Pod Insights The Daily Stoic | Wondery+ It’s Not A Bad Experience | Living Like A Stoic For 30 Days About this episode A night spent at the airport. A prison sentence. A two week bout with COVID. The crazy rush of the busiest season of the year for your business. We know we’re in for it. We dread it. We curse our fate. Actually, we should take a page from the great performance artist Marina Abramović, which she shares in her incredible book Walk Through Walls: A Memoir. She was known for her artistic feats of strength—whether it was days in a chair staring at strangers or inviting her audience to use 72 objects on her in any manner they please. In the middle of a project that would test both her and her partner Ulay emotionally and physically, Abramović once encouraged him, “we are not having a good or bad experience. We are having an experience in a period of 16 days. Whatever comes—good or bad—we are in it.”✉️ 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.
Transcript 0:02 Speaker 00 Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.
0:31 Speaker 00 It's not a bad experience.
0:36 Speaker 00 A night spent at the airport, a prison sentence, the crazy rush of the busiest season of the year in your business's history. We know we're in for it, we dread it, we curse our fate. Actually, we should take a page from the great performance artist Marina Abramovi, which she shares in her incredible book, Walk Through Walls, a memoir. She was known for her artistic feats of strength, whether it was days in a chair staring at strangers or inviting her audience to use 72 objects on her in any manner they please. In the middle of a project that would test her and her partner Ule, both emotionally and physically, she once encouraged him, "Ule, we are not having a good or bad experience. We are having an experience in a period of 16 days.
1:21 Speaker 00 Whatever comes, good or bad, we are in it." This is exactly what the Stoics meant when they said that events were objective, but our opinions about them were not. Marcus's reign of 19 years or Seneca's eight years of exile were not good or bad, they just were. Same goes for Epictetus's time in slavery or Stockdale's time in the Hanoi Hilton or Seneca's time recovering from tuberculosis. They didn't have time for nor see any need for labels. It was all they could do to focus on what was in front of them. It wasn't their job to put opinions on things. It was their job to get through them, to do their best to be virtuous inside them, to make something of them. And so it goes for you
2:04 Speaker 00 and whatever interminable period lays before you. It's not good or bad, it is an experience. What will you make of it? Will you be in it? That's what counts. That's what matters. That's what you control.
2:20 Speaker 00 That's my Amor Fati coin, which we've talked about before. But to me, that's what Amor Fati is. Yeah, it's not good or bad, but you can choose actually to see it as good. You can embrace it. You can be in it. You can make something of it, not merely to bear it, as Nietzsche said, but to love it. And I love this little coin. I carry it with me everywhere. You can check that out at store.dailystoic.com.
2:50 Speaker 00 Hey, this is Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, with my books, I try not to talk too much about myself. I talk more about these ancient ideas. I just don't want it to be like, well, let me tell you about the problem I was having on Tuesday and why that can teach you a Stoic lesson. I try to make it about something deeper, something bigger, something more relatable than myself. But I do, I do try to live by these ideas and I try to live by them in the busyness of my life, which is busy because I've got two young kids. It's busy because I travel for work. It's busy because I run this bookstore. It's busy because I have this podcast and all this other stuff. And it's busy because it's a busy, crazy world out there. But in today's episode, I wanted to take you behind the scenes of my life over a month period.
3:35 Speaker 00 This was recorded and shot and edited back in April, but this is a month of my life. I was traveling for some talks. I was, took my family on vacation. I lost someone that I loved. It was a busy April to say the least, and Stoicism was there for me, guiding me, helping me. I tried to live up to it. I didn't always get there, but that's the journey that we're all on. But in today's episode, I wanted to walk you through a month of my life as I try to live up to this philosophy. Maybe you'll find it interesting. Maybe you will find it relatable, but hopefully you'll find some takeaways. But I'll give you this, living like a Stoic as best I can. Let's put that in parentheses, as best I can, for 30 days.
