Who Is In Charge | Only Fools Rush In

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus, Rilius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:52Ryan Holiday?

  Who is in charge? In one of his letters, Seneca describes himself as a cold-water enthusiast, that he would celebrate the new year by taking a plunge into the canal. "Just as naturally as I would set out to do some reading or writing," he said, "or compose a speech, I would inaugurate the first of the year with a plunge into the Virgo aqueduct." But then he gives the real reason for his cold plunges. "The body should be treated more rigorously," he says, "so that it may not be disobedient to the mind." There's a lot of interesting research about the health benefits of taking cold showers and going for a run and lifting weights. But the real reason to do these things is far more simple.

• 1:35Ryan Holiday?

  It's to make a statement about who is in charge. The courageous side of you or the cowardly side? The side that doesn't flinch at discomfort? Or the side that desires to always be comfortable? The side that does the hard things? Or the side that takes the easy way? We challenge ourselves not to improve our immune system, not to increase our metabolism, not to reduce anxiety. Those things might be nice ancillary benefits, but they are not the point. The purpose is to become the kind of person that can do it. How can you expect to do big things that scare you, that scare others, if you haven't practiced them? Why do you think you can endure the cold reception of a bold idea if you can't even endure cold water? How can you trust that you'll step forward when the stakes are high? When you regularly don't do that?

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  When the stakes are low? What gives you any confidence that you'll do the hard thing when people are watching, when you can't do it, even when no one is watching? The person who does something scary every day is less fearful than someone who can't. The person who does something difficult every day is tougher than someone who doesn't. And that's what a bunch of people have learned taking our challenges over the years. But that's also why we built out the Daily Stoic Challenge Deck, a deck of cards that helps challenge you all year round. We first launched this a couple of years ago. Now it's new and improved. It's 40 challenge cards developed into three themes, built around those three key Stoic disciplines, perception, action, will. And each card, you could pull it out each morning or multiple times a day,

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  whatever version you want to play the game with, you can play with friends. Anyways, you pull out a challenge card and it's got a challenge for you, instructions, a quote from a Stoic, and then a unique inspiring illustration. And every day you're forced to wrestle with that question. Who's in charge, the weak side of me or the side that's going to do what the card says? It pushes you in little ways. So the big ways stop seeming quite so big, so out of character. And you minimize fear by making the act of overcoming it routine. You test yourself to prepare for the tests of life. You do something difficult, scary, something good every day. And you can check it out with the Daily Stoic Challenge Deck. I'll link to it in today's episode as well.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  You can find it at dailystoic.com/challengeDeck. And of course, you can find this and a bunch of other awesome products at store.dailystoic.com.

• 4:03Ryan Holiday?

  Only fools rush in. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the bestsellers. It's just an awesome experience, but I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. A good person is invincible, Epictetus says in Discourses 3:6, "For they don't rush into

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  contests in which they aren't the strongest. If you want their property, take it. Take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for, nor trap them in what they should avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible?" And then the entry is, "One of the most fundamental principles of martial arts is that strength should not go against strength. That is, don't try to beat your opponent where they are strongest." But for some reason, that's exactly what we try to do when we undertake some impossible task we haven't bothered to think through, or we let someone put us on the spot, or we say yes to whatever comes our way.

• 5:28Ryan Holiday?

  Some people think that choosing your battles is weak or calculating. But how could reducing the amount of times we fail, or minimize the needless injuries inflicted on us be weak? How is that a bad thing? As the saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor. The Stoics call it reasoned choice. That means be reasonable. Think hard before choosing and make yourself unbeatable. A book I've recommended many, many times, I sell it here at the Painted Porch, is Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel says, "The whole point of business in life is to find where you have a monopoly, where you're the only one doing that thing." There's another book that I rave about, that we carry here in the store, called Blue Ocean Strategy. There's another one called Blue Ocean Shift that actually did the marketing

• 6:10Ryan Holiday?

  for it. But the idea is, red oceans is where there's lots of competition. That means being like everyone else, wanting the things that everyone wants, focusing on what's out of your control like everyone else. It's a far better thing to focus on what is in your control, on being you and your unique self. And the Stoics actually have a lot about this, right? Agrippinus, we talk about in Lives of the Stoics, he says, "I want to be the red thread in the sweater, not like the other threads. I want to stand up." And that's the idea. Epictetus says, "Walk alone," right? "Look around you. Be who you are."

• 6:50Ryan Holiday?

  To me, what he's saying is that when you try to be like someone else, you lose. When you want the things that other people want, you lose. When you enter something where you are trying to be like someone or something that you're not supposed to be, you lose. But when you are yourself, when you stand for what you stand for, when you do what you know is right, that's when you win, even if you quote unquote lose. There's an interview I was reading with the architect Frank Gehry recently. And he would, he would say, when he was talking to architects who were just starting out, he would get them to all get out a piece of paper. And he would say, write your signature on this paper.

• 7:34Ryan Holiday?

  And then he'd spread them out and have the whole class look at them. And he'd say, they all look different. That's you. That's you. So stay with that forever. And I think that's what Epictetus is saying here. You are a unique person. You have a totally unique set of DNA and experiences and values. And you are that red thread. So don't make yourself like the others. Don't sell out, right? When you stick to who you are, when you're true to that, you win no matter what. You have a monopoly on you. Don't give that monopoly away. Don't forfeit it. Don't lose it. Another rendering of that Epictetus quote,

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  he says, you can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you. When your focus, as Marx totally says, on what other people say or do, on getting approval, on having certain gatekeepers accept you or open things up to you. Well, that's when you have set yourself up to be defeated. And even if you win, you've still lost in some sense that you've given up something that was uniquely you and uniquely yours. I think that's a shame. And so that's what I want to leave you there. Stick with what's up to you. Stick with who you are and go where you have that monopoly. Competition is for losers, as Peter Thiel said. So go where you're a winner.

• 9:04Ryan 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.