Modern Wisdom - #541 - Ryan Holiday - Stoicism's Lessons For A Disciplined Life

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Ryan Holiday is a podcaster, marketer and an author. Discipline is one of the modern world's hot topics. Because it's become apparent that in order to achieve anything, you must be able to temper your desires and direct your efforts. The Stoics believed this 2000 years ago and between then and now there's been a plethora of historical examples which can teach us how to build and sustain discipline. Expect to learn why sanity is your most precious resource, why discipline without an end goal is pointless, how to stay disciplined when success arrives, why Martin Luther King let a Nazi punch him in the face, how to enforce discipline without lambasting yourself for falling short, what Eisenhower's smoking habit can teach us about self control, why 75 hard might not build discipline long term and much more... Sponsors: Get £150 discount on Eight Sleep products at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Buy Discipline Is Destiny - https://amzn.to/3RQDnvL  Check out Ryan's website - http://dailystoic.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Ryan Holiday, he's a podcaster, marketer and an author. Discipline is one of the world's hot topics because it's become apparent that in order to achieve anything, you must be able to temper your desires and direct your efforts. The Stoics believed this 2,000 years ago, and between then and now there's been a plethora of historical examples which can teach us how to build and sustain discipline. Expect to learn why sanity is your most precious resource, why discipline without an end goal is pointless, how to stay disciplined when success arrives, why Martin Luther King

let a Nazi punch him in the face, how to enforce discipline without lambasting yourself for falling short, what Eisenhower's smoking habit can teach us about self-control, why and Nazi punch him in the face. How to enforce discipline without lambasting yourself for falling short. What Eisenhower's smoking habit can teach us about self-control, why 75 hard might not build discipline long-term and much more. I actually got to do this in person with Ryan, which was nice, because I've lived in Austin for seven months,

and still we haven't found time to see each other yet, even though we've been in touch for many years. He's great. I really, really appreciate Ryan's historical view, the number of examples he's got from the last few centuries and millennia of people fighting with discipline. He's great. You're really going to enjoy this one. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the show. Yeah, good to see you in person. Finally, man. Yeah, we did it remote.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah, once from Austin, remote. Right. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Could have shouted it out the window, but yeah, finally. For that, yeah, you were here. You just come here.

Yeah. Interesting. You've got this quote that I referenced a couple of weeks ago. Be quiet, work hard, and stay healthy. It's not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart, but sanity. What's that? Well, I find as a former, like, sort of young person going places, that when I'm hiring someone, or I'm looking for someone,

like I want to, mentor help or whatever. It's not like how talented you are what your background is but it's like the first test is like. I just find it's like this person fucking nuts or not you know what I mean like does this person other shit together or not and so I think. We often. Think a lot about like getting better at what we do like the craft of the thing, which is really important. But then when you look at why did this person make it and this person not make it, it's usually very some stark divergence where they started making bad decisions. They started being very egotistical. They had this shot and they blew it.

It's not like in sports where you're like, this guy's just faster than that person. It's some other thing that usually prevents a person from reaching everything they're capable of reaching. Is there an element in there as well about playing a long game? Yeah, for sure. Is there an element in there as well about playing a long game? Yeah, for sure. Definitely. I mean, one of the hard parts about having potential and ambition is that it burns very hot and bright. If you want to be established, you want to do it for a long time, you have to figure out how to play a long game, to not blow yourself up to not. It's like, how do you care about it very deeply, but not sweat it so much that it's like

a liability? It needs to be sustainable, man. Yeah. Yeah. I play with this all the time and a lot of the guys that I see that have flash in upon successes on the internet are very similar. Yeah. Well, look, and we live in an environment where algorithmically you can just be given

a huge gift, you can just sort of blow up, right? And so that really has nothing to do with whether you deserve it or not. But then once you have it, the question is, can you maintain it? Can you do the work necessary? Can you not fuck it up, right? And I think we, when I talk to groups, I usually start with some version of like, you know, like the biggest enemy in this room is not like what the other people are doing. It's not the economy. It's not like gatekeepers. Like the person who determines like

how this is going to go is you. Really? Like for the most part, most failures are self-inflicted, or most big mistakes are self-inflicted. And they often come like right after some form of success. That's kind of the most dangerous point. That's when we overeat since when we go, it goes to our head. That's when we, you know, it's like, it's in that moment of success or triumph

or whatever that like, you need the most discipline, but there is the highest justification for slacking on said discipline. So that's where it happens. There's a quote from Charlie Munger that says, it is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's like, can I not blow this up? I remember, so I dropped to the college, I was in the 19 or 20, I sort of had all these cool opportunities very early,

things that, especially with what was happening, because I sort of left writing in the financial crisis, so all my friends are struggling, watched of watched as you know people my age have taken longer than you would expect to get where they want to go. And then so I was very cognizant of the concept of like a regression to the mean, right. And so just because you break out early just because you have this thing, you know, statistically you're going to end up like everyone else. So you have to be really cognizant of, if that's what's tens gonna, if that's what would happen sort of naturally,

you better make sure you don't accelerate that process. Like there's even less room for self-inflicted or, you know, unnecessary errors. So I was like really in my 20s, I was thinking a lot about like, can you've gotten these like opportunities, you have this stuff, like the number one thing is like, don't fuck it up. How'd you avoid being too risk of us when that happens? Yeah, I don't

know. I mean, that is the tension. Like you, you, you still want to take big swings, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like I was risk averse in the sense of, I don't wanna, I've got this capital and I have to protect it. It was more like how do you not alienate the wrong people? How do you not take your foot off the gas at the wrong time? It was more ego, complacency, entitlement, those kinds of feeling like you're an anointed feeling like you're special, like as soon as you start thinking like the rules

don't apply, like I've made it, I'm good. Like that's when, you know, you're probably getting into dangerous territory. Yes. It seems to me that ever since James Clears book, Atomic Habits, this has been something everyone's thinking about, right? That your outcomes are a lagging measure of your inputs. Like where your art is just a lagging measure of the things that you've gone toward that. And it seems like discipline is pretty much exactly the same. And that's where I'm going to guess the line between your future destiny is dictated by your current discipline. Well, I was thinking about that actually just recently.

All the work that I, when I'm working on a book, so discipline just came out and we're working on the next one, like all the material in those books are the result of research, writing, thinking, organizing that I did a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, right? And so all the work that you'll do in the future is, in a sense, the dependent on the work that you're doing now and how long you continue to do it. And so, like when I sit down, I was sitting down and writing today, the material that's available is, like I said, a lagging indicator of work that I did at some unknown previous date.

And so it can be really easy to be like consumed with what the task is in front of you. And that, but if you're not simultaneously also setting up the future stuff, you're going to wake up one day and you're not going to have what you need. It's like you can, and I think the better you are, the more momentum you have, the easier it is to coast for a long enough time that you don't even know that... The foundation is being eroded from underneath you. Yeah. It's a bank account that you pay into every single day.

Yes. Yeah, it's very interesting to think about that. I'm going back to what we said at the very beginning about people being able to blow up overnight. I did a reality TV show called Love Island in the UK a little while ago, and that basically plucks people out of obscurity and gives them two million followers and a million pound contract with a fashion company and they're the hardest thing in the world. The UK, in which every single person knows who they are, and I have been worried for quite a while about what that teaches young people about the route towards success, not that you're supposed to do something that's very difficult at a high

quality consistently for a long period of time, despite what the market says to you. It's that you're supposed to be in the right place at the right time. Yeah, I mean, one of the amazing things about the internet is that it's this platform, they'll, it's so much more democratic, so many more people get their shots. But then you get that shot and you still have to like half the stuff, right? Like you can get, like you can have one thing go viral, you can have one thing,

but like can you consistently or repeatedly do it? Do you actually have, once you have the audience, do you have the stuff? I'll see this too. Someone will be really good on one platform. A couple podcasts that does well, or a YouTube channel that does well, or the social media account. Then what happens is the entertainment business is like, well know, the entertainment sort of business is like, well, we want you to do this. We want you to do this. And like, so I often interact with

those people when they're coming to do a book and you go, oh, like, you're really just a feature or a function of the medium you're in. You don't actually have like, there's no there there as the expression goes, like you don't have like a core thing that can then be translated into the other medium. If you have that, you're a goal then, like you can succeed in all the different platforms in all the different ways. If you have some unique point of view or a voice or a thing that you, a message that you're delivering, it doesn't matter if you start on this platform or that platform, you should be able to, with some skill and artwork, be able to translate

in all these different ways and be able to succeed in a sort of multidisciplinary format. The problem is if you're really just like right place, right time, then it comes time to do this thing and like the audience just feels that there's like, there's nothing there. It's something that I found very interesting thinking about discipline was the relationship between directionality or an outcome that discipline is being filtered through. It feels like you need something to direct your discipline toward without direction. Discipline is pretty hard to deploy because what are you being disciplined in service of? What does discipline even look like? As an ex-club promoter for a long time, what was disciplined to me going out until four in the

morning? Sure. Maybe somebody else's idea of complete destruction? That's true. Yeah, what is the outcome where you're trying to get? What's it all being directed towards? That's sort of the ultimate question. Practice without some aim is not really practice at all. It's just activity. So, yeah, you have to figure out what it is that you're trying to do. Like, for me, it was, you know, okay, I don't want to write. That's what I want to do. So, then it became clearer, like, you know, what are the composite tasks that go into being

in a position to do that? Just like, I feel like, hey, I want to run for office, you know, okay, maybe military service composite tasks that go into being in a position to do that. Just like, hey, I want to run for office. You know, maybe military service would be helpful. You had a graduate from these schools, you had to cultivate this network. There's a resume that you need to have that job. And you got to know what that is. That's not to say that everyone has to do it the same way,

but you got to know the sort of the collection or the portfolio of assets or tools or skills that you're that where you want to end up, but the Stokes have this line to go like If you don't know what port you're sailing towards no wind is favorable You have to know where you want to go and this is this is really true, even for successful people. If you don't know where your stopping point is, what you want your life to look like, now of a sudden, you're in this wonderful, fortunate position where people are like, hey, you want to do this.

