The $17 MILLION Test of Integrity | John Amaechi (PT. 1)

How much is your word worth? For former NBA player turned psychologist John Amaechi, the answer is $17 million. In this episode, John and Ryan unpack why he walked away from that payday, why integrity is his ultimate non-negotiable, why your job should never define you, and more. John Amaechi is an English psychologist, consultant and former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Vanderbilt Commodores and Penn State Nittany Lions, and professional basketball in the NBA for the Orlando Magic, Utah Jazz, and Cleveland Cavaliers. Since retiring from basketball, John got his PhD in psychology and has worked as a psychologist and consultant, establishing his company Amaechi Performance Systems. Follow John on X @JohnAmaechi and on Instagram @JohnAmaechiOBE 📚 Grab a signed copy of It’s Not Magic by John Amaechi at The Painted Porch 🎙️ Listen to Ryan's solo episode You Are What You Won't Do For Money on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ 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 Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives.

• 0:51Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. A couple of years ago, I had Matthew McConaughey on the podcast, and he was telling the story about turning down somewhere north of $10 million to be in another romantic comedy. He wanted to take his career in another direction. I'm fascinated with people who sort of bet on themselves in that way, or people who, because of their principles, decide that it really doesn't matter how much money you throw at them, they're not interested. Actually, we just did a podcast episode about this the other day. I wrote this piece called "You Are What You Won't Do for Money." And I was talking about that very idea. Here's a little

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  piece of it.

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  Couple of months ago, I got this email. Now, it was a sales pitch, so I take it with a grain of salt. But according to what the person was claiming, whose name I will leave off, and company I will leave off, I have a seven-figure opportunity sitting in front of me. And I'm an idiot if I don't see that, or take advantage of it. Basically, all I would have to do would be to partner with this supplement maker, and we could make a line of supplements with the Daily Stoic.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  Brand. The supplements they were saying could be about calm and clarity and resilience. And they said the brand could easily make several million dollars. And they mentioned a handful of people who have done very similar plays. And unlike the, the stuff we do at Daily Stoic, I wouldn't have to do the procurement, or the production, or the design of the fulfillment. Basically, it's just a licensing and a platform play. Now, there's only one problem here, which is that I just don't want to do it. It doesn't interest me like at all. And it's not that I'm like opposed to supplements or vitamins. I took some this morning. We've advertised a bunch of them here on Daily Stoic and The Daily Dad over the years. If

• 3:00Ryan Holiday?

  you listened to my State of the Show episode, I, I talk about how I think about which advertisers we take on. And there's a bunch of things I won't do. I won't do gambling. I won't do CBT stuff. I don't do things that are obviously scams, but I don't think there's anything wrong with supplements. And like I said, I not only take some, I, I think that they work. And I don't think there's anything wrong with making money or being in business. In fact, when I had Robert Rosenkrantz on the podcast, he talked about stoicism and capitalism. And he said, I'm a stoic capitalist because I write books and sell them to people. And you know, Seneca talked about this 2000 years ago. He says, no one has condemned wisdom to poverty. He said, the philosopher shall have considerable wealth,

• 3:44Ryan Holiday?

  but it will not been pried from any man's hands. It will not be stained by anyone's blood. Now, Seneca doesn't really live up to this himself. I mean, he makes a lot of money while he works for Nero, but I like the sentiment, right? Like, it's fine to make money as long as you're making money honestly and not exploitatively, and that you're not hurting anyone. In the process, there's a lot of things we don't do for Daily Stoic. I don't really do T-shirts. I don't do stickers. I don't do like a lot of the things where people just slap their name on something and sell it, usually through some third-party company.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Don't really sell hats. It doesn't feel right. More importantly, it doesn't get me excited. It's not like why I built the Daily Stoic or what I think the platform should be for. And so as long as I'm in charge, which is, I don't really see any reason why I wouldn't be. I haven't taken on outside investors. I don't have a boss, not going anywhere. As long as I'm around and I'm in charge, that's not how I want to use the platform.

• 4:57Ryan Holiday?

  Well, my guest today turned down $17 million because he felt like it conflicted with his loyalty and he felt like he'd given his word to someone. I'm talking about John Amaechi. He's an NBA player, psychologist, and a fascinating all-around human being who has had a journey unlike many others. He didn't even get into basketball until late in high school. He moved to America to play. He was sort of a journeyman NBA player. He was one of the first professional athletes to come out publicly as gay. And in this episode, we talk about how you make your dreams happen,

• 5:40Ryan Holiday?

  what it means to be a principled person. We talk actually a fair amount of stoicism in this episode. I thought it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed having it. As I said, John is an English psychologist, a consultant, former professional basketball player. He played at Vanderbilt and at Penn State. He had a professional career in the NBA. And then after he retired from the NBA, he had his PhD in psychology. He wrote a memoir called Man in the Middle, and he now has a leadership book called It's Not Magic. He signed a few copies of It's It's Not Magic here at the Pan and Porch. We had a lovely conversation and I think you're very much going to enjoy it.

• 6:22Ryan Holiday?

  We don't usually have people quite of your height in this studio at this tiny table, but I'm sure that's a problem for you in a lot of places.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Everywhere I go, the plane on the way here, indeed.