4:21 Speaker 00 The beginning and the end of the month were defined by two different kinds of writing. It started for me with putting the final touches on my next book. Now comes the most excruciating part of finalizing a book, which is I have the copy edited manuscript back of Discipline is Destiny. I've got till the end of the month to turn back what are invariably minor repetitive mistakes or issues or you just have to go over and over and over again. But the little things matter. Now I have to deal with about 250 pages of them. And I don't have that much time to do it, so I'm just gonna get to work. I'm gonna rip the Band-Aid off and just get after it. Right now, I'm working on a four book series on the cardinal virtues.
5:06 Speaker 00 Just finished last year my book on courage. I'm now doing this one on temperance or moderation. And I finished that book up and I got the draft in, which is always a stressful, difficult thing. You know, there's always this moment of anticipation, are they gonna like it? You also can't let perfection be the enemy of good enough. I had to get this book in. So I got it in at the beginning of the month. Then it goes to the publisher. They're designing it, laying it out. And I didn't get to see it until the end of the month. And that was now then a mad sprint to approve these print pages. It was an awesome surprise. I came home one day and there was the book at my driveway. In the midst of that writing, there is the daily writing practice that I have. So I'm always writing the daily Stoic emails, the daily dad emails, articles. I'm always writing.
5:50 Speaker 00 To me, I wanna stay at my fighting weight. There's this great quote, "If you're only writing when you're inspired, you're an amateur," and say, "inspiration is for amateurs, professionals get to work." That's what I do. I show up every day and I do some writing. Stoicism is of course not just something I write about, but it's something I'm lucky enough to talk about. So I got an invitation to come address the Ole Miss football team. Lane Kiffin, the football coach, has been a big fan and booster of my works over the years. He read Ego is the Enemy at one of the lower points in his career. And it's he sort of credits it with with helping him get back to where he is, which today is the head football coach at Ole Miss, which is having an incredible run. The program's had a historic season in a bunch of ways. And he was nice enough to ask me to come talk today. So I'm here in Oxford, Mississippi. I just went for a long run to see the campus.
6:35 Speaker 00 I wanted to see some of the civil rights markers. I wanted to see the Walk of Champions.
6:58 Speaker 00 Every second, every minute, every ounce of energy that we focus on whether something is fair or not, whether we like something or not, whose fault something is, how we wish it was otherwise, right? All of that is taking resources and energy away from what we do about it, how we respond. And then I had a really cool meeting with Lane Kiffin afterwards. We sat down and talked about how to apply these ideas. He's a big fan of ego is the enemy. We talked about how ego makes its way through professional sports. It was really great to talk about these philosophical ideas. It was an awesome program. Then I came home and I was actually doing my own athletic things. 10,000 has been a cool sponsor and booster. I usually wear their clothes almost every day.
7:39 Speaker 00 They had me do a photo shoot, so I had to do a run downtown here along the river. So I was recording some stuff for them. And then the next thing, I was only home a couple of days and I had to hop back on a plane and fly to Annapolis, Maryland where I was speaking at the Naval Academy. I'm in Annapolis, Maryland. I'm about to give a talk to 1,000 freshmen at the US Naval Academy. So I'm hoping to bring Epictetus and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius to all the midshipmen and women here at the US Naval Academy. My mentor, the great writer, Robert Greene, he says that teenagers, but I think this is true for all of us, we strike a somewhat paradoxical pose. We're lackadaisical and rebellious. He says it's a way of staying in place because if we try hard, if we do our best, if we
8:24 Speaker 00 put ourselves all the way out there, it brings an increased risk of failure. And then when we fail, right, it says something about us. Again, I said I probably traveled more than I'd like to travel this month. I tried to protect my schedule, but I had a really crazy week in the month where I had to fly up to Chicago to give a talk and I spoke in this big church.
8:48 Speaker 00 This is my green room in Chicago. You can see this is the live feed of what's going on on stage.
8:58 Speaker 00 And now I'm gonna call my wife and kids, talk to them before I go on. To me, happiness is simpler and more in our control than perhaps we're led to believe. I only had 30 minutes and then a quick interview. So that was a kind of an in and out talk. I was gone for like basically less than 24 hours. I'm home, we have like a day and a half of our normal routine. And then I had a late flight from Austin to Miami where I gave a talk to Honeywell. Well, it's midnight and I have now arrived in Boca Raton, Florida. My daily routine, as I was telling you, is I get up early, I go for a run. I actually have to report for the talk at 8:20.
