You Must Avoid These Stains Too | How To Make The Right Decision (Even When It Will Cost You)

There are forces out there, just as tempting as power, that can cut us off from our values, from truth, from other people, from what matters. It takes work to resist them, to counteract them, and to rise above them.📖 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 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  "You must avoid these stains too. It was the battle of his life. It is the battle that every leader, indeed every person, must fight. In Meditations, Marcus really says that he was trying to escape imperialization, that is, to not be changed by the power and fame of his position. This is not an easy battle, nor is it the only one that he faced, or that we faced. There are other isations that tempt, that infect, that corrupt and change us, aren't there? Especially these days. Radicalization, polarization, dehumanization, corporatization, algorithmization.

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  There are forces out there, just as tempting as power, that can cut us off from our values, from truth, from other people, from what matters. And it takes work to resist them, to counteract them, to rise above them. The incentives they offer, the comfort or clarity that they might represent, the ease with which we can fall prey to them, this is a siren's call." We must, as Marcus really writes in Meditations, be ever vigilant in the fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make us. You have to stay kind, stay good, to avoid tribalization, to avoid reducing people to items on a spreadsheet. We have to maintain our curiosity and open-mindedness.

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  We cannot allow extremism to take hold in us. We must continue to think to ourselves to cling to our humanity, to see the good and the dignity in others, no matter what is happening in the world or acting on us through our devices. If we don't actively resist these forces, we don't just lose our way, we lose who we are.

• 2:56Ryan Holiday?

  If doing the right thing was easy, everyone would do it. That's the tricky thing about virtue, how interrelated and interdependent all the virtues are with each other. The Stoics struggled with this the way that we struggle with it today. What is the right thing? How do I do it? When do I do it? What am I willing to risk? But in today's episode, I want to talk about how we do the right thing, specifically when there are consequences, when there are dangers, when we are going to be criticized or misunderstood, when we are scared, when we're not sure we're the right person for the job.

• 3:37Ryan Holiday?

  When we think about how hard doing the right thing is, how scary it is, that feels like it's bad. Like, we wish it was easy. But again, if it was easy, if it wasn't scary, everyone would do it. And of course, courage wouldn't need to come into play. You know, if my parents had supported me dropping out of college or if everyone had said, "Yeah, you should definitely leave your job to become a writer and then you should definitely walk away from writing marketing books to write about ancient philosophy." Well, I probably wouldn't have been the only one to make some of those decisions. It's that they were scary that first off made them scarce. But it's also that they were scary that I was forced to wrestle with something. I was forced to grow. I was forced to change. I became better because it was scary and hard.

• 4:22Ryan Holiday?

  The problem is so many of us would rather die than be uncomfortable. When Seneca talks about how we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind, the reason you push yourself as an athlete, the reason you take a cold plunge, the reason you dress oddly as Cato did. Or, you know, Seneca notoriously did when he would practice poverty. It's to, it's to develop this muscle that says, I do the thing I think I should do, even though I'm scared, even though it's hard, even though there's a part of me that doesn't want to. There's a story I tell about Crassus, one of the great Roman orators, who's crippled by stage fright. We're told that he's basically thrown into convulsions.

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  He's so scared the first day he's supposed to speak in court. He has stage fright, what we would call stage fright, which is a timeless thing. My eight-year-old was performing in this little improv club that he's in and, and he wanted to get up in front of some people the other day and do it. And he was so scared. He says, I have stage fright. And I had to sit him down and go, you've seen me talk in front of thousands of people. You have to understand, I am scared every single time, but I push through that fear. And I'm less scared now than I was the first time. And one of the ways I've become less scared is by doing it and getting good at it and developing confidence, but that fear never goes away. Jerry Seinfeld has a joke about how if public speaking is the number one fear, that means

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  people would rather be in the casket at a funeral than deliver the eulogy, which of course is irrational and insane, which is another part of the Stoic practice. You have to outthink that lower part of yourself that's, well, if I do this, I could die. Actually, no, you can't die from public speaking. You can't die from embarrassment. When Seneca has this exercise of premeditatio malorum, part of that practice is to, is to defeat the overwhelming fear and anxiety that you have with logic and go, hey, what's actually the worst thing that could happen here? I could be laughed at? I've interviewed in this very studio politicians who took stands that cost them their reelection. And I go, you know, where are you now? Are you living under a bridge somewhere? And they go, no, I'm actually making more money.

