It Doesn’t Matter Who It’s From | 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  It doesn't matter who it's from. It's sort of a strange choice, if you think about it. In the opening lines of the sequel to Gladiator, Paul Mescal, playing the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, says he's rallying the troops for a terrible battle. Quotes them a line from Epicurus. "Where we are, death is not," he tells them. "Where death is, we are not." Why is he quoting the rival school, the Stoicism? It's not like there's a shortage of lines in meditations about death. But just like, as we've talked about before, we have a video on this. The opening scene in the first Gladiator also has a hidden Stoic lesson. And so maybe it makes sense here that the grandson of Marcus Aurelius

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  would be liberally quoting from a rival school of philosophy. After all, who does Seneca quote more than just about any other philosopher in his letters? It's Epicurus. And Marcus Aurelius himself, Gregory Hayes points out in the best intro and translation of Meditations, he never explicitly identifies as a Stoic. No, Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher, and like Seneca, he quoted any author if the line was good. "Philosophy is not dogma, it's truth. It doesn't matter who said it. What matters is whether it gets the job done. What matters is that it helps us live better, think deeper, and face life's challenges with virtue." The wisdom of Epicurus, of Seneca, of Marcus, they're tools for the same purpose,

• 2:11Ryan Holiday?

  to prepare us for what life demands and to remind us what truly matters. Philosophy isn't about an allegiance to a school. It's about a commitment to growth, resilience, and truth wherever it may be found.

• 2:30Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've gotten to do some cool things in my life. I've been invited to talk to sports teams. I've, I spoke at the NFL owners meeting. I've been in cool hotels and cool venues. I've gotten some perks and, and you know, sometimes I bring my family along. Usually I ask my wife, hey, you, I got this cool thing. I'm going to be going here. You want to come? It's in Hawaii or it's in this country. And usually she's like, I'm good because she knows it's not that glamorous. And we try to keep a stable life for our kids where we're not interrupting them and leaving them too much.

• 3:09Ryan Holiday?

  But I remember I walked downstairs the other day and I said, I just got invited to talk at the White House. And they said, if I come on this date, I can also come to the White House holiday party. Do you want to come to this one? And she was like, hmm, yes. So back in December, we flew out to DC. She was just there for the day. She flew in in the morning, flew out at night. I stayed and the next day I gave a talk to about 200 White House employees in what's known as the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. I had been there maybe 15, 16 months earlier. I got offered to do a tour of the White House, which I did.

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  I saw this room. They were, I think when I was there, there was like some longtime government employees having this retirement ceremony there. The idea that I would come back and be answering questions about Stoic philosophy was not high on my list of expectations, but uh, was cool. And, and what my host said, which I thought was interesting, he works in the digital office of the White House or did. He said, with a change in presidents, every single person in that room was about to go through a major life and or career change. So they just wanted me to talk about that. Not a political talk, not a partisan talk, but a, how do you transition? How do you deal with change or disappointment or frustration? How do you make sense of a crazy, chaotic world? How do you make sense of a world where?

• 4:37Ryan Holiday?

  You've got to go find what your next thing is going to be. Anyways, this was an honor for me. It is obviously the inauguration here. It is coming up very shortly, so I'm bringing you a Q and A with this group of White House employees. This is obviously the outgoing administration, not the incoming administration. I suspect I will not be invited sometime in the next four years. So I guess back in 2017 or 18, I spoke to the White House Communications Agency offsite. People don't know that the White House is actually run by like a sort of a combined military command of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, I guess. I don't know exactly, but it was very cool experience to do that. They're the ones who, you know, when the president is the embodiment of the command center.

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  So where he or she goes, that's where, you know, all the things that have to go with them go. And so I talked to that group, although again, this is a nonpartisan thing. So much of the actual operations of government are nonpartisan or political in any way. We sort of screw that up in our country by politicizing everything. So I was talking to the nuts and bolts people then and now, and I wanted to bring you a chunk of that in today's episode. I am bleeping out everyone's names here because, you know, unfortunately we are heading in a, again, a partisan sort of, well, some people call it the revenge tour, which is a dark, sad thing. So I'm going to bleep everyone's names, but I'll give you a chunk of my Q and A, and I'll bring some more of that later on as we go through the year.

