How Fortune Favors The Brave w/Ryan Holiday EP 1171

My guest today is Ryan Holiday. He’s one of the world's foremost writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life. His books The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and Stillness Is the Key have sold millions of copies and been translated into over 30 languages. He’s now written a new book called Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave.In this episode we discuss how fear is actually a good thing, why people struggle to have courage and how to overcome that, how thinking about our own mortality can help us rather than hurt us, the biggest lessons we can learn from stoicism when it comes to finding peace, wealth, developing discipline, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1171Check out his website: www.dailystoic.comDaymond John on How to Close any Deal and Achieve Any Outcome: https://link.chtbl.com/928-podSara Blakely on Writing Your Billion Dollar Story: https://link.chtbl.com/893-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,171 with New York Times bestselling author Ryan Holiday. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:29Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, everyone. My guest today is Ryan Holiday. He is one of the world's foremost writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life. And his incredible books, The Obstacle is the Way, Eagle is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and Stillness is the Key have sold millions of copies and been translated into over 30 languages. And he's now written a new book called Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave. And in this episode, we discuss how fear is actually a good thing for us, why people struggle to have courage, and how to overcome that in your life, how thinking about your own mortality can help us rather than hurting us, the biggest lessons we can learn from Stoicism when it comes to finding peace, wealth, and developing discipline, and so much more. And if you're

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  enjoying this, make sure to share this and spread the message of greatness to a friend that you think would be inspired by this as well. And if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now and leave us a rating and review, letting us know the part of this episode you enjoyed the most, or the part that really inspired you the most. And a big shout out to the fan of the week. This is from Suzie who left a review over on Apple Podcasts that said, "This podcast continues to inspire and change my life. It's educational. It's therapeutic. Thank you, Lewis, and Team Greatness. Every time I listen, there's always a takeaway. Definitely one of my favorite podcasts. And to add, I don't usually leave reviews, so that's how much this show has helped me." So, big thank you to Suzie for being the fan of the week. We appreciate

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  you and your constant support. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Ryan Holiday.

• 2:06Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about my guest, Ryan Holiday in the house. My man, so good to see you. You are changing millions of people's lives with your book, with your work, with your articles, with your content. Now you're this YouTube star as well.

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  We've known each other for 10 years.

• 2:24Lewis Howes?

  I was thinking that. I was like, when I met you, it was like 2011, I think.

• 2:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:29Lewis Howes?

  Was it Tim Ferriss's event, 2011?

• 2:30Ryan Holiday?

  Neither of us had books. Neither of us had online platforms in any way. And...

• 2:35Lewis Howes?

  Both of us had Big Eos. And then you wrote...

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  I don't know about that. But I do think sometimes people think like, that either it's random luck, that you just get lucky, or they think it's like impossible to do. And I would say it's a good, it's a good example that neither of those things are true.

• 2:58Lewis Howes?

  Right. And we've been consistent for, well, previous than 10 years. I mean, we were, we were working very hard to get to where we were 10 years ago.

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 3:05Lewis Howes?

  But the last 10 years have been constantly showing up, self-discipline, consistency, surrounding yourself with people wiser than ourselves.

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  For sure.

• 3:15Lewis Howes?

  And, and overcoming fears, leaning into courage to put ourselves out there, taking risks.

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, like, so I'm, I identify as a writer. That's the medium that I'm comfortable in. That's like what, and part of the reason I feel like I gravitate towards writing is that I was less comfortable like being up in front of a room or putting myself out there. Like, I wasn't a kid who like wanted to be in drama class or like be in front of people. I was the quiet introvert writer. So like, even within the thing that you're good at, you're immediate, like, the irony of success in any field is that it forces you to do a bunch of things that you are not good at.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  Scared of.

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  That are, yes. So it's like, you write, you think like, oh, now my job is writing. It's like, actually, no, you have to go talk about what you wrote in front of large groups of people, or you have to make videos. So like, all of that stuff, yes, as far as overcoming fears, like...

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of like the idea of the art, like the most talented musician in the world who's undiscovered, who just like plays in his basement. You have to, you can't just become a master of your craft. You have to learn how to promote yourself, put yourself out there, create content.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Lewis Howes?

  Be in relationship with managers, do deals and not rub people, show up on time, like all these other things.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Lewis Howes?

  You gotta learn in order to get your craft out there.

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  When you talk to writers or anyone like creatives, I just love doing this stuff. I, I just like, it's good. It should just find its audience.

• 4:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:41Ryan Holiday?

  Never works. I see it as like two consecutive marathons. So like you run the marathon, you win, you think they're like, oh, great job, Louis. Like here's your medal. And you think they're like leading you over to the podium to like, you know, stand in front of everyone. And they're actually just leading you over to like the second marathon that starts right now.

• 4:59Lewis Howes?

  Right now. Start running.

• 5:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, just back to back marathons, like making it, you put everything you had into it. You put your whole life on pause. You know, you, you gave everything, you have nothing left. And if you do have something left, then you cheated, you know, like you didn't, you didn't put everything into it. And then they're like, now you have to go on the road and now you have to write articles. Now you have to go talk to people. Now you have to make all these decisions about the cover or the title or release date. You know, all the stuff that goes into creative work. And then, and then probably like the third marathon is just like, and now you wait. Like now, because it never happens as soon as you want. Like I started my first blog in two thousand and six. I sold my first book in two thousand and eleven.

• 5:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:44Ryan Holiday?

  My first new, my, my, and then my first like book about philosophy, The Obstacle is the Way, came out in two thousand and fourteen and it didn't hit a bestseller list until two thousand and nineteen.

• 5:55Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  So it's on top of all that, then it, you just have to.

• 6:00Lewis Howes?

  Master your craft or acquire a skill and become really great at it. Then learn how to promote and market it and get it out there in the world. Then wait another five to 10 years. Before you actually get the results you wanted to get.

• 6:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like investing, like first you have to make capital, like earn wages, you have capital. Then you have to find the opportunity, the thing you invest in, then you have to wait.

• 6:23Lewis Howes?

  To wait five, 10 years till you make some money?

• 6:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, compounding returns, interest, like you just have to let time do its work.

• 6:29Lewis Howes?

  And I don't know if you're like me, you know, 10 years ago, I invested in a lot of things that never made money. That I lost all the money. So you have to make a lot of mistakes.

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:36Lewis Howes?

  Through the lessons of promoting, marketing, or putting yourself out in the second marathon.

• 6:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Lewis Howes?

  And the third marathon of just waiting around for time to pass.

• 6:45Ryan Holiday?

  And then what if, what if your thing is like really ahead of its time, right? Then you have to wait even longer.

• 6:49Lewis Howes?

  Then no one cares. Yeah, you have to wait longer.

• 6:51Ryan Holiday?

  You might even be dead.

• 6:52Lewis Howes?

  I kind of feel like masculine masculinity for me was a little ahead of its time. It came out like right when Me Too was happening. And they're like, oh, we don't want to listen to a guy talking about vulnerability. We just want to yell at men.

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:03Lewis Howes?

  Or, or expose the men who have actually done the really hard things, the really bad things. And men weren't looking to find the answers or seek within. And so now I see it happening like a second wave four years later where people are like finding it, buying it, sharing it. They're like, wow, this is really powerful. I understand this.

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  Well, there's this expression that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And so the difference I found, yeah, like you work really hard, you make something, it's objectively good. But then timing is not perfectly right. It, it doesn't fail. It's like a single. But then when you have something and it's exactly timed to the moment, then it's a home run. Or your thing is just kind of floating there, waiting for the moment. So like I saw this during the, I've been writing about Stoicism and so resiliency and obstacles and also stillness. These things, they, they worked, but then, you know, March 2020, they take on a different relevance to people. And suddenly.

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  Six years ago, they weren't as powerful.

• 8:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And now also suddenly people have time.

• 8:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  And so.

• 8:03Lewis Howes?

  To do a daily meditation.

• 8:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Yeah. So then it's like, then yeah, you can either get a second life or a third life. And, and so I think the, the important part is like, you do work, you put yourself out there. You have to trust that it's going to work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a grind.

• 8:20Lewis Howes?

  I have a thesis that if you want to overcome your fears, you have to go all in on it. I, I don't think, I don't think you can outthink your fear. You have to go all in on your fear in order for the fear to start to disappear.

• 8:35Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 8:35Lewis Howes?

  And. You've got to have a lot of courage in order to face the thing that you're insecure about, that you're afraid of, people judging you, that you're afraid of failing or falling down on your face.

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:48Lewis Howes?

  But once you overcome it, or at least you're able to face it in a comfortable stance, maybe you're never fully comfortable, but at least you're like, I can do the thing. That's when I feel like your greatest gift can come to the world, or that's where I feel like there's so much reward on the other side. But it's extremely scary to face our fears. Why do you think it's so hard for people to face their insecurities, their shame, their fears, their doubts?

• 9:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, if it wasn't scary, then like courage wouldn't need to be there. So like it's like, it's good that you're afraid, right? Like if, I guess one way to think about it is like, if there wasn't a risk, let's say it's starting a business. If like, all you had to do was like have an idea for a business and then it was guaranteed that you'd be successful.

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  Then every, there'd be a lot more businesses, right? Like everyone would do it. It's, so the fact that it's scary is partly what makes it valuable.

• 9:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:40Ryan Holiday?

  Because most people are not going to get over the fear. So like, when you think about things that are scary or challenging, it's like, you could think about it like a heavy weight. If the weight is easy to lift, you're not going to build any muscles. So like, that you have that sensation of fear or hesitation or doubt, one, one way to think about it is that it's a positive sign. Like Steven Pressfield talks about that the resistance you feel is commensurate with like the value. So like, you're, you're not afraid to do things that don't matter. You're only afraid to do like big things that matter.

• 10:18Lewis Howes?

  So the harder the scary it is, the more valuable that thing is for you sometimes?

• 10:21Ryan Holiday?

  I think, I would say a lot of the times, not all the time, maybe it's scary because you're about to, you know, implode or drive off a cliff for no reason. Like, it's not that fear has no place, but it could be a sign that you're on the cusp of something. And so when when I think about it, I think I I go like, okay. If I'm not pushing myself, if I'm not scared, that's probably a sign that I'm just doing something that I'm already really comfortable with and therefore not growing. So I I think it's good. It's a good sign. But the I think the reason it's scary, you said you can't like outthink it. I don't know. I I disagree a little bit. What I would say is that oftentimes, the reason we're scared about it is because we haven't really thought about it.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  So we have these kind of like vague fears, you know, like, like, well, I don't want to do it because and then you're like, because why? Like, tell me what you're really thinking about.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  The worst thing will happen because I got made fun of because I get I lose my money.

• 11:19Ryan Holiday?

  It's actually not that big a deal. Like I talk in the book, there's this story about Pericles. He's this great Athenian general and um this he's leading these troops in a naval convoy. And there's this that suddenly like there's an eclipse. And like, imagine living.

• 11:34Lewis Howes?

  A solar eclipse.

• 11:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, thousands of years ago, you don't know what an eclipse is. Just all of a sudden, in the middle of the day, it's dark, right? And so everyone's scared and they thought, is this like an omen? Is this the gods are they angry? Um, and there's a similar story where like thunder happens and they're like, what is that noise? What's going on? And he just goes like, so so it's plunged into darkness and he grabs his cloak and he puts it over this guy's head. And he goes like, are you scared of this? The guy goes, no. And he's like, but it's just darkness. He's like, what does it matter if the darkness is because the sun disappears or because like I put, you know, my cloak over your head? So I think some of the times we're scared because we haven't really thought about what it is. And so it's kind of this enormous boogeyman that if we actually took a minute and we

• 12:19Ryan Holiday?

  broke it down and we thought about it, it wouldn't be as scary as it was. So I I agree that you want to go head on, but part of head on is just like, what am I actually afraid of here? Like, what is this?

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:32Ryan Holiday?

  And oh, it's it's not nearly as big as you think it is.

• 12:38Lewis Howes?

  I hear you there. For me, I guess the thing that I'm thinking of is like, when I was a teenager, I was terrified of talking to girls.

• 12:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 12:46Lewis Howes?

