Don’t Join The Mob | Ask Daily Stoic - Habits

In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan discusses how he cultivates better habits, people with habits that he admires, and books that you can read to help improve your routine. If you want to develop better habits in your own life, check out the Daily Stoic Habits Challenge at dailystoic.com/habits.📙 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow.

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  Don't join the mob.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  We can trace so many of our institutions back to ancient Rome. In Rome, they had senators and a senate which stood on Capitoline Hill. Here in America, all these thousands of years later, we have senators and a senate that conducts business in the Capitol, which sits at the center of Capitol Hill. There's also another institution in Rome's day, one that loomed large in public life that has stayed with us: the mob, the rabble, the riotous mass, the insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, smearing the Temple of Democracy with feces and blood, wearing clothes that celebrated the Holocaust, waving the Confederate flag

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  as they rushed to thwart the peaceful transfer of power. They were not an aberration. They were not an anomaly in the history of democracy. No, they were part of a tragic tradition that the Stoics have been warning about for centuries. As Mike Duncan writes in his riveting book, The Storm Before the Storm, and he also talks about this in a podcast episode we did together, many events in the decades leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic mirrored this. There was a crisis in 133 B.C. over a land redistribution bill, which escalated into an armed attack and the first political murder in the Republic's history. In 100 B.C., when it became clear that one politician was going to lose an election, his supporters

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  stormed Capitoline Hill, murdered the man who won the consular vote, and barricaded themselves inside its chambers. Then, in the 80s B.C., troops formed factions and Rome's first civil war broke out. The mob, then, to the Romans, symbolized the breakdown of their political system. Political violence was something to be abhorred, to be feared, never to be tolerated. Cicero's greatest moment as a statesman came when he stared down the Catiline Conspiracy. We have a great podcast episode about this with Professor Josiah Osgood. Just as 1800 years later, two of George Washington's greatest moments were when he nipped the Newburgh Conspiracy in the bud and then put down Shay's Rebellion.

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  Lincoln would give one of his best speeches before the Civil War, warning against the rise of the mobocratic spirit, which had infected both the South and the North alike. It should have been no surprise, then, to anyone paying attention at least, that Lincoln had no tolerance for the slave owners who, having lost a legitimate election, attempted to overthrow the U.S. government by force and violence. Chrysippus, an early Stoic, said that the whole point of being a philosopher was to separate yourself from the mob. It was to be above chaos and destruction, to appeal to and demonstrate, as Lincoln said, "the better angels of our rational and civic nature." Cato worshiped, even died protecting

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  the so-called "old ways of Rome," the traditions and institutions of the Republic. These were what were so fractured in the decades leading up to Julius Caesar's rise, the institutions whose brittleness and precariousness was easily exploited as the Republic crumbled and tumbled into empire. Today, all of us are threatened by this mob. Just weeks ago, more than two dozen people in Germany were arrested for plotting to storm the Reichstag, Germany's parliament building, where they would seize power from what they deemed to be an illegitimate government. Much of the language they used to explain their motivation echoed directly the delusional and conspiratorial pronouncements of that same mob that perpetrated the events that

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

  unfolded in this country two years ago to this day. The events of January 6, 2021, were not kabuki. They were not the simple exercise of free speech that got out of hand. They were not an aberration. They were not an abstraction. They were very real, and they cannot be dismissed with what-aboutism or conspiracy theories. Here's one way to make them real if you have yet to accept the gravity of what occurred on that day. One former Daily Stoic podcast guest and a friend of mine, Congressman and former Marine Mike Gallagher, was trapped in his office when the mob of insurrectionists broke through the barricades. The threat was real enough, conflict was imminent enough, that he prepared to use

• 5:17Ryan Holiday?

  his ceremonial Marine sword to defend his staff. He had broadcast live on social media a plea to the then-President of the United States, Donald Trump, to call his goons off. And as we know, the former president declined to do so for hours because he hoped desperately, pathetically, that the mob might win and restore him to power. The old ways that Cato fought for, the ones that ground us in a set of common laws and shared values, they must remain sacred always and everywhere. The peaceful transition of political power is today both the most important of those old ways and the most under threat by the mob.

