The Daily Stoic - Live Q&A with Ryan Holiday | The 2021 New Year, New You Challenge

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

Today’s episode of the podcast was taken from one of the live Q&A’s that took place during last year’s New Year, New You Challenge. The participants of the challenge get to engage in weekly group zoom calls with bestselling author Ryan Holiday to chat about how the challenge is going, ask questions, and more.  → We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It kicks off in a little over a week. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st!If you are looking for gifts for family members and friends, the 2021 Daily Stoic Gift Guide is here to help! This year’s guide features a bundle of books signed by Ryan Holiday, our new page-a-day desk calendar, the four virtues medallion, and more. Click here to give the gift of Stoicism this holiday season!Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com /stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.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 Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Something to help you live up to those four Stoic 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. As you know, stoicism has had a big impact on my life and it's helped me so much through the last 15 years, and it's something I a big impact on my life and it's helped me so much through the last 15 years. And it's something I tried to share with others sometimes. That's a book recommendation. One of the things we've tried to do over the years is create some physical embodiments of Stoic philosophy. Just sort of physical reminders of these ideas.

I've got the Marcus Arelius bust on my desk. My whole office, my home even is sort of reminders of these ideas from the ancient stokes. Maybe that's something you would want this time of year or as you're looking to give something to someone in your life to introduce them to the ideas of Stoses, and maybe that's members of your team or your unit. Maybe that's a friend you know who's going through something. Anyways, we put together a 2021 gift guide of these things. You can check that out at dailystoke.com slash gift guide. It's 10 awesome gift ideas for the stokes in your life. The op's goes the way leather bound book, the daily stoke,

leather bound book. We've got action guides, we've got digital courses. There's the daily stoke life membership. We've got signed personalized editions of all my books, awesome stuff like that for you or for someone in your life. Check that out at dailystoke.com slash gift guide. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoke podcast. I think one of the things I miss the most from the pandemic is obviously not just being in with people, but like the Q&As that I would get to do in my talks in person, like to go back and forth with the audience, people come up to you afterwards. Well, that's obviously out the window or has been out the window on pause.

Most things have gone virtual. But one thing we do every year at Daily Stoke, including last year, is this new year at NewU Challenge, where we all get together and do three weeks of like Stoke inspired challenges that make you better. And in today's episode, I wanted to bring you some of the Q&A that I got to do as part of that. We do three Q&As as part of the challenge. One at the end of each week, it's a Zoom chat. We all go back and forth. People ask questions, we talk about how things are going.

I try to answer as many of the Stoic questions as they have. And so in today's episode, I wanted to give you the best of last year's Q&A. And hopefully in the process, give you a peek at what you are missing. If you don't sign up for the Daily Stoke, new year, new year challenge, it's one of the best things that we do here at Daily Stoke. It's also one of the best things I do as a person

that helps me kick off having a great year. They're challenges, right? So it's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to get you out of your comfort zone. That's what I wanted to bring you in today's episode. Here is me answering some stoic questions. It's part of the daily stoic, new year, new challenge, which you can sign up for right now before it's too late.

At daily stoic.com slash challenge. We'd love to have you, how much longer you're gonna wait to demand the best for yourself. That's what EpicTida says. And that's one of the things we talk about in today's episode. This is so cool. Thanks for thanks for doing this. I'm really excited. It is 2021, which is both exciting and terrifying given what we know about 2020. What I thought we'd do today is I was gonna sort of just

just kick off with some thoughts and then we will go to questions. I was thinking about, so we did this challenge last year and there was a few days that have sort of jumped out at me. I think we started with a cold plunge, the idea of sort of willingly submitting yourself to adversity. And then I remember there was one about setting up an emergency fund, which Billy, will you mute your line for me?

Yeah. There was an idea of having an emergency fund in case one might need one in the course of a year. So that turned out to be pretty pressing. But I think even the idea of challenges, right? And this is what we're doing here this year. The idea of seeking out challenges and adversity so that when life throws these things at you, you have some preparation or experience dealing with that. And so as over the next 21 days, we're going gonna go through a bunch of different challenges. Some will be sort of mental challenges,

some will be physical challenges, some will be emotional challenges. But in each instance, what we're trying to do is force you to stretch a little bit, force you to think maybe from a different perspective, force you to do something outside your comfort zone, the idea being that if one cultivates this ability, if one does what what Santa could call a hard winter's training,

when the winter of life arises, then one can step up and is confident in their ability to step up. And so that's where we are. Obviously, 2020 was not the year that I think many of us looked for or hoped for, even if you emerged unscathed. It certainly wasn't what you'd plan on experiencing, but then here we are, The Stokes would say, it's not what happens, it's how we respond.

