Habits and Hustle - Episode 83: Ryan Holiday – Stoicism Expert, 3x NYT Best Selling Author, Media Strategist

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Ryan Holiday is a Stoicism Expert, 3x NYT Best Selling Author, and Media Strategist. Taking the sometimes difficult world of philosophy and approaching it with the story, and accessibility, Ryan assigns practicality to the teachings and the mantras of the old philosophers to give everyone an understanding and way to better themselves. Through comparisons of habits, pandemics, personalities, emotions, leadership, and more Ryan attempts to shine a light on all we can learn from the great thinkers of the past and how we might not be quite as different as we’d like to think. I’m not saying you’ll hear Marcus Aurelius talk about putting down his phone and spending more time offline, but you might be surprised at the similarities and applicable advice you can get from people thousands of years old. Youtube Link to this Episode Ryan’s New Book: “Lives of the Stoics” Ryan’s Website Learn more at ucan.co and Save 20% on your order with code HUSTLE ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When there's a penalty on the field, referees are there to sort it out. When there's an accident on the road... Sergeant Lindros, I'm glad you're okay. That's where USAA steps in. We help make the claims process easy, so drivers can get back on the road fast. Making the right calls. That's what we're made for. USAA Membership eligibility and product restrictions apply in our subject to change. USAA means United Services Automobile Association and its affiliates.

San Antonio, Texas. Vitamin water zero sugar just dropped in all new taste. It was zero holding back on flavor. You can be your all feeling. I'll play and all self-care you. Grab the all new taste today. Vitamin water zero sugar. Nourishcare you. Grab the all new taste today. Vitamin water's zero sugar, nourish every you. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O.

Welcome to the Habits and Hustle Podcast. A podcast that uncovers the rituals, unspoken habits, and mindsets of extraordinary people. A podcast powered by Habit Nest. Now here's your host, Jennifer Cohen. I wanted to start by saying, I thought honestly, when I started to read your books, I seemed to your probably like 50 or 60 people.

I didn't realize that you're like 33 year old guy because you have so many best selling books like New York time best selling books. I was like this guy can't be really just 33 years old. And I get that a fair amount. I definitely feel old but I happen to have been. Oh absolutely not. In fact, when I even looking at you, you look like you're 11 years old.

Like you're doing a look 33. So besides the fact that you look really young and you are really young, it's a pretty huge accomplishment that you've written this many books. So, you know, Bravo. But thank you. No, you're welcome. So, did you, I guess, well, I'll do a proper intro,

you know, later on after this. Okay. Because I want to get right into it with you. Because I've got so many questions for you, and I know that we have a very finite period of time. All right. Well, I guess I'm just more curious. Did you ever think when you started down

this path of stoicism from all your books, the obstacles the way it goes the enemy, the daily stoic, and still this is a key. This is the new book, which is of course, the one that we've been here talking about, the lives of, those are the lives of the stoics, right? Did you ever think that all these books would have such a broad appeal to so many different walks of life

from entrepreneurs, business people, tech people, parents, and everything kind of in between? No, I think that would have been insane probably to think that. And I was actually just talking to my editor about this at Portfolio. I finally sort of worked up the courage to ask, I was like, hey, what did you think when I came to you guys? Because my first two books had been about marketing and I said, what did you think when I came to you guys, because my first two books had been about marketing and I said, what did you think when I said, hey, you know, for my next book, I want to write about this, you know, obscure school of ancient philosophy. And she was saying, you know, we,

we didn't hate the idea, but we kind of hoped you would, you would maybe just get this out of your system. And then you could go back to what you really should be writing about. So I think even my own publisher thought like they were basically just humoring me as what she was saying. And I mean I was very serious about the idea and I thought it could work. But I think one of the really tricky things about taking a gamble or a risk is that you can after it's worked out tell yourself that you knew it all along or that it was obvious. I think, so I try not to do that.

I really just have always loved the philosophy it had such a big impact on my life. And it was just the thing I was most interested in, and it was the idea that I happened to have at the time, and the rest kind of took care of itself. Well, that's interesting because when I started doing some research on you, when obviously when we booked this podcast, I just assumed that you were a philosophy major and that you were just you know, you were just that's who you were. I had no idea that you came from a marketing background. You were like writing marketing for American apparel, right? Is that what you're doing? Yes. And then you wrote all these, you started as like kind of like a medium, you wrote about media manipulation. Yeah.

So, and I think that worked out to my advantage in two respects. So one, not being a sort of a classically trained philosopher, I was much more interested in the practical benefits of it, and I wasn't so consumed or distracted by the theories. And what's really weird is actually, Mark has realized 2,000 years ago, talks about even then how tempting it is to be caught up in these, in the ideas of it, and the abstraction of it, and to miss the point, so to speak.

But I then, I think my marketing background ideas of it and the abstraction of it and to miss the point, so to speak. But I then I think my marketing background helps me in the sense that when I sat down to write this book, I said, okay, I believe this philosophy is true. I believe it can have a huge impact for people. However, I also am well aware of just how resistant people are to even that word philosophy, let alone stoic philosophy, which is probably the most unappealing phrase in the English language. People think that means emotionlessness,

and they think it means again, abstraction. And so I think my sense that, hey, even though I'm really passionate about this, most people aren't. So if I want to take this idea and make it accessible to people, it's going to be hard and I'm going to have to attack it from a certain angle. And so I think, you know, when I talk about the obstacle being the way, I'm not just talking about obstacles, these sort of big life changing universities, I'm just talking about

you go to solve a problem, you can use some of the disadvantages to your advantage if you are creative enough. Yeah, and you know what, you do two things very well, like you make it very practical, like you said, you meet people where they are, so I think that's also what you said, like that's what the broad appeal to me, I think is.

You know, even in stillness, you know, your last book, it was about, you didn't talk about meditation, which everyone assumes, if you wanna be present, if you wanna be still, you must meditate. And so, I actually didn't even wanna, even read that book, because I thought, oh God, I know exactly what this is about. And then a friend of mine actually got it for me,

and he's like, you know, it's not an all what you're going to think it is has nothing to do with meditation. And like, but that's what you do very well. You kind of make it so even it's from 2000 years ago, it does really the information, the four pillars of what the virtue that what they stand on is so applicable to today's, to anybody's life. And you can really, you know, use it as a guide for like living well. Well, thank you. I mean, I like to think of myself as a regular person.