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  As philosophers and citizens and politicians, it is our job to stand for the former and beat back the latter. As citizens, as decent human beings, as lovers of justice, we cannot tolerate, rationalize, excuse, or accept any form of political violence. We cannot cater to or join with the mob. And anyone that violates this or any of its related principles deserves the most ancient of civil punishments: not cancellation, but permanent exile.

• 6:29Ryan Holiday?

  And by the way, if today's entry upsets you in any way, if you feel the need to disagree with what I'm talking about in any way, just do me a favor. Don't send me a note, just click the unsubscribe button. I don't need you, don't want you. Bye.

• 6:51Ryan Holiday?

  Hey there. Another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. You send in your questions. I answer them. Sometimes we do themes. Sometimes we do guests. I'm excited to talk about this. We've been working on this habits challenge. And so I thought I'd answer some questions that you guys have about habits. So the first habit I have is what is a habit that you've learned from the Stoics? I've talked about this before, but the waking up early is one that I learned from Marcus Aurelius. When I was 19 years old, I read Meditations for the first time. And the passage in Book Five, it's one of my favorite favorites. Marcus Aurelius says, "At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself you were born to do

• 7:36Ryan Holiday?

  the work of a human being, not to huddle under the covers and stay warm. You've got to get up, you've got to get moving." And I just love that so much that I actually typed it up and I put it on my wall in my dorm. It wasn't my dorm, it was a college apartment. But I've thought about that quote for many, many years. And I've gone through periods. I remember when I sort of first started to be successful in working for myself, I was like, oh, I can make my own hours. I can do whatever I wanted. And I sort of got away from waking up early. And I just found that that wasn't conducive to me doing my best work. My best work comes when I wake up early, when I tackle the important task of the day before anything else. And I learned this from Marcus Aurelius. I think if you look

• 8:19Ryan Holiday?

  at successful people, almost all of them are early risers. And there's a reason for that. As I say, in stillness, when everyone agrees on something, there's usually something, on a habit, let's say, there's usually something to it. And so I think the Stoics were notorious. Early risers for a reason, there's a lot of good in it. And, and, and that's probably where I'd start as far as habits go. The Stoics, the next habit, of course, would be journaling and, and, and reading. Um, and then, and then maybe some, some memento mori. But the, what I do love about Stoicism is it's not this thing you read. It is habits, it's practices. And the more you do them, the more you understand the sort of wisdom.

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, the, and, and, and almost the habit becomes routine, which becomes a kind of a, a ritual. And then the next question is, is what's a, what's a habit that, uh, I'm working on cutting out of my life? So for me, uh, social media has always been sort of a bane and a boon of my existence. I probably wouldn't be here without social media. Uh, certainly my businesses have succeeded because of social media. Certainly I see a lot of value in it, but I have a lot of trouble with sort of compulsive actions. Like, uh, there, they sort of go, there's people who are addicts, people who are not addicts. I, I definitely have an addictive personality, which by the way is one reason I, I don't drink. I don't do drugs.

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  Um, is, is just generally whenever I do anything, I, I tend to be, do it compulsively. And so I try to just steer clear of things that sort of trigger that compulsiveness in me. But for me with social media, it's this sort of constant battle. Um, and, and I feel like every time I sort of knock one of the networks down, the other one pops up in significance for me. So Twitter was the one, you know, in 2016, during the presidential election, sort of spiraled out of control. So I stopped that one and I, I very rarely check it. Um, and, and, and I, I don't keep it on my phone, but I do find myself occasionally drawn back into it. I, I rationalize, oh, I'm just going to check my at replies. I'm just going to check my messages.

• 10:23Ryan Holiday?

  And then here I, oh, I'm just going to check this, you know, sort of trending topic. And then here I am. So sort of having a really clear boundary and borderline with that one has been good. Facebook, I quit about two years ago, uh, an hour, a year and a half ago, um, which was great. I was found that it wa, it's not the, the activity, it's not the site itself that was triggering the compulsive activity, but it was triggering some compulsive thoughts for me. Um, having, you know, built my account over the years, it was filled with lots of people who do similar work to me, um, who, who are in peer groups with me. And I found that what it was triggering was sort of envy, status anxiety. Am I doing enough? Am I making enough? Why is this person doing this? Why am I not doing that?

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  And and checking out of Facebook really made it easier for me to stay in my own lane, to focus on what's important to me. There's this quote I love from Bruce Dickinson where he said, you know, like, we're farming our own field, what the other farmers are growing, so it doesn't matter to us. But I I really found that Facebook made it harder for me to do that, because I was constantly being, seeing what other people were doing. Instagram is similar uh to me, similar in that way. So I don't have Instagram on my phone. I actually have it on my wife's phone. Um. So for instance, I just got an email. Uh, we we put up something and someone was asking me, you know, how that posted. And it's like, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to go home and get my wife's phone to be able to

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  look at it. And so that delay makes it much harder for me to compulsively check it, um, which has been good. And and like, I try to think about how much time that habit has saved me. Um, in the way that sort of, uh, you know, someone trying to quit cigarettes might look at what these cigarettes are costing them on an annual basis, how much they save by not smoking. I I try to think about it in terms of time and and where might I spend that time? Creating the, you know, really using that surplus of time is important to me. But I find now, sort of being here, sort of home on lockdown, I am grabbing my wife's phone more, and I know it frustrates her as well. So, um, you know, the these these services are

• 12:29Ryan Holiday?

  designed to be compulsive. They the the smartest sort of data scientists and psychologists and behavioral economics economists have figured out how to make them very impossible to resist. So understandably, they're irresistible. Um, two books I'd recommend, if this is a habit you struggle with, Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism, very good. And then Neer Eyal's book, uh, Indistractable, also very good on the topic. So, um, that's a habit I struggle with, not perfect at it, definitely relapse from time to time. But like, what I try to measure, what I try to look at with with habits or, you know, things like that is something Epicurus talked about is. You know, what is, what is, what is this actually getting you?

• 13:13Ryan Holiday?

  Like, is, and even though we think of the Epicureans as sort of pleasure seekers, he's talking about how often pleasure is its own punishment. And so, yeah, there's a dopamine hit, there's a rush, or there's, you know, some mindless fun in doing it. But in the end, I noticed it, it decreases my overall sort of day-to-day happiness. And that's what I'm trying to optimize for, so I'm not going to use things that challenge that happiness.

• 13:41Ryan Holiday?

  The, the next question are, who is someone whose habits I admire or that I think we can learn from? So, a- as a writer, obviously, I've always looked up to Robert Greene. And there's two quick Robert Greene stories that I think, to me, I sort of see as examples of the power of great habits, the power of discipline, the power of, of sort of, you know, self-control. They might seem, you might not see them that way, but I definitely do. So I'll give you one. When Robert is writing, if you call him, he does not answer the phone. And I, I'm, I struggle with that. When, if the phone rings, I'm like, oh, I want the distraction, so I answer.

• 14:25Ryan Holiday?

  But, but Robert has this sort of iron ability to just stay on task. So, like, I might call Robert and not get a, get a phone call returned for like a week because he is busy. And when he's writing, that's the most important thing. Then his routine is the most important thing. His relationship with his, his girlfriend and wife is the same thing. You know, his, you know, his life is important, and then all the other things come second. I've always sort of really respected this kind of monk-like discipline. But I'll, I'll give you another example. So, obviously, we don't see each other that much. He lives in LA, I live in Austin, and, and my trips to LA are often sort of a bit of a surprise, or, or I don't have a ton of notice. So, last time I was in LA, I, I called Robert.

• 15:12Ryan Holiday?

  And and I said, hey, I'm here or I texted him. I think I said, hey, I'm here. And he said, I'd like to see you. When are you going to be here? And I was like, Robert, I'm actually, I think it was like, why don't you call me in the morning when you figure out your plans? And so I called him that morning. I was like, hey, Robert, I'm in Glendale. I have to drive to Hollywood. So literally, I am going to drive on the boulevard that your house is two blocks off. I was like, I will be driving by your house in, you know, in an hour and a half. If you want, if we want to see each other, let's see each other. And and we talked and and I could tell that he wanted to see me. And so it wasn't like a kiss off, but he said, you know, that's going to be like 10:30.

• 15:57Ryan Holiday?

  And I'll have just gotten in the zone writing. I think we should not do it. And like, I am someone who I'm, and I'm a pretty antisocial person myself. I'm so that, so I usually, you know, I usually, you know, I'm not, I'm an introvert. So I'm not always seeking out, you know, I I'm drained by, you know, sort of social activity. But I do also welcome distraction. And so I was, I was just the discipline that that took to me was just incredibly impressive. And it's something I try to think about and it's, it's hard to say no, right? It's hard to, you know, to to to do that.

• 16:40Ryan Holiday?

  And and he's able to do it because he's able to prioritize. We talk on the phone, we'll see each other soon. But but he's able to go like, no, I committed to myself. I'm going to do X. It might seem weird, it might hurt someone's feelings a little bit, but I'm going to insist on maintaining this. And I just, I just respect that about Robert so much and I admire it. And like in the habits challenge, you know, we talk about the power of relationships and investing in relationships. So I don't think it's about, you know, sort of, you know, ignoring other people, but it's about making sure that, you know, you are organizing and structuring your life and your relationships in a way that it allows you to do what you

• 17:21Ryan Holiday?

  want to do. You know, it's and and one of the things that having kids has been good for for me is that it has forced me to get more serious about that. When someone, you know, someone says, oh, hey, can you, you know, come do this thing, it, you know, requires you driving across town, it requires, you know, this commitment. I know I'm telling you it's only going to take 15 minutes, but actually it's going to take two hours, blah, blah, blah. I think for a good chunk of my career, I was so ambitious that I would accept sort of any of that. And now I realize, oh, wait, no, I'm stealing this time from a kid, or I'm stealing this time from my work, or I'm stealing this time from myself. When we talked to Steven Pressfield, you know, he talked about how sometimes he just wants to sit and look out the window and think, and that this is important to his

• 18:04Ryan Holiday?

  happiness and his creativity. Well, that is the truth. And so even knowing that I'm stealing that from myself is really important. So those are just a couple of thoughts on on habits that I hope are valuable. You know, as far as some recommendations about habit stuff, I really like James Clear's book on habit. It's great, called Atomic Habits. I'd also highly recommend the book, Daily Routines by Mason Curry, also great insight into some people's habits. Benjamin Spall has a book called My Morning Routine, which

• 18:45Ryan Holiday?

  can give you some ideas on routine. There's also a website called Morning Routine. We we have a website that we've run for a while called mime, sorry, called Writing Routines. It's writingroutines.net. You can check that out. Obviously, I have a chapter on on routines and the power of routines in. And still, this is the key, so you can check that out. But look, I think we, as James Clear says, we rise to the level of our habits and we fall to the level of our systems. And so the habits you make, the way you think about habits, the practices you build into your life, this has enormous, enormous impact. For like, I think people think with me, because I'm productive, because I write a lot, because

• 19:30Ryan Holiday?

  I'm young, that I must sort of always be, that it must be excruciating. Actually, it's just the function of some pretty basic, clear habits that I follow day in and day out. And that's really what, what, what we're talking about in the Habits Challenge. That's why I love answering questions about habits. So if you want to check out the Habits Challenge, you can do that. It's dailystoic.com/habits. I think it's one of the best things we've done a long time. It's a good opportunity to invest in yourself right now if you're stuck at home. It's six weeks, a really dedicated, rigorous course about habits, and I think it will make you better. So check it out, and I will talk to you next week.