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  I'm more happy and I can sleep at night. Right? So, so often what holds us back is these fears that we have that are not based on anything real. When I dropped out of college, what was so good about that was I learned that the thing I was afraid of and then what it was actually. Like weren't even on the same planet. That actually, I was so busy doing it that I didn't have time to be scared after I got over that hump, after I took that leap. And so the reason you do scary things is to develop the muscle so then you can do other scary things. And the reason you cultivate this Stoic practice of logic, of the discipline of perception, is so that you can break these scary things down and know what they're like. It's not always going to be easy. It's not always going to be fun.

• 7:15Ryan Holiday?

  There might be consequences, but it's when they are vague and ill-defined that they most overwhelm us, that they are exaggerated. You look at them up close, you break them down, you see what they are, and then you know what you do? You you push through and you do it anyway.

• 7:36Ryan Holiday?

  Part of the reason that we stand alone is that we alone have the ability to make a difference. It's hard not to read about the life of Cato the Younger and not be struck by how often he stood alone, right? He stands alone in his efforts to reform Rome's treasury, which was, at that point, drastically overspent. He stood alone against the forces that wanted to spend money that Rome didn't have. You know, there even became an expression in Rome where politicians would be asked to do things, and they said, I'm sorry, I can't, Cato won't allow it. So he became like the excuse that other politicians would use when they were not

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  disciplined, because they knew Cato was a wall against which these, you know, requests would crash. Cato stands alone in a time of electoral corruption, where elections were often bought and sold. He refused to participate. He stood alone in in how he dressed. He stood alone when he would, literally, when he would filibuster against bad laws, and the entire Senate comes to a grinding halt because he is there standing on principle. Seneca would write that that Cato stood alone against the vices of a degenerate state, he says, that was sinking to destruction beneath its very weight. And that alone, Cato stays the Fall of the republic for as long as one man's hand could hold it back.

• 9:04Ryan Holiday?

  And this isn't an accident. Cato has to cultivate this. It's important that we understand doing the right thing is going to mean standing alone. The great Manchester set of biographies on Winston Churchill, the middle volume is just titled Alone. Doing the hard right thing means you're going to be misunderstood, means you're going to be the one that's standing in the way. Means that you're going to be the one that other people's criticism, other people's energy, other people's issues are going to be directed at. But you have to be okay being alone. And Cato had cultivated this. Part of the reason that he dressed differently, I think, was he was cultivating this personality, this persona that was okay

• 9:46Ryan Holiday?

  being the odd man out. Later, politically, he's the odd man out, but culturally, he'd been the odd man out for much longer. Right? The great man of history theory is not so popular these days, but but most historical moments do come down to a singular man or woman making a decision. In Courageous Calling, I tell the story of Harry Burns, who was a politician in Tennessee, who you've probably never heard of. But women have the right to vote because of that man. He's an ordinary, he's a rather young politician in the Tennessee State Assembly. He's not a crusader. He's never really made a bold stand or a brave vote. And it looks like he's going to vote against ratifying the 19th Amendment, Tennessee being the last state.

• 10:30Ryan Holiday?

  If Tennessee ratifies it, it passes. If it doesn't, it doesn't pass. His political career, his political bosses are all aligned against him doing this. But he gets a note from his mother, who, by the way, he is the sole supporter of. Even though he's twice voted against the bill moving forward, he gets this note from his mother. She says, you know, I think you should do this. I think you should do the right thing. And on August 18th, 1920, he votes aye, which ratifies the amendment in Tennessee and triggered its passage nationwide. One guy, one vote, probably the scariest moment of his life. But he puts his prospects, his life, his career on hold and does what he thinks. Is right. At 20 seconds of courage, right?

• 11:15Ryan Holiday?

  Changes the course of American history, changes the course of world history. And, and look, it would have been easier to, to be part of the, the larger group. It would have been easy not to be on the wrong side of his colleagues and bosses. But that's not what you're elected to do. You're not elected to preserve your job. You're elected to do the right thing. And doing the right thing is going to mean standing alone. It's going to mean refusing to go along. It's going to mean insisting on standing up. It's going to mean pushing down that pit in your stomach. It's going to mean stepping away from the herd. It's going to mean getting up in front of them and saying what you truly feel and think.

