A Stoic’s Guide To Winning Without Losing Yourself | Leadership Expert Dan Coyle

You can be successful and still not be flourishing. In this episode, Ryan talks with leadership expert Dan Coyle https://danielcoyle.com/about the difference between living like a machine and living like a human being. They talk about why high performance can become hollow, where real meaning comes from, and why simple mantras matter more than we think. They also discuss the importance of community, the role of “yellow door” moments, and how the words you use shape the way you show up. Daniel Coyle is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers The Culture Code https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-culture-code-the-secrets-of-highly-successful-groups?_pos=2&_sid=be787a719&_ss=r, The Talent Code https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-talent-code-greatness-isnt-born-its-grown-heres-how?_pos=3&_sid=be787a719&_ss=r, and his NEW book Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/flourish-the-art-of-building-meaning-joy-and-fulfillment?_pos=1&_sid=be787a719&_ss=r. Check out more of Dan’s work on his website https://danielcoyle.com/ 📚 Grab signed copies of Daniel’s books at The Painted Porch: The Culture Code https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-culture-code-the-secrets-of-highly-successful-groups?_pos=2&_sid=be787a719&_ss=rThe Talent Code https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-talent-code-greatness-isnt-born-its-grown-heres-how?_pos=3&_sid=be787a719&_ss=rFlourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/flourish-the-art-of-building-meaning-joy-and-fulfillment?_pos=1&_sid=be787a719&_ss=r 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ 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/ ✉️ 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 know, sometimes the people who look the most successful on the outside are the furthest from actually flourishing. Like, you wouldn't trade places with them. You wouldn't want to live inside that head. You wouldn't want to be them. And maybe they are succeeding compared to other people. But that's not how we're graded, right? What actually matters is whether we fulfill our potential, whether we're living as well as we can be. So in today's episode, that's what I wanted to explore, like, the difference between winning and living well. And I think Dan Coyle is the perfect person to help me dig into that. He's a bestselling author, wrote The Culture Code, The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent. He has this new book called Flourish. But it's day-to-day life. He's embedded inside some of the most elite sports teams,

• 1:00Ryan Holiday?

  military units, companies, places where success is everything. And there's a lot of pressure to win. But I think he's come to understand that, that a win-at-all-costs mentality doesn't actually get us to that idea of flourishing, what Aristotle would call eudaimonia. And that's what I want to dig into today. You should check out Dan's books. The new book Flourish is great. Culture Code is great. Talent Code is great. I was down at spring training for the Cubs and the Diamondbacks this year. They were all raving about Dan and his work. He's a legit dude. You can go to danielcoyle.com. He signs some books here at the bookstore. But I think you're really going to like this episode. Talk soon.

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  Let's talk meaning, because I think a lot of people are very talented. A lot of people are very successful.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:46Ryan Holiday?

  You've probably worked and coached a number of them and also probably wouldn't trade places with them for all the money in the world.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Never.

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  You wouldn't trade places with them for all the money in the world.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  That's right. I guess the thing, we're talking about high performance. Is that what we're interested in? Like, super top performance. I mean, one of the big, it's funny, I did a, did a book. I've done two books on cycling in the past. And one was on Lance, Austin's own. And then one was kind of the, called The Secret Race, which was about, you know, the world of doping that helped support him. And I've been around a lot of people that are kind of win-at-all costs, right? And, and he exemplifies that. When you say win-at-all costs, I think about him. And when you see the cost of that, the actual human cost of that, it is pretty staggering. And that's not, it's a sports thing, but it's not just a sports thing. There's a lot of sort of super-successful, super-sad people

• 2:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  in the world that have achieved everything they want to achieve and have found themselves kind of in this barren landscape.

• 2:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Top of the mountain.

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  It's cold, it's windy, you're by yourself.

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Oxygen gets low after a while. And as I've gotten older, and as I've kind of been around that, that's what got me interested in, in like the valleys, like places of this generativity, places where they're producing a lot of surprise. There's still performance. There's still like a level of competence and exploration and innovation. But there are places where there's this sense of aliveness, where it's not just, I'm a machine climbing a mountain. It's like, we're gonna, we're gonna grow something together.

