The Daily Stoic - How To Improve Any Team With Ego Management And Silence

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

Today, Ryan presents a talk he gave to a group of coaches at the Tennessee Athletics Department about the core concepts of Stoicism and how they can apply them to their coaching practices in order to make their players, teams, and themselves better. In this second half of the talk, Ryan explains how the ego can be harnessed for the good of the team, the importance of coaches to model the attitude that they would like to see in their athletes, how finding moments to be still helps the competitor stay even keeled during the highs and the lows, and more.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Please play responsibly. If you are someone you know as concerns about gambling, visit connexontario.ca. Emily, do you remember when One Direction called it a day? I think you'll find there are still many people who can't talk about it. Well luckily, we can. A lot. Because our new season of terribly famous is all about the first One Directioner to go it alone.

Zayn Malik. We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest boy band and explore why, when he reached the top, he decided to walk away. Follow terribly famous wherever you get your podcasts. It's terribly famous. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend.

We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. This was back in May. I was flying, trying to get to Knoxville, Tennessee. I was supposed to land in Nashville and drive a couple hours to Knoxville, ended up being crazy weather, we circled for like an hour, ended up landing in Memphis, then we were supposed to wait a bunch of time

to then get on a flight. And I was like, you know what, I don't trust it. I don't think it's gonna happen. I called my speaking agent. I said, just give me a rental car. I'm gonna drive. I drove like six hours in the same storm and made it at like two in the morning to

Knoxville. And then I got up early that day, I went for run and then I went over and I talked to the entire Tennessee athletic department about the connection between stoicism and sports. There were tennis coaches there that had football coach was there, swimming coach was there, admissions officers, a whole bunch of people in the athletics department were all there as part of a coaches retreat, which I wanted to bring to you in today's episode. So enjoy. Thank you very much.

When we think about ego, the problem is ego makes everything about us. It makes us about what we want, how we want things to go, the credit we deserve, what we're trying to do. But we have to understand as Kyrie seems to fail to do that. Life is a team sport, right? Even the solo sports are a team sport because you couldn't get there without other people, couldn't get there without the university, you couldn't get there without your parents, you couldn't get out there without your spouses, right?

We're all part of this team. And when we sublimate ego and we think about what's best, not just for us, but for the organization, this is a helpful curve on that destructive ego. And also understanding that seeking out credit, seeking out attention is usually a sort of a creative death sentence or a death sentence for improvement and growth. This is Michelle Howard. She was the first four star admiral in the US Navy.

These bars on her shoulders for stars. They actually did not make this for women when she got her fourth star. She had to get them specially made. She's the first one to do it. I'm guessing most of you have not heard of this person. Who here has seen the movie Captain Phillips? Right? Great movie. We all know the Navy Seals do it.

She is the one that gives the order for the Navy Seals to take out the pirates who have kidnapped Captain Phillips. There's movies about it. There's books about it. There's story after story. She could have been at the forefront the subject of all of these stories, but she isn't. She constantly excused the spotlight. She could have written a book about herself.

She could have started a leadership company. She could have done all this stuff. She's someone who does her job, who focuses on what she's trying to accomplish, and doesn't really care about anything else, which is what's allowed her to be so successful, to get so much done. An admiral named James Stavridis talks about this in one of his great books, he's saying,

but if the order had gone badly, if the operation had gone badly, everyone would know who this was, right? But she doesn't seek attention, she doesn't seek the spotlight She doesn't seek the spotlight. She seeks getting things done, which is why ego is actually such a problem. Ego puts us in competition with other people. Humility or confidence or self-sufficiency allows us to get things done without being in opposition to other people. This is the great George Marshall, who paradoxically people know for the Marshall Plan, but actually the reason

it's called the Marshall Plan is a great example of this Truman. President Truman realizes that he is very, very unpopular. And he says, if I call this the Truman Plan, it will not pass. Marshall is mortified that it's called the Marshall Plan, but he agrees to lend his name to it because it gives it a chance of passing. And the reason his name gives itself, gives it the stamp of approval is that the reputation

in Washington was never does Marshall think of himself. Marshall was a man of unflinching honesty, of no ego, of always putting the country first. And so when his name is on it, when he has to go to Congress and say I need billions of dollars to give away to other countries, in some cases our former enemies Congress said, sure, right? Even though it was a Republican Congress facing a Democratic administration, they trust Marshall. And one of the reasons they trust Marshall is a gesture he makes during the war. Marshall is chief of staff. He is the planner.

