Live Q&A with Ryan Holiday | The 2021 New Year, New You Challenge

Today’s episode of the podcast was taken from one of the live Q&A’s that took place during last year’s New Year, New You Challenge. The participants of the challenge get to engage in weekly group zoom calls with bestselling author Ryan Holiday to chat about how the challenge is going, ask questions, and more. → We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It kicks off in a little over a week. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st! If you are looking for gifts for family members and friends, the 2021 Daily Stoic Gift Guide is here to help! This year’s guide features a bundle of books signed by Ryan Holiday, our new page-a-day desk calendar, the four virtues medallion, and more. Click here to give the gift of Stoicism this holiday season! Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com /stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck 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 Weekend Edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. As you know, Stoicism has had a big impact on my life, and it's helped me so much through the last 15 years. And it's something I try to share with others. Sometimes that's a book recommendation. One of the things we've tried to do over the years is create some physical embodiments of Stoic philosophy, just sort of physical reminders of these ideas. I've got the Marcus Aurelius bust on my desk. My whole office, my home even, is sort of reminders of these ideas from the ancient Stoics. Maybe that's something you would want this time of year, or as you're looking to give something to someone in your life, to introduce them to the ideas of Stoicism. Maybe that's members of your team or your unit.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe that's a friend you know who's going through something. Anyways, we put together a 2021 gift guide of these things. You can check that out at dailystoic.com/giftguide. It's 10 awesome gift ideas for the Stoics in your life. The Obstacle is the Way leather-bound book, The Daily Stoic leather-bound book. We've got action guides. We've got digital courses. There's the Daily Stoic Life membership. We've got signed personalized editions of all my books. Awesome stuff like that for you or for someone in your life. Check that out at dailystoic.com/giftguide.

• 2:06Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I think one of the things I missed the most from the pandemic is obviously not just being in with people, but like the Q and As that I would get to do in my talks in person, like to go back and forth with the audience. People come up to you afterwards. Well, that's obviously out the window, or has been out the window on pause. Most things have gone virtual. But one thing we do every year at Daily Stoic, including last year, is this New Year, New You Challenge, where we all get together and do three weeks of like Stoic-inspired challenges that make

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  you better. And in today's episode, I wanted to bring you some of the Q and A that I got to do as part of that. We do three Q and As as part of the challenge, one at the end of each week. It's a Zoom chat. We all go back and forth. People ask questions. We talk about how things are going. I try to answer as many of the Stoic questions as they have. And so in today's episode, I wanted to give you the best of last year's Q and A, and hopefully in the process, give you a peek at what you are missing. If you don't sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, it's one of the best things that we do here at Daily Stoic. It's also one of the best things I do

• 3:30Ryan Holiday?

  as a person that helps me kick off having a great year. They're challenges, right? So it's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to get you out of your comfort zone. That's what I wanted to bring you in today's episode. Here is me answering some Stoic questions. It's part of the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, which you can sign up for right now before it's too late at dailystoic.com/challenge. We'd love to have you. How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best for yourself? That's what Epictetus says. And that's one of the things we talk about in today's episode.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  This is so cool. Thanks for, thanks for doing this. I'm really excited. It is 2021, which is both exciting and terrifying, given what we, what we know about 2020. What I thought we'd do today is I was gonna sort of just, just kick off with some thoughts and then we will go to questions. I was thinking about, so we did this challenge last year and there was a few days that have sort of jumped out at me. I think we started with a cold plunge, the idea of, of sort of willingly submitting yourself to adversity. And then there, I remember there was one about setting up an emergency fund, which, Billy, will you mute your line for me? Yep.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  There was, there was an idea of having an emergency, an emergency fund in case one might need one in the course of a year. So that turned out to be pretty pressing. But I think even the idea of challenges, right? And this is what we're doing here this year. The idea of seeking out challenges and adversity so that when life throws these things at you, you have some preparation or experience dealing with that. And so as, over the next 21 days, we're gonna go through a bunch of different challenges. Some will be sort of mental challenges, some will be physical challenges, some will be emotional challenges. But, but in each instance, what we're trying to do is, is force you to stretch a little bit, force you to think maybe

• 5:31Ryan Holiday?

  from a different perspective, force you to do something outside your comfort zone. The idea being that if, if one cultivates this ability, if one does what, what Seneca calls a hard winter's training, when the winter of life arises, then, then, then one, one, one can, can step up and, and is confident in, in their ability to step up. And so,

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  That's where we are. Obviously, 2020 was not the the year that I think many of us looked for or hoped for, even if you emerged unscathed. It certainly wasn't what you'd planned on experiencing, but then, then here we are. You know, the Stoics would say, it's not what happens, it's how we respond. And so I hope that over the last 12 months, you guys have found things that you're proud of how you responded. Maybe things that you see as needing room for improvement. When I, when I was designing day one, that's sort of what we were thinking about. I think at the very least, we can all look back at the last 12 months

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  by nature of being here on this call and, and, and give ourselves some credit for having survived a historic year, a strange year, a surreal year. We're, we're still here. And if you had some sort of questions about how people in the past got through things, how Marcus gets through the Antonine Plague, maybe how your ancestors survived political unrest, or how they responded to, you know, moments of trials and difficulties. Well, this, this was a year for the history books and, and our children and their children will look back at 2020 and sort of marvel that so many strange and difficult things could happen within 12 months.

