The Daily Stoic - Justin Baldoni on Redefining Success, Small Improvements, and Vulnerability

Episode Date: June 18, 2022

Ryan talks to actor Justin Baldoni about his book Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity, the importance of structure in the process of improving, how being vulnerable can change the way you view the world, and more.Justin Baldoni is an actor, director and entrepreneur whose efforts are focused on creating impactful media. He can be seen playing Rafael on CW’s award-winning phenomenon Jane the Virgin. In 2012, Baldoni created the most watched digital documentary series in history, My Last Days, a show about living told by the dying. On the heels of that success, Baldoni founded Wayfarer Entertainment, a digital media studio focused on disruptive inspiration.Justin and I talk about his recently released book, Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity, which is a reflection on his own struggles with masculinity. With insight and honesty, the book explores a range of difficult, sometimes uncomfortable topics including strength and vulnerability, relationships and marriage, body image, sex and sexuality, racial justice, gender equality, and fatherhood. Blinkist takes top nonfiction titles, pulls out the key takeaways and puts them into text and audio explainers called Blinks that give you the most important information in just 15 minutes. Go to Blinkist.com/STOIC to start your free 7 day trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership.MUD WTR is a coffee alternative with 4 adaptogenic mushrooms and ayurvedic herbs with 1/7th the caffeine of a cup of coffee. Go to mudwtr.com/STOIC and use code STOIC to get 15% off your first purchase.80,000 Hours is a nonprofit that provides free research and support to help people have a positive impact with their career. To get started planning a career that works on one of the world’s most pressing problems, sign up now at 80000hours.org/stoic.DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck 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.

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 weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes, something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery'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. The Stoics talk, of course, about self-improvement a lot. That is the purpose of philosophy in many ways to get better each and every day. And I think the Stoics were pretty unanimous in their belief that reading is a way to do that.

And that's why I love today's sponsor, Blinkist. Blinkist is a way to get better, smarter, and to do it faster in 2022. Blinkist has takeaways from some of the best books on the topic of self-improvement, books that were written by friends of mine that have recommended many times. Mark Manson's The Settle Art of Not Giving A Fuck, James Clears, Atomic Habits, Tim Ferris's The Four Hour Body and more. They also, of course, have my books as well. When I read a book, what I'm really looking for is like one nugget, one insight, one thing

I can take away. And if you don't have time to read as much as I do, Blinkist is a great way to just get that. The sort of 15 minute summaries of these books, interviews with the authors, where they really go in depth at the core, the crux of what the author is trying to say. Now I don't think that's enough. I think you should also go read the book. But Blinkist is a great way to tackle reading in 2022, to read more, to read faster. One of the things I do when I tackle a really big complicated book is I want to read a review, listen to a summary, read the Wikipedia page, so that when I actually do get the book, I know

what I'm looking for. And I've got a base of knowledge to start with. Right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to Blinkist.com slash stoke to start your free seven day trial. And then get a 25% off Blinkist Premium Membership. That's Blinkist B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T Blinkist.com slash stoke. Get 25% off a free seven day trial. Blinkist.com slash stoke. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast.

There's this idea that like, stoicism is masculine. In fact, there was this controversial thing maybe a year ago or so, where they tried to say one of the components of toxic masculinity was stoicism. I mean, the lower casecase dose and there weren't specifically inditing Marcus reallyist, but you know, they weren't also not inditing him. But I dislike that for a bunch of reasons. One, because historically not all the Stoics were women. I talk about Portia Cato in lives of the Stoics.

Marcus really is profusely honors the sort of implicit stoicism of his mother and the opening of meditations. Musoneus Rufus thinks women should be taught stoicism. I also meet women in person at book signings that come to the bookstore. They send me emails. I just got off the read to lead challenge. And like 50% of the questions were from women. This idea that all stokes are like all dead white guys.

It's just preposterously an act, and you know, wouldn't be any fun either. I think stuacism is this diverse broad thing. And anyways, this is a little bit of a ramp. But it sets up why I wanted to talk to today's guest, who actually got introduced to by my friend Jeffrey Zyrowski, the chef and restaurant tour and long-time friend, family friend actually. My wife Samantha worked with his wife, Satya, when we lived in New York City, Satya being a wonderful and creative entrepreneur

in her own right. But Jeffrey said, you gotta meet this guy, Justin Baldoni, and then Justin set me a very nice copy of his book, Man Enough. And we became friends. We've connected a bunch. We've had some mutual friends in common as well.

In addition to Jeffrey and That's why I wanted to have Justin on the podcast. We had technical difficulty after technical difficulty I don't know what's been going on lately. I just had a bunch of stuff. I got a new pod mic for this exact reason Justin is an actor director entrepreneur who tries to create what he calls impactful media. He was on the show, Jane The Virgin. He created one of the most watched digital documentary series in history. My last days, a show about living, told by the dying. Fits in very beautifully with the stoke idea of momentum. And on the the heels of that success he created a new entertainment company called Wayfair Entertainment, a digital media studio focused on disruptive inspiration. And in today's episode, Justin and I talk about his great book, Man Enough Undefining

My Masculinity, which is a reflection on his own struggles with masculinity. He explores, I think, some difficult, uncomfortable topics, strength and vulnerability, relationships and marriage, body, image, sex and sexuality, racial justice, gender equality and fatherhood. He sent me a very nice copy, a very nice inscription on the book. He said, he says, Ryan, I hope this book speaks to you and touches the way you have touched so many, looking forward to getting to know each other better and meet in person one day soon. Here's to being enough.

And I feel like we got to know each other better on this podcast, also better through the stress of. Zamcast are not working zoom not working we start and calling FaceTime some publicists that was a whole thing. And the result though was a wonderful interview go to his website mananuff.com And the result, though, was a wonderful interview. Go to his website manenough.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Where it has literally millions and millions of followers at Justin Valdoni, B-A-L-D-O-N-I. And you can check out his book, Man Enough Undefining My Masculinity. Thanks, Justin, for taking the time. Enjoy this interview.

All right, we did it. Whatever bad Juju was in the microphone, we fixed. Okay, hold on, let me just put on my quick time. Not a red. You know what, I think we should be very impressed with the calmness and poise that we handle these technical difficulties. I would say normally I would be quite frustrated, but you have a calming energy to you.

