BONUS | 3 Shows in 72 Hours

In this bonus episode, follow Ryan behind the scenes as the Daily Stoic Live Tour https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ takes him through Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit. 🎟️https://www.dailystoiclive.com/DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ Boston, Massachusetts - November 16 https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0100648FA1C21706 Nashville, Tennessee - November 20 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1991992836196?aff=oddtdtcreator Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - December 8 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1987339339462?aff=oddtdtcreator Washington D. C. - December 9 https://www.unionstagepresents.com/shows/daily-stoic-live-09-dec Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So I woke up this morning, as I do every morning, thanks to my 8Sleep. I've loved my 8Sleep for years. The new 8Sleep Pod 6 is officially available. 8Sleep can result in up to 34% more deep sleep and a 32% average increase in sleep quality scores. And the 8Sleep's sixth generation of the Pod is a smart mattress cover that now truly fits on any size mattress. The hub is 50% smaller than the previous versions. Its thermal engine is 20% faster. And the new cover has nine times the biometric sensors of the Pod 5. And now with AI in the autopilot, it learns your patterns and adjusts every single night. The Pod 6 starts at $1,999.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  That's the lowest price 8Sleep has ever offered. And you can use code DAILYSTOIC right now at 8sleep.com/dailystoic for up to $200 off the Pod 6. And you'll get 30 days at home to try it, free returns if it's not for you. Look, if you're not prepared for things to go wrong, you're not doing this Stoicism thing right. I dropped my kids off at school and I was supposed to go to the airport. I gotta talk in Minneapolis today, Chicago tomorrow, Detroit the day after that. It's a pretty tight travel schedule, not a lot of room for things to go wrong. But to start with a 30-minute delay, then a 40-minute delay, then a 50-minute delay, and now hour and 10-minute delay is an inauspicious start. So instead of being crunched on the ground in Minneapolis, I went for a run here. And now I've got to figure out what I'm gonna do, because I can't shower before I get on the plane.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  So it's gonna be interesting. But it's life period. You have the way you think things are supposed to go. You have your plans, but that's a proposal. And as they say, God disposes. And so the key to Stoicism is ultimately to be flexible, which is gonna be the name of the game for the next couple of days. That's what we're gonna talk about in today's video.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  So I was on my way to Barton Springs. I was gonna jump in the water and so I was all sweaty on the plane. And then they moved it up 45 minutes. So now I gotta be flexible with my flexible plans, but I made it with, I don't know, 10 minutes to spare. So I went from being frustrated I was gonna have to sit around waiting to now I'm rushing. That's just how it goes.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Three things people get wrong about the Stoics. Number one, that it's emotionlessness. This is totally wrong. Yes, Stoicism is about being less emotional. That's very different than being emotionless. The Stoics get angry. They just try not to do things out of anger. The Stoics feel urges. They just try not to let that urge or that emotion drive the car. Two, Stoicism is passivity, people think, right? No, no. Stoicism is about understanding what's in your control and what's outside your control, and then focusing all your energy on what is in your control. If the Stoics were passive, they wouldn't have inspired the founders who were literal political revolutionaries.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  The Stoics did practice acceptance, sure, but that was only the things that were outside their control. The things that are up to you, that gets a full 100% of our effort, because it's the only place that that makes a difference. And finally, this idea of memento mori, right? Remember, you are mortal. That this is somehow depressing. It's the exact opposite. It's designed to be invigorating, designed to put things in perspective, designed to give your life meaning. The practice of memento mori isn't about taking life away. It's the exact opposite. It gives you your life right now.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  You don't have to put it in a book. Just put it on a line like it's just write it and figure out what it is. Do you have two memento mori?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  So I've got memento mori and memento vari.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  Wow, very cool. Yeah, I love it. All right, nice.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Have a good one.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Who do you want me to make a map to? Sterling. All right. S.T.E.R.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  I've never even seen it that way before. Yeah. Very cool. I like this. Thanks. A little slower here. Yeah.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  So Brian, Zach.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Hi. How are you?

