Are You Great Like This? | Ask Daily Stoic

People have different definitions of greatness or success. Maybe you think yourself powerful because you have a lot of people working for you. Or successful because you have a full calendar. Or important because you’ve been on TV. Or happy because you go from one pleasurable activity to the next. But do you know what Seneca considered the sign of greatness?---In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents part 4 of his live Q&A at Alechemy in which he covers the "life books" that influence him every day, the mentors who he is looking up to right now, his own struggles with defining happiness in his life, and more. We’re launching Session 2 of the New Year New You Challenge on February 1st! Enroll now to secure your spot or gift it to a friend.✉️ 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, including the Premium Leather Edition of the Daily Stoic.📱 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.

• 0:03Ryan 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. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow.

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

  Are you great like this?

• 0:51Ryan Holiday?

  People have different definitions of greatness or success. Some people look at money as a measuring stick. Some look at celebrity and recognition. Others look at awards and rankings and fortunes 40 under 40. Maybe you think you're powerful because you have a lot of people working for you, or successful because you have a full calendar, or important because you've been on TV, or happy because you go from one pleasurable activity to the next. But do you know what Seneca considered the sign of greatness? In On the Shortness of Life, he writes, "Believe me, it is the sign of a great man and one who is above human error not to allow his time to be frittered away." What a wonderful way of putting it. It's not how rich you are. It's not about how famous you are.

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  It's not about how many trophies you've won. No, to the Stoics, the point of this work was something simpler, something within everyone's reach, to not waste time, to be in control of one's life rather than in the sway of ambition or distraction or temptation. To get clear on what we want to do, when we want to do it, and who we want to do it with. To never, as we've said, wish away a minute of life, to make good use every minute. That is greatness.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Alright, so I'm gonna pivot away from your books. Your books can be part of the, some of the answers to the questions about that.

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  You've got a stack of books behind you. If I want to be a better leader in 2021, which should I be reading or studying, in your opinion?

• 2:29Ryan Holiday?

  Let's see. Forty Eight Laws of Power, definitely. Mastery by Robert Greene, definitely.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  It doesn't have to be behind you either, right?

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I, I, I think I can do, so the section I have behind me, for the most part, got a little mixed up. But, um, these are like the books that I read and reread. I call them my life books, books that you base your life around. So, uh, here's one, this is, um, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times. Uh, a very, uh, uh, timely book and timeless one.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Is that the Think Like a Roman Emperor book in the middle there, or is that the?

• 3:11Ryan Holiday?

  Here?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, what is that one?

• 3:13Ryan Holiday?

  No, that's a book called Roman Honor, uh, which is also good, but, but How to Think Like a Roman Emperor is very good. Uh, I, I love Donald Robertson.

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  I have Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, which I like. If you haven't read Anti-Fragile, uh, that's a great one. Uh, Man's Search for Meaning, uh, Taming the Tiger Within by Thich Nhat Hanh, who I was telling you about, who I like a lot.

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think that's a good start.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I would say that's a good start.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  It's about 2,000 pages, so, uh, hit me back when everyone in the room has finished all those.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Man's Search for Meaning isn't that long a book, but it might make you think for the entire 12 months.

• 3:59Ryan Holiday?

  That is, that is a short one, and yeah, if you only read that book, uh, it would, it would give you a lifetime to chew on.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Mentors, coaches, who are you turning to right now to be a better author, better leader, better father? Who are you looking at right now as we go into 2021?

• 4:18Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I love the concept of masterminds. I'm in a group of writers. We get together once a year. We rent a house somewhere and we spend like three days, everyone sharing different parts of their business, trying to learn from each other. So I'm a big fan of that model. You know, Robert Greene is someone I, I'm lucky enough, you know, he's continues to take my phone calls. So that, that's been a great one. Someone like Steven is a big part. You know, I have my, my editor, I have my agent, I have, you know, sort of collaborators that I, that I work on, on my projects. And then, you know, probably like when I think in my life, like every, every failure I've had, like every mistake, big mistake I've made, they all have in common that my wife told me they were a very bad idea and I did them anyway.

• 5:03Ryan Holiday?