So I hope that over the last 12 months, you guys have found things that you're proud of, how you responded, maybe things that you see as needing room for improvement. When I was designing day one, that's sort of what we were thinking about. I think that the very least, we can all look back at the last 12 months by nature of being here on this call and give ourselves

some credit for having survived a historic year, a strange year, a surreal year, we're still here. And if you had some sort of questions about how people in the past got through things. How Marcus gets through the Antenine plague, maybe how your ancestors survived political unrest or how they responded to moments of trials and difficulties. Well, this was a year for the history books and our children and their children will look back at 2020 and sort of marvel that so many strange and difficult things could happen within 12 months. I love the joke that 2020 is the longest decade of our lives. But we're all here. We all made it through. And I think that says something. And so when we're doing for day one, which is this sort of review of what gives us hope, I think, you know, we're not just, hey, what magical things do we think are around the

corner? That's not what the hope side of things are. It's what's up to you, what in your own conduct, in your own, your own experiences over the last 12 months, do you find some measure of confidence or faith in? And I think we can start with the fact that we're all still here. I was thinking about, I was thinking about this this morning, we can look at all the ways that our fellow human beings have let us down over the last 12 months

and that can make us sort of despair or resentful or alarmed. Or we can focus on the people that have measured up, whether that's the front line responders, whether it's the, you know, the medical minds that have now rushed through a vaccine in record time, whether it's, you know, your neighbors who have been helpful or kind, maybe it's your grandparents or your parents who've stepped up and helped in some way. So when I'm talking about looking at hope, I think what we're really talking about

is looking at the glass half full, where have people done well. And one of the things that gives me hope is even that we're here talking, that even after all of the things that gives me hope is even that we're here talking, that even after all of the challenges of the last 12 months, that all the people on this call got together in December and said, you know what I'd like to start 2021 off with some voluntary hardships with I want to actively seek out difficulty. So I love that. And then for today's challenge, this idea of stopping a backslide, this one I was thinking about also in relation to the fact that in 2020 when we did this challenge,

we had all these ambitious goals and ideals. Every year we start out with resolutions. I had one about the mile time that I wanted to set. I had one about certain habits I wanted to break, certain activities that I wanted to start. And I started those things as we often do. But then I started to see myself backsliding in them. And so instead of trying to, you know, do, do, do, and just add new things on top of it, what I was really thinking about with today's challenge was, okay, where is something that we can do? Where, where something where we can stop a decline rather than adding something new? And there'll be a day coming up that I

think you guys will like. We did a day that's about adding on where you've had a success. But I think also, instead of trying to get distracted by a new thing, I just wanted everyone to stop and think about where they've backsled. So for me, it's been some social media habits. I've been really good, really disciplined about how much time I spend on social media, what role it plays in my life. But then this is how sort of addictive things work.

We make excuses, we make exceptions, and then those things snowball. So I've watched sort of as we started the year strong and then the pandemic news and then wildfire news and then the election and then the pandemic news and then wildfire news and then the election and then, you know, and then, you know, you're going into the end of the year and you're spending time more time indoors. All of a sudden, you can find yourself sort of

backsliding on these habits. So that's something, even today I've been finding, it's interesting to me how much even habits sort of get inculcated in our muscle memory. So, you know, you pick up your phone to do one thing that's almost like how you drive to work, you know, your your body just sort of makes the turn as you get there without it even being conscious. And I was watching myself do that even even on my social media habits. So that's when I'm going to be working on. I'm not going to

create some new resolution. I'm just going to focus on really setting and sticking with one that I worked on last year. So those are the two days. I don't want to spoil too much of what we have to come. But I'm really excited about this year's one of the upsides of the pandemic, because we had more time to work on it, of course. And now that we've done this three or four years,

we've got a lot of data on what people like and don't like. But I'm excited for the days to come. You might have a slight preview in the calendar we sent. And I know there was a mix up. It didn't get sent out at the beginning, but you can kind of tell from the icons of what's to come. But we've got 21 more days. We'll do this call next weekend, and then the final weekend as well. One thing I would say, something that is always interesting to me, and I know I've teased this a little bit

in some of the messages, but it's interesting. Obviously on the back end, I get to see all the people that sign up, and it's so exciting. You watch all these people sign up, you're like, all of us are gonna get together, we're gonna make changes, we're gonna do this together. But what's always interesting is I watch,

I can also see the open rates of the emails go. At first, have it's funny. Like the first day, a bunch of people click unsubscribe on the email, and then immediately email customer service the next day and ask why they're not getting the emails anymore. But I also, and those are always the people that are the most angry, even though we can tell why they're not getting the emails anymore. But I also, and those are always the people that are the most angry,

even though we can tell why they're not getting it. But I can watch the open rates of the emails as we go through the challenge. And obviously, we send an email every day for Daily Stoke and I don't take it personally that people don't always open the Daily Stoke emails, But it's fascinating to watch. And I think it's sort of a microcosm of how human beings work. Well, first off, people sign up for the, we send out the email in mid-December and some

people like, yes, I want to do it. And then you also watch the people who wait until the absolute last minute. And they squeak in just under the wire. And then, you know, the last two days I've gotten a lot of people who have emailed, is it too late to sign up? Can I please sign up? So they're starting the year off with some procrastination as humans are want to do. But it's interesting to watch people who did sign up,

