MLB Pitcher Scott Oberg on Overcoming Adversity with Stoicism | Will You Answer the Call?

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and launches the pre-order for his new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave which you can check out at https://dailystoic.com/preorderToday’s interview with MLB relief pitcher Scott Oberg focuses on how an athletes career can be cut short in an instant, how Stoicism has helped Scott overcome physical and mental adversity, and why maintaining a positive outlook is important not only for yourself but for those around you. DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping. 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. Streak is a fully embedded workflow and productivity software in Gmail that lets you manage all your work right in your inbox. Streak gives you tools for email tracking, mail merges, and snippets to save time and scale up your email efficiency. Sign up for Streak today at Streak.com/stoic and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan. Ten Thousand makes the highest quality, best-fitting, and most comfortable training shorts I have ever worn. They are a direct-to-consumer company, no middleman so you get premium fabrics, trims, and techniques that other brands simply cannot afford. Ten Thousand is offering our listeners 15% off your purchase. go to Tenthousand.cc and enter code STOIC to receive 15% off your purchase. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Scott Oberg: InstagramSee 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 weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives.

• 0:39Ryan Holiday?

  Will you answer the call? Courage. It's always been in short supply, but today, we're in need of it more than ever, because courage is that powerful force which enables us to overcome obstacles, to fight for what's right, to serve others, to drive change, and ultimately, to become who we're truly meant to be. From the ancient Spartans to the civil rights movement, from pioneering scientists to mold-breaking CEOs, from Charles de Gaulle to Florence Nightingale, there is no greatness that is not rooted in bravery and sacrifice. Just look at the history of Stoicism. Zeno, carrying on after a devastating

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  shipwreck, building a new philosophy from scratch. Cato, battling Julius Caesar, Rutilius Rufus, braving a false prosecution with dignity and poise. Thrasse, defying Nero. Marcus Aurelius, sharing absolute power with his brother. George Washington, signing his potential death warrant to form a new nation. Stockdale's effort to cultivate a culture of resistance against his captors in a POW camp. It's long been held that there are two types of courage, physical and moral. Physical courage is the Stoic in battle. Moral courage is the Stoic fighting the silent, internal battle.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  Against the forces of corruption and cowardice to do what is right or to speak an unpopular truth. But in reality, these two conceptions of courage are closer together than you think. As I write in my new book Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Bold, courage at its core is about putting your ass on the line for something, for someone, literally, figuratively, financially, perhaps even fatally. This tradition of courage, the one we have studied here now for half a decade at Daily Stoic, is in danger. Cowardice of all types, political, corporate, artistic, cultural, are endemic. People are afraid to take risks.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  They're afraid to follow their own path in life. They're afraid to do what's right, and this is not good. And it's more than just social criticism. It is an urgent threat. Must one point out, the writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, "That from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end." Well, it doesn't need to be this way, because courage isn't rare like some natural resource, something that must be mined or refined. It's there, within reach, within all of us. In fact, it's reaching out to all of us right now.

• 3:31Ryan Holiday?

  Courage calls to each person differently, at different times, in different forms. But in every case, it is, as they say, coming from inside the house. Will you answer? Can you be brave enough to try? I hope so. And I'm so excited to announce that my newest book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave, is available for preorder. It goes on sale September 28th, but you can preorder it now. We have all sorts of awesome bonuses that I want to tell you about. But, look, it's been my great honor to write this daily email to you all every day since the summer of 2016. And if you've gotten anything out of it, if you enjoy my writing at all, I'd love

• 4:14Ryan Holiday?

  Love for you to consider picking up a copy. We have a bunch of cool preorder bonuses, as I was saying. Among them is something I've never given away. These are signed numbered pages from the original manuscripts of the book. I have one on my wall from Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire. It's a prized possession of mine. If you'd like to check out the book and preorder it, I've got a bunch of things to make it worth your while. We even have signed copies as well. You can learn more about that at dailystoic.com/preorder. You can preorder the book in any form, audio, digital, physical, signed, unsigned. You can buy from your local independent bookstore. You can buy from my bookstore. You can buy on Audible. You can buy anywhere books are sold. But if you go to dailystoic.com/preorder

• 4:58Ryan Holiday?

  and order Courage is Calling, Fortune Favors the Bold, we've got a bunch of preorder bonuses there for you. I really hope you support the book. It comes out next month, but if you could support it, that would be awesome. Courage is calling. I hope you answer. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Sort of an interesting story to open today's episode. I got sent a link about two months ago for an article for a writer for the Rockies, the baseball team, named Jack Etkin, was talking about how he had asked one of the players, Scott Oberg, a relief pitcher for the Rockies,

• 5:42Ryan Holiday?

  he'd asked him for assigned baseball for his daughter, which, as he opens the piece, he says, is sort of an unwritten rule in sports that you don't do that. You don't abuse your press privileges to ask for autographs or favors or whatever from the athletes. But he had a very good reason for doing this. He'd written a long story about Scott and about how Scott had experienced some blood clots in his right arm, and it had jeopardized his career. And the reason that this came up is that not only did Scott suffer from this, but he'd suffered from some arthritis early in his career, but basically a bunch of-

• 6:28Ryan Holiday?

  Medical issues. At one point in college, as he talks about in today's interview, he was walking with a cane as a 20-year-old. He had to walk with a cane. And the reason that this struck the writer is that his daughter, also near 16, was dealing with crippling arthritic pain. And so he reached out. He thought that even though his daughter's not really a baseball fan, he thought this might be meaningful to her as they sort of share this medical journey. And he said, "Yeah, sure." Scott said, "Yeah, sure. I'll do it." And so he asked for it. But then like some time went by. He didn't get the book. And he wondered if it wasn't like if he forgot about it, if he'd been pissed off. It was sort of a kiss-off. And then Scott shows up with this ball.

• 7:12Ryan Holiday?

  And it wasn't just a signed ball. As the writer is saying, he thought there'd be a the ball would say, "Best wishes, you know, Scott," and with a signature. But instead, it was covered in writing. And as he writes, he says, "The ball was dated 9/1916 with a greeting 'To Julia,' signed Scott Oberg, 45. And it said, 'These are a few passages that have helped me when faced with adversity. Best of luck, and I will be thinking of you.'" And on one side of the ball, it said, "Just remember, you can endure anything your mind can make endurable by treating it as in your interest to do so." And that quote might strike you as familiar because it comes to us from Marcus Aurelius, and that's Book 10 of Meditations.

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  And then on another portion of the ball, and this is what really floored me, it says, "Excellence is a matter of steps. The process is about finishing those steps. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts." And then it says, "Ryan Holiday, the obstacle is the way." So I was just so blown away. Here's a guy I've seen play on TV before, not only doing this generous, nice favor for a young fan.

• 8:25Ryan Holiday?

  But that he'd not only read my books, but he'd read the original Stoics. And here he is passing along the advice of Marcus Aurelius to this young person who's dealing with this painful condition. I just loved that so much that I reached out to another friend of mine, Steve Gilbert, who runs this amazing daily email called Win Your Day, which I've gotten for a number of years. It's popular in sports. Steve is a beat writer for the Diamondbacks. And I said, hey, is there any chance that you might be able to put me in touch with either the writer of that piece or Scott himself? And he did.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  And here we are with today's interview. It was a wonderful honor to be able to interview Scott. Scott is currently with the Colorado Rockies in Major League Baseball. He played at the University of Connecticut. He was drafted in 2012 in the 15th round. He's gone up and down the majors a bunch of times, but he is again struggling with this blood clot issue and still has put together a pretty incredible career. He's won 18 games in the major leagues through the 2019 season.

• 9:51Ryan Holiday?

  But as we talked about in today's interview, what's made it more impressive is the role as he's trying to get back into the game, trying to get cleared medically, just what a wonderful teammate he's become. And we talk about that. And that dovetails nicely with one other sort of shared connection that Scott and I have, which I opened the interview with. Chris Bosh, who I did this great book, Chris Bosh, who I did this, I was fortunate enough to be able to work on this book, Letters to a Young Athlete with, also had his career significantly impacted, in his case, permanently cut short by blood clots. So I connected the two of them and they're talking. So Scott is an incredible dude.

• 10:35Ryan Holiday?

  I think you're really going to like this interview. I was so excited to bring it to you. Do check out Chris's book, Letters to a Young Athlete. And Enjoy, and you can follow Scott on Instagram. He's ScottOberg45. Send him some encouraging words, perhaps, and watch him do what he does. I'll talk to you all soon.

• 11:05Ryan Holiday?

  I thought I would open with a passage. I know I sent you this book, but a passage from this book I did with Chris Bosh that sort of remind me of your situation, and I wanted to, I wanted to get your thoughts. Okay, so, so Chris is quoting from this quote that's passed around the internet. People attribute it to the movie Sandlot, but it's not in the movie Sandlot. But it says, "At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it." And Chris says, "My last game in the NBA was against the Spurs on a Wednesday night in February. We didn't win. We didn't play particularly well. It was a pretty ordinary day and an ordinary season in the history of the league.