  You know, so, so I think, you know, you're like, not like a mentor in that, in that sense, but like certainly a sounding board slash partner. Um, I, I, I don't think, you know, I met my wife when I was 19, so she's been on this journey, we've been on this journey together. You know, that, that's a, that's a big part of it for me as well.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  All right. Last question for me, then I'll get one or two burning questions.

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  All right.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Ryan, do you struggle with contentment or happiness?

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  I, I, I do think it's important to me, and, and the studies have shown this, young people tend to associate happiness with accomplishment. And as you get older, you tend to associate happiness with contentment. And, uh, that's an important, it's like knowing that we should try to not speed that process up, but we should try to go, oh, we're probably chasing the wrong thing. We think that winning a gold medal, you know, uh, getting a Super Bowl ring, making a billion dollars, being the best, we think that that thing is going to get us that happiness we want, when really it's appreciation and gratitude and contentment that will get us what we want. And so that's something I, I try to practice.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  I try to every day, take a minute and go like, this is enough. This is totally enough. You have enough. Be happy with it. This is, this is it. And then everything else is extra.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Well, I guess that's a good, my question, I was trying to figure out how to ask it succinctly. Filters, like how do you, as many opportunities that probably land on your desk today, and projects you want to pursue, and in light of kind of what you just said, how do you filter through? Like, how do you decide this is something I'm going to go on?

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  I have a big sign on this side of my computer, you can't quite see it, but it just says, "No!" Exclamation point. Just a reminder to say, "No." And I think the pandemic's been a great reminder of, like, you know, a lot of people, myself included, have sort of had some really clear, some really bedrock assumptions about what we have to do to survive financially, to be happy, you know, to be creatively fulfilled, whatever, like, I have to do this, this, and this. Like, if you told me at the beginning of 2020, "Okay, you're not going to travel, you know, you're not going to be able to sell books in bookstores, you're gonna have to do a book launch remotely", you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  I'd have been like, "Well, that's gonna be the worst year ever, and you're not gonna, you're gonna go broke and you're not gonna succeed, right?" Oh, lo and behold, it's one of the most productive, content years of my life. And so, you know, the pandemic, I think, has been a nice, in the sense that it's a

• 7:50Ryan Holiday?

  a radical force lifestyle experiment, you know? And so, one of the challenges for me is gonna actually be trying to maintain this bubble, you know, this sense of focus and purpose as, you know, the temptations and distractions come back online.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Awesome. So, a few minutes left. Does anybody have a burning question, something that they want to ask me, Ryan Holiday, about, around his books, or anything else? Anybody? I know it said "the" question, so, pressure's on. I have one more, if you guys don't have it.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  What's tattooed on your arms here, Ryan?

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  I have "Obstacles Away", "Ego is the Enemy", and then I have "Stillness is the Key".

• 8:32Speaker 01

  This is a marketing guy, guys.

• 8:36Ryan Holiday?

  I would say it's 1% marketing, 99% need to be reminded on a regular basis that ego is the enemy.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  I love it. You opened that book up, I think, saying, "Hey, I don't want to be any different here." Yeah. That's how you phrase it. Andrea Wincott?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I think the question is more here is when you're thinking about that next book, are you thinking about what's going to be good for yourself? Or are you thinking about what's going to be good for the audience?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Good question. So that next book, what's going to be good for you? Maybe financially or beyond? And what's going to be good for the audience anyway then?

• 9:09Ryan Holiday?

  So it's, I think about it's like, here's all the things that I'm interested in, that I could write about. And then here's all the things that the market is interested in. And you, you got to find where those two things overlap, right? Like ego is the enemy, as I was saying. I really wanted to write a book about humility. That's the, that's the, the sort of the germ of the idea. But it was in talking to be, oh, actually attacking this same idea from the opposite angle, that ego is the thing we're struggling with more, allowed me to, to, to find, you know, Epictetus says every situation has two handles. One will hold weight, one won't. So it's about finding the right handle on the idea that's both creatively interesting, fulfilling, challenging, fun, whatever it is,

• 9:54Ryan Holiday?

  and, you know, commercially viable.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Didn't Robert Kiyosaki write about that? How you have to have titles that are sexy?

• 10:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Yes.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  You, you gotta, you gotta have, like, look, people go, "Don't judge a book by, by its cover." It's like, why do you think books have covers then? You know, like, that's what, that's what it's there for.