Two Words To Lead And Live By | How To Be A Man (Lessons From The Stoics)

The most important thing displayed in Andy Reid’s his office is not a trophy. Instead, it’s a simple 3x5 index card—now decades old—with a remarkable subdued message: “Don’t judge.” 🏈 Check out Ryan's interview with NFL Legend Tony Gonzalez: https://youtu.be/-oBWywBbJKA🎥 Watch Ryan’s speech to the Browns here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3STjOKmuJhc👉 If you liked this episode, check these videos out on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel: 11 Stoic Principles Every Athlete Needs To Win and 6 Hits of Stoic Motivation (Sports and Philosophy). 🏈 Check out Ryan's interview with NFL Legend Tony Gonzalez : https://youtu.be/-oBWywBbJKA🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

• 0:05Ryan 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.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  Two words to live and lead by. He's one of the most successful coaches in NFL history. He's won 300 games, led his teams to 20 playoff appearances, and won three Super Bowl titles. And he's on the verge this weekend of potentially winning his fourth, the first-ever three-peat. But the most important thing displayed in his office is not a trophy. It's not a picture of him with a president or a celebrity, nor is it some motivational quote about leadership or excellence. Instead, it is a simple three-by-five index card, now decades-old, with a remarkably subdued message: "Don't Judge."

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  When John Harbaugh joined Reed as a special teams coach in 1999, he saw the "Don't Judge" card in Reed's office every day for nine years, but never asked him about it. But last year, during an interview, Harbaugh asked Reed to explain what those two words mean to him, why he chose to put that up on display. And as Reed said, "You don't put people in a box. You never know, once you open the box for them, what's going to pop out. So you give them a chance. Give them a chance to dream a little bit." I tell our coaches to this day, "You never know what a player is going to surprise you to be able to do. Don't box people in." We have a tendency to do that as humans, he said. We kind of put these people in boxes, and that's the approach I've tried to take throughout.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  We're not afraid to open the package, he said. Take Travis Kelsey, who, as it happens, is a daily Stoic reader. Early in his career, Kelsey had a reputation for being brash and undisciplined, with a history of behavioral issues in college. Reid could have judged him as a problem player, written him off as unfit for the structured teams he tries to run. Instead, Reid saw potential and possibility. He gave Kelsey the space to be creative, while holding him accountable to certain non-negotiables, like being on time for every meeting. And the result is that Kelsey thrived, becoming one of the best tight ends in NFL history, a future Hall of Famer who has set and broken multiple records and established himself as one of the most prolific receivers in league history.

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  And Reid's "don't judge" philosophy isn't just limited to sports. It's a powerful mantra for life. As Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, "You always have the option of having no opinion." Other people, their choices, their behaviors, their preferences and dreams, he says, "These things are not asking to be judged by you. The world doesn't need more critics. It needs more coaches, people willing to see potential where others see problems, to open the box instead of sealing it shut, and to give those who are prepared to do the work a chance to dream a little bit more than they did before." And hey, this is Ryan. I'm recording this from a hotel room in Nashville, about to catch my flight home. I'm excited to watch the Super Bowl this weekend. I have not talked to the coaches on the Chief staff,

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  although actually I did talk to Andy Reid once, when I spoke to all the coaches and GMs and owners at the NFL Annual Meeting a couple of years ago. That was private, so I can't show you that. But I did give a speech to the Cleveland Browns a couple of years ago, and I'll link to that now, if you want to see how we can tie some of these Stoic ideas into sports. And we also have a video on some Stoic principles that every athlete's need, and some hits of Stoic motivation. I'll link to those in today's show notes. If you aren't subscribed to the Daily Stoic YouTube channel, I think you would like it. I hope you have a good Super Bowl Sunday. I'll talk to you all soon.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  Sometime in his late teens, early twenties, a young Marcus Aurelius is given a book. He's given the Discourses of Epictetus. He's introduced to Stoic philosophy. And it's this chance introduction, this philosophy, that turns him into the man he would become, the most powerful and important man in the world, one of the greatest human beings who ever lived.

• 4:57Ryan Holiday?

  Today, all over the world, young men, they're struggling, they're angry, they're uncertain. They desperately need a guide to the good life. So now, as then, Stoicism can serve as this guide, a guide to being a man. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode, some Stoic lessons on masculinity.