• 6:31Ryan Holiday?

  Your whole life, I imagine. Were you always tall?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Always. Well, yeah, I mean, even as a kid, I was massive. I was compared to others. I didn't know it. It's one of the weird things about being a kid, I suppose. When you are abnormally large, you don't realize it. It's just normal for you.

• 6:47Ryan Holiday?

  Well, sometimes the other kids make sure you know.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:50Ryan Holiday?

  You're abnormal in some way.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Oh, they certainly let you know, but it's from my perspective, even back then, I was enormous and I knew other people thought I was big, but then, you know, cuddle with my mom and it was like, okay, I'm a normal sized kid. This is what kids are.

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. Did you sprout up at some point or were you just always tall?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Just huge.

• 7:08Ryan Holiday?

  Just from the beginning?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Big baby, big toddler, big teenager.

• 7:12Ryan Holiday?

  Were your parents big?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  My father's Nigerian, not known for their height, stocky, well-built gentleman normally are Nigerians. And my mother was, I don't know, I've got no real concept of her. I know she was much smaller than me, but 5'9", same height as my sisters. Genetic, luck of the draw.

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  But it started for you in a bookstore, right? You're on your way to a bookstore. That's where your athletic journey begins.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Oh, library.

• 7:39Ryan Holiday?

  Library.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Library. We couldn't afford bookstores, so, or at least that's not true. We couldn't afford bookstores at the way, the way I read books. I think my granddad thought it was wasteful.

• 7:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  The idea that I would buy a book that I was going to read in two days.

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  And then just have as a thing.

• 7:56Ryan Holiday?

  An expensive habit.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  It is, and it's a glorious habit. I mean, I came, I went into your bookshop first and you have that fireplace thing that is like this.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  And it instantly made me think, I mean, can I get away with that? I live in a flat. I don't think I can get away with it. But being surrounded by books, there is something about it that's chastening, I think.

• 8:15Ryan Holiday?

  You're like, I've read a lot of these, but I have so many more left to read. That's what I, when I look at the shelves in my house, which are not organized like this, this is just art, but I'm proud, but also I gotta pick up the pace.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, it's not even the reading part of it. Cause I don't assume nowadays in the days of virtual delivery that almost anybody, what people put on their bookshelves behind them is not always a reflection.

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Who they are more, who they wish you to see them as.

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  It's the idea of all these amazing people who have written on these amazing topics. It's chasing me in terms of the knowledge that they have that I can't even conceive of. Even if I read their book.

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Like with your book, right? You skim the knowledge of what that person knows and you feel like you've learned a lot by reading the book. But if you reflect for a second, the person who wrote the book, that's just what they've had time to write down.

• 9:05Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  That's what they've had time to curate and put into a. But if you really had a conversation with them, your mind would be blown instantly.

• 9:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  It's brilliant. It's not a bad thing. I just.

• 9:15Ryan Holiday?

  And a book is like, you know, kind of like in that, that thing about the iceberg, right? Where you only see the small fraction. Like I was just, I have a book coming out in October and I, there's a section on Lincoln. And I was gonna sort of just illustrate it for people. Like, I think I read like six or seven thousand pages on Lincoln. So you stack them there here. And that's like maybe 20 pages in the book.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:38Ryan Holiday?

  And so obviously experience is a really powerful way to learn. And people go, you know, you can't learn everything in books. But if you think about how much experience and knowledge and ideas go into producing a book. I mean, like this book is your life. This is lessons you learned over many, many decades. Having a number of experiences that most people will never get to have. And then, you know, books are really that sort of distilled down into some form of wisdom.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's time and place travel is the bit, the bit I like the most. The idea that I was at an event yesterday where I talked about my mom and somebody afterwards said it was like your mom was in the room. She's been, she's been passed away. She's, she died when I was in my twenties.

• 10:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And there's some part of that where the idea that you can transport an entire group of people, there's one reader or an audience of people listening to you and you can take them to that, that time back in 1978, when you were about to walk into the cinema and watch Star Wars for the first time or whatever it was. I just think it's incredibly cool to be able to do that.

• 10:38Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the founding story of Stoicism involves this guy, Zeno, who is, as a young man, visits the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. And he gets this prophecy, and the prophecy says, you know, "The secret to a good life is having conversations with the dead." And he doesn't know what this means. So many years later, he's suffered the shipwreck, and he washes up in Athens, and he's penniless. And he's winding his way through the Athenian agora, and he passes this bookseller who's selling, you know, these scrolls in the agora. And the books, I was reading one of the books out loud. It's this story from Socrates. And that's when immediately becomes clear to Zeno, that's what it means to have conversations with the dead. Books are this superpower.

• 11:22Ryan Holiday?

  You could travel back in time, you can travel forward in time, as you said. It also allows you to communicate with the wisest, smartest, weirdest, craziest, most evil, most amazing people who have ever lived. And you're, you can argue with them. In the pages of the, you know, the marginalia, you can be inspired by them, you can talk. It's a magical, beautiful, crazy thing. And some people choose not to do it.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think I fell into the kind of middle-class trap of suggesting that everybody had access to books and everybody knew how to read with the kind of fluency that allowed, that made, that made the process of reading not an impediment to actually enjoying the contents of a book. But the people I'm marvelled at are exactly the ones you're talking about, the ones who have those skills and have the finances, but simply look at other people's thoughts in such a way that it's not deemed important enough.

