The Daily Stoic - Olympian Kate Courtney on Optimization and Embracing the Process | This is What You Have To Choose

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Ryan reads today’s meditation and talks to mountain bike champion Kate Courtney about her recent trip to the Tokyo Olympics which she wrote about in the Washington Post, seeing moments of failure as opportunities for growth, the important distinction between optimization vs. maximization, and more.Kate Courtney is a professional mountain bike racer for the Scott-SRAM MTB Racing Team. Kate is the 2019 Elite XCO World Cup Overall Champion, and the 2018 Elite XCO World Champion. In 2017, Kate won four U23 World Cups and earned the U23 Overall World Cup victory as well as her first Elite National Championship Title. In 2018, Kate became the first American in 17 years to win an Elite MTB World Championship and only the fourth American woman to do so. Kate also secured her spot as a member of the US Olympic team for Tokyo 2020. Check out the Amor Fati challenge coin at store.dailystoic.comBlinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Ten Thousand makes the highest quality, best-fitting, and most comfortable training shorts I have ever worn. They are a direct-to-consumer company, no middleman so you get premium fabrics, trims, and techniques that other brands simply cannot afford. Ten Thousand is offering our listeners 15% off your purchase. go to Tenthousand.cc and enter code STOIC to receive 15% off your purchase.The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/emailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Kate Courtney: Homepage, Instagram, Twitter, 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 Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace in wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. 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. This is what you have to choose. Needless to say, life does not go as planned, especially lately. We propose and God disposes, goes the sang, and rarely then do we get what we want. But does it always have to be that way? Epic teetists suggest that the secret to happiness is to stop wishing for things to happen and to start wishing for what has happened. What he is talking about is choosing the things that have been chosen for us. You didn't want to make your entire workforce go remote, but you had to. What good is resenting or bemoaning a reality

that was out of your control. You didn't intend to cut out travel for most of the year, but here you are. You didn't want to blow out your shoulder or your knee, but that's how it went. And now you're laid up rehabbing or learning to swim because you can't play soccer anymore. So you might as well switch your attitude from half to to get to. Events have chosen you, so you might as well choose them back. Several times in meditations Marcus Aurelius uses the word ascent. That's what he's referring to. He's talking about endorsing what has happened because no amount of anger or complaining will

make it otherwise. He's talking about love and what has happened because hatred isn't getting you nowhere. A more faulty except choose love what the world has chosen for you. It's a better way. It's the only way. That is my more faulty coin. I was just giving a talk and showing it off to them actually. But a more Fati, as Nietzsche says, not merely to bear what is necessary, but love it. I carried this challenge coin with me most of where I go. Um, I'm still during the pandemic.

My clothing choices have changed and I'm not going as many places. So I also just have one sitting on my desk and I love to sort of roll it around and spin it and touch it and just be reminded of this idea that I didn't choose for it to be this way but now that it has happened I'm going to choose to accept it and to make the most of it and to use it. That's what a Morphati is all about. You can check that out at store.dailystoke.com. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast.

I've been trying to get today's guests on the podcast for months and months and months. She was a little busy competing in the Tokyo Olympics. She is one of the best athletes in the world at what she does, talking about Kate Courtney. She's a professional mountain bike racer and Olympic athlete, multi-world cup champion. She recently graduated from Stanford University and now is folks on being a professional athlete. All of that really interesting, but she wrote and we talked about this at the beginning of the

interview and article, I think everyone should read for The Washington Post, when her Olympic race did not go as planned. And she talks, I think, in a profoundly stoke and brave way, a vulnerable way, but also a resilient way about what it feels like to train for years and years to do something and then to get a really bad break. And that break can break you or it can make you better. That's really what the obstacle is the way it's about. It's really what the final chapter of Courage is calling

is about, the idea of bouncing back from a devastating experience. And as she says, in her case, one that had to happen not just in front of people in the moment, but the millions of people watching on television. And so I think you'll take from this interview what an incredibly strong and courageous

and self-aware person Kate is, how dedicated and committed she is as an athlete, how much she has studied, not just her sport itself, but the mental side of things, and it's lovely to connect with her and her study of stoicism and how the philosophy has made her better at what she does.

I was just so pumped to do this interview. I think you're gonna like it. You can go to Kate's website at katcourtney.com. You can follow her on Instagram, which I do. I think she's awesome there. It's at Kate Plus Fate. Follow along on her epic journey and watch her, not just not be destroyed by what happened,

but bounce back better because of it and continue to dominate what must be an extraordinarily difficult sport, mentally and physically. and with that, I will give you my interview with Olympian Kate Courtney, Mountain Bike Champion, and aspiring Stuart Flossfer. So you're on kind of a break, right? I'm just coming back around day three of training.

Oh, so it's like, it's sort of an off season, is there an off season in what you do? Yeah, so we kind of have, I typically have only taken a couple weeks off every year, but we are off from racing pretty much from like September to March, but like the first chunk is rest and recover and then we start the build up to the season.

Is that hard for you, like, or do you like the off season? I hate the off season. I mean, this is like, I think, yeah, that's like the hardest part often. Right. Is being out of your routine, like I love riding my bike, I love training. And also, it's just uncomfortable.

When you really train that much, it's a big change for your body. So it's like, takes a little while. And, but a lot of it is fun. Like, we get a break also. But I bet you have to fill up most of that time with other obligations that you've been putting off the entire season, right?

Exactly. Yeah. So it's a lot of that. I'm guessing you don't have an off season. You're just on the one. I sort of don't have an off season, but for me, it's weird. Like there's such a difference between like writing and putting out books. So like I'm in the middle.

So my my courage book came out in at the end of September. Oh, amazing. Okay. I like 10 pages left. I was gonna I was gonna try to finish it before each added, but 10 pages. Well, we're talking about me, or we're talking about you and not me, so you don't need to have finished it.

