This Is A Good Surprise | The Stoic Edge Behind Peak Performance

You’re tough. You’re firm. You don’t get bothered by things. You keep yourself under control. Good. But you’re missing something else just as important and perhaps more impressive.📚 Books Mentioned: You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America by Paul Kix The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan HolidayMeditations by Marcus AureliusIt’s Better To Be Feared by Seth WickershamAmerican Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback by Seth Wickersham 🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  This is a good surprise. You're tough, you're firm, you don't get bothered by things. You keep yourself under control. You know a thing or two about life. You have earned your wisdom the hard way, by experience. Good, but you're missing something else just as important and perhaps more impressive. If ever anyone possessed of power had grounds for thinking himself the best and most enlightened among his contemporaries was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "Marcus was the absolute ruler of nearly the entire world. He was strong and firm, wise and resilient. But what was less expected from his stoical breeding, Mill said, was his tender heart.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  What a lovely thing to have said about you, that in your nicer and kinder than expected, nicer and kinder than perhaps you could have gotten away with. Marcus Aurelius probably would have attributed his tender heart to his mother, but that was by no means at odds with Stoic philosophy. He saw this tenderness in Antoninus and in Sextus, who taught him, he said, "to be free of passion but full of love." That's good surprise. Not just strength, but softness where it matters. Not just control, but care. Not only to be wise, but to be attentive, compassionate, and patient with the people in our lives.

• 1:43Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We have kind of a special episode for you today. We've been kind of messing with the format here on Daily Stoic a little bit. We kind of want to do deep dives into topics, maybe ways of taking some of the Stoic ideas and tying them to things that are happening in the world. It is Super Bowl weekend here in America. And so if you didn't know that the Super Bowl is here, I know you're supposed to say the big game, but the Super Bowl is here and it's going to be between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, which is a little bit of deja vu, if you remember,

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  especially for me, because the first Seahawks Patriots Super Bowl was a very big deal in my life, not because I bet on the game or anything. It was a big deal because both teams had read my books and had actually gone and visited with the Patriots earlier in that season, which had been kind of a middling season that they turned around really late in the year. Actually, Paul Kicks, in an article for ESPN that he wrote in 2020, actually outlines one way that Stoicism made its way from the Patriots to the Seahawks. Here is John Snyder, the youngish general manager of the Seattle Seahawks during a

• 3:02Ryan Holiday?

  pro day workouts for the Oregon Ducks, Marcus Mariota, in spring 2015. Snyder talks with Mike Lombardi, a 30-year front office executive who spent the previous season with the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick's Patriots, the Patriots who snatched the Super Bowl away from Snyder's Seahawks weeks earlier. As Mariota throws, Snyder peppers Lombardi with questions about Belichick, how he approaches the game, how he leads, how he handles setbacks and level sets after triumphs. Lombardi holds up his hand, "Hang on." He tells Snyder about a book that came out the previous year, one he has recommended to the Patriots staff. The principles of the famous Patriots way are distilled within it.

• 3:47Ryan Holiday?

  If Snyder wants to know more about Belichick, wants to get the vibe for what he's like and what his philosophy is and how he approaches life in football, Lombardi says, if he wants to more fully understand the difference between winning and losing on the one-yard line in the Super Bowl, he needs to read it. What's that book called? Obstacle is the way, Lombardi says. And Snyder loves it. He later tells ESPN that the principles of Stoicism, resilience and objectivity, the push to accept what you cannot control and adapt to what you can. This is what he and Seahawks coach Pete Carroll have been preaching as well. And Snyder gives the book to Carroll and the rest of the Seahawks staff. And soon word gets out. The two best teams in the league are reading the same book.

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  And soon everyone else in the NFL is too. And by the way, Paul Kicks is an amazing writer. And I don't say that because he wrote this profile of me in the book. Considering it's February, it's Black History Month. He has an incredible book on the civil rights movement. Let me get it so I don't mess up the title for you here. He also has a great book on the French Resistance. If you read Courage is Calling, I had this whole deep dive into De Gaulle. He got some good De Gaulle stuff from his book, but he also recommended A Certain Sense of France by Julian Jackson, which is an incredible book. Oh, it's called You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live. He came on the podcast and talked about it. But anyways, I'm now getting a little bit far away from my setup here.

