Most Things Haven’t Changed (But This Has) | What Do the Stoics Say About Attachment?

Human beings are human beings. We have the same weaknesses. We have the same tendencies. We have the same potential. Thenew 10th Anniversary Edition of https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10The Daily Stoic https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10is out NOW! 👉 Grabhttps://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10your copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10 🎟️https://www.dailystoiclive.com/DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ Listen or watch Ryan's full episode on A Life of Greatness Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/ryan-holiday-the-stoic-rules-to-stop-overthinking/id1457268944?i=1000783928731&l=te: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dRLOkJxYX8, Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/ryan-holiday-the-stoic-rules-to-stop-overthinking/id1457268944?i=1000783928731&l=te, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/7GTQEmjiqWKJElHwBnJI2l Follow Sarah Grynberg on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahgrynberg/?hl=en 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

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• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's totally free. It can explain how AI can reshape work across your entire organization and how businesses like yours can prosper from it. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get this free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era, at netsuite.com/stoic. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/stoic. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues: courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  Most things haven't changed, but now this has. Some 675,000 days, more than 16 million hours, nearly a billion minutes. That's roughly how long it's been since Marcus Aurelius was writing what we now call Meditations. Think of everything that's happened since then. Empires have risen and fallen. Entire countries have come into existence. We've invented the printing press, the airplane, the internet. We've walked on the moon. And yet, you open Meditations, and there he is, trying to talk himself into getting out of bed, preparing himself to deal with difficult people,

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  reminding himself to be patient, to do his work, to make good use of the time that he has. You go back a little further, and you find Epictetus explaining why we get so anxious about the things we don't control. You find Seneca writing about people who complain that life is short while finding endless ways to waste it. All those centuries, all that changed. And here we are, working on the same things. Marcus himself noticed this when he looked back at the generations before him. "The Age of Vespasian," for example, he wrote, "people doing the exact same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die,

• 2:53Ryan Holiday?

  complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office and power." Human beings are human beings. We have the same weaknesses. We have the same tendencies. We have the same potential. Which is why people keep finding their way to the Stoics. You pick up something written nearly 2,000 years ago and find help with something that happened to you this morning: an argument, a disappointment, a worry that kept you up last night. That's what we were trying to do 10 years ago. It's Ryan, by the way, when we published The Daily Stoic. It was supposed to be a passage a day, something to think about, something to try, something to carry with you into whatever the day brings,

• 3:37Ryan Holiday?

  something from the past to help you with the present. And while the problems haven't changed much, a lot has happened in the 10 years since The Daily Stoic came out. I've had my own arguments, my own disappointments, my own losses, successes, sleepless nights. I've kept reading the Stoics, kept writing about them, kept talking to people here on this podcast about them. So when that publisher gave us a chance to redo The Daily Stoic, I didn't just want to slap a new intro in the book. I wanted to go through it page by page to see if I could make it better. The ideas from the Stoics haven't changed, although we've added about 60 new ones to the book. But my interpretation and my understanding of them has. And I think that's what has made it better,

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  certainly an expanded and revised 10th anniversary edition of The Daily Stoic, which is available now. You can get some signed and numbered first editions before we run out. We also have a new leather-bound edition, which I think is extra beautiful. Check all that out anywhere books are sold, dailystoic.com/ds10. I just recorded a new version of the audiobook, which I hadn't done before. And all of that, as I said, dailystoic.com/ds10.

• 4:57Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. Just packing up, heading to the airport today for this Australia tour. First, we're in New Zealand, then Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth. Sydney again? I don't know exactly. I'm very excited. I'm excited to see all of you there. I think there's a few tickets left if you want. I can grab those at dailystoiclive.com. But as part of the tour, they asked me to do a couple podcasts. And I did this podcast called A Life of Greatness. It's one of the big podcasters over there. Her name is Sarah Grinberg. And we had a lovely conversation. We had to figure out the time difference. It was crazy to do it sort of... I think I came back to the studio, did it after my kids went to sleep. But it was a lovely little chat, and I thought I would bring that to you

• 5:42Ryan Holiday?

  just to kind of turn the tables a little bit and remind you to come see me while I'm in Australia. I'm excited to swim in the rock pools. I've never been to New Zealand before, so I'm pretty excited about that as well. You can find A Life of Greatness on all the podcast platforms. You can follow Sarah on Instagram, @sarahgrinberg. And I'll see you in Australia and New Zealand, or maybe a little bit closer to home if you're listening in the US. I'm going to be in Nashville in mid-November, also Boston. Then in December, I am in DC and Philadelphia. All that at dailystoiclive.com. It can be hard to stay present in a meeting because you're thinking about what was just said.