But I think the hard part for me is the disruption of putting out the book because it blows apart like the writing routine, which is the thing I actually like doing. Like Lance Armstrong actually said something to me once that I really resonated with. He was like, they paid me to compete. He liked riding his bike, but he didn't like competing. What he was actually paid for was the disruption of the training and to go to the place and do the

thing. I sort of think about it like that. Putting out the book blows up my whole life. I actually like riding the books. Yeah, but I think, you know, with the Stoke Philosophy mindset, it's like those times are also an opportunity to appreciate what you like about being in the routine. So even right now, like just having a schedule, being like, I get up at this time, I get on my back at this time. I do strength work at this time. time is like an amazing feeling, whereas sometimes by the end of the season, you're like, I've been doing the same thing every day for 10 months. Right. No, that's a really good way to think about it. So it's like, while you're in it, remembering that when you are in the opposite of it, you're going to be wishing that you are where

you are right now. 100%. All right. Well, I want to start, I want to start sort of at the end, and I know you're super accomplished. So this is going to be a weird want to start, I want to start sort of at the end. And I know you're super accomplished. So this is going to be a weird place to start, probably an uncomfortable place to start. But I loved the piece that you wrote for the Washington Post after the Olympics. Like we obviously we so celebrate what winning looks like. The end, it's so rare that we don't spend that much time talking about what it feels like to not perform at your absolute best. So walk me through that because I just thought that piece was, I'm sure incredibly difficult to write, it. You are obviously one of my favorite authors. And I have come back to your books again and again

throughout my racing career. And I guess to the overall stoke philosophy that they impart in a very relatable way. But I think for me that Olympic moment was really, really challenging, but it was also an opportunity. And I think writing that piece, I did for me. I wrote it as a way to process that experience

and to understand what had led up to that moment. And also, how I could respond to it. And in some cases, there isn't really some triumphant response. You just acknowledge process, take the learnings and move forward. And that was kind of the first step for me in doing so, was, you know, writing about the experience, sharing it. And it was honestly amazing to see the response to that.

And I think for me as an athlete, of course, I love the moments where I have this breakthrough performance. And it's an inspiration. And it, you know, shows some people that they could do something they never thought they could do or encourages them to get on the bike. And of course, that's more fun to be in that moment. But in this moment, I actually got a much deeper response

and a response from a lot of people who I think throughout the pandemic had been dealing with similar big challenges and moments of working really hard for something and maybe just not having it come through or work out. And to be honest, even in the course of my career, which is so far, I would say, I've had big success in races, I've lost farmer races and I won. And I think that's in races, I've lost farmer races and I won. And I think that's kind of how it goes in life a little bit is you're trying to learn from and deal with and grow through those challenges to allow you to have your next big win. And so for me, that was definitely a pivotal one of those moments. And I'm still figuring out kind of the learnings towards the next big win, hopefully. One of the things you touch on in the piece that I thought was worth exploring was like,

I think we sometimes think that like winning or being great at something is simply a matter of willpower that it's like if you train for it, if you get in the right head space, like it'll happen and if it doesn't happen, it's like a reflection of you as a person. But like you sort of just, you kind of gloss over it, but it sounds like you just like, it just didn't happen. Like you just didn't, you just, you thought it would go

a certain way and you just, it just, you just weren't yourself that day. Do you know what I mean? Like it just, you just didn't get the performance that you expected out of yourself for really no particular reason. Yeah, I think in the time since that, I've kind of understand a little bit more about maybe what could have been different in my preparation or what could change, but at the end of the day, that's completely true. And I think part of what I'm seeing in the world of sports in general and with me personally is as an athlete, I show up, I have this process, I follow it, I get to these races as prepared as possible. And sometimes it works out and sometimes, you know, maybe there's factors outside of my

control or truly, maybe I just fail to have the best performance that I'm capable of that day. But you're still the same person and you still have the same approach that I'm capable of that day. But you're still the same person and you still have the same approach. And the chunk of my time spent preparing and processing and learning still comes from the same place. And so it's this interesting disconnect where you're really forced to separate the outcome from who you are as a person,

which I think is a very healthy thing long term, but it's also very challenging in the moment because especially when things are going really well, you want to identify with what you do. And for me, at least I care so much about the sport. I love it. I've put so much of my life into it that it is an identity that's important to me. Well, yeah, like when everything's going well in your identifying with it, it doesn't seem like there's any identifying with it, it doesn't seem like

there's any problem with that. Besides maybe a little bit of ego, right? Like you obviously know you don't want to think that you're perfect or something, but you go as long as I'm not being a monster, what good is there, what problem is there being proud of how well everything's going. But I think the problem is what happens when it doesn't go well and you still did everything right or what happens when it doesn't go well and it's like it's not your fault. Then you're devastated because you identify just as much with the failure. Absolutely. And that's a pretty tough moment

to be in. But I think one that is part of the game, if you're going to do something and put your whole self into it, you have to learn how to deal with that. And for me, I'm still early in my career. I'm still learning through those experiences and understanding how to have that little bit of separation, but still cared just as much. Because in many ways, being devastated by the Olympics, shows how much I care, shows how hard I work to get there,

and how much it means to me. And in many ways, that points me in the direction of trying again, even in a moment when it can feel really challenging to think about that. What would you do differently as far as preparation? You said, as you think about it a bit more. Yeah, I think, so the Olympics aren't for another three years again. I think for me, part of this has been a little bit of a disillusionment of that one race.

For me, I race all year. We have nine world cups this year. And that's actually the same field in mountain biking as the Olympics. It's actually bigger because you don't technically have to qualify. So I think for me, it's really understanding how to separate my personal progression and my goals as an athlete, comparing to myself

year over year and getting better at my craft from those outcomes. And that means that I probably won't put the same emphasis at least internally on that Olympic here, but really see that in the context of my evolution as an athlete, this next go around. And that seems like a subtle shift, but I think mindset wise,

that's what happens when you get experience in these sports. And then of course, like the specifics of training, there's definitely some nuances that need to be changed. And part of what's challenging about being an athlete is that you're kind of, you have this perfect plan, but you also are relying on your physiology. And you know, this year, the main thing I learned was like, what we tried didn't work for my physiology. I just didn't respond to this type of training. And that's a hard lesson to learn. But it also, like, when you can identify what didn't work,

when you can identify what did work, it's a huge learning and chance to do what works and know why it works in the future. I'm writing about Lou Gehrig in the book that I'm doing now on Self Discipline. And there's this thing, I was just working out honestly before we talk. So it's kind of perfect. But he goes through, he sort of goes through this slump early in his career. And he's sort of always been really good. So when he goes

through the slump, he's like, despondent, right? Like he thinks he gets knocked down to the minor leagues and he thinks they're going to cut him. And it's this sort of downward spiral that he's in. And the scout that had discovered him sort of gets dispatched by the owner of the Yankees to find him and they end up having this exchange and he sort of bucks him up and then as he's leaving like it's this sort of cinematic scene where he jumps on the train, he's pulling away.

