BONUS: Finding Stillness Amidst The Chaos | Ryan and Samantha Holiday

0:02Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

0:29Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a bonus episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. So the Stoics have this word ataraxia, which basically means a freedom from disturbances. I translate this as stillness. That's a word you see in both the Eastern and the Western philosophies. Like how do you slow things down when they're going really, really fast? And this is hard to do in any time. It was hard to do in the ancient world. Seneca talks about trying to concentrate when there's noise on the street below. So Blaise Pascal talked about how all humanity's problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

1:09And, you know, that was before social media and the crazy news cycle. Stillness has always been difficult for me. And then you have kids and then your life is crazy. And then you have these people to worry about who are running around, as they say, with your heart in their body. And so you're worried, you're stressed, you're exhausted. Stillness is really tough. And then it's tough when you're running a business or you're trying to make your marriage work. There's just so many things that can make stillness tough. And so in today's episode, we're going to talk about that. But this is kind of a special episode.

1:45So I don't know if you know this, but I have another podcast and another daily sort of meditation thing. We have the Daily Dad. And so there's the Daily Dad email that goes out every day. Then there's the podcast version of it. So if you listen to Daily Stoic, which clearly you do at least occasionally, you wouldn't be listening to this episode. You can also go over and subscribe to the Daily Dad podcast and get this sort of wisdom inspired parenting lesson every day. And then on the weekends, we do like a sort of a deeper dive episode. And my favorite episodes are ones where my wife, Samantha, and I sit down and just sort of talk about what we're thinking about and working on as parents.

2:21It's how we're trying or maybe struggling is a better word to put these ideas into practice in our own lives with our two wonderful slash insane boys, eight and five. And often we sit down in the Daily Stokes studio. But this episode was Claire, our producer's idea. I gave a talk in Vancouver and someone had asked me, like, how do I get stillness as a parent or how do I have stillness in the midst of my busy life? and so she took my answer there and then had my wife, Samantha, sit down and ask how she thinks about it and then she put them together in this kind of interesting way and that's kind of what we do on these Saturday episodes of The Daily Dad is just come up with creative ways to just sort of drill down on some parenting stuff.

3:07So I'd love for you to subscribe to The Daily Dad podcast. You can obviously check out The Daily Dad book. We've got the new leather edition which you can grab at store.dailydad.com although it might be in The Daily Stokes store. also and wishing you the best out there if you've got kids because it is crazy and stillness feels more elusive than ever but hopefully some of the ideas discussed here will be of service to you

3:35thanks to toyota trucks for sponsoring this episode when i bought my ranch in 2015 out here in basco county i drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

4:21We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory.

5:02Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Saturday episode of the Daily Dad Podcast. Back in May, I went up to Vancouver, Canada for this mastermind that I was talking to. It was called the Elevate Collective. At the end, someone asked me a parenting question that they said that they would really like to ask my wife, Samantha, also. So what I did was I answered it there on the spot, and then we had Sam answer that same question as well. So you'll get my answer and Sam's answer. Thanks to Samantha for humoring me on this little Q &A. And thanks to the folks at Elevate Collective for having me out.

5:45I thought it was really cool.

5:50I actually have a question for like real life, how you deal as a parent. And I would actually love to ask your wife this as well. So I have four kids and I run two businesses. And I wrote in my notebook, like, how do I achieve stillness in my business? Because I feel that as soon as I have a task in front of me, there's a mom, mom, mom, mom, or there's a fire or there's another thing or there's, there's always, there's always so much chaos. I find it really difficult as a mother, as a business owner to just like breathe and be like, okay, I can get this task done and move on. And, you know, you were mentioning quiet time.

6:33Yeah. How do you wake up and your kids don't wake up with you? So like, I just have so many questions about the actual everyday life. Yeah. I think, of course, it's easy to have routines and structure. And then you invite these people to live in your house and they blow it all up. I have gotten. They just like came on their own. I've gone from a place of having like a routine to a series of practices that I move around based on, did somebody wake up sick today? Do we wake up at our normal time? Or do we wake up two hours before our normal time? Or do we wake up an hour after our normal time? So I do think the idea of flexibility is really the key here.

7:16And sometimes you can get to, I think when some some people they're like this is what i do every day i go i either don't believe it or it's at the expense of neglecting a bunch of other responsibilities so i i try to be really flexible about it like i would love to do it in this order but i understand that the way it's going to happen today it's going to be in this order as a result of a bunch of other people making decisions but one of the things i've tried to think a lot about in my business and my life is like, what are the things that only I can do? Like, what are the things that are most dependent on me?

7:50And in my case, it's, as I have a sort of content and media business, it's mostly about me having the creative ideas, the doing the writing or coming up with the things that I want to talk about in all the other mediums. Everything else can effectively be done by someone else. And so I have to be really disciplined about what I'm willing to do and then what I don't do, even though I might be better at things than other people in the business. I have to think about the main things that I have to protect because if I don't do them, they don't get done. And I think a lot of times, especially if you don't have like a sort of a big corporate entity, like a very hierarchical structure, the cost of your success is that you're not doing the things that you're best at that only you can do.

8:37And that's really hard. I've also tried as I've tried to integrate my personal and business life, I just noticed it's interesting how this might be a little controversial, but I see people doing a lot of things that could easily pay someone else to do. And then it's weird to me how like outsourcing childcare or time with our kids is something we do first. And then you'll like talk to someone who like changes the oil on their car. You know what I mean? Like to me, the things that only I can do are writing and thinking and like only I can spend time with my kids as me. Does that make sense? So like those are my big priorities.

9:17And then I try to be really ruthless about what I'm outsourcing or having other people do. Does that make sense? People will hire childcare before they'll hire an assistant or another employee or someone to take a task off their plate that is actually much less important than this thing that they say is the reason they're doing all of it to begin with. Do you know what I mean? I don't know. That's just a thought.

9:48I find it really interesting that when somebody says, I'm a mother of four kids and run a business, Like, how do you find stillness? Ryan's response to this is how do I make more time? How do I like create time to have the stillness? And my response to that is the time does not exist. Like it is, there's always so much to do that if I try to think that I have to carve out time in my life for stillness to have room, then it's not going to happen. Like it has to be an internal mindset for me. And so I'm like, I find that if I'm far away from creating that space, that's when I fall into like a routine of like revenge bedtime where I'm like intentionally staying up really late so I can have peace.

10:37What's revenge bedtime? Revenge bedtime is like intentionally not going, not, oh, maybe not consciously, but intentionally not going to sleep after everyone else is asleep to like have time to yourself. So for me, that's like, I have very productive time after the house is really quiet because there's nobody impeding on my thoughts. And I'm like, okay, if that's what's happening after when the house is quiet, that means that that my brain is loud. I need to be able to create that during the day. And the other way I know that I need to figure out, I need to like reach back to that part is when I'm like pulling up to the house and not getting out of the car.

11:19Yeah. Or I put the kids in the car seat and I'm taking a long time to walk around. How do you tell the difference? Loud. Between when I'm not, don't do that. I'm saying you generally take a long time to do that. To get out of the car and walk around the car. oftentimes I try to create space and have stillness and then there's like my kids are handled and the business is handled and then you exist but there's actually a louis ck joke where he's talking about getting the whole car the family in a car for vacation and then he shuts the last door and walks around he says that's my vacation so for me the stillness is I find it's very interesting that there is this like creating more time which doesn't exist for me versus the headspace and like I need my thoughts and my brain to be quiet in order to listen.

12:12And a lot of times if I'm, that takes a lot of practice. So I'm like, and I intention. So I'm driving the kids to school and it's really easy for me to go through my entire to-do list with a million things that I need to do. That's not productive. It's just not productive. Like I, there's, there's never a clarity in those thoughts. I can't have just multitasking sucks, but it's not multitasking. I can't have like, there's not like, there's a thing in meditation where you're clearing your mind. And when you're clearing your mind and something comes into your mind, instead of trying to like clear it out, you take notice of it.

12:47You think about it, you internalize it, and then you allow it to pass. And I need to have that, that create the meditative space in just like day-to-day operation. So I'm not flooded. Like, so driving the kids to school, it's like a practice in, I mentally have to like get myself to a spot where I'm like, my brain is clear. I'm good to drive, whatever. And a lot of times I'll do that by just like naming what I'm doing right now. I'm driving my kids to school and I have a lot on my to-do list, but those things are going to crowd my thoughts while I'm driving. And like, what I need to do is focus on this one task.

13:27And it just, the result of that is I'm much calmer and I do have things that pop into my head and I'm much better at handling them. So like, it's really not about creating the time. It's about creating the space internally. No, that makes sense. I remember we were talking to Katie, a wellness mom one time, and she was saying when she like started her company, she realized because she has they have like six kids she was like she realized that she needed a wife like the reason her husband was able to do it was that her husband had her and then and that's a concept for you no no i just thought that was an interesting like no one can do it without support of some kind and so it's also like who yeah who is who's helping and your spouse has to be that but also more than your spouse yes but i'm like i think for me especially in this conversation it's it's like maybe it's my own trip but like that's a lot for me like managing other people and thinking about other people and depending on other people and managing disappointment and like expectations is just like it is something but it is an extra something so yes it is help but it is also extra work for me and like I can't think of stillness and my stillness and my peace and me being able to exist within a rhythm as something that is dependent on me having a support network.

14:48It needs to be, it needs to start internally first. No, that makes sense. And I also feel like that's a really good way, like to teach the kids that so they can silence the noise. Yeah. Even if they can't go on a walk or like I'm using the tools that I have now in this crazy time of my life.

15:10hey thanks for listening to the daily dad podcast you can get this via email every day as well at dailydad.com please leave us a review in itunes most importantly if you know any dads or parents who benefit from these messages please spread the word thanks

15:39Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free, no interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

16:33And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.