• 12:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  There is, there is something in my book about this, this kind of sonic libertarianism idea, this idea that we're in a time where what I say is important because I say it. And, and more importantly, inherently, what you say is unimportant because I'm not saying it.

• 12:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  And so there's something about that, that appears to me, people dismiss books. And there are books I'm sure that I would enjoy less and books that I enjoy. But the ones I would enjoy less, it's not because they're not highbrow enough.

• 12:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Somebody asked me the other day, one of my favorite books is The Neverending Story. I adore that book.

• 12:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. I mean, look, there's a lot of books not worth the pages that they're printed on, for sure. It's not that every book is amazing, but yeah. There's this Mark Twain quote about, you know, someone who does not read has no advantage over someone who cannot read. So yeah, you're not, the criticism is not someone who, because of education and circumstances, doesn't have access to books or wasn't given yet the skills to do it.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:16Ryan Holiday?

  But you talk to people and you go, I haven't read a book since high school. Or just they'd rather, and look, we're doing a podcast right now, but like podcasts are not a substitute for books.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 13:26Ryan Holiday?

  Like, but and even though they're both coming into your ear, if you're doing audiobooks, there is something about taking the time to craft sentences and arguments and sustain, you know, a journey from point A to point B that is in a book that us just riffing on stuff, you know, is not even close to coming as a substitute for.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  You can never get to the depth.

• 13:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  You might do in an individual, and you don't, as much as we might like to think we can, we never curate ourselves in this kind of environment in a way that is designed for the person listening or reading to really get it in the easiest possible way. Because this, I mean, because of the nature of it, we're talking to each other for each other to get each other.

• 14:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  And other people might enjoy that, but they'll miss bits of it because it's not about them getting that necessarily. And I think in books, I really, well, in mine anyway, I'm really thinking about, I think this is important and I think it's an important thing for other people, not just as a kind of, I don't know, intellectual fun thing for me.

• 14:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  But because I think it'll be helpful, how can I say this in a way that will make other people get that?

• 14:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, like I think what drew me to being a writer was like trying to explain things to my parents or teachers or friends and being like, you know what? I'm gonna go in my room and I'm gonna figure this out. Like it's a deeper impulse than just saying what you think. Like the Hemingway thing about, you know, you just sit down at a typewriter and plead. Maybe that creates sort of some interesting art, but that's not the same. That's not the muscle of writing, which is this kind of craft. I have actually a story in the book that I just finished where, where in the early days of World War II, Marshall calls Eisenhower, who's then just this young officer into his office and he goes, you know, basically here's the situation. You know, the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor.

• 15:21Ryan Holiday?

  World War II has commenced. He's like, what, what, what do you think we should do? And, you know, the other people he called into his office and asked this question to were to be like, sir, here's what I think we should do. And they would just sort of riff this answer. And Eisenhower is the only one who goes, sir, can I have a few hours? And Marshall says, sure. And then he requisitions a typewriter and some paper and he spends the next three or four hours typing out a memo of a sort of a strategic plan. And this is, I think, the illustration of his genius is that he's not someone who just pulls something out of his ass. He's like, let me put this to paper and think about it. And you've got to imagine he's typing a couple of different drafts.

• 16:05Ryan Holiday?

  He's editing, he's thinking, and that process of, of writing as a way to think, figure out what you think and to perfect what you think. That's really what it is. And that, again, I think we, like most of the great speakers, Churchill being one, you know, we think of them as these improvisers. And it's like, all of this was practice.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:26Ryan Holiday?

  Iterated. It's, it's a, it's a difficult thing you have to do.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's that, that practice, that iteration, that willingness to look at something and say, that is crap. That is terrible. I know I had good intentions for what I was trying to say there, but that's bad. And it's bad for like five different reasons that I can now see three hours after writing it or a day later when I revisit it. I think this, I mean, I, I was gonna ask you, do you enjoy writing books? Because I do not enjoy writing books.

• 16:54Ryan Holiday?

  They say a writer is someone to whom writing does not come easy. And then the other expression is painters like painting, writers like having written. I'm of two minds, though. On the one hand, writing is painful and difficult, and I like being done. I also love it. It's probably, maybe like you probably experienced as an athlete where you both love it and can't not do it. And it's also excruciating because, one, it's physically difficult, but two, you're really hard on yourself.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I liked, in the athletic context, I liked winning. I liked being personally successful. And I had to kind of, I didn't quite.

• 17:36Ryan Holiday?

  It's probably not that way most of the time.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Didn't express those that I was enjoying doing personally well, even when we lost.

• 17:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Right? But the, the practice that led to that felt like this is something where I just have to put focus and effort in. And liking it or not liking it is not relevant because that thing over there is the thing that's important. There will be a game and in the NBA, it's three times a week, right?

• 17:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  At least, there'll be a game shortly. And this thing that I'm doing, these sprints that I'm running, that I definitely hate because sweating is not one of the things I've ever enjoyed. These, these drills that are so dull. This coach who's so pedantic that he's coming over to me and touching my elbow by a millimeter.

