You Can’t Let People Puff You Up | Take A Walk

“As it is today, so it was in Rome. People have always tried to tell other people what they want to hear. Yeah, you’re doing great. Have you lost weight? I love your new haircut, boss. As a species, humans are quite good at obsequious flattering. That’s one of the things social media has harnessed: Our endless capacity for receiving and giving. We can fish for compliments and easily catch them as well. I am doing something special. Look at how many people liked my post!”Ryan reminds you why you must stay humble to get better, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal. For one day only, Ryan’s bestselling book Ego Is The Enemy is only $1.99 as an ebook on Amazon! Streak is a fully embedded workflow and productivity software in Gmail that lets you manage all your work right in your inbox. Streak gives you tools for email tracking, mail merges, and snippets to save time and scale up your email efficiency. Sign up for Streak today at Streak.com/stoic and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan.***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/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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?

  You can't let people puff you up. As it is today, so it was in Rome. People have always tried to tell other people what they want to hear. "Yeah, you're doing great. Have you lost weight? I love your new haircut, boss." As a species, humans are quite good at obsequious flattering. That's one of the things social media has harnessed, our endless capacity for receiving and giving. We can fish for compliments and easily catch them. "I'm doing something special. Look at how many people like my post." Think of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius as they moved through the hierarchy of Roman life to higher and higher positions. They would have found, as all leaders find, that the more powerful you become, the less truth you hear,

• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

  the more likely you are to encounter sycophants and hangers-on. This is very dangerous because it fuels ego and starves moral progress. As Seneca warned Lucilius, "The chief obstacle is that we are quick to be satisfied with ourselves. If we find someone to call us good men, cautious and principled, we acknowledge him. We are not content with a moderate eulogy, but accept as our due whatever flattery has been shamelessly heaped upon us. We agree with those who call us best and wisest, although we know they often utter many falsehoods. We indulge ourselves so greatly that we want to be praised for virtue, which is the opposite of our behavior.

• 1:59Ryan Holiday?

  A man hears himself called most merciful when he is inflicting torture, so it follows that we don't want to change because we believe we are already excellent." Ego is the enemy of getting better. Epictetus reminds us that we can't learn that which we think we already know. We can't improve if we believe we are perfect, which is why we have to be on guard against false friends and flattery and unearned self-esteem, because as nice as it feels, it's actually harming us. Progress is what we're after, not getting people to tell us that we're perfect. Take a walk.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca believed that we should take frequent wandering walks because constant work will fracture our minds. As a writer, he would have agreed with the novelist Helen Dunmore, "A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk." So take some good time this week to take some walks and watch the dullness and feebleness depart. Enjoy the scenery, enjoy being away from your work. Make them part of your morning and evening writing routine. Return with a stimulated mind that's ready to journal about and follow the philosophy you know. You think that it's taking a break, but really you end up smarter and clearer than you were when you left."

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  And that's from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living," by me, Ryan Holiday, which you can pick up signed versions of in the Daily Stoic store. And as Seneca says, "We should take wandering walks so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing." That's in his essay on Tranquility of Mind. But Marcus Aurelius says, "Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth." That's Meditations 448. And then Seneca again in On Tranquility of Mind.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  "The mind must be given relaxation. It will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced, for they will quickly lose their fertility if never given a break. So, constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. But it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while. Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul." I actually just posted this the other day. I was saying, "There's no problem so bad that taking a walk can't at least help you solve a little bit of it." And I also feel like I've never regretted deciding to get up and take a walk. My morning routine is built around it. As I've said before, I don't touch my phone in the morning.

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Strap my kids in this stroller and we go for a walk. It's about a mile and a half to the mailboxes at the end of the road. Little P O boxes for everyone there. And we've done this hundreds and hundreds of times now. It occurred to me that since my kids were born, I've probably walked, ridden, or run several thousand miles with them. And this distance we covered, it's not just good for health. It's not just, you know, getting out and getting sunlight, but it's refreshing. It's quality time together. It's time not spent struggling with some work thing. And yet, I almost invariably return with something to write down, with something I

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  remembered I need to do during the day, with some sense of purpose and energy for the day. And during the pandemic, we got so into these walks, not only do I do the one in the morning, then I sometimes do walks on phone calls during the day around the Daily Stoic offices and the Painted Porch bookstore here in Bastrop, Texas. I love walking through these little southern towns. It's always beautiful and shady because they planted the trees so long ago. But then we usually go for a walk after dinner. Sometimes our kids take a popsicle or, you know, my wife and I have a piece of chocolate. During April and May, we like to pick blackberries on the walk. But we just, we walk around. Sometimes we watch the sun come down, you know, we watch.

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  The deer run, or we look at the cows, or pet the donkeys. Sometimes we bring the donkeys carrots, although most of the time our kids eat the carrots before we get there. But the point is, this time outside is wonderful, and it's philosophical, and it's refreshing, and it's one of the most important things that I do. So I hope you will take some walks today. It's one of the best exercises you can do, but it's also one of the best forms of exercise for your mind. So take a walk. The Stoics demand it. And just a heads up, Ego is the Enemy, my book, I think it's one of my best books, is $1.99 on Amazon right now. It's only for a limited time. If you want to check it out, give it as a gift, it'll never be cheaper than this.

• 7:05Ryan Holiday?

  It's ebook only.