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  I love the joke that 2020 is the longest decade of, of our lives. But, but, but we're all here. We all made it through. And I think that says something. And so when, when we, when we're doing for day one, which is this sort of review of what gives us hope. I think, you know, we're not just, hey, what magical things do we think are around the corner? That's, that's not what the hope side of things are. It's what, what's up to you, what in your own conduct, in your own, your own experiences over the last 12 months, do you find some measure of confidence or faith in? And I think we can start with, with the fact that we're all still here. I was, I was thinking about

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  You know, I was thinking about this this morning. We can look at all the, all the ways that our fellow human beings have let us down over the last 12 months, and that can make us sort of despair, or resentful, or alarmed. Or we can focus on the, the people that have, that have, have measured up, whether that's the frontline responders, whether it's the, you know, the, the, the medical minds that have, have now rushed through a vaccine in record time, whether it's, you know, your, your neighbors who have been helpful or kind, maybe it's your grandparents, or, or, you know, your parents who've, who've stepped up and helped in some way. So, when I, when I'm talking about looking at hope, I think I, what we're really talking about is looking at the glass, the glass half full.

• 8:50Ryan Holiday?

  Where, where have people done well? And, and one of the things that gives me hope is, is even that we're, we're here talking, that, that, you know, even, even after all of the challenges of the last 12 months, that all the people on this call got together in, in December and said, you know what, I'd like to start 2021 off with some voluntary hardships, with, with, I want to, I want to actively seek out difficulties. So I love that. And then, for, for today's challenge, this idea of stopping a backslide, this one I was thinking about also in relation to the fact that in, in 2020, when we did this challenge, we,

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  we, we had all these ambitious goals and ideals. Every year, we start out with resolutions. I, I had one about the mile time that I wanted to set. I had one about certain habits I wanted to break, certain activities that I wanted to start. And I started those things as, as we often do. But then, but then I, I started to see myself backsliding in them. And so, instead of trying to You know, do, do, just add new things on top of it. What I was really thinking about with today's challenge was, okay, where is something that we can do, where, where is something where we can stop a decline rather than adding something new? And there'll be a day coming up that I think you guys will like.

• 10:16Ryan Holiday?

  We did a day that's about adding on where, where, where you've had a success. But I think also, instead of trying to get distracted by a new thing, I just wanted to, I wanted everyone to stop and think about, you know, where, where they've backslid. So for me, it's, it's been some social media habits. I've been really good, really disciplined about how much time I spend on social media, what role it plays in my life. But, but, you know, then we, this is how sort of addictive things work. We make excuses, we make exceptions, and then those things snowball. So I've watched, you know, sort of as we, you know, started the year strong, and then, then the pandemic news, and then wildfire news, and then, and then the election, and

• 10:58Ryan Holiday?

  then, you know, and then, and then, you know, you're going into the end of the year and you're spending time, more time indoors. All of a sudden, you can find yourself sort of backsliding on these habits. So that's something, even today, I've been finding, it's, it's interesting to me how much even habits sort of get inculcated in our muscle memory. So, you know, you pick up your phone to do one thing, that's almost like how you drive to work, you know, your, your body just sort of makes the turn as you get there without it even being conscious. And I was watching myself do that even, even on my social media habits. So that's one I'm going to be working on. I'm not going to create some new resolution, I'm just going to focus on, you know, really setting and sticking with one that I worked on last year. So those are the two days.

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  I don't want to spoil, you know, too much of what we have to come, but I'm really excited about this year's, one of the upsides of the pandemic, because we had more time to work on it, of course. And, and now that we've done this three or four years, we've got a lot of data on what people like and don't like. But, but I'm excited for the days to come. You might have a slight preview in the, in the calendar we sent, and I know there was a mix-up, it didn't get sent out. At the beginning, but you you can kind of tell from the icons of what's to come. But we've we've got, you know, 21 more days. We'll do this call next weekend and then the the final weekend as well. One thing I would say, something that I that that is always interesting to me, and I know I've teased this a little bit in some of the messages.

• 12:26Ryan Holiday?

  But it's interesting. We're obviously on the back end. I get to see all the people that sign up and it's so exciting. You watch all these people sign up. You're like, all of us are going to get together. We're going to make changes. We're going to do this together. But what's always interesting is I watch, I can also see the open rates of the emails go. At first half, it's funny, like the first day, a bunch of people click unsubscribe on the email and then immediately email customer service the next day and ask why they're not getting the emails anymore. But but I also, and those are always the people that are the most angry, even though we can tell why they're not getting it. But but, you know, I can watch the open rates of the emails as we go through the challenge.

• 13:08Ryan Holiday?

  And I obviously on, we send an email every day for Daily Stoke and I don't take it personally that people don't always open the Daily Stoke emails. But it's it's fascinating to watch, and I think it's sort of a microcosm of how human beings work. Well, first off, you know, people sign up for the, we we send out the email in mid mid December and some people like, yes, I want to do it. And then you also watch the people who wait until the absolute last minute and they they squeak in just under the wire. And then, you know, the last two days, I've gotten a lot of people who have emailed, is it too late to sign up? Can I please sign up? So they're they're starting the year off with some procrastination as as as as as humans are want to do. But but it's interesting to watch people who did sign up, who did pay for a thing, who had every intention of doing it.

• 13:51Ryan Holiday?

  You know, you watch the open rate diminish at every single day through the end of the challenge. It starts at 100% and then by the end, the open rate is much, much lower. It it usually gets to about half. And that that's something that confer that that confirms something that a friend of mine who who sells a lot of online courses was telling me. He's like, the open rate on courses is 50%. These are things that people pay for and they have every intention of doing it and then they just, they don't do it. So it's funny to think that. You know, the real battle is not even in the day's challenge. The real battle is in, do you open the challenge in the morning?