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  I'll give you the very first thing that Stoicism gave to me, the first thing that hit me about it. And this is actually Book Five of Meditations. Book Five of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations opens with a wonderful metaphor on getting off your ass, getting out of bed, and getting after it. Marcus says, "At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, 'I have to go to work as a human being,' or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm? But it's nicer here." "So you were born to feel nice," he says, "instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants, the spiders, and bees all going about their individual task and putting the world in order?" Says, "You don't love yourself enough, or you'd love your nature too

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it. They forget even to wash and eat." And look, I think this passage from Marcus Aurelius is particularly important. It hit me at 19 years old. I had some early morning class in college I didn't want to go to. And here you have the most powerful man in the world having this same debate with himself. And it's a timeless debate. We all have this kind of lower self and higher self. And the lower self wants to sit on the couch and play video games. The lower self wants to eat whatever you want to eat, act however you want to act. And then the higher self knows what we're capable of, knows that we have obligations, knows that we have purpose, knows that there's meaning in work and fulfilling yourself and becoming what you're capable of becoming.

• 6:55Ryan Holiday?

  And there's this battle, this tension between the lower self and the higher self. The work of philosophy, Sri Marx's also says this in meditations. He says, "Fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you." The idea that there's the man you can get away with being and the man you're meant to be, and you have to fight to be that person. You have to do the work. You have to demand something of yourself. This is the most critical lesson you can learn as a young person. Let's put aside, you know, some of the traditional notions of masculine, just the idea that you were meant for something, that you have purpose and value, that the world needs you. To me, this is the first thing that you have to take hold of. And then you have to do the work. You have to get uncomfortable.

• 7:39Ryan Holiday?

  You have to challenge yourself to do and be that person. And the earlier you realize that, the better you will be as a human being.

• 7:56Ryan Holiday?

  We're talking here about notions of gender. And obviously, the Romans had a very specific understanding of that. And we have a different understanding of it today. And, you know, in some cases, gender is fluid. It can be confusing. And we have, for better or for worse, a very different understanding of gender. I would say largely for the better. But it's important that we understand that when we're talking about virtue, when we're talking about being great, most of what we're talking about has no gendered connotations whatsoever. There was a Stoic teacher named Musonius Rufus. He's the teacher of Epictetus. And he has this fascinating essay called, "Should Women Also Be Taught Philosophy?"

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  And his answer is yes, because the core of philosophy has nothing to do with gender. He says virtue doesn't know gender. It doesn't matter what gender a hunting dog is or a horse. It only matters can they do the job? And so we have these jobs as human beings to realize our potential to be good, to help others, to contribute to the common good, to take care of ourselves, right? And most of that, in fact, the vast majority of that has nothing to do with gender whatsoever. So I'm talking here specifically to young men, but I want to make sure that what we're talking about doesn't reinforce any certain gender stereotypes.

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I'm physically active, I live on a ranch, I do, you know, things that you might consider to be traditionally masculine, but also my job as an artist is a creative one. I'm inside and I sit down and think all day and I love poetry and music and all these other. So I want to put those kind of more modern understandings of what is or isn't masculine inside, because they don't really matter. What we're talking about here is almost a much more fundamental human thing about being great, period. But it's specifically young men at this moment that are struggling to realize that and understand it.

• 10:08Ryan Holiday?

  A lot of the lessons that Stoicism can teach us about masculinity has to do with physical discipline across the board. Seneca says, "We treat the body rigorously so that it is not disobedient to the mind." The Stoics were active. Seneca took annual cold plunges. There were Stoics who were runners, Stoics who were boxers, Stoics who were wrestlers, Stoics who were chariot racers, Stoics who served in the armed forces. The Stoics were active. They embraced what Theodore Roosevelt would later call the strenuous life. There's a Latin expression, "Mensano incorpere sano," a strong mind in a strong body.

• 10:48Ryan Holiday?

  You have to have both, right? The, what you learn when you have physical hobbies, when you play sports and you're active, is you learn that, that, that the body can be a liar. Tells you you're too tired, it's too hard, that, that, that you don't have what it takes. And, and it's only the will, the, the mind overriding that, that reminds you, oh, I have more in me, I am capable of more. And that challenge, that's why the Stoics embraced this. So, we tend today to think of philosophy as this intellectual pursuit, and that's certainly a big part of it. But for the Stoics, it was inseparable from the active part. Socrates said, "Nobody is exempt from taking care of themselves physically." He says, "'Cause your country might need you."

• 11:32Ryan Holiday?

