Ask Daily Stoic: Who Are Some Famous Figure Influenced By Stoicism?

Ryan talks about putting the finishing touches on his upcoming book, Lives of the Stoics. Featuring today's entry from The Daily Stoic. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. 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

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• 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 episode of the Weekend Edition of The Daily Stoic. I am sitting here in Texas. I am just putting in the final, final touches on Lives of the Stoics. I was telling you a couple of weeks ago that, so basically, what happens is you turn in a manuscript and then it comes back with edits. And it is never a pleasant experience to see the red lines, to see people who don't understand, you know, what you're trying to do, or have objections about it. One of the best rules I've heard about writing that I actually think is sort of great feedback for life in general, and I forget who it comes from, but I heard it from the author Neil Strauss. The idea is that when somebody tells you something is wrong, they're always right.

• 1:14Ryan Holiday?

  And when they tell you how to fix what's wrong with your writing, they're almost always wrong. And the point is that if something isn't working for the reader, they're right because it isn't working for them. When they try to tell you how to fix it, they're not writers, so they don't usually know the best way to fix it. And I actually think this is great advice for business. This is great advice for life. When someone is frustrated with you, and someone complains about something, when someone gets upset with you, they're right in the sense that those are their feelings. They don't like something that you're doing. They don't like some part of the experience. They're having a problem.

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  Now, if their solution is totally a separate and distinct fact from this piece of information. So when we get complaints for Daily Stoic, for instance, it's like, okay, obviously you have to fix this person's problem, and you have to make them feel better. And then when they're saying, "Do X to make this..." Right. They're not usually right, but there's clearly some problem in the process that you want to address. So there's another book, I think it's called A Complaint Is A Gift or something like that, but it's a great sort of customer service. Also, I think lifestyles or writing piece of advice, which is that by complaining or by pointing out a problem, or in the case of writing with the editor making a note, they are actually doing you a favor by bringing something to your attention.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  Like, obviously in the manuscript, I think I did what I was supposed to do perfectly. Or I did it as well as I thought I could do it at that moment. And I think I got over the hump that I was trying to get over. But it may be that actually I didn't, or it may be that in getting over it, I caused some other problem. You have to separate your emotional reaction from the fact that the feedback is giving you the general direction, some sort of general warning about some issue. So the last couple of weeks, the last week or so has been me going through those notes, fixing stuff, trying to address stuff. It's like the manuscript's most of the way there and now you're just sort of tightening it. And actually, what I tend to find is interesting as you're working on the manuscript. So you're addressing all these little sort of piddly errors here and there, you know, little notes.

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  But then it's even in looking at it that way, I'm finding other things that I didn't know. It's just forcing me to look at the manuscript, the text from various different points of view and I'm finding and improving stuff. So it's this sort of process of going over and over and over again, that a book ends up becoming the thing that you guys ultimately end up holding in your hands. And I think having now done this so many times, this is like the 10th time I've gone through it. You also become a bit more patient, you become a bit more forgiving, a bit less sort of precious over the process. Cause you know that it's like, okay, you do this, you follow the steps, you stick to it. At the end of it, this sort of finished product emerges.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  So like, I'll turn in this manuscript draft, it will be accepted. That's actually a sort of an official term in publishing and there's actually a payment tied to it. It's called the delivery and acceptance payment, because you sign a contract to deliver a manuscript loosely about. A number of things and then the publisher has to decide, do we still want to publish it? So this acceptance is like a big sort of benchmark. It's like an official sort of way station on the publishing process. So hopefully it'll get accepted here, although I always send the manuscript in knowing that it might not get accepted. It might get kicked back to me. I might have to do this four or five times and that has happened on plenty of my books. You never want to celebrate the submission process too much because you don't control what the reaction on the other side of it's going to be.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  Hopefully though it'll get accepted and then then it goes to copy editing. So then you see the manuscript one more time. This is where we try to catch as many errors as possible. In fact, the copy editing is like the most unpleasant, uncomfortable part of the publishing process. Cause here's someone who doesn't really care about the book. They don't really care about you. All they care about are these like sort of very firm that they think are objective rules about grammar, which are not true. They're sort of coming into it with with little experience on the subject matter and they're just like tearing it apart. Like you almost see, almost always see more notes and less pleasantly phrased notes in the copy editing phase than you do in the formative editing phase. Then the copy edits are done and then you see what are called first pass pages.