• 14:35Ryan Holiday?

  I read this great book by Twyla Tharp. She's this choreographer and dancer. And she talks about her morning routine. And she says, you might think the win for me is like getting to the gym, to the studio, and doing my exercises and my practice and work. She's like, really, the victory is, did I get downstairs to the street in the morning? She's like, if I get up, get my stuff on, and get in the elevator. Like, it's, we think it's like getting to the studio, but actually, there's all these much smaller battles on the way there, that once you get over those, then you start to get momentum. And then you're, it's almost like, she's like, if I get in the cab, I'm gonna show up at the studio.

• 15:20Ryan Holiday?

  Never does she get to the studio and doesn't do the work. It's, the problem is, does she make excuses before she gets out of bed? Or does she get out of excuse, does she, you know, does she make an excuse before she makes coffee? Does she, you know, before, before, before? And so, when James Clear, whose book we mentioned in day one, when he's talking about atomic habits, he's not just talking about these, and I was talking to James last night, he's not just talking about these explosive, enormous habits that, you know, change everything. He's also saying that, you know, an atom, an atom is the absolute smallest thing. And he's talking, so what he's really talking about is the smallest, smallest thing.

• 16:05Ryan Holiday?

  And so, if I could sort of leave with one thing, it's just, you know, just open, just open the email. You don't, you don't have to do all, don't say, well, I don't know if I want to do that one. Just, just promise yourself you'll open the email every day for 21 days. You can decide you don't like the challenge when you get there, or you can tweak it, or you can do it some other way. The main thing, though, is just open the challenge. That's really what we're talking about. Just open the challenge. And I, look, I would encourage you to try. It can be easy, even me, like, I try to do, I do the challenge every day, even though I wrote them. But, but what I try to think about is like, it's not enough to just, like, I could have got day one and gone, okay.

• 16:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, what am I hopeful about? No, like really sit down with a piece of paper and follow the instructions. Like really do it. We have a day that's coming that you'll see is about putting something up in your house. Don't be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. And, and do your own sort of smaller. I, I would urge you to really put yourself out there to really try to really do it. We, we think these through for a reason and we put a lot of thought and energy in them. So, um, if you can think about that, that would be great. Um, the, uh, they're supposed to be uncomfortable. They're supposed to be a little bit weird. Some of them might even feel a little bit cheesy. Um, like I have, uh, I have right here. Um, I can't really show you, but I have an index card from one of the previous challenges

• 17:33Ryan Holiday?

  where you had to write epithets to yourself, like sort of little reminders about sort of the virtues that you, uh, that you want to embody. This is something that comes from Marcus Aurelius. And, and it felt a little weird writing that down. And sometimes people have come into my office and said, what is that? But, you know, I have looked at this card, you know, hundreds and hundreds of times in the two years since it's been taped to my monitor. And it really has made a big difference. And if I had just kind of phoned it in and said, oh, okay, I get the point of today's email, just sort of skimmed it, um, I don't think I would have gotten those benefits. So, uh, that's, uh, that's sort of all I had as a kickoff. Uh, I don't, I don't, you, you guys are going to hear enough from me, uh, just sort

• 18:17Ryan Holiday?

  of talking at you over, uh, the next 21 days. So I thought we could maybe do questions or people could, could share.

• 18:29Ryan Holiday?

  Someone asked my favorite copy of meditations. All right, so this is my favorite copy of meditations. Uh, this is the Gregory Hayes translation for the Modern Library. Uh, you can see that here. Um, there's a newer version. I don't know what it looks, I don't know where it is. There's a, there's a new version of the same book that's got a, a sort of a black cover with like, oh, there it is, with a bird on it. Uh, Robert Hiro.

• 18:58Ryan Holiday?

  So you can see it here. Robert has it. Anyways, I like the Gregory Hayes translation. I think it's the best one. It's, it's, I think, the most lyrical and readable. It's just, it's just great. The tricky thing about it, especially if you're international, is Amazon sort of sometimes lumps together some of the more mediocre translations. So just be really clear you're getting that one. There is a hardcover version of the Hayes translation, but just make sure you get that one if you're looking. And I don't think there's an audiobook. So if you're trying to buy the audiobook, it's not great.

• 19:37Ryan Holiday?

  All right. What Maxine is saying, what strategy would you suggest to avoid falling off a habit again? From, we have another challenge that we do called the habit challenge. And if you're a Daily Stoke Life member, you get that for free. But one of the things we found when we were researching the habit challenge is that it's, it's about the number of times that you do it in a short period. So it's, I think the research is it takes about 20, 20 to 21 days for a habit to take root. So it, I, it, this seems somewhat unsexy, but I think it's really about white knuckling it for a set period of time. So don't, so don't think about it. I have to do this forever. Think about it more like, look, I gotta do

• 20:21Ryan Holiday?

  this for three weeks and create some sort of system or habit to do it for three weeks. We used to use an app called SPAR and then it just, it, it, it just got a little tricky as, as the challenges got bigger and bigger to coordinate with everyone. But there's an app called SPAR that I like. Just SPAR with an exclamation point. And what it sort of does is, is you like, you commit with like a group of people. So like, let's say you, you all wanted to do journaling and that was a habit you backslid on, or you, you wanted to floss. I did a floss one a couple of years ago. And, and what you do on there is there's a pot, you have to check in with the challenge each day. And if it doesn't, if you miss a challenge, it charges you whatever the agreed upon amount is. And then at the

• 21:05Ryan Holiday?

  end, the winners who make it all the way through.