Oh, man. I appreciate that. I thought you'd handled that really well. I was thinking the whole time, I'm like, you know, if they were Zoom mics during the time of the Stoics, how would they react? I think you did great. I think they would be proud of you. I hope so. I think they would find it endlessly frustrating as well. And then have to use all their philosophical training. Well, speaking of which, speaking of manliness and ancient philosophers, how insecure should I be

that I cannot grow a beard? Because you have a very luxurious beard. Not even a little bit, right? Because you always want what you don't have. I wish I had your smooth skin, baby face, not a wrinkle on you. Not insecure at all. Not insecure at all. By the way, dude, I'm so stoked that we're talking.

I really do. I really am a fan of yours. Michael is. And I just listened to Ego is the enemy. And it's one of these things I'm gonna keep going back to and I'm currently listening to stillness is the enemy. And it's one of these things I'm going to keep going back to. And I'm currently listening to stillness is the key. And I just feel like you're just all over my life. And I really am grateful for your work and your and what you put out in the world. And I don't know how you do it all, including taking like long walks in the morning with

your children, because my children sure is held. I don't want to take long walks with me. So I'm just, you just really are a beautiful example and you're doing the work and you're using your talents to be of service. And I just, I really am a fan and I'm really impressed by you and how you do the world. That's very kind. You know, the kids don't want to take the walk. It is a thing they enjoy having done, but I'm sure, speaking of things that test your stoicism, the process of getting them to start the walk is one of the most challenging things. Because, and I think they realize this, like, when I'm out of town, they're more successful at convincing my wife not to do it.

It's not really part of her routine. So like I was gone in and out this week. And so like this morning was hard, but it's one of those things that once we get like halfway through, it's almost always worth having done. But like the the challenge of of like the argument and the fight, whatever, like I feel like there's a lot of things that, as a parent, you know that like, hey, you'll have fun if we go to the park, but getting you into the car is going to be a test of everyone's patience and affection for each other.

Oh yeah, I think about God that way too, just like the rules and the laws. It's like, this will be so good for you. Yeah. And we're like, no, it won't. I want to do it in my way. Yeah. But wait, what time do you do this walk? That's what I'm really curious about.

It's got to be before 8 o'clock. If it's later in the day, like, let's say we didn't, we got slow whatever, and it was like an 830, then it starts to push into all the other stuff. So it's big. They go to, do they go to school or they're homeschool? They're their homeschool-ish. My youngest is only, is not yet three, so he doesn't do anything. And so this is, this is, you push him. This routine is one, a product of them not being in traditional school just yet. And then also the pandemic gave us like two and a half years of like the thing. And it'll, it'll change with time. But yeah, it's like, I was reading about your morning routine.

I don't think the walking is actually the important thing. I think the important thing is that you have some semblance of a routine. I don't think the walking is actually the important thing. I think the important thing is that you have some semblance of a routine. Like kids are chaos. So if you allow that chaos to rule your life, everyone is more unhappy. You have to have some structure to your life or day. Yeah. And when the kids do rule the life, I believe, and I can speak from experience here, as I was one of the kids that ruled the life. It creates a lot of trauma for the child, because structure and boundaries are so important, even when we don't want them or when they don't want them. It's kind of going back to that. It's how it's analogous for how I think about God as the loving parent.

But I didn't have that growing up. I remember being, I think it was three. It's one of my earliest memories. And I don't know if I remember it or if it's just that my mom kept telling me about it over the years. But I think I actually do remember it because I remember the room and I remember the therapist saying that I ran the household. We were in a family therapy session at three. And that really, really messed me up.

And I've been dealing with a lot of that over the course of, you know, the last five years, especially since I started having kids and going deep into therapy and kind of thinking about like boundaries and why I do things and what do I do? And back to that like, man, wow, no, they don't run. They can't run our world. We have to be strong, even when it hurts. So I love that your kids don't wanna go on the walk. It makes me feel better as a father.

But it was, but it's inspiring. I love, I get so much inspiration reading about men like you reading and listening to books like you write and you know going into history and seeing how other people have done it because it just helps me. Oh, I can take that or, Sure, I can use you with that in my life and it, it, it, it's really sweet. We, we've spent so much time in our house as a lot of people have over the last couple of years that we finally, we broke down and we hired like an organizer to come in and like organize everything like somebody's coming for us to. Oh yeah.

Who knows what they're doing. And it reminded me of what you just said about boundaries because she was basically like, your whole house is your kids house, right? She was like, and they can't work this way. She's like, there is kids stuff and kid play things in every room. And it has to be segregated. Like, that makes it happen. And I go crazy when I see the kid stuff everywhere. Yes. And so we started fixing that. And like, everyone is already much chiller and getting along better. And it turns out it's much easier to keep it clean because it's like it is segregated.

You're not just like such as the tornado all over the place. And so yeah, I think generally, we think boundaries are going to be restrictive and we think order and systems and routine is going to limit our freedom. There's a great eyes and hour, cool. I love where he says, freedom is really the opportunity for self-discipline. And so obviously a lot of people's lives are circumscribed by, this is what time I have to get up because this is what time my commute is, which is what time I have to get to the office.

And then if I can't leave before this time or I won't get paid, right, there's all these, so, but I think the more successful you get and then also as the world becomes more digital and work from home and all this stuff, suddenly you have a lot of choices about how things are and maybe your religion isn't telling you what to do or society isn't telling you what to do, but if you don't create your own artificial structure or boundaries in that, you're not going to be, you're not depriving yourself of happiness, you're giving yourself the opportunity to have happiness because chaos and disorder is not an environment

in which anyone let alone children thrive in. I agree completely. I agree completely. And yet, it's also one of my biggest challenges in my own life because I didn't grow up with that. So I find myself and my wife and I talk about this all the time. So my wife's from Sweden

and I think if Sweden's known for anything besides their immaculate a Kia design and music, like Abba, they're known for structure. Yeah. They're really a structured group of people. And so coming into my tornado of a life with my family, having no structure was really a big challenge for her. And I have been noticing over the years, like how much I have craved it over the course of my life. And yet, how big of a challenge it's been for me to keep it because I never had an example. Sure. I never had it. I didn't have any curfews. I didn't have any rules really.

It was all kind of left between me and God, which I'm not a huge fan of. I love my mother so much, but I don't think that was the wisest thing to, you know, because it caused me to not do a lot of things, but not for the right reason. Mm. And now I'm like, oh, I need it. And I look at men like you, and I get so much inspiration because I'm like, no, it's possible. And it doesn't have to be perfect, right? It's the little improvements.

