The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Lacrosse Legend Paul Rabil On What It Takes to Become the Best

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

On today’s Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with lacrosse star Paul Rabil about the mental obstacles that come with being a pro athlete, the experience of starting a professional sports league, and more. Paul Rabil is one of the best lacrosse players in history and the best in the world at the sport right now—some have called him the LeBron James of lacrosse. He has played for championship lacrosse teams from his time at college to the professional leagues. Rabil is one of the co-founders of of the Premier Lacrosse League, an American professional lacrosse league whose second season ended this past August.This episode is brought to you by GiveWell, the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. GiveWell’s team of researchers works countless hours to determine which charities make the most effective dollar-for-dollar contributions to the causes they support. Since 2010, GiveWell has helped over 50,000 donors donate over 500 million dollars to the most effective charities, leading to over 75,000 lives saved and millions more improved. Visit GiveWell.org/stoic and your first donation will be matched up to 100 dollars.This episode is also brought to you by Raycon, maker of affordable earbuds with incredibly high-quality sound. Raycon earbuds are half the price of more-expensive competitors and sound just as good. With six hours of battery time, seamless Bluetooth pairing, and a great-fitting design, Raycon earbuds are perfect for working out, travel, conference calls, and more. Get 15% off your order when you purchase Raycon earbuds now, just visit buyraycon.com/stoic.  ***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Paul Rabil:  Homepage: https://paulrabil.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulRabilInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulrabil/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulRabil/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGMEwmTEHMhRZg1revBjxzwSee 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. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more

possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud, from the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions.

What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement

to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wonder App. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. Hey y'all, I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. I'm just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovelyly nicknamed me Kiki

Kiki Pabag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bag of love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans,

only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night. But I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Hope everyone is doing great. I am starting to feel it. The day is approaching, as I've talked about over the last year and a half now. Lies of the Stoics is written, it's done, it's edited, it's at the printers, the audio book is done, and

we are steadily marching to the release date, and I'm putting the finishing touches on the marketing stuff. So I'm starting to get excited, although as I talk about in the interview, this is also a sort of a part of the process I dread. Not because I don't think the book's going to do well. I think it's one of the best things I've written. I think you guys are really gonna like it. I think it adds a whole new element to Stoicism,

a whole new sort of perspective. We're looking at books called Lives of the Stoics, the Art of Living from Xenota, Mark Srelius. It's who were the Stoics? What did they do? How did they live? And what can we learn from their lives, not just their words. It's just the first stuff, this is the first book I've ever put out in a pandemic, so that's a bit strange, but it's also the first book in all of them that I don't feel the same excitement about all the marketing stuff because gotten into such a rhythm, writing, I've been so much more inwardly focused than I have been

in a long time because I've had to have it come that traveling, I'm not having meetings, I'm not going out, I'm just heads down working and so this is going to be weird because it is going to interrupt my routine a lot of that. Some live events, I'll remote and then I've some talks, and I've got a bunch of interviews coming, and also we've got a bunch of pre-order bonuses. Jim Hinton, they should be up by the time you listen to this. Sorry, DailyStoke.com slash pre-order, but also you can pre-order the book anywhere, books are sold, including 3,000 sign copies we're selling at Barnes and Noble.com, and then

there's Amazon, New York, India, and whatever. But anyways, I talk about that in the interview, and my guest today, someone I'd been wanting the interview for a long time, actually I met him on his podcast, suiting up, which I did in 2017, 2018. Ironically enough, it was in, we recorded upstairs at Stand Up New York, which is the comedy club owned by james altature

but paul rabble is my guest today he's my friend he's been the face of lacrosse for over a decade four time all american at johns hopkins university or one two national championships three time member of team us a they want a gold medal in 2010 and 2018, and it was the first overall draft pick in 2008

by Major League LeCrosse. That was a nine time first team all pro. But most excitingly, this is a connection that Paul and I have. Paul broke off in 2018 to start his own league, the Premier LeCrosse league, which I invested in. It's like the first time, maybe in sports history, that an athlete has broken off and started their own major league.

And it's been a huge success. It's ranked top 10 most innovative company in sports by fast company, secured 200 of the world's best LaCrosse players. Huge TV deal with NBC, major corporate partners from Tickamaster to Adidas, Capital One, Gatorade and others. And if you've been as desperate for sports as I have been during the pandemic, actually before the NBA bubble, the PLL bubble in Utah was actually the first, it was a three-week fully quarantine and family championship series.

I think he helped inspire some of these other teams to do it. And it was awesome. And you, we've got a chance to watch these teams play, obviously me on television, but so I'm talking about us, the fans. But in a world desperate for sports, Paul and the PLL delivered. And Paul's a world class guy on and off the field. And as you're about to hear in the LeBron James sense of the word,

he is much more than an athlete. He's a businessman, a reader, a student of philosophy. A guy dedicated to improving himself, making a difference in the world. And we talk about all that stuff. We talk about his journey in athletics, his brief attempt to play a professional football under Bill Belicec.

Belicec actually sort of scouted and recruited him and tried to make him into a safety for the patriots. So talk about a bunch of stuff. Paul's a great guy. You should follow him on Instagram, create account, follow the PLL, the Premier LaCrosse League. If you're interested in LaCrosse, check it out. LaCrosse, as we PLL, the premier lacrosse league. If you're interested in lacrosse, check it out.

