We Can’t Let Them Stop Us | Ask Daily Stoic

We cannot let them sully us—although we have to accept that they are going to do their best.📚 Books mentioned: Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday | https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  We can't let them stop us. They can be as awful as they want. And apparently, they want to be quite awful. They can be cruel. They can attack us. They can undermine our institutions. They can spread lies. Not only can people do these things, they always have and always will. What do you think it was like to live in Epictetus and Seneca's time, watching Nero and his goons run loose? It can seem reasonable, in light of this then and now, to despair, but we must not. In Meditations, Marx wrote that if an underground spring is powerful enough, someone could shovel mud into it or dung,

• 1:35Ryan Holiday?

  and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, and remain unstained. He was saying that the goodness within us, or determination to keep going and keep making a difference, it has to be like that spring. We have to be inexhaustible, eternal, fed by something deep and profound. We cannot let them sully us, although we have to accept that they are going to do their best. We can't let them break our will. We can't let them make us like them. Our job is to keep flowing with determination and virtue, no matter what mud they throw at us, and no matter what challenges we face.

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm about to go give a talk. I'm here in Sundance, Utah. Then there'll be like a Q and A after. I've said this before, but that's like my favorite part. It's not that I don't get anything out of giving the talk. Of course I do. I'm mostly giving, right? Like, I'm saying what I think. I have to learn and study and practice. I'm challenged in a bunch of ways doing it, but I'm not like being exposed to things I didn't know about. I'm not hearing anyone else's perspective. That's why I love the Q and As or the discussions that come after, because I hear from people and I have to think about things that I never thought about before. I'll probably bring you a chunk of today's Q and A at some other point. I usually mic myself for them.

• 3:02Ryan Holiday?

  But back a couple of months ago, I was in Phoenix. I don't know if you've been to the Global Ambassador. It's a lovely hotel. And I was talking to a mastermind. Do you know what a mastermind is? We've talked about them a bunch here. It's like a group of people that get together and think and learn and help make each other better. This is actually Dean Graziosi's mastermind. It's his and Tony Robbins' private business club. It's called Zenith Mastermind. And Dean had me out. We just talked for an hour or so. He gave everyone a copy of Ego is the Enemy, which is very nice. But I thought I'd bring you some of that conversation because I thought it was interesting. And hopefully I'll see you at a talk one of these days as well.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  So on the opposite side, the ego is the enemy that I just read this week. Even though you wrote that, and this is your study, is there ever a time, being a dad, being a leader, being a partner, being a husband, where the ego gets in your way?

• 3:59Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, all the time. Yeah. I think if you think ego is not a problem for you, you are talking about ego. You know, that's one of the more insidious things about ego is that we can spot it clearly in other people.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Like your ego almost says, there is no ego.

• 4:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Right?

• 4:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Well, it's just we can so very clearly see how ego holds other people back. But they're like, me, no, no, I've transcended this. I'm over this. And it's like, no, you just can't see. If you could get honest feedback from people around you, they'd be like, here's all the ways that your ego is holding you back. But what ego does is it, it sort of blinds us to that thing. And so I do, I make a big distinction between confidence and ego. Confidence is essential. If you don't think you can do something, you're probably not going to be able to do it. The problem is, just because you think you can do something, doesn't mean you can. And I think where ego gets in the way is it, it says you already have all the tools, all the skills, all the signs point to yes. Instead of doing the work to earn those things, right?

• 5:00Ryan Holiday?

  There's a quote from Epictetus, one of the Stoics. He says, "Remember, it is impossible to learn that which you think you already know." And so where like being a know-it-all is so problematic is that you're kind of right. You can't know anything more. And humility or confidence can continue to learn and grow because it's secure with itself, but also aware of how much more it needs. And so, you know, like I was just, I just got notes back from my, my last book. And my first reaction every time, even though I know this is like, how dare you? You know, I sent you a work of art and you-

• 5:38Speaker 01

  You told me you used a different color.

