Dr. Michael Gervais on Not Caring What People Think and the Future of Stoicism (Pt 1)

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1:45Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

2:35Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. So the story of my books and professional sports is that the Patriots read The Obstacles Away in like 2014. That was that famous game. The one yard line, the interception against the Seahawks. The Patriots end up winning the Super Bowl. The Seahawks heartbreakingly lose the Super Bowl. And I remember I watched that game getting off of a plane and watching it standing in an airport because the plane I was on didn't have much streaming back then. And so anyways, I remember watching that game thinking, this is unreal. How could my book, this book about ancient philosophy be in any way connected to that game?

3:22And then, you know, several months later, I get this sort of ping and then there's an email and it's a link to a Sports Illustrated article about how now the Seahawks were reading that book. And so I reached out to the person that I knew at the Patriots said, how could they have possibly heard about it? And he said, I told them I was there. I told him, this is Mike Lombardi. He had passed the book along. And so now these two great NFL teams are reading the books. And I was like, is this real life? And the Seahawks invited me out. And while I was there, I got to meet today's guest, Dr. Michael Gervais, who was not just an integral part of that incredible franchise and all the things they did, both as a team, but then also as a culture, as an organization, which I think has had an enormous impact, both in sports and in business.

4:12But he's also one of the world's top high-performance psychologists, period. He's worked with NFL teams, Olympic gold medalists, top CEOs in the world, huge musicians. And in fact, I've had a number of guests on the show who I ask, how did you hear about this stuff? And they go, oh, Michael Gervais is my performance coach. And he passed it along. So Michael and I go way back. I did his podcast many, many years ago. His podcast is called Finding Mastery. And he's just been a great dude, a great friend. He's pointed me to a bunch of stuff over the years. And as I said, been a big fan of the work.

4:48And just got a fascinating perspective on how one sort of becomes great at what they do. It's also got a very calming voice and calming personality, which I'm sure he's cultivated in his thousands and thousands of hours sitting across from otherwise very anxious, ambitious, driven, intense people. And I remember when I did his podcast, like it was a couple hours and I just was like, when I left, I was like, that was the most draining therapeutic show I've ever done. So you can listen to that episode and you can also check out Michael's amazing book, The First Rule of Mastery, Stop Worrying What Other People Think of You.

5:25He signed some copies at The Painted Porch. You can follow him on Instagram at Michael Gervais, follow him on YouTube at Finding Mastery. And this was an awesome interview. I'm really glad he came all the way out to the painted porch to do it. I hadn't seen him in several years. And so it was great that he did that. And I think you're really going to like this interview.

5:52Well, books are different than like movies or something, right? Where most people see it when it comes out, right? So like a movie, it has like a several month run in a theater or opening weekend matters. But books take a long time. Like people, most of the books that I read are not new. Do you know what I mean? Like you get around to them. Yeah, right. And usually they have to like sort of, they have to be like filtered through people that you like or admire. Like I almost never read books when they come out, right? Somebody says. Certainly not the week they came out because I have other shit that I'm reading.

6:25Yeah, that's interesting. Do you know what I mean? Like, so even if I buy it when it comes out, it goes in the pile. and then you get around to it later. Yeah, that is how it works for me too. You've been working on this thing for like years and years. And then you're like, what do you think? And people are like, it's on my to-do list. Yeah, come on. It's going to take, it takes hours. I haven't read it yet. It is so true because my wife hasn't read it yet. So I understand. Yeah. I really understand. I don't think my wife reads any of my books anymore. She's like, you've done like 12. She's like, I can't read all of them.

7:06Yeah, right. I live with you. Yeah. First, she's like, yeah, I heard you talking about it for like four years as you were working on it. And then also I read it. I read an early draft and then I read this chat. It's not like a new thing to me that I'm excited to find out. I think that's healthy. It's like in sports, they have to come to every game. You've been doing this the entire time. It's a little different. But yeah, I mean, there's such electricity at a sporting event. But yeah, point taken. So I love this idea in the book. You open with this idea of, what's FOPO? Fear of what other people think.

7:43Fear of people's opinion. Fear of people's opinions. I love that idea. And actually, there's a bunch of still quotes about this exact topic. Would you believe that? So my favorite from Marcus, which I actually remember thinking about when The Obstacle is the Way came out. So thinking about how books come out and then what they do. The Obstacle is the Way came out. It did okay the first week. It didn't like blow the doors off. It wasn't a failure. It did okay. And then it got skunked from the bestseller list. It should have hit it, but it didn't. And it did not hit a bestseller list for five additional years.

8:15So it took five years to hit a bestseller list. I mean, I never would have known that. Yeah, it took forever. It's in just about every locker room I've been in. Yeah, and it was selling very well, but the sort of recognition for the thing was delayed by five years. That's interesting. But I remember thinking of this quote when it came out, which is from Marcus Reelis. He says, we love ourselves more than other people. We're all sort of inherently self-interested at the end of the day. We have this natural instinct towards self-preservation. He says, we love ourselves more than other people, but we care about other people's opinions more than our own.

8:51And he didn't mean that we care about other people's feelings. We're empathetic. What he's saying is that we work really hard on something. We know that it's good. and we know that it's the best thing that we've ever done. And then we put it out and then we go, did I do a good job? Yeah, right. Am I okay? Am I worth it? Yeah, right, yeah. Did I just waste my time? That's right. You know? And so you turn around and you hand over the value of the thing to total strangers who are busy, who are biased, who don't even know you exist. And then you wonder why you feel shitty after you put something out.

