The 5-Step Stoic Routine for Clear Thinking | Maria Semple

0:00We are coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the Daily Stoic book, Daily Stoic website, which also means we're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the Daily Stoic Shopify store.

0:12Ryan Holiday: We've been using Shopify since the very beginning with Daily Stoic. We sold a print, I think, first, and then shortly thereafter, we came out with the Memento Mori coin. And we've used Shopify because we love it. We even expanded it out to the bookstore when we opened the bookstore. I guess this would have been in 2020, 2021. So we've been using Shopify forever because Shopify is the best and the biggest commerce platform there is. It's behind millions of businesses all around the world. 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. is with Shopify. It helps you tackle inventory, payments, analytics, and more.

0:50Ryan Holiday: You don't have to have multiple websites. You don't have to figure out who hosts or, you know, all this stuff. Shopify is everything all in one place, making your life easier and your business operate smoother. They've also got great customer service. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing with Shopify today. Sign up for your$1 a month trial at shopify.com. Go to shopify.com. slash stoic. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:33Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so my February got blown up, and it was a pretty absurd chain of events. Certainly, life can be interrupted by really bad negative things, a diagnosis, a change in the economy of somebody says or does something, and it causes all sorts of problems in a negative way. But we sometimes forget how often our lives can just be positively impacted, can go in a very exciting new direction as a result of something you never would have guessed what happened. And that happened for me when I got an Instagram DM from a producer at Harpo.

2:21Ryan Holiday: If you've never heard of Harpo, maybe just spell it backwards, right? That's Oprah's production company. And they said, hey, Oprah just read your book and would like you to come do an interview with her in Maui. And I said, what? Is this real? At first, I actually thought it was a scam. People with podcasts know this. There's a scam sort of going around where someone will message you. They're pretending to be a producer for a big show like Rogan or Tuberman or actually, we almost fell for one the other day where they're just impersonating a producer and then they sort of get you on the hook and then they, oh, we need this or we need that.

2:57Ryan Holiday: And then they start asking either for financial information or personal information. I thought that's kind of what it was at first. And then I got on the phone with the producer and no, it was very real. It was Harpo. So I got my whole family, including my in-laws, on a flight to Maui, took my kids out of school for a week. They had a four-day weekend, so we kind of stretched it a little bit. Got a nice, lovely, I don't want to say vacation, but lovely working trip out of it. I'll remember that always. That was lovely. You might have seen some of the shots in the Daily Stoic videos we've been doing.

3:28Ryan Holiday: And Oprah had read The Obstacles Away. My first question is, But how did she hear about it? I mean, it's a 10-year-old book. It turns out she heard about not just my book, but stoicism in general from a new novel. This novel, lo and behold, was sitting on my wife's bed stand. It had been mailed to me, but she stole it and didn't give it to me by Maria Semple. You may have heard of her other book, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, which was a huge seller a few years back. Anyway, she has a new book called Go Gentle. And in the novel, the main character is a Stoic philosopher, a philosopher who's tutoring the children of this wealthy family in New York City.

4:13Ryan Holiday: And Oprah had loved Maria's book. She'd selected it for a book club, but it also sent her down a rabbit hole of Stoicism, which is how she found The Obstacle is the Way. So as soon as I got back, I emailed Maria and said, We've never met, but you changed the direction of my life, and I loved your book. Do you want to come to the Daily Stoic podcast? I'll let you know when my interview on the Oprah podcast is out, but this conversation is going to come first because Maria's new book is out now. So you might be thinking novel about stoicism, not into it. Let me tell you, Maria knows her shit. This is probably one of the most in-depth conversations into Stoicism that I've ever had on the podcast.

4:59Ryan Holiday: Like, I got to nerd out more about it with her than I have with academics and translators of the Stoics. So this conversation is great. Maria's new book is out now, and it's lovely. I think you will really like it. She's the author of four novels. Today Will Be Different, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and This One Is Mine, The New One, Go Gentle. And that book, Oprah decided to make her book club pick, which is an incredible like sort of holy grail in publishing. Before she was a author, she wrote for shows like Arrested Development and 90210, Mad About You, Ellen and more. She signed a bunch of copies of Go Gentle at the Painted Portsch, some of the first copies that she had in hand.

5:39Ryan Holiday: You can follow Maria on Instagram at Maria Semple. And I think you're really going to like this episode. Let's go. So I went to sleep last night and I thought that I heard like nightingales chirping. And then I kind of like in the middle of the night, I woke up and heard kind of nightingales and went back to sleep. And then I woke up in the morning and there were like mama birds feeding baby birds. Oh, that's beautiful. And it was beautiful. But then then I woke up and realized it was the toilet leaking the whole time. And so I thought that's like a perfect stoic thing of reframing. It's all how you decided to see it.

6:11Ryan Holiday: It's beautiful or it's disgusting. That's right. And so I just felt like I was in this magical, like, fairy wonderland, like woodland of birds night and day. And then I realized it was like that goddamn toilet's leaking. And if I had recognized it as the toilet leaking, I would have had a horrible night's sleep. But I would have just been worked myself up. And then it was. But it really was. It's just the power of if you reframe things. I thought that was a good little mini lesson in that. One of my favorite memes is like you go and visit the Grand Canyon and it's OK. and then it's like the sunset in a random grocery store parking lot.

6:45Ryan Holiday: And, you know, what is this? That's actually one of my favorite passages in Meditations where Mark Strelis is sort of like observing all these beautiful things in nature that actually aren't that beautiful. They're pretty ordinary. He talks about like, you know, like the way grain is kind of just bending under its own weight or he talks about, you know, flecks of foam on a boar's mouth. Or my favorite, this is such a, only a writer would notice this. He's like, the way that bread breaks open in the oven. Right, right. And we don't really know why it does that. It just does it. And he's like, the baker's not doing it on purpose.

7:21Yeah.

7:22Ryan Holiday: But it's still a benefit of the baker's art. You go, oh, all the study, because the Romans had such a focus on poetry in place. He just learned turns of phrase and he's applying it to seemingly ugly things or not beautiful things and managing to find beauty in them. Yeah, that's so great. And that's, I mean, why I love Epictetus is I just think he brings just all this potential out of everyday like objects and just anything you come across during the day. You just see the opportunity it is, you know, for growth or, you know, just for to shift your perspective. He's very like domestic, which is what I like about him.

8:00Ryan Holiday: Yeah. I just wrote this email for Daily Soak, the Daily Soak email where James Baldwin is walking with his mentor. Is it James Buford? I forget. It's something Buford. And they're walking in New York City and as they're crossing the street, Buford stops Baldwin and he points. He goes, do you see that? And Baldwin's like, it's a muddy puddle. And he's like, no, no, no. Look, from this angle, you can see the oil on top of the water creating like that rainbow that oil does and the reflection. They could see the buildings in the reflection. And he's saying that Buford in seeing allows him to see. And that that's kind of the I think in a way that's what a philosopher does.

8:38Ryan Holiday: That's what an artist does. which is it sees beauty in the mundane or it sees potential in the ugly or the opportunity inside the obstacle. And they allow other people, in pointing it out, allow other people to see it. Yeah, very much so. I think that's really why I love the Stoics is because it really lets me unleash my imagination on just everyday occurrences or just the natural world or something. is I feel like it, unlike kind of faith or religions that don't, I can, I really like get fired up and like tweak out on like, wait, what's a different way I can see this? This is all the different perspective.

9:18And it really engages like the writer in me.

9:21Ryan Holiday: Well, sometimes people, they're like, okay, so what is it? What are the Stoics telling me to do? And it's like, it's actually not really telling you to do anything. It's just these kind of like different ways of running something through your brain. It's just, it's not actually doing anything in the way that meditation is sitting there and doing it. It's like, no, no, no, you're just, it's just different slices on the same situation. That's the thing. It's like, oh, you don't control that New York City is what it is, but you control if you look at the puddle as something ugly and disgusting or you look at it as something kind of beautiful and modern and surreal.

9:55That's right. It really is good for the artistic mind. And I think in just, you don't have to be an artist to do it, but I mean, I would hope that people who are into stoicism would understand that like, oh, I didn't get a job. I didn't get the job I wanted. But then, oh, there's all these other doors open to you. And what could they be?

10:12Ryan Holiday: You just didn't get a shitty job. You actually would have hated it and would have been horrible. And you can decide what story you're going to tell yourself. That's right. And it's actually really fun. Yes. OK, so give me your stoicism origin story. It's a mystery. I don't quite know how I came across it, but I feel like I thought it was in The New York Times, like the Stone. Remember, they used to have a philosophy column. And I read about it and it seemed really wise. And like, it just seemed like something I could do. And already just reading about it brought me relief. Now, I've now since gone back and tried to find that article and I can't find it, but I just read something about it.

10:47And what I figure it must have - When would this have been?

10:49Ryan Holiday: This would have been maybe 15 years ago. And I think probably it was about use wisdom, apply wisdom to figure out what you can control, what you cannot control, only worry about what, you know, the serenity prayer basically is like, which we all love. We were all like, whoa, the serenity prayer. But it's like, oh, this is the 300 BC serenity prayer, you know? Did it come to you at some time when you really needed that? Or why do you think it struck you? Yeah, well, I think generally I'm, I struggle with my emotions, I'd say, with just like being, I was like being ruled by my emotions, you know?

11:25And so this felt like it could bring relief to that, you know? And so I read, I think William Irvine, that book, that was like the first book that I read. And it was really about just the guide to the good life, which is basically like, you're just going to be a mess and have no idea what you're doing. And you're going to die and go like, I, what was that about, man? I had no plan. I had no idea of like what I had and I wasted it. And you can like live with intention. And so that was interesting to me. And then quickly, I just went into the Stoics themselves, you know, Seneca and then probably Marcus Aurelius.

12:01I really love Epictetus. Because he's your guy? Yeah. Epictetus. It's so funny. I feel like Marcus is your guy, right? Yeah. Yeah. And like Tim Ferriss is a Seneca guy, right? Yeah. And so I do.

12:12Ryan Holiday: That's exactly. Yes. Yeah. Right. Right. Epictetus is my guy. And it's funny because in one of your books, you refer to him as preachy. Do you still stand by that? He's the worst writer of them. Right. So he's not actually writing because someone, Arian is writing. But what you are getting when you sit down and read Epictetus is literally a man preaching. You're listening to a professor speak about stoicism. Right. And then that's filtered through Arian, his student. And I mean, I think there's a lot of great stuff in Epictetus. The Inchiridion of Epictetus I like better than the discourses of Epictetus.

12:48Ryan Holiday: Right, exactly. Because it is filtered down and edited in a way that you're getting to the core of it. I just think Marcus Aurelius, to be doing that in private and to write that well, it is unimaginable. Right, right. Like, he's just such a great writer. I think that's why I like Marcus Aurelius the most. And then Seneca is also an incredible writer. Such a good writer. Oh, my gosh. So it's kind of hard to compare Epictetus to him because he was doing something very different. You're listening to transcripts of a lecture. I think that's maybe why I said he was preaching. What I love that Sharon LeBell translation, and I think that she really does new age it up a bit.

13:25Translation. Translation, which is kind of wild. And in fact, in my book, Go Gentle, not to pivot to my book.

13:31Ryan Holiday: You talk about this. I do. I've interviewed her. Yeah, so I make her a philosopher. When I was thinking about what do I do with my main character, I want to make her a philosopher, like a stoic. But then I thought I'd have to have her learn Greek after she was a TV comedy writer. And I was like, do we believe that? Or Latin or whatever it was. And so, but then I read the chair and LaBelle just kind of read the American, I mean, the English, the English translation. She translated it not from one language to another, but from one context to another. And which is its own service. Yes. And so that's kind of why I felt like, okay, I can make, that's what my character does.

14:11is to kind of dumb it down and make it kind of nice for the people, you know? And so maybe that's why I like it is because it's very— It was very good.

14:20Ryan Holiday: It was one of the first Stoic things that I read in that. Actually, I wonder if it even informs my understanding of Epictetus because I was a little disappointed when I read Epictetus. I read that first and then I read Epictetus and I was like, are you sure he didn't say it that way? And it's like, no, he didn't. And so it's like he said it worse. And so she does such a great job distilling it down. That's a classic, great introductory to Stoicism. Right. And so what I did was I, and then of course, like I got your book, The Daily Stoic, which I just loved. And I have my copy here. I'm very excited for you to sign it.

14:52Ryan Holiday: I just, in my email today, got confirmation that I've sent in from my publisher the 10 year anniversary of The Daily Stoic. So we just did, we changed a bunch of the entries and whatever. So it's now 10 years old. I'll have to get a new one. Yeah. So I'd say with the daily Stoic plus the Stoics themselves, I would just every morning sit and read the Stoics and then start to try to come up with how to practice Stoicism because there was I didn't know how to do it. I kind of looked maybe there were meetups, but they seem like kind of scary and like weirdos or whatever. And I didn't know that I wanted to.

15:25I don't like meeting people. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to just drive an hour and a half away and then you're going to be scared by everyone you meet and then turn against your passion as a result. So I didn't do that. And so I then just started on my own coming up with what does it mean for me to be a Stoic? And so I came up with my philosophy of life based on William Irvine. And it took me years to kind of refine that. And then I have like a daily, you know, maybe like five step Stoic practice that I would just do by myself, which now just seems so kind of tragic and sweet that I just invented my own little Stoic practice.

16:00Ryan Holiday: What is your five step daily Stoic practice? Well, so what I do is I write down my philosophy of life. Let me read it just so I don't stumble on it. My daily goal is to bring my actions, desires, and thoughts into harmony with my philosophy of life. My philosophy of life is virtue equals freedom. The four stoic virtues are wisdom, courage, justice, temperance. Virtue is the only good. Its pursuit is the only guarantee of achieving abiding good cheer, secure joy, and a tranquil mind. Okay, so that's like what I realize is my philosophy of life. And then what I do is I go to the virtue list. So then I've written the four virtues down and I put a bunch of descriptions, like subsets of the virtues.

16:45Ryan Holiday: Walk me through why you put them in this order. I'm curious. As someone who just did a series on the four virtues, why do you pick them and why do you put them in this order? Okay, so wisdom is first? I don't put wisdom first. I mean, I want to know why you put them first. Okay. Okay. I think wisdom comes first because I think it applies to all the other ones. I think that without knowing what's in your control and what's out of your control, you can't, like, you need wisdom for that. So I think that that's the crown of it, you know? And then because they all are the things that you can control.

17:16So I feel like somehow that goes to the top.

17:17Ryan Holiday: Well, I sometimes tell people, I think wisdom can be misleading, but if you saw it as discernment, Yes, exactly. Then, oh, okay, yeah, sure, because it's telling you what level of courage to bring to a situation, telling you what situations to, what the right thing to do in a situation is, how much is too much and not enough, right? That's right. It's shaping and informing the volume on the other three virtues. That's right. So that's number one. And do I have, see, what do I have there as number two? Okay, see, I'll tell you why I have justice next, which is kind of funny, is that I was talking to Donald Robinson once.

17:51And I had courage next. And he kind of bullied me into putting justice because it's not funny because he was like, well, and he did this. He was like, why isn't justice higher up?

18:04Ryan Holiday: Well, yeah, it's like courage, courage for what? Yeah, right. Like, what is the courage being applied to? That's right. And if it's not to the right thing, then it's not so impressive. It's certainly not virtue. That's right. That's right. And also the thing about justice is I think it I mean, it's been such a years long process is justice feels I mean, all of the words are kind of problematic, like virtue. You know, like it's not cool going to dinner and going, yeah, all I can do is care about virtue. It just seems preachy and justice seems preachy. And I knew it could not be in the title of the book.

18:40Yeah. Yeah. You can't do it.

18:41Ryan Holiday: You know, I don't care about the law. Yeah. And I don't want to hear it from you, you know, about why I'm not going to have you tell me what to do. That's just what unfortunately applies now. So but once I understood it's about like being kind to other people and treating people well and then just kind of understanding. It's kind of a boundary thing in a way is justice, you know, at least ethics and standards. Yes. And yes. And so and then it's what do you put your effort into in terms of other people, you know? And so that to me is like very rich territory. And then I probably have courage. And so courage is just so great.

19:18You know, it's like about work to me. It's like I do. It's to me, courage is about work. What do you mean by that? It's just hard work. I feel like to just to do the writing, to go to the gym, to do the hard things, you know, is to me.

19:33Ryan Holiday: So this is where I disagree with the Stoics and I disagree with you. Okay. When I did this series, I think endurance and resilience, I think they go down in temperance and self-discipline. Okay, okay. So you think courage is the showing up? Yeah, see, see, like if I'm in a plank. Putting yourself out there? If I'm in a plank, it's like courage. I'm just going like courage, you know? Oh, that's self-discipline. Okay, no, but it's so much. One part of you wants to do the easy thing, and another part of you wants to do the hard thing. And you have to have the will and the strength to get there, to me.

20:06Okay, getting into the plank position is discipline. Being in plank is courage for me. Do you know what I mean? It's like the physical thing of just like fighting against the plank.

20:15Ryan Holiday: I would say the decision to go to the gym and be vulnerable and work on yourself is courage. But the deciding to do an extra mile on the treadmill is not courage. It's self-discipline. Okay, I get that. Okay, I get that. But courage now, you know what's interesting? The courage for me is now turning into is more about it's like contempt for conformity. Yes, definitely. Definitely. And I think that's so relevant now. And I feel like just it's almost when the life project is just now that we're all in this kind of digital panopticon of just like, are we thinking for ourselves? Classic moral courage.

20:52Right. So it's like moral courage, I think, is just becoming really urgent to me personally. And and it's so easy to slip into just the mob, you know, so that's really important to me. And then and then temperance, you call it self-discipline, right? That's interesting.

21:07Ryan Holiday: Just because temperance is also a shitty word. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that's like, yeah. Epictetus said that you could summarize all of stoicism in two words, persist and resist. Right. So it's doing the things you should do, not doing the things you shouldn't do. To me, that's temperance in a nutshell. See, I think I like temperance personally because I think like I talk too much or I talk a lot and I just want to be like, don't talk so much. That's discipline though. It is. But I think temperance, there's just like a coolness to it. It's just like, OK, just chill, you know, and I feel like I even feel part of soicism.

21:44Yeah. And so I feel like I might need that. And it's about like not talking so much, not, you know, talking less, you know, talking wisely, humility, knowing your place. I mean, a really big thing for me, just like the psychology of it is just that that's really freeing is just knowing your place in the system you're in, because we can all just go in and feel like we're the biggest thing. It's all about me. All that matters is like what I'm going to take away from the Daily Stoic podcast. You know, whatever. But it's like, no, there's a whole system here that's happening. And so I feel like especially when it comes to business stuff, when I was working at Hollywood, you know, when and I was have my I'd say values, you know, skewed is you would just want it so badly, you know, and that a project going would just be.

22:33You have so little control over everything.

22:36Ryan Holiday: Right. And these other people have lives, they have problems. And so I think temperance to me is just like I call it like right sizing my life, you know, where you just like put yourself properly in the scheme of things. And I think that's a real spiritual practice. Okay. So to go back to the five minute sort of daily. Right. Okay. So you write those things and then you just you just think about these four virtues in the morning. No, what I do is I figure out what I have to do that day, like whatever it is. And then I go to the virtue list. Yeah. And I will pick one or circle one or two. And it's all in a journal.

23:10Like I literally copy down my philosophy of life.

23:13Ryan Holiday: You write this first part. Every single day. You write this every single day. Every single day I write it. And I write that every day. And it used to be, and I write about this in Go Gentle, but for 10 years it was virtue equals happiness. And only a couple months ago I changed it to virtue equals freedom. Because I think freedom is so much bigger than happiness. Sure. Right? And that's what I realized. That I think I was doing it for happiness for a long time and now what I've achieved is freedom. And I'm like, no, that's the fucking bomb is freedom. And so that to me is virtue equals freedom.

23:45And so I've been refining. So then I figure out what virtue is I need. And then my next thing is to clarify my purpose. And I have the quotes there of my purpose quotes that I love, which is like Seneca without.

23:57Ryan Holiday: And this goes to what do you have to do today? What am I trying to do? What is a successful day for me? What are the challenges I'm likely to face today? Exactly. What do I need to bring my stoicism to today? Exactly. And I'm a writer. And many of the days when I'm working on a novel, it's like my writing. It's just about get off the Internet. Don't look at my phone. It's really just a whole elaborate system to not be on the Internet, basically. So this isn't for me, you know, and I think it's very relevant for that reason. And so that's what I do is then just kind of like get my game head on.

24:29And those I just read, you know, and I just kind of like fire myself up.

24:33Ryan Holiday: If you don't know what port you're sailing to, no wind is favorable. Love of bustle is not industry. You know, it's not that life is short, so we waste too much of it. We're defined by what we devote our energy to. Don't do anything with a begrudging spirit. Agree to do it with promptness and courage. I love that. So you just kind of run through these quotes as kind of helpful reminders and mantras. Yeah, to fire myself up for the game, you know? So I do that. And then what I do is I go to the, I pick one of my daily journal exercises. Okay. And so, and it's like, desire what I have. Desire what's in my control.

25:08Turn have to into get to.

25:10Ryan Holiday: It's funny. You clearly struggle with that because you have it twice. You have turn have to into get to. And then you write, I get to do this. Exactly. I mean, this is like my little book is very revealing about my inner soul. No, that's what it is. It's like I protest too much. Yeah, I don't want to do it, but I know I have to. I'm resenting it. And you're like, how do I flip this and focus on that I'm alive? Exactly. And that I, by the way, this is my dream. It's my, I am living the dream.

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28:00Ryan Holiday: To go back to Seneca's quote, it is foolish to undertake anything with a lazy and begrudging spirit. Anything you agree to do, do it with promptness and courage. Exactly. You signed up for this. Yeah. Do it. Be glad to do it. Don't do it. You know, spitting, you know, don't do it reluctantly and with bitterness. And I think no complaining is to me under temperance, right? I think I put that under temperance. I would agree. And so to me, that's what I do is I pick something and then I really frame my day that way. You know, it's like I get to do this. It's like I also love desire what you have.

28:34That to me is like it's just it's like a drug to me. Yeah. It's like I'm sitting. I'm like, oh, you know what I wish I had is like this apartment on the Upper West Side. It's like I have an apartment on the Upper West Side.

28:46Ryan Holiday: I try to remind myself, hey, you wanted to write one book. Yes. You know, you're you're so this is what you wanted more than anything. You get to do it. You are doing it. Focus on that. Not what and there is a great there's a Marcus Reyes quote where he says, think about the things that you have. Yes. And how if you didn't have them, how desperately you'd want them. And also, I think it's worth saying maybe this is less stoic, but I go think about how many people would kill. Yes. To have with this because they're currently starving in a hut somewhere or because they're on the outside. clawing for just one of the 20 breaks that you've gotten in your career.

29:24Ryan Holiday: Like, even though it's so tempting to be jealous of what others have, it's helpful to be reminded of how jealous others are of you. Even, you know, if you're in a jail in America, it's better than being like there are people in a jail cell in some other country who would kill to be incarcerated here. That's right. No, it is. And so I feel like I'm so living the dream. And also, I think probably like you, my days can be varied, especially now that I have a book coming out. There's just all these different, and I love that. I love novelty, and I love, oh, I get to do an interview today, and then tomorrow there's a photo shoot, or I don't know, there's just all these events and things.

30:03And that's kind of fun to realize I get to do this, because my last book was 10 years ago, you know, and that this is all I ever wanted out of this book was to finish the book and have the book like actually work, you know, now that it is, it really is something I dreamed of for 10 years and felt like in the depths of despair, like, oh, this book's not going to work. I'm never going to write another book. You know, maybe I just everything I had to say, I already put it in books. So this is such a wonderful like chapter. And I've got to just bring every amount of positivity to it. And I think optimism I have under courage.

30:41Is that what you say? Or is that temperance?

30:44Ryan Holiday: No, I think hope is both courage and I would say wisdom. Right. Oh, wisdom. OK, because I'm very I'm also kind of drifting into the optimism thing as being like very powerful because I think I maybe discounted it for a while of just like who needs that. That famous quote from from Seneca in here about hope and fear being the same. Oh, but I don't know if I totally agree. You know what I mean? And it's a powerful idea, but I also think there is something about, I think the Stoics could have used a bit more hope. Yes, yes, I agree. And I'll say hope equals fear. That really was my gateway concept.

31:22It may be Seneca's first letter, I feel like.

31:25Ryan Holiday: He's quoting another philosopher. But right? It's like, isn't it one? And I think that was the first direct thing I read of the Stoics was the letters of Seneca. And I read that and I was just like, gay mom. That is like crazy, you know, but I understood. And the other, I think it's almost in the same sentence is that the soldier doesn't isn't dragged by fate or no, no, it's like you need to willingly go into your fate. You can't just complain and drag your feet about life or something. But I feel like that's in the same paragraph. And that really was was the thing that I was like, OK, this is really interesting.

31:59And I want to do more of this.

32:01Ryan Holiday: This idea of saying to yourself, like, hey, I get to do this, I'm lucky. To me, one of the places it's really important to remind yourself of that is as a parent. You go like, hey, how many couples are struggling with infertility right now? How many families have buried a child? You get to do this. You and your spouse struggled, hoped, wanted this thing that you're now like, oh, well, they just go to sleep or like, oh, I can't believe we got to drive. We got to go to drive all like all the stuff that bothers you about a parent you were dreaming of being lucky enough to get to do and you do get to do it.

32:37Ryan Holiday: And then it's worth reminding yourself that at some point in the not so distant future, you will be jealous of as you're dragging your kids through the airport and you're carrying the car seats and you're they're whining and they want a pretzel. And then 10 years from now, you will be walking through an airport without your children and you will see someone else do it. And you will be filled with nostalgia and jealousy of that person who you are in the middle of complaining about. Oh, completely. You'll be jealous of yourself. Of yourself. And mad that you begrudgingly got through this moment instead of going like, I only get to do this so many times.

33:14It's so amazing you use that example because that's when almost like my deepest sadness is going through airports is about that of like, oh, the family trips and we used to go and she was little and missed the plane and have one like carrier and run and all that stuff that just seems so awful at the time. And now whenever I see families traveling, it just like hits me in a place that stoicism cannot touch. You know, it's like very powerful.

33:40Ryan Holiday: Yeah, I was talking to Dr. Pressman. She wrote this great parenting book and I was telling her how my son is just utterly obsessed with Hamilton and he listens to it every night when he goes to bed. He would be in the car for one second. Turn on Hamilton. Oh, I love it. It's like, if I have to listen to this Hamilton stuff, one more time, I'm going to kill myself. And she was like, I went through the same thing with my daughter and then she got over it. And she was like, the other day it came on in the car. Yes. And I was just, she was just like, I was just overwhelmed with a wave of sadness and nostalgia and affection for this like thing that was such a part of my life.

34:14Ryan Holiday: It's like, you know, it's not going to last. No. And you're in the middle of begrudgingly resenting it and enduring it and suffering through it as if not that long in the future, you would give anything to go back to this moment that you're wasting. Well, something that's related to that is Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk, talks about the non-toothache state, that basically when you have a toothache, you're like, all I want is this toothache to be over, like I'd do anything not to have a toothache, and then you don't have a toothache and you totally discount it. And so he's saying like, you go through life, like realize you're in a non-toothache state.

34:52So I always think about that, the non-toothache state.

34:54Ryan Holiday: Yeah, yeah. You have the thing that you desperately wanted and in the future will desperately want again. Yes. But you can't allow yourself to just be in it. But if you tell yourself, hey, I get to do, I get to drive them through traffic today. Yes, yes. You know, I get to take the trash out today. I get to, whatever it is you tell yourself, I get to do it. One thing we know for certain is you don't get to do it an unlimited amount of time. That's right. That's right. So that really helps me. So this is your stoic practice. Is there any other parts of it after the journaling? Well, then what I do is then if I'm really flipping out, then I have this many-step protocol for how to calm myself down about it.

35:34And that's many steps. But if you flip through, the gray pages are like my journaling. How long does this practice take you every morning? Well, and then, of course, I read the Stoics every day. It's really just Seneca's letters, meditations, and Epictetus. But I'm saying you just pick up one of the books and you just let me know. No, I'm reading one of them. And then I just like, you know, get to the end of it, then read the next one and read the next one. And start it over. Yeah. And then I do the daily stoic every day. Yeah. And so I do that every day, but I maybe read two or three or whatever.

36:01It's not like I do it according to the day. I really do set a timer so I don't read too much philosophy because it is so easy to read. That's the thing that you want to just beg everyone to understand when they think like, oh, Miss Thing going around reading philosophy. And it's like, it's so easy. It's so easy to read this stuff. It's so pleasurable. it doesn't take any learning to just get into Seneca's letters they're amazing and then and

36:23Ryan Holiday: then yeah you got to have the self-discipline to close the thing and go to your actual real life and then I write but I'm really like got my head in it you know I'm like let's let's go you know and what's interesting is when you write a novel like my novel is about all these different things you know it's about a woman who's single and in her late 50s and kind of starting life over it's about philosophy there's all this stuff about misogyny and sexual assault in it it's a romance It's art theft. It's like all this crazy shit in this book. It's crazy. It's really a lot. And now that the book is kind of getting out in the world, really, the thing that people are going nuts over is the stoicism, which and moms and things that I never would have thought.

