The Daily Stoic - 5 Usable Practices From Stoicism | Ryan Holiday Speaks At Ole Miss

Episode Date: January 1, 2023

In April of 2022 Ryan Holiday traveled to Oxford Mississippi to speak to the Ole Miss Football team about 5 strategies that can improve your performance no matter what you do.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. of life. Thank you for listening. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday.

Welcome to another episode of the daily stoic podcast. I, this is a little bit of a humble brag, but it's pretty cool. I just got a text from my friend, Lane Kiffin, the coach at Ole Miss, and he's on what appears to be a recruiting trip, and he's sitting on the plane, and he's holding the copy of Discipline is Destiny which I absolutely love to see.

I first heard from Lane five or six years ago, he read ego is the enemy at a low point in his career. I think he was supposed to be in the audience when I talked at Alabama because he was there then, but he got sent out and he got sent out or he wasn't invited. I forget what it was, but he wasn't there. And ended up reading the book after, and then went through some stuff in his life, ended up at FAU, reinvigorated his career, and then ended up at Ole Miss. And last year, he had me come out and speak to the team. They're in the process of rebuilding their team facility there. So I actually gave the talk like on the field, which was pretty nuts.

If you want to see a video of it, it's up on YouTube, but I wanted to bring you this talk. I brought, what I wanted to bring to the team was five strategies from the ancient Stokes, from my work that could help them improve their performance. And here on Christmas Day, whatever it is that you're doing, these are five tips that can help you that hopefully will make you better. And I'm excited to bring them to you. One quick thing that I think will make you better is the Daily Stoke New Year New U Challenge. You can sign up at dailystoke.com slash challenge.

I think you'll like it. Just a couple of days left. Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates our happy holidays. Try more fitting for me to say. But enjoy me talking at Ole Miss. And I'll see you in a couple of days at the Daily Stoke, New Year, New U Challenge. New Year, New You Challenge. What are speaker series today? Personally, I'm thankful for our speaker today. I was introduced to him by one of our coaches who told me that I had an ego. And they sent me an audio book, a snot, just a book that EROPE video is a hand.

Although I didn't think I'd apply, I mean, had me think about myself a little bit more and think about some of the things that I was going through. And so I took a deeper dive into some of the other books that he had written. I mean, if you all look familiar with the term, if it was easy, then everybody would feel it. Well, one of the books that our speaker today

has written is obstacle is the way. And one of the books that our speaker today is written is obstacle is the way. And one of the quotes that comes from that is the obstacle in the past becomes a past. We never forget that every obstacle is an opportunity that one can improve on our own condition. We don't really control what happens to us in life, but we can't control how we respond to it. And just some of the things that food is

written through the 5 million books that he sold worldwide, trans, translated 30 different times have been inspirational to me. And I'm sure that his message today will impact each and every one of us. So let me introduce you all to Ryan Halle. Thank you so much. Nobody ever thinks he goes the enemy applies to them, so. Good. All right.

I feel like I can relate a little bit to where all of you are. I didn't play college sports, but when I was 19 or 20 years old, I had the burning desire to do something. I wanted to be great at what I did. I wanted to be world class. I wanted to be different than my parents' small, ordinary life. I wanted to be elite at what I do, which is right.

And that was what motivated me to get out of bed every morning. That's what inspired me. That's what excited me. And I came across a book when I was your age. When I was in college, I was sitting in my college department. And this book came and it changed the course of my life. And the philosophy in that book is what I want to talk about today, because it's what helps me do that.

There we go. This book, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelias. Marcus Aurelias is the Emperor of Rome. I usually tell people that these old guys are the movie gladiator, that one he's seen in his character Kills, but I was talking to Jeff O'Cuda, the third pick in the 2020 draft, and I was telling him about Marcus Aurelias,

the movie gladiator. He had no idea what I was talking about, and I realized he him about Marcus Relis and the movie Gladiator. He had no idea what I was talking about and I realized he was two years old when the movie came out. So maybe you guys don't know Gladiator but Marcus Relis is the most powerful man in the world. He oversees an enormous empire and he sits down every night and he writes some notes to himself about how to be better, about how to be great, about how to be excellent at what he did. And this was the long ago days before Amazon Prime. So I had to buy some other books to get free shipping. And I had to leave like a week before it arrived.

And finally, this book comes and it hits me like a ton of bricks. There's this great expression, a quake book, right? A book that shakes the foundation that you live in. And that's what Marcus really since Meditations was, or this is my copy, I've put some miles on it over the years, it's all taped together. But this book, it shapes and it changes me. I know when people hear ancient philosophy, that doesn't feel practical or accessible, right? These are questions that professors ask,

that professors think about. So we don't think of philosophers as real people in the real world doing real things, but they were Marcus Aurelius, is the emperor, there's stoats who are writers, there's stoats who are generals, there's stoats who were athletes, who performed and participated

in the Olympics is that time. Philosophy in the ancient world wasn't something you talked about, something you thought about. Philosophy was something you did, was how you lived your life. And so this book that I read at 18 or 19 years old, it shakes me in so many ways. It changes how I think about things. I have the unique privilege now because of this book, because the ideas that we're going to talk about today, to be able to travel all over the world and sell millions of books. I've gotten to speak to elite groups like you guys. I spoke to the Army Rangers yesterday. I've been able to speak to a number of men. Felte, professional athletes, great college program, it's been cool to see this obscure thing that isn't supposed to be practical and usable, make its way into real people's lives, which is what philosophy has actually been for 2000 years.

