The Thing We Never Want To Do | Ask DS

We know what Seneca thought of Alexander the Great. We know what he thought of Marius. We know what he thought of entitled and gluttonous Romans. We have his seething satire of Claudius. His prolific writings condemn and judge—rightfully so—these hypocritical and often miserable folks. We have hundreds of his letters (a must read!), dozens of essays, volumes on natural history, multiple books that explore countless topics at incredible depth. But you know what we don’t know much about? What Seneca thought about himself and his job at Nero’s right hand. It’s like that line from the Taylor Swift song “Anti-Hero”—Seneca would apparently rather stare directly at the sun than look in the mirror. He’s got volumes for other people. He’s got an eagle eye for elsewhere. But his own struggles, his own contradictions, his own flaws? Well, he never seems to touch on that.--In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks stoics and growth hacking over virtual for HP. “Advance Compute and Solutions”. HP produces some the worlds most powerful PCs used by Creatives, Designers, Engineers, and Analytics teams. So we’re dealing with the leading edge technology and partner with the likes of companies like Intel, AMD and Nvidia.✉️ 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.

• 0:06Ryan 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 who are 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.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  We know what Seneca thought of Alexander the Great. We know what he thought of Marius. We know what he thought of entitled and gluttonous Romans. We have his seething satire of Claudius. His prolific writings condemn and judge, rightfully so, hypocritical and often miserable folks. We have his hundreds of letters, which are a must read. We have dozens of essays, multiple books, that explore these lives and other topics at incredible depth. But you know what we don't know much about? What Seneca thought about himself and his job at Nero's Right Hand. It's like that line from Taylor Swift's song Antihero. "Seneca would apparently rather stare directly at the sun than look in the mirror." He's got

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  volumes for other people. He's got an eagle eye for elsewhere. But his own struggles, his own contradictions, his own flaws, well, he never seems to touch on that. And most of us are just like him in that way. We don't want to look in the mirror. We don't want to put ourselves up for review. We can see what everyone else is doing wrong, their obvious issues and compulsions, but our own?

• 2:01Ryan Holiday?

  That's where we turn away. I've said this before, but that's one of the things I get the most from ego is the enemy. People want to deal with other people's egos. And how often do we focus on our own? And I mean, you could say I'm guilty of that also. Obviously, I can see very clearly where ego and issues have held Seneca back. But how often do we apply that same lens, that same introspection to ourselves? That's the real struggle and the real journey and the real work.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you were interested in my Stoicism stuff, you probably haven't read my book on growth hacking, because Stoicism and growth hacking don't really seem like they have anything in common. Besides the fact that I did and do try to use some of those ideas that I learned about this book that I wrote before I did any of my Stoic books in How I've Grown Daily Stoic over the years. That may be ultimately how you ended up discovering the podcast knowingly or not. But anyways, I gave a talk back in June to some folks at HP. The talk was ostensibly about marketing and growth hacking. This was to about 100 or so employees in the GoToMarket

• 3:29Ryan Holiday?

  team. And I did talk about marketing, and I may bring you that talk some other time. But afterwards, I did a Q and A. We ended up talking about Stoic stuff. And that's what I'm bringing you in today's Q and A episode. Here are some questions from the folks at HP. I think you'll enjoy.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  I've been noticing recently that Stoicism philosophy has been gaining popularity, especially after the pandemic and versus other philosophies. And I'm seeing it like everywhere around. Depeche, talking about bands, Pesh Mode, Momentum Mori, you know, that's the name of their tour. Also, a lot of our ELT folks have been discussing it about Stoicism, even in our all hands employee meetings, as well as occasional friends and family. Why do you think that after the pandemic, that this is becoming like so popular versus other philosophies?

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, well, it's funny, the guy behind you there, Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. That was a test.

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius also, you know, lived through a pandemic. They actually named it after him. It's called the Antonine Plague. It wasn't his fault, but it sort of happens on his watch and it sort of gets stuck with him. It lasts not for like one or two years, but 15 years. I think there is, you know, there is, first off, just the fact that he, like most of the ancients, were not that different than us, right? They went through difficult times. There were crises. There was political unrest. There were divorces. There was grief. You know, there was loss. There was mistakes. There were bankruptcies. There were ebbs and flows of different trends and, you know,

• 5:15Ryan Holiday?

  things happening in the market or the, you know, global affairs. And so when you have what Meditations is, it's my copy here. Meditations is effectively the most powerful man in the world just talking to himself about what he's going through, right? And so I think Stoicism as a philosophy that's there to help us with the problems of life, practically, as opposed to theoretically, is just timeless, like we were talking about. Marcus Aurelius says, "At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work," right? Like, so there are five, you know, there are, almost 2,000 years ago,

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  you have the most powerful man in the world talking about, you know, having a conversation with himself that's probably not that dissimilar to the conversations we all had this morning. Actually, here's another one. Speaking of mornings, clearly he had to wake up like the rest of us. This is the opening of Book Two of Meditations. He says, "When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, the people I will deal with today will be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and surly." Right? Like, probably maybe some of the people that you shared a commute with this morning, right? Or that you...

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Well, I work from home, so.

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe these are people that sent you emails while you were sleeping.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  The point is, people are people and they've sort of always been this way. And I think what Marcus is doing in meditations that the Stoics are doing is sort of tackling those core elements of the human experience that we've always been struggling with. There's actually a new book coming out about this by Morgan Housel. He wrote this great book called The Psychology of Money. But the new book is called The Things That Don't Change, right? Basically, the idea is, it was just a similar, I think it's part of Jeff Bezos's philosophy, which is like, great businesses focus on the things that don't change, right? And so what Stoicism does at its best is it focuses on the parts of the human experience that don't change, right? And I think great businesses do the same thing.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  They don't chase fidget spinners or cryptocurrencies or whatever the thing of the moment is. They focus on the problems that people have had for a long time and likely to have for a long time. I've said this in talks before, but like, the best book to have possibly written is probably What to Expect When You're Expecting, right? Like, that's a problem that's not going anywhere. There's a reason that book has sold millions and millions of copies.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Great, thank you.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Well, one question I have is, and it's obviously other than your books, what would be the three books you would have to take to a desert island and read?