who did pay for a thing, who had every intention of doing it, you watch the open rate diminish at every single day through the end of the challenge. It starts at 100%. And then by the end, the open rate is much, much lower. It usually gets to about half. And that's something that confirms something that a friend of mine who sells a lot of online courses

was telling me, he's like, the open rate on courses is 50%. These are things that people pay for. And they have every intention of doing it and then they just, they don't do it. So it's funny to think that, you know, the real battle is not even in the day's challenge. The real battle is in, do you open the challenge in the morning? I read this great book by Twila Tharp. She's this choreographer and dancer and she talks about her morning routine and she says, you might think the win for me

is like getting to the gym, to the studio and doing my exercise and my practice and work. She's like, really the victory is, did I get downstairs to the street in the morning? She's like, if I get up, get my stuff on and get in the elevator. Like, we think it's like getting to the studio, but actually, there's all these much smaller battles on the way there that once you get over those, then you start to get momentum. And then you're, it's almost like, she's like, if I get in the cab, I'm gonna show up at the studio. Never does she get to the studio

and doesn't do the work. The problem is does she make excuses before she gets out of bed? Or does she get out of excuse, does she make an excuse before she makes coffee? Does she, before, before, before, before. And so when James Claire, whose book we mentioned in day one, when he's talking about atomic habits,

he's not just talking about these trends, and I was talking to James last night, he's not just talking about these explosive, enormous habits that, you know, change everything. He's also saying that, know an Adam and Adam is the absolute smallest thing. And he's talking so what he's really talking about is the smallest smallest thing. And so if I could sort of leave with with one thing, it's just you know just open just open the email. You don't have to do all, don't say, well, I don't know if I want to do that one. Just promise yourself you'll open the email every day for 21 days.

You can decide you don't like the challenge and you get there or you can tweak it, you can do it some other way. The main thing though is just open the challenge. That's really what we're talking about. Just open the challenge. And look, I would encourage you to try. It can be easy, even me.

Like I try to do, I do the challenge every day, even though I wrote them. But what I try to think about is like, it's not enough to just, like I could have got day one and gone, okay, yeah, what am I hopeful about? No, like really sit down with a piece of paper and follow the instructions instructions like really do it We have a day that's coming that you'll see is about putting something up in your house

Don't be like yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it and and do your own sort of small over I would urge you to really put yourself out there to really try to really do it We think these through for a reason and we put a lot of thought and energy in them So if you can think about that, that would be great. They're supposed to be uncomfortable. They're supposed to be a little bit weird. Some of them might even feel a little bit cheesy. Like I have right here, I can't really show you, but I have an index card from one of the previous challenge where you had to write epithets to yourself, like sort of little reminders about sort of the virtues that you that you want to embody.

This is something that comes from Marcus Aurelius. And it felt a little weird writing that down. And sometimes people have come into my office and said, what is that? But I have looked at this card hundreds and hundreds of times in the two years since it's been taped to my monitor. And it really has made a big difference. And if I had just kind of phoned it in and said, Oh, okay, I get the point of today's email, just sort of skimmed it.

I don't think I would have gotten those benefits. So that's sort of all I had as a kickoff. I don't, you guys are going to hear enough for me, just sort of talking at you over the next 21 days. So I thought we could maybe do questions or people could, could share celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us?

The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. Someone asked my favorite copy of meditations. All right, so this is my favorite copy of meditations. This is the Gregory Hayes translation for the modern library. You can see that here. There's a newer version. I don't know what it looks. I don't know where it is.

There's a there's a new version of the same book that's got a sort of a black cover with like. Oh, there it is with a bird on it. Robert here. So you can see it with a bird on it. Robert here. So you'd see it here. Robert has it. Anyways, I like the Gregory Hayes translation. I think it's the best one. It's I think the most lyrical and readable. It's just it's just great. The tricky thing about it, especially if you're international, is Amazon sort of sometimes lumps together, some of the more mediocre translations. So just be really clear you're international is Amazon sort of sometimes lumps together some of the more mediocre translations, so just be really clear you're getting that one. There is a hardcover version of the the Hayes translation, but just make sure you get that one if you're looking and I don't think

there's an audiobook, so if you're trying to buy the audiobook, it's not great. So if you're trying to buy the audio book, it's not great. All right, what Max seen is saying, what strategy would you suggest to avoid falling off a habit again? We have another challenge that we do called the habit challenge. And if you're a daily stock life member, you get that for free. But one of the things we found when we were researching

the habit challenge is that it's about the number of times that you do it in a short period. So it's, I think the research is it takes about 20, 20 to 21 days for a habit to take root. So it, it, this seems somewhat unsexy, but I think it's really about white knuckleing it for a set period of time. So don't think about it. I have to do this forever. Think about it more like, look, I gotta do this for three weeks and create some sort of system

or have it to do it for three weeks. We used to use an app called SPAR and then it just got a little tricky as the challenge has got bigger and bigger to coordinate with everyone. But there's an app called SPAR that I like, just SPAR with an exclamation point. And what it sort of does is you commit with a group of people, so like, let's say, you all wanted to do journaling, and that was a habit you backslid on, or you wanted to floss. I did a floss one a couple of years

ago. And what you do on there is there's a pot. If you have to check in with the challenge each day, and if you miss a challenge, it charges you whatever the agreed upon them out, is, and then at the end, the winners who make it all the way through, they split the pot. So it can kind of create some accountability, but then also like community, and then there's also some rewards. So I like that as well. Chris is saying, what have we learned from previous years' challenges that we make sure? Well, thanks for doing this for the first time, Chris.