And the Baha'i, I'm a Baha'i of Dool Baha says, little by little, day by day. Little by little, day by day. Little by little day by day. And that's what I kind of always go back to, which is if I can just do one small thing, and it's been a huge help for me, because it allows me to also be more compassionate with myself.

But really, you've been really massively helpful in my life, even from afar, even with our very limited text interactions, thanks to our friend, our mutual friend, Jeffrey for introducing us. But I've really loved just all your work and what you're doing. Thank you. Yeah, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism,

he says, well being is realized by small steps, but it is no small saying. And I think about it that way. It's just these like little habits or structures or decisions that again, to a certain degree, they can kind of be arbitrary. Like, I heard this great quote about Judaism, which was that the Jews have kept the Sabbath, but the Sabbath has kept the Jews.

The idea being that like, it's both like the religious reason, but also like just the structure and the routine and the decision of keeping the day. The protection. It's actually, it's a protection. I don't think we think about it that way. In the by-riding, it's just like that, the howl that talks about the laws of God, not being seen as laws, but being seen as the choice wine of the day that has been given to us with like, might and power and like choice wine of the day. You know, you as a history buff understand what choice wine was. It is like the greatest gift.

It is like the thing that has been given to us that is a gift. It's for our protection. It's not a lot. It's not like the Sabbath. If you break it, you're going to hell. It's no, it's here for you. Yeah. Just like when I tell my, you tell my son, hey, hold my hand

when we cross the street, please don't run in the street without looking. It's a gift. I want you around. I want you in my baby boy. But we don't think about it that way. We think about, like, as human beings, we want to like push all the boundaries

and think we know everything. And, you know, and I love about you, but having kids has been so helpful to me. Because now I look at everybody and I'm like, oh my God, you're just a big child. We're all children. We're fighting over a fucking sandbox. No, I want that toy.

No, that toy's mine. What is a border? What is it? It is all of it. What is all of the stuff that we've created? This will take us on another tangent, so I'll let you ask the questions. Is this thing on check one, two, one, two?

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Well, given where you live, have you, have you read East of Eden Steinbeck's East of Eden? I haven't. So you should. It's an incredible book. And then he also wrote this book called A Journey of a Novel,

which is like his sort of letters to him and his editor as he's writing the book. There's also the James Dean movie that's really a weird adaptation of the novel. I want to read the book. Okay, read the book. But the big, central thing in the book, and it's goes to what you're just saying about it's for you, is basically, and Steinbeck has a letter about it. So it's kind of this interesting meta thing where he's talking about in the novel, but then in these letters you get where he discovers the idea. He's reading this translation of the Bible and he comes to realize it's like the Hebrew translation or something

that the it's not the commandments are not thou shall not, right? He says the word is Tim Shill or Tim Shill, I don't know, but he translates it instead as valmayst, right? So he's basically saying that you should not or you can not do these things, but that it's a choice. And this is the whole point is that it's a choice, right? It's the choosing not to do the thing. So it's not that you cannot do it, and you'll be smited down by God. It's that it's a suggestion from somebody who knows better. Exactly. Like, to me, this is also, it's, Stoicism is saying it's coming to these ideas more from a rational perspective than a metaphysical perspective. It's saying not like, hey, don't be a liar, don't she, don't bear false witness, because you might go to hell.

It's that that's a hellish life, that that is a place you will live now, and that place sucks. And that will exist right here for us. It's a state of mind. It's a state of mind. And nobody who's doing those, nobody is having the worst time than the people that are getting away with the things that you're considering allowing yourself to do.

I love that so much. And I think that there's actually a lot of spiritual metaphysical in the rational, which is what I love about stoicism, especially the way you talk about it. It's evident in all of the teachings of all the religions of God. I mean, fundamental belief in my faith, the by faith is that we are all one. There's one God, there's one religion unfolding, progressing throughout time,

pre-recorded history, pre-when we had the ability to write and record all of these things. We've always been guided. And so, but it is a very rational thing. The second we take rationality out of religion, we just have dogma, and it's not a practicable thing. So, absolutely, I love that. Do you talk about your mom earlier? How did your dad play a role or the male influences your life? Because I feel like when I think about some of these sort of misconceptions or preconceived notions that we have about what a man is or what motivates a person to go be driven in a certain way or do certain things or take certain things to excess, I so often find

that there's this, like, I just want dad to be proud of me. I just want to be seen by that guy. How was that for you? For me, it was a little different. I mean, it's why I write so much about masculinity is I think all of us men, we don't realize it, but we are and have been very hurt by the system that we've been brought up in. Sure. And I think one of the reasons why we so desperately crave our father's affection, our father telling us these things, like they're proud of us so that they love us. Is because it was so hard for our fathers to get that from them. Sure for their fathers and it's not a language that's taught to men growing up.

We're not taught to be vulnerable to show our emotions to show our feelings. Women are taught that that is the socially acceptable behavior right that's how they form community. In many ways I would imagine also for their own protection. Sometimes, and most often times, from men, they need each other in that way. So when a woman meets another woman, it's a face-to-face relationship. It's a face-to-face friendship. They bond over their shared vulnerability when a man meets another man at the side to side friendship, which is why bars are set up the way that they are, which is why we play sports, go to the gym, we do something, we drive in the car,

we have side friendship. We have side to side friendship. We cannot be vulnerable with each other. And what ends up happening is that's transferred oftentimes from the father to the son. So we crave face-to-face relationships with our dads, but we get side to side relationships with our dads, but we get side-to-side relationships with our dads. And we so desperately want to feel that love

and attention and appreciation, but what ends up happening is we reach a certain point when our men, when our little boys, are not little boys anymore, they're men. And we know how hard this world is. We know that this world is not for the faint of heart, that it's going to hurt us, that people out there are not going to be kind. And so we feel this need to prepare our children, especially our boys for the

terrain, if you will. But in the process of doing that, I believe we numb and we drown that part of them and us that desires and wants that little boy relationship that shows that physical affection, that kisses them on the cheeks of the lips when they're 16, 17, 18 years old. We, we, we stop doing that because they almost in some way become an equal and there's this like a night right of passage that almost we feel like has to happen so that we can avoid so that they can hopefully avoid the pain that we went through. It's very complex to nuance. All that to say, my dad didn't do that. My dad actually showed all of it.

