The Daily Stoic - The Stoic Athlete | Ryan Holiday Speaks to the University of Kentucky Football Team

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

In today's episode, Ryan talks with the University of Kentucky football team about how Stoicism can help them overcome adversity, the importance of discipline, and philosophical ideas they can turn to that will help them eliminate the noise and stay focused in season. 🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audio books without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app.

And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right Now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy. And most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. In February, I was walking down the stairs, my back porch, to go for a run before I got on a plane, took my kids to go do a talk.

And, oh man, sprained it so bad. I have a video about it. I'll show you that. But, oh man, it was some of the worst pain I've felt in my life. Just, it gave out. Honestly, I looked down, I thought I was gonna see bones sticking out. But it was a pretty serious ankle sprain, it messed up a bunch of tendons, it's because I wasn't taking care of myself and I sort of pushed through an earlier injury. None of this really has anything to do

with what I'm gonna bring you in today's episode, except for the fact that I still had to lace up a shoe, which could barely fit on my foot, that I still had to lace up a shoe which could barely fit on my foot, fly to Lexington, Kentucky, where I gave a talk to the University of Kentucky basketball and football teams. I gave the basketball talk later in the day,

but I gave the football talk there in the afternoon. Really awesome talking to the football team. They were great. They were basically a brand new team, made up of high school players and transfers from different schools. They're just getting ready to sort of come together for the first time. And there was a bunch to talk about.

I wanted to help them sort of eliminate the noise, focus on what they controlled, and some sort of timeless lessons that I thought the Stoics could offer them as young people. And it was especially, you know, I always love speaking to those audiences because it strikes me that I was basically their age when I read Mark Sturulius for the first time in my college apartment. So first off, it's mind blowing to think

I would be here all these years later sort of just talking about this thing that hit me when I was their age. But it's also, I feel like I'm paying forward a debt. I talk about this in the justice book, the idea of like, somebody helped us out, somebody exposed us to stuff, somebody took care of us, we got lucky, how do we pay that forward?

We carry a debt. I can't pay the Amazon algorithm back, I can't pay Dr. Drew back for introducing me to stoicism, but I can pay it forward, I can do that for others. And that's what I was doing. It was an awesome talk. I really liked it. And I want to bring you that talk now. So sit back and listen to me talking to the University of Kentucky football team about stoicism, how the obstacles away means discipline is destiny, and a bunch of other stuff. Enjoy. Thanks to the coach for handing me the team

for a little bit. I hope I delivered and I'll leave it to you to answer. Well, it's great to be here. I'm very excited. I know you guys are very excited for a talk about ancient philosophy. That's why you got into football, I'm sure. The problem, when we think ancient philosophy,

when we hear that phrase, we tend to think a bunch of old dead white guys wearing togas, which it was in the ancient world. But even in the ancient world, philosophy wasn't just this thing you thought about. It wasn't just these questions that people asked. The philosophers were people who did things in the ancient world. Philosophy wasn't just this thing you thought about. It wasn't just these questions that people asked. The philosophers were people who did things in the real world, and that's continued on to this day. Stoicism is now a philosophy that's made its way through professional sports, including the NFL. It's made its way to a number of teams that I've been lucky

enough to talk to over the years. That's a briefing from the Saints. There's a number one draft pick there. There's I know a guy you're all very fond of here. Referring to Marcus Rios as he preps for games. That's Tom Brady's game room next to a Super Bowl ball and a copy of the obstacles away. The idea of philosophy being this abstract, theoretical, irrelevant thing. That's one of the things I want to push back on today, because you guys are here at a wonderful university where

you have the opportunity to learn about these things. I learned about philosophy when I was in college, and it set me on the course that I was in. But it's also something that can make you better at what you do. And I want to give you three ideas from stoic philosophy, actually three ideas I'veic philosophy, actually three ideas I've tattooed on my arms here. Three ideas that I think you can apply personally, I think you can apply on the field, and then I think you can apply

professionally whatever you go on to do next. So we're going to start with this idea that the obstacle is the way. So again when we think of philosophers we don't think of athletes but we should. Epictetus, one of the great stoic philosophers, would say that, you know, a ball thrower doesn't think about whether it's a good throw or a bad throw, they got to catch it and throw it back, right? When you're in the moment you're in, when you're doing what you have to do, these labels, good, bad, fair, unfair, right? Likely, unlikely. These things don't matter.

What matters is the moment that you're in. And you might say, oh, I don't throw the ball. I'm on defense. Well, the Stoics also wrestle. The idea from Marcus Aurelius was that we have to be poised and dug in for sudden attacks. He meant this in life, but he also meant this in sport. Epictetus would say that when we find ourselves challenged in life, but he also meant this in sport. Epictetus would say that when we find ourselves

challenged in life, we say to ourselves, God has paired me with a strong sparring partner, right? And that actually the challenges that life gives us, the Stokes would say, are the things that make us stronger and better. This is why we go into a weight room, right? It's the whole point that it's hard that you're straining that there is resistance that creates the growth and thus the strength Right and Epictetus isn't talking about this Theoretically either Epictetus spends the first 30 years of his life in slavery in brutal grueling Unfair slavery, but he but he focuses inside of that on who he's gonna be, on what he's going to do with it. And then on the very other end of the spectrum, right,

stoicism isn't just this philosophy for people dealing with the difficulties of life, but also the difficulties of success in life. The other end of the spectrum, we have Marcus Aurelius, who's the emperor of Rome. He's the most powerful man in the world, and he too is practicing this same philosophy, right? There's obstacles that come at us

ones we didn't want and then obstacles that come along with success with getting everything that we ever wanted and Stoicism is supposed to be a philosophy that allows us to turn this to our own benefit to use it in some way So Marcus Aurelius becomes the emperor of Rome. He thinks it's going to be an awesome job. And then a plague breaks out. And then there's a series of historic floods. And then he spends the next decade or so of his reign at war.

It's one thing after another for him. What can go wrong will. And he's stuck with this. It's not his fault, but it is his problem. It's his responsibility as a leader. And he gets a bad hand. One ancient historian would say that Marcus doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved,

and his whole reign is involved in a series of troubles. And we can imagine him staggering under the weight of this, not liking it, not thinking it's fair. And he writes this little journal. I don't know if any of you in here are journaling. It's a great habit, it's a habit that powerful, important, wise people have practiced for thousands of years.

Mark Serrero keeps this journal. He writes little notes to himself about what he's going through. And he writes this note. He says, it's unfortunate that this happened. And it was. But instead of throwing himself a pity party, he stops. And he goes, note, he says, it's unfortunate that this happened. And it was, but instead of throwing himself a pity party, he stops and he goes, actually no, it's fortunate that it happened to me.

He says, it's fortunate that I've remained unharmed by it, right? None of these things killed him. But also he's saying that it didn't corrupt my character. I didn't get overwhelmed by it. I didn't get scared by it. And he said, now I'm going to work to use it to turn it into something good. Right? So the idea for the Stoics, for Stoicism, is that these things happen to us, and then we turn them to our benefit.

We dye them with our own color. So this idea that whether something is unfortunate or fortunate, this is a choice that we get to make. The event is, and then we decide whether it's unfortunate or fortunate with what we do about it. We get to decide. That's the choice that we make. We don't have a lot of choices in life, but this is one of the choices that we get.

We get to decide. The Stokes would say that things can impede us. They can get in our way. They can cause problems for us. But we always have the ability to accommodate and adapt and adjust. We can convert the obstacle to our own advantage to some new direction that we can go. So the Stoics say, and Marcus writes this in his famous meditations, he says,

the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. What he means by this is that every situation, good ones or bad ones, right? Epictetus and slavery, Marcus Aurelius is the emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius is the emperor of Rome, and things going wrong one after another, right, this is a chance for him to do things that he couldn't ordinarily do, to learn things that he wouldn't ordinarily learn, to be of service in ways that he ordinarily wouldn't be of service, right, to get a perspective that he wouldn't ordinarily get. Everything the Stokes would say is an opportunity to practice excellence.

The Latin word for this is erite. Everything is a chance to practice erite, right? It's not that every bad situation is magically going to make the team win the next game, but it can be an opportunity for that team to come together in a way and demonstrate excellence we always have the opportunity in every obstacle and every difficulty to Practice excellence and that's really the idea in Stoicism. We don't control what happens

We don't control events, but we control how we respond to what happens. We control what we do after The event happens. That's how it's the opportunity to practice excellence, right? We control how we respond to what happens, right? So there's all the things that are happening in the world, the Stokes would say, and then there's this little bit that we control, right? We wish it was more, but it isn't, right? And what we control ultimately, right, is who we are, right?

So the Stokes would say that the main task in life is to figure out what's in your control. Now, what's in your guys' control, right, is who we are, right? So the Stokes would say that the main task in life is to figure out what's in your control. Now what's in your guys' control, right? What do you control, right? You control ultimately how you play. You don't control the weather, you control how you play, right? You don't control what your coach does or says, but you control how you play, right? You don't control what the fans do, but you control how you play, right? You don't control what the fans do, but you control how you play, right? You don't control what the refs are doing,

but you control how you respond to what the refs are doing. You control how you play. You control whether you make it worse, right? You control whether you learn from it, right? You control what you do in response. You control how you play, right? You control how you play. You don't control what they say about you on TV, right? But you control how you play, right? You control how you play. You don't control what they

say about you on TV, right? But you control who you are. You control how you play, right? You might not even control whether you get to play or not, but you control how you practice. You control the effort you put in, right? You control the story you tell yourself about this. You control whether you're patient or not, right? You control what you do, right? You yourself about this. You control whether you're patient or not. You control what you do. You control your thoughts. You control your emotions. You control your decisions. You control your effort.

And that's it. It's it, but it's also a lot. Most people spend all of their energy focused on the things they don't control, trying to control the things that are not up to them. And what they're neglecting, what they're leaving by the wayside, is this thing that is up to them, their attitude, their decisions,

who they are, what they decide to be inside the situation they're in. So the question the Stokes would ask when you're looking at an obstacle or things aren't going well is you go, where am I wasting energy here? Where am I spending time and energy on stuff that's not up to me?

And how prepared am I for the fact that life is not in my control? And so I want to be poised and dug in for sudden attacks, as Marcus really is to say. So we focus on what's in our control and the rest takes care of itself. So Marcus, as I said, doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved. It's not how he wanted his reign to go. 20 years of peace and prosperity, he prepared for this moment, and then one thing after another goes wrong. But that's not the end of that story,

because he controls who he's going to be inside of that. He controls what he does inside of that. And he's a great leader. He's not corrupted by power. He does his best to help as many people as possible. He leads the empire through crisis after crisis. That historian would say, I, for my part, admired him all the more for this very reason,

because amidst all of these external events, amidst all of this adversity, he preserves himself in the empire. He does what he needs to do. He becomes great because of what he went through. He would have rather it been one way, but if it had been one way, if it had been the way that he wanted it to be, he probably wouldn't be talking about him today. There's this species of pine tree that I've been thinking about a lot recently. It seems like an ordinary pine tree, right?

Pine tree grows really tall, drops pine cones, the pine cones open up, and that's where the new pine trees come from. Except this pine tree, this species of it, isn't ordinary. In fact, that pine cone can only open when exposed to temperatures not reached in natural environments, right? It's only forest fires that unlock the pine cone. So the thing that the forest wants not to happen, that somebody walking by would think is the worst thing to happen to this forest, is in fact the thing, not only the best thing

to happen for the forest, it's the only thing that the forest needs. It needs the adversity. It needs the difficulty. It has to be exposed to difficult, incredibly hot temperatures to unlock. That's what it is. It's made from the adversity.

It cannot grow. It cannot change. The new growth cannot come if it is not exposed to the things that ostensibly it shouldn't be exposed to. We talk a lot about post-traumatic stress, which is real. I'm not making light of it. But there's also such a thing as post-traumatic growth. And this is a great example of that happening in nature.

So the new trees come, the growth, the next generation comes from the adversity and the difficulty. The Stokes have this concept of a mor fati. Marx uses that same image for a fire. He says, what you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire. It turns everything into flame and brightness and heat.

And so you can think about that's what great people do. That's what great teams do. They take what life throws at them. They take the situations they're in, and they turn it into something. It unlocks something in them. So the question as you face adversity and difficulty, which the only certainty I can tell you

about the next couple of years is that there will be more of that. There'll be more of it your whole life. That's how life is. That's what the world is. So what are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna make of it? How are you going to grow because of it?

["The World Is Our Own"] because of it. podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land. We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. Now one of the forms of adversity or difficulty, one of the things that causes so many problems, unfortunately isn't outside us at all, right? I would argue that the most dangerous opponent to this team, to your career, right, to each and every leader is not someone you're going to line up against, right? It's not the media,

it's not the coach or a professor, right? It's you, right? This is what we say, this is what we mean when we say ego is the enemy. There's an ancient Greek poem that says, you know, the first thing that the gods bestow on someone they want to destroy. They were asked what's the secret? How did you guys work together for so long, so many different iterations, so many highs, so many lows? And John Snyder said, no ego. He said, ego's the enemy.