Lacrosse, as we talked about in the interview, is actually the oldest continuous sport in the Americas. Maybe in the world, it's actually an indigenous sport. It's got this fascinating history, and Paul has done more than just about anyone else to bring it to an even wider audience. And of course, his feats on the field have been credible and impressive.

So here's my interview with Paul Ravel. And of course, check out the new book pre-order to get a chance to rise to the Stoics, part of learning from Zeno to Marcus, who really is. I'm curious, how did you start to sense or know that LaCross was it for you? That was like what Robert Green calls it like your life's task. When was it clear to you that like LaCross was it? Because I got to imagine you were good at other sports.

Yeah, it's a good question, Ryan. It's one that I'm actually delving into more now because you and I have known each other for a few years and we talk a lot about this podcast essentially in our stoic kind of self-actualization and just trying to attain you know, just trying to attain some sense of enlightenment. And that often comes through self and the alignment of actual and ideal. And then, you know, our professional endeavors tend to be in the mix, especially if you're kind of a creator and entrepreneur and have that ambition

to excel and have an impact on the world. And so I think the tricky part is why you catch me in an interesting time. We finished our second season. We're still in this global pandemic. We sprinted to get our, you know, the first North American team sports bubble off the ground in Utah. It was successful. I'm still playing in it.

There's a lot of stress that went into it, still a lot of stress and post and you tend to come down off of moments in life and you begin to do a lot of self work again. And so I've been actually thinking about, is my original when we last talked, is the thought around across being my life's work, is that a thing for me? I don't know. I know that I became really talented at lacrosse my sophomore year in high school. And then the structured path of which society,

especially in America, takes us, was one that, hey, you're going to be up for a college scholarship and you're going to be able to get a degree as a result and as it became better, I became the best in the country. And then you're going to be up for a college scholarship and you're going to be able to get a degree as a result and as it became better I became the best in the country and then you're going to be drafted into what was the former pro league and then I wanted to become the best player in the world and win championships and play internationally and it was very like singular sight focused and then as we began to know each other's when I started doing a lot of life work and we connected came on my podcast

and that life work led to how I can affect the industry or impact it in ways that helped others greater than me. And that I went down the venture building the premier of the cross. So you can have certain skill sets that helped me in the business of sports and helped me in the communication

and relationships of those that are in it. But I don't know. I mean, maybe I'll ask you, you've done a lot of things in life is our purpose, our life's purpose. I don't know that it is like you identify with a thing. I think it's just from just being and whatever that moment is is being in it and trying to do well in it. Yeah, I mean, I certainly relate to your path of being good at more than one thing.

It's like most people who are really good or world class at a creative profession or an athletic profession, like whether they're a guitar player or a point guard, they tend to be almost good at that thing at the expense of other things. So this is why there's all the cliches about Hollywood actors being bad at business or athletes being bad with money or management. You're interesting in that you're really good at the sport you play and have this sort of vision and entrepreneurial

and sort of building sensibilities. And I relate to that. And it's a weird feeling because you sometimes don't know, or I'd be curious what you think. Sometimes you don't know or I'd be curious what you think. Sometimes you don't know whether your pursuit of one or the other is inhibiting you in some way. So it's like, could you, could I be a better writer if I was only a writer? Or am I almost as good as I am at writing? Am I holding myself back by not fully pursuing, say, entrepreneurial things bigger than just my own individual creative

expression. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually a good point because we've been shooting a dock behind the scenes and since you and I have known each other in 2017 to now, especially when we were building the lead, we had cameras on, and we have great executive producers out here in LA, we have many public announcements around it yet, but we just wrapped an interview in, of course, like a socially distance

and safe setting here earlier this week, and the conclusion is to that point, I am the testing rat right now of actually there's one of and I don't take pride in this. There's one of me, there's one of all of us, but a player who started his own professional league that's playing in it. So you basically look at the closest case study would probably be the USC in Dana White and we model a lot of our business building off of what the USC has done in their ability to get over the really like extended wide moat that separated the legacy sports

leagues from the emerging leagues over the last century and the ability to be economically prosperous or viable. And the USC has shown how to do it with modern media and technology and personalities in IP. But Dana White is probably the closest because he is the face of a sport and he's also the owner of it of that league. And so there's an interesting dynamic where if you look at traditional sports, you have commissioners that are largely behind the scenes, and owners have become more public facing, but Dana White doesn't also get in the octagon. And then you have the history of a psychology of, no matter if it's sport or any industry, we have the labor force versus ownership,

or employees versus bosses. And that's a built-in psychology that runs deep into our lineage. And in year one, when we launched our league, which was 2019, all of the players for those who don't know, the Premier LaCrosse League, was a rebirth of professional across. There was a previously called Major League LaCrosse. Then under Wage Desk, we were paid on average below the minimum wage standards in North America for the labor force. We were all part-time. There was all this stuff that

that a lot of leagues would have traditionally looked at players unionizing the change, but there was no excess pot of money. There was no money at all. So unionization wasn't even an option. The only option was us to rip out and start something new. This is what my brother and I did, and Ryan, you were super helpful early on as were a number of other advisors and investors. And in year one, I was kind of perceived as the leader of the players who picked up and left and started something new. So on the field was challenging, but not like this time. This time was, okay, the PLL is now the new normal for the lacrosse world.

And my pulse now very very clearly one of the owners of the league still playing on the field against his colleagues. And for me, as I reflect on capacity to your question, it's like I have objectively had my two least productive seasons in my entire career going all the way back to college and my 13 years of playing professionally, while I've been building the POL. And so you wonder, you know, there's all these variables, right?

