Are You Willing To Be Cut Off? | Say No To The Need To Impress

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.

0:14Ryan Holiday: Are you willing to be cut off? They worked hard for it. They took it seriously. They liked it. They didn't want to lose it. Who would? Who would want to lose their position, their identity, their career, or their home? But when Helvidius was threatened with removal from the Senate by the emperor Vespasian, he refused to refrain from his criticism. Rutilius was willing to be exiled. So was Agrippinus. They were not willing to trade their self-respect for maintaining their access. They understood that there were fates worse in life than being cut off. In fact, they would rather be cut off from Rome than cut off from their values.

0:55Ryan Holiday: Courage is not an easy thing. It is not free. It is not without risk or sacrifice. And that's the whole point. If it weren't, there'd be nothing to be afraid of, nothing to fear, nothing for fear to whisper in our ear about. Courage is about triumphing over that doubt. It's fighting to do what's right, to remain consistent with what philosophy demands of us. We are living right now in a world where leaders are not doing this and we are experiencing the consequences. And apparently there is not enough shame in the world to get them to change. But what about us? Where is our bravery? Where will we draw the line?

1:37Ryan Holiday: What will we put on the line? That's what Courage is Calling is about. It's my first book in the Stoic Virtue series. It's got stories about people like Helvidius and Rutilius and Agrippinus, along with a bunch of people maybe whose names you are a tad more familiar with. People who chose exile over compromise, truth over comfort, values over access. And I think sooner or later, life is going to ask us that same question. We're going to have to show who we are with how we answer it. You can grab signed copies of Courage is Calling or any of the books in the Stoic Virtue series. I'll link to that in today's show notes.

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4:07Ryan Holiday: Say no to the need to impress. 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.

4:45Ryan Holiday: 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. 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 Stoke Journal, which you can check out. I do the journal every morning. I sit down and spend some time with the blank pages. We 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.

5:26Ryan Holiday: Be content then to be a philosopher in all that you do. And if you wish also to be seen is one, show yourself first that you are and you will succeed. That's Epictetus's Incaridian 23. 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 Incaridian 33.14. 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.

6:10Ryan Holiday: 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. Early in my life, I kind of wanted that validation. Hey, I did it. Maybe the media, maybe it's good for my brand. And now I see all that stuff as distraction. Even social media, 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 wanna say, hey, look what I'm doing. And then people go, oh, you're so great.

6:41Ryan Holiday: 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 wanna congratulate each other. We wanna encourage each other. And I get that, but that's not why I wanna be a writer. That's not why I wanna do things. As I say in The Boy Who Would Be King, all the things Marcus Aurelius did made him very popular. That's not why he did it. He did it because they're the right thing. So I try not to let social media, I try not to let the chase for validation or approval. It's not a need I really ever try to sate. I don't feed it because I feel like the more you feed it, the more it wants from you.

7:17Ryan Holiday: 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. 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. 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.

7:53Ryan Holiday: I think Instagram did people a public service when they turned off. Not everyone can see how many likes or views their posts got. I think that's great. As a public figure, they leave these tools and they are attempting. And so I don't even have it on my phone. I don't want to touch it. 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.

8:23Ryan Holiday: He says, you know, we care about ourselves more than other people, yet for some reason we care about 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. 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.

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