Wow. My dad is a, my dad grew up, my grandfather was an Italian American immigrant who came through Ellis Island in 1912 when he was eight years old. His dad came over on a boat years before, set up shop, got a job, sent the money, brought the family over, and my grandfather grew up to become a senator in Indiana in the 40s, very close to the home of the Ku Klux Klan. And didn't want my dad to assimilate, didn't want them to be seen as all of the things that at the time Italians were seen as. And never, ever once in his life told my dad that he loved him. He was a great dad, but he was really lacking emotionally.

And he said he was proud of him once, but he never told him that he loved him. And so my dad grew up, in many ways, trying to heal the relationship he had with his dad by just overcompensating until he loved me 500 times a day. And always showed emotion was very physical with me, hugged me, kissed me. But as I've been processing and what I write about and man it off and I have a book from middle grade boys coming out in October, yes, man, thank you. Boys will be human, which I think is far more important than man enough because it's for young boys. What I write about there is that my dad showed emotion, but he didn't show vulnerability.

And there's a difference. Sure. He could cry. And I'm so grateful that he could cry. He would cry in movies. He'd cry, something he'd cry in commercials. He cried when my grandma died. He cried when he was proud of me.

But he never let me in to see the parts of him that he didn't like about himself. He never let me in to see his mistakes. He never let me in to see his fear and his worry. And so what ends up happening is you grow up and you think that your father is impermeable. You think that he's a superhero. You think that the world can't affect him

or can't touch him. And then, in some ways, you think that that should be you. So your model of masculinity becomes this, I need to be like my dad, this superhero, this guy who's not affected by the world. But if he would have just shown me, if he would have just shown me his vulnerability, his fears, his stresses, his worries, talked to me about some of the things even my mom and him were fighting about, I could have had a healthy example to understand how to approach that in my life, which bring it back to your work in some ways is in many ways is what Stoicism is and talks

about. It's like it's the talking to the dead people idea. It's learning. And that's what I wish we had in our parenting. We shouldn't have to wait till they're dead or to read about them in a book, to hear about all the struggles we should be imbuing that into our children when they're young so they can see that their mom and dad are your human beings. Yeah, that brings up two things for me.

One thing my wife and I have been talking about that we're working on is like the amount of times I can remember my parents apologizing or explaining why they were being the way they're being is like zero, right? So it's like, look, going to the airport is stressful. And it's reasonable that you might lose your temper with your kids who are being insane or uncooperative or whatever because you're stressed that you're anxious that you're going to miss your flight. But instead of acting like that was either normal or that didn't happen, right?

I feel like what I needed, I am stressed out or anxious because acts, right? It requires a certain amount of self-awareness to go not only am I feeling a feeling, but the reason I am having the feeling is this. And it's not an excuse, but it is an explanation that provides context and awareness. And I think parents often struggle what one, because they kind of maybe feel infallible or impermeable and they don't want to let their kids into what's going on. But it's like, again, the idea, it's like, you can screw up, you can have strong feelings. But if you want your kids to be better at this than you and to not just pick up what you're doing, you have to explain why that is and what it is and that

you're working on it. So they can see that because you don't want to be losing your temper at the airport. It just happened. But most people Ryan and I'm an, are you in therapy? Yes. Okay. So most people don't have that emotional IQ or vocabulary to even be able to process what is happening to them. So we're so wired in this world that we're living in,

we're living in fight or flight. Our nervous systems are shot. And we don't have the wherewithal, the knowledge, the understanding, and our parents certainly didn't have those tools to be able to even understand why I'm freaking out or reacting or becoming angry at something. It took me years to understand, wait, why am I angry? My wife didn't even say anything to me.

She just, why am I reacting this way? That person who cut me off, what, where's this thing in me that me. She just, why am I reacting this way? That person who cut me off, where's this thing in me that's like, why am I triggered? I was walking around being triggered for most of my life, having no clue why, because nobody ever taught me to sit with my feelings. Nobody ever taught me to actually feel, to understand what I was feeling. Delayed bell hooks, I'm sure you've read bell hooks, who just passed away recently, and I really wanted to meet her. She writes in a will to change that the first act of violence that men commit in a patriarchal society is not violence against women.

It's violence against themselves when they engage in this psychic act of self-mutilation and numb themselves. They kill off their feelings in an act that she calls soul-murder and put on this armor to make it impossible for us to actually even know what we're feeling. And we do that to protect ourselves in this very dangerous world from other men. And other men building us, shaming us because the last thing we want to be is vulnerable. So how do we even know how to do that for our children unless we're doing that work? When I think that's that's the unfortunate stereotype of stoicism, you know,

what we call lowercase stoicism. It's sometimes even even that lowercase stoicism is associated with what they call toxic masculinity, to which to be is a misreading of what the philosophy is about. Totally right. It's not this idea that you stuff the emotion down. It's that in the Buddhist way you go, I am feeling X, but I don't have to identify with feeling X.

I don't have to choose feeling X. And I certainly don't have to act on or be defined by feeling X. So it's, I think, you know, if you think stoicism is this idea of pushing the emotion away, you're missing the point, it is, I think, understanding, processing, looking at the root causes and then ultimately trying to make the right decision based on the input that you have from that feeling, but not being defined by or driven by that feeling. 100%.

I agree with that completely. It's also about a time and a place. Yeah. I think that we have to be mindful to no matter what, we are made to feel. That's why they're called feelings, right? So there is not a human being on the planet or one who has ever lived, who has lived a life where they have been able

to objectively look at all of their feelings and then decide not to feel them. Yeah, it doesn't exist. Now, if I'm in a conversation with you right now, and you say something that's super offensive to me, and I'm triggered by it. I can go in the moment with that stoic principle, recognize I'm triggered by it, and then make the choice to respond with love and kindness.

But when I get off the phone with you, I have to allow myself to feel the thing. Yeah. If I don't, it builds up in my body, and it creates, I believe, toxicity and leads to illnesses. I mean, we know now, science has shown us for 30 something years that the tears that children cry actually contain stress hormones. And this is not something that we talk about. You know, so when I talk to men, especially with my work

with men, and we talk about why it's important talk to men, especially with my work with men, and we talk about why it's important to cry, why it's important to allow our children to cry, and not stop and interrupt their tantrums, we can take it back to science. They've measured what is in the tears of tantrums and toddlers and its stress hormones, which means our body is literally cleansing itself

when we cry, but when we hold that back, where do this restaurant ones go? They just absorb our body. At some point, we have to allow ourselves to release. And if we don't, what happens when we keep breathing in? At some point, I'm gonna explode. And that's what's happening all over the world. All over the world, especially us men, we don't have an outlet.

Because sure, we get angry, but what's underneath the anger? Unexpressiveness, feelings, so crying, letting that stuff out is really important, but the time and the place is exactly I agree with you. We can make that choice. So not let our moods in the by faith become our master. All the Stoics were active in life trying to make a difference trying to have a positive impact on the world. They were suspicious of the pen and in flusters of people who just wrote about stuff. We didn't do it. But we've talked before about how you're only on this planet for like four thousand weeks. Let's say you work for 40 years of that time.

That's 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, 40 years, that's 80,000 hours. Your career is roughly 80,000 hours. It's a lot of time, but it's also not a lot of time. You really can't afford to waste it, but if you dedicate yourself and that time productively and effectively, you can have a huge positive impact in the world. You can serve the common good as the Stokes talk about. There's actually an awesome nonprofit called 80,000 hours that gives free research and support to help people create positive impact with their career.

You can join their newsletter. They'll send you a free in-depth guide that takes you through all the steps, all the way to a concrete career plan. They host an awesome job board with nearly 1,000 open, high impact career opportunities in the offer free, one-on-one advice to help concrete career plan. They host an awesome job board with nearly a thousand open high impact career opportunities and they offer free one unwanted advice to help you switch paths. There's also a great 80,000 hours podcast, which hosts super in depth conversations with experts about how to best tackle pressing global problems. You can join the news that are right now. Get a free copy of their in-depth career guide, sent right to your inbox. Just sign up at 80,000hours.org slash stoic. That's 80, the number 80,000hours.org slash stoic,

80,000hours.org slash stoic. And just to be clear, they're a nonprofit, and everything we provide is free always. They're fully philanthropically funded. Their only goal is to help you have more impact in your career with those 80,000 hours that you have on this planet. To get started planning a career that works,

well, sign up at 80,000hours.org. Sasha Stutt. Well, I was thinking about this. One of the things that it's been helpful for me having kids is going like, it's really hard to be a kid. So of course, they're throwing a tantrum or being scared. They can't

express themselves. They have so little control. Things are overwhelming. They don't know why they're feeling what they're feeling. They don't even maybe even know fully what a feeling is. So they're overwhelmed. But I've been trying to expand that out like more. And I was just thinking about this, I was writing about it this morning. Let's think how hard it is to be a person in the world. Right? Like, you're like, okay, so things are changing all the time.

Like if you're 60 years old, things that were bedrock, foundational, parts of your understanding of reality are changing. You're forced to understand and accept things that you are totally unfamiliar to you. I think about all the information that's being thrown at people and the technical skill and the brain power required to make sense of it all. And then you put in the economic conditions and health and blah, blah, blah.

It's like, of course, people are having meltdowns in supermarkets. Of course, people are rude to each other. Of course, people pick up reactionary themes and politics or align themselves to certain movements. Like, some people can't, but they're just not cut out for what's happening. They just don't have the tools and they don't, like you were saying with your dad, like, they were not taught properly. And this actually my favorite passage in meditation. So he opens it and he's like, here's all the shitty people you're going to meet today. Let me give you a minute. Let me give you this too. You might like this. He says, um, and like when I first read it at like 18 or 19, I picked it up

differently. I only picked it the first part. But he says, this is the opening of book two of meditations. He says, when you wake in the morning, tell yourself the people I will deal with today will be meddling on grateful, arrogant dishonest jealous and surly, right? And I'm like, yeah, people fucking suck. That is totally it. That's what I picked up on. But then he says, they are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil. And I have recognized that the wrong doer has a nature related to my own. And so they cannot hurt me. And he says, no one can implicate me in ugliness, nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him.

We are born to work together like feet and hands and eyes, like two rows of teeth, upper and lower. So the idea that like, look, people are going to be this way, but not on purpose. They're not like this on purpose. They're like this because they don't have the tools that they need. I couldn't agree more. The biofaith were taught that, um, they're the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch. So powerful is the light of unity that it can illumine the whole earth. It was my senior, I think about my senior year book quote, was breathe not the sins of others so long as thou art by self-acenter. We've seen this in all of the religions of the world,

And we've seen this in all of the religions of the world. And when you say all of that, it's just, it's the fundamental thing missing from so many of us is empathy and compassion for what another person is going through and what another person is experiencing. I had an amazing, an amazing person on my podcast, the minute of podcasts not too long ago. They go by they then pronouns and we were really unpacking what's happening in the world specifically for trans folks. And it was a, it was a pretty mind bending

eye-opening experience for me, but they said something, their name is a loak, they said something that I have taken with me everywhere in every interaction that I have, which is that we have to start to value compassion over comprehension. Yes, we shouldn't have to, we shouldn't have to understand somebody to love them. We need to first be willing to love somebody, and that can help us understand them. And that has just like been such a huge, huge thing for me. In some ways, it's kind of what you were talking about.

No, no, and I think the trans issue is a good one, because whenever it comes up, I get angry, email some people and whatever. And I just, one of the parts that I, one of the things I think about it is like, first off, like, why is this so upsetting to you? Clearly, it's not about this. Anytime you get really upset about something, it almost has nothing to do with the issue

and everything to do with some part of you and yourself. And then the, but I like what you're said about comprehension because people go like, I don't understand. Or they'll try to go, they'll try to like poke holes in it. What about this? And what about this? And it's not who cares, but it's like, why is that important to you at all?

This is not your journey. Like this person is dealing with something that is clearly hard and difficult. Just take a second to think about how difficult and hard that would be. And if that doesn't make you back way up and go, I don't really need to have any role in this, unless my role is to help that person.

Like, if you're, like, unless you should either be struck by a certain compassion or a certain amount of, like, you know what? If I can't be a part of the solution here, I'm just not going to make this person's life any harder because they're dealing with God knows how much. And I think this idea of just like sort of backing up and dealing with your own shit and leaving other people to deal with their shit is something people seem to struggle with a lot in the social media air where it feels like because

the algorithm and the setup of the site is designed to elicit in opinion. Oh, here we go. I can talk about it. It's a holiday. I can talk about this with you all day long, right? I guess. Well, it is designed that way. Yeah.

But it's all user retention. Mm-hmm. The whole point is to make us feel so inferior and so less than and to keep us scrolling so that when we do say something and we get a cookie, we come back and say more. We have our opinion actually matters to somebody, but the root cause of this is that none of us feel like we're enough. All it's done is social media like any other big tech has just come in and said, oh, okay, these are users, right?

Like any other company, drug users, porn users, whatever it is. And let me mess with dopamine, get everybody hooked, and let me profit off of them. And I'll just feed, feed, feed, feed, feed to their feed, endlessly scrolling, you know, forming all of our neuro pathways, filling them with flooding them with dopamine

and trying to fill a hole that will never, never be filled. So we're just getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And it's heartbreaking because what we've created, I mean, everybody has an opinion now, even people that didn't before, because if they don't have an opinion, they're left behind. Having an opinion now, even if you don't even fully buy in or agree with your opinion, it's almost like it gives you something for a moment that makes you feel like you're full because the world is telling us that we're not.

The world is like this intersection of capitalism and the P word, which I know I'm sure a lot of your viewers were hate, but the patriarchy, all of this is like this intersection of combined, you are not enough unless you are doing X. Your worth as a man is defined by your productivity, but we're not fucking machines. So what, so if I'm not able to produce or provide, then I'm not a man anymore. It's so mind blowing to me that we haven't really looked at this and said, oh, wait a second. So in other words,

what we're saying to little boys and to men everywhere is that every day you have to wake up and prove you're a man. Because the court of public opinion, meaning your closest three friends, your father, anybody you value can take away your masculinity. So we're constantly living in a fear of fight or flight state where if we're not providing,

if we're not producing, then we don't have value. Because why we're seeing so many men, especially older, which is what's so heart breaking. We're talking about 50, 60-year-old men taking their lives as if they have failed. No, we have failed them. Society has failed. They're valuable. They're enough. That was one of the things I liked in the book.

You're saying that it's not that masculinity is something we should redefine, but it's something that needs to be undefined, which is actually a really interesting way to think about it. Like, I think what the world probably needs is more ambiguity and less certainty, right? So the idea that like, being a man, it's not a thing. It just is, right? There's no right way to do it. There's no wrong way to do it.

One of my favorite quotes from Marcus Realises is he says, you always have the ability to have no opinion, right? There's no right way to do it. There's no wrong way to do it. One of my favorite quotes from Marcus Realises, he says, you always have the ability to have no opinion, right? And I did something I tried to practice more as a person is like not having an opinion about stuff. And that doesn't mean that I'm not engaged in what's happening in the world. And I do think obviously there are some places you have to learn, it gives you time to form an opinion, God forbid. Yeah, I think it's primarily, it's like, why don't you have less opinions about what other people are doing with their lives, right? Because, right, like, this is different than, hey, what should the policy on this be, you know, what should, you know, this issue of rights or justice, that's different than just like, I find people are often

most miserable, most upset, most worked up about things that really are just not their business at all. And they're very unlikely to be able to change. Even if you had the like, even if you had the force of a gun, or as we're seeing now politically, you have just enough votes on the Supreme Court. Like you are trying to get your nose into the business of what someone else does with their life and their body. As if to go to what you're talking about earlier, you don't have enough splinters in your eye that you should be focused on. That's, I mean, that's exactly it. We talk about in our faith, it's idea of plowing your own field as a metaphor. Yes. Right. You're like back in the day when we would plow fields.

You would, you know, if you're, if you're focusing on how someone else is plowing their field, you look down, your field is a fucking mess. Yeah. You're all over the place. But if you focus on your own, you can get through it. And it was so simple and it's everything because we spend so much of our day and our energy worrying about other people's things, what somebody else does, what somebody else thinks, constantly giving away our power, as I know you talk about it, as I know is deep and show usism. Letting other people dictate our own happiness, letting the world tell us what matters. Focusing on issues that are happening with someone else somewhere else, it's like gossip is the talk of the day, and I just believe it just kills our souls, man. How could we ever find happiness or peace and contentment? We're so worried about what somebody else is doing.

And we're giving away our power every moment of the day. So I want, so one of my practices, because I'm wired that way. I mean, I grew up, I was bullied. I had a really tough time in middle school and high school. And, and I was, I was a very sensitive kid, which is really hard to be a sensitive boy built, built like I was, like in an athletic body, you know, star athlete, but very sensitive, you know, getting bullied by my own teammates, but then celebrated for winning the game. It was a very, it was a, it was a, it was a confute, which is, is kind of explains why I've gone into this work.

And oftentimes I would just go through school and hide. I just want to hide. Now all I wanted was to be liked and accepted and seen. And so now I find myself having these moments where someone will say something or I'll hear something. And I'll just like, it paralyzed for a moment and like a like fear will take over and 14-year-old 12-year-old Justin is living. He's like taken over. I'm on autopilot and I'm like, where is this coming from? Why does this bother me so much? And I have to go in. I literally have to

go in and time travel to figure out what happened. What is it about what that person said? Why? Ryan Holiday doesn't like me. He didn't like the interview. I just heard from my publicist. See it, you know, and I respect Ryan Holiday and he said something to my publicist. My publicist was like, yeah, it wasn't one of our best.

And I just, now I'm just sitting here going, oh, what have I done? And two hours goes by and I've been unproductive and I've wallowed in my own pain and misery. But what is that really about? It's not about right holiday. It's about what happened when I was eight or 12. And we don't do that right now. We don't teach boys and men to go in, to pause for a second, and to think about, why do I care so much about what the other person thinks? Why do I care so much about what the other person thinks? Why do I care so much about what's happening

on the other side of the freeway when all of the cars stop because they're trying to look over and see the train wreck that happened over there creating traffic for everybody else? What is our obsession with wanting to know what everybody else is doing? As you know, I live on a farm out here in Texas, so I need a four-wheel drive truck and I'm constantly throwing stuff in the back.

I've got tools and supplies and kid stuff and all of that. And the weather out here changes on a dime. It can rain out of nowhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. The deck drawer system helps you seize the day with two full bed length drawers that keeps your stuff organized, but also protected from the weather, from thieves, from rolling out while you're driving on the highway. It's awesome.

It's backed by a lifetime no hassle warranty with second to none customer service at your back and call. Keep all your stuff safe, secure, and protected in your truck like I do, grab the Debt Drawer System at Debt.com slash Stoic with free shipping that's Debt.com slash Stoic with free shipping on your Debt Drawer System Debt.com slash Stoic. Yeah, it's tricky.

When you're talking about triggering earlier, and people will sometimes preface what they do with trigger warnings where people go, you triggered me, right? I certainly am a person who has tried consciously to think about what I'm saying and the words that I use and the labels that I use. I don't wanna go around needlessly offending

or hurting or harming other people. At the same time, when we often talk about that stuff, it isn't part of a package where also you as the individual have to work on whatever that thing is inside you, even if and most of the time, it's not your fault. You didn't choose to be traumatized. You didn't choose to go through what you went through as a child. But ultimately, no one can fix that for you and no amount of protections against the outside world are going to insulate you from it.

