Nobody is Coming to Save You (And That’s Good News) | Ask Daily Stoic

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  Nobody's coming to save you, and that's good news. What should we do? What can we do? These are disorienting times, cruel times, dysfunctional times. There's plenty to be outraged by, plenty to fear. There's AI disruption, job uncertainty, economic instability, political chaos, and it's natural to want someone, anyone, to step in and fix it. But they're not going to. That's not how this works. As Tolstoy put it, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Kierkegaard put it even more sharply. "It has often been said that reformation should begin with each man reforming himself."

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics had the same realization. We don't control what's happening in the world around us. We control what we do, control how we respond. "We have to get active in our own rescue," Marcus Aurelius wrote. "Blow your own nose," that's what Epictetus said. It's our job, nobody else's. So let's get after it. Command yourself. Get your body under control. Eliminate devices that weaken you. Be useful to others. Build skills that last, no matter what the world throws at you. Make a difference where you can. Be the savior you'd otherwise have waited around for, because that's the only one that's coming.

• 2:24Ryan Holiday?

  And that's what we try to do here at the eve of every new year. The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge is a 21 day reset. One clear, actionable challenge per day built around the best, most timeless, and most empowering wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Designed to help you change yourself and create ripples of positive change in the process. No flux, just daily work that compounds. It's not about hoping that things get better. It's about making things better. Making yourself better and making the world around you better. We'd love to have you join us in the 2026 Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/challenge.

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  I'm going to be in there along with thousands of other Stoics all over the world. And I want to see you in there. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/challenge. And if you join Daily Stoic Life, or if you are a Daily Stoic Life member, you get this challenge and all our challenges that we do throughout the year, plus our courses, plus a bunch of other awesome stuff, totally for free. So you can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com, or just go to dailystoic.com/challenge and I'll walk you all through it. I hope to see you in there.

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's almost, almost done for me. I think this week, and I don't know when you're listening to this. I have no sense of what day it is anymore. I'm sorry. But I think I have one more trip for the year. I was just in New York a day or two ago. I did an event at the 92nd Street Y. Then I did a podcast while I was there, got a nice run or two in around Central Park. And then I've got one more talk for the year. And then then I'm done for a while. So as you know, sometimes on the Thursday episodes, I bring you questions that people are nice enough to come up and ask me in person. But I also get to answer your questions as part of the Daily Stoic New Year, New You

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  Challenge, which we do every single year. We've done it for almost 10 years now. And we're about to kick off the 2026 New Year, New You Challenge. Here are some questions that I got asked in the course of the challenges over the years. We do new challenges every year and then new Q and A sessions every year. We do three over the course of the three weeks. So sort of a review each week of how people are doing, what they're struggling with, how Stoicism can help you have a better year. And I thought I'd bring you a couple of those now. I would love to see you in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. We're going to kick it off on January 1. But in the meantime, here are some questions that will hopefully help you as we wind down the year and you try to get serious about

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  who you want to be in 2026.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. This is Richard. How are you?

• 5:23Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, tell me about your word.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. So I think I have it narrowed down to two, but I wanted your opinion. I know from your podcast, you've chosen stillness in the past. And I have been doing some reading up on Aristotle's Rule of the Golden Mean. And I was imagining the past, the present, and the future. And I think when you chose stillness, it was to keep you in touch with the present. And along the words I've seen on the challenge message board so far have to do with the future, such as improvement or growth. What do you think the Stoics would say about choosing a word based on the past instead of the present or the future?

• 6:07Ryan Holiday?

  And what do you, what do you mean? So you're, you're picking a word that's like in response to how things have gone in the past? Is that what you mean?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  So as a very basic example, in, in case you ask that question, say that your word for the future is save for money, but from the past is broke. So every day I want to think about broke and how I want to get better. But a part of light would be save.

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  I see what you mean. To me, I think you're picking a word that's what you're aiming at. That's what you're directing at. Like Seneca talks about how if you don't know what port you're sailing towards, no wind is favorable. I think if you, if you just have the negative, like you just have the mistake you've made or the place you don't want to be anymore, you're going to be a little bit reactive and you're not going to necessarily be moving forward. So I, that's why I picked two words. I picked a, a personal one and a professional one. And the, the, the personal one, just like as a parent and at home is going to be positive. Like, I'm not going to think about how I've been too negative in the past as my sort of

• 7:17Ryan Holiday?

  daily word, because that is by definition, me doing more of that thing that I'm trying not to do. And Epic T just talks about this a little bit, sort of trying the opposite, like, what's the countervailing habit? So, so for me, I think you, you want to focus on the positive thing that you're aiming at, the place you're trying to go. Are you going to get there all the time? No. Is it a destination that you actually reach? No. But it is a navigational set point that you are navigating towards. That, that's kind of how I would think about it.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. I appreciate it. I'll choose stillness for this year because

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  That's a great word.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  You're a hero of mine and you've chosen it. So I'll use it, but thank you for your time.