You want to do this. They're offering me this. Do you want to take this amount of money to do this, or more money to do this? And if you know, if you don't know, like, what's important to you, what kind of work you want to do, what you want your life to look like, you end up defaulting to one of two things, like, what pays most, or what are other people doing? And those are not the worst proxies in the world, like, it's better than no proxy, but you can end up very far from What you actually want and you'll only know that when you get there

So you have to have a very clear sense of like where you're trying to go or these things are these opportunities are You know really Chances to get super off track With that in mind is it easier to be disciplined before success arrives? Well, I mean, look, it's easier to say, like, singularly focus, or let's say, it's easier to say no to stuff when you're not getting offered a lot, right? It's easy to be principled when the, you know, there's not a lot in the way of consequences, right? It's easy to be principled when there's not a lot in the way of consequences. So all these things are easier to a certain degree when you're dealing with less volume

or lower stakes. One of the hard parts about being disciplined early is that you're doing this thing and the payoff maybe eating all of the sheets and doing a little bit. Very far lagging in the kitchen. So I think the truth is it's always difficult to be disciplined. It's always difficult. And it's something you have to figure out how to do and enjoy for its own sake. Because a lot of times there's not only not rewards for it,

but there can be the opposite of rewards for it, right? Like there can be punishments for it. If you're like, this is what I wanna do, this is the track that I'm on, this is what's important to me. You look around and everyone's not doing those things and it seems like they're having a better time, it seems like they're getting ahead for it, right? The, you have to,

if the only reason you're disciplined is that you think what comes on the other side of it will be worth it. Not only is that going to be hard when you're not immediately getting it, but then you find like, oh, I was super disciplined until I hit the best soloist. I was super disciplined because I wanted gold medal. I was super to, then you'd get that thing. Even that thing itself isn't the reward that you thought it was. So if you hated the process of it, but you told yourself it'll all be worth it when, you know,

there's a disappointment there, and the accomplishment is tinged with the kind of sadness. Was there anyone that you researched for the book that had that happen that reached lofty heights and then the discipline fell away? I mean, I think being disciplined once you're in the promise land is an extremely difficult thing. I don't know. I mean, when I look at super disciplined people, I, again, I'm not just making the case like, okay, you got to sacrifice it, then you get this, and then you don't have to do it anymore. It's more a kind of a, it has to get to a kind of an intrinsic thing. I remember I was, I was talking to Lance Armstrong once and he said, like, I raced for the money, but I practiced for me. Some version of that that like, his point was like,

he likes riding the bike. What they pay him for was the competition, right? And like, and like, people I've obviously, different opinions about, and so on and so on. But he's a person who clearly loved doing the thing. And you have to get to a point where you love doing the thing. That's why you do it.

And like, in writing, for instance, there's writing and there's publishing and those are not the same thing. Like publishing is when it goes out into the world and that's interacting with the publisher and there's contracts and there's deadlines and there's press and there's good stuff but there's also a lot that's not up to you. But like the day to dayness of it is is you. Does that make sense?

Yes. And seeing the stuff that you maybe aren't super, super enamored with as part of the price that you pay, the same as getting up on time, the same as hitting your word count. Yeah. Douglass Murray says that once the book is published, that's when the real work begins. That's how he is. It's just I've said it's like a second marathon and some people are not willing to run that marathon. But I remember I heard this interview with a comedian once

and he was saying that someone asked him, like, are you still gonna do comedy like once you've hit it big? Or, you know, and his point was that like, yeah, of course, because if I don't, it means that like, I was doing this for the wrong reasons, right? That like, he was a comedian as a means to an end to do another thing like acting or producing or you know, having to sitcom or whatever it is.

Like, I like doing the thing that I do. And what you'll tend to find, this is why discipline is so important. It as you get successful out of something like all of a sudden you're a pro-bul-quarterback or you're a CEO of a company or you write a book. Well, now you have all these opportunities to do not that thing, right? Like people wanna pay you to do other stuff, endorsements they wanna pay you, come speak here,

they want you to consult on this or invest in this. And so, if you don't love that thing, you're gonna end up doing all those other things. Or worse, if you do love that thing, but you don't have the discipline to be like, this is what I'm here for, this is like, what, why I did this, you'll end up reward for your discipline and your successes that you don't have the time

or bandwidth to do that thing anymore. Yes. And you only have a limited window to do that thing, right? And so one of the things I try to go like, well, could other people, writing is the thing that only I can do. Like, only I can write the things that I have to say. So I have to figure out a life and a system and a practice where I'm filtering what I'm saying, yes, and no

too, but I'm also building systems or structures. So I'm not spending a lot of time doing things that are prevent, and then I don't have time to do the hard thing, which is like, sit down at the blank page. That outsourcing of tasks that other people can do is an important one. One of the challenges, at least I'm seeing now, especially because Navale and his concept around leverage and all of that personal accountability stuff. I think people are quite quick to outsource stuff that they probably shouldn't be. I'm seeing a lot of, so for instance, in the podcasting world would be a good example.

The podcaster is the only person that understands the direction that they want to take the show in, but tons of shows that are smaller than the size of this one have guest bookers that look after all of the guests that come on. Sure. They have researchers that read the book and tell them the questions that they should ask. They have a thumbnail and a titling guide that comes in and demonstrates how it's visually going to look on YouTube and Apple podcasts and stuff. And go, well, what are you? Now, I have a friend who did a 330 date comedy tour over many years basically doing the same act. And he said that after the first 50 to 70 shows, he was no longer a comedian, he was an actor. And the point being that he was no longer actually doing the art of comedy, he was just a mouthpiece for what had happened before. And he had to take a big chunk of time off because he lost his love. Yeah, yeah. You have to maintain the authenticity of the craft or the thing.

And yeah, you do outsource and you find leverage points, but it's usually about the trivial things that don't matter to free you up to spend the most time on the things that do matter. So when you're saying no to stuff, it has to be clear that that is part of a process of saying, yes, a thousand percent yes to like the things that really do matter. So yeah, when I outsource, if I have an assistant or someone was my lawn, I'm sort of taking tasks out. That's not so I can just dick around, right? That's so I really do have the time to like sweat the details of

The stuff that I make right I tell a story in the book. There's this exchange Coretta Scott King Martin Luther King's wife is is called by the actor Harry Belafonte And you know, she's I think Martin Luther King and just gotten arrested or was you know sort of a way doing this March or something and as they're talking on the phone, you can tell, like she keeps having to put the phone down, she gets interrupted, kids are, need something, she's like food out of the oven, she's like just busy while they're on the phone. And Bella Fonte goes like, I, it's a personal question, but I have to ask like, are you, do you have like any staff?

Like are you doing, are you totally by yourself right now? And she goes, yes, yes, of course. And he says, why don't you have any help? And she goes, well, you know, my husband's a minister. She thinks the optics are bad. You know, I don't know if we can afford it. It's just sort of a combination of this block that they had. And Bella Fondik was like,

that's ridiculous and it ends now. He's like, I will pay for you to have stuff. And he realizes that like, he's like, they're doing, they're running this massive organization. They're the head of this movement that has the potential to change the world. Like, Marluxer can't be worried about whether there's milk in the fridge or not. And his wife can't be worried about this or that. You have to have the ability to delegate and build a system or a structure around you. And I think that can be really hard for people, especially if you came to what you did from a very sort of scrappy, like, passionate thing, where you loved doing it one,

but two, like you didn't think anyone could do it as well as you. And it takes a certain amount of discipline to find out what, to separate the essential from the inessential, to delegate, or eliminate the inessential, and then that leaves you with the essential in meditation, the Marxist Realist that leaves you with the essential.