And the scout says the most important thing that a young ball player can learn is that you can't be good every day. And I love that so much. And baseball is such a good example of that because, you know, like, if you bat 300, you're incredible. But that means you're gonna be missing the vast majority of times that you're at bat.

And so I imagine that your first Olympics, it's so big in your life. And even just, although you've raised a lot in four years, you have raised considerably more times, it probably loomed very large in your life. And I imagine the pressure of it and the place in what it meant to you only compounded all the things that we're talking about.

Completely. And I would toss the pandemic in there as well as an extra year of thinking about it. But I do, I love that. You got an extra year to be in your head about it. Yeah, completely. No, I really, I love that quote and I think it applies a lot to a sport like cycling where there's these big cycles. And this year I've taken more of a break than ever before. So I'm very slow right now. But again, that's that's a question my coach keeps asking you. Do you want to be fast now? Or do you want to be fast at the next World Cup?

And that I think is it takes a little bit of maturity to appreciate. And it is an interesting balance between being future thinking and looking at the process and understanding where you're going and trusting that you're going somewhere, but also being okay with where you are right now and being like present with, okay, this is where I am fitness wise right in this moment. And that doesn't mean this is going to be the moment forever, but you have to honor that break and that rest and what Regeneration happens in your body to be able to actually deliver when you need to be fast I'm writing this down. So what does that mean to you? Do you want to be fast now or fast later?

Because is that the idea of like doing something hard now that you're not good at that will have Long-term impact on your skill set or your, but what does that mean? Yeah, I think the interesting thing about being a professional athlete is we do have these goals and we have cycles and we have training structure for the entire year and the goals to really peak. So we're trying to have kind of like superhuman performance for a few big events a year. And a lot of people think that means that you're just training as hard as you can all the time 24-7.

But really, I would say what differentiates amateur and elite athletes primarily is the recovery time, the ability to make that work count and to allow your body to recover between these hard sessions. So a lot of what we do in the fall is long easy rides and just preparing your body to be able to take on this load. And it might feel like you're not, you know, going as fast as you can or doing all that you can. But it's critical to performance when the time comes. No, this is so interesting to me because obviously you talk a lot about courage in that piece, which I want to talk to you about, but it really sounds like what you're talking about. Here is Temperance, where the idea of moderation, which I imagine is extra difficult when you are super committed, super ambitious, super driven, and it sucks to not,

like, I imagine it sucks to not be peaking right now because that means you're having to be okay with not being as good as you'd like to be in the present moment or for even for extended periods of time. Yeah, so my dad actually describes this and this is probably more of a business term, but of optimizing versus maximizing.

And I think for me, that's really a big part of this phase of my career is understanding what things you're doing that make a big difference and doing those things fully and completely, but not maximizing. And maximizing, I would think of like the young athlete who's, I need to meditate and stretch and do this and do the cold bath and do the, you know, adding in every single possible thing you could be doing just to feel like you're doing everything you can.

And really, it is temperance, as you said, the optimizing, the being able to identify what actually matters, what you actually need to do to be successful, execute those things at the highest level possible, and then trust that they're gonna work. When, and I imagine holding back is difficult. You wanna give, like you didn't become who you were

if you weren't really good at giving everything you were capable of giving, right? And then so for a coach or for a race or for a training structure to say, yeah, you can only go 70% here. Kind of goes against like how you're wired, but that's the difference between fast now and fast later. Yeah, and that I would say,

to tie it back to that Olympic experience into my experience last year, one of the biggest things that I learned is I kind of pushed so hard in the last two years. I executed every training schedule to the best of my ability. And often, I'm the one who's like, always at the high end of the range of hours, always pushing.

And midway through the year when it seemed like things weren't working out, I had a lot of conversations and I talked to some of the best people in my sport. I talked to my teammate, Neino Shorter, and to his coach. And really learned that a lot of what I was missing was that pushing too hard wasn't doing what I was missing was that pushing too hard wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. So if I was given a two hour ride and they went for three hour ride,

in their mind, that was wrong. That was not, oh, you're like doing more, you're overtuning, you're pushing the limit. That was not respecting the assignment. Right. And so that's kind of a re-conceptualization for me this season about really respecting the plan. And that involves a new level of trust and making sure that you understand, okay, why is it important that I do exactly this?

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You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. Yeah, most people, let's say you're supposed to do a two hour ride or something, most people don't do it, right? Like most of us have, like we know what we should do to get better and we don't do it. But there are some of us who we do more than we're supposed to do, but it's hard to think that, like sort of the horseshoe,

those are actually much more similar to each other than we would like to admit, because it's like, no, I did what I was supposed to and I did extra, but by doing extra, you're actually taking away instead of adding to your capacity. Completely. Yeah, I've been talking to my teammates coach. He's, you know, given me some advice in the last year and he called me one day and said,

Masheri Kate, he's French Swiss. I said, Masheri, it's an emergency. Said, what's going on? He goes, I see on the schedule, there is no complete day off. There has to be a day off for the family, on the schedule, there is no complete day off. There has to be a day off for the family, for the dog, for you, like you have to have a day off. And that was a really interesting moment for me

because I've had a few days off, but I always begged my coach to go ride an hour or go do something. And really, when you look at the people who are most elite at what they do, who are doing it at the top level, sustainably over a long time, that's what they have. They have that piece of balance where there is that rest day, there is that moment to step away and allow the work to marinate. So how do you balance back? Because that's what you talk a lot about in the piece. So it doesn't go well.

bounce back because that's what you talk a lot about in the piece. So it doesn't go well. How does that not, although I'm sure it's devastating, how does it not devastate you, right? Like, I talked, I remember I visited the LA Rams after they'd made it all the way to the Super Bowl and then lost. And I sort of said, like, how do you not become Carolina or one of the teams that goes to the Super Bowl? And then that's sort of the high water mark and then they're just never the same, right? Obviously lots of teams win and then never come back, but there are also teams where it's sort of get almost there and instead of it being a confidence builder, it destroys the confidence and they're just sort of never the same. Well, I hope that doesn't happen to me.

