Go Back And Pick It Up Again | Is This the Life You Worked For?

0:00Ryan Holiday: So I woke up this morning as I do every morning thanks to my 8sleep. I've loved my 8sleep for years. The new 8sleep Pod 6 is officially available. 8sleep can result in up to 34 % more deep sleep and a 32 % average increase in sleep quality scores. And the 8sleep's 6th generation of the Pod is a smart mattress cover that now truly fits on any size mattress. The hub is 50 % smaller than the previous versions. Its thermal engine is 20 % faster. And the new cover has nine times the biometric sensors of the Pod 5. And now with AI in the autopilot, it learns your patterns and adjusts every single night.

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0:47Ryan Holiday: And you can use code DAILYSTOIC right now at 8sleep.com slash DAILYSTOIC for up to$200 off the Pod 6. and you'll get 30 days at home to try it. Free returns if it's not for you. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:14Ryan Holiday: Go back and pick it up again. Everyone has a book that changed their life, one that opened their eyes or taught them something, moved them, challenged them. We know that this was Marcus Aurelius' reaction to Epictetus. Perhaps this was how you felt when you read Marcus Aurelius for the first time. I know it was for me. But how long has it been since you read that book that first hit you? Now, think of everything that's happened then. All the other books you've read, the experiences you've had, things that have happened in the world, the lessons you've learned. How much have you grown? How much has your perspective shifted?

1:50Ryan Holiday: In his great biography of Emerson, The Mind on Fire, Robert D. Richardson writes about a year of rereading that had a revitalizing effect on Emerson, enlivening his reading and sending him ranging over further afield. New readings overlapped old, he writes. Familiar books yielded fresh connections with the present, and books from one culture or era became newly applicable in another. This sort of cross-fertilization happened frequently for Emerson. This year in 1844, he gave it a name, quasiment, crossings or crossbreedings. Its startling symbols for Emerson were the seashore and the taste of two metals in contact, our enlarged powers at the approach and the departure of a friend.

2:36Ryan Holiday: He felt that these crossings or intersections most strongly perhaps in the experience of poetic creativeness, which is not found in staying at home nor yet in traveling, but in transitions from one to the other. And as he tried to court this crossroads experience, so he now tried to manage his whole life as to present as the most transitional surface possible. That word, quasimal, it itself came from a reread. Emerson is quoting a French philosopher who said that nature loves crossbreedings. Growth, creativity, and insights emerge from this, from dynamic intersections, intersections, points where different ideas and experiences or influences converge and create something new, transformative, and vital.

3:22Ryan Holiday: And this is why we cannot simply pick up a book once. It's why we have to revisit the books that shaped us again and again. It's crazy to me, but can you believe that it's been 10 years since The Daily Stoic came out? Like, think of the life you've lived since you first picked it up, what you've experienced, what you've learned, what's happened, how you've changed. For a decade now, Stoics all over the world have been reading those same pages, completing basically loops of the Daily Stoic, getting something new from it each time. And the Daily Stoic 10th Anniversary Edition, which is out now, has been updated and informed by a decade of writing and reading about the Stoics.

4:01Ryan Holiday: More than 60 new translations. It's got new meditations, new stories, an expanded glossary, a bunch of awesome stuff. I think you'll really like it. Because again, we never step in the same river twice. That's why we must return again and again to the books that have impacted us. Revisit the Stoics. Revisit the books that changed your life. Revisit the works that have stood the test of time, whose wisdom has endured across generations. Give them a chance to crossbreed with your ever-changing self and see what new wisdom emerges. And you know, normally updated editions, they just slap a new forward on the same book.

4:38Ryan Holiday: But I really wanted to go back and ask myself, hey, if I was doing this again, knowing everything I know now, what would I do? And that's what this new 10th anniversary edition of The Daily Stoic is. It's better. I'd like to think I'm a better writer. Certainly, I understand the philosophy better. We added new stories. We made corrections. As we said earlier, there's 60 new quotes in there that weren't in the first edition. And there's new illustrations. Also, we totally redid and improved the leather edition, which is really made to stand the test of time. You can grab all that at dailystoic.com slash ds10.

5:11Ryan Holiday: I'll link to that in today's show notes. Thanks to everyone who supported the book over the years. And I hope you like this new version. Makes a great gift. And these are signed numbered first editions. And yeah, check it out. All right. dailystoic.com slash ds10.

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6:09Ryan Holiday: Anyone can sell. Your business can be big or small, can be just starting. And people selling on Whatnot sell 10 times more than on other marketplaces because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. Whatnot users spend something like an hour a day on the app. They're not just browsing, they're engaged, they're buying, they're coming back. You go live, you show off products in real time, and you turn what you love into real income. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the App Store, download and start selling right away. Benjamin Franklin said time is money in 1748.

