Why Would It Go Differently For You? | 9 Life-Changing Books

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.

1:09Most incomprehensible that after eight years of working for him, writing every word he publishes, keeping his secrets, a young Eisenhower would write of his boss, General MacArthur in 1935, that he would suddenly turn on me as he is all the others who have ever been around him. He'd like to occupy a throne room surrounded by experts in flattery, Eisenhower said. Except it was perfectly comprehensible as his own sentence reveals. If MacArthur eventually turned on everyone around him, why would he not eventually turn on his most trusted aide? Seneca watched as Nero slowly eliminated every rival and relative.

1:45Seneca even had to remind him that it was impossible to kill every successor. And yet Seneca stuck with him, even as Nero killed his own mother. When Nero's goons came to demand Seneca's suicide years later on their boss's order, Seneca acted like he knew this was unavoidable. He consoled his friends that he was not surprised by it. But of course, that's not true. Seneca could have done something earlier. At some level, he must have expected he'd somehow be the exception, that he'd find a way out. That's why he kept working for him, right? That's why he kept writing for Nero and teaching him. Well after, it must have been clear that the man was deranged and unstable.

2:23When people show us who they are, we need to believe them. We cannot indulge the fantasy that they will treat us differently than they treat others, that the wicked will not ultimately bring their wicked down upon us. It is impossible for them not to do so, Marcus Aurelius reminds us. Expecting otherwise to steal a phrase from Epictetus is like expecting figs in winter. We did a video over on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel about why narcissistic leaders always fail in the end. We know this historically. It never ends well. And yet what do people do? They enable them. They vote for them. They support them.

2:59They expect it to go differently. They go to work for them going, hey, I'm going to be the one that turns this person around. I'm going to be the one that escapes from them unscathed. I'm going to be the one that gets them to put my agenda into place. I'm going to be the one that gets more out of this than it takes out of me. And do you know how it goes? It goes the same way it's going right now and always has and always will go. The video is only a couple months old. It's already gotten 2 million views, one of our top most viewed videos of all time. You can check that out. I'll link to it in today's show notes.

3:31And I think we may have even run a podcast episode about it if you want to listen. So I'll link to that in today's show notes also.

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5:05That'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 of 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 bestselling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

5:47My 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.

6:24Becky. 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.

6:44My job is to read books. That's one of the perks of being a writer is you can't write without reading. And I've been reading every day for as long as I've been able to read and that's what's made me successful. It's also made me happy. It's made me a better human being. That culminated in a couple years ago I opened my own bookstore. In today's episode I want to talk to you about some of my favorite books, books that have changed my life, books that I think you absolutely need to read and that will make you healthier, wealthier, wiser, and many, many other things. Let's get into it.

7:20I'm holding in my hands one of the most controversial books ever published, one of the most shoplifted books of all time, a book that's banned in the federal prison system in the United States of America. Why is it so controversial? Because it talks about a thing that we all crave and want, but also fear. It's a book about power. It's a book about how to get power. The way to get power is not always pretty. The rules by which power operates are often ugly and scary and dark. But actually, the more intimidated you are by that, the more repulsed you are by Machiavellianism or the dark side of human nature, the more important it is that you read this book because you are so likely to be a victim of people who do understand these ideas.

8:02I'm talking about Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power. It's a primer. It's a summary. It's a survey course of all of the brilliant writings on power, the dark, alarming, scary writing, and the history of humanity as we struggle to get and protect ourselves from power. If you haven't read the 48 Laws of Power, you should. The author of this book says that everything can be taken from us. And in fact, everything was taken from him. Home, his livelihood, his work, the original manuscript of this book is lost. He loses his entire family in the Holocaust and nearly loses his own life. In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl says, everything can be taken from us, but our ability to choose our attitude in any set of circumstances, to make our own way.

8:45This is the essence of Stoicism, that we don't control what happens to us, even something as cruel and awful as the events of the 20th century. We choose how we respond to it. Suffering is inevitable. We also have the ability to find meaning in suffering, to grow from the suffering. This is one of the most beautiful and inspiring books ever written. There's a reason, sold millions and millions of copies. If you haven't read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, you absolutely should. My aunt gave me a copy when I graduated from high school. I've read many times since. One of my absolute favorite books.

9:10You have to read it. This is one of the greatest books on the creative process ever written. Every artist, every person trying to do something faces what's called the resistance. You know you want to do it, but there's some part of you that says, do it later. Do it when you're more qualified. Do it when inspiration strikes. And this is the fundamental battle that all creative people face. The resistance. And this battle against the resistance, against our lower self to get to our higher self. Every artist, every creative has to be heroic in that battle if they want to succeed, whether they reach a huge audience or a tiny one.

9:49I'm talking about The War of Art by my friend Steven Pressfield. If you haven't read this book, it'll change your life. I reread it before I start any creative project, and so should you. in 1939 one of the best books ever written about the city of los angeles but nobody appreciates it at the time because of a crazy reason the publisher of this book stackpole and son is sued by adolf hitler for copyright infringement because they'd published a translation of minecraft they're bankrupted it destroys the marketing budget of this book which is forgotten for the next 50 years until charles bukowski finds john fontes ask the dust on the shelves of the los angeles public library.