• 18:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  All of this, this is incredibly dull. But I can either indulge myself in the dullness of it or just recognize how it's not red thread. There was a great big fiber optic cord that leads from this thing to me being able to not get my ass kicked.

• 18:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Next week. And that was it for me. Book writing is a little bit different in that I really like what I write sometimes. I often, I was reading the audiobook for the last four or five days.

• 18:42Ryan Holiday?

  That's an excruciating experience, isn't it?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  It's, it's.

• 18:45Ryan Holiday?

  I did it right here at this table.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I did it in this tiny little booth where my shoulders barely fit in it. It was so hot. I was just sweating with an iPad in front of me. And it made me feel so incompetent.

• 18:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  To read.

• 18:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you're like, do I know how to read? And I'm not sure I know how to write either.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:02Ryan Holiday?

  I hate this.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I keep on, I'm coming to parts, I'm saying, why do I write like this? I think there's probably a clip of outtakes from the three days it's taken me to do this. I'm just like, why do I write like this? And I love the way it sounds when you read it.

• 19:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Wonderful alliteration. And then when you read it out loud, it's like, this is awful.

• 19:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And you could spare yourself that experience by doing it out loud at some point earlier in the process. But then you'd have to undergo the excruciating experience then. And I think I I exhaust my publisher because I I then send a huge stack of edits.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I did the same thing.

• 19:36Ryan Holiday?

  From the audiobook. They're like, you can't keep doing. And I go, I just said it all out loud. And there's something like, you notice, hey, I said the word obviously four times on this page. And I wouldn't have noticed that.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  This is it.

• 19:47Ryan Holiday?

  You know, because, well, first off, when I wrote it, the pages weren't so small. You know, like you're you're to see every step of the way you're seeing it. Now you're you're holding it to another standard.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know for a fact that I use the word context in this book.

• 20:01Ryan Holiday?

  Too many.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Way too many times. I had no clue of it until I read this. And at some point on day one, I had this creeping suspicion like, oh, my God.

• 20:11Ryan Holiday?

  There's a lot more context to come.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Did I not have? I mean, did I not have a thesaurus here?

• 20:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Yeah.

• 20:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you realize, oh, I've never heard this word before. And I used it confidently. And now I have to figure out how it's pronounced or I'm going to sound like, although now I will say, because I've been doing audiobooks for 10 years plus. I now go, you know what? You can fix that in AI. And they can they can now come in, like, I don't do any difficult pronunciations. Because AI is good enough that it can help you do like, it couldn't do a whole sentence. That might sound weird, but if there's some big French word, I'm like, I'm not embarrassing myself with that.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  So my my audio tech was a lovely bloke. I'm clearly going to the wrong places because I had pickups for all kinds of stuff. And doing pickups without context.

• 20:59Ryan Holiday?

  That's harder, too.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Is really.

• 21:00Ryan Holiday?

  Now you don't know where to emphasize.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  I don't know what to so, but that's what I didn't know. There was an AI opportunity for it. You were talking about the words that you use. I, since I was a kid, I did this thing where I would pick a dictionary up and just pick a word. I'm like, what's that word?

• 21:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  The first time I did in college with my academic advisor, who I used to just hide in her office sometimes.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  She's one of the few people who didn't see me as an athlete. It's really cool, right? It's just, it's just fun to be a student in a place. And I would pick up a, and with sophistry was the first one, I think, was it sophistry? Or was it syllogism? Syllogism was the first word. And so ever since then, there are a ton of words now that I know. And I know that I'm using them in the right way in a sentence, but if you asked me to divine them, I couldn't.

• 21:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  And so the book, when I read the book, I'm like, oh, like, I know that's right. But now I'm saying it instead of writing it, doesn't feel as right anymore.

• 21:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:54Ryan Holiday?

  It's a weird, surreal, excruciating experience to do. And then you're just like, am I bored with my own writing? Or am I, am I just bored from reading out loud? You know, it's not a thing. You would never sit down and read a book out loud to anyone, but I, I don't know.

• 22:22Ryan Holiday?

  So when you start playing basketball, did you love it? Or did you love that you were good at it?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Neither, because I was not good at it.

• 22:31Ryan Holiday?

  Clearly you were pretty good.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  When I first started.

• 22:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Awful. And, and even in terms of the NBA, whilst I'm better than, unless you've got like some of your former guests like Kansas, watching this, this episode, I am better than, than most people.

• 22:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Who call themselves people who play basketball. But I was very average in the scheme of the NBA.

• 22:50Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  But the reason I played was because I went to my first training session in a gym in Manchester, near Manchester, and I walked in the room and these strangers, they ran towards me. They grabbed me by the arm. They're like, this guy's on our team. I felt really embarrassed because I'd never picked, I'd never touched a basketball. So I didn't know what I was doing. But I remember that feeling. It was so utterly intoxicating. I was like, I'm never, I remember saying to myself after the end of this practice where I'd, I think, made one basket, missed many. And I was like, I'm never leaving this space. And I didn't mean that gym. I didn't, I meant this feeling, I'm never leaving.

• 23:31Ryan Holiday?

