It’ll Take Some Time | The Stoic Art Of Not Caring What People Think

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1:42Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas and how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

2:06It'll take some time. In 1922, while an unpublished struggling writer named Ernest Hemingway was covering events in Switzerland, his wife Hadley came from Paris to see him. Assuming he would want them, she packed up the writings Hemingway had accumulated in their apartment, manuscripts and short stories and poetry and an unfinished novel. Hemingway had made some important literary contacts on his trip, and she figured he intended to show off his work. As she waited during a stopover at a French train station, Hadley stepped out for a drink in a newspaper, only to find on her return that the bag containing all of Hemingway's manuscripts had been stolen.

2:45It was an enormous, nearly unbearable loss. Years of hard work had disappeared in an instant, impossible to recover. Of course, you know the end of Hemingway's story and can probably guess how this obstacle contributed to it. Hemingway would go on to be one of the greatest writers of his generation. The loss of his back catalog forced him to start fresh, partly driving him to reinvent his literary style. The impediment to action advances action, Mark Sturelius wrote, but what stands in the way becomes the way. It was precisely that. But, you know, it wasn't that immediately. I suppose you heard of the loss of my juvenilia, Hemingway said.

3:24You naturally would say good, etc. But don't say it to me. I ain't yet reached that mood. I worked three years on the damn stuff. It is a certifiable fact that most of what we despair over and resist turns out to be good for us. We change because of it, respond to it. That's what stoicism is all about. Still, that doesn't change the heartbreak. It doesn't change the moment. It takes time. We have to be patient with ourselves, with others in similar situations. Let our mood come around to it. Let our perspective shift. Let more information come in. We also have to make it good, as Hemingway did.

4:02And that took time and effort and lots and lots of writing. So it goes for you.

4:13You can't waste your time thinking about what other people are doing or saying, Mark Stamila says in meditation. He says, unless, of course, it impacts the common good. He's saying, because when you're focused on what other people are thinking, what other people are doing, what you're neglecting is what you're thinking, what you're doing, what's going on in here, which is the one thing that you actually have some control over. And this is a critical stoic lesson. You focus on what we control so we can make a difference there. One of the main things we don't control what the Stokes talk about a lot is what other people think and say about us.

4:43I'm Ryan Holiday. I've not only written all these books about Stoke philosophy, I've been lucky enough to talk about it. The NBA and the NFL, sitting senators and special forces leaders. And it's key that we learn how to not care what other people say and think. We can imagine Marcus Rios has his share of critics. He also has the people whose approval he craves. He says to himself, tranquility comes when you stop caring what other people say and think and care only about what you do and say. and think. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about the stoic art of not caring what other people think.

5:17We don't compare ourselves to others because we don't control other people. The stoics say it's what's in your control versus what's outside of your control. What's inside your control is the work that you do, the situations that you're in. And when you start to say, oh, but that person has more than me, or why do they have that? Now you're getting into envy and jealousy, you're stealing joy and happiness from yourself. Mark Sewell says that happiness is about tying yourself to what you do and say, not what other people do and say.

5:48Folks have this word euthymia, which means tranquility. And Seneca says, well, what is that tranquility? How does one get it, right? It's not you retreat to the mountains or a monastery or some beautiful resort, right? He says, euthymia in the course of life has to come from something else. He defines this euthymia as, he says, a sense of the path that you're on without being distracted by the paths that crisscross yours, even from those, especially from those who are hopelessly lost. So you think about the interchanges and the connections. You think about all the other companies doing what you do, going in similar directions.

6:29think about what's happening in the industry, in the world, it's very easy to get distracted, right? When I was at American Apparel, I watched Dove destroy a billion dollar company because instead of doing what he did well, what the company was meant to do, he started doing what Forever 21 was doing and Urban Outfitters was doing and H &M was doing, right? He lacked the discipline to stay on his path. He got distracted by the paths of those who crisscrossed Even when some of those companies ultimately also were headed towards bankruptcy or having to reinvent themselves. So it takes a lot of discipline to know what you do, right?

7:04What makes you great, what your principles are, what your place in the market is, and to stay on that and to not get distracted, right? To not get distracted by every shiny other thing. And so euphemia is not just a recipe for personal happiness, tranquility, but it's also a recipe for success, right? It's staying in your lane, staying on your tracks, doing what you set out to do, adhering to your strategic plan, your mission, your principles. This takes an enormous amount of discipline.

7:38Epictetus said that we have to put every impression to the test. Your therapist might say, you have to ask yourself, is this assumption true, right? Because the reality is a lot of what we implicitly or instantly believe in a situation is preposterous. Sometimes we're telling ourselves that people don't like us, but if we actually look at their behavior, they actually do like us. Or if we actually ask them, they would say that they do, right? We make these assumptions, and these assumptions, it turns out, are not really based on anything. So we have to put that impression up to the test. We have to ask ourselves, is this actually true?

8:07Why do I believe it? What evidence do I have for it? And this should help us from falling prey to false impressions, false beliefs, false assumptions. Let's go to what's true, not what our mind made up in a moment of weakness or doubt or confusion.

8:24I moved to New Orleans more than 10 years ago. I lived in this little apartment building. And one of the things I did when I moved here was I didn't tell a single person that I was writing a book. For two stoic reads, number one, I found out afterwards that a bunch of my friends here thought that I just didn't have a job. They thought I was basically just a bum. They had no idea I was working on a book, which is an important stoic concept. Epictetus says, if you wish to improve, if you wish to become good at something, you must be content to be seen as stupid or foolish. I didn't care what anyone thought about me.

8:50I knew the work that I was doing. I knew that it would pay off eventually. And when the announcement came out, everyone was surprised. Oh, Ryan was working on something. He wasn't just hanging out in his apartment. And then number two, a stoic doesn't talk about it. A stoic is about it. I've always believed that talking about what you're doing and doing it fight for the same resources. So I didn't want to get credit for writing a book. I didn't want people to ask me about the book. I didn't want validation for the book. I wanted to spend every day actually working on the project. That's what paid off.

9:18That's what put me on the track that I eventually got on. That's why I never talk about what I'm doing until after I've done it. And you probably shouldn't either.

9:28In one of the greatest essays ever written, I think one of her most stoic pieces of writing, the novelist Joan Didion, this is actually her table. I'm sitting in a chair that was once in her house. She said that self-respect frees us from the expectations of others. She says it gives us back to ourselves. And that's the great singular power of self-respect. You realize that respect isn't something you get from other people. Respect comes from in here, right? And by respecting oneself, holding oneself to a certain standard, having a certain character, knowing one's worth and value, what you will do, what you won't do, from this emanates a kind of confidence that makes one worthy of respect.

10:12The Stoics have this great concept. It's actually in a play about Cato. It's founding fathers were fond of it. They were saying nothing can guarantee you success, but there's something better still that's deserving it, being worthy of it. And I think that's the idea. Having respect of other people is great. Obviously, Cato appreciated the fact that people saw him as Cato. But what mattered was that he was actually worthy of it, that he lived a life, that he was a person worthy of that success. And that starts from how he saw himself. That starts from the character that he cultivated. And the same is true for us.

10:49If good work comes from being present, it's preventing your ability from like actually being great on the television show that you're on. You're spending energy out in the world on stuff that doesn't matter instead of being like, I'm going to be the best that I can be in the thing that I am. 100%. If you are constantly dwelling on other people's opinions, if you're constantly dwelling on other people's success, it will 100 % diminish your capability of doing good work. Just no ifs, ands, or buts about it because the mind has a certain amount of bandwidth. And And the way I always express this when I talk to people about it, I go, look at it like a number.

11:21If you had 100 bandwidth, like if your bandwidth was 100 and then someone said something mean to you on Twitter and you read that and responded and you're going back and forth. Now, how much do you have? I bet you got about 30 is gone. 30 percent is just dedicated to this thing. It might be 40. Now, whatever work you are actually trying to do is greatly diminished because you don't have the focus.

11:49When you find yourself being criticized by someone, Mark Cirillo says, you have to get inside of them. Look in their soul. Look at what kind of person they are, he says. And then you'll find you won't strain to impress them so much, right? It's like that line in Fight Club about how we spend all our time and energy trying to impress people who we don't even like, who we don't even respect. It's kind of insane if you think about it. So when you think about the approval of the people that you are craving, that you are chasing, you realize who they are, you realize what they actually value, you realize how wrong they are all the time.

12:19It discounts the amount of energy and focus you're going to spend on trying to make them like that. His point was that we too often accept the disapproval of, say, a hater without actually seeing who this hater is. What have they ever actually done, right? Do they have any real expertise here at all? Do they know what we're trying to do, right? They're judging us for a mistake that we made, for weakness we have, but maybe their weaknesses are way worse, right? that's a very silly way to do it so you have to look at this person whose approval you want you feel like you're no good because you didn't go to harvard look at the people who have gone to harvard right look at the people who have not gone to harvard does this actually say anything about you look at the the problems the mistakes that institution had made and is it really that important for it to reflect on you zeno's the founder of stoicism he had this social anxiety someone said he was sort of stubby he had weird legs kind of a weird appearance and he had this mentor, this philosopher mentor named Crates.

