Would It Really Be Different? | How Do I Know If Ego Is Winning?

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: Would it really be different? If you were in their position, if you had their power, if the decision fell to you, you'd do it right. You would not be such a coward. You would not be so weak. You would not be driven to excess. You would not be selfish. You would do it right. Sitting on the outside, this is all easy to think. But as the lyrics to the song A Satisfied Mind go... If I had money, I would do things my way. The problem is that we know how it actually goes. Power corrupts, wealth entitles, success distracts, people make excuses, people fall prey to the same traps, the ones that have existed since the days of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and indeed for all time.

1:02Ryan Holiday: We must understand that success, as the great Tennessee Williams put it, is a kind of catastrophe. It's something to be looked at suspiciously, something that will screw up your compass. The Stoics believe that we had to train in virtue to prepare for adversity, sure, but also for the fortunate situations in which we get our way, because this is precisely when we are most tempted and most under strain. All of a sudden, those ideals have a big price tag attached. All of a sudden, there are fewer constraints upon us. And just like in adversity, we will find in these moments that our training is being put to the test.

1:37Ryan Holiday: Did we really mean what we said? Are these values really important to us? Do we have the strength that Marcus Aurelius did, for instance, to remain good when we don't actually have to be? can we be different or will we, as the song goes, be one of the nine out of 10 who show themselves to have been all talk? By the way, that's something we talk about in our course, The Wealthy Stoic, like how to actually be wealthy, however much money you happen to make. Like what do the Stoics think about having money, how to spend it, how to think about it, what are some of the habits and practices to help you get it to?

2:12Ryan Holiday: I think it's a great course, not always totally understood by some of the people who don't like what we do here at Daily Stoic, but I think you'll like it. And by the way, if you're a Daily Stoic Life member, you get it for free. So dailystoiclife.com for that, or you can check out The Wealthy Stoic at dailystoic.com slash wealthy, and I'll link to it in today's show notes.

2:35Ryan Holiday: It all comes down to hiring. You got to find the right people for your team, and you got to bring them on board, and you got to onboard them quickly. You know, just throwing up a job posting and hoping you get lucky. I've just found, well, you don't get lucky enough. If you want to find quality hires, well, you should check out Indeed right now. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In just the 30 or so seconds we've already been talking, people have made dozens of hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Their sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 % more likely to report a higher than a non-sponsored job.

3:15Ryan Holiday: So join more than 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less time, less stress, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. and listeners of this show get a$75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash stoic that's indeed.com slash stoic right now and support the show by saying you heard about it on this podcast indeed.com slash stoic terms and conditions apply hey it's ryan i'm on the road right now doing talks all over the country i love traveling i love going to new places the thing i don't like about it though is i don't get to sleep in my bed at home, which I like not just because it's home, but because I have an eight sleep on my bed.

4:06Ryan Holiday: I've had an eight sleep on my bed, I don't know, five years. I love it. My wife loves it. We love it because it cools the mattress. It heats the mattress. You can have different sides cool at different temperatures. It's even how I wake up in the morning. Instead of an annoying alarm clock or that horrible sound on your phone, it lightly buzzes you awake. And then when you're up, you want to turn it off, you just tap the mattress. There's all sorts of awesome features in my Eight Sleep. It was worth every penny. The point is, I love my Eight Sleep and the Eight Sleep keeps getting better. Eight Sleep users report up to 32 % better sleep and up to 34 % better deep sleep.

4:44Ryan Holiday: This is all stuff you love. You can use the code dailystoic at eightsleep.com slash dailystoic right now for up to$500 off. And this 4th of July sale ends on July 12th. So don't wait. And if you have an HSA or an FSA, some 8Sleep stuff qualifies for that as well. Through TrueMed and qualified customers save about 30 % on average. Check your eligibility at trumed.com slash 8Sleep before you buy. TrueMed is for qualified customers. HSA and FSA tax savings may vary.

5:19Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. been chugging away on this tour and starting to think about the fall. I'm going to be in Australia, New Zealand. I'm going to be in DC, Boston, I think, but a bunch of places. Anyways, it's far out. It's forever from now. So on the one hand, I'm not thinking about it. On the other hand, I'm thinking about it because they're having me do some like interviews in these different markets, right? To tell people about it. So like, I just had to do this interview in the evening the other the day. Usually I like to do all my stuff earlier in the day, but they were like, no, no, it's a big time zone difference.

5:57Ryan Holiday: And I was like, how big? And they were like, New Zealand time zone, very big. It was actually a show, a radio show called Matt Heath and Tyler Adams Afternoons. It was on News Talk ZB in New Zealand. And we had a nice little chat about some stoic themes. And I wanted to bring you a chunk of that for today's episode. If you want to come see me, you can, as I said, a bunch of dates, Minneapolis in August, Chicago in August. We just added Nashville in November. So that'll be fun. All that stuff is at Daily Stoic Live. And if you want to come see me in New Zealand on October 13th, you can do that.

6:37Ryan Holiday: I found out Noah Kahn is going to be there while I'm there. So we're grabbing tickets to that. So I'm excited. So you can see that show also. Anyways, DailyStoicLive.com. Thanks to Matt Heath and Tyler Adams for having me on the show. and hopefully you'll get something out of it too. News Talk ZB, best-selling author and one of the most influential voices of modern stoicism, Ryan Holiday is coming to New Zealand for a one-night event at Auckland's Bruce Mason Arena. It's happening on October the 13th, an evening with Ryan Holiday. It will explore how the ancient philosophy can help navigate pressure, setbacks, and uncertainty in the modern world.