In meditations and marks, you realize, so you can imagine, is the emperor of Rome is having to think about this exact thing. He says, you know, the question you have to ask yourself in every moment is, is this essential? And he said, because most of what we do and say is not essential. And he says, the thing is, when you eliminate the essential, you get the double benefit of doing the essential better and so this this isn't you know this sort of hoidy toidy like first world problem it's it's in a critical dilemma critical juncture point as you get better at what you do. to matize and scale the stuff so you can spend more time on the things that matter and less time on the things that don't matter. Or you can bring in other people who are better than you at certain things that allow you

to take what you do to another level. It's such a common dynamic that I see, especially coming from the northeast of England, right? Spit and saw the salt of the earth people who are that person that you said scrappy. They've come up from the bottom up, they've done all of the things themselves. They were HR and marketing and finance and accounts and all that, everything. And they get to the stage where you go,

look man, you are now bouncing off the rev limiter in first gear. The only way that you're going to be able to do this is to relinquish some of this control. And it's a combination of fear, of perfectionism, of a lot of things that come about. And it's a combination of fear, of perfectionism, of a lot of things that come about. And it is a particular type of discipline.

I think the Puritan work ethic, this is something that I would love to have drilled into myself 10 years ago. So we ran a Saturday club night in Newcastle, the city I went to union. And I did 204 Saturdays in a row without missing a single one. Yeah. The only first one that I did miss was becauses in a row without missing a single one.

The only first one that I did miss was because I had a chest infection and I was completely dead. I literally couldn't go. I was going on holidays that would leave on a Sunday and get back on a Thursday for four years because I didn't want to be away for this particular thing. I was absolutely adamant that if I left the Saturday, something would go wrong. But the stuff that I was doing during the day, setting the club up, was getting a piece of rope with a gaffer tape

and throwing it over the top of a particular bracket at a very specific place, because that's where the inflatable went that looked right in the middle. And if it went a little bit to the left, it was off, and it went a little bit to the right. And then the way the smoke machine was set up and everything. And me and my business partner did this. We were the directors of this company

that was doing thousands and thousands of people, every single Saturday night. And it was us that was spending three hours each Saturday between 11 and two going in and doing this. Like why? Well, it's because we were terrified that if somebody else did it, that would be the gateway drug, the pebble at the top of the avalanche that would cause everything to fall to pieces. Look, and there's a forum, ironically, of kind of fear or resistance in this sort of obsession or sort of drive to be on top of everything. I remember when I was at American Apparel,

I looked down for my office one day, and the CEO and owner of the company was in the parking lot, like directing traffic. Like there'd been some problem and there's a traffic jam and he sees and he runs downstairs and he's like directing traffic, like thousands of cars. It's like a shift change, he's directing traffic. And so there's some, you know, version of leadership stories where this is like hands-on, the leader gets down in the trenches with the soldiers and does what needs to be done. And there is truth to that. A leader has to be willing to do anything, but a leader also can't do everything.

And the truth is, there were a lot of hard decisions that the company desperately needed to make, like strategic decisions, sort of hard decisions that the company desperately needed to make, like strategic decisions, sort of cultural decisions. The worst down in the cop-up. That weren't down there, that he was, as I step back from it, completely see was running from those things. You know, there's the immediate reward, the immediacy, the tangiableness of like, I'm going to go solve this problem when he should have been in his office

doing something that if someone walked by might not have looked like work, right? He could have been sitting there like this, just thinking, but if he doesn't do that, no one does that, right? Like you have to think about your role in an organization in a project in a field. You have to go like, if not me, then who, right? And like, there's a lot of decisions, especially as you get higher up, that only the owner, only the creative, only the main person can make. And thinking long-term, you know, setting principles, you know, setting goals, except those are the things that only you can do. Other people can do a lot of these main pieces, but if you're not doing that thing,

it's not happening. And you have to figure out what that is, and that's what that question is, this essential is like, is this essential? Am I the only one that can do it? What happens if I don't do it? And that's got to sort of determine your day-to-day priority

list or your to-do list. That would be not with excess discipline, but with discipline that is heavily focused, perhaps, in suboptimal direction, or perhaps behind them almost. It's focused on tasks that they should have let go of a little while ago. What about someone on the other side of that? What about somebody that achieves the accolades and gets to that stage and then everything falls away? I think

you had, was it Robert Moses? Was somebody that was like that and you could compare him with like a George Washington who, or who's the guy that was in charge in 1944 when America was in the war? Hi, George Marshall. George Marshall. Yeah, him. That would be a big difference, right? You have someone that's basically in charge of, what was he said, about 70 million human lives. Oh, Eisenhower. Yeah, I just was so glad. Sorry.

Yeah. Eisenhower is basically this sort of brief moment after the Second World War, the most powerful man in the world. He leads this enormous army, he's the head of the nuclear arsenal. He is a conqueror of conquerors, the head of the most powerful nation in the world

for this sort of brief moment. And he has this line that I think a lot about. He says freedom is better defined as the opportunity for self-discipline. And so we think of discipline as this thing you need to achieve a kind of success, right? And you do. You have to be disciplined on the way up. But also, like, people make you disciplined on the way up because you have fewer options. There is no other way, right?

You have to be disciplined about your money because you don't have any, right? You have to be disciplined about your work ethic, etc. because like you're in this competition with all these people and sort of a forcing function. But then you get there, you get to the top and now the rules that previously bound you or the things you needed to prove that's not there. And so if you're not self-driven, if you're not enforcing that discipline on yourself, it all falls apart. And I think deep down, the reason a lot of people are ambitious and want to be successful is they want to be the president or they want to be the president or they want to be the CEO or they want to start their own company.

What they think is that the end of that rainbow is an exemption from all the rules that they don't like. And in fact, it's those people have to be stricter on themselves. The Stokes would say no one is fit to rule who is not first master of themselves. And so the idea is that discipline is not this thing that is enforced on you like when you're in school you can't go to the bathroom at this time you gotta be here at this you know as you work your way up a lot of those things not only not only fall away but actually life says well what time do you want to be here right like what do you? Like, what do you want from us? What do you need from us?

Suddenly, people are accommodating to you. And so, or, you know, they're building you up, they're telling you how great you. If you don't have this sort of strong internal compass, the strong sense of what you're okay with, what you're not okay with, what you need to do, what you shouldn't do, then the success is going to be deeply unmooring, right? And deeply disconcerting and liable not to last, because you, it's like you ran past all

the barriers and now you're just there. And so, yeah, discipline has to be this kind of internal thing that you cultivate that stays with you, whether the circumstances are really good or really bad. Do you not think that this is where comedists would have probably played a stark contrast to his father's role? Yeah, I mean, what's so interesting about Antoninus, Mark Ceruleus, and then Mark Ceruleus' son, Comedus, you have sort of a great emperor, a greater emperor, and you have one of the worst emperors.

And why is that? I mean, there's so much we don't know, right? We don't know what their relationship was like, we don't know what happened. It could be that Marcus Aurelius was the greatest father in the world and his son was a psychopath, right? We know there's just a tragedy, the whole thing is tinged in tragedy in the sense that, you know, Marcus Aurelius had 12 or 13 children and every one of his sons dies. Cominus is the only one.

We have some sense that Marcus, for instance, the first thing Marcus really does with absolute power is this incredible moment in human history. He's named Emperor and he anoints his brother, his step brother, co-emperor. The first thing he does with this power is he shares it, right? Which is a nod to the old Roman system, which had two consoles, like had two presidents who would serve, like co-presidents who would serve these one-year terms, then Rome becomes an empire and this changes. But Marcus says things that there needs to be this kind of check on power, and he's who he and his brother serve as co-equals. We get the sense that he was setting up some system where two of his sons,

or his son and his co-emperors, a step-brother son, would rule together. Okay, so do you think that maybe Marcus was trying to future-proof any one tyrant from being in too much control because you would always have this other person? And by doing it at the moment that he was given power, it set, it was the highest cost that he could pay. Yes. Like, one of the most beautiful passages in meditations, again, it says, you have the private journal of the Emperor of Rome.

And he's saying, be careful not to be cesarified. You can easily be dyed purple. He says that the Roman Emperor wears a purple cloak. And he's saying you can't be died probably, you can't be stained or changed by this position you're in, right? We have Lord Acton's rule of like absolute power corrupts absolutely. He was saying like he was consciously talking to himself about trying to prevent that from happening. And I think obviously the decision at the very beginning to share power is like a very big sort of step. Like it's preemptively trying to prevent that from happening.

And we believe that his succession plan for his son was to set up some sort of system or tradition where that happened again. The other quirk is, Marcus is the only emperor, five emperors, and wrote to have a male heir. Marcus's father is not Antoninus. Antoninus is adopted father, just as Antoninus is adopted father is Hadrian, and Hadrian's adopted father is Trajan.

There's this period, There's this process. So Marcus isn't able to do that, right? He's not able to choose an heir because he has a male son. But we get the sense that if you wanted to have two, maybe one his son, one of his brother son, or two of his sons rule together, but in the best laid plans, they all die. And so, Comedis is the only one left. And we don't know what Marcus thinks of comedists. We can imagine every father is blind

to a certain degree to the flaws of their children and trapped by, you know, the insaneness of this system. But certainly something goes wrong. And it's a tragedy of, in some ways, an indictment of Marcus, right? Like, if you're the most disciplined, you know, decent human being, but somehow you're not able to pass that along to your family. I mean, what does it say? It raises a lot of questions for sure.

That is interesting, the fact that you have this emperor philosopher, God King thing going on, incredibly giving, very benevolent, very caring, you know, was equality, ideas that were literally millennia before their time. And yet one of the few roles that every father has, that they need to fulfill somehow happen. But then everybody is so idiosyncratic and unique and individual. You don't know. I mean, we all know about the rebellious rich kid that happens to be a dick. Yeah. It smashes up the father's car and has parties in the house when the parents are away and all that stuff. So, and I suppose the open loop here that may never is most likely to never be closed unless we discover some more hidden something somewhere is interesting for speculation.

It's like, is this a blip in what would have been otherwise a pure white snow surface of Marcus Arraylis's rule. Or is it just, you know, the exception that proves the rule, which is the reason we don't have this system is that it almost never produces good results, right? Like there's third year 40 Roman emperors. There's five that they consider the five good emperors, right? Or does that finish, that finishes with Marcus's the last, what Marcus is considered the last of the five good emperors, right? Does that finish with... Marcus is considered the last of the five good emperors. There's five emperors in road. There's a few other good ones, but the point is, I mean, even with the passing

of Queen Elizabeth, how many other good ones have there been? There's not that many. There's been thousands of kings and queens in these various kingdoms over thousands of years. And there's probably what, two dozen that were like, they did a good job. They proved what Matthew Arnold, one of the sort of biographers of Marx's Relias in the 1800s, right? He was, you know, Marx's Relias is given every privilege and power and advantage in life.

And the remarkable thing is he proves himself worthy of it, right? And how rare that is, not just in royal families, but like anyone with any kind of privilege. How many people who are incredibly athletically gifted also are like, and they're a great person too, or people who are wealthy and you're like, and they're also so hardworking and just a great parent. The reality is, and this is why I think discipline

is such a virtue, and justice too, and wisdom, and all, it's really hard, it's really fucking hard, and it's harder in some ways when you can get away with not doing those things. And that, I think, is what privilege and power often enables. There's not the forcing function of having to earn it, right? Like, commentator's not have to run for election, you know, like he just gets it.

And because it doesn't have to get it, he doesn't do a very good job of it. That's the interesting element about the life cycle that discipline has, especially as you progress as a human, that in the beginning it's about working hard, it's about leaning in. As you start to develop more and more, it's actually perhaps a little bit more about leaning away, it's about restricting the options that you have, it's about leaning in a little bit less, and that what got you here won't get you there, mentality has never been seen more for me than watching that kind of transition at least begin to happen in my life as well.

I'm like, look, I have more things that I need to say no to than things to say yes to, and that was a pathological yeser. So, I'm like, okay, well, what do I do now? I can't people please anymore. Sure. If I take my air of the ball on the main thing, the main thing is the podcast. That needs to happen. I need to prepare. I need to choose guests that I'm interested in. I need to make sure that I am on my game as much as possible. That's the single-ordinating function. Two examples, actually, that I keep on using, and I don't know whether you came across them. So apparently when he was at Amazon,

Jeff Bezos filtered every decision through one heuristic, and it was, does this make the customer experience better? And apparently Elon Musk has got the same, and it does this get us closer to Mars. And I don't know if it's true, but... It certainly does look like he's following said rubric. That's up for debate. My point being, even if it isn't,

the idea you can see how much more simple everybody's life would become if you had a single, ordinating principle. It's like, does this make the people of Rome, the existence better? Everything from, do I have wine tonight, to what time do I get up tomorrow, to who do I have meetings with? And this is where the multiplicity of options that people have in the modern world

creates a difficulty for discipline, I think, because the the amount of distractions that are there. Well, that's the idea. If you don't know what port you're sailing towards, no wind is favorable. How do you judge whether you should do X or Y, whether you should do it now or later? Right? Whether you should do X or Y, whether you should do it now or later, right? Whether you should say yes or no. How much you should charge, how long it should take. You don't know any of the things unless you know where you're trying to go. Like for me, I don't have like a question where I'm like, Hey, like, is this helping

me become the most of this or the most of that? I kind of think about it because the reality is we have multiple things, right? So if Mark is the realist, is I gotta be, is this good for Rome? Well, you know, what about you stuff? It's good for my son, right?

Yeah. So I think about it in terms of like, I wanna be very good at my professional life. I wanna be a great writer. I wanna be a great husband, and I wanna be a great father. And those three things are related, but also in tension with each other.

But the nice part about the tension is it prevents you from going too far in one direction. And I think it sort of forces a kind of discipline. There's things I could do that would make me more successful as a writer, but would come at the cost of my marriage. Or there's things like, my wife and I could do that would make our marriage better, but then we're personally happier,

but we're gone all the time or whatever, right? You have to think about how these things matter to each other, or balance with each other. And my friend Austin Cleon sent to me once, he said, actually, right when I moved to Austin, he said, work, family, scene, pick two. So the point was you can be good at your work, you can have a family, but like partying, being cool, like the fun experience is the perks of the job, you know, you gotta say a note of that. Conversely,

you can be great at your job and party it up, but like, probably not going to find that person or your kids are going to be like, where's dad, right? So you can't have all those things in. And when you know, okay, well, the important things to me are work and family, the important things are family and having a good time, okay? Well, you're gonna leave some potential, some whatever your magnum opuses, it's not gonna happen, right?

And so knowing that, okay, here's what I want, and then here's what I'm willing to trade or give up to get that thing, you know, like that clarity is super, super important. What was that would, a, a crazier, a crazier? Yeah, the, the idea that there's sort of a higher self and a lower self, and these, sort of for the ancients, there was this perennial battle between the higher self and the lower self. And discipline, to me, is the deciding factor, which wins. What side of use is going to win out here? And it takes a sort of a strength of will. The story that goes to the beginnings of stoicism is called the choice of Hercules. Hercules is walking through the hills of Greece

and he comes to this crossroads. And basically there's two goddesses. One is the goddess of vice and the other is the goddess of virtue. You know, basically one is the lower self and the higher self, the easy way and the hard way. And he has to choose. He has to choose. You get everything you want. It's easier.

You're willing to work for it or you're willing to sacrifice virtue or vice. That choice of Hercules was at the essence of Stoicism, are you choosing the disciplined way or the ill-disciplined way? And that choice, we face that choice, not just like this one big pivotal moment in our lives, where you choose between, I'm gonna go for it or not go for it. But like you said, you also choose it every day. I'm gonna eat this or

that. Am I going to get up at this time or this time? Am I going to push through when it's hard or am I going to wait for it to be easy? Like that choice happens over and over and over again. And the stokes would say that, you know, if you want to be beautiful, if you want to be great, you have to make beautiful or great choices. So it comes down to over and over again, we have this choice of Hercules. And do we make it often enough? I don't know if you have to make it always,

but more often than not, you have to make that right, beautiful, great choice. And that is what determines whether you will be those things. Do you think there's a risk of attaching a sense of self-worth to your ability to be disciplined? Seems to me that a lot of the friends that I have who are superbly disciplined spend more time lambasting themselves for missing out by one to 5%

on the perfect game for each day, because their meditation was good and they did it, but maybe they thought about work for a minute of their 15 minute meditation. Do you know what I mean? It makes you fragile. The paradox of having high standards is that it makes you more likely to reach great heights, but also almost constitutionally unable to enjoy or appreciate or even recognize that that's where you are.

Like, the person who goes, oh, that was the greatest game in the world. I crushed it is not going to see all the things they could have done better. The person who goes, oh, but I messed up this, this, this, and this. That person, this 10 is going to be the one, it's going to tend to be the one that's improving and growing. And, and that's good, but it's also not a recipe for happiness, for a contentment, for sustainability. Seneca is writing this letter to his friend, Lucilius, and they're talking about Stoicism, this idea that, you know, you try to get better every day, hold yourself to these high standards. You know, and at this point, he's probably in his 60s

or 70s, he's been doing this a long time. And he goes, how do I know he's sort of rhetorically, but maybe Lucille said, ask him, like, how do you know you're doing it right? Right? And he goes, how do I know that I'm doing it right, that I'm getting better? And he says, I'm, each day I become a better friend to myself.