They were able to see that they were on the same team, that they were working together, that their mutual success benefited both of them, as opposed to fighting only for their own interests. Right, that's the problem. Ego says it's all about me, but you're playing a team sport. And most things in life are a team sport. And so when we realize that it's not all about us, we zoom out, we get perspective, we see connections, we're able to learn things,

our guard is down. Right, it's realizing that it's not about accomplishments, it's not about money, it's not about recognition. At the end of the day, when you reflect back on your career, when you reflect back on your time here, what you're primarily going to think about is people. The people you made connections with, the people who you helped, the people who helped you.

And if we can understand that it's about growing and it's about fostering these relationships with people, we can focus on the right thing, we can make the right decisions in the right moment. That's what great leaders and great teams do, right? They make people around them better, right? They make the cities they're in better, they make the organization they're in better, the industry they're in better, they make the people in those things better as well. I was just with the San Antonio Spurs last week.

I think what's interesting, this is also a little bit for the coaches here in the room. What's fascinating about the San Antonio Spurs, it's not just that they're one of the most dominant, long-lasting dynasties in the history of sports that have won at every level for so long. What's fascinating about this guy, Greg Popovich, is the coaches who have been through his system, what

they have gone on to do. So Greg Popovich is, I think, the most winningest coach in the history of the NBA. But he's also created the most head coaches of anyone in the NBA. He was one of the first NBA teams to hire a female assistant coach. She just won a championship with the WNBA.

You look at the Spurs, what they call the coaching tree. I don't know if you guys have heard that around this facility, the idea of a coaching tree, right? Ultimately, Greg Popovich is not just going to be judged on the games he won. He's going to be judged by the coaching tree, which one sports writer, I think, said beautifully. He's going to be judged by the coaching tree, which one sports writer, I think, said beautifully.

He said, it's not a coaching tree, it's a coaching forest. You think of the influence that he's had. There have been multiple years where two different head coaches that have been through the Spurs system were playing each other in the NBA Finals. The Spurs weren't there, but the Spurs were there. Adam Silver described the Spurs essentially at this point as a coaching academy for the NBA. It's not what Popovich wakes up and thinks about every day, but it's a byproduct of his system and

his culture and how everyone inside the organization thinks. I was talking to them about this. I was saying what a beautiful coaching tree they had. They said, it's not just coaches. It's not just what our players have gone on to do. They proceeded to brag to them about this, I was saying, you know, what a beautiful coaching tree they had. And they said, you know, it's not just coaches, right? It's not just what our players have gone on to do. And they proceeded to brag to me about all the teams and organizations and businesses that their social media employees have gone on to work for and start, right? That front office people have gone on to do, travel coordinators, what they see themselves as being a part of, like I said, is this academy. Their job is to help people succeed, to grow together. It's not just about me. It's not just about success in the short term.

It's not just about winning in this iteration, but it's about helping everyone that I touch, that I'm a part of, helping them succeed and be their best possible self. That's what an egoless person thinks about. That's what a confident person thinks about. Ego is so fragile. It's threatened by other people's success. It's threatened by someone else succeeding in a role that you saw for yourself or somebody else getting

some attention that you wanted for yourself or getting a deal that you wanted for yourself. Instead of going I Believe in myself. I know what I'm capable of doing. I know I'm gonna get my moment. I'm gonna help this person I'm gonna be happy for this person, right? I'm gonna learn from this person, right ego is threatened Confidence on the other hand is good can relax can be calm, right? Which is what I want to talk about next It's this idea of stillness, right? Which is to me where confidence should get you can we often confuse ego with confidence ego is insecure It's frantic. It's busy. It's always doing and doing and doing whereas confidence can step back right can take a moment it knows

