The Truly Wise Make Time For Leisure | Ask Daily Stoic

Leisure is one of those words that modernity has terribly corrupted and misused. When most people hear it we think of lounging around doing nothing. We think of any activity absent of activity, as an opportunity to completely shut down. And this is a tremendous perversion of a sacred notion.✉️ 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 Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:03Ryan 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. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow.

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  Is it resilience? Or are you just naive? We've talked before about the so-called Stockdale Paradox, the blazing determination inside future Admiral James Stockdale that allowed him to believe that despite his imprisonment and torture, he would not only survive but thrive because of his experience. There's something similar in meditations where Marcus Aurelius reflecting on the plague and the wars and the troubles that beset his reign, actually says to himself, "It's fortunate that this happened to me." The Stoics always believed they could find a way. But it's important to understand where this is coming from lest we confuse resilience with naivete, or worse. In a recent episode of Ramit Sethi's

• 1:32Ryan Holiday?

  wonderful podcast, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, one of the guests explained how his father, despite having to raise his kids in a trailer while making $30,000 a year, inspired his kids to believe that everything was going to be okay, that they'd get through it, that they would find a way. And this is a wonderful and important lesson, except now, as an adult working as a mortgage broker, the man seemed remarkably naive about the potential vulnerability of his industry to the turbulence of the economy. "What if the market turns?" he was asked. "I trust that my company will take care of me," he said. Wasn't he concerned that he had so little in the way of savings or emergency funds? No, he said, "It'll all work out. My company will take care of me."

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  The word for this attitude is not stoic, it's panglossian, a term derived from the novel Candide from Voltaire. Yes, a stoic believes they'll find a way through no matter what happens, but they're also realistic. They try not to depend on things outside their control. When asked who fared worse in the North Vietnamese prison camp, Stockdale singled out one group, the optimists. They were convinced that the army was coming to get them, that the US government would ultimately protect them and bring them home. They were convinced it would happen by a certain date. They were convinced that everything would work out fine. They were convinced it would get resolved soon. We cannot be so naive or excessively optimistic. We cannot be dependent on others.

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  Like the Stoics, we must never expect or hope that someone will come to save us, because ultimately, it's our expectations and our entitlements that crush us.

• 3:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. You send in your questions about Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, about reading, writing, philosophy, ancient history, whatever it is, we kick stuff around. You can send those questions to [email protected]. The more specific your questions, the better. Steve wrote in and he said, "How can I get my wife interested in Stoicism?" Why do you want your wife to be interested in Stoicism? I think that the Stoic quip would be like, focus on yourself, leave other people to their own development. Sometimes I think we can, sometimes I think we want, we project our own needs on other people.

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  Like, there's a Zen saying, like, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I think, like, Stoicism is not an evangelical religion. You're not supposed to convert people. It doesn't need to be this thing you force on other people. It's there for the people that want it, but it's there primarily for you to be interested in improving yourself. So, I could only think about how I got my wife into Stoicism. I remember when we met... I think we met in 2007. I had actually just read Marcus Aurelius. I remember I bought it at Borders. No, I bought it on Amazon. And, and I was reading it and I was talking to her about it.

• 4:39Ryan Holiday?

  And she was so interested from my conversation that she went to Borders and bought a copy. Borders is no longer in business, but we went through the copy a couple of months ago and you can still see like this faded out receipt inside the book. The point was she went and got it because she was interested in it, not because I forced it on her. I don't think this is something you can force on people. And even if you could, I don't think it would work. And, and, and my evidence for this is Seneca, one of the greatest Stoics ever, was assigned to teach Stoicism to Nero and it didn't work out well. We wrote this Daily Stoic email about a famous statue of the two of them. You can kind of see the statue is like Seneca trying to teach Stoicism to Nero.

• 5:22Ryan Holiday?

  And he's just like sort of sitting there like this is Nero and he won't pay attention. And he's, it, to me, the lesson of that statue is like you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. And, and so when I think about how you might teach it to a wife or a friend or a kid, I think it all comes down to the material is there, the wisdom is there. You model it, you can tell them about it, but you can't do anything more than that. And, and ultimately you want to focus on what you control, which is what is the philosophy doing for you?

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  All right, Karen wrote in, she just graduated from college. She's heading out into the world. What's, what sort of advice would I have for someone getting started? And, and is there anything sort of that the Stoics specifically have to say about that? Well, I don't know. I think when I think about my path, obviously, education was important. Obviously, you know, sort of luck and privilege was important. But the big sort of movers in my career were people that I met, that I talked to, that I developed relationships with, that ended up becoming sort of mentors.