• 5:33Ryan Holiday?

  That's like the first time the books like started to be designed. And then you see second pass pages and then that's the last time. And so you see it in the galleys and then the finished product. So that'll all happen over the next six or seven months. And then hopefully we'll have books sort of towards the early fall. And then I believe we're looking at an October launch. So there's a lot left to do, but it's sort of around this phase that I start to wind down sort of this book, taking up too much of my mental bandwidth. I'll no longer be thinking of the lives of the Stokes and I'll start to be thinking about researching what the next project is. So I like to kind of have like a smooth, but integrated handoff from one project to another. So I'm always writing, always working.

• 6:18Ryan Holiday?

  I want to stay kind of in my fighting weight because like the process is arduous and it can be discouraging. And so I always feel like if I'm just always doing it, I never get used to not doing it. And that's so. Sort of my writing philosophy. So that's really fun. And then I'm flying to LA this afternoon. It's funny. I feel like I've been talking about the pre-Meditation Malorum at the beginning of these messages. Well, I showed up this morning to sit down at my desk and then it was like, your plane is delayed. And then I got another email and it was like, your plane is undelayed half that. And then I got an email a little bit after that. This is your plane is redelayed more than the original. So I am girding myself, stealing myself in advance for what will be a ridiculous flight I'm imagining.

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  What I also try to think about is something I've worked on more recently as I've gotten older is like, I have a dinner that I'm supposed to do when I arrive and that used to cause me like so much anxiety that these like two things are in conflict. It's like, well, now this is bumping up into this and because this is bumping into this, that could go wrong. And now it's like, look, I'll have the dinner or I won't. It would be unfortunate if I didn't. None of that is really up to me. What is up to me is whether it's going to be a miserable experience between now and then. Am I going to let the looming uncertainty of it make me unhappy? Am I going to make it, have it make me stressed? Am I going to make it like, make me run and sprint and, or am I just gonna have a sort of a pleasant morning and afternoon?

• 7:45Ryan Holiday?

  Try to do as much work as I can, try to be in the best headspace that I can. And if it happens, it happens. So like, I think there is an aspect of Stoicism that should help you get to a kind of zen. And I wish that the Stoics had a word for it, you know, obviously for me that I've tried to use that word of stillness or ataraxia, sort of freedom from worry and frustration and uncertainty. But you should get to a place where these things don't bother you as much. And just as I'm trying not to be bothered by the notes, I'm trying not to be bothered by the uncertainty of flying. And I'm trying to do what I have to do. So that's it for me today. I can't wait for you guys to hear what we have coming up in the rest of the episode. Thanks to our sponsors for supporting us and thank you most of all for listening.

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  I thought I'd read today a quick excerpt from the February 15th entry of The Daily Stoic. The title is "Only Bad Dreams," and the quote is from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Book Six, Passage 31. He says, "Clear your mind and get a hold of yourself. And as when awakened from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream upsetting you, wake up and see that's what there is, just like those dreams." The author Raymond Chandler was describing most of us when he wrote in a letter to his publisher, "I never looked back, although I had many uneasy periods looking forward." Thomas Jefferson once joked in a letter to John Adams, "How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened?"

• 9:13Ryan Holiday?

  And Seneca would put it best, "There is nothing so certain in our fears that not yet more certain in the fact that most of what we dread comes to nothing." Many of the things that upset us, the Stoics believed, are the product of imagination, not reality. Like dreams, they are vivid and realistic at the time, but preposterous once we come out of it. In a dream, we never stop to think, "Does this make any sense?" No, we go along with it. The same goes with our flights of anger, or fear, or other extreme emotions. Getting upset is like continuing the dream while you're awake. The thing that provoked you wasn't real, but your reaction was. And so from the fate comes real consequences, which is why you need to wake up right now instead of creating a nightmare.

• 9:57Ryan Holiday?

  I'm always amazed, actually, the most popular quote we've ever put on The Daily Stoic Instagram is related to this. It's Seneca's quote, "We suffer more in imagination than in reality." That's sort of the idea, is that, sure, there are things that worry us, there are things that are concerning, but it's our paranoia, our fear, our stress, that often makes these things worse in advance. And so, we know this, but we forget it, and then the mind races, the dream becomes so vivid that it feels real, and it causes problems for ourselves and the people around us. So, that's just a thought to think about this Saturday. You can check out The Daily Stoic audiobook on Audible and pretty much everywhere books are sold.