And so I, I'm not that interested in ancient philosophy, right? Like, I mean, I'm very interested in it. But at the same time, like, like if somebody starts throwing a bunch of words at me that I've never heard before, or they're talking about something in a totally theoretical context, or all of a sudden it's gotten very far from any practical application,

you know, my eyes start to glaze over and I tune out, and it definitely was stillness. I mean, like, the amount of people that have told me that I should meditate, the amount of people that have told me that I should meditate, the amount of meditation apps that I've tried, you know, the amount of classes I've been, and yet I can't seem to make it a habit. But oftentimes what people will do, my friend, Ramit Sethi, is a financial blogger and he talks about how almost all personal finance advice begins with start a budget.

And he's like, but then if you look at the research, nobody keeps a budget. Rich people don't keep budgets, poor people don't keep budgets, people who care about personal finance don't keep budgets. Even personal finance writers and personalities don't keep budgets, right? It's very disingenuous to go tell people to do a thing that you yourself are not going to do or to talk about it in a way that assumes or pretends that the reader or the audience is somehow,

you know, beneath you and therefore they need the advice, but you of course don't need the advice. And so that's one of the things I think about with books is like all my favorite books, what are they filled with? Stories, all my favorite books have stories. The only thing I remember from any books I've ever read are stories, and then the occasional quote, and then anecdotes,

or just sort of halfway between a quote and a story. And so really when I think about doing books, I try to build them around that. And the other when I think about doing books, I try to build them around that. And the other thing I think about, and this is something I disagree with a lot of authors on, I also think I am much less interesting than most historical figures who have ever lived. So if it's a choice between a story from my boring life or a story from Marcus Aurelius' life or a story from, you know, my friend Steve's life and Napoleon, I'm going to pick Napoleon and I'm going to pick Marcus Aurelius. So I also just try to think, you know, if I was a reader and I didn't care about

this and that's the truth. Most people do not care about you, what you're doing, they don't care about your life's worth, they're not that interested. And so if you want to reach them, you have to figure out a way to get over and through all those reservations. So that's sort of what I build my works around. And how did you know this? Because like I said, you're super young, you're not like, you're not like this old wise man that's lived a long, long life, right?

But yeah, you keep on turning out like one amazing book after another, after another. And it's and and what so and it wasn't like we just said earlier, it wasn't only because it was all about like taking these stories from these these philosophers. I mean, you did it before with your other books. Like, did you how did you, did you always just innately have a knack though for understanding human nature like that and getting it really quickly what people need and your marketing background? That's why you were probably good at that.

I don't know. I mean, I think, I think, you know, an athlete tends to have a natural aptitude that then is invested in. And then the amount of drive that they have or their willingness to improve or get feedback, it sort of all adds up into some form of mastery or the ability to do the task well. So I feel like I always loved reading, I always loved stories. I think there was a part of me that was just looking for advice, so I sort of was naturally just,

that's what I was gravitating towards when I was reading. And then I got really lucky in that instead of training as a writer, like instead of going to, to, you know, the Iowa writers workshop, or getting an MFA somewhere, where I would have been much more schooled in the craft of streaming words together. I ended up training as like a research assistant

to a great writer, Robert Green, who I think you had on, right? I had it on a couple of times and we're at actually very close friends with him. That's how I got to you. That's right. He's the one who recommended, well, not just recommended,

but you didn't have to recommend you. He's the one who I basically said, I wanna have your guy on, make it happen. Well, that was the big break in my career and it allowed me to sort of, there's this great expression, and any fool can learn by experience. I've been very lucky in that I got to learn

from the experiences of someone like Robert Green. So I was sitting here writing this morning and the very research methods that I'm using on my book now, I learned for Robert and so, or from Robert. And so, I mean, there's 40 hours of power and human. Yeah, I'm looking. But looking at it. I got sort of trained in the art of doing that specifically,

or explicitly, and that was a huge breakthrough for me. So I really went into it with a huge break in that sense. How is your method for researching so well because I'm just doing it well. Well, thank you. So Robert actually just posted a picture of his note cards on Instagram the other day. Basically, it starts on 4x6 note cards. You sort of read books and you break down the material from those books onto the note cards and you accumulate and you accumulate and then you sort and organize.

And so I'm in the middle of a book now and I'm moving all these pieces around. So I'm in the middle of a book now, and I'm moving all these pieces around. And you know, I had the stack of note cards for the chapter that I'm writing today. So it's this kind of process of researching, synthesizing, and then using those as building blocks for your own writing. Wow. I mean, I think I should try that. I saw that in one of your, I think you were doing like a Google talk or something like that and that was, you mentioned something about those.

I didn't realize that was actually your process of researching to write a book. So, wow. Okay, so now that you've like, and also, your new book is so, so big. I mean, it's like 700 and what, 12 pages. I mean, it's a long, I mean, like it's like 700 and what 12 pages, I mean, I don't know about that. It's a long, I mean, the way I have it, because I have it on it.

Oh, it's a PDF or something, right? A PDF, yeah, for me, it's a PDF. So I'm speaking to myself, did this be a amount of, I guess you've basically done this so much in this space that you kind of are like gathering about a lot of the information. But what I loved about this particular book is that it was, it's very, it's like you're making these, these philosophers very real, like real people, you're humanizing them, right?

It's not just like looking at a word and saying, okay, this is a quote. It's like you're kind of creating them, like you're looking at their actions, what they're doing day to day, which of course I love because that's how, like you said, it's the practical element where I feel like someone, I can relate to the person. No, it's funny.

I actually have not seen the book yet because of the pandemic. Like normally I would have seen, I would have had physical interactions with drafts and galley. So I don't even have the book yet, and I'll probably get it in about a week or so before it comes out.

So we're kind of all in uncharted territories. When you said it, it was 700 pages. I was like, oh my God, I hope I didn't write a 700 page book that doesn't sound very appealing. But I think it's shorter than that. I hope. But- Oh, sure, and is it, the way I'm looking at it, it looks like that. But also, it's shorter than that. I hope. Oh sure it is the way I'm looking at it

It looks like that, but also it's a kind of book I don't think it's a bad thing because you can use this book as a reference point like you can kind of go back and forth And it's not like one you can like read one One person what you can read Zeno for example one of the stoics and you can read You know I call them cleanse cleansey. What's his name, cleanse? Claims. Claims yes, okay, sorry, I'm not as versed as you are. You can kind of like go back and forth when needed.