7:12Tickets are on sale now. Go to ticketmaster.co.nz and Ryan Holiday joins us now. A very good afternoon, Ryan. Yeah, you too. Now, we'll start off with an obvious question. Why do you think stoicism as a philosophy for life works as well in the modern world as it did in the ancient world?

7:30Ryan Holiday: Well, you know, unfortunately, the modern world is not that different than the ancient world. You know, it's uncertain. It's crazy. Institutions feel like they're falling apart. You know, you've got pandemics and plagues, corruption, dysfunction, tyranny. You know, all the things that we worry about today, they worried about in the ancient world only more so. They also worried about dying from an infected cut on your finger. right or or your baby not surviving infancy and so what they were talking about in the ancient world how do we deal with the fact that so much of what happens is outside of our control what kind of framework should guide our behavior should should should help us navigate how to respond to these things outside of our control that's what philosophy was or at least stoicism as a philosophy was in the ancient world i think today we tend to think of philosophy as theoretical and abstract, even impractical.

8:28But, you know, for Epictetus,

8:31Ryan Holiday: who's a slave in the Roman Empire, and Marxer, who's the head of that empire, both are trying to wrestle with the ins and outs, the everydayness of life, and trying to do it well. And that, I think, is why Stoicism lands all these years later. Yeah, that's interesting, that, because those are two heavyweight influential Stoics with very, very different paths. You've got Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, as you say. Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor who had all the power in the world, could have indulged in cruelty, but chose, as a lot of emperors did, but chose service and justice over vanity and excess.

9:11Or you've got Epictetus, who was at the very other end of Roman society, as you say, a slave crippled by his master who became, you know, powerful from a position of weakness using Stoicism. So which path is more impressive or admirable in your eyes, Ryan?

9:30Ryan Holiday: Well, I think it's interesting to think about which path was more admirable in Marcus Aurelius' eyes. Like Marcus Aurelius is the most powerful man in the world, but the person he's looking up to, the philosopher he quotes more than any others, the person he's trying to base his life on is basically Epictetus, right? So here you have the most powerful man in the world looking at this effectively powerless man and going, yeah, but look how he controls himself. Look at his dignity. Look at his self-respect. Look at his resilience. Look at his optimism and perseverance. And so for Marcus Aurelius, he sees Epictetus as the more powerful figure.

10:13Ryan Holiday: And I think for the Stokes, it was this realization, and I'm sure you've had this too. with some of the people you've interviewed on the show or you've met in your course of your life, actually being successful, being famous, being rich, this is pretty common, right? Like you realize it's actually, there's actually a lot of those people out there, but those who are not slaves to their ambitions or their tempers or their emotions, those that are good people, those that have some semblance of self-awareness, that's actually a much rarer thing. And so, you know, I think Marcus Aurelius looking up to Epictetus gives us a sense of just how powerful someone under their own power truly is.

10:58So linking that into ego, Ryan, and you've written extensively about this ego is the enemy in many other books. How do you recognize when ego is getting in the way of good decisions or progress, particularly in a world that seems to reward self-promotion?

11:14Ryan Holiday: Yeah, look, I'd love to say that egotistical people never succeed, but of course they do, right? Like you look around, actually many, many, if not most people who are successful are quite egotistical. But I think anyone that knows them or sees them up close understands how that ego often makes what they do harder, gets in the way of what they're trying to do, or in many cases, leads to their downfall. Like I've never been dealing with a problem or some situation or, you know, a team that's not coming together and thought like bigger egos would solve this, right? It's always the opposite, right?

11:47Ryan Holiday: Ego is the thing that's getting between us and what we're trying to accomplish. And so, you know, I sometimes liken it to how, look, a lot of musicians might have a drug problem or a drinking problem. That isn't what's fueling the creativity. It's actually a drag on the creativity. They're just so talented and and inspired or brilliant that they're able to compensate for it for a time. And so I just tend to be suspicious when any of that kind of ego creeps in. I go, this isn't helping me do what I'm trying to do. If anything, it's going to make it harder. Well, talking about how hard things can be, it's hard to argue with the logic of stoicism, but it can be hard to implement it in real life.

12:33For example, to paraphrase a message that I've read that you've written before, if someone insults you and what they're saying is not true, you can ignore it because it's nonsense. If it is true, you can thank them for the knowledge about yourself. But in the day-to-day, we still get angry with people with pain itself to us. So how do you get that clear stoic logic working in real time for you?

13:01Ryan Holiday: actually what Epictetus said we should say whenever someone insults us is, if they really knew me, they would say something much worse. We got off easy with whatever they, if they could read our darkest thoughts or see our darkest secrets, they'd have picked an even juicier target. So look, obviously that's funny. It's easy to say, you know, just shrug this off. Don't take it personally or, you know, No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. It's all well and good. It's just hard to put into practice. And that is the point. Stoicism is a practice. So, you know, I try to remind myself, for instance, when I see something nasty about me on the internet, I go, do most people feel this way?

13:48Ryan Holiday: No, right? Is this one person out of 100? Oh, that's pretty good. You know, that's actually a pretty good ratio. Like the idea that I was going to reach the audience that I've reached or that I would I would put anything out in the world and it would receive 100 percent endorsement and approval that it would be for everyone. I mean, that's just like naive and downright entitled. And so I do try to remind myself that like, look, nobody escapes unscathed, like that a certain amount of people are going to dislike you. Certain amount of people are going to be jerks. Certain amount of people are going to be rude.

14:25Ryan Holiday: Certain amount of things are going to be said that, you know, could have been said differently, but they weren't. And you just try to say to yourself, you sort of pause and you say to yourself, hey, this is par for the course. This was, why is this surprising to me? And I do think that takes some of the sting out of it. I was alive for you... Get my flow and follow me Yahya Who were sent to hell... Tumblr...