I played 33 last year, 34 this year. And so you look at the athlete age, barometer, but is it actually possible to do things really, really well simultaneously in psychology would say, no, not to the extent of potential, but I'm really been trying to do that. And I'm at this really kind of intra dynamic, very dynamic and kind of in pass in my life where I'm looking down the barrel of, you know, luckily having built a successful business that means more to me than, you know, having a more successful playing career, but also then looking at, you know, is this the

end of my playing career? It forces you to kind of doubt yourself in both fronts and it's really strange. And there's no visible like evidence of it except your own sort of hauntedness of what you might be leaving on the table in either direction. That resonates with me. Do you ever think I'm curious do you ever wonder to what your life would be like had you gravitated towards another sport like I think about like like you're the I would say and you might shy away from this but you're the LeBron James of LeCrosse LeBron James of the NBA you know is making a hundred100 million a year or something. Does that ever haunt you also?

Like do you ever think about like, what if I made the transition to tight end or do you feel like the cross is the only language you were meant to speak as an athlete? It used to. It used to haunt me in my 20s because I had that opportunity. You and I've talked about and we both have Relationships with Bill Belacheck who I think is the greatest coach of all time and there was a moment I've known coach for 15 years or so and he grew up playing lacrosse and I built a relationship with him while I was at John Topkins and we got together after I graduated and you know, he's pretty notorious for his sense of picking off talent from other disciplines and he's done it in LaCross

and Chris Hogan's an example. Chris Hogan's a year younger than me. I at the time I remember seeing Chris basically invest a decade because he played across at Penn State a decade into building his football talent and to when he emerged and became a super bowl champion. And Bill had given me that opportunity back in 2009 to go out for the team and play strong safety.

You know, the reason why I didn't as I wanted to play Y receiver, I thought that was my skill set. And we kind of argued around it. But then we sat down a month later, we were at dinner and we sat down a month later and he was like, you know, you're, you know, the best player in your sport right now, you're getting ready to suit up with Team USA this coming summer. And he was like, my gut is that while you may be able to make this team and have potentially a short career on, you know, the practice squad or special teams.

And that would be really fun to make the minimum wage, which is, you know, probably 120 times what I was getting, which was $8,000 to play professional across. You know, you're doing something that is going to be more fulfilling to yourself because you're at the top of what you do. And that was hard for me. This was, I was 24, 25. And then I ended up in my personal life going through a marriage, a divorce,

going through a depression after we lost. The following world games, which was four years later, and I was considered the best player in the world and dropped an egg in the championship game against Canada. And that led me into therapy and like deep cognitive behavioral therapy. And I really evolved as a person that has helped lead me into a place

where I could operate a company with my co-founder and brother Mike and change a sport like the Premier LaCrosse League. And now I feel like right where you have me now, right? And which was like interesting four years later when I first got into CBT, it is like my next wave of being, you know, deep into self-observance and questioning. And I'm sure like my investors don't want to hear this, but yeah, I think those are like the

ebbs and flows of life. And so to kind of wrap up the question is, I feel a lot of distance and don't feel any anxiety or doubt or regret around not doing anything else. I think to a degree, we have to trust ourselves. And I feel really fortunate around what I've been able to get to at this stage at least. Yeah, there's just kind of this sense of like, what could have been that I think hits you every once in a while.

Like for me, I started my career in Hollywood. I worked at this talent agency and I, you know, people I worked with went on and founded companies that were worth, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. And sometimes you think, you're like, oh, what would my life have been like, if I did that? And I think the truth is you'd be pining for exactly the life you had.

Now, you know what I mean? I think even if you had been successful as a football player, you'd wonder what it would have been like to be the greatest of all time at the sport that you were leaving. And so it's a weird thing. I think you can't, where your ad sounds like the right place to be, which is you ultimately can't spend much time on what is

because there's nothing you can do about them, but it is the curse of being talented or having optionality in your life is that you do sort of wonder what those other roads would look like. Yeah, and I think what I've also learned around perspective and taking objective inventory and you learn this from the Stoics is that our brain is wired in particular circumstances. When it comes to self, our critical inner voice tends

to jump in and it's very loud and tells you what you're bad at and you believe it. And then when it comes to alternative beings, our optimistic voice comes out and says like, well, you could have played in the NFL, Paul. And you could have been a strong safety. And who knows that you're a work ethic? You could have been an all pro. And maybe all of a sudden you're making millions of dollars

and playing in front of 80,000 fans. But what it doesn't do is tell you like, wow, look at the risk. You would have left a sport that you were high achieving in. Football is also really dangerous. You could have gotten concussions and you've learned as you've gotten older, just the more, most important part of your body is your brain. And that's like what we thrive on into old age, is our ability to think and be.