But I think a lot of that is about having the self-reflection to turn it into the learning moment. And the way I was actually originally introduced to your books, my nutritionist every year, Kyle, Faffenbach, I shout out Kyle, he's going to be listening. He's a huge fan also. Oh, really? But he sends me two books at the beginning of every year. And they're always different. But the first year that I worked with him, he sent me Ego's enemy and the obstacles like. And this was very early in my career and before kind of a lot of these ups and downs. And I love the books. And I think in particular, the obstacles the way informs the way that I respond to failure

in my career. Because I think if you take the like thousand foot view, all athletes have these ups and downs. You're not gonna win every time. You're gonna have these devastating moments. And if you lean into it, those are the moments where you really learn. And as much as that's not a fun emotional experience,

I think it's actually a really fun intellectual process for me of thinking, okay, like this is a science experiment. Here's the variables that we put into play this year, but it didn't work. And I like to say it's like, if you multiply everything and one variable zero, it doesn't matter what the other variables are. So if the training plan's not the right one and that's zero, doesn't matter how hard you tried or how well you executed your training schedule or how much sleep you got. Um, but when you get that variable right, you know, you don't know what the outcome is going to be. And so for me, it's been really identifying, okay, what things are working, what things stay, what things change,

what people do I need around me to make that possible. And then again, treating that confidence piece as one of the variables. What do I need to do to build that confidence? What do I need to do to trust my coach and trust my team and trust that what I'm doing every day is going to work next time. And of course, we have not seen the outcome

of that new equation yet, but at least we have it in place. Interesting. Yeah, that's something else I'm writing about in the Timberlake's book. Until 1960, no heavyweight champion who'd lost the title ever won it again. So like now it's happened several, like a half dozen times since, But the idea was then was like

if you lost the title, you were just done. No one ever it was such it was such a devastating thing to be the champion of the world. And then back to like regular fighter that no one ever came back from that right and Floyd Patterson was the first boxer to ever lose the, so win a title, lose it, and then reclaim the title. And I think it's just so, it goes back to what we're talking about is when you associate with the outcome or with the status of the thing, then when you don't have it,

you're, it's like you're suddenly missing, especially in something like boxing, I guess, which is so dependent on confidence. If you have even just the slightest hesitation that you're capable of doing something, you won't be able to do it anymore. Completely. And I think that's more common in this fourth world than we even recognize because it is such a kind of gift and a curse to be at the top. It's in my opinion much harder to stay there than to get there the first time. But I think again, it's also that opportunity for clarity.

And I think the one thing that you get when you do kind of fall back to the bottom is you realize that you don't have to do it. You don't have to come back. You don't, I could go do something else. I could have to do it. You don't have to come back. You don't, you could, I could do something else. I could go to business school. I could, you know, I could choose something else for myself. And that kind of those moments, I think,

give you the opportunity to like really listen to your internal voice and to say, what is it that I most want to do if I could do anything in the world? And I think when you have that kind of, maybe it's not confidence in my ability level yet, but it's confidence in myself and in my motivation and in whose driving this train. And that I think can be really powerful.

And hopefully is the beginning of a great comeback. Well, you know, I would say that winning also brings about the same sort of existential crisis, right? Because you do it. And then it never feels exactly as you thought it would be, right? There's always a sort of anticlimactiveness to it. And you sort of can, if you don't, if you can't fall back on the fact that I actually love doing it, like I love training or I love the process of it, you probably also aren't going to be able to sustain it or continue to do it. Like, so it's like if you can sort of either win or losing, should strip away for you that association with results.

And then it can be either both really painful or really disillusioning, but the outcome should be really freeing either direction because now all that you're left with is like the joy of doing it or not. If you don't have the joy, you probably shouldn't keep doing it. Exactly. No, and I think that's like the point you get to. When that kind of gold star is taken away,

you have to have the joy of doing it. And I love, there's a quote, I think it's from the Zen and Art of Motorcycle maintenance where he says it's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. And I think that's really. It's very barren up at the top of the mountain. It's very barren at the top

and it's tough at the bottom, but it's like that middle piece that kind of in-person moment that is most gratifying and where hopefully I think if you're doing things right, you spend the majority of your life. It's like, okay, you have the top where you're kind of headed, what those centering goals are. And you can look back and see how far you've come. But when you get there, you kind of end up hopefully at the base of another mountain.

And I think those transitions are like the uncomfortable pieces at the top or at the bottom. And then you settle back into you know, stack and bricks on your way to the top. Well, I had Bob Bowman on the podcast, the swimming coach for like Michael Phelps. And I imagine swimming

and cycling are similar in that they're very long sports. So if you don't enjoy it's not like sprinting sucks. I'm sure, but it only takes like nine seconds, right? And even the training is pretty concentrated, right? But like, so maybe you could be a sprinter and not like sprinting that much.

I don't know, I don't know enough about it. But like, if you don't love cycling, it's probably the wrong sport for you because you're going to be doing a lot of cycling. You're right, that's all you're doing. So you don't like it. You don't have a tough side. Yeah, and so it's like, if you don't like writing, like the launch of a book is like six weeks maybe, right? So if you're doing it for that, that's a lot of delayed gratification.

And probably not sufficient to justify the enormous expense of the inputs that go into it. But if you actually like sitting alone in your office thinking about ideas chipping away on the manuscript, then you're kind of indifferent. I mean, obviously, you want it to go better than worse. When the stone's saying different, they mean like, you could be happy with either. But of course, you want the good outcome more than the bad outcome. But if you actually enjoy the process of it,

the day-to-dayness of it, then what happens at the end of the race is a bonus, or at the very least just a slight detraction, as opposed to the thing that decides whether it was worth doing or not. Completely. And I think it's a very good comparison because it is very similar. I spend a lot of time toiling away out alone on my bike in a similar way. But I actually, after the season, one of my friends who studied neuroscience told me a story. It's some study she read and she said it was on young kids and making art. And so they took two groups and they gave one group gold stars.