It's been used by people in pursuit of what's called arite. Arite is the Greek word for excellence, right, for virtue, for being great at what you do. And as I've got to talk to all these groups, I've figured out some ways that we can take this, again, theoretical concepts and apply it to what we do. This is my book, I think the comment, people, people. It's been cool to see this play out. And here's Coach, thank you, I appreciate it.

What I thought we would talk about today, because I realized you guys go to lectures all the time to get talked about all the time. I want to talk about five usable practices from Stoke Philosophy that you can apply. In your life that I have to apply in my life that your coaches try to apply in their lives, that everyone, whether they're trying to make it in the pros, whether they're just trying to get through to graduation, whether they're trying to deal with being stuck in traffic, how do we apply these ancient practices to be great personally in profession? Because that's really what stoicism is in the top. And stoicism starts with a really simple question.

What is in my control? This is called the dichotomy of control. It's the chief and most basic practices go blocking. It starts with certain that that there's everything in the world, everything that could happen, everything that everyone else is doing, all the situations we find ourselves in. And then there's this tiny little bit of that we control. Effectie is who's a who's a Roman slave who becomes a stove blocker, talks about how there are the things that are

within our control, within our power, and there are things that are not. And the chief task in life is to find out what those are. A thing is either up to you or isn't up to you, right? And the main task is to separate these things into their proper categories. So we know how to treat them. So we know how to respond to them. What you control. And I want you to think about this question today and for the rest of the season. Is this up to me? Is this in my control? Because at the end of the day, what you control primarily

wasn't anything else, it's just how you play, right? You don't control the playing time, you don't control whether it's coached. Like so you don't control anything, but how you play, how you act in each individual mode. You control how you play, how do you act in each individual mode? You control how you play, right? You don't control the weather on the game then, right? You control how you play.

You don't control what the rest do. You don't control what the other thing does. You control how you play it. You don't control what they say about you. You don't control what they think about you, right? You don't control what your parents say. You don't control the media. You don't control social media think about you, right? You don't control what your parents say. You don't control the media. You don't control social media.

You control how you play. You control your thoughts. You control your emotions. You control your decisions. You control your effort. That's it. That's it, right? Going back to Epitons, you can imagine.

This guy is a slave. So his power is radically shrunk. But he realizes in Rome, as he lives in the palace with the emperor, the emperor in Europe. He realizes that he's freer than many of the people around him because they're addicted to things because they want power, they want approval because they want more than what they already have.

They're slaves to their urges, right? They're slaves to their ambitions. They're slaves to circumstances. They're slaves to their preferences. But he by focusing on what's up to him, his thoughts, his actions, his opinions, he's freer than they are. So we don't control what happens. This is the core principle of Stodovloss. We don't control what happens, but we always control how you respond to what happens. So in some sense, it's admitting it's accepting how powerless we are in this world, right? We don't control the weather, we don't control where we come from,

we don't control what other people are doing, we don't control that such a big chunk of your time here has been affected by a pandemic, but you control how you play, right? You control what you do about it. You control how you respond to it. You control what you make it, right? And the person who is most focused on what they control will win.

They have the advantage. If you think about us having a finite amount of energy, a finite amount of resources, every second, every minute, every ounce of energy that we focus on whether something's there or not, whether we like something or not, whose fault something is, how we wish it was otherwise, right? What we want to change about, all of that is change, all of that is taking resources and energy away from what we do about it, how we respond.

Right? Don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens. And that leads to this idea, the obstacle is the way, which is important enough to me that I have a tattooed on my arm here. The obstacle is the way, is focusing on how we respond to what has happened. So I'll take you back to Marcus Aurelis' time in Rome. This is 165 AD in a playing kids' Rome. It's called the Antenine playing.