• 5:13Ryan Holiday?

  So anyways, the book ends up making its way to the Patriots and the Seahawks. And the Patriots win not just that Super Bowl, but another one. And I got to know one of the players on that team. It's funny, I was just in Seattle and he and I were messaging because he'd been giving a talk like the day before in the same room. But I'm talking here about Martellus Bennett. He was a tight end for 10 seasons in the NFL. He retired eventually in 2018. First, he was with the Cowboys and then the Bears. He was a multi-pro bowler. And then he was with the New England Patriots, who he won Super Bowl 51 with. And so he came on the podcast. And one of the things I wanted to ask him was about that crazy Super Bowl,

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  where they had come back from 28 to three at halftime. And he told me this crazy thing, that they had actually practiced halftime. You played in maybe the greatest Super Bowl of all time. You know, the 28 to three comeback against the Atlanta Falcons. Walk me through, because obviously from a physical performance standpoint, you were incredible in that game. That game was incredible, but like, how does someone look at that scoreboard at that point in the game? And not give up hope?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  So we get to the Super Bowl, we down, right? Thing, we got the interceptions, everything going wrong, they sacking us, they dancing. We look over, so then we go on a halftime and we go halftime, I'm like, all right. I wonder what's gonna happen because I've seen losses go, I see people yell. I see people curse each other out, I see people throw chairs, I see people wanna fight. I see people blame each other, like I've been in lots of losing situations, like one thing I know is what a loser looks like. Right? Like, because I've been around losers before, right? So, but when I walked in this locker room, I didn't see any losers. I didn't see any of the loser antics or anything that losers do. All the stuff that I've been seeing other losers at moments of time.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Happened to them in a situation and I knew the way that they react, I was bracing for it because I've been around people losing. And now I've been around these guys who've been winning and never really experienced losing like this with me this year. But I can't even say I was surprised, like when I walked in the locker room, because we had practice halftime. Like we practiced halftime leading up to the Super Bowl because it was longer, like. What the schedule is gonna be like, what we gonna do when winning the locker room, yeah, you know, five minutes to yourself, coach is gonna be with you. Like we knew what halftime was gonna be like because we actually worked halftime into our Super Bowl practices, like.

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  You practiced halftime, that's incredible.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Bill would take a long, however the long halftime is, is like 15, 17 minutes or something. Like double the time, we had the actual halftime at practice where you had to get around, you had to stretch again and get ready to go back out and play. For the second half of practice, so we practiced this, which to me, get the shit over with, like god damn, bro, like. Because at practice, you're just sitting around, you kind of have that, like you don't go through all the plays and stuff, you're just like, hey, this five minutes, we'll be talking about this. And then you'll sit about five minutes and nobody's talking about anything about, except for what they want to do after practice today, et cetera, et cetera, like you just have this time to yourself. Which I also think was really good as well because really you started being like, man, we just fucking around too much. We can't be fucked. Cause everyone started looking at everybody

• 8:39Speaker 01

  like, man, we can't be fucking around like this during the game. So anyway, we get in at halftime and I walk in and literally no one yells, no one throws a chair, no coaches shouting, no coaches do say, say anything. And I think the only thing that Bill, Bill said, hey, you got five minutes before you meet with your coaches. So I go to, so I go to my locker and I sit down, I eat my peanut butter jelly sandwiches. It's like the regular, just like practice, right? I'm in there and you know, my, I'm, I always change socks at halftime. It was just kind of like this thing I always do. Like, so like I'm changing, I take off your pads, guys are like kicking their feet up, kind of relaxing. But when you look around, you can see that every single guy was individually, they were focused

• 9:21Speaker 01

  individuals. Like they were thinking about what they could do. They had their headphones on. Nobody was messing around. It was everyone like reflecting on themselves and what they had did the first half.

• 9:33Ryan Holiday?