So that's what I like about those kind of books too. Yeah, no, it's definitely designed to be modular. And on my book, The Daily Stoic, we did a similar thing where you read one page a day. I really do like self-contained sort of modular writing. But to your point about humanization, I mean it is interesting that we say that because it sort of implies that they weren't humans to begin with. We have such a strange relationship, the ancients where we think that because they lived a long time ago,

they that humanity was somehow fundamentally different and there were a lot of things that were different, but you know, I was thinking about this recently. I mean, Marcus Aurelius wrote medications during the Antenine Plague, which was a 15 year.

Global pandemic that originated in China was spread by the military and ends up sort of devastating Rome. And it creates an inordinate amounts of stress and chaos and sadness and tragedy. And so, I mean, what he was waking up and experiencing was the ancient Roman way of exactly what we're waking up and experiencing. And we like to think that the past was so different, but it really wasn't. And I mean, I open the preface of stillness as the key, Seneca is sitting in his apartment.

He's got the windows open because it's hot, and he's trying to write and concentrate, and he can't because his neighbors are being too noisy, and there's a police disturbance downstairs, and there's, he's being disturbed by carriage noise instead of car noises, but fundamentally, it's describing the exact same thing as someone living in Los Angeles

or Rio de Janeiro or New York City, right? Just how noisy life is and how distracting that is. And so, people were fundamentally people and they always have been. And so, what I'm trying to do in lies is say, okay, we can learn a lot from what these people said. But what do they do? Senaqa is offered a job in Nero's administration and he's struggling with whether to accept it. And he rationalizes that he should do it because he can contain the worst impulses of him and that he's trained for this. maybe there's these these political things he wants

to accomplish and it's very flattering and it's like well what does that sound like right? That sounds like the exact dilemma that politicians are struggling with right now and from 2016 to 2020. So so again people are people and we've been struggling with the same things and that to me is what philosophy is really about. It's funny you mentioned Santa Cix because I think he's the most relatable to modern time, right? Because he was a senator. He did, and he was very ambitious. And I mean, just from like the, you know, I'm not schooled, like I said on you, but from what I kind of like got from most of them. But you know who you talk about a lot. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but Marcus Arelius, you mentioned him all the time.

Of course. Is he your favorite? Is he like your favorite? Or do you resonate with him the most? I do resonate with him the most. I sometimes I call him Marcus because he's been such an integral part of my life in life. And so this is a meditation here, his favorite book.

So I favorite book and this is my favorite translations by Gregory Hayes. But I was 18 or 19 years old. I hadn't even met Robert yet. And I bought that book and it came on Amazon. And I just read it and it's this incredible document because it's really a peak inside the brain of the most powerful man in the world at that time.

And Marcus is writing, he has no idea that it's ever gonna be published. He's not even writing like, hey, today, I had a sandwich and then I fell asleep. He's writing about losing his temper and he's writing sort of, admonishments to himself about how to be better. So it's really more like aphorisms or yeah,

they're like aphorisms and maxims about who he wants to be, how he wants to be, what the right thing is, who he doesn't want to be like. There's even a big extended section of all the things he learned from people in his life and he just wanted to get it all in one place. So that book was just so formative for me and I returned to it over and over and over again. And it's because I think it's so short and kind of cryptic that it really just allows

you to even talks about this in meditations. You know, he says, you never step in the same river twice. And I think every time you pick up the book, depending on what's going on in your life, you get something different out of what he's saying. And I was just reading it last night before bed. And I was like, you know, this is a copy I've had for 15 years. And I've marked almost everything on the page, except for this little thing, and it struck me in a different way last night, and I wrote it down, and I'll probably

do something with it. That's amazing. So, you basically, how many times do you think you've read that whole book? I mean, well into the hundreds. It's not really a book that you necessarily have to read cover to cover. It's self-contained, is that? Same thing. Yeah, I mean, like, you're all just open or just read you one.

So this is a book 10, number four. If they've made a mistake correct them gently and show them where they went wrong. If you can't do that, then the blame lies with you or with no one. And so they're just like little sentences like that and they're all numbered. It really, the right translation is really key. Some of the other translations aren't as accessible, but that's just an, just think about the person who wrote that commanded the most powerful army in the world.

The largest empire in the world was, there was literally something called the cult of the emperor. There was literally a cult that worshipped the emperor as a god. You could put people to death, when he would head out in the streets, thousands of people would cheer him. Every pleasure you could imagine was his. So he was in every sense all powerful.

And yet he's writing in his diary at night that if you can't, you know, kindly convince someone of the error of their ways, then he's the problem, not them. I mean, that's just incredible. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm, all fuzzy, all self-care, zero self-doubt you. Grab a with love today. Vitamin water, zero sugar, nourish every you.

Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O. So I really liked him too, because he's all about having. I mean, I like what he does. His practice is his habits. He does every day. And I want to look, I'm going to ask you about them because I actually relate to all of them except one, which is the one that says he eats to live.

He doesn't eat to he lives to he eats to live, not lives to eat, which of course, me being a Jewish girl, you know, I do the opposite. But the thing that I found super interesting about him, he's the one who also said that you let the practice, you are what you do every day. So you have to practice being excellent every day. Sure. And I just, because of course this podcast is habits and hustle, anything that goes with anything that I hear that kind of triggers that habit thing, I of course kind of like latch on to. But he says journaling is a really big one, right?

And I want to you also believe in journaling every day, right? Yes, I mean meditations is Marcus Aurelius' journal, right? And so yes, very big on journaling. I think habits go to the core of what stoicism is. It's not this thing that you just read and then you magically are transformed. It's not like a religious awakening. It's much more in ongoing process. And so when you read meditations, what's really interesting is how often he's repeating things to himself. He's having to remind himself, hey, what about this? What about this? You forgot about this. I think that's a big part of it. Zeno is a founder of Stoicism. He has a great line which I think

about as far as habits go. He says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing. I think that's, to me, really, what habits are about it's about, you know, James Clear calls them atomic habits. What are those little things that have an enormous impact on your life. And yeah, whether it's waking up early to journal, whether it's, you know, deciding that you're not going to drink anymore or it's deciding to, you know, like a basic little habit I have that sort of keeps me sane is I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm awake at a minimum. And so I have one hour of time to journal, time to

spend time with my kids. I can, like, when I'm, when I get in the shower in the morning, I'm not thinking about emails that I've gotten. I'm thinking about whatever has, I'm thinking in the shower having, you know, not touched my phone since 10 o'clock at night. And so I'm starting the day from a clear place. I'm not starting the day from my back flip, or I'm not, you know, Donald Trump is not in my head, because when I woke up at 2 a.m.

to go to the bathroom, I checked my phone and I saw something that the president tweeted. You know what I mean? I have clarity and ownership over my own mind, and that's really important. Well, when you have kids, like I do too, it's not so easy, because you have a lot of distraction from them.

So waking up, and I think you do this as well, but waking up early and being that creature of habit that you wake up at the same time around the same time every day, kind of like also helps with that, right? For me anyway, I don't know what time you wake up. What time do you wake up in the morning? So I woke up this morning at like 6, 10, because that's when my, so I used to wake up early on purpose now.

I don't really set it alarm because my kids are gonna wake me up at an early time. I don't have to work. Thanks. But so the first thing, I woke up, my wife had been up with them at some time in the middle of the night. I knew this so it was my turn.

So I took both kids, we waited for it to get a little bit light outside and then we went on a three-mile walk together and we were just outside for close to an hour. I was active, we saw the sun come up, we talked and so like you know I obviously have been at work since then but it's like I started the day with you know an hour and a half of like quiet time with my kids. Like, I'm in a good place, right? I could have spent that time checking my email. I could have spent that, you know, if it wasn't a pandemic, maybe you would have scheduled a breakfast meeting. I like to preserve that morning

time for myself, for my, for my important creative work and for my family. And then everything else, like, I'll probably be done for the day around like two or three o'clock. And if I have to catch up on stuff, sure, but I've already done all the important stuff for the day. Right, so always like, so make your morning where you do all the important things. So all the really important tasks should be done in the morning. Like I think with this also was that, I don't know if that was Marcus or really this thing,

but I know that was one of the things that I saw you talk about as well. Now, you said something that I wanted to touch upon, which was getting to the Good Habits. And then what did the stoic say, or what have you kind of gleaned from them from all the stories of how to break bad habits. So it's one thing to make a good habit, but how do you break a bad habit? Yeah, I mean, obviously that's that's a that's the trickier part. I mean, one of the things

I think you do is you start small. So like, let's say I'm addicted to my phone, which like all people I am, I started, I started, I said, hey, look, I'm going to, I'm addicted to my phone, which like all people I am. I started, I started, I said, hey, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna not touch my phone for the first 10 minutes that I'm awake, right? So that's why I started. I actually used an app called SPAR, which I love, and I did a group. It was like a challenge group with people.

And you had to check in after the 10 minutes or whatever. And if it was on the honor system, but the point is, if you mess up, if you miss a check in, it charges you like 10 bucks or something. So I started small, I started 10 minutes, and then I went to 30 minutes, and then I went to an hour. And after a year of sort of explicitly building the habit, it becomes a muscle memory.

And now it's like, I have to remember to grab my phone on the way out of the house in the morning because it's not a part of my morning. It's not what I built my morning around. I built my morning around all these other things. So not actually is something Epictetus talks about. He's like, one of the best ways to break a habit is to build a different habit, right? To sort of put your inner, instead of just going,

I'm not going to do X anymore. I think it can sometimes be better. I'm going to do Y instead, and to focus your energy constructively building something up rather than trying to break something by force. And then what else other ways that you can build a build, a good habit or break a bad habit besides starting small with baby steps. I mean another way. Sure, sure. I think so so as part of

the the morning, you know, the morning routine we talked about, but then the other part of Seneca's sort of routine is in the evening, there's like a review. So he's like sort of maybe in the morning here's what I'm trying to do here's who I want to be this is my goal, you know, and then the after in the evening he sort of says, you know, after my wife has gone to bed after the house is quiet, I said and I put the day up for review. And so like that's something I tend to I tend not to do it so much in the oftentimes in in the morning, I'm reviewing the day that just passed, but same idea, which is you set your intention,

and then you evaluate how you compared to that intention, just in the way that a football team breaks down film of the game, how did you do, right? Why didn't you, you didn't do what you're supposed to, why is that, what your excuse so on and so forth. So like, for instance, I'm someone who gets anxious when I fly. Not like I'm anxious to fly, but clearly I am anxious because I end up being very rushed, I end up getting an argument, I take everything too seriously.

And so what I'll often do is it's like, okay, you're leaving for the airport in an hour, and so I'm writing about this in the morning, it's gonna be delayed. Let's think about this in advance. Here's, like, sort of actually trying to describe yourself what you don't want to do, or what you do wanna do, whatever it is. But then you actually have to take the uncomfortable step afterwards of doing the debrief, right?

Doing the debrief. Yeah, deep evaluation. You can't just go, hey, you know, I'm trying to eat healthier. And then, and then, you know, you just eat whatever the fuck you want. And you, six weeks later, like, why have I not lost any weight?

It's like, well, what did you eat yesterday? And if you're checking in with yourself about how you're doing, I think it keeps you on track. Keep you accountable. So that's also why I think journaling can be a place such a big important role, right? Because you're seeing day to day what you said the other day.

You know, you basically are keeping a track of what you're thinking and what you're saying and how you're feeling. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. You, what was I think I saw that you had like, I wanted to ask you because you would have a journal, I don't like again, I don't know where I saw that you mentioned it,

but you write one sentence a day and something, which I think is a really good way for people who are not, you know, accustomed to journaling to start, because it's, again, it's just, you're starting small. Yeah, I know. What kind of book with that or so. So I totally wish that that's how I'd started journaling because it would be so cool that to have, but I found it only if I think I found it three and a half years ago, some

three and a half years then. But it's called the One Line a Day Journal. And there's a whole bunch of different ones. There's the One Line a Day journal for moms and there's interesting ones. But yeah, it's just one line a day and so what's really cool for me as a writer is like you know yesterday when I was doing and I was like you know I'm you know starting part two of you know the book that I'm working on now which I would say but it happened that that almost exactly one that exactly one year ago today I was in the middle of actually two years ago, I was in the middle of, actually two years ago yesterday,

I was in the middle of part two of stillness. And so I just write one sentence every day. It's kind of like what I'm working on, what's going on. And it gives me, it just helps me kind of root myself in where I am in my life. So yeah, I just write one quick sentence every day. You could do it, you could write a lot of sentences if you wanted, there's like a few lines.

But the point is, you're just supposed to read one thing a day and you could do it about your kids. You know, you could do it about your battle with depression. You could do it about your diet or you could just do one that's sort of miscellaneous like mine, but I really like it. I'm gonna get that one. I saw that I'm like, that sounds perfect because I it's that and meditation never seemed to work. You know, I always like make this big and

ambitious at the beginning. Yeah. And then it just always like falls to the way side. But the journaling though, I know there's a lot of, you know, it once you get into the habit, there's a there's a lot of other benefits, ancillary benefits. So you just motivated me again to try that again. More from our guests, but first a few words from our sponsor. So have you guys tried you can for your energy? Because if not, I would definitely give it a shot. You can have this patented ingredient called super starch, which has this ability to provide a steady release of energy

without spiking your blood sugar levels. This helps you focus through the day. It gives you longer lasting training while you're working out and it keeps your hunger in check without of course compromising your health. Today I had their energy and protein cookies and cream powder, which was not just delicious, but it really did maintain my energy throughout the day. It was originally created for a child with a rare metabolic disorder, but U-Can's superstarch is now the go-to energy for over 400 colleges and proteins.

Olympians are using it, and thought leaders in health and fitness are also fans. You can learn more about you can at youcan.co that's youca n.co and save 20% on your order with code hustle. So let's talk a little bit about leadership because we do that here a lot. And from, again, like from the Stoics, right, and maybe from your new book, Lives of the Stoics, what are a couple learnings about being a great leader? Is there something that that's not so obvious?

I shouldn't say they're obvious, but so, you know, we hear the same generic stuff all the time. Is there anything that's a little bit more unique because you've dove so deep and lean so deep into this stuff? That's a little bit. Yeah, I think what we're seeing right now obviously is just sort of a masterclass in what leadership should not look like. And I don't just mean that on the presidential level. I mean, like you look at the entire world and you could probably count on one hand, you know, the amount of leaders who have sort of risen to this crisis. And I think the real core idea for the Stoics,

this predates them a little bit, they sort of make it their own. You know, there's this expression, character is fate or character is destiny. And the idea is, if you're a shitty person, you might be successful in the short term, but eventually this is going to prove to be your undoing. I'm sort of talking about this in my book, Ego is the enemy as well. Ego can masquerade as confidence and competence, but ultimately Ego can masquerade as confidence and competence, but ultimately in real crises or difficulties, you know, the truth is revealed. But I think for the Stoics, it marks, really, says his great line, which to me, has sort of the, has to be the motto of all leaders. He says, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. The amount of leaders I've seen in this pandemic say things like,

well, we've got to go back to normal sometime or, you know, this could be really bad for the economy or, you know, but my supporters don't like masks or, you know, any of this nonsense. And what you never, what we're not hearing anyone say is like, this is gonna be unpopular, but it's the right thing. Or they're saying like, this is gonna hurt, but it's gonna be the right, I'm seeing this with, you know, my own kids and whether we should send them to school or not, some are correct. You know, that people are saying things like, what kids need school?

And it's like, sure they do, of course. But that's not what the question is. The question is, is it safe? And what is the impact on everyone else, right? And so I think at the core, what leadership is about, it's not about success, it's not about accomplishing your goals, it's what your obligations are, what your duty is as a person. And so, you know, Marcus really, it's an incredible thing.

In meditations, he speaks of the common good, something like 80 times. Over and over again, he's talking about his obligation to other people, to future generations, to strangers, to even people who are not even a part of the Roman Empire. And we seem to have lost the ability, I don't even know any other way to say this,

we seem to have lost the ability to give even two shits about other people. And to me, that's been the most egregious failure of leadership. Even I was reading this article about some of the pandemic response teams. And it's like they were think that somebody actually said, oh, the virus seems to be hitting democratic states

the worst, so this isn't that important. And like just wrap your head around, being like a rise into a position of leadership and thinking that life or death is a partisan issue. And so I think fundamentally, with the Stoics talk about leadership, that was inseparable from this sort of ethical duties of a good person. Yeah, I mean, there's a thought, I mean, where is the line between ego and confidence,

right? They're not synonymous with the same. You can be, right? And do they ever talk about that, Like the, the, the, the difference? Well, I think confidence is really important, right? If you don't believe you can do something, you're probably not going to be able to do it. Right. But just because you believe you can do something does not mean that you can do it, right? It's air. Okay. How about Eric, like arrogance, ego confidence? There's like their confidence is not the same, but you need to have some kind of arrogance to have that confidence sometimes to do so. I mean, I don't know. So, so, so Aristotle talks about the golden mean and he says that that all virtues are a midpoint

between two vices. And so he says, for instance, the virtue of courage is halfway between And so he says, for instance, the virtue of courage is halfway between cowardice and recklessness, right? And I think that's an interesting way to think about it. And so if ego is on one end, and sort of, ironically, I think the ego of arrogance, like the sort of Donald Trumpian ego, is actually, to me, very similar to the ego of like imposter syndrome, the ego is actually, to me, very similar to the ego of imposter syndrome, the ego of

like, in both cases, you're obsessed with other people and what they think of you, when in reality, people aren't thinking about you at all. Isn't that insecurity? So that type of ego, ego mania is more, it's stemmed in complete insecurity. But then most people who are that egocentric are insecure, and that's why they are acting that way. That's sort of my point, I think. At the far ends of the extreme,

it's insecurity both directions. And so in the middle, confidence to me is self-awareness. It's an understanding of your strengths, but also it's an awareness of your weaknesses. And the reason this is so important, it's like, if you're a boxer and you go into the ring thinking that you're perfect and you have no weaknesses, that's precisely where you're going to get hurt. If you go into the ring and you go, okay, I'm better than this boxer in these following

areas and I'm not as good in these following areas and as a result I've created a fight plan that allows me to leverage my strengths against their weaknesses and I have a defense for my weaknesses. That's where you want to be. It's like if you were going up against Kobe Bryant and you knew that Kobe Bryant shot 80% when he went to his right and 80% when he went to his right, and 50% when he went to his left, all you would know is that your job is to make him go to his left, right? So what confidence is, is not this delusional sense of your invincibility, it's a realistic sense of the world around you. Robert Green, I think it's in 33 strategies where he talks about,

he says, we have to take to reality like a spider in its web. And I think that's really the weakness of egotistical people is that they don't live in reality, they live in a fantasy land. And that can work for a while, but eventually, in this case, you come crashing up against a pandemic that doesn't give a crap

about what you think, and then all of a sudden, you know, all your weaknesses are laid bare. You will fail. So what? Everybody does. But your gym, your watch, your yoga pants, they pretend you won't. So when you miss a day, eat the pancakes. Give up on a workout.

