How Many Are Left? | Impulse Control

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  How many are left? Their names stick out to us, the athletes we remember peaking in our teenage years, the athletes we remember our favorite teams drafting, the first politician we voted for, the first author whose books we eagerly read as they came out. Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, has talked about how everyone's favorite era of SNL is the years they were in high school. The stars are burned into their minds, the best characters impossible to forget. What's haunting, though, is to think about where all these all-time greats are now. Is it hitting you that the athletes who were once your age in their prime, when you were in your prime, are now all retiring or retired? Even most of the coaches are gone.

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  "All those people who came into the world with you and have already left it," Marcus Rilis noted in Meditations towards the end of his life. "Life is a procession of people leaving the stage, having their moment, and then that moment ending." We talked a while back about the song lyrics, which notes that "all the stars of classic movies are dead now." We've mentioned Seneca's shock when he sees the trees planted in his boyhood, starting to wither and die. The same thing that happens to athletes in an unusually sped-up way is happening only slightly more slowly to us. The 15 minutes of fame of our favorite celebrities is just a magnified version of our own brief professional peak before a decline and a replacement.

• 2:05Ryan Holiday?

  We are not exempt. If anything, we are more vulnerable, our legacies less pronounced. They should humble us, give us perspective, and also give us a sense of priorities. Be here now, enjoy it while it's here. Memento Mori. And I carry that coin, got one on my desk here, and I've got the Memento Mori ring, which I wear as I go out. That's the idea for the Stoics, a reminder that what happened to them will happen to you. There's even a famous gravestone that says, "What you are I once was, what I am, you soon will be." It's just an important, powerful Stoic reminder. You can check it out, store.dailystoic.com.

• 2:57Ryan Holiday?

  If something is making you upset, write it down and look at it. What happened? Who caused it? Now think about your reaction. What did you say? What did you feel? Did this make it better or worse? Marcus Aurelius's emperor clearly had many people and causes to be upset. He also had real power and authority. Even so, we find that he would tell himself, "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." So too with what has happened to you. You did not control what happened, but you do control which impulses you will follow in the wake of it.

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  And this is this week's meditation in the Daily Stoic Journal titled "Impulse Control." I do hope you check out the journal. It's a little journal I do every morning. We have three quotes here to go along with it. Epictetus says, "We must discover the missing art of assent and pay special attention to the sphere of our impulses, that they are subject to reservations, to the common good, and that they are in proportion to actual worth." It's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, 1137. I just love that it marks Aurelius quoting Epictetus. "You say good fortune used to meet you at every corner, but the fortunate person is the one who gives themselves a good fortune. And good fortunes are a well-tuned soul, good impulses, and good actions."

• 4:23Ryan Holiday?

  That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 536. "Frame your thoughts like this: You're an old person. You won't let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you'll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future." To me, journaling is just such a great way to do this exercise of impulse control. I usually do it in the morning, but you could do journaling at any time. But I think, what are you upset about? Why are you angry? What are you holding on to? What's that thing inside you that you really want to say to that person? Say it on the page first. Anne Frank talks about how paper is more patient than people.

• 5:07Ryan Holiday?

  Sometimes I find that the thing that I was writing down, I hadn't quite worked it out yet, and if I had said it the way I was thinking on the paper, it would not go well. Or I find that having said it once, I'm done. I don't need to mention this to anyone. It's probably better that I keep it to myself. So, to me, journaling is really a way to work out some of those urges. Just because you think something doesn't mean you need to say it. I'm always amazed at these athletes who, you know, after a loss rush into the locker room and tweet something, as if, dude, you're not going to be in a small metal tube with the person you just talked shit about for the next eight hours, as if you don't have to show up to work with them every single day.

• 5:52Ryan Holiday?

  You need to develop this emotional impulse control, but that doesn't mean you just stuff it down and you don't deal with it. You've got to deal with it on the pages in the journal. That's the idea. You let it out. It's a place to do some spiritual combat, but it's also a place for your ideas, your competing impulses, your competing opinions to battle themselves out, to fight for that limited space. So, spend some time with your journalized therapy. That's what it's there for. And if you're not taking advantage of it, chances are you are just taking those feelings out on other people, or you're taking them out on yourself. And that's not a good way to go through life. So, use the journal as an instrument of impulse control.

• 6:37Ryan Holiday?

  It's gotten me out of trouble time and time again. I can think of a moment... When one of my books was coming out and I got sort of royally screwed over by a journalist, I wouldn't even say screwed over anymore. Let's just say someone did something to me that was quite unethical and quite petty and annoying. And actually, the prompts in the Daily Stoic Journal, it caught me day after day. It was like three prompts in a row. I didn't rush into saying something, I was gonna wait a few days. And at the end of the three days, at the end of the journaling, kept it to myself. And even now, I don't need to tell you the specifics, I've moved on. And it saved me some headache, probably saved me creating an enemy for no reason. And then I can move on. And I hope you can do the same.