Pod Insights The Daily Stoic Premium (🔓) You Must Declutter Your Life | Ask Daily Stoic About this episode What we do as people is we accumulate stuff. We accumulate, accumulate, accumulate…until our homes, our cars, our minds, and our schedules are cluttered. 💡 Go to dailystoic.com/spring and enter code DSPOD20 at checkout to get 20% off the Spring Forward Challenge! Challenge yourself to spring forward and become the person you aspire to be. The Spring Forward Challenge starts March 20, 2025. 🎙️ 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
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Ryan 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.
0:57 Ryan Holiday? You must declutter your life. It's a timeless problem, rich or poor, old or young, married or single, successful or struggling, modern or ancient. What people do is we accumulate stuff. We accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, until our homes, our cars, our minds, and our schedules are cluttered. In meditations, Marx realist jokes about people whose abundance leaves their owner with no place to shit. And that's just the physical stuff. People also accumulate problems and grudges and anxieties and opinions, piles and piles and piles of them. Our mental load grows and grows.
1:40 Ryan Holiday? It builds slowly until we feel overwhelmed, stuck, and weighed down. And there is only one way out: ruthlessly decluttering. We have to eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. We have to get rid of stuff, get rid of our baggage, let go of beliefs, let go of worries, let go of people. We have to stop buying and stop saying yes. We must free ourselves from the weight of excess, shed what's unnecessary, and clear away what is holding us down.
2:15 Ryan Holiday? And is there a better time to do this than right now? Spring is here and isn't that the perfect time to clean up and clear out? I think that's the beauty of spring cleaning. We're only a few months into the year and already we know we could use a reset that we'd benefit from getting rid of stuff and wiping the slate clean. And look, basically that's what the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge is about. It's a 10 day challenge, 10 days of Stoic inspired challenges that will help you tackle the physical and mental clutter that is weighing you down.
2:54 Ryan Holiday? You know, your doom boxes that are filling up the garage or your drawers, the digital distractions that pull us away from what matters, the commitment overload that makes us spread ourselves too thin, and of course, the mental baggage, our resentments and unfinished business and unspoken things. We spring clean so we can spring forward. We clear the clutter to make room for what truly matters. And I'd love to have you join me and many of your fellow Stoics in this challenge. It's starting on March 20th. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/spring. And remember, if you join Daily Stoic Life, you get this challenge and all our challenges for free. It's gonna be awesome. I'm excited about this one.
3:38 Ryan Holiday? I build the challenges around the stuff that I know that I need and it's how I know I think it will be what you need. And I'd love to see it in there. Dailystoic.com/spring. Only a few more days to sign up. I'll see you in there.
3:53 Ryan Holiday? Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was sitting in our living room last night with my wife and I said, why are we in the living room? We can go sit on the porch. It's finally nice. The bugs haven't happened yet. Skeetos aren't out yet. It's not hot yet, but it's getting nicer. It just hit me like, hey, it's spring. It's here. We always said, this is like the wonderful time to live where we live. Like we said, if we ever sell our ranch, we always remind ourselves, we gotta sell it from like March to May. That's the amazing time. And sometimes we're just like too busy to really fully notice it. Like I said, it snuck up on me during COVID. Five years ago, we finally spent like the whole spring in one place. We weren't gone for one day. We didn't travel for spring break. We didn't go to, we were just here. It was just amazing.
4:36 Ryan Holiday? And watching those, the leaves come in, you know, I think of that Larkin poem. We did a Daily Stoic email about it. You know, he says, last year is dead and the, those leaves, they seem to say, begin afresh, afresh, afresh. And here we are. So in today's Q and A episode, I wanted to bring you some of the questions from last year's Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. We kick off spring with 10 days of Stoic inspired challenges to help you spring forward in your life. It's awesome. I hope to see you in there because we're doing it again this year too. You can ask me some questions as part of it. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/spring. If you use code DSPOD20, you get 20% off the challenge. So that's pretty cool.
5:20 Ryan Holiday? It's just for podcast listeners. But like I said, challenge starts on March 20th. I want to see you in there. Dailystoic.com/spring. Or if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you can get this challenge and all the challenges as part of that membership. DSPOD20 to sign up for the Spring Forward Challenge. Dailystoic.com/spring.
5:45 Speaker 01 I really enjoyed these challenges. So thank you for that.
5:49 Ryan Holiday? Of course.
5:50 Speaker 01 One of my favorite things that I found was how they sort of influenced each other. You know, I was going for a, doing the one hour out in nature by myself kind of a thing. And then. About thirty minutes in, I came across a bunch of trash and then I found myself picking it up.
6:04 Ryan Holiday? Lovely.
6:05 Speaker 01 Picking up the trash. So I was really sort of impressed with how that kind of happened so naturally. And now I'm seeing trash everywhere now and I'm picking it up. So I, I thought that was wonderful. Same with writing the letter of gratitude. I found myself looking at my space, making sure it was organized the way that I
6:19 Ryan Holiday? Yeah.
6:19 Speaker 01 wanted in order to be effective and clear and all that. So I thought that was awesome. I was curious.
6:22 Ryan Holiday? Amazing.
6:23 Speaker 01 Uh, one small thing, I don't know if there was like an 11 day challenge. Was there one that didn't make the, the, the cut here? Like if there was another day that you would ever were thinking about adding on?
6:33 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, not, not to spoil it, but we have two bonus days coming. So there'll be another one tomorrow and one, one day after that. So yes, almo- almost always we brainstorm like a bunch and then they, they either don't fit or some of them maybe feel a little bit similar to another one. And so we'll just keep them as bonus days. So, so stay tuned. We've got, we've got some other ones, but I think the ultimate bonus day is exactly what you already came up with, which is how do they kind of intersect and build on each other? And then ultimately that's obviously what we talked about today too. How, how do you just sort of keep, keep it going?
7:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, I thought it was awesome. I look forward to it.
7:10 Ryan Holiday? Really appreciate it. Angela?
7:11 Speaker 02 Is that me? I guess?
7:13 Ryan Holiday? Yes.
7:13 Speaker 02 Hi, thank you so much for picking me. Uh, yeah. My question is, is really, I recently pivoted from, um, my professional career. Uh, I used to be, you know, corporate for my own financial service. I'm really, really busy. And now I am kind of slowing down and I decided to become a self publisher and I'm writing a book actually for a, hopefully Jill might appreciate this about, um, uh, life skills for teens. Anyway, my question for you is if you have any insights?
7:42 Ryan Holiday? About writing?
7:43 Speaker 02 Yes, because I'm planning, I'm planning to, to write several books, uh, on, on the same topic.
7:49 Ryan Holiday? Well, congratulations. That sounds really exciting. Buckle up. It is fun to have written a book. Uh, writing books can be, uh, kind of brutal. I'm in the middle of one right now. I love it and I hate it at the same time. That's kind of a, a feeling that, that you, you have to learn how to get comfortable with. I did a book. Book in 2017 called Perennial Seller, which is like a bunch of my thoughts on writing and publishing. I'm probably updated at some point. It was something I was excited to do at the time and it's not exactly how I would want it to be now if I was doing it again. But I would point you towards that book. I guess the big, the big thing when you're sitting down and writing is it's sort of who are you writing to?
8:34 Ryan Holiday? And how are you writing and saying something that they haven't heard before that solves a very real problem for them? So when I sat down to write a book about ancient philosophy, there were a bunch of ways to do it. And I settled on this idea of sort of illustrating it in stories and and sort of rooting it in more modern figures. That ultimately is the most important thing. Like what's your way into the topic, your way into the audience? You have to spend a lot of time thinking about that. Too often people just write the book and then they ask themselves these questions like during the launch. And that's not usually the best way to do it.
9:09 Speaker 02 Thank you so much. That was, that was awesome.
9:11 Ryan Holiday? Peggy.
9:11 Speaker 03 Good morning. Out here in California, Gold Country, rural Lower Sierra foothills.
9:18 Ryan Holiday? I grew up in Placer County.
9:20 Speaker 03 Oh, I'm in Calaveras.
9:22 Ryan Holiday? There you go.
9:23 Speaker 03 Yeah. So I am a huge fan of the Daily Stoic and the challenges. I have the challenge deck and have adopted it into not just my personal life, but in my professional world as well. I'm an employment law consultant for small business. And have used the challenges and different team building aspects and things of that nature. And my question is, this was a great refresher on some of my favorites within that deck. And my question is, is there another deck coming? Are there new and unique challenges that are being thought of and tested? Or, you know, what's, what's on the horizon for that?
10:03 Ryan Holiday? Well, thank you. Yes, I really like the challenge deck too. It's one of my favorite things we did. So I don't know when you bought the challenge deck, but we did a version of it several years ago. And then we did a refresher, like another set of cards. So I'll link to that and everyone else can see it. But for people who don't know, the challenge deck is like, basically it's this little card deck. You set it on your, you know, your bathroom counter, your desk, or your nightstand, or whatever. And you, you pull out one each day and it just gives you like a, a quick challenge to do based on, on Stoic practices. So it's, it's one way to keep this all going.
10:36 Speaker 03 And I've modified the deck, using the deck in different ways over the years. You know, sometimes I do one a month. Sometimes I'm doing one every day, once a week. Sometimes I, I write about the challenges that I'm doing in a week for my team. I get my employees on board with doing some of these challenges as well. So I'm excited to know there's a second rendition. So yeah, definitely. I'm excited for that. Thank you.
11:02 Ryan Holiday? Amazing. All right. Patrick.
11:04 Speaker 04 Hello. Again, really appreciate you doing this. I also enjoyed the challenges everyone else has. I think I definitely kind of stumbled into Stoicism before I even knew what it was.
11:16 Ryan Holiday? Yeah.
11:17 Speaker 04 Just growing up, you know, I, I think I get a lot of my characteristic traits from my father, who's kind of more of a laid back approach. And I've been able to take that into my past career as a educator, but also into the learning development space. And so I've used a lot of those practices over the last few years as far as my trainings go and my facilitation style. But I guess my question for you is regarding being in a Stoic mindset 100% of the time is, can be difficult. Are there any things that you kind of have as a go-to to get back to kind of more even keel?
11:55 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I, I don't think any of us are sort of perfectly stoic all the time. Certainly I am not. I try to, I think, I think the journaling practice is obviously a big part of this, right? So you're sort of going through your life, you're doing your things. And then, you know, in the moment, it's hard to maybe even be thinking about this stuff. But if you carve out a little time every day or every morning or every night, where you're just kind of going, well, how did I do today? What could I have done better? Where did I fall short? Was how I was on that customer service call, as, as the first question was talking about, was that who I wanted to be? Or, or maybe, hey, I was frustrated and then I caught myself and I was who I wanted to be. So for me, the journaling practice is a big part of that.
12:39 Ryan Holiday? I don't exactly have like a mantra that I say to myself in the moment that brings me back. But that, that journaling practice is a big part of it for me.
12:47 Speaker 04 Yes, I appreciate that. I got your journal for Christmas. That was on my list.
12:51 Ryan Holiday? Oh, lovely.
12:52 Speaker 04 I love it. It's been, I, I text my sister-in-law and I said, the other day, actually, I said, this has been the best gift I've had all year. I said, I, I mean, just look forward to that, you know, whether I do it in the morning or at night.
13:03 Ryan Holiday? Oh, that's, that's so nice.
13:05 Speaker 04 It keeps, keeps me in that mindset every day. It's a, it's a quick reminder to kind of get in that headspace.
13:09 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, that's great. Awesome.
13:11 Speaker 05 Hello. Thank you for all you do. I've read a lot of your books. I've listened to podcasts. The channel was great. My question for you is, I'm very good at, as a long time, you know, listener and reader, instilling your practice in my daily life. The problem is when stuff gets a little bit off kilter. Let's just say I'm staying on my in-laws.
13:29 Ryan Holiday? Yes.
13:30 Speaker 05 I'm sleeping on an air mattress and the dog's licking my face. I don't have time to exercise. I don't have time to read and write and all these kinds of things that I think that calm you down and they work for us stoics. Like I remember your podcast when you were in California.
13:45 Ryan Holiday? Yes.
13:45 Speaker 05 And you had the interview Schwarzenegger and you kind of see, you're not the kind of the same calm guy you are maybe back in.
13:52 Ryan Holiday? Oh, that's funny that you noticed that. Yes.
13:54 Speaker 05 That you do to kind of say, you know, get yourself back grounded and maybe during book signings, you don't have. There is one week where I guess I don't have one minute to myself.
14:04 Ryan Holiday? Yes. Okay. So this is great. And actually, we did a YouTube video loosely about this idea like last week because, you know, if you're a routine person, you're, you're like, this is what I do. This is the time I wake up. This is where I go. This is the order that I do things. And that, that's, that's really awesome. Uh, but there's also kind of a fragility in it because then when you're traveling or then when you're sick, or then when you're really busy, all that goes out the window. I've come to think about it more as like specific practices as opposed to like, these are the things that I do, the way that I do them. Do you know what I mean? So that, so, so I, I've, I've tried to, to actually not become less routine based,
14:48 Ryan Holiday? but I've tried to become more flexible as I go, understanding that I have less control than I would like to think that I do about my life and the systems that I can set up. Do you know what I mean? So I would think about, you know, hey, what are the, what are the sort of grounding things that you can do in all circumstances? So it's like, hey, you know, I do 50 pushups when I wake up or, you know, I do, I go for a walk every day. As opposed to I go for a walk at nine AM every day when I let the dog out. You know, that's something you can't do when you travel, but if it's more that the more general practices or sort of grounding exercises that you do, that's going to be,
15:33 Ryan Holiday? you know, that, that's going to be, I think, more resilient than, than wanting to keep things a very specific way at very specific times.
15:40 Speaker 05 Okay. Thank you very much.
15:41 Ryan Holiday? Awesome. Well, have fun at your in-laws.
15:43 Speaker 06 Hey Ryan, how are you?
15:45 Ryan Holiday? Hi.
15:46 Speaker 06 Hey, um, I listened to your Michael Gervais podcast and Gervais is one of my favorites too. And one of the, um, quotes that I like that you use is that the worst thing that can, a leader can do is not think something could happen.
16:00 Ryan Holiday? Yes.
16:00 Speaker 06 That's a little bit of a pessimistic mindset. And then Gervais talks about being mentally tough is about that sense of optimism that your next decision is going to make an impact. And I see how they connect. I also see how they're different.
16:13 Ryan Holiday? Sure.
16:14 Speaker 06 So the question I have is, You know, how does someone prepare for the worst and maintain their optimism? And then also, who are some of the people that you've had on the podcast where you've really disagreed with their philosophy? And thank you again for the great guests. I think Gervais, I was introduced to him from you and I love all your stuff. So, thank you, Ryan.
16:35 Ryan Holiday? Oh, that's, uh, that's very kind. Yeah, look, I think when the Stoic is saying, you gotta think about all the things that could happen. It's weird to say this, but I think it is inherently optimistic, right? Because when Seneca is saying, hey, you know, exile and war and torture and shipwreck, all these things could happen to you. He's not saying all these things could happen to you and you're screwed, right? He's saying all these things can happen to you and you should be prepared to be able to deal with them because you can deal with them. So I think inherent in this sort of Stoic practice is the idea that one is capable and qualified to deal with any of the things that life is going to throw at you. That's not to say they're not gonna hurt.
17:20 Ryan Holiday? That's not to say they're not gonna be heartbreaking. That's not to say they're not gonna be scary and overwhelming and expensive and all these things. But there is, I think, inherent in the Stoic assumption that we're still gonna move forward. We would, we, in, in fact, the idea is that by thinking about them in advance, we're better prepared and more likely to be able to deal with them. So I, I like what, what Gervais was saying too, which is like, I'm gonna be able to make an impact, but I have to be realistic about the situation first to know what that impact is going to be. Does that make sense?
17:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, and I think they're very connected because Gervais talks about naive optimism versus true optimism. True optimism goes back to what you talk about, that you've generated the evidence that your next decision will make it better.
18:08 Ryan Holiday? Yes. As far as guests that I've disagreed with, that's a good question. I mean, generally I get to choose who I have on. So it's not like I'm just waking up and then it's like, who have the producers chosen for me today? Maybe this sounds weird, but it's not that I would never choose to have someone on that I disagree with. I just want to talk to people who, in talking to them, I'm learning and growing. And then also I feel like we're sharing information that is beneficial to the audience. So one of the things, and again, this is my opinion, but I am concerned with the trend, particularly in podcasts with a lot of people that I know and actually I like,
18:52 Ryan Holiday? of just platforming utterly abhorrent individuals or people who are just asking questions. Right? And, and so they're thinking like, hey, is this, is this episode going to get a lot of engagement? Right? Is it going to be interesting? And when I think about who I want to talk to or who I want to give an hour of my life to, and thus ask the audience to give an hour or two hours of their life to, I think a lot about whether I feel like this person's message should be given to a large audience. So I think a lot about that. So that, that precludes a lot of the people that I have sort of strong disagreements with, because I think this is kind of a trick that people do.
19:35 Ryan Holiday? They, they say, oh, I'm having this person on and I'm going to hold their feet to the fire. Or this is about, you know, understanding the other side. Really, they're just playing a game of, of sort of SEO and the algorithm and all of that. And I, and I just choose largely not to play that game.
19:53 Speaker 06 No, it's interesting. A lot of times people are looking for affirmation, you know, on their thoughts. And Gervais did have somebody on, I forget his name, and I'll let you go, a philosopher that basically talked about, we don't have freedom of choice. So it was a really interesting discussion.
20:07 Ryan Holiday? Yeah.
20:07 Speaker 06 You know, Gervais, and he's very, very, his whole, his whole process is we do have choice. So it was really interesting hearing him talk to someone that he really disagreed with, and he really disagreed with Gervais. So it was really interesting. That's why I thought of that question.
20:23 Ryan Holiday? Yeah, it's a good one.
20:28 Ryan 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.
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