9:27and and then if you attach your identity to it as well it's so now it's not just about like do you value the product but do you value me because you've yes commingled identity with the performance of whatever matters to you yes and that it's a it's a really dangerous proposition to go through life that way it's the most dangerous because in the creative fields or the athletic fields or whatever. You're so vulnerable. You're putting yourself out there and you're doing it in front of other people. If the crowd gets to decide, like the gladiator games, like thumbs up, thumbs down, you're not going to make it.

10:08You have to be doing it from some sort of independent place of self-assessment, not do they love me or not. Yeah. Crowdsourcing a sense of self again, Again, right? Very dangerous. And I think the most powerful people, and I don't mean that in an obtuse way, but people that have a real sense of self is that the external world doesn't dictate their internal experience. Yes. So the external world is happening. It could be thumbs up or thumbs down. It could be cheering or booing or whatever it is, celebrations. That is noise to the signal. And the signal is, was I true to my thoughts, words, and actions?

10:49Was I true to my first principles? Did I bring my best efforts into? So that inside out is really what we're pointing to in the book. And that's, so the title is the first rule of mastery, but the subtitle is stop worrying about what people think. That's not the first rule. So I thought that you would pick that up. Okay, so the fear of what other people think is not the first rule of mastery. No. Okay. So like, let's say the first rule of health is to stop drinking poison. Sure. You'd say, yeah, It's pretty good if you're drinking poison. That sounds like a good first rule. Put the poison down.

11:22I think the poison that we're drinking is this outsourcing of scents. The poison that we're drinking is the outsourcing of self. So like, am I okay in the eyes of others? And we're drinking it all day long. Our brains are wired for it. Socially, the need to belong is like in the fabric of how we organize ourself. And we've gotten lazy. Yes. And the laziness is, I don't know if I'm okay. I haven't done the inner work. So what do you think? Well, it's a good, like what the crowd thinks, what the market thinks, what sales are, the awards. These are good heuristics of, did you do a good job? But they're not perfect.

12:02I would say it's a good heuristic to, did I tap into what they, whatever they is like? Yeah. And so there's a utility in that, but it doesn't mean that it's honest to you. Yes. Right? And I just mean, like, it's a crude metric. So people use it instead of doing the work to figure out what a better metric is. Right? Because, like, in sports, winning and losing is obviously very important or you don't get to do it anymore. Like, if you lose all the time, that's not great. And they'll probably find, they'll probably try to replace you with someone who they think will win more. NFL stands for not for long.

12:40Yeah. And so that's a reality of it. It happens fast. The weird thing is when you find people who are really great at what they do and have won a lot is they're actually usually measuring themselves day to day on something usually more strict or more individualistic than what does the box score say or what are the announcers. You find that they're operating on a whole other level of standards that tends to correlate to winning and losing more often than not, but it's also independent of those things. So they could be really pumped with how they did on a game that they lost, and they could feel pretty good about themselves on a game.

13:22No, sorry. Yeah, they could feel bad when they lost, bad when they won, and good when they lost, right? Because they're offering something else. If the tuning fork is honest to their very best. Yes. So if the tuning fork is tuned to the approval of others or the outcome, then those two matter more. So the tuning fork, when you're tuned to yourself and you know, and it's actually not that hard. Like we know when we're lying. Sure. All marketers, right? Yeah. Like we know when we're telling the truth. We know when we've conformed just a tiny bit for approval. We know it. Yeah. We know when something feels a bit overwhelming and we choose something to numb it, social or drugs or whatever.

14:09Like we know. So it's like ringing the bell to like the signal to noise, like have the tuning fork be to the signal, not to the noise. And I love that you're pointing out like how the strong, you know, the extraordinary performers work because it's not as clean as we might think. so the the true performers might not be the seven best in the league yeah right they could be middle of the pack barely hanging on because they're not six foot eight 265 pounds and jump 42 inches but they are so pure in their approach yeah and they've got the signal to noise ratio right but we just don't know them because they don't get airtime same with you know a single parent in the middle of somewhere that has two kids, three kids and no history of college.

15:02And they are figuring out the most creative lifestyle that you could imagine with purpose. But we don't know how to herald them and support them and like honor them because they're not on TV and they're not on the radio or whatever it might be. Yeah. We're all sort of graded on this curve that is our own potential, right? And it's hard to take someone whose success is totally a matter of their own individual circumstances and context and hold them up as an example and say, we should all be like this person because we don't necessarily relate to that, right? So it's easier to go like, this is the athlete that's won the most games.

15:42This is the entrepreneur that's made the most money. That's why I said, it's this sort of crude metric. Like it makes sense, but it leaves so much out and it leaves so many other people feeling like they're failures because they're not that. But actually, again, graded on this curve, you're crushing it because you've done so much more than, it's not how long you live necessarily. It's how long, like when you were born, the moment in time you were born, the genetics you have, the class that you're in, the country, all these things determine what your life expectancy is. So if your life expectancy was 40 and you lived to be 60, you crushed it, but you might look at someone who's 110 and be like, they did so much better than me.

16:25And it's totally different. And then you add the secondary, probably more important variable there is the quality. Yes, sure. Did you live the quote unquote good life? Yes. Right. Did you have a fire in your belly? And did you really lean in? Yeah, are you 110 and miserable? or are you 60 and you feel like you left it all on the table? Yeah, I mean, that's a real thing for many of us. Of course. And the other thing is like with elite athletics and sport is you might wanna have some of like the ones that you know their names, right? You might wanna have them over for dinner once. Sure, yeah. You realize it comes at a cost to be that way.

