It’s Not Extraordinary | No Pain, No Gain

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan 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.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's not extraordinary. How does it happen? How does someone become great? Is it genetics? Is it luck? Is it superhuman dedication and brilliance? Too often, we see impressive results. Books on, bestseller lists, people in peak physical condition, companies selling for millions and millions of dollars. And we assume that the process that led to these results must have been equally extraordinary. And in fact, it often isn't. Success usually happens the same way. Action by action, as Mark Schrelius said. On an episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Bob Bowman, the coach of the 23-time Olympic gold medalist,

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  Michael Phelps, along with many other elite athletes, talked about the simple three-word mantra that captures the essence of those who succeed at the highest levels. Here's what he said.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Just do your work.

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Just get in, do your work. And then it became this thing with the team, because I kept putting on the workouts. And I was like, what do you do when you've never felt better in your life? When you come to Price, do your work.

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  What do you do if you feel terrible and you can't, you're not motivated and you just don't know what to do? Do your work.

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  If you're uncertain, do your work. Just come in every day, do a little something, whatever that is. And that's the meaning of it, is that these incremental, just consistently, mind-numbingly boring, consistent, everyday...

• 2:23Speaker 01

  You know, deposits in your bank account

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  are what makes the big changes later.

• 2:28Ryan Holiday?

  I think this is what the Stoics believed too, that the little things add up to make the big things. This is what Zeno meant when he said that well-being is realized by small steps, but it is truly no small thing. It's what Epictetus meant when he said, "Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, against all other misfortunes." He said, "Select one thing to thoroughly digest each day. One gain per day, one step forward per day. It's not romantic, it's not exciting or extraordinary, but over time, it is transformative." And that's what the new book from me, the final in the Four Virtue series,

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  I have it right here. I've been working on it now for six-plus years. I'm super proud of it. And it's now available for preorder. If you liked Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, or Write Thing Right Now, this is the fourth and final book. We have not just signed and numbered first editions of Wisdom Takes Work, but we also have a special limited edition run of all four books, signed and numbered, just 1,500 of them. I'm just finishing up the signing of those now. We've got a bunch of awesome preorder bonuses for people who preorder any of the books, bonus chapters, signed pages from the manuscript. We're going to do a special Q and A. Plus, you can have dinner with me. If you want to learn about these, grab your numbered, signed first editions. Just go to dailystoic.com/wisdom.

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  I'll link to it all in today's show notes. Grab that four-book series before it runs out. If you're going to want to give some to some friends, grab some more, you can get those manuscript pages. Bunch of awesome stuff. I hope to see you at the Philosopher's Dinner that we're going to do. And I'm really excited for you to grab this book when it comes out in October. But it supports authors in a big way if you preorder them. So if you could do that, I would really appreciate it. dailystoic.com/preorder and grab Wisdom Takes Work and round out the Four Virtue series. Thanks, everyone.

• 4:39Ryan Holiday?

  No pain, no gain. This is today's entry in the daily Stoic. "Difficulties show a person's character," Epictetus tells us in Discourses 124. "So when a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer. Becoming an Olympian, it takes sweat. I think no one has a better challenge than yours, if only you would use it like an athlete would a younger sparring partner." The Stoics loved metaphors from the Olympics, especially wrestling. Like us, they saw sports as both a fun pastime, as well as a training ground to practice for the challenges one will inevitably face in the course of living. As General Douglas MacArthur once said in

• 5:23Ryan Holiday?

  words engraved at the gymnasium at West Point, "Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that upon other fields on other days will bear the fruits of victory." Everyone has found themselves outmatched by an opponent frustrated by some skill or attribute that they have that we don't. Height, speed, vision, whatever. How we choose to respond to that struggle tells us about who we are as athletes and who we will be as people. Do we see it as a chance to learn and get stronger? Do we get frustrated and complain? Or worse, do we call it off and find an easier game to play, one that makes us feel good instead of challenged? The greats don't avoid these tests of their abilities. They

• 6:05Ryan Holiday?

  seek them out because they are not just a measure of greatness, they're the pathways to it. You know, Marcus Aurelius loved to box and to wrestle, hunt. These physical activities, his love of competition and the outdoors, it was cultivating, as MacArthur said, "the seeds that upon other fields and on other days will bear the fruits of victory," or bear Stoicism, or "bear the fruits of virtue," Marcus Aurelius might have said. Sports are... A way to practice, to cultivate, to get after it in a safe space that hopefully you build some virtues that are transferable, right?

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  Even the metaphor here of Epictetus is that you're matched with a strong sparring partner. If you've ever wrestled, if you've ever played against someone who's better than you, you realize, hey, this is making me better. I'm getting my ass kicked, but it's making me better. You seek that out. But how rarely we do that in life. We want things to be easy. We want them to be comfortable. We hate that challenging boss. We hate that rival or that peer, right? We hate the adversity that life is dealing us. We want it to go away. We complain that it happened to us. Now, it's good. It was chosen for you. It was chosen for you by a trainer or a coach that wants to get the best out of you.

• 7:30Ryan Holiday?

  If you can come to think about it that way, if you can come to relish it almost for that reason, you'll be able to use it. You'll be able to grow. Becoming an Olympian takes sweat, Epictetus says. No one has a better challenge than yours, he says, but only if you choose to treat it the way an athlete would treat their sparring partner. Someone to learn from, someone to get stronger from, someone to work out their issues on and with, right? Teammate, collaborator, even though they're also an opponent, even though they're also punching you in the head or dunking on you, literally or figuratively, right? That's why we do this work. Competition makes you better. Resistance makes you stronger.

• 8:15Ryan Holiday?

  You have to understand this metaphor. And there's no better way to understand that metaphor than by literally doing those things on the field. It's cultivating strong body and a strong mind. And that's the message. No pain, no gain. It's good that it's hard. It's good that they're challenging you. It's good that you're getting your ass kicked because you're going to use it and be better so that when the real fight happens, when you're on the other field, as MacArthur said, you can bring your best, can do your best, you can win.

• 8:48Ryan 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.