This Is What Kindles The Soul | Ask Daily Stoic

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.

0:55On this day 22 years ago, Brian Sweeney was a passenger trapped on hijacked United Airlines flight 175. He knew something was wrong, but he could not have fully understood that he and so many others were about to be murdered in one of the most hateful and deranged acts of terrorism in history. But in those final few short minutes of his life, he managed to leave a beautiful message on his wife's voicemail. Hey, Jules, this is Ryan. Listen, on an airplane, that's been hijacked. Things don't go well. It's not looking good. I just want you to know, I absolutely love you. I want you to be good. I'm so happy to be fine.

1:33Same to my parents and everybody. I just totally love you and I'll see you later. Bye, babe. What's up, I love you. In book one of Meditations, where Marcus Reeles catalogs the most important things he learned throughout his life, he said that he learned from a teacher named Sextus to be free of passion, yet full of love. Imagine the terror of that moment. Yet when you hear Brian's voice coming through the phone, there's not a trace of fear. It's free of passion, free of anger, free of despair, free of everything, yet full of love. Because everything else has been stripped away, rendered irrelevant and insignificant.

2:15Pure love, Seneca said, careless of all other things, kindles the soul, makes us selfless, it emboldens us, makes us courageous, inspires us to be strong, instills us with purpose. It doesn't always win, as Sweeney's tragic death reminds us, but it is an antidote to terror and cruelty and evil. It is the thing that keeps going, that lives on after us, that brings meaning and comfort, even in the worst of situations. So today, on the anniversary of 9-11, let us, as Marcus Aurelius said and Sweeney was, let us be full of love. Let us tell those we love that we totally love them. Let us bring love to every situation we face.

2:59Indeed, there is almost no situation in which passion helps, but almost every situation is made better when it is full of love.

3:16Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm staring out a hotel room in Vermont, looking out over a beautiful lake. I've never been here before. I thought I had my mic with me. I brought it and it's not working, which is going to cause me some problems for the virtual talk I'm about to give. But that's not what we're going to talk about here very quickly. We're going to talk about ego. I was just doing a podcast for Wisdom Takes Work, which is out in a couple weeks with Chris Williamson. And we were talking about what are some of the things that make smart people stupid.

3:53And I was listing a bunch of things, and I was, again, struck, as I have been now writing and thinking about this very idea for over 10 years, how much it comes back down to ego, right? Ego makes us think we already know everything. It makes us uncurious. It makes us not listen to other people. It makes us complacent. Deludes us. It makes us think we have powers we don't have. It gets in the way. And so I thought I would bring you a special Q &A episode of the podcast where we just talk about ego. Over the last six months, I've been all over the world. As I said, right now I'm in Vermont, but I've been traveling all over and people have been asking me about ego.

4:35It's one of the questions I get the most. So that's what we are going to be answering questions about today. Before I get into that, when Chad was on the podcast from Chad Goes Deep, he had something interesting to say about ego. Here's that. we kind of experienced that with um we got a show on netflix yeah and it was great the whole experience was great and but to me it was like actually i was listening to ego as the enemy a lot during it because i'm like i was like gotta keep the ego in check like don't become like too and you know it kind of like it was like the dream especially growing up is like if you're a comedian like getting a tv show you're like that's the career maker and to me i was like when this comes out, I'll, you know, I'll be cruising.

5:14You're a made man. Exactly. And it was great. Like the whole experience was awesome. And we're really proud of how it came out, but it came out and next day it was, you know, you're kind of like, and nothing happened. Where's the parade? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I'm saying, I'm like, I was miserable for like two weeks. And my fiance was kind of like, what's your deal? I'm like, I'm like, I don't, you know, You just expect everything to be easy from that point. And then, but it kind of humbled me in a sense to where I was like, oh, I need to get back to that open mic mentality of just getting back to the craft and just putting the work in every day.

5:51Like there's never going to be a moment where you're kind of just on easy street. But anyways, let's get into some questions. These are people asking me about ego. If you want to book on this topic, of course, we have Ego is the Enemy. And then I would argue that Wisdom Takes Work is largely a meditation on this theme as well. You can pre-order copies of Wisdom Takes Work and get a bunch of awesome bonuses if you go to dailystoic.com slash wisdom. Enjoy.

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7:45Stoic at checkout. That's human with two N's dot com slash stoic for an extra 15 % off with code stoic at checkout. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then 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.

8:27My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky'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.

9:05Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

9:24You're a very successful writer, bestseller. You give all these conferences. How do you ground yourself? How do you not have an ego? I mean, you talked about your day, but that's more around how you plan your day. Maybe it's part of that. But then what else do you do and, oh, I cannot have this conference of Pepsi, but we're not the greatest because they hired me and stuff. How do you work about that? Well, I think it's important. Everyone has an ego. And if you don't think you have one, that's like the most egotistical thing you could do, right? But I find that doing the task is inherently humbling, right?

9:59So if you're focused on how you can get better as opposed to, look at how awesome I am, look at what I've done, you're going to naturally, I think, be humbler. So like what I try to do is whenever I finish a book, I start the next one, because when I start the next one, you're starting with page zero or page one and it's blank and it's intimidating and it's not going to be good for a long time. So like by throwing myself into the next project, I feel like I'm not only protecting myself against It's the ego of like, look how great the last one is selling. Look at all the cool things that I've done.