9:39 Speaker 00 So I have to get up pretty early, so I'm just gonna crash, go to sleep and get after it in the morning. There are definitely worse places to be in the morning than a beach in Florida at 6 a.m. I'm gonna go for a run, I'm prepping for my talk, trying to be present for it, trying to appreciate it, trying to soak it in.
10:05 Speaker 00 It's 7 a.m. in Florida, I already ran five miles on the beach. I prep for my talk and then I'm going on stage in about 20 minutes for about 700 people. To me, the morning routine is so essential, right? You wake up early, you get a win right there, then you go do something, you get active, you get outside, second win. And then you go do whatever the hard thing you have to do for the day is. So for me, that's the talk, then I'm gonna go back to my hotel room, I'm gonna do a little writing. And then that's the day, I've already won. Everything else from there is extra. As they say, well begun is half done. Start the day off right, everything from there is a bonus. It's a glamorous life, I'm scarfing down some food at Palm Beach Airport before I get on a plane again.
10:46 Speaker 00 Now to fly up to New York and I'm gonna talk at a dinner in New York. And then I fly out very early the next morning in New York, so water. Possible sandwich from Starbucks. Then I'm gonna try to get some reading done on the plane. Then I flew from Palm Beach to New York City. And then I gave a talk to a hedge fund there in New York City. It was a much smaller group, kind of like weirdly in this restaurant. But it was much more intimate, lots of great questions. It's cool to talk there. One of the things I do when I'm traveling is I always try to send a letter to a letter or a postcard to my kids and to my wife. So I drop those in the mail. Then I was home and, you know, life is life and a fact of life is death.
11:27 Speaker 00 I got a call from my mom that my grandmother, who was 85, had taken a turn for the worse. Now, we drove out to see her last year during the pandemic. What we knew was probably gonna be the last time that we saw her. And my kids got to see her and it was really awesome. And we, you know, we connected and it was wonderful to be together. But I knew it probably didn't have that much longer. And had a conversation with her on the phone. And then she died later the next morning, which was, which was really sad and devastating. And, you know, someone I miss a lot. My grandmother is an immigrant. She came to the United States at 18s, early 20s, refugee, didn't speak the, the language. She eventually met my grandfather, also a refugee from Europe. They built a life together. He was a German teacher.
12:12 Speaker 00 She was a stay at home mom. She raised four daughters until she went back to work in her 40s, I think. She was a saleswoman at JCPenney. It was like an American success story in a lot of ways. She lived a, a long, difficult, but not unrewarding life. And the end of that story for all of us is, is, is death. Tragically, but just also a fact of existence. We all were born and we know that we will die. But this is why the Stoics remind us of memento mori. I have my memento mori practice. Life is short. You can't take it for granted. You can't take time for granted. One of the things I did do, and I do this every time I lose someone that I care about, is I read, I reread Seneca. Seneca writes these two brilliant essays called Consolations, one to his mother, one to the daughter of a friend.
12:56 Speaker 00 And I was rereading the Seneca's consolation to his mother, who was grieving the loss, not just of a grandchild at this time, but Seneca himself, who'd just been exiled. She's sort of working through it. And Seneca says, what does Stoicism offer? And he says, Stoicism offers counsel. It offers counsel, something to lean on in precisely these moments when we've lost someone.
13:21 Speaker 00 One of the things my wife and I try to do on Fridays or Saturdays is get some time either alone or with the kids where we're just outside with each other. We're not running around, we're not crazy. We love to eat at this place near the bookstore here called Storehouse. We had a couple beautiful dinners throughout the month. We just try to connect. It's beautiful here, you can watch the sun setting over the Colorado River. You just experience the beauty of life. And these sort of ordinary meals are, I think, a wonderful place to have philosophical discussions. Which I also had, Manu Ginobili came out to the Painted Porch. We sat down, had a nice philosophical breakfast here at the Painted Porch. That was cool. One of the things I was really looking forward to this month, I've been there before, but my kids really wanted to go.