• 6:27Ryan Holiday?

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• 7:11Ryan Holiday?

  They help people contribute better, track what's going on, and it captures the good ideas so we don't lose them. That was the point of the meeting, right? If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. And you can try it totally for free. Just head to granola.ai/dailystoic. That's granola.a/dailystoic to get your time back. Try it for free, granola.ai/dailystoic. So I have a bunch of traveling I'm doing through the end of the year on Daily Stoic Live Tour. I just got back from San Diego. I like to stay in the places that I'm staying. I like to book places on Airbnb so I can be like a local. I not only do some of my best writing, but I learn about things that I wouldn't have known otherwise. When I was just in San Diego, I took a walk along the water. I bumped into someone who recognized me,

• 7:55Ryan Holiday?

  and they told me about their favorite local bookstore, which was like two blocks from where I was staying. And I never would have known about it if it wasn't for that encounter. It was cool to me to think that I have helped facilitate that experience for many, many people coming to Austin over the years. The first house that I bought in Austin when my wife and I first moved here, we would list it on Airbnb, and it helped me make the transition from my corporate life to being a full-time writer. So if you're going to be away, you should maybe think about listing your place on Airbnb. It can be a great way to earn extra cash while you travel, can offset the cost of your trip, or maybe even go towards whatever you're doing next. If you've got travel coming up, check out Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think, and you can find out how much at airbnb.com/host.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  I wonder, Ryan, how do you come up with what you're gonna write about every single day?

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  Ooh.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  I write once a week and I am sitting there thinking and thinking and thinking. So like every day is like huge cadence.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  Well, um, I don't think about what I'm gonna write about every day. I write every day. So let me break that down a little bit. So, um, the Daily Stoic email, it goes out every day and it's gone out every day for, in September, it will be the 10th year of the Daily Stoic email. And then I also do a one called Daily Dad, which is a parenting one. So it's really two a day.

• 9:19Ryan Holiday?

  But, but what I do is I write every day. Usually, you know, sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three. I'm always writing and then those get processed by the editor that I work with for, for the list. And we pick out a schedule basis. So, so what I try to do is take out the pressure of needing to do tomorrow's email. Right? So like today I wrote two about, you know, change and improvement. Like how so often we cling to the person we've always been as opposed to, you know, trying to become someone or something new. And so I wrote two of those emails.

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  So obviously one isn't gonna go out tomorrow and the other isn't gonna go out the day after that. It's two relatively similarly themed things. So that, that process only works if I have 30 or 40 of them in the can, which I, which I try to do. So, so yeah. What I try to do is just always contribute something as opposed to like sitting down and going, what am I gonna do today? And, and I'm, when I'm working on a book, what I'm doing is I'm taking this big thing, which is a book that might be a one or two year process. I'm two years into the book that I'm doing now and I'm probably halfway done. So let's call that a four year process. I have a little chunk that I'm working on today.

• 10:42Ryan Holiday?

  That as long as I show up and put in some time on, um, I can, I can call that a successful day. I'm not like needing to

• 10:54Ryan Holiday?

  reach a certain checkpoint, I guess. I, I try to break the, the big task down into component tasks that feel very manageable and there's not much pressure about.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Great.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  That's, it's interesting to hear from someone else that writes as well. That seems like a very efficient way of doing it. I wanna talk about, um, getting over the hard times that we kind of touched on before. But the idea, which is kind of a principle in Stoicism, that everything is an opportunity, even suffering, sort of the idea that the obstacle is the way.

• 11:35Ryan Holiday?

