Everything (And I Really Mean Everything) Is A Chance To Do This

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

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  It's weird for me to say that I might have been reading Marcus Aurelius wrong for many years. It's especially weird to think that I was reading this quote wrong, even as I helped popularize it to millions of people. I think it's true. You know, in the famous passage in Meditations where Marcus Aurelius talks about how the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way. The idea that the obstacle is the way. Most of us, and certainly myself when I was younger, take this to mean that we can always turn adversity into advantage, right? You can think of the entrepreneur in the downturn who's building a huge business.

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  We can think of an investor buying back stock, taking advantage of being underestimated by the market or their competitors. We can think of a general using bad weather as cover. Can think of an athlete coming back stronger after an injury. Can think of a rejected artist or musician going independent, building their own label from the snowbank that they received. And that's mostly how I thought about obstacles and opportunities when I was writing The Obstacles Away in my twenties, now over 10 years ago. And the simplest idea in the book, the one that's resonated with people all over the world, is that there are hidden advantages in every problem.

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  The businesses and teams and people can take seemingly impossible situations and triumph over them. And this is true. Hard times can be softened, Seneca says.

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  Tight squeezes can be widened. Heavy loads can be made lighter for those who apply the right pressure. And again, this is right. This is true. This is how great and successful people think about things. But one of the things that I have come to understand, the longer I have meditated on that idea in meditations, the longer I have thought about this idea, the more I have experienced, is that the Stoics were thinking about it a little deeper than just that. They were getting at something a little more profound than just the fact that every downside can be flipped into some kind of advantage and turned into some professional success.

• 3:07Ryan Holiday?

  They had to be because it would be insane to say nothing of insulting and insensitive to tell someone that their terminal cancer was an advantage. Was there a way for Marcus Rilis to spring forward after he buried another one of his children, which he did, not one time, which would have been terrible enough, but time after time after time? Seneca can say that hard times can be softened. Then again, he doesn't have to live like Epictetus. He doesn't have to live through not just slavery, but the disability that comes from the torture he endures at the hands of his cruel master.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  I guess what I'm saying is that I've come to understand that this idea applies to professional, even personal level, but it also applies at a deeper spiritual level. It's a little bit different. The opportunity that the Stoics were seeing inside adversity, big and small, was the idea of practicing virtue. The idea was that these obstacles are a chance for us to rise and meet the occasion, to do the right thing, to be magnificent or magnanimous, even when we're experiencing heartbreak. The Stoics tried to do this even when they were being kicked around by life, even when they were dying. That's what he mean.

• 4:37Ryan Holiday?

  When he says that the obstacle is the way, there's not always a chance to make more money or to win an election. But there is always a chance for you to grow and change and practice virtue. Okay, so then the question is, what is virtue? In the ancient world, virtue isn't one thing. It's four things. And fittingly, Zeno, the first Stoic to lay out these four virtues, comes up with them after a devastating shipwreck in which he loses everything, including his family business, and he has to rebuild his life from scratch. So again, he's not saying this glibly, right?

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  He's not talking about recovering from a slight downturn in the market. He's talking about rebuilding your life from scratch. The four virtues, according to Zeno, and then all the later Stoics, are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. So courage, that's bravery and fortitude and honor and sacrifice. Temperance is discipline, self-control, moderation, composure, balance, equanimity, restraint. Justice, that's fairness and ethics and service and honesty, fellowship, goodness, kindness. And then wisdom is knowledge and education and truth and self-reflection. Marcus Rivas calls these four virtues the touchstones of goodness.

• 6:05Ryan Holiday?

  He says they're guiding principles for how we ought to act, how we should respond to every situation. And I think it's fair to say, even of the worst situations, there are none that we can't use to practice these virtues. Even the hardest, the most tragic, most heartbreaking moments in life, including a terminal diagnosis or a crippling energy or losing your livelihood or burying a loved one. These things can be transformed by endurance and selflessness and courage and kindness and decency.

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  Life can strip us of a lot, can take a lot from us, but it can't take away our ability to respond with those things. You know, I interviewed Francis Ford Coppola on the Daily Stoic Podcast not that long ago. His movie Megalopolis has a bunch of Stoic themes in there. And he said something really touching to me. He had just been going through a tragedy in his life. He'd lost his wife of 60 years. And it would be insane, and again, insulting to be like, so the obstacle is the way, right? Like, how are you using this? That's not what the Stoics are talking about.

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  But Francis did bring up to me how he was challenged by this and what he was challenging himself to do out of it.

• 7:29Francis Ford Coppola?

  I lost this wife of 60 years. And it's sort of devastating. But there was a Marcus Aurelius quote that really lifted me, which was, I don't know it literally, but you'll know it. If you lose a loved one, honor her. And in a sense, try to be more like her and then she'll live in your actions. And so my wife was very good. And I just tried to be like her. And when I tried to be like her, I, you know, like she was very, if someone was alone or sick or something, she'd call them up and be comforting to them. And I'm not like that, you know? So I started to do that.

• 8:11Francis Ford Coppola?

  People that I know, some guys my age who have no grandchildren are just there. And call them up and say, how are you? And being like her. And they were so pleased and so, oh, it's so kind. And I keep my wife in my life with Marcus Aurelius advice by trying to be more like her.

