This Is The Only Place To Look For Approval | Ask Daily Stoic

We want the stamp of approval—from the critics, from the crowd, from the market. This makes sense...except it doesn’t.📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.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 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.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  We all want to be liked. We want the acceptance of our peers. We want to be chosen. We want the stamp of approval from the critics, from the crowd, from the market. This makes sense, except it doesn't. Is it not true that most people are not very bright, hold regressive or alarming opinions, and generally follow the herd? And yet somehow, we think it's vindication when they love us. It's nonsense. It's pretty strange how much we value the respect of people we don't respect and the lengths we're willing to go to get it. "If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval," Epictetus said, "realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own."

• 1:37Speaker 00

  This was something Marcus Aurelius wrestled with even more than Epictetus, because he was a public person. He saw crowds cheering him in the street. People flocked to court to heap praise on him before asking for favors. He also had to put up with their jeers and criticisms. Eventually, he realized that he couldn't pay attention to any of it. He had to hold himself to his own standard, an inner scorecard, and ignore everything else. The clapping was meaningless. The boos were too. What mattered was his own integrity. He had to be his own witness. And today, so do you. It doesn't matter what other people say or think. Approval or disapproval are equally meaningless.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  What matters is what you know is right and whether you do it.

• 2:31Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Hope you are having a great Thursday. I just flew back. I was in Chicago yesterday, dropped my kid off at school, flew to Chicago, had enough time to go for a long run, swim in the lake, give the talk. Well, actually, it was just a Q and A. That's why I'm talking about it here on a Thursday because Thursdays we do Q and A. Did the Q and A with some healthcare executives, raced to the car, got to Midway Airport just in time to fly home, to be quite delayed, get home at 1:00 AM. And then here I am back at

• 3:09Ryan Holiday?

  the office, talking to you. In today's episode, these are some questions when I did a session with the Naval Information War Command back a few months ago, talked about 1,000 wonderful officers, civil servants, vets, federal employees. The NAV War is basically an acquisition command. They focus on the science and the engineering and the research and the development of the Navy. And it was a talk called Applying Stoic Methods in the Workplace. I talked about how some of the Stoic virtues can help them be better leaders and communicators. And then I answered their questions, which is one of my favorite things to do. This was booked before

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  the incident at the Naval Academy before I was, what I suspect is now persona non grata. So I was thankful that they were nice enough to have me on anyway. I'm sure they took some heat for it, or maybe I flew under the radar and I didn't, although it would be ironic if the Naval Information Warfare Command was off the radar of the leaders there. Anyways, here's the Q and A, and I hope you are all doing well.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Next question is, I'm very flexible to change and have the mindset that of a contortionist, I think I said that right, in a carnival, but what do you say about the old saying, "Don't change what's not broken"?

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think that expression is actually, "Don't fix what isn't broken." So, the idea is sometimes we're meddling for the sake of meddling, or we are, you know, jumping on a trend or a bandwagon because everyone else is doing it, and we end up, you know, breaking something in the name of fixing it, and obviously, that's not good. I mentioned that quote from Churchill earlier, and it's something I think a lot about when I'm thinking about change. Basically, one of his aides, I believe, said, "The genius of Churchill was that he venerated tradition but despised convention." And so, convention to me is the status quo, the way we've always done things. Well, that's

• 5:26Ryan Holiday?

  what my boss told me, or that's how I was taught it when I started. You know, that's something different than a bedrock principle or value. Cato was known as the protector of the mass maiorum, or the old way of doing things, but that wasn't, you know, I think that was a values proposition, not a, "Well, this is how my father said it, so it must be right." I think we have to be able to adjust and adapt, but then we have to protect what's truly important. And, you know, Cato is not the perfect example of this, in that sort of Cato's inflexibility, his lack of ability to adjust, which he obviously believed

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  was deeply principled, but part of a politician's job is to adapt and adjust and to find coalitions and to compromise. Part of Cato's intransigence is what facilitates the rise of Julius Caesar, and Plutarch would talk about how Cato, in some ways, brings about the thing that he fought his whole life. To prevent because he was so inflexible and unable to adjust and adapt to the uniquely modern problems of his time. So it's there. There's a, there's a balance here, attention, to be sure. We can't throw everything out and we also can't preserve everything as it

• 6:50Ryan Holiday?

  always was. I think that's the balance we have to strike.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  From Steven, the obstacle book uses examples of historical figures facing major challenges. How do you see the obstacle is the way applying to smaller, more everyday obstacles like parenting, procrastination, self doubt, or difficult relationships?

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. I think Stoicism applies there just as much as, as the little thing that I don't think anyone would have read a book with about, you know, stories about Socrates adjusting to his shoelaces breaking or, you know, getting a toothache or something, right? So obviously when I'm writing a book, I want to talk about sort of bigger, more inspiring, interesting examples. Socrates does have a difficult marriage and he, he said he always saw it as training ground for philosophy. Marcus Aurelius has difficult children, has health problems and he has to figure out how to deal with them. You want to talk about mundane problems? Let me read you the opening of book five of Meditations because it's about as mundane as and relatable as they get. At dawn, when you have trouble getting

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain of if I'm going to do what I was born for? And he says, or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm. And he says, but it's nicer here. So you were born to feel nice instead of doing things and experiencing them? You know, he goes on and on. But I, I thought about that passage this morning when I had to get up at, at, you know, 5:30 to take my son to school. We have a very long commute. And I was like, I would like to not do this, but that's my job as a parent. That's my job as a person. And I wanted to come here and talk with all of you. And one had to follow from the other. So I threw off the covers and I, you know, I got after it.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Next question from Travis. Since Marcus Aurelius never intended for meditations to be read by the masses, talk a bit about the unseen work and those echoes of good that we'll never see. At times, this can be a great motivator.