37:01And people, I mean, I've gotten so many messages already of like, I want to read a Doris Stoic books. I want to read the, you know, I want to read her books. And so I thank you in my book, in the back of my acknowledgments, but also the other writers that I think people should go to. But there is this tendency that people don't want to read the Stoics themselves. I'm sure you found this, right? And there's this resistance. I mean, but lucky for you, they want to read you. And so that's like good.

37:25Ryan Holiday: I always try to remind people like nobody said it better than the Stoics. Yes, yes. And so people go like, what would be a good Stoic book for my 16 year old? It's like if your 16-year-old lived in ancient Greece or Rome, they'd just be reading the originals. Yes, yes. And they thought that you were more than mentally capable of reading that. Yes. And I think we sometimes baby kids and people about books, like there is no one who is not capable of reading the Stoics. What I try to do in my books is, as you try to do in yours, is take the ideas and illustrate them. Yes. Or portray them in what it might look like in either a real or a fictional situation, which is different than laying out the idea itself.

38:02Right, right. Right. No, and you use all the great stories throughout history. I mean, I feel like I could probably not win Jeopardy, maybe become second in Jeopardy just from reading all about your historical examples.

38:13Ryan Holiday: Well, that's just me crisscrossing my two favorite things, which is stoicism and history. Yeah, yeah. I do think stoicism, like people tend to assume that everyone who's interested in stoicism is a dude. Right. Right. It has a masculine energy. I think that's changing. But why do you think it struck you as a woman? And why do you think women who are reading the novel are so lit up about that theme. Interesting. Well, and that's what I love about the Oprah aspect of it is I feel like, wow, maybe this is going to turn moms and women onto Stoicism, which would be just so weird. And it just makes me so happy, the thought of that.

38:52And I haven't really given it much thought. But now that you say it, I think that I offer a kind of a softer version of stoicism in my novel, which I feel like I've engineered for myself over the years.

39:08Ryan Holiday: Yeah. And that - What do you feel you're softening? Well, so it's actually, it becomes the story of my novel, which is that I think when I first discovered stoicism, I really loved the idea that there are like no victims, that everything that happened, this is how I interpreted it. Everything that happened to me, it was a fault of my character. And I was responsible for my unhappiness, let's just say. I still believe that. But I think in the early days, it was very self-punishing of me, you know, and it was self-punishing. And so I think that chicks don't take to that, you know, as well as men do, I think, you know.

39:47But for a while, I'd say it's really liberating when you're like struggling with your emotions or your neuroses or whatever these patterns you can't get out of. For a moment, there's just this like self-empowerment, which was like, I did it to myself. You know, like you don't want to be a victim.

40:05Ryan Holiday: They didn't offend me. I took offense. I took offense. And so you're like, I can work with this, you know, and I can do it. And so I think that what that can lead to is just being too like harsh on yourself, you know, and too, I don't want to, I don't think you can be too forgiving of other people, but just like keeping yourself maybe in situations that aren't good because you're like, I got to just gut through this. You know, it's all me. It's all me. Yeah. And I think that may that that I personally don't like that, that I am. My novel is called Go Gentle, you know, and it really is. Ultimately, it's it.

40:39That's the journey of Adora Hazard is that she, you know, starts out being really harsh. And it's like, you know, I look for the quote and it wasn't really the quote. I'd misremembered it, but it was like, be hard on yourself and easy on others. Isn't there, Marcus?

40:53Ryan Holiday: Strict with yourself, tolerant of others. Right. That's Marcus. Yeah. Right. OK, so I felt that I had kind of overdone in my youth, you know, and and so and it's not that I've moved into like victimhood or blame or whatever, but there's just kind of a loosening of of right now. I feel like and it's also age really helps just a lot of times when I explain why I like stoicism, I say it makes you philosophical, you know, it kind of lowercase, the lowercase p. Big picture, perspective. Yeah, and it's like, does it really matter? It doesn't matter that much. It all just feels like, it's not that there's that much at stake, but it's like, you know, it's all going to work out.

41:35Yeah, or it's not. Or it's not, or it's not. But as you're the master of is when it doesn't, it still does. Well, that's what I mean.

41:43Ryan Holiday: Maybe your early read on Stoicism is like, it's all going to work out. And then the more philosophical one is like, or maybe it won't. And that is also working itself out. And that works out, exactly. You just have a bigger perspective on things.

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44:29Also, I would say that that I and I'm very curious to hear what you think about this is that I feel like there's not about a lot about love in stoicism. There's like justice and there's this thing.

44:41Ryan Holiday: Well, where would you put love under the four virtues? I mean, I don't think you put it anywhere. I mean, I think it doesn't belong there. I think that Christianity brought in love, you know, and then I think I think I write about that in my book, that that's her big revelation. when she realizes that like stoicism is limited. It can only like help her in certain ways of her life. But what about love and chaos? You know, those are human. Those are great. Like if I fell in love tomorrow, I mean, I'd be very interested because I like have not fallen in love as a stoic, you know, but I would hope if I fall in love, I just lose my fucking mind.

45:17You know what I mean? And look, then I'd pay 10 times for it in the tenfold in the future of misery. But still, that's a human experience. You know, I want that. So what do you think about that?

45:28Ryan Holiday: I mean, I thought about this a lot during the Virtue series. Where do you put it? And I ended up putting it in injustice, like our affection for each other, our connection to human beings, our obligations to each other. I told this story towards the end of Right Thing Right Now about Charles de Gaulle and his wife have this daughter with Down syndrome at a time when you like you would ship a child like that away. Yeah. And they don't. And she's like the apple of his eye and they go on these long walks together. They had this like profoundly loving relationship and the sort of philosophical beauty of that as well as the sort of selflessness of that and the sort of connecting to something bigger than yourself of that strikes me as like what justice is ultimately about.

46:15Ryan Holiday: Justice isn't like, hey, I gave you my word. I'm going to do it. Or, you know, I am scrupulously honest. It's the selflessness and the giving yourself over to things. So I put it there and then I would probably also put it in wisdom in the sense of like, what's this all for if it's not for. For love. For love and other people. But see, I'm talking about like madness, you know, which I do think that there's value in it, you know. And when I write, it's all within the stoic paradigm. Like I'm not saying madness out of like I can't write my books without madness, you know, like, no, no, I need to full reason.

46:52Ryan Holiday: No, the irrational exuberance of those early days of falling in love with someone. And then, you know, there's a mother-daughter relationship in my book. And there's when the daughter's just being a nasty little bitch and she's like enjoying her and getting frustrated by her. And then they fall asleep together and they're falling. They have to sleep on an air mattress and she kind of hugs her daughter. And she says the stoic makes some good points, but none of them were mothers. And I just think that love of a child that have just liked to be so bedeviled. And I don't want to reason myself out of the frustration and the craving of my daughter.

47:29Ryan Holiday: Well, there's this passage I think about in meditations all the time, which I think goes to this. And again, our perspective on who the Stoics were, we tend to I just don't know if we fully give them credit for who they were as actual human beings, which is a little bit more well-rounded. This is Mark Shrelis saying what he learns from sexist. He says kindness, an example of fatherly authority in the home, what it means to live as nature requires. to show intuitive sympathy for friends, tolerance for amateurs and sloppy thinkers, his ability to get along with everyone, sharing his company was the highest of compliments, the opportunity, blah, blah, blah, blah.

48:03Ryan Holiday: He says not to display anger or other emotions, to be free of passion yet full of love. Right, okay, right. So to me, he's talking about how can you be philosophical and be stoic within the frustrating, aggravating, beautiful, crazy, inexplicableness of human relationships, especially family and the people you care the most about. So I think to me, what stoicism is, is kind of like, well, look, let's get rid of the madness of anger, the madness of lust or jealousy or anxiety or fear. Let's push those aside. And then if we're going to make room for any of the passions, love is the one we're going to make the exception for.

48:46But then it does get into attachment in a way that I think is good, you know, like it's very hard to love without attachment, you know.

48:53Ryan Holiday: And again, what the Stoics write and then you go, but Marcus, you had 11 children. So like clearly, clearly what he's trying to do is remind himself of how attachments can be irrational or, you know, how you can lose things or how you don't control their people within the context of of the default being you have a family, you love your spouse, blah, blah, blah. So it's like people go, well, they say here, you know, ambition is bad. Don't have ambition. And it's like, yes, the person saying that was an extremely ambitious person. They're not saying that because they're sitting in an ashram somewhere not doing anything or in a year-long silent meditation retreat.

49:36Ryan Holiday: They're saying that in the forum, running for this office or that office. So it's the context with which they're saying it's not that they're hypocritical. It's that they're saying, hey, just understand what ambition is if you're going to have it because you're right. It's like they're playing with the fire, but then also reminding themselves that it's dangerous. Right. I think that's an important lens on it. Yeah. And that and that comes that does come from age. I think a lot of it does, you know, or just experience. It's not even it just comes from experience, you know, which is good. Well, so to go to the female Stoic thing, I wanted to.

50:09Ryan Holiday: Yeah, yeah. So we did this video a couple months ago about like Stoic women in history. Oh, OK, good. Please let me know. One of the ones we talked about was Portia Cato because Cato's daughter. OK. Like Cato's daughter is in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. She's married to Brutus. A lot of people don't know this. OK, OK. But so. So then there's this famous scene where to prove herself worthy of being included in the conspiracy, she stabs herself in the leg. OK. And then and then binds up the wound just to see like, hey, could she withstand torture? And when she does, she goes, anyways. So these are some of the comments.

50:40Ryan Holiday: I thought you'd like this. The very essence of a woman's life is an exercise in stoicism. I thought that was funny. And then someone said, she stabbed herself in the thigh, bound the untreated womb, suffered with fever for several days, and her husband didn't even notice. Yeah, that tracks. Considering what men have done to women throughout history, men are very lucky that so many women are stoic. Yes, yes. Because I think about you hear these stories about it's like this stoic gladly goes into exile. But it's like, who's he dragging along with him? That's right. Or who's staying behind? That's right.

51:12Ryan Holiday: The person who not only had to put up with it and deal with the consequences, but who don't even dignify with a name. Yeah, yeah. Like that's stoicism right there. Well, I agree. And I do think that being a mother, that there are those at a certain age when the kid is sick and you're sick and you still have to be like the woman of the household and do those things. and then you have your work and you do that, you just put your head down and you do it. And I do, I will say, no hate, Ryan. I think women do a much better job at that than men do. People are always like, women are so emotional. It's like, actually, it's, we portray emotional as being like crying or afraid.

51:49Ryan Holiday: And then it's like, a dude gets angry and he punches a wall and we're like, that's so masculine. It's like, that was extremely emotional. Like, and Mark Struis talks about that in meditations. I was like, it's not manly to lose your temper and break things. Like I think about like our current political environment. I go, these are incredibly emotional, like fragile snowflakes who are going around saying like women shouldn't be in combat roles because they're too sensitive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really true. And I always think that women are so much more practical than men. I have that line in the book is when she talks about something and says, women, you can't accuse us of not being practical.

52:26Like I think that we are extremely, and I think it scares men when they really see how practical women are. Like, I have my women friends and we practically, like, go through the problems. I think it would terrify men. And so I do think that women do have a certain, like, there's just this baked-in stoicism to how we go through the day that we don't get credit for. It's not, like, we're not portraits encouraged when we stay home with the kids. You know, a man is like, you know, oh, my God, look, he's babysitting the kids tonight. And you're like, oh, you mean he's like co-parenting? Being a dad.

52:58Exactly. And so there's like that type of thing. So I do, I think maybe that's why women maybe are responding to it, is it's really already aligns with a lot of how they go through their days.

53:13Ryan Holiday: Yeah, there's, it's Aeschylus or Eripides, whichever one fought the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, he famously said, you know, I would rather stand in battle three times than give birth once. Yes. That's very true. No, I know the childbirth thing is a whole other level. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are the comments I thought you should respond to. Okay, these are the last three. God, no, maybe if they were raised to be stoic instead of following every fleeting emotion. Women are boring. Do you think catering to women is going to help your channel? I'm not watching this. And then it says, then why do women overreact so much?