It comes from the east. It's like COVID on steroids. It's the worst thing that's ever happened. Millions of people died. Rome is overwhelmed. And Marcus is stuck there in the middle of it, right? And not just a play, but then there's historic flooding, then there's a war, then there's just the difficulties of running

this enormous empire. It's one thing after another. And one ancient historian, passing style, says that Marcus did not have the good fortune that he deserved. His whole range is involved, in a series of trouble. And maybe you think about that about your college career, maybe you think about that in your life. You wish that things had been better, you wish that it had been easier, you wish it had been set up the way that you wanted it to set up. You didn't meet with the good luck, that you deserved or that you have seen other people

get. That's just how it goes. Right? Mark is right in the meditations, and I remember reading this 19 years old, he says, it's just how it goes. Marcus writes in medications and I remember reading was at 19 years old. He says, what should it that this happened? Right? He's feeling sorry for himself for a second. He catches himself. No, it's fortunate that this happened to me because I'm strong enough to deal with it. I'm going to turn it into something. And that's actually what

leaders say. Leaders say better me than somebody else. Right? Better me than a weaker person. Better me than a less well-training person. Better me than someone with fewer resources. So he says it's fortunate that this is what the stoves are saying that we have the power to die events with our own cult. Right?

We have the power to focus on how we respond. We have the power to tell ourselves a positive story about what it has. So is this situation unfortunate? Is the the the thing you're dealing with, the injury, the step back, the bad grades, the the problems at home, is it unfortunate? Or is it fortunate? You get to decide, you get to choose what becomes it. You get to choose whether you become better for it. You get to choose how get to choose what becomes it you get to choose whether you become better for it you get to choose how you step up and deal with it you get to change you get to control how you respond to always control how we respond that's the one part of it that's up to us. Mark's experience and medications look stuff can get in the way there's no question

right we can be impeded. Our plans can be disrupted. But we have this superpower of being able to adapt and change and re-route and use that thing. These are the mind-daffled converts to its own purposes. The obstacle you are active. It says, the impediment to action, advance action, stands in the way we come. Right?

This is what the obstacle is the way it means. It's not that everything bad can be wonderful. It's that by dealing with the frustrating and the difficult and the painful can be inopportune and the unexpected, we have this opportunity to rise to the occasion. We have the chance always to practice virtue or erotic. We have the chance to be excellent. Perhaps not in the way we want it to be, right? You have all these big plans for the season.

You have everything you want to do on the field, and then suddenly an injury changes that. But you still have the opportunity to step up and be an excellent teammate, to be an excellent student, right? To be excellent in a number of other ways, right? Nothing can stop us from deciding to be our best self at what we're able to do in that moment. That's what the obstacle is the way we, that we have the chance always to face what we are dealing with, with virtue and parent aid in excellence.

We can be great, even in frustrating and not so great, so good. Andy Grove, one of the founders of ThinkHow, is that companies are destroyed by great companies, survived, good companies survived. Great companies are proved by, and this is true for individual athletes, it's also true for teens, right? Are you a

teen that's so fragile when things fall apart? You fall apart. Or you a teen that becomes better for what you go, you learn, you understand that you've got an extra gear in there. You understand what's really important. You understand why you do this, right? That's what he can take from these obstacles. As in the Stoic's concept of a more botty, which means a love of faith, means instead of wanting it to be a certain way instead of presenting that it's not the way that you want it to be, instead of lamenting the situation that you have to deal with, instead of just muddling through and surviving it, you go, no, this is chosen for me, this is the best possible thing that could happen to me, and I'm going to turn it into something that in retrospect, I wouldn't want it to fit any other way. That's what the obstacle is the way.

And then that leads to this idea of the ego. Right. And my argument is that the biggest obstacle that we face, that you face that country is a nation's and teams, it's not an external thing. It's not an external thing. argument is that the biggest obstacle that we face that you face that countries and nations and teams is not an external thing. It's not what you call that you're lining up against. It's not the people you're competing for a spotlight. It's not anything outside. The opponent is never on the outside. The biggest obstacle for every leader in organization continues to declare, right?

It's inside Diego. Empire's collapse from within. We do these things to ourselves. That's where Diego is so injured. Diego is disconceitious force that works and thinking with disconnects us that screws us up. There's a 2000 year old poem here. He says, the first thing that the gods can still on one day would destroy is pride. Right? That you're better than other people. That you're special.

That the rules don't apply. That everything you do is fantastic. you can't be criticized if you deserve this. Try and upholds this fact. Try and prevent us from getting better. Try and go before the fall. Ego is the enemy because it's this force that sucks us down like gravity that prevents us from being what we're capable of. Now, when I talk about ego people, but isn't a little bit of ego important. And I would make the distinction between ego and confidence.

Confidence is something you earn. Confidence is based on the results on what you have accomplished. Ego is in a sense that you're invincible, that it's all about you, that you're the center of the universe. It's that voice whispering in your head that you're you're magical and important and destined for all these things. No, the humbler person is trying to hurt it. He's focused not just on where they're good, but also on where they could better. That's the person who is continually getting that right. And I've seen as I'm with the director of marketing and company called American Arrow in the my 20s, the biggest fashion company in the United States,

the largest garment manufacturer in North America worth over $1 billion. I watched the founder of average $500 million of his own well, because he couldn't take feedback. He couldn't surround himself with people who challenged him. He couldn't follow the rules. He couldn't be organized. He couldn't be structured.

