This Is Always There | Ask DS

Every retail business knows about shrinkage–the percentage of goods shoplifted or stolen off the floor. Every manufacturer knows how to calculate their defect rate–because no production run is perfect. Every shipping company knows there will be an error rate, a delivery failure rate, even a disappeared-into-thin-air rate. Every credit card processor knows about fraudulent purchase rates and disputed charges. And the bigger the businesses, the larger these numbers are, certainly in terms of cost. It’s frustrating. It’s expensive. It’s also a fact of life.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions about why he chose to study Stoicism, tricks that the Stoics had for being still, his strategies for helping athletes understand that an inflated ego is the enemy, and more as part of a Q&A session after a speech he gave to execs at a Tennessee Athletics retreat.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks, some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members, or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  This is always there. Every retail business knows about shrinkage, the percentage of goods shoplifted or stolen off the floor. Every manufacturer knows how to calculate their defect rate, because no production run is perfect. Every shipping company knows there will be an error rate, a delivery failure rate, even a disappeared into thin air rate. Every credit card processor knows about fraudulent purchase rates and disputed charges. And the bigger the business, the larger these numbers are, certainly in terms of cost. It's frustrating, it's expensive, it's also a fact of life. Marcus Aurelius writes that "A world without obnoxious people is impossible, and a patient and wise person comes to understand

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  that when they meet someone obnoxious, they are simply a percentage of the whole." And so it goes in business. The entrepreneur, the leader, the accountant comes to accept that a certain amount of goods will be stolen, a certain amount will break, a certain amount will be lost. Just like we do at Daily Stoic with the products that we make and sell, you try to minimize the losses as best you can, but you will never get it to zero. Mistakes, theft, random acts of God, these are taxes and tolls, operating expenses. And as Seneca said, "We must learn to pay these taxes, and pay them," as Seneca said, "of all the taxes in life." Gladly and without complaint. It's madness to sweat every screw up, to get angry at every incurred fee or replacement,

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  to take any of it personally. It's to torture yourself and the people who work for you. You have to accept it. You have to practice what the Stoics call the art of acquiescence for a reasonable amount of it. You have to focus on growing the business as a whole. In fact, understanding that as you grow the business, the shrinkage and defect and failure and fraud increases alongside it. Such is life. We must pay its corresponding taxes.

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to a Q and A episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. This was back in May. I was flying, was trying to get to Knoxville, Tennessee. I was supposed to land in Nashville and drive a couple hours to Knoxville. Ended up being crazy weather. We circled for like an hour, ended up landing in Memphis. Then we were supposed to wait a bunch of time to then get on a flight. And I was like, you know what? I don't trust it. I don't think it's going to happen. I called my speaking agent and I said, just give me a rental car. I'm going to drive. I drove like six hours in the same storm and made it at like two in the morning to Knoxville. And then I got up early that day.

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  I went for a run and then I went over and I talked to the entire Tennessee Athletic Department about the connection between Stoicism and sports. I'll bring you the whole talk in a little while, but in today's episode, I wanted to do the Q and A that I had with some of the coaches. There were tennis coaches there, the head football coach was there, the swimming coach was there, admissions officers, a whole bunch of people in the athletics department were all there as part of a coach's retreat. And they asked some really interesting questions, which I wanted to bring to you in today's episode. So enjoy.

• 4:16Ryan Holiday?

  Time for some questions? Want to do some questions?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  So you've mentioned all the different things in Stoicism that obviously you've lived after. When you were looking at different philosophies, what ultimately led you to that and what was maybe another one you considered?

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, I think you take from any school, any tradition, any way of thinking, if it makes you better, right? They're all dead. They don't have any claim to how it has to be. It's not a dogma. Seneca talks about, he says, "Read like a spy in the enemy's camp." He says, I'll quote, "A bad author if the line is good." So I try to take from any and all school, from any and all traditions. What I like about Stoicism is that, I think, again, a lot of philosophy is about up here. And if you live up here, that's great. But if you have a job that's down here in the real world, you know, I want to rely

• 5:12Ryan Holiday?

  on a philosophy that has been proven on the battlefield, on, you know, in the arena, in life. And what I find fascinating and cool about the Stoics is that they were real people who were doing real things in real life, and the philosophy was helping them in that. So, you know, I think that's why I get excited about it, and why it's interesting to me is, you know, they would say "acta non verba," deeds not words. Like, how does it actually work in practice? What do the lives of these people look like? And I think Stoicism passes that test pretty well. Yes?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  So still, this is the way, yeah, in that, but do you have tricks for when your mind is doing the hamster spinning?