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  You know, I think that's beautiful. I think that has a lot to teach us. And I think it's closer to what it means when we say that the obstacle is the way. It's something I try to apply in my own life, practically in my business and creative life, but also in the difficulties of my own life. And, and the last 10 years since The Obstacle came out have been wonderful to me in, in many ways. I'd also say it's been a lot. It's probably been a lot for you too, right? There were natural disasters and floods and fires. We opened this bookstore in the middle of the pandemic. Then there was a terrible storm that knocked out the power for several days and necessitated

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  replacing the roof as water came pouring in. There was a long drought that's ravaged the ranch that I live on. Of course, the pandemic lasted for many years and nearly killed the bookstore before it opened. I've had disputes with business partners. I had an employee who was caught embezzling. There were funerals and late night phone calls with news that you don't want to get. The company that I started at went bankrupt and it took not just a big chunk of my resume, but what was supposed to be several years of salary in stock options that I had earned. There was a falling out with family.

• 9:59Ryan Holiday?

  There were hundreds of thousands of miles on the road as I traveled and worked. There was getting skunked on bestseller lists. There were creative differences. There was daily battles with procrastination. There was just life, right? Life is not easy. Life does not go the way we wanted to go.

• 10:29Ryan Holiday?

  I remember in the early days of the pandemic, as the bookstore project went from this fun, exciting thing to a daily nightmare in many ways. I wrote myself a note along these lines. I wrote, 2020 is a test. Will it make you a better person or a worse one? That's what it means when we say the obstacle is the way. Whether the business would work or not, whether things would turn around or not, whether it would turn a profit or not. In some ways, that was all dependent on things outside of my control. But who I was, whether I stayed true to what I believed, whether I grew and changed and learned from this experience, that's, that's what the obstacle is the way it means.

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  And look, I think spending the time that I've spent on this Stoic virtue series, I started in 2019, a series on these cardinal virtues. I did Courage is Calling and Discipline is Destiny and Right Thing Right Now. And I just finished and am putting out Wisdom Takes Work. I think I've come to more fully understand what the Stoics were talking about, what they were getting at when they said, "The obstacle is the way." Life is always demanding one of these virtues from us, always demanding that we try to be a good person despite the bad things that have happened,

• 11:55Ryan Holiday?

  telling us that we must be good in a world despite the bad things that have befallen us. And then also in good times, in the face of temptations and distractions, as well as the responsibility and obligations and obstacles, again, that come with success and abundance. We have to be humble. We have to be disciplined. We have to be decent. We have to be generous. We have to stay true to our values. That's, again, what this idea means. Like, when I look at the world right now and I'm frustrated or alarmed by it, what I try to remind myself is that moments like these demand virtue from us. It's not how I would have chosen things to go. It's not how I want them to be.

• 12:39Ryan Holiday?

  But I do choose how I respond to them. Here it is, right? And what are we going to do about it? Who are we going to be inside of it? Is this going to make you better or worse? That's the decision that we get to make. And I think a lot of this comes down to the ideas, to this virtue of wisdom, right? To be able to see it that way, to be able to understand and discern when and where to apply courage. How much discipline is required in a given situation? What is the right balance? And of course, to what ends are we applying courage and discipline? That's what justice is about.

• 13:24Ryan Holiday?

  It's bittersweet finishing the series, of course. When Gibbon finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he talked about the sadness he felt taking leave of an old friend and companion. I don't feel exactly the same way finishing this series because virtue isn't something that you ever finish or take leave of. But there is something strange about finishing it. But I know I'm better for having written it. The more we think about virtue, the more we apply it, the better we become, not just creatively, but personally. If I was starting this series again, I would do certain things differently. That's part of wisdom, is you reflect back on the new things you've learned and you see how you would apply them differently.

• 14:08Ryan Holiday?

  And then hopefully you apply that differently in the future. But I will say that taking this deeper understanding of what it means to say the obstacle is the way, I noticed that I am calmer, I am quieter, I argue less, I get upset less, I admit I am wrong more often. There's still a long way to go and each new challenge challenges us in new ways. But I'm proud of the progress that I've made. And that's what the ancients wanted us to understand about virtue. That virtue wasn't a thing that you're born with. It was a kind of a craft, a thing that you get better at as you go. Aristotle says, "We become builders by building, and we become harpers by playing the harp." He says, "Similarly, we become just by doing just actions,

• 14:51Ryan Holiday?

  temperate by doing temperate actions, and brave by doing brave actions." Virtue is a craft. So yeah, sure, maybe it starts in the professional world. How do you get a little better at responding to bad news? How do you get a little better at taking advantage from seemingly frustrating or disappointing situations? How do you find the opportunities that others are missing? But then you gotta apply it at this deeper level. You gotta apply it to those truly challenging, truly life-altering situations. The ones that, at the surface level, it doesn't feel like there could ever be anything good in them. They feel devastating, that take you away from people or people away from you,

• 15:34Ryan Holiday?

  that really scare you, that really rattle you. But in how we respond, we can make something of them. And that's the one part of life that we control. And that's what Stoicism is ultimately about. Responding well to life, to the world, to unpredictability, to setbacks, to injustices, to problems, and everything we're going to experience. To respond well means to respond with virtue, to turn the obstacle into the way, to turn adversity into advantage. That's what we're doing. And that's what I understand now about what Marcus really has meant 2,000 years ago.

• 16:18Ryan 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.