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  Anyways, it was an honor for me and just a real treat. And I'm glad my wife got to come with me and I wish she'd watched this talk.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  I used to watch your videos like on the way to school all the time. I'd be like, 10, 10 stoic ways to get your life together. I'd be like, wait, I'm actually getting my life together.

• 6:28Ryan Holiday?

  Clearly you did, or you wouldn't be here.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you so much. Thank you to you. And then I could be like, oh, my kids, I'm stressed out, but I'm breaking me up. And then it'd be really awesome. And then you got me into your book, so I want to thank you for that.

• 6:40Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, amazing.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  And so with principles and stuff like that. So I think it's a big thing and like. Pro culture talk about that, but you actually get into it in a healthy way. It's not like talks and has to only be actually teaching people like how to get into the stock principles and how they do it, so I'm thinking for that. Then my second thing is, is I think a lot of people in public service are like very creative, great, like I want to do a million and one things, I want to work right house one day for another administration hopefully, I want to have this one, but million and one things. And so in terms of like stock principles from your perspective, how do you prioritize what's important in the moment, right? Because a lot of people wouldn't do everything at once, but then some people say like we should do this person, look at that, but as you talk about, you're a very productive person.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  So how do you do a stock principle, prioritize what you want to do in the moment?

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  Let me do just the first thing there, because I think it's important. There is, when people are talking about, or doing postmortem on the election and sort of having the young vote, the young male vote especially, I think, I do think young men are struggling and we can say that about taking away from other groups who are struggling, and I would say they're struggling and there's not much in a way of content, ideas, role models to deal with that. And so a lot of these, you know, influencers have become very popular by filling a vacuum of stuff about how, how should you set up your life? What are good habits?

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  What are bad habits? What are, what are things you need to know about the world? And so I, I think a lot about how do I use the platform? Because I was a young man who, you know, you wake up and like, nobody taught me how to do any of these things that I'm supposed to do. And so when I talk about the founders and so plus me earlier, you would be taught these things in school. There, there was a moral component to education, not just how do you do on standardized tests? And that is all that philosophy and religion are supposed to fill in life. And so when you take those away, there's a vacuum and people step in and fill that vacuum. And I, I think a lot about, and I think we need to think more as a culture about how do we fill that vacuum with positive moral instruction about how to be a good person,

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  how to be a good man, how to be a good woman, generally how to be a good person in the world. And philosophy is, I think, a great answer to that, but the way into those things via social media is. Really practical stuff about, you know, just foundational habits, things to read, you know, ways to think about things. And so that's, look, I would love to just write books, but I spend a lot of time working on stuff on social media to meet people exactly where you were. And I'm so glad that you found stuff. As far as like prioritization, it is tough. You can't be everywhere. You've got to know what your main thing is. You know, what's the main thing? What's, so for me, that's writing. So I do all these other things. And that, my two main things are my family and writing.

• 9:44Ryan Holiday?

  And so I have to go, okay, I get these two opportunities. Other things come up, there's stuff I get excited about. But ultimately, if I don't have a good chunk of time every day to do those two things, that's not good, right? So really kind of crafting like, hey, what do we want my days to look like? Allows you to make certain career and life decisions. In 2016, I got an offer to be a staffer for one of the cabinet secretaries. And it seemed cool, it seemed exciting, ideology aside. I was like, that's the opposite. This is the opposite of where I wanted to live. The main thing would be I wouldn't be able to do writing, which is my main thing. And so I was like, okay, this is a cool opportunity, but it's not the right opportunity.

• 10:27Ryan Holiday?

  And so being able to know what you want your life to look like day to day. Sometimes maybe you go, hey, for six months or a year, I'm going to do something different, but I'm going to come back here. But so thinking about like, what do you want your life to look like? Day to day, and then you got to be able to judge these decisions. Because you're going to get offered and asked a lot of things to do. And some of them get you closer to the main thing and some will get you further from the main thing. And being able to say no to things that are exciting or lucrative or prestigious, but are not where you want to end up. Those are the real challenges in life. Good challenges, but still a challenge.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Hi Ryan, nice to get a virtual interview with us. My question has been focused on storytelling. I'm going to write books one day and I want to hear more about what are those key drivers for your storytelling approach and how has that shifted over time across the years?