  True.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Intellectually, people would go, yes, yes, I understand that. But again, when it comes to head, it would be, why does this happen? If say someone gets an illness, why does this have to happen to me? All my friends are well.

• 11:52Ryan Holiday?

  True.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  You know, things that seem really tough for the individual. How would you use Stoicism to look upon those situations?

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  Well, look, I do think it's important not to be glib about it. You know, like if someone comes to me and they say like, look, I just found out I have terminal cancer. I don't say to them, you know, hey, the obstacle is the way. What are you gonna do with this? Like that, that's for, that, I think that the Stoics have been speaking these truths for thousands of years. And I think, I think that can resonate with a person. But it's not, it's not my place to be like, you know, sort of buck up and handle this, right? Like, uh, you should be smiling through this. I, I just, that's not, that's not how I think about it. But one of the things I do try to point out to people, and I try to remind myself of this more than anything else is like, look back on your life, even a relatively privileged life.

• 12:50Ryan Holiday?

  If you start to go through it, you, you just see a catalog of like one thing going wrong after another. That like, if you had said, this is what you're gonna have to deal with, they would have, they would have been like, well, I can't deal with that. Like, just go back to, to March 2020 and, and say to someone, hey, let me tell you what the next six years are gonna entail, right? You'd be like, that's insane. I just can't possi, I couldn't possibly deal with one thing after another like that.

• 13:22Ryan Holiday?

  But you know what? You did, because you actually don't really have a choice, right? The only thing you have a choice about is like how much you suffer inside of that. Like how much you add on top of that by, by going, this isn't normal. This isn't fair. This is ridiculous. This is so and so's fault, right? Like the, really the only thing you look back on and, and wish you did differently was like, how much time you wasted before you just got down to dealing with it. And so I, I do think one of the empowering things that we can take from looking back on our own lives is just like, how far we've come, how much we've dealt with.

• 14:02Ryan Holiday?

  And then that should give us some, some sense of, of how

• 14:11Ryan Holiday?

  practiced we are for whatever the future can bring. And, and I think we could also look back and go like, look at who you, look at who you come from. Like your grandparents, your great grandparents, the people who settled the country you live in, you know, whatever your ancestry is, like all of us come from like this chain of survivors who are not constitutionally different than any of us. They just, they just dealt with what was in front of them. Just like you're gonna deal with whatever is in front of you. That's kinda how I think about it.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  You know, in Buddhism, they talk a lot about attachment and the idea that attachment obviously causes suffering, the more that we're clinging on to something. When it goes, we become sad and, and we suffer. And Stoicism kind of circles around not a dissimilar theme. I wonder how you and your everyday life work around the things that are very good and not being attached to them. Because I know for myself, we can get so excited about things and, um, you know, and, and I have learned over time, like as much as you can get sad, you shouldn't try and get so crazy excited either.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  It's, it's kind of finding that middle ground.

• 15:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the even keel, I think, is a better way of thinking of Stoicism. It's not too high, not too low. But I'll give you something I think about with attachment. Because I have two young kids, as I was saying. And like, one of the things that can like make me spiral is just like thinking about something happening to my kids, right? You're like, you don't want them to suffer. You don't want them to feel pain. You don't want them to get lost. You don't want them to get hurt. You know, you, there is your whole world, right? And so you have this vulnerability, right? That's the problem with attachment. You have this vulnerability. Like they say, like having kids is like your heart running around outside your body. Which is true. And then I go, okay, you feel that way. You know, you would be devastated if anything ever happened to your kids.

• 16:14Ryan Holiday?

  And then like just this, this afternoon, like, cause like my kids are out of school and my son was talking to me about this thing. And then he's like, here, I wanna show you this video, you know? And then I'm like, uh, no, I don't have time, you know? And so here he is trying to connect with me, trying to show me something. And I'm like, no, no, I don't have time. I have to do this work thing, which I did not actually have to do.

• 16:38Ryan Holiday?