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  Well, look, it's going to be a crazy year. I'm sure all years are crazy, but I, I would suspect this is going to be a chaotic, dysfunctional, noisy one. And stillness is always, uh, stillness is always good.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Hey, Ryan, how are you?

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, I'm good. How are you?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is like my third or fourth year in the challenge. And I feel like it's a great re-energizer for me. I'm a school district superintendent. The January ones start to get be the dog days of the school year. So this is a good little, uh, shot of adrenaline for the year.

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  What's one of your favorite parts of it? Or what's something that stayed with you from a past one?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  The cold plunge, my wife actually bought me a little mini cold plunge tank from Target for Christmas. So that's set up.

• 8:39Ryan Holiday?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  So it's something that's really stuck with me.

• 8:42Ryan Holiday?

  There you go. Beautiful. What you got?

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Couple of things real quick. One is the visiting the graveyard. We have one that dates back like 1795. And at my first superintendency, they had all the different superintendents from the past in the boardroom. And I always kept, I always kept it in mind, the guy that was the superintendent in 1863, that looks like Ulysses S. Grant, he's been passed. So I can't second my career for my family.

• 9:08Ryan Holiday?

  That's one of my favorite passages in Meditations where Marx Rios lists the names of a bunch of emperors that came before him. And he goes, you know, like, how, where are they now? And he says, how archaic and unfamiliar these names sound. And yeah, realizing that it's kind of this honor, this special thing when your picture goes up on the wall and you feel important and you feel recognized. And then, you know, there's that sort of ceremonial or unceremonial day where, where they put up somebody else's picture. I think, like, look, in the next couple of weeks, all the pictures and all the airports and all the

• 9:48Ryan Holiday?

  federal buildings all over the United States, one picture comes down and another comes up. And within a, you know, within not that long, we go, wait, who, who was the president before so and so? Or who was the vice president back in, you know, this year or that year?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Super humbling.

• 10:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's super humbling. And that, I think about it when I walk through a cemetery, you think, what did this enormous monument cost? I remember I was just, when I was in Australia over the summer, there, I was walking by, there's this big monument. And there was like a plaque, like, you know, so like a historical plaque where they're explaining. And they were saying like, 200,000 people attended this person's funeral. And this is like in Australia, like 100 years ago. So just trying to wrap my head around how big a deal this person was. Not only had I never even heard of them, I hadn't even heard of any of the things that they did or were a part of. And so that is the sort of ephemerality of, of all of it. And that's, that's what this stoic practice is about.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  For me, for me, it kind of calms me down because if you drive. You're superintendent of a school district, but if you drive 10 miles in either direction, nobody knows who you are. But my question is, my kids are 14 and 13. This is part of the reason why I do the Stoic Challenge, is try to be a better dad and better husband.

• 11:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  They play a variety of sports and totally out of my control when they're on the court or on the field. Son plays football, baseball, basketball, daughter volleyball and basketball. And when I watch them play, it feels like my heart is on the court. It feels like there's a miniature version of me out there. And it's so hard. And after the games, I'm trying to get better, but I can be so critical and I coach them when they may not want to be coached. But we have great relationships. My question, I know you have young kids, I don't know what activities they're in, but I want to be more stoic when it comes to parenting them with their athletics and try to separate some of the emotion from the games and try to work it as a blessing to be present. I have two kids that are healthy enough to play, not get so caught up in the outcomes. What advice would you have for me to be a better

• 11:49Speaker 02

  dad in those moments where you want to coach, you want to help, but the reality is incredibly counterproductive?

• 11:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a video I saw on the internet the other day of this family, their daughter was like an Olympic athlete or something. And it was like watching these parents in the audience and, you know, some, some important competition. And they just seemed tortured, like they weren't like yelling and screaming, but like, you know, they couldn't move and they were like feeling. And on the one hand, it was kind of beautiful. And on the other hand, I thought like, I think you guys just, um, you're putting way too much of yourself in this, you know? Um, I think about this, my, my kids are young and I try to remind myself that it doesn't say anything about me, whether they are good or whether they are really terrible. And I just try to ask, you know, are they having fun? There's a, a book by a guy I love, an author I love named Rich Cohen called Pee-wee's. And it's all about his son's journey. Yes, the hockey book.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yes, I read that.