That's how I know I'm making progress. And I think what he means is that discipline or stosism is not this constant whipping of oneself, this constant feeling of falling short of not being good enough, being like, you piece of shit, I hate you, like, could have done all these things better, but it's a sense of like, you did of shit, I hate you, you could have done all these things better, but it's a sense of like, you did your best, good job, I love you, I respect you, there's still room to grow, but there's nothing you have to feel guilty or terrible about. And I think if you want to do this well, you want to do sustainably, you have to understand

that discipline is not a form of self-flagulation. It should not be hurtful. You should love it. Like in meditations, Mark says, love the discipline you know and let it support you. And I think he means that discipline in both senses, he means the philosophical discipline, but he also means like the practice of it. And I think that love and support are too like

operative but also underrated words there, right? Like it, if you feel bad about yourself and that's what you think discipline is, I think you're getting it wrong. It's a motivating fact of the right. That's where people do it. They need to have both Carrot and Stick. And for the most part, a lot of the people I think that are seduced by heavy discipline, they're stick people. A good example of this, so Andy Frazzella, who reached out a couple of months ago, he did that 75-hard thing. He was the guy that made 75-hard. Have you heard of this? Yeah. Okay, so it's a challenge for 75 days in a row and you have to do two 45 minute workouts, read 10 pages of an unfiction book, meditate, drink a gallon of water,

do something else and don't break your diet, something like that. It's like a list of things, kind of basic but pretty intense. And if you miss any one thing on any one day of the 75, you go back to the start and you start again. And from the outside, I loved the idea, I haven't done it, but I loved the idea of something that created a framework for people to build discipline around. However, I haven't got a single friend that's done 75 hard and not snapped afterward and not gone to a period of a decrease in discipline, even if you smeared it across 150 days, their discipline overall is lower.

One of the guys didn't train for half a year after he did it. One of the guys didn't meditate. Another one of the dudes couldn't bear to go into work and do a bunch of other stuff because they just myopically nailed themselves to this goal and sustainable perseverance, commitment over time. Like these sort of words I think that being introduced into a more holistic view of discipline will be interesting. Magic words for me are more often than not.

Like more often than not, are you doing what you're supposed to be doing? Are you holding yourself to high standards? Are you taking the, you know, the hard choice over the easy choice, putting in the extra more often than not? Are you doing it? Right? If you try to hold yourself to this perfect or impossible standard, not only are you liable

to sort of not do it and then feel terrible afterwards. But I think it can so often come at the expense of other things that are important or you become so terribly out of balance that it's almost an excuse, right? You're like, so you do some challenge for 30 days or 75 days or whatever. It's like they don't throw you a parade at the end.

I mean, look, I appreciate the idea of challenging yourself, pushing yourselves into a certain degree, all discipline is arbitrary. But like, I'm not trying to just win, made up competitions or check arbitrary, you know, things off the list. I want to do this consistently over a long period of time. So I run. It's one of the things that happens when people find out you're running, they go, oh, are you running a marathon?

Are you training? You do an Iron Man? I'm not trying to win at my hobbies. You know, like to me, the doing the thing is the reason I'm doing it. It's good for me for a variety of reasons. If I, but it could very easily become an unhealthy, unproductive thing that comes at the expense of the other things that are important to me.

So I think sometimes people can get caught up with seeing it again as this kind of a means to an end when it should be a sort of an integrated practice into your life. I think that this becomes very prevalent when you grow up a little bit, that my ability to view broader time horizons has only really kicked in in the last couple, I'm 34, it's only kicked in the last few years, that you presume the thing you're doing now is going to be the way that life's going to be forever and the training plan that you do now, even

if there's a 10% 20% risk of injury over the next six months, doesn't matter because you want to be jacked to go away in summer holiday or whatever. And then after a while, you realize, no, my goal is in 20 or 30 years to be significantly more capable than I am now. What is the root between me now and me there and the fear and the degree of neuroticism around it being, it's not fast enough. It doesn't happen quick enough. That dissolves quite nicely. I was talking to the Olympian Kate Courtney. She's this amazing mountain bike racer. She was telling me, her coach would give her a workout. She'd ride 20 miles., probably 20 miles. She write 25 miles. Or, you know, do it in two hours and she'd do it in 90 minutes. And I think a lot of successful driven people

understand that impulse. Like, you're like, I want to win everything, right? Even practice. And she said to her once, and when I signed her copy of Discipline's Destiny, I wrote this in it because I think about it all the time. He said, do you want to be fast now or do you want to be fast later? The purpose of training, the purpose of practice, is to peak in the race, in the moment that it matters. Life is a little bit different than the Olympics. Is there, it is no sort of one moment.

But if you have this idea that your big moment is in the future that it's a marathon and not a sprint, the idea of sort of forcing it now peaking early is actually something you should be quite worried about. So, you have to be disciplined about your discipline. You have to curb that impulse to do in some ways the easier thing now, which is like, I wanna go all out, I wanna push everything into the center of the table, I wanna go now, but now might not be the moment, and the ability to step back to restrain yourself

to focus on sustainability and endurance and all that. It may well be the harder thing, and so it's like,'s, may well be the harder thing. And so it's like, do you want to be great now or do you want to be ready when like, a truly great opportunity is there? Do you want to do your best work at 22 or the only work at 22 or do you still want to be doing this when you're 82? Because you love it. Because you'll have more experiences and wisdom and all that stuff now. And those are the kind of questions

that I think people at a really elite level are thinking about. What was that comparison between Lou Garrig's career and Bay Bruth's career and how the trajectories went? Well, I mean, Lou Garrigan Bay Bruth are two of the greatest baseball players of all time, both achieve incredible athletic feats. But when you look at Lou Garrett,

or when you look at Babe Ruth, you're sort of like, how? How did you even, like, he doesn't look like an athlete. And so in some ways, he's very impressive that he could hit all these home runs. But you definitely get the sense and the more I think you study, you know, sort of elite performance or history,

sometimes you're just amazed and saddened at the greatness of someone because you're like, how did you do it? And what could you have been capable of if you weren't your own worst enemy? So both Lugarig and Babe Ruth's careers are cut short, right? Lugarig from Lugarig's disease or ALS. And then Babe Ruth, I mean, this wasn't a guy who took care of himself. He burned through millions of dollars, he treated his body like a garbage can. You know, he sort of has this precipitous decline at the end, and, you know, he was not Tom Brady, right? Like, in peak athletic conditioning at the end of his career, he was an obese, you know,

drunk old man, right? And I think that's so tragic to me, right? And to me, the idea is like if you respect the craft, if you really love the thing you're doing, you owe it to that craft, to take the responsibilities of it seriously, right? And I think I wanted to show that contrast because we so often just assume, oh, this person accomplished all these things, therefore it's good. But what else could they have done

had they had more discipline? And I think one of the small consolations of someone like Luke Eric is you go, he left it all in the jersey. Like there was nothing that he could have done in his career that he didn't do. The only thing that, the only tragedy was that for reasons that were not his fault, he didn't get to do it as long as he could have done it. Right?

But the games that he played, he showed up for and he played them. I think about that every day when I wrap up, I'm like, did I leave it all there? Or did I phone it in today? Did I make excuses today? Did I not bring my best self to this thing. And again, more often than not, you want the good answer to that question. I like the idea of the more often than not because it means that an individual repetition that is suboptimal. Today, I just didn't quite work.

It seems like it would give you a little bit more detachment from it. And I think that that's very important. Yeah, you marks the real estate in meditation because you got to pick yourself up when you fall, but also celebrate your human being. And none of us are perfect that we're going to mess up, we're going to screw up. But if you have this sort of baseline that you know what you're capable of, you know what you should do, you know that you're not always going to be able to do it, but you know what to come back to. To me, is more important than having these impossible, perfect standards that are almost

in their own way paralyzing or impossible or discouraging. And so I think cultivating a kind of, like a rhythm, like there's like this thing. And sometimes you, sometimes you fall off the rhythm but you know how to come back to it. That to me is a more sustainable, conscious, kinder way to be committed to something. I think that, again, that's something that you learned through experience. I was locked into, perennially locked into a work so hard that I can't take it anymore, burn out, spend three days in bed, work so hard. That was me. That was the cycle of how I worked, pretty much for most of my twenties.

One of the advantages of doing that was that now I know some of the warning signs when I start to get close to that. And I can just, yeah, and I can just about fly underneath that a little and go, okay, how long can I hold this for? And I'll back off a little bit more, but it's less of this. Apart from the fact that it's less efficient because three days of doing nothing is a lot worse than a couple of days of doing 50% of something. But it's just, suffering, the difference in terms of suffering,

is pretty drastic. And I think another interesting example, so you're talking there about two different types of athletes, one of whom left everything on the table, another one who didn't, and you know, took a turn away. Michael Jordan seems to be someone that was almost tyrannical in the way that he went about his game and left it all in the table, but did it in a way that sacrificed everything else, pretty much everything else. Do you think that it's possible for people to get extreme results in life while still having that balance? It seems like you're trying to do that and that was the two out of three example. To me, that's the challenge. It's almost easier to be great than it is to be good.

And I don't mean to contrast good and great in that sense. I mean that like, like to say, I don't care about anything but succeeding in this thing is almost taking yourself off the hook to a certain degree. There's a writer when she said, like, I don't wanna have kids, I don't wanna get married, I wanna be an art monster, right?

