Would It Really Be Different? | How Do I Know If Ego Is Winning?

People fall prey to the same traps—the ones that have existed since the days of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, indeed for all time. 👉 Listen to Ryan's episode on Matt Heath & Tyler Adams Afternoons https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/matt-heath-tyler-adams-afternoons/audio/ryan-holiday-best-selling-author-and-voice-of-modern-stoicism-on-the-resurgence-of-the-philosophy-live-new-zealand-event/: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/ https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/matt-heath-tyler-adams-afternoons/audio/ryan-holiday-best-selling-author-and-voice-of-modern-stoicism-on-the-resurgence-of-the-philosophy-live-new-zealand-event/ 💡 The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Happy, and Free https://store.dailystoic.com/products/the-wealthy-stoic-a-daily-stoic-guide-to-being-rich-free-and-happy explores how stoic ideas can be applied to personal finance, wealth-building, financial mindset, and how it can help you overcome common financial obstacles and challenges Get The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Happy, and Free https://store.dailystoic.com/products/the-wealthy-stoic-a-daily-stoic-guide-to-being-rich-free-and-happy & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life https://dailystoic.com/life/ 🎟️ 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/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 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.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Would it really be different? If you were in their position, if you had their power, if the decision fell to you, you'd do it right. You would not be such a coward. You would not be so weak. You would not be driven to excess. You would not be selfish. You would do it right. Sitting on the outside, this is all easy to think. But as the lyrics to the song "A Satisfied Mind" go, If I had money, oh, I would do things my way. The problem is that we know how it actually goes. Power corrupts, wealth entitles, success distracts, people make excuses, people fall prey to the same traps, the ones that have existed since the days of Seneca

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  and Marcus Aurelius, and indeed for all time. We must understand that success, as the great Tennessee Williams put it, is a kind of catastrophe. It's something to be looked at suspiciously, something that will screw up your compass. The Stoics believed that we had to train in virtue to prepare for adversity, sure, but also for the fortunate situations in which we get our way. Because this is precisely when we are most tempted and most under strain. All of a sudden, those ideals have a big price tag attached. All of a sudden, there are fewer constraints upon us. And just like in adversity, we will find in these moments that our training is being put to the test. Did we really mean what we said? Are these values really important to us?

• 1:42Ryan Holiday?

  Do we have the strength that Marcus Aurelius did, for instance, to remain good when we don't actually have to be? Can we be different? Or will we, as the song goes, be one of the nine out of 10 who show themselves to have been all talk?

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  By the way, that's something we talk about in our course, The Wealthy Stoic, like how to actually be wealthy, however much money you happen to make. Like, what did the Stoics think about having money? How to spend it? How to think about it? What are some of the habits and practices to help you get it too? I think it's a great course, not always totally understood by some of the people who don't like what we do here at Daily Stoic, but I think they'll like it. And by the way, if you're a Daily Stoic Life member, you get it for free. So, dailystoiclive.com for that, or you can check out The Wealthy Stoic at dailystoic.com/wealthy. And I'll link to it in today's show notes.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Been chugging away on this tour and starting to think about the fall. I'm going to be in Australia, New Zealand, I'm going to be in DC, Boston, I think, but a bunch of places. Anyways, it's far out. It's forever from now. So, on the one hand, I'm not thinking about it. On the other hand, I'm thinking about it because they're having me do some like interviews in these different markets, right? To tell people about it. So, like, I just had to do this, this interview in the evening the other day. Usually I like to do all my stuff earlier in the day, but they were like, no, no, it's a big time zone difference. And I was like, how big? And they were like, New Zealand time zone, very big.

• 3:20Ryan Holiday?

  There was actually a show, a radio show called Matt Heath and Tyler Adams Afternoons. It was on News Talk ZB in New Zealand. And we had a nice little chat about some Stoic themes, and I wanted to bring you a chunk of that for today's episode. If you want to come see me, you can, as I said, a bunch of dates, Minneapolis in August, Chicago in August. We just added Nashville in November, so that'll be fun. All that stuff is at Daily Stoic Live. And if you want to come see me in New Zealand on October 13th, you can do that. I found out Noah Khan is going to be there while I'm there, so we're grabbing tickets to that, so I'm excited. So, you can see that show also.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  Anyways, dailystoiclive.com. Thanks to Matt. Heath and Tyler Adams for having me on the show and hopefully you'll get something out of it too.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  News Talk ZB, bestselling author and one of the most influential voices of modern Stoicism, Ryan Holiday is coming to New Zealand for a one night event at Auckland's Bruce Mason Arena. It's happening on October the 13th. An evening with Ryan Holiday will explore how the ancient philosophy can help navigate pressure, setbacks and uncertainty in the modern world. Tickets are on sale now, go to ticketmaster.co.nz and Ryan Holiday joins us now. A very good afternoon, Ryan.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you too.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Now, we'll start off with with an obvious question. Why do you think Stoicism as a philosophy for life works as well in the modern world as it did in the ancient world?

• 4:50Ryan Holiday?