So ultimately, you have to go do that work. So you can be like, ah, this is that inner child part of me that is being driven into an irrational rage when my wife or someone or a random person on the internet says or does x, y and z. Ultimately, you're complicit in that reaction because you have to go do that work on yourself or you better hope that you never cross paths with whatever that trigger is, and that's not a great way to go through life. Absolutely not. And we've got to be mindful too, because there are a lot of, and I guess so much of this

is also social media, man. And it's a, it's a, it's a wormhole, black hole. We don't have to really go down. But there is so, there are so many crazy things happening in the world right now that it would be impossible to shield ourselves from all of the triggers. Of course, which is why in some ways it's funny, even saying the word trigger has become almost this part

is it? Very triggering to people. Like on one side, you have, oh, everyone's triggered by everything. Like snowflakes and on the other side, it's like, well, that was triggering and that was triggering. And it's like, okay, okay, I understand. There are some things, yeah, please Twitter or Instagram,

please put a black box over something that's gonna show me a dead child in war. Yeah, because you know what, I don't need to see that right now. Yeah. I just don't, because when I see that, it wrecks me for a moment. And so I have compassion for those, you know, sexual assault survivors, you know, rape survivors. There are things out there that I think are just this go without saying that we just have

to be really mindful of. I have friends who are very triggered who have tried to commit suicide. It must be very mindful of those things. But when we're talking about, you know, just the world around us, it's going to trigger us. We have to also take that responsibility ourselves. I love what you said. But at the same time, if you're on Instagram, Twitter, all those places, you're also kind of signing up for it. Yeah, right? So we have to be mindful of like taking accountability and then also creating space where people have compassion for those people that do get triggered and not letting that affect you in ruin your day, that somebody else has bothered by something that you said, because then there's like that negative feedback loop where nothing ever gets done.

I'm sure you've had this in your marriage where both of your traumas or both of your insecurities meet at the exact worst time and you can't get through to each other because it's both of your eight-year-old selves are talking. Yes, it's two eight-year-olds that are arguing not to adults. Yes, of course. No, I think world, that's literally the world right now. That's where we are. No way, you have to do that. And I think you talked about therapy earlier, but like I would urge everyone listening to sort of inner child work of figuring out sort of those different places that you had, those different ways that you're frozen at eight or seven or six or 17 or three. And having kids

has been really helpful for me in that regard. Because suddenly, like, my thing is like, I don't even really remember my childhood very well, which is itself, you know, not a great sign, but, um, no, my response. It's like, oh, this is what a four year old is like. And that gives me some perspective as to how wildly inappropriate the way I was treated as a four year old is like. And that gives me some perspective as to how wildly inappropriate the way I was treated as a four year old was, right? And then realizing, not just, okay, here's how I have to do a better job as a parent, which is really the main thing that I control.

I can't go back in time and fix what's happened, but I cannot pass along generational trauma. But going, oh, this is why I have such a strong reaction to anything, even in the general vicinity of that. And it's why my reaction feels so childish or strange or whatever. It's because clearly something happened to me at this exact phase in my life.

Yeah, exactly. The power that says that man should know his own self and what leads him to loftiness or abacement both are on our. And it's that it's the self work. I call it in my book, The Hard Work of Hardwork. Yeah. Making that journey from our head to our hearts, understanding that we are all like this is all of us.

We're just walking around open wounds, you know? And we gotta start taking the armor off. We can't take, if we don't take the armor off, we can't do the work that you're talking about of even being able to recognize that. Something for me that happened was that, I didn't know why I was having a hard time playing with my kids.

Ooh, like when I, like why can't I just sit here for 20 minutes and 30 minutes? What is this constant desire or need to be doing something else? I was beating myself up about it. Because I was just like, OK, I just want to sit and play with my son. Why do I, where is this urge coming from to check my email, to check my phone, to check my text messages,

to look at my watch? Where else do I have to be? That's more important. And the deeper I went, more I realized that I wasn't played with a lot. Yeah. And it wasn't my parents fault. They were busy, they were providing, my dad was stuck in the hamster wheel,

trying to make it, trying to provide for the family. My mom was also working. So I wasn't played with a lot. So it's a part of me that actually doesn't fundamentally know how. Right. So I've had to re-teach myself what play is as an adult male. And my children are helping me. And so much of that is stored in my body.

It's in me. And I have to go in. I'm doing a lot of somatic healing work. I'm doing, you know, breaking through and feeling free to move my body, to play, to not be so stiff and rigid and built, to be more of a palm tree than an oak tree, and to be open to like make an ass out of myself. Yeah. Because for so long as I was never, I never allowed myself to do that because I had to be viewed as certain way. Image was important.

That was one thing that my grandpa passed down and my dad, that my dad passed down to me. It was how the world sees us is important. So I never acted a fool. It was sillier goofy. I was like, always put together. Business work was important, work ethic. But now, recognizing, like, oh, that impulse to check my phone is because my dad taught me that that's what matters.

Sure. Not being here present with me as a four-year-old and playing. So when my son says, Daddy, will you play with me for now on? My response is yes, no matter what I'm doing. But what is easier than the other, right? So like checking your email is something that you're than the other, right? So like checking your email is something that you're, or going to your work is something you're good at, something you get rewards for, something that is recognized by society as good. No one gets mad at you for making more money or being more successful for the most part. But put aside how we see play, we naturally go towards the thing we're more comfortable with. And so for you, it's like, Hey, this thing is uncomfortable. And that's actually why I have to do it. It's the

cold plunge. Yeah. It's, I have to get into the cold plunge. I don't want to. I have to get in there. I have to sit for three minutes. I have to breathe. And it, there's a part of me that's like, Oh, my God, I'm comparing playing with my child to a cold plunge, but if you weren't played with enough, it's not a language that you know. And now, oh my God, when my sons has played with me and he comes up, I think to myself, it's similar. It's kind of like how it instows in how you talk about, I don't know if it was Seneca or who talks about how,

when we put our children to bed, imagine it was their last night. Yes, this is Marcus really saying that but it's really, it's it was a really, yeah. And that idea of not that they're gonna die in the morning, but where do I have to go? Yes. What is the rush?