• 5:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you sent me back this thing covered in red marks. What is this? And then I go, okay, that's ego. Ego doesn't like to be criticized. Ego doesn't like to have to do extra work. Ego doesn't like to be challenged. Ego thinks I'm the expert, you're the assistant to the editor, or how, you know, all the things that you're pushing back on. And then I go, all right, let's sit on that for a day. And then usually what I tell myself is, let's do all the easy notes first, you know? Let's do all the ones, all the ones we agree with. I'm only going to put in the ones that are obviously right, that I agree with. And then, you know, by the end, I put in all the notes because I've gotten over that initial resistance, right? And, you know, anytime you get criticized or you, you screw up,

• 6:24Ryan Holiday?

  you want to think about how it was somebody else's fault, how you didn't deserve it, they don't understand. And then once you can let that subside a little bit, or what I try to do is once I let that subside, I go, okay, and now where's the truth in this? Where was I responsible? What do I want to take from this experience? And that's kind of how I think about it. But I generally, ego is not this thing that you don't have. It's not this thing that you kill and it goes away. It is a constant process.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  And would the opposite of ego be humility? Or what would be the opposite of-

• 6:54Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the ancients had this idea of the golden mean, and the golden mean being that most virtues are actually in the middle between two vices. And so I'd actually say that confidence is there in between a sort of humility has a positive connotation, but there's certainly people who are too humble, too self-effacing, riddled with imposter syndrome and doubt and feelings of worthlessness. On the one hand, we have this, and then ironically ego on the other end is actually quite similar. Right? Ego is an obsession with the self. Actually, when you meet really egotistical people, you you see how insecure they are deep down. So to me, confidence is there in the middle. It's an understanding and an awareness of our strengths, coupled with an awareness of our weakness,

• 7:38Ryan Holiday?

  of our need for improvement, where we can get better, what we don't know. And it's these two things fused together that is what we're aspiring to be, as opposed to stuck on either end.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Love that. Love that. You know, in a room of high achievers, one of the principles, Stoic principles, is surrendering control.

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's tough.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  And there's time, like even this year in 2025, I never really thought through the term leadership bias. Right? So I'm just going to give you one example in my office. And I realized when I'm really excited about something, I want to shift the marketing, I want to write something new, I want to change the direction of the company just a little bit, and I'll call on the leadership team. What I just realized at the end of the year, because I was really journaling on how can I be a better leader in this next year, I realized that I go into the room and I speak first.

• 8:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And I have so much passion and so much like, like this is where we're going, then I'm like, what do you guys think? And everybody's like, yeah, hey, that that sounds great. And what I realized is I'm selling them so hard that they go, even if I say anything,

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  He's not going to, I'm going to ding his ego, or he's not going to feel in control. But I would address it like, hey, now that you have mine, I want to hear yours so we can come up with something. Everybody's like, nah. And I just made a point this year when I go in a room, I'm the last one to speak.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  And I know that might sound, I'm giving up a tiny bit of control, but it's huge for me. Because half the time I'm here and I'm going, that's dumb, like mine's better. Right? But I'm like, that's because you've been in control and it might be your ego. So I'd love to hear your philosophy on on how that works into leadership and personal growth.

• 9:16Ryan Holiday?

  Well, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, famously, Kennedy realizes that everyone in the room is telling him what he wants to hear, and that people aren't saying what they really think. And he realizes that he, the president, has to remove himself and let what was called excom discuss all the different options and then present to him, hey, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, and here's what we as a group think, not here's what I as the individual worried about losing my job is saying in the meeting, but then whispering to other people. And so sometimes the leader realizes, hey, I have to step out, or I have to let things settle. I can't be, I can't direct this, or I'm not gonna, that's why dictators have such a big problem. They don't get

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Feedback.

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  They don't get feedback. They don't get truth. Yeah. So that's one form of control. That's the leader being in control. But I also think, you know, nobody in this room got here by accepting things, right? You got here by changing in your force of personality and your drive. But part of life is also about surrender and accepting the limitations of your control. And so talk about the need to sort of understand, hey, here's the things that are up to me, and here's the things that are not up to me. And that can be really tough. But I guess what I would just say is that even the things that we have changed, we first had to accept the status quo as a fact before we could change it, right?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 10:41Ryan Holiday?

  You have to accept the facts on the ground before you can set about building something new, changing whatever. And sometimes I think our lack of acceptance, or our fear of surrender, makes it hard for us to get started on solving the problem, because we would rather spend our time denying the problem, or fighting the problem, instead of first accepting. So there's two different ways we could talk about this, but I think that's

• 11:05Speaker 01

  No, it's a really good point. And it takes time, because especially, most people in here has kind of bootstrapped your business, or raised money, or borrowed money on the way up. Your brain, at least I'm gonna share, maybe I'm just being transparent here, it's like, hey, I built this X million dollar a year company from starting with nothing. I think I know better than

• 11:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  You've been here for seven months, right?

• 11:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And when I can shut up and actually listen, some of the best ideas come from somebody looking from the outside in.

• 11:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  And it doesn't mean that I won't go with my idea with a twist or adjustment, but sometimes it's altered a little, and it's better.

• 11:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  And it took me a long time to realize that.

• 11:47Ryan 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.