You Can’t Forget What You Don’t Put Off | (Dis)integration

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: You can't forget what you don't put off. You didn't mean to lie. You didn't mean to be late. You didn't mean not to do it. It's just that, well, you forgot, as we almost always do. We plan to do it. We mean to do it. We just tell ourselves that we'll do it tomorrow. The problem, as the Stoics remind us, is that we don't control tomorrow. Stuff can come up. We can get an unexpected email. We get bad news from a friend. We wake up to a sick child. Even when things don't come up, distraction does. We delay. We drift. We fail to do what we genuinely intended to do. We do what Seneca warned that fools are always doing, getting ready to start.

0:57Ryan Holiday: We forget. The solution then, do it now. You can't forget what you don't put off. You can't procrastinate something that's already done. You don't have to make excuses or apologize if you just get started now.

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3:39Today's entry from the Daily Stoic Disintegration These things don't go together You must be a unified human being Either good or bad You must diligently work either on your own reasoning Or on things outside of your control Take great care with the inside And not what's inside Which is to say stand with the philosopher Or else with the mob Epictetus' Discourses 315 We are all complicated people. We have multiple sides to ourselves, conflicting wants and desires and fears. The outside world is no less confusing and contradictory. If we're not careful, all of these forces pushing and pulling will eventually tear us apart.

4:25We can't live as both Jekyll and Hyde. Not for long, anyway. We have a choice, to stand with the philosopher and focus strenuously on the inside. or to behave like a leader of a mob, becoming whatever the crowd needs at a given moment. If we do not focus on our internal integration on self-awareness, we risk external disintegration. Obviously, you're listening to me, so you can't see it. But in the book, I have disintegration, the dis in parentheses. One word, but there's the parentheses. And the reason I do that, it's actually something I talk about in the intro of my first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying.

5:02And if you've read Trust Me, I'm Lying, or you've heard of it, it might seem very different than what I talk about here at Daily Stoic. Or if you see a video of me and then you contrast it with the somewhat ominous, maybe even evil cover of Trust Me, I'm Lying, it might seem as difficult to reconcile. And indeed it is. And I talk about this in the intro of the book. I was, of course, familiar with Stoicism when I wrote that book. I was, of course, studying Stoic philosophy before I even got into marketing. And, you know, I've read Mark's Reels many times in those years that I worked for those controversial clients.

5:37Was it hypocrisy? Was I a bad person? I mean, I don't get to say that, but what I think about it, and as I reflected on it when I wrote that book, is that I was not integrated. I had these two different parts of myself that were very not aligned. Does that make sense? It's funny, we use the word disintegration to mean like comes apart, right? But really what it would mean, dis and integrated means not integrated. And that's what I was. I was not integrated. I had these different spheres. I had this part of me that really liked philosophy, that really believed in these ideas and stoicism and was trying to apply them in my life.

6:14And then I had my actual occupation and day job where I was, you know, pulling these marketing stunts and, you know, living, I don't want to say an unphilosophical life, but certainly not a life fully in accordance with the philosophical ideas. I don't think I was making the world a better place. That's partly why I wrote the book, partly why I changed. The philosophy helped me get there. But for a long time, these things were compartmentalized. They were not integrated. And so I think that's what Epictetus is talking about. He says, you must be a unified human being. You can't be these different things.

6:49Seneca was not a unified human being. He was a brilliant artist and a ruthless power broker. He was a philosopher who also coveted wealth and status and influence, who wanted to be on the inside of things. And that disintegration, some would call hypocrisy, I would just say, was not the integration he needed. And he got closer to that integration as he got older. He ultimately leaves neuroservice and dedicates the last few years of his life to getting there. And that's where I think a lot of his best work is from. But that lack of integration is a problem for all of us, right? You say you love your spouse, that your family is really important, and then you spend all your time at the office, or maybe you have an affair.

7:33Or you say you care about the environment, but then look at some of your personal decisions. You claim to be a good person, but then look at how you treat people who are close to you. Hypocrisy is one thing, but I think it's often that we have trouble just applying what we believe or applying it fully or seeing, in fact, that the way that we're acting, which feels normal or appropriate or necessary given our profession, is actually not in accordance with our values or, as Stokes would say, not in accordance with nature, not who we're supposed to be, what we're capable of. of B. So this integration is the work that we need to do, both in studying the philosophy, maybe it's going to therapy, maybe a relationship helps you get there, maybe just long conversations, a lot of self-awareness.

8:22I think ultimately, not to reference another one of my books, but it's our busyness, our franticness, our yearning or push for things that keeps us so busy and preoccupied that we don't notice the disintegration. I think that's largely what it was for me. I was just trying to get ahead, doing cool things as they came up. I was young, had a million things going on, didn't want to let certain people down. And so that lack of awareness about my disintegration was largely rooted in just not having the time, not having the space to reflect, not having literally a minute to do it. And I think part of the reason we keep ourselves busy So we don't have to do that because when we do it, it's painful.

9:10When we do it, it demands change. So I'm urging you, I guess, to take a little time to think about whether you're integrated, to think about where you're not a unified person, to think about where you're focusing on things outside your control, because inevitably it will tear you apart. It does not end well. And it can make you do things that you're ashamed of or embarrassed by or later regret or have trouble explaining, all of which are true for me to a certain degree and true for I think anyone as you get older and wiser and better. I'm wishing you much integration and the stillness required to get to that integration.

9:47I encourage you to do that work.

9:54Hey, it's Ryan.

9:55Ryan Holiday: 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.