• 21:10Ryan Holiday?

  They split the pot. So it's, it can kind of create some accountability, but then also like community. And then there's also some rewards. So I like that as well.

• 21:22Ryan Holiday?

  Chris is saying, what have we learned from previous year's challenges that we make sure? Well, thanks for doing this for the first time, Chris. And we're going to keep doing them every year. So I hope to see you next year as well. I think one of the things we found is that the more specific the challenge is, the more people get out of it. So like, again, with day one, instead of it being like, you know, think about all that's made you hopeful. It's like, write it down. So, so we found that the more literal it is, like it, it's actually something you have to do and that thing has to be challenging. The more it is. And, and, and so we've come up with some fun ones like, we did one, I don't know if it was last year, the year before, but

• 22:08Ryan Holiday?

  it to, to practice stillness, we did one where you had to count to a thousand in one, in one setting. Which was a, which was a strange, a strange thing. I'd never counted to a thousand before. I don't know whatever the highest number I've counted to was. But to really just sit and count to a thousand was different than say, like be still for 20 minutes. Like to go, okay, no, you have to count to a thousand. And, and that, that sort of created a physical sensation. And, and, and a deliberateness to it. That was, that was really great. That I enjoyed.

• 22:45Ryan Holiday?

  Someone is asking about the Slack channel. Yeah, there's just a Slack channel that, that, and you can join it's linked at the bottom of the email. And maybe Billy, do you want to post it here in the chat for everyone in case they don't have it? But it's, it's just a way to discuss each day's challenge and everyone sort of shares how they're, how they're doing. It's by no means mandatory. And if you have technical troubles, like, don't worry about it. We're trying to find a, a, a solution that does all this. You don't have to use like Zoom and Slack and email. But, but, but have not found a great solution so far. Hi Laura, you want to go?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hi Ryan. Hi everybody. How do you ensure that you find time for, you know, to relax, have a little fun, all while staying true to your own stoicism?

• 23:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily think of those two things as being in conflict with each other. You know, I think when we talk about this stuff of like memento mori and the shortness of life, to me, it's about designing a life that doesn't, you know, make you a machine. And it's creating sort of a balanced life. I do think the Epicureans, you know, talk about this a bit more prominently than the Stoics. You get the sense that maybe Marcus Aurelius was struggling with the exact question you have. But Seneca talks about how the mind has to be given over to relaxation. He talks about hobbies. He talks about taking long walks.

• 24:17Ryan Holiday?

  So for me, it's less about like, how do I make time? And more about how do I build my life around the idea that all these things are equally important? So, you know, instead of, you know, the, instead of like having a life that is so stressful and difficult that you want to take vacations, I try to maybe try to design my life or my days that so these things are a bit more baked in there. And I think, you know, the pandemic has been a good reminder of the importance of that for people. And I think in some ways, it's been a sort of an enormous lifestyle experiment that we're all trying to do together when we're, when certain things aren't possible anymore or just sort of happening differently.

• 25:00Ryan Holiday?

  So I would think about it less as like, okay, I'm going to carve out time and more about, I'm going to actually design my life around those things. I had, it hasn't come out yet, but I think next week, our podcast guest is Cal Newport. I had Cal on and he has this new planner. It's like a time blocking planner. And he was talking about the importance of time blocking, which might be helpful to the question that you have and worth checking out.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 25:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, great question. Anyone else have a question they want to ask instead of, all right, let's do this.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  I think I saw Casper had one.

• 25:43Ryan Holiday?

  I'm gonna do Jerry here. Jerry, you wanna unmute yourself? Can you do that? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. So Jerry's asking, how do you work on habits? Do you, do you sort of do it one at a time? Do you work on them all at the same time? I, I am a big believer in sort of like creating a list, crossing things off the list as you go. So I do tend to, to, to be working on, yeah, sort of one area of improvement at a time. Like, and I think New Year's is a great time to do that, where like, okay, these are the big things that I'm working on all at once. These are the, these are the ones that I'm starting on. Just as a preview, like, we have, we have one coming up that's in, in, in this challenge. It's gonna be about an evening routine.

• 26:27Ryan Holiday?

  So I've spent a lot of time talking and writing about morning routines. And so that's, that's at a place where I'm really comfortable and good with it. So I, it's something my wife and I were talking about. I was like, okay, let's, let's, let's sort of make deliberate focus on improving evening routines. And let's get that set. And then who knows, maybe at the evening, we'll get that done this year. And then it, maybe the morning routine will have problems again, or maybe, I don't know, I don't know what you adjust after, after evening routines. But the point is, I like to focus on one thing at a time and then, and then focus on the next one. But that, but that's a great question. I think if you, it, it can almost be a form of paralysis to try to do a million things at one time.

• 27:11Ryan Holiday?

  And, and then, then you're really discouraged that you're not making progress. So I do try to focus on one thing at a time.

• 27:19Ryan Holiday?

  Derek is saying that he started the German version of Daily Stoic in 2017, and he's read it all these days in a row. That's awesome. Yeah, it's cool. I know the Daily Stoic is in a bunch of different languages. I've probably only seen three or four. But, but yeah, that, that's really awesome. I appreciate that. Who wants to do, who wants to do a question? Anyone got anything?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I have two questions, if that's fine.

• 27:46Ryan Holiday?

  Go for it.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  First one is basically, how do you incorporate stillness and stoicism? Because I'm a student right now, in terms of procrastination. And the second one is, I just finished reading Kalu Newworth's book, Digital Minimalism. And I just wanted to ask if you've tried his digital declutter? And what are your thoughts on it?

