Will You Prove Yourself Worthy? | Ask Daily Stoic

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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.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  "Will you prove yourself worthy? He was born rich. He was a citizen of a great nation. He was given the best teachers. He was selected for great things. And then, one day, Marcus Aurelius found himself the emperor of Rome, the head of an enormous army, the head of an enormous empire, the wielder of incredible power. Yet, what was most impressive, one historian would write, was that Marcus Aurelius proved himself worthy of all this. The power didn't corrupt him. The privilege didn't entitle him. The responsibility did not overwhelm him. Now, what about you? Almost certainly, you have not been so enormously blessed,

• 1:41Speaker 00

  but you were born to technological and social progress that the ancients could not have imagined. At even a public school, you were given access to ideas and breakthroughs that the brightest minds of antiquity could not have wrapped their heads around. Your average life expectancy is longer. Your quality of life is better. Your water does not come to you via lead pipes. You have all your fingers and toes. Your children will probably not die before they become toddlers. All this privilege, all this good luck, what will you do with it? What will you make of it? What will it make you? Through nothing but an accident of birth, you have been blessed. Will you prove yourself worthy of it?"

• 2:30Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You know, I, I have to be honest, before I went over to Rotterdam in November, I was not exactly sure where it was. I've always found it a little confusing. I, you know, that there's a great scene in, in an episode of Seinfeld, they're sitting in the diner and they're talking about the Netherlands. Here, I'll play it for you.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  What is Holland?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  What do you mean, what is it? It's a country right next to Belgium. No, that's the Netherlands. Holland is the Netherlands. Then who are the Dutch?

• 3:15Ryan Holiday?

  So I knew where Amsterdam was, and then I don't know, is Amsterdam part of the Netherlands? Where's Holland? Who are the Dutch? Right? It's a little confusing. I'd been to Amsterdam three or four times. As I said, Amsterdam is where the sort of Tim Ferriss effect was visited upon Stoicism because he bought the rights to The Obstacle is the Way when we were both there at a conference. And there was another conference I was there where Casey Neistat sort of showed me the power of YouTube when he went wakeboarding through the canals of Amsterdam. So I have been going there a long time, but I'd never been to Rotterdam. Anyways, in Rotterdam, it was lovely. I did a Q and A before the event for some VIPs and then a Q and A after. I'm gonna bring you a chunk of those questions. Let's get into it.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Super cool to see you here in Rotterdam, Ryan. Thanks for being here.

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  So the bad news is that I've been trying to formulate my question and I still haven't figured it out. So maybe you can help me out.

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  We'll just do it live in front of all these people. Swing it.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've been trying for a week now, and it has to do something with the Stoic virtues, for sure.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  And I think you're getting a bit more activist in recent years, and I really like that. And also, I think when you look at the Stoic virtues, there's this thing where you don't want to be too judgmental. You want to be strict with yourself, soft towards others. Otherwise, you have a certain mission in life or a certain responsibility to take.

• 4:49Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  So I find that super challenging to find a balance in, on that scale.

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Could you maybe give some sort of advice on how to find a balance on that scale? That would be my question, I would say, yeah.

• 5:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, no, it's a great question, yeah. A Stoic is engaged and involved, you have to be. Seneca says that the key distinction between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that an Epicurean gets involved in politics or causes only if they have to, and a Stoic gets involved unless something prevents them. So the default is engaged, involved, outspoken, etc. But yes, there is a tension, I think, and you're right to point this out, between being engaged and active and outspoken and being judgmental, or condescending, or annoying, or... You know, I have to think about this with the Daily Stoic email. The Daily Stoic email goes out to a million people all over the world.

• 5:47Ryan Holiday?

  The idea that I would not speak about very real and very important things happening in the world for fear of upsetting some percentage of those people would be cowardly and injustice. At the same time, if all I talk about are those things, that audience will get smaller and smaller, and its influence will diminish to the point of not being able to have a positive impact. So I have to think about that balance. It's funny, every time I talk about American politics or something like Trump and what the rise of fascism represents, you know, people go, "It's a bad idea to alienate half your audience." And it's like... You know, it's very American of you to think that my entire audience is American.

• 6:32Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it's not. And I do tend to find when I talk internationally, people see these things much clearer as they have an outside perspective. And also, you guys have a bit more experience with what happens when you elect some of these people or these some of these people take power, which is a lesson we seem to be forgetting where I'm from. If Stoicism is just about getting stronger, faster, more productive, more self-contained, it might be more popular, but it's also going to be hollow and somewhat empty. And I struggle. I don't think I always get it right. I think maybe early on, I was too focused just on what Stoicism could do for me and

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  you and not enough on what it asks of us and all of us. And maybe sometimes I talk too much about those things. I don't know. I'm always trying to twist the dials and get it right. Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Certainly, I don't have a great answer. If I did, I'd spell it out, but I don't. So, thanks.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  My question is about the mindset, courage mindset, winner mindset, warrior mindset.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  When things get challenging or tough, I notice that my habit is more of a victim mindset, like, I'm not gonna make it, it's too hard, things like that. So, I'm now saying to myself, like, it's not as bad as you think it is. Keep on going. You're not the only one in the world who experience thoughts like this.

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  And my body also, you know, says a bit like, it's too much, get a bit feelings like dizziness or something like that.

• 8:08Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  So, I realize now that I have to experience these things to get to act differently. Do you have some tips or advice for me?

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  One of the things I like about running is that you you learn that your body is a liar, that you always have way more in the tank than you think you do, and that you have to push past that. That's what sort of both mental and physical toughness are about. And so when I'm in the middle of a book project, or my kids haven't slept, or, you know, I've got some crazy big project, or some big problem I can't see a way out of, this is what I mean when I'm talking about trusting the process. Like, you trust the process and not the feeling you feel in the moment, because you've been through the process enough times that you know it's more reliable than these feelings,

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  that thing inside you that's screaming to stop or quit. Now, look, sometimes that voice is right. You're about to, you know, pull a muscle, or, you know, you desperately need to take an off day. There's a tension. You don't always, you know, blow past what your body's telling you. But you do develop the ability to sense, you know, what's really going on. And this is kind of what Stoicism is about on another level, right? The Stoics talk about putting every impression to the test. Sometimes you trust the impression, sometimes you don't. But it's, it's a, is this really true? Or am I just feeling it now in this moment? And you develop that in all senses. But, but the physical sort of,

• 9:45Ryan Holiday?

  this is why I think having a physical practice is so important, because you learn to sense that about yourself. And you learn how much you can do if you push through that resistance or that part of you that wants to stop.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  It's nice to hear you live. I normally hear you on my car, on my, on the audiobooks.

• 10:05Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  So I just have a very simple question, a practical advice to tap into stillness in a world of overload of information, doom scrolling, chaos coming. So I would like to hear a practical advice on this.

• 10:24Ryan Holiday?

  Delete all the social media apps from your phone. Number one, don't sleep with your phone in your room, right? So you're not, you're having a large block from it every day. Don't touch your phone for the first one hour that you're awake. Add a journaling practice. Add a physical practice like we're talking about that doesn't involve screens. Like, people are like, "Oh yeah, I work out." And they're on a treadmill, looking at a television screen, scrolling the worst news in the world, you know? Stillness is not this magical state of mind that you get by going like this. To me, it is a discipline. It is a practice. It's something you have to build your day around.

• 11:06Ryan Holiday?

  General James Mattis, who was the Secretary of Defense, four-star general in the Marines, he carries Marx realist's meditations with him on 40 years of deployments. I think that he's carrying books with him on deployments is an interesting, he's carving out time to read and think every day. When he was Secretary of Defense, he had an hour of reading time, reading slash lunchtime scheduled in the middle of the day. And the idea of carving out time and space for reflection, for quiet, for solitude, you know, for less voices, maybe even less of my voice, is, I think, essential. You just gotta, you gotta do it. And then the stillness comes from there. Hey, it's Ryan.

• 11:51Ryan Holiday?

  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.