It’s Beyond Arrogant | 6 Insanely Useful Stoic Questions

Human beings have been putting things off for as long as there have been things to do. We tell ourselves we’ll do it when we’re older, after we finish, when we have more time, when the seasons change. We tell ourselves we’ll do it tomorrow. And yet…✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 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

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, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:32Ryan Holiday?

  It's beyond arrogant. Human beings have been putting off things as long as there have been human beings. We tell ourselves we'll do it when we're older, after we finish, when we have more time, when the seasons change. We tell ourselves we'll do it tomorrow. Even the Bible rebukes this, as not only lazy but entitled, referring to our arrogant schemes about what we plan to do this year or next, this week or next, as if we decide that, as if we can take that for granted. "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow," reads James 4:13. "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

• 1:16Ryan Holiday?

  In Meditations, Marcus reminds himself that while today is certain, tomorrow he could be embalming fluid and ash. "We could leave life right now," he says, "and that must determine what we do and say and think." Now, what we do and say and think today, not tomorrow. Memento mori. You are mortal. So go play with your kids. Go apologize to your brother. Tell that person you love them. Speak out about the things you think are important. Stop sweating the things that don't matter. Stop deferring what you have always wanted to do. Stop deferring what you know you were meant to do, what you know is right to do. Don't be arrogant. Be humble. Realize that you cannot assume that you will get six months from now,

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  let alone six years. So while you are blessed with this life, use it.

• 2:07Ryan Holiday?

  And that is my Amento Mori coin, which is a reminder of this I carry with me always. You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. It's always helpful to have great reminders of this, which I do on my desk, in my pocket. I carry them with me wherever I go. Sold a bunch of these to people all over the world. I think it's one of the coolest things we did at Daily Stoic. You can check that out at [email protected] or come pick one up at the Painted Porch here in Vastrop, Texas. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I think sometimes you learn more from the question than you do from the answer.

• 2:50Ryan Holiday?

  Or, you know, sometimes rhetorical questions, they really hit you in a fragile place. They open you up, they force you to see things. And, uh, you know, going back to the Stoics' favorite philosopher, Socrates, the art of asking questions often challenges us and helps us to get to see new things. Well, in today's episode, we're going to focus on some questions, I think some deeply Stoic questions that should challenge you, that should get you to see things differently, hopefully open you up a little bit, widen your perspective, help you check in with what matters, and helps you get to what matters. And I'll leave you there. These are six insanely useful Stoic questions, and I hope you enjoy.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  The phrase that I like is, I want to work backwards from magic. What is the magical outcome? And then let's work backwards from that. The first thing is, you have to not limit yourself when you're thinking about the magical outcome. So, the, the objective is to actually think about what the ideal thing is and to not let limit, self-limiting beliefs creep in, where you're like, well, we couldn't do that because of X, or I'm not sure if that will work because of so and so. And it's like, no, this is not the time for that. The, right now, this is the time for, what is the magical ambitious outcome? Then you have to wrestle with reality. And if you cannot find a path that goes all the way from the magical outcome back to the chair that you're sitting in right now, it's just a dream. But if you have an idea that you can actually draw a path all the way to the magical outcome, then it's a great idea and all you need is pay.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Patience and consistency, but you need to be flexible about how you get there. People write down goals like I'm gonna lose thirty pounds in six months by working out four times a week. They try to, you know, make them very specific and it's like you have no idea what's gonna happen over the next six months. If you say the magical outcome is, I don't know, I'm in the best shape of my life, or I have six pack abs, or pick whatever it is for you, then there are actually many, many ways of getting there and you just work backwards from that and try to follow a path. Ideally, you'll be able to draw many paths back from the magical outcome and you can start working towards those and whatever one proves most fruitful, or whatever one you happen to catch a lucky break on, that's the one that you end up following.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Complaining is easy, it's in vogue, it's seductive, it is reinforced socially, and it, for me at least, is utterly counterproductive. I think that there's an expression as it relates to anger, that, you know, a vessel that holds acid is damaged more than anything it pours acid upon. And if you are the vessel for anger or complaining, I think it does more damage to you than that which you pointed at. If you want to improve or maintain or improve your health, your well-being and your ability to function, consider something like the 21 Day No Complaint

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Experiment. If you address complaining, which is easier to identify and measure sometimes than anger, there is a very significant carryover effect into decreasing anger. Very, very large carryover effect.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  You know who one of the great Stoics of the 20th century was? No. Alfred Hitchcock. Directing a film, if you've known other people who've done it, is an extremely stressful job because problems are arising that you cannot anticipate. There's all this pressure, there's all this money, got insane egos of actors, producers, etc. So Hitchcock, people would look at him on the set and he'd be falling asleep in the director's chair. He'd look like Buddha, his eyes were closed because he prepared for everything. He anticipated everything that was going to happen. And so by the time the film came, He was completely bored because he was able to control every aspect of production. So I know, for instance, if I have to go on live television, which is almost like having a sword fight with Musashi. Everyone around the world is seeing you live.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  If you say something stupid or you blank out, you're humiliated. Or if you're boring, they can, they'll cut the interview short. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I don't know if you can agree with me, but it's one of the worst things ever. So what I've learned is I'm gonna prepare the hell out of it. I'm gonna have everything nailed down, right? And then sometimes they don't ask you the questions you anticipated. Goes off in other directions. But when you enter that green room or where you're ready to be interviewed, you have a calmness because you've prepared. You know what your answers are gonna be. You're not sitting there in the moment trying to figure things out.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin talks about how, for his martial arts performances and competitions, before he would go out, he had like a little ritual that he did. You know, a lot of athletes have this kind of pre-game routine or whatever. And gradually, over the course of a few years, he started paring it down and compressing it, making it smaller and smaller, until he got it down to where it was just like 30 seconds or so. And it ended up serving him really well because he was at an international competition and he either was given the wrong information or misread the schedule or whatever. And he was taking a nap on one of the benches and they were like, hey, you're supposed to wrestle in like three minutes. And he woke up like groggy and kind of like goes through his 30 second routine and he was ready to compete. I've tried to develop something kind of like that with writing, where, you know, if I'm at home, I face a wall that doesn't have any windows.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I put on my headphones, I listen to the same playlist every time. I grab a glass of water. Like, I try to set up the environment the optimal way. And I can do that basically anywhere. I do it when I'm on a plane, I do it in a hotel room. And by compressing it down to something that's really short like that, I make it easier for myself to like get into this state of flow and perform at a high level, even if things aren't optimal. And so you need to be able to have like something that you can carry with you and utilize that to get into your flow state or get ready to go.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  You know, I have a consulting business to work with a bunch of businesses and the clients that accepted the reality that was upon us the fastest, they made the quickest changes and adapted. And really it just comes down to having humility because if you're humble enough to say, I'm not perfect, I don't know everything, I'm not sure how long this is going to last, then you start to make adjustments. You know, I think it's come down to if people have been getting their ass kicked over the last four or five months, well, guess what? It's time to adjust your plan and attack from a different direction.