• 28:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, great question. So I think one of the things about procrastination is that it can feel like, it can feel like, hey, I just don't want to do that right now. I'm enjoying what I'm doing. But really, what you're doing is you're just putting the chaos off to the future. Like, you know, it feels like you're living your ideal life. And then, and then suddenly, you know, you've got to pull a bunch of all-nighters or something. Or then you've got this anxiety or dread or worry. So to me, one of the, one of the benefits of having systems and good habits and not putting things off is that I feel good, I feel good, as good as I can, sort of most of the time. Like, I'm feeling, I like to sort of have that even keel where I'm not worried, I'm

• 28:54Ryan Holiday?

  not putting things off, but I'm also not just sort of chilling out. I just sort of like to have, to me, the result of good, good systems is a certain amount of stillness and relaxation. So I think, like, I just like to tackle stuff when I get it. I like to tackle it a little bit every day. I don't do, I don't do a lot of sprints. You know, I don't do a lot of like, okay, I've got to roll up my sleeves and really get serious about this because I've been putting it off for weeks and weeks. I like to just be chipping away at it all the time. So, for instance, I just finished my next book in December. I went into my publisher and I'm already starting to think about the next one. Because what I don't want to do is put it off, put it off.

• 29:40Ryan Holiday?

  There is a certain amount of discomfort doing the book, so you can want to put them off, but I don't want to put it off. I want to go right into the next one. So I'm just sort of always in that, in that right headspace. I love Cal's stuff. Brass Check, which is my company, did the marketing on digital minimalism. So I think it's a great book and he's a great guy. Cal's, I think, relationship with technology is, I would just describe it as more severe than mine. You know, he's like, uses a flip phone and stuff. I have, let's say, a more engaged relationship with technology, but I have a set of sort of bounds. I think when people hear minimalism, they

• 30:23Ryan Holiday?

  think like the minimal amount, period. I think he's more talking about like, what's the minimal amount for you? What's the sort of minimum effective dose for you? So I think it's just, it's sort of, there's some relativity there. Like, what is the best relationship for you to have with these devices or systems that keeps you happy? The sort of test I like to go is like, am I using the tool or is the tool using me? And thinking about it that way is, helps me create some balance. And we have a video coming about this on the David Stokoe YouTube channel, so stay tuned for that. And then actually, Billy, what day is the phone-free day in the challenge? Do you remember?

• 31:09Ryan Holiday?

  That is...

• 31:13Ryan Holiday?

  Is it tomorrow?

• 31:15Ryan Holiday?

  No, it comes... Yeah, it is day three. Yep. So Darren, get ready. We actually have a challenge about this tomorrow. Great, thanks. Cool.

• 31:29Ryan Holiday?

  Someone said, "I started reading different translations of meditations and really liked it." Oh, thanks, Dirk. Yeah, this is something I've been working on too. And we had a day about this in an earlier challenge where we talked about rereading. So...

• 31:44Ryan Holiday?

  Obviously, different phases in your life. Sometimes you're like, I gotta read all this stuff because I know nothing about it. Then you sort of build up some familiarity and knowledge and then it creates the opportunity to do some rereading. And one of the things I've been doing is, Robert, I'll get to you in a sec. I've been doing some rereading of classic books and each time I'm doing a different translation. Unfortunately, I don't speak really any other languages. I speak a bit of Spanish, but not much, certainly not enough to read in Spanish. But so reading different translators of the same text, it's still in English, also gives you a different perspective and you realize just how much room for interpretation and explanation there is in these texts.

• 32:29Ryan Holiday?

  So I definitely second the advice of reading in different languages or translations. Maxime is saying, when will I announce my next book? I don't know when I'm going to announce it. Actually, we have like sort of a secret sort of fun side project book that'll come out probably in March, which I won't tell you anything about. And then I have my next sort of big book that will be coming probably in the fall of 2021. Although it sort of remains to be seen, it's still in the finishing stages. So that's a great one. Where are you, Robert? Robert, you want to go? What do you got? You're still muted. There you go.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Just to make the point, I was exposed to Stoicism back in the early 60s.

• 33:18Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Turned me off.

• 33:21Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Turned me off. This is not for me. And then again, in the late 70s, my grandfather-in-law had three volumes of Meditations. Didn't, took a shot at it, no. And then again, another translation and it just did not feel good to me. Then I somehow came across you, wound up getting this, this is it. This is a good translator. This makes sense and it's pieces that we can easily integrate into our lives.

• 34:13Ryan Holiday?

  For the last two years, we've been doing this thing that we call the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It's 21 actionable challenges, one per day, built around the best Stoic wisdom, but for what? How to be better in the new year. This is the time when we start to think about what we're going to do next, where all the time went, what we wish had gone differently or better, how we're still struggling with this or that, how we'd like to stop doing this or that. And that's what the New Year, New You Challenge is all about. It's my favorite thing that we do, and it's three weeks of actionable challenges presented in one email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. It should help

• 34:55Ryan Holiday?

  you snap out of this trance we've all found ourselves in and help make 2022 your best year yet, no matter what's happening in the world around you. Go to dailystoic.com/challenge to join us. I'd love to have you. I'm challenging you to join me. I can't wait to see you. dailystoic.com/challenge.

• 35:17Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's, that's well said.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  I'm well spent.

