How To Stay Calm When The World Feels Out Of Control

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1:10Ryan Holiday: If you're hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. You think this political dysfunction is new? You think you're the first person to live in a time where it felt like the world was falling apart? No, there have always been times like these. And there have always, unfortunately, been people like this. It's easy to forget that, you know, the ancient Stoics lived in the time of Nero. Socrates wasn't in some golden age. Athens was in Socrates' time ruled by 30 tyrants. People have always been forced to endure difficulty, dysfunction, disorder. but they figured some stuff out along the way.

1:49They had to. That's what you see in meditations. You see Marcus Aurelius fighting to be a bright light in the dark time. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's video. I want to share some time-tested strategies from the Stoics who lived through times like these that will help you remain calm, decent, and hopeful in the face of unimaginable cruelty and uncertainty, and in some cases, utter nonsense.

2:21For starters, you know what I'm doing? I'm not letting them get me. I'm not letting the sons of bitches, I'm not letting the assholes turn me into a son of a bitch, turn me into an asshole. I'm not letting cynical people make me cynical. I'm not letting insane people make me insane. In some ways, I think this is kind of the hardest task in the world right now to not let them make you like them, to not let cruelty harden you, to not let stupidity make you bitter, to not let outrage pull you down. Marcus really says that the best revenge is to not be like that, to not be like them. And so while I'm genuinely disappointed, not just in the world, but in people I know, people I love, people I thought I respected, what they're doing and saying and thinking.

3:08It's not good. Instead of focusing on that, instead of trying to change them, which I have less impact and control over, I'm focused on not following suit, not getting dragged down. As Chrysippus said, the whole point of being a philosopher is to not be part of the mob, to be above, to hold yourself to a higher standard, to not be corrupted and corroded by the time you are living in. And we live in one of those times and we have to do the work to not be sucked into it.

3:42I'm focusing on what I can control. Epictetus, who was a slave in the Roman Empire, who experienced exile and torture and about every other form of difficulty you can imagine, he said that our chief task in life is to separate things into two categories, what's up to us and what isn't up to us. He said we have to get clarity on what's up to us and what isn't up to us. And so like a way to think about this, like inflation, tariffs, my mother's health, weather, like none of that is up to me. But you know what is up to me? Like my attitude, my emotions, my wants, my desires, my focus, my response to all those things, what those other people do and say, the consequences of what they do and say, how I respond to that, that is up to me.

4:27Who I am is up to me. So that's what I'm focusing on. and that's what the Stoics want us to focus on.

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7:13i'm trying to help the starfish do you know that story there's a story about a little boy coming to the beach one morning after a big storm and there's thousands of starfish washed up along the beach. And he starts to throw them back into the ocean. And this adult, you know, this adult who knows better comes up and he says, you know, you're never going to make a difference. What are you doing? This doesn't matter. And as the little boy throws another starfish in, he says, it matters to that starfish. There's a great line in Milan Kundera's book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, where this woman, they're living in a time of communism and repression.

7:48She tells her husband that she thinks it's more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground than send petitions to the president. And look, of course, politics matter, but I think so often we focus on national or global politics instead of how we can make a difference. Not just even, like, in our small towns, but, like, we're passing litter by the side of the road. We're not trying to catch that dog that we see running by the side of the road that probably belongs to someone. We're not asking someone who looks like they're struggling or in pain what they need. There's a story about Cleanthes.

8:24He's walking through Rome and he sees this man sort of beating himself up. And he just stops him and he says, you're not talking to a bad person. That act of human to human kindness, that's a blow against the Neros of the world. That's how you fight back against the cruelty of right-wing trolls on the internet. But not by owning them and arguing with them, but by doing the opposite to real people in real life. We sometimes think of these grand solutions or sweeping reforms or, you know, landing this enormous blow against, you know, some awful cause. But really no change is possible without these smaller things, without these first steps, these first acts.

9:05You know, when Zeno said that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. The same is true for change. The same is true for community. The same is true for remaking and improving the world. So I'm trying to think about the little differences that I can make, the real differences for real people right here, the burdens I can ease, the kindness I can extend. And part of that means deciding not to become cynical. That story about the boy and the starfish, that cynical adult was saying it doesn't matter, why bother? In Courage's calling, I quote General Mattis, he has this great line, he says, you know, cynicism is cowardice.