17:01Yeah, like there's an exciting thing that happens with all of that attention, but it tends to be a lot about them. Yeah, sure. And maybe the interests are not exactly aligned. And I say that with some jest because certainly narcissism works in the world of elite anything. But I'm not saying true narcissistic personality disorder. I'm saying that excessive narcissism. But they don't have it buttoned up the way you might or we might think. Sure. They're working to. They're working to know if they're okay. And it was one of the origins of like why write this book is because I was embarrassed as a young kid.

17:43I was 16 years old. I saved up a couple summers to get my first truck, Mazda B2000. And it was like three grand or something. And I'm driving and I'm brand new at driving. And I remember I was traveling in a direction. There was a lane next to me traveling in the same direction. and there's a car coming up on me that's going to slowly pass me. And I thought, oh, I'm going to look cool in this thing. So I grabbed the steering wheel. I kind of got that cool kid lean, you know, and I'm like, when they look over, they're going to see a cool kid. Yeah. They didn't look over. Right. And so I had this moment like, what did I just do?

18:22Yeah. What is all of that that I just like pretended and I wanted, I didn't know this person and I was shape-shifting in a way to look cool. Yeah. and i was so embarrassed i knew that that was not the good way the right way to go through life i knew that and i was embarrassed by it i didn't have anyone to talk to about it because and then i i didn't really change right like i was still doing and then come to find out with many of the world's best that i've been fortunate to learn with and from and work with they too have a similar mechanism where they say i don't want to let people down man i don't want to blow it i don't want to look stupid you know like looks i've got to show up because coach and agent are counting on me and they hold the power whether i get to do my life the way i want to do it so this opinion of other people is a real thing yeah it's uh that's one of the things about imposter syndrome which i've talked about before but it's like there is this belief that people are paying a lot closer attention to you than they possibly could be i mean even like on a football team like you get this sense like oh the coach is out to get me or what it's like there's 52 players like they're not thinking about you at all, really.

19:30Most of the time, they're thinking about so many other things. They're thinking about travel arrangements. They're thinking about what people are thinking about. You have this sense that the spotlight is on you. And that is your sort of ego and your natural narcissism that because it's so important to you, you assume it's important to everyone else. And it's not that there isn't any attention on you and that the stakes aren't high and that you don't have to perform, but it's just not as intense as you sometimes think it is. And I know you're well aware of the spotlight effect. You know, Professor Gilovich coined that term by just basically finding that this is a fun experiment.

20:08Can I talk about the experiment? Yeah. So he's got about 100 kids sitting in – or kids – freshman college usually, right? And so they're sitting in a classroom or auditorium. And he's got a handful of other students that he says, okay. And no one's in on the experiment here. Everyone's part of the experiment, but they're not sure of their roles. And so these handful of kids, he gives the epitome of like uncool and he gives them a shirt, the Barry Manilow, like a big Barry Manilow shirt on it. Which is probably cool now again. Yeah, right, now it's come back around. But at the time, you can see the freshmen going, you want me to wear this in front of my friend?

20:46Like, you want me to walk in there? And like, yeah. And by the way, what percentage of people do you think are gonna notice? And the ones that are wearing the shirt are like, oh yeah. Yeah, right, 100%. oh man, I got to walk in front of the class in this shirt. And then, so then they asked the group of hundred, how many of you noticed people walking with the ugly shirt? Yeah. And it was like 25%, someone in that range. So we overestimate with a grandiosity about our level of importance. And so he dubbed it like the spotlight effect. So I've got a spotlight on me thinking about what do you think of my hair and my t-shirt and what I'm saying?

21:25And you've got a spotlight on you thinking about your hair and your t-shirt. So like we're these spotlights not casting on each other, but like casting on ourselves walking around.

21:38I got an amazing night's sleep last night. One, because my six-year-old fell asleep in the car at like six o 'clock and he transferred him from the car seat to the bed and it stuck, which is just magic. So he's in bed way earlier than normal. But I sleep really well every night because I have a 8 Sleep Pod 5 Ultra, which is 8 Sleep's best product. I've used 8 Sleep for many years now. And it's just totally transformed how I sleep, made me sleep better, made my wife sleep better. It's amazing. So basically, 8 Sleep is this topper that goes over your mattress. It can heat and cool both sides separately.

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22:58But I know you will. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep, shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at 8sleep.com slash Daily Stoic. You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact. on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact.

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24:13And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic, and you'll get your donation matched. That's GiveWell.org. Code the Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. I remember there was another study that I read about and it was talking about how like in middle school to high school, kids start to pick up this thing. They coined it like the imaginary audience, which is that you start to think everyone's sort of watching and following you.

24:54It's just like this sort of developmental, you're becoming aware of all the things that you were not necessarily aware of when you were younger. And you were a kid and you were just free and you didn't care and you couldn't be embarrassed. You sort of pick that up. and that's why like yeah your pants rip in high school and you think like my life is over yeah because you think people are paying way more attention than they are which of course they aren't and the argument was one of the dangerous things about social media is that kids are now picking that up at the same time and so the imaginary audience instead of being this developmental phase that you grow out of just becomes permanently infused with your personality which is that you really do think you're you're performing all the time and I think anyone who has an audience or has done things, it is disorienting and destabilizing.

25:37It's not normal or good for you to have an actual fan base, right? Because now there are these people that you think about and that takes you out of what you're supposed to be doing, which is hitting a ball or writing a movie or what you're, you're supposed to be thinking about the thing, but instead you're thinking about the thing. And part of you is also going, but do they like me? What do they think? and so we we know that fame is this sort of toxic thing and people talk about it all the time the problem is like now everyone else is getting their own version of it and so it's it's heightened like you see totally regular people that are like you know posing for their family photos not for the christmas card but for social media and and it's sort of taking you out of the moment that you're in and you're you're turns you into a performer in your own life yeah your your highlight reel on public display.

26:30And so the other thing that happens is the imaginary audience is now real. Yes. And we've always been public figures. Yeah. Like if you think about like you had a family and a couple neighbors and you had 30 some kids in a classroom or maybe 15, whatever it might be. And so we were community members. We all are, unless you're like run by wolves or something. Like, so we've always been quote unquote public, but it's the extrapolation of the size of it and then the not knowing, not being able to have a tactile feedback loop about, do I fit in the tribe or not? And that fitting in the tribe is foundational to safety.

27:10Like that goes back a couple hundred thousand years because if you and I were in the tribe, right? And we're going out and hunting or gathering or doing what we're doing and we're screwing up and we're not performing and we're actually distraction when we come back, the elders are going to say, hey, Ryan, Mike. You don't want to be the weirdo. You got to go. You're out. So listen, we're giving you a warning. Give you a second warning. Hey, listen, okay, this is the last warning. And then we keep the behavior that's not tuned to the tribe. You two got to go. Now that's a near death sentence. So that's why we are so tuned, ancient brain and modern times, we're so tuned to the just hint of rejection because that was a near death sentence.

27:50So that's why when people, what's the greatest fear for most people? Public speaking. Walking on stage. Those four little steps, right? Greater than death. The Jerry Seinfeld joke is the number one fear is public speaking and the number two fear is death. And he says, so most people would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy. It's so good, right? Yeah. But why is that? It's because our ancient brain, modern times, we have fused who we are with what we do. And then what we do is in the public court of opinion. So that's all noise. That's why it's, and look, there's no sniper in row 14 in most public speaking events.

28:31But the eyeballs are really dangerous because if they don't like me, then maybe I don't matter. And maybe I'm going to be kicked out of this tribe and I don't know how I'll fend for myself. Yes. That's actually not how modern life works though. Sure. Right? Right. Right. So, but it's still in our ancient brain. Yes. And it's, as you would recognize, David Foster Wallace says, you know, that the old fish and the two young fish, you know, like the old fish swims by and says to the two young fish, like, how's the water, boys? And the two young fish don't say anything for a while and swim away. And then one brave young fish says to the other one, the hell is water.

29:09Right. Right. You're just used to it. So the water that we swim in is so obvious to the elder. Yes. And that's what we're trying to point out is the water we're swimming in is really the poison of needing approval from others. Yes. Now, the subtitle is stop worrying. Yes. It's not titled stop caring. Sure. We do need to care about some people's opinions. Like your boss oftentimes could be one of the important ones. I don't have my supervisor in there. I'm an entrepreneur, so that makes it, it's my wife is my supervisor. No, look, like I was saying, if you sell zero copies of your book, you won't be able to do it again.

29:50You don't get to do it again. And also, even permission aside, you did it for someone other than yourself by definition. Otherwise, it would have looked very different. You wouldn't have put a cover on it. You wouldn't have edited it so closely. I didn't design the cover, by the way, right? Like somebody much smarter. It would be your diary. That's exactly right. Art is by definition for the audience also, right? So that's interesting. I've never heard that just because I haven't thought about it that way. So can you deconstruct that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, look, you're doing it for yourself.

30:25You're trying to fulfill your vision, but you're conscious of an audience existing or you would do it very differently. I think that that's the civil war inside for the committed creative. is this true and honest or is this for approval well i just think people people aren't being honest when they go like i just make it for me and it's like really that's why the sitcom you made is exactly 23 minutes like uh it's 23 minutes because that's the format that it fits in television so they could sell slots so even you're saying the meta but so i think some of the most creative athletes are the ones that have to figure out how to be creative in the constraints of the system yeah so you're saying even the meta the system is designed for approval yeah i yes football games are less than three hours yeah i just mean like you are if you're like oh i i just play for the love of the game then you'd be playing alone in a park at 2 a.m like you're you're you're also in it for winning and for team like it's a whole thing and money is part of the economy of course of course it's it's definitely part of it like how i would do the books if i was the only audience would be very different than if you know like i it would be i would be writing in shorthand to myself actually this is what's so incredible about what's so incredible about mark surrealist's meditations and why it is an unprecedented book is that it's maybe by the way like what you've done here like it's ridiculous dude like it's really ridiculous there's honestly what you've done here like so hold on before you get to your point like i've got to just like let me go back to like uh let's see when 1993 when i graduate 1992 i graduated college in 94 and i've uh minored in philosophy yeah and so we go through all the different types and you know it's not just one class but it's a minor so i'm into it yeah and the stoics this is 92 and i'm like man these guys like they're onto something like that's different now.

32:27Like, I love this idea. And it was always working in the background of my approach. So as a licensed psychologist, like there's philosophy in there somewhere, right? There's a course, best practices, evidence-based, da, da, da. And it's always kind of been in there. And then I come across you and I'm like, holy shit, This is so good. And like you have just caught the attention of literally like the sport world and, and, and. And it's, dude, I just want to say it's rare to put philosophy on front stage and you've done it and you've done it in a great way. And I hope that you have monetized it as well in all the ways that that celebration can happen.

33:09but like, I'm so stoked for what you've done and how people are finding in your community a new way to take control of their wellbeing. Well, thank you. What I was saying about Marcus, what's incredible about meditations is that it's one of the only books, certainly one of the only philosophy books that's not written with an audience in mind. It's his private thoughts. So, you know, he goes - And Frank, kind of. Yes, of course. Also an incredible book. Listen, I do not want to spar about authors with you. No, no. But what I'm saying is that very few books survive to us that were not intended to be books.

33:47That's cool. Right? So like there's little, and you can see in the book, there's obviously things where he's writing to himself. You know, he goes like, like that customs agent that I met. And he doesn't explain or elaborate. So only he would know what that means. And if you were writing for an audience, you would phrase it differently. You'd be like in the year 162 AD, we were traveling. You would sell the story. He is – and it's also – it's not sequential. It's just bulleted. It's basically bulleted number. We don't know how he did it. But it's just a jumble of thoughts because it was his journal to himself.

34:26He was practicing the philosophy, which happens to be a writing. So for him, meditation was having a conversation with himself about these ideas, sort of reminding himself of things. How did that go from private journal to commercial? We don't know. Basically, he dies towards the end of the second century AD. Somebody sold him out now. Somebody got a couple of shillings. And probably assumed it would be destroyed. And then we don't hear about it again for like several hundred years. And then it doesn't emerge as like a major philosophical text for many centuries after that as the Western texts are sort of rediscovered.

35:04I mean, we have this thing called the dark ages where we forget about everything. And so he would probably be mortified that we're talking about it now. But for him, the process of the philosophy was writing to himself about it. And then that survives. So there's something very specific, very unique about it that makes it general and relatable. But the point is, I would never write a sentence like that because I am writing for publication. That's the nature of the world we live in. If you were to look at my journal, though, my diary, it's very different. I'm writing that totally to myself. And it's all about things that only I know about, right?

35:41And so the definition, when an artist is sitting down to make something, there's a choice you're making at that very beginning with how you present yourself, how you talk, how you – that is inherently admitting that it's for more than just you. Yeah, I think - It's gotta be for you, of course, but you're also, it's fundamentally for you. So I like your point. It's not, don't worry about it, but you still have to care. Yeah, so you're pointing at the exact center of the internal civil war, the internal crisis, the internal sense of self. Yeah. And what I wanna just highlight here is that there are micro choices that we're making.

36:20Yeah. And those micro choices are made in context to the neighborhood, to the culture, to the era, all of that. But it's the context that – this other context I think is really important is that how clear are you to your virtues, your core values, your first principles? So if you bundle those together, virtues, values, and first principles, and if those are really clear, you've got some bellwethers. And then if you've got a purpose lined up, that you're clear about your life purpose or your monthly purpose or your purpose while on the team or purpose of a role that you inhabit as maybe a father or son or whatever.

36:59So those are the two big ones that help guide the micro choices. And then if you can, inside of that context, you can access the thing that you want to express. Yes. And if you've got a well-refined craft, like you've got range. And if you're new at it, there's less range. And I think you care about what the audience thinks, about what the crowd thinks, about what your coaches think, about what the sports writers think, whatever your domain. You have to care about customers in a capitalistic society. But you don't have to go to Marcus's quote about how we love ourselves, but we love other people's opinions more than our own.

37:38You just can't care about their opinion more than your own opinion. So like if I set out to write a book that's about a certain topic in a certain style, obviously I think that's going to resonate with an audience and I want it to resonate with the audience. But if what the audience wants is this totally different thing that doesn't interest me or doesn't excite me or my editor says, well, what if you did this? I think I have to measure that or check that against my values and my intentions. And I have to decide what's more important to me. And ultimately what you think and what you want to do should be the sort of North Star creatively and professionally.

38:17Otherwise, you're this sort of finger to the wind person who doesn't stand for anything. And fundamentally, whatever you make is insincere and hollow, right? Like we want a politician to do what they think is right. Of course, we want to be in alignment a lot of the times. But if someone's only doing what the polls are saying at any given moment, we also don't respect and like that person, right? So you have to, you care, but not too much. And then we can sift down. I have a round table of eight. Yeah. Like your sort of board of advisor. Yeah. So those eight that earned a right at my table, those are the ones that I palpate first.

38:55Sure. So tuning fork internal against virtues and purpose. And I'm going to get to the purpose in a minute. Then the next external signal is that eight. Yeah. And to have a seat at the table for me, you can have any level of discernment you want of who makes the table. Mine is quite simple, is one, they care. They've demonstrated that they know my scars, they know my traumas, they know my ambitions, they know my hopes and dreams. They've invested time under tension. And so I need that. So that's the first. That way when I say, hey, Ryan, if you're at the table, what do you think about this? It's not just an opinion.

39:38It's actually thoughtfully, contextually embraced. Like for you, Mike, I might do something different. But for you, and then the second variable is they understand and they've embodied living in a high stress public amphitheater where it's like that context is really important as well. So those are the two variables to me. It's like you've done some shit. Yeah. And you've got time under tension in this relationship where I know you also care and I care in return. Well, and I think that's so important too, right? Because feedback is a central part of life. That's right. But if you don't know what you're trying to do, if you don't know your purpose, you're at the mercy of potentially incorrect or inappropriate or ill-timed feedback, right?

40:29And feedback can be very, very dangerous. Yes. There's low performance feedback, high performance feedback. There's inaccurate. You want to almost create a sanctuary of the people where you get the feedback from. Yes, because that person could be telling you what they would do or what other people do. And you have to know, well, here's what I'm trying to do. So I'm going to take the parts of that feedback that get me closer to what I'm trying to accomplish, that align with my purpose. and then I'm comfortable, confident ignoring the stuff that's well-intentioned, maybe even right in other circumstances, but for what I'm trying to do, you know, don't make sense.

41:09And here's even one more layer of complication of like those folks. Many of our closest people like who we are in reflection to who they are. Sure. You see where I'm going with this? So let's say that you and I are trying to sort something out and I make$100 ,000 and you make$100 ,000 or you make 102 and I make 98. So we're in some range here. And you say, hey, Mike, what do you think? I'm thinking about this thing. And that's gonna put you on the map to like 100 million. Yeah. And I say, I don't know. Like that doesn't seem quite right. Yeah. Like it's not because like, it's not because the idea isn't right.

41:49It's because I'm presenting that the idea is not right. But it's really because I don't wanna feel kind of way around you. Yeah. So that reflection of I'm comfortable, I like you because we're kind of close in how we live our lives. Yeah, your friend comes to you with advice saying, hey, I'm thinking about moving across the country to take this other job. Same thing. It might be great for them, but you're inherently threatened or saddened by the idea that they were getting up and leaving. And then what does it say about you for staying? It's this whole, we're very complicated people. That's right.

42:17I remember I gave a talk to the pirates one time, the Pittsburgh pirates. And I was walking around spring training when they were telling me they had this interesting rule, which I have thought a lot about since. They were saying one of the rules in the organization is you can't go up to a guy and give feedback. Like you can't give feedback to an athlete unless you have a relationship with that person. That's right. Because they don't want just somebody going around and meddling, not knowing what that person is working on, not knowing what feedback they just got from somebody else 10 minutes ago, not knowing how that person responds to feedback, what's the most conducive way to get feedback, So, you know, information could be correct, but it's lacking the context needed for it to be successful.

43:01And so there was this idea of like, you got to give people space and you got to respect each person's sort of individual sanctuary, especially in a kind of a training or a developmental environment. You can't just go around willy nilly just, you know, sort of firing feedback out because it could do more harm than good. Oh, it's great. And so that's, I was nine seasons at the Seattle Seahawks and we built a, we had a lot of winning 2012 to 2021. We had a lot of winning in the two Super Bowls. One, we won in dramatic fashion. And I like where you go first. And when we lost in dramatic fashion as well, but there was a lot of winning going on.

43:37And we only talked about winning once a year. So we were not an outcome focused and we had a really favorable, you know, it's rare to get to the Super Bowl. Like there's some clubs in the NFL that have never been. And so we put a tall tentpole. What am I trying to say? We put a tall flag down that we are relationship-based organization. Because it's the relationship of knowing the person that you can, in context to who they are, who they're trying to become, that you're able to provide some sort of feedback in that loop. So relationship-based organization. First, that is developmentally minded.

44:18Yes. So we're trying to get better, but we're grounded in the relationships. This is not therapy at work. Yeah. Right? That's not what this is. This is getting to know somebody so that you can support, then challenge them to be their very best, even when it's hard. Yeah. So that's kind of the formula that sits underneath when I hear you talk about the pirates. I'm like, that sounds familiar.

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46:33So let's talk about being outcome-based or process-based, because I think that's something I've thought a lot about. Like, I feel like as I have done this longer, I care less and less about results. Care is maybe the wrong word. I think less and less about results. Like with my first book, how does it do on the bestseller list? How many copies is it selling? And I'm checking all the time. There used to be this tool called Novel Rank and you can see where your book ranked on every Amazon in every country in real time. And thankfully it went away because it wasted so much of my time. But I would say today, I wouldn't even think of checking something like that.

47:08Like, I don't know what the sales are on the books. And I am always surprised. You're like the king. Feed them all cake. I know a queen said it, but like, you know, like, well, it's going to be a bestseller. Well, I just, I think about it less because what I'm thinking about is what's more in my control, which is the work that I'm doing, right? And you have a great graphic in here. Let me see if I did it. I loved it. You have this thing, which is basically the essence of stoicism. Right, yeah. The essence of stoicism, Epictetus says, our chief task in life is separating things into two categories, that which is in our control and that which is not in our control.

47:46And ultimately, effort is in our control and outcomes are not in our control. Outcomes are related to things that we control and often a byproduct of it, but there's not a one-to-one relationship, especially as you get further and further out. So you could be maybe to a certain degree winning is in your control, but people liking or respecting you or recognizing how magnificent your accomplishment was. Definitely not. And I don't think winning is anywhere in your control. You can influence it in great ways. But ultimately, you've got a competitor that is trying to do the same thing. So there's – yeah, I'm not interested in the conversations about winning and losing.

48:29And I'm not – it's deleveraged. I'm now in a deleveraged position if I'm trying to control something that's not in my control. And so to put yourself in the greatest position of leverage, focus on the things. And I would say go one step further than focus, work on mastering the things that are 100 % under your control. And I'd love to have a conversation with you about something that I think stoicism is missed. Oh. Uh-oh. Let's hear it. Yeah. How dare you? It just got thick in here, didn't it? Is the way that we work with emotions. Okay. And so there's an ordering in stoicism about thoughts. Get your thoughts right.

49:15Sure. Work from that place. And I go, yeah, thoughts are upstream. We know from best-in-class modern science that it is bi-directional. Thoughts influence emotions. Emotions influence thoughts. Sure. And then in between, we've got feelings, which is our subjective interpretation of the raw data of emotions. So feelings are like private and they're internal and emotions are public and observable. Sure. So heart pounding is an emotion. Yeah. And then how you label it is your feeling. Okay. So I think we need more compassion. I think we need to work from emotion because we've numbed them for so long.

49:59And we've been afraid of them for so long. And I do think at the time of stoicism, it made perfect sense not to be run over by emotions. Look, if you're going to be over emotional, you can't do and make the hard decisions. I can't count on you because we've got hard decisions to make. I need to kill 100 ,000 people. Yeah. Or you could be killed at any moment. Your kid could die of some terrible disease at any moment. And if you panic and you're overrun by emotion, then you can't make the clear decision because we do know that emotions cloud judgment. Okay. That's a brain structure type of thing.

50:39Okay. Now, but if you can dance well with emotion and you can dance well with thoughts and you can play there just a little bit more. I think the world is calling for not an uncontrollable emotional human, but a thoughtful, compassionate, dare I say, person that is working to make something better. That's where purpose is so important. Yeah. Because purpose tends to be about something that's bigger than you. Sure. Right? And that tends to be about the planet or other people or animals or something, right? Agreed. And so I would love, I'm caught in this and I've been looking forward to talking to you about this because I think you'll have a point of view here that I'm missing.

51:23Well, there's this stereotype of the Stoics being totally emotionless, being robotic, sort of stuffing it all down, suppressing it or being somehow getting to some monk-like transcendent state where you no longer feel emotions or anything at all, which I think totally misses it. So I did this book a few years ago called Lives of the Stoics, where instead of sort of really like diving into what the Stoics said, I just tried to write these biographies of who they were. Now the Stoics got married. The Stoics had kids. The Stoics made works of art. The Stoics played sports. The Stoics fought for political causes.

51:58There was this whole generation of Stoics called the Stoic opposition, which was basically a series of resistance fighters who gave their lives in many cases against the tyranny of several bad emperors in a row, including Nero. And there's even one Stoic, there's a Stoic named Chrysippus, who died of laughter. Like he was just laughing so hard he was old, he probably had a heart attack and died. So I think when we actually look at who they were in practice, it's very different than maybe what comes off in the page. And so my sort of take, and maybe this is a modern interpretation, which I'm also okay with.

52:36Like they're dead. They can't get mad at me for changing things. But my interpretation is that the Stoics were not about the suppression of the emotion, but about understanding and processing. and then hopefully making fewer decisions on those emotions. So I like your distinction between having the emotion and the feeling, like being angry and punching someone because you're angry are different things, right? So to me, stoicism is the stopping yourself before you throw the punch as opposed to stopping yourself before you get upset that someone called you a terrible name. Yeah, and then the thing that I wrestle with, and just like I said early on, Like, stoicism is awesome, and I've been attracted to it.

53:23And I wouldn't have thought this probably five years ago, that, wait, we need more compassion. Agreed. And then if you square it with relationship-based, okay? So that's where, at Finding Mastery, we're using that in our culture to be a relationship-based organization as well. And to be in a relationship-based organization, I need to know not only your thoughts. Yeah. That's good. I need to know your history. I need to know the way you feel about your future and your history. And it's the feelings that allows for the deeper knowing. And so I just want to ring the bell a little bit here about compassion's a really good thing in a world that is thrashing.

54:07Of course. And there's a vulnerability to be compassionate. And so the cardinal Stoic virtues are courage, which I think people associate with the Stoics. Then there's discipline, which people associate with the Stoics. Then there's wisdom, which people associate with the Stoics. But the fourth one, which I guess would be the third, is the one I'm writing about now, which I think is less discussed, sort of skipped over, is the virtue of justice, which is where I would put things like compassion and empathy and fairness and kindness and caring about the world and trying to have a positive impact.

54:42That's interesting, yeah. So it's like, it's not like it was this minor afterthought, like a core pillar, like one of the four pillars is this idea of justice. And to me, one of the ways I've thought about this is like, okay, stoicism in what I control says like, hey, try not to go around being offended all the time. Try not to be overwhelmed by your emotions, et cetera. But that doesn't change the fact that other people get offended and other people have emotions. And so I don't see there's anything contradictory about caring about that, right? So stoicism isn't, it's funny, there was this case a few years ago where this guy was just a real asshole at his job and he gets fired for being an asshole.

55:23And he says, he ends up suing, I think this is in the UK, he sues the employer for discriminating against him and his religion, which he said was stoicism. And his stoicism said that he didn't have to care about other people. He could dress how he wanted. He didn't have to be. It was basically like he was saying stoicism allowed him to be a jerk, which I think is totally missing the point, right? I don't think there's any contradiction about empathy in stoicism. It's saying, hey, you should probably go around and you yourself should probably not be an open wound that's horribly offended by what other people say all the time.

55:58But that doesn't mean that you get to hold other people to that standard and say, yeah, look, I just call it like I see it. Radical candor here. Like I don't – I'm not polite. So for me, I don't – I think we're probably more in alignment here than people might think. And one of the things that actually gets me upset and I find myself pushing back on it again to go to our point about not caring what the audience thinks. Like I know if I talk about courage, the audience, the stoic audience likes it. If I talk about self-discipline, the audience likes it. If I talk about wisdom and how to learn and get smart, the audience likes it.

56:37But if I talk about justice, then people get upset, right? And I can see people unsubscribe. I see them get mad. If I present stoicism as here's a recipe for being a better, more productive sociopath, that finds a larger audience and is less upsetting than if I go, hey, it's important that you give a shit about other people. And it's important that you give a shit about the planet. And the ethics matter. So I talk about those things at significant expense to myself because I think they're important. I think it's a really important part of stoicism. And I think it's why when you look at the lives of the Stoics, you see that they got involved in politics and they participated and they served their country.

57:30They were involved. There wasn't – we have this understanding of philosophy as something that withdraws you from the world, which is what the Epicureans did, right? The Epicureans retreat to this garden and they work on sort of perfecting their own development. And Stoicism, I think, at its core says that's not right. somebody has to be involved because if you seed the field, somebody else takes over. And so long story short, I do think there is a place for emotion, particularly compassion and stoicism. And I think caring and participating is not just like a part of it, but like a key obligation of the philosophy.

58:09What do you think the extension of stoicism is? So

58:17So stoicism was built in a particular era. Sure. And they didn't have access to cognitive psychology. They didn't neuroscience. They didn't have access to some of the science that we have now. They did a pretty damn good job, you know, in a lot of things. And I just wonder what the next version or the extension of. and you might say, no, they got it right and I'm doubling down. I definitely don't say that because here's what's interesting about Stoicism. So Stoicism is founded by this guy named Zeno in the third century BC. So basically the death of Alexander the Great, Zeno washes up in Athens and starts his philosophy.

58:58Now Marcus Aurelius is writing meditations like around 160 AD. So here you have 500 plus years just between two well-known Stoics. and I don't say it, I wouldn't say it ends with Marcus Aurelius, but he's sort of the last well-known of the Stoics, right? But so there's five centuries there of evolution. It's not exactly the same. And in fact, one of the interesting things that scholars sort of note is that there is this kind of, they call it a softening. I would say it's an improvement, but the sort of harsh individualistic Stoicism of Zeno, which is rooted in, from his influences in the cynics, softens by the time it gets to Marcus Aurelius because the Stoics take such a prominent role in public life.

59:47They serve as diplomats and generals and politicians and then ultimately the culmination of sort of a philosopher king. But they get involved in life and you can't be involved in life and not see that things are complicated. You can't, you know, the Stoics would say the only thing that matters in life is virtue, right? Well, that's true. But like, if you go around as this sort of self-righteous, holier-than-thou person, you're going to have trouble operating in a political world that requires compromise and collaboration for which there are no perfect solutions. So he says that there's this softening of stoicism when they have to become more realistic and then to participate in life.

1:00:26So all of which is to say, first off, even in stoicism when it was what you might call a living philosophy, there's an immense amount of changes and each individual stoic puts their own stamp on it. Now, flash forward 2 ,000 years later, are we obligated to stick with what Seneca talked about? I don't think so at all. That's the question, right? What is the neo-stoicism? What is the avid? I don't know if we even need to call it neosteicism because then I think that stipulates that it was never changing. So one of the things I love about Seneca's writing, Seneca is by no means a perfect person.

1:01:06But Seneca in his writings, the philosopher he quotes the most is Epicurus, who he ostensibly agrees with or disagrees with way more than he agrees with. And he says, I read like a spy in the enemy's camp. And he says, I'll quote a bad author if the line is good. Oh, my God. And so to me, what he's saying there, what we can take from that is that take and use anything that works from anyone as long as it's consistent with the sort of core values of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. So you think about like, it's not until effectively Gandhi in the middle of the 19th century that the idea of passive resistance or civil disobedience or like not solving your problems by killing people is invented, right?

1:02:04So like, that's an incredible thing. And I think we skip over that, right? Like people invented things that have made, not just invented technological devices, but we invented things, like ways of thinking about things that were profoundly changing. That's very cool, yeah. And so for the Stoics, the only way to solve a problem was to go to war. 2 ,000 years later, it's like, oh, hey, actually you can protest. You can list your grievances. you can resist. There's all these other things you can do. So I think we would be doing the Stoics a disservice if we did not incorporate those things into it, again, provided that it is consistent with the core virtues, which I think are pretty expansive.

1:02:52Yeah, I do as well. And I'm reminded of a, this was an early, go back to early days of college for me one more time, is that it was the first, it was the past of like 11 world religions. And So we're studying all 11, Sikhism to Zoroastrianism to Judaism. And so we're studying all 11. And I had this wonderful idea that I was going to stand up and say, you know, if we combined, this is my humble opinion. If we combine this, this, this, there's a commonality here, here, here. And if we cobbled together a couple of these, like these common ideas, like, and so the professor says, thank you. I just want to make sure I'm understanding your point of view here is that you believe that you've discerned deeper than Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad.

1:03:39I just want to make sure in your six days of class here. So it is so easy to opine from a distance as opposed to develop from within. And this is where I think we come back to that signal-to-noise ratio is for us to understand what the signal is. And if the stoic approach can help, awesome. And if it's resting on a bed of virtues that are generative rather than self-serving. And so that to me is one of the bedrock of the whole thing.

1:04:20Thanks so much for listening. 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.

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