• 11:58Ryan Holiday?

  Well, there was a Stoic named Chrysippus who said, if I meant to be on the side of the mob, I wouldn't have become a philosopher. What did you become? A business leader, a politician, a author? Uh, what did you do any of this for? If it's to follow and not lead. Life is about leading. Philosophy is about leading. So yeah, you're going to need to stand alone. The leader stands alone. And the Stoics understood this was hard and it was scary, but they did it anyway.

• 12:32Ryan Holiday?

  There's a, a group of Stoics that have been dubbed by historians now as the Stoic Opposition. And these were Stoics who stood up in the face of autocratic and tyrannical rulers in their time. And they were repeatedly asked to stop asking questions, right? To stop causing problems, to stop giving speeches. And this is a timeless theme throughout history. I mean, Socrates is told to do that. Cato is told to do that. You know, stop getting in the way. Stop looking behind the curtain. Stop upholding certain traditions or antiquated norms, right? You're, you're causing problems. And do you know how the Stoics, I think as a rule, respond to this?

• 13:16Ryan Holiday?

  They do it even harder, right? That Michael Scott joke, I'm going to keep doing it even harder. And the Stoics Did this in the face of criticism, of being jeered, of being sent into exile, of being offered bribes and temptations. They did it in the face of of being threatened with death and and torture, because a stoic does what they think is right, because it is right. They are not deterred by difficulties or threats. They don't go along to get along. Again, they don't mind standing alone. They don't only not mind being a thorn in the side, they look forward to being a thorn in the side if the side that they are stabbing is corrupt interests or the, you know, sort of powers at be. That's what the stoic opposition

• 14:00Ryan Holiday?

  was. They were willing to to throw themselves into the spokes, right, to fight and to resist, to insist on justice, even though they were outnumbered, even though they were relatively powerless. And and so it has to go for us. Timothy Snyder has talked about this not obeying in advance, right, about standing up, being your unique self, not being afraid of what might happen, but doing what's right and not being deterred or intimidated about potential consequences, not being bought off. It's about resisting. It's about standing on what you believe. I think often about that line from Martin Luther King, where he says, wherever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere.

• 14:42Ryan Holiday?

  He says, a man can't ride your back unless it's bent. That's what the best Stoics did, is they refused to let anyone ride their back. They refused to bend the knee. They refused to do what they were told. They did not obey in advance. They were proudly and defiantly themselves, regardless of the consequences.

• 15:05Ryan Holiday?

  One of my favorite Stoics, who is definitely part of the Stoic opposition, is named Thrasia. He's a lover of history and philosophy, and these early studies shape him into someone who just couldn't accept what Rome was in Nero's time. He felt that Rome had drifted further and further from the world that he had read about, from the Rome he believed in. And, you know, he's like Seneca. He pursues a political career. He wants- Wants to reform and improve the Senate. And he rises through the ranks, though, as Nero is not just coming to power, but then coming unhinged, descending into tyranny and murder. And most of Thrasia's peers go, I don't know. This is just what it is.

• 15:50Ryan Holiday?

  You know, they're like our politicians today. Oh, I really, I'm really concerned. I really don't like it. I object, I condemn that tweet, or I disagree with this policy. But that's about as far as their objections go. You know, when Nero murders his mother in 59 AD, a bunch of Rome's senators propose delivering honors to Nero. And this is put to a vote, which Thrasia finds so disgusting that he storms out. Today, you know, senators will avoid voting on issues so as to not put their opinion on the record. But when Thrasia does this, his objection is leaving no ambiguity. And he begins to ratchet up his open opposition to Nero.

• 16:30Ryan Holiday?

  In 63 AD, he comes to the conclusion that there can be no more change within the system. And he walks away. And in 65 AD, Nero begins to see just how dug in people like Thrasia are in opposition to him. And he goes on a elimination spree. He finds pretext to give Thrasia a death sentence. And Thrasia writes Nero directly with two questions. What are the charges? When is the trial? I think Nero was expecting a plea for mercy, expecting him to bend the knee. He just couldn't believe, we're told, in the defiant independence of a guiltless man. So Nero instead sends goons to deliver the death sentence.

• 17:14Ryan Holiday?