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  All I was thinking about was getting the team good enough to make a run for a championship after the All-Star Game. LeBron had left and was defending the Eastern Conference title with the Cavs. I think we had the stuff. I think we could have done it. What a series that would have been, one for the ages. But it was not to be. In the winter of 2015, the doctors found a blood clot in one of my lungs. I thought it was just one of those small health setbacks any athlete has to deal with from time to time. I took some time to recover and finished out the season." But, of course, he would never play again, right? Talk to me about this idea of you think your career, your life, is going along in a certain

• 12:30Ryan Holiday?

  direction, and then suddenly you get a, not to, not to be, not to, not to use the pun, but, but life throws you a curveball.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, no, I mean.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  You know, I think we're still holding out some hope. But, you know, with that passage that you just read, I mean, it, there's, there can certainly bring a lot of similarities to the situation that I'm going through. And, you know, it, it's kind of interesting now that I kind of reflect on the last game that I have, that I played at the, at the major league level and, you know,

• 13:06Ryan Holiday?

  When was that?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  It was, I don't remember the exact date. It was in August of 2019, early August against Miami. I went in, I closed the game out, got the save. You know, that's really what was on my mind at the time. We were kind of struggling a little bit. So it was, hey, let's, let's continue to finish the season out strong as a team collectively. And, you know, we'll take it into the off season and, you know, we'll, we'll build from there. And, you know, I just remember that I, I think it was maybe the next day or later that night or whatever it was, just like my arm felt heavy. It was very similar to some of the symptoms that I'd had in the past.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  So I kind of knew right away that there was, there was an issue going on that needed to be addressed and all the other surgeries that I had had previously. Cause at that time it was my third blood clot in my arm and we thought we kind of had, had it under control to a certain degree. And then this one, like you said, it just, you know, throws you another curve ball.

• 14:13Ryan Holiday?

  So I, I think that's really interesting. I, I want to talk about all that, but, but something that you brought up, I think is worth diving into there for a second. There's this interesting thing, I think with all athletes and all driven people, right? Which is that your body or your mind is your tool, right? And so you have to listen to it. You have to be very much in tune with it. And yet you wouldn't have gotten where you've gotten if you didn't also regularly ignore and push through pain, right? So there's this interesting tension between like, my arm feels heavy, but I'm going to gut it out and my arm feels heavy. I gotta take this seriously for both my health as a human being, but also my long-term career

• 14:58Ryan Holiday?

  interests.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Right, right. And you know, there always seems to be, and I'm sure it's across other sports too, where there's this adage between knowing the difference between whether you're sore or whether you're hurt. And it seems that, yeah, like, you know, if you're sore, it's like, all right, well, that's, that's just the body recovering and, and you're gonna be all right. You can push through those. And even, even the very first time that, that all of this had happened to me, it was very, it was very confusing. I had felt like some forearm tightness. And I'm like, okay, maybe it's just that time of the year. Um, you know, maybe let's, let's get in the trainer's room and, um, you know, let's have the guys work on me a little bit and see what happens. And then it got to the point where, you know,

• 15:42Speaker 01

  I was, I was losing blood and, or, you know, the blood wasn't rushing back to my middle finger. I'm like, okay, well, this is different. This isn't what I've ever seen in my life before. Okay, maybe this is something we have to address. But, but you're right, you know, there's, there's plenty of times and instances where, you know, you almost have to go to another level mentally to kind of overcome some of those aches and pains or soreness, or, you know, whatever it might be in the middle of competition, or in the middle of the season, or, you know, what have you. Um, you know, I remember hearing a story about Cal Ripken when he was going through his, his streak where he was having some really bad chronic like nerve issues in his back. And the doctor said that it

• 16:26Speaker 01

  wouldn't get any worse if he kept playing. And I can only imagine how agonizing that must have been. And then it got to a certain point in the season and the pain dissipated.

• 16:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And then he just continued, continued on in the streak and, and went from there. And it's just like, wow, you know, the, the human body and the human mind are really truly capable of, you know, amazing things when, you know, we really go through these things.

• 16:50Ryan Holiday?

  No, that is the tension. And I'm, I'm writing about Lou Gehrig in the book that I'm working on now. And, and it is true, like, anyone who's ever pushed through pain knows that at some point, it does like, just go away. Except when it doesn't. So like, how do you know, right? That's, that's, it's like you push and it works for you, but you could almost be learning a pretty wicked lesson, which is one of those times, it's gonna be, your knee was warning you, and you ended up blowing it out.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Right, right. And that's where, in the situation that I was in.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  It was almost fortunate that I had a lot of the same symptoms every time that this, you know, this medical issue kind of kept coming up where at least I knew that this is what feels normal and this is what doesn't feel normal and the telltale signs are always there, the warning signs are there, and this is not something that we can push through. This is something that we have to address. We have to get the attention of the medical staff and if it has to be, then, you know, we're on our, we're on our way to the hospital to spend a few nights there. And that's, you know, understanding that difference and

• 18:10Speaker 01

  understanding, you know, intrinsically what your body is capable of doing versus what when it's time to say, all right, we need to take a step back and reevaluate some things is, is kind of the tricky, tricky part of, of being in athletics, especially at, at such a high level where, you know, there's a lot more pressure. There's, there's other factors that come into play.

• 18:35Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  And, you know, sometimes, sometimes guys are, you know, they want to just keep pushing because it's like, hey, I've worked my entire life to get to this position. I'm not going to just sit it out or, you know, think that, you know, I'm being weak mentally or physically or whatever it may be. And sometimes guys have to push through it and sometimes they, they cross that line and then hurting themselves even worse. So.

• 19:02Ryan Holiday?

  No, I think about that as a writer, right? There's like today, I was, I started out okay and then it just wasn't working and it's, it's this tension between, am I just not feeling it today? Or is this one of those days where pushing through gets you to, you know, the other side of something? And then there's, there's this other question sort of hovering above it, which I, I imagine you feel in the professional level of sports where you're like. This is not a profession where you can just only work when you feel like it. You know, like this is, if this was about like only when you're having fun, only when you're inspired,

• 19:44Ryan Holiday?

  like you're an amateur. A professional is somebody who shows up and works whether they're feeling it or not. Right. And I think it's, it's all of those things in a balance that makes it so hard to know whether to rest or push, whether you're sore or hurt.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, it even just, I think in the baseball sense, it, it doesn't seem to matter too much whether you're a position player or, you know, a relief pitcher. The, the starting pitchers seem to kind of just, you know, they have their set schedule. They have their five day routine and, you know, even them, it's like, hey, look like, you know, they, they might get to a bullpen session and it's like, hey, I'm not feeling all that great, but you know, let's, let's maximize what, what I have this particular day. And that I think ends up being what a lot of guys end up doing. They know that internally, it's like, hey, maybe my mind's not here or maybe I'm not as motivated. Maybe I, you know, I've been, I've been playing a lot recently.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Sometimes, you know, hey, I've pitched eight out of the last 10 days out of the bullpen. Not feeling that great, you know, but I still have a job to do. And when the manager makes his phone call, it's like, hey, look, you know, we gotta, we gotta make the most out of everything that we have.

• 21:05Ryan Holiday?

  You gotta go to the office and get to work.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Even in the off season when it's like, you know, you're by yourself, you're training, you're doing all the work, you know. I, I, I live in the Northeast, so it's very cold and it's like, ah, man, you know, it could be really easy for me to just not do this today, but this is my job. And things that I'm going to do today are going to have that effect six months from now. You know, but I think the older I've gotten, I've also kind of learned that, you know, the times where I'm not mentally, physically at, you know, exactly where I want to be. It's like, okay, those are the days where I gotta work smarter and not harder.

• 21:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  And it seems like, hey, like, you know, I'm still going to get some sort of a benefit out of this training session or out of this throwing session or whatever it may be. But I'm going to get the most out of what I got on that particular day.

• 21:59Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that was something I wanted to ask you about, this idea of being intentional, which I think is, and I want to go back to the blood clot thing, but I was reading something where a manager sort of pulled you aside and talked about sort of being more intentional in practice. And I wonder if that's sort of how you kind of thread this needle, which is like, look, some days you're just at 100%. So you do everything at 100%. Some days you're not. So you focus on like, where can I make a little bit like, what am I focusing on today? What's the most important thing today? How can I get some benefit out of this workout? Is that sort of what you're saying?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, you know, there'll, there'll be times I, you know, I can recall where I've been pitching in games where, you know, I'll warm up in the bullpen and, you know, I don't really feel like I'm, my body's moving as fast as I want it to. Or I don't feel like my fastball is where it could be at. And, you know, the days where I feel like, hey, I feel great. Here it is. You know, I got the high velocity fastball. It becomes a little bit easier to pitch. The other days where it's like, I'm not really sure. Some doubts starting to creep in a little bit. And now I kind of really have to narrow my focus as to, you know, the location of my pitches. And, and those are the times where I almost find those to be, you know, those are the most challenging.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  But, you know, when you come out successful during those times, you know, to me, it just, it kind of reiterates that, hey, look, you know, yeah, I'm going to have days where I'm not, you know, 100%. But if I can redirect my focus and, you know, I really have to focus my slider in this particular area of the plate, or, you know, with this particular batter, I really have to focus in, you know. Put my pitches in in in better spots. And at that point, you know, I'm not really so much worried about what the velocity on the scoreboard says and more so about, you know, being deliberate with my pitches and being intentional. And and now I'm gonna,

• 24:01Speaker 01

  you know, there's another kind of adage where, you know, you got guys that are throwers and guys that are pitchers.

