The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Who Are Some Famous Figure Influenced By Stoicism?

Episode Date: February 15, 2020

Ryan talks about putting the finishing touches on his upcoming book, Lives of the Stoics. Featuring today's entry from The Daily Stoic. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke. Or each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at alestowac.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to Business Wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Weekend Edition of Daily Stoic. I am sitting here in Texas. I am just putting in the final, final touches on lives of the Stoics. I was telling you a couple weeks ago that so basically what happens is you turn in a manuscript and then it comes back with edits and it is never a pleasant experience to see the red lines, to see people who don't understand you know what you're trying to do or have objections about it. One of the best rules I've heard about writing that I actually think is sort of great feedback for life in general. And I forget who it comes from,

but I heard it from the author, Neil Strauss. The idea is that when somebody tells you something is wrong, they're always right. And when they tell you how to fix what's wrong with your writing, they're almost always wrong. And the point is that if something isn't working for the reader, they're right, because it isn't working for them. When they try to tell you how to fix it, they're not writers, so they don't usually know the best way to fix it.

And I actually think this is great advice for business. This is great advice for life. When someone is frustrated with you and someone complains about something, when someone gets upset with you, they're right in the sense that those are their feelings. They don't like something that you're doing, they don't like some part of the experience,

they're having a problem. Now, if their solution is totally a separate and distinct fact from this piece of information, so when we get sort of complaints for daily stoke, for instance, it's like, okay, obviously you have to fix this person's problem and you have to make them feel better. And then when they're saying, do X to make this right, they're not usually right,

but there's clearly some problem in the process that you want to address. So there's another book, I think it's called a complaint is a gift or something like that, but it's a great customer service. book, I think it's called a complaint is a gift or something like that, but it's a great sort of customer service. Also, I think life styles are writing piece of advice, which is that by complaining or by pointing out a problem or in the case of writing with the editor making a note, they are actually doing you a favor by bringing something to your attention. Like, obviously, in the manuscript, I think I did what I was supposed to do perfectly, or I did it as well as I thought I could do it at that moment,

and I think I got over the hump that I was trying to get over, but it may be that actually I didn't, or it may be that in getting over it, I caused some other problem. You have to separate your emotional reaction from the fact that the feedback is giving you the general direction, some sort of general warning about some issue. So the last couple weeks, the last week or so has been me going through those notes, fixing stuff, trying to address stuff. It's like the manuscripts most of the way there,

and now you're just sort of tightening it. And actually, what I tend to find is interesting is you're working on the manuscripts, so you're addressing all these little sort of pitley errors here and there, little notes. But then it's even in looking at it that way, I'm finding other things that I didn't know. It's just forcing me to look at the manuscript

that text from various different points of view and I'm finding and improving stuff. So it's the sort of process of going over and over and over again that book ends up becoming the thing that you guys ultimately end up holding in your hands. And I think having now done this so many times, this is like the 10th time I've gone through it, you also become a bit more patient, you become a bit more forgiving, a bit less sort of precious over the process because you know that it's like, okay, you do this, you follow the steps, you stick to it. At the end of it, this sort of finished product emerges.

So, I'll turn in this manuscript draft, it will be accepted. That's actually an official term in publishing, and there's actually a payment tied to it's called the delivery and acceptance payment, because you sign a contract to deliver a manuscript loosely about a number of things, And then the publisher has to decide, do we still want to publish it? So this acceptance is like a big sort of benchmark. It's like an official sort of way station on the publishing process.

So hopefully it'll get accepted here, although I always send the manuscript in knowing that it might not get accepted and might get kicked back to me. I might have to do this four or five times and that has happened on plenty of my books. You never want to celebrate the submission process too much because you don't control what the reaction on the other side of it's going to be. Hopefully, though, it'll get accepted. And then it goes to copy editing. So then you see the manuscript one more time. This is

when we try to catch as many errors as possible. In fact, the copy editing is like the most unpleasant, uncomfortable part of the publishing process because here someone who doesn't really care about the book, they don't really care about you, all they care about are these sort of very firm that they think are objective rules about grammar, which are not true. They're sort of coming into it with little experience on the subject matter and they're just like tearing it apart. Like you almost see, almost always see more notes and less pleasantly phrased notes in the copy editing phase

than you do in the formative editing phase. Then the copy edits are done, and then you see what are called first pass pages. That's like the first time the books started to be designed, and then you see second pass pages, and then that's the last time until you see it in the galleys and then you see second past pages and then that's the last time until you see it in the Galleys and then the finished product. So that'll all happen over the next six or seven months and

then hopefully we'll have books sort of towards the early fall and then I believe we're looking at in an October launch. So there's a lot left to do but it's sort of around this phase that I start to wind down sort of this book taking up too much of my mental bandwidth. I'll no longer be thinking of the lives of the stokes and I'll start to be thinking about researching what the next project is. So I like to kind of have like a smooth but integrated handoff from one project to another. So I'm always writing, always working. I want to stay kind of in my fighting weight because like the process is arduous and it can be discouraging. And so I always feel like if I'm just always doing

it, I never get used to not doing it. And that's sort of my writing philosophy. So that's really fun. And then I'm flying to LA this afternoon. It's funny. I feel like I've been talking about the pre-meditashumalorum at the beginning of these messages. Well, I showed up this morning to sit down on my desk and then it was like, your plane is delayed. And then I got another email and it was like, your plane is underlaid half that. And then I got an email,

I got a little bit after that. This is your plane is re-delayed more than the original. So I am girding myself, stealing myself in advance for what will be a ridiculous flight. I'm imagining what I also try to think about is something I've worked on more recently as I've gotten older is like I have a dinner that I'm supposed to do when I arrive and that used to cause me like so much anxiety that these like two things are in conflict. It's like well now this is bumping up into this and because this is bumping into this that could go wrong and now it's like

look I'll have the dinner or I won't. It would be unfortunate if I didn't. None of that is really up to me. What is up to me is whether it's going to be a miserable experience between now and then. Am I going to let the looming uncertainty of it make me unhappy? Am I going to make it, have it make me stressed? Am I going to make it like make me run and sprint and four. I'm just going to have

a sort of a pleasant morning and afternoon try to do as much work as I can, try to be in the best head space that I can and if it happens, it happens. So like I think there is an aspect of Stoicism that should help you get to a kind of Zen and I wish that the Stoics had a word for it. You know, obviously for me that I've tried to use that word of stillness or adoraxia, sort of freedom from worry and frustration and uncertainty, but you should get to a place where these things don't bother you as much. And just as I'm trying not to be bothered by the notes, I'm trying not to be bothered by the uncertainty of flying and I'm trying to do what I have to do. So that's it for me today. I can't wait for you guys to hear what we have coming up in the rest of the episode.

Thanks to our sponsors for supporting us and thank you most of all for listening. I thought I'd read today a quick excerpt from the February 15th entry of the Daily Stoic. The title is Only Bad Dreams. And the quote is from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, book six, passage 31. He says, clear your mind and get a hold of yourself. And as when awakened from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream, upsetting you, wake up and see that's what

there is just like those dreams. The author Raymond Chandler was describing most of us when he wrote in a letter to his publisher, I never looked back, although I had many uneasy periods looking forward. Thomas Jefferson once joked in a letter to John Adams, how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened? And Seneca would put it best, there is nothing so certain in our fears that not yet more certain in the fact that most of what we tread comes to nothing. Many of the things that upset us, the Stokes believed, are the product of imagination, not reality.

Like dreams, they are vivid and realistic at the time, but preposterous once we come out of it. In a dream we never stop to think, does this make any sense? No, we go along with it. The same goes with our flights of anger or fear or other extreme emotions. Getting upset is like continuing the dream while you're awake, the thing that provoked

you wasn't real, but your reaction was. And so from the fake comes real consequences, which is why you need to wake up right now instead of creating a nightmare. I'm always amazed actually the most popular quote we've ever put on the Daily Stoke Instagram is related to this It's Senaqas quote we suffer more in imagination than in reality That's sort of the ideas that sure there are things that worry us. There are things that are concerning But it's our paranoia our fear our stress that often makes these things worse in advance And so we know this but but we forget it. And then the mind races, the dream becomes so vivid that it feels real. And because problems for ourselves

and the people around us. So that's just a thought. To think about this Saturday, you can check out the Daily Stoke audiobook on Audible and pretty much everywhere books are sold. Thanks for subscribing, and now we'll go into Ask Daily Stoic. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole.

Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air, from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering, comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman Fried.

Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes at free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoke. You send us your questions about stosism, about life, about the stoke figures, about me, whatever you want. We answer your questions. We try to do three every Saturday. You can email us your questions at infoatdailysteal.com. You can also hit us up at Daily Stoke. I'm pretty much every social channel. Don't send questions to me though. I won't see them. First question is from Jesus, or it's from Jesus himself. I'm not sure. But he says,

who are some well-known figures from history who are influenced by stoicism? Well, obviously Marcus Realis is probably the most famous of the Stoics or the most famous person directly influenced by Stoics. There's obviously a ton. And we have an article on Daily Stoke which you can check out.

But I remember when I was first read Marcus Realis, I was in college and then I had to read John Steinbeck's book East of Eden shortly thereafter. And it was like, whoa, Stoicism is in this book, the Chinese servant of the main family is like a fan of Marcus Realis, and he's quoting from the book. So I've kind of always been on the lookout for little ones. But it's my favorite examples.

Theodore Roosevelt took a copy of Epic Titus with him on his famous River of Doubt Journey, which you can actually see the copy of Meditations at the Theodore Roosevelt House in New York City. Thomas Jefferson died with a copy of Seneca on his nightstand, which I always thought was cool. George Washington was introduced to Stoke Philosophy by a neighbor when he was about 16 years old, and then we have a day to stoke an email about this. But one of his favorite quotes is from the play Cato about the stoic, which he put on at Valley Forge. But he says, I like to look at things

in the calm and mild light of philosophy. So George Washington is a great example. General Mattis, our most recent secretary defense here in America, and then four star general in the Marines, he actually takes Marcus a reliance with him on the campaign trail trail wherever he goes. James Stockdale, former vice presidential candidate, as he was parachuting in to Vietnam where he knew he was going to be taken prisoner. He said, I am leaving the world of

technology and I am entering the world of epictetus, which I always thought was cool. Arnold Swartz and I know is interested in stoicism and I know that because I've talked to him about it to doing Lin-Patriots of Red Stoicism So the Seattle Seahawks I've spoken to the Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams Less need who's the GM the Rams is a huge stoicism fan Nick Sabin talks about Marcus Arrelius There's actually an ESPN article about Sabin and Marcus Arrelius helping him prepare for games I'm just looking at some more of the names here Michelle Tafoya about Sabin and Marcus Aurelius helping him prepare for games.

I'm just looking at some more of the names here. Michelle Tafoya, sending at football, a big fan of stoicism. And then a bunch of rappers have talked about stoicism. Lupe Fiasco wraps about Marcus Aurelius in one song, which I always thought was cool. Somebody sent me that tea pain, has a mix tape called stoicville.

So he's got to be vaguely familiar with it. JK Rowling talks about Marcus Relius Fairmount on Twitter, Brie Larson has as well. The theme to lab, sort of interesting Stoic fellow traveler, Neil Strauss, I know Jonathan Newhouse who's the head of Connie Nast, Tim Ferris, Jack Dorsey. I can go on, really article. I think the point is Stoicism has always been a philosophy,

not only that influential people have been interested in, but has influence influential people and shaped the choices and decisions that they've made. And so, you know, that endorsement is worth what it's worth. I don't think stoicism is more or less worth following because famous rich people or powerful people have used it, but I think we should look at the effect that it's had on them in their lives.

And if we think that that's a positive effect, then it's something we should emulate. Okay, so Nathaniel said, how do you let go and change beliefs that aren't serving you anymore? I mean, I guess I would turn that around. Like, why would you be holding on to beliefs that aren't serving you anymore?