  And Thrasia takes them at his home with complete indifference. He says Nero can kill me, but he cannot harm me. And they cut open his veins and he bleeds out. And he, we're told that Thrasia says to Nero's aides, "You have been born into times in which it is well to fortify the spirit with examples of courage." And that's, that's what Thrasia was. You know, I think we think of the Stoics as being resigned. That's not, they were defiant. They were openly involved. In political resistance. But I think there's a parallel here with Thrasse and our current politicians. Ezra Klein was talking about the strangeness of being a Republican senator today.

• 17:53Ryan Holiday?

  He says to have gotten as far as they have, to have accumulated enough power as they have, and yet they are as scared as they are, as powerless as they are. These are the 100 most powerful people in the country. And when they disagree with the president, they keep those thoughts to themselves. They rubber stamp or vote on cabinet appointees that they find repugnant. They say things behind closed doors that they won't say in public. Thrasse is a powerful example of not doing that. He is openly defiant, openly resistant. He says what he thinks. He uses his power as a senator, although it does not end well for Thrasse.

• 18:33Ryan Holiday?

  He does create the beginning of the movement, which would lead ultimately to Nero's fall. And I think we can contrast him so vividly with Seneca, who is the one who tells himself that he's got to be in the room where it happens, that he's a mitigating influence on Nero. If Seneca wasn't there, someone worse would replace him. And yeah, this is partly true. And yet it's also hard not to see how complicit Seneca was. He writes a speech for Nero after the murder of his mother. People supported Nero because they saw Seneca supporting Nero. And at the very least, you can't say that about Thrasse. Thrasse is not ultimately successful in his resistance to Nero, not at least in the

• 19:18Ryan Holiday?

  course of his life, but he does ultimately set in motion the events that lead to Nero's fall. And most importantly, Thrasse and the other members of the Stoic opposition help define for future generations what not just good government looks like, but also our sacred obligation to resist that bad government. And that is precisely what Marcus Rilis is calling out in the opening pages of Meditations. He says how lucky he was that he encountered the stories and the example of Thrasse and Helvidius and Cato and Dion and Brutus. He says, who conceived of a- Society of equal laws governed by equality of status and of speech and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else.

• 20:01Ryan Holiday?

  And it's this very thing that inspires the founders too. So it's not just about, hey, if I do this, will I win? Hey, if I do this, will I be successful? It's about what message am I sending to the future? What message am I sending to my children? What message am I sending to those around me? And I, and I think this is essential because that's actually one of my favorite quotes from Solzhenitsyn. He says, must one point out that from ancient times to now, a decline in courage has always been considered one of the first symptoms of the end. By showing that courage is not dead, by showing that not everyone is going along with this, by showing that there are still brave men and women out there, people who insist on doing what's right, you are sending a powerful message to the people around you, to the

• 20:46Ryan Holiday?

  next generation, and you are passing a torch. And hopefully, someone else will pass that torch and eventually, inevitably, we will get a little bit closer to where we need to go. I've done some scary things in my life. I've made some hard decisions in my life. I've also chickened out at times in my life. I've also not done the right thing at times in my life. The afterword of Courage is Calling, I tell this story about this thing I was asked to do at American Apparel when I was the director of marketing. And it was plainly illegal and immoral. And the boss wanted me to do it. And I didn't do it. I knew it was wrong, but I also didn't quit on the spot. I didn't call up the press about it. I also knew that he just asked someone else to do it instead. Now, this was scary.

• 21:31Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I knew that by saying no, I was potentially risking my job. But in retrospect, it's striking to me that I wanted to keep a job that I was being asked to do something like that. I had my reasons at the time, and yet, those reasons seem so silly. They, they didn't age well. The reasons we have don't age well. The reasons I didn't speak up, the reasons I wasn't more forceful about it, the, the reason I rationalized it. In retrospect, they make no sense. They just look like cowardice. Your reasons won't age well.

• 22:05Ryan Holiday?