He is the one who's giving everyone else the battle assignments, whether they win glory or fame or in some backwater posting. This is all on Marshall. And FDR calls Marshall into his office and he goes, look, nobody knows who the chief of staff for the US Army was during the US Civil War. It's actually Henry Hallock.

But nobody knows who that is. And he says, I understand that a general's reputation is made by what they do in battle. And so the biggest command of the war is now upon us, who will command the Allied invasion of Europe, right? The invasion of Normandy. Who is gonna be the Supreme Allied Commander? And he says, the job is yours if you want it,

more than anyone else you have earned it. And so Marshall thinks about it and he goes, you know what, I don't want you to take my personal feelings into account as you decide who to give this job to, give it to whom you think is best. And after you are thinks about and he goes, I know this is going to crush you, but I want to give it to Eisenhower.

He says, I can't afford to lose you. They have this great working relationship in Washington. He doesn't want to send Marshall all the way overseas and lose their day to day contact. And Marshall accepts this, right? And it might have been a little bit of a bitter pill because Eisenhower is his protege. This is the job that propels Eisenhower to the presidency,

seals his fate as one of the great generals of all time, and Marshall is effectively dooming himself to obscurity as he makes this decision. And this is a little memo, I know it's hard to see, but this memo is after FDR says give the job to Eisenhower, Marshall writes out the order, and then in the moment when he is giving the command, the job of a lifetime to someone other than him, because it's right for the country, because it's the right thing to do, because it increases their chances

of success. What Marshall is thinking about is how Eisenhower is going to be thinking about this. He's not crushed, he's not crying, he's not privately receiving, he says, dear Ike, I thought you might like to keep this order as a memento, and he sends it to him for his personal records. In this moment, Marshall is not only thinking not of the country first, but he's thinking of his protege who is now leapfrogging above him. And like in sports, we're measured not just by how much we win, but by our coaching

tree. Who are the other coaches that we have influenced? Who, what do our players go on to do? I can see the list there, right? It's not just how many titles you win or conference titles or bowl games, but it's what are your athletes go on to do? What are the coaches who started in your program go on to do? I think Greg Popovich for this reason is not just one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, but has the greatest coaching tree probably in the history of sports, right? The coaches that he's given breaks to, who is incubated, who is taught, the impact that he's had on the

game, and what I think's interesting about Popovich, just as it is with Marshall, is that these coaches are not mirror images of Greg Popovich. There's a big difference between Steve Kerr and Mike Brown. There's a big difference between the types of players he's had in his program, but what he's built is an incredible coaching tree. And that's why Marshall thought about it. Marshall kept a little black book with him throughout the course of his career,

starting from the very beginning. And when he identified people of talent or promise he would write their name down in this book and he would spend incredible amounts of time and energy trying to advance their career. Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, these are people he discovers, he promotes, he makes into, in some cases,

people who are more famous and more important than he is. And I know we have this fear that if we put others' interests in front of ours, if we're team players rather than fighting for our own career, if we don't leap at every opportunity for promotion or advancement or attention will get left behind. Marshall has a simple funeral. He wants to be buried like an ordinary soldier, he says, but his tombstone kind of says it all.

This is his tombstone. It says, Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army, right, the most important part, time in American history, Secretary of State, President of the American Red Cross, Secretary of Defense. Pretty good the American Red Cross, Secretary Defense.

Pretty good run, right? Pretty good resume. And the point is, actually by doing the right thing, by not thinking of ourselves first, we developed the reputation, we developed the trust, we developed the credibility that Marshall has that allows him in moments like going before Congress and saying, hey, I need millions of dollars for this thing we're calling the Manhattan Project. I can't tell you what it's for. You'll never see the results. It might be a complete and total waste of time.

And Congress says, yes, when he asked for the Marshall plant, it's the same thing, right? By not being driven by ego, but by being driven something bigger than ego, team, organization, country, etc. He's able to actually accomplish far more. And so if we think about the secret to humility, it's not just the team, it's not just some principle or cause. I think it's also understanding that we're not perfect, that we can always be getting

better. I think you see this in martial arts, if you walk into a martial arts gym, the humblest, kindest, most interesting person to talk to is the one with the highest belt. They're the ones that's gonna make you the most comfortable. They're the one you need to worry about the least, right? Because they have dedicated themselves

to the craft of getting better at that thing rather than lording their success over other people. So it's insane that we have to always stay a student. We have to always focus on what we can learn. Epic Titus would say, remember, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. This is the problem with ego. Ego says, I'm perfect.

