The Daily Stoic - Everything, Everywhere, All At Once | Say No To The Need to Impress

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

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or listen early and ad-free on Wondry+, on Apple Podcasts, or on the Wondry app. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing.

So let's get into it. Everything, everywhere, all at once. At the height of his political career, Seneca suddenly ran afoul of the emperor. Perhaps his eloquence offended Claudius. Perhaps it was his political base that threatened him. Seneca was falsely accused of sleeping with Claudius' sister and exiled to the island of Corsica just days after he buried his only child. After decades of peace and prosperity and stability, the early days of Marcus Aurelius' reign were rocked by extraordinary and endless difficulties, a plague, floods, wars, and

attempted coup. He too buried a child, then another, and another, and another, and another. Life comes at us fast. It does not stop. It hits us with everything, everywhere, all at once. We cannot prevent this. We cannot hope to be skipped. All we can do is be ready. Dug in, as Marcus Aurelius said, like a wrestler, ready for sudden attacks. The unexpected blows, Seneca said, land heaviest, so we must anticipate them. We cannot be naive or lulled by false hopes. We have to prepare.

We have to be ready to accept what happens, as Marcus said, just as we accept the orders of a doctor. We will stagger under the weight of all this. We will struggle and break. All we can do, the Stoics tell us, as Hemingway wrote, is try to be strong in the broken places, to focus on how we respond, what we do about it, to who we can become for having gone through it. Say no to the need to impress. If the desire to impress and be liked by others is innate to humans as a species, then every generation born before social media got lucky. Today, we face an unending stream of status updates demanding to be filled with all the

impressive things we are doing, the trials we are overcoming, announcements of our dangers averted and triumphs realized. It's exhausting. Centuries ago, Epictetus saw this pride and narcissism even in his own computerless students and reminded them that it wasn't so innocent. In fact, he told them that it would destroy their life's purpose. It would distract and fatigue them. Seneca, too, saw the seeking of approval of spectators as one of life's disgraces. Watch those impulses today. Notice how much you seem to need your phone and status updates and ask, is this

the person I want to be? Is this what a philosopher would do? And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoke Journal, which you can check out. I do the journal every morning. I sit down and spend some time with the blank pages. We've got three, we've got two Epictetus quotes and one Seneca quote to round it out. If you should ever turn your will to things outside your control in order to impress someone, be sure that you have wrecked your whole purpose in life. Be content then to be a philosopher in all that you do. And if you wish also to be seen as one, show yourself first that you are,

and you will succeed. That's Epictetus' Incaridian 23. In public, avoid talking often and excessively about your own accomplishments and dangers, for however much you enjoy recounting your dangers, it is not pleasant for others to hear about your affairs. Epictetus is in Caridion. 33. 14. How disgraceful is the lawyer whose dying breath passes well at court at an advanced age pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators. Seneca on the brevity of life.

20. You know, I think about this, I have a little rule for me. When I'm working on a book, I don't talk about it. I don't tell people that I finished, I don't tell people that I just finished chapter two, I don't tell people that I just signed a deal. In fact, on my last book deal, I didn't even announce it. I could have gotten a little press. And early in my life, I kind of wanted that validation.

Hey, I did it. Maybe media, maybe it's good for my brand. Now I see all that stuff as distraction. Even social media, if you follow me, I'm at Ryan Holiday on Twitter and Facebook and I and Instagram and at Daily Stoic also. But you'll notice there's almost no real time updates for me.

I never really got the habit, but when I feel it peaking up, I break it immediately. These are not platforms for me to fish for validation. I don't wanna say, hey, look what I'm doing. And then people go, oh, you're so great. Oh, you're so awesome. And I'm not saying they do that because I'm well-known. I'm saying, your friends do this.

We want to congratulate each other. We want to encourage each other. And I get that. But that's not why I want to be a writer. That's not why I want to do things. As I say in The Boy Who Would Be King, all the things Marcus Aurelius did made him very popular. That's not why he did it.

He did it because they're the right thing. So I try not to let social media, I try not to let the chase for validation or approval. I try, I just, it's not a need I really ever try to say it. I don't feed it because I feel like the more you feed it, the more it wants from you. So I try to focus on just not talk, I try to let my work do the talking about my work.

That's not to say I don't believe in marketing. I do, brand is important. I mean, I have the social media. I just try to have a healthy relationship with it, a healthy balance with it. So I'm using it, it is not using me. And look, Twitter and Facebook and Clubhouse and all these apps, you're the product that's

being sold. They're exploiting your need for validation and attention, right? They know that you want to tell people what you're doing, and then you want to hear what people say about what you're doing, and then you want to respond to the people who aren't liking it enough, and then you want to check back and see how many comments it got or likes it got or whatever. There's a reason Instagram, I think Instagram did people a public service

when they turned off, you know, some of the, not everyone can see how many likes or, you know, views their post got. I think that's great. As a public figure, they leave these tools and they are tempting. And so I don't even have it on my phone. I don't want to touch it.

Every time I, I never go to one of these sites and I feel better about myself as a person, I just feel that that insatiable need has been encouraged a little bit. So let's say no to trying to impress other people. Let's not care what other people think. As Marcus Aurelius said, this is another quote we could have included in the entry. He says, you know, we care about ourselves more than other people, yet for some reason we care about their opinions way too much. No, focus on what you have to do, focus on you, focus on what you think, what you know is right. Do things for that reason. If you get validation for it afterwards, wonderful, but that can't be why you do it.

And if it is why you do it, it's going to break your heart, I promise you. So say no to the desire to impress other people. Plus, other people, man, they don't know. They're wrong 99% of the time anyway. Focus on what you know. Just do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. 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. Some things are meant to be shared, like sunsets over the Pacific,

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