  Like team sports, basically.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  But this type of, I didn't, and again, I wasn't, I'm not a sports fan now. So you could ask me, I'm an NBA ambassador. Do a lot of work in Europe and Africa because I live in, in England. And so when I'm asked to do stuff about that, I, I get the NBA league pass. And I, I do a 10 minute crawl through the games to find out what's going on. Otherwise, I couldn't tell you who's, who's on which team. But that space felt so good. And then as a, what was it? 16, 17 year old, 17 year old. My idea of America was formed only of, of the TV shows.

• 24:05Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  So A-Team, Knight Rider. So I had this sense that it never rained in America, that it was always sunshiny in America. And I thought, what if I could have this feeling in a place where it never rains?

• 24:16Ryan Holiday?

  But it's all Santa Monica or something.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  That was, yeah, because it's all the filming studios, right? It, so, you know, that was the sophistication of the thinking. This feels amazing. These people can see my potential. They're interested in me as a person. They care. And I could do it where it doesn't rain so much.

• 24:33Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  And so I told them, we had a 45 minute practice. I arrived a little late. And I told them 45 minutes in, yeah, they were talking about the NBA. I was like, what's the NBA? It's by the best people in the world. Players like, yeah, I'll do that.

• 24:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 24:46Ryan Holiday?

  And obviously basketball would have been in a weird point at that time is it's, I mean, it's still becoming this sort of global game that it was. And then, as I understand it, I know for Europe, but maybe in the UK, like, high school sports and college sports are just not the same thing that they are here. There's not the system where you go from one to the other, to the, the pros. It's.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Entirely right. Yeah. So, so in America, it is a factory, right?

• 25:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  It is a professional sport starts in high school, I think.

• 25:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  People are really. Objective about it. And in fact, my high school coach, when I came to this country, Toledo, Ohio, a guy called, that was also-

• 25:27Ryan Holiday?

  Very far from Santa Monica.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  That was also a surprise to me. I will admit, I didn't realize that Americans didn't speak English when I arrived in Toledo, Ohio. I couldn't understand anything he was saying. But he gave me this advice and it was really brilliant. He, as I told him my ambition, told him what I was here to do, which is to get a scholarship. That's the next stage. And he said, just remember to have fun this year, to really enjoy playing basketball this year, because it'll be the last time you play basketball for fun.

• 25:52Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  He said, it won't be the last time you have fun playing basketball, but it will be the last time you play basketball for fun.

• 25:59Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  And I thought it was just a remarkable reflection of the reality of college sports, which is you can see them celebrating, you can see athletes having fun in practice together, but they do not play for fun.

• 26:12Ryan Holiday?

  No, they're playing for their future.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  They're playing for a renewable one-year scholarship.

• 26:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  That people don't realize is a renewable one-year scholarship. And they're, they're playing in order to not have massive student debt.

• 26:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  And they're playing, for some of them, to facilitate them being in university at all. It's the only way they could be. And they're playing for some of them, because if they weren't doing that, they wouldn't be eating properly.

• 26:35Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And so there's, there's all kinds of other things that mean playing basketball is a job, a real job, even before this, this, this new system came into play.

• 26:44Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's funny because we were talking about, you know, do you enjoy writing? And the athletes that I've talked to, I'm, the one thing they, and it actually changed how I think about it, is like, all of them at some point in their career, maybe right before it ends, but then definitely after it ends, they look back and they wish they'd enjoyed it more. Because they did, they got to play a game for a living. And then suddenly it goes away. They took it so seriously. Winning and losing felt so monumental.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:11Ryan Holiday?

  And then, then all of a sudden, you don't get to do it anymore. And it, it's like this dream, and you don't remember having any fun when you got to do your dream.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I remember successes and I remember fun with colleagues, with teammates. But I think I had an advantage the whole time against my colleagues and indeed against the narrative of people in sports, which is that I was never a basketball player or basketballer, as English people would say. And I'm always frustrated by people who think I am. You know, you probably got a document that my team sends around all the time that says, this is how you can describe me and in this order.

• 27:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  And if anything has to go, it's the basketball bit that goes.

• 27:54Ryan Holiday?

  It wasn't part of your identity as a person.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  My occupation was not my definition. I think it's the most dangerous thing. If you look at, we do some work with some of the professional sports teams in Europe and in America. And if you look at the pain points of transition, it is oftentimes not just that they didn't save well, or they didn't whatever, or they don't have a, they have a skill deficit of some kind of the real world. It's the fact that they've gone from being, they knowing who they were, because it was what they did, to the next day, not.

• 28:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  And what a devastating impact on your ego, on your sense of self.

• 28:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  To be, you know, and it can only last so long that you walk through an airport terminal. People are like, hey, great, you know, you played a great game last week, last month, last year, nineteen ninety.

• 28:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  And at some point, people just stop.

• 28:45Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Who was on the All-Star team nine years ago?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:48Ryan Holiday?

  It fades pretty quickly.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Very quickly.

• 28:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  And if you are a player of my caliber, then people are like, oh, you're tall, you must have played basketball. And that's the best you get, right? It's the best you get. Occasionally, you get a Penn State fan, because there's enough alumni out there who'd be like, oh, you played at Penn State. And I met somebody yesterday in, in Oxford, who went to Penn State the year before me.

• 29:10Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Which is crazy. Our alumni are everywhere, apparently. But that's it. So if you're defined by that moment, especially, I was thinking about it as I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, and I was like, if you define, because it's a lot more than just your kind of intellectual and cognitive identity, you know, you look in the mirror and it's like, I don't look like I looked. When I played basketball, and even that feels like a bit of a betrayal. If you're not careful, if you don't allow your mind to really say, it's okay. I'm fifty five, nearly fifty six years old. It's not, it's not abnormal. I mean, I'm not wildly obese. I'm just, I just don't have four percent body fat anymore, which is okay. It's normal for humans.

• 29:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and I think the stoics would say it's a dangerous thing to stake your identity on something that you don't control. So if your identity is like, I'm an athlete, meaning I do athletic things. Well, that's largely in your control. I mean, you know, you could get in an accident and then the kinds of sports you can do might change. But if your identity is NBA player, at best, you're going to retire at some point and not be able to do it anymore. But you could get cut tomorrow, you could apply your knee tomorrow. You could be replaced by someone better tomorrow. Yeah, I think about it's like, is my identity as a writer or is it author? Because writer is something I always get to do because I can do it in a journal. But author is more like, are they letting me publish books and how are those books sell?

• 30:35Ryan Holiday?

  And certainly if your identity is bestselling author or, you know, NBA starter, you know, the, the more your identity is tied to the things that other people have significant or complete say over, the more vulnerable you are to those crushing changes in transitions.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a process versus outcome part, right? Where you're talking about writer and even then I hadn't, I hadn't thought about that. And, and because I think of myself, even as I often tell people, don't let your occupation be your definition. I, I just can't imagine not being a psychologist. It's so, it's so thrilling, right? It's so, it's so thrilling. And I know it feels, I'm sure to other people, it's like, really? And also the credibility of is low raw day because people like, oh, you talk for a living. Great.

• 31:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  You went to school, you got a PhD and now you just talk to people. But there is something about it, the access you get to people's lives, the, the credibility that you can quickly build with people that allows them to share stuff with you. And you just sit there as a reflective entity saying, it's really interesting. You said that last week, you said something quite different that which one, how do we reconcile those things? And to me, it's so exciting, the idea that in, you know, 10 months' time, working with, with, with, especially because I get to work with very cool people at the peak of their careers often, but. Even those people who are just starting out, it's just incredibly exciting to know there's just, just listening and picking up important, but not necessarily like wildly blaring flashy light types of things.

• 32:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Reflecting them back can make people grab it and go, just go. Amazing.

• 32:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. When you have that thing that you love, and then what is the root sort of verb of the thing, that's what you want to attach your identity to, because that's more or less what you always get to keep doing as opposed to the noun like, you know, I'm the, I'm the team psychologist for these people, or I'm the, you know, uh, uh, number one expert on this. Those are, those are status related, selection related, gate kept things. And while you have them, they're nice.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:46Ryan Holiday?

  But you've got to create some kind of distance to them because they can go away.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And really know what underpins them. What is the thing about you that really makes those things work? Cause there are lots of people who are psychologists, lots of people who are writers or, or authors rather. And so what is it that makes your particular thing so valuable to you?

• 33:08Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  It's not just the book at the end. It must be something else.

• 33:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I like the impact the book have. I'm sure you've had that experience too. When you, you talk to people and I'm not very good reading the audio book, remind me that I write something and instantly forget it. One of my team said this quote, she said, can we use this quote in this session that we're doing? I wasn't a part of it. It's like, that's an amazing quote. You should absolutely use that. Who did that? And she, she just looked at me because I think she thought I was fishing. I wasn't fishing.

• 33:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  No idea. From the new book, from the new book.

• 33:42Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you can't memorize all this. That is the lovely part of the process is like you, you are chipping at it day after day and cumulatively it's something, but there was never one point where you had it all in your head and you were dictating it out. That would be, that would, that would signify a very simplistic or not that.

• 34:04Ryan Holiday?

  Rigorous of a thing. It's the individual sentences that add up cumulatively to the thing as a whole.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there were points when I was reading it, I was like, I had to stop the the audio tech was like, no, stop to that again. And it's because I was super self satisfied. I was reading it. I was like, that was really clever.

• 34:21Ryan Holiday?

  I like it.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  I was there. That was, that's a great sentence. That's a great sentence. But it doesn't, obviously, when you read it with that kind of joy in your voice, it doesn't come across right.

• 34:41Ryan Holiday?

  I'm fascinated by the story about you staying with the Magic. And I think I'm fascinated by it because, and probably you hear, people ask you about it a lot. I think the reason it sticks out to people is it's just not how people do business, you know? So walk me through what it was and what happened.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  So I played with the Atlanta Magic for a year. I did, I think, to most people's ideas surprisingly well. And started and ended up with the interest of 17 teams. I would, I was, I had a home in Scottsdale at the time. That's where I stayed in the offseason because it was just far away from where I played. Until I went to Utah and I was getting these jerseys with my name on the back sent from various teams. I think I've still got the one from the Knicks and I've got one from somewhere else. And so this is incredibly flattering, feels great. But I also remembered a year, almost exactly a year before, when my agent and I had been, I had been calling teams. Myself begging them to allow me to come to their summer league.

• 35:46Ryan Holiday?

  He just wanted a shot.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Just, will you let me come to your summer league team? I remembered I never got to an executive of any consequence, but I was just talking to random people in the front offices. People that my agent had names for. And numbers four and some were polite, few were warm. Yeah. Most were immensely transactional and slightly confused by perhaps the audacity on one hand, but also on the kind of what if you're we have if we don't know you. Yeah. You're no good. Right. Was definitely the implication. Yeah. So that was the name again. Yeah, we don't know you. You definitely know good. If you were good, we'd know you. Yeah, we wouldn't be calling. Right. We'd be calling you. We'd be calling you, right?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  And I remembered that in contrast and Doc gave me an opportunity that I took full advantage of. And I was fully aware that I was working for a business and a business that would have no problem ejecting me the next year. But my mother told me a long time ago that you can't be a part time person of principle. In the context of me, you can't be a part time man of principle. And I say certain things are important and it's not about loyalty because I don't really believe in it as a as a thing. This feels a bit quid pro quo, but this was about me and what I thought was the thing that was most resonant with who I am. And the thing that was most resonant was saying, I'm going to take a ridiculously small in the context of the other opportunity amount of money to stay with the team and more importantly, stay with the coach.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  That had given me the opportunity in the first place because that felt resonant with who I am. It felt like that was aligned with my principles. And I knew that there was a good chance that their front office at the earliest opportunity, whether it was Tim Duncan or some other bloke would come along and kick me out of the team so far and so fast. Yeah. Right. I knew that was a possibility, but I said, I did it anyway. And it really wasn't about anybody else than just me. I knew it was a bad idea financially and I knew. How bad of an idea? Oh, it's incredibly bad idea. Anybody listening, if you're if you're offered seventeen million dollars, you should take that money. Unless it's for. You're offered seventeen million dollars to change. To change your organization, right?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you should probably do that, especially if you're the figure that you were getting paid before was like two hundred and eighty six thousand. Yeah. You should probably go. Yeah. I would advise that for other people. It's worked out pretty well for me. I now work with people and on on this one side, I work with people who are doing well and transitioning and trying to do remarkable things. Other people are trying to grab their organization and change their opportunity, right? But I also. I also work with people in the most vulnerable moments who come to me because that usually recommended and they'll say, you know, I don't know how I can, if I can trust you and how much, how much is your word worth?

• 38:31Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  And there's very few people who can say, well, around seventeen million dollars is a starting point, right? And so for me, it works really well because being centered around my principles is one of the reasons that people find me as polarizing as I know I am as a human being. In the context of my work, people find me grounded and easy to trust.

• 38:55Ryan Holiday?

  I think we want to believe that the world is just, that karma exists. So what I want to hear is the conclusion of this story is that, you know, you stayed and then you got a huge payday from the magic, or it didn't end up mattering because, you know, you added up the contracts from after, the different teams you played with over the years, or that they stayed loyal to you forever, or that, you know, that, that in the end, it was a wash financially, that, you know, you, you didn't actually lose seventeen million dollars. But how does the story, does the story end?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I, I lost a significant amount of money. I went to the Utah Jazz, who did not pay me seventeen million dollars. But it doesn't end there because my career certainly didn't end there. I moved on and I'm now a psychologist. I work in academia, I've got a consultancy and at least some small part, although fascinatingly, most of the people I work with, even the Americans, don't know that I ever played basketball.

• 39:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  There is something about the fact that our principles are setting us apart.

• 39:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  In the way we work with organizations and individuals. And that's remunitif, that, that pays good money. And so I don't think I, I thought or intended it would, but it was just about what's the decision that feels most me.

• 40:13Ryan Holiday?

  I think we saw this with Rory McIlroy, who decided not to take the live golf money. So like several hundred million dollars, basically. And then he stayed loyal to the league. And then like, sort of what happens, right? Like, first off, his, his actual game suffers because he's like, taking golf is such a finely tuned mental balance. That like, thinking of anything but, but golf for one second. And you start to, so his, his, his game goes temporarily in the jitter. And then he stays loyal to the, the league that brought him, what he thought was the best version of it. And then what does the league do? Basically sells out to the people that he turned down the money from. I think we want to think like, hey, if you stay loyal, if you do the right thing,

• 40:58Ryan Holiday?

  it not just doesn't have a negative consequence. There's some reward for it. And I think that's probably the wrong bill of goods to sell people because you do that one time and it doesn't work out. You become jaded and cynical. I think what you're saying is, no, you do the right thing because it's the right thing, because you have to live as that person. Not only will it probably not pay off, but like, you may get fucked.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can absolutely end up getting shafted. I remember vividly sitting in an office in Scottsdale, a law practice, a meeting with Vanderway, I think his name was, one of the GMs and a couple of other people from the Magic. Walking in, they said, sit down. Instantly told me, don't forget, they've been talking about the next year's contract and how it'd be seven years and it wouldn't be a max, but it would be a lot. And I remember the sitting there and it was 10 seconds into the conversation, we're not signing you next year. It was over. It was done with them.

• 42:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. In game theory, they call this the sucker's payoff.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Right? And here I am sat in my hometown at the time, being told this news and knowing that now I have to scramble to find a team that'll take me. And there was one that I thought might, there were two that I thought might, and one of them was a preferred option, and one of them was a less preferred option for numerous reasons.

• 42:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  And I ended up in a situation that I knew would be bad for me interpersonally and personally. But I'm a humanistic psychologist, and so much of what we learn in humanistic psychology is the idea of congruence. The gap between what ought to be and what is, what is promised and what you get, the experience that you'd like and the experience that you're given is pain. It's always pain. One description, and it might tend to be pain that has you lash out, or just pain that causes you pain. But it's pain. And so, doing things that are aligned, you talked about doing the right thing, which I don't use that terminology because I find that people can manipulate it to mean whatever they want it to mean in any moment. But doing things that are actually aligned to the principles that you've really examined. Of course, you

• 43:13Speaker 01

  can't do this if you have an underexamined life. But if you can do the things that are aligned to your principles, whatever happens to you externally, and you mentioned stoicism, focusing on things you can control, at least there, there is this sense of groundedness, security in the idea that I am aligned to the things that I say that I stand for. And that's what I had to take from it. I am asked about this every week. Somebody in a public environment, at a Q and A for something that's nothing, I was talking about psychological safety the other day, and some bloke said, what about?

• 43:48Ryan Holiday?

  You wish you took the 17 million?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  As I said to the guy who asked, actually, last week, I said, thank you for bringing up that extraordinarily painful memory. Because it's

• 43:56Ryan Holiday?

  Sorry.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  There is a part of it

• 43:58Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  that is painful, even as, when I think about it, it feels quite assuring.

• 44:02Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  It's like, yes, I had examined my life, not as fully as I have now, but I did know that some things were important to me.

• 44:08Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  And even when dangled, an opportunity that I knew would give me with no effort, had I been injured on day one as a Laker, I'd have four championships.

• 44:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Right? Four championship rings. And those things are nice.

• 44:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  But I knew that in that moment, I stayed aligned to who I was.

• 44:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  And I've refined that a little bit over time. And now I can make decisions that are aligned to that. Always knowing that even when the alternative seems incredible, there is something worthwhile about doing the thing that's aligned to who you know you are.

• 44:39Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's like, look, not cheating in relationships isn't going to prevent you from ever being cheated on. At the same time, the fact that someone might cheat on you is not a good reason for you to be a cheater. Again, what part you control? You control whether you're a person of integrity, whether you're a person who keeps their word, whether you're honest, whether you're loyal, whether you value things over money. You also have to be sort of mentally and spiritually aware that that's not really the norm.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yes, the integrity word, that was the word I was searching for as I was trying to talk before. That's the piece.

• 45:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  There is, there is great resilience, personal safety in integrity.

• 45:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  And having in a way that is internal rather than those people who perform it. But there is, there is something really powerful about it. And despite the fact that I remember that meeting, I remember crying in that meeting. I cried as I was in the meeting and then I cried as I ran out. And I got to my very, very hot car and I sat in my very hot car without putting the air conditioner and cried in the middle of the summer in Arizona.

• 45:49Ryan Holiday?

  What I get?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  And that's what it was. It was screaming, my mind was telling me what an absolute idiot I was. And yet, at the same time, I had predicted this. I knew it was a possibility. I knew the characters.

• 46:01Ryan Holiday?

  Well, we'd like to live in a world where that's the norm. And a lot of times it is. I mean, I think people are mostly good and often do the right thing or, you know, the integrity. But then they don't. And they usually tell themselves they have their reasons. And sometimes they do have their reasons, but it's always disappointing and can be kind of soul crushing. If your default view of the world is that like integrity is important and it's worth more than money, it can kind of set you up for, I think this is why cynics, they say, are often like sort of idealists who've been burned.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:38Ryan Holiday?

  It's like you had this view and then you found out it was not. A shared view.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think people think I'm cynical, but I'm a skeptic in the kind of behavioral science sense of that word. I'm a skeptic, but not a cynic. But I do, I'm not sure I think that people are broadly good. I meet a lot of people as a

• 47:01Ryan Holiday?

  You hear their private thoughts.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  As a psychologist, and I do, I do hear their thoughts. And this doesn't mean that I think people are bad either. It's just that without the being, without using a kind of banal neutral, there is something else. And I think the something else is, I'd be interested to know how this fits, or if it fits with Stoicism at all. But this idea that when I look at organizations, when I look at individuals in organizations, the consistent theme that you can see is how people will choose comfort, or at least the avoidance of discomfort, over organizational performance, integrity, something better.

• 47:40Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Right? They will choose that because there's a very small world for many people that is just about, does this feel bad today?

• 47:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And what's interesting about it is contextual too, because that's usually not the same as that executive who chooses that for sure when they don't give feedback that would really help a colleague, but they just choose not to because it would feel a bit squirrely to do it.

• 48:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  But that's the same executive that will come in that the next day and be talking about, oh, my arms are so sore, you know, they've got the delayed onset muscle sore. So they really, they seek out the discomfort because they recognize it as a component of growth.

• 48:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Component of growth, sorry. And yet, in other dimensions, I think the interpersonal dimensions, people will choose.

• 48:19Ryan Holiday?

  Where will we challenge ourselves? It's easier to challenge ourselves physically than to get out of our comfort zone, either to stand up, you know, and speak in front of public, or to say something controversial, or take a political stand, or whatever.

• 48:35Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.