Make Sure You Write Down Everything Interesting That You Find | Just Say No to Future Misery

“When he was young, James Mattis hitchhiked to San Francisco to meet Eric Hoffer, the philosopher most famous for his book, The True Believer, and as Mattis said, “Eric was the one who told me, ‘Make sure you write down everything interesting you find,’ and I have ever since.”Ryan explains how you turn the words and phrases you come across into actions, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. GiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. If you’ve never donated to GiveWell’s recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $1,000 before the end of June or as long as matching funds last. Just go to GiveWell.org/STOIC and pick podcast and The Daily Stoic at checkout. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  When he was a young man, the future General James Mattis hitchhiked to San Francisco to meet Eric Hoffer, the philosopher most famous for his book, The True Believer. And as Mattis said, "Eric was the one who told me, 'Make sure you write down everything interesting you find,' and I have ever since." It's wonderful advice. And we're lucky, for instance, that 2,000 years ago, a student named Arian sat in on the lectures in Mycopolis, on the coast of Greece, and decided that he would jot down the sayings that he heard his teacher Epictetus say. "We're lucky that Marcus Aurelius jotted down his own thoughts, because that's how meditation survives to us. We're lucky that Seneca chose to write those letters to Lucilius,

• 1:19Ryan Holiday?

  for without them, not only would we be without his wisdom, but we'd be without many of the quotes from the early Stoics that are preserved only because he wrote them down." General Mattis has followed Hoffer's advice his entire life. One of his former speechwriters recently described "the incredible treasure trove of wisdom that Mattis had accumulated." To bring his speechwriters up to speed, Mattis once gave them access to his closet. There, the speechwriter records, "He kept many years of meticulous notes in black Moschino notebooks from his time in uniform. Each page included a small printout of his daily schedule along with handwritten notes. Lined up on the shelf above them were three special journals in old, worn, three-ring binders.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  These he referred to as his 'Books of Wisdom.' This treasure trove held decades of personal thoughts plus correspondence from his mother, friends, and colleagues." Isn't that really interesting? That when Mattis needed other people to get to know him well enough to craft his speeches, he didn't call a meeting and sit them down for hours and try to explain who he was and what he believed. Instead, he showed them, through his treasure trove, a more thorough representation of who Mattis was than he could possibly articulate, was there. If you haven't read "Call Sign Chaos" yet, you're missing what is itself a book of wisdom, a collection of all the lessons Mattis learned and observed in his career, a compilation

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  of one great man's lifelong voyage into the interior of oneself. And if you haven't yet started your own book of wisdom, you're missing out on so much more than wisdom. Seneca said it brilliantly, "We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teachings and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application, not far-fetched or archaic expressions, or extravagant metaphors, or figures of speech. And we should learn them so well that words become works." Just say no to future misery. How often we make ourselves miserable in advance, out of fear of this, out of desperate hope for that.

• 3:31Ryan Holiday?

  When we focus on pining for, avoiding a certain future, we make ourselves miserable here in the present. Hakato of Rhodes, a great student of the Middle Stoic scholar Panathius, taught that this misery is always tied to hopes and fears that we have of imagined future outcomes. And so from this, Seneca reminds us to say no to both, because indulging in hope or fear robs us of the ability to enjoy the present. So today, try not to think so much about the future, what you hope will happen, what you fear might, and just focus on right now. Be where you are, with what you're doing, what you're thinking, right now.

• 4:12Ryan Holiday?

  And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living," by yours truly, Ryan Holiday. You can pick this up anywhere books are sold. I use this journal myself every single day, and you can also pick up a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, Seneca writes in Moral Letters, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest. By longing for things to come, it will lose the ability to enjoy present things. Then Seneca, again, there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate. And then, going back to the original quote, Seneca in Moral Letter says, "Hiccupo says, cease to hope and you will cease to fear. The primary cause of both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to the present circumstances, we send out our thoughts too far ahead."

• 5:15Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it's funny, in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book, 4,000 Hours, he quoted something that he said is a real British expression, but I had actually heard a couple of days earlier in Ted Lasso, the idea that it's the hope that kills you. Which, it's not that the Stoics are nihilists who, you know, don't hope, it's that they try to get to a place of indifference, where they're just like, whatever will be, will be, I'm gonna be good with it. But, but I, this was a theme that also came out, this is also a theme that came up in my interview with Dr. Edith Egger, who wrote The Choice, which was about her experience in the Holocaust. And she talks about how, she talked about

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  how there was a person who knew, she knew in the camps who thought they would get out, be freed by a certain date. And then the woman died on that day, of despair, of disappointment. And Admiral Stockdale talks about this, that it was the optimists who got crushed, right? Because they said, oh, in March, oh, in June, oh, by Christmas. But this was not something in their control. And so, in a way, hope is the same as fear. It's to hand over your happiness, your, your contentment, your ability to continue on, to some arbitrary thing, or event, or person, or intervention in the future, which is not up to you. I've been trying to think about that during the pandemic.

• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

  It just is, man. It just is. It'll be over at some point, but I don't need it to be over by any point. I'm gonna adjust to what is. I'm gonna accept it unflinchingly in the sense that it simply is. I'm gonna adapt to it. I'm gonna adjust to it. I'm gonna make the most of it. I'm gonna be here now. I'm not going to rob myself of the present, right? The person who needs it to be a certain way, or needs it to not be that way, and that's why they're afraid. Seneca's right. That soul will never be at rest. And by longing for things, or by fearing things, we lose the ability to enjoy present things.

• 7:25Ryan Holiday?

  I, I thought this, this little phrase is particularly a good one, and I think it's worth repeating again, where he says, "To be miserable in advance of misery." That's what fear is, right? But hope is just, hope is just the opposite of that. It's just being delusional in anticipation of an event outside your control, which often will be misery. So just try to, to put fear or hope aside. Just try to be, be here with this, whatever it is, wherever you are, whether that's a, a plane ride you have today, whether that's traffic you're stuck in,

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  whether it's a job you have a couple more months left in, or maybe it's just, maybe it's battling an illness, or, or a blown out knee. Just is. Don't magically hope it's gonna get better. Don't fear it getting worse. Just be with it now. Focus on what you can do now. Enjoy present things as best you can. Be indifferent, as the Stoics say, which is to say, "Good with any of the possibilities." Because you are good. You are capable. And that's the Stoic prescription for you this week. Say no to future misery. It's not worth it. I'll talk to you soon.

• 8:47Ryan 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, and I'll see you next episode.