They started giving them gold stars every time they made art. The other group, no gold stars. And at the end of the study, they stopped giving the gold stars and the kids stopped making art. And the other kids who'd never gotten gold stars just kept making art because they loved it. And I just thought that was, I was like, wow, like my gold stars got taken away. And I had a moment's pause. And I think for me, you know, I've always loved riding my bike.

For the very first moment I did it. It's something that brought me joy and I loved and I was curious about. And so I think for me, it's been, you know, getting those gold stars back has been figuring out how to give them to myself for enjoying it and, you know, following that curiosity, following those things that helped me fall in love with the sport in the first place. And then you do kind of feel a little bit, not indifferent, like you have that confidence and I think when you're in that place, you kind of know in the back of your head,

it's more likely it's going to go well because you care a little bit less in some way. But at a certain point, like you're very resilient to the outcome. Well, it's kind of like, and I'm sure you've experienced this is obviously a champagne thing. But you get invited to do things and you're like, oh, that sounds awesome.

I would love to do that. And then they're like, and we'll pay you. You're like, oh, that's like the best. You know, that's that, right? But you were going to do it anyway. I think that's how you want to get towards the external results, which is like, I was gonna do this thing anyway. And then the fact that I'm also getting recognized

for it is extra. And of course, I want as much recognition as they're willing to give, but that it's, I remember I lived in New Orleans and they had this great word, Lan-Yaf, which basically refers to the 13th donut. So it's like you ordered 12 donuts, but if 13 comes, of course, you're like, oh, this is awesome, right? So it's like the extra on top of the already worthwhile thing.

Absolutely. And I actually think this is a really interesting problem that we're having with the kind of age of social media, which is that I think that's how it always starts is you do the thing and then you get a little bit of recognition and then you do it again and you doing comes first. And then I allow other people to take pictures and make videos and do projects around that. And that is so gratifying. That's like 13th Donut Heaven. But I do think this kind of like being starved for content world that we live in, oftentimes has started to put the content first or the idea of the thing before

the thing itself. And that's something that I think you have to be like at least personally for me, I have to be careful about and I have to think about and make sure that I'm not just filling the cup and then saying no when it's full. And instead like really examining what the things that I'm choosing to prioritize? And sometimes that means saying no to absolutely everything until I come up with like a really cool idea and then calling all those people back and being like, okay, actually we're doing this. Yeah, I was talking to someone who works for me.

His name's Dawson, who will probably be editing this podcast, but he was talking about, I could tell he was a little down and I was asking what was wrong. And he was like sort of disappointed that some like the view counts on the things that he'd been editing of me were not doing as well as they had done like the previous month. We'd had like a monster month with things that performed better than expected

and then things were performing slightly better, worse than perspective expected. And so it was like, first off, how do you think that I feel? Like, it's my face, right? Like, this is a much more, this is literally a thumbs up or a thumbs down of me as a person, right?

But like, I had to sort of remind him that, like, first off, me as the boss was not measuring his performance based on these arbitrary made up metrics that don't actually mean anything. But that like I was very happy with not just how they'd done, but that the thing was good, right? And so you have to, I think it's sort of the distinction between an inner score card and an outer score card.

You wanna have like, what is it that you are attempting to accomplish, how are attempting to accomplish? How are you measuring yourself? And ideally, you want that to be as, you want that to be primarily rooted in things that other people or masses of other people don't have control over. So like, if you're like, I judge how my career is going

based on how many Instagram followers I have, then then Instagram gets to decide whether you're being successful or not, right? If you're, if your thing is like no, success for me is whether I'm helping people, whether I'm doing something that I'm proud of, whether I'm getting better as a this, that, or the other, then obviously you can look at how those numbers are. Again, you want those numbers to be higher than lower, but an algorithm controlled by a publicly traded company doesn't get to go like this or that to who you are as a person. Absolutely. Yeah. For me, I think the metric has become simpler and simpler year to year,

which is just, do I wake up excited to ride my bike? Like, that is a great indicator for me, because yeah, it sounds really, really simple, but if I wake up really excited to ride my bike, everything else goes great. Like, that is the kind of metric of kateness in my life. Like how much of my authentic energy and self am I bringing to what I do? And I think it's always interesting talking to people who have a different, like you have a very different sphere. You work in a very different sphere. But from what I hear from you and what I know about your work, like I think, you know, you are someone who seems like you wake up excited to work on

what you're working on. And that comes through in the product in the end. And you've gotten people so excited about stoke philosophy. And now like all my friends have read your books and talk about it, which is different. Then when I, you know, first discovered it was kind of this niche, new, new thing. And that shouldn't, that probably didn't change that much for you like how excited you were to work on it and how it felt to write the book dependent on you know how much enthusiasm it garnered. It was actually weird so during the pandemic

like because the world sort of suddenly was shaken for a lot of people I I going into the pandemic, I thought, this is gonna be really bad for me. Like from a career standpoint, in the sense of like, can't travel around, bookstores are closed. Like my thinking was, I'm gonna take a huge hit from this. Obviously, that's not my primary concern, my primary concern is my family.