  And I wasn't able to outthink it and be like, okay, they're just gonna laugh at you and then you're gonna be fine. I almost needed to like experience it and realize physically, I'm okay.

• 12:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Lewis Howes?

  Same thing with salsa dancing. I was like fascinated by watching salsa dancers, but I was terrified to get laughed at.

• 13:00Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  And to look like out of place and not in the right cultural fit. And for months, I was paralyzed at the idea of like looking silly, making someone else look bad, getting laughed at, not fitting in, not belonging, all these things, just not understanding the language of salsa dancing. And finally, I did it for the first time in the middle of, I don't know, probably a hundred dancers. And I was shaking, trembling, terrified. And I remember after about 10 minutes, I looked up and no one cared. No one was watching me, no one was looking at me, but I don't think that I've been to outthink it because

• 13:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  the fear was in my body and it was almost like I needed to physically do the action and feel it. Until I was like, okay, I'm still not comfortable in this situation. But like Batman, he had to live in the cave. He didn't just say, well, let me just think I'm a bat. He was like, I need to become the bat. I need to live with the bats and let them swarm around me and realize like, I'm not that afraid. Or it's okay, I can learn to embrace this discomfort as opposed to outthink the fear.

• 14:04Ryan Holiday?

  I remember one time I was sitting in a cafe on Houston Street and you walked by and you

• 14:08Lewis Howes?

  In New York?

• 14:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. It was like, it had like a glass wine. All of a sudden I heard this knocking on the door. It was you.

• 14:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Ryan Holiday?

  And you were like, hey, I'm going salsa dancing. Do you wanna come? And I just remember thinking like, I would literally rather die than do that, because that's

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  It's terrifying.

• 14:21Ryan Holiday?

  But, but I do think physically experiencing it can be really valuable because you realize, yeah, it wasn't what you thought it was. But it is interesting. So like you, you're afraid of salsa dancing, talking to girls. At the same time, you were playing football at an elite level. You were going up for passes, getting smacked by someone running full, like

• 14:42Lewis Howes?

  It's still scary though.

• 14:43Ryan Holiday?

  You could literally die.

• 14:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 14:45Ryan Holiday?

  Like you were not afraid to be hit basically by like a car.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:51Ryan Holiday?

  And yet you were scared of what people thought. So it's like, it's funny because we think that when we think about courage, we tend to think of physical courage as being like the end all be all.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  I almost feel like it's easier to run into a building that's on fire. Than it is to like go up and talk to your crush when you're like terrified of the rejection. Because maybe physical instincts would be like, I'm gonna go wrestle this person out of a car, out of a crash. Like I would just get up and go, but I would be like, as a teenager, this girl's gonna laugh at me and all my friends are gonna laugh at me and I'm not gonna be accepted and no one's gonna love me and I'm gonna die alone.

• 15:24Ryan Holiday?

  Well, there's war heroes that run for political office that then are afraid to vote against their party because people will be mad at them. Or they could lose their job.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  So different types of courage, right?

• 15:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, so, so we often think of physical courage as the end all be all, but I would actually argue that moral courage

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  It's the hardest.

• 15:41Ryan Holiday?

  is hardest and more rare. And the tricky thing is that people will have one and not the other. And it could be, it could go in either direction, but that's really the tricky thing.

• 15:51Lewis Howes?

  What has been the hard, before you wrote this book, because I feel like every book you write, there's always like something in you of like, ah, I gotta write this because I know I haven't been fully mastered this thing yet.

• 16:02Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 16:03Lewis Howes?

  So where were you lacking courage in your life before or during writing this book? Was there parts, or maybe it was years ago that you've mastered now, but what was the thing maybe that was the hardest for you to have courage around?

• 16:16Ryan Holiday?

  So I mean, I've gone through scary things in my life, whether it was dropping out of college, the decision to leave the corporate world to become a writer. These are all scary things and even the decision to like go from the marketing track I was on to writing books about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. Like that was, you know, I took a major hit in the advances. You know, it didn't work right away. I, you know, I was worried whether people were gonna like it or not. But I do, one of the last stories in the book I talk about when I was at American Apparel and I think one of the scariest things that people face is like, if I do this, I could lose my job, right? Even though this might be a job they're thinking about quitting, like at that very moment,

• 16:59Ryan Holiday?

  there's some, we had this huge mental block between quitting and being fired, right? And I was thinking, the, the story I tell is I was thinking about leaving American Apparel to become a writer and then I get asked to do this sort of unethical thing at work. And I say, I'm not gonna do it. I don't do it. But that was as far as I took it. I didn't want to stop, like, I, I didn't want to go toe to toe to stop it from happening.

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:26Ryan Holiday?

  And

• 17:26Lewis Howes?

  You just did it, said, I'm not gonna do this, but you knew it was still happening.

• 17:29Ryan Holiday?

  I said, that's a bad idea. I'm not gonna do it. Find somebody else.

• 17:32Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:33Ryan Holiday?

  And I, but I could have said, like, that's not right. Don't do that. Right? And I didn't have to watch as it happened.

• 17:42Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:42Ryan Holiday?

  Um, and I, and, and I think back, I go, why? And it was like, well, you didn't, you didn't want to lose your job.

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:51Ryan Holiday?

  A job that I left shortly thereafter, anyway. And I think, what I think about in retrospect is like, why did I want to keep a job that you could get fired from for doing the right thing? And so when we, I think it's, the reason I tell the story is that I wanted to make an important point, which is, the excuse, I was worried about X, or I was afraid of Y, does not age well.

• 18:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 18:18Ryan Holiday?

  Like, when you look back, you're never glad that you chickened out. Like, you're, you never are.

• 18:24Lewis Howes?

  That's the truth.

• 18:24Ryan Holiday?

  And so, yeah, I, I think, I don't want the book to come across as like, you know, I'm super brave. This is my story. The, the story is, the, the book is, here are inspiring people throughout history, whose courage is calling to us to be better.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 18:40Ryan Holiday?

  And like, I actually end the book, not with a story of courage, but a story of, um, sort of, a, a failure of courage. Because I think that's really, like, it's funny, if you should be afraid of anything, it should be afraid of, like, you should be afraid of betraying your principles, of falling short.

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 19:00Ryan Holiday?

  Of not doing what you know is the right but hard thing at the time.

• 19:05Lewis Howes?

  How does someone develop their principles or their values if they're not clear on them? Or if they had, they were taught, like, different values by their parents, you know, by society, by friends in high school, college? How did they get clear on those core things?

• 19:18Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I think you develop them as you go, and, and that's why you can't be too hard on yourself when you fall short, because that's one of the ways you are learning.

• 19:25Lewis Howes?

  How you learn, yeah.

• 19:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  Um, By being a coward?

• 19:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  Because like, by making the mistake of being a coward, you learn through pain.

• 19:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 19:32Lewis Howes?

  You should have done it differently.

• 19:34Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and, and you learn, oh, like, the thing you, the self-preservation that you were trying to, uh,

• 19:43Ryan Holiday?

  That you were following.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:44Ryan Holiday?

  It's not a guarantee anyway.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:46Ryan Holiday?

  You know what I mean? Like, you're, you're, you're like, oh, I don't want to mess this up. I don't want to piss off this or that. And it's like, you're, you're assuming that it's yours anyway, that you have control of it and you don't. And so it's kind of like, it's like the Stoics talk about memento mori, right? One of the benefits of memento mori is like, actually, life is too short to try to hang on to it too tight anyway.

• 20:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Ryan Holiday?

  Um, but I think you develop your compass. One of the ways I think you do it is, is like, who are your heroes? Like, who do you look up to?

• 20:17Lewis Howes?

  Models, yeah.

• 20:17Ryan Holiday?

  What would they do in this situation? What is the code that they lived by? That could be your grandparents, it could be your spouse, it could be Jesus, it could be Marcus Aurelius, it could be anyone from history, um, it could be a character from your favorite book. Like, what would they do? I think that's a really key way to do it.

• 20:36Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 20:36Ryan Holiday?

  What the, the book, this book, and then the series of books is, is built around what's called the cardinal virtues, um, which are actually the virtues in Christianity and Stoicism, actually appear in a bunch of different philosophical schools. But the idea is courage, self-discipline, justice, wisdom. So to me, that's kind of what I, that, that, those are the principles that I try to live by. And I think every situation that we face calls for one or all of those things.

• 21:07Lewis Howes?

  Where, where do you think people lack, um, courage the most? In what parts of their life? Is it in just being honest with themself? Is it in how they lie to other people? Is it in how they don't stand up for what's right? Or at least what they believe is right? Is it physical courage, emotional courage, you know?

• 21:27Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's all of the above. And, and, and I think it's important. It's like, no one is like fully brave or fully a coward, right? Like, it's more like day in and day out. What do you do?

• 21:37Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 21:37Ryan Holiday?

  Right? But I think one of the places we struggle with the most is, like, if courage is rare, courage in pursuit of the right thing is rare still. So the virtues are interrelated, right? Like, one of the stories they tell in the book is, okay, think about Michael Jordan. The decision for Michael Jordan to walk away from basketball.

• 22:01Lewis Howes?

  And play baseball.

• 22:02Ryan Holiday?

  Immense courage, right? Think of the, of the amount of people who told him it's a bad idea, told him he couldn't make it, wasn't going to work. I think of the money he left to set, right? Real courage. But. I contrast that with Maya Moore leaving equally dominant in the WNBA. She leaves at the height of her career, not to go play a different sport, not to go on some spiritual pursuit, not to, you know, spend time with her family, but to free a man wrongly convicted, who is spending his life in jail. So, so courage is important, right? The courage to like, oh, I'm gonna quit my job and start a company. Great, very courageous. But the person who quits a job to dedicate themselves to some meaningful cause,

• 22:46Ryan Holiday?

  that's, to me, the level above.

• 22:51Ryan Holiday?

  And I, so I think it's, it's courage, but courage in pursuit of what? Right? We all know people who are savvy investors, they're great at taking risk, managing risk, they're bold, they're making, but is it in service of their bank account? Or is it in service of doing something that matters?

• 23:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Where do you feel like you struggle the most with courage still?

• 23:17Ryan Holiday?

  I think, I think that's a good example, that, that the story I'm telling is where I continue to struggle. It's really hard to say or do things that you know will have financial or career repercussions for you.

• 23:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:37Ryan Holiday?

  Right? So, like, I think early in my career, I was like, oh, I, I don't, I guess, I've said this to people where it's like, I was just too, I was like, happy to be here, or happy to be wanted. So like, I would go like, oh, this is the opportunity, I'm excited, grateful, let's do it. Not like, does this align with my values? Does, do I feel like this makes the world a better place?

• 23:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:59Ryan Holiday?

  So, but, but so, it wasn't greed so much that was motivating me, but a fear of what would happen if I said no. So like, I, I often find myself saying yes or not. Objecting or being like fully articulating what I think and feel. Because like, I don't want to be on the outside. Or I don't want to rock the boat, right? So I think what I've been working on is just like, this is what I think. This is what I feel needs to be done, like come what may. I'm trying to get to a place where that is consistently who I am and what I do. But it's scary because like, first off, um, what if that's?

• 24:44Ryan Holiday?

  What if the opportunities dry up because of it, right? Right, right. And then I think as I've gotten older and you have more responsibilities, you realize like, it doesn't just affect you. Hmm. It affects the people who work for you. Yeah, your kids, your family. Exactly, exactly. So people will, you know, people will go along to get along, right? And that's like, so, so one of the things that's done is given me some empathy. I try to, I, I have a chapter in the book about like, basically never question, uh, the, the title chapter is never questioning another man's courage. Meaning like, we, we watch, we're like, why are these bums in Washington? Like, why is the mayor doing this?

• 25:22Ryan Holiday?

  Or like, why isn't, why isn't LeBron James speaking up about, you know, his, like, why is it LeBron James speaking up about what's going on in China? Right? And it's like, why don't you speak up about what's wrong in your industry? Right? So it's like, it's very easy to get in this trap where you're criticizing other people's courage or lack thereof. Instead of doing what we should be doing, what we should take from these examples is like, what am I putting on the line? Do you know what? Right. What deals am I torching? How am I stepping up? Exactly. When, like you, we look at a politician, we go, why won't they vote for this or that? Um, who cares if they don't get reelected, you know? And it's like, well, they care.

• 26:07Ryan Holiday?

  And so it's like, what? What, when have you gambled your career? You know, like, what, what stands have you taken? Where you're like, this is unpopular, but I feel morally obligated to do it. And I'm willing to accept the consequences of that.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  What happens if the consequences are really bad? And you are broke for years and you don't have opportunities for years. You know, even if you want to self-start and just no one's. You're just so excommunicated from whatever society or community or families that you were a part of, that now, okay, I stood up for what was courageous, but what did I get for it? My own personal pride and loneliness? I mean.

• 26:47Ryan Holiday?

  Well, there's a tension there. So at, like, at American Apparel. So I didn't, I didn't do that, right? And, but by not doing that.

• 26:55Lewis Howes?

  You kept your job.

• 26:55Ryan Holiday?

  I kept my job, but it, which didn't just benefit me. I was then later in a position when, uh, when the, the company had more leverage over the founder and the owner to actually make it right in a way that worked, right? So, you know, uh, noble failure, what good is that, right? Like, if you, if you take your stand too early, um, if you are, you're the person who, uh, like, you and I both have an audience, right? If we had earlier on in our career, maybe taken certain stands, that audience wouldn't be there to then talk about whatever the important thing is. The problem, the trap is, we say, oh, I'll do it later.

• 27:38Ryan Holiday?

  I'll do it later. I'm still building. I'm still working. And then you never do it because now it's actually more expensive. Right? Now we have more to, we think, like, you, we think like, oh, that guy's a senator. He should be able to, or this woman's the governor of the third most popular state. Like, she should, but actually, the hard part is, as you get bigger, it's more to lose. Right? Like, you go, oh, this, this decision could cost me a billion dollars.

• 28:03Lewis Howes?

  A lot.

• 28:04Ryan Holiday?

  Um, not that, not that I have ever had a similar cost. But, but like, it actually, it doesn't get easier as you get more successful. It can get harder. So you actually need more courage as you go. It's easy to be the guy on the sidelines saying how things should go. But then, when you have, again, you have people dependent on you, you have influence, you have something you've worked your whole career for, uh, it's scarier. So you need more.

• 28:31Lewis Howes?

  So what is something from the Stoics that everyone should learn right now to help them have more courage and live a greater life? If there are three things that everyone could take away from the Stoics to improve the quality of their life right now, first, what would that be?

• 28:48Ryan Holiday?

  I got some good ones. So one of the questions we ask ourselves when we're like afraid of something, when we're thinking about, we go, but what about me? What would I do if? Right? Like, we're worried. And Marcus realist goes, you'll meet that with the same weapons you've met all your other problems. So remembering that like, hey, you've been scared before and you're still here. Right? So we often, often what our fear is really doing is underestimating or undercounting how good we actually are at what we do. Like, you're not, you're not suddenly tomorrow going to be a helpless loser. You're the same person you are today. And what will you do? You'll figure it out. Just like if you quit your job, you'd be like, I'm quitting and I'm going to go find

• 29:33Ryan Holiday?

  a new job. But if you got fired, that suddenly feels like disempowered, whereas the other one feels very empowered. So remembering what you're capable of, to me, is really important.

• 29:43Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 29:43Ryan Holiday?

  Number two, the Stoics say that we should always be training. So one of the reasons I think it's important to have like a physical practice, one of the reasons it's good to seek out adversity and difficulty is so when stuff happens, you're right. Epictetus, one of the early Stoics, he's actually a slave. And he says like, you want to get to a point where when stuff happens, you're able to say like, this is what I trained for.

• 30:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:12Ryan Holiday?

  Like, you knew this could happen and you did the work.

• 30:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Before you go into the next one, it's, it's, right when the pandemic happened, I was like, this sucks. And yet I've been training for this for the last like 12, 13 years of my life.

• 30:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 30:25Lewis Howes?

  Because in 2008, when I, well, in 2007, I got injured and had surgery. And then 2008, the housing crisis, and there were no jobs for someone like me without a college degree that was ignorant from school. I was like, I better develop myself so that when this happens again in five, 10, 20 years, I'm ready to take on any adversity.

• 30:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it's not fun and it's still challenging, but I'm prepared and ready. And I spent 13 years training for that moment. And I felt a sense of Kind of weirdly, I felt a sense of peace. That gave me the energy and the clarity to take action and shift where I needed to and lead from a place of courage as opposed to, and I wasn't perfect.

• 31:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Lewis Howes?

  But lead from a more calm, peaceful place as opposed to ah frantic, fearful place.

• 31:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, look, preparation makes you brave.

• 31:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:15Ryan Holiday?

  You prepared, so you were ready. And then I think also because you remembered what you felt then.

• 31:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 31:21Ryan Holiday?

  You were also in a position to lead and understand what people who were not as prepared.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  What they're experiencing, yeah, what they're experiencing. It sucks.

• 31:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Lewis Howes?

  So you can have empathy like you talked about, you can connect with people in that way. Okay, so always be training, always be learning something new, training yourself physically, mentally, emotionally.

• 31:41Ryan Holiday?

  And the third, the third one would be this Stoic exercise of memento mori, which basically means remember you will die. I actually carry a coin in my pocket that says this. But I think when you realize like, hey, life is already short and fragile. Like, I don't need to, if I'm spending my time cowering in fear or worrying, I'm acting as if I have a certain power over things that I don't. There's this famous Stoic story where like the emperor sees this Stoic philosopher he hates and he's like, he's like, I'm threatening you to, or I'm sentencing you to death. And he's like, I was already sentenced to death.

• 32:21Lewis Howes?

  At some point.

• 32:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. He's like, you have no more power over me than, than I had, than, than life itself.

• 32:28Lewis Howes?

  Mother nature, yeah, it just means dying.

• 32:30Ryan Holiday?

  And so realizing that, that life is fragile. I, I think sometimes people can miss this, like memento mori doesn't mean like, oh, like, don't wear a motorcycle helmet or pretend the pandemic is not real. That's not what it's saying. But it's saying like, hey, focus on the parts of safety and concern that, that are in your control. But if you're wasting your time being afraid, that's something I thought a lot about in the pandemic. It's like, look, I don't know, especially early on, we don't know where this is going, don't know what it means, don't know what is ticking clock is in anyone's body, right? What pre, preexisting condition you might have or bad piece of luck you got. So you take it seriously, but within that. What are you doing with your time, right?

• 33:14Ryan Holiday?

  Like, what are you gonna spend your time on? So if you're spending that time worrying, stressing,

• 33:22Lewis Howes?

  Watching the news all day.

• 33:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, what you're actually doing is rejecting the life that you have in front of you.

• 33:30Lewis Howes?

  It's kinda like a longer eclipse. It's like there's an eclipse that's happening. We don't know what this is, but you know, you could sit there and worry in fear for those five minutes of eclipse or whatever, or you can look up and enjoy it and do something with your time and

• 33:45Ryan Holiday?

  Exactly.

• 33:46Lewis Howes?

  Make the most of this and prepare and strategize and organize your time.

• 33:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, James Stockdale, who spent seven years in a prison camp in Vietnam, who reads the Stoics, he says, you know, he gets there and he goes, "I never lost sight of the fact that I controlled the end of the story." Right? So if he got out, that he would control the end, he would decide what, he said, "And that I could turn this into something that in retrospect I would not have traded for."

• 34:17Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 34:18Ryan Holiday?

  That's incredible.

• 34:18Lewis Howes?

  It's like Mandela as well, it's like 25 years or something.

• 34:21Ryan Holiday?

  So I think we have, it takes courage to say, "This thing happened to me and I wouldn't have chosen it, I didn't want it, but now that it's here, I'm gonna face it. I'm going to apply all my training and experience towards it. And then I'm not gonna waste my life being bitter, resentful, afraid, passive about it. And I'm just gonna get to work turning it into something."

• 34:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I'm not sure if this is 100% true or accurate, but I heard someone say that Bhutan is like the happiest country.

• 34:59Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  I'm not sure if you've heard of this. It's because, I don't know if everyone does this or just some people do this there, they focus on their death five times a day.

• 35:07Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting.

• 35:07Lewis Howes?

  They think about their death five times a day. And so there's an app, I think it's called Croaked?

• 35:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  Or you will croak or you, something like that, where five times a day. I had it for a while. It sends you a reminder, you're gonna die.

• 35:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Lewis Howes?

  With an inspiring quote. That has you reflect on your death five times a day to remind yourself. Do you have this on your phone?

• 35:28Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, did I give you one of these? This is what I carry in my pocket.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I see. Oh, nice.

• 35:32Ryan Holiday?

  You should just carry that. I keep, it's like a nice way to, I spin it and the idea is-

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  You could leave your, you could leave life right now.

• 35:40Ryan Holiday?

  And the rest of that quote, so Mark Sturges says, you could leave life right now. And then he says, let that determine what you do and say and think. And so that, so to me, the power of meditating on your death is that it puts everything in perspective. Right? It doesn't make things meaningless. It actually makes them meaningful because in, it says like, if this doesn't matter, I shouldn't be doing it. And if it does matter, I should be doing it as if it is the last time that you get to do it.

• 36:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:14Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I think, one of the things, I don't know about you, but like, as like an ambitious or driven person, I find myself like rushing a lot, right? Like, like gotta go here, gotta go there, this is taking too long, I don't wanna wait. I haven't found myself like, like my son, he often like naps in the car. So it's like, he's, you're in the car as long as he's asleep. And I'll, I'll find myself like, you're behind a slow driver. And you're like, I gotta get around this. And then I'm like, I'm not going anywhere, right? Like, I'm rushing. And so what I've, what I've started to remind myself is like, what are you rushing towards? You're rushing towards death, right? Not just because speeding is unsafe, but you're rushing towards, like as you're rushing out of a moment, you're rushing away from life.

• 36:59Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca talks about, he says, don't think of death as happening in the future. Think of death as happening right now.

• 37:05Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why?

• 37:06Ryan Holiday?

  The time, says, because the time that passes belongs to death, right? Like, so when you, when you die, you're like, you've lived 80 years, but you also, that's 80 dead years. That can never come back. So if you think about the time that passing as being death happening, like you're, every minute, you're getting closer to death. You don't want to rush through a moment. You want to fully experience the moment.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  Even if you're waiting in line or behind a car or impatient.

• 37:34Ryan Holiday?

  This is life. And when you're rushing, you're rushing away from it. Or you're rushing toward death. And so you slow down and you go, okay. I've been alive thirty four years. What do I have to, like, did I, was I alive for thirty four years?

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  Or was I rushing?

• 37:49Ryan Holiday?

  Right, or was I rushing away to, to get to thirty five? But maybe I die at thirty five. Right, you don't know. So, so if you, if you just go like, the present is here. I'm going to be controlled enough and courageous enough to just. This is enough. This is it. Doesn't need to be anything. Or anywhere else. I'm just going to be here and I'm not going to rush away. And, and I, kids have really been helpful for this because you're like, oh. Not only am I rushing potentially like towards death, but you're, at the very least, they will never be this age again. So as you're trying to, as you're trying to get this over with. You, you, you have to.

• 38:29Lewis Howes?

  Miss those years.

• 38:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and eventually you're gonna, you'll be like, oh, if only they were five again. Right, like, I, you know, but you, when they were five, you wanted it to be over. And so.

• 38:40Lewis Howes?

  The screaming, the crying, the pooping, or whatever it is. It's like, oh, I wish they could do this on their own, but you'll look back.

• 38:46Ryan Holiday?

  You don't really want that.

• 38:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Ryan Holiday?

  So, so.

• 38:48Lewis Howes?

  You want them to stay there forever. You're like, we're going to capture this moment.

• 38:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and, and that's, this is true even for the shitty stuff. Like, even when you're stuck in traffic, even when you're home with the flu, even like.

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  So true, it's like, I don't know if you think about this. I mean, you've, you've always just been like talented and successful your entire life. Unlike me, where I struggled and went through pain for years. But I feel like, especially the years after my dream was over, playing football. And I was like, well, who am I? What is my identity? What is the value I add to the world if this was my value? How can I, you know, just survive and thrive in this world without that value or identity anymore? I remember just being in a state of uncertainty for a while. And wanting to get out of it.

• 39:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:38Lewis Howes?

  Wanting to have a job, wanting to launch a business, wanting to have money, wanting to have an audience, wanting to have a book, all these different things, wanting to have something.

• 39:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Lewis Howes?

  And when I look back and I'm like, man, those moments were really meaningful of what I was living and learning moment and day by day, the struggle, the pain, the adversity. Like, I'm recreating that in other ways, just by trying to get to the next level, but I'll never live that aspect, those moments again, the specific time.

• 40:06Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and when you got those things, was it as magical as you thought it would be? It never is.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  It wasn't, yeah, I mean, it wasn't as fulfilling. Uh, it was cool to see like a full circle and reflect back, but it was never like, oh, this is, I've made it, you know?

• 40:19Ryan Holiday?

  You never feel like you've made it. And so that, like, I, I talk about this a little bit, uh, in some of my stuff where like, what will happen is you get to the medal stand, right? You, you, New York Times bestseller, Olympic gold medal, you know, uh, All-American, whatever the thing is, right? And it, there's an anticlimacticness to it.

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  Very. After 10 minutes, you're like, now what?

• 40:42Ryan Holiday?

  You talk about this in the School of Greatness, you're like, now what? So, the problem is, people can learn, you can go two ways. You feel the now what? So you can go, now, oh, I gotta find something really meaningful.

• 40:53Lewis Howes?

  You gotta go bigger.

• 40:53Ryan Holiday?

  Well, no, no, so you either, either you look at that and you're like, oh, it was never about accomplishments. It was always about being present and meaning and connection and the friends you made along the way.

• 41:04Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 41:04Ryan Holiday?

  Or, or you go, oh, it's that I have to do it again. Or, oh, it wasn't a million dollars, it was a billion dollars.

• 41:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:13Ryan Holiday?

  And so you can see why that moving in the goalposts creates really successful people.

• 41:20Ryan Holiday?

  But they're rarely happy people.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Happy or fulfilled.

• 41:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  Or peaceful inside.

• 41:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, and, and I think it's, the journey I'm on, what I'm trying to do, I would like to be proof that it is possible to be world-class at what you do and come from a place of contentment and fullness, not have to do, not being like, I just need this, then I will be good. Cause you're never. Ever good.

• 41:48Lewis Howes?

  There's always gonna be some writer better than you, or someone that writes a book in a way that's different than you, or some, whatever. This could be someone more talented, more successful.

• 41:56Ryan Holiday?

  I remember.

• 41:56Lewis Howes?

  Richer, you know.

• 41:57Ryan Holiday?

  Of course. I mean, you meet someone, there's a, there's a story about Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five, Joseph Heller wrote Catch Twenty Two, two of the great writers of the 20th century. And they're at this party, and you've been at parties like this, where like, you're a much richer person, right? Like, like one of those, you're like, why am I even here? And, and Kurt Vonnegut is teasing Joseph Heller, and he says, like, you know this guy made more money this week than your book will make in its entire life.

• 42:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:27Ryan Holiday?

  And he says, yeah, but I have something he doesn't have.

• 42:30Lewis Howes?

  What's that?

• 42:30Ryan Holiday?

  What could that possibly be? And he says, I have enough.

• 42:34Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 42:35Ryan Holiday?

  And, and, and it's, it's not that that guy just wrote Catch Twenty Two, and then he sat on his ass. He wrote other great stuff. He did great work. He just wasn't coming at it from a place of craving. Like, you know, we had that word thirst. Like, he wasn't thirsty. He was, he was quenched, but he was doing it because he actually liked it. I remember the first time one of my books hit number one, I was mowing the lawn at my house. And my agent, Steve, called me, and I was like, now I have to finish mowing this lawn. You know, like, it was like.

• 43:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I had a 10 minute moment, and I saw here, like, pushing this thing.

• 43:12Ryan Holiday?

  And, and then you realize, like, oh, it's never gonna be, I don't know what I thought it was gonna be, but I didn't think it was gonna be that. And I feel grateful that I didn't think, oh, I have to have back to back number ones. That will be it. You know?

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting. I remember Steve, when Steve called me, because we were the same agent, and when I hit number, I didn't hit number one, but I went to hit the New York Times bestseller list. And I remember for like, an hour, just being like, wow, this is something I dreamed about. But then, after an hour, like, calling everyone and being like, congratulations, I was like. Did anything change? Like, nothing really changed. I accomplished a Yeah, there wasn't like opening up the gates and money dropping down or people calling me. It's like a few people noticed and a few, okay, you do one post on Instagram and then people compliment and then people move on. And time moves on, you know, it's

• 44:00Ryan Holiday?

  On this book, I'm actually thinking about that because you know, when you do a book, there's this whole lane of prioritization of like, how do you get on the list?

• 44:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:08Ryan Holiday?

  And it takes a lot of your time and energy.

• 44:10Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 44:10Ryan Holiday?

  And why do you do it? It's obviously there's some business reasons, but part of it is, if not ego, it's this like, people said that's important. So you're like, that's as good a target as any. On this one, and I'm a little bit of a thing when I publish a, where I'm like, no, I just want to like, get as many books in people's hands as possible. So I'm like ignoring all that. But there is a kind of a fear there because it's like, the one benefit of that strategy is that the success is clear and objective and recognizable by other people.

• 44:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:38Ryan Holiday?

  So like, the book's going to come out. I, I know it's doing well. I already know the track that it's on. But like, I'm not saying I'm going to get condolences, but there are people are going to be like, oh, I guess it didn't work as well. You know, like, so, so

• 44:50Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of been like all your books. They're like, didn't hit right away. It's like two years later. Now it's number one. And it's crushing.

• 44:57Ryan Holiday?

  Just the idea of like, hey, I, you have to determine what success is to you and to not base it on what other people, like

• 45:05Lewis Howes?

  That's so hard. That's courage.

• 45:06Ryan Holiday?

  It, it's hard to do that.

• 45:07Lewis Howes?

  Tell you what, for me, the last two years, I've been working on developing a new book, but I've also been like, gosh, do I do the traditional publisher thing? And I've been having these conversations, but I'm like, I just want to let that go and just write a good book that people are impacted by.

• 45:23Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 45:24Lewis Howes?

  But it's like, oh, do you worry about, you know, the advance and what people are going to ask you about it? Or do you not care about that at all? Self-publish it and just try to help as many people as possible. Is there a balance? And literally, it has been holding me back until the last like six weeks, the last couple of years. I've been in this limbo. I think one, because I've been trying to like build my business in the pandemic and shifting and but this has been on my mind, this conversation for two years during all this. And it's not until now where I'm just like, okay, I need to get clear. I just need to take action and do it from the highest level place possible. Do things that are smart as well for business, but also just do what's going to help as many people.

• 46:04Ryan Holiday?

  What's a safety net, right? To do it, to, to do the conventional, like this is how it's done. Is safer because like then no one's going to be like, what an idiot.

• 46:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:14Ryan Holiday?

  Or like.

• 46:15Lewis Howes?

  Oh, he's falling off the wagon.

• 46:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he's a loser. It didn't work. Uh, you know, he's on the decline.

• 46:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Ryan Holiday?

  And, and so the decision to like, do stuff that you care about that, that requires sort of like burning the boats behind you. And just going like, I'm on this journey. And I think it's particularly hard in today's world where, you know, there's view counts and likes, like there's so much more public quantification of what, uh, what's done. And, and like, when I talk to sports teams, I sometimes say that I'm a little bit jealous. It's like, it's obvious whether they're doing a good job or not.

• 46:50Lewis Howes?

  You're jealous?

• 46:51Ryan Holiday?

  Some, I like, I, I love the clarity of sports, like win, lose.

• 46:56Lewis Howes?

  Win, loss, track and field. Yes. Did you get the height or not? Yes.

• 47:00Ryan Holiday?

  But the reality is in the, the world that the rest of us exist in.

• 47:03Lewis Howes?

  It's like a committee and how many people like it and who you're following.

• 47:06Ryan Holiday?

  You're running your own race. Like you have to decide what success is. And that means, uh, that means criticizing yourself when you fall short of your own metrics. And it also means congratulating yourself on a success that perhaps other people don't recognize.

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  Right. The success could be just, I'm proud of this chapter I wrote in this week or this month, even though no one's going to be see it.

• 47:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Lewis Howes?

  No one's like buying this, but I'm proud of the work that I'm putting in, the effort, the energy, the process.

• 47:34Ryan Holiday?

  I've tried to get to, I, I would say that on my first book, I was 10%, this is a success because I made it and it was the best I was capable of. And 90%, let's see what the results are. Like, let's see how it does. And I would like to think that as I've gone forward, that's slowly flipped. And that I'm now 90, it's already a success because it exists.

• 47:59Lewis Howes?

  Even if no one buys this.

• 48:01Ryan Holiday?

  It's my best work.

• 48:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:02Ryan Holiday?

  And then 10% like. Bonus like, hey, it worked, won awards, got recognition.

• 48:09Lewis Howes?

  But isn't the, like we talked about in the beginning, there's kind of like three levels to like a book. There's the, the mastery of writing the book, which you've become one of the greatest writers of our time. And, and distilling wisdom, ancient wisdom, and creating practical examples on how you can actually do this for today's life, and millions of people have read your books. But you could master writing the book, but you also have to master doing the marketing and promotion and now putting yourself out there and communicating it. And then master being patient of like, maybe you put out the great book. And no one cared about it right now for a few years, but then you'd be patient and people start buying it.

• 48:48Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think you want to rank them. So the Stoics say that their first task in life, the most important task in life is what is up to me and what is not up to me, like separating things into the category of is it in my control? Is it not in my control? So as I look at like any project or business or whatever, I prioritize based on like what's most in my control to what's least in my control. So like the first mastery of the thing itself, like is it the best album, the best video, the best, you know, live event it could possibly be, you have as much control over that as you're going to have of anything. Cause that's yours.

• 49:30Ryan Holiday?

  So like there you have the ability to get most of the win before it's even out. Then marketing and promotion and communicating and talking about it, that's like more something you have influence over as opposed to something you control, right? Because it's like, uh, what's happening in the world, you know, like how on point or trend is your thing, you know? Are you, but it's also, are you willing to put in the time? Are you willing to, so many people just think they're better than that and so they don't do it. And then the third part is the patience or the time, it's like you gotta, the, the audience will like it. Imagine you're Herman Melville, you write Moby Dick, it gets savaged. Everyone's like, this is not just not good.

• 50:15Lewis Howes?

  It's horrible.

• 50:16Ryan Holiday?

  Horrible. You should be, we're offended that you did it. And then only like towards the end of your life and after your life, does it finally get the recognition you just? So that, that part's the least in your control and you have to be somewhat detached from that. Because if you're sitting, if you wake up every day and you're like, is this the day that people finally recognize me for all my contributions? You have handed your happiness over to something that's not up to you.

• 50:46Lewis Howes?

  It's true. As funny as you were saying that, I grew up in a religion called Christian Science that a woman discovered this religion and wrote a book called Science and Health. And this is the same time back in the late 1800s when Mark Twain was around. And they were kind of like frenemies, I guess. And Mark Twain wrote an entire book trashing this woman, Mary Baker Eddy, and her findings of, you know, the science behind healing. It was essentially like the science of Jesus's healing. Here's how it works. Here's how the mind works and how we can heal ourselves. And he wrote an entire book bashing her and the religion called Christian Science,

• 51:26Lewis Howes?

  which was like this critical of her work because she kept writing the same book with expanded updates every year, like so many different editions of the same book. And it kept hitting number one. And he had to write new books all the time. So I think he was frustrated that this woman kept writing the same book over and over with like, here's more finding and research and science of how the mind and body is healed through the mind. And it's funny, like, she just kept going because she was focused on the work and healing people one at a time and the message spread. But I think it's interesting that, for a reason that came up for me, because the more you put your work out there, the more criticized it's going to be open to.

• 52:10Lewis Howes?

  You know, there's more people are going to be willing to criticize it. And I think a lot of people aren't ready for criticism. They're not trained to deal. No one teaches you how to deal with criticism when you have an audience.

• 52:21Ryan Holiday?

  No, no one teaches you, because it's a champagne problem that a lot of people never get to. So there's not like a lot of instructions, but it is inevitable. And like, you have to realize, I've realized a couple of things. One is like, Critics are almost always louder than your fans. Like, people who dislike something are much louder than the people who are like,

• 52:42Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 52:43Ryan Holiday?

  That's pretty good. I think it's one feels more strongly than the other. Like, the stuff I like, I'm like, cool.

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:49Ryan Holiday?

  You know? But then, when you really hate something, you're like, I need them to suffer how I am suffering. So, a lot of times, I think you're just, just different levels of enthusiasm. Even if, you know, even if 10% of the people hated it and 90% of the people liked it, you're gonna hear more from the 10%.

• 53:09Lewis Howes?

  How do we prepare ourselves to have courage, knowing that criticism will come to us?

• 53:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you have, uh, what, it, this is why it's really important to know what you were trying to do or what your success is. Because what success was, because a lot of times, I will see negative reviews of my work. It'll somehow get to me. And I try not to, I try to like, keep it at a distance anyway, but it always gets, right? And sometimes, the thing people will be criticizing negatively will be exactly what I, they'll be like, you know, uh, there's no original ideas in this book. This is just Ryan, uh, popularizing ancient wisdom. And it's like, hey, bro, that's exactly what I was trying to do.

• 53:50Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 53:51Ryan Holiday?

  Like, what you are, you're just saying like, uh, what is this guy? He has brown hair. It's like, that's, that's it.

• 53:59Ryan Holiday?

  Like, uh, and, and it's actually even less than that.

• 54:01Lewis Howes?

  I love when, when people say, nothing new here.

• 54:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 54:04Lewis Howes?

  Like, I mean, there's no original, no original idea here. This is just regurgitated or something. But how many original ideas are there? It's kind of like repackaging and purposing something that you can learn it in a different way and understand it in a different way, right?

• 54:18Ryan Holiday?

  Well, in my case, I'm specifically not trying to have my own ideas, but to tell you the best ideas from the past. So, you have told me that I have succeeded. You've not, like, what, you think you're criticizing me, but you're really saying, I didn't want what you were selling. Cool, right? So, so when you have a sense of what you're trying to do, then you're able to integrate the criticism. So, if someone instead said, you know, Ryan got Stoicism totally wrong for the following reasons, well, now we're at least in the same universe as far as the intention of the work. So now I can go like, well, is this person right or not? But at least we're aligned.

• 55:02Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I'm trying to get here, you're mad at me for not being over here.

• 55:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:06Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I didn't want to go over there, so we're just, we just shouldn't be friends.

• 55:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:11Ryan Holiday?

  So I think really understanding what you're trying to do is great. And then the third one is just like remembering that it almost has nothing to do with you.

• 55:20Lewis Howes?

  What does?

• 55:21Ryan Holiday?

  The criticism has nothing to do with you.

• 55:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:23Ryan Holiday?

  It's something going on with them. Like, sometimes you'll get like a nasty email and I just go, sometimes I like to reply, "I hope this made you feel better."

• 55:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:32Ryan Holiday?

  And, and they'll be like, "I had no idea you would respond, I thought this wasn't a real person," you know, blah, right? Then you realize like, oh, this person has a [BLEEP] life, or they're going through something, and they thought they were just shouting into the void, and you happen to hear it, you know? So realizing that like, hurt people hurt people, you know, that this is like, this doesn't really have to do with you, the way that they're making it seem like it has to do with you, can be...

• 55:59Lewis Howes?

  And just because someone's criticizing you doesn't mean you have to take it in.

• 56:02Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 56:02Lewis Howes?

  I think a lot of people take it in, and they are so affected by it and impacted by it, and that then holds them back from putting their work out there.

• 56:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  And creating more because they're afraid of something penetrating and getting in, and then holding on to this anger or criticism of other people.

• 56:18Ryan Holiday?

  Well, there's an exercise from, from Marcus Realist that I think about, it's not specifically about this, but I think we can apply. He goes like, "Is a world without shameless people possible?" No. Certain, he's like, "A certain amount of people are gonna be this way or that way." Right? And he's like, "So when you meet one of them, you're not like, 'What is this?'" You're like, "One out of a hundred? Is this person? Is this kind of person? I just met one." Makes sense. Mathematically, it makes sense. Right? Just like, you see a tall person, a certain percentage of people are tall, you're not like, "Where is this tall person coming from?" So like, if you, was it ever possible that you would please 100% of people 100% of the time? Absolutely not.

• 56:57Ryan Holiday?

  So when you come across someone that is unhappy with your work, you gotta go, "This checks out mathematically." Right? Like, like, when you, you look at a YouTube video, you're like, "Oh, it did a million views, it did 50,000 upvotes, and a thousand downvotes." You're like, "Who are these thousand people?" You're like, "1,000 out of a million."

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:19Ryan Holiday?

  Mathematically, that's pretty good, actually.

• 57:22Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty good.

• 57:22Ryan Holiday?

  You know, that's actually great.

• 57:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 57:24Ryan Holiday?

  And so, again, just reminding yourself that... Mathematically, a certain amount of people, they're just not, you're not for them, they're not for you.

• 57:35Lewis Howes?

  What do you think the Stoics would think about in terms of the law of attraction, manifesting abundance, and self-discipline, kind of that category?

• 57:45Ryan Holiday?

  I think about this a lot, because people ask me that question, because Stoicism has become popular with self-help stuff. There's overlap. So, the Stoics are very, here's where they would agree. Marx really says, "Our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts," which I think is a beautiful way of-

• 58:03Lewis Howes?

  Dyed.

• 58:03Ryan Holiday?

  Dyed, like dyed the color green.

• 58:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:06Ryan Holiday?

  Like, if you have positive thoughts, you will have, you will see positive things in the world. If you see everything as nasty and bitter and unfair and crappy, that's what you will see in the world. So, our perceptions do color our reality, for sure. But, the Stoic disciplines are the discipline of perception, but the next discipline is the discipline of action.

• 58:30Lewis Howes?

  Perception, meaning like how you perceive and look at the world, how you think?

• 58:33Ryan Holiday?

  Story you tell yourself, what you wish for, what you think about. But then the next discipline is the discipline of action.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:39Ryan Holiday?

  So like, I don't, I don't think the Stoics say like, "Oh, if you just see everything positive, it will be positive."

• 58:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:45Ryan Holiday?

  It's that the positivity sets up the action, which can make the positivity real. So, I think, I think where I get frustrated with people on manifestation or the law of attraction, is this idea of like, "Write yourself a check for a million dollars and it will be true."

• 59:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:03Ryan Holiday?

  Right, wait, no, go do the work, right? So, if you want thing, like, when the Stoics see an opportunity inside of a disaster, they're not just sitting around going, "Oh, this will solve itself." They have to get to work on that thing, so.

• 59:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I've always seen the law of attraction, I mean, the word "action" is in attraction, it's like of taking action to attract what you want. But I think perceiving it first is, I didn't know that was the first principle, is perception?

• 59:30Ryan Holiday?

  Perception, action, and the third is will. So like, what you endure, what you put up with.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  Kind of like your disciplines, your willingness to endure hard things, challenges.

• 59:41Ryan Holiday?

  The fact that so much of life is outside of your control, that suffering is inevitable, you know, just, just the hard parts of life, those are the three disciplines.

• 59:50Lewis Howes?

  What do the Stoics think about in terms of? Accumulating wealth, or I mean, I don't know what they were accumulating back then, but riches of the world.

• 59:59Ryan Holiday?

  So, the founder of Stoicism is a merchant named Zeno, who loses everything in a shipwreck. And he washes up in Athens with nothing. And he walks into a bookstore.

• 1:00:11Lewis Howes?

  When was this? What year is this, or?

• 1:00:12Ryan Holiday?

  Like, 300 AD.

• 1:00:14Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:00:14Ryan Holiday?

  Right around the, right around the time of the death of Alexander the Great. So he walks into this bookstore and he hears somebody reading philosophy. He goes, "What's this?" And it changes his whole life. And he would say later, "I made a great fortune when I suffered a shipwreck." Meaning, he traded worldly goods for real goods, which is wisdom, happiness, purpose, all of that. But, the Stoics were business people and generals and politicians. Seneca is like the second richest man in Rome. What the Stoics said was that money isn't good or bad, that it was indifferent. Not indifference, but indifferent.

• 1:00:59Ryan Holiday?

  Meaning, it just was. So if you had it, you should use it. If you didn't have it, you weren't deprived of anything, you just didn't have this thing. Now, obviously, the Romans lived in a time where things were much more hierarchical and people had a lot less control and ability to, to start a business.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:19Ryan Holiday?

  You know, you, this was a time-

• 1:01:21Lewis Howes?

  It wasn't decentralized, it was like, there was classes and hierarchy.

• 1:01:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, and you, you inherited certain status and things. So, so they were a little bit more passive than we are today. But, but I think the idea that like, money is a tool. If you have it, you should use it. If you don't have it, you shouldn't spend all your life obsessing about it. But, I, I think, I like to think of the Stoics as being more or less indifferent to it.

• 1:01:49Lewis Howes?

  So what would be the approach if someone was trying to create more wealth and earn a bu- I mean, like, like, you know, I don't have that much money, but I'd like to have a more comfortable or financially abundant life, where I'm not stressing about money. Maybe I'm not gonna be a billionaire, but-

• 1:02:02Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think that's the problem. A lot of people think of money as this, this independent good, so like, they will suffer in life to potentially have lots of money in the future.

• 1:02:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:15Ryan Holiday?

  Um, that, by the way, the Stoics say, isn't guaranteed.

• 1:02:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:18Ryan Holiday?

  And you can't take-

• 1:02:19Lewis Howes?

  And you can lose it, too.

• 1:02:20Ryan Holiday?

  You can't take it with you when you die.

• 1:02:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:23Ryan Holiday?

  Um, and so often, people will trade time for money, a ver- uh, in a priceless resource for a less valuable resource.

• 1:02:32Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:33Ryan Holiday?

  And so Seneca talks about how, um, like, if your neighbor stole money from you, or, you know, built their property onto your property, you'd be very upset. But if they wasted your time, you'd be like, oh, whatever, this is what they do, right? So I think also, though, the Stoics would go, what is your actual most valuable resource?

• 1:02:54Lewis Howes?

  Time.

• 1:02:55Ryan Holiday?

  It's your independence of mind, it's your autonomy. So I think sometimes, especially, uh, people who are like really frugal, um, which the Stoics were humble and, and didn't care a lot about fancy things, I think you can get to a place where you're often valuing money more than it's actually worth. Like, you're trading your happiness to accumulate this thing that isn't gonna give you what you think it's gonna give you.

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  Right. I mean, you're a guy who's driven and successful and wants to keep creating. You've got a, you know, a nice ranch, you've got cattle and geese and, you know, horses and whatever you have on your farm, you've got family, you've got a bookstore now, a thriving bookstore, you've got all these businesses and you're a team. So obviously, money is in your life.

• 1:03:45Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:03:46Lewis Howes?

  You want to have it to sustain a lifestyle. What is your thought process, whether it be on a daily, or maybe quarterly, or yearly basis of like, okay, do you think I wanna, I wanna reach this financial goal this year? And then how do you approach making money in terms of a philosophical point of view in your daily practices?

• 1:04:07Ryan Holiday?

  I will say, like, as an artist, one of the things I, one of the ways I've thought about money that's been helpful to me is, I want- I didn't come from money, I didn't inherit money. And so I'm not like independently wealthy. But I want to invest and save and earn in a way where I can make the choices I want to make independent of money. So because I had a corporate job and because I was successful as a marketer. And I and I kept my needs minimal. Yes. I was in a position in 2012, 13, when I sold my first philosophy book, The Opposites Way. I said, so I just sold, I'd just done Trust Me, I'm Line, which was a bestseller.

• 1:04:51Ryan Holiday?

  I'd done this little book called Growth Hacker Marketing. So basically did two marketing books. I said, I have this idea for a book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. And my publisher offered me half what I got for my first book. So if I had been, let's say financially irresponsible, or I was primarily valuing money as like success, I would have not been able to accept that. But because I was in a place where I'd saved, I'd invested, I had multiple revenue streams, and I didn't drive an Aston Martin. Right. You know, I was able to go, whatever.

• 1:05:35Ryan Holiday?

  Like, that's the book I want to write, so it doesn't really matter what you think it's worth. I know what it'll be worth in the long term. Right. And so I, as I've. So how do you think about that now, then? I think about like, I want to create revenue streams or investments that allow me to do what I want creatively, personally, and professionally. And not have to think like, where does the money come from? Mm hmm. Right? And and I think you and I both know people who are extremely wealthy. Yes. Who don't actually have that freedom because their lifestyle is at X.

• 1:06:14Ryan Holiday?

  Or, you know, like, there's two ways to be rich, right? It's that, one is to have lots and lots of money, and the other is to like not need lots and lots of money, you know? And so if you can kind of split that difference, I feel like you're in a great spot. Like, you're talented, you demand to be paid what you're worth. You know, you invest intelligently, you are creative, you work hard. And, like, what you need to feel good is, you know, attainable, then, then you have freedom. Like, to me, success is autonomy. So, if making lots of money makes me feel less free, like, I gotta keep all this thing going, then, then I feel like I'm becoming less successful.

• 1:06:57Ryan Holiday?

  If, if I'm at a place where I'm like, this is what I want to do, and I am able to do it, I'm like, that's good.

• 1:07:04Lewis Howes?

  Right. What would the Stoics be investing in these days?

• 1:07:08Ryan Holiday?

  That's a good question.

• 1:07:09Lewis Howes?

  If Stoics were around today, where would they put their money? To help their money work for them so they could have this lifestyle of autonomy, freedom, peace, flexibility, creativity, abundance? Would they be investing in crypto? Would it be back in their own business? Would it be real estate? Would it be, I don't know, something more safe?

• 1:07:29Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's really hard to answer that because the Roman world was so different. I mean, this is a world where slaves are doing most of the work and, you know, it's, it's a colonial empire that's like pillaging all these different... It's not, it wasn't a good place in that sense.

• 1:07:42Lewis Howes?

  Stealing and, yeah.

• 1:07:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. But, but I think the, I, to me, the idea of... The, the best investment I ever made was the decision to move to a little bit of property outside of a big city.

• 1:07:57Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 1:07:58Ryan Holiday?

  Um, so in 2015, I bought a small farm outside Austin.

• 1:08:04Lewis Howes?

  Because you were living in Austin.

• 1:08:05Ryan Holiday?

  I was living in Austin.

• 1:08:06Lewis Howes?

  Near town.

• 1:08:07Ryan Holiday?

  In town, yeah. You, you came to my house once, you saw my goats.

• 1:08:10Lewis Howes?

  The goats.

• 1:08:11Ryan Holiday?

  And we, we need more space for the goats.

• 1:08:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they can't run around enough yet.

• 1:08:15Ryan Holiday?

  So we moved, we, we bought about 20 acres and now it's about 40 acres right out. It's about 30 minutes from Austin. But it was the best investment. I'll give you a couple of reasons. One, it's a quiet place for me to write that I'm not looking around what other people are doing. I'm not distracted. There's not a million things to do. It's quiet and it's a little bit apart. If I need to do something, I can, but I'm not like right in the thick of it. Number two, easy access to outdoors, like being outside, being in nature, doing stuff as opposed to, you know, sitting in, you know, rooms all the time. Buildings, yeah. That's really important.

• 1:08:55Ryan Holiday?

  And then, you know, the pandemic happens and all of a sudden, you know, my friends who had great apartments in the city are like, Get me out of here. I can't do this. Whereas we were like, this is amazing, right? Was set up for years. Yeah, and, and, you know, like, We got food here. We got like, We could hunt, we could fish. But, but like, you know, every morning I take my kids for a walk on a dirt road. Every evening we take the same walk on the dirt road. We're outside, we have space. So I think, but, but that's what it was for me. I'm not saying that needs, but, but I, I would say like, find where you're happy, like what your place needs to be.

• 1:09:35Ryan Holiday?

  And that, I think one of the reasons a lot of people I know have moved in the last 18 months is since they were finally home for an extended period of time, they realized they hated their house or they hated the city they were in. Right. And they were only there for career reasons, financial reasons, or scene reasons. And like, life is too short to live somewhere that does not make you happy. You say scene reasons? Is that what you said? Scene. Yeah, being in the scene. This is the scene. This is where the parties are. I want to get invited to stuff. Yes. And that's just not, it's not a good reason to live somewhere. Right. You should, where, where should you live? Somewhere that makes you happy? Yes. Somewhere that makes you happy, somewhere that gets the best work out of you. Ah.

• 1:10:19Ryan Holiday?

  So like, I write better out there than I do in other places. And so knowing like what your space is and then investing in that space. So that's something I've struggled with too. You asked like, what do you do with money? I think it's like, how are you investing in? Your environment. Your environment, just like LeBron James spends a million bucks a year on his body. Like, what are you investing in? Like I, I was for a long time was like, All I need is like a laptop and like I'll grind it out, you know?

• 1:10:48Lewis Howes?

  Sit by couches and be fine.

• 1:10:50Ryan Holiday?

  And part of the reason we we opened this bookstore was like, I was like, I'm gonna kit out like my space, like all my stuff's gonna be in one spot. I'm gonna have all the technology I need. It's gonna, you know, I'm gonna, that was an investment that was well worth it. And so sometimes we, it's like we cheap out on the stuff that actually lets us do what we do. And if you're not gonna spend your money on the thing you do for a living, what are you spending it on?

• 1:11:25Lewis Howes?

  That's a good point. So they would invest in their environment, their space?

• 1:11:30Ryan Holiday?

  I think so.

• 1:11:30Lewis Howes?

  They wouldn't invest in crypto?

• 1:11:32Ryan Holiday?

  I mean,

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  Who knows? Maybe they would.

• 1:11:34Ryan Holiday?

  I'm sure, I'm sure they would.

• 1:11:35Lewis Howes?

  Or NFTs or?

• 1:11:36Ryan Holiday?

  I'm sure they would invest in whatever they thought was a good investment.

• 1:11:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:11:40Ryan Holiday?

  So I don't want to make a, although I'm interested in all those things, I don't want, I don't want to use this ancient philosophy, which is about, you know, self-actualization to to apply so specifically to, you know, this or that, because I think it's more timeless than that.

• 1:11:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:11:57Ryan Holiday?

  But I think they would, they would be investing in what allowed them to do what was important to them.

• 1:12:07Lewis Howes?

  How would they use self-discipline in all of this as well?

• 1:12:13Ryan Holiday?

  Well, self-discipline and courage are interrelated, right? Because too much courage, Aristotle says, is recklessness.

• 1:12:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like, I'm gonna jump on this plane with that.

• 1:12:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right. I'm gonna go around half-cocked, I'm gonna get in fights that don't need to happen, I'm gonna take risks that don't need to happen, I'm gonna risk more than I actually need to risk, right? So, so also, I think. If you're not a driven person, self-discipline, something you need. If you are a driven, ambitious person, you actually need self-discipline about your self-discipline. Tom Brady's, Tom Brady's struggle isn't like, how do I get out of bed this morning and be great at football?

• 1:12:50Lewis Howes?

  It's like, how do I sit down and relax?

• 1:12:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, how do I, how do I keep this under control so I can be a good father?

• 1:12:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:12:56Ryan Holiday?

  So I don't overtrain and hurt myself. So I don't go too hard on my teammates.

• 1:13:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:13:03Ryan Holiday?

  So I can sustain this over a long period of time, right? How can I be patient? So, so self-discipline, depending on where you are, what phase you are, manifests itself very, very differently. Like for me, I, I'm more on the, I need to ratchet it down. I need to think about, you know, not forcing it. Like, so I'm, I'm here doing press for this book. You asked me before, what, what's the next book? What do you, because I am always working on the next book.

• 1:13:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:32Ryan Holiday?

  But I had to go like, okay, these two weeks, I am doing stuff for this book.

• 1:13:37Lewis Howes?

  Right, now I'm already going to the next one.

• 1:13:39Ryan Holiday?

  I don't need to be whipping myself for not doing the other stuff at the same time.

• 1:13:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:46Ryan Holiday?

  That's not fair to the work, to me, to my family. What, so I, you know, to be able to be like,

• 1:13:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:53Ryan Holiday?

  I'm going to turn this down and I'm going to be present and I just actually do the thing that's in front of me.

• 1:13:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I feel like every writer feels inferior to Ryan Holiday because you always have, you've like got the book out and you're like, well, if I have the next three done. And those are coming out in six months and the next six months. And everyone's like, how do you do this? You're a machine.

• 1:14:12Ryan Holiday?

  So, so for me too, it's like, like if you told me I could put out a book every three months, like I might, I like, I'd be like, oh. But actually my struggle is more like, I gotta space them out for even just for like,

• 1:14:24Lewis Howes?

  Let them breathe.

• 1:14:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's harder for me to do than to not work. So we all have diff- it all manifests itself differently for different people.

• 1:14:35Lewis Howes?

  So what do the Stoics talk about when it comes to self-discipline then? Is there learning a discipline for yourself that works? Is it, what is, what is the philosophy of self-discipline in general?

• 1:14:45Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I, one of my favorite things for the Stoics and self-discipline would be the reminder that it's called self-discipline, right? Like you can't hold other people to your standards.

• 1:14:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:14:57Ryan Holiday?

  Marx really says tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

• 1:15:01Lewis Howes?

  Say again, tolerate?

• 1:15:02Ryan Holiday?

  Tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

• 1:15:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:15:05Ryan Holiday?

  You, like, for instance, Kobe Bryant struggles with this.

• 1:15:08Lewis Howes?

  He's like, he was trying to push his teammates to be like him.

• 1:15:11Ryan Holiday?

  Rick Fox was like, dude, we're not all Kobe Bryants, right? And like, that is a lesson, that's not a lesson that most people have to learn, but that's a lesson that some people have to learn.

• 1:15:21Lewis Howes?

  Tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

• 1:15:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you can only hold yourself to your standards. You can't be like, why isn't this person waking up at the time that I am? Well, it's because it's not their company, you know?

• 1:15:34Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. They don't care as much.

• 1:15:36Ryan Holiday?

  They don't care as much, and they just haven't found that thing yet. And so you can only hold yourself to your standards. And I've, I've struggled with that where it's like, if you want to go around being disappointed and angry at people all the time, then sure, try to hold them to your standards.

• 1:15:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:15:52Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to have friendships, if you want to have relationships, if you want to be happy, if you want to be encouraged, you gotta be like, everyone's on their own journey, they're all doing the best they can, and like, I'm gonna meet them where they are.

• 1:16:05Lewis Howes?

  What about finding peace? How do the Stoics find inner peace?

• 1:16:10Ryan Holiday?

  We tend to associate Buddhism with inner peace, but my book on stillness, which is called Stillness is the Key, the Stoics talk about this too, a lot, actually. Marx really says you want to be like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually fall still around. And I, so I love the idea that like, the world is spinning faster than ever, it's noisier than ever, but like, I'm gonna be calm and chill and locked in. And, and actually, I think you know this from the sports stuff, is like,

• 1:16:45Ryan Holiday?

  The athlete is stillist when the game is the most

• 1:16:49Lewis Howes?

  Most chaotic.

• 1:16:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:16:50Lewis Howes?

  Well, in order to perform at your highest level, that's when greatness comes about.

• 1:16:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:55Lewis Howes?

  When there's 10 seconds left, it's the play is the last play of the game. You fell down, you gotta get back up, you've gotta make the play. Otherwise, you lose the game. It's like, it's almost like you learn how to calm yourself under the most pressure. Otherwise, you will not succeed at your goals.

• 1:17:15Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and you'll ask like LeBron James, what were you thinking? And he's like, nothing.

• 1:17:19Lewis Howes?

  Nothing.

• 1:17:19Ryan Holiday?

  You know, like, that's when the training takes over. And I think, I think you, you see this where like, okay, the world falls apart 18 months ago. And like, actually, most of us did a really good job. We were like, all right, what do I gotta do? You know, like, what do I do to keep people I love safe? What decisions do I need to make? What precautions do I need? We were just like locked in because it was, we knew it was serious. But then you're like, get a flat tire and you're like, what the fuck am I supposed to do?

• 1:17:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:17:52Ryan Holiday?

  So it's like, it's like how like, if your arm got cut off, you'd go into like some state of

• 1:17:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, like, okay. Where's the hospital?

• 1:18:01Ryan Holiday?

  Go get me a belt and like call 911.

• 1:18:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:18:04Ryan Holiday?

  And like, you know, you, but

• 1:18:07Lewis Howes?

  You scrape your knee.

• 1:18:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right, right, right. You break, you jam your finger playing basketball and you're like, I don't know if I can work tomorrow. You know, like the minor stuff, because you have the luxury of freaking out, you do. So I think courage and self-discipline are related there. The ability to be like, my, my emotions want me to do X, but X is not helpful.

• 1:18:28Lewis Howes?

  What's been the hardest thing for you to overcome in the last few years in terms of emotional triggers that maybe used to or always tend to get under your skin? That you really learned self-discipline or stillness or meditation to become better at? Maybe you haven't perfected it yet, but like it still bugs you and this happens or that happens. But what's the emotion you've had to learn to master the most?

• 1:18:53Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I think all, I would, I would say the majority of driven people struggle with temper, like your temper. Because you want things to be a certain way.

• 1:19:04Lewis Howes?

  You want it to be done yesterday.

• 1:19:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:19:06Lewis Howes?

  A certain way.

• 1:19:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. And so you get frustrated that they are not That it's not how you want it to be, how you asked it to be, how you would do it. So I think the one I'm constantly struggling with is anger.

• 1:19:20Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:19:21Ryan Holiday?

  Not like, not like, I would say like, I don't have an anger problem, but anger is a problem.

• 1:19:27Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:19:27Ryan Holiday?

  Right? You know, like, it's not the same. It's just not good.

• 1:19:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:19:32Ryan Holiday?

  And just realizing that it almost never makes things better. I'm never glad that I lost my temper. I, most of the things I regret have to do with my temper. You know, like, it's like, why did I send that? Why did I say that?

• 1:19:52Ryan Holiday?

  Now, I think as you work on it, there are moments where like, you need to make a display of anger to accomplish something. But that's not the same.

• 1:20:03Lewis Howes?

  As feeling it regularly.

• 1:20:05Ryan Holiday?

  Or as being out of control from your anger.

• 1:20:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:20:08Ryan Holiday?

  Like, coaches in the NBA will sometimes take a technical, like, they'll get angry on purpose to like, send a message to the ref or rile the team up. That's different than getting in a fight.

• 1:20:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:20:21Ryan Holiday?

  And needing to be restrained, right? So, for me, it's just like, is anger gonna make this better? What am I really upset about? I would say anger's the big one, and then the other one would be like, just anxiety. I think, like, the pandemic, when all of a sudden I was doing a lot less stuff.

• 1:20:39Lewis Howes?

  Like, what do I do now?

• 1:20:40Ryan Holiday?

  I realized like, oh, I thought I was anxious about like, needing to get to the gate before my flight, but I was really just anxious, period. So it's like, you know, like, like now that I'm not traveling and I'm still feeling the, I've nowhere to go, nothing to do, and the anxiety is still there. It's like, oh, anxiety is one for me.

• 1:21:02Lewis Howes?

  What do the Stoics say on how to let go of or heal anger and anxiety? What's the process of?

• 1:21:12Lewis Howes?

  Healing the anger challenge, temper challenge, that I think a lot of people have faced, or the anxiety anxious challenge.

• 1:21:20Ryan Holiday?

  The anxiety one is is my favorite. Marx really says like, today I escaped anxiety. And it goes, no, because he's writing to himself. Like, you're looking at the journal, the most powerful man who ever lived. It's beautiful. Because I escaped anxiety, because no, I discarded my anxiety because it was within me.

• 1:21:38Lewis Howes?

  The anxiety was within you.

• 1:21:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, like, the anxiety is a creation, like, almost all the things that I am anxious about, nobody else cares about.

• 1:21:50Lewis Howes?

  They're not anxious about, yeah, in the same way.

• 1:21:51Ryan Holiday?

  Or it's just like, I imposed this deadline, and it's arbitrary, and now I'm stressed about it, right?

• 1:22:00Ryan Holiday?

  I was just, I just talked to someone about, on my team about this. I was like, okay, like, obviously, I want this to get out by this certain date. And I'm worried that if we don't, the customers will be upset, or worried, or whatever. And I was like, so we're still going to work very hard to hit this deadline. But here's the email we're sending out now, explaining to people all the factors that are going into it, why it's going to, why it may take longer than expected, what the conditions the pandemic has created, so on and so forth, and just to be patient. And so now, I still want to hit the deadline, but I don't have this sort of self-imposed anxiety or worry that there's all this stuff that people don't know about, and that, you know, like, I'm just going to go like, hey,

• 1:22:44Ryan Holiday?

  I'm going to manage my expectations, I'm also going to over-communicate, and then I'm going to detach a little bit.

• 1:22:50Lewis Howes?

  Right. Okay, so that's with anxiety. What about with anger? What does Doug say about letting that go?

• 1:22:56Ryan Holiday?

  Anger would be, Seneca says, getting angry is like returning a bite to a dog or a kick to a mule. You know, like, so often, what you're angry about, you're just, you're really expressing, it's like, I wish that hadn't happened.

• 1:23:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Ryan Holiday?

  And this, and it's like, okay.

• 1:23:17Lewis Howes?

  But it happened. Yeah, so.

• 1:23:18Ryan Holiday?

  So like, what is this accomplishing? And so I think for me, I, I think a lot about like, who's being punished here? Mostly me, like, I'm feeling.

• 1:23:27Lewis Howes?

  The anxious and angry person is being punished.

• 1:23:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, I'm by my, I'm punishing myself by deciding to carry this around. And that, I think the other thing that can be helpful is like, have you ever looked at yourself when you're angry?

• 1:23:42Lewis Howes?

  You don't look good.

• 1:23:43Ryan Holiday?

  Like, like, yes.

• 1:23:44Lewis Howes?

  You don't look good.

• 1:23:44Ryan Holiday?

  You don't look good. And, and I think one of the scary slash things about being like a public figure or something is you're like, you, you can catch, you go like, what do you think people would think? If they saw this?

• 1:23:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:56Ryan Holiday?

  Right? And then that, that, and that is a stoic exercise. Like, what would you look like? What would an indifferent person, like a person who didn't know you? Just standing here in this, like, would you, would you be doing this? If people could see? Probably not.

• 1:24:11Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:24:12Ryan Holiday?

  And so just, just sort of going like, this is not a good look, man. This is not, this is not what you want to do.

• 1:24:19Lewis Howes?

  At the end of the day, do you look yourself in the mirror ever and ask yourself like, how did I do today? Did I show up to the, the standard that I want to of the Stoics or of my own standard today? Or how do you process and assess your day? Whether it was up to your standard or below your standard?

• 1:24:36Ryan Holiday?

  Do you journal?

• 1:24:38Lewis Howes?

  Not consistently, but I do it. Yeah. I, I kind of like mental journal, you know, or verbal journal.

• 1:24:43Ryan Holiday?

  Same thing.

• 1:24:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, verbal journal.

• 1:24:44Ryan Holiday?

  So for me, it's journaling, and I think it's almost impossible to separate Stoicism and journaling. That's what it is. Meditations is Marcus Aurelius's journal, right? Seneca's work survives to us in letters that he wrote to a friend. Also kind of a form of journaling. So for me, like, I do that reflection. Obviously, in my work, I'm always thinking about these things. So I have kind of an advantage. Um, that's one of the benefits of like, you're, you're always working through your stuff with guests or,

• 1:25:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes, always.

• 1:25:12Ryan Holiday?

  interviews or.

• 1:25:13Lewis Howes?

  I'm always revealing my shame and.

• 1:25:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Yeah. It's, it's work that if you were a different kind of entrepreneur, you would have to have a different medium to do it in.

• 1:25:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:25:23Ryan Holiday?

  Um, but for me, the journal is like the private space that I do that in.

• 1:25:27Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:25:28Ryan Holiday?

  What am I working on? When am I falling short? What do I need to be thinking about? What am I proud of? What am I grateful for? I'm just trying to, to talk through that stuff on that page. And I would say the last year especially has been really good because it was overwhelming. It was not normal, right? Like it was more spent a year and a half in quarantine with two kids under four. Right, like that's not healthy, right? Like that's not what anyone would choose. And so you do that. Like if you don't have an outlet, where does that go? Comes out in anxiety, anger, fear, all those other places.

• 1:26:12Ryan Holiday?

  So I think if you can work either in the morning or at night on a page. Anne Frank says, a paper is more patient than people. Just work it out there instead of vomiting.

• 1:26:24Lewis Howes?

  On people, yes, on people. What are the exercises or the hobbies that you dive into in order to release anxiety and anger besides journaling?

• 1:26:35Ryan Holiday?

  So every morning, uh, my, it fluctuates a little bit, but I do some form of walking and some form of physical exercise, like an endurance thing. And then usually I do some like training, like three to four days a week also. So it's like mostly physical.

• 1:26:52Lewis Howes?

  Walking, running, swimming.

• 1:26:54Ryan Holiday?

  So walking, walking is not the exercise. Walking is like for the meditation and then I run, swim or bike every day.

• 1:27:02Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:27:03Ryan Holiday?

  And then I'll do like some kind of weight or body weight stuff a couple days.

• 1:27:07Lewis Howes?

  Really? You do like 10 to 15 miles a day, I feel like. Don't I always see your?

• 1:27:12Ryan Holiday?

  Not, not that much.

• 1:27:14Lewis Howes?

  Watch posts.

• 1:27:15Ryan Holiday?

  I do, I do run a lot. Um, and then I've tried to merge like running and kid time. So like I put them in the stroll, like this morning I ran with the kids. But, um, I, I like to, to me, because like my job is sit in the chair, stare at a screen. I want the hobbies to be the opposite of that.

• 1:27:31Lewis Howes?

  Outdoors or activities or physical?

• 1:27:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:34Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:27:36Lewis Howes?

  Where would you like to be a year from now? You had 18 months of this where you probably were faced with your anxieties or, or temper or whatever more frequently. A year from now, where would you like yourself to be with your inner world?

• 1:27:52Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you know, people, you've probably heard yourself saying, I've heard a million people say, they're like, I can't wait for things to go back to normal.

• 1:27:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:27:58Ryan Holiday?

  And. I want the opposite of that. Like, first off, normal doesn't exist.

• 1:28:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Ryan Holiday?

  Second, if normal does exist, normal caused this. So I want to preserve what has been the, maybe the largest lifestyle experiment in human history. Right? Like, what does less look like? What does more family time look like? What is, you know, like,

• 1:28:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:28:23Ryan Holiday?

  More focus look like? You know, what does that look like? For me, it's like, how do I preserve those things in an environment where I now can do other? Like, it was easy to not travel for speaking for eighteen months because, like, there were no live events.

• 1:28:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:28:42Ryan Holiday?

  But now, and I'm sure you're seeing this, like, now the offers are coming in.

• 1:28:45Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:46Ryan Holiday?

  And to be like, that's very generous, thank you, but I'd rather not.

• 1:28:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:28:52Ryan Holiday?

  That's not just hard to do, it's scary to do. Because like, there's a part of you that's like, what if I, what if five years, I'm kicking myself because I need that now?

• 1:29:01Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:01Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Or like, what if they never, what if they're offended? You know, what if I miss on this opport, you know, like, FOMO is real, so.

• 1:29:09Lewis Howes?

  How are you, how are you making your decisions based on like, travel and speaking and opportunities? Are you making them based on like, if, if you really want to do it? Or if it's a certain pay that's like absurd, you're like, okay, I have to do this because it makes sense now?

• 1:29:23Ryan Holiday?

  I'm having to think about it. I mean, the, I had, I was doing the math because I, I did my first in-person like, a couple of weeks ago. And it was really safe, it was actually done by an air filtration company. Like, so it was like, couldn't have been a, who, by the way, is killing it as a business, as you can imagine. But I realized that I, on that night, I was ending the streak of like, five hundred and thirty consecutive bedtimes with my kids.

• 1:29:51Ryan Holiday?

  That I'll probably never get ever again.

• 1:29:54Lewis Howes?

  That you put them to bed.

• 1:29:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, with my wife, and not saying I did this by myself, but like I was, I slept in the same house as my kids. Did the same routine for five hundred and thirty five nights.

• 1:30:07Lewis Howes?

  Pretty impressive.

• 1:30:08Ryan Holiday?

  And I'll, I mean, I've probably never gone that many nights without traveling in my whole life, even when I was a kid, right? Like.

• 1:30:15Lewis Howes?

  That's impressive.

• 1:30:16Ryan Holiday?

  So I'll never get that again. And so now really like opportunity costs are a hard thing to keep track of because they're hidden. And sometimes when you step away from something or you try it in a new way, you realize, oh, yes, this is lucrative. Yes, this is fun. Yes, this gets me attention or builds a business. But it comes at the expense of quiet evenings at home.

• 1:30:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:30:44Ryan Holiday?

  Being more connected to the work, being like, let's say, if you travel in a week, your interviews that week are five percent less good.

• 1:30:56Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:30:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's really hard to notice that. But over a long enough time, that's actually a huge decrease in quality.

• 1:31:03Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:31:04Ryan Holiday?

  And so I think for me, if I'm like, where am I a year from now? I'd like to think I'm, I, my goal would be to be in a very similar head and spiritual place. Even though life will have resumed some of the busyness and obligations that, you know, do have to resume.

• 1:31:26Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. What's the thing you're most proud of in the last eighteen months?

• 1:31:31Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, that bedtime streak is a big one for, I mean, that's like, it means a lot to me, but I would just say that like, you know, the world melted down and I

• 1:31:43Ryan Holiday?

  was able to do good work that I think mattered inside of it, right? Like I started this book, I'd sold it before the pandemic, but I started it on June sixteenth, twenty twenty. So like in the middle of the most difficult world event of my life, like I did good work that I'm proud of that.

• 1:32:09Lewis Howes?

  We gotta get the book. Courage is Calling. Fortune Favors the Brave. Doesn't it usually Fortune Favors the Bold?

• 1:32:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:32:16Lewis Howes?

  Why'd you change the brave?

• 1:32:19Ryan Holiday?

  Because courage and bravery as sort of word. But you know, that expression, which is a lovely Latin expression. You know, it's actually about this guy named Pliny the Elder, who was a naval admiral. And Mount Vesuvius explodes. And he went to rescue his friend. So when he's saying, basically, he's trying to get into this harbor where his friend is trapped. And the pilot says, like, the captain says, "We can't get in there. It's too dangerous. There's too many rocks." And he says, "Fortune favors the bold, like, head towards my friend." So we think that that expression means like, be a visionary, like, take risks. You know, do like, do the bold thing.

• 1:33:02Ryan Holiday?

  But, which it does mean that. But he meant it in a selfless context. And in fact, he dies in

• 1:33:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:33:09Ryan Holiday?

  in the course of the rescue. Which I feel like is a really important spin on a story that people are kind of, would kind of miss the point on. It doesn't mean, like, plunge ahead, don't think of the consequences. It means, like, dive into the water to save someone who's drowning.

• 1:33:28Lewis Howes?

  That's inspiring. Yes. Fortune Favors the Brave. Courage, you know, something, courage is like, for me, I feel like you should really lean into things that are hard for you to have courage on. You know, for me, it's easy for me to think of like, okay, if someone gets in a car crash, my reaction is stop the car.

• 1:33:48Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:33:48Lewis Howes?

  Go out and go and pull someone out. Maybe it's because of my size, maybe it's because of sports background. That's kind of like my reaction. It's hard for me to Tell my girlfriend something I don't want to tell her.

• 1:34:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:34:01Lewis Howes?

  It's it's hard to be like, oh, man, this takes a lot of courage for me to be like, oh, I'm really going to be honest here. How's this going to impact her?

• 1:34:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Lewis Howes?

  Is it going to change every, you know, whatever it is?

• 1:34:11Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:34:12Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's important for us, I don't know if you have a practice or if you have this in the book, where like exercises on how we could start implementing courage on a daily process, whether it's say the thing that's hard for you to say to your boss or to your friend or to your parent, whatever it is. Or do the physical activity that's hard for you. Do you have any of that we can think about as well?

• 1:34:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, the the book is sort of breaking it down and and going in the ways that we do that, but I I, you know, there's that cliche, the the simple ways, like that cliche about like, do one thing every day that scares you.

• 1:34:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:34:44Ryan Holiday?

  It's kind of hard to beat that, you know, that's like, sometimes these things are cliches for a reason, like, because I think if you build it as a habit, you're gonna be more likely to do it when it counts.

• 1:34:56Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:34:57Ryan Holiday?

  Um, and so like when you've done scary, I think this is your point about the pandemic, like if you've been through stuff before,

• 1:35:06Ryan Holiday?

  it's easy to know what to do. If you've avoided difficult things, if you don't have a practice of like plunging ahead.

• 1:35:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:16Ryan Holiday?

  And even just like turning the knob to cold in the shower, like who's in charge? You know, like, I do the scary, hard thing because I'm in charge. You're gonna be able to do that when, you know, when it counts, hopefully.

• 1:35:28Lewis Howes?

  What are the uh, what are the the either the Navy or the Army or the Marine, I can't remember who, but what's the saying? It's like we rise to our training. We fall to our training, we don't rise to our expectations or something or?

• 1:35:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, um, you think that it's gonna be like, oh, my best, this situation will bring out my best self.

• 1:35:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:49Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe, but probably not.

• 1:35:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:35:52Ryan Holiday?

  Um, it it's a what's your, what's your worst best?

• 1:35:57Lewis Howes?

  Your worst best on your worst day, like how good can you be trained for that consistently? Because you're gonna fall down to that. If you're better than that, great.

• 1:36:04Ryan Holiday?

  Well, as a runner, you train your T pace, right? You're like, what's your, what's 90% of your best, your your all out max capacity? Train at that and then it becomes

• 1:36:15Lewis Howes?

  Normal.

• 1:36:16Ryan Holiday?

  Easy. Yeah. And then so when it happens, and this is what we're talking about, preparation makes you break, done the work, put yourself in a position where you're like, this is what this was all for.

• 1:36:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Get a few copies for friends. I'm telling you, Courage is calling. Here's the thing. Every one of Ryan's book becomes a bestseller at some point. So whether it's gonna be best selling the first week, or first year, or first 10 years, it's going to be, it's going to be number one at some point, I'm telling you. Let's support him in getting to number one, sooner than later. Even though it's not his intention right now, but it's, it'll, it'll definitely help get the message out to more people. And I think courage is one of the, um, the values that humanity lacks the most. Having the courage to stand up for what's right. Even sometimes you might be wrong later in life, but like having the courage in that moment,

• 1:37:08Lewis Howes?

  like at least I stood up for what I thought was right. Having the courage to say the truth. Having the courage to be in integrity with yourself. Having the courage to, uh, just continue to show up as a good human being. It's not easy. In a selfish world, it's not easy to have courage. And stand for what's morally right, and what's the win-win-win for this situation. Not how can I win at all costs?

• 1:37:31Ryan Holiday?

  And where would we be without those people? Not, you know, much more, if you think things are bad now, where would we be without those people in the past? And so you can be one of those people today.

• 1:37:42Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Be a symbol of inspiration. Uh, so get the book anywhere books are sold, Amazon. What's also the best place for your site so they can learn more about this and all your books?

• 1:37:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, DailyStoic.com. I do a free email about Stoicism every day.

• 1:37:56Lewis Howes?

  It's a great email list.

• 1:37:57Ryan Holiday?

  And, uh, and then my, uh,

• 1:37:59Lewis Howes?

  Social media?

• 1:38:01Ryan Holiday?

  At Ryan Holiday, at Daily Stoic.

• 1:38:02Lewis Howes?

  And if you want to see a YouTube sensation, go to your YouTube. YouTube.com slash Ryan Holiday, right?

• 1:38:08Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 1:38:08Lewis Howes?

  Daily Stoic, Daily Stoic, yeah. Some really great videos there actually from Stoicism. You guys do like great storytelling and visuals on that stuff. But now you're vlogging, so you're a superstar on the Youtubes and the TikToks. Um, this is a, this is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. I think you've answered it before, but let's, let's see if something comes up different for you. Imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away, and you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. You're as old as you want to be, but eventually you gotta turn the lights off.

• 1:38:41Lewis Howes?

  And you've lived the life.

• 1:38:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:42Lewis Howes?

  But all of your written, audio, or video work has to go somewhere else.

• 1:38:46Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:38:47Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't stay in this world.

• 1:38:48Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:38:49Lewis Howes?

  So no one has access to this interview or anything you've ever put out in your life. But you have a piece of paper and a pen, you get to write down three truths. Three lessons that you've either learned, that you've experienced, or that you want to share with the world. And this is all the lessons we would have to remember you by.

• 1:39:06Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:39:06Lewis Howes?

  From all your work or what you know about life. What would you say are those three truths for you?

• 1:39:15Ryan Holiday?

  Let's start at the bottom. Life is very short, right? So memento mori, you've got a brief moment here, right? Life is short. Two, all accomplishments are ephemeral. What matters is what you do for the people you care about.

• 1:39:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:39:37Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, Jackie Robinson's tombstone is a life is not important except for its impact on other lives.

• 1:39:43Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:44Ryan Holiday?

  So some version of that.

• 1:39:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Interesting.

• 1:39:48Ryan Holiday?

  And then the first would be,

• 1:39:56Ryan Holiday?

  what would I say?

• 1:40:03Ryan Holiday?

  Do what you love.

• 1:40:06Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Do what you love.

• 1:40:10Lewis Howes?

  Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Ryan, for being an incredible human being. You constantly show up every year. I've known you for 10 years.

• 1:40:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Lewis Howes?

  You constantly improve your life. You do what's right for you. You invest in your family. You invest in your health. You invest in creating art for the world to be a better place. You do, and you're constantly acknowledging where you could improve. Anxiety, anger, temper. And for me, you're taking ancient wisdom and teaching it in a new, fresh, practical way, while using your creative mastery, your writing, and your skill set. So I want to acknowledge you for always showing up, for being a leader in so many different ways in the world. Writing being the most way that's, people see and read your writing, but in other ways behind the scenes that people don't know about, that I do know about.

• 1:41:05Lewis Howes?

  So I acknowledge you for how you keep showing up, man. You're a brilliant human being. Extremely talented, probably one of the most talented writers I've ever met and of our time. So I really acknowledge you for all the gifts you have.

• 1:41:17Ryan Holiday?

  It's very nice.

• 1:41:18Lewis Howes?

  Of course, man, of course. So if your, if your wife doesn't tell you that every day, she needs to start telling you that, right?

• 1:41:27Lewis Howes?

  Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:41:30Ryan Holiday?

  Definition of greatness, fulfilling one's potential. So I think it's very easy to define greatness by some sort of external standard, right? Like, do they have the most? Did they win the most? Did they get this or that? Right? And I like to think that as you get better at what you do, you care less and less about that and more about, did you do everything you were capable of doing? Did you take whatever hand you were dealt or set of assets you were given and did you play them for all they were worth?

• 1:42:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:42:04Ryan Holiday?

  Like, what did, did you leave anything on the table?

• 1:42:09Ryan Holiday?

  If the answer is yes, then that's not greatness. If you touched however briefly, the full, you tapped in however briefly to the full measure of your powers, that's greatness. Maybe you get it for a whole career, maybe you get it for one thing, one moment.

• 1:42:27Ryan Holiday?

  You know? But that, that, maybe nobody sees it, but that's, but greatness is that.

• 1:42:33Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Ryan Holiday, my man. Appreciate it.

• 1:42:35Ryan Holiday?

  The best.

• 1:42:36Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.