He was an undisciplined mess. And he drove his company into bankruptcy and it's 10,000 people lost their job. This is what ego does, right? It sucks us down like a lot of gravity because his endless problems don't need to be there. Problems that distract us from what we could be doing. Problems that make us do shameful and embarrassing things

that we can't erase, the problem that sent us to jail potentially as opposed to the example show. Problems that make us the worst human being in the entire world, but ego prevents us from doing hard things. It prevents us from working with other people. It prevents us from connecting. The ego, as they define it in the alcoholist

anonymous, I love this definition, it's that ego is a conscious separation from. Right? To be great, you have to be in touch with reality. You can't live in your own head. You can't live in your fantasies. You have to have an accurate, in a self-aware understanding of all your strengths and weaknesses of the whole picture,

you have to stay hungry. Right? And Kiko gets in there and prevents us from doing. Right? Kiko makes everything about us, about how you're better than everything you can ever want, right? And that's not true, especially now. Right? You're still in the ascendancy phase of what you're trying to do. Kat Riley talks about the disease of meat. And he says that a team, a person, organization starts out on the innocent client. That's when they're all on the same page, that's when they're working together,

that's when they're sublimating and reducing ego to work together to accomplish something together. But then what happens is ego intervenes. The disease of me, he says, can strengthen any winning team in any year at any moment. We have to keep ego away. Ego doesn't help teams come together. Ego doesn't help people collaborate. Ego doesn't help people realize their potential. It is the impediment to those things. And we've seen this play out in highly urban spirit when the greatest basketball players could ever do it.

Greatest track of number one by the Cleveland Browns, the Cleveland Cavaliers, he comes there and has a happy LeBron leaves. He's great, he's rookie of the year, but the team is not that great. And so LeBron comes back and they go to three straight NBA finals. They really wanted that.

So you might think this is incredible, right? You're a great basketball player. You're playing with the greatest basketball player in the Everroot. And you win a championship together. And you almost win two other ones, but not for kind of not for someone who can't control their ego. In fact, I may never wanted LeBron James to come to back

to the Cavaliers because he was worried it would overshadow him, right? And it kind of did. He was mad that LeBron James had special dreams. LeBron James got to bring friends on the plane and kind of didn't. This is a knock on LeBron too. We didn't understand that, hey, not everyone

was in the same boat as him. Not everyone had already won a championship. Not everyone had already made hundreds of millions of dollars. But the two of them, their egos, get in the way, tears apart the calves, right? They had multiple championships left for them, and that doesn't happen. But this is what Ego is.

There's an ancient expression, the characters face. Ego is a self-fulfilling prophecy, just follows him around and tears things apart. He gets the Boston and very quickly his ego inspects that team and tears it apart. And then of course, if you want some evidence of Ego Tyrant, we can use the world's flat. Ego is thinking that you know more than literally every scientist

and scholar and astrologer who has ever lived. And then he goes to Brooklyn. And here he is on an incredible theme, one of the greatest teams ever assembled. And you might not even make the playoffs this year. He, again, his ego tears a team apart. And look, I don't want to get into the politics of vaccine, but I thought his stance on vaccines contrasting it to the stance that this organization and team has done, which credit to all of you, I think,

was an incredible statement of selflessness and sacrifice them in between and goodness. But Kairi says, I'm doing what's best for me. You play a team sport, dude. That's the definition of what you don't get to do, right? When you play a team sport and can't be all about you, it has to be about something figure than you. But you don't get in there. It gets in between and it prevents us from what we're capable. So it's not that he and statistical people are never successful.

Kyrie is very successful. He's made millions of dollars. He's won an NBA championship, but it is indisputable that his ego, his selfishness, his know it all this has cost him one, two, three, four, I don't know, but two, an incredible number of wins and accomplishments have been pushed out of reach. It's like every time he gets their ego pushes it just a little bit further, it makes it impossible for him to reach it. That's what ego causes. It's not been successful. People don't have ego. It's that ego's bold, successful people back from being as successful as they are capable of being. Right? Epicgenesis is impossible to learn what you think you already

know. Right? That's again, I think the world is flat. I think I know more than the biologists and epidemiologists. I know more. I'm better than you. The problem with ego is that it prevents us from getting better because it thinks we're as good as we're capable of being. Emerson Tversley says, everyone that we need is better than us at something, which you focus on learning from. So what ego does is it puts in place a mechanism that allows us to get better, right? Because it exposes us to all the deficiencies or flaws or opportunities that we have to get better, right? Because it exposes us to all the deficiencies or flaws or opportunities that we have to get better.

This is a quote from a physicist John, we always says, as your island of knowledge grows, you're exposed to a greater shoreline of ignorance. Meaning, as you learn more about the game of football, as you progress in this game, you're suddenly exposed to things that you didn't even know. You didn't know about it. First, you were just trying to master your position, then you were trying to master the game. Now maybe you're thrust in the position of being a captain or you're forced to learn a new position. As you get better, you're thrust into all sorts of circumstances where if you're not hungry to keep learning and get better, you're thrust into all sorts of circumstances where if you're not hungry to keep learning and get better, if you think you're perfect, you are frozen

in place. So the reason that great people are actually humble is that this humility is what allows them to continue to get better. Right? Tom Brady is a walk around thinking that he's the goat. Tom Brady isn't even obsessed with winning, he's obsessed with getting better. And this mechanism of not focusing on how great we are,

but on all the opportunities we have for improvement is what allows us to get better and be the best at what we do. So all of you are students, right? You are a student athlete, I get it. But don't think of being a student as something that ends when you're school time ends, right? There's a difference between school and education.

And if we focus on always remaining a student of our craft, right, of being a human being, of being a student, of being a spouse, being a student of the game, of being an athlete, of sport, right, of business. If we focus on always being a spouse, being a student of the game, of being an athlete, of sport, of business. If we focus on always being a student, we always get better and keep you going away. Now, this idea of stillness, which I have here on my wrist, stillness is what allows us access that ability,

what allows us to tap into that perseverance or that that tenacity stillness is when we slow things down right every morning I wake up very early the first thing I do that came I came for a long walk outside watch the sun come up we're outside we're connected with nature we have some quiet time before the criness of the day. And then the next thing I do is I sit down with some journals, and I just write to myself, I'm working through, like Marcus really was, but I'm struggling with

when I'm afraid of where I'm falling short, what I want to get better at, what I'm excited about. And I access this stillness, because it allows me to do what I do, it allows me to write. Marcus really says, we have to learn how to concentrate like a moment, doing what's in front of you with sites in January series,

and you're willing to just bring yourself from distractions. It is a busy world out there, but you all know, you've touched this feeling before, at your best moments of peak performance, you weren't thinking of 50 other things. You weren't frantic. In fact, when the game, when you run into the two-minute drill,

even though things are crazier than ever, right? That's when you're at your most still, your most connected beginning. You can feel the game slowing down. You can feel yourself walking in. Would you need to access that all the time? Not just in moments of great significance, but the closer you can get to that on a daily basis,

the better you will be at what you do in that half year. You will be at what you do. This is General James Madison, four star general in the Marines, the Secretary of Defense. He says, the single biggest problem for leadership and the information age is a lack of a pleasure. Says you need solitude, you need space, you need some stillness in your life.

And look, on one of the most beautiful campuses in America, you have to access that. You have to find time to get that reflection, to get that space to think and reflect. But also to have that, it's going to require eliminating some things. Mark, sure, as we have to ask ourselves in every moment, is this essential? Because most of what we do, instead, we did it to find ourselves doing it, he's not

a thing. We're just doing it because somebody asked us. We're just doing it because we used to do it. We're too busy to have this stillness and this space in our life. This is a picture I have of my wall between two pictures of my kids. It was given to me by a sports psychologist who works for the medicine. It's just, it's a picture of this doctor, Oliver Sacks, and Oliver Sacks have assigned behind him on his desk.

Just said, no, what are you saying no to? In fact, your default should be no. People are asking you to do this. They're asking you to do that. If they want to know if you want to go here or go there, what about this opportunity? What about that opportunity? The answer is no, right?

Because you have something more important that you're focused on. This is a letter that someone sent. This is the writer, D.B. White. This is thank you for your letter inviting me to be on this commission. I must decline for secret reasons, right? Don't be afraid to piss people off

or to be laughed at or to be out of things. Forget fear of missing out, to be great at what you do, right? Academically and athletically, you need focus. You need to window the amount of things that are on your plate and on your mind so you can be 100% locked in on that stuff. Think about it this way.

Everything you say yes to is saying no is something else. It's saying no to extra practice, extra game, extra film time, extra time with your teammates. When you're saying yes to things, you're saying no to other things, right? When you say no to something, you're saying yes to the things that matter. I've been lucky enough to spend some time with the Rams.

The motto of the Rams less need the GM, he says, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, right? That means eliminating everything that is not the main thing, the main thing, right? That means eliminating everything that is not the main thing. It's the only time you'll have here playing football in college. Are you gonna waste it doing a thousand other things or are you gonna show up for it?

You're gonna be focused for it. Are you gonna clear your plates? You can be totally fall in on that. And I would say one of the big entities of StoLis is of course this thing, the football. I told you about my morning routine. Part of what I do when I wake up, when I go in that walk, when I do my journaling,

my rule is I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm awake. So I can have time to think, so I can have time to reflect, so that I can have time to be intentional to set my intention for the day. I don't wanna start my day with all the texts I got for my friends,

with all the things that happened on social media, with all the things that happened in the news, right? I want you to start by creating some space in the morning, especially in those big game days, right? Don't start your day reactionary, don't start your day in your bed, just mindlessly scrolling your phone. That is not a place that could work comes from. Just the comes from the cartilage. They just give the team breaks in the middle of the day, right, he has to break up a team meeting and event like this so people can go get

their social media fix, right? That's an addiction myth. That's like a smoke break for social media. But what I want you to think about, when you think about the amount of time you have on your phone, and you can check it out, your phone will tell you how much you're using in each day. I want you to think about what you could do with that time.