  And so like what, what you're doing is like, you're worried about losing this thing in the future as you are in the middle of pushing it away in the present, right? And, and so I, I don't know if this, I, I think this attachment thing is like, is weird because I think some people take from it and they're like, oh, you just shouldn't be attached. I think what they're saying is that it, you should be present and enjoy it while you have it. The Stoics would just say, tell yourself that you don't actually own this, that your possession of it is tenuous. And therefore you have to get really good at being present and grateful for having it right now.

• 17:19Ryan Holiday?

  And then also be grateful and appreciative for the fact that you had it, that you got up until this point with that person, with that career, with that, you know, possession, right? There is, there's another Buddhist story about like this, this monk has a cup that he loves. And he tells himself, you know, the cup is already broken, the cup is already broken. And, and someday the cup breaks.

• 17:48Ryan Holiday?

  You know, telling yourself that this thing that you have is not yours forever, I think is, is, um, is the way to think about it. But that doesn't mean you don't care about it. It just means, I think, you actually care about it intensely while you have it. You just understand that the future is not guaranteed.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Wow, that's true. It's true. It's, it's, it's hard.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  But, you know, obviously a great way to look at it. You, well, the Stoics talk a lot and you have done a lot of work in the idea that death is imminent. And it's something that we should think about regularly. I actually think about it very regularly. I don't know if that's such a positive thing. And I think I think about it. I scare myself and I try to stop thinking about it. But at the same time, I understand mortality and I know that life can change in an instant. I wonder, what are, what is the work that you have done with thinking about life?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  And the fact that, you know, death is something that unfortunately to some come with being born. And something, well, probably the only thing in life that is a certainty.

• 19:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's not that it's necessarily imminent. It could be, right? Which is why we have to be aware of it, but certainly it is inevitable, right? Like it is the one prophecy that never fails, as they say, like.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:22Ryan Holiday?

  Everybody's born with a terminal diagnosis, just some, some, for some, it's, it's, it's more looming than others. I think when, when the Stoics talk about this practice of what they call memento mori, meditating under mortality. It's, it's saying along the lines of what we're just talking about, like, don't put off till tomorrow what you could do today. Don't take people for granted. Don't take your health or your position for granted. Because, you know, it can all change like that. And so I think from memento mori, we get a couple of things. We get, we get a sense of priority, right? A clarity about what's important and what's not important.

• 20:03Ryan Holiday?

  Like if you suddenly found out that you had a month to live, how, how many things would you immediately stop doing? And, and, and what does that tell you about those things, right? There's a passage in Meditations where Marcus Rios goes, so let me get this straight. You're afraid of dying because you won't be able to do this anymore? Like, you know, whatever the dumb stuff that we waste our time with is like, that's what you're clinging to life for.

• 20:30Ryan Holiday?

  And then I think the other thing that gives us is humility, you know, like, hey, I'm a, I'm not a god. I am not exempt. I'm not special. I'm an animal. I'm biodegradable. I'm going to end up, you know, equalized like everybody else. I remember I was in, when I was in Sydney, two years ago for those talks. I, I was running along, you know, the, the sort of Bondi Beach trail there. And I, I stopped it at the Waverley Cemetery, which is like maybe the prettiest cemetery in the world. Like it's just absolutely incredible there with waves crashing up. And I remember I was walking through it and, and, you know, first off, it's like, you know, none of these people are appreciating it.

• 21:15Ryan Holiday?

  Like they don't, it doesn't mean anything to them that they're buried in the most pretty cemetery in the world. Like all, all their time for enjoying this view is gone, you know? It's worth remembering, but two, I remember I was walking and I'm, I'm forgetting the person's name, which I guess illustrates my point. There was a little placard and I was talking about this person who died and was buried there. And 250,000 people came to their funeral. And this was like a hundred years ago. It wasn't like, you know, recent. But so you think about how many people lived in Australia or Sydney that 250,000 people would come to this guy's funeral. I mean, that would be an insane amount of people now.

• 21:57Ryan Holiday?

  It'd be a sane amount of people in any country at any time, but, but a hundred years ago, it's even more. And anyways, you're just like, in the end, it's no different than any of the other people buried here. Like one person, 250,000 people, you know, it all cuts us down the same. We all become worm food, you know, and we are all eventually and inevitably forgotten. That's one of the interesting things in Meditations, Marcus Rios is talking about like these other emperors. And how quickly their names have become unpronounceable and unfamiliar to people.