• 10:39Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for subscribing, and now we'll go into Ask Daily Stoic.

• 10:46Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. You send us your questions about Stoicism, about life, about the Stoic figures, about me, whatever you want. We answer your questions. We try to do three every Saturday. You can email us your questions at [email protected]. You can also hit us up at @dailystoic on pretty much every social channel. Don't send questions to me, though. I won't see them. First question is from Jesus, or it's from Jesus himself, I'm not sure. But he says, "Who are some well-known figures from history who are influenced by Stoicism?" Well, obviously Marcus Aurelius is probably the most famous of the Stoics, or the most famous

• 11:26Ryan Holiday?

  person directly influenced by Stoics. There's obviously a ton, and we have an article on Daily Stoic, which you can check out. But I remember when I first read Marcus Aurelius, I was in college, and then I had to read John Steinbeck's book, East of Eden, shortly thereafter. And it was like, whoa, Stoicism is in this book. The Chinese servant of the main family is like a fan of Marcus Aurelius, and he's quoting from the book. So I've kind of always been on the lookout for little ones. But some of my favorite examples, Theodore Roosevelt took a copy of Epictetus with him on his famous River of Doubt journey, which you can actually see the copy of Meditations. It's at the Theodore Roosevelt House in New York City. Thomas Jefferson died with a copy of Seneca

• 12:07Ryan Holiday?

  on his nightstand, which I always thought was cool. George Washington was introduced to Stoic philosophy by a neighbor when he was about 16 years old. And then we have a Daily Stoic email about this, but one of his favorite quotes is from the Placido about the Stoic, which he put on at Valley Forge. But he says, "I like to look at things in the calm and mild light of philosophy." So George Washington's a great example. General Mattis, our most recent Secretary of Defense here in America, and then four-star general in the Marines. He actually takes Marcus Aurelius with him on the campaign trail, wherever he goes. James Stockdale, former vice presidential candidate, as he was parachuting in to Vietnam, where he knew he was going to be taken prisoner, he said, "I am leaving the world of technology and I am entering the world of Epictetus," which I always

• 12:52Ryan Holiday?

  thought was cool. Arnold Schwarzenegger. I know is interested in Stoicism and I know that because I've talked to him about it. The New England Patriots have read Stoicism. So the Seattle Seahawks, I've spoken to the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Rams. Les Snead, who's the GM of the Rams is a huge Stoicism fan. Nick Saban talks about Marcus Aurelius. There's actually an ESPN article about Saban and Marcus Aurelius helping him prepare for games. I'm just looking at some more of the names here. Michelle Tafoya, Sunday Night Football, a big fan of Stoicism. And then a bunch of rappers have talked about Stoicism. Lupe Fiasco raps about Marcus Aurelius in one song, which I always thought was cool. Somebody sent me that T-Pain has a mixtape called Stoicville, so he's got to be vaguely familiar with

• 13:37Ryan Holiday?

  it. J.K. Rowling talks about Marcus Aurelius a fair amount on Twitter. Brie Larson has as well. This team Taleb, sort of interesting Stoic fellow traveler. Neil Strauss I know. Jonathan Newhouse, who's the head of Conde Nast. Tim Ferriss, Jack Dorsey. I go on, read the article. I think the point is Stoicism has always been a philosophy not only that influential people have been interested in, but has influenced influential people and shaped the choices and decisions that they've made. And so, you know, that endorsement is worth what it's worth. I don't think Stoicism is more or less worth following because famous rich people or powerful people have used it. But I think we should look at the effect

• 14:19Ryan Holiday?

  that it's had on them in their lives. And if we think that that's a positive effect, then it's something we should emulate. Okay, so Nathan, he said, how do you let go and change beliefs that aren't serving you anymore? I mean, I guess I would turn that around. Like, why would you be holding on to beliefs that aren't serving you anymore? I mean, there's always sort of some vestiges of like, sort of old habits and assumptions that are there, even if we want to move on. But I do think like, You should always be asking yourself, do I still believe this? Is this true? Is it helping me? And one of the things I most admire about Marcus Aurelius is how he talks about, he's like, when somebody shows you that you're wrong, they're not hurting you, they're doing you a favor,

• 15:03Ryan Holiday?

  they're helping you. And so I think this idea that we cling to things that we believe because we used to believe them or because someone once told us, that's something we always want to be questioning. We always want to be forming our beliefs anew. We want to be evaluating them as if we were discovering them for the first time. Seneca, you know, I think we can take from his constant quoting and meditations on someone like Epicurus, who's theoretically a rival or, you know, holds radically different views, is him constantly questioning what he believes, comparing it against what other people believe, seeing if it holds true in experience, and then moving on or adapting or changing those ideas as he incorporates them into his life.