53:47Ryan Holiday: Why do they struggle so much with emotions? Why do they act so much on passions? Why do they struggle so much with discipline, indulging in pleasures and being so inconsistent? Why do they get all over the place every month? And it's like the hilariousness of I'm also thinking of like how emotional do you have to be as a person to write that comment on a video under your real name? Exactly. Exactly. Not thinking through the consequences. But well, I'd say that when that when there's systems that are against you, you have to get your head on straight about it, you know, about like, how are you going to react in these situations?

54:19You know, and so I think that that I mean, women have certainly a degree of of exposure to that people of color, et cetera, et cetera. You know, and so I think that that there are a lot of people who are the system is set up against them. And so I think you do have to have a plan for that. You know, it's like you got to figure it out. Like, what is my and that's where you need a philosophy of life, I think, because every injustice is going to make you angry, make you crazy. You know, one of my things that that I I say during my protocols for when I'm about to get wigged out or when I am getting wigged out about something and what to do is just like, don't make it worse.

55:01You know, is number one. It's the first rule of holes. Yes. I have that in my book. The first rule of holes, man, is just don't make it worse like that. That is just digging. Yeah, that's the yeah. The first rule of holes is when you find yourself at all, stop digging. And that's what I find that I feel like with that you do, you know, in specific situations, but just largely you have to come up with a plan. And you really do. You want to be kind of Steve Jobs with the turtleneck. You know, you want to just be like, that's nothing that bothers me. Like, that's just I've made an executive decision that I will not be.

55:33I won't go there. I won't start getting myself worked up. I won't bring other people into it. I won't talk about it constantly. You know, it's just like not going to be my problem. And I do think then you get to be productive, you know, and then you get to write books and you get to do things with your time, you know. So I think you do have to come up with a plan.

55:50Ryan Holiday: Well, and I think sometimes people go, well, what could what could the Stokes teach me? You know, this is just a bunch of privileged old white guys. And it's like, OK, first off, you have you have no conception of what the Roman Empire was. You think they're all blonde and blue eyes because you saw movies made in the 50s. But half of them were enslaved, first of all. But it's like from Spain to Turkey to North Africa is an enormous swath of population of different skin colors and cultures and environments. And it's like, yeah, sure, you have Marcus Aurelius. But actually, the beauty of stoicism is that you have Marcus Aurelius directly influenced by Epictetus.

56:30Ryan Holiday: So you have extreme power who's wrestling with the fact that for all his power and success and fame, he's still constrained fundamentally by all the things in life he doesn't control. Right. And then you have Epictetus, who is disadvantaged, discriminated against, persecuted, abused, suffers. And yet for all of his seemingly, all the seemingly prescribed nature of his life and the limitations, he's actually so powerful and has so much ownership of himself that that Marcus Aurelius and also Hadrian, two emperors who are changed by his work, are envious of him. That's right. And that's what the Stoics have to teach.

57:12Well, you know what? I think why Stoicism is big now or why it's getting big and why particularly with like the tech world or whatever, my theory about that is because it's when you have everything that should have made you happy and you're not happy. Right. And I think that this really answers that cry of the soul, as they say, you know, is that you're like, wow, I was supposed to I should have been happy by now. You know, like society told me what to go after and I did it. You know, I got the witch's broom and now I'm still unhappy, you know, and how the fuck did that happen to me? You know, and people go out of their minds about like and then you keep you keep you're on the hedonic treadmill.

57:54You just want more and more. It still doesn't make you happy. And I think that stoicism is just like a circuit breaker in that. It's like, check yourself. The whole system is at fault. Like the messages, everything was wrong. You have to switch it out for something. So that's why I think right now it's really big. You know, and maybe the Roman Empire as well, not the Epictetus.

58:17Ryan Holiday: What's remarkable about the moment in time we're in right now is that we're experiencing extreme prosperity and technology and all these wonderful things. Right. We're freer than I've ever been before in history and have more. And yet also experiencing instability and uncertainty and difficulty and death in the form of a pandemic and wars. And so and political corruption and chaos and dysfunction. And so you're like, oh, OK, it's never actually going to be normal. It's never actually been calm. You think you you can just have the good things, but bad comes along with the good. And that we're all that this is just fundamentally what everyone has been dealing with for all time.

58:57Ryan Holiday: And it turns out that for thousands of years, people have been figuring out strategies for right for how to navigate it. Exactly. There's a story John Adams tells where, you know, there's this poor shoe cobbler in Boston and he takes his shoes. He doesn't always need them to be repaired, but he's taken them to this guy just to be nice. and you know he goes and he visits and there's like 20 you know this guy's got 10 kids and they're living in this sort of hovel and um drops off the shoes and then a couple days later he comes back to pick them up and as he walks up he can hear the guy working in there and he's whistling and singing he was like he was he was happy to a degree that epictetus could not have even imagined you know and he's like how is this possible like he's going as as i think Epictetus and the Stoics are talking about you, you get so caught up with your own problems.

59:45Ryan Holiday: And then you look and you're like, how is that person who has it way worse than me? Right, right. Smiling from ear to ear, loving life, grateful, appreciative. I must be doing something wrong. And what Stoicism does is it goes, yeah, here's all the things you're doing wrong. You're focused on what's not in your control. You have too many opinions. Yes, yes. You're not being resilient enough. They walk you through the protocol and they help you get to where that is. Yes. And then and then I think what what really helps me is is that that the passions are based on faulty judgments, that you basically judge something wrong that.

1:00:23And I love that. And I think that to me is like totally freeing. And I apply it every day, like when as soon as you're anxious or you're upset about something, it's like you've made a false assumption about about something. And so go back and figure out what the false assumption is. And and that actually can really help help the emotions.

1:00:41Ryan Holiday: Well, that's amazing. I thought the book's great. Let's go. Let's go. Yes, yes, please.