You Fought The Wall and the Wall Won | When Self-Discipline Becomes a Vice

“Why should we get angry at the world,” Marcus Aurelius writes, “as if the world would notice?” Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🇺🇸 USA dates: Boston, Massachusetts - November 16 https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0100648FA1C21706Nashville, Tennessee - November 20 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1991992836196?aff=oddtdtcreatorPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania - December 8 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1987339339462?aff=oddtdtcreatorWashington D. C. - December 9 https://www.unionstagepresents.com/shows/daily-stoic-live-09-dec 🇳🇿 NEW ZEALAND: Auckland, New Zealand - October 13 https://au.thinkable.events/ryan-holiday-tour/ 🇦🇺 AUSTRALIA dates: Sydney, Australia - October 16 https://au.thinkable.events/ryan-holiday-tour/Melbourne, Australia - October 18 https://au.thinkable.events/ryan-holiday-tour/Brisbane, Australia - October 20 https://au.thinkable.events/ryan-holiday-tour/Perth, Australia - October 21 https://au.thinkable.events/ryan-holiday-tour/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  You fought the wall and the wall won. It was not the right time. It was not fair. It was gonna mess up so much. It was gonna hurt so bad. It was gonna get in the way. That's why you dreaded it. That's why you were anxious about it. But ultimately, the recession, the hurricane, the hardship, it didn't care. It never does. It didn't ask for your opinion or take into account your needs, and it never will. At the core of Stoicism is this idea of acceptance. Not acceptance of everything, of course, but the acceptance of things that are not up to us. "Why should we get angry at the world?" Marx realist writes, cribbing from Euripides.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  "As if the world would notice." There are some things that are bigger than us. There are some things that will not yield to our efforts or our entreaties. We should not hurl ourselves against those things. We should not fight a wall because the wall will always win.

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, I just got back from that run of three dates. I did a whole deep dive into the shenanigans there. Travel delays, trying to be stoic in the midst of some craziness. But the first stop was in Minneapolis at the Ted Man Concert Hall. Beautiful venue, amazing crowd. Really loved doing it. And the questions were great. They were really great. But I mean, one of them, oof. I'll play it last because it hit me so hard. I don't want you to tear up like I did right at the beginning. But this 10-year-old kid gets up and asks just a beautiful question, which, I don't know, it just really hit me because I have a 10-year-old. And I just think of what a head start this kid is getting,

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  turning into Stoicism so early. It was on it. He sent me a really nice email after, and so did his dad. I got to meet him after the show. If you're wondering sort of how this panned out, I'll bleep out his name and stuff so people can't identify him because he deserves some privacy. But I think you'll really like this. There were a bunch of other questions, which I'll get to first. If you want to come ask me a question, or if you have a 10-year-old that wants to ask me a question, I'll be in Uklund on October 13th, Sydney on the 16th, Melbourne on the 18th, Brisbane on the 20th, Perth on the 21st. Just bought all the tickets. Whole family's going. Then I'll be in Boston on November 16th, Nashville on the 20th, right before Thanksgiving, and then Philadelphia in DC on December 8th and 9th. You can come see me. Grab tickets at dailystoiclive.com.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  What would you say is the most important thing to focus on when you realize you have more life behind you than in front of you? I know we talk about memento mori. Could you say what would be the most important thing to focus on? Thank you.

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's interesting, right? Obviously, at a certain point in your life, the actuary tables can give you evidence of that. But any person could be at that point at any time and just not know it, right? The practice of memento mori is not, hey, you're going to die tomorrow. So what are you going to do differently? It's that anyone could die at any moment. And what does that change? What perspective does that shift? What prioritization does that give us? Seneca said that it's wrong to think of death as something that's in the future, that we're moving towards. He says, actually, death is behind us, that the time that's passed belongs to death. Basically, his point is that we're dying every minute, dying every day.

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  We're dying in terms of how we spend our time. And his point, which he talks about repeatedly, his essay on the shortness of life is one of the greatest things ever written. He's saying that, you know, we protect our money, we protect property, we protect status, and then we just waste our time. You know, he says, life is long. If you know how to live it, the problem is we just waste too much of it. So I guess, to me, it doesn't matter where you are in life, whether you're young or middle-aged or, you know, well-advanced in age. The question is, you know, what do you have to show for the time you've already had? And then what are you going to do with the time that you have left? And those are the key questions that I think we should be asking ourselves, you know, theoretically, but also practically.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  And it's a philosophical practice. You know, hey, I don't know how long I have. I don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring, but here's what I'm gonna do today. Here's the changes I'm gonna make now. That's what that philosophical practice of memento mori is really about.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  So a huge thank you. Your work and what you've done has forever changed my life in positive ways. So like a lot of people here, just a huge thank you. I was very curious. In the Daily Stoic, I'll forever remember March 19th. There was, you quoted Father Anthony de Mello. And I think there's a really interesting convergence with spirituality and Stoicism. And I was wondering if you could maybe just talk to that a little bit, especially regarding like a lot of de Mello's work around awareness and attachment and so forth. Thank you.