10:26It's rediscovered and appreciated the amazing classic that it is. The great California novels are the West Coast Great Gatsby that every single person should read. It was made into a kind of a mediocre movie with Colin Farrell. It's one of my all-time favorite novels. I've read it three or four times. If you haven't read it, you absolutely should just to give a nice middle finger to Adolf Hitler.

10:47This is a book where I think the subtitle is actually more important than the title. It's a book about leadership in the only real context that matters. It's about leadership in turbulent times. It's easy to be a leader when everything is easy. It's hard to be a leader when it's not. Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of the great biographers of all time, put out this amazing collection, sort of like her greatest hits album, of profiles of leaders who led through profound adversity and difficulty. Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln. It's about leaders who didn't get the good fortune that they deserved, who had to lead through moments of crises and frustration, bad times, and managed to respond well to that.

11:32Not perfectly, and nor would anyone argue, Goodwin least of all, that they were perfect people. But there's wonderful ideas in this book about how to be a better leader, and if you haven't read it, you should go get it right now. This is not only one of the greatest books ever written, It's maybe the only one of its kind. It's written by the most powerful man in the world who has no intention of publication. He'd probably be mortified that his thoughts on everything from losing his temper to his fear of death would ever be known to people. It's a person who had enormous wealth, enormous fame, and yet he's talking to himself about justice, self-discipline, wisdom, and courage.

12:13And the writing is so beautiful, so specific, and yet so universal at the same time that there's never been a book like it before, and there'll probably never be a book like it again. Talking about Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. If you haven't read it, you must. The guy that wrote this book had every reason to be angry. He spends 10 years convalescing from this horrible illness. He gets exiled by the emperor for totally made-up charges. He spends eight years of his life on this island in the middle of the ocean. And yet he ends up writing some of the greatest thinking on how to not lose your temper.

12:48And I'm talking about Seneca. This is a collection of his essays. It's called How to Keep Your Cool. It's important that we see the Stoics not as being emotionless, but having kind of an even keel, even when things are going great and when they're going terrible. And Seneca, an advisor to a later emperor who had a bit of an anger problem, knows a lot about why we have to hame that temper. And there is no uglier emotion than anger, Seneca says, and there is no greater remedy for it than delay. Letting it sit, letting it cool down. Also some selective ignorance. You want to be less angry, be less aware.

13:21Stop monitoring everything that's happening by the Princeton University Press, translated by James Rahm. It's a great read that every leader and thinker should read. The Stoics wrote for a long time about adversity and difficulty, and we take them at their word. What's incredible about this book, it's written by a fighter pilot who shot down over Vietnam. As he is parachuting down, knowing he's going to be taken prisoner, knowing that he very well could die, this man says to himself, I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus. What he's doing then is testing the doctrines of Epictetus in the laboratory of human experience.

13:53James Stockdale spends seven plus years in what now is called the Hanoi Hilton. He's locked in solitary confinement. He's tortured as Epictetus was. And yet all the time he's focusing on what Epictetus talked about, that a podium in a prison is each a place. In any of these situations, good or bad, we have a certain freedom of choice. And what will we do with that choice? Who will we be with that choice? This book by James Bond Stockdale, Medal of Honor recipient, goes on to be an admiral. He's this heroic figure who comforts the other prisoners, who helps steal their will and make them determined and strong.

14:22It's called Courage Under Fire. It's an exploration of the Stoics in one of the most difficult circumstances you could possibly imagine. That's why it's worth this very short, very brief, very life-changing read.

14:35This is a book that you can tell when I read it for the first time, I was struck by a few things. This is written by one of the most famous Romans of all time. He's near the end of his life. He was the advisor to the emperor. He probably knows that he's a marked man, that the emperor is soon going to kill him. He's been studying philosophy his whole life. And he has this friend who's in a prominent position of power. He's a governor of of a Roman province. He wants to write some advice to that guy. They have this exchange back and forth where they're writing these letters to each other about life, about the world, the things we struggle with, where to find peace, how to avoid the traps that other people fall into.

15:11I'm talking about Seneca. This is not actually what Seneca looked like, long story, but Seneca writes these letters to his friend Lucilius. And I think it's one of the most incredible books written about success, about failure, about learning. Ultimately, he defines philosophy. I think this is great. He says, how do you know you're making progress with this philosophy? I know because I've begun to be a better friend to myself. So read Seneca's letters. It's amazing. I read a lot. It's sort of my job. You can't write without reading. But for almost 15 years now, once a month, I send out an email with my favorite book recommendations for that month.

15:47Books that I've been reading, books that I've been going through, books that changed my life, that inspired me, that I think connect to what's happening in the world. and you can sign up right now at ryanholiday.net slash reading list.

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