Ego says, I've know everything. In that sense, you do know everything it is possible for you to know. If you think you know everything, it becomes impossible for you to learn anything else. Socrates, who I mentioned earlier, his key to knowledge and wisdom was his understanding of what he didn't know. He was interested in learning what he didn't know, not telling people what he did know. John Wheeler, a great physicist, actually part of the invention of the hydrogen bomb. He would say that as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance.

So as we get better, as we learn more, as we do this longer, in some cases, we actually become less confident in a good way, right? Because we're exposed to all the things that we're not yet good at, that we can learn all the little different elements, all the parts that remain for us to study and begin to understand. Emerson would say that everyone is better than us at something, and that's what we wanna focus on, what we can learn from them.

And so the Stokes try to say students always, there's a story about Marx's release, he's his old man, you see leaving the palace in Rome try to say, students always, there's a story about Marx's relic. He's his old man. You see him leaving the palace in Rome, and a friend asks him where he's going, and he says, I'm off to see sex, this the philosopher to learn that, which I do not yet know.

And the man marvels that this is the most powerful, wisest man in the world, he says, taking up his tablets and going to school. All of you work with student athletes, but how many of those student athletes would see you as a kind of student coach that would see you continuing your education, see you continuing to learn,

to add new elements to your games, your understanding of leadership. And we have to model this. The MMA fighter Frank Shamrock has this idea. He says there's a plus, minus, and equal. You have to have the minus. These are the players that you're coaching, the younger coaches that are under you. That's who you're teaching. He says,

the plus, that's who you are learning from, that's who you are still apprenticing under, that's who your mentors are. And then equal, these are your peers, who you're meeting with, challenging each other, competing with each other. And this plus this plus minus equal creates a sort of holistic environment that pushes ego down and allows you to come better. And the stuff is to say, we learn as we teach, right? As we are studying, as the words are coming out of our mouth, we're reminded of what we believe, of what we've studied.

And then we never arrive. Mastery is like the horizon. It gets a little bit further from us, the closer we get to it, it's a perfection in asymptote that we never actually touch, although we get closer and closer to it as we go. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination-focused

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Still as the world spins faster and faster around you slowing things down The even keel the still tries to get not too high not too low Marks really talks about being like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually the sea falls still around. When we think of stosism, it tends to mean to people lowercase stosism or has no emotions robotic. That's not what stosism is. It's not that you don't have the emotion.

It's that you're able to sit with the emotion, not be ruled by the emotion overwhelmed by the emotion. It's the difference between being angry and doing something out of anger. It's not emotionlessness, but it is less emotion, particularly in the big moments. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was once asked to describe John Wooden in a single word, and he said, dispassionate, which I think so perfectly captures both of them. John Wooden, of course, cared deeply about winning. He was deeply competitive. He was passionate about the game,

but on the sidelines, he was calm and cool and collected. He said, sometimes when they would go out on the field, he'd go, I've done my job, right? He's like, I've done everything that I can, me ranting and raving on the sideline does not help anyone. Usually, it gives points to the other team in basketball. You think about a technical or in football,

it's giving me yards. Whatever it is, right? Not having control of yourself usually works to the advantage of the opponent and not to your team, throwing the chair famously. This is not an example of stoicism. I hate this picture so much. When you are attempting to physically intimidate a child

or a kid to get your point across, you fucked up, right? You've done it wrong. This isn't how we want to comport ourselves. This isn't the model of control. We would never like seeing it with other people. The Stokes would talk about, look at someone else being really angry, right? You're at the airport with your kids,

and you see some parents struggling getting really upset with your kids, and you know, what are they doing? So don't they know people are watching? And then you turn around and get mad at your kids, and you think it's different. It's not different, it's never a good look. You never are glad that you lost your temper.

The stones would say the whole point of the philosophy is to be able to look at things in the calm light of mild philosophy. The next day, later, down the road, we're going to have distance and perspective from this thing. And we're going to be able to see it differently. The key is to get closer to that in the moment. General James Mattis, who famously carries Mark's releases

meditations with him everywhere he goes over his 40 years of deployments, who would say, the single biggest problem of leaders in the information age is lack of space of reflection. They're always responding, responding, responding. And I know I said that's what still is, but it's also about the space before we respond, the consideration before we respond, right? The analysis, the philosophy that goes into making sure that the response we're having is one we're going to be proud of, the one that's going to make the most sense

that's going to age the best. And so we have to see stillness as a discipline, just as working out, is a discipline, just as pushing ourselves physically, is a discipline, the ability to be calm and cool and collected under pressure, under stimulus. This is also a discipline, and it's a practice, and we have to build our lives and our programs around it. Part of this for me, as I try to wake up very early, I think the mornings are a time for stillness. I think this is why coaches are so famous for trying to get to the facility first. There's less requests for meetings.