• 24:07Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, what's the difference?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  So to me, the guys that are throwers, it's like, you know, you got all kinds of guys that are throwing 97, 98. They don't really have a clue to where it's going. Whatever pitch the catcher puts down, it's like, oh, slider. Okay, I'll throw that pitch. And it just kind of ends up wherever. The guys that are pitchers are kind of, you know, you can see the the the attack that they're trying to instill upon the batter. There you can see, you know, the game plan. You can see how they recognize how to play a pitch off of another pitch and set a hitter up, or they throw a fastball in one area. It's like, okay, look like, you know, maybe I can throw a slider right off of that pitch. And he's going to think it's a fastball because I just threw the pitch before in that same area.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  And and those are the days where, you know, to me, it's more of an art form when you're out there and you move the baseball around and, you know, you got a lot of movement. And you know, people love to talk about Greg Maddux in this way because, you know, his whole thing was about execution. He didn't really necessarily care about how hard he was thrown, or who the batter was up there. He was he was solely focused on executing his game plan, executing his pitches. So I think sometimes where I'm not feeling at my full capacity, it's like, okay, you know, we might have to reevaluate things a little bit, take a slightly different approach, and in pitch to very specific areas so that way I can be successful and help my team win that day.

• 25:37Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. No, it's funny how timeless this stuff is. I was I was reading something not that long ago about Socrates. And Socrates was having this discussion about sort of courage and endurance and whether endurance was a virtue. And he says, it's too simple to say that endurance is a virtue, because what if you're enduring in the wrong thing, right? Like, this this idea of when do you keep going? When do you pull back? You know, when do you gut it out? When do you rest? So I'm curious for you, you know, It wasn't just this one instance two years ago where you have the blood clot. This has been an ongoing medical issue for you. And I suppose at some point you understand inevitably you will have to make the decision

• 26:21Ryan Holiday?

  as all people do at some point in any career. Why not quit, right? Like, how do you decide to keep going to try to come back versus I've had my run? You know, life is telling me that it's come to an end. Like, how do you know when to walk away and when to keep trying?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Man, that's, I think that's the million dollar question right there, you know? And I think sometimes people want to ignore that little voice in their head that might be telling them it's time to walk away. And, you know, maybe they do some more damage or, or, you know, maybe they persevere and maybe they get through it. You know, we've had a guy, Daniel Bard, who had pitched with the Red Sox for a long time, you know, back in mid 2000s. And he'd been on the shelf for a while and, you know, he had some, he had some, his own medical issues. He, he was out of the game for a little bit.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  He kept his arm in shape and then last year he had, he made a comeback and he made our club at a, at a spring training. And, you know, it was pretty, truly incredible story, you know, because you see a guy that, you know, could easily walk away and be okay. And he's got his family, he's got his kids and he's got a nice life, you know, but there's still a part of him that was, I think, curious as to if he could still do it. You know, I think his situation definitely a little bit different than mine where it might be, you know, it may not even be up to me. It may be, you know, the medical people telling me that, hey, look, like, this is time, you know, any, any further you go, you might be doing significant long-term damage. And we're still trying to find some of those answers out, but.

• 28:21Ryan Holiday?

  That's sort of the story of Tommy John too, right? Like, you know, experimental surgery brings him back, but then, you know, he should be at the end of his career, then he somehow makes the Yankees again. It's kind of a paradox, right? Because you don't, you don't get to where you get in any of these elite professions if you're always listening to the safe thing, or the odds, or, you know, conventional wisdom. And yet, inevitably, you do have to yield to reality at some point. And then, and then it's hard to know what that is, because then you have like the story you're just talking about. You also have, you know, Carmelo Anthony, or you have these, these players who manage

• 29:03Ryan Holiday?

  to have this sort of second or third or fourth act to their career. And then you don't know, is that ego to identify with it? Or is that actually, you know, an inspiring? Marx really says like, if it's humanly possible, know that you can do it. It's hard to know whether it's humanly possible, or you're just fooling yourself.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. And I, and I think, I think almost anybody at, at a high level, whatever profession they're in, you know, along the way, they've taken fairly significant risks in some, in some regard, in some aspect, that kind of propelled them to get to the level that they're at. And I think some people that, that get to this level have been successful in those risks. And other people, you know, maybe they haven't been successful, or, you know, maybe they get a little timid by the risk, or they don't maybe necessarily understand, or, you know.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think what, um, was my train of thought a little bit, but, um...

• 30:10Ryan Holiday?

  No, I think I get it. I, what I was gonna say too, you, you mentioned Cal Ripken's streak. What I think's fascinating about that, you, to the original streak, you go to Lou Gehrig. You know, Lou Gehrig... Toward the last like sort of two years of his career, he wasn't Lou Gehrig and we don't, but he couldn't tell if that was something wrong with him or if he was just going through a slump because slumps are such a weird part of baseball unlike like basically other sports. So it's like, you know, how do you know, like as a writer, like, let's say I put out a bad book or two bad books or three bad books. How do I know that that's not just, you know, the law of averages work like, like working its way out, you know, you flip a coin enough times, you're going to get some, some weird patterns. It's, I mean, I guess it's the,

• 30:55Ryan Holiday?

  it's, it's not even the million dollar question. It's like the question is like, how do you know? Are you struggling? Are you falling short? Is this finally your time coming up? Or is this just, uh, you know, adversity to get over?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Right, right. And, and everybody's level at which, you know, they're either struggling or whatever, it's going to be different for everybody. And I think that's what makes it so, so amazing and so unique and, and so special. When you see guys that, that, that do overcome that and they do persevere and they, and they kind of get over that hump. And, and you know, other guys, you know, maybe it's, maybe it is the right, right decision to step away because they're the only, only people that really know how their body's feeling or what the doctors are telling them or, you know, just, you know, the, the

• 31:52Speaker 01

  amount of suffering almost that, that they're willing to endure to get over that hump to get to, you know, kind of see that light at the end of the tunnel a little bit. And yeah, baseball is very, very unique in that sense where, you know, some, some guys are very streaky and, you know, if even, even just that baseline, you know?

• 32:14Speaker 01

  If you're, if you're successful 30% of the time, you're going to be a great player. There's no other industry in, in the world that, that's going to have that kind of an outcome.

• 32:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Well, and, and that was, that was interesting about Lou Gehrig, which I didn't understand. So when he finally walks into the manager and says like, look, you know, put, put, put somebody else in, I'm out, streak's over. The manager goes, why? What are you talking about? And he goes, well, I was talking, you know, he's like, it hit me when I was talking to so and so yesterday. And the manager's like, what did he say? You know, he's going to go like wring this guy's neck thinking that, you know, someone was trying to bully one of the greats of all time into retirement. And he's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. It was the opposite of that. Basically Lou Gehrig had caught like a ground ball, right? Like just a, a simple ground ball. And the guy was so nice and he was like, oh my God, great job. Like congratulate.

• 33:04Ryan Holiday?

  And that was when he said, that's when I knew I wasn't me anymore. When I was getting sympathy from like, from the second baseman or whatever it was, right?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:17Ryan Holiday?

  And, and I, I liked that as sort of a metric. It wasn't that, uh, it wasn't that he didn't think, it, it wasn't, it wasn't that he'd given in to the criticism. It was the opposite. He sort of had this self-awareness to like zoom out and see himself in the perspective of the game and go, what I'm doing isn't fair.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:40Ryan Holiday?

  I'm hold, I'm holding the team back. And that's why he walks away. But, but what I think so interesting about your story, I was just reading about this. You really have, and this is how we connected over the obstacles away. But it seems like you've really taken on a different role with the team while you haven't been able to play. That's not only probably challenged you in a variety of ways, but created an opportunity for you that, that maybe you would have been too busy or too competitive or not had, you know, the, the confidence to do at another part in your career. I'm talking about sort of becoming like, uh, I want to say a mentor, but becoming like a resource inside the clubhouse for the players who can step out on the field.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, and that's and that's kind of something where, you know,

• 34:32Speaker 01

  you know, I've certainly done a lot of reflection upon the situation that I'm in currently and, you know, it basically kind of came down to me being like, okay, you know, this year is probably out of the question. But it's more about, you know, I can sit here and, you know, wallow in self pity and feel bad for myself and, and whatever else, or I can, you know, let's see what else is out there. Let's see what kind of opportunities this, this, this leads to, what kind of doors is this open? You know, how can I still be productive and help this team as much as I can? At least from the outside, I I know that I can't physically help them on the field, in the scoreboard, on the stat sheet, but,

• 35:16Speaker 01

  you know, can I take a guy aside, put my arm around him and be like, hey, look, like, you know, I understand where you're coming from, you know, and show him a video of the exact same situation that he was just in, or, um, you know, I'm also our team's player association representative. So I have that that's that's going on right now. Um, so I'm trying to lead on that on that side of things and kind of take the burden away from, from another player that, you know, would have to be fully ingrained in the into the, into the longevity of the season and, you know, you can get lost in your own world during during the major league season just because it's,

• 35:57Speaker 01

  in totality, you're looking at a seven month season where, you know, the guys in the clubhouse and the coaching staff and the people around just naturally become your second family and you spend more time with them than you do your real family and your immediate family.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  So it's easy to kind of get lost into what you're doing on the field and some of the other things, you know, they kind of go by the wayside, you know, they're there, but it's not the primary focus. So to me, it was it was more of a, hey, you know, where can I, where can I take a step back? Where can I take a look from a 10,000 foot view of things and, you know, where can I help out? What, you know, what areas are needed where, you know, I can?

• 36:39Speaker 01

  You know, lend a voice or, you know, pick up the torch somewhere else. And, and that's kind of what I've been doing is just kind of getting my feet wet on all kinds of different things, but also just trying to, you know, help some of the guys and, and, and give them some of the, the knowledge that I, that I have, because I've been around for a little bit of time where, you know, I feel like I can help maybe speed up the learning curve a little bit that took me a little bit longer to figure out because I had to go through a lot of failure on and off the field.