What it needs it it can take some space for itself to do what it needs to do best. So this idea of stillness is really important. And I know that it's noise. It's not just literally noisy on the field, but it's noisy because people are coming at you. People are saying things. You're saying things. It's a noisy world, which is why this stoic concept,

this philosophical concept of stillness is so important. How to be calm, how to get quiet in a noisy world, in a world that is not calm, how to be able to be still as the world is spinning faster and faster and faster around you. We've got social media, we've got the news. We've just got all this stuff coming at us. And we have to be able to step back and cultivate some space

so we can think, so we can make good decisions, so we can learn. We can see the way through an obstacle or a difficult situation. We cannot be doing things out of emotion or ego, right? We think about all the time we spend on our device. What that's doing is taking us away from what we could be learning, right? from what we could be learning, right, relationships we could be forming, right, rest we could be taking, sleep we could be getting,

and then we're going to be worse at the things we have to do, right. What's what all those things are also doing, of course, is fueling the ego. It's not healthy. It's not normal to be told all the people that love you, especially at this age, right? How amazing you are, how perfect you are, when a lot of those people want something from you, when a lot of those people are projecting things at you. And then conversely, I can tell you as an author, it feels great on the way up when things are going awesome, but what about when you make a mistake?

What about when it doesn't go that well? What about when you do something that you think is important, that you believe in, that you think is your best work, people don't appreciate it, they don't understand it. If you listened on the way up, if you identified with that success, with that shatter, with that clapping,

you're gonna identify with the criticism and the doubters and the haters too. So stillness is that what confidence is is the ability to step back and not be changed by that too much. There's words for it in almost every philosophical and religious tradition, because it's one of the most important things there is,

this idea of stillness or poise, not being amped up, being driven by things outside of your control. The even keel is really what we're talking about. How do you maintain your sense of self, your sense of equanimity, right, in a crazy upside down world? Mark's realist in his meditations, and you can imagine, he's the emperor of the world.

People are loving him, people are hating him, he's got stressors like you can't imagine, all these things are going wrong, and he says, the key is to be like the rock that the waves crash over, and eventually the sea falls still around. So a game doesn't go well.

Teammate does something that upsets you. Are you reacting in the moment? Are you pouring yourself out on Twitter or Instagram or whatever, something that you're going to regret later? Or do you have the ability to step back, let things settle down? You get some feedback from someone, you get some information, and part of you

immediately reacts to that, says that's not true, I don't like that, that's not who I want to be, that's not what I want to do. Well, actually, maybe you need to step back and you need to think about it. Where are they coming from? What do they mean? Are they partly correct, right?

Is there some of it that you're going to take and some of it that you're going to ignore? Stillness, part of what this, when we use that word, philosophical, we don't just mean they know a lot of philosophy books. We mean they have the ability to step back and see the big picture. They're not thrown off by first impressions.

I have a little quote on my wall that's from Johnny Cash's manager. Johnny Cash's manager was telling Johnny Cash that he had to build a vault, a vault or a mausoleum around his head. He says, you have to determine who you're going to let in there. He said, you can't let the fans in there, you can't let your family in there, you can't let the critics in there,

you can't let your own doubts in there, you got to protect this thing that you do, right, the thing that you know, right, the reasons why you do it, the inputs that make you able to do what you do, and you have to do this, right, because if you are listening to every bit of noise out there, what you're not doing is focusing on the things that are in your control, you have to decide who and what you're going to let in. And this is one of the most important decisions that we make. And I mean this literally and practically.

This is General James Mattis. He was a four-star general in the Marines. And for 40 years of deployments, he would bring Mark Surreles' meditations with him. And he said that what he found, both in war and in politics and in business, that the biggest problem that leaders have is not enough space and time for reflection. There's too many inputs.

There's too much noise. There's not enough solitude. There's not enough silence. So they're always reacting, reacting, reacting. They're reacting emotionally instead of philosophically, instead of out of wisdom. They're acting of philosophically, instead of out of wisdom, they're acting out of ego, instead of out of confidence, instead of out of what's really true.

Right? So for me, part of that is I try to wake up really early, right, before the noise, right? I think so often we wake up and we're already behind the eight ball. We got to rush to a class in your case or a meeting in my case or, you know, we're behind the eight ball. I like to wake up, I like to have some space, a morning routine where I'm thinking, I'm being thoughtful. I'm not getting sucked in to the phone.

I'm gonna talk about that in a second, but what I like to do in the mornings is again, this journaling, that's what Marcus Aurelius is doing in his tent on the front lines, in the palace in Rome, in the Colosseum as the gladiators are fighting. Marcus Aurelius is thinking to himself, working with himself about what's important, what matters, what his values are,

instead of just being reactive. So I do this little journaling. My rule is I don't touch my phone for the first 30 minutes to one hour that I'm awake. Now, it's not because I don't have anything going on. I got a lot going on. There's people waiting on me. But I need to carve out that space and protect it for me so I can be thoughtful, I can be intentional, I can use that time to read, I can use that time to think, I can use that time to prepare, I can use that time to zoom out and

get perspective on who I need to be that day, what I need to do that day, as opposed to we wake up and some crazy person said something that's on us about us on social media and that's taken us in a bad direction. Our friends are texting us about something and so we're sucked into that and the gossip or what our plans are that night. Or we get an email and it turns out we didn't do as well as we wanted to on a test, right? Or the market didn't do what we thought it was going to do. Whatever it is, right?

You get this news and all of a sudden your day is now reactive to what happened to something that was outside of your control instead of protecting that space, cultivating that stillness in the morning. Seneca would talk about how there are these people, even in that day, even 2000 years ago, he says they just plunge headlong into the flood. He's saying, look, of course, a stoic has to be able to deal with difficulty and noise and frustration, but he says we can't choose it, right? Who wouldn't rather be at peace than at war? Well, I mean, this is sort of what Elon Musk wakes up every day and does, right? As they say, he wakes up and chooses violence. He gets sucked into arguments. He goes off half

cocked about things that he hasn't really thought about. He's reacting to arguments. He goes off half-cocked about things that he hasn't really thought about. He's reacting to news or information that hasn't fully been fleshed out yet. And what he does is he gets himself in trouble. He gets sued all the time. People are mad at him. He creates enemies that he doesn't need to do.

He should be living an awesome life. Instead, his life is filled with drama and chaos. You become addicted to it is ultimately what happened. And look, I'm not saying that he's not successful. He's the richest man in the world. He's incredibly successful. But you think about what he's trying to do and the things that he does that are really important.

And all the people that are counting on him, thousands and thousands of employees, are hopes of reaching Mars. And instead of focusing on that, he's gambling it or spending that capital on silly culture war issues or petty arguments with people named Cat Turd Six on Twitter or whatever. This is not a good use of his time. And it's not a good use of your time or my time.

We want to stay focused. We want to cultivate this stillness so we can be above the fray. The question is, what could you do with that time if you had more stillness in your life, if you turned out the noise? Mark Shrevely says, the question to ask yourself is, is this thing I'm doing essential?

He says, because most of what we do and say and even think is not essential. And when we eliminate the inessential stuff, he says, we get the double benefit of doing essential things better, right? So that's what we're trying to cultivate with this stillness What could you do with all that energy that you're spending on drama or trivia or distractions, right? Who could you be right? What could you do? That's really the question. So as I wrap up here

I know I threw a lot at you I've been excited about this this form of ancient philosophy since I was your age I was in college in California and someone gave me a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and that book opened up my eyes to this whole other world that again it wasn't what my you know my Professor wearing a turtleneck was talking about that wasn't what philosophy was no philosophy was the emperor of Rome. It was soldiers It was athletes. It was people doing real things in the real world. They were using this philosophy to be wiser, to overcome obstacles, to be better human beings.

So if I can summarize all this and you forget everything I said, I'll just give you those three ideas. I think they're worth thinking about, worth writing down. I have found them to be true in every situation, big and small in life. The first is that the obstacle is the way. There's no problem, so bad that we can't find some way to grow from it, learn from it, do something that we couldn't otherwise do. There's always an opportunity to practice excellence, and in fact, that's what obstacles are.

They are opportunities to practice excellence. Next, that ego is the enemy. Ego makes things worse. It tears teams apart. It freezes you in place. If you think you're perfect, you cannot grow. You cannot change. If you think it's all about you, you will not be a good teammate

and you will not get the most out of your team. And then finally, the third thing is this idea of stillness. Stillness is the key that unlocks peak performance, that unlocks creative breakthroughs, that unlocks happiness and understanding and perspective. And ultimately that leads us back in to that first idea that the obstacle is away. When we are overwhelmed, when we are stressed out, when we're dealing with something tough, whether it's an injury, whether it's grades, whether it's stuff in our personal life, we

want to step back, get that perspective, that stillness, and through that stillness, through that practice, we'll find a way through, we'll find something we can do, find some way that we can grow, find some way that it can be fortunate that this thing happened to us. So thank you very much. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on

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