And we're gonna keep doing them every year, so I hope to see you next year as well. I think one of the things we found is that the more specific the challenge is, the more people get out of it. So like again with day one, instead of it being like, you know, think about all that's made you hopeful. It's like write it down. So we found that the more literal it is, like it's actually something you have to do, and that thing has to be challenging the more it is. And so we've come up with some fun ones. Like, we did one, I don't know if it was last year or the year before, but to practice stillness, we did one where you had to count to a thousand

in one setting, which was a strange thing I'd never counted to a thousand before. I don't know whatever the highest number I've counted to was. But to really just sit and count to a thousand was different than say, like, be still for 20 minutes. Like to go, okay, no, you have to count to a thousand. and that sort of created a physical sensation and a and a and a deliberateness to it that was really great that I enjoyed. Someone is asking about the Slack channel. Yeah, there's just a Slack channel that and you can join it,

it's linked at the bottom of the email and maybe Billy, do you wanna post it here in the chat for everyone in case they don't have it? But it's just a way to discuss each day's challenge. And everyone sort of shares how they're doing. By no means mandatory. And if you have technical troubles, don't worry about it.

We're trying to find a solution that does all this. So you don't have to use Zoom and Slack and email, but have not found a great solution so far. Hi, Laura, you wanna go? Yeah, hi Ryan, hi everybody. How do you ensure that you find time for to relax, have a little fun all while staying true to your own stoicism?

Yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily think of those two things as being in conflict with each other. You know, I think when we talk about this stuff of like Momentumori and the shortness of life, to me it's about designing a life that doesn't make you a machine and it's creating sort of a balanced life. I do think the Epicureans, you know, talk about this a bit more prominently than the Stoics. You get the sense that maybe Marcus Relius was struggling with the exact question you have. But Seneca talks about how the mind has to be given over

to relaxation. He talks about hobbies. He talks about taking long walks. So for me, it's less about like, how do I make time and more about how do I build my life around the idea that all these things are equally important. So, you know, instead of, you know, the, instead of like having a life that is so stressful and difficult that you want to take vacations, I try to maybe try to design my life or my days

so these things are a bit more baked in there. And I think the pandemic has been a good reminder of the importance of that for people. And I think in some ways, it's been a sort of an enormous lifestyle experiment that we're all trying to do together when certain things aren't possible anymore or just sort of happening differently.

So I would think about it less as like, okay, I'm gonna carve out time and more about I'm gonna actually design my life around those things. I had, it hasn't come out yet, but I think next week our podcast guest is Cal Newport. I had Cal on and he has this new planner. It's like a time blocking planner. He was talking about the importance of time blocking,

which might be helpful to the question that you have and worth checking out. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, great question. Anyone else have a question they want to ask instead of let's do this? You guys saw it, asked for a head one. I'm going to do Jerry here. Jerry, you want to unmute yourself? Can you do that? Yeah, that's a great question. So Jerry's asking, how do you work on habits? Do you sort of do it one at a time? Do you work on it all at the same time? I am a big believer in sort of like creating a list, crossing things off the list as you go. So I do tend to be working on, yeah,

sort of one area of improvement at a time. And I think New Year's is a great time to do that where you're like, okay, these are the big things that I'm working on all at once. These are the ones that I'm starting on. Just as a preview, like we have one coming up that's in this challenge, it's gonna be about an evening routine.

So I've spent a lot of time talking and writing about morning routines. And so that's at a place where I'm really comfortable and good with it. So it's something my wife and I were talking about, I was like, okay, let's sort of make deliberate focus on improving evening routines and let's get that set. And then who knows, maybe at the evening,

we'll get that done this year. And then maybe the morning routine will have problems again or maybe, I don't know what you adjust after eating in routines, but the point is, I like to focus on one thing at a time and then focus on the next one. But that's a great question. I think it can almost be a form of paralysis to try to do a million things at one time.

And then, then you're really discouraged that you're not making progress. So I do try to focus on one thing at a time. Derek is saying that he started the German version of Daily Stoic in 2017, and he's read it all these days and now, that's awesome. Yeah, it's cool. I know the Daily Stoic is in a bunch of different languages.