• 35:19Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I love hearing that, Robert. Thank you. An honor to have turned you on to the right translation. I have a video coming out about this as well that I was working on. I think one of the, one of the problems for people who haven't read things in multiple translations, to go to the other question earlier, is that it can be hard to realize just how much power the translator has. So like, when you read a translation from the 1850s, you are not reading a translation of Marcus Aurelius in English. You're reading a translation of Marcus Aurelius in 1850s English. And if you picked up an 1850s novel, stylistically, even if it was in English, it would be difficult to read. So even, like,

• 36:02Ryan Holiday?

  I have a translation of Meditations from like the 1700s or something like that. And it's got all these thou art and thou shall not. And it's, it's almost, it's biblical. It reads like, you know, in a very biblical way. And it's, so it's very hard to read. Obviously, Marcus, writing to himself in Greece, in, sorry, in Greek, you know, 2,000 years ago, was not using any of those phrases. Those were later inventions and colloquialisms. And so, That's just, and we went through this doing the Daily Stoic. Steve Hanselman is both my agent and my translator, was doing them. And sometimes he would come back and translate, and I'd say, Steve, that seems really dense. I don't quite get it.

• 36:47Ryan Holiday?

  And he'd just come back with a totally new translation because you realize like just how malleable it is. And I think Hayes just does an amazing job making it accessible. So if you've tried to read meditations and you've struggled, it may just be the translation. Or maybe you didn't like Hayes. Go pick up one of the other ones. I'm not saying it's the only one that works. But what I hear from people all the time, they grab like the free translation on the internet and they're trying to save some money. And it ends up, you know, being sort of a penny wise, a pound foolish because they don't get the benefit of the book. Anyone else have a question?

• 37:32Ryan Holiday?

  We'll keep doing this. Let's do Adam here. I'll unmute you. You gotta unmute yourself, Adam. There you go.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  Fantastic. Lives of the Stoics. I thought it was a fantastic book and gave me great perspective on how many sort of philosophers, Stoics there were and sort of how they trained and taught one another. But what I'm struggling with is, maybe it's the, you know, what we were just talking about, translators is all of the writings or the storytelling from generation to generation, and then I guess now translator to translator. I see it as a big spider web of opinions. And I'm struggling with how do I define or distill all of that and think of, okay, this

• 38:24Speaker 04

  guy's opinion of Marcus's meditations, and there's this guy's opinions, and then there's this guy's opinion. Do you have a framework or a methodology that could help me out?

• 38:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great question and great observation. Unfortunately, unlike, say, Christianity, it's not like, you know, in the history of Christianity, there are these sort of committees and councils that would get together and they'd be like, "Look, how many books are there going to be in the Bible? And what's our view on this or that?" And these sort of committees of bishops would get together and, and make decisions that we now sort of take for granted when you hear about them, or sort of, they seem simple, but, but it could have easily gone a different direction, right? There was none of that in Stoicism. And not only was there none of that in Stoicism, there wasn't even like, "Here are the Ten Commandments, and here are the views." And we have to also realize, this is the really tricky thing that I, that, that we

• 39:18Ryan Holiday?

  discovered as we were writing Lives of the Stoics, is just wrapping your head around how many, how many or how much of the Stoic texts were lost. You're like, "Xeno was this prolific writer, and like, 10 sentences survive," you know? Or Chrysippus was this very prominent writer, and like, "A poem survives." We have almost nothing. And, and, and even Marcus Aurelius, who, who sort of has the most complete text, was, was writing to himself. He wasn't saying like, "Here's the definition of Stoicism." He was, he was really just writing about what he needed.

• 40:02Ryan Holiday?

  So even when we read Meditations, we should realize that this isn't, this isn't the Bible of Stoicism. This is Marcus Aurelius's notes on, on Stoicism, based on what he was most interested in or needed the most. There is a couple, let me see, there's an interesting book by, that was published of Musonius Rufus recently, and it's called That, That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic. And it's this little interesting book, I read it, so every time I read a book and then I do the notes I wrote, I write down when I read it. So I read this in March of 2020.

• 40:44Ryan Holiday?

  But he sort of has some really good lectures on Stoicism. He sort of, he does, he is trying to define the stuff. And Musonius Rufus was Epictetus's teacher. So you might like that book, which was not really in print before. And then the other tricky one, he's a character in Lives of the Stoics. I talk about Arius Didymus. And he was the advisor to the Emperor Octavian slash Augustus. He wrote a, there's this sort of collection of his writings called, I think, Stoic Ethics by Arius Didymus. And it's probably the least practical, but it does feel the most sort of definitive.

• 41:28Ryan Holiday?

  Like, he's really trying to, he's like defining terms and it's not super. I won't say either of these books are like riveting self-help, but it might go to your point about like sort of really trying to get to some first principles.

• 41:46Ryan Holiday?

  Connor is asking, was there a Stoic in particular that I was impressed by that you started to research more, one I didn't know about? So, yes.

• 41:58Ryan Holiday?

  When we set out to do the book, we sort of agreed on like who the main characters would be. And a lot of them were obvious, right? You know, you're gonna have Marcus Aurelius, you're gonna have Zeno, you're gonna have Cleianthe's, you're gonna have Cato, so on and so forth. But when I had, one of my favorite books, and I'm forgetting the author's name, let me just look it up. What's it called?

• 42:21Ryan Holiday?

