This Is the Great Equalizer | Smoke and Dust of Myth

“Imagine what it must have been like to be Alexander the Great, conquering most of the known world by the time you were 30 years old. Born into royalty, you surpass even the incredible accomplishments of your father, to rule an empire of some 3,000 miles.”Ryan discusses where we are all headed and why it levels the playing field, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Trends. Trends is the ultimate online community for entrepreneurs and business aficionados who want to know the latest news about business trends and analysis. It features articles from the most knowledgeable people, interviews with movers and shakers, and a private community of like-minded people with whom you can discuss the latest insights from Trends. Just visit trends.co/stoic to start your $1 seven day trial.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

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

• 0:40Ryan Holiday?

  This is the great equalizer. Imagine what it must have been like to be Alexander the Great conquering most of the world by the time you were 30 years old. Born into royalty, you surpassed even the incredible accomplishments of your father to rule an empire of some 3,000 miles. Imagine what it must have been like to be Ozymandias, the king of kings, surveying his mighty works. Imagine what it must have been like to be Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, the head of an army of over a million men with an imperial treasury of unfathomable wealth. Imagine walking into the Colosseum and knowing that everyone within it was your subject, that they worshipped you as a god, that everything you wanted could be yours.

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  The snap of a finger. Imagine that. Imagine having that. Now, stop and think about where it got these men. Marcus Aurelius thought about it. He thought a lot about Alexander the Great, who lived just a couple centuries before him, who ruled over many of the same lands, who experienced power and fame just as early as Marcus did. And then what did Marcus wrote? He said, "Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died, and the same thing happened to both." Death was a great equalizer, Marcus found. It was el finito.

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  The conclusion that rendered so many of the accolades and accomplishments he had piled up instantly worthless. Marcus Aurelius wasn't alive to read Percy's poem about the statue of Assimandius, but he would have loved it. "Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away." Of course, you should strive to realize your potential. You should conquer and do and be great. You should just remember where, to quote another poem, "All the paths of glory ultimately end up. There's no amount of doing that will allow you to escape death, and that in death we are all equal, small and powerless."

• 2:42Ryan Holiday?

  The Smoke and Dust of Myth. Keep a list before your mind of those who burned with anger and resentment about something, of even the most renowned for success, misfortune, evil deeds, or any special distinction, then ask yourself, how did that work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth, trying to be legend. Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, 1227. That's from today's entry in The Daily Stoic. In Marcus Aurelius's writings, he constantly points out how the emperors who came before him were barely remembered just a few years later. To him, this was a reminder that no matter how much he conquered, no matter how much

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  he inflicted his will on the world, it would be like building a castle in the sand, soon to be erased by the winds of time. The same goes for those driven to the heights of hate, or anger, or obsession, or perfectionism. Marcus liked to point out that Alexander the Great, one of the most passionate and ambitious men who ever lived, was buried in the same ground as this mule driver. Eventually, all of us will pass away and slowly be forgotten. We should enjoy this brief time we have on earth, not be enslaved to emotions that make us miserable or dissatisfied. Does that mean that the Stoic has no ambition? We did a video on this recently for Daily Stoic on YouTube.

• 4:10Ryan Holiday?

  I don't think it means that. I think what it means is that you try to get to a place where you're not tortured by your ambition. There's a quote, maybe it's Bertrand Russell, I think he says, "The belief that your work is terribly important..." Is a sign of an impending nervous collapse. That's like a breakthrough I've had to come. I remember I, and I think I may have talked about this on the podcast before. I remember I met this really successful athlete. We had like lunch or something before a game and, you know, he was just so chill. I mean, this is a person who's made hundreds of millions of dollars. It's accomplished all this stuff in their sport. And there was such a lightness about them and such a humility about what they did. They weren't like, they weren't acting like it was the most important thing in the world.

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  Cause it's not, I mean, they're really great at it and, and it clearly gives them a lot of purpose. And, and they spent a lot of time on it, but they didn't have this sense that they were like, you know, on a mission from God or whatever. And that was, that was, it was like, oh man, this person is just chill about what they do. And, and why can I not be that way? That's, that's like sort of what I came away feeling. And it's a, it's just really easy to take what you do incredibly seriously. As if you're building a monument for all time. And the reality is you're not. And even if you were, as Marcus says, you wouldn't be around to enjoy that monument. So let's take it down a notch or two. That's what it is. It's not about getting to a place of not caring.

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  It's just ratcheting it down a little bit into a more moderate place. Fox Connor, who was Eisenhower's mentor, said, always take the job seriously, never yourself. Maybe that's a way to think about it. Like the writing I do is, it means a lot to me. It's important. I can tell, I know it has impact. I know, I know it, I'm doing it at a high level, but that doesn't mean I'm at a high, that doesn't mean anything about me. It does not associate, it can't be associated with my identity. I can't get self-important about it. I can't let it, you know, stress me out, wind me up, you know? That's just not a place that's fun to live. And it's honestly not a place where good work comes from.

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  So today's meditation is like, when I, when I, if I could talk to myself at 25, I'd just say like, Dude, relax. You don't need to be so intense about this. And I'm pretty sure 40-year-old me could talk to 30-year-old me and say the same thing. And I think that's where you get as you get older. You just get more philosophical about this stuff. Because you see so much more come and go. And you realize how silly a lot of our pretensions are and how needless a lot of our intensity and passion actually was and how little it contributed to the things we were able to accomplish. And if you're not going to enjoy them while you're accomplishing them, if you're doing them because you're trying to leave some legacy, then you're missing the point. So let's relax a little bit today. Let's not be so intense.

• 7:00Ryan Holiday?

  Let's remember the people who came before us. Let's be humbled by where they are now. Let's give ourselves the gift of enjoying this present moment while we can instead of torturing ourselves as we strive to be somewhere else.

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference. And of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. We'll see you next episode.