• 37:13Ryan Holiday?

  And I think that's what people don't quite understand about that expression, the obstacle is the way. It's not that you can magically make some crappy situation wonderful, or that merely by pushing through and throwing your full weight at something, you can get through it, right? No amount of hard work is going to address, you know, your blood clot issue, right? That's like a thing that's up to the medical gods, right?

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 37:44Ryan Holiday?

  But what you can do, and I think this is what I think is inspiring about your story, is that door is closed or temporarily closed, but that doesn't mean the window over here isn't open. So what Mark's really, this is really saying is that nothing can stop you from practicing one of the virtues, right? Your, the virtue of endurance, for instance, might be closed off to you, but the virtue of being a good teammate, uh, which I guess we'd put under the bucket of justice, um, is now open to you in a way that, um, just, that, that wasn't open when you had to be a hundred percent focused on how you were going to pitch in today's game.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree with all of that. And you know, it's funny too, you know, it's not like, it's not as if we're, we're out searching for obstacles to overcome, to strengthen and callous our mind, or whatever else, it's just

• 38:44Ryan Holiday?

  No, life's got enough of those. They bring them, they bring them our way.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Exactly, right, right, exactly. And, and even for me, I think, not that it's easy in any regard or any sense, but I think this, you know, I think maybe part of the reason why it, you know, your, your book and, and a lot of what the Stoics have to say about, about adversity becomes, comes very natural to me, and very easy and understandable. And it just kinda, it just kinda clicks with me is, you know, I, I, I'm not foreign to medical hardship, or just adversity in general. You know, I had gone through a few things in, in college that I, you know, not too many 20 year olds are going through, but

• 39:29Ryan Holiday?

  What was that?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  It was, I, I had been diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. And it affected, it was, it was actually right after Phil Mickelson, I got diagnosed with the exact same, with the same autoimmune disease. And it was to the point where it was, it was affecting my feet and my toes specifically. So I had the hardest time just walking around campus, even, you know, getting out of my bed in the morning. You know, I remember I had a cane right next to my bed, a 20 year old in college.

• 39:59Ryan Holiday?

  In college?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  In college, I'm using this, I'm using this, this darn cane to get around my apartment just to, you know, just, just to kinda get moving a little bit, to loosen up the joints a little bit.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  And it took, it took a full semester to get the medicine right and to get everything squared away. And then as soon as that happened, I started training and started getting ready for the season. And I ended up blowing my elbow out, having to have Tommy John surgery. So it was like, my entire junior year of college was just like, even going back to the summer going into that year, it was just kinda one long You know, beat down where, you know, it was just seemed to be one thing after another and it just really started to kind of make me understand, you know, how fragile things are and, you know, maybe try to see the best of the circumstances that I'm in and, you

• 40:53Speaker 01

  know, what directions can I go in and, you know, how can we, how can we overcome these things? And to me, that was like, kind of the foundation that, that built me and almost got me ready for, for these types of situations because, you know, outside of Chris Bosh, I don't know how many other athletes have gone through multiple blood clots before.

• 41:13Ryan Holiday?

  Although it's, it's not a given though, right? Like plenty of people go through medical adversity or, you know, have some sort of bit of, of difficulty in their personal lives and their professional life or whatever. It doesn't invariably make them a better teammate, right? You, I, I guess, walk me through your thinking, like, is, is it that focusing on helping some other guy, showing him some clips? Is, is that a way of taking your mind off what you're going through? Is it about wanting to be valuable to the team? Is it about, like, I, I guess what I'm saying is, I understand it, but I also understand that it's not the direction that everyone goes for. Often when we're going through

• 41:57Ryan Holiday?

  stuff, all we can think about is our own crap.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, no, I, you know, I think it's, I think it's a combination of a few things where, you know, I, I hold this game in such a high regard. And when, when I first got called up, I had some really, really great veteran leadership in the bullpen. I was around the Troy Hawkins who had spent

• 42:20Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I know him.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Damn, damn near 20 years in the big leagues.

• 42:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he, he, he, he, he and I have talked a handful of times. He's, he's a big hunter.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, yes, he is. And I mean, he was great to me.

• 42:38Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 42:38Speaker 01

  My rookie year and he was, he was, he was awesome. I mean, you know, between him, I had another guy named John Axford, another guy named Adam Ottavino. You know, and, and those guys really took care of me and really, really helped me along the way.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  And to me, it's more about like, you know, how can I pay it forward? How can I respect the game? You know, you know, within the baseball circles, and I'm sure it's in every other sport too, you know, it's all about respect for the game itself. And, you know, if you treat the game well, the game will treat you well. You know, so that's kind of part of, you know, why I think I want to help guys. I want to do the same for the younger guys that, you know, older guys did for me when I was first coming up. And, and it also goes to, you know, how can I, how can I create value for, for the club while, you know, I can't physically do it on the field, but, you know, if I can help, help a younger pitcher out, or whatever it may be,

• 43:41Speaker 01

  you know, get him thinking a little bit different about a situation. You know, maybe that'll speed up his career a little bit. And now, you know, maybe in a month or two, or a year from now, you know, that little seed that, that I just gave him, you know, it'll click and it'll make sense. And now he's going to have, be successful in his own right.

• 44:01Ryan Holiday?

  And maybe, maybe 10, 10 years.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 44:05Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and maybe 10 years down the line, uh, he'll be going through, or she will be going through something in their career and see someone else. And they'll, it creates that sort of chain of, not quite multi-generational impact, but it's, it's about creating a chain of doing the right thing.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Sure. Sure. Yeah, exactly. And, and to me, that even goes back to, you know, just some of those values that were instilled upon me when I was a kid through my parents and through my family. And, you know, I don't think that that's necessarily, you know, lost on me as an adult now.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Where.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Even if I'm going through a hard time, that's fine, but you know, how can I still help the people around me get better, you know, especially, especially in a team type of atmosphere where, you know, it's, it's, it's very competitive and, you know, I just want to see the best for, for the guys because I know how hard it is to get to this level, to stay at this level, and then to be successful at this level, you know, it's almost kind of three variations to climb the pillar to get to where you want to get to, you know, it's, you know, just, just physically getting to the big league level is one thing, and then sticking around for a few more years is another thing, and then to be really successful and playing All-Star Games and things like that, that's a complete, you know, elite level

• 45:27Speaker 01

  of the game, which, you know, ideally, we're all trying to aspire to.

• 45:36Ryan Holiday?

  But don't you find it is also a way to help yourself? Like, I find when I'm going through crap, or I'm really sort of difficult, I'm consumed with my own thoughts, or anxiety, or frustrations, or troubles, when, when you focus on somebody else, not only do you forget about your problems for a while, but you may end up opening up a new door, or opportunity, or way of thinking about your own problems that does in fact help you?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I think in, you know, in a roundabout way, I think it does, you know, kind of ease the suffering a little bit, and, you know, I think the best, you know, I've heard this before too, you know, the best way to, you know, to make sure that you understand certain material, or certain, you know, principles, or foundations, or whatever it may be, is to be able to articulate it to somebody else, so that they can understand what, what it is that you're talking about. And I, you know, find myself, you know, I've been, in the past, I've always been intentional about trying to teach even younger kids, you know, get pitching lessons or whatnot, and, and hearing myself say the things that I

• 46:48Speaker 01

  believe in kind of reinforces why I believe them, or why I think that they're important.

• 46:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, that's right. Well, Seneca says, you know, we learn as we teach, which I think is true. But I also find, you know, when I was writing The Obstacle is the Way, I looked at this set of studies about elite athletes. I think they were in Canada, and they were talking about post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic injury or disorder, right? And they were saying that oftentimes, the athlete may come back from the injury weaker in some way because they blew out their knee or they don't have quite the same mobility or whatever it is they put on weight. But they're better because they've spent that time studying the game. They understand, you know, their role in the game. They appreciate their teammates more.

• 47:40Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe they're more connected to it. Like, I got to imagine, let's say you come back at 100% in a year, you know, next season. Not only did you help your teammates through, you know, you contributed to your teammates, but the team will be, you will be coming back to a stronger team where the players are more connected with each other because of this period. And so, again, that's the idea of the obstacle being the way.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, no, without a doubt. And I think, you know, you just said like in a very, to me, like, you know, when you mentioned appreciation, you know, I think that that's one of the things that when the game or, you know, when life kind of puts you on the sidelines for a little bit, you know, the things that you were really involved in, the things that you really enjoy doing, you know, when you can't do them anymore, you kind of have that that greater appreciation because now you can see it, you know, from a bird's eye view or from the sidelines or, you know, whatever metaphor you want to apply to it. But, you know, you really get that deep appreciation for...

• 48:46Speaker 01

  You know, how much you enjoy it, how much you see other people being successful at it. And, you know, I think that there's like an inner drive too to be, you know, especially the times where I've had to go through some sort of a rehab process, whether it was with, you know, surgeries or, you know, whatever else is, you know, you have the game taken away from you for, for a small period of time. And, you know, I'm watching it on TV and watching the dugout or what have you. And it motivates me to want to get back out there. So the things that I'm going to do with the training staff or physical therapists or whatever may be, you know, like you said, there might be some physical atrophy in the muscles, but, you know, mentally I might be stronger. I might be better because I know

• 49:31Speaker 01

  I've gone through the process and I've gone through all the steps to get back to ultimately where I want to get to. And I think that's, that's where that appreciation comes in. And that's where it becomes maybe a little bit more digestible to overcome those obstacles on a, on a daily basis. When, you know, like we were saying earlier, you know, you just don't, sometimes you just don't feel like doing it.