Yes. What are you rushing away from? Waved from away from this thing that you say is really important to you, which is your kids. Which is our kids and you only have them for such a short time as children. So when my son asked me now, I drop what I'm doing, even if it's important, if I'm not in the middle of a Zoom hall with church or people or something. And I say, yes. And those five to 15 minutes of undivided

presence, which in the past I haven't been great at giving, are what he's going to remember. So I often say like, my actions today will be their memories tomorrow. Yeah. And further, my actions today will be their actions tomorrow. So I want my son to play with my, I want my son to play with his son

because his daddy played with him. And that's how we break the cycle. Let's not just break the cycle. Let's not just break the cycle, but he is teaching you as you are teaching him, right? Like you didn't learn how to do something as a kid. So you have a kid who's now teaching you how to do something. But by doing it with him, you are teaching him

something that your dad didn't teach you, which is how to play with another person. Exactly. And there you teach you if we allow them to, our children are our greatest teachers, because they will show you just like marriage. I'm a huge believer in marriage, just like marriage. They are mirrors.

Yeah. But that goes to something uncomfortable. But that goes to something mirror. You look at it. You opened with earlier, where you're talking about these sort of rules and boundaries. I've been with my wife. We've been together almost 15 years now, because we met in college. We've only been married seven or eight, but we've been together, almost after lives at this point. And people go like, I want that. How do you do that? And I sometimes

I joke, I just go with a number one secret. It's just to not break up. Like, that's how you do it, right? Like, and so I think people often think they want this thing, like they want to end up at a place. But then when it gets hard or when it challenges them, or when they're not immediately happy or getting all the things that they want in any moment, they leave the thing. And then they wonder why,

like, the way to be in a relationship for like the way to be in a relationship for 50 years is to be in a relationship for 25 years and also 10 years and also five years and also one year and also one date after the really uncomfortable date you had, right? So you have to sort of push through a certain amount of things and you have to allow that thing to teach and change you as you are teaching and changing it. I couldn't agree more. My dad,

despite shortcomings in some areas, was incredible and is incredible. And one of the greatest things he taught me, and this is right when he started to be vulnerable with me and open. One of the greatest things he taught me, and this is right when he started to be vulnerable with me and open. This was, this is right when I was dating my wife. And I started asking about marriage. Cause I remember my mom and him fighting a lot, and there being a lot of tension.

And I was like, I was like, that, did you guys ever like, was there ever a rocky time? Like did you ever think about divorce? Like I was just, Dad, did you guys ever like, was there ever a rocky time? Like did you think about divorce? Like I want to know because I'm now in my late 20s, I'm sure I think I'm going to marry this girl. I want to know, like teach me. Like tell me about you and mom. And he told me, he got really honest. And he said that there were times in the marriage when he had to wake up and choose to love my mom. The easier choice would have been than not.

And for a lot of reasons, it had been him, it could have been her, but he said he woke up every day and he made a choice to love my mom. And they've been married for almost four years. And that choice that he made every day allowed me to grow up in a family that was not perfect. But I have not seen divorce. Yeah, I've seen them distant at times over the last, you know, 38 years for me. And closer. And now I see them in their 70s getting closer and closer and closer.

I see a patient man. I see a patient woman I see them accepting and loving each other and growing every day and there were periods where there was no growth But he still chose to love her and that was Everything to me because we live in a world where the grass is always greener where there is abundant choices Where you can swipe and have the adventure of your dreams. I mean, scientists or psychologists are talking about this phenomenon called mind-swiping. Have you heard of this?

Now, I read about it in the book. It's people are so used to swiping to find love. Sure. When they walk by people on the street in their minds, they're swiping. Oh, they're just like ranking them up or down like what I'd be with that. Left or right, right. Left or right, is this person? That's normal.

Like we are, we have this on-demand culture right now. And in marriages and relationships, we haven't been trained to do this work, to make that choice like you made, right? Yeah. To train ourselves to be married for a long time. Because we have this idea that, oh, it's supposed to be easy. Yeah. Oh, it's supposed to be easy.

Like, oh, what if it's too hard? It's not meant for me. But yet as men, we find things in our lives that are intentionally hard. And we put ourselves in them every single day. We pick hard jobs. We sign up for, you know, the military, or a marathon fighter. Marathon's ultra-marathon's, right?

One of the tech entrepreneurs, you know, thing. What do you, what do you notice about a lot of these high-end, like high-performing entrepreneurs? They do ultra-marathons, but their marriages are falling apart. Yeah. They cannot commit to the person that challenges them the most. So they just choose, like if I would choose to pick up my email instead of be my kids,

to make the easier choice. We have to learn, we have to take that same energy that we spend in the gym when we are burning our muscles to grow them and tearing down the fibers, put that into your fucking marriage into your life, sit in the cold plunge of the relationship. No, that's very well said. Yeah, we seek out challenges and hardship in all facets of our life. But then if the most important thing in our life is not easy or exactly as we want it to be. We think, well, I got options.

I'll find something that gives me exactly what I want. I'm so jealous of you, Ron. I'm the kind of person that I need to talk for like five or 10 minutes and you can summarize everything I said in one sentence. And I've always been jealous of guys like you because you're so freaking brilliant. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you said that way better

than I did and took me five minutes to get there. Well, I'll trade you some articulateness for the ability to grow beard and we'll split the difference. Okay, deal. Happy to give you some of this. My wife would love if I gave you some of this. I always thought it would happen for me. Like I was like, it's so funny, I know, I'm impossible.

And then I'm like getting gray hair and I still can't grow a me. I was like, it's so funny, I know I'm impossible. And then I'm like getting gray hair and I still can't grow a beard. I can get like a, I could probably get like after a week of not shaving the kind of stubble that you would get if you shaved your beard off right now and then woke up tomorrow. Yeah, it's pretty embarrassing. Or manly, I guess, I don't know.

It's like, there you go. It's the grass is always greener, right? Grass is always greener as we talked about earlier. Dude, this was amazing. I love the book and I'm so glad we got connected. You you wrote me a very nice note in your copy and I appreciate. Oh man. I appreciate being on. I love what you do, as I said before. And you'll have to come on the Man in a Podcast. I would love that. I'll come see you before. And you'll have to come on the Man of Podcast. I would love that. I'll come see you. Yeah.

And I want to come visit your book store in Texas. Please do. I'm here right now. Oh. I love it. I love what you've done. Appreciate it, man. You're the best.

Thank you for having me. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stove 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 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. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon

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