But I just thought, like, if I had to evaluate what the impact was this, I would have said, it was gonna have a negative impact on sales. But weirdly, I had to evaluate what the impact was this, I would have said it was going to have a negative impact on sales. But weirdly, it had the opposite because people needed stosism. So there was this kind of weird moment where realizing that exactly as you said, I just been busy working and then you sort of check some of the numbers or you get like a royalty check or something and you're like, oh, no, it's like significantly leveled up. But I think this is what we're talking about,

which is if you actually are just waking up excited to do what you're doing, it could be 10 times higher or 10 times lower, and it doesn't change your day to day concern because you're really just getting up and doing what you like to do. Yeah, and that's also what's remarkable. Like I think the enthusiasm that I bring to cycling is what made people probably, I'm guessing, I'm doing some inferring here. Probably follow me in the first place. Wow, we love how much she loves what she's doing and it makes us fall in love a little bit with it. And that is what that's kind of like the life force of what I do and that's

like the most important resource to me in it. Okay, but what do you do about the days because they also exist when you wake up and you are not excited because you're tired or because you hurt or because you're deep in the training season, but you're in that weird period where you're probably, you don't have a race to get excited about. You're just like in the wilderness on it. How do you know whether it's just something you push through

or whether it's like a canary in the coal mine thing to be worried about? Yeah, that's always the challenging thing. And I think for me, a lot of times I use data to help with that decision-making. I use Woop to track recovery and I use power meter and a heart monitor. And we just have a plethora of data to at least help me

understand if my body is in an okay place. But beyond that, I think those days can actually be some of the best ones when you kind of push through and have that breakthrough moment. And there's kind of two, I would say two types. There's like the hard interval day where it's, I might not be that motivated, I might not want to do it. And it's going to be very hard. But it's like checking that box gives me so much gratification and pride that it might be kind of a type to fun day where it's not fun while you're doing it, but it's fun looking back on the experience. We're like three quarters of the way through. Once your body is sort of consumed by it, you're like, oh, I'm glad I pushed through. Completely. And then the other side of that

is just kind of the boring days. And I think that's something that when you're really pursuing mastery or excellence in something, it's actually fun to work hard because you're like, I'm making progress towards my goal. The thing that can be more challenging is stretching and like doing your two hour bike ride and your little bit of core and just doing these things that are so monotonous every single day for eight months. And for that, I have a lot of strategies.

Like my number one I would say is bring cookies with you on your bike ride and eat them at the farthest point from home. You have to get back. Great, great option. Riding with people that are fun and interesting and that have intellectually stimulating fun conversations.

That's magic. You're just out, basically having a social hour and also doing something you like to do. So I think there's a lot of different little tactics like staying motivated. But I also think what you said about the Canary and the coal mine, the thing that often is the best sign for me

of motivation is when I'm arrested. And so if you're just so exhausted and really hitting that wall and it's like a struggle every single day. You might be overdoing it. You might need a rest day, as Nico said, with the complete rest day. And that tends to work as well. Yeah, it's sort of like also the longer you've done it,

the more I think aware you are that those days simply exists, right? So it's like, now I'm on my 10th or 11th books. So I'm like, there are just gonna be, let's say the thing takes a year, there might be several weeks in that year that suck, right? That just feel like I'm not making progress that I'm stalled out.

Like I am, I definitely felt that on this book and I had this weird experience where, apparently, I, I definitely felt that on this book and I had this weird experience where apparently I wrote a note to myself and I, because I use these note cards and I wrote this note card, I said, like, look, this isn't going to feel like it's coming together, but sort of trust the process and, and it will. And I remember finding that note card, like months later at this sort of low moment. And shortly thereafter it did sort of come together, but I think it's like, you know, it's like, you, you, it's like when you're cleaning your house

and it gets dirty first, it gets dirtier first, you know, like, and, but like after you've done it enough time, you're like, no, no, this is that stage in the process right before it all comes together. I don't, if I quit now, it will definitely stay this way, but if I just power through over this hump, like tomorrow it's gonna look great. You have to have that kind of experiential knowledge

that gets you over those sort of low point that Paul Graham calls it the trough of despair. You have to get you the trough of despair. You have to get through it. But it's, yeah, and I think there is another huge similarity in our career paths here where I'm working for that moment where the race goes perfectly and everything comes together and you get the result that you wanted. And I'm sure it's a little bit similar with kind of like a book launch or these moments

where you look back and all of these decisions you made, all of this work that you did seems like it was perfectly correlated to land you in this great moment where everything worked out. But you don't really get to control when those moments happen. And I think that's really then something I've thought about a lot in the last six months in particular is that I had the mantra one season that good is the enemy of great. Everything I do, every day, I have to be great. I have to be worthy of that next moment when really my new one is perfection is the enemy of good.

When you try too hard to have that moment every single day, you actually rob yourself of that kind of synchronicity that happens when it does all come together. And when you have been like toiling and working and just focusing on that process and also adapting to what's happening in the world, which might be yeah, having a few weeks where you feel off. For me, I was just sick and had to take an extra week off the bike.

Those things happen. And it's not going to be perfect. But oftentimes in my career, when I really analyze what's happened in those kind of like big, amazing moments, there will often be a few things that I look back on like 2018 when I won the World Championship, I actually hurt my knee and June and I took two weeks off. And at that moment of winning Worlds, I said, man, I'm so glad I hurt myself.

I had this break, I ended the season so energized. But in the moment, it felt like my career was on the... Right. So I think, yeah, having that kind of long view and trusting that process is so much easier said than done, but it is really kind of the crux of making those moments possible. Yeah, I think Tom Brady has lost four super voles or something like that, right? Like he's been to all the way and it might be three, but you know, to get there and

and also be like, you're like, oh, yeah, sometimes you just go to the Super Bowl and you don't win, right? Like to be not comfortable with that, but like understand and sort of experience that that is an outcome would be weirdly a skill. And so if you do at once and you come back and you win, like obviously for some people they lose the Super Bowl

and that's sort of the end of their career, but the idea of like, no lose this approval and that's sort of the end of their career. But the idea of like, no, this is just one of the outcomes that's possible. And then you're able to sort of get back and go, it's like, it's like you've absorbed it and been able to get past it. So now it sort of doesn't have that same power over you. Like, you now know, it might not seem like a good thing, but you know what it's like to not win a gold medal,

as you're writing about in the news. You know, you know, which is an elite club, right? Like easy to gloss over that that's an elite club. Like you could fit all of the people that know that experience probably in a single arena, right? Like in all of human history, like over 2000 years, right? Like not that many people have made it all the way to the Olympics and then not one, because not that many people have made it to the Olympics. But like it is actually

a unique and powerful experience that should make you both a better athlete, but also a better human being, because you're going to meet people who are experiencing some sort of devastating failure in life. And you'll know what it's like to not only do that, but do it in front of millions of people and be able to help them. Yeah. My brother was actually going through a tough break up during the time of the Olympics and he said, you know, this is tough, but at least I'm not on TV. I was like, okay, buddy.