I've probably only seen three or four, but yeah, that's really awesome. I appreciate that. Who wants to do a question? Anyone got anything? Yeah, so I have two questions, if that's fine. Go for it. The first one is basically,

how do you incorporate stillness and stoicism? Because I'm a student right now in terms of procrastination. And the second one is, I just finished reading Colony Works book, Digital Minimosum, and I just wanted to ask a few, a few arthritis, Digital Declutter, and what are your thoughts on it? Yes, great question. So I think one of the things about procrastination is that it can feel like, it can feel like, hey, I just don't want to do that right now. I'm enjoying what I'm doing, but really what you're doing is you're just putting the chaos

off to the future. Like, it feels like you're living your ideal life and then suddenly, you've got to pull a bunch of all-nighters or something or then you've got this anxiety or dread or worry. So to me, one of the benefits of having systems and good habits and not putting things off is that I feel good, I feel good, as good as I can, sort of most of the time. Like I'm feeling, I like to sort of have that even kill where I'm not worried, I'm not putting things off,

but I'm also not just sort of chilling out. I just sort of like to have, to me, the result of good systems is a certain amount of stillness and relaxation. So I think, like, I just like to tackle stuff. When I get it, I like to tackle it a little bit every day. I don't do, I don't do a lot of sprints.

You know, I don't do a lot of like, okay, I've got to roll up my sleaze and really get serious about this because I've been putting it off for weeks and weeks. I like to just be chipping away at it all the time. So, for instance, I just finished my next book in December. I went into my publisher and I'm already starting to think about the next one. Because what I don't want to do

is put it off, put it off. There is a certain amount of discomfort doing the book so you can want to put them up but I don't want to put it off. I want to go right into the next one. So I'm just sort of always in that right head space. I love Cal's stuff. I, Braschak, which is my company,

did the marketing on digital minimalism. So I think it's a great book and he's, he's a great guy. Um, cows, uh, I think relationship with technology is, I would just describe it as more severe than mine. Um, you know, he, uh, he, he's like, he's the foot phone and stuff. Um, I, I have a, let's say a more, uh, engage relationship with technology, but, um, I but I have a set of sort of bound. So I think when people hear minimalism, they think like the minimal amount period. I think he's more talking about like,

what's the minimal amount for you? What's the sort of minimum effective dose for you? So I think it's just, it's sort of, there's some relativity there. Like what is the best relationship for you to have with these devices or systems that keeps you happy? The sort of test I like to go is like, am I using the tool or is the tool using me? And thinking about it that way is, is, is helps me create some balance. And we have a video coming about this on, on the day of the YouTube channel, so stay tuned for that.

And then actually, Billy, what day is the phone free day in the challenge? Do you remember? Well, that is... Is it tomorrow? No, it comes... Yeah, it is day three. Yeah, so Darren, get ready. We actually have a challenge about this tomorrow. Great. Thanks. Cool. Someone said I started reading different translations of Meditations and really liked it. Oh, thanks, Derek. Yeah.

This is something I've been working on too. We had a day about this in an earlier challenge where we talked about rereading. So, obviously, different phases in your life, sometimes you're like, I got to read all this stuff, send you nothing about it, then you sort of build up some familiarity and knowledge, and then it creates the opportunity to do some rereading. And one of the things I've been doing is, Robert, I'll get to you in a sec. I've been doing some rereading of classic books, and at each time I'm doing a different translation. Unfortunately, I don't speak really any other languages.

I speak a bit of Spanish, but not much. Certainly not enough to read in Spanish. But so reading different translators of the same text. It's still in English, also gives you a different perspective. And you realize just how much room for interpretation and explanation there is in these texts. So I definitely second the advice of reading in different languages or translations. Maxime is saying, when will I announce my next book? I don't know when I'm gonna announce it.

Actually, we have like sort of a secret, sort of fun side project book that'll come out probably in March, which I won't tell you anything about. And then I have my next sort of big book that will be coming probably in the fall of 2021. Although it sort of remains to be seen, it's still in the finishing stages. So that's a great one. Where are you, Robert? Robert, you want to go? What do you got?

You're still muted. There you go. Yeah. Just to make the point. I was exposed to stoicism back in the early 60s. Wow. Turn me off. Okay. Turn me off. This is not for me. And then again in the late 70s, my grandfather and law had three volumes of meditations. Didn't, it took a shot at it, no. And then again, another translation and it just did not feel good to me. Then I somehow came across you, wound up getting this, this is it. This is a good transfer.

This makes sense. And it's pieces that we can easily integrate into our lives. For the last two years, we've been doing this thing that we call the daily stoic New Year New U challenge. It's 21 actionable challenges, one per day built around the best stoic wisdom, but for what? How to be better in the new year. This is the time when we start to think about what we're going to do next, where all the

time went, what we wish had gone differently or better, how we're still struggling with this or that, how we'd like to stop doing this or that. And that's what the new year new challenge is all about. It's my favorite thing that we do, and it's three weeks of actionable challenges presented in one email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom and stroke philosophy. It should help you snap out of this trance.

We've all found ourselves in and help make 2022 your best year yet, no matter what's happening in the world around you. Go to dailystoke.com slash challenge to join us. I'd love to have you. I'm challenging you to join me. I can't wait to see you, dailystoke.com slash challenge. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another

podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool

homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondaria. free on the Amazon or Wondaria. I think that's that's well said. I'm well spent. Well, I love hearing that Robert. Thank you.