• 12:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a great scene in that book where, you know, he's complaining to the coach about, you know, playing time or this or that. And, and then, you know, he goes up to him and he's complaining. And the, and the coach says, well, let me ask you a question. Is your son having fun? And then he's like, yeah, of course. And then he says, so why do you give a shit? You know, and I, I do try to remember that is like, what, what matters, you know, is are they learning? What matters are they being active? What matters is are they having fun? So again, so much of it is us and us inserting ourselves into it that is a thing that is, you know, primarily.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  That's what I try.

• 13:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, totally.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Ryan, yeah. So the question I had, so this is second year.

• 13:22Ryan Holiday?

  Amazing.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  But the, the question that I have, and it's something that I kind of struggled with entering this set of challenges, is the value. So it's something that I struggled in all my life. And I'm not going to go on the tumultuous history of my family, but essentially I was never taught how to value my own time, how to value my own work. And it's something I've realized, I found out that I've realized that, you know, over my work and that I was almost self sabotaging myself because I didn't have this way of finding value in the things that I do. And that obviously had disastrous consequences in my life, you know, and I'm kind of building my. And so, you know, after the first challenge, I've struggled a bit. I've struggled with, I'm going to be honest with you. I struggled with building those habits. I've struggled to building, in building discipline.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  And then over a kind of a lot of self perfection, I've realized that I have trouble with seeing, yeah, value in the actions, you know, and seeing, seeing this, this translating all those, all this amazing information that you put in your books. And what I'm learning from Marcus Aurelius, and actually translating that into my life. So actually seeing those things, you know, so you can see, you can read the books and you can see how other people, you know, like yourself as well, how you put those things out, how you discuss them, how you kind of break them apart for us to understand them. But obviously inherently they are part of your life. This is how you have come to some of those things. And what I'm struggling is, is seeing, not only seeing value in those things, but translating them into my life. I don't know, I don't know if I'm making sense.

• 14:50Ryan Holiday?

  No, it does. I think, I was thinking about James Clear this morning because I was reading, there was a little article about him in the New York Times. And, or no, maybe it's the Atlantic. But anyways, I was reading this article about him. But they were pointing out is that, that sort of the fundamental premise of his work, which I think is right, is that it's not so much about habits as it is the identity that you have for yourself. And a lot of what holds us back from forming positive habits or making positive changes, that we don't really believe it. We don't really see ourselves as the kind of person who could do it, who's capable of doing it. Or I think in your case, sort of worth doing it. It's good that you're asking this question, right?

• 15:34Ryan Holiday?

  Because instead of just trying to throw more and more energy and more and more discipline at the problem, you may have to go a little bit upstream and fix like that inherent self-worth issue. And which is probably going to be above my pay grade and maybe even above the Stoic pay grade. This is probably something you would want to work on in therapy. But, but just the idea of being a person of fundamental worth and dignity and uniqueness and having unique skills. I do think the Stoics have something to teach about this. I mean, look, obviously Marcus Aurelius is celebrated as this really powerful, important person. He has a good bloodline, he comes from a good family, he's anointed with all this power.

• 16:17Ryan Holiday?

  And so, so maybe that's what, what people's idea of Stoicism is. But, but his favorite philosopher is Epictetus, who's a slave. Epictetus, you want to talk about not having any worth? Epictetus's name means acquired one. Like, it's not even a real name. His name is just like guy, or like person, or, or like animal, right? It doesn't mean anything because he wasn't seen as having any worth. And what he realizes is that, is that he has to see that in himself. He has to decide that he's worth something, that he matters, even if legally he doesn't.

• 16:55Ryan Holiday?

  He has to decide that he's powerful and important and, you know, in control of something that counts. Again, even though legally he doesn't. And so I think Epictetus might be the Stoic for you to look at because there is something inspiring about someone seemingly so lowly.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 17:16Ryan Holiday?

  Having this just powerful, strong sense of self and self-ownership. But that might be a place to start.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Just very quickly, yeah, the control, I think what you're talking about, and I think it's a big aspect of that. Feeling in control of your life or actually have, you know, in the control. So don't get me wrong again, in the sense that, you know, in control of the things that we can actually have control over because that's, you know, when you feel already beaten down. And I'm not saying just specifically my mate, but, but, you know, a lot of people that I meet as well, because I'm trying to help others as well as much as I can. Yeah, this, this sense of having control where it matters. I think this is, I've kind of identified that as another thing that I need to, that I feel genuinely like the philosophy of Stoicism is going to be the key to helping me find and actually putting and helping me put the effort when it's actually valuable, let's put it like that, you know? So yeah, the control, I suppose, yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Well, thank you very much, mate.

• 18:10Ryan Holiday?

  Of course, I love it.

• 18:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything, I just wanted to say thank you.