Don’t Put Yourself in This Position

A leader stands up, steps up…or in other cases, walks away.🎙️ Listen to Ann Wroe On The Real Story Of Pontius Pilate, And His Connection To Stoicism on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, & Wondery📚 Grab a copy of Pontius Pilate by Ann Wroe | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/💡 We designed The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Leaders to mirror the kind of education that produced historically great leaders like Marcus Aurelius. Check it out: store.dailystoic.comGet The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Leaders & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  Don't put yourself in this position. We take the job because it pays well. We take the job because it gets us closer to where we're trying to go. It gets us closer to the center of power. It's the opportunity we trained for, we worked a lifetime for. It's a job we're good at. It's a job that a lot of people and things depend on. But still, we have our reservations about the effect our industry has on the world, about the character of our boss, maybe about what that job is doing to us, our health, our family. It's a timeless situation. Our ambition writes checks that our conscience has to cash. Our drive keeps us busy, but in the quiet moments, doubt, concern creeps in. In her fascinating and must-read book,

• 1:14Ryan Holiday?

  Pontius Pilate, Nero, you can listen to her podcast here, she sets the scene back in the year 26. "It is not hard to imagine dinner parties in Caesarea at which Pilate's guests, visiting from Rome, would regale him with the blood-soaked stories and sexual details that would make women cover their ears," she writes, "while Pilate would listen in the awful sinking knowledge that this was the man to whom he owed his career, from whom he drew his authority, and whose safety he prayed for. Doubtless, in some sense, he could disconnect the man from the office, as people under any regime can close their eyes to the personal sins of their rulers. But there may have been times when he could not, when amidst the genteel litter of wine beakers, chicken bones,

• 1:58Ryan Holiday?

  and roses, and clowns, the prefect of Judea would find himself suddenly sickened by the obscenity of his protector." This must have been the same sickening, creeping sense that Seneca had, working for Nero. Perhaps, in his own way, Stockdale had some sense of this as the Nixon administration went on. And certainly, General Mattis, a man of great integrity and discipline, would have felt this during his time as Secretary of Defense. But what we can't do, as Seneca did for too long, as Pilot did, is push away that feeling. Just continue to go about our business. Because eventually, inexcusably, we become complicit.

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  A leader stands up, steps up, or in other cases, walks away. That's Leadership 101. How do you manage up and down? Also, how do you manage when to walk away, when to draw the line, when to do something that is in the interests of your country or your cause, but perhaps not in the interest of the organization, or the institution, or the company? I talk a lot about that in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. We talk to some great leaders, generals in the Air Force, heads of sports franchises, leadership experts, all sorts of folks that I think you can learn a lot from. If you want to check it out, you can go to dailystoic.com/leadershipchallenge, or click the link in today's show notes. I think it's one of the best courses we've done over at Daily Stoic.

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  I think you'll really like it. And do check out that Pontius Pilate book by Anne Ralich. It's absolutely incredible.