  You know, football is like a physically aggressive game and it's grueling, but it also ups and downs of emotions, right? And, and really it's about teams that can bounce back quickly, that can get to that even keel, right? Not too high, not too low, that can come back to that kind of place of stillness. That's, that's what great athletes, what great teams, that's what great coaches and organizations help their athletes be able to do. I think one of the things people get wrong about the Stoics is that they assume they're, as we said, emotionless. No, it's really about regulating the emotions, not when you get high to come back to level set like we're talking about. But it's also, you know, belief that they're always confident, that

• 10:16Ryan Holiday?

  they never doubt themselves, that they just feel because they're big and strong, they must feel big and strong on the inside. But what you realize is when you actually get up and meet some of these people that you put on a pedestal or you are physically intimidated by or their success humbles you, you go, oh, they're just like me, right? Some of these people could be the absolute best in the game, but that doesn't mean they're immune to impostor Syndrome, right? It does seem a little crazy, right? That you could be best in the world at something objectively. You'd be paid millions of dollars for it, but still feel like you're not good enough, still doubt yourself. I mean, it actually does make sense because part of what drives you to be great is being so hard on yourself.

• 11:00Ryan Holiday?

  When I had Tony Gonzalez on the podcast here at the bookstore, he lived briefly in Austin. I was on his podcast and then he moved here. He would come out sometimes just pop in the bookstore to shop for books, which was always lovely. But we sat down and talked about exactly this. And, you know, Tony Gonzalez is one of the greatest tight ends of all time. Many people would say is the greatest tight end of all time. He spent his first 12 seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs. He was selected in the first round in the 97 draft. And then his last five seasons, he was a member of the Atlanta Falcons. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019. So even a Hall of Famer in arguably one of the greatest to ever do it, is struggling with that idea of imposter syndrome,

• 11:43Ryan Holiday?

  which I think is worth thinking about as you watch the Super Bowl this weekend.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  For me, what I struggled with most and into that transition to, and even still to this day, like I have a little bit of that imposter syndrome. It takes me a while to feel totally, totally confident. And that's what took me so long to become really good in the NFL. I didn't get any faster or stronger between my rookie year and my third year when I was first team all pro. Those first two years were shitty for me. And it was, and the only reason it was because I wasn't confident. And that's what's kind of plagued me throughout my, I don't even know if it's a plague, maybe it's a good thing. I'm starting to read that imposter syndrome is actually a good thing.

• 12:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  And maybe it is, but I can't shake it sometimes. I just don't feel so confident when I'm, when I'm doing certain things.

• 12:24Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, there's a story about Marcus Aurelius that he's sort of chosen to be king. And he like, he supposedly, this is, he's a young man, but he sort of breaks down in tears because he's like, literally all kings have been bad. There's like no examples of like good ones. They're all, they all break bad. They end up being terrible tyrants, like addicted to pleasure, et cetera. And he's sort of wondering whether he can do it. And then he has this dream later that he has shoulders made of ivory, that he is sort of. Strong enough to do it. But I was wondering that about your career because yeah, you have a sort of a slow start. But I wonder, do you think you could have played as long as you played if you'd come out of the gate stronger?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Obviously, I don't, I don't know. But it's the best thing that ever happened to me. You're right. If I would have came out and played, I would have never went through that dark, dark time in my career where I doubted myself so much. I'm talking, I got benched. I got written up in the papers telling me I was a bust. Like, that stuff hurts. And I still hold on to that. And that's a chip I'll have for the rest of my life of being so embarrassed and feeling so much shame and guilt and all that stuff. I mean, it was all of it rolled up into one. But I think when you go through those situations, and I read a lot, and I read a lot of biographies, and it seems like a lot of the people that have achieved greatness go through those really

• 13:50Speaker 02

  extremely dark times. Like, there's nothing wrong with with going through those extremely dark times, as long as you eventually figure it out.

• 13:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Churchill says that every prophet has to go through the wilderness. And then, from the wilderness, this is where they they produce psychic dynamite. The idea being that you have to go through this experience where you're sort of sent away. It's kind of the hero's journey, where you're sent away, you're doubted, you struggle. And then if you come out of the other side of that, you're much stronger. I remember I was talking to John Snyder once, the GM of the Seahawks, and he was saying, like, they have trouble when they draft players who have never been through anything before. Because like, almost everyone goes through some version of that dip when you start. Because you're like, the best in college. And then you're like, oh,

• 14:39Ryan Holiday?

  shit, like, the NFL is another level. The NFL is another level. And if you've never had to adjust to like, not getting everything you want, and like, struggling and having to learn and grow, like, it's gonna kick your ass.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I had that when I was younger. I guess people can look up that story. But I had a bully. Long story short, I had a bully. I played Pop Warner football. I was the worst kid on the team. Had this bully come down, try and beat me up. And that changed everything and it helped me become a better football player.

• 15:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  But then after that, once I figured that out, football, oh, man, I just, I was the man. Until I was a first round draft choice. I was that guy that you probably wouldn't like.

• 15:19Ryan Holiday?

  But I bet in that experience, as you were adjusting, even though you still struggled, you were drawing on the strength that you drew on. Like if you hadn't gone through what you went through as a kid, maybe you wouldn't have made it out of the other side of those three years.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  And you're right, and maybe I wouldn't have, but I still did not know the formula for success when I became a professional.

• 15:37Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Now, before that, talent wise, I'm 6'5", I can jump really high, I'm strong, I'm quick, I'm athletic. This is, and I didn't ask for this, this was just given to me from birth genetically. And so I relied on that a lot. Now, I worked hard. Don't get me wrong. I worked my ass off, but my working my ass off was what they told me to do.

• 15:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  So if practice started at 1, I showed up at 1 and I worked my ass off for those two hours until 3 o'clock, 3:30, whatever it is, and went home.

• 16:04Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  I did exactly what they asked me to do. And this is what I tell incoming rookies now in the NFL. I say, welcome to the world of you're no longer special.

• 16:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  No one gives a shit.

• 16:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  You ran a 4-3, so does he, so does he, so does he. Oh, you benched 4 and a pound, so does he. Oh, you're first team All-American. Good, good, good for you. You won the Heisman. So that guy over there, he won the Heisman. He doesn't even start.

• 16:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Okay, nobody cares.

• 16:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Who you are and what you've been through anymore. What's going to separate you at the professional level? This is, I don't care what it is. It's the, it's the obsession.

• 16:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  It's the, for me, I had to figure it out. I had to go out, I can't show up at 1 o'clock.

• 16:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  And be done at 3:30 after practice. I have to show up earlier, 30 minutes before everybody gets out there and I need to catch balls.

• 16:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  And while the defense is going, I need to catch balls. While when coach calls us up afterwards and everybody goes home to go play video games and go talk to the sweetie pies. I'm gonna stay after and I'm gonna catch more balls.

• 17:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  With my chin strap buckled, mouthpiece in, eyes wide open, focused.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  In the game situation, getting ready, obsessed with being the best. When I go home, I don't turn it off. I can be watching a basketball game or a football game and I'm always thinking about, okay, how am I going to get better? And that's one of the things, you talk about that transition. I forgot that's what made me so great at football. And I think a lot of players forget about what made them so great when they played. And that's why you look at the statistics when players get done playing, any professional sport, they, it's a huge falloff. I mean, depression, financial troubles, divorce, addiction, all that stuff that happens. And I think it's because they expect to be great again, right away at whatever it is they choose.

• 17:50Ryan Holiday?

  But you're starting at zero.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Right, not realizing that you gotta go through all that embarrassment again, all that boring work again, all that stuff that made you great before, you forget, and I forgot.

• 18:01Ryan Holiday?

  I think one of the things that's always helped me manage my feelings of imposter syndrome, or whenever that insecurity creeps in, is this idea of I have the evidence. Like, I did the work. I did the training. I know what I put in. I focused on what I did, everything I could. I focused on what was in my control. So whether you're the Patriots or the Seahawks, whether you're gearing up for the Super Bowl this weekend, or you've just been promoted to a new role at work, for training for a marathon, you're working on a new creative project, there is evidence that you can handle hard things because you've handled hard things before, right? Mark Schuris talks about this in meditations. He says like, how will you handle what's gonna happen tomorrow? He says with the same weapons that you handled yesterday with.

• 18:47Ryan Holiday?

  One of my favorite books that I read this year was my friend Seth Wickersham's book. He wrote a great book actually about the Patriots and he came on the podcast and talked about that when it first came out. But he also just wrote a book about the position of the quarterback. One of the reasons I love football is that the quarterback position is so unlike anything in sports. I mean, first off, you're only on the field half the time and you know, it's one of the only major sports where you can't see the person's face, but the quarterback is just doing so much, just all the hats they have to wear. And Seth talked about that. He said something really interesting when he came on the podcast.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  Steve Young and I at one point like talked about all the hats you have to wear as a quarterback. And I think we stopped at like 24.