  Well, you know, unfortunately, the modern world's not that different than the ancient world, you know, it's uncertain, it's crazy, institutions feel like they're falling apart. You know, you've got pandemics and plagues, corruption, dysfunction, tyranny, you know, all the things that we worry about today, they worried about in the ancient world only more so. They also worried about dying from an infected cut on your finger, right? Or or your baby not surviving infancy. And so what they were talking about in the ancient world, how do we deal with the fact that so much of what happens is outside of our control? What kind of framework should guide our behavior, should should should help us navigate how

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  to respond to these things outside of our control? That's what philosophy was, or at least Stoicism as a philosophy was in the ancient world. I think today we tend to think of philosophy as theoretical and abstract, even impractical. But, you know, for Epictetus, who's a slave in the Roman Empire and Mark Schrilles, who's the head of that empire, both are trying to wrestle with.

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  The ins and outs, the everydayness of life and trying to do it well. And that, I think, is why Stoicism lands all these years later.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting that because there are, those are two heavyweight influential Stoics with very, very different paths. You've got Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, as you say, Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, who had all the power in the world, could have indulged in cruelty, but chose, as a lot of emperors did, but chose service and justice over vanity and excess. Or you've got Epictetus, who was at the very other end of Roman society, as you say, a slave crippled by his master, who became, you know, powerful from a position of weakness using Stoicism. So which path is more impressive or admirable in your eyes, Ryan?

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it's interesting to think about which path was more admirable in Marcus Aurelius's eyes. Like Marcus Aurelius is the most powerful man in the world, but the person he's looking up to, the philosopher he quotes more than any others, the person he's trying to base his life on, is basically Epictetus, right? So here you have the most powerful man in the world, looking at this effectively powerless man and going, yeah, but look how he controls himself. Look at, look at his dignity, look at his self-respect, look at his resilience, look at his optimism and perseverance. And so for Marcus Aurelius, he sees Epictetus as the more powerful figure.

• 7:32Ryan Holiday?

  And I think for the Stoics, it was this realization, and I'm sure you've had this too, with some of the people you've interviewed on the show or you've met in your course of life. Actually being successful, being famous, being rich, this is pretty common, right? Like you realize it's actually, there's actually a lot of those people out there. But those who are not slaves to their ambitions, or their tempers, or their emotions, those that are good people, those that have some semblance of self-awareness, that's actually a much rarer thing. And so, you know, I think Marcus Aurelius looking up to Epictetus gives us a sense of just how powerful someone under their own power truly is.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  So linking that into ego, Ryan, and you've written extensively about this ego of the is the enemy in many other books. How do you recognize when ego is getting in the way of good decisions or progress, particularly in a world that seems to reward self-promotion?

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, look, I'd love to say that egotistical people never succeed, but of course they do, right? Like, you look around, actually, many, many, if not most,

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  people who are successful are quite egotistical. But I think anyone that knows them or sees them up close understands how that ego often makes what they do harder, gets in the way of what they're trying to do, or in many cases, leads to their downfall. Like, I've never been dealing with a problem or some situation, or, you know, a team that's not coming together and thought like, bigger egos would solve this, right? It's always the opposite, right? Ego is the thing that's getting between us and what we're trying to accomplish. And so, you know, I sometimes liken it to how, like, a lot of musicians might have a drug problem or a drinking problem. That isn't what's fueling the creativity. It's actually a drag on the creativity. They're just so talented and inspired or brilliant

• 9:27Ryan Holiday?

  that they're able to compensate for it for a time. And so, I just tend to be suspicious when any of that kind of ego creeps in. I go, this isn't helping me do what I'm trying to do. If anything, it's going to make it harder.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Well, talking about, you know, how hard things can be, it's hard to argue with the logic of stoicism. But it can be hard to implement it in real life. For example, to paraphrase, you know, a message that I've read that you've written before, if someone insults you and what they're saying is not true, you can ignore it because it's nonsense. If it is true, you can thank them for the knowledge about yourself. But in the day to day, we still get angry with people when they insult us. So how do you get that clear stoic logic working in real time for you?

• 10:20Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, what Epictetus said we should say whenever someone insults us is, if they really knew me, they would say something much worse. I'm sure we got off easy with whatever they... If they could read our darkest thoughts or see our darkest secrets, they'd have picked an even juicier target. So, look, obviously, that's funny. It's easy to say, you know, just shrug this off, don't take it personally. Or, you know, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. It's all well and good, it's just hard to put into practice. And that is the point, stoicism is a practice. So, you know, I try to remind myself, for instance, when I see something nasty about me on the internet, I go,

• 11:05Ryan Holiday?

  do most people feel this way? No, right? Is this one person out of a hundred? Oh, that's pretty good, you know, that's actually a pretty good ratio. Like, the idea that I was gonna reach the audience that I've reached, or that I would put anything out in the world and it would receive a hundred percent endorsement and approval, that it would be for everyone. I mean, that's just like naive and downright entitled. And so I do try to remind myself that, like, look, nobody escapes unscathed, like that a certain amount of people are gonna dislike you, certain amount of people are gonna be jerks, certain amount of people are gonna be rude, certain amount of things are gonna be said that, you know, could have been said differently, but they weren't.

• 11:48Ryan Holiday?

  And you just try to say to yourself, you sort of pause and you say to yourself, hey, this is par for the course, this was, why is this surprising to me? And I do think that takes some of the sting out of it.