• 49:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Yeah. So I, I was, you, you mentioned earlier, the idea of pitchers and thrower, pitchers or throwers. And I was thinking about this when I was writing Stillness, my book Stillness is the Key, which is probably the book I talk about baseball the most. I was talking about this idea that, and I, I didn't come up with it, but it's a pretty well established fact, as you all know, as you know, that, that like sort of hitting, hitting a baseball is the single hardest act in professional sports. Right? But part of the reason it's so hard is because people like you are on the other side, right? You're, you're trying to make it as hard as possible. So I'm interested in this idea. You were saying that, you know,

• 50:36Ryan Holiday?

  perhaps as you're physically declining in one sense, you're also getting more strategic, more clever, better able to disguise your pitches, better able to, you know, get in the head of the batter. Is that sort of how you've seen your career arc, not just as a human being who spent time in the league, but also as you've been battling these sort of physical obstacles that they've forced you to get better mentally?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 51:12Ryan Holiday?

  You dropped off for a sec, but did you hear me?

• 51:15Speaker 01

  I heard up until a couple of seconds ago that you were just starting to get into.

• 51:25Ryan Holiday?

  I'll go again, I'll go again.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Meeting on the mound and okay.

• 51:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so in Stillness is the Key, I was, probably in my book, I talk the most about baseball, but I was referencing this idea, which I'm sure you've heard a million times, that hitting a, hitting a pitch in baseball is the hardest act in professional sports. But the reason it's hard is because guys like you are on the other side, right? You're trying to make it hard. And I was curious, you were talking about pitchers or throwers. Have you seen your arc as you've gone on, as you've gotten older, dealt with these physical things, that you've had to get more strategic, more clever, you know, play the psychological game as a, as a pitcher? Is that sort of how you've seen yourself developing?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, without a doubt. You know, it's even, even just on the baseball side, outside of the medical, you know, it's been its own transition, its own transformation where, you know, younger in my career, you know, I kind of, I sped through the minor leagues a little bit quicker than what is the norm, I guess. I think I was up there within three years of being drafted, especially for, for somebody that wasn't a very particularly high draft pick. It kind of breaks the norm a little bit. And so I got up there and I was throwing very hard, but my command wasn't great. My off-speed pitches, you know, they had great movement to it, but they weren't, they weren't very effective because they

• 52:54Speaker 01

  weren't landing in the spots that they needed to get to. And the first four years of my career, I was, I was bouncing back and forth between AAA and the big league level because just because I, I wasn't throwing enough strikes. I was walking too many batters. You know, the scouting report was, hey, you know, this guy's probably going to throw four balls before he throws three strikes. So wait them out a little bit. And then the times where I would fall behind in account, now I have to be back in the zone. And that's where that's where the damage would get done. I give up a lot of doubles, a lot of home runs. You know, and you go through those growing pains as an athlete on the field. Um, and that was really like the first major time, um, extended period of time where I really failed ath- athletically.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Um, so that's kind of almost like its own unique shock to the system. You know, because I think as athletes, especially guys that get to the levels they get to. You know, more times than not, they're, they're kind of. They're not really as challenged as, as much as they probably could be until they get to the top level.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And at that point, you know, sometimes you have to take a look, take a, take a look at the mirror and maybe change some things around. So I ended up dropping some pitches, um, that had made me successful over the years. You know, I, I had been a, a, a two seam fastball and a curveball type of pitcher when I, when I got up to the big leagues. And then what ended up making me successful was a four seam fastball and a slider. So it was almost as if, you know, I'm two different pitchers. I mean, even the times where I would watch video for myself, uh, on myself.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  I would almost disregard my first couple of years because, you know, it's like watching a completely different person, a completely different pitcher. I don't, you know, I'm not going to be able to learn anything from that pitcher, at least on. Within the game itself, from a standpoint like that, where, you know, if I'm trying to pick something up or, you know, how, how should I attack certain hitters? You know, the person that I was, the pitcher that I was in 2018, 2019 was vastly different from the pitcher I was in 2015, 2016 where.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  I was throwing hard, but I I had no clue where it was going. I was I was a thrower, so to speak. And, you know, I had to learn how to be a pitcher

• 55:16Speaker 01

  in in AAA. And the last time that I got I got sent back down was in 2018. You know, I had come off a playoff experience in 2017. I thought I had kind of righted the ship a little bit. And I opened up the season in April and I it was not very good. So I had to go back down to Albuquerque and readjust some things. But when I came back up, I had made all of the right adjustments. I had really put all of my focus into what it was that I was trying to do, because I knew I I I had, you know, the stuff. I had the movement of the pitches. I had, you know, some elite velocity on my fastball.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  And at that point, it was just a matter of really tightening everything up, narrowing the focus, getting to a point where I can be consistent with the locations of my pitches. And I think you see, I think the difference between the pitchers and the throwers are that the pitchers can really command the fastball on both sides of the plate pretty much whenever they want to. And, you know, we were talking about Latroy Hawkins earlier. I mean, one of the first things I ever asked him was, I said, Hawk, what was, you know, what's made you successful? Why, you know, what is it about you that has been able to play 18, 19, 20 years at the major league level? Not just professional baseball. Right.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  And he's like, one, he's like, you gotta, he's like, your body's a race car and you gotta feel it like one. And number two, he's like, he took a home plate and he took both of his hands and he just kind of went back and forth on the corners. And he's like, you gotta live on the corners in this league. What does that mean? He's like, basically, you gotta put your fastball on both sides of the plate. You gotta be able to throw in the corners. He's like, you can't catch too much of the plate.

• 57:02Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  So he was really able to just go in and out left on both sides of the plate, lefties and righties, put his fastball really where he wanted to. And it took a little bit of time to figure that out and to get that. But once it did, it clicked and, you know, I went from a guy that was probably, you know, one of the worst relievers in the league to now I'm, I'm right up there with, with some of the best relievers in the league. And to me, it was just, you know, really establishing the fastball command and learning how to pitch.

• 57:34Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Man, I gotta, I gotta follow up with Latroy. I'm going to interview him now. Um, one of the things I think must be both terrifying and clarifying about baseball is like, all of us are comparing ourselves to other people all the time, right? Do I belong? Am I good enough? You know, where do I measure up against people? Baseball, and I think it's unique even among the, the major sports, is the way it sort of promotes and demotes people. And it, it, there's not that much stigma attached to it. It's just like sort of constant, like you're going down for a few months, you're coming back up. You know, there's guys who spent years in the major, in the, in the minors and they come out and they have an awesome major league career.

• 58:16Ryan Holiday?

  There's guys who have had awesome major league careers who get sort of forced down to the minors for a while. You've been talking about you going back up and, you know, back and forth. But I imagine what, what all those successful people have in common is, is their ability to be both really competitive, but also tune all of that comparison out, right? Cause like, if you're like, I suck, I'm down in the minor leagues, that's going to crush your spirit and your confidence. Also, if you're in the major leagues and you're like, I'm out of the minors forever. I'm amazing. I'm the best. That's when you get complacent. So you kind of got to focus on like your own individual journey.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. Exactly. And, you know, and you can have that false sense of security that, hey, I'm in the big leagues, everything's great, you know? Everything's way better than the minor leagues.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  And you can kind of fall into that trap of, you know, what the major league level is all about. Or, you know, you can feel sorry for yourself, or you can even get angry. Um, you see, I've seen a lot of guys over the years where, you know, the bitterness kind of comes out of them once they get sent down and they're in AAA and it's, I shouldn't be here. Why is this guy getting called up over me, over me? You know, I'm going to call my agent, you know.

• 59:36Ryan Holiday?

  Judging that, judging the guys you're around, that they're not as important or cool as you.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I think that that's, you know, I think interestingly enough, I think being in AAA is actually, sometimes it can be significantly harder, at least mentally. Especially when you've gotten some, more than just maybe a cup of coffee in the big leagues.

• 1:00:01Ryan Holiday?

  We are going from a private plane to a bus, right?

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Right. Well, most, yeah. I mean, the league that we were in, there was only one bus trip and that was to El Paso. The other, the other were, you know, you, you're waking up at four in the morning to catch a 4:30 bus, to catch a connector flight, a Southwest connector flight at five or six in the morning. And then, you know, you get into whatever city you're playing. Sometimes you get there too early and you can't check in right away and you're playing that night. So you're just like hanging out in the hotel lobby until it's like three o'clock and then you check in and try to take a nap. Oh, and you go to seven o'clock game that night.

• 1:00:37Ryan Holiday?

  This is the life of a, of an author on the road as well. It burns you out.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I can only imagine. Um, but yeah, it's, it's an interesting lifestyle in, at, at the AAA level. And I think if, if, you know, you, you almost have to thread the needle of, you know, you know, you can be upset and that can, that can be a motivator, but you can't be so upset where it distracts you from what it is that you're ultimately trying to do.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  And I think kind of having some humility and, and even encouraging and trying to help other people, like we were talking about a little bit earlier, kind of helps,

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  helps you in that situation where it's like, hey, I'm going to be happy for the guy that's going up, you know, to, to the big leagues instead of me. Like, you know, I, I, I have to take the approach that, you know, I'm not going to be upset if it's not me because that just tells me that I'm not ready yet. We still have more work to do. At least that was the approach that I took.

• 1:01:42Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and, and think about your situation, right? So there, I'm sure there were moments in the minor leagues where you're like, this sucks. I hate this. I don't want to do this anymore. But now that you're facing not being able to play again, you would kill for one inning in the minor leagues, I'm sure, right?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Sure, absolutely. I would take an inning anywhere at this point.

• 1:02:04Ryan Holiday?

  Right, a company softball game.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Sure, right, exactly. And, and I mean, sometimes it, you know, sometimes that drives me nuts, you know, when I see guys, it's kind of like, you know, like, hey, man, you're pissing away an opportunity here. You know, just because it's like, I'm looking at it from a different perspective.

• 1:02:25Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you know, you have the power of the stoic idea of memento mori. When you get a whiff or a taste of what it's like for something to be gone, you see it in a fundamentally different way. I think, I think about this with my kids all the time. You know, like, they're having trouble going to sleep. I've asked them, you know, we, we've done the bedtime thing seven times now and they keep popping out of their room. And I go, I go, first off, like, just in the absolute most positive scenario, I'm going to miss this when they're 15, right?

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:59Ryan Holiday?

  Like, but then the, the, the unthinkably worst case scenario, right? That all people are fragile. I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:03:09Ryan Holiday?

  I would, can I, I, I was like, I would never forgive myself if I wasted tonight because I assumed I have an infinite amount of these, or I got angry at them because, you know, they were interfering with me watching Netflix on the couch after they were in bed. Because you, you, what you're really doing when you're, I guess, when you're, when you're being like arrogant, or you're being resentful, or bitter, or angry, or, you know, any of those things, what, what you are in fact doing. Is being not present and most likely ungrateful.

• 1:03:49Ryan Holiday?

  Right. And I think when you, when you experience how fleeting all of it is, whether it's playing or in my case, like, I just think about like, when, when a book is kicking my ass, I go, first off, how many people would kill to be writing a book, like to have a book under contract and be able to write it. And then two, how much did I, did I want to kill for this opportunity that I now have? And I'm going to put that to the side because it's not perfectly to my liking. That's, it's, it's awful.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And it's that constant balancing act. And, you know, I, I think when I, when I did eventually get, get recalled from, from AAA 2018, it was like,

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  you know,

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  it was the perfect timing. It was like, you know, I almost instinctively knew that when I got called up, I remember exactly, you know, where I was, you know, we were in Sacramento, I was playing catch and

• 1:04:49Ryan Holiday?

  At the Rivercats?

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  At the Rivercat Stadium.

• 1:04:51Ryan Holiday?

  I've been to many, many Rivercats games.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Place gets smoking hot in the summer.

• 1:04:56Ryan Holiday?

  It does. Yeah. People ask me like, how do you put up with the heat in Texas? And I go, I don't think you actually know what Sacramento was like, man. It's not, it's not Santa Monica. Let me tell you.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  No, no, it's not. It's not San Jose. It's not San Francisco. And, and the bullpen's down in Sacramento, they got like little umbrellas down there. There's no, there's no coverage. You're just out there baking. But yeah, I just remember it was like an instinctive moment. It was almost as if like, you know, all the hard work and everything that I had just done had finally paid off. And it was like, you know, internally, I kind of knew that like, all right, this is, this is going to be the last time. This is it. You know, this is going to be the last opportunity that you get at this level. And just, I think just in the situation that I was in.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  With the Rockies, and I think that it it kind of comes down to, at least in general with baseball, you know, sometimes just the luck of the draw, right? You know, if if you were a kid that got drafted by the Yankees, well, as a shortstop and you got Derek Jeter up there, well, you're probably not going to be playing a shortstop in New York anytime soon. You know, I kind of got fortunate in the sense that I got drafted by a club that, you know, is a smaller market team. They're not really spending a whole lot of money on free agents. And just the nature of pitching and altitude in Denver, you know, nobody's really ever been able to crack the code. I don't think anybody ever really will. So to be successful consistently is very difficult to do. So we're constantly having roster roster

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  changes throughout the season. And, you know, when I got called back up, it was just, okay, look, you know, here it is. Here's the last opportunity. You wouldn't have probably wouldn't have gotten this many opportunities with with any other team. So let's take full advantage of it. You're prepared. You've done all the work. And here we go. Let's hit the ground running as soon as we get up there.

• 1:06:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And and I think, you know, sports are like, there's such a narrow window, right? You only get even, yeah, someone like Latroy, 20 years, right? And I think, I think Tommy John was like 26 seasons, right? I just had this guy Oliver Berkman on, who wrote this book called 4,000 Weeks, which is like, that's, that's how long the average person is alive, 4,000 weeks. And and we were talking about, like, even really, really old people, like, if you live to be 110, that's like, 5,000 or 6,000 weeks. It's not like, transformatively different, right? Like, five years in the league, 20 years in the league, at the end

• 1:07:32Ryan Holiday?

  of the day, like, it's not your whole life. It's a brief window. And how do you take advantage of it while you have it? Even this, even this sort of injury period that you're in, or this kind of medical limbo period you're in, it's like, that's going to be a certain percentage of your career, right? Even if you come back, that will be a chunk of your career. And I think what's impressive about what you've done is, is the decision, which is not unlike the decision a lot of people have had to make during the pandemic, like, it's been, it was going to be two weeks, and then it was two months, and now it's like knocking on the door of two years. It's like, How do you get real fucking comfortable with this uncomfortable situation?

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:08:11Ryan Holiday?

  And make it something?

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Ryan Holiday?

  Because it is something and to not let it be something is to reject the gift. It's to reject the present moment.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, without a doubt. And, you know, to me, you know, understanding that and diving into into your books and, you know, leading me to the to the primary sources of where you're getting your material is really helpful. And when I was coming up through the minor leagues, you know, just because at the time I didn't really, I hadn't gotten an iPhone until maybe 2014 or so.

• 1:08:50Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was kind of late to the party. I kind of pushed it off as late as I could. And I finally got one, but, you know, there was a lot of times where, you know, you're taking nothing but bus trips. So, you know, my little dumb phone's not going to be able to entertain me. So I got to read. I got nothing else to do. So diving into into the sports psychology, which kind of led me into your book, which led me into the Stoics and is just kind of all encompassing and you can kind of see the ancient wisdom and kind of pairing it with the modern day academic side of things. And it's like, wow, these really, these ideas really meshed together pretty well. And, you know, it kind of makes sense as to where they were getting their information from and.

• 1:09:29Ryan Holiday?

  And then you read The Way of Baseball?

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Uh, by Sean Green?

• 1:09:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, I remember reading that. Unbelievable. Unbelievable book.

• 1:09:39Ryan Holiday?

  Another book I loved on baseball, um, that Josh Boyd at the Rangers, who's actually who I met, uh, Latroy Hawkins through.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:46Ryan Holiday?

  Um, it, the biography of Sadaharu Oh.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  That book is like, is not, that's not the one that he wrote.

• 1:09:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:09:55Ryan Holiday?

  It's the one he, yeah, it's like a bunch of money on Amazon because it was like not popular. It's old or whatever, but it was like.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Ryan Holiday?

  This is like the greatest baseball player who ever lived and nobody's ever heard of him.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, nobody has ever heard. I always try to tell people as, as many people as I can, you know who the real home run champ is?

• 1:10:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  I'm like, watch these highlights. This is the guy who was the first guy that did the leg kick back in the seventies.

• 1:10:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Oh, it's incredible story. And he's, and then he was partly who sort of re-inspired me to look at like Musashi. I don't know if you've read the five book, the Book of Five Rings, which is like, he's basically contrast, because he's Japanese, he's contrasting, you know, baseball and like the sort of Samurai tradition. Obviously in the West, you know, we look at like, you know, the Stoics, or we look at, you know, uh, uh, the sort of the Western canon. But it was so interesting to think of, uh, baseball, because it's, baseball's a Western game, but to see it influenced by the Eastern tradition. And that's why I like Sean Green's book. It's, it's so fascinating.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it really was. I mean, I haven't read it in a, in a few years, but I just remember, you know, him bringing kind of like an Eastern type of thinking and an Eastern type of philosophy into, into the game. And, and I just remember, I think it was a passage where he ended up pitting like four home runs in one game in Milwaukee after he'd been in like a terrible slump, or something like that. I don't remember all the particulars, but I remember him being like, I, you know, he's like, everything just made sense. It was just, I stayed with my process and, you know.

• 1:11:27Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's emptying the mind. And like sort of clearing, clearing.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Finally let go. Right.

• 1:11:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Which as a pitcher is the exact opposite of what you want the batters to have. Because you're trying to, you're trying to get them to overthink it. And that, I was thinking, I was thinking about that, uh, is like, it's like, we have self-discipline, but we, part of what we're trying to do is, uh, is, or we have stillness, we have self-discipline, and we want to exploit the lack thereof in our opponents. That's like the essence of the competitive, you know, battle.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think what makes the elite hitters, um, you know, really interesting is because they don't have any control over the timing of the situation.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  You know, they have, they're constantly on, on the pitcher's watch. They're, they're constantly, it's like, hey, you gotta be ready when I'm ready. You know, that's the way it works. I got the baseball.

• 1:12:24Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  I'm the one making the pitch. I'm the one dictating the pace. I dictate how this thing goes. And my job is to disrupt your timing.

• 1:12:34Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Yeah. So, so the skill there is flexibility, right? We think of them as these big, strong, controlled, powerful guys, which is true and, and women in any sport.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:12:46Ryan Holiday?

  But it really, the ultimate strength, the, the last law in the 48 laws of power is, is about formlessness. You know, the ability to adapt and change and, you know, hit anything. And, and actually, I was, again, not as familiar with baseball as you, obviously, but I was fascinated with the, the contrast between Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Like Babe Ruth basically hit all his homers in the same place. And what made Lou Gehrig so dominant was like, he could hit across, he could hit it anywhere.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:13:17Ryan Holiday?

  Right? And so the ability.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, sorry to cut you off, but I've always like, you know, you said fluidity and I've always thought,

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  you know, when I've read something from an eastern type of philosophy, they, they love using the water analogy.

• 1:13:31Ryan Holiday?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  You know, with the fluidity and it just, that just makes so much sense to me, I think, within sports, within baseball particularly.

• 1:13:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, no, it to, it totally does. Uh, because you're not, it's not like running or something where it's just like, do you have the, the skills, right? It's like, can you, you, you, it's more like boxing or something where you're going up against, uh, somebody else who is trying their hardest to prevent you from doing whatever it is that you're doing.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, definitely.

• 1:14:05Ryan Holiday?

  Man, I'm so glad we, we connected. Uh, I appreciated the kind words about the book and I'm, I'm glad I reached out and, uh, I should mention, um,

• 1:14:15Ryan Holiday?

  The, what we got connected by Steve Gilbert's win your day email. Steve was, was who connected us, but I, I also love his, do you get his daily email?

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  I don't, he's the beat writer with the Diamondbacks, correct?

• 1:14:28Ryan Holiday?

  He, he is, but he does, uh, he does this email every day.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:33Ryan Holiday?

  Called win your day. Uh, and, uh, wait, is it down? I think the website's down, so maybe I'll cut this, but anyways, but I'll just say Steve Gilbert was nice enough to connect us and, and I'm so glad that he did and, uh,

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too. I've been a fan of yours for, for a long time and, you know, when I, I think when our beat writer or somebody mentioned they're like, hey, Ryan Holiday wants to get in touch with you. I'm like, are you serious?

• 1:14:59Ryan Holiday?

  Well, no, it was, it was amazing. And I'm going to tell the story about how we connected at the beginning of the episode. So people, people know, but I'm so glad and I'm rooting for you and, uh,

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, the other thing that I didn't mention, but you know, I've also gearing into grad school too. That was kind of part of like,

• 1:15:17Ryan Holiday?

  Oh yeah. Right. I read about this.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  One of, well, yeah, what I've done. So I ended up getting into Georgetown for a sport management program.

• 1:15:24Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's,

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  you know, it was, it was just one of those things where I was like, hey, look like, you know, I can't just, I can't just live and die by my athletic career. Like nobody, nobody's going to give a shit about that. Like, oh, hey, you played in the big leagues. Great. Good for you. Like, you know, what can you do for me?

• 1:15:41Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Well, I was like, hey, the academic side, I gotta have, I gotta have a little bit of that too.

• 1:15:48Ryan Holiday?

  I, I read a great book a few months ago, um, called, I came in as a shadow about Georgetown's great basketball coach. Let me, I came as a shadow. Let me just get his name. Oh, John Thompson's incredible book. You would, you would love it.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that'd be awesome.

• 1:16:10Ryan Holiday?

  Well, awesome. This is so cool. Let, but go ahead.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, I was just gonna say like, you know, I've been trying to connect with, with Chris.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Unfortunately it just hasn't worked out yet, but.

• 1:16:22Ryan Holiday?

  I'll, you want me to follow up or is it in the works?

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  He, he sent me one email. I sent one back and I just haven't heard back from him. I'm sure he's busy, but, um, you know, it would just kind of be interesting to just hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, you know, just like, you know, all the things that he went through.

• 1:16:44Ryan Holiday?

  No, you, you hit him up and, and then when this is posted, I'll follow up with him and bump him that, that you guys should connect.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:16:53Ryan Holiday?

  Dude, awesome. Seriously, hit me up anytime. And I'm, I'm, I hope we can, we can stay in touch.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, me too. I'd really enjoy that. Just out of curiosity, how far away are you from, from Houston? I mean, we're on.

• 1:17:07Ryan Holiday?

  I am like two, like two hours from Houston.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Oh, nice, nice. Yeah, we're, we're in Houston right now.

• 1:17:13Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, that's funny. So you're traveling with the team?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm traveling with team. We had a two game, short two game series in Houston and we're flying out tonight to go to San Francisco. You know, the other silver lining in all of this has been the amount of time I've got to spend with my family.

• 1:17:31Ryan Holiday?

  I bet, man.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  You know, that was, I probably easily could have mentioned something like that, just, you know, but I, that's even a whole conversation in and of itself, just how much, how much time the game takes away from your immediate family.

• 1:17:43Ryan Holiday?

  It's, uh, it's, it's the same thing for me.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:17:46Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I just think about like, where, where would I have been? I would have been on the road so much, right? Like, uh, and, and instead I got to spend, I mean, I've spent half my youngest son's life at home, like every single day. Like, it's, it's a credible, credible gift.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you know, and it's, and it sucks for me. It's like, this is kind of like very much like par for the course. Like my daughter's, my daughter's turning three on Friday and she'll be in New Jersey and I'll be in San Francisco. And it's just kind of the way it is, you know?

• 1:18:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  But because, because of the nature of my injury, they're, they were in Denver for the entire first half of the season up until the All-Star game. And I didn't travel with the team. So, you know, just one, just physically spending the time with, with my daughter. It's like, you know, going through all sorts of like crazy developments at two years old and, you know, being able to help my wife on a daily basis where she doesn't feel like she's drowning and just

• 1:18:46Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  being by herself with a two-year-old and we were starting to potty train her and that was the whole thing. You know, it, to me, that was just like, you know, such a blessing that it's like, okay, you know, this really sucks. I really don't want to be in this situation, but you know, look at all the good that, that's coming out at the same time. You know, it's like, this is, I would never be able to spend this much time with my kid and my wife. Yeah, it's it's obviously something I would never ever, you know.

• 1:19:16Ryan Holiday?

  You wouldn't wish for it.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  No, right. And and even just like going through this first half and getting to spend, you know, even between the pandemic, between the last two years of, well, it's been three years, three in a row now of getting blood clots. I've been able to chance to get home and spend a little bit more time with them. And it's just like, you know, that's time I never would have gotten otherwise. If I'd still been playing and still been successful, you know, all my attention and focus would have been on, would have been on baseball and even the times where, you know, maybe I'm home with them. It's like, hey, maybe I'm, maybe I'm not mentally there, you know? Maybe that present moment is kind of escaping me because my thoughts are on the game that night or, you know, whatever it may be.

• 1:19:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, it's, it's like you want it to be over. And at the same time,

• 1:20:07Ryan Holiday?

  it's, it's also, and you know, it's been horrible for so many people. And at the same time, it's given you something that, or me something that I could have never even thought to have asked for. You know what I mean? Like a year and a half of not traveling. Like, I would have said that's career suicide.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:20:23Ryan Holiday?

  Um, and, and as valuable as it was, I would have thought it would have been irresponsible to take that for myself, you know? Um, but to, to be given it, it's, it's a shame to waste it.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  Right, right, for sure. Um, I'm actually very curious as to how, you know, about your process.

• 1:20:43Ryan Holiday?

  For writing?

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's just, it just, you know, you have, you have so many backgrounds, so many stories, so many, so many references. I'm just like, where does it come from? How does this guy do it? I have no idea. Like, it's just like, it's, it's, it's so fascinating to me. And while I got you on the phone, like I had, I had, I gotta.

• 1:21:00Ryan Holiday?

  No, I could tell, I could tell you all about it. I basically, I, I sort of, as I'm researching and reading, I'm always collecting note cards. And so like, uh, for the, my, my book about courage is coming out in the fall. That was, you know, several years, uh, where I loosely understood I might write a book about that someday. Just also generally collecting stuff I liked. And then now I'm doing this, the sequel, which is going to be about self-discipline, which you and I were talking about. So I'm just always collecting this material. And then as I start to get serious about the book, then I start, I just kind of look at my cards, right? Like, like, like, as if, you know, they were dealt to me. I look at what I have, and then I start to organize them around patterns or topics that I think

• 1:21:44Ryan Holiday?

  would make up the outline of a book. And then, then I, then I have to complete, you know, where the pattern is falling apart. But like this morning, I'm, I'm writing a little chapter about this, this sort of, one of George Washington's favorite concepts. He talks about seeing everything through the calm light of mild philosophy. So I'm, I'm on the, the mental side of self-discipline, you know, sort of how do you calmly look at anything and everything that happens to you. So I have about 10 note cards about this idea. You know, some of the note cards are like page 17, you know, the Ron Chernow biography of Washington. And so I go get that book off the shelf and it, and I'm like,

• 1:22:27Ryan Holiday?

  oh, okay, there's, I, I, it's sort of, I've earmarked the, the raw materials. And then today, it's sort of like, can I shape this into something? Do I have enough here? So I kind of show up every day and I just try to chug away, make a little bit of progress on one small component part of the larger project, which is the book. And then at some point, I get to what feels like the end. And then I start the review process. Like, you know, then it's, it's like, then I'm printing it out and I'm reviewing it and refining it. And so it's, but it's really all rooted on these cards, which are kind of the, the, the building blocks of the book.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And it's amazing to me, you know, the more people I connect with and the more books I read, it's just, you know, those patterns of just, you know, completing little processes or completing little steps along the way. I don't know if you ever came across the, I think it was the Art of Learning?

• 1:23:28Ryan Holiday?

  No. Is this the Josh Waitzkin book?

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:23:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I know. Yeah.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that just like, to me, it just like blew my mind that the guy can go from like elite level competitive chess to

• 1:23:40Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  push hands competition, which he's just a complete novice and becomes a champion in that.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  And you know, from what I'm hearing from you too, it's like, it's just, to me, writing a book sounds like such a daunting task.

• 1:23:54Ryan Holiday?

  But it's like a series of small puzzles, right? Just like you, you, you go, okay, like, like, I'm gonna be up against 16 batters tonight. Right? And each one is it's kind of its own self-contained pattern. And yet, or puzzle, but yet all the puzzles are also connected with each other because how you handle batter number one, you know, relates to how batter number six is gonna face you, right? And so you're kind of, it's like, all right, here's roughly what I think I need to do to knock this guy out. And then here's what I have to do here. And then, you know, sometimes you're, sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's like, you know, so some of the chat, one chapter might take an hour and a half and another chapter might take 10 days, you know?

• 1:24:38Ryan Holiday?

  And so it's kind of this process of just like, you know, let's say that I kind of, I kind of go in, go, look, the book's gonna be three parts, 30 chapters. So, you know, it's gonna take me six months. And so that's kind of like the timeline that I'm operating on and I just, I just chip away.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  Sure. No, that makes sense. And I mean, you know, when you're, when you're going about reading other books, you know, do you particularly have like a, you know, the next book topic in mind? Or is it just kind of something where, you know, the, the pattern just kind of reveals itself or the overarching theme just kind of reveals itself in what you're reading?

• 1:25:15Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's both. So I'm kind of, I'm, I've always been reading, so I'm always like, I like this, I like this. I don't know if it's for anything, but I just like it.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Ryan Holiday?

  But then generally, like, I, like, this is a unique instance where I know what my next, I knew, I knew four books in a row that I was doing. So I could, I'm, I have a lot more clarity about what I'm looking for than I ever have previously in my career.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:44Ryan Holiday?

  But even, even so, like a lot of, like, just the other day, I was researching, or sorry, I was writing something and I came across a note card that I'd written. And I realized that I'd taken the notes on this 15 years ago.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:26:00Ryan Holiday?

  And obviously, I had zero idea that in 2021, I'd be writing a book about self-discipline, and that it would work perfectly in this chapter about keeping your workstation clean. But something struck me when I was 20 years old that, uh, that I liked it, and it popped into my head, and I was able to put it to use.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Sure. No, I mean, that's, that's incredible. I mean, you know, that's, to me, what's so inspiring about, you know, you know, somebody like you that just seems it's just like, hey, boom, you know, here's another book that I need to buy because there's going to be all kinds of just great nuggets in this thing, and I can't not have this book, you know?

• 1:26:41Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's a little easier for me because they're, they're not my nuggets, right? Like, I think if, if, if I was having to create this stuff from scratch, it would be a whole different kind of process, right?

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:26:51Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I'm some, some really smart guy did the nugget, you know, 50 years ago, and then I discovered it 15 years ago, and now it's appearing in my book. It's not quite the same as like, coming up with a new theory of physics or something, but...

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Right, right. But I mean, at least, you know, you know, you're kind enough to at least bring it all together for the people like me that's just like, hey, look, you know, it's going to be way easier if I can read it in one book rather than read it across 50 books.

• 1:27:21Ryan Holiday?

  But that's what I love. I love, I love the org. That's, that, to me, that's the puzzle, is

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:25Ryan Holiday?

  putting all the pieces together in a coherent whole that makes a, uh, you know, a straightforward argument that's applicable. That's like, that's my puzzle, which I, yeah, I just love.

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's great, and you know, your writing style is so, it's so easy to digest, too, and it's just, you know, it's so easy to just like, hey, boom, I can get through the book fairly quickly and, and have a pretty solid understanding and a grasp as to what it is that I'm looking for in reading, and it's easy to go back to.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  You know, I just...

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  You know, I just really appreciate a lot of, you know, everything that you've done.

• 1:28:07Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's very, that's very kind. That's very kind. That's, I appreciate that. And I'm, I'm doing it for me, right? Like first, like that's what I, that's. You're always trying to write the book that you wish existed, because if it did exist, then you wouldn't have to write it.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Right, right. And that, and I kind of almost feel, you know, a similar sense, you know, maybe it's at a smaller scale, but, you know, when I'm going out and I'm pitching, you know, I'm doing it for myself, but I know how much joy it's bringing other people. And if I can inspire and, and, you know, basically, it got to the point where, you know, I'm almost challenging myself and, you know, the later in my career, you know, the batters didn't seem to matter as much anymore.

• 1:28:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  It was more just like, hey, how, how, to what level can I push myself to be as good as I possibly can be? And, you know, how can I make and execute pitch after pitch that's just very high quality? And, you know, start to separate myself from everybody else. And, you know, I know that that, that ends up bringing a lot of fulfillment to other people. You know, obviously it's on a smaller scale just because, you know, the reach that the Rockies have as a club is much smaller than, you know, other teams, but.

• 1:29:30Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, it's, and I think that, that's, uh, ultimately, I think the closer you get to mastery of a thing, the less you care about external results and more you care about the process of doing it. And so your point about the batters mattering less, I think is, is perfectly correct.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  Right. And, and that's, I think, where it really, really comes in because that's, you know, you get to really.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Narrow and really get to lock in on the process. And I think the longer you do it and the more skillfully you get at it, you know, it's easier to see where you need to trim fat off or whatever else where maybe 10 years ago, I would have, you know, put my head down and well, if I'm not sweating and working hard, then it's, you know, it's like a bull in the china shop sort of thing. You know, where it's like, I'm not, I don't really know exactly what kind of benefits I'm getting out of this. I just know that I'm working hard because I'm sweating a lot.

• 1:30:31Ryan Holiday?

  No, I told, I, I like, that's one of the challenges I'm thinking about on this book. I'm, I'm like, can I write this book and not be an insane person? Like, can I, can I write it and it, it be easy? Like, not easy, but can it be like, not, not so disruptive? Like, can I just do it? You know? And, and is that actually a harder, like, is that actually a harder needle to thread than the like, I'm gonna give every, you know, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, nothing matters more than this kind of a thing?

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah. And I'm, and I'm sure, you know, I know that I've probably driven my wife meth a million times. And, and I'm probably, I'm sure it's probably very similar in your house, too.

• 1:31:13Ryan Holiday?

  Completely. My, I, I remember when I sold my third or fourth book, my editor called or emailed my wife and said, congratulations. Also, I'm sorry.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Oh, man. That's really funny.

• 1:31:29Ryan Holiday?

  But I, you know, so to me, the next hurdle is like, can I make this not a regrettable experience for everyone involved? Like,

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:31:36Ryan Holiday?

  That would actually be more impressive. Like, that's what I think so impressive about Tom Brady this year. It seemed like he had the most fun winning this ring than the other rings.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it just seemed like the, that. External pressure really wasn't as tangible as it was when he was in New England.

• 1:31:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's not to say that what happened in New England wasn't incredibly impressive. It is. It's just, it's a different way of doing it. And perhaps in its own way, a rarer, more elite way to do it.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  Sure. And I'm actually going to be very cued into that with how Lionel Messi does with his new transfer to PSG. I'm very curious as to, you know, is he going to be just freed up to just enjoy the game again? And he's with his buddies and he's with Neymar and he's with Mbappe. And, you know, how does this guy go? Is he going to be, is he going to go to another elite level that we didn't even think that he could possibly go to?

• 1:32:38Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right. Yeah. Or was it a cop out? Right? Like, that's always, that's, that's the tension, right? Is it, is it the, I want to go to a team where I don't have to try as hard? Or is it that actually is a pure way to play the game?

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Right, right. And, you know, I think maybe this past year, just because, you know, the way things kind of kicked off at the beginning of the year before, when he tried to get out of his contract at Barcelona. And then it probably felt like he was just carrying the entire weight of the city on his back when he didn't really have as many elite players with him as he had in the past. You know, maybe, maybe having some other players up front with him might free him up a little bit. Who knows? It'll be interesting to watch, though.

• 1:33:25Ryan Holiday?

  It sure will, man. Well, look, I gotta run. Let's, let's do this again. And seriously, reach out anytime. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna email to Troy and tell him that you said hello.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I will. I really appreciate you having me on, Ryan. Thank you.

• 1:33:38Ryan Holiday?

  Dude, this was amazing. And we'll talk soon.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 1:33:42Ryan Holiday?

  My newest book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave, is available for preorder. It goes on sale September 28, but you can preorder it now. We have a bunch of cool preorder bonuses, as I was saying. Among them is something I've never done, I've never given away. These are signed numbered pages from the original. Manuscripts of the book. I have one on my wall from Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire. It's a prized possession of mine. If you'd like to check out the book and preorder it, I've got a bunch of things to make it worth your while. We even have signed copies as well. You can learn more about that at dailystoic.com/preorder. You can preorder the book in any form, audio, digital, physical, signed, unsigned. You can buy it from your

• 1:34:25Ryan Holiday?

  local independent bookstore. You can buy it from my bookstore. You can buy it on Audible. You can buy it anywhere books are sold. But if you go to dailystoic.com/preorder and order Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Bold, we've got a bunch of preorder bonuses there for you. I really hope you support the book. It comes out next month, but if you could support it, that would be awesome. Courage is calling. I hope you answer.