Okay. But yeah, no, I think that's really true. And I think that is though where this kind of having reflection, having some kind of philosophy, having the ability to pick up and read books from throughout human history is a huge asset. Because I think, you know what you said earlier about,

okay, well, how do you know that you're gonna come back and not be the one who, you know, that's it? And the answer is I don't, but I do know that I will use this experience. And I think that's like when you start to take back power from those failures is when you say, I'm going to use it to be a better athlete, but I'm definitely going to use it to be a better person. And it will inform both what I do in my cycling career, but also beyond that. And you know, it doesn't have to be as big as that, maybe one one challenging race in my life, there are opportunities like that all the time

to learn and adapt and to use an experience to at least help you get to know yourself and get to know what you want to do and how you want to be in the world a little bit better. I have a really specific question for you. What do you, like when you're training, do you listen to music, do you listen to podcasts, do you talk to people like, how do you occupy your brain for what must be sort of hours of repetitive activity? It's, that's a really good question. Often music, but I've actually this, this year,

right now I'm having kind of like a little challenge to myself to not listen to music at least for the first hour of every ride. I can't listen during a race, can you or you can't? You can't. So I do not ever listen to music during intervals. So that's always been kind of part of my preparation because you can't listen to it during a race.

So when I'm at that pace, when I'm like doing hard work, I have it. But of course, when you're on a five or six hour easy ride, having someone along to talk to, listening to music, even listening to audiobooks or podcasts, to be great. But I do think for me at least, I recognize this in myself when I'm using that as a crutch. And when I'm just like, if I have something playing all the time, for example, that's a red flag to And when I'm just like, if I have something playing all the time, for example, that's like a red flag to me that I'm like avoiding something or just like not comfortable being in silence by myself, which I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with. So right now I'm in

a little challenge of like not putting on a podcast and listening to a book or music, kind of all the time and making sure that I do have that time where I am still in quiet and like, you know, ride through or think through whatever's going on. Yeah, imagine that's almost its own sort of feat of endurance, right? So to ride for six hours is physically hard, but then to not have a distraction mentally for five hours might even, in some ways, be more difficult, especially probably the younger you are and the more sort of connected or digitally native you are where you're not, you're just, your whole life you've been stimulated.

Oh my God, yeah, I think it's definitely intentional now. Like I have to have these little rules for myself. But it works well. Like I think when I have these kind of, yeah, like set a parameter around it and say, I'm just gonna try to ride, I'm gonna leave my phone at home today. What's gonna happen?

And I think you recognize one that oftentimes it's just so nice to have a break. It's not torture to have a break from that kind of stuff, but also that's really valuable in a lot of ways. And I find that I have my best ideas. I have the most appreciation for my rides when I'm not distracted. Yeah, it feels like, yeah, you're sick, oh, I wanna take a picture of that or oh, I wanna write that down, but it's like we make up an endless amount of reasons to need a thing that obviously even like 20 years ago humans could not have even conceived of existing.

Yes, I know, I got a, I had like a watch that I could have my phone connected to for a while. So it's like, okay, at least if something terrible happens, I know I got it. I had like a watch that I could have my phone connected to for a while. So it's like, okay, at least if something terrible happens, I have this watch. But you're totally right. Like if I did have an issue out on the road, you know, that was the case long before cell phones and you flagged on a car and figure it out. Yes. Yeah, but it's so nice to have that it becomes.

I think your point is like, when is it being a crutch versus when is it just sort of a harmless indulgence and that distinction being a pretty important one? It's back to the 13th donut. I feel like that's really the crux of our conversation here. But when you're on a bike ride and you're just so happy to be out there and you feel good and you're focused on your breathing and you're focused on your body, and then you also have a super interesting podcast, listen to, it's the 13th donut,

whereas if you're like, I will do this, but I need some form of entertainment, then it's fresh. I think about that with routine too. I like doing a certain number of things like before I talk or before I write or whatever. And then I go, but if I have to have it, then it's probably not good. And so can I do it without it? Like I remember a couple of years, I like to shave before I talk. I don't like being scruffy.

And then I was like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna like, I'm just, to the set up the routine, so I don't shave this morning. So I can remind myself that I'm perfectly capable of doing the thing without the routine. It's like because it can, the routine can become, it's like, you do the routine enough, it becomes a ritual

and that's wonderful. But if you do too much, it becomes like a superstition. And then you're dependent on it and it's a vulnerability. I feel personally targeted. That is totally how it works with sports as well. I think there's a lot of like once something's gone, well, you hear about the lucky socks, the lucky sports rava, you know, for me, it often has to do with data. Like we race with power meters. So you have power numbers. You have this data all the time. And it's a huge positive. It allows you to track and understand and analyze. And that's kind of like the nerd side of my brain is very happy with it. But it also, if you're, okay, hit this number and then I had a great race. So now I have to do that every single time.

Right. You're putting, you know, some, I think an inappropriate level of control over something that is really a mix of factors and that becomes the superstition when really you're capable of performing without that and you need to know that to have confidence in all situations. Well, I think it goes to a very primitive part of our brain. We don't like sitting with uncertainty. So we make stuff up that allows us to feel

certain or comfortable. It's almost like, I'll find myself even doing this with like COVID where it's like, oh, I, somebody came in, I bumped into someone and they weren't wearing a mask. I was like, oh, shit, and then I'm like, I should, I should put hand sanitizers on. They're totally unrelated, but it's like, that was like, that's like a thing that my mind is going to as like a thing I control, right? And so like, I think this is what people do with the rosary or this is what people do with, you know, basketball players will do a certain thing with their hands or the, you know, like we come up with a routine or a ritual that's really

about taking the uncertainty and the randomness out of what we do. It's just about pretending that that's not the case. When of course it's totally the case, and life isn't fair, and so much of it is just like random, you know, a random rolling of the dice. Yeah, and I think it's too like understanding when that's working for you and when that's not, because there's cases, I mean, one kind of ritual that I love, when I started with the sports ecologist and I would talk about making the steak and a race,

we started using, I would say the word reset out loud. And that, it sounds very funny from the sidelines, but it totally works for me. Like if I make a mistake and I say the word reset out loud, it's like new game, clean slate, it didn't happen. And so that works me really well. Like it's completely the same thing. Like, oh, yeah, if I say this word,

