If You Want To Be Happy Do This | Ask Ds

The Stoics talk about a lot of things. But they don’t speak that much about happiness. Is that because they were too tough or too resigned to their bleak view of life to care about it? Did they mean to imply that there isn’t room for happiness for the Stoic? That it wasn’t possible? Not at all. They talked about other things—virtue, resilience, self-command, managing the passions—because they believed when you handled that, happiness would ensue. As Dr. Becky Kennedy writes in her wonderful book Good Inside, if you want to raise happy kids, you don’t try to make them happy. You try to make them resilient and self-aware. She writes, speaking of both kids and parents, “The wider the range of feelings we can regulate—if we can manage the frustration, disappointment, envy and sadness—the more space we have to cultivate happiness. Regulating our emotions essentially develops a cushion around those feelings, softening them and preventing them from consuming the entire jar. Regulation first, happiness second.”In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks stoics and growth hacking over virtual for HP. “Advance Compute and Solutions”. HP produces some the worlds most powerful PCs used by Creatives, Designers, Engineers, and Analytics teams. So we’re dealing with the leading edge technology and partner with the likes of companies like Intel, AMD and Nvidia.✉️ 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.

• 0:06Ryan 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. We're 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. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to be happy, do this. The Stoics talk about a lot of things, but they don't speak that much about happiness. Is that because they were too tough or too resigned to their bleak view of life to care about it? Do they mean to imply that there isn't room for happiness for the Stoic, that it wasn't possible? Not at all. They talked about other things: virtue and resilience, self-command, managing the passions, because they believed when you handled that, happiness would ensue. As Dr. Becky writes in her wonderful book, Good Inside, we've also had her on the podcast recently, "If you want to raise happy kids, don't try to make them happy. You try to make them resilient and self-aware." She writes, speaking of both parents and kids, "The wider the range of emotions we can regulate, if we can manage the frustration and disappointment and envy

• 1:32Ryan Holiday?

  and sadness, the more space we have to cultivate happiness. Regulating our emotions essentially develops a cushion around those feelings," she says, "softening them and preventing them from consuming the entire jar. Regulation first, happiness second." This is great advice, a perfect Stoic mantra. "The ability to deal with frustration, to not be ruled by our temper, to catch ourselves when we're comparing, to stop ourselves when we start to spiral, these don't seem like happy things." But that's the point. By dealing with them, we make happiness possible. This is what the Stoics wrote about. This is what their strategies and exercises are all about. They just took it for granted that you would understand

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  what it was all aimed at: helping you flourish in life, creating the conditions from which happiness could flow smoothly and wonderfully. And we really did do an amazing interview with Dr. Becky, which I'll link to, but it was on the podcast not too long ago. So check that out.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursday, we do those Q and A's. Last week, I brought you a chunk of the Q and A from a talk I gave at HP back in June. Well, here is the second half of that. I was talking to some folks in the go to market team, the marketing department at HP, and they ended up having a bunch of questions about Stoic philosophy, which of course, I always love answering. Whatever I'm talking about, wherever I am, of course, I want to talk Stoicism. And that's what I do in today's episode. Here are some questions and my answers, and hopefully, they might match up with questions you have. Maybe you disagree with my answers, but I'm always excited to get the conversation going.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Whether you're learning for your bookstore, or whether you're thinking is like the next big thing that you could bring in, could just get the bookstore to a whole nother level, or maybe you want to open another bookstore. Have you, have you thought about that? Like, what, as a marketer, what's working, what's not?

• 3:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the big paradigm shift that we're seeing across different industries is, obviously, this is again, sort of a microcosm, but the vast majority of authors do not sell books to customers, right? Not that most books don't sell, which is true. But typically, I sell a book to a publisher. The publisher sells a book to a distributor. The distributor sells a book to a retailer, be it Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or your local indie. And, and then that gets sold to a customer, right? So not only are the margins pretty bad, because there's so many different middlemen in there, but ultimately,

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  the most important relationship is between the reader and their audience, right? Or sorry, the writer and the audience. And we have let that be intermediated by so many different people, right? And, and I, this is true in, in most businesses and that you sell to the retailer sells to the customer.

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  That's just how it works, right? And I think what's really special is actually a way back to how things used to be is more and more people are operating their own storefronts and having the direct relationship with the customer, which goes to my point about platform, but it's like, you should know who these people are, right? You should know, what does the data say about them? What do they like? What do they don't like? What works for them or doesn't work for them? You know, how do you have an ongoing relationship with that person? I think obviously subscription businesses are a version of this too. But I'm just, I'm very excited about the idea of my bookstore. Yes, I sell lots of other people's books and that's mostly what the bookstore does.

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  But like when I put out the daily dad book, or when I put out my discipline book in the fall, last fall, the vast majority of the copies in, on the launch week came through me, right? And so like when I launched the discipline book, the people I did most of my marketing to were, this is crazy for publishing, the people who bought my previous books for me, right? Like I know those people, right? I'm not calling up Amazon and buying co-op from them, buying ad, like buying access to my previous customers from a third party intermediary.

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  I am directly communicating with those people and I'm able to sell it more cheaply to them. I'm able to get it to them more quickly. I'm able to create a wow customer service experience, you know, all that stuff. So I am just generally excited about the idea of fewer middlemen and doing things direct with the most important people in the world, which is your, which is your customers. And I think that goes to the, the iron maiden thing we're talking about, you know? You're not in the insert, you know, device business. You're in the, you know, insert your tribe business.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  When people go to your store, do you feel, I'm just curious, it's close to us and Houston, I love to see it, is, do you feel like they know your brand? They know who you are, the majority of people that go in there?

• 7:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes, I mean, some people, my favorite is when people will come in and the staff will tell me about it, and they'll be like, wow, you have a lot of Ryan Holiday books here, you know, or whatever, and they won't make the connection, which is always fun.

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  No, but, but look, one of the things that I think social media has really been able to do, it's really cool, and then sometimes it can be a little scary, or awkward, or whatever, which is like, because of the podcast, because of videos, because of, you know, social media, like, I'm talking to people, like, if someone, like, even the difference between reading a book and listening to an audiobook, like, if I take the time to record my own audiobooks, which I do, that's hours and hours in, like, being directly piped into someone's brain, right? And that can be a little weird, but it's also just such a profoundly deep connection. And I think, originally, for instance, when I launched Daily Stoic, like, I was not involved

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  at all, I was always in the third person, or, you know, not in the third person, it was just, it was just, there was just no person involved. But then when I would come time to be like, okay, we have this course, or like, we are selling this thing, they, the audience would be like, who is we? Why should I listen to you? And so, ultimately, having to make it more personal, and cultivating that personal connection, then allows you to engender, or to draw on, the trust of like, hey, you know me, I'm saying, I'm launching this thing, and I would like it if you could support me. And like, people can, people can buy my books more cheaply from Amazon, but they'll buy it from me when I'm launching it in the store, because they want to support me.

• 8:51Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, obviously, it's a little different, again, when you're a multi-billion dollar corporation, but how do you get your own version of that kind of trust? That's one of the most valuable things in the world.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  I have one question.

• 9:05Ryan Holiday?

  All right.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  So unfortunately, I have the other problem. I have a lot of data and I have a lot of trends. What can I actually do in order to find that one trend that will bring us to the future?

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, what I try to think about is, you know, is this an of the moment thing? Or is this touching something that like we're talking about earlier, that's unlikely to change? It's likely to still be true a year from now, five years from now, whatever, right? So even in my own books, right now, it's funny, Stoicism has kind of become a trend, right? People can look at the data, they can see what's going on. So people are like wanting to jump on to the Stoicism trend, which is funny to me because I remember how much not a trend it was when I was trying to interest my publisher in it. But I myself don't think about Stoicism as a trend at all. When I'm writing my books, I'm writing them about timeless

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  things that Stoicism has good insights about: obstacles, ego, busyness, you know, fear, discipline, justice ultimately is the next one, wisdom will be the final one in that series. So what I look for when I'm looking at the data, right, when I'm looking at what's doing well, I try to see where that overlaps with things that have held true over long periods of time, right? Or are unlikely to change, you know, so it's like people are always going to be graduating from high school or college, right? So, you know, something that when you see a trend at the college market or the high school market is

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  or the gift giving market or whatever, things like I look for the overlap between what's sort of timely and then also what is timeless. And I think that's where you get really explosive stuff.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Hey Ryan, I know we're up on time. But I just wanted to say thank you.

• 11:08Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, this is so fun.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  This is the second time I've been able to listen to you. The knowledge, experience, the ideas you share are priceless, really. I mean, I saw everybody here, I'm sure people even on the phone taking a ton of notes. And I'm sure they'll turn it into their own. I think why it's so important for us is it, I think I told you in the beginning, I've gone through, I think, most if not all of your books. Now I'm gonna certainly purchase The Daily Dad as a dad of three.

• 11:37Ryan Holiday?

  Love it.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  So what's hard, though, is when you read or listen to books or have the experiences on your own or the ideas you share with people, it's hard to share those with a big group. So you start with common principles or those ideas. And why it's so important that we come together and listen to someone like you is we can all share that as we work together going forward and say, hey, remember that time when Ryan said this? Now that's a jumping point for us. And so that's priceless for us. So I really appreciate your time and your knowledge and ideas. And just thank you.

• 12:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I love hearing that. And that's what keeps me going. So I'm honored. And we're right on the way from Houston into Austin, right off 71. So all of you are welcome next time you're going to Austin or an A&M game. And I'd love to see you and wow you with the tree and the bookshelf. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.