And I get that, right? I think anyone who's like loves what they do, there's a certain like, I wanna be the center of everything, I only want this thing to matter. But that's almost the easier path, right? Like, to be like, well, why is this person an asshole?

And they're like, well, they're great. You know, like that, it's, I think sometimes people think that they're in a talent or they're success or they're commitment to a path or a goal is like an exemption from the rules of human behavior, right? I don't have to care about other people. I don't have to keep my word. You know, there's a story about this writer. I'm forgetting her name. She was at this party.

She had a young daughter and she's a poet and she's at this party and Jack Kerrowack is there. And she, you know, it's one of those famous parties and she's there and she gets up to leave. She goes, you know, I promise the babysitter, I'd be home by 10, she has like a young daughter, I have to leave. And Jack Keroak, you know, a sort of different model of a kind of writer, says, you know, if you don't forget about that babysitter, you'll never be a great writer. And she gets up and she leaves anyway and she says later, I knew in that moment that if I didn't keep that promise to the babysitter, I wouldn't be a great writer. And her point was that like having some talent,

some calling doesn't exempt you from keeping your word. And then in fact, if you tell the babysitter, you're gonna be home at 10, and then you blow that off, you're also the kind of person that says, I'm gonna be at my desk writing by nine, and you break that promise also, right? And so actually, I think cultivating a practice or a set of standards that are more than just

like how good are you professionally makes you a more well-rounded and better professional. And the people that I really admire, people who have gotten to the commanding heights of their profession, but are still good neighbors and citizens and activists and fathers or daughters or wives, like, I just, there's something to me hollow and kind of a cop out about being great at one thing, at the expense of all the other things. When, especially at the end of your life, you don't get to take that thing with you, you know?

You don't get to take it with you. So, what does it matter that you made more money or You wrote one extra book like you're gonna sit back and go I really fucked it up That's why it's so important to start with the end in mind I think why am I doing this? Yes. What are the ordinating principles that I have yes, and I'm working towards because yeah You could spend a very very long time climbing up a ladder to find out that it's up against the wrong wall. Yeah, I mean, and how many people there on the metalstand,

you know, they're accepting the Nobel Prize or, you know, they get to that number, they told themselves, like, I want to make that, and then, what was that thing about? What was that thing about? Beyond mountains, there's more mountains. Yeah, it's a Haitian proverb behind beyond mountains. There are more mountains.

But I think it's more, it's more like you think that this thing is going to fix it. It's going to make me feel good. It's going to make my parents proud of me. It's going to make me part of a club. We think that these external things are going to address this internal lacking or need or emptiness that we have. And I've done a lot, I've read a lot, I've talked to a lot of people, I've yet to find someone that got it.

It's a mirage. It's a phantom. You get there and it moves. And in one sense, that's a tragedy. In the other sense, it's a great gift, right? The first time you do that thing, and you get it, the thing you've been working for, and then it isn't what you thought it would be. the thing you've been working for, and then it isn't what you thought it would be. If in that moment, you can accept the gift you've been given, which is a decoupling from external success and internal contentment happiness, enoughness. If you can make that break in that moment, you're free and empowered forever. Because now you can still do the things you're good at. You still want them, but you are no longer at the whims of this lie or this delusion. Yes.

But what most people do in that moment is tell themselves a second lie, which is, oh, I have to prove I can win an NBA championship on my own. I have to show that this wasn't a fluke. Oh, it's not $10 million. Actually, it's $100 million, right? It's not number two that's enough.

It's, I gotta be number one. If that's what you do, I think you have made a bargain or told yourself a lie that is now almost impossible for you to get free of. I think that people need to see that for themselves. Yes. I've been told this lesson a million times. And I, each time that something good happens that feels like a success, it helps me to prove that same

rule to myself a little bit more. Robert writes, why Buddhism is true in that he talks about life is suffering, said by the Buddha, and the word duke, duke, kkj, contested by some scholars, is not meaning suffering, but unsatisfactoryness. Life is unsatisfactoryness. And given that Robert is a evolutionary psychologist now writing about Buddhism, that aligns those two perfectly. Humans are not built to be happy, we're built to be effective. And effectiveness is everything being just a bit more shit than you thought it was going to be. Well, from an evolutionary perspective, there's very little value in the finish line existing, right? There's a lot of evolutionary value to move it a little bit further. It's like the horizon.

You never actually get there, but in chasing it, you go further and further and further. And so understanding why it exists should help you break free of the power that it has over you. And I mean, look, I've liked to think that the work that I've done since coming to this conclusion is still very good, right? It's just, and in fact, I would argue it's better. Like when I think of, like, there's no question craving or anger, wanting to prove something. This is powerful fuel. But at the same time, it's really volatile fuel. And I'm not sure it actually puts you in the headspace needed to do like your best work.

And I, I would think that the work that I've done from a place more of fullness and contentment and balance, I think it's better. Like, not only is it better for me, but I think the actual product is better. But I think people are really afraid. They're afraid of what it will cost. They're afraid of like, if I put this down, if I'm motivated by something different, if I no longer need to do X, Y, or Z, I won't do it anymore. And so they don't. So they find, you know, the anger gets them here and then they're like, why do I need to find something new to be angry about? Or you know, I shoved it in these people's faces and it wasn't as satisfactory as I thought. So I'm going to shove it in more people's faces, right? And that is, again, from an evolutionary perspective, from an output perspective, it works,

but I'm not actually sure it's best. But it's also what are you optimizing for again? If it's a miserable experience, and if you sacrifice the thing that you want to achieve the thing which is supposed to get the thing that you want, if you sacrifice happiness in order to become successful so that you can finally be happy, it's that story of the fishermen again. Just why not just be happy? Why not just give yourself a little bit more of a break?

You talk to people and you're like, well, why do you want to do X? If they're like, then I can do Y. And Y is so much more accessible to them now. And why do you think they're mutually exclusive? I'm not sure that they are. You mentioned Queen Elizabeth of Iran. What do you learn about her? Well, I think she's this remarkable person.

I mean, look at someone you don't want to talk about sustainability. You have this job for 70 years. And as I was saying, the idea of Marxist-Russe is given these privileges, this immense power, platform, et cetera, and he proves himself worthy of it. And you look at the outpouring of support for this woman when she died, even from people who have sort of an ideological disagreement with the monarchy, to me,

that's very high praise when people disagree with what you do, still find the way that you did it to be admirable and impressive. And, you know, she was a remarkable picture of restraint and dignity and poise tradition, but also flexibility and innovation. And I just, you know, discipline is not just how far can you run, you know, how hard can you work. It's also, you know, are you in control of yourself? Like you're talking, you want to talk about someone who is in command of themselves. This is a woman who over 70 years never lets the mask slip, never has the outburst, never has the, you know,

dropping them for 70 years. She's like on point for a thing that she didn't choose for a thing that, you know, only because of a cork of history even was in a position to take. Tell people that story in case they're not familiar. So her uncle was the king of England. He abdicates in this sort of fit of passion, as he's in love with this terrible woman basically. And suddenly, Queen Elizabeth's father becomes king. He would have been expected to rule for 20, 30, 40 years.

Instead, it sort of dies, I think after like 20, 25 years. Father dies unexpectedly young of lung cancer. And then in her, what, late 20s, early 30s is, I think, yeah, early 20s is suddenly the queen of this enormous empire. And what is her job? You know, her job is better defined by all the things she's not allowed to do, as opposed to the things that she can do. It's this symbolic role. And, you know, I wanted to illustrate the idea of discipline. Again, it's not just, but it's also, when you feel like,

and not doing it, right, the restraint and poise, the ability to want to do something, to very understandably want to do something, and then to not do it, because it's not the right thing to do. That coming of it. Yeah, queenly. That is a kind of discipline and grace that I think we need to see more of.

You think about, you're like, why is this person tweeting this? Why are they saying this? Why are they doing this? And you're like, well, they can. Because it's the right thing to do, not because it's important, not because it's gonna accomplish X, Y, and Z, but this kind of lack of self-control, I think. She is a inspiring picture of what self-control can look like

and not self-control in the masculine sense, which is what I think we so often tend to stereotype it as. How would it be feminine? Why, I just mean like she's, she's not, this is in a physical thing. This is a spiritual and emotional and a mental thing. Yeah. As you're getting news headlines written about you that are claiming you think a thing or did a thing or a part of a thing and you don't have the compulsion to write a response to. Why? And it like she's, she was a little old lady, you know, and that she's not this big hooking thing.

She's a little old lady. And yet, you know, was more restrained and disciplined than these ambitious prime ministers, male or female, right? Like, she, she had a sort of a different path to power. she had a different path to power. In a world where everyone says everything that they think and is constantly fighting for their recognition, for their chance in the spotlight. She's a really powerful example. It was a really powerful example that the opposite of those things is often more impressive or a better path.

