The Gift Of Having To Start Over

Ryan explains the other-side of the disorder and devastation that has come from the pandemic, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave is out now! You can still get the preorder bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorderSign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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.

• 0:05Ryan 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 at dailystoic.com.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  The gift of having to start over. It's scary to start over. It's scary to pursue a new career, to pursue that tugging interest, to step into uncertainty, to be single again. It takes courage or a catastrophe. We had Chris Guillebeau on the podcast not long ago, and he's helped millions of people reinvent themselves in their careers. His latest book, The Money Tree, is the story of overcoming a significant struggle and discovering meaning in self-reliance on the other side of it. And when I talked to him at the beginning of the pandemic, we were talking about how there are millions of people who suddenly have had no choice but to start over. And this is what he said.

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  He said, "First of all, congratulations on reaching such a remarkable opportunity. Starting over means you have the chance to build what you really want. Imagine building a sandcastle and then seeing it destroyed by a freak tidal wave. You're disappointed, right? But then you start over, and maybe the new one is better. It doesn't take as long to build, and you make improvements as you go based on the sandcastle-building skills you've acquired. Or maybe you just realize you're tired of building sandcastles, so you leave and do something else. On the other side of this disordered state we're all in now, I think we'll see a number of tremendous shifts and positive changes from so many people. And look, in Lives of the Stoics,

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  I tell the story of Zeno's shipwreck, which was devastating to his business, but transformative to his life. It led to his founding of Stoicism, after all. He could have been wrecked. Instead, he saw it- As an opportunity, and years later, Xeno would say, I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered shipwreck. He said, well done, fortune, to drive me thus to philosophy. If you've lost your job, if you've gone through a painful breakup, if you've been forced to start over, if your sandcastle or your ship has been swallowed up by this freak tidal wave that was COVID-19 in the year 2020 and 2021, well, congratulations. You've been

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  gifted a remarkable opportunity. You get to choose the life you want to build. Well done, fortune, you can say, to drive me thus to the life I've always wanted. Remember, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave is now available everywhere. You can go to your local bookstore and pick it up. You can come to the Painted Porch and pick it up. We are still offering the preorder bonuses. We've extended it to the end of this week, so you can get that at DailyStoic.com/preorder. But you can also get Audible, you can get e-books, you can get whatever you want from wherever you want it. But I would very much like you to support the new book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave.