Remind Yourself Who is in Charge

Ryan discusses how you can turn anything into a good thing, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Get signed copies of Courage Is Calling in the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  Remind yourself who is in charge. There's that cliched bit of advice, "Do one thing every day that scares you." The Stoics might say, "Do one thing each day that you'd rather not do." Seneca regularly took cold plunges and intermittently fasted. When Marcus Aurelius discovered philosophy, he made a habit of sleeping on the ground. Cato made his walks around Rome barefoot in the warmer months and bareheaded in the colder months. Epictetus exercised and lifted weights. "The body should be treated rigorously," Seneca wrote, "so that it may not be disobedient to the mind." How can you expect yourself to step out of your comfort zone when the stakes are high if you aren't regularly doing it when the stakes are low?

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  We must test ourselves daily. We must make courage a habit. We must remind ourselves who is in charge: you, not the pull to be comfortable; you, not the desire for everyone to like you; you, not the need to sound smart and all-knowing. If you don't want to fail yourself in the big moments, the best thing you can do is practice in the little ones. We can crank the knob in the shower to cold. We can volunteer to address the rowdy audience. We can put on the silly costume to please our kids and not care what anyone thinks. We can admit that we don't know something, at the risk of eye rolls and condescension. We can agree to try what we have never tried before. And then, when it counts, we'll know what to do: the brave thing, the right thing,

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  the thing we'd rather not do, but know we have to do. There's a chapter in Courage is Calling about John McCain, sort of this habit of being the maverick, of taking the unpopular political stance. Sort of final act of his political career was precisely that. And he trained for it, and he worked for it. And I would imagine a little bit of Stockdale rubbed off of him, rubbed off on him there in the Hanoi Hilton, and therefore indirectly some Stoicism. But I think the idea of courage, the idea of doing something that scares you, is that you build it up as a resource, as a muscle, so that you can act on it when it really, really counts. That's what the book is about.

• 2:35Ryan Holiday?

  I hope you check it out and get signed copies in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. And of course, you can grab the audiobook, the ebook, Kindle, iBooks, Audible, whatever. Support your local independent bookstore. We have copies here at my bookstore, The Painted Porch, as well. But I'd love for you to support the new book. Check it out. Appreciate the support, everyone. Do well.