Ask Daily Stoic - How Do I Use Stoicism To Fend Off Negativity?

Ryan talks about the Edmund Morrison biography of Thomas Edison, reads a passage from The Obstacle is the Way (on sale for a few more days), and fields more questions from his readers and fans. See 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, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another Saturday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was telling you recently that we'd set up new offices for Daily Stoic, and we are still very much under construction. They're actually in the middle of scraping some really old plaster off the walls to reveal the brick. Again, I don't want to reveal too much about this really cool, big project, but I will keep teasing it to you guys and tell you more about it. But the thing I did want to talk about is something related to the move and to this quote that I read. I just finished Edmund Morris's biography of Thomas Edison. It's the last book that Edmund wrote before he died. I'm a big fan

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  of his biographies of Theodore Roosevelt. And so, he talked about, in the book, there's a scene where Edison is moving to his new workshop. And he says, Edmund Morris writes, "The transfer of a personal library from one home to another is always for an intellectual, a sign of irreversible change." And that was the hardest part of this move for us. Certainly, it was the decision to move all my books. I had books at my house, and then I had books at, when we first moved to Austin, the house we bought. I've set up all my books in these sort of permanent bookshelves. Basically, my books were split over two different places. And

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  The decision to move them all here, one of the compromises I made with my wife was that I would take all the, most of my books out of the house because they're just taking up too much space. And so the, it was, you know, two trailer loads of books. It was not, not necessarily cheap either. There's a lot of organization that had to go in even to the moving process. And then they're all here and being sort of put in one place. So the two collections are being brought together for the first time. But when I was reading that quote, as I was sitting here surrounded by boxes of my books, it struck me as totally true. Like, one of the reasons we kept that house was that I didn't want to move my books and it felt really permanent to move those books. And to do that now, you

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  know, is actually good. It means like I'm sort of jumping into this thing with two full feet and, and that, you know, I'm sort of burning the boats behind me because I'm not moving these books again. And, you know, we've talked about this. If you haven't checked out our Read to Lead course, I think it's really awesome. It's sort of our best stuff. But one of the, one of the days in that challenge is, is about sort of organizing and setting up your library. So I did that for the first time many years ago, when I, when I set up the library in Austin. But I've, I've sort of not just outgrown that system, but I've literally outgrown the shelves. And so now it's coming up with a new system. How do I want them to be organized? Usually I like, I like books categorized and then in descending height. I have someone helping me now. So we're also doing them by color within the

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  category. So it's, it's, it's much sort of more visually soothing as well. But just to, just having these books in one place, having them displayed, having access to them, I'm just really looking forward to. And, and like, as I'm talking to you, I'm looking out at them and I, it's running through my head just how much money I spent on all these books, how many of them I've read, but at the same time, how many of them I've not yet read. And yet it's almost certainly the, the best investment I've, I've ever made in my life. Edmund Morris, who gave me that quote that I opened this with, how did I hear about Edmund Morris? I was 19 years old and I asked Dr. Drew for a book recommendation and he recommended Epictetus and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. And so-

• 4:03Ryan Holiday?

  I wouldn't be, I literally would not be here talking to you as a writer, as a thinker, had I not made the decision to buy those books. And it might not have worked out, right? They might have been bad books, but it turns out they were good books. And so I've never been disappointed in the investment that I've made in books because it's never cost me more than what I paid for it and the time that I put in, right? You can't, can't lose money buying a book. You can lose what you put in, but your downside is hedged, right? And so investing in books, not being cheap about it. If I think it's good, I buy it. If I think it might be good, I buy it. If it's $200 because it's some rare old book, I buy it or I find a way to read it. But, but I just thought

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  you guys might be able to relate. The transfer of personal library from one home to another for an intellectual, for a philosopher, for a thinker, Edmund Morris says, is the sign of irreversible change. And so this is a big change for us. I'm excited to tell you about more about it soon. And we'll get into this week's episode.

• 5:08Ryan Holiday?

  Today's reading is from the perception section of The Obstacle is the Way. Tommy John was one of baseball's most savvy and durable pitchers. He played 26 seasons in the majors. 26 seasons in his rookie year, John F. Kennedy was president. His final year was George H. W. Bush. He pitched to Mickey Mantle and Mark McGuire. It's almost a superhuman accomplishment, but he was able to do it because he got really good at asking himself and others in various forms. One question over and over again, is there a chance? Do I have a shot? Is there something I can do? All he ever looked for was a yes, no matter how slight or tentative or provisional the chance.

• 5:52Ryan Holiday?