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, maybe it's, there's a distinction between success and flourishing. You know, probably most people who are flourishing are successful in some form. They're succeeding at a number of things.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  And, and success is not at all the same thing as flourishing. Because you can be extremely successful at one thing or in one part of your life, and then just be absolutely falling apart or just absolutely fucking up this thing we call existence.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. It's very, very easy to do that. They're, they're operating completely different domains. Success, measurable. Success ultimately is machine-like.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Ultimately, it's in the machine domain. Flourishing is what machines can't do. Machines can't generate new stuff. They can't grow. You can have the best machine in the world. Some of them are in our pockets. They don't grow.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Right? They're good in this very, very narrow, measurable way. They, they change, they deliver measurable outcomes. But flourishing is like, there's, you know, when I visited these places for the book, there's this sense of like, like aliveness. And I kind of, the litmus test is like, who do you feel most alive with? And what are you growing? Like, those two questions kind of unlock places in your life where, oh, is that happening? Or, you know, are you kind of in the machine mode, automating? And a lot of our world, and a lot of the self-help world in particular, is built on, let's build good habits, build good systems, build good protocols, let's do X, Y, and Z, and therefore, the promises. And what I saw in the flourishing places was a lot of good habits, a lot of good habits.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And they weren't just automating, they were like animating.

• 4:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hmm.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Animating their thing with, with meaning. There's a orientation at Zingerman's. This is, you familiar with Zingerman's? A little deli started in Ann Arbor. It's grown into a $90 million community of businesses.

• 5:05Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  There's, you know, the bakery, the coffee shop, the restaurant, the travel business, all this stuff. It's been this, and they won't leave Ann Arbor. They're like, this is where we have our meeting, Ann Arbor. Walt Disney was like, we'll give you 50 million bucks to come in the park. And they're like, no, thanks.

• 5:17Ryan Holiday?

  Because it's, it's your classic Main Street kind of business thing.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is our, this is who we are. We exist to serve Ann Arbor. And I went to an orientation for new people there, and I kind of expected the orientation to be transmit.

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Here's what you need to, here's the answer key, how to succeed. And it was a complete flip. It was like, so Ryan, what's your story, man? Like, why do you want to work in the bakery? Like, what made you like bread?

• 5:41Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  And over and over again, that same flip takes place. And so they're, they're not immediately, and they want to do a good job. They need to be machine-like in certain ways.

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  If you can't bake the bread, you probably get let go.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  You gotta show up, right? You gotta show up at the right time. You gotta have the right salt level. But at the end of the day, it's like, no, it's, it's, it's about relationships. And so these places are good at creating spaces where people can matter.

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  Thinking about what you were saying, it's like, a machine can get really, can be really good at doing something.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:09Ryan Holiday?

  Right? And it can do it extremely well. It can do it extremely quickly. It can do it extremely efficiently. But what it can't do is enjoy what it's doing. And it can't have meaning in what it's doing. And then obviously, it can't learn how to do something else. It can't expand into other domains and take this analogous knowledge and apply it over here. And so that is the, that's not just a uniquely human thing, but I think that is the difference between success and flourishing.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:37Ryan Holiday?

  Like, and you're not just, yeah, put here to swing a bat or like, I've thought about this in my own thing. It's like, if I'm not enjoying while I'm doing, my job while I'm doing it, which is to say writing, like, you know, so, so many writers are so, celebrate sort of how tortured the whole thing is. I go, then, then this isn't like a gift. This is a curse that's like, so, so I just have to do this painful thing over and over and over again, even if I'm past any point of, you know, financial need, but I'm just compelled to do this thing and I can't stop? Like, then this whole story is actually a tragedy, not a, you know, not a bounty of any kind.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  I love that. Yeah. That sense of bubbliness and surprise that is in good lives, it's in good workplaces, in good families. If you can predict exactly what's going to happen.

• 7:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  You ain't doing it right.

• 7:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  I mean, you're not, you're not even close to fortune, right? It is that sense of openness, that sense of leaving space for things to emerge. And also that sense of like, I'm going to experiment and some of them are going to fail. And that's great.

• 7:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  If they don't fail, then like, that was probably, then I'm not doing it right.