And there's this exchange of significant risk in the sport that you were considering. And so when I develop that perspective, or when I think about what could have been, which happens a lot to me, even on decisions on a daily basis, I try to actually think about the downs have been, which happens a lot to me, even on decisions on a daily basis, I try to actually think about the downsides too, because I know that my brain's trying

to convince me of what I missed out on. Well, you know what, it's interesting you bring up cognitive behavioral therapy and stochism, because those two things are much more linked than I think a lot of people know. Albert Ellis, one of the founders of CBT. He basically roots the foundation of the philosophy in a quote from Epictetus, one of the Stoke Flossers, and the quote is, it's basically, it's not things that upset us. It's our judgment about things. And so it's like,

we choose a path that is a path. And then what we then our mind sort of gets to work and tells us, like, oh, you fucked up or oh, you made a huge mistake or oh, you could have been something else or oh, like these events are objective. But then what we do to ourselves is the mind sort of goes to work just kind of running these thought patterns that are really full of a lot of judgment and doubt and sort of speculation about all the things we're missing out on and that that is really the source of so much unhappiness and in our lives I feel. and the quote resonates, I've also begun to, I have an interesting kind of background, familially. So I both have a relationship in my family

to learning differences, so dyslexia, as well as personality disorders and other like access DSMs. And I've learned that, as a society, hopefully we're becoming more accepting of therapy and kind of like psychology as it means to grow in turn interpersonally. But I've also learned that groups of people

who have been largely stereotyped for their differences and you take LD and kids who are dyslexic and are going through a different pathway in the school system, is they're learning differently because of the way that their brain processes information and aggregates memory and a lot of successful business people and entertainers and artists and innovators are dyslexic. And if you look at the school system, which is very like R&D built, is the way they study history and science and math,

actually, it's a beautiful way to learn versus traditional textbooks and testing styles of our educational system. I also look at modern developments of therapy for personality disorders and Marshal Linnum, who built or created dialectal behavioral therapy as a means to treat certain personality disorders and martialinum who built or created dialectical behavioral therapy as a means to treat certain personality disorders also gets really tactical, which I think is really helpful over top of CBT is thinking about or understanding perspective

is one thing and then what do you do to approach it or how do you address, you know these are like meaningful life long engagements that we embark on and it's not like, you know, I can sit down and study Buddhism or read a book and then try to say, I want to implement it in my life and then you go back to the like hard creased paperful in our lives. So it has to be a commitment to it. And I find that understanding tactical ways to build integration is helpful and dialectal behavioral therapy does just that. It maps out an approach for when we are unregulated in our

emotions, whether it's a conflict, whether it's something that happens at work, and how to first recognize that unregulation and then approach it from a factual standpoint. So asking yourself, like, what am I thinking about? Is that actually true? Did that happen? If so, how do I feel about it? And then you're able to like settle down the current and make a decision.

So I think that I've been grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from a number of people and be introduced to core concepts that has helped me balance a lot of my anxieties around doing two things at once and taking on almost these like massacres ventures of building a professional sports league from scratch or playing professional sports and putting your body at risk.

What I think's interesting, Peter Tiel has talked about this with sort of learning disabilities and call it mental illness or you call it the autism spectrum. He was sort of looking at different entrepreneurs and how there tends to be a disproportionate number of people who are either dyslexic or had aspergers who end up starting successful companies. And his sort of theory was that when everyone is kind of thinking the same, everyone's on the same wavelength,

some of these things that we think of as disadvantages or illnesses or, you know, weaknesses actually are huge advantages because they allow us to sort of operate on a different plane. And I've got to, I've got to imagine one of the reasons that athletes don't go start their own leagues on a regular basis is because you get really used to as an athlete doing what other older people tell you to do. So you, because you spend all these years listening to your coach, the idea that you're gonna buck the commissioner

and go be your own commissioner is probably a difficult, you know, it's probably a difficult place for a lot of athletes to get to. No doubt. I think it is sports. We can go in so many different directions here because they sit at the intersection of so much in society, whether it's social injustice, politics, activism, community, tribalism, religion, sexual identity, and it has been a lot of times a force or a spur of change.

And I think just in the same vein, sport is also exemplifies the notion of, players are subservient to ownership. And ownership, players, you see athletes talk about this all the time, as much like number one in receiving a reward or a championship, they thank God and number two, they thank ownership for like, you know, drafting them and paying them a wage that frankly from like a transactional standpoint, the athlete was worth the draft pick because they earned being the best at whatever college

they were at and they deserve the wage because the owners are getting a return on it But they may have ownership and sports has built this Dynamic where like the athletes feel lucky to be there and it's unique to other industries And I think as we've seen even going back to the labor force in the early days of unionizing to now like the modern labor force and You know the wave of entrepreneurship over the last couple of decades and the celebration of entrepreneurship over the last 10. And then with the infusion of tech and then general startup costs going down, you're seeing people in all industries

break off from Fortune 500 companies to start their own. It's that the tricky part about sports is that sports are monopolies, right? In basketball, there's one pro league. And so I know during COVID, there were a few players that talked about our wages are getting docked and we're playing this bubble model, we have to leave our families. This isn't right. What if we've started our own? There's also major hurdles that these leagues have had in place traditionally to prevent players from starting their own where guys are on long-term contracts, some guys are on one-year contracts.

There's non-compeats, there's, there, there also, and the big four leagues are getting paid really well. So the risk is like disproportionate for leaving where in our league, all of us were under one-year deals, and we were all being paid disproportionately under market. There was no risk to leave outside of the sport going away entirely. So it's, I think the larger point is, yeah, being able to, as like Steve Jobs would say, zig when everyone's eggs, or maybe it was the other way around. I can't remember. I think it's one of the same. But there's part of it is the way you grow up. And then the other part is how you think critically.

And then the last one is feasibility. I don't think Pro Basketball players, LeBron, right now, objectively couldn't pull the top 40 guys and go start his own league. It just wouldn't work. They're all under different terms of their contracts. And so that's also a disadvantage when you look at industries that have monopolies, which is really what sports are.

No, and I think in a weird way this explains some of the cappernick stuff, right? It's the reason players weren't backing him before, and they are now, is that you're not supposed to stand a look. Like football is a game that does not look for individuality. Like even you compare LeBron James to Tom Brady, LeBron James has so much more autonomy and freedom owns is a bigger platform. There's more of a spotlight on him. He's one of fewer players.

And so I think in a way that the idea of someone doing something that was so transgressive and Had the risk of offending so many people in opinion was at that time not with it was just it was inconceivable for athletes of both races to back that even if Politically they were aligned with it. And that's where that idea of the Stoics talks so much about courage. It's really hard to do a thing that other people don't think you should do. And that's that includes kneeling during the national anthem or breaking off and starting your own business or dropping out of college or, you know, running for public office. Like when, or even, you know, in football, they look at, they look at this where it's like coaches don't go for it on fourth down as often as statistically they should because they don't want because most other coaches don't do it.

And therefore you might look stupid or different in doing it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's two things that come to mind. The first is difference between if we're going to talk about the NFL and the MIA is ownership in the NFL has for as long as we can remember, try to commoditize the value of the athletes. And so, you know, in the 80s, there was an attempt at a players association that was exclusive to the quarterbacks. It was called the quarterbacks club. And they got a lot of pushback because, you know, they were delineating themselves from their peers, but they knew that like, the only people in football that have enterprise value are the quarterbacks. They're the ones with the ball on their hands. Everyone has helmets on, so you can't see them like we see Leon on

Messier and all that on LeBron James. But they're also at every press conference, and they get the They're the ones with the ball on their hands. Everyone has helmets on, so you can't see them like we see Leon on messy or in all though in LeBron James. But they're also at every press conference, and they get the endorsement deals. And so everyone else, whether it's a half-back, a running-back, a corner-back, a line-backer, they're commoditized. And so that's one, and the NBA is not that way. But two, largely, to the and justice efforts on display and the peaceful protests that Colin Kaepernick was continuing all the way back to, you know, those of Arthur

Ash and Jackie Robinson and they've each taken on different moments from, you know, Jim Crow to segregation to now kind of being actively anti-racist, is that NFL ownership can't call in Kaepernick. And so they were not only are you all commodities here, and you can lose your jobs if you stand with them, but do you really wanna take that risk? And then the NBA, even before Colin Kaepernick, the move that Adam Silver made,

who was David Stern's successor and David Stern was fantastic in the 80s of positioning, basically rescuing the NBA, which was largely considered, you know, kind of a drug using league, and the Michael Jordan doc, Michael even talked about it, and like ratings were down and put butts and seats, but it was basically like the Lakers and Celtics and the Knicks and the League wasn't making any money. Adam Silver came in and when there was racism right here in LA with Donald Sterling, who was the owner of the Clippers, he asked Donald Sterling against resistance because Commissioner's job is to be basically the owners puppet puppets and Mike Beck, I need to service my owners. They're trade association leagues. They're service the owners first and player second. He was like, this isn't right.

Donald Surnieling asking you, we're gonna ask you a step down and he had to sell his franchise. And that began the trust between the NBA players and their new commissioner. And then I think they trusted David Stern. But David Stern was largely marketing the athletes. And Michael Jordan famously wouldn't talk about politics

because he said Republicans buy shoes too. And this is now the major difference, I think, at a macro level between the NBA and the NFL. And if you lead to what we did with the Premier League cross-league, and I'm sure people know about LaCrosse now, and many people don't know about the sport, but it's actually an indigenous sport. So the Haudenosaunee, which are referred to now because of French missionaries coming

in and deciding we think you should be called Iroquois, the Haudenosaunee is a Confederacy of comprised of six tribal nations in Canada and the US, and they're the creators of a Cross, it's called the Medicine Game, and they have shared it with the rest of North America. And it became a college inhabited sport. And then we built a pro league from it. But there are two major sources of social injustice in our country by which we have the ability as owners of this league to stand with, stand for, and activate with.

The sport has largely become white and considered very privilege, is it's a game that was founded by indigenous nations. So those who are rightful inhabitants and kind of citizens of North Central and South America. And then number two, if we look at the other countries, other kind of original sin, it was building the labor force off of free labor and slavery. And as we've seen since the

George Floyd death, that, you know, we're back into this modern civil rights movement. And we were actually in a position where we decided to go against what I think the sport had stood for a while, which is stand on the sideline and say we're not racist and continue to look at a disproportionate majority of players being white to black and our sport doesn't look like the NBA or the NFL looks a lot like NASCAR and the NHL and the PGA Tour, which all four of ours are expensive sports to play so you can look at socioeconomic issues. But we were the first thing to say about that. If the Ivy League brought you a lot of people.

That's right. And so we took a position much like Adam Silver did and much different than the NFL ownership groups did. And we said, no, not only do is this wrong and we're not standing with it. And I know people want to, a lot of fans want to look at sport as a circus and a source of entertainment and don't interfere with my politics. This isn't politics.