• 4:39Speaker 02

  I'm doing great.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Yourself? You've been through this a couple of times.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yes, you've been awesome and like a huge inspiration.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  For the Stoics, being able to engage with and talk to people you disagree with, to be able to wrestle with ideas that maybe are on their face a bit repugnant or scary or disagreeable to you, that is a really important thing. And it's not always so, you know, severe. Sometimes it's just, what does this Stoic think or that Stoic think? And where do they disagree? But I think going to the people and places and ideas and schools of thought that you're not familiar with, or maybe that you have a little bit of an aversion to, and immersing yourself in that. Either you're gonna learn something, or it's gonna inoculate you against that idea, because you understand it better. And both of those outcomes are good, and we need a lot more of that. Awesome. Thank you guys very much. It was an honor. Really appreciate it. The city's so inspiring. Thank you all very much.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Do I pick the cities that I talk in because I wanna go running there? Not exactly, but close enough. I'm running in Minneapolis this morning. I didn't get to do it yesterday because of the flight delays. I'm six and a half miles in. I've got about a mile and a half to go. It's crazy to me. I'm here at the beginning of the Mississippi River. And about a week and a half ago, I was running in New Orleans along the very end of the Mississippi River. In wisdom, I talk about Abraham Lincoln doing that whole journey by boat and what he learned along the way. Doesn't really have anything to do with what's going on this morning, but I am gonna talk about Lincoln quite a bit tonight in Chicago, maybe the greatest person to ever come from Illinois. So that's what I'm thinking about this morning. Got a nice run in.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Remember what Seneca says, "We treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind." I like to push myself, of course, but mostly I go for the run in the morning to help regulate myself, to get myself calm, to get a win in early in the morning. It doesn't matter how the rest of the day goes. The talk could go horribly. I started the day off right. I got up early. I did my run. I'm gonna do a little writing, then I'm gonna go to the airport. It's a great day. However the gig goes, from there is a bonus.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  All right, so it's 8:30. I'm on my way to the airport. Talking Chicago tonight. They just told me over a thousand tickets, which is pretty crazy. Minneapolis was good yesterday. Went for a long run this morning. And now we've got two hours to the flight. It should be a short flight. I'm talking about contingency plans. I did the math that there's a problem with the flight. As long as we get in the car by 1:00, we can drive there and still make it. So if you wanna have your backup, then your backup's your backup. But we're doing good.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  This, it was like the show. You switch it right when I started. I appreciate it.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. No, I have to, just because I can't have it fullscreen and then also do this at the same time.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  The secret to wisdom, Seneca said, was simple. He said, "You just got to find one thing a day." He said, "Find a quote, find an idea, find an insight." And he says, "Thoroughly digest it every day." 10 years ago, we started the Daily Stoic email about that very idea. A few thousand people signed up. But in the decades since, it's grown a little bit. Over a million people get the Daily Stoic email every day. It goes out all over the world, and it's one piece of Stoic wisdom designed to help you live a better life right here and right now. And you can sign up for it totally for free at dailystoic.com/email. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. There's no spam. The Daily Stoic email is the thing I'm proudest of, that I work hardest on. And if you wanna add Stoicism to your life, you can sign up right now.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  So I found Stoicism, one, through him being on The Daily Show and him talking with Jordan Klepper and speaking on like the book, Daily Dad, as well as, I was just having a hard time in life a couple of years ago, and I just threw myself into all the books that were available, including like his older stuff. Like, I just found it very interesting how he went about everything.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  I actually studied Stoicism in college, a degree in theology, but it was purely academic at the time. And then I discovered this book and realized how it could really be applied to life and really be life-changing. So Stoicism has a whole different meaning now.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  What brought me to Stoicism? I played college athletics and just dealing with the adversity of sports, going through injuries, losses, those types of adversity, really helped pique my interest in Stoicism. Also, as I was a philosophy major in college, so all those types of things really piqued my interest. And found Brian playing college.

• 9:56Speaker 05

  Sports when he did a talk for the Cubs. So it's just been really interesting for me to learn about it and apply in my life.

• 10:04Speaker 06

  My brother gave me the book, The Art of Living Manual. And I loved the daily short reads on it, little paragraphs. And that brought me to the Daily Stoic to kind of just keep that rhythm going and acceptance of life and what I can control and can't control.

• 10:23Speaker 07

  Jaco Willink had a book out, Discipline is Destiny. And he had Ryan on there. And I listened to that podcast and it really resonated with me. So I looked into it and then I found Discipline is Destiny. And I got hooked. Here we are.

• 10:39Speaker 06

  And then my brother found it and told me about Ryan. And I was hooked from, like, I looked him up, found the Daily Dad. And I've been hooked ever since. He's been incredible. Changed how I live my life.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Epictetus's question was, who is your master? What is your master? Doesn't matter what your job is, doesn't matter what your title is, doesn't matter what your legal status is. What is controlling you? And so for the Stoics, discipline was then not just a way to freedom, it was freedom. It was freedom from these things that would otherwise be depriving you of your autonomy. Guys, this has been amazing. I'll let you get home. Thank you so much for coming. It's been an honor. Thank you for the support.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Come up, I'll sign that thing for you. Bring me your book, they'll take care of it. Thank you, guys.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Hey, guys.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Look, it's been a while since I've had to fill out an expense report. That's one of the perks of not having a job. But I don't remember enjoying the experience. And certainly, I don't want my employees to waste a bunch of their time doing it. You know, you got to find the receipt, you got to guess what category it goes in, then finance is asking you, well, what about this? Or are you sure this was proper? Or, you know, what if you didn't have to do any of that? It's bad use of your time, that's bad use of company time. Expense reports are tedious. It's not what I want my employees doing. Well, Ramp makes collecting and submitting expenses super simple. With Ramp, expenses submit themselves. You just text or email your receipt and Ramp categorizes codes and submits it.