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's a fascinating question. So for people who don't know, Meditations is not a work of philosophy as we would typically think it. It's the byproduct of philosophy. Marcus Aurelius was journaling to himself, trying to remind himself of his philosophical principles as he was regularly falling short of them and dealing with difficulties. And the byproduct is this book, which we don't even fully understand how or why it survived. It is a freak of history. So the idea of doing things because they are good processes, because they make us

• 9:39Ryan Holiday?

  better, because they're the right thing to do, and not thinking so much about recognition, appreciation, how it's going to be received, you know, that is embodied right here in Meditations. And I think the best work and the best deeds follow along similar lines. One of the things that Marcus talks about in Meditations is this idea of not asking for the third thing. He says, "You've done something good and someone has benefited from it. Why, as like a fool, do you turn around and expect a thank you or a favor in kind?" You know, we do the right thing because it's the right thing. We do our job because it's our job. It's what we're called to do.

• 10:19Ryan Holiday?

  Whether we're always going to be appreciated, acknowledged, rewarded for it, you know, the annals of American military bureaucratic history are actually filled with stories of people doing the right thing, doing the selfless thing, doing the heroic thing, and then being punished for it, being fired for it, being criticized for it. In the Justice book, I talk a lot about a famous whistleblower who ultimately ends up having to sue the President of the United States because Nixon gets him fired for pointing out cost overruns in the Pentagon. It would be wonderful if we always appreciated whistleblowers, if we always gave stealthless

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  civil servants, you know, their recognition and appreciation. The reality is that we don't. We appreciate it often too little, too late. That's not what ought to motivate anyone. And if that is what you're motivated, if what was motivating you was recognition and financial compensation...

• 11:22Ryan Holiday?

  You probably picked the wrong line of work, right? You picked this because you think it's important, because you think it matters, because it's satisfying to you. And the Stoics would say, we have to let that be our sufficient motivation.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  What podcasts, if any, do you enjoy? And of course, that is besides the daily podcast.

• 11:43Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I definitely don't listen to my own podcasts. That would, that would be weird. But this morning on my drive, I was listening to Ezra Klein. It's a podcast in the New York Times. It was a really interesting episode this morning about what you ought to teach your kids in a world of AI. I like Daniel Tosh's podcast, which I think is funny. I like Marc Maron's podcast. I like Fly on the Wall, which is about Saturday Night Live. Most of the podcasts I listen to are usually humorous or have nothing to do with sort of what I, what I do professionally.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  How would a Stoic know it's time to rest rather than grind without feeling like they're quitting?

• 12:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a great Latin expression that's a favorite of the Emperor Augustus, which he gets from his Stoic teacher. It's fastina lente, make haste slowly. Sometimes we're all go, go, go, work, work, work, grind, grind, grind. But as I have experienced a handful of times in my life, you know, because I didn't want to take a break, I overtrained and I got injured and then I missed more time than if I had had a rest or recovery day. I don't know if there's a hard and fast rule exactly when you should, but let's start by just recognizing that we can't be doing all the time. We have to rest, we have to recover, we have to take care of ourselves.

• 13:03Ryan Holiday?

  We have to do what we're trying to do sustainably, if in fact, we are trying to do it for a long period of time.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  You write about the ego and overcoming it. How do you personally find the balance between healthy ambition and ego-driven goals, given your status as not only a famous writer and personality, but as a father and husband? And a follow-on question, are you happy with the balance in your life?

• 13:27Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, look, the balance in our lives can always be better. And it's something I feel like I am constantly working on. But I try to make sure that my goals are not motivated by ego. I try to be focused on process. I try to be focused on the things that I control. Like, I control what I put into my books. I control whether I do my best or not. I don't control necessarily how they are received. I control whether I am a good writer. I don't, to use your phrase, certainly not how I see myself. I don't control whether I am a famous writer, or whether I am a well-liked writer, or anything like that. All those things are for other people to decide and to think.

• 14:11Ryan Holiday?

  I control whether I show up and I do my job, whether I do my job well, whether I am training and improving and getting better. So I've said this before, but I'm very ambitious as a writer. I am not that ambitious as an author. As a writer, I am trying to always challenge myself and get better and add things to my game and to improve on what I did before. I am not trying to outsell what I have done before. I am not trying to beat anyone else. I mean, look, there, obviously, I think we're all competitive, and there are times I'll find myself drifting, or, oh, I wonder how they got that, or, I think I can do that. We all do that. We all want to be well compensated and rewarded for what we do.

• 14:55Ryan Holiday?

  But I try to make sure that that's not my motivation, and that's certainly not my primary thought or measurement of how I'm doing.

• 15:09Ryan 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.