This is about humanitarianism. And the same people who have changed the world in sports from Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali to even the William sisters name. We talk about Colin Kaepernick, the Billie Jean King. We have those players too. And we have black players. And we're standing with them and black lives matter and

And then we we've since also done what's called a land acknowledgement, which is largely unheard of but it's it's it's done primarily in Canada where if you're going to Operate your business on land you much like you say the national anthem you give a landing knowledge man to the indigenous people Who like you say the National Anthem, you give a land acknowledgement to the indigenous people who inhabited that land and still live there today. So there's a lot of important things that we can do as owners and the league. And you know, we I somehow went down this path because we were talking about, you know, that I think the currency of of traditional ownership versus players and the unique aspect that we're in because you have a player that started the league. versus players and the unique aspect that we're in because you have a player that started the week.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you and I, I'm sure both know a lot of these people, they're smart people, they're genuinely kind and good people, typically tend to be successful people. And they seem to have gotten to this place where they hear everything that you're saying or they watch these videos or read these articles. And I think it's almost like it hits them in a place that makes them so uncomfortable

because they are looking at what the stokes would call injustice or evil. And even if they're not the doer of that evil, even if it's an ancient historical evil, it makes them so uncomfortable that instead of sitting with it and thinking about it and talking about it and learning from it and trying to no one is saying you can magically make these things go away, you know, your land acknowledgement thing you're talking about doesn't, you know, sort of restore an Indian tribe from, you know, 180 years ago to the land that was stolen from them or 400 years ago.

But it does begin to move the ball forward a little bit. Instead of being able to do that, it almost feels like they're sort of instinctively and emotionally moving away from it and they go, oh, I'm not like, that's like woke bullshit. Or, you know, like, do you know what I'm talking about? Like, it seems like, and I'm sure you heard from a lot of those fans who otherwise would be like, good Christian kind, you know, decent people,

and they just have this intensely, almost hateful reaction to anything that makes them feel that way. And it's one of the sadder things that I've been trying to wrap my head around, especially the last six months where it's sort of really weird to tell. It's been devastating. And it's been a source of a lot of the pain that we have had going through this and having open discussions with all of our players and then our fans.

And things that we did beyond just saying the Black Lives Matters that we had assets on screen. We had BLM LED boards. Our players had the option to wear BLM patches. We had Black Lives Matter warm up shirts. I was on NBC talking about why we support the Black Lives Matter movement and address specifically some of the politicization

and the political hijacking that's happening. It was like, some of my closest advisors and mentors were like, there's like really only downside for you Paul to have done that, but you did well, luckily. But like, you know, we, I believe that like having that conversation, I mean, this is the moment that we're in, which is a moment for the generation of white males.

In particular, straight white males, but just white people are for talking about the oppression of black people over the last 400 plus years to stand with. And I've learned about what psychological standing is and why we've lacked it. And it's okay, you can understand it if you study psychological standing, which is we care and we disagree with the injustice. We recognize the systemic racism, but we don't feel worthy to talk about it because it's not us, and there's so much risk because our genealogy with a perpetrator is largely. You stand on the sideline and say, I support black people, and I'm not racist, but we're at a point now.

It's very clear that that's not enough, we have to get out of our, out of the comfort of our own skin and, and stand with them. And that's the call to action. But what you're referencing is I think even going back to our conversation on the school system, is it an even faith that the thing that, you know, and I'm, I'm a spiritual person, I grew up Catholic and my family is really strong moral compass and strong ethics. I have become more agnostic to a particular faith, but I'm spiritual. But I always began to, I haven't always, I began to question in my 20s, like if faith is, why do denominations

insist on creating all of this regulatory structure around even itemizing a venial versus a moral sin and my purgatory and reconciliation to get X amount of gifts waiting for you in heaven and like hell. And it's like you're actually stripping out the part of faith that like I thought I was trying to become with. And I think, you know, because you had mentioned a lot of great Christians out there, and I would agree, and you know,

by identification cards, like I'm one of them, is you believe in anti-racism, and you believe in the oppression that has existed, and you want to partake in change. But we're wired between the way that I believe a lot of denominations in faith, fixate us, and then the school system to that point is like, it is so past fail, and then the school system to that point is like, it is so past fail and even in relationships, we're built to get defensive when we don't pass or succeed

and the defensiveness is at the core of the issue in our country's divide right now. Like to the point of like, you're not wrong. It's okay to have lack psychological standing. I lacked it, me personally. And like, I'm not ridiculed for lacking it. Like this is a moment where we can learn. And it's like the defensiveness, unfortunately, is the death of our growth.

No, I think that's right. And it's like, no one is personally inditing you, right? They're inditing a thing that millions of people have been complicit in. And what they're asking you to do is just care about it now, right? It's not that hard. It is scary and there is some risk, right, to step up and be a little bit political or to put your platform out there when people would prefer for you to not do it. But, you know, there's this Lyndon Johnson quote I love. This is like right after Kennedy's assassinated and I think it's right after Martin Luther King

is ultimately assassinated. He decides to sort of go all in on civil rights. And somebody says, you know, why don't we wait until this later date? You know, he says this will be bad for your re-election prospects. You know, you're going to piss off this. And he goes, oh, man, what the hell is the presidency for?

