This Is The Part To Love | "I Spent 6 Years Researching The Most Elusive Trait In The World"

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

0:56This is the part to love. It seems crazy. It seems insensitive to even suggest that someone loved their fate. How are you supposed to love a breakup? Love that you buried someone. Love that you lost your business. this love that you got robbed, love that accident, love political dysfunction or even persecution. Well, we can clear that up right now. The Stoics didn't love the fire that swept through Rome. They didn't love the betrayals and the backstabbing. They did not love funerals or cancer or losing an election. They did not love the plague. That's silly. No, what they loved was what this demanded of them.

1:32They loved the opportunity for virtue and erite that disasters and troubles and setbacks and loss presents us. The part they embraced was not the loss. The part they embraced was what it gave them. A chance to be there for others, a chance to grow, a chance to throw themselves into rebuilding, a chance to start over, a chance to be courageous and decent and kind. That is the part we love. We love that it gives us more of ourselves, that this experience, however unfair, however painful, however avoidable it is, can unlock something within us. That if we do our work, if we hold true, we can emerge better than before.

2:12That we can make things better for others. We didn't ask for this, but here it is, a challenge we must rise to. And if there's anything a Stoic loves, it's that, a challenge.

2:31we just took our kids to an outdoor performance the nutcracker they had a snow cone and then uh they went insane in the car ride home and one of the things i try to remind myself when that's happening is that i don't control my kids behavior especially when they're too far gone like that but i do control how i respond right that's stoicism but it's also what dr becky talks about Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr.

3:08Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being.

3:49And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns.

4:32There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour.

5:09And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

5:37Every day for the last six years, I have been working on a series of books about the cardinal virtues. courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. I'm Ryan Holiday, best-selling author of The Obstacles, The Way, The Daily Stoic, and now this Stoic Virtue series, Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, Right Thing Right Now. Finally, wisdom takes work. Writing a book is not something that happens overnight. It's not something you do in one pass. Doing a book takes work. It takes consistency. It takes discipline. In this video, you'll see everything that went into writing my last book, Wisdom Takes Work.

6:10Let's dive in.

6:20I guess in the old days, they would call this a sanitarium or a rest cure, but I'm working on some shit on myself in Arizona and had a little time. And so I am going over the first batch of note cards. I've been accumulating the note cards in the wisdom book since 2019. Some of them are just plain. Some of them are on the note cards I printed up later. I'm just going through them and marking vaguely where they'll go in the book. Normally, this is a process I start in the office on the big table in my office, but I'm going to do it now here. I just thought I had a little dead time, lifetime dead time.

7:01I'm in a good headspace. I wanted to make what progress I could. So like these two cards will go in the intro I think. This is another intro card so I'm just writing intro at the top. So sometimes I'm writing three for part three, sometimes two or three. These will go into piles and in the different segments later on.

7:24Stack of note cards. This is week two of laying the book out. I am already running out of space from the table but hopefully these will start to come together a little bit more. Maybe I'll have to start using other surfaces. Great. So basically what I have here are all the uncategorized stuff that I think pertain to part two. So basically this is a think about this in three months file. This is the intro so this is very relevant that's looming. These are all categorized stuff so I don't know where it's going to go in the book but I and a theme is emerging and then this is part three so god knows when I'll think about this but I'm going to put these away because I'm already running out of space on the table

8:12so I was down here in Florida in August of 22 working on part one the early stages part one of the justice book which I wasn't sure if it was going to come together or not. I wasn't sure how it was going to go. The book was still, you know, in pieces, the instruction manual not clear. I wasn't sure how the book was going to work. So here I am now in March of 24, and I'm in the exact same spot on the wisdom book. I was here for a week. I wrote maybe two and a half chapters, or I got the starts of two and a half solid chapters and so I'm just trying to remind myself like it'll come together because the funny thing is I was also even though it was spring break for my kids I also had to sign 2 ,000 of the 15 ,000 tip-ins that I'm doing for the Justice book and so the idea is I've got the final bit of the Justice book in my hands as I am in the same place literally and figuratively as it was on the last book and that's sort of the process that you remind yourself of you remind yourself it's a process it comes together you do the work you don't think about the outcomes you just keep your head down keep chipping away at it and it starts to come together working on the book and this crazy thing happened yesterday like the first I think I'm on chapter four chapter five they're all male examples like just it's smidged many male examples and I thought it'd be awesome if the next chapter that I wrote was built around a female example that's just vaguely what I was thinking And so I decided to work on the commonplace book chapter.

9:49I've showed you how all my books are from note cards, right? And so I pull out this note card, and it says, Joan Didion did note cards. There's a mention of it in this book. I pull it up, it sends me down a rabbit hole. I had totally forgotten that in Slashim towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion writes an essay called On Keeping a Notebook. Basically, everything that I want to build a chapter around is in this really awesome essay which she wrote in the 60s. That's what I was working on yesterday, that's what I'm working on today. But the irony, the part that made it just feel so magical and cool, because I don't know if you can hear this speaking chairman, this is Joan Didion's chair.