Didn't Martin Luther King get punished by a Nazi or something? And that's kind of a similar situation. Yeah, again, we tend to think of discipline as strength, force. There's a moment in Martin Luther King's career, he's obviously committed proponent of nonviolence, and it's one thing to be like strategically where we are marching from here to there, the police are gonna attack us, we just need to keep going. He's on stage in a Nazi walks on stage

and just starts punching him in the face, front of everyone that he knows. And what people said they found, so he attacked so first you know he's hit and the natural human thing when your hit would be to protect yourself Which he does instinctively hits himself and people said the shocking sound like the auditorium goes dead silent you can just hear you know flesh on flesh and Then there's this moment. So he's you. So he's being tested at the highest level. He's, I am a practitioner of nonviolence. That doesn't mean I don't just not engage in violence, but like, what do you do when you are violently attacked? And in this split second,

as he protects himself, he catches himself, and they said he drops his hands. And it was like this, you know, it's, this is more than self discipline. This is some higher, almost saint-like place that he's managed to reach where, you know, again, he's not just protecting himself, not defending, like not actively defending himself, but he is for philosophical and spiritual reasons, that the discipline is to actually allow yourself to be attacked in this moment, which he does. And it was this shocking moment that sort of fundamentally, it teaches the power of nonviolence, and that his commitment to the message more than any other thing he could have possibly done. And then obviously the man is swarmed and the first words out of Martin Luther King's mouth are like, don't hurt him, don't hurt him. And again, it's easy to say these things,

but then what do you do in that moment of being tested? And to me, that's more impressive than any Olympic gold medalist or feed of athletic strength that he's able to conquer his almost innately human need to protect yourself. He's able to stop that in the moment. That to me is discipline at some sort of transcendent coro heroic level. What about perseverance? What did you learn about people who coped when things got really difficult?

It seems to me that discipline, even in the modern world, you know, no matter how hard it is that you're working toward a thing and how difficult the pursuit is, it's still quite a bourgeois, sort of luxurious position to be in. You know, I know that you recently got a cold tub. We've got one in the house as well. Let's not get that wrong. We are lapping at discomfort. We're electing to go into discomfort because the world has become so nerfed

and so comfortable around us that we need to buy pieces of kit that we can get into that forces to feel cold. What about times? Where do you stand? Where can people find that forces to feel cold. What about times, where do you stand? Where can people find that's firm for them to stand when they're doing the discipline and the world just continues to punish them in the face?

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the difficulties of life, right? Like, I think it's good to have practices, physical practices that push us. But like life is fucking hard and it breaks your heart. There's Murphy's Law, right? What Kinga Wrongwill. It's also another law that says like, it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take this law into account, right? Like, it's hard. Like, people, I want to start a podcast. How long it took you before you even started to see rewards or pay off, I mean, even just now you're probably early in it, right? It takes longer than you think.

It's fucking hard and it breaks your heart, you know, is that, is it certainly preferable to like starving to get to death and some, you know, desert plane, of course, right? It's better than, it's better, you know, here in this moment than anywhere in history, probably anywhere in the world, of course. But like, if you don't have a sort of a fortune, the Stokes call an inner citadel, kind of a fortress that you can retreat into, that you can rely on, I don't think you're going to make it. Maybe algorithmically, you get lucky and it always goes your way, maybe, but to count on that or to let alone expect that, you know, I think is to set yourself up to be crushed by what is inevitably a heartbreaking, difficult, you know, soul-testing process.

Paul Graham talks about after the rush of the excitement of an idea, you know, cause it like the tech crunch bump right? You get your first bit of attention. He's then you enter the trough of despair, right? And the trough of despair is fucking real. Like every book I start, it starts off exciting. It's not exciting, it's fun, it's what I'm gonna do, and then right into the trough of despair. And you might not come out of that for months. Like, and by the time you're out of it, you don't even, it catches, oh, I'm on the downhill side of this. Like, you don't even realize that you're out of it until you're so far out of it that you're almost surprised by. So you have to have this ability to endure

to show up fucking every day, even though it's hard, even though it doesn't feel like you're making progress, even though not doing it would be way easier, you have to cultivate that strength. And it doesn't matter if it's, you're trying to become a massage therapist or you're writing some, some like the great American novel,

like it's fucking hard, or you're starting some movement, you're trying the great American novel, like it's fucking hard, or you're starting some movement, you know, you're trying to build this movement off the ground from nothing to change. Well, like, it's going to take a long time. Things are kind of constantly go wrong. It's going to be way harder than you think. And it might not test you in the sense in the way that, like, starving tests you, but it's going to challenge you in every conceivable

way, and you have to have, you have to have what it takes to get through. And you have to have a really strong why, too, or you're not going to get through it. One of the other elements that gets laid on top is, I think, shame and guilt around it not being as bad as it could be. Yeah. You know, the fact that a lot of the people that do deal with discomfort, it's them choosing to go after a pursuit that they care about. You're choosing to write these books. No one is holding a gun to your head other than your own existential conscience that you

have to go and write these books. So okay, well, what does that mean? How do I ameliorate the fact that I'm choosing to do a thing, I'm electing to do it, but it's causing me suffering, but I also, the suffering from that I derive meaning and on the other, it's sort of all this big mess, I think. Yeah, it's weird. Like, as I wrote this book several years ago called The obstacles away and so people will go, well, what was the biggest obstacle in your life?

And I think people think it's like some contest or this measuring thing or they think that the only obstacles that count are like, well, I lost my leg in an accident when I was seven or you know, I was born, you know, and barely survived this genocidal attack. Like obviously all those things are profound obstacles. And we can learn so much from Fickr Frankel and Mancer for Meaning. There are these people who have been through the absolute crucible of the human experience. And they have something profoundly deep and powerful to teach us. But I think we're often quick to dismiss the adversity of our lives. And we somehow think also that it's this thing that happens once.

And in fact, we all wake up every single day in a world that we don't control. That's utterly indifferent to us, our happiness, our fulfillment. And the challenge is like, do you have what it takes to keep going through that, to not be despond, to not despair, to not become cynical, to keep believing, to keep going through that, to not be despond, to not despair, you know, to not become cynical, to keep believing, to keep trying, to keep pushing, to keep using the experiences that you have to get better. To me, that's the marathon of it, that's the gauntlet of it. And I, of course, we should poke fun at the fact that we live these nerve lives

and we should acknowledge readily the incredible privileges that we have compared to other people, compared to people who lived a long time ago. But if you think that it's easy because we're privileged or because you're not running from somebody trying to kill you, you're, I think, being naive and anyone who's done anything hard can tell you, like, you have many moments, these sort of dark nights of the soul moment. And if you don't have something to draw on, you're not going to get through that.

Well, what's a firm place for people to stand then? You're doing something, you're working hard, and it's just difficulty after difficulty, the discipline is being tested. Where do they go in those moments? Yeah. I mean, for the Stokes, that's what the inner Citadel was, this sort of the principles, the ideas, the practices that you've gone, where you go, hey, I've been through tough shit before, right?

Like, I've been through stuff like this before. I mean, just to think, if you just think about, first off, the unlikeliness of you and I even being here, We're already extremely lucky. But you think about like you were born this tiny defenseless thing with no discernible skills or knowledge, and you're not fucking dead. Like you survived against incredible odds and incredible adversity to even like,

you learned how to walk. You know, you got through school, this like crazy insane, you know, thing, you worked your way up from like nothing, like in that sense, like, it's an incredible journey. Just as like someone who, you know, went from poverty to, to wealth, they'd be like, I got from here to there.

Like we all have the ability to look back and be like, look at where I was, not that long ago. And you should have some sense of what you're capable of. Marcus Rios' meditation is he goes, what is sort of worried or anxious about some future thing? And he goes, well, what will I meet that with? And he says, the same tools that I've met today with, like that you have been through stuff.

And especially coming out of the pandemic, like people should go, like, you just live through a historical event of, you know, epic proportions and the way that you would hear from grandparents who lived through depression or the war, you know, traveled across oceans on some boat to go to some new like Those historical moments are on par with the historical moment that we just live through that we are continuing to live through and You're still here and I'm not implying the people who are not here somehow not here as a result of their own fault

But what I'm saying is like You have been you have been in the arena and you have been knocked around and you made it. And you should be able to look back at the things that you've done and take, have a certain pride and confidence and your ability to get through real shit. And that should give you some firm ground to stand on as you contemplate what tomorrow might bring. You know, like you'll meet tomorrow with what you met yesterday with and what you've met all the challenges of your life with. And I mean, I do think there's value in seeking out difficulties

and challenges and pushing yourself. So you have even more confidence, but like the fact that you're here that you've been through all the things you've been through, that's not nothing. Yes, I love that. The idea of the inner Citadel is you're talking away. I've got this idea of a huge grand hall, maybe influenced by the fact I'm watching a lot of Game of Thrones at the moment. Huge grand hall, above the fireplace, are all of the heads of the different enemies, but they're all you. It's all you at different stages. It's all it was you when you doubted your ability to do this. It's you when you felt weak and you decided you were going to do it anyway. It's you when you chose the path that was virtuous as opposed to the one that was hedonic.