Right? His point is, like, why do I have this power if I'm not going to use it to do this thing that I know is right. And I think that's an interesting thing. I think athletes have gone through it, the number of politicians that I've worked with over the years and gotten to know, even just like wealthy people or just normal people. Everyone is going, I know this is wrong, but I'm not in a position to do something about

it right now. Or like, I know I have, you know, 50,000 Twitter followers. I'm going to leave this discussion for someone with more followers, or, you know, you might have been saying to yourself, well, let's wait till we get the league a little more established before we take a political stand. And I think what the Stokes would say is something similar to that Johnson remark, which is like, dude is like, dude, like what do you have what you have if you're not going to use it to do what is sort of obviously right? And to me, that's what's so impressive about the Kaepernick thing. Even though I actually have some disagreements with him, one politically on a lot of issues, but two, in the way he decided to do that messaging,

I think he made some mistakes, and I could discuss that all day. But the point is, I respect when somebody says, I'm going to put my ass on the line. Like, just as I respect a soldier who puts their ass on the line, and I respect and appreciate that sacrifice, I also respect when somebody decides, hey, I'm going to gamble my job on taking this stand that's important to me. That, uh, that Lyndon Johnson quote, I hadn't heard before. That's why I love talking to you. You're like full of quotes and I take a bunch. I have a note pattern in front of me. I was like, I'm going to take notes when Ryan talks. I think about a couple of things off of that. The first is the impact of social media and the second is being mindful of our root

of action. And it's a tricky thing because a couple of thoughts that I'd written down prior to this is, and I'll start back to front, I guess, is the dynamic of stepping up. And the notion of, like, is there such thing as a self-esteem? And you had mentioned, if we truly want to do well, part of that wanting to do well is having your voice amplified and hoping to impact generations. One of the things that I loved hearing when Barack Obama spoke during the DNC was his story that he heard from one of John Lewis' friends

that when Barack Obama was born, it was one of the days where Mr. Lewis was headed into prison and he was like our voice, our singular voice echoes into generations. And I remember Jim Brown telling me that when he was doing a lot of activism with Muhammad Ali is that every single Conversation has a ripple effect far beyond what we know and so the tricky part for everyone activated Now this is something that I think about because I feel my Critical and my ego critical self and ego jumped in from sometimes and I'll like Take a stance and then I'll like take a stance and then I'll check social because the brilliant psychologists

that work for these social media platforms try to build their algorithms and their upvoting to make us feel like, okay, is this thing gonna go viral? And that's not why we should fucking do it and it drives me nuts when I have that feeling. So like social media is unhealthy, but it like ironically is also an outlet where we can reach more people. So it's like, damn, if you do, damn, if you don't, it's like

it's an activist effort. If you use your platform for that, Lyndon Johnson's social good, or Colin Tappernick's social good, where you're also going to be testing your own ability to distance from kind of self-worth and ego. And then the notes that I wanted to draw to you is kind of managing our, what I've heard called as multitudes. This comes from an author named Jessica Carson. And she was talking about entrepreneurs and creators and accepting the paradox of which we live. So if you look at qualities, curiosity, perceptiveness, ambition, confidence, courage, charisma,

each of them has a counter. So if one were curious, we're distracted. When we're perceptive, we're overwhelmed. When we're ambitious, we're exhausted. When we're confident, we can be arrogant. That's like a social media thing. When we're courageous, we can be delusional. When we're charismatic, we can come off as an authentic. And on and on. That's hard. And that's where I try to, like, tap into, like, you know, the deep sense of just being rather than searching for, you know, the illuminated sense of happiness or fulfillment is like just be and trust that process. Well, so to wind down, I thought maybe we'd

sort of go back to where we began, which is how you're 34 now, right? How are you going to know when it is time to transition away from playing? How will you know? How does an athlete know this is it for me? Yeah. Well, I think an athlete traditionally that doesn't take on the ownership of a league has a tricky kind of balancing act on a tight rope of understanding that age different than any other industry is the most significant factor we deteriorate in our athletic ability. And so if you're a high performance athlete and I'll just draw another

NBA example, you can have Kobe Bryant and Robert Oury both of one the same amount of championships. Robert Oury may have actually won more. Robert Oury was a fantastic NBA role player and has won so many championships. And he's, you know, I think it may be seven or eight, but six out of minimum. And he, and his, his path to retirement, even like Vince Carter who accepted, and even we're seeing him with Carmelo Anthony,

accepted being the star to then role player, there's a difference between those three and then, you know, the best, which is LeBron, Kobe, and MJ struggled with retirement. But like, the best actually are operating on a pretty binary perception from their teammates, their coaches and fans, which is is if you're not the best, you need to retire. Like, we can't see you in any other light. And that's what I've experienced over the last three seasons, in particular, the last two, is that, you know, I appreciate the compliments that I get, but I'm not the player that I was when I was, you know, 22 to 32. when I was 22 to 32. And in particular, probably 27 to 31.

But, and so, I have to figure out, and I think athletes have to decide, why they play the game. Is it to be the best and having an impact on the field? Or are you going to be okay with not being the best and playing it because you love the competitive fly and you love the community and the locker room, but knowing that if you're not the best

and you once were, you're gonna be ridiculed for hanging on. So I think that's generally the decisions they make. And of course there's economic decisions, but I think largely if we're talking at the level that we are, which if you're an athlete that's fortunate enough to make a decision, when she or he can retire, that means you're probably one of the best.

A lot of athletes don't get that decision. They just get cut, were traded in their career ends, which is also really difficult. I think for me though, my decision that I'm making is much more unique because I could play three to four more years and play well, I think. But every season that I'm playing into the future is one where I'm putting just my colleagues

in a unique position. There, as much as I think, and I think most of them believe that I should be on that field and competing and trying to win, I'm also, you know, Dana White or Adam Silver, Roger Gidell on the field, planning a sentence and it puts me in a unique position in my locker room and in other locker rooms.