• 7:45Ryan Holiday?

  Of all the athletes I've talked to, pretty much all of them, as they come to some element of retirement age, which I think sports is helpful because it's like a sped-up version of regular life.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:54Ryan Holiday?

  Like, they, but they've all, they're all like, you know, I wish I enjoyed it more. Like, I wish I hadn't tortured myself so much.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:01Ryan Holiday?

  You know, maybe they left certain wins on the table. They wish they could have this shot back or that shot. But mostly, they're like, I wish, one of the people you talk about in the book, Chris Bosch, is, is fascinating because like, you know, one day, it just gets taken away.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  And that happens.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:16Ryan Holiday?

  Right? It's an injury, it's, or it's retirement or whatever. And, and they're, they're all sort of as, they just miss. The thing that got them into it for the first place, which is that they like doing it.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. And there are, so there are a few that I've seen, especially on, on certain side. I think of, makes me think of Greg Popovich, San Antonio.

• 8:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  He spent, I think his wine bill for each season was like 100 grand.

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Like, he was constantly celebrating. He enjoyed every bit of it and the ups and the downs.

• 8:44Ryan Holiday?

  Which is funny because he looks like such a grouchy, like, joyless dude when he's on the sidelines.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  He is an absolute delight.

• 8:52Ryan Holiday?

  He's an epicurean.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Abs, he is.

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  He's a big epicurean and a stoic. Like, there was a moment, like, right after, I think when they lost that super painful game to Miami in 2014. You know, they were basically going to win the championship. Miami comes back, hits several crazy shots to win. They had the restaurant all prepared for the celebration.

• 9:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  So the temptation was, oh, let's just go back to the hotel. This was the most gut-wrenching loss, maybe in the history of the NBA. And there's an account, I talked to the assistant coach, said, Popovich said, no, we're going to the restaurant. We're going. And he go, he gets there early, and he sits in a chair in the restaurant. And he looks as broken as a man has ever looked. Like, his, he just destroyed. The bus pulls up, he straightens himself up, he takes a deep breath, and he walks to the door, and he smiles, and he starts greeting all the players. And then they gather at that dinner with families and everything. He puts the players at the center table, and he spends the night. The coach said it was like watching a father at a wedding, like helping every lifting everybody up.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  But like for me, like that is just the supreme self-control to serve the common good.

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Like it took an immense amount of command for him to be able to do. I don't think all of us want to go curl up.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  In that moment, right? Feel sorry for ourselves, but to actually take that breath, make that smile and make that evening happen. And at the end, they were like rejuvenated. And the next year, when they win, they pop the same bottles. They kept the champagne. So it's like, that's, that's sports. That's like the best of sports. That's not the machine, like torturous part. And those both do exist, but it feels like you see, you don't, you don't see that other one often enough. Cause it's really, it's really a part of it.

• 10:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, I know Manu Ginobili a little bit. He's been here. I've seen him a bunch.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 10:42Ryan Holiday?

  He's fascinating to me because, you know, he's sitting in that chair you're in and you're like, this guy has four championships. You know, like Olympic gold medal, has done all the things, but you know, doesn't seem tortured.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 10:55Ryan Holiday?

  You know, that, that sort of unquenching desire for more and more and more, that sometimes motivates people to get in that position.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  And in a way, that's almost a more, I've said this before, so, but it, it's almost a more impressive accomplishment.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:10Ryan Holiday?

  Right? To be able to succeed at what you do and have some semblance of flourishing, contentment, happiness. Because in a way, it's, it's easier to make yourself into the machine, into the beast.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:22Ryan Holiday?

  It takes away the pain.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:23Ryan Holiday?

  Of the, the losses and, and the collateral damages and all that. You don't have to be a human being. You're just a thing that does one thing.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Right, right. What that makes me think of is that sense of play. I remember there was, I was talking to somebody about Ginobili and he said, and the way he described me was like, if, if he was across the bar and you had a glass and he had a bottle cap in his hand, he would try to throw the bottle cap into your glass. Like, which is just.

• 11:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  You can feel that on the court.

• 11:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  That guy has joy.

