This is The Math That Losers Do | What Virtue Is This Moment Asking of You?

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: This is the math that losers do. You could be focused on what you're going to do about it. You could be focused on solutions. You could be thinking about forgiveness or patience or acceptance. Instead, you're thinking about who's to blame, making as the Noah Kahn song goes, making quiet calculations where the fall lies. Why are they like this? Why did they do it? Why didn't they listen? Why couldn't have things gone differently? The better question is, what good is all this going to do you? It happened. It's done. It doesn't change your responsibilities. Nothing is more pathetic, Marcus Aurelius writes in meditations, than people who run around in circles delving into the things that lie beneath and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them.

1:01Ryan Holiday: He's saying that it's very easy to get distracted by putting other people on trial and that this is a way to let yourself off the hook. We should instead focus on how we're going to respond to this, how we're going to, as the Sox teaches, use this as an opportunity to practice virtue. We can keep running the numbers, replaying the mistakes, assign and fault, but the total never changes. That type of math keeps us stuck in the past. The past is gone and no amount of calculation will bring it back or make it fair. What we have is agency right now. We can choose to let it go, to move on, to move forward.

1:37Ryan Holiday: Agency doesn't exist in the past. Only exists now. Now.

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4:40Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so a couple of weeks ago, I was on CNN. They have a show called One World with Zane Asher, and they wanted to talk about how stoicism can help us navigate these turbulent times we're living in. The questions we all have. It was a really cool opportunity. I'm glad I got to squeeze it in. But when I got on air, I was just like blown away like, oh, this host knows their stuff about stoicism. So I wanted to bring you a chunk of that interview here today in case you weren't mainlining CNN in the middle of the day. Thanks to Zane for having me on, asking those great questions and giving me a platform to talk about stoicism.

5:18Ryan Holiday: You can follow her on Instagram at Zane Asher CNN.

5:27For centuries, leaders, generals and politicians have been inspired by the thoughts and writings of thinkers like Marcus Aurelius. The essence of his teachings, how do we learn to live well in a world that we simply cannot control? And what would that mean for our peace of mind? Our next guest says that he was introduced to the philosophy of Stoicism about two decades ago. Ryan Holiday joins us live now from Austin, Texas. He's the host of the podcast, The Daily Stoic, and the author of several books, many of them I've read myself, including his latest one, Wisdom Takes Work, Learn, Apply, and Repeat.

6:05Ryan, so, so good to have you on the program. I am a huge fan of yours. Obviously, I am a news anchor, and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that the news cycle feels relentless. It feels very emotionally charged. What does Stoicism have to teach us about how we can respond or how we should respond to injustice, Ryan?

6:28Ryan Holiday: Yeah, Stoicism is ultimately a philosophy about acceptance, accepting things that are outside your control. But the one area that the Stoics are quite clear that we don't accept things, that we do respond, is in the case of injustice. The four Stoic virtues being courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom. And I think courage and justice come together there to sort of turn away, to not pay attention because it's upsetting to you is obviously wrong. And we have Mark Stimulus, the emperor of Rome, saying that to himself, a reminder that that injustice is not just something you do. You can also commit an injustice, he said, by doing nothing, by saying that's not my problem, that doesn't affect me, by looking for excuses.

7:13Ryan Holiday: So the Stoics are actively involved in the world. They just try to be in command of themselves while doing so. That's such an important point because I think a lot of people, you know, when I first discovered stoicism, I think my misinterpretation was that it was similar to sort of apathy and disengagement. But it's not like that at all. Does anger have a role to play in stoicism? Yeah, I think being upset when you see something outrageous is natural and human. But it is precisely when the stakes are high, it is precisely when people are counting on you or you're in some position of responsibility, that you can't afford to go around being outraged and acting on that emotion.

7:59Ryan Holiday: The Stoics were often sort of connected to the halls of power. And we have one Stoic, his name is Athena Doris, and he's advising the first emperor of Rome, the Octavian, the future Augustus. And he tells him that whenever he's upset, he has to first count all 24 letters of the alphabet. It was too shorter then. And he says, you have to count all the letters of the alphabet before you respond. And I think pausing and reflecting before taking action is a big part of what stoicism teaches us. It's not that you don't take the action. It's that you don't want to take it while you're angry, while you're blinded by fear or jealousy or whatever strong emotion is coming up.

8:39Ryan Holiday: that's not what you want informing what you do. What I find so interesting is how so many of these philosophies overlap. I practice Kabbalah and that is a big part of it, pausing before any kind of emotional response. So one of my questions to you is really just moving away from the news cycle, just talking about some of the issues that people might be dealing with in their everyday life. Two people can go through the same thing, a divorce, heartbreak, your boyfriend breaks up with you, death in the family, Somebody gets cancer who you care about. You get cancer. One person collapses under all of that pressure, totally understandable.

9:15Another person adapts. What determines the difference between the two, Ryan?

9:20Ryan Holiday: I don't know. That's one of the great mysteries of life, why one person responds this way and another this way. And I think the same person might be able to deal with something heart-wrenching like cancer, and then their car breaks down, and that's devastating. And so I think so much depends on the circumstances, depends on the moment. What the Stoics try to teach us, though, is that when we are challenged by life, the point is to rise and to meet that challenge. It's not to turn away from it. It's not to wish it was otherwise. It's not to blame it on other people. But to say to yourself, what does this give me an opportunity to do?

9:57Ryan Holiday: Right. What can I learn from this? How can I be of service to others through this? What virtue is being asked of me here? And in this way, even the most difficult and unfair and challenging of circumstances presents us an opportunity to be better for it. It's not going to be fun while we're going through it, but afterwards we can look back and go, hey, who I am now is only possible because of how I responded to what happened then. I loved what you said about just now about what virtue is being asked of me here, sort of using some of the challenges that you might experience to be of service to others.

10:34that's a big part of Kabbalah as well. And it sounds like stoicism too. You know, it's one thing to practice stoicism by yourself in your bedroom when your life is going well and when your life is so, when things are going smoothly. But when you are really tested, when the rubber meets the road and something goes wrong in your life, like you lose your job, for example, it's very easy people to then sort of abandon. I don't have time for stoicism right now. I need to deal with this. How do you make sure that you incorporate everything that you've learned in private to when it really matters when you are being tested.

11:04Ryan Holiday: Yeah, it's easy to be stoic about something when you're not being tested, when it's easy. It is precisely in moments of extreme success, but also extreme difficulty and adversity that I think we're most called to sort of have that even keel, to have that self-command. So if it was easy, everyone would do it. If this was just something you were born with, it wouldn't be that impressive either. So it's important that we see that this is work. It's hard work. It's not something you read once and you magically have. It's work. And we should be getting better at it as we go. That is how we turn obstacles into opportunities in one most simple way, which is we go, hey, I'm getting practice dealing with stuff like this.

11:52Ryan Holiday: And it's going to prepare me and make me better for when I have to deal with something even more difficult than this at some point down the road. So I just try to think about it always as I'm getting reps. I don't want to be having this conversation. I don't want to be dealing with this. I would love the news to be positive instead of negative, but it isn't. And so I'm getting practice dealing with precisely that. Ryan, thank you so much for your work. I mean, obviously I've read The Obstacle is the Way and just in terms of really sort of teaching me how to respond to the challenges that we all experience in life.

12:25Myself, I mean, I've been through quite a bit over the past couple of years. And just what you have taught me about how to react and how to respond rather than react has been life-changing. So I thank you for that. Ryan Holiday, live for us. Thank you so much.

12:57Ryan Holiday: the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.