Beware the Freight Train Coming Your Way | (Dis)integration

Ryan talks about why you need to be prepared for what is to come, about how everything we do for others comes back to us, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day. Sign 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  Beware the freight train coming your way. You're starting to feel some relief that you're coming out of the slump, that your industry is starting to rebound, that vaccines for your youngest might be available soon, that the pandemic is nearly over, that your depression feels less heavy, that your exile is going to be lifted. It's good to have hope. It's good to look towards the future. But we have to be careful, because sometimes, as the Metallica lyrics go, "It comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel was just a freight train coming your way." We've talked before about how a Stoic can never say, "I did not think that could happen," or "I did not think that would happen to me," or "I didn't think that would happen again."

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  But we also have to be on guard, Seneca reminds us, against hope. Edith Egger told us on the Daily Stoic Podcast about a friend in a concentration camp where she'd been imprisoned, that they came to be convinced that she would soon be freed. And when that day came and went, she died of a broken heart. Hope was the scaffolding that held her up. It was the oxygen that filled her lungs and it kept her going. And when it collapsed, so did she. That light at the end of the tunnel can deceive us. It can make us do crazy things. It can put us in danger. It may well be that things are getting better. The end may in fact be close. But don't relax your guard until you get there. Don't take anything for granted or fall prey to bad habits in the process.

• 2:11Ryan Holiday?

  Keep doing what you're supposed to be doing. Stay focused. Let the end of hard times resolve themselves as they will, but remain prepared for the new normal, whatever that may be.

• 2:24Ryan Holiday?

  Disintegration. And I'm reading to you today from The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of The Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the bestseller list. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. "These things don't go together. You must be a unified human being, either good or bad. You must diligently work either on your own reasoning

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  or on things outside of your control. Take great care with the inside and not what's inside, which is to say, 'Stand with the philosopher or else with the mob.'" Epictetus's Discourses 3:15. "We are all complicated people. We have multiple sides to ourselves, conflicting wants and desires and fears. The outside world is no less confusing and contradictory. If we're not careful, all of these forces pushing and pulling will eventually tear us apart. We can't live as both Jekyll and Hyde, not for long, anyway. We have a choice to stand with the philosopher and focus strenuously on the inside or to behave like a leader of a mob,

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  becoming whatever the crowd needs at a given moment. If we do not focus on our internal integration, on self-awareness, we risk external disintegration." Obviously, you're listening to me, so you can't see it. But in the book, I have disintegration, the "dis" in parentheses. One word, but there's the parentheses. And the reason I do that, it's actually something I talk about in the intro in my first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying. And if you've read Trust Me, I'm Lying, you've heard of it. It might seem very different than what I talk about here at Daily Stoic. Or if you see a video of me and then you contrast it with the somewhat ominous and maybe even evil cover of Trust Me, I'm Lying, it might seem as difficult to reconcile. And indeed, it is.

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  And I talk about this in the intro of the book. I was, of course, familiar with Stoicism when I wrote that book. I was, of course, studying Stoic philosophy before I even got into marketing. And, you know, I've read Marx's theories many times in those years that I worked for those controversial clients. Was it hypocrisy? Was I a bad person? I mean, I don't get to say that. But what I think about it, and as I reflected on it when I wrote that book, is that I was not integrated. I had these two different parts of myself that were very not aligned. Does that make sense? Like, it's funny, we use the word disintegration to mean like comes apart, right?

• 5:18Ryan Holiday?

  But, but really, what it would mean, dis and integrated means not integrated. And that's what I was. I was not integrated. I had these different spheres. I had this part of me that really liked philosophy, that really believed in these ideas in Stoicism and was trying to apply them in my life. And then I had my actual occupation and day job where I was, you know, pulling these marketing stunts and, you know, living, I don't want to say an unphilosophical life, but certainly not a life fully in accordance with the philosophical ideas. I don't think I was making the world a better place. And that's partly why I wrote the book, partly why I changed. The philosophy helped me get there. But for a long time, these, these things were compartmentalized. They were not integrated.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  And so I think that's what, what Epictetus is talking about. He says, "You must be a unified human being. You can't be these different things." Seneca was not a unified human being. He was a brilliant artist and a ruthless power broker. He was a philosopher who also coveted wealth and status and influence.

• 6:24Ryan Holiday?

  Wanted to be on the inside of things. And that disintegration, some would call hypocrisy. I would just say was not the integration he needed. And he got closer to that integration as he got older. He ultimately leaves Nero Service and dedicates the last few years of his life to getting there. And that's where I think a lot of his best work is from. But that lack of integration is a problem for all of us, right? You say you love your spouse, that your family is really important. And then, you know, you spend all your time at the office or maybe you're having an affair. Or, you know, you say you care about the environment, but then look at some of your personal decisions.

• 7:05Ryan Holiday?

  Right? You claim to be a good person, but then look at how you treat people who are close to you. Right? Hypocrisy is one thing, but I think it's often that we have trouble just applying what we believe or applying it fully or seeing, in fact, that the way that we're acting, which feels normal or appropriate or necessary, given our profession, is actually out of, not in accordance with our values or as the Stoics would say, not in accordance with nature, not who we're supposed to be, what we're capable of being. So this integration is the work that we need to do, both in studying the philosophy. Maybe it's going to therapy, maybe a relationship helps you get there. Maybe just long conversations, a lot of self-awareness.

• 7:48Ryan Holiday?

  I think ultimately, not to reference another one of my books, but it's our busyness, our franticness, our yearning or push for things that keeps us so busy and preoccupied that we don't notice the disintegration. I think that's largely what it was for me. I was just trying to get ahead, doing cool things as they came up. I was young, had a million things going on. I didn't want to let certain people down. And so that, that lack of awareness about my disintegration was largely rooted in just not having the time, not having the space to reflect, not having literally a minute to do it.

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  And I think part of the reason we keep ourselves busy is so we don't have to do that. Because when we do it, it's painful. When we do it, it demands change. So I'm urging you, I guess, to take a little time to think about whether you're integrated, to think about where you're not a unified person, to think about where you're focusing on things outside your control. Because inevitably, it will tear you apart. It does not end well. And it can make you do things that you're ashamed of, or embarrassed by, or later regret, or have trouble explaining. All of which are true for me, to a certain degree, and true for, I think, anyone as you get older and wiser and better. I'm wishing you much integration and the stillness required to get to that integration.

• 9:16Ryan Holiday?

  I encourage you to do that work.

• 9:21Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.