How it can make you a better athlete, right? How you can make you a better student, how it can make you a better son or daughter, right? I hear from people that go, oh, I don't have time to read, right? I don't have time go, oh, I don't have time to read. Right, I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to do that. But if I pulled up the screen time app on their phone,

I could show them several hours that they had where they could have done that. You have the time, you just have to make the time to get the prior time. So what you think about is you think about your social media habits as you think about your phone addiction as you think about video games and screen time and all the things that we commit to that aren't really that important. What could you do with that time? And what would that time apply in this window allow you to do?

And again focus on what we control. We don't control. You don't control what the other athletes are doing, but this is a place that you can make up for time, right? Maybe someone started earlier than you. Maybe someone had more resources than you, right? Maybe they do, but you can make up for last time. You can catch them. You can put some, you can, you can close some of that gap by not wasting your time, your free time with you control. You can focus that on what matters. Who could you be if you focus? A couple years ago I gave a talk to the ground. I talked about a lot of the same things. Focus on what you control, stay off social media. Those are my two big messages. There was big hopes for the grounds that year. They did not be any of them.

And then I went and I was doing a piece about big, big building at the end of the season. And you basically said, you know what I did wrong this year? I focused too much on stuff that was outside of my control. And I spent too much time on social media. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable.

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And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Right, but that's the cost, the cost of this distraction, of this trying to work on things we don't control, it comes at the cost of your performance on the field in the classroom in life. And the reason I try not to do myself, as you say, and the reason I try to focus that

time is that I want to spend it on the things that are important to me. I want to spend it with my family. I want to spend it with my work. I want to spend it reading. I want to spend it improving. I want to spend it getting better. So those three big ideas there, right? The idea that you go with the enemy that the obstacle is the way it's still the security and the security. Through life or all of that, I want to say the other focus on what we control. But do I have time for one? The last one I would be the last thought, this is someone of a silver age,

I just had to realize you're all very young. So maybe this isn't something you think about. But I was lucky enough to work on a book with Chris Fosh. And in 2016, Chris laces up his shoes. He heads out on the court. It's a game that he or playing the spurs. And he has no knowledge at that moment that it would be the last time that he ever played professional basketball.

Right? Now he's lucky in that it wasn't cancer diagnosis, it wasn't a fatal car crash, right? It wasn't a fatal case of COVID. It's just a blood clot in his leg that means he can't pass the physical, he can't play in the NBA anymore. He was the last time he got to do the thing he loved more than anything in the world. And the reality is all of us will have that move, right? Life is very short, life is not in our control. Unexpected thing happened.

Right? There was the moment, the last time that all of you went out and played football in the street with your friends. There will be the last game you played, it will miss, there will be the last game you play in college. Maybe there's the last time you played in front of a cheering crowd ever. So the reason we need the stillness, the reason we want to focus on what we control, all of the factors that we need up to that

is not up to us. But do we soak it in? Are we present for it? Do we show up for it? Do we give our best for it? That's what we control. So the stillness and I carry a coin that says this in my pocket. The mentor, more, you remember that you are immortal, right?

And again, mortality is not something you think about when you're 18, 19 years old. I get that. But it's there just because you don't think about it, doesn't mean it's not there. Every single one of us, when we were born, the doctor could say with 100% certainty that you would die. They couldn't say when, they didn't say how long you had,

but every single person who is born will die. There's one prophecy that will not fail. So there's no way to say that the fact that you believe life right now has to determine what you do and say and think. It's why you can't waste time. It's why you can't be resentful. It's why you can't be unnecessarily busy. Like you can't say yes to things that don't really matter. Momentum or the fact that life is short and fleeting, that the time is tipped ticking away, is the reason to be present, to show up, to do your best, to not take any of it for granted. Mark Smith says, you could be good today. Instead you choose tomorrow. We put things off,

right? We delay. We are arrogant enough to think that we have forever. Right? You could blow out your needs tomorrow, right? The season could get canceled as it was for a lot of programs, right? A number of things could happen. And look, people do get in car accidents, people do get diagnoses, right? Life is that is a fact of life. And this isn't to make you sad, this isn't to depress you, it's not to be morbid, but it's to give you perspective, it's to remind you that this this moment is here, they call it the present for no reason, it's a gift. And are you going to accept it? Are you going to lock totally into it? Or are you gonna fritter it away?

Zeneca, one of the other shows said, let us prepare our minds just in time to end the flight. He said, post phone nothing. Balance the books of life each day. Put on the finishing touches of life each day, and you are never short of time. Meaning, don't put things off to the future. Don't wait, Don't have acid.

