This Book Was Not Meant For Us | Build Up, Don’t Tear Down

There are very few books like it. Certainly, none written by someone in such an unusual position. You see, Meditations was not meant to be a book for the reader, it was a book for the author. In Greek, it was titled Eis heauton or “To Himself.” A more recent title also captures the essence: The Emperor’s Handbook.📕 We created a premium leather-bound edition of Meditations - To learn more and to pick up your own copy of this beautiful new edition of Meditations, visit dailystoic.com/meditations📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

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

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  This book was not meant for us.

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  There are very few books like it, certainly none written by someone in such an unusual position. You see, Meditations was not meant to be a book for the reader, it was a book for the author. In Greek, the title of Meditations actually translates to "to himself." A more recent title also captures the essence, The Emperor's Handbook. Why write a book that no one would see? Why create a handbook with no plans to publish it? Because Marcus himself needed it. "When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have," Marcus writes in a passage. "This one's energy, that one's modesty, another's generosity, and so on.

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we're practically showered with them. It's good to keep this in mind." Meditations is filled with the stuff that Marcus thought he needed to keep in mind. He was writing to encourage himself. He was thinking of the qualities of the people around him. He was showering himself in their virtues so that he might be improved by the association. And as far as we can tell, it worked because he was a good man, despite facing incredible temptations and pressures. It's an added benefit, a bit of nature's inadvertence, to borrow a phrase from Marcus, that the byproduct of this was one of the most brilliant, accessible, practical, and

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  popular works of philosophy ever written. We are the lucky recipients of this unintended beneficence.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  We should treat this gift with the respect it deserves, showering ourselves in the thoughts that guided Marcus so that like him, we can do and be better. It's the easiest and most effective form of encouragement there is, and we can access it anytime that we like. It's funny, my copy of Meditations is now 15 or so years old. I just gave a talk at the Austin Public Library about it, and I was showing some pictures. And I've put some miles on this copy, and it is worse for wear, which is actually why I've spent the last year working on this cool thing. I purchased the rights to the Gregory Hayes translation for the Modern Library, my favorite one, and we're doing a premium leather-bound edition of Meditations, which is what I've switched to. I put the other one up for display or record-keeping,

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  and I'm starting over with this new one. It's got a genuine leather cover with gold-foiled imprints. There's custom illustrations for all the 12 books, which I oversaw and designed. It's got this cool box. There's end sheets. There's a ribbon so you can mark your place, which is something I've always wished I could do in my copy. And then there is a bio of Marcus at the end, which is actually my chapter from Lives of the Stoics. This thing is so cool. We made it in the UK. It's beautiful. And we're doing the pre-order now. There's a limited number of copies, so if you want to grab them, you've got to do it now. You can go to dailystoic.com/meditations to grab it. I think we're going to run out of these. I'd love for you to see.

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  I'll link to this new edition, this leather-bound edition of Meditations. There's a cool video of it also. But you can grab it at dailystoic.com/meditations. When we sent out the email this morning, we already sold a bunch of them. So grab it now before it's too late. The Gregory Hayes translation of Meditations is one I always recommend. It's now available in a leather one that should hopefully last a lifetime. You can hand it on to your kids, whatever. I think you're really going to like this. Check it out, dailystoic.com/meditations.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Build up, don't tear down. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed, personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. "Is there a worse environment to work in than one where bullying and one upmanship

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  are the norm? Sometimes leaders seem to think that this is part of the job description, that they're there to regulate and keep people in line. In truth, tearing people down is incredibly counterproductive." Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks, poses a question. "If self-confidence is so important for players, why would a coach ever risk anything to damage it? Marcus Aurelius, who had the power to take anyone down at will, even kill them, almost never actually did. Instead, he reminded himself that it was better to build up, to be community-minded, modest, prepared, and tolerant of others. 'We are made for cooperation,' the Stoics said, 'and to render works held in common.'" Let's think about that going forward. How can we help build self-confidence of others?

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  How can we find some of our own in doing so? We have two quotes from Marcus today. He says, "So someone's good at taking down an opponent. That doesn't make them more community-minded, or modest, or well-prepared for any circumstances, or more tolerant for the faults of others." That's Meditations 7:52. And then for Meditations 8:12, he says, "Whenever you have trouble getting up in the morning, remind yourself that you are made by nature for the purpose of working with others, and that our own natural purpose that is more fitting and more satisfying..." When we interviewed Major General Dan Kane in the Leadership Challenge, he was saying that almost never in his career has he ever said, "I'm ordering you to do this."

• 6:37Ryan Holiday?

  I think we have this fantasy that, once we really get power, we become head coach. You know, we become a general. Then we won't have to ask, we won't have to persuade, we can just demand. But that's not how it works. Eisenhower famously said, "The art of leadership is getting people to do things because they want to do them." Right? Randall Stutman, who I talked about last week in the Leadership Challenge, which I urge you all to check out, talks about how the job of a leader is to make people better. It's not to keep them in line, it's not to break them down, it's not to mold them into who you want them to be. It's to make them the best version of themselves. This is why the Stoic virtues of patience and kindness and understanding and empathy are so important. It's not about brute force.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  A Stoic is strict, yes, strict with yourself, but we try to be tolerant and kind to others. And I struggle with this. I really struggle. I think a lot of smart, talented people, again, it was a little egotistical to describe myself that way, but you get my point. A lot of people who are good at what they do, find it very hard to be patient or tolerant of people who are not good at what they do, especially when those people are getting in the way of what you're trying to do. And I struggle with that. The moments I've lost my temper, moments I regret as a leader, as a boss, almost invariably come from that sense of frustration. Why? Why? I told you how I wanted this done. I went over it like 15 times. And I have to catch myself and call myself and remember, this isn't making anyone better and it's making me worse.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  I look like an asshole because I'm being an asshole. And that's not a good way to be. So we have to learn how to keep ourselves in check, how to be strict with what we control, tolerant and understanding and patient with other people and with their actions because that's not in our control. And this is one of the things that ancient historians credit Marcus Aurelius with, that he was very tolerant of the flaws with others, that he found a way to work with them, that he found a way to get things out of them, that he found a way to put them to good use. And I think there's not a better endorsement of a leader than that. Ability to not expect perfection of other people. This was something Rick Fox famously said about Kobe Bryant. That Kobe Bryant struggled to realize that not everyone was Kobe Bryant.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  And in the ancient world, there was an expression, we can't all be Katos. But no one had to understand this more than Kato. That not everyone was like him, not everyone was as good as him, not everyone naturally understood or was committed to these things, the way that he was. And so you have to understand that your job is still ideally to get people closer to that ideal, to make them better. But you're not going to do it through force. You're not going to do it through bullying. You're definitely not going to do it through humiliation. You're definitely not going to do it through yelling. And in fact, when you are yelling, you have almost always screwed up as a boss. Is there tactically, sometimes it needs to be done to send a message? Sure, maybe. But this is almost always a rationalization of an impulse that's gotten out of control or struggle we're having.

• 9:33Ryan Holiday?

  So today and this week, I want you to think about the idea of being calm, being collected, being kind, being a builder, not a destroyer, being an asker, not an orderer, a demander, right? Convince, persuade, inspire. Don't demand, don't bully, don't force. You will get more this way, I promise. And I hope you journal on this in the Daily Stoic Journal, if you're doing it. And just a thought to think about. Build people up, make them better. You don't need sheer force, you don't need anger, don't need to order them. Persuade, make them do it because they want to do it. Make them do it because they've seen the results when you've done it.

• 10:14Ryan Holiday?

  That's the Stoic way. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, the leather bound edition of the Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.