• 6:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Action as you're trying to be still?

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, definitely. Just counting your breath is such a great way to do it. You know, it forces you, you can't do anything else as you just count the inhales and the exhales. That's obviously a good one. Usually I find, I think hobbies are a great way to do it. If I'm super distracted, if I need to get out of my head, I do something that I have to lock into, whether that's go for a run, or a swim, or a bike ride, or whatever. The other thing for me is...

• 6:32Ryan Holiday?

  I just try to remind myself, like, is this helping or not? Right? And I think so often, like, we're having this huge conversation in our head about this thing that might or may not happen, or we're worried about this, and going like, the other people are not thinking about this at all. This is like a one-way thing. I'm inflicting this on myself. Is the anxiety making the plane come faster or slower? Is it gonna change the course of the storm? You know, I think so often we're kind of borrowing suffering, or borrowing trouble by, you know, thinking about things that they're just gonna happen or not. Right? Politics, right? It's like, somebody will get selected as the nominee, and then you'll have a choice in November. Right?

• 7:15Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not saying that politics don't matter, but I'm saying, like, are you gonna vote in November of next year? Yes, great, okay, then you don't need necessarily to be watching CNN every single minute and scrolling Twitter. Like, cross that bridge when you come to it. Watching it or following it in real time, or, you know, emoting about it every, you know, this isn't helping you, and it's not helping the situation. And in fact, there are a bunch of things that you probably could do that would make a difference, that could be socially constructive, and you're choosing not to do those, because it's not only easier, but it's like, you're addicted to watching, you know, on whatever

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  side you're on, watching, you know, it unfold on television or social media or whatever. Yeah?

• 8:04Speaker 03

  I love what you say about ego is the enemy, but in college athletics right now, where we're going, it's definitely the opposite. What are some of the practices that are things that you say to our athletes that helps them understand that?

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, look, ego is obviously a timeless problem. All the Greek plays and the Shakespearean tragedies, at the core of them, it's all hubris and ego and entitlement and selfishness that leads to... So it's always been a problem, and then I think, social media and culture and the collapse, let's say, of some of the old values, it just exacerbates, it makes it better. But I think, what I try to do, is what I try to do in the books, what I try to do in my own life, is that the reason we study these kind of cautionary tales is that... The reason that the plays and the literature and the movies are about it is to warn us like, "Hey, you're going down a bad road." So I think studying those things is really important. And sometimes, you know, you can tell people, "Hey, don't do that. That's bad." They're not gonna listen.

• 9:04Ryan Holiday?

  And writing the rule is like, "Show, don't tell." And I try to not only just model the stuff in my own life, but then like when I am trying to convince someone or convey the importance of a point, I try to pick salient examples that demonstrate that ideal, that just sort of plant a seed, "Oh, hey, I'm being like so-and-so in this situation." That's probably how I would think about it. But I think generally, you know, it's easy in the short term, often in an organization, in a team or whatever, to make exceptions or allowances for ego because it's getting results in the short term, right? A non-sports example, Uber was a great example of this. One of the fastest-growing companies in history.

• 9:48Ryan Holiday?

  They recruited exclusively what they called like rock stars, like the badasses, the people that were the best at what they did, even though those people were often problematic, or jerks, or assholes, or worse, right? And so in the short term, it made them grow very quickly, but it was setting up future lawsuits, setting up future embarrassing scandals. It also made it very hard. It's like, you know, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Those people were only good in a certain type of economic environment or a certain growth trajectory of the company. And then when the company needed something else, those people didn't have that toolkit. And so I think the important part for a leader, for a coach, for an organization is go like, "What are the values? Who are we?

• 10:33Ryan Holiday?

  What do we stand for? What do we allow? What do we not allow?" And then you have to have the strength, you have to have the sort of fortitude to be like, "We don't make exceptions for that even when, you know, everyone else wants this person, right? Sometimes we don't know what we want, so we just want what other people want." And like, when someone comes on the market, or when there's some trend, even when it's in contradiction to what we know is best for the long-term prospects of the culture that makes exceptions, it very rarely works out, you know? Or it seems cheap now, but the bill comes due later. Thank you all very much, appreciate it. (applause)