Are You Obsessed With Living? | Ask DS

There is a morbid theme running through the music of Johnny Cash. His deep, haunting voice is rarely far from a lyric about death or murder or loss or grief. He has songs about soldiers killed in Vietnam, songs about dying cowboys on the streets of Laredo, about tragic rifle accidents, songs about salvation and damnation, songs about tragedy and war. Famously, he performed almost his entire career dressed in black—like he was on his way to a funeral. The memento mori medallion , memento mori signet ring And the memento mori pendant, All these were created to remind us that we must live NOW, while there is still time.--And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan speaks and answers questions at Sutter Health University on Stillness is the Key, Challenging people to see what's important, and Creating habits, rituals, and more stoic wisdom to 4,200 healthcare leaders. ⏳ You can view our entire Memento Mori Collection at dailystoic.com/mm✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

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

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Be obsessed with living. There is a morbid theme running through the music of Johnny Cash. His deep haunting voice is rarely far from a lyric about death, or murder, or loss, or grief. He has songs about soldiers killed in Vietnam, songs about dying cowboys on the streets of Laredo, about tragic rifle accidents, songs about salvation and damnation, songs about tragedy and war. Famously, he performed almost his entire career dressed in black, like he was on his way to a funeral. So it's not a stretch to think he might have been a bit preoccupied with the idea of mortality. In an interview with Neil Strauss, Cash explained that this was actually the wrong way to see it.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  He said, "I am not obsessed with death. I am obsessed with living. The battle against the dark one and the clinging to the right one is what my life is about. In 88, when I had a bypass surgery, I was as close to death as you could get. The doctors were saying they were losing me. I was going, and there was a wonderful light that I was going into. It was awesome, indescribable, beauty and peace, love and joy. And then, all of a sudden, there I was again, all in pain and awake. I was so disappointed. But when I realized a day or so later what point I had been to, I started thanking God for life and thinking only of life." There is a similar tendency to think that the Stoics were obsessed with death,

• 2:09Speaker 01

  particularly Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. Seneca talks so much about death that there is a recently published collection of his writings on the topic actually titled "How to Die." But if they were given a similar chance to comment like Cash did about their fixation with death, we might expect a similar response. They weren't obsessed with dying, but with living. They wanted to get the most out of every minute of this uncertain existence we have all been given. It happens that meditating on our mortality is a powerful way to do that. Memento Mori is an exercise that makes sure we are awake, grateful, and at peace. It prepares us for the inevitability of what is to come while allowing us to seize every

• 2:54Speaker 01

  second between now and then. That might seem counterintuitive, but it actually makes perfect sense. If you know death is inevitable and that there is nothing you can do about it, and you have no idea what will come, then what is the alternative? Or as Andy says to his friend Red in The Shawshank Redemption, when they're talking about what they'd do if they ever got out, "I guess it comes down to a simple choice: get busy living or get busy dying." Which is why we should start this morning with gratitude and urgency, with appreciation and awareness. How much time any of us have is not up to us, but what we do with that time, that's our call, that's our song to sing. And I hope you'll

• 3:37Speaker 01

  check out some of the products we have in the Daily Stoic store. You can see the Memento Mori medallion. It's one I carry with me every day. It's got a quote from Marcus Aurelius on the back. It says, "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think." And on the front, there's a skull, and a flower, and an hourglass, the sort of reminders of the fleetingness of our own existence. And I hope you'll check those out. We have a poster version. There's even a necklace version. Just go to dailystoic.com/store.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  I came to a conference when I was in high school. Some series of political talks. And I stood in the back of that room and wrote an article about it for my high school newspaper. And it just hit me while I walked in here this morning that I had been here before. So this is very, very cool for me.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  That's awesome. That's awesome. So tell me, obviously, you've spent a lot of time studying technology and read a lot of books. I mean, tell us, like, how did this whole journey start? Like, what was the trigger? Like, what drove this?

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I went to UC Riverside in Southern California. And I was at a conference, a much smaller one than this. But I was also covering it at that point for the college newspaper. And I went up to the speaker after and I asked if they had any book recommendations. And he turned me on to the Stoics. I was taking philosophy classes in college, but the Stoics were just so different and so much more practical and accessible. I just remember reading it in my college apartment going, "This is the advice that I was looking for." And again, we tend to think of philosophy as abstract or theoretical, these big questions. You know, "How do we know we're not living in a computer simulation?" or something like that. But what Marcus Aurelius was doing was living in times like the ones we are now.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  He's trying to manage stress. He's trying to manage difficult children and responsibilities. And like we're all trying to do. And I think if we can remember that the ancient world was not that different to the one we're in now, what we can take from them is advice about really practical and unfortunately timeless problems. And I think that's just what struck me. And so I got the recommendation. I read it. That's the key thing. People go, "Oh, I bought it." You know, you have to read the book. And then I just went down the rabbit hole from there.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  So, you know, going into your comment, so it was like, well, it's different today.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  You know, it's, we're busier. We've got technology. How do you respond to that? How do you view that?

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, it's definitely busier. But in the 16th century, Blaise Pascal, a fan of the Stoics, he says, "All of humanity's problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, he didn't have an iPhone or a computer, or, you know, he couldn't hop on a Southwest flight to anywhere he wanted, right? And even then, he was finding that it's hard to be still. It's hard to focus. There's so much going on. So, yes, so much has changed. You know, we don't bleed people anymore. You know, they believed that incense in Marcus's time, the one pandemic mitigation method they came on was that incense would keep the plague away. Right? So obviously, they had only the most rudimentary understanding of how any of these things work. And yet, there were still people with egos, with problems, with tempers, with fear. You know, all of the kind of human emotions that we have now that cause us distress and anxiety and frustration, you know, they had.

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  And so, lots has changed, but more things have stayed the same than have changed.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Now, you build a pretty disciplined routine. So what's your advice? Like, how do you get started? Like, you know, someone out there would, "Yeah, I do want to do that. I do have something that I like. What do I do?"

• 7:39Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. Yeah. I think if you're like, "I'm gonna script out my whole life", you're probably not gonna do it, right? But what's one thing you could start with? "Hey, I'm gonna start getting up a little bit earlier. I'm gonna journal before I go to bed, or I'm gonna read 15 pages a day." Like, pick something and start that habit and watch what happens as you begin to practice that habit consistently. I will say, I'm pretty disciplined, but one of the things I'm working on is also flexibility inside that discipline, right? Kids, obviously, they blow up your life, right? And so, you know, necessarily choosing when I wake up or what time bedtime is, or how much time I have here or there, I have had to adjust and get more.

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I would say today, I have routines, plural, as opposed to a routine. So I think it's more like, what are the practices? What are the foundational habits that for you help you get better? Or give you a little bit of peace, or focus, or, you know, help you cross things off your to-do list? I think it's more about building a portfolio of those into your life as opposed to magically, you know, having a, you know, a bulleted calendar that you never deviate from.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  And what about journaling? Like, how do you recommend people approach that? Like, are you trying to solve problems? Are you just putting down what's in your head? Like, what would your advice to somebody that's looking to journal or start that?

• 9:08Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's funny. I'll sometimes I'll talk to people to be like, "Okay, what journal should I buy? What pen should I buy? What time should I..." And it's like, just do it, right? Like, you're letting sort of perfect be the enemy of good there, right? One of the journals that I started with that was life changing for me is it's called "The One Line a Day Journal." And it's got five slots on each page, and you just write one thing about the day that you're either experiencing or that you just experienced. And I'm on like my seventh or eighth year. So I can see where I was last year at this time, and I found that to be really easy, just finding something to start with. But, um, actually for Daily Stoic, we have a journal, and it's just one Stoic prompt every day. So if you're someone who's like, "I don't know what to write about."

• 9:50Ryan Holiday?

  You know, there's journals with prompts that say, that give you a question, or give you something to meditate on, or a word to think about. I promise you, there is a way in for each person, but it's really just thinking about, how do you create some distance from you and your thoughts? How do you create a little bit of disciplined time where you're being self-reflective and self-aware? So what you're... I always say like, "I'd rather put those emotions, fears, problems on the page, instead of vomiting them on the people around me," right? The very... I'll write things down, and I'll go, "That's insane." You know, like, "What am I talking about?" Right? Or I'll write something, I'll notice that I'm writing the same thing over and over again, like, "I am tired."

• 10:32Ryan Holiday?

  You know, and it's like, "Well, I think you know the solution to that problem," right? And so, there's just, there's something special, and there's a reason that for thousands of years, human beings have been doing this. There's something about creating a distance, having a conversation with yourself, that I think is really conducive to breakthroughs, and calmness, and clarity about what you're going through.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  So if you think about your books, like, what's your favorite? So if someone's gonna read one, I told you, you know, Kirk's book was kind of spoke to me.

• 11:03Ryan Holiday?

  That's so cool for me to hear.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  What's the one that makes you go out?

• 11:08Ryan Holiday?

  That's a good question.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Just buy them all, I know.

• 11:10Ryan Holiday?

  Well, of course, of course, that goes without saying. I don't know, I think, as an author, one of the things I have learned is that whatever you... One of the reasons you can't be focused on external results too much is that it's outside your control and it always sort of humbles and surprises you. So, the book that was hardest for me to write, that I'm most proud of, has sold the fewest copies. And then the book that I was... that was the fastest and the easiest, has sold the most copies. And you just sort of go, okay, it really has nothing to do with me here. I just gotta do my job. And sometimes it really works, sometimes it doesn't, but as long as I show up and do my best, that's the part that I control.

• 11:52Ryan Holiday?

  But I think there's something about The Daily Stoic, which I don't think had to do with me, I think it has to do with the format of visiting something day after day, and ideally coming back to it in a loop, right? Stoics talk about how we never step in the same river twice. It's like, the book is the same, but we're different, and so you never come back to the same thing. And so, The Daily Stoic has been this really cool thing, people have been reading it now for eight or plus years. The email goes out, which is free, also, I've been doing that for eight years. But I have found, because I think it would be weird if I read The Daily Stoic every day, I read a book called A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy, which was his, like, favorite quotes every day.

• 12:36Ryan Holiday?

  And so, I think there's something really special about the page-a-day format, that I would urge people, if you're talking about how do you set up a nice morning routine, what is something? Is it a calendar on your desk, or a book like The Daily Stoic? I just did this book, The Daily Dad. If you're a leadership person, there's one called The Daily Drucker, which is Leadership Advice from Daily Drucker. There's a whole genre of these books, but the idea of like, I'm gonna spend five minutes really intentionally thinking about something, learning from someone wise, or some ancient tradition, I think there's something really powerful about that medium. So I usually tell people, start there.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  So you know this book is about parenting. Maybe tell us a little bit about that, and kind of what spurred that on?

• 13:17Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's a parenting version of the page-a-day idea. Again, the idea being that... You know, the idea that you read what to expect when you're expecting, and then that'll get you through the next 40 years is probably naive. And so I found that there's something weird about parenting books as being, you read this book and then you're good, right? Because you're being told about things that you might not experience for decades from now. And so I think what I tried to do in The Daily Dad, which is also an email every day, is one piece of timeless parenting advice from people who are better at it than me that you can start the morning or the evening just thinking about.

• 14:00Ryan Holiday?

  And again, people have been parents for as long as there have been people. And some of them have been really good, some of them have not been so good. And we should learn from both of those things. And again, why are you learning by trial and error? When you could be integrating into your experience some of the wisdom of people who've come before you. That's what The Daily Dad is trying to do.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Any final thoughts or pieces of advice to this group that literally changes the state of our day? So many people are counting on them. Any advice?

• 14:35Ryan Holiday?

  You know, obviously I watched the Kings in the playoffs this year. It was incredible.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Like the beat?

• 14:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, so great.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  We've got a lot of Warrior fans here, too.

• 14:47Ryan Holiday?

  I just think it's such a great example of a franchise that struggled for a really long time. And then you make one tweak, you get a different coach in, you get maybe one extra player. Then, you know, people get like, organizations can turn around like that. Or a ceiling that you thought was unbreakable can just be shattered in a second. The converse is true, right? You remove a key player, you mess with some part of a culture, and an organization will fall apart. But I just think, you know, the Kings had the longest playoff drought in all of sports until this year. And it feels like they are back to being the team that I was with a kid.

• 15:32Ryan Holiday?

  And just, it's not like it was a complete roster overhaul. It was a series of small tweaks. And I think that's very inspiring and exciting to me. So I'm excited about the Kings.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Awesome, awesome. Ryan O'Neal.

• 15:46Ryan Holiday?

  Thank you all very much.

• 15:49Ryan Holiday?

  Thank you. Thank you.