  It says something today that most young men, literally a majority of young men, who would want to join the army, could not, because they are physically disqualified, right? They're too out of shape, they don't take care of themselves, uh, and, and, and as a result, they become, and, and it's, so it's not, it's not an exaggeration to say this is literally a national security crisis, right? So the Stoics and, and the philosophers had this sense of, of needing to be a, a, a person who was of use to the country, right? To their fellow human beings. And you only get that by taking care of yourself and pushing yourself, knowing what you're capable of, toughening yourself up.

• 12:16Ryan Holiday?

  So this is a huge part of Stoic philosophy.

• 12:28Ryan Holiday?

  You know, the Stoics would have looked down on someone who just spends hours and hours in the gym, finally sculpting their body. Epictetus talks about how if you talked to a strong person, and you said, "How strong are you?" And they said, "Look at my muscles," you would shake your head. You would want to see what they could lift, right? The point of fitness is functional, right? Not vanity. You can follow people on social media, and it's clear that they're using steroids, it's, it's clear that- Going to the gym has consumed their entire life and what they're doing it primarily is for vanity, for pleasure, for impressing people. And the Stoics were much more interested in being a functional,

• 13:12Ryan Holiday?

  healthy member of society who can do hard things, who can endure hardship, who's tough enough to deal with what life throws at them, who can lend a hand when a hand is needed. But again, the Stoics' beauty was beautiful choices. For them, beautiful choices were defined by moderation. So to be weak is a vice and to focus on sort of vanity muscles, et cetera, would be a vice on the other end of the spectrum. It's about this middle ground of functional fitness, being active, taking care of yourself, treating fitness as a kind of a metaphor, toughening yourself up so you can take your mind where it needs to go.

• 14:02Ryan Holiday?

  One of the few areas that Marx realist addresses manliness directly is a little bit counterintuitive. He says, you know, it's not manly to lose your temper. And I think that's really interesting because, you know, there's like the stereotype, the athlete who gets so angry, they're throwing helmets on the sideline. The guy that gets so angry, he punches a wall. Guy who getting in fights, right? We think of this as somewhat masculine. Marx's realist's point is that it's not masculine at all because this is a person who is not in control of themselves. The greatest empire, the Stoics said, is command of one's self. And Seneca writes a whole essay on the perils of anger.

• 14:44Ryan Holiday?

  He says, it's the worst emotion, it's the ugliest emotion, it's the most damaging emotion, and it's the most absurd emotion. He says, you know, would you return a bite to a dog or a kick to a mule? We have a story about Cato who's at a Roman bath and he gets bumped into and shoved by another man who throws a punch at him. And now you might Think, oh, he's a stoic man. He fights this guy. He beats the crap out of him. No, Cato resists, walks away. And later, when the man apologizes, he says, I don't even remember it happening. Because Cato had mastered himself. He wasn't triggered. He wasn't getting drawn into fights. He was in control of himself and his emotions.

• 15:28Ryan Holiday?

  So again, the Stoics would say that taming your temper is a critical element of masculinity. Because to not be in control of it is to say you're not in control of yourself and thus to be not fully a great man.

• 15:52Ryan Holiday?

  However, when the Stoics are talking about controlling your emotions, I think they're saying we want to be less emotional. But that's not the same as emotionless. We have multiple stories of Marcus Aurelius crying. As a young man, he loses one of his beloved tutors. And one of his philosophy teachers goes to him and tries to say, hey, you know, we don't do that around here. And Antoninus, his stepfather, steps in and goes, let the boy be human. He's saying that we don't benefit by just stuffing our emotions down and pretending they don't exist. We have a story of Marcus Aurelius crying over the many millions of Romans who perished in the plagues. We even have Marcus crying when he's told he's going to be emperor because he's overwhelmed

• 16:36Ryan Holiday?

  by the magnitude of the responsibility that's being thrust upon him. And so Marcus wasn't this emotionless, unfeeling robot. He knew he had emotions. He tried not to be ruled by them. He tried not to be regularly overwhelmed by them. But the idea was that sometimes we were. Sometimes we do lose our temper. That's okay. But it's about coming back, getting control of yourself, not doing anything you might regret because of that emotion, thinking it through, processing it, working it. You are not impressing anyone by pretending you are an unfeeling robot. I interviewed Adam Kinzinger on the podcast not long ago. He's a hero of mine. Here's a guy who stood up to-

• 17:18Ryan Holiday?

  The most powerful man in the world, as Stoics often have throughout history. He loses his job over it. This is a guy who's rescued a woman in a knife fight. He served honorably in the armed forces, masculine in all the ways that we might define masculinity as a positive thing. And during a congressional hearing, when he looked out over the Capitol Police Officers who had valiantly pushed back the mob on January 6th, he teared up. Now, he was called by, he was called crying Adam by Donald Trump about this. And that's so insane to me. It was insane to him. He said, when I was talking to him, he said,

• 18:00Speaker 01

  In my definition, masculinity is, you know, being in touch with your emotions, fighting for causes, right? Bigger than yourself, defending your family, defending the defense list. That, to me, is like the most masculine thing.

• 18:15Ryan Holiday?

  Which is, by the way, why Marcus Ruses was grieving a Tudor, why he was caring about the victims who died in a plague, why he was intimidated by becoming emperor. Because it wasn't all about him. He wasn't stuffing his emotions down. He wasn't pretending he was invulnerable or perfect. He was dealing with the difficulties of life, which a Stoic has to do. I remember when my son switched schools and I said, hey, are you sad about, you know, changing teachers? And he goes, no, I'm not sad. And I could see that he was sad, but he was actively pretending that he wasn't. Now, again, some people might say that that's what Stoicism is, and I think the opposite. I said, it's okay, buddy. Like, it's okay that you feel that way. Let's use that feeling.

• 18:59Ryan Holiday?

  Let's write your teacher a letter. Let's make sure we stay in touch with your friends. Let's process this. Let's not just pretend that changing schools at five years old isn't a lot to deal with. It is a lot to deal with, and it's okay if that overwhelms you. It doesn't mean that you don't have to change schools, that you don't have to deal with the reality of what life is in front of you, but it's okay to feel those emotions. That being said, I don't think we would define a Stoic as someone who's being overwhelmed, losing their temper, weeping all the time, feeling sorry for themselves, racked by anxiety. No, we are trying to be less emotional, but that doesn't mean we are emotionless.

• 19:49Ryan Holiday?

  I think when I first came to Stoicism, like a lot of young men, I was mostly interested in what it could do for me. I was interested in what it told me about physical discipline and mastering my emotions and being tough and being courageous and all these things. And there's no question, there's a lot in there. But one of the things the Stoics talk about over and over and over again is other people, about caring about other people. Marcus Aurelius has a quote I think about a lot. He says, "The fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good." To me, that's a great definition of masculinity as well, to be a person of high character of values and a person who is of use to other people

• 20:31Ryan Holiday?

  and contributes positively by nature of being alive, being a member of society. And so Stoicism doesn't just do a lot for us, it also asks a lot of us. This is why the Stoics were involved in politics. This is why they ran for office. This is why they served in the military. This is why they had children and were active in the lives of their children. This is why they wrote works of philosophy and taught. They were trying to pay forward, like somebody positively changed Marcus Aurelius's life. His philosophy teacher introduced him to Epictetus. Thousands of years later, I'm benefiting from the fact that Marcus Aurelius wrote those lessons down in Meditations. We're all connected with each other.

• 21:16Ryan Holiday?

  We're all citizens of the world. We have obligations and responsibilities and duties to each other. If you think Stoicism is about making you a better sociopath, if you think masculinity is defined by not having to give a shit about anyone else, you are getting it wrong. Being a man means taking care of people, means caring about other people. It means being a positive example, means doing good. It means taking responsibility. It's all of these things. I think, you know, who is the man? Marcus Aurelius or Nero? Nero was a man-child, a petulant, vain, insecure, egotistical man-child.

• 22:00Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius was a responsible adult, a mature individual in command of himself. And that's who you want to be. You want to be the hero or do you want to be Nero?

• 22:18Ryan Holiday?

  To me, one of the defining characteristics of masculinity that Stoics can teach us is rooted in humility. Zeno was one of the first Stoic teachers, and he said the students that he liked least were the conceited ones. He said, "Nothing is less flattering on a student, particularly a young one, than conceit." Epictetus put it even better a couple of generations later, when he said, "Remember, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know." What I think defines Marcus Aurelius's meditations is the intellectual humility. He talks about how he's not that special, he's not that important, that he's going to be forgotten, that the rules still apply to him, that he's a human being who makes

• 23:03Ryan Holiday?