You failed? Seriously, what the hell? We're body. We've been a part of that too, but not anymore. A body where rejecting perfection and embracing reality. Not in a pizza Monday kind of way, in a loving your whole life kind of way. In a, this workout is fun, and it's okay if I take a week off kind of way. In a, this workout is fun and it's okay if I take a week off kind of way. And then, I'm eating healthy and it's okay if I indulge kind of way.

In a, I like myself no matter what kind of way. Yeah, you will fail. We all will. But we're not gonna let that be the end. You see that? We're already making progress. So let's keep going. We are body.

Start your free trial at body.com. That's b-o-d-i- dot com. And also, managing your emotions and anger, I saw that to be a big steam as well, right? Because that could be someone's biggest downfall a lot of times, you know, when you react badly, right? And it becomes like a bad ripple effect. Okay. I would say it's like, we don't all have anger problems, but anger is a problem for everyone. Like, Senica has a whole essay, it's called on anger. And he wrote it for the emperor, Nero,

when Nero was a young boy before it was quite clear how Deraingit Nero was. But his point was that anger is this sort of most savage, most irredeemable of all emotions, that it primarily injures the person who is angry, not the person that they're angry at, and that it's the sort of the root of not just most evil, but also most people's downfall. And I think he's right. I don't think when the stoics are talking about anger, they don't have it, they don't have a temper.

I think they just figured out how to conquer that. And it's the work of one's life. It's really being aware of the consequences that, I mean, one of the things, we have a challenge called team your temper for Daily Stoke. We talked about this but one of the things you can do is just like get out of his paper and just write down the things that anger has cost you in your life. You know what I mean? And that list gets pretty significant pretty quickly. You're like,

well I said this and then I got fired and I said this and then they walked out the door. And, you know, like, very rarely do we look back at the role anger is played in our life and we think, I'm so glad I lost my temper. You always regret it. Right, absolutely, absolutely. That's a good, that's actually a good technique or a tactic to do, to write it down. What are some other things that you learned from the Stoics

that they did to control their anger, their temper, their emotions? So, I mean, I think this is- I like that, that's very practical, so I like practicality. Thank you. This kind of a girl, but I mean, one of the big Stoic exercises is Memento Mori. There's a mark

to real. I have to, I carry this coin with me, but Marcus says that, you know, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. And so one of the things, and he quotes the playwright, Europeedie, he says, and why should you feel angry at the world as if the world would notice? And I think this point is that if you realize you could die any moment, if you realize that at some point you die and you're gone forever, it sort of turns down the volume on not just everything, but it also makes your anger feel really silly

and ridiculous, you know? And so that's, I always go like, why am I so mad about this? First off, your heart's pumping like crazy. You're shortening your life by however many seconds every time you lose your temper. But second, you're just wasting time. You're so mad about this thing or this person. And this person doesn't even

know you exist, right? The person who cut you off in traffic, they just weren't paying attention. They were not trying to harm you, and they still don't even know that you're there. Do you know what I mean? And I think about that a lot. It's just like, wow, we're both going to die. Who gives a shit? Absolutely.

But what happens if it's something that's like if not the person on the street that they cut you off because that's very trivial and silly, but something that's much more effective of your life, like somebody in your life that you are you know who's your business partner and they do something or whatever your your co-worker, whatever it is your husband, your girlfriend, whatever it is, it can affect every type of relationship or any type of scenario. It's not just in a flash moment when you're driving on the 405, right? Yes. Oh, I was going to say, it's like those are the ways that you have to really try to figure out ways to control your emotions or anger because that is a downfall of people.

But all of us have, right? Totally. And then stillness, I talk, I'm fascinated if people haven't watched it. Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech. You have the greatest basketball player of all time and it goes up and you think this is going to be this sort of crowning achievement this wonderful moment where he you know

He's like, oh, I remember you know the first basketball I ever got and I remember my first pro game And I remember this and and and he gets up there and he catalogs like every slight every injustice Yes, everything that's ever happened to him. And you're just like, whoa, if that's what winning looks like, count me out, you know, that doesn't look fun at all. And so I think that's something to look at too, the Stoics, the Stoics, you know, being in close, such close proximity to power sort of got some, some insider access to this. If you've ever met a really successful but angry person, you sort of, you realize like no amount of money in the world is ever gonna make this person happy.

They're still mad about getting cut from their high school basketball team or whatever it is. They're still mad that their mom made them wear glasses or that they got laughed at in history class. And you just realized that what a place of profound pain, a lot of that anger is coming from. And that it's really self-inflicted. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so happy you just said that Michael Jordan, Hall of Fame speech, because I totally,

I remember that so well. And it was talked about a lot because I think it surprised like so many people, right? Here's the best person has ever played the game in the world. And he was like, he's such a perfectionist that he can't even get out of his own way of actually appreciating or seeing his, his, I guess his, I guess the life that he's lived and like the path is profession that he's done. It's unbelievable. And just how you do one thing in life is how you do everything.

I'm sure that happens in his personal life. And what also you said is I see it all the time that people who are billionaires who from the outside look like they have it all. They should be happier than anything, and they're the most miserable people, the most, you know, just if no gratitude to their unhappy, again, they are petty is the good word of it, petty. Like Michael Jordan was very petty in that thing, right? Yep, and what I think is interesting is, so a go a lot of people they go, oh, so Michael Jordan was angry That's what it takes and yeah, you're this is just kind of a survivorship bias because you know like so Robert ori Who won a bunch of rings with the Lakers a bunch of rings with the bulls?

I think one other team. No, I think he's won the most rings I think he's won seven rings no But you if you read about Robert Oury, no one's like, and Robert Oury is even angrier than Michael Jordan. It just happens to be that Michael Jordan is an extraordinarily talented basketball player who's also nursing a bunch of grudges. Do you know what I mean?

They're not related. And so Steve Jobs was the most brilliant CEO and sort of designer, product designer of all time. And he was an asshole. They're not the same. Like they're really, if anything, treating people so cruelly harmed him and it held him back from being,

Kanye West is not a great rapper because he's manic and has a big ego. He's an incredibly talented artist and thinker and sensitive person who also has these demons over here and sometimes they get all mixed up. And if anything, it's prevented him from doing great work, you know, better work. Right. No, I totally agree. You showed me just before a coin. What is on that coin? And when you see that again, yeah, so you want to drink a glass of water. I keep interrupting you when you're like,

the momentum, or you on the front, which means a remember you are mortal. And then it has the three facts of life, which in almost all the momentum or the art that you see So there's an hourglass which is time a skull which is death and then a flower which is life and then on the back It just has the quote from our surrealist you could leave life right now and the idea and and and in most Sort of paintings of philosophers. You'll see a skull on their desk The idea in the ancient world was, life was so fragile, you could go any moment,

people wanted sort of reminders of their mortality. I have on my mirror in my bathroom, I have, I bought it from an antique store. It's a broken off chunk of a tombstone from some Victorian grave. And the only word you can see engraved on it is it just says dad. And so the idea of having these sort of tangible reminders of how short life is just a really powerful philosophical exercise.

To me, it just puts everything in perspective like in an instant. Do you carry that around with you? I do, yeah, I carry the coin with me. We sell them in the daily stoke store, but yeah, I carry one that says, I'm into more and then in my other pocket, I carry one that says, that list the four virtues of stosis, which are courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom. I like that one. I like to get that kind of, let's get back coin.

Where would I get that? I'll send you one. But, I promise. I promise, I promise. I'm gonna hold you to that right now. I'm right. I know where you live. I'm writing it down right now.

It's, if you just go to store.daily I'm right. I know where you live. I'm writing it down right now. It's if you just go to store.dailystowoc.com that we have all the challenge points there. Do you know what I noticed? Also, there's not very many. There's only one woman I read about in this whole in this whole stoicism time, a philosopher time, and that was the daughter of Kato. Yes. Iron Woman or Super Woman. For Kato, yes. Right, I got it, right? Yes.

I can't believe I remember that one. And she was the only one, Portia, and she was married to Julius Caesar and Embrudus. Is that sort of, sort of, uh-huh? Okay, can you help? No, look, like when I sat down to biographize all the major stoke figures, it was obviously very, people tend to think

stosism is just this kind of masculine thing and it's just for guys, it's only popular with guys. I know how big, how much of my audience is female, it's probably 50% or more so. And so it was really important to me that we have at least one female figure in it. But also within the, I didn't wanna shoehorn in someone who wasn't actually sort of us,

in the strict sense. So unfortunately, the ancient world was a man's world and there weren't many stoic women. But Portio Cato is fascinating for two reasons. One, she's Cato's daughter and she mar marries Brutus, and she and her husband, she doesn't get enough credit, but she and her husband conspired to kill Julius Caesar, who had overthrown the Roman Republic, and sort of most badass. Brutus was afraid of telling his wife that he was thinking about killing Julius Caesar, and he wasn't afraid to tell her because he didn't want her to know.

It's that in Rome, conspiracies, if you were suspected to be conspiring, they would examine you under torture. And so he was afraid that his wife wouldn't be able to, she, to, to, or she suspected that he wouldn't wasn't telling her because he didn't know if she could hold out under torture. And so she famously stabs herself in the leg, doesn't tell anyone, binds up the wound, and just sees how long she can hold the pain without breaking under it. And ultimately, this is why they end up conspiring together.

And then famously, she commits suicide rather than be killed by Caesar, by swallowing hot coals, which is, again, pretty inhuman. But what's interesting is, so she's like the main stoic female figure and the main one that gets a profile on the book, but Musoneus Rufus, who's one of the later Roman stoics, is very transgressive in his own time because he's one of the first philosophers to say that parents should instruct both children regardless of gender in philosophy.

And his argument is one, I only have two, I just have boys, but his argument is he's like, you don't care what gender your dog is, like you want a great hunting dog, right? He's like, you don't care what gender your horse is, like you just care if it can do the job. And his point is that like virtue, which is excellence, is it has nothing to do with one's genitals. And that he says both sexes are equally capable of

and have the same inclination for virtue. So the Stokes were by no means flawless on when it came to sexism, but they were ahead of their time in that sense, so it's really important that she be in the book. Office Depot Office Max has great deals on everything you need to succeed, like stylish furniture and chairs to keep you working comfortably, the latest tech to keep you organized and productive, calendars and planners to keep you on schedule, and cleaning supplies to keep your space spotless. It's the perfect time to stock up on the supplies you on schedule, and cleaning supplies to keep your space spotless. It's the perfect time to stock up on the supplies you need to succeed from the office to your

home and everywhere in between. Need it fast? No problem. Place your order at office-tipo.com and pick it up in just 20 minutes at your nearest office depot or office max store. What would be the one stoic that you would say is the most underrated that people just don't know about that you learned a lot of really valuable life lessons from? Yeah, that's a great question.

Actually, I just remember to go back to the female question. One of the other things, obviously, we closed the book with Marcus Aurelius as the last of the ancient Stoics, but then I've just been writing some extra bonus stuff that's going to go out when the book comes out. But on modern Stoics, and I ended up profiling area on a Huffington, who people don't think. First off, Born in Greece is introduced to Marcus Aurelius in high school. She goes to Oxford at age 16, and she actually carries a laminated quote from Marcus Aurelius in her purse everywhere that she goes.

So the idea that philosophy is this is a dusty thing. Just for men, it certainly doesn't hold up. So I find he's like that. No, I do. Are you serious? I didn't know that. Yeah, she's great. I've gotten a little bit over the years. But to go to your point about... Yes, she's great. To go to your point about underrated stoics,

Musoneus Rufus, who I mentioned, is fascinating. He's exiled four different times under four different emperors, partly because he has this nasty habit of speaking truth to power, but he has this great badass line sort of on his last exile. He says, you know, you can take away my country, but you can't take away my ability to endure exile.

And he's basically saying, like, I ultimately have the power of choice to bear any fate that life throws at me. And so there's just this wonderful long history of the Stoics just, you know, dealing with the hardest, most difficult things you can imagine and just, you know, they just keep on trucking, and I just love that about them. It's like, I think it's resilience more than that's the character trait that I would say that guy has as well. Exactly.

You know, that's a good one. Which is name, what? Musoneus Rufus. How do you remember all of these? I mean, honestly, like, I do not. I do not. It's very, that we have those floor by six cards on you. So totally and look like as someone who's kind of self-taught

and sort of primarily interacts with these people through the written word, you know, when you have to sit down and read an audio book, you go, oh, I've never heard this word before. I have no idea how this name is pronounced. So actually as soon as I get off this interview, I have to go do a bunch of audiobook pickups where they're like, you got this name wrong

and you got this name wrong, after re-record a bunch of names. Oh, good. So I wasn't the only, I don't feel so bad that I call that guy cleanliness or whatever his name was. You know, it's Clienthees, but. Clienthees, thank you. Yes, I mean, these are absurd ridiculous names.

