Do You Have This Ability?

We often think that greatness is a synonym for brilliance. That great leadership is all about magnetism and communication. For which we need vision and boldness, allies and luck. And of course, to be successful in any field, but particularly in leadership, all of those things are true. But we also need something far simpler that is yet even more rare. We need the ability to focus, to lock in, to do what has been termed “deep work.”As one of Churchill’s political contemporaries would observe of that great man, “concentration was one of the keys to his character. It was not always obvious, but he never really thought of anything else but the job in hand.”For the last five years, we have been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge—a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. 21 challenges designed to set you up to be able to say, whatever happens in 2024 and beyond, this is precisely what I trained for.. Demand more of yourself in 2024. Prepare for whatever is ahead. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW!✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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, dailystoic.com.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have this ability? A leader is a doer, but that doesn't mean they're always doing. In fact, if a leader is always doing, chances are they'll end up doing the wrong thing because they haven't taken enough time to think, to study, to question, and prepare. In Thomas Rix's wonderful book, Waging a Good War, which he also discussed on a great episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast recently, Rix looks at what made Bob Moses one of the best, yet lesser-known, civil rights leaders. Moses was calm and quiet. He didn't seek out the spotlight. He did not make decisions out of emotion. Instead, Rix says, quoting a colleague of Moses, "He had the capacity for reflection and distance

• 1:09Ryan Holiday?

  from the thing you are very much in the midst of in even leading." Rix goes on to say that the ability to gain psychological detachment, to reflect on action, is a talent of many effective leaders. James Mattis, he says, "One of the best American generals in our recent wars made a habit of carrying in his combat knapsack a copy of the works of Marcus Aurelius. In reading that Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher for a half hour at night, he explained, 'helped him gain some mental distance from the battlefield.'" Of course, Marcus Aurelius himself had this ability, and that's what created meditations in the first place. Marcus was taking time to think and reflect, to distance himself from the very battlefield he was writing from in his tent.

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  All leaders need to be able to do this. Reacting emotionally does not serve anyone well. Reacting unthinkingly does not serve anyone well. Look at the mess that Elon Musk is currently in at Twitter. A classic example of what Robert Greene calls tactical hell. So much of it could have been avoided with a better plan, with more restraint, with a willingness to take in feedback and integrate new information as it comes in. Each of us must cultivate time and space for reflection. We must be able to detach from a moment and see ourselves and it from a distance. We need stillness. We need discipline. We need less ego. We need to listen. Only then can we act. Only then are we fit to lead.

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  And this is, of course, something we talk a lot about in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. And I talked to R.C. Buford, who's the CEO of the San Antonio Spurs. When I talked to General Dan Kane, who's in the Air Force. When I talked to entrepreneurs and business people and leadership experts, they're all saying some version of this, the ability to make transitions, to step back, to see perspective, to make good, rational and calm decisions in the midst of very irrational and often not calm situations. That's the art of what we're trying to cultivate. If you haven't checked out the Leadership Challenge, you very much should. Go to dailystoic.com/leadershipchallenge to check that out. I'll link to it in today's show notes. It's one of the best challenges I think we've done.

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  And you can get it for free, by the way, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, which I'll also link to. But I'm wishing you much stillness in your leadership journey, and I think this challenge will help you get there.