  If there was a chance, he was ready to take it and make good use of it, ready to give every ounce of effort and energy he had to make it happen. If effort would affect the outcome, he would die on the field before he let that chance go to waste. The first time came around the middle of the 1974 season when Tommy John blew out his arm, permanently damaging the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow. Up until this point in baseball and sports medicine, when a pitcher blew his arm out like that, it was over. They called it dead arm. Game over. But John wouldn't accept that. Was there anything that could give him a shot to get back on the mound? And it turns out there was. The doctors suggested an experimental surgery in which

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  they would try to replace the ligament in his pitching elbow with the tendon from his other arm. What are the chances of me coming back after this surgery? One in a hundred? And without it, no chance, they said. He should have retired. He could have retired. But there was a one in 100 chance. With rehab and training, the opportunity was partially in his control. So he took it. And he won 164 more games over the next 13 seasons. And the procedure is now famously known as Tommy John surgery. Less than 10 years later, John mustered the same spirit and effort when his young son fell horrifyingly from a third story window, swallowed his tongue, nearly died. Even in the chaos of the emergency

• 7:17Ryan Holiday?

  room with the doctors convinced that the boy probably wouldn't survive, John reminded his family that whether it took one year or 10 years, they wouldn't give up until there was absolutely nothing left that they could do. And his son made a full recovery. For John, his baseball's career seemed to finally come to an end in 1988, when, at the age of 45, he was cut by the Yankees at the end of the season. Still, he would not accept this. He called the coach and demanded, if he showed up at spring training as a walk-on the next spring, would he get a fair look? They replied that he shouldn't be playing baseball at that age. So he repeated the question, if I come down there, do I have a chance? The baseball officials answered, yes, fine, you'll get one look. So Tommy

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  John was the first to report to camp. He trained many hours a day, brought every lesson he learned playing the sport for a quarter century, and made the team as the oldest player in the game. He started the season opener and won, giving up a scant two runs over seven innings on the road in Minnesota. The things that Tommy John could change when he had a chance, got a full 100% of the effort he could muster. He used to tell coaches that he would die on the field before he quit. And he understood that as a professional athlete, his job was to parse the difference between the unlikely and the impossible. And seeing that miniscule distinction was what made him who he was. So I think it's really important, too. And by the way, that reading comes from the Obstacle is the Way.

• 8:42Ryan Holiday?

  You can get it as audiobook and get it anywhere books are sold. But I think really that the message of that, to me, is an important one because it counteracts the Stoic notion that the Stoic doesn't care. That when we put the things in the buckets of what we control and what we don't control, that it's about resigning ourselves. It's the exact opposite. It's by eliminating the things that are not in our control from our concern, it allows us to then focus 100% on what we do control. What made Tommy John so great was his unrelenting focus on what he did control. And the same will be true for you. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic.

• 9:25Ryan Holiday?

  You send questions to [email protected]. I answer them. We talk about Stoicism. We talk about whatever you want. Thanks for letting us do this. Our first question is, is there a Stoic virtue to focus my energy on for removing lazy actions or keeping myself from allowing negative or hurtful thoughts from affecting my overall sense of self? So what are the four Stoic virtues? It's courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance. So temperance is the virtue that this would fall under. Now, temperance, when people hear that, they think, oh, isn't that like, you know, the temperance movement, not having alcohol? No, temperance means moderation.

• 10:09Ryan Holiday?

  It means self-discipline. The Stoics believe that only the self-disciplined are free. People who have no self-control are slaves. They're slaves not just to other people, but to their own desires and urges. And so I think the virtue for you to look at there would be temperance, moderation, the line at the oracle of Delphi, it's one of the engraving. It was nothing in excess. So that means not being too easy on yourself and it means not being too hard on yourself. It means doing the work, but not overworking. It means being ambitious, but not too ambitious. The other concept I think related to this idea of temperance is another concept. This is Aristotle's golden mean. There's a Wikipedia article about it. You can read

• 10:53Ryan Holiday?

  it's pretty accessible. The golden mean says like, sort of every virtue is on the midpoint between two vices. So like, take courage. Courage is halfway between recklessness and cowardice. And so I think it's not that we shouldn't do things at all, although there's some things we shouldn't do. It's how do we do the right things in the right amount in the right way? That's the virtue that I would think about. So don't whip yourself for being lazy. Just think about what systems you want to set in place, what standards you want to set for yourself, and then operate along those lines. So these four virtues, like it takes wisdom to know what, you know, the right amount of

• 11:33Ryan Holiday?

  something. It takes courage to, you know, do less when everyone is doing more, to do more when everyone is not doing enough, but they all fit within each other. But of the four virtues, it sounds like the one that I would urge you to think about would be the virtue of temperance. Okay, our question now is, do I think that other Greek philosophies can overlap with Stoicism? For example, a Pyrrhanist state that our thoughts are the main obstacle for achieving ataraxia, equitability, and therefore we should suspend judgment. So, it's a good question. I was just rereading Gregory Hayes's introduction to Marcus Aurelius. And he says, you know, it's

• 12:12Ryan Holiday?

  interesting, Marcus Aurelius never identifies explicitly in his writing as a Stoic. He talks about the Stoics a lot. His writing observes Stoic thought for the most part, but he never says, I am a Stoic. And what Gregory Hayes takes from this is that if you ask Marcus, do you identify with the philosophical school? He'd probably say Stoicism. But if you really asked him what he was studying, he would say, I'm studying philosophy. And I think Seneca is a great example of this as well. Seneca, not only in his boyhood, and I talk about this a little bit in Lives of the Stoics, which I'm writing now, he studied all different kinds of philosophical schools. In fact, his father didn't want him to be a Stoic.