9:43It takes courage to care, to try to help that half-dead crow in the road, to throw the starfish back in the water, to be nice, to try to do something even though you're overwhelmed and the odds are against you. To believe, to be earnest when everyone else is full of doubt and cynicism. You know, as they say, losers have always gotten together in little groups and talked about winners. And the hopeless have always mocked the hopeless. And the nihilists have always tried to tell us that nothing matters. But it does matter. And you can make a difference. And you have to earnestly and sincerely believe that.

10:19These days, I'm choosing to be philosophical. I don't mean in the sense that I'm reading a lot of Marcus Aurelius or Socrates or Nietzsche or whatever. I am. It's always good to read philosophy, but I mean it in the colloquial sense. Like, to be philosophical, when we say someone's philosophical, what we mean is they see the big picture. They're calm. They have wisdom. They have perspective. They're above or outside what is misleading or overwhelming or confusing or manipulating other people. That's what it means to be philosophical. Like, think about how many bad leaders there have been throughout history.

10:59Think about how many moments, eras, and epochs that were defined by chaos and dysfunction, how many societies felt like they lived at the end of the world, that the sky was falling. That's a constant thread throughout history. And of course, that's what right now looks like and feels like because it has always looked like and felt like this. Like, the 1960s were filled with war and assassinations and unrest. If you read Brian Burroughs' Days of Rage, there's a crazy stat in there. In 1968, there was a flu epidemic and 2 ,000 terrorist bombings in the United States. It gives you perspective on this moment, gives you things to be grateful for, also gives you things to be aware of, to not be so sanguine about, because you know how bad it can get.

11:43The Great Depression was not fun. It wasn't fun to live through Watergate or the Six-Day War or the the 73 oil crisis or the cuban missile crisis imagine montane in the reformation or imagine living through the cultural revolution or or the civil war or any civil war this shit was scary it was weird it was confusing but that's what history is it's only the passage of time that turns down the volume on these moments that that that reduces them to some passage in a book Like the fall of Rome must have felt like the end of the world. And yet also the world went on. The Roman Empire went on after the fall for hundreds of years.

12:22I guess what I'm saying is like we don't choose whether we live in normal times or not. We do get to choose our attitude about these times, our perspective on these times. The Stoics remind us that history is cyclical, that chaos is the rule and not the exception. but also through reason, through courage, through discipline, through perspective, through wisdom and truth, we can rise above it. So that's what I am doing. That's how I am preparing and future-proofing myself. I want to focus on what's in my control. I'm doing the work. I'm not going to be broken by things beyond my power. I'm going to focus on what is in my power.

12:55I'm going to do my job. I'm going to contribute to my community. I'm going to try to make a small, positive difference for the people I can.

13:07I'm trying to look for the helpers. There's a Mr. Rogers quote that I love. He says, you know, when he was a boy and he was scared, there were scary things on the news, that his mother would always say to him, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. And when you watch a major American city get destroyed by wildfires, you can choose to focus on what awful people are saying and doing online. You can look at the incompetence of our politicians, or you could focus on the people flying those planes. You could think of the prisoners who, despite their lives and despite their existence, are putting it on the line to stop the fires, to help people whose houses they would never be able to live in.

13:51You can focus on the people who are trying to make a positive difference. You can focus on the chaos or the dysfunction and the selfishness and the awfulness, and that will make you cynical and that will make you despair. But if you look for the people who are stepping up, you'll find them everywhere. The neighbor who mows the lawn of a family they know is struggling. These are the things that restore your faith in humanity. And I'm not saying you just sit on the sidelines and go, other people are handling it. No, the idea is to not take comfort from these helpers, but to take inspiration and obligation from them.

14:32I'm trying to have fewer opinions. Mark Surrealish reminds us that we always have the power to have no opinion, that we don't have to turn this or that into something, that we don't have to let this or that upset us, that things are not asking to be judged by us, he writes in meditations. In this world that we are living in, where we have access to an overwhelming amount of information, and we also can see what so many people are doing who otherwise would be strangers or unknown to us, we just have too many opinions. We have opinions about people's relationships, how they live their lives, what they do in their own bedrooms, about scandals.

15:09None of this is our business. And we need to have fewer opinions. I'm trying to have fewer opinions about what my kids like or dislike, how their room looks or doesn't look. I try to, you know, that expression about not yucking other people's yums. That's the same idea. Just have less opinions. You'll get along with people better. You will be happier. So what if somebody is a vegetarian or whatever, right? Let them be who they want to be. Let them do what they want to do. Things are not asking to be judged by you, as Marcus said. Leave them alone, especially because so many of our opinions are negative.

15:43They're making us miserable. We have to remember, it's not things that upset us, as Epictetus said. It's our opinions about things. And when you have fewer opinions, particularly about other people and things outside your control, not only will you be happier and nicer, but it frees you up to have opinions about the things that actually matter. I'm not saying we should be totally disconnected. We should not care. Oh, live and let live when someone's doing something deeply harmful or violent or unjust. My point is that if you have fewer opinions about TV shows or celebrity scandals, you can have better, more well-informed opinions and more energy to right that wrong about the things that actually matter.

16:24If we're spending our energy having opinions about every trivial annoyance, we're just not going to have anything left for the things that matter.

16:35I'm keeping a journal, as I always have, because in keeping a journal, it keeps me. You know, the Stoics, they lived in turbulent, chaotic, dysfunctional time. There was Nero and Domitian and Claudius. There was Commodus who came after Marcus Aurelius, right? I think it's an interesting question. How did they stay clear-headed and principled? How did they not lose their minds? And the answer to that is hard work. And the place they did that work, the place they waged, which one writer would say the Stokes, where they waged their spiritual combat was on the pages of their journal. That's where they got perspective.

17:11That's where they shook off misinformation and noise. It's where they sort of boiled things down into truth. It's where they fought for control of the greatest empire themselves. Mark Sturrilis is fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. And where is he doing that? he's doing that in meditations meditations is the byproduct of marcus aurelius writing a journal in a chaotic period a period as chaotic as the one we're in now one that made as little sense to him as this one might make to you but he used the pages of the journal to help it make sense orwell said that you know to see what's in front of your nose needs a constant struggle he was talking about totalitarianism and authoritarianism and state control in the 20th century.

17:58But he actually said that a journal was something that helps towards that. He said to keep a record of what you're thinking, of what's happening. It's something you can hold fast to that can help you make sense. It can even help you hold yourself accountable to your own opinions. And I guess what I'm saying is that if you're not examining your mind, who is? If you're not dumping your frustrations out on the pages, like who are you dumping them on? If you're not using a journal to gain self-awareness, to cut through all that noise, how are you going to see what's in front of you? And you have to do that.

18:34You can use the Daily Stoic Journal, for instance, like this is mine. It has a little leather cover in it. It's a reminder, make time. I want to make time every day. I want to sit down with some questions. I want to sit down and create some distance between me and the present moment. Root myself in deeper principles, bigger ideas, go to clarity, and a journal is something you've got to be doing in this day and age.

19:02And here's something that I think stands the test of time that I'm working on. I want to treat people well. I don't control the cruelty in the world. I don't control how others act. I don't care how unfair or thoughtless or selfish most people are or are being in this moment. But I control how I run my team. I control whether I show up for my family. I control how I treat strangers. The world is always going to have its share of rude people and dishonest people and indifferent people. I mean, look, Mark Swillis opens meditations with this. Like, talk about things that don't change. He opens book two of meditations by saying, the people I will deal with today are going to be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and surly.

19:44He's like, this is what people are going to be. This is the way they always have been. We don't control that, but we control whether we're like them. He says, we control whether we let them implicate us in their ugliness. We don't have to contribute to it. We can be kind and patient and fair. This is something that's always in my control. That's one of the wonderful things about being an entrepreneur, but also about being a consumer. You decide what you're going to do with your wallet. You decide how you're going to run your business. You decide your policies. I decide what vendors I use for the things we make for Daily Stoic.

20:17I control what companies I do business with. I control the benefits that I offer. I control, you know, my tone of voice. I control my stuff. And we should focus on treating people well. This is where we can have a positive impact.