6:42Ryan Holiday: That was his advice to a young man. 278 years later, some of us, depending on what you do, are still spending part of every month typing receipts into a form. It's bad use of your time. That's bad use of company time. Expense reports are tedious. It's not what I want my employees doing. Well, Ramp makes collecting and submitting expenses super simple. With Ramp, expenses submit themselves. You just text or email your receipt and Ramp categorizes codes and submits it. And when you book business travel with Ramp, they find the best flights and hotels you're actually allowed to book. You don't find out later that your company's only partially going to cover it.

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7:44One of the questions that we talk about with a lot of families is this idea of how do you define enough, right? Whether that's in business, whether that's wealth, whether that's passing wealth to kids, right? That's a really big question for a lot of families. And so I'm curious how you think about it and how you define that, Mark.

8:02Ryan Holiday: Yeah, there's the famous Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller story where they're at a party at some rich guy's house, which I've been to this exact party many times. They're sort of talking about, you know, how this guy probably made more money than any of them had made in the totality of their book sales, despite them being, you know, two incredibly successful authors. And Joseph Heller says to Kurt Vonnegut, well, I have something this guy doesn't have. And he says, you know, what's that? He says, enough. And that's a really powerful thing. I think sometimes people might take that story to mean, okay, so he has enough.

8:39Ryan Holiday: So he just doesn't care what like yes he wrote catch 22 but that's not the only book that he wrote he had enough but he wrote many books after this point i think what heller is saying like i'm not driven by money alone and i'm not trying to get to some number or prove some point and and what i have noticed in a lot of successful people and i've noticed it a lot of my peers who are doing books so this is specifically what that story is about is like the reward for succeeding at the thing that they love doing is that they don't get to do that thing anymore, you know? And so it's like, someone really loves, uh, they're a chef, they love food.

9:16Ryan Holiday: And then it's like, when was the last time they were in the kitchen? And it's like, no, cause like the, the impulse is, well, we have one successful restaurant, so I got to scale it up and then I got to open another restaurant. And now all of a sudden all of their time is on phone calls and meetings and accounting stuff and marketing, and they don't actually get to do the thing that they like anymore. And, and like, I I really love writing. That's why I decided to write books, right? Many books. Yeah. But no, no, I got into it because I like doing the thing, not because it was a means to an end, which was another thing.

9:48Ryan Holiday: And so I think a lot about like, how do I protect the time and the space? So the reward for succeeding at the thing I love is that I get to do more of that thing. I get to do it in different ways. And there's obviously other things that I do, but I just don't want success to be a punishment. And so I think the question is not just like enough, like what's your number? What is financial independence? But it's like if you get to some point of financial independence, what is that independence for? And how is it actually creating or facilitating what you like? and this is something I think the Stoics were talking about where they're like, who's in charge here?

10:31Ryan Holiday: Like, yes, you have this company, but the company has you. You're running around from meeting to meeting, deal to deal. You don't see your kids. You can buy everything, but like the day that you want, because that day is for you some point in the distant future, when all of the, when you sell, when things slow down, when you're older. And the big thing hovering over the Stoics was like, that is not guaranteed. Not just because in their time, you know, you could run afoul of the emperor and be exiled or killed, but that's not guaranteed because markets could turn, industries can turn. And then also, you know, you could die from a cut on your finger back then, right?

11:14Ryan Holiday: Like, like today we'd say like you get hit by a bus, right? So So like the idea of, hey, I don't like my life now or I do a lot of things I don't like to do now. So some point in the distant future, I'll be able to do whatever I want. Obviously, that's a version of a lie that everyone says. But I think the degree to which successful, wealthy, powerful people tell themselves this, even though they could have that right now, is, I think, a really important kind of philosophical thing to think about. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of those questions that takes a lot of work and reflection and probably constant work and thinking about how can I keep that front of mind?

11:59What's important? Like you mentioned, what is that ideal day? What are you really striving for and having that front and center?

12:05Ryan Holiday: Well, this is where all these virtues come in, right? So this decision of like having enough and then, you know, making sort of a countercultural, even transgressive decision to be like, I'm going to live and be this way is like, so first, let's go wisdom. This is like self-awareness. This is understanding yourself, understanding what you want. This is discipline to be able to say no. Sometimes that's the hardest thing to do in the world. It's also courage to be like, hey, I'm going to go in a different direction than everyone else. I'm going to do a thing that maybe not everyone understands or some of my peers laugh at me about.

12:40Ryan Holiday: Or I'm just going to have the courage to be like, hey, I'm good with this. I'm not going to I'm not going to let it bother me that I'm at this point on this list and there are these people above me. And then also the justice of like, it's not all about you. And where can you have more impact? Can you leave some for other people? So all these virtues come in to these seemingly kind of modern questions of like, what am I here for? What's enough? What should I be doing with my life? But these kind of timeless virtues, I think they always apply.