What Would Less Look Like? | Say No to the Need to Impress

“This has not been fun. It’s been brutal. But it has been, at least, an exercise in that question that the Stoic aficionado Tim Ferriss is a fan of: What would less look like? Less flights. Less dinners out. Less meetings. Less income. Less time with friends.”Ryan explains why you must focus on what is essential, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Literati Kids, a subscription book club that sends 5 beautiful children’s books to your door each month, handpicked by experts. Literati Kids has book clubs for children ages 0 to 12, and each club has age-appropriate selections tailored to what your child needs. Every Literati Kids book in your child’s box is hand-picked by experts and guaranteed to spark their curiosity, intellect, and spirit of discovery. Go to literati.com/stoic to get 25% off your first two orders and receive 5 incredible kids books, curated by experts, delivered to your door every month.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

  What would less look like? This has not been fun, it's been brutal. But it has been, at least, an exercise in that question that the Stoic aficionado Tim Ferriss is a fan of. What would less look like? Less flights, less dinners out, less meetings, less income, less time with friends. Some of that has been easier to bear than others. Some of it has been sad and lonely, other parts of it have been downright liberating. But the thing about less, why we ask Marcus Aurelius's version of the question, "Is this essential?", is that less often reveals what more looks like. Because as tough as the last few months have been, it's also meant more sunsets from the back porch, more dinners at home,

• 1:16Ryan Holiday?

  more appreciation for the people and things that matter, more understanding of the urgency of memento mori. That's what Marcus was saying, what Tim was trying to get us to see. When we do less, we get a double benefit. We cut out what is inessential, and we do what is essential much, much better. There is not a lot of redeeming qualities to a pandemic, but we should at least try to take this lesson from it. We are being taught what less looks like. We are being taught that less can actually be more.

• 1:50Ryan Holiday?

  Say no to the need to impress.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  If the desire to impress and be liked by others is innate to humans as a species, then every generation born before social media got lucky. Today, we face an unending stream of status updates demanding to be filled with all the impressive things we are doing, the trials we are overcoming, announcements of our dangers averted, and triumphs realized. It's exhausting. Centuries ago, Epictetus saw this pride and narcissism even in his own computerless students and reminded them that it wasn't so innocent. In fact, he told them that it would destroy their life's purpose. It would distract and fatigue them. Seneca too saw the seeking of approval of spectators as one of life's disgraces. Watch those impulses today.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  Notice how much you seem to need your phone and status updates and ask, "Is this the person I want to be? Is this what a philosopher would do?" And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, which you can check out. I do the journal every morning. I sit down and spend some time with the blank pages. We've got two Epictetus quotes and one Seneca quote to round it out. "If you should ever turn your will to things outside your control in order to impress someone, be sure that you have wrecked your whole purpose in life. Be content then to be a philosopher in all that you do. And if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself first that you are, and you will succeed." That's Epictetus's Incoridion 23.

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  "In public, avoid talking often in excessively about your own accomplishments and dangers. For however much you enjoy recounting your dangers, it is not pleasant for others to hear about your affairs." Epictetus's Incoridion 3314. "How disgraceful is the lawyer whose dying breath passes well at court at an advanced age, pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators." Seneca on the brevity of life, 20. You know, I think about this, I have a little rule for me. When I'm working on a book, I don't talk about it. I don't tell people that I've finished. I don't tell people that I just finished chapter two. I don't, I don't tell people that I just signed a deal.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, on my last book deal, I didn't even announce it. I could have gotten a little press. And early in my life, I kind of wanted that validation. Hey, I did it. Maybe media, maybe it's good for my brand. Now I see all that stuff as distraction. Even social media, if you, if you follow me, I'm at Ryan Holiday on Twitter and Facebook and I guess, yeah, on Instagram and at Daily Stoic also. But you'll notice there's almost no real time updates for me. I, I never really got the habit, but when I feel it peaking up, I break it immediately. These are not platforms for me to fish for validation. I don't want to say, hey, look what I'm doing. And then people go, oh, you're so great. Oh, you're so awesome. And I'm not saying they do that because I'm like well known. I'm saying like, your friends do this. We want to congratulate each other.

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  We want to encourage each other. And I get that, but that's not why I want to be a writer. That's not why I want to do things. As I say in The Boy Who Would Be King, all the things Marcus Aurelius did made him very popular. It's not why he did it. He did it because they're the right thing. So I, I try not to let social media. I try not to let the chase for validation or approval. I try, I just, it's not a need I really ever try to sate. I don't feed it because I, I feel like the more you feed it, the more it wants from you. So I try to focus on just not talk, I try to let my work do the talking about my work. That's not to say I don't believe in marketing. I do, brand is important. I mean, I have the social media.

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  I just try to have a healthy relationship with it, a healthy balance with it. So I'm using it, it is not using me. And look, Twitter and Facebook and Clubhouse and all these apps. You're the product that's being sold. They're exploiting your need for validation and attention. Right? They know that you want to tell people what you're doing and then you want to hear what people say about what you're doing and then you want to respond to the people who aren't liking it enough and then you want to check back and see how many comments it got or likes it got or whatever. There's a reason Instagram, I think Instagram did people a public service when they turned off, you know, some of the, not everyone can see how many likes or, you know, views their post got. I think that's great. As a public figure, they leave these tools and they are tempting.

• 6:18Ryan Holiday?

  And so I don't even have it on my phone. I don't want to touch it. Every time I, I never go to one of these sites and I feel better about myself as a person. I just feel that that insatiable need has been encouraged a little bit. So let's say no to trying to impress other people. Let's not care what other people think. As Marcus Aurelius said, this is another quote we could have included in the entry. He says, you know, "We care about ourselves more than other people, yet for some reason we care about their, their opinions way too much." No, focus on what you have to do. Focus on you. Focus on what you think, what you know is right. Do things for that reason. If you get validation for it afterwards, wonderful, but that can't be why you do it. And if it is why you do it, it's going to break your heart, I promise you.

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  So say no to the desire to impress other people. Plus, other people, man, they don't know. They're wrong 99% of the time anyway. Focus on what you know. Just do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The, the reviews make a difference and of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So 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. I'll see you next episode.