I won't make another mistake, and I've erased my past and there's not. But here's what I don't have a problem with that. That's totally in your control, right? So like, if it's like, no, I have to get to the arena an hour and a half before game time, then I have to do this. Then I have to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

made this way with these ingredients, then I have to have my lucky shoes, which I put on in this order, blah, blah, blah, blah, you are very dependent on access to all of those things, right? So if it's a mental thing like, hey, this is what I do when I find myself spiraling out of control or making a mistake, you're always going to be able to do that, right? Any circumstance where you couldn't say

yourself reset, like, you're so fucked, it doesn't even matter. But so that, to me, is different than like, I need things to happen in a certain way, in a certain order, right? Like, I like writing in the mornings, that's my routine, but if my morning gets messed up for some reason, and I'm only able to write in the morning, I can't sort of gut it out in the afternoon, well then I have to kiss that day goodbye and that's not a good place to be in. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's like allowing the internal to dictate or allowing the external to dictate, which is sometimes challenging to separate out those things, but I think it's it's important. So last question for you when when I first heard about you is because Peter at Tia sent me a picture that you had posted on Instagram, you were reading obstacle, but you had some weird thing on your leg that couldn't figure out what it was like some chamber you or something I always wanted to know what the flow was Good question the nor attack boots. What is that? So they're they're from this brand hybrace. So it does recovery products and it it like squeezes your leg And so it essentially is like a massage And it like restricts blood flow and then hopefully increases blood flow to

help you recover between workouts. So that's usually I always read in the middle of the day. That's kind of my little ritual that I love to recover between workouts. Right. So yeah, I'm sure you have just dead time where you're having to be recovered or rub down or wait for stuff is that when you, is that the time that you use for like personal development stuff? Yeah, I'd say, yeah, sitting in those old, normal tech boots, like maybe I've done a gym workout and have a ride coming up. This is again what we talked about at the very beginning, which is often like

it's hardest to rest. Like it's hard for me to be like, here I am doing my job reading this book in the middle of the day or like taking a nap, but it really is part of my job. And so I've kind of tried to make it like a little bit luxurious my recovery time. No, I struggle with that too. It's like let's say it's like two in the afternoon. I've done like most of what I have to do for the day. The idea of like going into the other room in my office and sitting and reading a book feels very self-indulgent, especially when I have kids and like I know my wife or someone else is having to take care of the kids. And I also know that I have like a million emails. It feels more like work to sit at my computer and answer emails than to sit and think or go for a walk or read. But I guess that also goes to the question you put earlier,

which is like, do you wanna look productive now, or do you wanna be productive over a long period of time? And that distinction is really, really important. Yeah, definitely. And it's optimizing and not maximizing. Sometimes I think that for me that recovery time, that time where I'm sitting and resting is probably what allows me to go

and have a great second workout. And maybe for you, thinking, walking, reading is what allows you to have that next great idea. It's just not what we think of as productive. And it's also appreciating, I guess, in some ways, like some of those extraneous factors. Like, things tend to work out better for me when I'm well-rested and go better on my ride, even if I'm not, like, necessarily connecting one thing to another exactly. Well, it's also about, like, if it works, not giving a shit what it looks like to other people.

Yeah. You know, I wrote this book with Chris Bosch that you might like called Letters to a Young Athlete. And he was talking about how you remembered one time they were flying on the team plane, they were all playing cards. And LeBron James was like, I got to get up and stretch. And he starts doing yoga like in the middle of the thing. And everyone's laughing at him. Like he was an idiot or a weirdo for doing this. And he's like, and Chris Bosch was like, but you know, LeBron James is still playing and nobody else on that plane is playing anymore. And so he had this, it was both courage

and then also just like an indifference. But it was courage commitment to a certain set of things and then also indifference to what it looked like. Now, of course, everyone does that stuff, but he was like, I don't care that this looks stupid or silly. It's good for me. And so I'm going to do it even though people are busting my balls about it. Totally. Yeah. And I think you see that in every sport. It's, you know, someone will do something and everyone wants to comment on why it won't work. And then if it works, how'd you do? What'd you do?

Can I hire that coach? Can I get on that program? And so I think the challenge as the athlete is to always be looking for that thing that's going to work and not necessarily basing your training protocol off of who the latest win was. Yeah. Malcolm Gladwell talked about this in one of the episodes of his podcast where I guess like shooting a free throw,

like granny style is like objectively a superior way to do it. And it's much more accurate, but no player in the NBA will do it because it looks so lame. That's really funny. It kind of does. It looks terrible. Yes, it looks terrible.

But what works works. Right. These guys will do. Yes. These guys will do anything for an edge, but not that. Wow. Hey, if you, if you give me the uncool thing that will work in biking, I'll, I'll give it a world.

There you go. No, this was so awesome. I'm so glad we finally got to do it. And I'm so excited to watch what happens next for you. Yeah. Thank you go. No, this was so awesome. I'm so glad we finally got to do it. And I'm so excited to watch what happens next for you. Yeah, thank you so much. And I have my 10 pages left. Good. Just calling, but I love it so far. So amazing. Well, I appreciate it. It's perfect for my moment. So thanks for writing to my life right now. You talked about that word. Let me pull it up. I wonder how many times you say it. You in your... I like quite a few.

It was like more times than I remember. 10 times. Wow. That's one of the times. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't the theme you would think would be the sort of the main theme of the piece, but it's, I think, actually makes perfect sense. Yeah, I mean, I have a new favorite definition of courage,

which was, in your book, courage is an endurance of the soul, which I feel like is very applicable to trying and trying again in things that you love. Well, to be fair, that's, that's, that's, not, yeah. That's Socrates. He kind of knew what he was talking about and how he'll help you. He introduced it to me. That's so that's socrates He kind of knew what he was talking about all

I'm Introduced it to me. So it's socrates via Ryan Alde I'll take it. I'll take it. All right. We'll talk soon. All right. Thank you so much Thanks so much for listening if you could leave a review for the podcast We'd really appreciate it the reviews make a difference and of course every nice review from a nice person helps balance out. The crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with, so 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. and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.