10:37Look how proud I am of what I've published. But I'm also insulating myself against the failure too, right? Like, so I've had books that have done really well out of the gate. And I've had other books that took a long time to take off. And I really didn't sweat either one because I had this other thing that was kicking my ass every day. And that was taking up the most of my focus. And so Amazon has this slogan of like, it's always day one, right? And you're always starting anew and fresh. And part of that is not being sort of rigid and set in their ways and complacent. But I think it's also always reminding yourself that you're starting at the beginning and to not get too full of yourself.

11:23Right. Amazing. You talk in the book about, as you talk today about, a little bit about the patriots. and then we heard about the Spurs. You talk a little bit about Bill Belichick and how he started and he was like the guy doing the job that nobody wanted to do. You probably now know him as the six-time Super Bowl winning coach and probably Brady was there also. How do they remain egoless in a multi-billion dollar business with all the hype they get around, et cetera, et cetera? How do they ground themselves? Well, I think it's a similar thing. In football, the team that wins the Super Bowl not only played the longest season, but then they have the most trouble retaining talent and coaches.

12:12They have the worst draft picks the next year. And so they're starting that next season behind April. Everyone else got knocked out earlier and has been thinking about how they're going to do the next year. Right. And so realizing that actually your success, you could get you could take this too far and become paranoid and never. But if you realize that your success is actually putting you in a position of disadvantage. Now you've got the most competition. People are the most familiar with what you just did. Right. You're the person they're trying to be. You've got a target on their back. you realize, I think, really quickly, like, there is the margin for error is so small that if you introduce ego or complacency or entitlement, you're going to get your ass kicked.

13:04I mean, I was looking at if I spoke to the Los Angeles Rams a couple years ago, and they ended up winning the Super Bowl last year. And then this year, they didn't even make the playoffs, right? And I'm not saying it's out of ego. It was this team that got ravished by injuries. But it's realizing that, hey, like, just because you were successful before, it is not to be taken for granted that you will continue to be successful. You have to stay hungry. You have to focus on ceaselessly solving problems. And you have to look at what you're doing next. Right? And I think that's a way to just be so locked in that you don't have – you could look at how awesome your career was after you retire.

13:47you know but if you're looking at it in the moment you're taking your eye off the ball so on the opposite side the the ego is the enemy that i just read this week even though you wrote that and this is your study is there ever a time being a dad being a leader being a partner being a husband where the ego gets in your way oh all the time yeah i think if you think ego is not a problem for you you are talking about ego you know uh that's one of the more insidious things about ego is that we can spot it clearly in other people. Like your ego almost says there is no ego. Yes. Right? Yeah. Well, it's just, we can, we can so very clearly see how ego holds other people back, but they're like me, no, no, no.

14:26I've transcended this. I'm over this. And it's like, no, you just can't see if you could get honest feedback from people around you. They'd be like, here's all the ways that your ego is holding you back. But what ego does is it, it sort of blinds us to that thing. And so I do, I make a big distinction between confidence and ego. Confidence is essential. If you don't think you can do something, you're probably not going to be able to do it. The problem is just because you think you can do something doesn't mean you can. And I think where ego gets in the way is it says you already have all the tools, all the skills, all the signs point to yes, instead of doing the work to earn those things, right?

15:05There's a quote from Epictetus, one of the Stoics. He says, remember, it is impossible to learn that which you think you already know. and so where like being a know-it-all is so problematic is that you're kind of right you can't know anything more and humility or confidence can continue to learn and grow because it's secure with itself but also aware of how much more it needs and so yeah look I was just I just got notes back from my my last book and my first reaction every time even though I know this is like, how dare you? I sent you a work of art. You told me you used a different color. Yeah, you sent me back this thing covered in red marks.

15:48What is this? And then I go, okay, that's ego. Ego doesn't like to be criticized. Ego doesn't like to have to do extra work. Ego doesn't like to be challenged. Ego thinks I'm the expert. You're the assistant to the editor. All the things that you're pushing back on. And then I go, all right, let's sit on that for a day. And then usually what I tell myself is, let's do all the easy notes first. Let's do all the ones we agree with. I'm only going to put in the ones that are obviously right that I agree with. And then by the end, I put in all the notes because I've gotten over that initial resistance.

16:25And anytime you get criticized or you screw up, you want to think about how it was somebody else's fault, how you didn't deserve it. They don't understand. and then once you can let that subside a little bit, or what I try to do is once I let that subside, I go, okay, and now where's the truth in this? Where was I responsible? What do I want to take from this experience? And that's kind of how I think about it. But I generally, ego is not this thing that you don't have. It's not this thing that you kill and it goes away. It is a constant process. And would the opposite of ego be humility? Or what would be the opposite of, or just?

17:00Well, the ancients had this idea of the golden mean. And the golden mean being that most virtues are actually in the middle between two vices. And so I'd actually say that confidence is there in between a sort of humility as a positive connotation. But there's certainly people who are too humble, too self-effacing, riddled with imposter syndrome and doubt and feelings of worthlessness. On the one hand, we have this. And then ironically, ego on the other end is actually quite similar. Right. Ego is an obsession with the self. actually when you meet really egotistical people, you see how insecure they are deep down.

17:34So to me, confidence is there in the middle. It's an understanding and an awareness of our strengths coupled with an awareness of our weakness, of our need for improvement, where we can get better, what we don't know. And it's these two things fused together that is what we're aspiring to be as opposed to stuck on either end.

17:59Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in 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.

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