• 12:22Speaker 00

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• 13:04Speaker 00

  This time of year, something's always going wrong at the worst possible moment. And look, your customers don't care who fixes it. They just care who answers first. And if they try to get you and they miss you, they'll go to someone else. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelled Q U O, the business phone built so you never miss a call or a customer. It is the number one rated business phone system on G2, trusted by over 90,000 businesses who rely on it to stay reachable and look professional every day. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place. So anyone on your team can pick up the conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. And QUO integrates with the tools your team already uses. HubSpot, Zapier, Claude, whatever.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  It helps you save time, stay organized, and spend less effort chasing down information between systems. Money is on the line always. Say hello with QUO. Try QUO for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com/dailystoic. That's Q U O dot com slash daily stoic. So we're at this Chicago airport now. It is 9:00 AM and then we are flying to Detroit for the last gig. I got up, I went for this run this morning. We stayed near O'Hare. I remember like nine years ago, maybe, I stayed not in the same hotel, but at a similar hotel, and I went for this run, this random park. And it had like the biggest tamest deer that I'd ever seen in my life, just in the center of Chicago.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  And somehow I found myself in that park this morning. And I saw this huge buck and then a couple of doe. It made me think, it's almost deer season. That was weird. But now, now we're on our way to Detroit. I've got to figure out what I'm going to say. I don't want to do the same talk in each city, so I've got to come up with what I'm going to say. I was only able to think as far as Chicago. So now hopefully on the plane, I can put some time into the next one. And then I got to go home and pick my kids up from school tomorrow.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Do you know what Thomas Edison said when his factory, this factory was burning down? He grabbed his son, shell shocked him. Their life's work, his inheritance going up in flames. And he said, go get your mother and all her friends. They'll never see a fire like this again. And supposedly, he paces up and down watching this surreal fire, which is throwing all these weird colors and heat up into the air. And he starts to repeat that line from Kipling's If about meeting triumph and disaster all the same. And he really means this. The next day, he tells reporters, you know, I've been through things like this before. He says, it prevents an old man from being afflicted with ennui. Says, it's going to prevent me from getting bored. And in fact, the final act of his life is throwing himself into the rebuilding, into

• 15:50Speaker 00

  more inventions, into more work. And instead of taking the route of despair and disappointment and grievance, takes the route of inspiration and urgency and renewed focus. It's this Stoic idea of amor fati. You can't do anything about the fire. You can't put it out. It's gone. All of it's going to burn down. That's what technology was at the time. But you can choose how you respond. You can choose what you make of it. You can choose what you turn it into. You can choose the story you tell yourself about it. That is Stoicism. We don't control what happens. We control how we respond to what happens. We don't run away from our fate. We embrace our fate when we allow it to make us better in ways that we couldn't have possibly ever imagined. And that happened right here.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  How old are you guys?

• 16:44Speaker 02

  I'm 17.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  17 and 14, nice.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  I'm the one that originally.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Turned me on to you. Oh, this was great. Thanks for bringing them. It's great for you. Oh, how old are you?

• 16:55Speaker 02

  I'm 24. So I actually found Stoicism because of Ryan Holiday. I was listening to Chris Cuomo on SXM and he was interviewing Ryan Holiday. And that was kind of the beginning of my whole journey. From there, I got his books and that got me into Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and all of them and kind of started this whole journey into the great conversation. So that's how. Okay, it's my husband. He loves it and he reads it, so I get it by osmosis.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  How did you find Stoicism?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  I heard Ryan on Tim Ferriss's podcast 100 years ago, maybe 2012. And then dove into his books and I went to Stoic Hunt in 2017 to see Ryan talk. So I was hooked from there. What brought me to Stoicism? I believe Stoicism found me. I was searching for self and trying to find answers to questions that I thought had to be answered. And by finding truth, I found Ryan's work through ego is the enemy and it changed everything and how I live in life. Huge thanks to Ryan for that, his work and also his bravery. So I found Stoicism, especially as a teacher. I work with middle school kids. And in particular, middle school kids are the most emotional people that you'll ever be around, especially seventh grade.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  And so in particular, I wanted to find something that is, kind of grounds me, kind of keeps me motivated, kind of keeps me focused on what I need to do, just as a teacher, as a parent, as a husband.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  So how did you actually find it?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  I happened to be kind of floating through Spotify, kind of looking at podcasts and stuff like that, happened to find Ryan, really enjoyed it, ended up reading a lot of his books and just ended up, it just connected. It just all clicked and it really, really helped.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  For me, it started, I'm a cancer doctor. And I was trying to find a way to provide guidance, not only for my patients on how to deal with the mental struggle and the psychological burden of having a cancer diagnosis, but as a physician, caring for these patients, trying to find a way that I could deal with that burden as we experience it, as a physician, as a clinician. That's.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Separate from just the amount of burnout that is throughout healthcare right now. And so I stumbled upon Ego is the Enemy over a decade ago and got hooked. And since then, I've been following Ryan. I've introduced Ryan and his work to my family so they could learn about Stoicism in a way that's digestible, that doesn't have the complexity that philosophy may have in a graduate program, but that you can understand it, really look at how you apply it. Because we're all on this journey. And sometimes that reminder, those daily Stoic messages, both, all of us actually have Ryan's Daily Stoic, and we go through that and helps us kind of keep grounded. It's a great way to start the day.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  My wife follows his podcast. Ruby, you can talk about how Stoicism has impacted your work and your life.