14:05 Speaker 00 And I, after spending so much time writing this book, I wanted to make sure we had some extra time together. And so we drove out to Big Bend National Park, which is the only national park here in Texas. We're off to Big Bend this morning. We're taking the family and the camper. Basically, our routine there was, instead of the walk at the farm, we took these awesome hikes in the morning before it got too hot. So we hiked Santa Elena Canyon, we walked the closed canyon, we went down to the hot springs. It was just beautiful. Then we would come home to the camper, and it's a reminder, I mean, like, look, when I travel for these talks, sometimes they're very well paid. Sometimes they put me up in super nice fancy hotels, sometimes they fly me first class. And it was like to spend time with my family in a camping spot that costs $30 in the middle of the desert.
14:49 Speaker 00 And to know that what my kids really care about is not just nature, but the fact that there's a swimming pool. We're just having fun together.
15:20 Speaker 00 And then, right at the end of the month, you know, I was a little too busy. I didn't, I knew it was coming, but it kind of snuck up on me. This is my absolute favorite time of year because where we live in central Texas, out in the country, it's wild blackberry season, or dewberries, brambleberries, I call them a million things. But all along the road and all along some of the back pasture where we live, it's just delicious wild blackberries just come up from nowhere. And I love picking them with my kids, I love putting them in cereal, I love what my wife bakes with them. I love just the satisfaction, the pleasure of like disconnecting from work and trying to see who can get the most in the shortest amount of time. And of course, what would a month be without reading?
16:04 Speaker 00 My friend Christo, my former research assistant who I mentioned earlier, recommended this book on justice because he knows the next book in the four book series I'm working on is about justice and there's a lot of stuff. So when I read, I've shown my methodology before, but I take a lot of notes, I fold pages. So this one is really good, I got some stories you'll probably see in a future book. I keep a copy of Meditations on my bedside, so I went through that. One of the books I read every morning is Tolstoy's The Calendar of Wisdom. I love daily reads. Robert Greene's The Daily Laws is another one I recommend that I spent some time with this month. I told you that every time I lose someone that I care about, or I have to recommend a book to someone who's going through that, I do Seneca's On the Shortness of Life. I do read novels, people think I only read nonfiction, but my wife recommended Sorrow
16:49 Speaker 00 and Bliss, which is this beautiful novel about depression, surprisingly funny. I read this while I was traveling, I liked that. I read Susan Cain's new book, I love her book, Quiet, about introverts, as an introvert myself. Her new book, Bittersweet, about sort of the melancholy side of life. Because I was speaking at the Naval Academy, I was very excited that Admiral Stavridis sent me a galley of his new book about Navy admirals and captains who took huge risks. There's a lot of great stories in here, and I read this on my way to the Naval Academy. While I was in Big Bend, I read this new book from Steve Rinella about how to raise outdoor kids in an inside world. Obviously, I'm bookish, obviously, I spend a lot of time in front of screens, but I also live in the country, I also love the outdoors.
17:33 Speaker 00 And how do you raise a kid?
17:37 Speaker 00 That appreciates that and understands the beauty of the outdoors. Anyways, this is a great book. I really liked it. I interviewed him for the podcast, as I was saying. I read the mayor of Castro Street biography of Harvey Milk. You think of Stoics as apathetic or passive, accepting the status quo. In fact, they change things. They make the world better. So as I'm starting to think and research for the next book in the series about justice, I'm looking for people who were pioneers, who made changes, who brought new awareness to things. And this biography was fascinating. Some stuff to do, some stuff not to do, but overall, great book. Glad I read it. And then this one was highly recommended to me. It's about Gandhi, but not Gandhi in India. I'm reading that one next. But this is Gandhi, the activist in South Africa.
18:18 Speaker 00 He went to school in London, then immigrated to the colony of South Africa, where he suddenly faced all this obscene and eerily similar to what would later happen in America, sort of Jim Crow-esque laws. So I don't know, this is probably two, 3,000 pages worth of books. But when you treat reading like a job and you take it seriously, you can get a lot done. And in a normal month, I'm at home more, so it's actually harder for me to read because I was traveling so much time in airplanes. I try not to watch TV or movies. I try not to space out. I don't eat. I just sit and I read on the airplane. I get a lot done. And this is a great reading for me. When I think of the main lessons of this month, I think there's a couple.
