This Is Why We Study | Ask DS

To be a Stoic is to be a lifelong student. You don’t read the Stoics, you study them. Ask DS: What mentorship lessons did Ryan learn from Robert Greene that he uses to help pay it forward today? How can we balance practicing Stoicism and embracing our emotions?+ More! Kick off Stoic Week on October 28th with Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life | For 14 days you will join a live cohort to collaborate and share thoughts with on our private discussion board. PLUS, you’ll get an invite to two live office hours with Ryan, where you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions on what you’ve learned about Stoicism!✉️ 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks, some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members, or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  It's sort of strange. If you think back to when you were a kid, what appeared to you to be the best part about being an adult? No more school, because that's the example that adults by and large set, that education stops, that adulthood is like one long summer break. You cross that stage, receive your diploma, and your real life can begin. But then you realized just how real life could get as an adult. You met obstacles you couldn't overcome. You experienced grief and misfortune that overwhelmed you. Your relationships weren't quite what you'd hoped them to be. Even if you were one of the fortunate ones, successful beyond your wildest dreams, something still felt off, like you missed a turn on your way to the top. Perhaps that's what brought you to Stoicism, why subscribe to this podcast, to learn practical wisdom you can use to improve your actual life. It

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  might seem strange becoming a student once more as an adult, but this idea that graduation is the final destination of learning and studying and investing is your education, it's actually a relatively new phenomenon. Not long ago, adults prioritized their own education as much as their kids. There's a story of Epictetus teaching one day when a student's arrival caused a commotion in the back of the room. Who was it? Hadrian, the emperor. An emperor studying under a slave. Hadrian's example clearly had an impact on his successor and adopted grandson, Marcus Aurelius. Late in his reign, a friend spotted Marcus heading out, carrying a stack of books. "Where are you going?" he asked. Marcus was on his way to a lecture of Stoicism. He said that learning was a good thing even for one

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  who was growing old. "I'm now on my way to Sextus the philosopher," he said, "to learn that which I do not yet know." In adulthood, Cato had a Stoic philosopher named Athenodorus come live with him so he could continue his studies. Thrasse was one of the Stoics who challenged Nero. He continued his studies up till his last breath. In fact, he was discoursing and studying with Demetrius when his death sentence from Nero arrived. This is what it means to be a Stoic. To be a Stoic is to be a lifelong student, is to follow in the footsteps of Hadrian and Marcus and Cato and Thrasse. It is to know that wisdom is an endless pursuit, to believe that one never graduates, one never arrives at some final destination of education. There's this cool annual thing out there called Stoic Week, where people all around

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  the world commit to living like Stoics for a week. And as part of that, we're relaunching one of our most popular courses, Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. It's a chance for you to dive deeper into the Stoic ideas you're most curious about, with me, with Ryan. Whether you're new to Stoicism or have been studying it for years, it's a course for people who want to get serious about Stoicism, who seek a practical guidebook for real problem solving, who want to keep learning, who want to learn what they don't yet know. You'll get a bunch of stuff on the essential lessons of Stoicism and some of the Stoic secrets to resilience and success and productivity and virtue. And it's a short class, it's just two weeks. You won't do it alone, you're going to be in a cohort with a bunch of other awesome Stoics, there's a private discussion board.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  Plus, you'll have some office hours with me, Ryan, and we can talk, you can ask questions, I can talk about what I'm working on. How much progress would you make? Maybe that's what you're asking. Someone asked Seneca that question, and he said, "Just as much as you try to make." "Why do you wait?" he says. Wisdom comes haphazard to no man. If you want some of the best lessons from the Stoics and you want to take it to the next level, well, why don't you join us in Daily Stoic 101. To kick off Stoic Week, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/101 to join. It's going to start on October 28th, so don't delay. Let's get into it together and I'll see you at office hours.

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was on the road back in June. I went out to Salt Lake City and I talked to this mastermind that's for very successful people trying to integrate their newfound success, their newfound fortunes even into their life. Like, it was this idea about money. And I think it's fascinating because many of the Stoics were quite wealthy. We talk about this in the Wealthy Stoic Challenge, the idea of like what wealth actually is and what it means. And just having a lot of money certainly wouldn't be the Stoic definition of wealth. And I thought this was a fascinating conversation. So I always love Salt Lake City. It's a great place to run. I love to run up

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  to the Capitol and back. And that's what I did. It was a fly in and out. I think I flew in, ran, showered, changed, gave the talk, and went straight to the airport and got back in time. So it was an in and out trip for me, but I thought it was fun. And I think you will enjoy these questions that they asked me.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Do you believe that you, even though you teach it, you study it, you write about it, do you believe you live it?

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  I would say, well, I'll give you this. My wife says that one of us is a Stoic and the other writes about Stoicism. So I am the aspiring practitioner. And I think sometimes the reason we get really interested in something is that it's what we aspire to be, but not how we naturally are. So I think, I think we've all met people who are just kind of naturally Stoic. Oftentimes, our grandparents seem to embody those values. We never met them when they were 20, so maybe they weren't then. Maybe it's something that comes with old age. But I would not classify myself as someone who's naturally these things. And so the reason that the writings are there and the reminders are there, we should see Stoicism as a practice. It's not like a thing that you like

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  Accept into your life, or something that you read in college and then you're good. It's this practice, and that's what Marx realist himself was doing, you know, he's, he becomes emperor and he's like, okay, you gotta make sure that this doesn't change you. And what he's doing in the rest of those pages is trying to kind of have a discussion with himself, an ongoing kind of monitoring to make sure he's doing it. So that's, I, I happen to publish the writing that I do about Stoicism, but it's as much a practice for me as anyone reading it.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. You studied under Robert Greene.

