You Deserve Moments Like This | (Dis)integration

We are so busy. We think we’re supposed to be. We think that’s how we get better. We think that moving is the only way to move forward. You might think that Marcus Aurelius could relate. Yet when he speaks most beautifully it’s of moments of quiet and calm. "If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind," he said, "free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, 'a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness.’" Have you ever had a moment like that?---And in today's Daily Stoic excerpt reading, Ryan discusses his perspective on focusing on the internal more than the external by examining the quote from Epictetus's Discourses, “These things don’t go together. You must be a unified human being, either good or bad. You must diligently work either on your own reasoning or on things out of your control—take great care with the inside and not what’s outside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!”✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  Have you ever had a motionless moment? We are so busy, we think we're supposed to be. We think that's how we get better. We think that moving is the only way forward. And you might think that Marcus Aurelius could relate. After all, he headed an entire empire. He had books to read, writing to do, laws to pass, cases to hear, troops to lead. So yes, he was a busy man. He, like us, was pulled in many directions. He had ambitions, worries, hopes, dreams. And yet, when he speaks most beautifully, it's of moments of quiet and calm. "If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind," he said, "free of the future and the past,

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  and can make yourself, as Impedically says, a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness." Have you ever had a moment like that? If you have, you know how special it is. You know what kind of insights you were able to access, what kind of happiness crept in, what kind of peace you were able to feel. Marcus wrote that having that stillness allows us to concentrate on what living can be lived, the present moment. Only then, he said, "Could you spend the time you have left in tranquility and in kindness and at peace with the spirit?" Within you, you deserve moments like that. Moments where you watch the snow fall, moments when you sit quietly with a book,

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  moments when you look out the train window, not on a conference call, not checking email, not wondering how long until you arrive in the city, but a moment to check in with yourself, to think about your life and what you want to do with it. Moments with loved ones, moments when you are grateful, connected, happy, creative, in the zone, doing whatever it is that you do best. When the Stoics talk about stillness, they're not talking about some abstract notion. They're talking about maybe the most important thing you can be doing in your life. They are saying that all the work you are doing, all the thoughts you're expending, trying to get ahead, trying to force as a breakthrough are pointless.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  The real way to charge ahead is to slow down, to clear your mind, to rejoice in perfect stillness, free of the future and the past, fully present and locked in. You can do it. You deserve that. For me, one of the, one of the things I was really thinking about when I wrote Stillness is the Key was the idea that all the special moments in my life came not when I was doing stuff, but when I was not doing stuff. It was when I was looking out the train window. It was when I was reading a book at my, you know, my kitchen table in my college apartment. Marcus really sort of fell on me like a ton of bricks. It was, it's moments now with my kids, or it's moments in a run through a forest when I didn't hear anything but this buzzing sound and I couldn't figure out what this buzzing

• 3:33Ryan Holiday?

  sound was and I realized all I could hear were, were bugs. The bugs were so loud, it sounded like a chainsaw. That's how quiet it was where I was. And, and so these are the, like, these are the moments that I think we know our life is about. And we've talked before about how, how easy it is to become a slave to your stuff and how success can take you further from where you want to go. I think we know that what we want in life, where we're trying to go is moments of stillness and peace and tranquility and reflection and, and happiness. And yet, we make decisions that take us away from that thing. And so, when, when the Stoics are asking if you've had a motionless moment, they're asking, how are you spending your life? Are you getting the one thing that's supposed to make your life worth living? Are you doing what you need to be doing? Are you getting what you deserve?

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  Are you living what can be lived, as Marcus said? Are you?

• 4:22Ryan Holiday?

  Are you experiencing the present moment? The present moment is, can be all that you need if you so choose. And, and so, these motionless moments, to me, are the greatest moments. It's sitting on a porch swing, it's, you know, it's sitting in an airplane cabin when every, and everyone has fallen asleep and you're not watching a movie, you're not doing anything, you're just there with yourself. It's moments with the journal in the morning, it's moments with a book, it's a quiet dinner with people you love, or it's a loud dinner with people you love. It doesn't have to literally be still, but it's moments when you've tuned out the inessential, you've focused on what really matters, and you're there, and happy, and present, and full. And that is what the Stoics would define joy as, and that's what the Stoics would say

• 5:07Ryan Holiday?

  we're doing this work for.

• 5:17Ryan Holiday?

  Today's entry from the Daily Stoic? Disintegration. These things don't go together. You must be a unified human being, either good or bad. You must diligently work either on your own reasoning, or on things outside of your control. Take great care with the inside, and not what's inside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob. Epictetus's Discourses 315. "We are all complicated people. We have multiple sides to ourselves, conflicting wants and desires and fears. The outside world is no less confusing and contradictory.

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  For not careful, all of these forces pushing and pulling will eventually tear us apart. We can't live as both Jekyll and Hyde. Not for long, anyway. We have a choice: to stand with the philosopher and focus strenuously on the inside, or to behave like a leader of a mob, becoming whatever the crowd needs at a given moment. If we do not focus on our internal integration, on self-awareness, we risk external disintegration."

• 6:27Ryan Holiday?

  Obviously, you're listening to me, so you can't see it. But in the book, I have disintegration, the dis in parentheses. One word, but there's the parentheses. And the reason I do that, it's actually something I talk about in the intro of my first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying. And if you've read Trust Me, I'm Lying, or you've heard of it, it might seem very different than what I talk about here at Daily Stoic. Or if you see a video of me, and then you contrast it with the somewhat ominous, maybe even evil cover of Trust Me, I'm Lying, it might seem as difficult to reconcile. And indeed, it is. And I talk about this in the intro of the book. I was, of course, familiar with Stoicism when I wrote that book. I was, of course, studying Stoic philosophy before I even got into marketing.

• 7:11Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, I've read Marx's theories many times in those years that I worked for those controversial clients. Was it hypocrisy? Was I a bad person? I mean, I don't get to say that. But what I think about it, and as I reflected on it when I wrote that book, is that I was not integrated. I had these two different parts of myself that were very not aligned. Does that make sense? Like, it's funny, we use the word disintegration to mean like comes apart, right? But really, what it would mean, dis and integrated, means not integrated. And that's what I was. I was not integrated. I had these different spheres. I had this part of me that really liked philosophy, that really believed in these ideas and Stoicism,

• 7:56Ryan Holiday?

  and was trying to apply them in my life. And then I had my actual occupation and day job, where I was, you know, pulling these marketing stunts and, you know, living, I don't want to say an unphilosophical life, but certainly not a life fully in accordance with the philosophical ideas. I don't think I was making the world a better place. And that's partly why I wrote the book, partly why I changed. The philosophy helped me get there. But for a long time, these things were compartmentalized. They were not integrated. And so I think that's what Epictetus is talking about. He says, "You must be a unified human being. You can't be these different things." Seneca was not a unified human being.

• 8:39Ryan Holiday?

  He was a brilliant artist and a ruthless power broker. He was a philosopher who also coveted wealth and status and influence.

• 8:50Ryan Holiday?

  Wanted to be on the inside of things. And that disintegration, some would call hypocrisy. I would just say was was not the integration he needed. And he got closer to that integration as he got older. He ultimately leaves Nero Service and dedicates the last few years of his life to getting there. And that's where I think a lot of his best work is from. But that lack of integration is a problem for all of us. Right? You say you love your spouse, that your family is really important. And then, you know, you spend all your time at the office or maybe you're having an affair. Or, you know, you say you care about the environment, but then look at some of your personal decisions. Right?

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  You claim to be a good person, but then look at how you treat people who are close to you. Right? Hypocrisy is one thing, but I think it's often that we have trouble just applying what we believe or applying it fully or seeing, in fact, that the way that we're acting, which feels normal or appropriate or necessary, given our profession, is actually out of, not in accordance with our values, or as the Stoics would say, not in accordance with nature, not who we're supposed to be, what we're capable of being. So this integration is the work that we need to do, both in studying the philosophy. Maybe it's going to therapy, maybe a relationship helps you get there, maybe just long conversations, a lot of self-awareness.

• 10:15Ryan Holiday?

  I think ultimately, not to reference another one of my books, but it's our busyness, our franticness, our yearning or push for things that keeps us so busy and preoccupied that we don't notice the disintegration. I think that's largely what it was for me. I was just trying to get ahead, doing cool things as they came up. I was young, had a million things going on.

• 10:43Ryan Holiday?

  I didn't want to let certain people down. And so that, that lack of awareness about my disintegration was largely rooted in just not having the time, not having the space to reflect, not having literally a minute to do it. And I think part of the reason we keep ourselves busy is so we don't have to do that. Because when we do it, it's painful. When we do it, it demands change. So I'm urging you, I guess, to take a little time to think about whether you're integrated, to think about where you're not a unified person, to think about where you're focusing on things outside your control. Because inevitably, it will tear you apart. It does not end well.

• 11:26Ryan Holiday?

  And it can make you do things that you're ashamed of, or embarrassed by, or later regret, or have trouble explaining, all of which are true for me to a certain degree, and true for, I think, anyone as you get older and wiser and better. I'm wishing you much integration and the stillness required to get to that integration. I encourage you to do that work.