• 22:38Ryan Holiday?

  And that, that he's like, look, the same thing will happen to you. You know, how many people know Marcus Rios as the old guy from the movie Gladiator? Like the most powerful man in the world is just like some guy in a Russell Crowe movie that they saw. And that's, that's what happens, right? And, and so I think this, this practice, it, it feels morbid and it is, but it has a bunch of philosophical benefits.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I want to, what you have changed in your life when you have thought more about death? And, and the idea that, you know, things do change fast.

• 23:21Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. Yeah. I mean, a bunch of things. I think one is I'm like, what am I doing this for? Like, like, why did I say yes to this? Why did I get roped into this? It's like, I was afraid to be rude, like to come off as rude by turning down an invitation or ignoring an invitation. And I was willing to trade the most precious resource in the world to not be perceived that way. It's like the craziest, it's the craziest thing.

• 23:56Ryan Holiday?

  You know, I think a lot of people who are ambitious is because of the idea of ego. You know, you, you, you want to make your mark. You want to leave a legacy. You know, you want to be remembered, you know? And, and posthumous fame, the Stoics remind us is like maybe the wor, the most worthless thing you could possibly imagine. Like you don't get to enjoy it. As I said, like that person who had 250,000 people at their funeral, they're not like, oh, yes, I did it. You know, thanks, guys. This really makes me feel special, right? Like they didn't experience any of that. They don't know there's a plaque, right? Like authors who are dead don't appreciate that their books are still in print.

• 24:41Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it doesn't do anything for you. So I think just sort of prioritizing what's actually important, which isn't to say, oh, what's actually important is being famous to people who are alive. It's just realizing like, hey, this whole contest doesn't matter at all.

• 25:00Ryan Holiday?

  And then it reminds me to kind of slow down and be present. There's some famous singer, I forget who it was, they were on some TV show and they said, you know, you know, you've got this diagnosis. Well, you know, what has it taught you? And he just said, enjoy every sandwich. That's what it taught him. And so I do think there's something special about just being present and enjoying the ordinary things in life, you know? Doing the dishes, sitting in traffic, reading a book, watching, you know, some, some, some of these things feel more special than others. But at, at some point in your life, you would trade anything to be able to get to do that again, or for a little bit more of that.

• 25:44Ryan Holiday?

  And do you think the memento mori stuff reminds us like, hey, I have this thing right now that in the future I will want desperately. And what am I doing with it? I'm, I'm on my phone.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  I think about that often. I've often talked about it on the podcast, the idea of finding happiness in the mundane. And similar to you, knowing that at the end of life, those are the moments that we'll want back, right?

• 26:14Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  And they may seem mundane now, but I, I, I know that they will not be mundane then. And, and there is joy in that.

• 26:22Ryan Holiday?

  When they're actually not mundane, if you can cultivate a more poetic way of looking at them. Like an artist, an artist, you know, sees a basket of fruit and goes, no, that's like the prettiest thing I've seen in the world. Like, like, look, of course the Grand Canyon or, or the Waverly Cemetery or the Blue Mountains or, you know, whatever. Whatever natural wonders of the earth are, they were celebrating and, and seeing. And it's, they're good bucket list items. But, you know, just the, the insane beauty of any city at night when it's all lit up. Or the mess of a room that a child has made.

• 27:04Ryan Holiday?

  You can see that as frustrating and annoying and the thing you have to clean up. Or you can go like, this is a well-played in room. Like you, you get to decide how you see things. That is kind of the essence of Stoicism. And so even that idea of, of mundane or ordinary, you know, the Stoics, like some of the most beautiful passages in their writing is when they're, they're just noticing regular things in life, but they're doing it with a kind of, you know, they're doing it with a kind of, of awe and fascination. It's like, sometimes we'd see this when somebody's like on drugs and they're just like, whoa. You know, they're just seeing something they've, they've ordinarily been inured to with a kind of a fresh set of eyes.

• 27:50Ryan Holiday?

  That, that I think is really important too.

• 28:02Speaker 02

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