  Before the Storm. Oh, so I interviewed for the podcast, no, no, not for the podcast. This is a written interview. But I interviewed this guy, Mike Duncan, who wrote a great book called The Storm Before the Storm, which is a history of the 100 years of Rome before Julius Caesar overthrew the Republic. And I was talking to him about what Stoics, you know, he was interested in. And he mentioned this guy, Rutilius Rufus, who I'd seen mentioned. In some of Seneca's writings, but I really knew nothing about him. And Steve, who did a lot of the groundwork on Lives of the Stoics, and my job was to sort of write the stories. I said, Steve, I'd love for you to find everything we possibly can about Rutilius Rufus.

• 43:05Ryan Holiday?

  And he said, you know, there's really like nothing about him. You know, maybe this will fill like a few paragraphs. But we managed to find so much stuff on him that he ended up getting his own chapter. And it's actually one of my favorite chapters in the books. He's this guy, for people who haven't read Lives of the Stoics. Rutilius Rufus was this, was a governor. He's a Stoic philosopher. He's a governor of this Roman province. And he's brought up on false charges for corruption. Actually, he wasn't corrupt. He was brought up, it was sort of a Trumpian thing where he sort of accused, his enemies accused him of exactly the thing he's, that they are guilty of. And anyway, so he's brought up on these false charges and he ends up being exiled.

• 43:49Ryan Holiday?

  But he's allowed to choose where he wants to be exiled. And he chooses the country that he was chosen of, that he was fraudulently accused of defrauding. And they, of course, welcomed him with open arms because he was a very honest guy. So it's just a fascinating story and I think really illustrates like, you know, a Stoic sort of struggling in the real world. Someone said, I missed a question above. Oh, someone is asking how to introduce Stoics to a young person. I guess the question is how young they are. One of the things I'm thinking about is, you know, like how to talk about it with kids.

• 44:30Ryan Holiday?

  So I'm in the middle of working on a book about that, which I'm excited to show you guys soon. As far as teenagers or anything older than that, honestly, I would just introduce them to the originals. I think one of the ways, one of the things we try to do with the podcast and the YouTube videos and Instagram is to make it as accessible as possible. If you're talking about a 15 year old, just think, you know, 500 years ago, they would have been not just learning the Stoics, but learning The Stoics in the original Greek and Latin. George Washington was introduced, you know, to the Stoics at sixteen years old. I, one of the only founding fathers not to read the Stoics in the original language.

• 45:14Ryan Holiday?

  The point being, I don't think we need to baby kids when they, when they come to these books. I wish someone had introduced me to the, to the Stoics earlier. And I think I would have got a lot out of it. Let's do a couple more over Zoom. If people have, have questions, just sort of wave your hand and I'll, I'll, I'll catch you, can.

• 45:32Speaker 05

  Thanks. My question, if I can form it right, amor fati, the love of fate. I am trying to figure out what filter or what system to use.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Where you read something and it does cause a little bit of righteous anger. And instead of truly loving it, you want to fight it and stand up against it.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  So that's my struggle.

• 46:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a tricky part of this. I don't, I think what the Stoics would say is when they're saying, um, there's nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. This is Shakespeare, obviously, but when they're saying there's no good or bad. I don't think they're saying there's no such thing as moral and immoral. There's that there's no such thing as right and wrong. Of course they are, but a core Stoic virtue is the virtue of justice. I think what the Stoics are trying to say is that anger as far as enforcing or seeking out justice is bad fuel. I mean, I think I, I, I recommended the, the Taylor Branch series on, on Martin Luther King.

• 46:49Ryan Holiday?

  The, what's so powerful about Martin Luther King and, and the movement that he manages to create is that he does it from a place of love rather than a place of anger. So that, that is not to say that he was passive and did not want to affect change. I mean, his driving mission is to create transformative. Affirmative political and social change. But he's realizing that anger is a destructive emotion. And in fact, a counterproductive emotion. He sees that it's actually his opponents who are driven from anger and fear. But he wants to come to it from a place of love. Seneca writes a whole essay called On Anger that I think you would really like.

• 47:35Ryan Holiday?

  There's a translation by Penguin, no, by Princeton University Press that James Rahm did that you can check out. And I think it's called How to Keep Your Cool. And it's just, it's selections from that essay and some other places that Seneca talks about anger. But Seneca talks about anger a lot. He says like, look, even if someone murdered your father, he said, you should get vengeance. Just don't get vengeance. He says, you should get vengeance and justice, just don't do it out of anger. So this idea that the Stoics are passive, that a mor phati means you just accept everything is not quite right. It's that you, you accept it as sort of fuel or an experience that has occurred in your life.

• 48:19Ryan Holiday?

  But if you have the opportunity to affect change or to be made better for what has happened, that's where you go towards it. Not anger, bitterness, resentment, frustration. I mean, look, when you look at what's happening in the world, it's very easy to get angry. But I would, I would argue that anger is more of the problem than the solution. And so that's, that's maybe where I think about it. Someone's asking habits that I've had to incorporate in my life. I don't know if I can think of like the hardest habit that I've, that I've had to incorporate in my life. But I would say to go to Tina's question about anger, I think that's the thing that, that a lot of people struggle with.

• 48:58Ryan Holiday?

  We've said this before, just because you don't have an anger problem, doesn't mean anger is not a problem for you. I don't think there's really anyone who finds that anger makes things better in their life. Very, very rarely have I ever lost my temper. And I thought, oh, I'm so glad I did that. It made things much better. And yet I lose my temper all the time. And, and I think when you see Marx really is talking about anger and temper in, and in meditations, it's because he too is struggling with that exact thing. And so. So anyways, I would definitely check that. We have a challenge on this. You can check out. So anger is one, and then I would say patience is the other. Someone's asking,

• 49:43Ryan Holiday?

  does the love aspect of a morfati contradict the prince? Darren, I'm not sure. You want to explain? What do you mean?