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, The Way to Love is a little book by Anthony de Mello. It's just absolutely incredible. Like, page for page is maybe one of the greatest books you'll ever read. I think he's a Jesuit monk born in India, familiar with Buddhism and Catholicism, and just a fascinating guy. I do think there's a lot of overlap between the eastern and the western philosophy. Ultimately, I feel like they're kind of independently coming to some of the same conclusions about, you know, what causes suffering? What are the fundamental realities of life? What things, you know, sort of enslave and torture us?

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  And how do we free ourselves from them? I don't know exactly how much they informed each other, so much as I take it as a positive sign that wise people that I admire from different philosophical schools are expressing in their own way some of the same essential truths. And I think you see that when you read Confucius. I see that when you read Buddhism. I see that when you read, you know, Sermon on the Mount. I see that when you read the Stoics. And then the Epicureans, who were in the ancient world, considered these like diametrically opposed rivals, who basically said the exact same thing with some small differences. So I think that's a really powerful sort of signal that they're on to something.

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  And Seneca talked about how, you know, he'll, he reads like a spy in the enemy's camp, that he'll read from any philosophical school, even if he disagrees with them. He wants to steel man his own arguments. And if somebody says something good, he's like, oh, he says, I'll quote a bad author if the line is good. And so I think there should be an open-mindedness, not just to all the different philosophical schools, whichever you ascribe to, but also we should be willing to update and add. We shouldn't act like 2,000 years of history and scientific studies and breakthroughs and, you know, understanding of psychology hasn't been added to our store of knowledge. And we should, you know, let that inform our understanding and our practices as well.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  When you were talking about courage and discipline, you talked about like moral courage and physical courage. I also think there's kind of moral discipline and physical discipline as well.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  My question, when you were talking about like getting out of bed and asking like what controls you? Like, what's the thing that you're reaching for? The thing that you're running to? How are you balancing your practices of discipline without allowing those to become, you know, the things that control you to like your own personal detriment? Like, when do your routines and your practices and your disciplines start to actually kind of overcome who you are as a person? And how are you balancing that?

• 8:45Ryan Holiday?

  Right, the purpose of discipline is not to turn you into a machine. It's not to suck all the joy and fun out of life. It's not to, you know, account for every minute and every second and every calorie. You're put here to live. You have one life. How are you gonna spend it? I think when we think of discipline, yeah, it's not about this sort of torture you inflict on yourself. But it is understanding that oftentimes the things that feel good or we want. Or that we'll accept in the short term are often at odds with who we want to be and what we want to do in the slightly longer term. Right? Like, all success, all happiness,

• 9:30Ryan Holiday?

  I find all contentment, all accomplishment is a lagging indicator of, you know, decisions we made long ago or work that we did long ago. So the question is, is not like, hey, do I want to get out of bed early right now? But, um, you know, who do I want to be tomorrow and the day after and the day after? And is the choice I'm going to make contributing to that or not? And so I sort of think about it in that context. At the same time, we have to be disciplined about our self-discipline. Any virtue can be taken to in excess and becomes a vice. Just as too much courage becomes recklessness, too much discipline becomes, in a way, its own vice, its own form of ill-discipline.

• 10:14Ryan Holiday?

  And I think sometimes, like, this is a, it's a good problem to have. And it's a little bit like, you know, my biggest flaw is I just work too hard and care too much, you know? But, you know, some people need more discipline to get up off the couch. And some people need to sit on the couch and relax and recover because they did too much the day before or because they can't do it like they used to. Or they're, you know, coming down with something. And so the discipline to pace yourself is a really important one. I have a chapter in the Disciplined book about load management, which is something that the San Antonio Spurs pioneered and everyone in the NBA hated them for.

• 10:58Ryan Holiday?