  And it makes even less sense to me because I was gonna quit that job a few months later to be a writer, to do the same scary thing that I didn't want to risk happening. I didn't want to get fired. I didn't want to lose my job. But I was gonna risk that to do this other thing that I was really excited about anyway. Again, our ability, our capacity to rationalize and excuse the mental gymnastics will do to not have to make hard decisions. It's just what we do. But you gotta learn from it. And I have learned from it. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was supposed to give a talk at the Naval Academy. I did a video about this. I was supposed to give a talk at the Naval Academy and I was gonna speak up over these alarming, I think, deeply unconstitutional and certainly stupid attempts to remove books

• 22:45Ryan Holiday?

  from the libraries of the various military academies for the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. I felt like I couldn't go up on stage and talk to these kids, having just lectured them about courage and just lectured them about discipline and just lectured them about justice. I was supposed to be talking about wisdom. How could I not mention this anti-intellectual cowardly compliance with an unsound illegal order? I felt I couldn't. And so I was planning on discussing it. And when they caught wind of this, they threatened to cancel my talk if I didn't remove it. And so I said, okay, I guess I won't give the talk. And I guess I could have slinked off, but instead I decided I would speak up about it. And I wrote a New York Times article and ultimately I recorded that talk in this room and it's been seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

• 23:29Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not saying that was the most courageous thing in the world. It was just honestly, I think, the minimum that I was obligated to do. There are people who have since resigned, their professor just resigned from West Point. You know, that's a person who had a pension on the line, whose career was on the line, who, you know, was condemned on social media by the Department of Defense. Like, that, he's really risking something. I was risking very little. I was just doing what I thought was right. But I don't think I would have been in a position to do that had I not gone through the experience that I went through at American Apparel. And had I not done the reflection and the journaling and the thinking where I just saw how, in the future, you're gonna wish you made the hard right decision. In the future, you're gonna wish you spoke up more. You spoke out more.

• 24:13Ryan Holiday?

  You put more on the line. You tried more things. That's what you're going to wish in the future. But now, in this moment, as you're facing this hard decision, all you're thinking about is the risks. All you're thinking about is it not going well, the criticism. All you're thinking about is that. So that's my personal experience. The whole point of Stoic philosophy is you're supposed to take the words and put them into action. And I try to do that with the choices that I make in my life. And as I wrap up this video, I hope you do that in your life. The idea is that we don't just talk about courage and discipline and justice and wisdom, but we act with courage and justice and discipline and wisdom when it counts.

• 24:53Ryan Holiday?

  One of the ways we procrastinate or get out of making hard right decisions is that we say we're going to do it later, right? We all tell ourselves that we're accumulating our money or our influence or our relationships for a reason. We tell ourselves that we're playing the long game, that we're building up allies, that we're developing our reputation, that we're gaining sway, we're doing favors for people, we're getting them in our debt, that we're acquiring financial freedom or leverage or capital. We tell ourselves that this is all for the future, for some big moment of significance where we're going to have to make a hard right call, right? Whether we're betting on a big idea or challenging the powers that be,

• 25:38Ryan Holiday?

  speaking truth to power, asserting our independence, making that scary decision. The problem is that we don't ever actually think that we're at that moment, right? I think of Cicero or Seneca, they accumulated all this political power. They piled up wealth. They had enormous audiences and impressive reputations. And yet, in the moments of great peril and difficulty for their country, when when public opinion was, I think, up for grabs, they didn't do enough. Cicero and Seneca largely kept silent. Seneca specifically is bending over backwards to accommodate and enable Nero. And he's probably telling himself that he's the adult in the room, that he's waiting for some future moment that he's going to really prevent Nero from doing something bad.

• 26:23Ryan Holiday?

  Meanwhile, Nero's doing bad stuff. Every day, I think about this, an example of this happened recently. Columbia University has a $14 billion endowment. And then when they were threatened by the Trump administration, and again, you can disagree with the policies or even the culture of antisemitism on Columbia's campus. But the president of the United States does not get to dangle federal funds and tell independent universities what to do. And yet, when Columbia is threatened with precisely this, the loss of a $400 million federal contract, they fold it. Even though this contract is spread out over many years, even though, again, they have a $14 billion endowment.

• 27:04Ryan Holiday?

  If you have $14 billion, when someone tries to threaten your academic independence, it's at that moment that you should be able to say, go fuck yourself. But they couldn't. You have to ask yourself, what is the point of this power? What is the point of the influence? Why accumulate this enormous financial war chest if you're not going to use it? And then how can they expect their students to make hard ethical decisions if they're not modeling it when it comes to them standing up for the most basic functions of a university? And this is the problem, right? We lie to ourselves. We don't say we're never going to be courageous. We say we're going to do it later. And right now, I have to be practical. Right now, I have to play for the future. I'll speak out when I'm more secure, when my platform is bigger, when it's really serious.