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, one of my favorite Marcus Aurelius quotes, and I think it ties into your message. It's weird to think he was writing during the Antonine Plague. He's like, no, it's unfortunate that this happened. And then he says, no, no, no, wait, it's fortunate that it happens to me because not everyone would have basically what I have.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  I did a series of podcasts about, there's a guy named Chesty Puller, who is kind of the biggest hero in the Marine Corps, five Navy Crosses, just the most iconic of all Marines. And his son was in the Marine Corps too, and his son wasn't quite the same kind of hardy stock that Chest Puller was. Lewis Puller was more of a cerebral guy, he had glasses, he just wasn't this Marines Marine, which is what his father was, but you know, he joined the Marine Corps. And then he went to Vietnam, 1968, and he ended up getting severely wounded. It's a totally tragic story. He ended up killing himself after he wrote an incredible book, which is called Fortunate Son, and it seemed like everything was going in the right direction. The book came out, Pulitzer Prize winner.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  I had another guy on my podcast who was also wounded in Vietnam. He lost both of his legs and one of his arms. His name is Jim Surlesley. And to hear him tell the story, you're waiting for sort of the tragic tone in his voice to come out and it doesn't come out. And then he gets home from Vietnam and now you're thinking, you know, here's going to come the tragic tone in his voice and it doesn't come. And instead he's saying, I had to spend nine months in rehab just to learn how to work my wheelchair and then I got out of there, I went to college. When I went to college, I started a little roofing company. And he's just saying this like it's no big deal. Started a roofing company, started getting into real Got married and so he carried on with his life. The, the reason I'm telling you all this is because when we got done with the podcast and, and we were just sitting around and talking.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  He, he asked me, he goes, do you know who Lewis Puller is? And I go, yes, sir, I do. I, I did a podcast on, on him. And he goes, I was in rehab with him. We were in the same facility, learning how to live without legs. And he goes, and I had to also learn to live without one arm. So we were both kind of in the same boat. And he said, you know, he never fully accepted what happened to him. He said, I think he was at 99%. He said, when I got home, I 100% accepted that this is what had happened. And I'm going to move forward. You know, things unfold in life. And if you want to sit there and, you know, shake your fist at the, at the sky and, and, you know, I've done that. And I know we all do that. But if that's what you continue to do, you're, you're not going to be able to move forward.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Sort of a common criticism, but also I think people are just kind of trying to poke holes to be snarky sometimes. They're like, well, I don't want to be a robot. I don't want to pigeonhole myself or, you know, like have every hour of the day planned or do the same thing every single time or whatever. Like first of all, just separate from that. I don't know anybody who actually is like that. Like I, I don't know anyone who actually can live life that way. Because life doesn't work that way. Every day like introduces other emergencies and things like. It kind of reminds me of what people were like, well, I don't know if I want to lift weights because I don't want to get huge like a bodybuilder. And I'm like, it does not happen that fast. Trust me. I've been trying to make it happen that fast for like 10 years. And it still doesn't work that quickly. Habits don't restrict freedom. They create it. You know, it's usually the people who have the worst habits that actually have the least amount of freedom.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  The people who have the worst like knowledge and reading and learning habits always feel like they're behind the curve. People who have the worst financial habits always feel like they don't have enough money or they're wondering where the next dollar is going to come from. It's actually by optimizing your habits that you create capacity and space to have that additional autonomy and freedom. Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you want to become. And so by doing those habits, you're casting these little votes for the type of person that you are, the identity that you believe you have. You're sort of reinforcing that internal narrative. By building small habits, by sticking to the process, in that moment reinforcing that identity. And ultimately, once you get to that point where you say, "Hey, actually, you know, I've done this enough times. I think this is part of my story." Like, "I am a basketball player, or I am a meditator,

• 12:56Speaker 01

  or I am a writer." You're no longer pursuing behavior change at that point. You're not trying to be someone new. You're just acting in alignment with the type of person you see yourself to be.

• 13:05Ryan Holiday?

  I hope you like this video. I hope you subscribe. But what I really want you to subscribe to is our Daily Stoic email. One bit of Stoic wisdom, totally for free, to the largest community of Stoics ever in existence. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/email. There's no spam. You can unsubscribe at any time. I love sending it. I've sent it every day for the last six years and hope to see you there at dailystoic.com/email.