Ask Daily Stoic: January 11, 2020

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. See 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, this is Brian Holiday. Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. You send us questions about Stoicism. I answer to the best of my ability. I give you some of my personal advice, and then, of course, some advice from the Stoics. So, our first question today is, according to Stoicism, we must work on things that we can control and not on the results. But when one is trying to be ambitious and sets goals, most of the goals are result-oriented. How can I be ambitious and not worry about the results at the same time? This is a great question, because it is kind of a paradox in Stoicism, but there's some really good advice from Marcus Aurelius on this. So, he talks about how

• 1:09Ryan Holiday?

  to tie your ambition to external results is to hand your sanity over to other people. He's like, this is a recipe for misery. What you want to do is focus your goals on things you control. So, I can only really talk from experience here, but when I think about this as a writer, my goal is not to write a book that sells a certain amount of copies. My goal is not to hit the bestseller list or to win certain awards. My goal is to write the best possible book that I can. Obviously, I want to sell lots of copies. I want to reach lots of people. I'm not averse to receiving awards or recognition. But Ego is the Enemy

• 1:51Ryan Holiday?

  came out. It should have debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, but it did not. Stillness is the Key came out, and it debuted at number one. Am I calling one a success and the other failure? Even though by the same objective criteria, they both deserve to be in similar places? No, I think stillness is better, not because it hit number one, but because I know that I was better as a writer. I put in more work, I put in more energy. I didn't leave any stone unturned. That it was recognized, that it externally noticed, fantastic. But that's not why it was better. I'm focusing my goals always on the parts of it that I control. Think of a football player. If your goal is to win a Super Bowl, it's great. But what if somebody drops a pass in the end zone?

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  Your goal should be to have the best season you can, to do as much as you can for the team, to think about it in that sense. So I think, I think the Stoics try to make it, it's not that they're goal averse. This is also kind of an eastern concept. But it's when we're thinking about goals, it's like, how do we make the goal primarily about things that we control? That things that are up to us and to use Epictetus's term. So that's how I think about it in my, in my own career. I want to get better. I always want to improve. I always want to be making progress. But I don't want that progress to be up to other people necessarily. I want that to be extra. I want that to be bonus. And, and actually, one of the things I'm proudest of, which is actually kind of part of my goal

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  on Stillness is the Key, was to be more indifferent to the external results. So my first book, which came out about 10 years ago, trust me, I'm lying. Let's say I was 10% convinced I did a great job and 90% looking to see how it debuted on the Best Solist. I think it debuted on the Wall Street Journalist. Now, I would say by the time Stillness came out 10 years later, or nine books later, it was precisely flipped. I was 90% inwardly focused on what I controlled and 10% looking for that external validation. And I think that's a stronger position to be in, and that's a better way to live. All right, so somebody writes in, "My sister has a bit of depression. I've been trying

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  to encourage her to learn and practice Stoicism. One day, I introduced memento mori to her, asking her to stop paying attention to criticism and trivial matters. And she asked me, 'So if I'm going to die one day, why should I work at all? Why shouldn't I go and play and enjoy my life?'" She's not happy at work. And so, how does Stoicism and memento mori answer this question? First off, I would say, if you're talking to a depressed person who's not feeling great about themselves, letting them know they're gonna die is maybe not the best pick-me-up. But I think what the Stoics would say is not, they might not actually disagree with your sister. She's, you're telling her, "Look, life is finite. You don't get to do this forever. It's not, shouldn't I go and play and enjoy my life? You should absolutely enjoy

• 4:46Ryan Holiday?

  your life, and you should realize that life is too short to be spent at a job, living away, living in a place that does not make you happy, that is not getting the best out of you." So I do think part of memento mori is designed to provoke the exact question that she's asking. I think it's not, "Oh, you're gonna die, so let's go do heroin, let's have an orgy," as I've said before. It's, "Let's make sure I'm fully living this moment." And I think when I feel a little bit depressed, that's something I think about. I go, "Look, I'm not gonna be here that much longer, so I'm not gonna sit around feeling sorry for myself. I'm not gonna whip myself. I'm gonna get out and get moving and go do something.

• 5:26Ryan Holiday?

  I'm gonna try to make a positive step towards where I wanna end up. That's what I control. That's up to me. That's what I wanna do." So, it's not that we think about death to stop paying attention to criticism, it's that we start paying attention to death so that criticism is put in perspective. So the frustrations with our job are put in perspective. The problems that we have are put in perspective. And what comes out of that perspective is a sense that life is short. The things that a lot of people think matter don't really matter. And we should hone in on, hone in on what we really do think matters to us and what really is important to us.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  What you want to talk to a depressed person about that's a little glib and can be, you know, maybe the exact wrong thought you want to be planting in your head. But memento mori for the rest of us, for people who are frustrated or unhappy, should help put some of our issues into contrast and help us make decisions that otherwise might be a little difficult. Someone is asking, what does the inner citadel look like and how is it created and cultivated and used? So the inner citadel for the Stoics is the idea that even if you're thrown in prison, even if you lose everything, even if you're attacked and persecuted, even if, you know, what life is throwing at you seems overwhelming,

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  what you have inside you is this sort of indomitable spirit, this fortitude. Remember, that's, that's one of the big virtues in Stoicism, this sort of courage or fortitude. And we cultivate this, I think, in a variety of ways. We cultivate it by, by meditating on the philosophical principles of Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius is not just writing these things in meditation for fun. He's writing them to toughen himself up, to remind himself of what counts and what matters. The Stoics also cultivated that inner citadel by going out and doing difficult things. Marcus Aurelius is wrestling, he's boxing, you know, he's hunting, he's doing physical activities. We might call them manly activities, but the point is he's active.

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  It's not just this sort of, you know, mind or soul thing. It really is cultivated in, in doing what the Stoics call hard winter training. So this is why, you know, Seneca is jumping and taking cold plunges. This is why he's, you know, fasting or, or eating, you know, rugged fare. He's, he's toughening himself up for the world. So the inner citadel happens that way. And then I think that the core defense of the inner citadel is probably that idea from, from Epictetus. Like we don't control what happens, we control what we respond. What's up to us is our thoughts, our opinions, our emotions, the story we tell ourselves. So we realize, oh, they can do all these things to me.

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  You know, Epictetus says, you can bind up my leg, but I will still. Go on, like, being philosophical, I was still, you can't bind up my will. And that actually happened to Epictetus. Like, he was a slave. His cruel slave owner broke his leg. Epictetus knew that people could do things to you physically, but no one can touch what's inside of you. No one can make you go against what you believe. No one can force you to change your opinion. No event is so bad that you have to say it is bad. Ultimately, we control that. So the inner citadel, to me, is kind of made up of those things. It's the training, it's the exercising,

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  and then it's remembering that inside of you, things can't touch the soul, as the Stoics would say. You have this sort of thing inside you that's totally up to you that even the worst situations in life can't touch. So, thank you for listening to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Send in your questions to [email protected]. I like the more personal questions. If you want to talk to us about specific things you're struggling with, specific questions, passages you have, you know, questions about inside Stoicism, if there's things you want us to talk about, shoot us a note. I want to talk to you about it. Thanks for watching. Talk soon.