18:59 Speaker 00 A big one is, of course, it's easy to overcommit and be too busy. Right? When I look at the calendar and when I was starting to get stressed, my wife and I laid the calendar down and we wrote everything out that we had to do for the month. And it was too much. It's a calibration as the world kind of adjusts and we embrace like whatever this phase of the pandemic is. I agreed to more than I wanted. And so I emailed my speaking agency and I said, this is as busy as I would ever want to be. This is the line. Can't go past it. So that's important from a like work-life balance standpoint, but also professionally, by drawing the line, by creating scarcity, here's what I'm willing to do, here's what I'm not willing to do, here's how many slots there are. You also increase value. So saying no, to me, is the big lesson. Memento mori, that life is short, you can't take people for granted.
19:44 Speaker 00 You have to be with them while you can be with them. And this is something I remind myself of every night when I tuck my kids into bed. I'm not rushing through this. I'm not rushing to try to get them to sleep. I'm not saying, no, I'm not going to read you one more book. Because what am I rushing towards? Netflix, you know, email? None of that stuff matters. But I'm also rushing. Away from one of however many nights I get with my kids. I'm rushing away from them as three-year-olds and five-year-olds. I'm rushing away from this moment. And I don't want to do that. I want to be in this moment. Presence to me is an important lesson and you just have to practice it. And actually, it's funny, one of the things we rolled out for Daily Stoic this month is this memento mori calendar.
20:28 Speaker 00 This, your life is made up of roughly 4,000 weeks. This month was, you know, four weeks. How did I spend those four weeks? Did I live those four weeks? Seneca says, "Death isn't something in the future. Death is happening now." Yes, my grandmother died now, but she died slowly over 85 years. She actually exceeded the 4,000 weeks on the chart, which is great. That's wonderful. But what do you have to show for those weeks? And she had a wonderful life. But, you know, if I was just on autopilot this month, or today, or this minute, I'm rejecting that gift. I'm not being present. I'm taking life for granted. And then, you know, I have tattooed on my wrist here, and I talked about it in a couple of the different talks I gave. But when I think of all the moments that I'm happiest, that I did my best work,
21:13 Speaker 00 you know, I wasn't doing 50 things at one time. I was connected. I was present. I tuned things out. The Stoics talk about ataraxia, right? Not being disturbed by internal or external forces. But I think the idea is like, you don't control what's happening in the world. You don't control necessarily how busy your month is, or all the things that could go wrong. So you have to find a way to be still and content and focused in the midst of that. There's a letter from Seneca where he's in Rome trying to write, and there's crazy noises going on, and someone's getting arrested, and, you know, the room's too hot. You have to be able to tune all that out and focus. Especially as a writer in this digital world where there's alerts and interruptions and... Can you focus amidst the cra...
21:55 Speaker 00 Can you be still as the world is spinning faster and faster around you? Because if you can't, not only are you not going to perform at a good level, but you're going to miss all the wonderful moments. You're going to miss the sunset. You're going to miss the dinner with people that you care about. You're going to miss the sweetness of that bedtime. You're going to miss all the little things that Marcus Aurelius observes. You know, grains of wheat bending under their own weight, or, you know, the furrow of an animal's brow, or the way that bread splits open. You're going to miss the ordinary extraordinariness of life.
22:25 Speaker 00 And so when I think about this month, I think about the time that I spent with my kids. I think about the progress that I made on my book. I think about the runs that I took on the beach. And all of that, to me, made it a wonderful month. I hope you like this video. I hope you subscribe. But what I really want you to subscribe to is our Daily Stoic email. One bit of Stoic wisdom, totally for free to the largest community of Stoics ever in existence. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/email. There's no spam. You can unsubscribe at any time. I love sending it. I've sent it every day for the last six years. And I hope to see you there at dailystoic.com/email.
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