• 11:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Joy. And there was a definition of joy that I came across recently that really resonated. It said, joy is rediscovering your love of reality again and again. Like it's falling in love with reality.

• 12:04Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  That's what joy is.

• 12:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And like whether that's walking your dog or whatever that is, but that's what you see in people like that. I would say Jose Ramirez has that same sort of joy. And a lot of the, a lot of the good leaders that I've been around have that same sort of, Popovich had that.

• 12:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  It's like that same sort of deep joy of like, this is, I'm going to throw my bottle cap. Like this is really fun. This isn't grim. Like this is, this is delightful.

• 12:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yet again, if it's grim, like you lose even if you win.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 12:32Ryan Holiday?

  You know, because, because it's, it turns to ash in your mouth.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:37Ryan Holiday?

  You're telling yourself, you're putting all this work, you're doing all this stuff. So you can feel good when you get it, but you can't feel good when you get it because you're incapable of doing that.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. It's true. It's true. And I don't think we're, I think we're like realizing that. I feel like, do you feel like parenting has changed? Like, is there a sense that like the, the tiger parent thing is done?

• 12:59Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it's sort of bifurcating, right? It's like some people are on that one and then some people are on this one. And you're sort of choosing, and it's hard in an ultra competitive world because it feels like.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:11Ryan Holiday?

  Career prospect suicide to kind of take your kids off.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:15Ryan Holiday?

  That track if other people are on it and go, you know what? I don't, I'm going to send you to the public school down the street, not, you know, this academy to go to this academy to go to this academy.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 13:26Ryan Holiday?

  And then the funny thing is something like AI comes along and maybe makes it all irrelevant anyway, you know? And so, yeah, I don't know. It just doesn't seem fun to be some people. And what's, what's the point of the success or the achievement if it's not fun?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  If it's not fun, if there's not some, and not to say there's not suffering too, right? It's just that, that's the other thing about flourishing that I think people.

• 13:49Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the suffering is where meaning comes from often.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  I think it is. It absolutely is. It absolutely is. One of the, I didn't include this in the book, but like one of the consistent fascinating examples of flourishing is what happens after a natural disaster. When you talk to people, I don't know what your family's like, but my family, one of the best nights of the year is when there's a blackout. Like shuts it all down, man. Like we're, get the candles, light a fire.

• 14:13Ryan Holiday?

  Suddenly in the moment, it's interesting.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  We're present, like this matters. We're, we're connected, we're cooperating to figure out what to do with the freezer that's melting or to figure out how to cook dinner. And the same thing happens in a larger level. It's funny, but there's this, there was this guy named Charles Fritz, who did all these studies looking at what happens after big disasters, looked at hundreds of them, interviewed hundreds of people. And what he found was there was joy.

• 14:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  You know, there is a sense of deep connection because there's meaning. And because there are these, you know, like you're flowing towards solving, there's this collective agency. It's like meaning plus agency is flourishing.

• 14:51Ryan Holiday?

  The idea that you can bomb a country into submission.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:54Ryan Holiday?

  Is like been so repeatedly disproven.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:57Ryan Holiday?

  That it's tragic, we still try to do it, but yeah, you find it actually tends to bind populations together. And that, you know, maybe the initial bombing is a shock and it's problematic. But as it goes on and on and on, people's resolve hardens and it becomes this existential struggle that they refuse to give up on.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. We're built that way.

• 15:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  We're, we're wired for community is a way to think about it, right? And when we get the right conditions, and that was one of the encouraging things about this, like, it feels like that flourishing is a long way away from machine world, like from, but in fact, because of the way we're built, because of the way we're kind of ready to wake up to it. I think a lot of times it's like one big action away or even one small action away.

• 15:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think that's what's so funny. Obviously like psychedelics and stuff are popular these days. And you talk to the people about like the life shattering, you know, breakthrough they had doing this or that. And you're like, that's in like every book.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:57Ryan Holiday?

  And every spiritual tradition ever, you just didn't want to hear it.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:01Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it's not like they do this and then suddenly they understand, like they're able to transcend space and time. And they, it's like unlock the secrets of the universe. It's like, I just realized like, I don't have to be mad at my dad anymore or whatever. It's like.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:15Ryan Holiday?