I mean, there's always sort of some vestiges of like sort of old habits and assumptions that are there even if we want to move on. But I do think like you should always be asking yourself, do I still believe this is this true? Is it helping me? And one of the things I most admire about Marx's is how he talks about, he's like,

when somebody shows you that you're wrong, they're not hurting you, they're doing you a favor, they're helping you. And so I think this idea that we cling to things that we believe because we used to believe them or because someone once told us, that's something we always want to be questioning. We always want to be forming our beliefs a new,

we want to be evaluating them as if we were discovering them for the first time. Senna, you know, I think we can take from his constant quoting and meditations on someone like Epicurus, who's theoretically arrival or, you know, holds radically different views, is him constantly questioning what he believes, comparing it against what other people believe, seeing if it holds true in experience, and then moving on or adapting or changing those ideas as he incorporates them into his life. I think the other thing I would think about is like,

when we ask ourselves why we believe a certain thing or why we're doing it a certain way, it's usually because it's serving us some need, even if it's not a posit, it's doing something for us. Like, I heard this great line once they said, traditions are solutions to problems that we've forgotten about. So the idea that like the way we've always done things or the habits we have or the beliefs that we've picked up, at some point that was true, or at some point that helped us get ahead,

it was adaptive, that might not be true now, but we're holding on to that. So I would think about like this belief system that you're holding on to, this idea, that habit, or whatever it is, it's keeping you comfortable in some way, it's keeping you in a relationship that you shouldn't be anymore,

or it's maintaining a connection that you shouldn't be anymore or it's maintaining a connection that you're, you know, reluctant to let go of, it's keeping you rooted in the past. There's something that it's doing for you like drinking. Let's say, you know, you believe you know you shouldn't be drinking, but you can't stop drinking. Well, why are you drinking? Probably because it makes you not have to feel something that you do feel when you're

sober. So if you want to change the drinking habit, you have to address that feeling and then the need will lessen. And I think that's something to think about as you evaluate and you question these belief systems and move on. But really great question. And I hope people sort of work on that. All right, last question for today.

OBS asks, how do you not take things personally, which he puts in all caps, which I take personally? It feels like a bit like an attack. He says, is there any stoke approach to looking at things or events objectively without being personal? The truth is like almost nothing is personal. When you think about the things that you do to other people, how often are you intentionally inflicting distress or problems on them?

It's not. You're always thinking about yourself. You're not thinking about the other person. So it's like, we give ourselves a pass, then we won't give other people a pass. Like, we know when we mess up, it's because we were tired or hungry or confused or overwhelmed. But then when someone else messes up, it's because they're an awful person. We know, like, oh, sorry, I didn't see that car. That's why I drifted into their lane or I accidentally cut them off. But of course, they cut me off because they're an asshole. So it's realizing that most people are not socrates

as like nobody does wrong on purpose. Obviously, I think that's a simplification. Like there are such things, sociopaths and psychopaths and there are evil people in the world. But for the most part, people are doing what they think is right. In fact, they're trying to help more than they're trying to hurt. So it's realizing where people are coming from,

which is a place eerily similar to your own place. To me, that helps. I think the other thing you could say is like, even if it is personal, what does it matter? You decide whether it's good or bad. Like we talked about this at Daily Stoke, like the ask is the ask. If someone says, hey, can you stay,

you know, an extra hour after work, you decide, oh my God, how are they doing this? Like you can just say, no, I'm sorry, I can't. You decide to interpret a remark as rude. You decide to take it personally. And so realizing that you actually just have the power to tell yourself the story, whatever you wanna tell it about the event, and that how often and regularly you do it, like when

your parents say one thing, you read it this way, when your boss says that you read it this way, when your husband or wife says it this way, or when your least favorite person in the world says that you decide all the time to decide the same actions in radically different ways. And so why don't you just choose not to take this one personally? That would be one thing. If I would leave you the Marx-Realist quote,

I just say, this doesn't have to upset you. He says, you always have the ability to not have an opinion. I think when you realize that you have strength, you can choose not to be offended. As Epictetus said, remember, you are a complicit in the outrage. Like when someone says something and you decide to be offended. As Epictita said, remember, you are a complicit in the outrage. Like when someone says something and you decide to be mad, you are dancing with them. And

so when you decide, even if the person was meaning it personally or they weren't, it only is personal if you choose for it to be. So remembering you have that power is really important. Easy to say, of course, hard to do. So So thanks it's another episode of Ask Daily Stoke. Keep sending your questions info at DailyStoke.com Thanks to our sponsors, thank you for listening. You can check this out as the podcast, you can check it out on our YouTube channel and you know thanks sending your questions. If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning you can sign up at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the daily stoic early and ad free on Amazon music.

Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music App today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.