• 19:28Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  You know, from mannequin idol to field general to, um, you know, astonishing asshole, to amateur psychologist, to, you know, spokesperson of a multi-billion dollar organization, all these things. And oh, by the way, you also have to be able to throw the ball through windows that nobody else can see, much less take advantage of. I think that like to do it now, you not only have to be able to have the ability to throw, but you have to have that hole in your personality that requires constant adulation and reassurance and love.

• 19:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  That's very similar to a politician or a lead singer, something like that where it's like, that just kind of has to be part of the equation at this point. What is that doing to people? What does that do to teenagers? When we're so obsessed with spotting genius early without really understanding what makes the genius in the first place? That is going to be really interesting to see.

• 20:20Ryan Holiday?

  When it's not like you're given time to develop a fully rounded out personality with diverse interests and connections. Because you, you have been specialized since you were 10.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And like.

• 20:36Ryan Holiday?

  So you don't have the things that would actually help you manage that thing. Like, like in music, they call it LSD, like lead singer disease.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:43Ryan Holiday?

  Like you're catching this quarterback disease at like 10. All right, as we bring this episode to a close, I was down in Cleveland six, maybe seven years ago. I gave a talk to the Cleveland Browns right before the start of that season. Now, they did not go on to win a Super Bowl that year and they remain sadly a bit of a cursed franchise. But it was really cool to, to go in there and, uh, sit with them. Baker Mayfield was on the team. Odell Beckham Jr. Was on that team. Garrett Miles was on that team. So, you know, some, some real heavy hitters. But, um, I wanted to pass on some thoughts on stoicism that I think they could apply.

• 21:26Ryan Holiday?

  So I thought I would close this episode with what I told an NFL team and maybe it'll give you. You some insights into what players are thinking about and dealing with on the field this weekend. It's been just incredibly cool to see Stoicism and my books make their way through locker rooms and coaches offices. And I hope you have a fun and safe Super Bowl weekend. I'll talk to you soon. And I hope you like this new format. Thanks to Claire, our wonderful producer, who is helping us experiment with this new format. And I'll talk to you soon. If there's one thing that philosophy can teach any athlete, whether you're an amateur,

• 22:08Ryan Holiday?

  whether you're a collegiate, prospect, whether you're a top-ranked recruiter, whether you're making millions of dollars in the pros, is something that I talked about to the Cleveland Browns. What I said, I started my talk and I said, Look, everyone in this room controls one thing. They control how they play. You don't control what your teammates do. You control how you play. You don't control what they say about you on Twitter. You control how you play. You don't control the size of your contract. You control how you play. You don't control what they say about you from the stands. You control how you play. You don't control what the ref says. You control how you play. You don't control whether it's

• 22:49Ryan Holiday?

  snowing. You don't control whether it's raining. You don't control whether it's 100 degrees. You control how you play. You don't control whether your teammates get hurt. You don't control if your teammates are fair. You don't control if the guy in the position ahead of you wants to groom you and mentor you or not. You control how you play. You don't control whether your opponents cheat. You control how you play. You don't control if your coach is a bully and he screams at you. You control how you play. You don't control if people are doubting you, if they don't believe in you. You control how you play. You don't control yesterday's game. You control how you play today. You don't control if

• 23:34Ryan Holiday?

  you've lost to this team 1,000 times. You control how you play. You don't control if your team wins. You control how you play. You don't control if you lose. You control how you play. All you control, if it's not clear enough, is how you play right now, right this second. Whether there's doubters, whether you're being adored, all you control is how you play. The effort that you bring, the decisions you make, the principles by which you operate.

• 24:02Ryan Holiday?

  And that's ultimately all you can judge yourself on. You don't control the outcome. You don't control the facts. You don't control anything but how you play. But if we can focus on this, the Stoic said, if we can focus exclusively on what we control, not only be happier, we'll have way more energy and way more to focus on what is in front of us while everyone else wastes time whining about, complaining about, worrying about, thinking about, bragging about what they don't control.

• 24:37Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.