• 15:48Ryan Holiday?

  I think the other thing I would think about is like, when we ask ourselves like, why we believe a certain thing or why we're doing it a certain way, it's usually because it's serving us some need, even if it's not a positive, it's doing something for us. Like, I heard this great line once, they said, "Traditions are solutions to problems that we've forgotten about." So the idea that like, the way we've always done things, or the habits we have, or the beliefs that we've picked up, at some point that was true, or at some point that helped us get ahead, it was adaptive, that might not be true now, but we're holding on to that. So I would think about like, this belief system that you're holding on to, this idea,

• 16:28Ryan Holiday?

  that habit or whatever it is, it's keeping you comfortable in some way, it's keeping you in a relationship that you shouldn't be anymore, or it's maintaining a connection that you're, you know, reluctant to let go of, and it's keeping you rooted in the past. There's something that it's doing for you, like drinking, let's say, you know, you believe, you know you shouldn't be drinking, but you can't stop drinking. Well, why are you drinking? Probably because it makes you not have to feel something that you do feel when you're sober. So if you want to change the drinking habit... But you have to address that feeling and then the need will lessen. And I think that's something to think about as you evaluate and you question these belief systems and move on. But really great question, and I hope people sort of work on that. All right, last question for today.

• 17:11Ryan Holiday?

  Obie asks, how do you not take things personally? Which he puts in all caps, which I take personally. That feels like a bit like an attack. He says, is there any stoic approach to looking at things or events objectively without being personal? The truth is like, almost nothing is personal. Like, when you think about the things that you do to other people, how often are you intentionally inflicting distress or problems on them? It's not. It's, you're always thinking about yourself. You're not thinking about the other person. So it's like, we give ourselves a pass, then we won't give other people a pass. Like, we know when we mess up, it's because we were tired, or hungry, or confused, or overwhelmed. But then when someone else messes up, it's because they're an awful person.

• 17:54Ryan Holiday?

  We know, like, oh, sorry, I didn't see that car. That's why I drifted into their lane, or I accidentally cut them off. But of course, they cut me off because they're an asshole. So it's realizing that most people are not, Socrates says, like, nobody does wrong on purpose. Obviously, I think that's a simplification, like, there are such things as sociopaths and psychopaths, and there aren't evil people in the world. But for the most part, people are doing what they think is right. In fact, they're trying to help more than they're trying to hurt. So it's realizing where people are coming from, which is a place eerily similar to your own place. To me, that helps. I think the other thing you could say, it's like, even if it is personal, what does it matter? You decide whether it's good or bad.

• 18:36Ryan Holiday?

  Like, we talked about this at Daily Stoic, like, the ask is the ask. If someone says, hey, can you stay, you know, an extra hour after work? You decide, oh my God, why are they doing this? Like, you can just say, no, I'm sorry, I can't. You decide to interpret a remark as rude. You decide to take it personally. And so realizing that you actually just have the power to tell yourself the story, whatever you want to tell it about the event, and that how often and regularly you do it. Like, when your parents say one thing, you read it this way. When your boss says it, you read it this way. When your husband or wife says it- This way, or when your least favorite person in the world says it, you decide all the time to decide the same actions in radically different ways. And so why don't you just choose not to take this one personally? That would be one thing.

• 19:20Ryan Holiday?

  If I would leave you with a Marcus Realist quote, he's like, "This doesn't have to upset you." He says, "You always have the ability to not have an opinion." I think when you realize that you have strength, you can choose not to be offended. As Epictetus said, "Remember, you are complicit in the outrage." Like when someone says something and you decide to be mad, you are dancing with them. And so when you decide, even if the person was meaning it personally, or they weren't, it only is personal if you choose for it to be. So remembering you have that power is really important. Easy to say, of course, hard to do. So thanks, it's another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Keep sending your questions, [email protected]. Thanks to our sponsors, thank you for listening.

• 20:05Ryan Holiday?

  You can check this out as the podcast, you can check it out on our YouTube channel. And, you know, thanks, send in your questions. If you like the podcast that we do here, and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.