The Daily Stoic - Yung Pueblo on How to Measure What Actually Matters in Life

Episode Date: November 12, 2022

Ryan talks to the poet Yung Pueblo about his new book Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future, why servicing the common good is the most valuable metric to measure great work by, the common threads that tie differing philosophies together, and more.Diego Perez is a meditator and New York Times bestselling author who is widely known on Instagram and various social media networks through his pen name Yung Pueblo. Online he has an audience of over 2.7 million people. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. His two books, Inward and Clarity & Connection were both instant bestsellers. Diego's third book, Lighter, debuted as a #1 New York Times best seller.✉️  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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a

little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan.

Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. I have talked about my love of poetry before. There's a book I actually read to my kids most nights called A Poem for Every Day of the Year by Ali Asiri, who I've had on the podcast before. Marcus Relius loves poetry, Client These Loves Po poetry. Some of the stokes even wrote poetry, some of which survives to us. I find in poetry the ability to express ideas succinctly, paradoxically, beautifully in a way that prose sometimes isn't able to. I tend to like older poems better than newer poems, but that's sort of true, even for me in pros.

But one poet I was turned on to many years ago, as I'm sure many of you listening were turned on to them, because his stuff is just so shareable. He is in the way that Daily Stoke has tapped in to some of these social networks to share these Stoke ideas. Young Pueblo, aka Diego Perez, has brought a thing that people might have thought couldn't work on social media. Two millions of people via social media.

Diego is from Ecuador. He moved to the U. is a kid, he grew up in Boston, he attended Wesleyan, and his entry point into spirituality and poetry was through Buddhism. So we're going to be talking about philosophical ideas from the Eastern and Western perspective today. If you've been in the painted porch any time in the last couple of months, you see we have a big poetry collection. And we carry a lot of today's guests work, including his book Clarity, which was a huge best seller. And his new book, Lighter, came out earlier last month. If you're not following him on Instagram, you should. That's Young Pueblo, YUNG underscore Pueueblo and young Pueblo.com on Twitter at young

Pueblo. I find that his work is just wonderfully well suited to social media. I never feel worse reading one of his poems. They connect with you that give you something to think about. They clearly come from a very heartfelt place. And I really enjoyed this episode where we talk about our mutual love of poetry and his new book, Lighter. And I'll just leave you there. Thanks to Young Pueblo for coming on and enjoy. Yeah, I'm a big fan also. I resell this book and my bookstore and people love it.

Oh awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, I've been following you for, I think maybe like six years, like it's been a long time. Yeah, for sure. Oh, that's very cool. Well, I saw we've been trading back and forth on the bestseller list, so that's fun also. I know, we're both a very fortunate people.

Not as fortunate as James Clear, who seems to be just perpetually there, but congrats on number one. That's amazing. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, James is a juggernaut, and rightfully so, you know, he created something incredible, but it's so funny to see how much it takes to get him off of number one for one week. Yeah, I know. I want to talk to you about that because I want to hear what it felt like to you to hit

it, but there is something humbling about like you work for months and months on this launch, you sell like more copies than you thought you would ever sell. And then you just get beaten by somebody, just having an ordinary week, you know, like it's like 150 consecutive weeks. And it's like, oh yeah, sorry, I beat you. It is a reminder one, I think of how powerful something can be as you're saying,

but also the thing that you think is your greatest accomplishment could just be an ordinary week to someone else, which is where you compare us and sucks. Yeah, yeah, it really sucks. And then you think about all of us compared to Colleen Hoover and it's nothing. That's true. That's true. There's always somebody who is doing more than you.

And not just doing like a little bit more than you and you're like, if I stretch, I think I can get there. You're just like, no, no, this person is several feet taller than you. Yeah, I actually checked her out on publishers weekly. And I think a number of her books had sold like 40,000 copies that week. Yeah. Six of her books. And it was just like outrageous. So what did it feel like to hit number one? Because I mean, you've hit the list many times.

You sold a lot of books. You have large numbers of followers. But hitting number one is a thing. I don't know if this is the first time for you, but what was the sensation that you felt when that happened? It was the first time hitting number one, and it was totally unexpected. I just didn't really see it coming because I know the New York Times has their own way of going about things.

And I've heard of a lot of different stories. Like I've heard of like Tim Ferriss' a story of selling 100,000 and getting number four. So I was like, okay, it just doesn't matter to me. Trying my best to just let it go and I've hit it before with clarity and connection. And I was basically just telling myself and my editor being like, look, I'm just trying to get the book in as many hands as possible. If we get somewhere on the list great. But when we got number one, it just felt surreal. It was just

you know, that's like the thing that authors, that's like the prize, that we kind of have as a potential. It's a gold medal. Yeah. Was it an anti-dematic at all? as a potential. It's a gold medal. Yeah. Was it an anti-time actic at all? No, it just took days to process. It took days. It was like, you know, it happened.

And then my wife and I were just like, wow, but we were like in the middle of everything. You know, everything was still happening and going in the middle of the release and had a bunch of things to do. And it wasn't until like, when I was number two, that I was like really celebrating number one. Oh, the next week, it became clear the difference between one and two. Yeah, yeah, so we just flipped sides and went to number two. Interesting.

Yeah, I think when it happened for me on stillness, it should have happened for me on discipline. I sold more than James that week, ordinary week for him, not ordinary for me, but because I sold them through my own bookstore, good chunk of the copies, they probably scrubbed like 20,000 copies from the total number. Oh, no. Yeah. Which I knew going in. I think this is one of the problems when we, like, we say we don't

care about something that we're like, you were like, I just want to reach as many people as possible. But then secretly we want to have, we want to eat our cake and have it too, right? Like we say we don't care about what other people think, but we do. And we don't want to do anything to get what people think to be positive, but then we're hurt when we don't get it. So like, I think, I knew what I was doing, and I knew that it was reducing my odds. And yet, there's still, there's still some part of you that's like, well, why didn't I get this thing? But when I got it for, for stillness, I remember thinking, okay, this doesn't feel exactly how I thought, like, I don't know

if I thought the heavens would part and my dad would call me and finally like we would be good. And then I would feel like not like a 17 year old who doesn't know their place in high school anymore. What I like, I felt like all that would go away. But then you're still you. I mean, you're still the same person that you've always been. No one throws you a parade. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because it's so fleeting like it's, it's done. You know, it happened. And now it's sort of like what comes next? And I think, um, I'm always trying to be really careful of falling into the trap of just craving for more, craving for more. Like don't get me wrong. I want to be a good writer.

That's something that I try to like hold myself to and be like, okay, for my next book, how can I make something even more useful for people? But at the end of the day, it's like, there's just always more craving as relentless. So being okay with appreciating what's happening now, I feel like, especially at this point in my career, because I'm almost at that personal other mark for authors when all together all your books sell one million copies. Yeah. And I'm right below that mark now, so it's like the next hurdle that's coming up,

and I'm thinking about that and being like, okay, that's a great mark to reach. And then what comes after that is they're just more craving, or can I just focus on being productive? One one thing I think books as obviously we're getting a little inside baseball here but I think one lesson that people who are not authors can take from what we're talking about is that okay, yes, there is this list although we're in this sort of ghetto list called the advice how to miscellaneous. Yeah anytime anytime your accomplishment lumped together miscellaneous, you know,

you're already, they're already saying there's something weird about it. But like, the people on the list, like if I pull up where you were, it's like you, me, James Clear, and like a bunch of other very different things. So like, there's one cookbook. Yeah, it's a finish line, but there's really 10 different races happening on this list. And so like for you to have sold a million books is not the same for me to have sold a million books. It's not the same for James to have sold a million books. It's not the same for James to have sold a million books because a million books about habits versus a million books about an obscure school

of ancient philosophy versus a million books of poetry in 2022. These are not just apples and oranges like these are different galaxies or universes that that we are existing in, our craft is existing in, and the audience is interested in, is existing in. And so when we compare ourselves to other people, it's fundamentally unfair to them and us because we're doing very different things. Yeah, and it's also a changing situation, right?

Like in terms of, like I've, it's hearing in a lot from my editor when he was just like, you know, the way things work now, and what the New York Times wants from you and how they want you to sell books and where they want you to sell books and have it all neatly spread out, it's just not realistic and he's like post-COVID times where everyone's just online. Yeah, like, yeah, I don't want to be around that many people and all of that. So it's just, even when we were designing the tour, like the launch of it all,

and like I went out and did, I did, I have one more event at a three in-person event, and it was just a whole different experience where instead of signing books for people, you know, signing books ahead of time so that they could leave with a signed copy, but all of it would just felt very new. And I think it's a pretty transitional period for like how we can even measure the success of a book going forward. Well, you said something interesting where you said it's so fleeting.

And it is fleeting, you know, there's the Latin expression sick transit, Gloria, Moon, the augur is fleeting. And it does, it doesn't last. And yet, right? Because like your number one for seven days. And then, now you're number two. And then, and almost certainly, again, unless you're James Clear, it's a one directional march, right?

Like you're heading down, you're down from here. And that's true. And yet also, so there's some humility and looking at it this way, like, hey, you're the president for four years, you're number one in the world for one year, whatever. But the other way to look at it is, you've also done it forever, right?

Like, you can never be taken away from you that you did it. And so I think it depends on ultimately, like how we choose to see things. Do we look at this sort of perpetual competition? And if we're not number one, we're not measuring up and we're less than, or do you go, I'm an Olympic gold medalist, right? Like I am an Academy Award nominated actor. I did that.

You can't take that away from me. And no one can also take away from the fact, putting aside the extra recognition that you wrote a book that was good, that was even in contention to be one of these things. You know, it's funny. It makes me think back to like I once was talking to this teacher that I really rever and I'm holding high esteem and I was telling him that you know I wasn't going to be able to do as many meditation courses this year because I'm really focusing on my career and what not.

And he was like, look, he was like, don't think of it as two different things. Like you do a good job in here in these courses to do a good job in your life. And you do a good job in your life to do a good job in here. And the thing that really just struck me was he looked at me and he's like, be the best. Yeah. Not in the sense of competition, not in the sense of what others are doing, but you be the best. And that's what ended up just hitting me

and made me really reflect and think, you know, okay, let me not worry so much about what other people are doing, but let me just put out the best thing that I can possible and let's see what that is able to do. Yeah, I think about that. I actually have a chapter about this in the discipline book. Pompey, the great, goes to see one of the Stoke philosophers.

It's I think it's Panateus or Posidonius. And this is what advice do you have to me? And this is in the moment when Pompey is literally his name is the great. He's like the most powerful man. Yeah, yeah, it's quite a name, right, to have that in your lifetime, you know. And he says to him, he says my advice to you, and he's quoting the Odyssey, the Odyssey, and he says, be best and always superior to others. But, but Pompey takes this as, you know, like win the most battles.

But, but, but what he means is to, to be great, like, to be great as a human know, like win the most battles. But what he means is to be great, like to be great as a human being, not as an accomplished person. And I think sometimes we mistake those things or we, it's easy to look at the measurable evidence of, say, greatness or success, right? You're like, hey, I'm the number one best-selling author in the world this week, or the United States this week. We often, we're not, the, I'm the number one best-selling author in the world this week or the United States this week.

We often, we're not, the more people in China, I'm sure they sold more books. Were you the best writer this week? And I don't even mean the published work, but like did you show up and do the work this week? Do you know what I mean? And that's when they, when the Stokes talk about being best, I think that's what they mean. Like the, did you do the work like now? Not the lagging indicator, which is the external recognition that comes from a thing that you haven't touched in six months. Yeah, and it's funny because for most of us, like I was so inspired by the video that you put out, you know, with your, I love that you were able to capture that moment with, I don't

know if it was your agent or someone reaching out to you telling you that you got the number two spot, sold 60,000 copies. And I was like dang, I was like, I'm literally in the same place. Like I'm in the middle of writing two books right now. And I just, you know, got the number one, but it's like, okay, well, I'm still, I'm gonna savor this moment, but at the same time, I'm trying to just keep it going because I know this is the moment.

It feels like this is the right time for me to put out a number of books about different topics that are important to me. And I don't know what I'm gonna do in the future. I'll figure out what I'm gonna do, but I feel like this is the project and everything's hot right now, so let me continue with it and do my best, yeah. So putting us out of the best, I wonder if it's difficult for you.

Like I've said this before, that social media gives human beings way too much data, like an unhealthy amount of data. So if I think of poetry as this kind of, I don't wanna say like, it seems a little bit immune to the market or removed from the market in that, you know, it's this sort of ancient art form, it's certainly no longer cutting edge on like on the,

as far as like transgressive pop culture, less people read poetry now than probably did 200 years ago. And yeah, you're making poetry because of the mediums that you've tapped into, so powerfully. But like when you publish a poem, like they give you a number. Like how many people viewed it,

but then they also give you a number of how many people liked it, how many people shared it, how many you know, how many people immediately clicked away, how many people commented on it, how do you think about doing this kind of artistic strange art form, but then also wrestling with this very precise, almost scientific amount of data that you're barraged with. very precise, almost scientific amount of data that you're barraged with. You know, it's funny because in some ways there's an upside to it and downside. It's you do get to learn if you're actually reaching people, if you're making sense. Does this make sense? And to me, that early on in my career, that was really important because when I started writing, I spent the first three years just like developing my voice as a writer, like knowing, like, okay,

I'm not trying to put out a book immediately. I'm just trying to figure out how to write and also what are my major topics. And as I sort of like grew in a smaller incubator with like 10,000, 20,000 followers and just learned about how I can better say things when it got bigger and it got over a million, over 1.5 million, 2 million, it was just too much.

So recently, my relationship with the data was just that I just stopped looking at it. Like I'm honestly, I'm done with it because it, like I still see the amount of likes of postkits, but there's just so much more information on the inside, it's like how many people saved it, how many impressions did you get, how much reach, how far did it go? And it is just, you know, that type of information can lead you too far into just what I call writing hits. Like, you know what's popular and you know what it'll just, you know,

but if you just write what's popular, then you'll lose your sort of sense of like, you know, why it is that you got popular in the first place, as an individual, as a creative artist. And I try to, you know, there's nothing wrong with writing the occasional hit, but at the same time, you want to write, you know, have the courage to write the thing that's going to get, you know, like 40,000 less likes, but it means a lot to you and to leave it up there. How correlated are those for you? So like, let's say the work that you're most proud of, like the where you're like that, that, that hit something. Like, I was really visited by something that day, or I really got where I wanted. How correlated is what you think your best is versus what is your most popular or shared?

Yeah, sometimes it's very correlated. Sometimes like the ones that I'm like, man, this is, I'm so glad that came through. I was able to capture that, write it down. And it'll get, you know, like over 100,000 likes. And then other times I'll write something that I'm like, this is important. Like I remember this one particular message that I try to write about a lot. It's the way that my ego wants other people

to think and act just like me. Sure. And this is something that we see in each other all the time. And if you do not adhere to the way that I see things and I think you are an enemy or something like that. So I try to put that out. And it just, it falls flat because the message is just like, either a little too raw or I haven't figured out

and say it right, but that'll get like 30,000 likes or something like that. It is weird. You realize very quickly that if it's obviously more popular to tell people what they want to hear, versus what you want to say. And sometimes those things are aligned and sometimes they're not. But yeah, what did you become an artist for?

Is it to service an algorithm or is it to service some idea of truth? And I think that's a tough decision for people to make because you are choosing, in some cases, to put things out there in the world that you know are not going to be popular, or that they're not inherently as shareable or spreadable because they are challenging or uncomfortable or unpleasant. Yeah, and I think honestly, what I've learned over time is that when you do share sort of these deeper truths that are hard to receive that are unpopular,

your serious fans, the ones who go out there who buy your books, who pre-order it, they, you get credibility, because you're not just touting to what you set feeding the algorithm and just trying to reach beyond your own audience, and instead you're like, okay, let's go deeper. Let's talk about the things that are harder to really accept about ourselves. And I think it's powerful to be able to bounce between it too, because then you don't lose yourself, and that's pretty important to me.

Yeah, I think that's right. And once you're sort of freed from the fact that your, once success or like sort of extra recognition and what you're proudest of are decoupled, you have this sort of freedom. Mark's realizing one of my favorite passages and meditations, he says, you know, ambition is tying your success to what other people say and do.

And he says, sanity is tying it to your own actions. And so I think there's, it's like when you realize, like, hey, I worked the hardest on this thing and it did the worst. And then this thing was this kind of flip of inspiration or a guess or I didn't think it would do that well. And then it did 10 acts what I normally do. You're just sort of like, there's almost like a freedom and an empowerment and that William Goldman screenwriter says nobody

knows anything. If you go, nobody knows anything, any chance of guessing what will and won't do well is probably a fool's errand. So just do what you think is best. Do what you think is best is the way to do it. I find that to be very free. I don't know if you're free. Oh, and it really is because you kind of, you don't know. Like you put something out there, you write something and essay, whatever it is. And you're sometimes shocked by the results that it's like, wow, this hit.

And then a lot of things align, you know, not only is the quality of the content good, but the topic matched with the day, you know, whereas like also thinking about in terms of like where people are in the day of the week where like, you know, there's more sort of inspirations on Monday, Wednesday Thursday, you realize that like the week's been tough and writing about you know overcoming that difficulty and You know Fridays people generally will be thinking about their communities and their family members and their friends so Posting about like good relationships and whatnot on those days So you can kind of like you know you can learn from where we are especially by the way capitalism as a sign the week where we are, especially by the way, capitalism as a sign the week.

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 Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wunderys' new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud, from the build-up, 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 Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears.

When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fring 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 Britney. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondering App. Yeah, and look like most of the things that matter in life can't be measured, right? And so when you realize that, it's quite freeing because like, why is it, why is a poem a success because it did 100,000

likes or shares or whatever. And then one does a thousand, but it saves somebody from suicide or it sets up some creative breakthrough for yourself or it's the one that somebody who becomes a close friend discovers you through, like all the things that really matter in life can't be measured, there's the, from the little prince, you know, what is it? Only with the heart can one see, right? Like the, basically, what is it? Invisible, let me pull it up, invisible.

Yeah. I say, it's super. He says, it is only the heart, is. Yeah. The eye, say it's super. It says, it is only the heart, is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eyes, right? It's like the things that you are actually trying to accomplish in writing or art or with basically anything in life, you know, it's almost unquantifiable. It's ineffable. So the idea that like some number of hearts or shares

are between just going to capture whether it was a success or not is impossible, it's insane. You know, it's funny that I think the real measurement of success, I have like these two that kind of stand out for me personally, is when I have a book out, if it's good enough for you to gift it to a friend. Yes, that's when I'm like dang, I'm like that was good. Like, you know, we did a good job

and that's unquantifiable. I don't know how many times that happens, but I'll see it a number of times through people sharing stories and, you know, someone saying thank you, I got this from so and so. And to me, it's like that's really powerful. And the other side of it is too is when you share things, like it's always great occasionally when like a celebrity

shares some of your work or they share one of your books, but it's not Kim Kardashian who's making you famous. It's actually the person who has 200 followers. Because if they share your work and they're like, this is good, their friends are gonna really listen to them. Like their friends, their family, they're gonna be like, whoa, I'm gonna to check this out. And that has a way bigger impact than someone

who has millions and hundreds of millions of followers. Yeah, otherwise sometimes I'll take it like, you know, someone, let's say famous or important will like the book. And it's like, okay, there's a certain quantifiableness to the impact there. But then to me, the other thing is like, okay, I thought what I was saying was true

in my experience. And then this person has spent 20 years in combat. And it's true in their experience, who are this person was in a concentration camp or this person, you know, and you're like, like, again, how do you quantify, it's not even validation, but it's like the proof that you tapped into something true, that the work actually was good. It's equally true. You hear someone who's like, this got me through my cancer diagnosis or my divorce or the loss of a child. And you're just like, yeah, how many copies is standing up for that person worth?

Is it a thousand? Is it ten thousand? It's definitely more than one, you know, and you can't measure that and that's not going to be captured in, you know, hitting the list in a given week. And I guess the stokes would say it's all an external, it doesn't matter, but it does matter. Like when you do something for someone when your work is of service, that's the most valuable metric that there is. Yeah, and I think, I mean, you're making me think too,

because I've been following your work for a long time, and I've been coming from this background of Burmese Buddhist meditation that I've taken really seriously, and it shocks me. You know, the things that you share, the things that I've read from your books, how there is this powerful alignment in the truths that keep reoccurring over and over. We're talking about, you know, understanding the fleeting quality of life, understanding not to be dominated by external situations, understanding the power of equanimity. You know, like I see this, like you, you know, the way that you write about this,

it's like, so to me, it shines a light that thus, like those of us who seek wisdom, we're sort of heading in the right direction, even though we're coming at it from different time periods, different cultures, and to me, it's inspiring to me that we're moving in a similar direction That that that's something I get so much fulfillment out where like you're researching something and then you find a connection between To like unrelated schools or you find two people who never met who lived

Thousands of years apart and had very different experiences saying fundamentally the same thing. You're like, oh wow, okay This there's some truth here. There's some independently discovered pre-existing truth that's going on here. And I'm sure you found that too where you found some way that some words rhymed or an observation in one of your poems. And then you found it in another poem or a very similar and you're like, oh, this is a human thing. I found this is a very human. I tapped into something fundamentally human here. Maybe I can't use it because I'm going to use it or maybe I can, but like, okay, this is a core human truth here that we're both touching on. Yeah, and it's powerful too because like that means that those of us who even aspire to developing a life where

There is the potential for happiness the potential for peace the potential for a mental clarity It's like okay if we have those things as our ideals then on the way to achieving them and developing them These truths will re-occur and it's like no matter where you're coming from, it's like, okay, if you really want to you know, have peace, then you need to deal with your reactiveness. You need to deal with how intensely you're reacting to the outside world and realize that your perception and your reaction are being created by your own mind. And these things are just, yeah, it wows me a bit. Yeah, it's like an intrudetective, you know, he's quoting Nietzsche times of Flat Circle, which is in Ecclesiastes, which is in the Stoics. And you're just like, okay, this idea, it's not just, it's true that history is the same thing happening over and over

again. This idea of the things, things happen over and over again. But then also us discovering that history is the same thing happening over and over again, that there are these elements of recurrence. That is in of itself a recurrence, right? Like each generation, each philosophical school, each religious tradition sort of gets under the hood. And it's like, yeah, this is how stuff works. I'm curious for you, like when did stoicism become this like central point of your life? Like, did you study in high school? Did you go to a classics school or no?

No, definitely not. I was in college and I got introduced to a pectetus in Marx's Relics and it sort of hit me like this ton of bricks. And it's funny, do I have it? This is my very old copy with lots of notes. It's like 16 or 17 years old now. It definitely puts some miles on it. But I think what I think is cool about stoicism is it kind of it seeps into you.

Right? Have you ever read any Heraclitus, the poet? No. He's this sort of Greek mystic poet. He does these kind of short epigrams. Actually, let me see if I have them within reach. Oh, here they are. These are very Instagrammy poems that he has. Let's see. From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony. see from the strain of binding opposites comes harmony. The harmony past knowing sounds more deeply than the know. What else do we got? The Sun, timekeeper of the day and season overseas, all things.

His famous line is that no man steps in the same river twice. The biggest, yeah, the biggest truth. That's the foundational thing that made Herman has to sadartha work. That was the key, the key truth. Yeah, so again, it's one of those ideas that somebody has at some point and then it gets into the ether

and then is independently discovered and rediscovered. But I think each time I read the Stokes, I come back and I get something new out of them, right? So like what I was looking for when I was 19 was advice about purpose and resilience and self-sufficiency and all these things. And then I'm rereading it in the middle of a pandemic and I'm thinking about justice, I'm thinking about connection, I'm thinking about mortality, because now I'm 15 years older, the world is falling apart, I have children,

you know, who you are when you pick up the work, you get something different out of it each time. And so my journey of sort of with the still, I think people think about these things as just like epiphany, you know, this moment on the road to Damascus. And there is that, I think, but there's also, it's more of a seeping, gradual thing. It gets into your blood and it changes you. I think great art, great work, great insights.

That's what they do. I think what I'm wondering too, right, so from what I've observed of the mind, right, it's incredibly malleable and it carries so much heavy conditioning that over time, we don't even realize how much we're accumulating. We'll react with anger over and over and over again, and obviously that makes it easier to then react with anger in the future. Sure. When you make that break from the past and whatever it is that's inspiring you to do better,

whatever method, I think one thing that sort of stands true along many methods is that repetition is key. It's like you just have to try again, and again and again, and over time, you'll build new positive habits, new conditioning that actually supports your happiness and your freedom. Yeah, the Stokes talk about fueling the habit bonfire.

Like what fire are you fueling, right? The good habit or the bad habit, the you you wanna be, or the you that you're ashamed of being. And I think that's right, you get stronger as you go. And the more you set up routines and structures, we were talking about hitting the best cell list. Like if you have a routine or a structure, they're like, this is what I do every day,

whether that's you hitting number one or undeservedly not appearing on the list, you know what you're supposed to be doing. And that, you know, that's the bonfire I think you want to be fueling. Yeah, it's interesting too, because when I go to these, so I've started going to these longer meditation courses where I go away for 30, 45 days, and it's, you know, you're in total silence and you're meditating with, you know, my wife and I were usually the youngest ones that go. And we have about 10 years of experience, we're meditating with people who've been doing

this since the 70s, and I just, I come out of it realizing that what I did was I just sent myself to the mental gym. Yeah, I'm just at the gym. Like I'm working on my mind, teaching myself how to be a quantumist, bringing myself back to the present moment, and developing compassion for myself and all people.

And it's literally like, it's just repetition. It's trying it over and over and over again. Yeah, you do it until it becomes muscle memory. And I think that's, for the Stokes, there wasn't this meditative practice, but there was the journaling practice. And so people will look at meditations and some sort of translators in academics have been like,

it's not a work of great philosophy because it's repetitious. That he repeats himself, he doesn't really say anything new. And this is to miss the point of what he's doing, which is sitting down and practicing. It's like, that's like listening to a musician do their scales and be like,

they're just doing the same thing over and over again. That's what they're doing. That's the whole point. But from the repetition of the scales comes sort of intuitive knowledge, a sense of how things go, that then allows the endless combinations of improvisation or new creations from that work. I think too. And there's a lot of works like that in the ancient world too, where they're so repetitive and they're for multiple reasons. They're like, you know, to help people remember it as an oral tradition and also to highlight

the tiny differences, like to highlight the tiny evolutions. Because then it just like, boom, it's like, oh, something changed and it's like, what was it? And it just makes it so clear. And it's like, oh, this is what's important. Well, I had another question for you about your writing process. So it must be weird also. Like, OK, your traditional poet would have had

to collect their poems. Maybe they're occasionally publishing them in newspapers or privately. And then they're occasionally publishing them in newspapers or privately, and then they're saving them up for a book. You have the ability to just write them and put them out like today or tomorrow. You could put them out like this. There's no editor between you. This is all wonderful and empowering.

How do you cultivate a discipline that self-discipline that is able to determine what is good enough to be published or not? How do you decide, especially because your work is so short, I imagine you could do a poem in 10 seconds, you could be like, buh buh buh buh. But how do you know this is how long it takes to work on this one. This is how long it takes to get it right. And even though there's only 11 words in this poem, she hears how I'm confident they're the 11 right words. Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's a mixture of two things. It's one of it is

the muscle memory of having been spent the last eight years of my life just focusing on writing, where I've seen poems fall flat and I've seen other ones rise and connect with people. So I spent a lot of time, especially in the beginning when I was much more minimalistic in my writing. Now I'm a lot more of worthy because I'm just giving myself the space. But I spend a lot of time writing out what's the message because to me, message always feels more important than craft. You know, like I'm not like a literary poet. I look at what matters to me is are you understanding what I'm saying in terms of like personal transformation or relationships. So I would spend time just crossing words out.

Like I would write a poem and I would see, okay, what was superfluous? Like what am I using the word that too much and just scratching things out to make it clean? And there's a feeling that I've developed where it's like, you know, I look at it, read it over and over, make sure there's no mistakes. And then it kind of just clicks inside of me that's like, okay, over and over, make sure there's no mistakes, and then it kind of

just clicks inside of me that's like, okay, this is ready to put out there. And I think that's been like a sort of intuitive muscle memory development that I developed over time with just knowing like what is worth putting out there and what's not. And I feel like I've been really, the reason I took the Instagram in the beginning anyways was because I knew that the topics that I was writing about, like wellness and the world of wellness wasn't as developed as it is now. And I knew that a publisher wouldn't be interested in my manuscript. So I thought to myself, let me see if I can even connect with people. And then I'll worry about a publishing deal later.

And that's what ended up happening was people came first and then publishers came after that. Well, I imagine again, it must require some discipline for you that I think there's a part of every creator that loves the validation, that loves the love from the audience. And so knowing that hey, it's Tuesday, I'm not feeling that great about myself. I could bang out a poem and publish it and get flooded with comments and likes. That is more rewarding. And you know, ego fulfilling than saying, no, I'm going to spend six hours moving seven words around in this one and not publish, right? So I imagine that the discipline of not shipping yet because it's not where it needs to be.

I think it's an underrated skill. Totally. And you know, I'll find myself, especially with pieces that I find that are really important because lately I've been doing a lot of essay writing, but with the essay writing, I'll normally connect it with some short poem that captures the main message of it, but that's what's cool about the new book. Yeah, there will be like ideas that will just marinate in my mind for like two months before they're even ready to like sometimes even put

pen to paper. And then after that, it's like, okay, let me, like does this have rhythm? Like is this really, does it make sense yet? But there are a lot of important pieces to me that literally took two, three months to write. And I've been fortunate to, like I've been pretty prolific, like I write a lot. I've been writing a lot over the past eight years,

so what I try to do, and now that I have these three books and I'm working on two more, I, you know, will share something new in the morning if something new has come up or something that I've written that I like, or I'll just, you know, pick from the old, like, old pieces that I've written

and just feel, feel out the day and connect with, put out there whatever feels right for this random Thursday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The discipline to insist on your own standards, even when the audience might accept less or the market might accept less, or your ego would accept less is a very hard thing. And it's tempting, the market will accept it very less,

very, very less. Like, what's popular, it's incredible how, we can just, there's just a lot of mimicking of a particular idea that happens on the internet. And everyone will get an X amount of likes so to have to restrain from that, to just make myself not just fall into what's popular, but just fall into trying to create work that's more evergreen as opposed to 2020 boundaries are really popular. So everyone's writing about boundaries.

You know? Well, I connected with something you said a few minutes ago, which is you're saying that, you know, your poems used to be shorter and other a little bit longer. Um, I think about that too, what, and I go back and forth, whether it's an, uh, an example of discipline or ill discipline. Like when I look at, um, each one of my, my sort of stoic inspired book.

So if I go obstacle, ego, stillness, courage, and discipline, each one of those is a little bit longer than the one that came before. Oh, interesting. And like obstacle is the shortest of all of them. And during the pandemic, I was reading them again. I read some of them to my youngest son. And there was a part of me that was like,

oh man, there's like an authenticity, an authenticity, an erroneous, and a, and it's get to the pointness of this that I wanna get back to. But then there was another part of me that was like, the reason I can't write this short anymore is that it's not honest. I was saying things that were true, but was not the fuller picture,

and now I have a fuller understanding of the nuances of that idea, and I would never say it that way now. And so I go back and forth between, am I being not disciplined or too disciplined? Like, I don't like that I'm getting longer in the tooth each time, and yet, I'm also insisting on a higher standard of truth.

And that's why it's requiring more words to say the same thing. Do you think about that? Yeah, totally, man, because I've noticed that after I put out inward, which was like inward was like hyper minimalism. You know, I was really pushing it. And then clarity and connection was like, just it was wordier. I mean, I think you have like 10,000 more words than in word.

And, but I realized that when I was wrapping up ClareDin connection, I was like, oh, I'm not as interested in writing poetry. Like I just, I felt this shift happened inside me. And I wanted to start writing essays. Like I was like, I want to write essays. I wanted to like pick a topic and just put everything together that I, that's coming up for me in that moment about that topic. And I had this like kind of back and forth for a while because I was like, oh, you know, like I'm known as a poet.

I should keep writing poetry, but it was I landed on let me just be true to myself. Like in this moment, I don't want to write a lot of poetry, but I do want to write a lot more. I want to write paragraphs. I want to write essay that want to just go deeper on all of these topics that I've been talking about for the past few years and letting myself do that. I mean, it helped create lighter. And I think it's just more the direction

that I'm moving in now. And I'm just kind of letting myself evolve as a writer because I think it's like I owe it to myself to just do what I enjoy. So we opened we were talking about best soloists and accomplishments in the feelings and I was thinking as we were talking about it. Have you read have you heard the poem The Moment by Margaret Atwood? No. She wrote the handmaid in Stil, but she did this poem.

I do love poachers, so I'm gonna read this to you and tell me if you can get jies with your experience. Okay, she says, the moment went after many years of hard work and a long voyage, you stand in the center of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island country, knowing at last how you got there and say, I own this.

Is the same moment the trees unloose their soft arms from around you. The birds take back their language, the cliffs, fissure, and collapse. The air moves back from you like a wave and you can't breathe. No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor time after time, climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way around. I definitely, definitely connect with that because it's, you know, I try to stay away from lofty titles.

Like, even her saying, like, right, I don't, pointing out, we don't own this. It's this, this is temporary thing that's happening. Like in this moment, I am sort of immersed in these ideas and, you know, yeah, totally. It feels like a vessel and there are definitely a lot of times where poems would just totally appear They would just pop up into the head and other times I would ask myself what am I learning and I'll put it together in words But you know not thinking of myself as the owner and also not thinking of myself as a teacher I think has been fundamental to

My inner and outer success Because I think a lot of times when we're on social media, just because you have, you sold X number of books, you're on the New York Times best seller, and you're like, you know, do all these accomplishments, but people will put you on a pedestal that you yourself do not put yourself on. Yeah.

And it's an interesting situation where obviously I can't control how people perceive me. Like, their perceptions are dependent on their own, interesting situation where obviously I can't control how people perceive me. Their perceptions are dependent on their own emotional history, how they feel in the current moment. So there's a lot of filters that go through before they make up their idea of you. But on the other end, I think positioning myself in my own mind as a student, as an explorer, has been much healthier because I'm not the end all be all, right? Like, I'm thinking of myself as like, you know, as if I know everything, like, I know I don't know everything. I'm very aware of how unwise I am. I'm very

aware of how like, middle of the road I am, you know? So even when I decided to even take writing seriously, I felt intuitively it was like, right, like right about the fact that healing is even possible. Like that would that be welded me so much. And I felt that I knew that I was in totally heels, I knew I was in totally wise, I knew that I was on my way, but it was okay. It was okay to share reflections.

It was okay to potentially help someone turn that lens inward the way I have and hopefully they benefit from observing themselves. Yeah, and also this idea that we don't own any of this stuff in the sense that like you have the number one spot for a week, right? And then somebody else owns it, right? Like I had it for a month, for a week in September 2019,

and you know who took it from me? Donald Trump Jr. So it's not worth that much to begin with either, right? Like it's this transitory thing. All of it is, right? Your name is on the door of the office. You are the owner of this stock or this company, or you are the legal recognized spouse of

so-and-so, but it's all ephemeral and transitory. And either it gets taken from you, it disappears, or you die, right? Or it dies. And the second you have told yourself that you own it, I think the Stokes would say is when you made yourself most vulnerable, because now you're gonna be crushed when it's taken away, you're gonna feel like you've been wronged in some way, as opposed to that, I think the more gracious approach, which is,

I can't believe they let me put my name plate here on this spot for one week, or the best way I heard someone describe like your house as they say you don't own your house the bank just lets you make payments on it for a while. I think that you're hitting at the key the key you know there was a I think when Buddhism came to the West there was a mis mistranslation of the word craving. So they used the word desire, desire is a root of suffering. But my teacher, Sankwanko, he says craving is a root of suffering.

And I was able to connect with that so much more because from, and it's often also said, you know, attachment is a root of suffering, but it's really where are these attachments coming from, they're coming from our craving. And what's the difference between desire and craving, tension, there's tension there. There's this sort of tense manner of trying to approach a situation. And when we think about it, right, we're not monks, we're householders. So it's fine for you to have goals. It's fine for you to like, build a, you know, home for your, for your family to have goals. It's fine for you to build a home for your family to have a car to just develop things in a way

where you are taking care of your responsibilities. And it's fine to have those things as goals. But when you start going too far and wrapping up these desires, these goals with tension and they just become these cravings that are just basically causing you tons of misery in your own mind. And then when you don't get these things or they get taken away or what you thought was true

is revealed as an illusion that you thought you own things, then you just explode into greater suffering. And I think that's what Atwood is saying in that poem. She's saying that it's like, it's the moment when you say this is mine. That's when life has to remind you. You know, she says, when you say that I own this is the same moment that trees unloose their soft arms around you. It's like when you have the arrogance to say, this is mine. It's forever. I own this, no one can take this away from me. That's when life has to almost take it upon itself to to to dis abuse you of that notion, to remind you who's really in charge. So there's almost a, I think even an element of tempting fate when we, when we believe like,

this is mine, this is who I am, this says something about me. I think that that poem also points to like the, you know, abundance entering your life, it kind of requires a very light mind, like a mind that's not just like gripping, because like what is attachment? You saying this is mine, your mind literally is just like gripping this story. And then I don't know, I feel like the wisest people that I've met, the

most peaceful people, the kindest people, like their minds are very light. You know, there isn't, there isn't hate there. There's just this openness and that openness of letting go of being able to embrace this moment. And then also watch it pass is, it's very inviting. And it's inviting and invite success too. Yeah. And I think going back to the best solo list where we were, it's like, do you see this as this thing that you have to protect and fight for all the time? Or do you go, I've done it now. Now I don't need to do it again.

You know, now I don't, like, I have it forever. It's a memory, like, it's a memory that, you know, you can lose your printout of the paper, but it doesn't change the fact that for that one week, it was there, like, nothing, like, I think about this as a parent, the most haunting thing to consider ever is that you lose your children.

And it's true, life can, things can take them away, death, the government, the bomb, you know, whatever. But nothing can take away having, death, the government, bomb, you know, whatever. But nothing can take away having had them, right? And so how do you think? Do you think about, you know, what you want to have in the future? Or do you think about the present moment that you have now? And the joy and happiness that it's already brought you, which nothing can dislodge from you, you from you short of dementia or your own death. Yeah, I mean, the thing that you're pointing to too, I've been realizing a lot lately where impermanence has been my greatest teacher. Yeah, it's by far, like I'm just always going back

to this idea of impermanence. And it's really shown me that earlier, before I really started trying to develop my own self-awareness, I was just absent from life. And I was absent from the people that I really love, from the people that I want to be spending time with. And as I started attuning myself to impermanence, and the fact that things are so fleeting, and that you just don't know when they'll really radically change, it's helped me just

be there, like spend more time, intentional time with my wife to be there with my parents and just give them my intention as opposed to just scrolling on my phone when I'm sitting next to them. You know, and I think there's just, if you are able to really embrace the fact that everything is impermanent, to really embrace change itself, it is impermanent to really embrace change itself, it'll just allow you to be so much more present in life. And at the same time, when things get difficult, you know that you can weather the storm because it's impermanent. It's not going to be stormy forever. It's just going to be another passing situation. But in both cases, I think impermanence just helps you step up as the best version of yourself in life.

Yeah, we're scared about potentially losing something in the future that we are taking for granted right now. Right now. Yeah, and we're also, when we think about impermanence, we think about it in a negative connotation. We're always afraid that it's going to take things away. Yeah. But you don't realize that if the entire universe was static, nobody would exist.

If like the universe is fundamentally based on movement, like, you know, atomic movement, mental movement, physical movement, it's all, it needs movement for us to even have the opportunity to exist. So in a lot of ways, I feel grateful that this universe is like fundamentally impermanent and dependent on change because you and I wouldn't even be having this conversation right now if change wasn't possible. Well, I think this is why you're going to like Heracletus for sure. And I think you're going to see that you guys have been unconsciously tapping into a similar

river. Nice. But Mark Sereo says this in meditation. So, look, everything in life comes from change. You're birth, you're afraid of death because it's a change, but your birth was a change. You didn't exist and then you were brought into being and that everything good in your life, we're afraid of change and yet everything good in your life also came from change. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And when I was when I was I was really sort of happy

that this one, like I wrote a long essay about that about how we shouldn't be fearing change, that it should inspire us and that we should also realize that it's brought us everything that we love, everything that we find beautiful in life. And I was hitting hard at it in the essay, and I had no idea how, you know, people were gonna respond to it, but I sent it out on my sub-stack. And man, the reshairs that that thing got, it was all over the internet. And I was like, wow, I'm really glad that I stayed true

to what was important to me in this moment. I just kept coming up. And I love that Marcus Rulius was hitting at this thousands of years ago. One, and even if change wasn't good, not liking it, or fearing it, isn't going to stop it. So you're just torturing yourself. Totally, totally.

And I even think in terms of our personal identity, like who, how you see yourself as an individual, to allow yourself to move with the river of change, to allow your interest, your likes, your dislikes to also evolve. It feels really valuable because if you try to move against this like, forward flowing river of change, if you try to move against nature, it's just going to hurt. Man, this is beautiful. Well, I love the books and I love what you're doing and this conversation was amazing. Yeah, thank you so much. It's so good to finally be in contact. Really grateful.

Likewise. Congrats again. All right, my man. Talk to you soon. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoog podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor.

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