10:32And I never met Joan Didion. I came to her writing a little bit late. Maybe she would hate what I do, but I think it's pretty fucking cool that I am sitting in the chair of one of the greatest writers of all time and writing about her in one of my books. So anyway, there's that. What changes when you hit number one on the New York Times Missile list? Literally nothing. Back to work this morning. I am going through John Stuart Mill's autobiography, which according to this note, I first read in November of 2010. That's pretty cool. I'm doing a chapter on John Stuart Mill's nervous breakdown, brought on by studying and thinking too much, and I'm presenting it as kind of a cautionary tale.

11:18So that's the project now. It is Thursday, June 20th. Still had to drive my kids to school. Still had to feed the animals last night. Still regular fucking person. Nothing changes. You just do what you you gotta do, you get back at it.

11:45Usually as a writer, I'm not a big believer on changing locations. I think you should be able to do your work where you are. The idea of traveling, going somewhere else and finding a good spot to write doesn't tend to work out. But last summer I did a chunk on the Justice book in LA. This summer I did a chunk on the Lincoln chapter here in Australia. and it's worked out okay. Not as well as I wanted, but I got some stuff done.

12:16It is 7 p.m. on August 6th, I guess, in Australia. I am going home tomorrow early in the morning. This is the second place we stayed. This is in Bondi. I got a decent amount done on the Lincoln chapter, not as much as I wanted. I had this fantasy that I would come back with like the whole chapter done and it doesn't always go that way. I made some progress on some other stuff and I have an idea but I forgot my journals so I was using this little kid's notebook I got in a museum. I think what I'm going to have to do when I get back, I bought two extra books about Lincoln and I'm just going to have to do more reading.

12:50I need more material and then what I'm going to do and I did the same thing on the Justice book and on the Discipline book. Sometimes you stop making forward momentum and my advice when you stop making forward momentum on a project is to go where you will have forward momentum. Go towards something that you have wrapped your head around. So actually I had some ideas for the next chapters I'm gonna do in the book. So I'm gonna put this Lincoln thing on pause while I do some more reading and just go back and focus on that and see if I can't get a better sense of what I need that chapter to do and then come back and backfill it.

13:24Just what I've written and the material I put down alone is 7 ,500 words. So almost certainly everything I need is there. It's just how to connect it all together. And the point I want to make is not there. All in all, the very successful trip. It's funny, as I was doing it on stage, I talked in the talks that I did at Sydney Town Hall and Melbourne Town Hall, I did a tour of all the books. And I talked about the fourth book and I said, I wish I could give you a good definition of the fourth virtue, the virtue of wisdom, but I can't because I'm currently writing about it. No, by that I mean, I'm still figuring it out.

14:00And then I said, but maybe that's the point. You're supposed to be working on it. You're never supposed to actually arrive. As it happened, like literally live on stage, I flipped open meditations and I started to read some things that Mark Shrullis said he learned from Antoninus. And it gave me a sense of what I want to say in the chapter. So who knows? We'll see. I've got this manuscript to read on the plane to finish. I did about half of it on the way here. And we'll go from there. It is 5 a.m. on August 8th. At the end of the day, coming back. None of us slept. the kids woke up at 2 in the morning.

14:31I'm back in the office and I'm going to work on first chapter part three.

14:40It is Christmas Eve. I spent the morning with the family and now I am doing a little bit of editing. When I turned this in at the beginning of November, it was 99 ,000 words. I just got edits back from Julia, who did a nice pass on it, and I'm down to 81 ,225. I think I can get another 2 ,000 words out, and then I may call it. I don't know. I'm listening to the gang of youths. It's a good day. This is my Christmas present to myself.

15:19I I did about an hour on the manuscript today, maybe a little more, I might come back to it later, but I'm now at 80 ,715 words, so I'm chipping away at it. This is the work. I spent about a month doing this in LA in July of 23, and I took the Justice book down about 10 ,000 words, and I think it was better for it. That's what you have to tell yourself. It's painful, but ultimately you're better for it.

15:52It's a Saturday morning. I'm down here in Florida. It's raining, so we didn't get to do our normal walk this morning, but I sat down to work on the manuscript. My wife went out with the kids for coffee, and it's going to be a big moment. So the book is currently 80 ,479 words. I took a while. I knew for a while I was going to have to cut this, but now I am going to cut it, and I'm going to cut this chapter in part three that, here, this is what, this is what the editor said. This chapter pretty much just summarizing what the book is about and so to keep it doesn't really make sense it's not adding anything new there's a little piece i'm going to move probably to the afterward but anyways all right let's do it so 80 479 words let's hit delete here 79 684 words we did it there's probably a little bit more but but we are now officially under where we want to be

16:51All right, it is 3 12 p.m. on the 31st and the manuscript is going in.

17:09It is now February 17th and I got an email which I was both looking forward to and dreading this weekend which is from my publisher the copy edits back on the wisdom book which I now have to go back through and do not just those edits but I have this many note cards that I have to add into the book which is going to require some cutting to make room for so I have a bunch of work to do before this thing goes back the publisher took six weeks to do the copy edits and and then I have like three weeks to get them back. So I may have to ask for more time, but that is the next step in the process. One of the more excruciating ones.

17:53So it's just gonna be notes on notes. See all these notes? So already a dispute with the copy editor. I have this quote, of all the virtues, wisdom is the most elusive, but it's something to which you aspire, something that you attempt to one day acquire. I say, yet we approach that we will almost certainly never get there and that at best, true wisdom is something we can only approach. Despite a lifetime of work, it exceeds our grasp each time, slipping with each step further into the distance like the horizon that can never be reached. And he said, don't you mean escapes? The cliche is about a person's reach exceeding their grasp, not the goal exceeding their grasp.

18:34No, I'm referencing this exact quote from Robert Browning, ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp. What is heaven for? So no, you're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about, but this is what copy editing is. Like one time out of 10, they're correct. And then all the other times you're just like rolling your eyes at it.

19:03All right, here it is.

19:09What? A manuscript from the new book came. Well, this is the first past pages. Yes. This is six years in the making, the final book in the series. Oh, Tommy, you want to see? You want to check it out?

19:31Yeah, it's not that bad.

19:41The secret to finishing big projects is to do them a little bit at a time. I have thousands of these tip-ins. That's the first page in the new book which takes work to sign. And how am I doing all of these tens of thousands of pages? A little bit at a time. That's what a live time dead time is about too. I'm waiting for my food in a restaurant. So I'm signing a couple of these pages. Sit here. And then these get bound up, put in the book. I can't have given a talk about courage, a talk about discipline, and a talk about justice, and then talk to these future commanders of nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers and fighter jets about the idea of wisdom and not address the fact that you're removing books from a fucking library a few yards from here.

20:44I think this is the manuscript. Oh yeah, these are the second half pages. What's in the back? These are like my notes in the margins. I'm going to record the audiobook office tomorrow.

21:05Well, that is it. I've been at this audiobook for almost a month. I did it in smaller chunks this time so I could keep the energy up and my interest up. I finally did it. This is, I think, the fourth audiobook that I've recorded here in my studio next to the Painted Porch. And Wisdom Tate's work is now in the can. It will go to editing and then it will be out on October 21st. As I'm doing the audiobook, I am still making changes at this very late phase, which I'm sure my publisher is going to be pleased about.

21:41Wisdom, the final virtue, what the final book in this series is about is an elusive virtue. All right, it is finally, finally here. Six years I have been working on this series. Actually, since I was on a hike in Bastrop State Park, I had the idea. And then I did courage and discipline and justice. And now, the first time I'm holding in my hands, wisdom. This is the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtue series. And this is literally the first time I have gotten to hold it. And I'm very excited.

22:25I just got back from a very wet, very stormy pre-dawn run for a very full day of press. of the book. I did 6.2 miles. My phone was going off in the middle of it. It was like a pre-evacuation alert for mudslides and flooding. You know, it was very wet, but also enormous palm fronds were falling all around me as I was running. So was this wise? No, it was not wise. It was the opposite of wisdom. But before a very full day of press, you got to do whatever it takes to get regulated. So that's what I was doing. And a little bit of crazy is a good thing. All of this is a little bit crazy. So you got to balance it out.

22:59My next guest, my dear friend Ryan Holiday, argues that one way to deal with these changes is to cultivate wisdom. In his new book, Wisdom Takes Work. Wisdom Takes Work. Wisdom Takes Work. Wisdom Takes Work. I'm heading to The Daily Show now. It is 5.09 p.m. It should be fun. I did The Daily Show once, maybe three years ago. Hopefully it goes well. Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight is the creator of Daily Stoic and a best-selling author whose latest book is called Wisdom Takes Work. Learn, apply, repeat. Please welcome Ryan Holiday.

23:39I think it's hard to subtract justice from any of the other virtues. And at the same time, wisdom is the most essential in that it tells us what is or isn't just, how to bring that justice into the world, what to be courageous about, what is the moderate, the temperate, or the disciplined amount of something. What's too much? What's too little? The new book, Wisdom Takes Work, is now out wherever you buy books. This is the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtue series. If you want me to sign it, you can head over to dailystoic.com slash wisdom to grab it. Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible.

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