I have a friend who I saw at the start of this week in his band has a lyric that says, I can't drown my demons. They've learned how to swim. And he'd suffered with depression, same as me throughout his 20s. And that's one of the things that was one of the most empowering and lightning reflections I had from dealing with depression for a chunk of time was the world is going to have to do really, really well to be able to touch and be more than my own mind already did. Like I have already become the prison keeper of every single little bit that I knew was exactly the pharmaceutical grade insult that I wanted that was pinpoint accurate to make me feel as bad as possible and each different time that you get past that, another head goes up on the wall, another

head goes up on the wall. That's another situation that I've managed to get myself through when I was adamant It was going to be destruction and and embarrassment and all the rest of it and Everybody that's listening is listening and that's that's the benefit also of discipline and having high standards Which is like you know that what you subject yourself to on a regular basis the standards you hold are that what you subject yourself to on a regular basis, the standards you hold, are higher than the other things. So you're not intimidated by like, what are other people gonna think, how's it gonna do? Cause you have worked to such a degree

that that's almost like settling. That's like the low end of what you're expecting. Yes. And you know, this difference I think between kind of an inner scorecard and an outer scorecard. The outer scorecard is almost the easier one. Like, what do other people think? Do people like me?

Obviously, it's not in your control, but there's a softness to that because it may well be less than your actual capable blow. Yes. Yes. What about Eisenhower's smoking habit? What do you learn from that? Well, we're talking about this guy who says, you know, freedom is the opportunity for self-discipline. Is this the most powerful man in the world? And in his 50s or 60s and has these heart problems

and doctorate as, dude, it's the smoking. And you've been smoking like five packs a day or whatever for 30 years. And he gives himself an order and he quits, right? He just quits cold turkey after a lifetime of a habit, which is extremely difficult to do. And, you know, I think the Stokes were very suspicious of anything that was in control of us. So Seneca says, you know, show me somebody who isn't a slave, you know, a slave to a mistress or to fame or to money or to what other people think. And, you know, he wanted to, he wanted to break any of those habits, right? To rule, he's a ruling over the self

is the greatest empire. And, you know, are you in charge of the cigarettes? Are you in charge of the phone? Are you in charge or the need to win one more, make more, can't pass up the deal, I can't be out of the thrill, you know, are you in charge or is the need in charge? And they, when the need was in charge, that was something

you needed to look very, very hard at. If you need any substance in order to perform, then it stopped conferring a benefit. That's the reason why I did a thousand days sober, even though I wasn't drinking that much. I was like, look, I am going to be the person that gets to call the shots. I'm going to go out on nights out and I'm going to be the person that gets to call the shots. Yeah. I'm gonna go out on nights out and I'm gonna work out what it's like to go on a night out. So, as a club promoter, as a fucking club promoter, it's like 15 years. And then I did 500 days without caffeine.

And I think that caffeine stays people in the face. I think that most people don't have varying levels of tiredness, they simply have varying levels of caffeine concentration in their blood. So people don't say, I'm tired, they say, I need a coffee. You've supplanted the problem for the solution, the way that you describe it. And what happens is by doing that,

I'm using chemicals as a proxy for everything else here, but you paper over the cracks that are causing that to come through. Have you ever stopped to think about why you're so fucking tired at two o'clock in the afternoon? Is it maybe that you're not actually getting enough sleep? Is it that you're going to bed at different times? Is it that you're sleeping by?

You mean the wrong things? Exactly. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you got to look at the sort of root cause of it. Yeah, and anytime you can't not do a thing, you probably need to stop doing that thing. And this is true for work too, right? Like if you're like, I just can't be out of it.

Like I can't stop. Workaholism, there's the addictions or the compulsions that are not socially acceptable. Heroin, you know. And then there's the ones that are not just socially acceptable, but often socially rewarded. Loaded, yeah. And those are the most insidious ones.

And, you know, people will applaud you for them, they'll celebrate for, and then they'll laugh at you, or question you, or make you feel like you're the crazy one for not doing it. Why don't you want to go out with us you're the crazy one for not doing it. Why don't you want to go out with us? Well, I don't enjoy doing that. And then you feel like a weirdo for having your sort of own thing that you don't want to do. And yeah, it requires discipline.

Because I'm not interested. The same for you with the books. I mean, I imagine that you're writing close to the limit in terms of what you could write. But if you, someone had a gun to your head, you would be able to crack out another, however many percent per day. So there is some that's being left in the tank. There is a little bit that's being left in the tank with regards to that.

So the, well, why don't you want more success? That would be more accolade, that would be more applause. That would, the publisher should be fucking delighted, I'm sure. So, well, the question when they question when they try to see you to someone, an addict or someone have, does someone have a problem?

It's, you know, what are the costs of this thing to you? Where are there negative repercussions in your life from this thing, right? And so if it's coming at the expense of X, Y and Z, so yeah, sure, I could could do more I could do more faster But it would it would start to deteriorate the quality of the other things that are important to me or it might shrink the time horizon that I the longevity that I would like to have and so yeah

You have to ask yourself and is is I trying to do it now or trying to do it later, or you know, what's actually important to me? What about the caution retails from people like Napoleon and King George the Fourth? Because I have no background about either of these people. Well, I tell the story in the book about Napoleon, he writes this essay as a young man about the perils of ambition. You know, it says, what is Alexander doing trying to make it to the ends of the earth? He's conquering this and this and this. And he goes like, what a fool, you know? So the irony that he would then be that conqueror, it's almost too perfect.

But it's what happens, right? None of those people start off thinking that's where I'm gonna end up. It's a process that once you begin, it's hard to stop. And yet, once that governor comes off, it's almost inevitable, right? And ambition is a thing, talking about socially acceptable addictions.

Ambition is a thing that very few people question or criticize, up until it stops working, right? Everyone's clapping you on the back telling that it's a great idea, right up until you overreach and lose all of it, and then they go, you're a fool, what were you thinking, How could you do it? And so you have to have that sense. Now, other people, consequences, you're like, all these things, they're going to be the lagging indicators. You've already passed the point of no return. So you have to have this sort of internal governor, this internal compass, this internal sense of your limitations that, you know, prevents you from becoming another cliche.

And what about King George? Well, King George, I was sort of contrasting him to, do you want the life where you say, I don't eat this, this is how hard I have to work out This is you know the strenuous life seems like the hard life, right? Compared to I mean eat what I want. I do what I want But who's happier right the person who's in good shape or the person who's not in good shape The thing about you know exercise and diet is that it's hard now, but the rewards or the place it gets you is pleasant.

The thing about the Oreos or the milkshake or whatever it is, is it feels good on the way down, but the consequences are, you know, they linger. Was that King George lab 1800s? Was he East India trading company time? He's not, he's not like the American King George. Yes. I think he's after that King George. Too many George. This is Queen Victoria's father, I believe. Okay, so this might be about the right time. I'm watching Taboo at the moment. So it's a five-year-old... But I'm going, I forget. ...with Tom Hardy in it, right?

And it's all about the East India trading company and Tom Hardy comes back and he's been in Africa and he's been in Voodoo Magic and Ludovar the stuff. And it's got, I would be very surprised if it's not, but he's got this sort of big bloated, like super fat king and he's gout and it's a bad but he's got this sort of big bloated super fat king and he's gout and a bad complexion and all this sort of stuff. And yeah, I mean, you look at that and Tom Hardy is this guy who is continually underfoot.

He keeps on making the right decisions whenever he can. And you do, you're contrasted between, there's another guy that's kind of an echo in between both of them. And the guy that has the life that you would want to lead is probably tomhadi is the guy that's actually doing the right things. I sent you I think I mentioned to you the last time that we spoke about the forgotten highlander. Yeah, I read that book. How do you get on with that? It was fascinating. It was fascinating. Yeah, when we talk about people who've been through real adversity, right? There's those levels to this guy. Yeah, yeah, of course.

There is some level where you're like, how is that even humanly possible? How did you not break under these circumstances? It should remind you, I think, I mean, one of the things I take from that is that we're capable of more than we could possibly conceive of. So when you're having that dark night of the solar in the trough of despair, you can definitely make it through this. You definitely have what it takes to do this. You come from an unbroken line of those ancestors, right?

Like every one of us comes from an unbroken line of people who endured terrible things, who made it through famines and wars and, you know, adversity and challenges that we can't even begin to conceive of. And like, we should feel, we should remind ourselves that we're their descendants. We are the heirs to that tradition. And to go back to the idea about Marxism, are you going to prove yourself worthy of it? Or are you going to be a disappointment? To me, that's a question to ask yourself in some challenging moment. Ryan Holiday, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to check out the stuff that you're doing

at the moment, where's best to go? DailyStoke.com, I do one email every day about Stoke Flossy, and if you like podcasts, obviously do. I do a podcast version of it, totally for free every day at the DailyStoke Podcast. Ryan, I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.