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  He just hired a Stoic philosophy teacher to teach his son everything. But Seneca quotes Epicurus probably more than any other philosopher. So he was always looking for where the schools overlapped. He was borrowing from other schools. He was familiar with his other schools. So I do think that concept of ataraxia, that is an Epicurean concept primarily. The Stoic concept, the one that Seneca talks about is apotheia a little bit more. So there's lots of overlap. They're sort of all coming of age in Greece and in Rome at the same time. And there's different practitioners of different ones, but they were all familiar with each other.

• 13:33Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, Stoicism comes to Rome through Diogenes, one of the early Stoics alongside a skeptic. The philosophers were just these sort of leading people who belonged to different schools and had different beliefs, but the concept of a philosopher was sort of a role in society. And we kind of lost that. Now we think, you know, philosophy professors. We don't think of just sort of philosophers as people as a job, really. But I think there's plenty of overlap. And I think I'm more of the camp of you take what works from all the schools and you come up with something that works for you, that makes you better as a person. So our last question for today's is how does a Stoic control their anger?

• 14:18Ryan Holiday?

  I think this is what all Stoics are struggling with all the time. I mean, Seneca, one of Seneca's most brilliant works is De Ira of Anger. It's brilliant essay. Definitely encourage everyone to read it. And I think when you read Meditations, what you see quite profoundly is that Marcus really has an anger problem. He would not be talking about temper and frustration and how stupid other people were all the time if he was not getting upset quite often. And it must've been a very difficult job. So I think the Stoics did struggle with their temper. They did get angry, just like the rest of us. But they worked to, I don't want to say suppress it, but to Nassim Taleb's line is to domesticate those harmful emotions. So we have this course for Daily Stoic called Taming Your Temper.

• 15:03Ryan Holiday?

  I'm just thinking of some of the strategies we run through. One is, I think that they pause. And I know there's an early Stoic who's an advisor to Octavian, and he says, basically, like, whenever you want to do something out of anger, like, give it a minute, literally count for one minute. And so the pause, just waiting, is really important. One of the Lincoln's strategies was to write, like, angry letters, and then sit on them, and then decide if he wants to send them later. So just like, don't make it worse by rushing into it is a big way we address our temper. One of the things we do as part of the challenge that I think is really revealing is like, if you wanted to like, get some perspective on your anger, like,

• 15:41Ryan Holiday?

  sit down and catalog what anger has cost you in your life. Like, literally, like, almost like a budget or P and L, like, what has anger brought you, and what does it cost you? And really looking at the downsides of anger, having that sort of floating around in the back of my head helps me realize that I'm going to regret getting so upset about this. And then, for me, a big thing is like, having some other outlet for the energy. So I think when we have the Stoics, you know, writing, hunting, boxing, they were doing active, physical hobbies that I think distracted them and calmed them down and gave them perspective.

• 16:23Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's a big part of it. I think journaling, for me, like, if I can sit down and just write about what I'm angry about, that helps. If I can write about what I'm angry about, then I write about what I'm grateful for, tends to cancel each other out. So I don't think the Stoics thought, hey, here's this magical thing that will eliminate your temper. But they were very aware of the consequences and the damage caused by anger. And then they worked out strategies or little hacks, little ways to get at it from all these different angles that would help minimize it. And so definitely read Seneca's Essay on Anger, check out our anger course, I think it's dailystoic.com/anger. And then we've got some articles about it as well, but there's lots of great stuff

• 17:05Ryan Holiday?

  from the Stoics on temper. And I think this is, it's something you work on your whole life. Like, my thing is, it's not that you have an anger problem, it's that anger is a problem for everyone. It's just a fact of life. And who we are is really a result of how much we're going to work on that problem. And so I'm always working on mine. I don't think of many times that I'm proud of myself for having lost my temper. And so the Stoics are always trying to work on theirs, and I hope you will too. So thanks. This is another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Thanks for listening. Thanks to our sponsors for sponsoring it. And we'll talk next week. Thanks for listening to today's Daily Stoic podcast. I've got really great news.

• 17:46Ryan Holiday?

  The ebook of The Obstacle is the Way is currently on sale for $1.99 on Amazon. It's got great stories about wisdom, how we take the things that life throws at us, and we see them not as obstacles, but as opportunities, how we make what is in the way, the way. The book is $1.99 as an ebook in the US right now. I'm really excited. Every time we do this, a whole bunch of new people come in. So if you haven't read the book and you want to give it a try, it will never be cheaper than this. Or if there's someone you know that would benefit from it, maybe you could gift it to them. So check that out on Amazon, or you can follow us on social media and get a link to it. But the book in the US on Amazon, $1.99 as an ebook, I think also iBooks and the other book platforms. So check it out.