Put everything you have into it. Live today as a goal and complete life in which you gave everything you were capable of giving the things that were in front of you. And the thing that really blew my mind again at your age, understanding from Stateness says, don't think of death as something in the future that's way off. You know, you've got 60 years left or 50 years left, right? Don't think of it that way, because death isn't something in the future that you're moving towards. He says, actually, death is something that's happening right now. Not just because people are dying all around us, as they tragically have been during the pandemic,

but because he says the time that passes belongs to them, the time that passes can never be gotten back. Once you spend it, whether it's on a video game or a phone call or actually showing up for practice and being totally there and embracing and loving all parts of the game, even the frustrating parts, that's time that you never get again, right? So time is our most precious resource.

You only an unrenewable resource in the world. And so when Seneca says that this is happening right now, what he means is that we're dying every second, every minute, right? So again, don't think of how many years you have to let go of. Think about how many years you've already minute, right? So again, don't think of how many years you have to let go of live. Think about how many years you've already got, right? You've already got 20 years.

How have you spent those years? Impressively, I would say, or you wouldn't be sitting here, but carry that sense of perspective and urgency with you as you go forward, right? Live, fully live, fully be here. For however much longer you have on this program, every game that you get to lace up for, be there because it won't be here forever and none of us will be here forever. That, you can still say the honor to share it with all of you and I really appreciate it.

You want more about it, you go? Okay. When I think about you, you think it's so important. Everything that we do, Okay, when I think about you go, you think it's so important. Everything that we do, like, but I'll take you what I do. I have to make things that connect with other people, right? I have to make things that work in the market in my role.

So, kind of, right? Kind of can't be even just to go in the studio, but the music wouldn't be. Right? You can be crazy when it's marketing. You can do all that, but at the core of it, when you make stuff for people, if you guys make stuff for people, right,

you make a product. This product is compelling football, right? A winning football scene. But if you're in your own head, if you're obsessed with yourself, if you have no empathy, right? Empathy is the ability to think about what other people are thinking, put yourself in their shoes,

understand what the world of the market wants. That's why ego is so costly because it prevents us from being able to do that. And to do great work, whatever it is, you have to have that empathy. And I think you see this in coaches, right? Coaches who have got coaches who are so convinced with their own power, their own egos, their own, putting their own imprint on the, on the program, not really giving a shit about anyone else. Those are the coaches that have trouble connecting with the athletes who they have to get something. I won't even answer, but the other college coach went

to the NFL and I, you know, pretty disastrous season. That ego gets in the way there, right? Ego prevents us from getting things out of other people from making what we're talking about, connect with other people. And that is the key skill in life. I'd say, especially outside of school. Like if you're a technistical business man

or business woman or artist, you will not go very far because you are lacking the ability to connect with and communicate with other community. Does that make sense? Do you want me to answer questions? Yeah, I think that, you know, these guys go through things and stops goes away, which you know, to really make sure they understand that part. And maybe I've phrased it differently, like all the things that we think are bad. Yes, it happened to us as we get older. Like, this is it.

There's no way, there's no way this can be good. This is the end of everything. And then all of a sudden, years later, for certain people, you know, now, they're gonna look like, say, that was awesome. Yes, almost. That was necessarily always awesome. That was really what I needed. It was really innovative for who I became.

Right? Like everything bad that's ever happened to you in life led up to where you are now. And that's true for the things that are happening now also. Right? So of course, nobody wants to get hurt. Nobody wants, you know, to go on academic probation. Nobody wants to be criticized. Nobody wants any of the things that are,

quote, unquote, bad to happen. But everything bad that has happened to you in your life led you up to the school, right? And so I think what we can understand there, in fact, we can give ourselves that gift right now and go, hey, this thing, it sucks, it's not what I wanted, but it's going to shame and change who I am capable of becoming.

That we control. One of my mentors, Robert Green, who's one of the greatest writers of all time in Rhodes, who's book the 40-A-Lawson Power and the Combastrian, who wrote a book with 50-cent, called The 50-A-Blaw, he said, look, the great thing about being a writer is that it's all material. He says, everything that happens to in life life you get to turn into your work. But Marcus really says that in meditation too, he says what you throw on top of a choir becomes fuel for the choir, right? It turns it into flame and

brightness and heat. And so if you can think about the things that have happened to you as fuel, as giving you motivation, giving you perspective. And they've done studies of athletes. Obviously, we talk about post-traumatic stress, but there's also a thing called post-traumatic growth and athletes that come back from severe injuries. Maybe they're not quite as fast off their left foot anymore, or maybe they can't.

They don't have the same mobility this way or that way anymore because of this or that injury but maybe it also gave them a perspective about the game. Maybe it it could force them to spend more time watching a film. Maybe it forced them to connect more with their teammates. Maybe it just gave them maybe just reminded them that they're not going to be able to do this forever and they better take it seriously while they can. So the idea is that we can grow and change and use the things that happen to us, but only if we choose to see them that way. It's almost an argument, you're going to use all of it in the future, right? You're going to appreciate it 10 years from now for 20 years from now in ways that you can't really understand.