The phones aren't ringing as much. We create space so we can think, so we can see big picture, so we can not be responding. So we can have a little solitude. I know not everyone is a morning person. I do have a book recommendation if you struggle in the mornings.

My kids like this one, right? Discipline in the morning is rooted in the discipline that we have in the evening, right? When the stoics are talking about waking up at dawn, pushing yourself, you know, they're not saying sacrifice. They're saying you gotta be disciplined, you to take stuff out so you get to bed in time, sleep being such an important thing. This is Tony Morrison, the great writer.

She was an editor as she was writing her first novel and she would famously get up every morning. She said she had to make contact with the muses as she watched the dawn. She had to see the sun rising to do her best work, but she said she had to do her writing before she heard the word mom, right? She had to get it done in the morning. What's the space that you carve out

to do your best thinking, your best planning, your prayer, your meditation, your workout? Whatever it is, you need to cultivate the mental stillness that you're gonna need to draw on through the course of the day. Usually the to cultivate the mental stillness that you're going to need to draw on through the course of the day. Usually the morning is the best time for that. When you wake up and you're behind the eight ball when you're scrambling, when you get sucked straight into things, that's also an attitude that you carry forward through the day. So I try to get up early and then I take my kids for a walk. That's my thing. We go outside and we go for a walk. It started with the single stroller

and then the double stroller. Now they're walking on their own. It was easier when I could strap them in and they couldn't resist. Now I have to come up with all sorts of incentives and bribes to get them to do it. But I can see in their behavior and I can see in my behavior and I can even see it in my creative output for the day when I skip this, when I don't have the discipline, right? It's reflected in the quality of the work. I try to do a little journaling in the morning. I try to create distance between me and my thoughts.

I want to vomit, my frustrations or fears or worries or insecurities out on the page, instead of on the people that work for me, or the people that live with me. And the page being a great way to do this, right, paper being so much more patient than people. And then I go straight into my hardest writing task for the day, I wanna cross that off,

again, before the interruptions, before things can go wrong. And my other rule is I don't touch my phone. Really, I don't check my texts, social or email, for the first 30 minutes to one hour that I am awake. Right. I don't want to start the day reactive. A great rule I heard is that or a great line I heard is that your inbox is a

to-do list put together by other people. Right. I have my to-do list that I want to tackle in the morning, which is family time, reflection time, thinking time as opposed to this random request, hey, can you send me your address or, hey, did you want this flight or that flight or, hey, did you see this terrible news story about how the world is falling apart or this is really going to piss you off, right? A friend of mine was telling me, you know, he wakes up early, he says, and then I check

my email to see if there's any fires I have to put out. And I said, but you never don't find them, do you? Right? If you wake up looking for stuff to get sucked into, that's what's gonna happen. So I try to carve out this morning space. I try to keep distance from the apps. Here's a failed experiment from the car nose cell phone break.

Every hour, the team got 15 minutes of cell phone breaks. That did not work out super well. We think we're good at multitasking of switching back. I check this and I'm back. The scientists show that there's a residue. It takes us a considerable amount of time to go from one task to the other to be fully locked in on that task. The fewer the interruptions, the more distance you have, the more locked in you have the

better your performance is going to be. When you look at your screen time, when it shows you how much time you spend on your phone, ask yourself, what could I have done with that time? Ask yourself, how was that feeling my ego? Who could I be if I was less tied to this thing, less sucked into this thing, and more present and focus with what's on front of me? I think the killer advantage in the information age to go to Mattis' point is uninterrupted focus.

How good are you at concentrating? How locked in are you in a world where everyone else is distracted? Paradoxically, I think hobbies are a great way to do this. They allow you an escape, so then you can be locked in when you are doing what you're doing. Churchill famously has a nervous breakdown after the First World War and he gets into painting and he is not good at painting. You can see some of his paintings and you can see that it's not

what he was doing for the painting but what the painting was doing for him. It made him present, it gave him something to be joyful about. It made him present, it gave him something to be joyful about, it forced him to go outside, it was also humbling, right? Like it's never as good as you want it to be. He actually writes a book called Painting as a Pastime and he says, every public or important person should have one or two hobbies.

And he says they have to be real, they have to get you to do something. And his other hobby was actually bricklaying. He would lay bricks on his estate in the morning. It was something he would do with his kids. And we can, again, imagine one of the most powerful, important brilliant people in the world, getting some therapy out of manual labor, right?

