This Is Why You Can’t Care What People Think

"It seems silly: Cato, one of Rome’s most courageous and steadfast leaders, had to practice wearing ratty clothes and walking barefooted and bareheaded. He had to gird himself for it. For defying convention and ignoring the people glancing askew. It doesn’t just seem silly, it seems a little dramatic. How much courage should that really take?"Ryan talks about why wearing a mask during the pandemic is more important than how you look wearing one in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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. This is why you can't care what people think. It seems silly to read that Cato had to practice wearing ratty clothes and walking barefooted and bareheaded. How much courage does that take? To defy convention or people glancing askew? Well, it turns out it takes

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

  a lot. Look at the backlash that's going on right now in the United States. People are afraid, not of the pandemic, but of wearing masks, because they think they'll look stupid, because they don't want to look different, or change how people act around them, because they think it'll be inconvenient or uncomfortable. There are some folks on the extreme end of the spectrum who, deep down, are so afraid of what other people will think of them, that they're trying to label the people who do wear masks as cowards. Even in the early days of the virus, it's likely that health and government authorities were reluctant to advise mask use for fear of looking like they were overreacting, or for fear of freaking people out. Meanwhile, over at The Atlantic, we have the facts. They write, "Models show

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  that if 80% of people wear masks that are 60% effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R rate of less than one. That's enough to halt the spread, the disease." Life presents us with all sorts of dilemmas. Every choice we make has a risk. Ask a question, you can learn, or possibly be thought of as dumb. Leave a steady job to start your own venture, you could succeed, or you could fail in front of everyone. Speak what you feel is the truth, and you can make a difference, or you could get yelled at. Take safety precautions, you could protect yourself and your family, or you could look foolish. It would be wonderful if this weren't the case, if no right Behavior ever drew judgment or raised eyebrows, but that's not how the world works.

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  It was a fact of life in ancient Rome, and it's a fact of life in the modern world, which is why you have to cultivate real indifference to what other people say or think. It's why you have to practice swimming upstream and against reservations, even against your own. You cannot care what other people think. You have to do what's right and what's smart. And wouldn't you rather be laughed at than dead?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoic email, go to dailystoic.com/email.