• 11:22Ryan Holiday?

  So I was very fortunate that I was a research assistant for one of our great living writers, Stephen Brock, with the Forty Laws of Power, and Mastery, The Laws of Human Nature, Thirty Three Shadows of War. And so I really learned like this building blocks of how a book happens. Research and then storytelling. And I think a lot of books fail because they are fact-based. Sounds like I have a problem with facts. If you're just, "Hey, these are facts." That's not how people remember and that's certainly not how they get excited. A book is a journey. You're sitting down, you're going to give five or six hours of your life to a book. And so how do you take them on a journey from point A to point B? It's usually a true story.

• 12:07Ryan Holiday?

  Same with talks, same with politicians. You've got to tell a story. It's got to be a compelling story. And so I decided when I was going to write about ancient philosophy to not say, "Hey, let me tell you what Seneca said, or Marcus Vila said, or Apeta said, and why it is or isn't true." I decided because of my background in Southern European, that what I was going to do is take these ideas from the Stoics and illustrate them with stories, in many cases via people who are more well-known than the Stoics. So I'll pick, you know, a team on the way to the Super Bowl, or pick a great, you know, that on history, or a great leader. And I want to tell stories that illustrate the ideas. So my first book on Stoic philosophy, The Obstacle is the Way, the word "Stoic" probably appears three times in the whole book.

• 12:51Ryan Holiday?

  It is a book demonstrating what Stoic philosophy looks like, often through people who had never even heard of Stoic philosophy and maybe were the opposite of Stoic philosophy in other aspects of their lives. But in this example that I'm telling you, they're demonstrating a Stoic idea. So what I do is I have what I want to say, or the point I'm trying to make, and then I find examples and stories that demonstrate this. And that, the research part of it is the hard part. The writing is actually much easier.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Hello. So nice to meet you, like the young gentleman that mentioned earlier. So I came across you, I think, five years ago.

• 13:30Ryan Holiday?

  Lovely.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've been with that ministry for a few years, but Capital Hill is my home base. I was there for a few years. I needed to come across you. I'm definitely at a inflection point, to say the least. But so nice to meet you, thank you for being here. I think what would be very helpful for me, definitely practicing Stoic, but perhaps for the room, is to hear you talk about prioritization, which is everything. But then, other layers, can you talk about discipline?

• 14:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  Right, and what you do beautifully, the various mediums that you talk about Stoicism, but through the body, right, the meditation, walking.

• 14:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  But concrete steps like that, because I don't want to speak on behalf of everybody, but after January 20th, the market is saturated, job interviews right now are a bit hard to come by. And so, how to stay disciplined, and then how to, the ability to concentrate, and then concentrate at a long period of time, I personally think is key for this new transition, but I think that's going to be helpful.

• 14:40Ryan Holiday?

  No, I think you're right. You tend to think of philosophy as a theoretical or a mental thing. And of course it is, but there's a physical component to it, too. That's why discipline is one of the Stoics' virtues. I mean, Aristotle, Aristotle school is named after walking. There's, I think, philosophy and walking have always been intertwined. It wasn't this idea of going to sit in a classroom and listen to someone lecture for a long time. There was an active practice to it, and there were Stoics who were athletes. There were Stoics who, what these beautiful observations I mentioned, they were clearly like outdoor people, and we unfortunately live in an indoor world. And so, I think having a strong physical practice, ideally it's an outdoor physical practice,

• 15:22Ryan Holiday?

  is really, really important, especially when things are going sideways, because you have a win every day, you know? The world could be falling apart, but like, I got a good run in, you know? And it's something that's in your control. That's the other part of having a great physical practice, is like... You win because you did. And so building that in, like, I have a cold plunge at my house. I've read a whole bunch of things about its, you know, health benefits. This could be complete bullshit. I have no idea. To me, that it's unpleasant and hard, but I do it anyway. That's the benefit of the thing. And having some of those practices are really great. One of the reasons I like swimming is that it's a screen-free activity.

• 16:05Ryan Holiday?

  And you're kind of in this sensory deprivation element, you know? But it doesn't happen. Whatever it is for you, you've got to have some kind of practice.

• 16:16Ryan 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.