• 8:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, well, okay, so I'll put this, this translation of Marcus Aurelius at the top. This is the Gregory Hayes translation for the Marcus, for the Modern Library. I, I, you know, read it many hundreds of times over, you know, almost 20 years now. And so it, it is, it seems to continually give, give me something new each time I pick it up.

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  I really like, let me see what's behind here.

• 8:37Ryan Holiday?

  This is a, this is a great book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership in Turbulent Times. It's sort of a greatest hits album of all her best biographies of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and FDR. I guess Lyndon Johnson's in here, too. It's probably one of the best leadership books I've ever written, or sorry, ever read. What else would I do? This is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, which is pretty incredible. They actually published a new book, which I think is destined to be a classic. They found one of his old lectures. This is my copy. My aunt gave me this copy when I graduated from high school,

• 9:21Ryan Holiday?

  and I've come back to it many, many times. So again, the ideas that you come back to are what's important. But there's a new, there's a new edition of Viktor Frankl called Yes to Life that I've been thinking a lot about recently and really enjoyed. So that might be three that I'd start with.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  I was just curious, and I put this, I don't know if you have the chat up or not,

• 9:43Ryan Holiday?

  I see it.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  The HP Way is kind of a big thing to us here at HP. And I'm interested, you know, I was looking at the definition of Stoicism, and one thing I saw was the fact that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve a well-lived flourishing life.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  And I feel like our culture at HP, it kind of aligns with that. And I was just wondering if you'd comment on kind of how Stoicism relates to that HP Way I put in there.

• 10:23Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I love the HP Way. I've heard it before, obviously. It's, I think it's hard to find much to argue with in these values. The four values of Stoicism, as you mentioned the word virtue. Virtue is obviously singular, but then it's also plural. It's made up of multiple sort of sub virtues. And the four virtues of Stoicism, I have the symbols of them tattooed on my wrist here. The four virtues of Stoicism are courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. And as I look at these 11 ideas in the HP Way, or in the ad you mentioned, I find that All of them illustrate one or more of those virtues, right? In some form or another, right?

• 11:08Ryan Holiday?

  Believe you can change the world. That's courage. So is radical ideas are not, are not bad ideas. Sharing, right? Trust your colleagues. This would pull up the virtue of justice, right? Know when to work alone and when to work together. This is pulling at the idea of wisdom. Make a contribution every day. When I think about self-discipline, I don't think about the idea of some radical self-transformation. I think about the accumulation of small gains, right? Of observing, you know, the rules as best you can day in and day out. There's a great rule in writing, which I love. It's just two crappy pages a day, right?

• 11:49Ryan Holiday?

  You're just, you're just trying to make a small contribution every single day. So I would say that as far as corporate values go, which are obviously going to be a little bit different than sort of personal values. Because corporations ultimately have, you know, the sort of bottom line stakeholder of the, of the, of the shareholder and sort of needing, needing to ultimately turn a profit for people in a way that perhaps the individual does not. But as far as corporate values go, I think as close as we can get to the idea of these four virtues, you know, the, the better and more sustainable we're going to be as a, as a business and as a organizational culture.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  Hey, hey, Ryan, I just recommended a book called The Gap in Game. I don't know if you've had a chance to read it, but.

• 12:41Ryan Holiday?

  Is this the Ben Hardy book?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, I know Ben.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Something right now that kind of resonated. I haven't, I mean, I'm not even happy to do it, but it talks about how we're always pursuing this ideal, right? And we're always thinking about the gap against that ideal, which is a moving target at times, right? So we're, it's not that we're going to reach it. Versus focusing on the gains that we have done, being a better person or a better whatever than yesterday.

• 13:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  And celebrating those small wins, which is what you highlighted. Can you give us a little bit more? I mean, I haven't finished reading it, so you probably have a little bit more perspective on what you just said about that.

• 13:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, so not to, not to bring up one of your competitors, obviously, but I've gotten to know Michael Dell here a little bit in Austin. And he was telling me this great acronym that I've been thinking about. It's, uh, it's, it's basically sort of personal motto is pleased but never satisfied. Right. And I think it's a, it's a, it captures the, the only way through that tension that we're talking about, which is like, if all you're focused on is how you can get better, right? You never celebrate the win. You never feel like it's, it means anything. You're sort of always moving the goalposts. And at the same time, if all you're doing is patting yourself on the back, celebrating how far you've come,

• 14:03Ryan Holiday?

  you're unlikely to go much further forward. Right? And so, you know, sometimes we see great athletes who are incredibly talented. They've accomplished so much, but all they care about is winning one more, right? And this tears apart families, it tears apart franchises, it, you know, they, they stay in the boxing ring too long. Right. And then, and then conversely, if, if all you're doing, speaking to, to further that boxing metaphor, if all you're looking at is, is how dominant you were in the last fight, that's where the, uh, this, the, the hungry, young upstart, you know, catches you, uh, you know, catches you unawares.

• 14:41Ryan Holiday?

  And so this idea of being both happy and not complacent, being ambitious, but also not insatiable, I think is, is the tension that we're talking about. And the Stoics would have rendered that as the virtue of temperance, right? Or the, or the right amount, moderation. And I think that's obviously the balance that we're all trying to strike in every thing that we do.

• 15:12Ryan Holiday?

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