  But, like, you only get so many years. You only get so many games. You only have so many reps. And if you're not diligent with that and you don't shepherd those resources properly, you end up, you know, ironically, getting hurt and missing more games. And so that balance is key. So ultimately, temperance as a virtue is about finding that midpoint between the extremes. And that's the work. It's easy to say like, just do more, work harder, go faster, you know, add more things to the load. But that can be a recipe for, you know, disaster.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  I have really appreciated all that you've taught us about the obstacle being the way. And I'm curious how you approach when two things are true. You know the obstacle is the way and that darn obstacle really hurts.

• 11:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  So you don't want that hurt to be masked or hold you back. So how do you navigate that?

• 12:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think there's obviously different kinds of obstacles, right? There's professional obstacles. It is worth noting the the obstacle Marx really is specifically referring to in the passage about how the impediment to action advances action and what stands in the way becomes the way. He's referring to annoying and obnoxious people who screw up stuff for us. So, um, you know, his point is that other people are always an opportunity for us to practice a virtue. And I think, you know, that distinction can sometimes get lost because it's so easy to apply the formula to like professional endeavors. Like, oh, how does this, you know, how does the market today? Or this bit of news? Or this thing that happened?

• 12:43Ryan Holiday?

  How do I use that to improve the bottom line? Or, um, you know, to grow the business? Or to, you know, get some attention? Or get ahead? There's obviously the other kinds of obstacles in life. You know, a diagnosis, a call from a family member, something happening out in the world. And when we say that the obstacle isn't the way, or we say the obstacle is the way, that's like not something I would say to someone who just told me they had cancer. It might be true. It's not what I would say to them. It seems like sometimes people will, you know, they'll order a copy of The Obstacle is the Way and they'll say, you know, my friend just got this, you know, very serious cancer diagnosis. Can you inscribe, you know?

• 13:28Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not going to tell that person amor fati. That just seems, you know, incredibly offensive. That doesn't mean it's not an opportunity for them to be great, you know, in the true sense of that word, in the sense of magnanimous and impressive and dignified and inspirational and, um, you know, peaceful and content. And like, there's always the opportunity to practice some virtue. It might also be, at the same time, as you said, it's not mutually exclusive, incredibly painful and scary and sad, the exact opposite of what you would want to happen. And so when you look at the lives of the Stoics, you see that they're not being glib about this.

• 14:13Ryan Holiday?

  These are people who were sent into exile. These were people who buried children. These were people who, uh, you know, were robbed. These were people who were enslaved. These were people who were tortured. These were people who watched their beloved government be taken over, right? They experience all sorts of pain and loss and difficulty. And when they say the obstacle is the way, they don't just mean like, let's turn the have to to a get to, you know? It's something much, you know, much deeper and more profound than that, right? And that's how, that's to me, it's something harder to express, but is the sort of spiritual part of this philosophy that I think, you know, again, it doesn't make for a good,

• 14:58Ryan Holiday?

  or it does make for a good Instagram quote, but it's woefully insufficient for describing the amount of sort of spiritual soul power required to actually make that true in a given case.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  It's me and my dad here.

• 15:12Ryan Holiday?

  Where are you? Hey, bud.

• 15:15Speaker 05

  Um, my parents recently divorced and you've been helping us a lot. And it's become our, one of our best, favorite things to listen to you. Sorry.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  And I just, I wanted to ask, what is one of your favorite quotes that probably not most people have heard or know of that that just isn't very popular or well-known?

• 15:53Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I'm sorry to hear you're going through that. I think we know who's getting the book.

• 16:10Ryan Holiday?

  Let's, uh, let's find one here. Ooh, this one's good. Okay. And maybe this applies to what you're going through. Not, it says, frightened of change, but what can exist without it? What's closer to nature's heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can't you see it's just the same with you and just as vital to nature? He says actually something similar to this later in Meditations where, um, where he says, you know, you couldn't exist without change. Like, you didn't exist

• 16:55Ryan Holiday?

  and then you came into existence. And then, obviously, we see that as a good change. And then all sorts of other changes we try to beat back the currents against, like Gatsby, or we try to resist. We try to fight, even though years in the future will look back on whatever it is, including something painful like you're going through, and we'll see it ultimately as something formative, something that shaped us, something that we're proud that we figured out how to get through and we made it through. But there's a lot here. It's a book you read over and over again. And then the book that I, you know, the book that I read when I was 19 years old, this one, is the same book that I just opened and read a passage to you now, but I understand it differently because I'm different.

• 17:39Ryan Holiday?

  The pages stay the same, but we change. And so I'll sign this for you after. I'll give it to you and hopefully it's something that stays with you. All right? All right, it was great, bud.