Compete With Yourself And Root For Everybody Else | Seeking Out Shipwrecks

Ryan explains how you turn the words and phrases you come across into actions, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com/stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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 Aurelius, 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.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  Compete with yourself and root for everybody else. The Stoics said that you should focus on your own improvement, that the only race to run is against yourself. At the same time, they also remind us that we're all tied up in this thing together, that we're all bees in the same hive. Aren't those two things at odds with each other? When you focus on your own race, don't you necessarily want to win at the expense of others, or at the very least have to disregard them and their interests? Well, no, we've talked about this. What one does ripples through the collective. Marcus Aurelius said that when one bee is injured, the whole hive suffers. Goes the other way, too. When one bee succeeds, the whole hive thrives.

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  A tweet from Candace Millard squares this tension perfectly. My advice, for what it's worth, she says, "For success and happiness is this: compete with yourself and root for everybody else." In his letters to Lucilius, Seneca was explicit in his writing aspirations. He wanted to be one of the greats. But unlike some writers, he didn't view other writers as competition. If he read a great work, he didn't see it as a threat. In fact, in his 46th letter, Seneca says he received his copy of a book that Lucilius wrote with the intention of just quickly skimming it. "The sunlight called to me," he said, "hunger warned, and the clouds were lowering. But I absorbed the book from beginning to end.

• 2:07Ryan Holiday?

  I was not merely pleased, I rejoiced." So full of wit and spirit it was. He was happy for his friend. He was rooting for him. And we can imagine he was inspired to better himself and get better at his own craft as well.

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  Seeking out shipwrecks. I was shipwrecked before I even boarded. The journey showed me this, how much of what we have is unnecessary, and how easily we can decide to rid ourselves of these things whenever it's necessary, never suffering the loss. That's from Seneca's Moral Letters 87. And this is today's entry in The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, from yours truly, Ryan Holiday, with my co-author and translator, Steve Hanselman. You can get the book anywhere books are sold, including signed copies in the Daily Stoic store and our limited edition, leather-bound edition as well.

• 3:09Ryan Holiday?

  Zeno, widely considered to be the founder of the School of Stoicism, was a merchant before he was a philosopher. On a voyage between islands in the Mediterranean, his ship sank along with its cargo. Zeno ended up in Athens, and while visiting a bookstore, he was introduced to the philosophy of Socrates, and later, an Athenian philosopher named Kretes. These influences drastically changed the course of his life, leading him to develop the thinking and principles that we now know as Stoicism. And according to the ancient biographer Diogenes, "Zeno joked, 'Now that I've suffered a shipwreck, I'm on a good journey.'" Or according to another account, "You've done well, fortune, driving me thus to philosophy."

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics weren't being hypocritical when they said we ought to act with a reverse clause, or that even the most unfortunate events can turn out to be for the best. In fact, the entire philosophy is founded on that idea. You know, I tell this story at greater length in Lives of the Stoics, so I'll read you a chunk of that as well, just because it's one of my favorite stories in all of Stoicism, and I think it's just so fitting. I write, "The story of Stoicism begins fittingly in misfortune. On a fateful day late in the fourth century B.C., the Phoenician merchant Zeno sent sail on the Mediterranean with cargo full of Tyrian purple dye. Zeno's family's trade was in one of the most valuable goods in the ancient world, and

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  as for many entrepreneurs, their business was on the line every day. No one knows what caused the wreck. Was it a storm, pirates, human error? Does it matter? Zeno lost everything, ship and cargo, in a time before insurance and venture capital. It was an irreplaceable fortune. And yet, the unlucky merchant would later rejoice in his loss, claiming, 'I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered a shipwreck, for it was the shipwreck that sent Zeno to Athens, and on the path to creating what would become Stoic philosophy.'" Another fun wrinkle about this that I love is that, you know, he ends up in a bookstore, and it's the, the, the bookseller is reading the works of Socrates, and this is what sends Zeno down his path.

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  So I think there's a couple of things here. Zeno's quote is actually a little bit more about the idea of pre-Meditation, about preparing for adversity. Maybe Zeno was prepared, maybe he wasn't. Again, that his whole business was on the line, and he lost everything in this shipwreck, maybe suggests that perhaps he wasn't. But the idea that the worst possible thing, the thing you dread, the thing you could not have imagined, the thing you think is the worst stroke of bad luck, turns out to be the pivot point of his entire life. Zeno, think about how many Tyrian dye merchants there would have been in the ancient world. How many of their ships were coming into Athens, week in and week out?

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  And think of how few of them we've even heard of. I mean, have you even heard of Tyrian purple? No, you haven't even heard of the country that Zeno's from, right? And so, the irony is that the thing that he probably resented and was angry about and feared, all of this, turns out to be the only reason that we're even talking about him right now. And I think this is a good lesson that, you know, holds true in your own life, right? If you think about the worst things that have happened to you, the things that you dreaded, the things that you wanted, as time has passed, you've seen how they've contributed to who you've become. That's not to say you would have chosen them. That's not to say that they weren't painful. And that's not to say that there wasn't more,

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  in some cases, more downside than upside. But there was upside. And in that, we can make true what Zeno said, that we made a great fortune by suffering a shipwreck, that perhaps from heartbreak came the love of your life, or from a financial calamity came, from some great injury came a wonderful recovery, came a new way of doing things. From the heart attack came an awakening about your health. The worst thing that happened to you can become something good. This is what the idea of the obstacle is the way is really about. And I just love so much that it's literally written into the story of Stoicism, that it is there at the beginning. It is there before the beginning.

• 7:34Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, it's there causing the beginning. And I think that can be true for all of us as well. So I'm not saying, I hope you find a shipwreck today. I'm just saying if your ship does wreck, let's turn it into a Zeno-like rising from the ashes. Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference. And of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So 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.