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  Or advisors to me. So I, what I would think about is in this sort of, you're a fresh graduate, you're young, you're just getting started. I'd think about like, who, whose work do you admire? Who has done what you are trying to do? And what advice could you reach out and ask of them? So like, the fact that you wrote into this thing is exactly the kind of thing that you use to kickstart a thing. So a mentorship isn't this thing that magically happens, but it's also not like, an official sort of ordained thing. It's something that evolves. So when I think of like, my relationship with Robert Greene, who taught me how to write, who gave me a lot of my big

• 7:16Ryan Holiday?

  breaks as a writer, it was like, that, that started from sort of random email exchanges, and then they built from there. And I took like, a little job working for him, and I did well, and then a bigger job. So like, you don't magically get your dream job. In many cases, you make that job. And so that, you know, the willingness to start small, the willingness to sort of, you know, try things out and reach out without any sort of ulterior motives is, I think, really key to developing the network or the relationships that ultimately, you know, set up where you're trying to go and what you're trying to do.

• 7:51Ryan Holiday?

  So Ben, Ben wrote that he'd, he's laid up with a broken leg. How does he sort of make use of this time? What, you know, sort of stuck, upset, sort of, any thoughts on, on sort of recovery, anything like that? I'm, I'm just writing now, in this book, Lives of the Stoics, there's a, there's a philosopher, Kretes of Malus, M A L L U S, not Malice, although that would be a cool place to be from. He, he was in Rome on a diplomatic mission, and he falls in a sewer grate, and he breaks his leg. He's, I think he's from Rhodes or something. He's not from Rome, but he's in Rome,

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  falls, breaks his leg, and he's laid up for several weeks. And it's been several months, and being laid up for several months, is when he starts giving discourses on Stoic philosophy. The philosophy is sort of so.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  Relevatory and new in Rome that it's a sensation, these pamphlets. This is, this may well be the introduction of Stoicism to Rome. It had been popular in Athens and in Greece, but it had not made its way all the way to Rome. And so it may well be that Stoicism's first introduction to the Roman Empire, which it, the philosophy it's sort of incorporated into the DNA of the empire that changes the course of the world. And history comes from the exact scenario you're in. So I think one of the things the Stoics would think about is like, sure, it sucks. You broke your leg. It probably hurts really bad. I'm sorry that this happened to you. But they'd say like, what good can come of this? How can you use it?

• 9:29Ryan Holiday?

  And I remember in 2011, I quit my job in American Apparel. I moved across the country. I was all set to start writing this first, my first book. I wanted to write a book on media. And I was riding my bike to the gym in New Orleans and the tire got stuck in the street car track. And I went over the handlebars and I landed on my left elbow and I fractured a bone in my elbow. And so it was in a sling for something like six weeks. I couldn't exercise. I couldn't swim. And I had to type with one hand and I was going out of my mind, but I used that time. I went on these long walks because that's how I got my exercise. That's how I got outside. I couldn't do as much writing. I had to do more reading and I had to do more research.

• 10:12Ryan Holiday?

  And I don't think that book would end, would have ended up being the book that it was if it wasn't for that experience. I wanted to rush right into it. I wanted to get it all done, but it forced me to take it slow. It reminded me of, you know, it just, it made me overall a better writer and a better person. I am almost certain that you will look back on this injury as, as being sort of less painful and more meaningful than it feels to you now. But the question would be like, what can you get out of this experience? What can you learn? What can you do? Who can you reconnect with? There's a study that I talk about in, in The Obstacles, the way they did this study on Canadian athletes about.

• 10:55Ryan Holiday?

  How sort of potential career-ending injuries often were the fodder for what they call post-traumatic growth. Even if it didn't make them better, the rehabbing process didn't, they didn't emerge stronger from it. They appreciated the game more, or they appreciated their teammates more, or they understood the power of leadership more, or made them more patient, or made them more grateful. Like, this injury can do that for you if you choose to let it, but that ultimately is up to you. So, that's what I would think. I'm sorry, I hope you feel better soon. Great question, though. Appreciate everyone who wrote in. Talk to you next week. This was awesome. You can send your questions at [email protected]. Follow us @dailystoic pretty much everywhere. Subscribe below on YouTube.

• 11:40Ryan Holiday?

  Leave a comment if you want. And of course, as always, I hope you get the Daily Stoic email that you can check out at dailystoic.com. Thanks.

• 11:55Ryan 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 would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.