And honored to have turned you on to the right translation. I have a video coming out about this as well that I was working on. I think one of the one of the problems for people who haven't read things in multiple translations to go to the other question earlier is that it can be hard to realize just how much power the translator has. So like when you read a translation from the 1850s, you are not reading a translation of Marcus Aurelius in English.

You're reading a translation of Marcus Aurelius in 1850s English. And if you picked up an 1850s novel stylistically, even if it was in English, it would be difficult to read. So even like I have a translation of meditations from like the 1700s or something like that. And it's got all these thou art and thou shalt not. And it's almost, it's biblical.

It reads like a, you know, in a very biblical way. And it's so it's very hard to read. Obviously Marcus writing to himself in Greek, you know, 2000 years ago was not using any of those phrases. Those were later inventions and colloquialisms. And so that's just, and we went through this doing, doing the Daily Stoic, Steve Hanselman is both my agent and my translator was doing. I mean, and sometimes he would come back and translate.

And I'd say, Steve, that seems really dense. I don't quite get it. And he'd just come back with a totally new translation because you realize like just how malleable it is. And I think Hayes just does an amazing job making it accessible. So if you've tried to read meditations and you've struggled, it may just be the translation. Maybe you didn't like Hayes.

Go pick up one of the other ones. I'm not saying it's the only one that works. But what I hear from people all the time, they grab the free translation on the internet and they're trying to save some money and it ends up being a penny wise a pound foolish because they don't get the benefit of the book. Anyone else have a question?

Let's keep doing this. Let's do Adam here, I'll unmute you. You gotta unmute yourself Adam, right? There you go. Fantastic. Lives of the Stoics, I thought it was a fantastic book and gave me a great perspective on how many sort of philosophers, Stoics, there were,

and sort of how they trained and taught one another. But what I'm struggling with is maybe it's the, you know, what we're just talking about translators is all of the, the writings of the storytelling from generation to generation. And then I guess now translator to translator. I see it as a big spider web of opinions and I'm struggling with how do I define or distill all of that and Think of okay this guy's opinion of Marcus's

Meditations and there's this guy's opinions and then there's this guy's opinion Do you have a framework or a methodology that could help me out? Yeah, that's a that's a great question and great observation unfortunately that could help me out? Yeah, that's a great question and great observation. Unfortunately, unlike, say Christianity, it's not like, you know, in the history of Christianity, there are these sort of committees and councils that would get together and they'd be like, look, how many books are there going to be in the Bible?

And what's our view on this or that? And these sort of committees of bishops would get together and make decisions that we now sort of take for granted when you hear about them or sort of committees of bishops would get together and make decisions that we now sort of take for granted when you hear about them or sort of, they seem simple, but it could have easily gone a different direction, right? There was none of that in stoicism, and not only was there none of that in stoicism, there wasn't even like here the 10 commandments

and here are the views. And we have to also, this is a really tricky thing that we discovered as we were writing lives of the Stokes is just wrapping your head around how many or how much of the Stokes texts were lost. You're like, Zeno was this prolific writer and like 10 sentences survive, or Cray Cipis was this very prominent writer and like a poem survives. We have almost nothing. And even Marcus Aurelius, who sort of has the most complete text, was writing to himself.

He wasn't saying like, here's the definition of stoicism. He was really just writing about what he needed. So even when we read meditations, we should realize that this isn't the Bible of stoicism. This is Marcus Aurelius' notes on stoicism based on what he was most interested in or needed the most. There is a couple, there's an interesting book that was published of Musoneus Rufus recently and it's called that one should disdain hardships,

the teachings of a Roman stoic. And it's this little interesting book, I read it. So every time I read a book and then I do the notes, I write down when I read it. So I read this in March of 2020. But he sort of has some really good lectures on stoicism. He sort of, he is trying to define this stuff. And Musone's Rufus was Epic Titus' teacher.

So you might like that book, which I was not really in print before. And then the other tricky one, he's a character in Lives of the Stoics. I talk about Ares Dittamus. And he was the advisor to the emperor Octavian slash Augustus. He wrote of there's this sort of collection of his writings called, I think, Stoic Ethics by Areas Dittimus. And it's probably the least practical, but it does feel the most sort of definitive. Like he's really trying to, he's like defining terms and it's not super, I won't say either of these books are like riveting self-help,

but it might go to your point about like sort of really trying to get to some first principles. Connor is asking, was there a stoke in particular that I was impressed by that you started to research more when I didn't know that. So yes, when we set out to do the book, we sort of agreed on who the main characters would be. And a lot of them were obvious, right? You know, you're gonna have Marxist release, you're gonna have Xeno, you're gonna have Clientes, you're gonna have Kato, so on and so forth. But when I had one of my favorite books

and I'm forgetting the author's name, let me just look it up. What's it called? Before the storm. I interviewed for the podcast, no, not for the podcast, this is a written interview, but I interviewed this guy, Mike Duncan, who wrote a great book called The Storm Before the Storm, which is a history of the 100 years of Rome before Julius Caesar overthrew the Republic. And I was talking to him about what Stelix, he was interested

in, and he mentioned this guy, Rutilius Rufus, who I'd seen mentioned in some of Seneca's writings, but I really knew nothing about him. And Steve, who did a lot of the groundwork on lives of the Stelix, and my job was to sort of write the stories, I said And Steve, who did a lot of the groundwork on Lives of the Stokes, and my job was to sort of write the stories, I said, Steve, I'd love for you to find everything we possibly can about Rutilius Rufus. And he said, you know, there's really like nothing about him, like, you know, maybe this will fill like a few paragraphs. But we managed to find so much stuff on him that he ended up getting his own chapter. And it's actually one of my favorite chapters in the books. He's this guy for people who haven't read Lives of the Stoics.

Rutilius Rufus was a governor. He's a stoic philosopher. He's a governor of this Roman province. And he's brought up on false charges for corruption. Actually, he wasn't corrupt. He was brought up. He was sort of a Trumpian thing where he sort of accused his enemies, accusement of exactly the thing that they are guilty of.

And anyway, so he's brought up on these false charges and he ends up being exiled, but he's allowed to choose where he wants to be exiled and he chooses the country that he was chosen that he was fraudulently accused of defrauding. And they of course welcome him with open arms because he was a very honest guy. And so it's just a fascinating story

and I think really illustrates like, you know, a Stoics are struggling in the real world. Someone said I missed a question above. Oh, someone is asking how to introduce Stoics to a young person. I guess the question is how young they are. One of the things I'm thinking about is, like how to talk about it with kids. So I'm in the middle of working on a book about that,

which I'm excited to show you guys soon. As far as teenagers or anything older than that, honestly, I would just introduce them to the originals. I think one of the way, one of the things we try to do with the podcast and the YouTube videos and Instagram is to make it as accessible as possible. If you're talking about a 15-year-old, just think, you know think 500 years ago, they would have been not just learning the Stokes, but learning the Stokes in the original Greek in Latin. George Washington was introduced to the Stokes at 16 years old.

One of the only founding fathers not to read the Stokes in the original language. The point being, I don't think we need to baby kids when they come to these books. I wish someone had introduced me to the to the stokes earlier and I think I would have got a lot out of it. Let's do a couple more over zoom. If people have questions, just sort of wave your hand and all, I'll catch you, can. Thanks. My question, if I can form it right, Thanks. My question, if I can form it right, a more fatte, the love of fate. I am trying to figure out what filter or what system to use, where you read something and it does cause a little bit of righteous anger.

And instead of truly loving it, you want to bite it and stand up against it. So that's my circle. Yeah, that's a tricky part of this. I think what the Stoics would say is when they're saying there's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. This is Shakespeare obviously, but when they're saying there's no good or bad, I don't think they're saying there's no such thing as moral and immoral. That there's no such thing as right and wrong.

Of course they are. But of course Stoic virtue is the virtue of justice. I think what the Stoics are trying to say is that anger as far as enforcing or seeking out justice is bad fuel. I mean, I think I recommended the Taylor Branch series on Martin Luther King. The what's so powerful about Martin Luther King and the movement that he manages to create is that he does it from a place of love rather than a place of anger. So that is not to say that he was passive and did not want to affect change. I mean, this driving mission is to create transformative, political, and social change. But he's realizing that anger is a destructive emotion and in fact a counterproductive emotion. He sees that it's actually his opponents who are driven from anger and fear. But he wants to come to it from a place of love.

Seneca writes a whole essay called On Anger that I think you would really like. anger that I think you would really like. There's a translation by Penguin, no, by Princeton University Press that James Rom did that you can check out. I think it's called How to Keep Your Cool. And it's just its selections from that essay and some other places that Senna Katak's about anger. But Senna Katak's about anger a lot.

He says like, look, even if someone murdered your father, he said, you should get vengeance. Just don't get vengeance. He says you should get vengeance and justice. Just don't do it out of anger. So I this idea that the Stoics are passive that amorphatic means you just accept everything is not quite right. It's that you you accept it as sort of fuel or an experience that has occurred in your life. But if you have the opportunity to affect change or to be made better for what has happened,

that's where you go towards. It not anger, bitterness, resentment, frustration. I mean, look, when you look at what's happening in the world, it's very easy to get angry. But I would argue that anger is more of the problem than the solution. And so that's maybe where I think about it. Someone's asking habits that I've had to incorporate in my life. I don't know if I can think of like the hardest habit that I've had to incorporate in my life, but I would say to go to Tina's question about anger, I think that's the thing that a lot of people struggle with. We said this before, just because you don't have an anger

problem doesn't mean anger is not a problem for you. I don't think there's really anyone who finds that anger makes things better in their life. Very rarely have I ever lost my temper. And I thought, oh, I'm so glad I did that. It made things much better. And yet, I lose my temper all the time. And I think when you see Mark's realist talking about anger and temper in meditations, it's because he too is struggling with that exact thing. And so anyways, I would definitely check that.

We have a challenge on this, you can check out. So anger's won and then I would say patience is the other. Someone's asking, does the love aspect of a more fax to contradict the prince? Darren, I'm not sure, you wanna explain now on you? What do you mean? Hi, because I've been reading on Macerville's philosophy and he was saying,

it's better to be feared than to be loved in terms of the political structure and you mentioned something about Martin Luther King that his enemies were structured by fear and his was about love. So, I see, Rishay. they were structured by fear and this was about love. So. Hi, Sarah Sheng. Yes, a small breakthrough about you. Sure. I think there are a little bit related.

We're talking about a more faulty, we mean sort of, this is an individual sort of way that you're going through the world. Sure, are there leadership styles that effectively rely on intimidation? Sure. And where they're in lives of the Stoics, I tell a story of areas did a misadvising

the Emperor Augustus to eliminate one of his rivals by a sort of violent force, which is a very Machiavellian move. Whether something is an effective power tactic and whether something is a good strategy in your life and whether it is will result in happiness and contentment and being a good person. These are very different things. But I would say Martin Luther King's strategy of sort of loving his enemies, of not using non-violence, ironically created incredible, almost irrational fear

in his opponents. And part of what was so effective about his non-violent strategy is that it, but he would go on these marches and it would create these profound overreactions, these sort of violent, televised overreactions from segregationists that although it would have been brutal to have endured, we're ultimately sowing the seeds of the destruction of racism,

structural racism in that sense. So the people in the South were petrified of Martin Luther King. They thought it was a communist. They thought it was an agitator, they thought he was trying to destroy thing, they were very much afraid of him. So I don't necessarily also think that two things are in contradiction in that sense. Should we do one, maybe one more, Billi? Is there anything you saw on Slack or? Just saw Adam's hand go up there. All right, let's do that. All right, Adam, you got the last one. All right, it might be kind of like what we're doing today, but I'm trying to picture as I read,

lives of the Stokes and your other writings. I, in my mind's eye, am picturing the steps with the teacher and the students sitting amongst them. And that is the classroom every day. And that classroom might be taught by a different stoic leader or another talking head with a louder voice. From your perspective, is that the right vision that well what is your vision? That's kind of my vision what I've put together. What was what was life like with all these stoics talking to one another? Well, I was actually just, so I do this other email every day for any of the parents on the chat.

I do an email every day for a site I have called Daily Dad. So I do daily stoke every day, I also do daily dad, which is for parents. It's not just for dads, but that's what it's called. And anyways, I was writing about this today. The Greek word for school, the root school is, it just means leisure. And I was writing about how different that like school leisure, those are not synonyms in the modern world, they're like Antonims, right?

School is this place you go, you have to carry your backpack, if you get up early, it's like an exhaust and grind, nobody likes it. So the idea of school and leisure, this more leisurely self-directed reflection-based almost voluntary form of education, I found to be really interesting and I think closer to the model. And look, the fact that all of us are here on a Saturday afternoon at the beginning of the year, when maybe everyone's going back to work on Monday.

And here we are talking about ancient philosophy because we're interested in it. To me, I love that. That is a much closer, that's much closer to the idea of school A or leisure. And I think that's, closer to the idea of school A or leisure. And I think that's like, it's interesting. It's like philosophies is really important thing.

And it's urgent as all these benefits. And at the same time, if you're forcing it, if you're seeing it as a job or an occupation or a burden, you're probably doing it wrong. And you're probably not going to sustain it over your life. There's a story. I don't remember if it's in lives of the Stokes, but there's a story, Marcus really,

this is an old man and he's seen leaving the palace. And his friend comes up to him and says, where are you going? And he says, I am off to see sexist the philosopher to learn that, which I do not yet know. And so here you have the most powerful man in the world using his leisure time to go learn and actually as it happened sex this is Plutarch's grandson which is this a wonderful little coincidence.

But here you have one of the wisest most powerful men in the world going to learn even as an old man to me that's sort of my vision of education. And the fact that you said, I'm going to learn that, which I do not yet know is just beautiful. I love that so much. And yeah, that's maybe a great place to stop. Look guys, this is so cool. I'm, if everyone wants to put together questions or thoughts for next go around, please do. Please keep trying, stick with it.

Wish everyone a great new year. This is awesome. And we will talk very soon. Be well everyone. Have a good Saturday. Demand more of yourself in 2022. And one of the ways you can do that is by joining us in the Daily Stoic New Year New Year challenge. All you have to do is go to dailystoic.com slash challenge to sign up. Remember daily, still a life members get this challenge and all our challenges for free. But sign up, seriously. Think about what one positive change, one good new habit is worth to you. Think about what could be possible if you handed yourself over to a little bit of a program.

We all pushed ourselves together. That's what we're going to do in the challenge. I'm going to be doing it. I do the challenges. All of them, alongside everyone else, I'm looking forward to connecting with everyone in the Discord challenge, all the other bonuses. Anyways, check it out. New year, new you, the Daily Stoke Challenge. Sign up at dailystoke.com slash challenge. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to 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. podcasts.