Either Way, This Is Not The Answer | Ask DS

Then there is the stuff that does harm the community—a corrupt politician who tries to overthrow the rule of law, discrimination, violence, pollution. This stuff happens, it’s the definition of injustice. But again, anger is not the right response. Not because these things aren’t upsetting, but because they are bad remedies to the problem. When the community is at risk, with justice at stake, we need our wits about us. It’s here that we need to be most controlled, most in command of all our faculties. We can be angered at what is happening, but we cannot afford to respond in anger. We need to be rational, strategic, patient, courageous, creative (as well as forgiving, empathetic, and nurturing in the way that our many emails have highlighted about the brilliance of the Civil Rights activists). We need to bring our best to fight the worst. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8hmX7RPyYo]If you’re serious about being your most controlled self when the stakes are high, then check out our 11-day Taming Your Temper Course. It’s full of Stoic practices to defuse your anger in the moment and will help you find constructive outlets for your emotion—freeing you to work on fixing those problems that stoked your anger in the first place. Learn more here and conquer your anger today!✉️ 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.

• 0:06Ryan 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. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, just as you are. Some of these come from my talks, some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members, or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  Either way, this is not the answer. All the bad things in the world are not created equal. For instance, stuff happens that was a mistake, stuff happens that was an accidental byproduct. Stuff happens because people are ignorant of who and how it affected others. And then, of course, there's the stuff that happens that really doesn't do any damage at all, that we sweat or get upset about only because we're valuing the wrong things or focusing on what we don't control. Is there evil in the world? Sadly, yes, there is malevolent, terrible evil. But as Marcus Aurelius wrote, "If the community isn't injured by it, neither am I." And if it is, anger is not the answer. His point was that a lot of the stuff we get mad about isn't worth getting mad about. Somebody cuts you off

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  in traffic, somebody says something insensitive to you, a storm floods the garden you worked hard on. What does anger do about any of this? Who does it punish but you?

• 1:46Ryan Holiday?

  And then there is the stuff that does harm the community, a corrupt politician who tries to overthrow the rule of law, discrimination, violence, pollution. This stuff happens, and it's the definition of injustice. But again, anger is not the right response, not because these things aren't upsetting, but because they are bad remedies to the problem. When the community is at risk, when justice is at stake, we need our wits about us. It's here that we need to be most controlled, most in command of all our faculties. We can be angered at what is happening, but we cannot afford to respond in anger. We need to be rational, and strategic, and patient, and courageous, and creative, as well as forgiving, and empathetic, and nurturing, in the way that so many of our recent emails have highlighted.

• 2:28Ryan Holiday?

  The brilliance of the civil rights activists, we need to bring our best to fight the worst.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you listened to my Sunday episode back in the fall, I had this crazy couple of days where I flew down to LA, I interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger, I drove up to Ojai, California. I had dinner with a former podcast guest and friend, the comedian Pete Holmes. Then I did a talk for this amazing group called Mastermind Talks, Jason Gainerd and his wife, Candace. I have known them since they started Mastermind Talks. I went before my book Growth Hacker Marketing came out for the first time. I went the second time when Obstacle is Coming out. I've been many times over the years. He's been awesome to me. So I did a long Q and A there, which is what I'm going to bring you a chunk of today. Then I went back

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  down, did an event with Robert Greene, flew home for the night, then flew to Seattle to do another event with Robert Greene. So I told that whole story about how you sort of stay stoic and calm amidst a crazy overwhelming travel schedule. So that was me talking about it. If you want to hear me in the middle of that craziness, that's where I am in today's episode. I did about an hour, hour and a half Q and A with a bunch of these interesting entrepreneurs from all over the world. Some are authors, some are in e-commerce, some are influencers, some are fitness people, some are, some run call centers. They're just all sorts of interesting entrepreneurs, really nice folks. And if you haven't been

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  to Mastermind Talks, you should. I think they're taking a break this year, but I'm sure you can get on the waitlist for next year if you're thinking about coming. Thanks to Jason for sending over the audio of this. And thanks to everyone in the audience who asked some very interesting questions. I'll be bringing pieces of that over the next couple of months. But I'll give you a chunk of some stoic themed questions right now.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  How long does it take you to write a chapter? Once you're like, I'm writing this chapter today?

• 4:35Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it depends, right? Some chapters are short, some chapters are long. Some chapters, I've written about this thing a thousand times. And then some chapters are, I'm breaking new ground. So I don't think there's a hard and fast rule. I would sort of say, as I did in the talk, sort of, it takes what it takes. There's not a, this is how many words per day you should do. There's how long, it's like, it takes until it's good enough. You know, it's as good as it can be, right? I mean, one rule is like, how much more could you cut? Right? And so I'm always thinking about that, like, and like, when I show it to people, I'm like, tell me what you think I should cut. And I'm trying to always get tighter with it. So a lot of the rewriting is, okay, I did this in three paragraphs, but if I only had two, what would that look like? And now, what would it look like with one?

• 5:19Ryan Holiday?

  Or, you know, if I had to make this whole book 10% shorter, what would that look like? And just that forces you to, there's a Stephen King thing about killing your darlings. You kill the parts that you're the most indulgent about, because that's where the fat tends to be.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ryan. I loved the talk today.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, thank you.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  It was so good. Thank you so much. And Chrissy just reminded me that our son is obsessed with you. So we may need a bit of a selfie before the day's over. That's all right. My question has to do, you've obviously cornered the market on modern Stoicism and you're very prolific. But my question is, as an artist, do you ever, one day, wake up and go, fuck, today? Like, you probably have interests that are all over the map, I would expect. Do you ever wake up and go, fuck, I really want to write a book on, I don't know, Spain? Or whatever it might be? And if so, how do you put that aside while you're working and doing everything you do?

• 6:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. When I sort of set out to write about this stuff, there's the topic that I was interested in, but then there's also the way that I write about the topic, which is I take stories and I illustrate the ideas. So although I am writing about this overarching topic, I get to bring in all the other things that I'm interested in. So I read very widely and I bring them back to the thing that I talk about. So there's not a ton that I feel like, hey, I have like, lots of good material over here that I can't use. But I have done other projects that are very different. I'm in this parenting one, that was a big part of my life. So I do Daily Dad every day, which is advice, but you know, about a very specific part of my life. I have the podcast, I get to talk to people about different things.

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  And then I've done a couple of books in like, sort of different, different genres. But- I think when you find something that like really lights you up, chances are you don't have like 10 things that light you up to an equal degree. So there is, when I was talking about you have to be able to say no. There's some things that I'm saying no to, but mostly I'm saying no to things. So I can say yes to this one thing that I'm the most excited about.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Going back to tactics, when you were talking about content.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  I, I actually really love your videos because you're so yourself, like this and this. And I love how passionate they are and real they are. How do you shoot them to use your iPhone, to use your computer? Like, what are the tactics for that? How do you do lighting? Like, who helps you? All those questions.

• 7:33Ryan Holiday?

  So I, I have like a video team that does, you know, that does a bunch of stuff that I don't understand and know about. But a lot of what I shoot, I have a GoPro 9 over there, um, which shoots in 4K, which is pretty much as good as you can shoot stuff in. It has an external mic, there's a case with a mic. That does like most of it. And it has, literally has a button on the top and it turns it on and records at the same time. And so it has a screen in the front. I, I try to set up systems where there's going to be the least, the fewest points of failure. And, um, it's going to set up the other people who are good at the, the parts that I'm not good at to do what they do. So I, I tend to shoot more than we can use.

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  So I shoot a lot and then I go, your job is to send these out to get edited. And then like I, if we're using everything I'm shooting, then you're not being strict enough. And then, um, also, one of the things I've found, and Gary Vaynerchuk told me this also, which is like, when something works, um, just do it a lot of times. So like if, I think Gary said this once, he was like, I talk about seven things. I forget what the seven things are, but he's like, I, all my things are about these seven things. And so I tend to find stuff that works and then I find different ways of saying that, or I'm trying to tighten it all. So, so a lot of what I'm doing is sometimes the same thing. But when you get over the idea that you have this enormous rapt

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  audience that's consuming everything you do, you realize the vast majority of people have no idea who you are and have never seen anything you do, even on YouTube. So Daily Stoic has, I don't know, like a million and a half YouTube subscribers, I'd say. The average Daily Stoic YouTube video from the last time someone walked me through the stats is seen by like 20 to 30%. 20 to 30% of the people that watch it are subscribers. So the vast majority of people that are watching it have just been recommended this thing, or they saw. So realizing like, hey, most of the people are not, hey, I've already seen this before, but they're saying, what is this? You know? And so I just, I try to talk about things that get me excited. And I try to find new ways to say it so it's not boring to me.

• 9:44Ryan Holiday?

  But I'm not, I'm not going like, I have to make 250 totally unique, brand new things. Like, what are the main themes? And when you, when you find something that works, you know, how do you do it in lots of new ways? Even if like, if it worked as a video, what's like a Twitter thread version that works? And what's an article version that works? And what's an Instagram carousel version that works? What's the Daily Stoic email version of it that works? So I'm trying to take the stuff that's worked and then break it down and translate it in the different ways. Just as in publishing, if you have a book that works in English, then they sell it to a Spanish publisher and they sell it to a Chinese publisher. And you know, you're in these different languages, but you had nothing to do with it.

• 10:31Ryan 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.