13:16And Crates realized that Zeno was too self-conscious. He cared too much about what other people thought about him, and he thought people were looking at him all the time. So he asked him to carry this large cauldron of soup across town, and he knew that Zeno would be mortified at the idea. So he caught Zeno kind of like trying to sneak around, take it on these back roads, or do it at night. So Crates was following him, and right as he was in front of some people, he hit the pot with his staff and it spilled the soup all over Zeno. And of course, Zeno was all embarrassed and he ran off and he said, you know, where are you going, my friend?

13:49Don't you realize nothing has happened to you? And his point was that no harm has actually befallen you just because some people are looking askew at you or, you know, none of these people know who you are. They don't care. They're immediately going to forget this event. So I think what the Stoics realize is that one, naturally were self-conscious, so they're not denying that you care what other people think or how you're being seen, but they actively practiced not being shamed by these things. Cato, for instance, would walk around bareheaded. He would walk around barefooted. He wore ratty clothes, even though he could afford the finest garments.

14:26And he did this because he was trying to make himself immune. He's trying to inoculate himself against caring about what other people think. And so I think the real benefit of that, if you look at Cato's life, is that towards the end, when everyone was so afraid of Julius Caesar, when everyone was going along with what Julius Caesar wanted to do, Cato was the one who was comfortable standing alone. He was comfortable being the on man out. He was comfortable, you know, people being mad at him and saying, why can't you go along to get along? Why are you being like this? Why are you being such an asshole?

14:55He had the strength and the confidence to do the right thing when everyone else was afraid because he'd actively practiced not caring so much about what other people think. So look, I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not saying I don't catch myself doing it too, but it's something you work on and you get better at. And so it's important to realize that Stoicism then is a practice. It's a process. It's not just a bunch of ideas. It's something you engage in the way that Kratis was for Zeno. And of course, the way that Cato was in his philosophical practice as well.

15:29it's strange we not only care about other people's opinions we care about the opinions of people in the future who we will never meet who will be dead before or ever walk this earth marcus really says you know people who long for posthumous fame they forget not only are they not going to be around to enjoy it but the people in the future will be as just as dumb and silly and ridiculous and obsessed with fads and valuing the wrong things as people right now. So what matters is what you think. He says, we love ourselves more than other people, but we care about their opinion more than our own. It's insane.

16:02You know what's right. You know what you value. You know what's important. You know what your principles are. That's what you have to measure yourself against. What you're capable of, what you're trying to do. External approval, external validation, external results, that's secondary. How many views this does? That's not important. Did I say what I wanted to say? Did Did I do what I wanted to do? Did I bring my best self to it? That's what matters.

16:28It's one of the most frustrating things in the entire world. You do the right thing, you treat people well, you hold yourself to a certain high standards. And then what happens? People talk shit about you. People steal from you. People screw you over. That's how it goes. Kipling says, can you bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools? Mark Serrillo says, they'll cut you with knives, they'll stab you in the back, they'll shower you with curses, they'll argue in bad faith. But then he says, but what? Does that cut your mind off from clearness and sanity and self-control and justice?

17:00No. To the Stokes, it doesn't matter what other people do. It doesn't matter if you're not recognized and rewarded for doing the right thing. You stay on the path that you know is true and good. You stay true and good anyway, because to betray it is to add insult on top of injury.

17:21When someone criticizes me, I do this exercise for Marks to realize that. He says, think about this person. Think about what they just submitted to. Think about who they are. Think about what they're addicted to. Think about what they've ever accomplished. And what you realize is that this person whose opinion you were about to let supersede your own evaluation of yourself and your work is actually worse than meaningless. They're like the opposite of who you're trying to be. So it's good that they don't like what you're doing. You don't want their approval. Focus on what you think. Focus on who you want to be.

17:52As he says, we love ourselves more than other people, but then for some reason, we care about other people's opinions more than our own. That's insanity. You got to focus on who you are, on your own internal scorecard, on your sense of self. That's what you measure yourself against, not the nonsense of other people, not the worthless opinions. These people who, quite frankly, you don't respect anyway. If you want more wisdom inspired from the Stoics, I send out one Stoic themed email every single morning, totally for free. You can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. No spam. You can unsubscribe at any time.

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