  mistakes. He's not saying, "I'm a god-king, I'm better than anyone else, I'm the chosen one." He's not saying, "I'm smarter than you, I'm better than you." No, what he's trying to do in meditations, he said, he's trying to strive to not be Caesarified, to not be dyed purple, that's the cloak of the emperor. He wants to remain humble, he wants to remain connected to other human beings. He wants to still be held accountable to the same rules and obligations as everyone else. And so, there is a strain of masculinity these days, I think exacerbated by social media, that's, you know, like, "Look at the car

• 23:44Ryan Holiday?

  that I drive, look at how much money I have, let's make fun of these people, let's bully these people." A Stoic is not a bully. A Stoic is kind, Stoic is humble, a Stoic is confident. That's very different than egotistical. If you walked into a jiu-jitsu gym, the coolest person there, like, the person who's nicest to you and friendliest to you and will be the most patient with you, is almost certainly going to be the highest ranking belt. It's actually the white belts, or the, actually, somewhere in between, that you have to be more worried about, because that person, more often than not, is going to be insecure, they feel like they have something to prove. So, to me, masculinity is confidence, a sense of who you are. As a unique individual, a person who is themselves,

• 24:29Ryan Holiday?

  not a person trying to be someone else, not a person trying to be better than anyone else, a person who is confident versus egotistical. And confidence, to me, is an understanding of our strengths paired with an understanding of our weaknesses. Egotism is the opposite of that. Confidence is earned. Confidence is based on what's real. An ego is something dangerous, something we want to push away.

• 25:01Ryan Holiday?

  When I think back to who I was in my early teens and twenties, I was so ambitious. I had so much ambition. I wanted to make a lot of money. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to prove people wrong. I wanted to make my dad proud of me. You know, all the things that that kind of stir you up when you're young. It's good that you want to get up off the couch and do something and be someone. That is important. But the Stoics have an interesting relationship with ambition. And if you watch the movie Gladiator, you see this sort of fragile, unmanly commodist trying to rationalize ambition as a virtue to his father. In fact, in The Real Meditations, Marx Reus talks a lot about ambition. He says, "The problem with ambition

• 25:44Ryan Holiday?

  is how often it's rooted in impressing other people or getting things that are outside of your control." "The longer I do this, the less I am in competition with other people or trying to hit any external goals at all. What I'm trying to do is be the best writer that I can be, the best person that I can be, the best Ryan I can be. I focus on the work that I put in, and I'm much less interested in the results." In Meditations, Marx Reus talks about how ambition is tying your actions to what other people say and do. But he says sanity is tying it to your own actions. And most of the cautionary tales we hear about from the Stoics are the people whose insatiable ambition is ultimately the end of them.

• 26:29Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca talks about this Roman general. He says, you know, "He commanded armies, but ambition commanded him." And again, for the Stoics, being a man was about being in command of yourself, which means not being a slave to needing to impress people, or conquer things, or beat things, or win at things, but to be confident and comfortable at being you and focusing on what you control.

• 27:05Ryan Holiday?

  As I wrap this up, I thought maybe I could give you a definition of masculinity. A man who embodied these ideas, someone who so impressed Marcus to realize that he spent his whole life trying to live up to this guy's example. And I'm talking about Antoninus, his stepfather. And Marcus, at the beginning of Meditations, has this section called "Debt and Lessons", where he thinks about what he learned from the people in his life. And what he says he learns from Antoninus is not just the most beautiful passage in Meditations, but one of the clearest and, I think, most impressive definitions of lived masculinity

• 27:47Ryan Holiday?

  that we could all aspire to be more like here in the 21st century. And so he says, "My adopted father." What Marcus admires and learns from him is his compassion, his unwavering adherence to decisions once he'd reached them, indifference to superficial honors, hard work and persistence, how he listened to anyone who contributed to the common good, his dogged determination to treat people as they deserved, a sense of when to push and when to back off, his altruism. And he says, "You could have said of Antoninus, as they say of Socrates, that he knew how to enjoy and abstain from things that most people find it hard to abstain from and all too easy to enjoy."

• 28:29Ryan Holiday?

  Strength, perseverance, self-control in both areas, the mark of a soul in readiness, indomitable.

• 28:38Ryan Holiday?

  It's hard to get better than that, and so I'll leave you there. Let's try to strive to make Marcus, the Stoics, and most of all, Antoninus, proud. Let's try to show that there is a new kind of masculinity, a both timeless and a modern one, that involves taking care of ourselves, mastering our emotions without eliminating them, caring about other people, but most of all, rising, as Marcus really said, fighting to be the man that philosophy tried to make us.