It is a Lonely Thing | Sweat the Small Stuff

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: It is a lonely thing. Many people knew. They knew they were flirting with danger. They knew he had designs. They knew that these were compromises that violated Rome's traditions. They knew that he would never be satisfied. But they didn't do anything. They didn't say anything or try to stop it because they weren't sure how it was going to go down. This is the story of the rise of Caesar. It's the story of Octavian, his successor. It's the story of Rome's emperors, competent and cruel alike. It is not the story of Cato, who stood up against it. It is not the story of Thrasia and Helvidius, who stood against Nero.

0:57Ryan Holiday: It is not the story of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the translator of Epictetus, who was radicalized in the 1850s by the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, seeing clearly the lengths the slave powers would go to. These were lonely positions. They were not, at first, successful positions either. But that's not what a Stoic thinks about. They think about what is right. They don't ask, is this safe? They say, that's wrong. And they say this loudly and repeatedly, even if it's unpopular, even if they are threatened for it, because that's what courage and justice, two of the most essential Stoic virtues, demand of us.

1:41Ryan Holiday: That's also the theme of Right Thing right now, which is my third book in the Stoic Virtue series, which is all about how we do this, how we take those lonely stands, why we take those lonely stands, what sustains us when we take them. And I think there are obviously some connections to where we are historically, politically, culturally right now. You can grab Right Thing Right Now, as well as Courage is Calling, or the whole virtue set, actually, if you want, and learn from some wonderful men and women who chose to step up when it mattered. We should study these people, we should study their actions, and then we should go do the same.

2:22Ryan Holiday: I just heard this stat that shocked me, given that I hear from the sales staff at my publisher quite a bit. The stat is sales teams spend about 50 % of their time on admin work instead of selling, relationship building, closing deals, which means they're not selling, right? And that's where today's sponsor comes in, Pipedrive. It's a simple, intelligent CRM tool for small and medium businesses. Pipedrive was built from the ground up to strip away that manual work, that stuff that's wasting your time, taking your sales team away from doing the thing you pay them to do, which is sell stuff. They've got smart automations to handle repetitive tasks, and you can even customize these automations to fit your unique sales process.

3:05Ryan Holiday: Plus, they've got AI features that will analyze your pipeline, flag stall deals, surface what needs attention, and tell your team what to do next without them having to go look for it. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join over the 100 ,000 companies already using PipeDrive. And right now, when you use our link, you'll get a 30-day free trial. No credit card or payment needed. Just head over to pipedrive.com slash doic to get started. That's pipedrive.com slash doic to be up and running in minutes. When you're a productive person, when you've got a lot on your plate, you don't have time to be groggy or unfocused just because you had a couple of drinks the night before.

3:41Ryan Holiday: Cheers Restore after alcohol aid helps you have better mornings after drinking. You take it after your last drink or before bed, and then it works while you sleep. Their claim to fame is that you will feel 50 % better or your money back. A lot of people think that dehydration is why you feel bad in the morning, but the real reason is what happens in your brain and liver while you sleep. When alcohol leaves your system, your brain goes into rebound mode, and that's what makes you feel bad. and the DHM in Cheers works while you sleep to smooth out that rebound. And at the same time, the alcohol converts into a toxic byproduct that your liver has to clear out.

4:19Ryan Holiday: And the cysteine in Cheers helps speed that up. Cheers is backed by doctors, PhDs, and over a thousand verified clinicians. Take Cheers Restore after your last drink or before you go to bed and wake up feeling at least 50 % better or your money back. For a limited time, our listeners are getting 20 % off their entire order at cheershealth.com slash stoic. Sweat the small stuff. Today's quote comes to us from Zeno. Actually, we don't get this directly from Zeno, but it's passed along to us by Diogenes Laertes. He says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it is truly no small thing. The famous biographer Diogenes Laertes attributes this quote to Zeno, but admits that it might also have been said by Socrates, meaning that it might be a quote of a quote of a quote.

5:13But does it really matter? Truth is truth. In this case, the truth is one we all know well, that little things add up. Someone is a good person not because they say they are, but because they take good actions. One does not magically get one's act together. It is a matter of many individual choices. It's a matter of getting up at the right time, making your bed, resisting shortcuts, investing in yourself, doing your work. And make no mistake, while the individual action is small, its cumulative impact is not. Think about all the small choices that will roll themselves out in front of you today.

5:50Do you know which are the right way and which are the easy way? Choose the right way and watch as these little things add up towards transformation. I did a piece about this not long ago, and it's sort of the basis of the habit challenge that we do for Daily Stoic as well. But George Washington's favorite saying was, many mickles make a muckle. The idea that things add up, that things are cumulative. Mark Cirellus says that we assemble our life action by action. And he says the benefit of doing it this way is that when you sort of shrink it down to these individual actions, it's very unlikely that someone will get in your way, right?

6:31When Nick Saban talked about the process, if your goal is to win a national championship and that's all you're focused on, there's so many things that can go wrong between you and that goal that determine whether you have the success or failure you want and make it. It's so all or nothing, I guess, right? But if you focus instead on like, I'm going to kill it at practice today. I am going to throw the hell out of this ball. I am really going to listen to my coach to this podcast episode right now. I'm going to do this thing in front of me. However small it is, I'm going to do it extraordinarily well.

7:07That really can't be interfered with. And that cumulative impact has the big difference, right? Something can get in the way of you striking it rich. in some, you know, scheme or genius play or breakthrough invention or, you know, whatever you think is going to make your fortune. But very little can get in the way of you methodically, consistently saving and investing, you know, with a long-term target in mind, right? And that compounding effect is what the Stoics are talking about. I think the other thing that's important to note here, I've always said that I think epiphanies are overrated, if they exist at all, right?

7:50This idea of like this big breakthrough moment, the Zen Buddhist talk of Satora, the idea of like the moment that enlightenment appears, I don't think that that's it. And I think what Zeno is saying is you don't just get there in this singular breakthrough, you get to that real well-being, that smooth flow of life that the Stoics are talking about, you get to enlightenment slowly and surely in these small steps. And although each individual's action is small, the actual place you arrive, the enlightenment that you get to, that's the big thing. Most of the big conclusions or big principles or big ideas that I now base my life around didn't strike me like lightning.

8:35It was a slow unveiling, a slow reveal. That's how I got there. And I think that's how you'll get there too today. So focus on the little things you can do right. Focus on habits, focus on accumulating, focus on systems, focus on breakthroughs. And I think you'll get where you want to go.