• 6:55Ryan Holiday?

  I did, yes.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Forty Eight Laws of Power.

• 6:57Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  What were some of the lessons you learned? I mean, he was, he was basically your mentor, correct?

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. So I dropped out of college when I was nineteen or twenty, and I apprenticed under a great writer. I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I thought the best way to become one would be to learn from someone who's actually done it. And so it was a, it was a wonderful process. It took many, many years. I think, you know, it, it feels more official in retrospect than it was. Like, everyone should have a mentor. I, I think every young person should have some period of apprenticeship where they kind of learn the craft of what they do. But it's not like the old days where Ben Franklin is like, there's an apprenticeship contract. You know, it's something that evolves over time. But I, I learned, like, really practical stuff from Robert, like,

• 7:43Ryan Holiday?

  how you research a book, how you write a book. My, my writing and researching system is all a result of him. But then also, you know, I, I learned, I think, as we always do, a lot more from how, you know, here's this guy who sold millions of books, who's instructed heads of state and CEOs of big companies and armies. He's done all this cool stuff, but how, sort of how lightly he wore it, and then how, how focused he always was on getting better and doing the next thing. And so, yeah, I feel like I've, almost everything I learned, I learned from him in one way or another, yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  You've taken that from him. Are you paying it forward, or will you pay it forward to someone else?

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's the thing. You get these breaks in life. These people take you under their wing. They show you things. They open doors for you. And there's really nothing you can do to pay them back. Now, I, I do think we sometimes think of mentorship as this selfless thing. The best mentor-mentee relationships are reciprocal. Like, you're bringing energy and ideas and raw manpower. You know, you're bringing things to them, of course, too, but... Really, there ultimately, there's nothing you can do to pay them back. You can only pay it forward. And so how do you, how do you take what you learned? And how do you take the example? Good and bad, because I've also had some other mentors who are not as great as Robert. And then how do I do that better? And yeah, I have a chapter in the new book, which is about the virtue of justice.

• 9:07Ryan Holiday?

  And I'm talking about how, you know, when you look at a great coach, like a great sports coach, it's not just how many championships did they win? Or how long did they have the job? But one of the things we evaluate coaches on is their coaching tree. What did the coaches underneath them go on to do? And were they the kind of insecure coach who's like trying to hold their people tight? Or are they the kind of coach who's, you know, making phone calls for people? And I talk a lot about Greg Popovich, who I think has the greatest coaching tree in the history of sports. And so, yeah, I think about that. And the ability to, it's funny, having learned from Robert, the first law on the 48 laws of power is never outshine the master. Because people are always very sensitive and very insecure.

• 9:48Ryan Holiday?

  And I think what's been amazing about Robert is how helpful he's been in my success. And I think that's, that's a skill that you have to learn. The ego wants you to, you know, take all the credit, which is another one of the laws of the book. But you want the credit, you want the attention. You never want to be out and to actually go, no, I'm going to feel as proud of their accomplishments as I do of my own. And that's something I've gotten to feel more lately as people who've worked for me have gone on to do things. It's a wonderful thing to add because it doesn't matter how your stuff's going. You've got these other things to be excited about, too.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. In Stoicism, you have kind of this teaching or concept that you should be really almost indifferent to joy or pain or, you know, sorrow. It's like, at some point.

• 10:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Do you ever get to the place where you're like, this has, to some degree, taken some of the fun out of life? You know, like, is there a balance in that, right? You know what I'm saying?

• 10:46Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, of course.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Because I read, I read it as well. And it's like, and so much of it is so practical. And, and so, and living an even keel, you know, like indifferent life so that these things don't affect us are great. But then you never get the high highs or the low lows.

• 11:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think, look, first off, the stereotype of the Stoic as having no emotions is just not true, right? Marcus Aurelius had a family, he had hobbies that he was interested in, there's jokes in meditation. The idea of the emotionless Stoic is not true. I do think the Stoics tried to be less emotional and most of us see how our emotions get us into trouble, particularly in business or making decisions. But I'll give you a personal example I was just going through. So I really try to focus when I'm working on a book to just be happy with the parts of it that I control, which is the writing that I do, the ideas that I have, the effort that I put in. And the reason you don't want to be so attached to the outcome is like,

• 11:43Ryan Holiday?

  "Well, you could put it out and there could be a tornado," or "You could get snubbed by a basso." There's so many things that could happen. Or you could, as other artists have experienced, you could be way ahead of your time, right? And so if it's only worth it if people say, "Good job," you're very vulnerable. So I try to focus on the parts of it that I control. And I find that this has helped make me more successful because I'm putting all that energy into the project itself, as opposed to just like hoping. At the same time, so I was in New York last week, did all these shows that I'd never done before, and then I could hear from like little things that the book was selling better than I thought. And then, you know, it ultimately ended up being hitting number one, which is really cool. But I found I was a little detached, almost too detached.

• 12:27Ryan Holiday?

  And so it wasn't that I, it was like I just felt nothing. And the result was, it wasn't joylessness, it was just nothing. And that felt also kind of counterproductive. And it also felt, I had to go, "Hey, other people are working very hard on this too." And so if I'm like, "I don't care," I'm also demeaning the effort and the work that they're putting in. And so it's a balance. And if you are utterly detached and emotionless and you don't care about anything, I think you've gone past the point of Stoicism and you're somewhere closer to nihilism, which is not what we're talking about. But it is trying to focus as much as possible on the parts of it that are in your control and not being overcome or overruled by the emotions.

• 13:12Ryan Holiday?

  Because what if the news had come back and somebody sold more? Or, you know, next week if it's not in the same spot, am I going to let that determine whether two years of work was worth it or not? I don't want to do that either.

• 13:28Ryan 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.