So maybe the reason I like Marcus are really as the best is that it's the easiest. As I was gonna say, you can actually say that name. Maybe that's why I like him the best too. Maybe has nothing to do with the whole habit thing and all his habits and excellence and that's really what it is. What are like some final takeaways that you would like to leave your readers with or the audience here with your findings, from all your research with the Stoics, from your new book?

Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think those four virtues from the Stoics, it's, you know, Marcus talks about this, he goes, if you ever find anything better than courage, self-control, justice or wisdom, he says it must be a pretty extraordinary thing indeed. I think he's right, those four character traits, those four virtues, to me, that's the highest form of human excellence, right? And that's what I think we're all trying to strive for in our own way. And so just this idea that, you know,

that stoicism is a thing you do. Obviously you read about it and you can write about it and you can listen to podcasts about it or watch movies about it or YouTube videos about it, whatever, but the point is ultimately, it has to become a thing that you do. That's the whole point of it, that it becomes an action. And so I think just realizing that is, is ultimately, I think that's the through line

of all my books is that you have to apply this stuff in real life. And since you started taking this stuff extremely seriously and written copious amounts of books about them, has your, have you changed? Like have you actually, has your mindset shifted a lot? Like beyond just using some practical implication. You know, it's a process. I mean, nobody's perfect.

And, but I do try to give myself credit and go, how would I have reacted to this at 20? How would I have reacted to this at 25 at 30? How would I have reacted to this yesterday? And so to me, it's, are you making progress? I don't think it's that you magically transform yourself. I think how do you make progress? And if you can keep making progress for as long as you live,

eventually, we're talking about well-being is realized by small steps, but when you get there, it's no small thing. And so to me, I just kind of consider myself an ongoing work in progress. And I try to do a little bit each day. Wow. And so then this book comes out. What day does this book come out?

September 29th. Yes, September. Lives of the Stoics, right? My favorite Stoics. He are living from Xeno to Marcus Aurelius. And then, but you're saying you're working on another book. So when does that book come up? It's unbelievable.

You're like a machine over there. Yes. You have a bunch of other books. I mean, yeah, but I mean, and also, I didn't even even I wanted to ask you about this, but didn't you also go write a bunch of other books? I'm not going to mention names or anything, but you also are writing a bunch of, so how long does it take you go write a bunch of other books? I'm not gonna mention names or anything, but you also are writing a bunch of,

so how long does it take you to write a book? I think stillness took about two years, lives took about two years, but those times can overlap a little bit, so I'm just always working. I mean, I'm probably halfway through the, this book comes out in a month, and I'm about halfway through the draft, book comes out in a month and I'm about halfway through the draft,

the first draft of the next book. So I finish and I keep going, I finish, I start the next one, I finish, I start the next one, I just, I, we talked about habit and hustle, I think. Yeah. You guys show up every day and you can't stop and that's how you build a body of work. Ab, and then how many,

I'm just, is that a curiosity? How many actual hours a day do you write? I got to the office at about 8.30 and I was probably done with the hard core writing for the day, I probably did about three hours. Three hours. You never have writer's block, like what happens when you do ever get that?

I mean, yeah, certainly you can bump into areas where it's not going as well, but to me, writer's block is just not having the material. So if you do the research, you'll always have something to write. Amazing. Well, you're just amazing. A 33-year-old, like, how many best sellers do you have now? now have like one two three How many you know better than I know this is 10 this is book number 10 This is 10 Amazing, okay, so how do people find you if they want to learn about more of the daily stoic you We don't care if they know you you said you say you're not very interesting

Well usually so usually the best place to start if you're interested in the Stoic stuff, and you wanna just dip your toe in, I do a free email every day about Stoic philosophy that goes out to about 300,000 people each morning, and that's at dailystoic.com slash email. So that's the best place to start, but you can check out all the books on Amazon, and then also there's at Daily Stoic on Instagram,

and then I'm at Ryan Holiday. And you have a YouTube channel that has all the books on Amazon, and then also there's at Daily Stoke on Instagram, and then I'm at Ryan Holiday. And you have a YouTube channel that has all the videos. Yeah. Don't forget to put all those videos. You try to make a lot of stuff. I mean, that's the point. You want to reach people where they are. You're making a ton of content.

I don't know how you can, like, churry out a book this fast. I mean, literally, it takes people a year to have one book, and you have, like, 10 and you're six years old. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Have a good time. Have a good time. You're awesome and good luck with this book and I hope to meet you in person sometime soon.

I would love that. Don't stop keep it going. Habits and hustle from nothing in the summer. All out, a host of bio Jennifer Cohen. Visionaries tune in, you can get to know. Re-inspired. This is your moment. Excuses. We in Habitat. The Habits and hustle podcast. Power by Habits.

Next. What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? Hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm Heather Monahan, host of Creating Confidence, a part of the YAP Media Network,

the number one business and self-improvement podcast network. Okay, so I want to tell you a little bit about my show. We are all about elevating your confidence to its highest level ever and taking your business right there with you. Don't believe me, I'm gonna go ahead and share some of the reviews of the show so you can believe my listeners.

I have been a long time fan of Heather's no matter what phase of life I find myself in, Heather seems to always have the perfect gems of wisdom that not only inspire, but motivate me into action. Her experience and personality are unmatched and I love her go getter attitude. This show has become a staple in my life. I recommend it to anyone looking to elevate their confidence

and reach that next level. Thank you. I recently got to hear Heather at a live podcast taping with her and Tracy Hayes and I immediately subscribe to this podcast. It has not disappointed and I cannot wait to listen to as many as I can as quick as I can. Thank you Heather for helping us build confidence

and bring so much value to the space. If you are looking to up your confidence level, click creating confidence now. A blank page holds infinite possibilities. PAPI-A creates thoughtfully designed stationary journals, notebooks, and more. Each page is as special as the ideas you put in them. Best of all, their products can be personalized for free to be uniquely yours or an unforgettable gift.

Make each day noteworthy with POPPA. Visit POPPA.com for 10% off your first order. That's 10% off at PAPIR.com. iR.com.