So you might as well focus consciously on doing that right now in benefit from it in the short term as well. Anyone else have questions? You're going to have a few of almost the best way to approach it. Yeah. I heard you again, heard that it's in that in the picture. Right, but if you don't hurt, that is a bad idea.

But if you don't think you have it, you don't, it's definitely not. The most difficult thing is to think that you don't have it. You all have one. You all struggle with it. It's always there, especially as you get more successful, because not only do you have confidence in there, but you have other people telling you

that you're amazing. All of you were the best at what you did from where you came from. So you experience that. But you have, I think one of the ways you keep ego at that is by focusing, as I was saying, queer, you can get better. Right, so when you're doing stuff, that's hard, that's kicking your ass, that's really forcing you to learn, and be uncomfortable and change. It's hard to have, you know, you see it in there. I think this is what, you know,

Tyler Woods has reinvented his swing on three different occasions. So, yeah, he was the greatest golfer in the world, but there were moments in there where he was like, I can't even pick a ball because he was in a tent to re-adventure swing. So, I'm not saying we have to go around trying to re-advent what to do, but if you're always focused on something that's really hard outside of you, if you're always focused on the work, the process of it, I think it keeps ego at that.

So, I think that's one key way. And the other way this has been very true. Oh, my career is, who is the best at what you do and like how are they mentored? So like Robert, Robert Green is my mentor. I've worked for it with him for like 15 years now. Well, he's so more books than me. He's better at it than me. He's seen more than me. He's had cooler experiences than me. So like when I'm around him, first up, you wouldn't put up with my ego,

but it's also just humbling to be a guy, right? Because he's always showing the all the things that I don't know. And so if you can also seek out wise or older people who have been where you want to be, I think that keeps your ego at bay also. And it's just natural. It's both annoying, but inspiring at the same time. Because I'm around him and I'm like, this guy's so much better than me.

He knows so much more than me. He's done so much. It's impossible to ever get where he is. But then it's also like, if I could just get a little bit closer. That would be me. So that process keeps it, and then there's a rule in writing, like your last book, your last book you ever write here, your next one.

So this is why I think great coach is like, whether you guys went at the shoot, but the shooter bowl or not, like coach Kiffin is right back at zero, starting over, right? And I think that keeps you humped. The fact that you're having to rebuild it always keeps you humped because you're not like, look at what I've done. You don't have time to sit back and rest on your laurels.

You've got recruiting to do or meetings to sit in. So if you're focused, again, always on the process, always on doing more good work, I think that keeps you up. So it just states that you need to use a private area in that. Do you want to go to the more relevant and personal area of the person? Michael Barney, who is the GM of the Browns

and the front office of the Patriots. I think you want to regular area. It was the GM, the Browns, and the front office of the Patriots. I think he wanted to write another round. He wanted to see the Patriots. He said, ego is the beating cause of undecoying the NFL. Right, so I think definitely at high levels of things, ego is more prevalent. Right, because people are telling me you're great to make them lots of money. You're famous, all these things.

I think that's part of it. But I would say ego is prevalent everywhere. I mean, there's egotistical professors, there's egotistical people who work at nonprofits, there's egotistical people who are sitting on their character to do nothing, right? Maybe that's why there's still on their character to do nothing. But basically what I say in the book is that we're always in different phases in our life.

We're like aspiring to do something that you are at the top of what we're doing. Or maybe we just failed, we're at like rock bottom at what we do. Ego is gonna be there. It's just gonna feel and look different. The Ego of a 19 year old plan for all this is different than an Ego this football player

just wanna Super Bowl, which is also different than somebody who just got kicked out of the NFL or whatever. But the ego is going to be there manifesting itself in different ways. And we have to be on guard for always the metaphor I heard in life for it is that it's like sweeping the floor. You sweep it, you sweep the ego away, and then the loop is dirty again. And so it's always accumulating, which just has to be constantly on guard and focused on that. The ability and confidence instead of just giving

yourself over to it. You really think that he goes bad a lot. I don't know. I think he's going to die to be able to play really with your purposes. I think that's right. You know, when you have a purpose that's bigger than you, that helps you go at that because it's not about you, right? So I think if someone told you that it's all about you and this is about you getting ahead, right? Doing what's best for me, that I think is a, is kind of fertile territory for you though. But if you're focused on the

team, if you're focused on community, if you're focused on the guy or the guy next to you, right, about making them better, about making the whole thing better, all of that to me keeps ego at day. For the stove, there's this virtue of temperance or self-control, self-mastering. And so if you're focused on that, I think there's things that you get just to go first, you never let yourself get away with it. Do you know who I am? You know that kind of stuff. So I think if you've got good values, it is a tool like a value of your own.

Cool. Alright, I appreciate it everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.