The Daily Stoic - Sometimes Words Are Very Unnecessary | Robert Greene's 10 Stoic Laws For A Better Life

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

The Stoics talk about how events don’t need your opinion, they aren’t asking to be judged or labeled or explained by you. They were saying what Depeche Mode once said, that sometimes words are very unnecessary–that they can only do harm.---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares 10 stoic Laws from his mentor Robert Greene. Like the Stoics, Robert Greene has spent decades operating within and around the halls of power. And trying to understand human nature and psychology. And mastering his craft. And advising politicians, leaders, financiers, princes, serial entrepreneurs, platinum-selling musicians. In this video we've compiled some of Robert's best thinking on Stoicism, power, and getting better every day.Robert Greene is an American author known for his books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written six international bestsellers: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature. His newest book The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature is a daily devotional designed to help you seize your destiny.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship, with thoughtful service and cultural enrichment, on board and on shore. Learn more at Viking.com. Emily, do you remember when One Direction called it a day? I think you'll find there are still many people who can't talk about it. Well luckily, we can. A lot, because our new season of terribly famous is all about the first one directioner to go it alone. Zayn Malik. We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest boy band and explore why, when he reached the top, he decided to walk away.

Follow terribly famous wherever you get your podcasts. for the terribly famous Wherever you get your podcasts. It's terribly famous. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. Sometimes words are very unnecessary.

Look, it definitely happened. It's definitely not what you wanted or expected to happen. A shipment was lost, money was stolen, something broke. But can you leave it at that? The Stoics talked about how events don't need your opinion. They aren't asking to be judged or labeled or explained by you. They were saying what Depeche Mode once said that sometimes words are very unnecessary that they can only do harm.

The silence is difficult though, isn't it? We feel so compelled to talk about what happened, why it happened, how annoying it is, that it did happen, how much the fact that it happened is going to cost us. But what does this do for us? What does it do about what happened? Not much. It just belabers.

It stirs up resentments and anger. It distracts. Takes us away from what we do control. What does matter, which is how we respond. Which is how we change ourselves in light of the unchangeable new wrinkle in reality, which is our carriage and dignity as we go through life in a world where we are not in control, where stuff will most definitely, indefinitely, indefinitely, keep happening. The need for certainty is the greatest weakness

that humans have, it's almost like a disease. And it's preventing you from seeing the true reality of the phenomenon around you. And it's a deadly factor in any kind of creative venture. To me, he's one of the great living philosophers of our time, someone who's worked, you should absolutely be familiar with. In fact, no one has taught me more about applying still wisdom to your actual life.

His works have changed the lives of athletes and musicians and world leaders, and he directly changed my life. I'm talking about the great Robert Green. I think one of the greatest, most brilliant minds of our time is Robert Green. 40 laws of power, art of seduction, mastery, laws of our time, is Robert Green. 40 Laws of Power, Art of Seduction, Mastery Laws of Human Nature, the Daily Laws. I'm Ryan Holliday. The Daily Stoke wouldn't exist without Robert Green. The books that I've written wouldn't have existed without Robert Green. The places that I've talked to work that I've done wouldn't exist without Robert Green.

Robert himself once showed me his copy of Marcus Aurelius, which had tons of little notes in the corner. So he's been a practitioner of Stoke Philosophy for many years. one showed me his copy of Marcus Aurelius, which had tons of little notes in the corner. So he's been a practitioner of Stoic philosophy for many years. And in today's episode, I want to give you some more Stoic wisdom from the one in only Robert Dree. I'm thinking the most Stoic law is always say less than necessary because of the discipline and the self-control and then also the indifference to what other people say or think like. So always saying less than necessarily not needing to prove someone else wrong, not needing to explain yourself,

just sort of being contained with who you are and not worrying about anything else. Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, it feels like actually like almost all the laws of power are in some way rooted in some kind of self-discipline. Yeah. And the idea that I think there's Sena Kaye said, no one is fit to rule who's not first master of themselves. Like you first have to have power over you for you to be able to play the game of power and some right.

There's a Sena Kay I think we were talking about, Marius, the Roman general, is that Marius commanded armies, but ambition commanded Marius. So like if you're not ultimately in command of yourself, your power over others or over the world won't last very long. Your ability to make the right decisions depends on knowing the situation kind of in a John Boyd sort of sense.

And when you have power and it accumulates in time, goes by, you start isolating yourself from that kind of Udalupe type situation. And you start listening to other people are saying about you, you start getting a second, you become more inside your own little tower. And you have less access to the world into information and your decision start to become delusional to think is what's happening. Yeah, I think in the 33th Shadjiv War, you talk about how you have to take to reality like a spider in its web. And the longer you are powerful or important or people are telling you you're amazing,

the harder it is to keep your grasp on reality, because you don't know what's real, because people are deceiving you and you're deceiving yourself. Yeah. So you and I are going to be doing two talks in September. Are we? Yes. Yes. Hopefully. She won here in Los Angeles and won in Seattle. Yeah, very exciting. I actually, it's funny when we were trying to think of the, I think you and I were thinking of much more of a discussion and they were thinking, well, what are you going to tell people?

But I think actually, if you think about things more as a discussion, you've learned more. Yeah, yeah. I like to keep things a little bit open and did. And I've noticed myself that the times I think I understand how that I had the most control, I've written everything out and organized it. I do the worst jobs, but if I kind of keep my mind open in the moment, then just we had a good time when we did that in Los Angeles before. We did one here, there, LA live talks, I think. You prepared for that.

No, we did. Not that we're not going to prepare or that we're just leaving it. It'll be September 19th in LA. And then it'll be September 21st in Seattle. Yeah. And I think we're talking power, mastery, strategy, philosophy, all of the ego. Yes, all of the bucket of life. How did you get better at life?

Character is the core of a person. Something they can't control, something that comes from deep within. And it causes people to have patterns of behavior. And you want to find people who have a strong character to associate with as opposed to a weak character. And what a strong character is is people who are adaptable, who are fluid, who can admit that they are wrong,

who can learn from their experience, who can take criticism, who can work with other people. So one of the parts of this book is I want you to focus not on people's charming exterior, on their funny words, on their wit, on their charisma, instead focus on that deep inner quality, that core, that character, because that's who they really are.

Your character is creating what happens to you in life. There's the famous quote of the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, character is fate. People only have the sense of pleasure, particularly now now that it has to be immediate, that they have to get quick gratification, they need quick hits. But I try to say, to take those three years and to write a book like Ryan does gives you a much deeper thrill, a much more important sense of pleasure, what I would call fulfillment. Then just having that empty,

I'm suddenly the CEO of a company and I'm famous and I'm on Instagram, it's so empty, it doesn't lead anything, it's just gonna make you more depressed at the end. But the sense that you've actually built something yourself leads to the deepest pleasure that a human can have. I'm sorry to say that the sense of accomplishment of creating something from nothing,

from building something, is to me the highest pleasure that a human can have because we are animals that are born to make things. It's the number one commodity that you want that's going to make you a master's creativity. If you're a creative thinker, I don't care if you're working at subway or wherever, you're going to end up at a great place. The only people that ever get to that point who are the true masters who we've known, and it doesn't mean you have to reach the Steve Jobs level. There are a lot of many Steve Jobs out there is by being yourself. If there are 50 other people like you out in the world, why you? Somebody else

can do what you do, and so you're never going to be great, you're never going to be brilliant. But if there's only one you, if you have a skill, a knowledge base, you've learned three different fields and you're combining them, and there's nobody else like you, then you've written your own ticket to power and success because you're irreplaceable. But so, so, people have this wrong impression about Stoicism, which came back to some of the we were talking about yesterday, where they kind of accuse you sometimes of not being stoic. Or it's a struggle.

Even for Marcus Arrelias, it was a continual struggle, even for a pictotist, it was a continual struggle, even for epictetus, it was a continual struggle. It's not like you're suddenly a stoic, you've reached, you've got a diploma, you know, you're cont continually struggling with your human nature. And if it wasn't a struggle, would it be that admirable? Like if you were just born that way,

or if it was you read this book and then you magically become this way, how impressive would that be? It's like we love the Tom Brady's of the world or the whatever because they shouldn't be able to do what they're doing because they were a six-round draft pick because they're not drew breezes and tall enough. It's that they're doing it in spite of everything that makes it impressive or admirable. Right. So it's the resistance that kind of makes you stronger. Like sometimes I wish, damn it, why couldn't I have been born in like the 19th century or an ancient Athens? You know, there's something about the 2020 that I just don't like, you know?

I've been so much happier, but then I have so much to resist against. Yeah. But it almost is almost like a form of pleasure that I have to struggle even harder to focus on reading and reading a book now, reading Nietzsche or reading Marcus Raleus, is triple the pleasure when you live in a world that's so antithetical to it, right? Yeah, I wrote once that the need for certainty is is the greatest weakness that humans have. It's almost like a disease.

And it's because the world itself is mysterious, it's complicated, you know, just dealing with people. A person is like another world is like an alien. They have their own thoughts. You're never going to understand their emotions completely. They're a total mystery to you, right? And you can't get through life without understanding people. And so what you do naturally is you simplify everything

because you don't like the feeling of not understanding people or events in the world. You're full of anxiety and you want to kind of reduce things to pat little formulas that make it so you want you say I'm certain about this idea I know what's going to happen tomorrow. I know what my wife or my spouse or my children are thinking etc. Right? And so it's like a defense mechanism and it's preventing you from seeing the true reality, the mystery, the complex nature of a phenomenon around you. And it's a deadly, deadly, deadly factor in any kind of creative venture, because the creative spirit, this is what John Keats called negative capability, is to be able to postpone that need for certainty and say, I can entertain two ideas that might be contradicting each

other at the same time, but I'm okay with it. I don't need the answer. My mind is open and I'm exploring ideas, and maybe I'll settle upon an answer eventually, but for the moment, I'm open to the mystery, and that's the source of creativity. So having this certainty is a mental disease that blocks you from any kind of creative thinking.

Do you believe that through your own effort, through education, through consciousness, through thinking, through reflecting, you can improve yourself? Do you fundamentally deep down in seren, right in the center of your gut? Do you believe that? Because some people will say, yeah, I do, but they don't really believe it.

They think inside that it's luck, it's circumstances, people who believe and crutches. They don't think that it comes from somewhere inside. I think you can make a division there and there. Do you really in your gut believe that through your own efforts, no matter what happens to you, you can through learning, et cetera, improve yourself.

to you, you can through learning, et cetera, improve yourself. Personally, I could say that the 48 laws of power I would see on Gura, I was more energetic and I just spilled that out of me and it has that fist-real appeal. And then I would say, but as I got older, I've kind of learned more, and I've kind of made more new on-starggones. Now that could be me justifying my own aging and depreptitude, and you put a little sauce on it, or there could be some reality to it. As I get older, I come to this idea of continually reminding myself that I don't know, I'm reading a fair amount of Plato, Laylin, and Sockers spinning through my head a lot. But this idea of you think you know something

but you really don't know at all your your knowledge of an event or what you think the world is, it's just like the something hitting the surface. Very hard to realize that. And so the humility of saying, I don't really know the answer here and maybe I kind of miss the mark or I've got a thing I'm constantly going through this I'm riding now you know that idea sounds exciting but it's not really true and we examine it we examine it there's a physicist John Wheeler he's a convinced right his line is as the island of knowledge grows so does the shoreline of ignorance yeah and so you're you're either understanding that you're learning more

or you're understanding that you're bumping in to what you don't know. Yeah. Those are simultaneous expansions. Yeah. It's a truth. It's a principle that will stand the test of time. It doesn't matter what happens in the world.

It's not like the pandemic is suddenly going to prove that it was wrong. The idea is things happened in the world. 98% of its beyond our control were constantly dealing with pain. We're all going to die. Life involves obstacles as you titled your book, etc. there's no getting around it. So what is the point of kind of complaining or pushing against them to each of that meant you are denying life itself because life

involves adversity and pain. If you embrace the pain, if you embrace the adversity, you are embracing being alive itself or that when I had a stroke, you know, everything that was a pleasure in my life was taken away from me, swimming, hiking, biking, etc. And then I had to find, well, what's the point? This just happened, I had to accept it, right? And I have to find a way of finding something less than from what they're incredibly valuable. So when you have a more faulty, when you say everything happens for a purpose

and everything contains of the tension for me to turn it into something incredibly valuable lesson, it means that you love life itself. Quote from TSLE into something to the effect that we humans have a little stomach for reality. And basically, we love illusion. We love stories. We love fiction.

We don't really like reality. And you know, we see it very much in our culture. Who do we venerate the most in this culture? We don't venerate philosophers if there are any more philosophers. We don't venerate, you know, practical people who build things. We venerate movie stars and celebrities, people who manufacture illusion, who are a config to the core. That's what we admire, but it's always been that way. There's a Latin expression, I can't remember an off the top of my head. That means we humans love, deception,

we love to be deceived. And even his children, but we love more than anything was to hear a story. So I've incorporated that in my book. So I always begin each chapter with a story, kind of lure you into my book. So your stomach for reality isn't natural to you. You don't wanna know who you really are. You don't want this mirror't natural to you. You don't want to know who you really are. You

don't want this mirror held up to you that shows you that you have narcissism and envy and aggression. You want to imagine that you're Marlon Brando, that you're somebody, that you're handsome and beautiful and wonderful. To see that mirror deserves, ah, that's who I am. Yes, that's who you are. So, if you're able to overcome that love of fantasy and illusion and dip your feet a little bit in reality, you're going to have an advantage of our other people. You're going to make better decisions in life.

You will be able to know how to pedal illusions and how to pedal deception in order to appeal to people and seduce them. You will have more control, the further you dip your feet into the pool of reality. When I wrote The Daily Stoke 8 Years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I write one more every single day, and I give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three-quarters of a million people

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