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I've been, I've been reading on Machiavelli's philosophy, and he was saying that it's better to be hated than, it's better to be feared than to be loved in terms of the political structure. And you mentioned something about Martin Luther King, that his enemies, they were structured by fear, and his was about love. So.

• 50:16Ryan Holiday?

  I see what you're saying.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Yes, a small breakthrough about.

• 50:20Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. I think they're a little bit related. We're talking about a morfati. We mean sort of this is an individual sort of way that you're going through the world. Sure. Are there, are there leadership styles that, that, you know, effectively rely on intimidation? Sure. And were there, in Lives of the Stoics, I tell a story of Arius Didymus advising the Emperor Augustus to eliminate one of his rivals by sort of violent force, which is a very Machiavellian move. You know, whether something is an effective power tactic, and whether something is a good strategy in your life, and whether it is, will result

• 51:00Ryan Holiday?

  in happiness and contentment and being a good person, these are very different things. But I would say Martin Luther King's strategy of sort of loving his enemies, of not, of using nonviolence, ironically created incredible, almost irrational fear in his opponents. And part of what was so effective about his nonviolent strategy is that it, but he would go on these marches, and it would create these profound overreactions, these sort of violent televised overreactions from segregationists, that although would have

• 51:39Ryan Holiday?

  been brutal to have endured, were ultimately sowing the seeds of the destruction of racism, structural racism in that sense. So.

• 51:50Ryan Holiday?

  The people in the South were petrified of Martin Luther King. They thought he was a communist. They thought he was an agitator. They thought he was, you know, trying to destroy things. They were very much afraid of him. So I don't necessarily also think the two things are in contradiction in that sense. Should we do one, maybe one more? Billy, is there, is there anything you saw on Slack or?

• 52:14Speaker 02

  I saw Adam's hand go up there.

• 52:16Ryan Holiday?

  All right, let's do that. All right, Adam, you got the last one.

• 52:20Speaker 04

  All right, it might be kind of like what we're doing today, but I'm trying to picture, as I read Lives of the Stoics and your other writings, I, in my mind's eye, am picturing the steps with the teacher and the students sitting amongst them. And that is the classroom every day. And that classroom might be taught by a different Stoic leader or another talking head with a louder voice. From your perspective, is that the right vision? That, well, what is your vision? That's kind of my vision, what I put together. What was, what was life like with all these Stoics talking to one another?

• 52:56Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I was actually just, so I do this other email every day for, for any of the parents on the chat. I do an email every day for a site I have called Daily Dad. So I do Daily Stoic every day. I also do Daily Dad, which is for parents. It's not just for dads, but that's what it's called. And anyways, I was writing about this today. The, the, the, the Greek word for school, the root scola, is, it just means leisure. And, and I was, I was writing about how different that I, like, so school, leisure, those are not synonyms in the modern world. They're like antonyms, right? School is this place you go. You have to carry your backpack, have to get up early. It's like an exhausting grind and nobody likes it.

• 53:39Ryan Holiday?

  So the idea of school and leisure, this, this more sort of leisurely, self-directed, sort of reflection-based, almost voluntary form of, of, of education, I found to be really interesting and I think closer to the model. And look, the fact that all of us are here on a Saturday, talk, you know, Saturday afternoon at the beginning of the year, when, you know, maybe everyone's going back to work on Monday. And here we are talking about ancient philosophy. Because we're interested in it. To me, I love that. That is a much closer, you know, that's much closer to the idea of scola or leisure. And I think that's like, it's, it's, it's interesting. It's like philosophy is this really important thing.

• 54:23Ryan Holiday?

  And it's urgent, has all these benefits. And at the same time, if you're forcing it, if you're, if you're seeing it as a job or an occupation or a burden, you're probably doing it wrong and you're probably not going to sustain it over your life.

• 54:36Ryan Holiday?

  There's a story, I don't remember if it's in Lives of the Stoics, but there's this story, Marcus Aurelius is an old man and he's, he's seen leaving the palace. And his friend comes up to him and says, where are you going? And he says, I am off to see Sextus the philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know. And so here you have the most powerful man in the world using his leisure time to go learn. And actually, as it happens, Sextus is Plutarch's grandson, which, which is a wonderful little coincidence. But here you have one of the wisest, most powerful men in the world, men in the world, going to learn even as an old man. To me, that's sort of my vision of education is good. And it, and the fact that he's saying, I'm going to learn that which I do not yet know, is just beautiful. I love that so much.

• 55:20Ryan Holiday?

  And yeah, that's, that's maybe a great place to stop. Look, guys, this is so cool. I'm, if, if everyone wants to put together questions or thoughts for next go around, please do, please keep trying, stick with it. Wishing everyone a great new year. This is awesome and we will, we will talk very soon. Be well, everyone. Have a good Saturday. Demand more of yourself in 2022. And one of the ways you can do that is by joining us in the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. All you have to do is go to dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up. Remember, Daily Stoic Life members get this challenge and all our challenges for free. But sign up seriously. Think about what one positive change,

• 56:03Ryan Holiday?

  one good new habit is worth to you. Think about what could be possible if you handed yourself over to a little bit of a program. We all pushed ourselves together. That's what we're going to do in the challenge. I'm going to be doing it. I do the challenges, all of them alongside. I'm looking forward to connecting with everyone in the Discord challenge, all the other bonuses. Anyways, check it out. New year, new you. The Daily Stoic Challenge. Sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge.