You Must Seek This Out | Ask Ds

It’s sad that when we think of a philosopher we don’t think of somebody tough. We don’t think of a soldier or a skilled professional. We don’t think of a happily married parent raising kids. We don’t think of someone thriving amidst the chaos of the world. No, for some reason, we think of an academic. We think of somebody scrawny. We think of someone whose life is mostly sedentary, mostly spent at a desk with their stacks of books around them and their scrolls in front of them.-In part 2 of today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks stoics and answers questions in NYC during Obstacle is the way for 160 Hunter Douglas leaders from across the world. Hunter Douglas is the world’s leading manufacturer of window coverings as well as a major manufacturer of architectural products. For the last five years, we have been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge—a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. 21 challenges designed to set you up to be able to say, whatever happens in 2024 and beyond, this is precisely what I trained for.. Demand more of yourself in 2024. Prepare for whatever is ahead. Head over todailystoic.com/challengeand sign up NOW!✉️ 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, just as you are. Some of these come from my talks, some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members, or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  It's sad that when we think of a philosopher, we don't think of somebody tough. We don't think of a soldier or a skilled professional. We don't think of a happily married parent raising kids. We don't think of somebody thriving amidst the chaos of the world. No, for some reason, we think of an academic. We think of somebody scrawny. We think of somebody whose life is mostly sedentary, mostly spent at a desk with their stacks of books around them, or their scrolls in front of them. But no, this is wrong. In the ancient world, philosophers were warriors, and athletes, and hunters, and boxers, and wrestlers, and distance runners. They did hard things. They sought out opportunities

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  to push their physical limitations. Socrates was admired for his ability to endure cold weather. Marcus Aurelius was a wrestler. Cleanthes was a boxer. Chrysippus was a runner. Admiral Stockdale played football in high school and at the Naval Academy. This wasn't separate from their philosophy practice. This was. Their philosophy practice. These were people trained in adversity. They were people who did difficult things because as we've said, difficult things are good for you. "We treat the body rigorously," Seneca said, "so that it will not be disobedient to the mind." We toughen ourselves up because life is tough. We challenge ourselves so that no matter what life has in store for us, we'll be able to say, as Epictetus said, we need

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  to be able to say that this is what I train for. Well, are you training? Are you seeking out challenges? Are you getting soft? What picture of a philosopher do you present? Academic or active? Difficult things are good for you. Seek them out. And I think we should all be kicking 2024 off with a challenge. And that's why we created the Daily Stoic New Year, New Year Challenge, which I've been talking a ton about. For the last five years, thousands of Stoics all over the world have looked forward to this as I look forward to it. Every year, we kick the year off with 21 unique, actionable Stoic challenges built around the most timeless wisdom of Stoic philosophy. It arrives in

• 3:06Ryan Holiday?

  your inbox each morning. We all do this cool challenge together. Some are physical, some are mental, right? Some are, you write them down, some involve reading, some involve, some you do alone, some you do with other people. But the point is, it helps spark who you are meant to be. It challenges you, gets you out of your comfort zone. I'd really love for you to join us. You can sign up right now. It's going to start on January 1st, so there's not that much time left. I'd love to have you join us. Don't delay. Let's start it now. Let's do it together. I'd love to see you in there. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge. Or remember, if you join Daily Stoic Life, you get this challenge and all the Daily Stoic challenges for the rest of the year, plus a bunch of

• 3:47Ryan Holiday?

  other bonuses, all totally for free. And you can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com.

• 4:01Ryan Holiday?

  I was telling you last week that I gave a cool talk to the folks at Hunter Douglas in New York City. I think it was at the Marriott there in Times Square. I got in super late. I had just enough time to scarf down some food, get a couple hours sleep, do the talk, and then head straight back home to Austin. One of the things I'm trying to do lately, just with the kids being so young, is spend absolutely as little time on the road as possible, which means I don't get to do all the things that I used to do in the cities that I would travel to. You know, I like to swim at the New York Athletic Club. I like to run in Central Park. I like to see friends that I know. There's lots of stuff I like to do when I'm in New York, but doing less and less of that these days, it's just, what's the... I'm even thinking less, like, what's the flight with the best

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  frequent flyer miles? And I think, which one's going to give me 30 more minutes at home? Or whatever. But it was a nice little trip, speaking to different leaders inside the Hunter Douglas organization, which is an international company that, as I said last week, has been in business for 100 years. So I had some really cool questions, and I'm going to bring you those now. Enjoy.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  For me, the...

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  That would be same. Yeah, sure.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Have you thought about writing about that?

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  A little bit. I talk a lot about the eastern stuff in my book on stillness.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  There's such a connection.

• 5:19Ryan Holiday?

  There is. I think they were drinking from the same source in some way.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  From the same source, right?

• 5:24Ryan Holiday?

  Where they kind of settled on the same truth.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  That I'm really into is the connection between humility and high performance.

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, of course.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  And sort of like, Aurelius talks about, you know, what is it? Pride is the great master of deception.

• 5:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, of course. Well, ego is the enemy, right?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Ego is the enemy.

• 5:43Ryan Holiday?

  It gets in the way. And I think you find really great people are very humble.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:47Ryan Holiday?

  Because that's makes you better.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and open.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  And it's something in the US, like, from the origins, we're like a Dutch, European company.

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  And it's a counterintuitive thing in how American companies tend to be managed. There's a lot of non-humility creeps in.

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. That's part of the American spirit, I think.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  It is, it is.

• 6:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Epictetus's line is you can't learn that which you think you already know.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Ryan Holiday?

  Which I think is a very eastern idea also.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  And so, you know, there's the Zen story about the cups. You pour the water, if it's already full, it overfills.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  And so, the emptier you are, the more you can take in.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  I've been meaning to ask you this because I think there is something in that concept.

• 6:30Ryan Holiday?

  I do too.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  The connection between humility and high performance is actually surprisingly tight.

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course, if you focus on how you can get better, then you can get better. If you focus on how great you are, then you sort of say the same. And I think, obviously, you know, back to the beginnings of Western thought, the Socratic method is, you know, knowing what you don't know. And asking questions versus making statements.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 6:54Ryan Holiday?

  I love that.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  When did you, when did you start this math on, did you pay?

• 6:59Ryan Holiday?

  When I was in college.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Did it start with Marcus Aurelius?

• 7:01Ryan Holiday?

  It did, yes, yes. I started, it started with meditations and I was like, this is the most incredible thing.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  And it did not start from, it was Arai's before, like Buddhism and let's say Zen.

• 7:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  That, I mean.

• 7:14Ryan Holiday?

  That came later and then you're like, wow, these are all the same thing.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  And at the same time, more like five hundred beast, they were, they were all around the same time.

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  You could, you could have interchangeably sat in on the lectures of any of them and been like, I've heard this before.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You did a fantastic job.

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  Thank you, that's so cool.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  I have, I mean, you know, I didn't know that they had organized for you to come.

• 7:36Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  When I saw you on the agenda, I'm like, okay, like, you know, these guys.

• 7:41Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I love it.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  We were thinking alike right from the beginning when we were partnering, but when he picked you.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, that's so great.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  That is a sign that we're totally in tune on people.

• 7:51Ryan Holiday?

  Amazing.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  And in the way you spoke, it was just like the right thing at the right time.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I love that, that's amazing.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Fantastic, you have lots of fans.

• 8:00Ryan Holiday?

  Awesome, thank you, of course, great to meet you, yeah, hi, hi.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Nice to meet you, it's a big time of yours.

• 8:07Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, awesome.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  I'm thinking about, you know, the things to keep in mind, like, do you think the Ver military goes well with the perception or you think it's more of a attitude?

• 8:17Ryan Holiday?

  Ultimately, it just matters that it sticks in your mind and it gives you something to apply. Do you know what I mean? That's kind of how I think about it. Sometimes I need one reminder and sometimes I need the other, depending on what I'm going through. That's kind of how I think about it.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  And besides like, you know, rains and coins, is there any other way you...

• 8:31Ryan Holiday?

  I just try to write about this stuff all the time. That's what I'm writing about in my journals. It's just like, these ideas over and over. Usually in the morning, sometimes at night. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. But I just try to be writing about the ideas over and over again. That's what brings me back when I drift from it.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Trying to bring it together.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  That's a good experiment.

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course.

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.