If they talk shit to me, which is a natural occurrence in a sport. If they are in my locker room and, you know, trespass or do something that, you know, the league would potentially have to consider suspending them for like a high hit from one of my teammates. Naturally you're going to look at Paul, like, what's the decision? Am I going to get find. And like that has increasingly over the last 12 months weighed on me. And it's something that has just took away my happiness from plane. So I know that I'm in the twilight from an on field standpoint in my career, but

I also feel like, you know, the time is very near if not just this next season, you know, that I'll retire. Yeah, I was reading a book about Lou Gehrig and he was sort of talking about, obviously this was exaggerated in Lou Gehrig tragically, but he's sort of watching, and he was saying watching an athlete age in the game

is like a magnified version of a preview of death. Right? Like, the reflexes slow down. They become more vulnerable to what's happening around them. They have less control. And so it must be such a strange feeling, especially for you, the ability to kind of, like you're not just thinking about your own career

and how it's good for you and how it's affecting you, but you also have this weird sort of dispassionate view of it as the owner for which you kind of work for as well. It must be surreal and kind of a reminder of that momento morey that, hey, like this can't go on forever. And so as you're saying sort of like, let me enjoy it and then let me also get ready for what's next.

Yeah, enjoyment in sport is a unique thing at the highest level. I'm not sure the highest performers, and I'm curious to your thoughts too, and the industries that you've excelled in. Outside of being in a flow state, which for an athlete is during a game, and you're playing really well, and you're connected, you're enjoying it, but it happens so fast those flow states that you kind of enjoy it in post-mortem after games. But for me, as I've competed at the highest level, so take it when you first asked me on as excelling my sophomore in high school, and certainly once I got into college and the pressure was on, I just, I don't know where I land on, where others land on this when I say it,

but I've never really had fun doing what I do. I do what I do on the field because I have this fire that burns inside of me when I was at my top of my game that I wanted to be there and it was like this sacrifice and this commitment to winning at all costs and bringing your teammates along to that level and it was very stressful. And like, I think about sports that are largely fun and, you know, I get calls from people during this past season like, Hey man, you look stressed out there, you should have some fun and I started reflecting.

I've never had fun, thanks for the advice, but this is just the path that I've chosen. And my hunch from talking to some of my friends and playing other major leagues is like, it's kind of shared. And I wonder if that's the case. I know sports are different because they're like, you know, you have this two hour hit every week that you get a chance to like, to show off all the work and all the study that you've done.

And it's so dynamic because different than business, you have an opponent that's doing everything they can to stop you. Like that doesn't happen really in business outside of maybe some competitors and industries, but like they're not actually trying to trash you. It happens in politics, but you know, in business you typically have two companies or more going after the same revenue.

So it's competitive, but not saying like, fuck this guy or I'm going to like try and take an out by his knees. So that's, yeah, you're not literally, you're not literally head to head the way you are with sports. And the result, the result is not binary win-lose. I certainly relate to what you're saying. I mean, there's this fascinating Wright-Thompson profile of Michael Jordan from maybe like 10 years ago.

And he used, Michael Jordan was saying, you know, you get this gift, the competitiveness, the drive. And it makes you great. But he's like, you can't turn it off. And he's like, if can't turn it off. And he's like, if you could turn it off, then you could breathe. And I certainly relate to that. I mean, yeah, in my field,

like sort of clearly very aggressive, very hard working, have something I'm doing. Like, you know, writing is often sort of a leisurely thing for a lot of writers, not leisurely, but they're sort of operating on a much slower pace. I feel like, in my career, I've turned it up. What I've found is I really love the writing. I love when I get to do the thing in the flow state you're talking about,

but as I become more successful and the audience has gotten bigger, I've come to find that I enjoy all the other things much less, right? All the meetings, all the discussions, I mean, I'm going into the, I have a book coming out and at the end of September called Lives of the Stoics. And like, this is the first one where it's like, I really felt almost no excitement about any of the stuff. I mean, the pandemic has contributed to it. But I sometimes I'm like, I can't wait to get out on tour. I can't wait to do interviews.

I can't wait to, you know, we've got these marketing calls. Like, maybe I felt like there was something more that I was proving in doing those things well. But I've now, like, that part of it, I am the least interested in it. And I really only like that part of it, I am the least interested in it. I really only like the doing of it. And the other things are what,

they don't make me unhappy, but they definitely don't contribute to my happiness in any way. That's powerful, man. I feel that. It's a tricky thing. I mean, and certainly all the people who are killing would kill themselves to publish a book or kill themselves to make it into a professional sport,

let alone at your level in the cross, you know, probably have no comprehension of what we're talking about. And that's the tricky thing is that you, I don't know about you, but I've heard people talk about exactly what we're talking about, but you always tell yourself like,

it'll be different with me. And I think that's what, in a weird way, keeps the human species going, but it also makes us miserable. Yeah. Yeah, and then I've also heard the side of the audience that says, like, how could you not appreciate

all of the wonderful things that you're doing and the book tours and the mass marketing and the product sales and so it makes you feel like I'm not enjoying this and it's just it's such a dynamic thing that you're right. I heard about it and listened to when I was younger and still thought you know it wasn't going to be me and you didn't start saying, well, look at this small violin on plane or what was it? But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but to make you better and your profession isn't going to make you better and by better I mean feel more fulfilled. You're the only one in control of that. That's right. That's right. Well man, I was so good to talk to you. I do hope there's at least one more season with fans because that is part of it and I

can't wait to come see you and appreciate everything and we'll talk soon. Hey, Sean, I'm your Ryan. I enjoyed it. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcasts, listening apps. It really helps and tell a friend. 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.