• 19:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, I actually did a PhD in Career Growth Formation and looking at how we kind of wind up where we are in our careers. And I find that Ryan's philosophies, it's really just resonates with, on a day-to-day basis, because I work with counseling and working with students and in sometimes different difficult conversations and kind of going through that. There's so many things I've learned through just his podcasts, through his writings, through his philosophies, to the point where we've actually shared it with the kids and the kids have actually shared it with friends and have just kind of gone through. And it's actually helped with some of the day-to-day life anxieties that kids face and just, it's been one of those things that really grounds us as a family.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  And we're so, feel blessed to be able to come here and to meet him today personally. And this is a birthday gift for him.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this was a birthday gift. And just two days after her high school graduation, I fell down the stairs. I ruptured my quadricep and my tricep. And so I entered the world of Epictetus. And poor Ruby has dealt with me saying, sweetheart, you have to read the Enchurriadion, you have to read the Discourses. And it's been a journey, and this is our first outing since my injury. And what a great way to just stay grounded and hear about Stoicism and how it impacts our life. So I'm just blessed to be here, thankful for that.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  I'm not quite sure how I found Stoicism, but I know that when I found Ryan Holiday, I had found Stoicism. I don't know if I knew anything about it before then, but it piqued my interest. So I looked further into it and I just read Discipline is Destiny. That was my first Ryan Holiday book, and it changed my life. He was so inspiring with all of the stories that he gave us about, it really is dedication to your art. It really is about showing up every day, doing the same thing, doing the boring stuff and never, ever giving up. That thought stopped me from forever thinking that somebody had something special. It was in their DNA.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  They had all the breaks. That's not the case. It truly is about your personal dedication and what you bring to your mission. That is what changes everything.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise and welcome to the stage, Ryan Holiday.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  I committed this summer to do a 50K in Rome, my first ultra marathon. And I will tell you, when I got there, and it was literally the hottest it has ever been in Europe, I had some second thoughts, right? Actually, I run most mornings and just hope that I would roll my ankle on a cobblestone. I was like, just, just give me any excuse to not have to do this. And actually, the crazy thing is, I really didn't have to do it. Like, I had committed to doing it, but not publicly. I could have quit at any moment and no one would have known. I just wouldn't have told you about it. Discipline is what sustains us when we're doing the thing that no one can make us do, right? I think the virtue for the Stoics is not enforced discipline from above.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  It's not discipline if you, you could get shot for not doing it, or if you get thrown in jail for not doing it. It's discipline if you're doing it under your own volition. And I'll tell you, in the middle of the run, I thought many times about quitting also. That's one of the things you learn when you do hard things, is you learn not to trust that impulse. You develop muscles doing hard physical activity, sure, but the most important muscle is that one that allows you to override the part of you that wants to quit, the part of your body that is screaming to quit, right? It's not fun while you're doing it, but you feel invigorated and stimulated when you get out. The very least, you are proud of yourself for doing that thing that you know was uncomfortable

• 23:55Speaker 00

  and difficult. Have a safe drive home. Thank you. Good night. All right, well, that is three gigs in three days. I'm exhausted. I am drenched in sweat and I'm very much ready to go home. I think it was fun, it was enjoyable, I got to reach people, that's all great. We got better at what I do. That's what it's all about. Can you get a little bit better every day? I talked about this in one of the talks about discipline. Discipline is about getting a little bit better each time, learning something each time, putting yourself a little bit out there, a little bit more out there each time. I feel like I did that, and I also got to meet some wonderful people. This kid asked me a question yesterday that almost made me cry.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  It's been a wonderful experience, and now I gotta go home, not stay up too late, and get up very early to catch a flight home to pick up my kids tomorrow. If you want to see me come to a talk, well, you're too late for this one, but you can come see me in Nashville, in Boston in November. You can also see me in DC, in Philly in December. So I'm gonna be all over the world, bringing Stoicism straight to you, and you can grab tickets at DailyStoicLive.com.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work, around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.