• 27:48Ryan Holiday?

  But the reality is, when that moment inevitably comes, you will be telling yourself the same excuse that you are telling yourself now.

• 28:01Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, I drilled down on something in Right Thing right now that I've been thinking a lot about. I take my job as a writer, as a person with a podcast. I take it seriously. Like, there's no code of conduct or bar that supervises writers. But I feel like I'm immensely privileged to have this platform and influence. And I have to take that seriously. I can't just say and do whatever I want because I'm not honoring, I'm not being a good steward of what I have. And actually, there's this quote from Yuval Levin. He was despairing about some of the decline in so many of our institutions. And he says that each of us need to ask ourselves in little moments of decisions, what he called the great unasked question of our time.

• 28:45Ryan Holiday?

  He said, "It's given my role here, how should I behave?" Because like people who take the institution, or the profession, or the craft that they're in seriously, they say, you know, as a president, or a member of Congress, a teacher, or a scientist, a lawyer, or a doctor, or a pastor, or a member, or a parent, or a neighbor, what should I do here? Like, what's my duty? In business, there's something called a fiduciary. This dates back to a decision in the 1920s that said that a trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the marketplace. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive. They said, "This is the standard of behavior, the level of conduct for a fiduciary. It is kept at a level higher than that trodden by the crowd."

• 29:28Ryan Holiday?

  So as you're making your decisions, as you're weighing what you have to do here, you have to ask, "What am I honor-bound to do here? If I was part of a guild, if I was a member of the bar in good standing, if I was subject to the American Medical Association, or whatever it is, and I was to be judged by a jury of my peers, would I be living up to the standards of my profession here? Am I rising to the occasion?" You are held to a higher standard than everyone else. You have to think about it this way. So when you're thinking about speaking up, when you're thinking about pushing forward, when you're thinking about a hard but expensive decision, you have to go, "Hey, what does a fiduciary owe here? What does a member of good standing owe here?" I think about this with Truman, who I talk a lot about in Right Thing Right Now.

• 30:13Ryan Holiday?

  He said, "I was taught that the expenditure of public money is a public trust, and never have I changed my mind on that subject. No one has ever received any public money for which I was responsible unless he gave honest service for it." And Truman faced all sorts of vexing decisions along these lines, where in a time of open political corruption and graft, he's actually part of the Kansas City political machine, he decided to stay honest because he had this code. He had these standards that he was holding himself. To but again, this is Marcus Aurelius, just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. What does the code say? What is your duty say? What is your honor say? Do that thing. Come up with your code, come up with your priorities, your values. And this will help you in these difficult decisions.

• 30:58Ryan Holiday?

  It will help you make the hard right decision. And that's what Marcus Aurelius is doing in meditations. He's writing this code to himself over and over and over again. So that in the hard decisions, he's put it in writing. He's made it part of the muscle memory and now he's going to do it.

• 31:16Ryan Holiday?

  A question to ask yourself when you are thinking about doing something or not doing something. When you're weighing a hard choice, when you're considering speaking up or stepping forward. It's a question that comes to us from the Jewish elder Hillel. It's if not me, then who? If not now, then when? And the great John Lewis actually had this in his office. He said, if not us, then who? It has to be done. Somebody has to do it. And if it's not you, who is gonna do it? And you might have a good answer to that question. There might be 500 people behind you, all lining up to take this risk, to, to speak out on this issue, to do this thing. In which case, maybe you don't need to do it. But if there isn't, if you're the only one, if this thing will get swept under the rug if you don't speak up.

• 32:01Ryan Holiday?

  If this business won't happen, if this project won't go forward unless you're the one that takes the risk. You're the one that steps up, you gotta do it, right? You were not meant to sit on the sidelines. We're meant to be in the arena. If not you, then who? And if not now, then when? And that, that when should, should weigh on you. It should hang there because when we say later, we mean never, right? You could be good today. The Stoics said, why choose tomorrow? We choose tomorrow because it's a way out of not having to do it. It's a way of dodging the responsibility and the obligation. Who am I that I should go to the Pharaoh? Moses asked.

• 32:44Ryan Holiday?

  The person selected for this moment, destiny demands it of you. If not you, then who? If, if you don't adopt that kid, who will? If you don't start that business, who will? If you don't finally say those magic words to this person, who will? Maybe someone else, and that could be heartbreaking in its own way. Or maybe no one, maybe never. And if someone else does it, it will be different. It won't be the same. It won't be as good. And so you've got to believe that you can make a difference and you've got to believe that there is something behind you here. There is something calling you here and then you have to do it.

• 33:26Ryan Holiday?

  It's not always wrong. Cicero and Seneca were not totally wrong. Politics is difficult. Politics requires working with flawed individuals. It requires compromise. We needed an adult in the room. We needed a positive influence and Seneca does prevent Nero from being as bad as he could have been. The problem is the way that Seneca kept going, even when he knew that Nero was well past redemption. You're not always gonna love where you work. You're not always gonna love your boss. Your boss might be unsavory. You might disagree with them on a lot of things, but something they are doing is important and good. You might have to sometimes not say everything that you think or mean. Seneca was telling himself what so many modern politicians have told themselves, that they're preventing

• 34:11Ryan Holiday?

  a bad situation from being worse. If they left, they'd be replaced by someone worse, that they're able to do good and that if they were on the outside, they wouldn't be able to do anything good at all. And this is a real dilemma, but it's a real dilemma for them, right? Sometimes someone does have to play that role. But you know what? Like, chances are you're not that person. We can say, well, certainly, most of us are not that person. And most of the time when we think we're being that person, we're flattering ourselves, we're making ourselves into martyrs, but really what we're doing is enabling. The onus on most of us is not backroom compromises. It's not turning the other way. It's not biting your tongue. We don't need more of that. What most of us need to be doing, what Marcus Aurelius said,

• 34:55Ryan Holiday?

  which is do the right thing, speaking up, being a good person, doing it without hesitation, saying the truth as we see it, calling a spade a spade. The world does not need more Senecas and Ciceros, for the most part. It needs the Thrasias and the Catos. It needs more Helvidiases, right? People who say, "I'm gonna do my job." You do yours, let the consequences be what they are. It needs unbending courageous people. It needs people who take the risk, not people who do what's expedient. It needs people who are not afraid to lose their position, not people who will do anything to keep it. It needs people who speak up, who speak out, who speak truth to power. Rome needed those people. And today, wherever you are, the world needs more people like you.

• 35:44Ryan Holiday?

  One of the American founders, Benjamin Rush, wrote a letter to John Adams. He said, "Do you recollect that pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the president of the Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at the time to be their own death warrants?" He was talking about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In retrospect, it worked out, but in the moment, it was terrifying. It was scary. They very well could have been signing their death warrants. There's a kid's story. It's called "The Golden Key." There's this scene where the old man of the earth is showing a young boy the reality of the world. He's saying, "There's no progress without risk."

• 36:25Ryan Holiday?

  And he moves this enormous stone across the floor, and he shows this boy a hole that seems to go on forever. He says, "That's the way." And the kid says, "There's no stairs." And then the man says, "You must throw yourself in. There is no other way." You know, all growth is a leap in the dark. Netflix is a huge business now, but when they left the DVD business, it wasn't preordained that they would succeed. You know, there's the apocryphal story about Cortez burning the boats. You don't know. You don't know. It's scary. It is a risk. If it was guaranteed, if it was obvious, everyone would do it. The whole point is that it's scary. The whole point is that it could go either way. And honestly, the scarier and riskier it is, usually, the higher the rewards potentially

• 37:10Ryan Holiday?

  might be. That's what you get for taking the risk. Florence Nightingale famously said that she would rather die in the surf trying to find a new world than stand idly on the shore. But that's the thing. You could die. Heading out into the surf is risky. Heading out into open waters is risky. You gotta remember, that's a sign. It's a good sign. If there was a well-trod path, if it was obvious... Well, first off, courage wouldn't be a part of this. And also, it probably wouldn't be that valuable. The resistance there, it's showing you something. It's telling you something. It's good that it's scary.

• 37:47Ryan Holiday?

  When I wrote The Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you want to get the email, if you want to be part of a community that is the largest group of Stoics ever assembled in human history, I'd love for you to join us. You can sign up and get the email totally for free. No spam. You can unsubscribe whenever you want at dailystoic.com/email.