  You know, like it's not that crazy.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  It's not that crazy to have that thought.

• 16:18Ryan Holiday?

  It's, you're not going to, the, the insights or the change, it's not, I have to sell everything. And, you know, go into nonprofit work. It's like, it's often the difference between flourishing and non flourishing or a meaningful life and a meaningless or a, you know, exhausting, unpleasant life is not that enormous.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  No, and I think we're sold the fact in a little bit that is bigger. There's like change and shift and all this stuff. And it's usually like, I sort of think reach channel is a slightly better world where you're still yourself.

• 16:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  A lot of people who do self-improvement, if they're all focused on it, at the end, they don't feel like themselves anymore.

• 16:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  You know, they feel like they've, they've just become a robot. And it's like, that's not what real self-improvement, self-improvement should actually be called like self-channeling, where you're still yourself and you're just putting some new constraints on it. Maybe you're, you know, trying to develop in these certain ways, but you're not like, I'm guessing like you, I was a pretty anxious kid growing up. Right? And for a time like that, that's just being anxious. Why are you laying out your clothes two days in advance before you have to wear them? Right? That's just being, being neurotic. But if you channel that same persnickety-ness toward writing a book or reporting a story, suddenly I'm a good journalist. Same person, same person, but I just channeled into this domain where it was like, oh, now that's actually kind of useful.

• 17:40Ryan Holiday?

  I think about that with my kids. I try to give them grace in the sense I go, oh, you're me.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 17:45Ryan Holiday?

  Plus my wife, but you're me and you haven't figured out the things it took me 40 ish years to figure out.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:52Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Like, like you're what I would be like if I hadn't learned the lessons that I've learned and also found the projects and the outlets that I have found.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:00Ryan Holiday?

  So like the main thing is not for me just to tell you, don't do that, don't do this. It's to tell you, it's to help you find those places and outlets.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:10Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Like, and I think the same is for the meaning business. It's like, it's not like, oh, your life is meaningless, you're screwing it up. It's like, hey, let me tell you about these things.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:18Ryan Holiday?

  That will give you meaning.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:20Ryan Holiday?

  Work, you know, it's, it's relationships, it's, you know, being of service. It's, it's a handful of really basic things.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:28Ryan Holiday?

  But like, we've got, you know, 5,000 or so years of experience, knowing that these tend to be the big levers.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:35Ryan Holiday?

  That they're not going to radically transform you. They're just tightening things up just enough that it'll be transformative.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  You'll still be you. I mean, there's, it's like they're at this trail and there's all these maps that people have left at the head, the trailhead. It's like, maybe check those out.

• 18:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Those, those have been useful.

• 18:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 18:50Ryan Holiday?

  So tell me what a yellow door moment is.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. This is an idea from Lisa Miller. You know, part of doing this book was like, everybody secretly writes books for themselves. Like, as you know, right? This is not, you know, we're not actually doing it for the readers. So as I was, you know, going through life, I tend to be real to-do list oriented, real focused. And Lisa Miller has this idea, you usually go, and it's based, it's connected to these attention systems that are in our brain, task attention, relational attention. And it's, we usually go through life focused on green doors that are open, red doors that are closed. And we sort of see the world that way as a set of green doors and red doors. Go this way, don't go that way. Clear. Boom. And we react instinctively to that. And Lisa's thought experiment is, why don't you pay attention to those ones out of the

• 19:35Speaker 01

  corner of your eye that don't look clearly green and don't look clearly red? You know, the invitation from your neighbor that seemed like a doofus the last time you talked, the, you know, the work thing that you don't feel like going to, or the sport that you've never liked to try. And, and you start seeing your life not as a series of like, straight lines, but much more of curvy sort of complexity. And those yellow doors end up, you know, kind of, I think of it as like a daily yellow door, like do one thing every day that's like, oh, that was something that I wouldn't normally do. And it ends up, like all of this stuff, it's usually kind of a path toward community. Most of these things are ways to connect to other people in a world, our world, which

• 20:19Speaker 01

  is very algo oriented and mixing it up a little bit. One of the, one of the stories that Kurt Vonnegut used to tell was, he would go downtown to buy an envelope. And he'd buy one. And then the next day, he'd go walk downtown, kind of like this downtown, in Indiana, and he'd buy another envelope. And finally, after like, three days, the clerk was like, I've got a whole box. I could sell you the whole box. And he goes, no, I'm, I actually, on my walk down here, I, I get to make faces at the babies in the stroller.

• 20:52Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I get to pat all the dogs and I get to give a thumbs up to the fire engine that goes by.

• 20:57Ryan Holiday?

  The inefficiency is the point.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  The friction, friction is the point. The inefficiency is where community happens. The inefficiency, community. And the thing, efficiency is for machines.

• 21:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Like, if you want to live like a machine, definitely ignore yellow doors. But if you want to live like an actual ecosystem, like a garden that you want to grow, gardens require nurture. They require attentive little moments. You don't grow a garden like a machine.

• 21:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  You clear a space, and then you plant stuff, and then you wait around, and you watch, and you see, and you help.

• 21:26Ryan Holiday?

  Some of it grows, some of it doesn't.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Some of it doesn't. That's right. And that's how gardens are. And so those moments of inefficiency and cultivating a life where it's got yellow doors and inefficiency in it, ends up being one of the most enriching things that I've taken out of this process.

• 21:40Ryan Holiday?

  I love that. All right. I had a couple of quotes from the book I wanted to riff on with you. People mistakenly think life is a treasure hunt, and it's not a treasure hunt. It's more like treasure creation. You have that above your desk.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Ryan Holiday?

  Why?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  It hit me at a time in my life. I mean, I, I've been a pretty good hunter. It's kind of how I approached my career, like what, I'm going to hunt down a good project. I'm going to hunt down another good project, hunt down good people to work with. Very focused, very effective. It works, right? But when I was in, you know, my mid 50s, both my parents passed away within the, you know, about three years of each other, kind of unexpectedly. And just like being there for that moment, seeing the last breath, it's like, there's memento mori, and then there's like, the experience of, of it. And it just knocks you to your knees. It just, just makes you see the world in a different way. And we're all going to go through that. And we should probably get more acquainted with it, as you, I think, would recommend.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  It's like looking right at that, because that is, that's coming for us all. It's very, it's no, no illusion. So at that time, then I encountered that quote that you read from the psychologist Barry Schwartz. It's like, life's not a treasure hunt. People mistakenly think that. It's a treasure creation.

• 22:49Ryan Holiday?

  What's the difference between treasure hunting and treasure creation?

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Hunting assumes that it is out there and your goal, your, your role is to chase it. So that means you've got to detect it. You've got to focus. You've got to have that narrow tunnel vision to hunt it down. And then, once you have it, you'll be good.

• 23:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Right? I will capture it. I'll control it. I'll be set. I'll reach a point. And what that spotlighted for me, and really resonated deeply, is like, think of all the people you know who are, who have approached life that way. Did that work for them? Think of all the people you know that have approached life as if it was a garden that they nurtured and grew and created, created, co-created. Maybe would even be a better way to say it. And that treasure always ends up being some version of, of community, I think. You know, all the, all the, all the Harvard studies, all the, all the, everything is like, you know, fulfilled life is relationships, full stop. And so we, that's still, as obvious a truth that is on paper, I think it's a truth that fails to like, put us in our, get

• 23:49Speaker 01

  to our core sometimes, that we don't believe that in our core, or we don't behave that in our, in our behavior. So that quote, that's why I put it above my desk, to keep reminding me, like, turn off that narrow, turn on the broad, or at least let the narrow serve the broad.

• 24:03Ryan Holiday?

  It also reminds me, or makes me think, like, treasure hunting is zero sum. Like, I got to the chest before you. There's one chest, I have it.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:11Ryan Holiday?

  And treasure creation is like, there's an unlimited amount. And you make it, and by the way, in making it, you get it, but also now it exists in the world. Someone else can get, like, it's not this zero sum, like, we got to fight, because if, if you have it, I don't get it.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. That's true.

• 24:28Ryan Holiday?

  You're talking about doing karaoke, but as you're, as you're doing, let's say you're doing any scary task, you could say to yourself, one of two phrases, I'm nervous, or I'm excited. And then you say, would saying one or the other make a difference in your performance?

• 24:44Speaker 01

  I like that. Yeah, I feel that. Um, there was a study by Alison Brooks, Harvard Business School, where did that, right? And what that really revealed, the people, spoiler alert, the people who said, I'm excited, did a lot better than the people who said, I'm nervous. The power of language to create the, the internal experiences that we have.

• 25:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  I mean, in the words, it really captures that. This, this idea of, I'm nervous, puts you in that I need to control things. I need to focus narrowly. I need to tighten up. I need to clinch, right? So to speak. And that diminishes your performance versus, I'm excited. I'm excited is, is interesting because it's mysterious. It's vague.

• 25:24Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  They weren't told to be excited for, I'm excited because I might become a pop singer someday. I don't think so.

• 25:29Ryan Holiday?

  But it is interesting because it's like, one is half full, one's half empty. It's like, you're nervous because you think it could go bad.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:36Ryan Holiday?

  And you're excited because it might go well.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:38Ryan Holiday?

  Right? One is, let's look at what the good could happen. And the other is, well, think of all the bad things that could happen.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  That's right. So when you're thinking of all the bad things, that's kind of this narrow space, right? It's a small space of control and fear. And that's, and if you open up that a little bit, I'm excited, that's a much bigger space. It encourages you to kind of imagine things.

• 25:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  And so much good stuff. I think we've kind of lost in some ways, that knack for imagining things. Do you listen to John Vervakey at all?

• 26:06Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Super, super interesting dude, but, but philosopher who does these massive courses about the meaning crisis. That's the name of his course. It's brilliant. But one of the things that he talks about is just the role, you know, we can learn information. You can, you can teach someone how to do anything as a parent. But really, what, what happens when, when talent is grown, when capacities are grown, are moments of imagination.

• 26:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Are moments where the kid, it's not the kid reading about what Zorro did. It's when the kid puts on the mask and gets a stick and says, I'm Zorro.

• 26:38Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Right? And that imagining, I think of, why, why is Jose Ramirez such a good player? That dude imagined himself being that good player over and over again. And what happens in those moments where we do kind of suspend, and there are moments that are illogical?

• 26:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Bruce Springsteen, looking at Elvis.

• 26:55Ryan Holiday?

  I could do that.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  That's an imagine, that's me. I feel that. And those, creating ecosystems, and I think that's what communities are at their best, is there ecosystems where those moments get kind of fertilized and sparked over and over again, where we can kind of nurture these moments where people can kind of live into these sort of questions in a positive way. Like, Ryan owns a bookstore and he owns a podcast. It doesn't, it's not that hard. Like, he's in my community.

• 27:21Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I can automatically imagine myself doing that. I'm excited, as opposed to, boy, owning a bookstore and having a podcast seems impossible, right?

• 27:29Ryan Holiday?

  Which, by the way, is, is why representation is so important, to be able to see

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:33Ryan Holiday?

  people like you doing things.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:35Ryan Holiday?

  It, it makes things possible. I do think that what I, what I took from when I read the, I'm excited or I'm nervous thing from you is like, the event is objective, as the Stoics would say. Like, singing karaoke is singing karaoke.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:46Ryan Holiday?

  Public speaking is public speaking. You know, you're getting called into a meeting, you're going into a job interview. It is what it is. The story you tell yourself about it is subjective, that you have control over it.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:58Ryan Holiday?

  And you can tell yourself a story that makes you better, or a story that makes you worse.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:02Ryan Holiday?

  And usually, if you're going like, I'm nervous, you're what you're, you're already in this spiral where you're like, I'm going to fuck it up. It's going to go badly. They're going to laugh at me. And, and that's not just not fun, but we know it affects performance. You're unlikely to hit a home run that you don't think you can hit.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. It's true. It's true. And we often put in these, this in the category of like, belief and faith and things like that. And it is, it actually is. And it's kind of cool to, I think, to see that clearly. And to see some of this, I think we're learning how to talk about these moments better than we used to, I think. I think we're learning what's actually happening, as opposed to it sounding woo-woo or, or naive.

• 28:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  You've had the experience of meeting people who are really good at their jobs. And what you'll find, I think is the same thing that I find, which is like really positive.

• 28:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Like, the positive energy thing is not like, there's an earnestness, there's a realness. It's not baloney and sales. There's a presence, I would say, in that. And that's not, when you sort of put that on paper, it sounds woo woo, but it's real.

• 29:06Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's funny. Some person from NPR reached out. They wanted to do this story. And I thought that they even thought it was a story is illustrative of a certain worldview. And I thought you would like it. They're like, we wanted to do a story of like, why do people like quotes on Instagram? Why do CEOs like motivational quotes and use them? Like, you know, and like, the implication is that it's lame, or it's obviously stupid, or there's something weird about it.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:35Ryan Holiday?

  And then you're like, okay, but look, like, you go into a locker room. These are the highest paid people in the world at what they do. The most world-class at what they do, the most motivated at what they do. And what are they doing? They're repeating these seemingly cliche sayings to themselves. Because at that level, it matters and it works. And it's, there's something about the sneering sort of judgmental mind that just can't wrap its head around the fact that, you know, Michael Jordan is repeating affirmations to himself. Bill Belichick says, do your job, or, you know, the team has the little sayings, even at that level. And it's funny that people want to make it more complicated than that.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  No. And it's a great, if you think it's embracing the cheesiness of that, I think ends up being a really liberating thing. You know, everybody, I think everybody should have mantras. Like, it's really, really helpful to reset your attention in moments where you're tempted to kind of want to grab for control or do the wrong thing. And then you can say, wait a minute. What's, what's really going on here? What is this?

• 30:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And it's like, the fact that they are simple is the point. Because you're doing something, as we're talking about, that's complicated or complex.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:51Ryan Holiday?

  You need something, you need some simple bedrock principles or ideas to come back to, so you don't lose your bearings amidst all that complexity.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's true. It's true. It's, I mean, clarity is curative.

• 31:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  And that's what they give. They like, and they're ultimately liberating. You're not falling for something. The SEALs who say, shoot, move, and communicate, that's what we do. It's like, no, that's actually really good to ground yourself in that.

• 31:18Ryan Holiday?

  Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Why do they need?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Why do they say that over and over again? Well, because it's really a great attentional technology that grounds you. And I think grounding is a nice word for that. Like, everybody should have these grounding techniques.

• 31:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And by the way, just because it's simple, doesn't mean that it's easy. Actually, they're, like, it might seem so obvious and so basic to you, the outsider, but you just, not being in that position, you don't understand all the levels that they are understanding and interacting with that idea. And it's like, forget who it was, maybe it's Oliver Wendell Holmes. He says, he's like, there's simplicity on this side of complexity, and then there's simplicity on that side of complexity.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:01Ryan Holiday?

  And if you're like, I don't get why they're just saying, you know, you go out there and do your best.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:06Ryan Holiday?

  And then somehow it comes all the way, the world champions, like, we're just gonna go out there and do our best. But it's different than your dad saying it to you when you're 10.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 32:15Ryan Holiday?

  But it's also the same.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  That's right. It's also the same. And there's, there's levels. I think I love what you're speaking to, because it really is this deep understanding that, you know, if you're in a domain for a while, you can hopefully get to that point. It really, it really, it really is incredibly deep. All the good stuff is simple and deep. And you can go to it, I heard a good definition of something that's of sacred the other day. It's like, something sacred, if you can go to it and it keeps giving you insights. It's like, okay, the forest, maybe, or maybe it's, maybe it's a saying. Maybe show up and do your job is actually pretty kind of sacred, like, in a way.

• 32:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. And I think those, those little mantras that those Zen monks go over. You know, it's like, they're so simple, they're nonsensical. They're so nonsensical, suddenly they make sense.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:03Ryan Holiday?

  And that's, that's kind of the whole point.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  And having some mystery in life. Like, they'd leave room. They, if they're good, they leave some room. They don't give you instructions. They kind of guide you into this space where you can guide yourself.

• 33:14Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's right. All right. You want to go check out some books?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  I'd love to.

• 33:17Ryan Holiday?

  Let's do it.