So different than what he normally does. There's a scene where he's in the White House during the Second World War and he walks into the Oval Office and he finds FDR going through his stamp collection. And he would have understood this perfectly that they both have these kind of silly weird hobbies, but that it's a release valve for them. And if you're all about business, if you're so locked in what you're doing, you're not balancing yourself out, I think this is what leads to burnout and nervous breakdowns of these types. There's a, at the Casablanca conference, FDR is dragged by Churchill.

They get in a car, they drive five hours to see a sunset in Marrakesh. Just imagine how stressful things are and Churchill's painting this sunset. Chris Bosch in the offseason as a basketball player learns how to play guitar, he learns Spanish, he learns computer coding, he was just telling me now he's taking pottery classes, he's fallen in love with art for all the same reasons that Churchill, that it's so different than what he was so good at, that it balances him out. For me, it's spending time on my farm, it's mostly fixing fences or, you know, tracking down animals or feeding animals. It's an endless amount of labor, but it's so different than what I do. It's humbling, I'm terrible at it, I'm always asking my neighbors

for help. It gets me out of my head and forces me to focus on what I'm doing This is my donkey buddy. I bought him on Craigslist for a hundred dollars But one of my best investments ever because I've gotten so much Stillness and focus and connection out of it right the ability to be present that donkey is just standing there He doesn't compare himself to the other donkeys. He doesn't wonder if he's reaching his potential or not. As long as he doesn't die, that's like a pretty good day for him, right? And the ability to be present to be where you are is really the hardest thing. I would say one of the most incredible physical and intellectual feats of the last century is Marina Abramovich's the artist is present.

She sat every day in a chair for three months, eight hours a day, doing nothing but staring directly at the person in front of her and they would rotate. And it was such an overwhelming experience. These people would break down in tears. They would freeze, they were overwhelmed by the feeling of just actually being present with another person. She couldn't get up for bathroom breaks, she couldn't say anything, she couldn't move, she just had to actually just be in the moment. And you know when you're a moment, like if I sat here and I said, let's just wait for one minute, as Mr. Rogers famously did on TV.

And I just watched the second hand's tick by, it would be the longest minute of your life. But that's what happens when we slow down and we lock in. When we say no to the things that keep us busy and distract us, this is a sign on my desk, that's a picture of Oliver Sacks, just says no exclamation point. And below it and above it, our pictures of my kids

are a reminder that when I'm saying the yes to things that I should be saying no to, I'm saying no to them. I have this little memo, this is a real memo from Truman's office, and it's him writing a note to a secretary. She's asking, should I say that because of so many similar requests, the president must be excused, and he writes the proper responses underlined, HST. As he becomes more important, as more and more is on his desk, he has to say no to almost everything that comes in. This is an ideal day in my calendar. Not because I'm not working, but because I haven't agreed

to any distractions or meetings or things that take me away from what I should be thinking about. This is a great letter speaking of Eisenhower, E.B. White, the writer was asked to join this presidential committee, and he said, I must decline for secret reasons. You don't know anyone in explanation. You don't have to feel bad.

If you don't want to do it, just say no. If you've got more important things to do, if you have your main thing, this is the motto of the Rams. The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. And to say no to the things that are not the main thing, realizing that every yes, as a no, every no is a yes. Most meetings could be zooms,

most zooms could be phone calls, most phone calls could be emails, most emails could be texts, most things probably don't need to happen at all. Mark should really say the question to ask ourselves is is this essential? He said because most of what we do and say is not essential.

And when we eliminate the, in essential he says we do the essential better, family being essential, self development being essential, your standards being essential, the big things being the essential, and we let the little things go. So that's what I have for today.

The obstacle is the way, ego is the enemy, stillness is the key. And the reason we have to remember all of these principles is that, as I said, as long as you don't die, that's a pretty good day. So if you say, momentum or a life is very short. We don't know how long we're here. Mark's for this is we could leave life right now. Let that determine what we do and say and think. We could be good today. Instead, we choose tomorrow. We put it off. We don't balance the books of life each day. We don't live each day as a complete life. And then when we wake up, we take that day for granted, we're distracted, we waste it, we put things off. No, you could leave life right now, let that

determine what you do and say and think. And so on that very morbid note, thank you very much. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The op's goes the way. You go as the enemy, still in this is the key, the leather bound edition, this is the key. The leather bound addition of the daily stoke. We have them all in the daily stoke store, which you can check out the Daily Stoic Early 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. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy.