The Daily Stoic - Stephen Hanselman on Pursuing Virtue and Redefining Courage | How Are You Going To Be?

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to his agent and writing partner Stephen Hanselman (The Daily Stoic, Lives of The Stoics) about how they both got introduced to Stoic philosophy, how his new book Courage Is Calling and the Stoic Virtues series came about, how true excellence cannot be achieved without the 4 virtues, and more.Stephen Hanselman has worked for over three decades in publishing as a bookseller, publisher and literary agent. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, where he received a Master’s degree while also studying extensively at Harvard’s philosophy department. He lives with his family in South Orange, New Jersey.Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave is out now! You can still get the preorder bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/courageiscallingList your product on AppSumo between September 15th - November 17th and the first 400 offers to go live will receive $1000, the next 2000 to list a product get $250. And everyone who lists gets entered to be one of 10 lucky winners of $10k! Go to https://appsumo.com/ryanholiday to list your product today and cash in on this amazing deal.SimpliSafe just launched their new Wireless Outdoor Security Camera. Get the new SimpliSafe Wireless Outdoor Security Camera, visit https://simplisafe.com/stoic. What’s more, SimpliSafe is celebrating this new camera by offering 20% off your entire new system and your first month of monitoring service FREE, when you enroll in Interactive Monitoring. Again that’s https://simplisafe.com/stoic.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.Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com /stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.Go to dailystoic.com/preorder to get your copy today.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Stephen Hanselman: Instagram, TwitterSee 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 podcasts 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. How are you going to be? Every day we have a choice. We choose how we're going to act, what we're going to do, what kind of code we're going to look by. As the title of Sheila Hades novel puts it, the essential question of our days and lives is this,

how should a person be? And that's really the central question of Stoic philosophy too, to help you answer that question well. Each of us has the choice to be good or bad, strong or weak, brave or cowardly. Marcus really says writings in a sense are his attempt to answer that incredibly difficult question. You've been made emperor, what kind of emperor will you be? What kind of person will you be? And when he lists his epithets for the self,

that's what he was answering. He was saying what a person, what he should be. He was saying upright, modest, straightforward, sane, cooperative, disinterested. And there's so many that we should add to this list, resourceful, resilient, grateful, kind, courageous, still. And certainly all of these words are better than the alternatives.

Uncooperative, insane, duplicitous, egotistical, crooked. So what will you choose today? How will you be? That is the question. And actually the rules I have, I haven't written here in my epithets for the self. I keep my computer and say, honest, calm, fair, father, like a parent, brave, and generous. That's how I want to be every day in every way and everything that I do.

I never want to forget it. Because I'm trying to decide where to be coming, who we're going to be, as Cheryl Strad says. So you might as well be that person today. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. As you know, Murphy's Law is a law of the universe. What can go wrong will. And anytime I put something out into the world, I am reminded just how much can go wrong. Book launches are always like insanely

stressful. So much goes wrong. But this one has been nuts. So as you know, I'm signing the copies myself, fulfilling them out of the painted porch on like lives of the Stokes and stillness, they, they mailed me like sheets of paper, which I signed and they then bound into the book. Well, that wasn't possible with this book with courage is calling. And so it's been this, you know, with courage is calling. And so it's been this, you know, overwhelming, both emotionally, but also logistically sort of scramble to fulfill something like 10,000 signed pre-orders, which seriously to everyone who ordered, I am beyond honored and I appreciate so much. But I thought it would give you a little inside look into how that's gone. The printed copies were supposed to arrive

off the printers at the publisher's warehouse like the 27th of August. And then there was a small delay, the pandemic has overloaded most domestic printers, and they arrived on the first. Now I was leaving on the 5th to do the, we drove across the country. I did a bunch of in-person podcasts in Los Angeles, which there's a bunch of stuff from me coming on. And there's a great YouTube vlog we did about it. If you want to check it out.

But I needed some of those copies to arrive before I left. So I could sign like a thousand or two before I left. And then the rest would arrive while I was gone. And then I would come back, sign the rest of them. They would all be set up and arranged for me to do that. So there'd be a lot of redundancies and overlap, and then I could sort of steadily do it. Well, that did not happen, not only did no copies arrive before I left, but only like 10% of the copies that needed to arrive while it was gone arrived and then I came home and was way behind the April. And the books that were supposed to arrive in the middle of last week didn't arrive and

then the day they were supposed to arrive, they didn't arrive. The publisher had an sent them on time, which is very frustrating. Then the shipping company lost them, sent them somewhere else, then they brought them back. And then this is all happening. The yesterday, 4,500 copies of the 10,000 or so arrived at the painted porch in a van without means of unloading them. So we had to unload them by hand. Then I had to sign them. Then we had to pack them, and we're not even close to digging our way out of it. It's been a lot. So it's been a lot, and that's what I am dealing with today.

But I took a quick break from signing and packaging and overseeing this operation, which a bunch of amazing fans and volunteers have come and helped with. So thank you to them and my wife and my in-laws and my employees have also been spectacular. But I took a break to have a discussion with one of my favorite people, a person who not only would, none of my books be possible without,

but the Daily Stoic itself would not exist without and that is the one and only Steve Hanselman. Steve is my translator on The Daily Stoke. He was my co-writer on Lives of the Stokes. And he's also my book agent. He's been a book agent for, he's been a bookseller, a publisher, and a literary agent for like 30 years.

He's a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. He has a master's degree and studied quite a bit in the philosophy department. He's worked with a bunch of amazing authors, including the one and only Tim Ferris, who is the source of our connection. But I wanted to talk to Steve, because Steve knows about as much about Stoicism as anyone I have ever met, and I wanted to talk about the virtue of courage. Because whether you pick up the book or not, courage is important. It's desperately lacking in today's world. And I wanted to just, I wanted to talk about

courage. I wanted to talk about what it meant to the still. I also wanted to give you kind of an inside look into my who I am, how, how other people see me, what I am like as a client, what I'm like as a writer, what I'm like as a writer, what I'm like as an author, working with a publisher, and just some of the logistics of the big leaps and some of the backstory behind the big scary leaps that I took in my life, whether it was leaving marketing to write my first book, whether it was publishing my first controversial book, leaving marketing behind to write my first philosophy book, and then the decision to take on this sort of big overwhelming and scary series, the four virtue series that I'm working

on now, and just some of the stress and tension that has been sort of getting this book out into the world over the last several weeks. And Steve felt like an amazing person to talk to about it. I love Steve. He's a great dude. And I think you'll get a sense of our affection and collaborative relationship in this interview. So thank you to Steve. And remember, Courage is calling Fortune Favours the Brave is now available everywhere.

You can go to your local bookstore and pick it up. You can go to your local bookstore and pick it up. You can come to the Payne of Porch and pick it up. We are still offering the pre-order bonuses. We've extended it to the end of this week. So you can get that at dailystilck.com slash pre-order, but you can also get Audible, you can get eBooks, you can get whatever you want, from wherever you want it. But I would very much like you to support the new book.

Courage is calling Fortune favors the brave. And in the meantime, enjoy this conversation with Stephen Hanselman and myself on the topic of the Four Virtues and the most important of the Four Virtues. Courage. You know what I was thinking about? What do you remember about the first time we met? Because it occurred to me that it was almost 10 years ago exactly that we went out with my first book. Yeah, I mean, I guess the first time in person we were in a room together at Tim Ferris' marketing summit out in Napa. And we actually both spoke on the day us that day, but we didn't get to talk to each other

personally. Right. And it was after that, you followed up with me and sent me, trust me, I'm lying, which you'd already been through a couple of drafts on before I even saw it. Yeah, I was basically done. I'd sort of, you know, I had been sleeping on the draft. I hadn't told anyone I was working on it. And then you didn't tell me that you were interested in stoicism until, like, I feel like it was like after the obstacle is the way it came out. Yeah, it's funny because it was like a conversation that I had been having

with Tim, who is also very interested in the Stoics. And of course, he was very focused on Seneca, and you sort of came in through Marcus Aurelius. But yeah, my own story with Stoicism went way back. I actually had a professor in college, Delbert Wienes, who did his dissertation on Musoneus Rufus. Oh, really? And yeah, I first heard about them then, but you know, was sort of only reading secondary sources. And it wasn't until I got into graduate school that I started reading at Pectetus, which

was basically I found Thomas Wentworth Higginson translation. And that's sort of when I first started reading the Stoics directly. Interesting. Yeah, Wentworth Higginson is fascinating. And it's sort of strange that he's not a better known American hero. I mean, some people know who Robert Shaw is. There's a monument to him in Boston.

He's also the subject of the movie glory. But if you want to talk about putting stillicism into practice and the four virtues, there you have a guy who translates Epic Titus. I believe he's the champion and friend of Emily Dickinson. That's correct. And then he's also very involved in the suffragic movement. Right. And then if that weren't sort of Stoicism enough, then he leads a black regiment in the Civil War, which was, you know, to fight in the, which was to fight on the right side of it

was a dicey enough proposition. But they buried Robert Shaw in a ditch when he was killed because it was considered to be the ultimate race transgression to lead black soldiers as a white person at that time. Yeah. While there's no doubt that Higginson really found such strength, you know, from his reading of the Stoics, and he showed it in so many aspects of his life. I'm just googling this, went worth Higginson. I don't, I wonder if there's any statues of him. I'm just googling this, uh, went worth, I think, and I don't, I wonder if there's

any statues of him. I imagine that there are not. I, I'm not sure. I think he's buried in upstate New York. I'm not even sure what's there. Um, yeah, there's a small grave. You died in 1911. Wow. Yeah. Um, fascinating, fascinating Yeah. Fascinating guy. I think so. And to me, that's what I think I fell in love with as far as the Stokes, although, again, I didn't hear about him until much, much later. But I like the idea of the philosopher as the man or woman in the arena, right? And I think that's what's so interesting to me about the Stokes is that they weren't these kind of like passive figures.

They weren't theoretical figures. They weren't talking about the action as it was happening, but actually sort of were in the action as it was happening. And pushing the envelope as far as what that action was. Yeah, I mean, I know in the new book, you quote William James, but I think there's this sense in all the great Stoics, you know, who are exemplars, you know, not only in their own time, but to us still today.

But they're all using the system, the precepts, the powerful ideas to kind of, as William James put it, make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. You know, it's like this constant work, not for some schoolroom practice, but to take it out into the arena and show what a difference it can make. Yeah, that's right. And we kind of almost brush over some of the contributions of the Stokes, not just someone like Higginson, but it's like almost all the Stokes that we profiled in lives of the Stokes had some form of military service, some form of public service, were exiled. We almost just take for granted that the, maybe it's that the ancient world was so chaotic

and so much was happening that we just like sort of assume, of course they were there or of course this happened, but it is interesting just to think about how active these people were. Absolutely. I mean, it was Zeno's dictum from the beginning that you have to participate in public life unless you were unable. Right. No. The people think the difference between the Epicurians and the Stoics was the pursuit of pleasure. In fact, the Seneca says actually we're not that much in disagreement there. Pleasure, sort of pleasure and moderation is fine.

It's that the Epicureans retreat to the garden or to the, you know, I think the modern equivalent would be like the Academy or you know, pursuit, they flee to the sort of individualistic world. And the Stoics sort of believe quite deeply in our collective obligations. And unless something actively prevents that sort of overwhelm and corruption or dysfunction or injury or something like that, you are obligated

to contribute to the polis. Absolutely. So let me ask you so. OK, so we connected on that first at that meeting and then I came to you with the book and then I was thinking about selling it recently because I was I was in California and I was visiting my my grandfather's grave who I remember I had flown like directly from the funeral to sell that book but I'm curious what did you where did you think directly from the funeral to sell that book. But I'm curious, where did you think my trajectory would go? Because I remember I was asking Nikki, my editor, on most of my books,

like sort of what she thought when I started the first stork book and she was saying something like, well, we just hope you get it out of your system and then go back to marketing books. Is that the direction you thought I would go out of the way? Not at all. In fact, you know, when Julie and I talked about it and we loved, trust me, I'm lying. And we knew that was sort of, it was sort of this deep philosophical lesson you had learned from practicing, you know, these dark arts of, of, of media manipulation. But we knew from following your blogging and your writing that popular philosophy

was much more your gift, translating the ideas in a way that people can use in their lives. So I told Julie, I said, we're gonna get this book in the right hands, but I really wanna see him writing about philosophy. Of course, I was a double major in history in philosophy and college, and I went through Divinity School at Harvard doing

about half my work in the philosophy department. So I've always had a bias for writers who have that kind of interest and focus. And you know, at the time, I just knew that there was nobody really doing what you could do on a popular level. So it was my hope that that's where you would go and you did.

That's interesting, because I've had this thing a bunch of times in my life in career where like, I kind of had some vague sense of what might be possible, but we at least sort of other people saw it more or more excitedly than I did. Like I kind of thought dropping out of college would work or I kind of thought, you know, the books would work,

but it has been weird that certain people have seen it better than me. I'm not sure what that says or what that means, but it's always been surprising to me. Well, you know, you're, you're very clear writer and you're a very prolific writer and you've been putting it out there for longer than the books have been out there. So, um, you know, those who follow you know, so. Yeah, that was the funny thing when Trust Me Ameline came out, a lot of people were like, well, what is this? They were like, I thought you were right about philosophy. And then when Trust Me Emline did well,

or it was sort of this big splash, then when the philosophy books came out, people were like, what is this? And now that's the question I get asked the most, people go like, well, how did you transition from marketing to philosophy? And it's weirdly the other way around.

Yeah, it is, for sure. So the other juncture point for you and I was the decision to go away from marketing to the philosophy books. And I remember I had already written the proposal. I remember it was called turning the obstacle upside down or something like that. It wasn't, it was the way. Just yet.

But I remembered you, I didn't do any meetings for it, but you had gone out with it when I was in Brazil or something. I was doing a talk in Brazil. And I remember being in a hotel room and going back and forth over email about it. But I think now that the books have done very well, people see that as like a very obvious transition. And sometimes fairly cynical or, you know, people who are not fans go like, oh, he obviously did this for money. But that wasn't the case at the time. I remember it being a very hard sell.

Yeah. Yeah, I think there was a lot of convincing and we certainly were paid less for it. A lot less, right? Yeah. So, but, you know, I always, you know, I'm a literary agent by day and I tell, I always tell my clients that, you know, if we're in the right

hands, we're with the right editor, we do the book in the right way, you know, the book is going to earn eventually it's going to earn its way. And so yeah, I mean, we were, we were definitely swallowing a loss there at the beginning, but it was less than half. It's far less than half, but you know, it's, it's turned out to be the best-selling book. So there you go. No, and to me, there's a couple of lessons in that that I've taken, which is number one, having people often think like, you have to be all in on whatever you're doing. But the fact that I still had a job meant that I didn't care that much. I could very easily take the massive step backwards

because I didn't need it to feed my family or something. It was all sort of, at that point, the writing income was all extra income in my life. I had my own business side of job. So to me, that was one thing I took out of it. Two, if we talk about ego as the enemy, the idea that like, what you get paid is not reflexive of your worth.

And if you really believe in something, if you really know, it doesn't really matter what people think or what people value it as, what matters is sort of what it becomes in the long run. But then I think the other thing that this ties more into the idea of courage, and of course there's, this is not the same courage as running into a burning building. But I have found, because I've done lots of ghost-writing projects and work with all different types of people over the years, which is that almost no agent or author is willing to do that. You were saying, like, hey, if the book is good, it'll earn.

I find that most agents and most writers, all they care about is the advance. So they're essentially not willing to bet on themselves. The obstacle is the way it was a big bet. I took half the money up front that I would normally get, but in the long term, it earned out, and it's actually better for tax purposes to get paid out over a long period of time. But I find people aren't willing to do that.

They don't believe in the project. They don't believe in themselves, or they don't believe in a long-term future, enough, like the idea of the marshmallow test, to be willing to take less guaranteed for a higher upside down the road. Yeah, and I, you know, even, even accounting aside, I mean, it kind of comes down to, you know, the basic insight of the Stoics and, you know, what we value and the choices that we make, right? It's what's important is the soundness of your aim and, you know, your perseverance in of your aim and you know your perseverance in sticking to it. Happiness is never going to be found in things, money, desire for things or money. That's a dead end. You know, if you want to get on the right road and go somewhere, you have to have the right aim, and you have to stick to it. And, you know, that one book became a series, and now look at us today, we're launching all new series.

Well, and what's the alternative, right? Writing books that you don't actually want to write because the advances are better. And I know, when you say that people are like, oh, obviously not, but that's what the vast majority of people do, not just in publishing, but in literally all professional fields. Most people don't do what they want.

They do what the market wants the most, or they do what is the most immediately viable at the expense, not just of their happiness, but also their credibility and dignity as a human being. Correct. Yep. It's hard though. I mean, there was certainly a part of me that was like maybe they're not valuing it at this level because it's a bad idea, right?

So I think that's the hard part is that it's easy to go where lots of people are or where the market is. Yeah, it's true. But professionally too, though, this happens in publishing a lot because publishers, every time they acquire a book, they have to give examples of similar books and they have to give forecasts of sales. And they even go as far as doing a profit and loss statement and You know once an author has been overpaid and had a book that doesn't perform

It in a way it almost dooms and authors career with a publisher. I mean good editors good publishing teams will you know allow an author to course correct But often you you see the one hit wonder where the publisher got really excited and the author's pitch and belief and paid a lot of money and they never got published again when the book didn't work. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground

up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Codopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way,

like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. To sort of show people how it works behind the scenes, we kind of went through that a little bit with conspiracy, too, right? Because it was this sort of splashy of the moment book. And I don't think we were overpaid for it.

And I actually think probably if you looked at the math, it would have been, I still think we are underpaid. But it was interesting to watch that book, sort of be very critically reviewed and be sort of developed this cold audience, but not, you know, it didn't sell like bad blood or something. It didn't blow the doors off. And so I remember it being as still as the launch of stillness was getting prepped. I remember there being a bit of a headwind because people had trouble.

They wanted to then use conspiracy as a baseline. And I wanted to sort of go, no, that was a risk. That's like outside the sample here, but I think people are often worried about taking risks or doing outside the box stuff because they know it will cost them in terms of people's expectations and where they classify them and where they rank them and all of that. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things about that book, I mean, you say it felt of the moment, but I think oddly in a way, it's going to end up being one of those books that people understand

defined in era, in a way that we couldn't see at the time, you know, kind of like the way the big short defined, you know, that whole era and the kind of mindless risk taking and stuff that was going down and accepted as normal at the time. What I really liked about that book was actually a really sort of the obstacles, the way part of it was that because it didn't, all my books up to that point had sort of sold faster than the book before. And that was the first one that didn't. And it was actually really helpful in freeing because I knew it was very good.

And people that I respected said that it was very good. And it also resonated with an audience that perhaps my other books hadn't resonated with. And it was actually really helpful for me to completely decouple the idea of quality and sales, right? And then, so weirdly, when stillness is the key came out and sold the most that any of my books had sold, and debuted at number one, it was actually helpful because those things were decoupled,

right? Still, it's not that I didn't care about either. They were just to it's not that they were they that that i didn't care about either they were just to unrelated facts it was i had written the book that i was most proud of to that point and it had sold the best as opposed to this sold the best because it is the best or you know whatever other relation you want to put between those facts yeah well i think, I think, you know, at this point now, what are we on book number 11? I don't know. Is it 11 or 12?

Do you count the journals? Do you count the different editions of the book? Yeah, it's, I don't know. But, you know, you've definitely, at this point, there are genres of Ryan Holiday. And they're all working in a little bit different ways. So. What does a courageous author look like to you? And they're all working in a little bit different ways. So.

What does a courageous author look like to you? Like, if you think about that attribute as far as like a person in a creative field, what is that? What's that criteria for you? To me, it's the person who's actually done the work, who's, you know, gone out research, done the reading, thought long and hard about their point of view, and will not in the process of producing a book will not do injustice to either of those two things. And it's often in trade publishing, there are a lot of pressures. Yeah. To, you know, kind of suppress the work that you've done or to smooth off, you know, your

point of view. But, you know, I think both those things have to be in place. And the authors who are staunchest and sticking by that and seeing it through to the end. I think I do the best they break through because it stands out Well, I don't even part of breaking through is also sort of breaking through into new ground or open territory like what I think is so interesting is now I get them all like lots of books are being published about Stoicism and I'm not questioning those people's commitment or interest to the philosophy, I think it's a wonderful, but I do suspect that there are a set of motivations

going on both from the publisher and from the writer, which is essentially, this is a lucrative market, right? Like that I think sometimes the people are going, Ryan doesn't have any credentials. What does he know? I'm smarter, I'm better. I will sell, and because of those things, I will obviously be much more successful in this market

because I have those markers. But really what they are doing is walking into a much safer space because there is a defined market. There is an understanding from the retailers and from the algorithm and all that that people are interested in this. Yeah, and I mean, you know, publishers like to believe that they can look around the corner and see the next thing, but you know, more often than not, they're more trying to adapt what's coming in to something they already know as a success. You know, it's funny. I'll just never forget, you know, when I went out with Tim Ferris the first time with a four-hour work week, which was not called that at the time. Right.

It was like a, how do you call it? Drug dealer or something? We were calling it lifestyle hustling, but it was based on a course that he jokingly titled at Princeton Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit. But you know, all the ideas in that book, again, this gets back to, you know, have you done the work, you know, Do you have a point of view? All the ideas in that book at the time just sounded a little bit nutty to publishers. Like, there was nothing to compare it to. Like, the idea of remote working and, you know, geo arbitrage and many retirements and, the Prado principle to optimize productivity.

Like all these things were like, people were like, what? But fast forward today, and look, we just like, because of the pandemic, which nobody saw coming, were like in the greatest productivity period in American history the last couple of years. And it all happened when people were basically free to work remotely. Yeah, so it's funny. I was just talking to Tim the other day. I was like, you know, it's like, you know, everyone thought it was crazy at the beginning. And now the whole world is living this life. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny. I have a chapter in the courage book about based on the

Henry Miller quote, where he says, all growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience. And that's really, I think the thing about publishing or making anything is that the real big hits, the things that work, or that Peter Tiel, as we were talking about him, that talks about giving you a monopoly, is in the dark, the dark spaces, the space where there is no one, where it hasn't been proven yet. And I think people really struggle with that, though, because they want, as you're leaving, or as you're trying to, if you're leaving

or old life, as you're thinking about quitting your job, or whatever it is to do this new thing, do you want some guarantee or reassurance that like it's gonna work out, that there's some like minimum level of success you can count on, but that that sort of floor is also Establishes some sort of ceiling and so you really do have to sort of carve out a new space and I feel like all of my books have That that's something I think about when I do them, which is like, has anyone done anything similar to this? And if so, that's not what I'm interested in doing. I want

to do a totally new way of thinking about this topic or this idea or this space, I want to make something that doesn't exist. No, and I think you brought that into this new series. I mean, I think a lot of people are aware of the four cardinal virtues, many aren't, but there's so central, or have been central, probably not. They're missing completely in current culture, but they've been so central to certainly the Western civilization. But the idea that you started with courage, I think for those who are in the know,

it's gonna surprise them that you're starting with courage. Why do you think that is? Well, generally when you see all the lists of the virtues, it's not the first one that you see. But I like the way you talk about it and the book about it, really being the backbone of the virtues. And we can choose to do the appropriate thing, but unless we stick to it and follow through, which is what courage is all about, what's the point. So yeah, do you remember when I came to you with the idea?

I was I was just doing a video about it, but I was just thinking about like the sort of the origin story of the book. I was I was wondering what you, what you, what you, what I remember, and this is what it's like, you know, working with you is you're always kind of, you're always kind of digging it all out in advance. Like, you know, You were doing a lot of writing about the virtues and you had the medallion and you're really trying to highlight it. It's important because a lot of people will come into stoicism and they're just thinking about productivity or whatever. Yeah, and being tough and all of that, but, you know, often the kind of stuff you see

and hear out there in the memes, it's just like completely devoid of the virtues, you know? And I know that's been important to you, you know, from the beginning. So, you know, I could see you were working toward it. When you told me I just thought it was so exciting. It was like, yes. So, yeah, told me I was so excited, it was like yes. So yeah, I remember I was walking in Bastard State Park

with the kids. This is right, for people who don't understand how publishing works is like, you finish the book, and then there's all the other stuff, like the editing and then the publishing. There's a bunch of stuff, but there's kind of this like, fallow period, like about three months before a book comes out, where sort of you can't do anything to the book that's coming out. But there's this looming date as to when it is coming out,

and you kind of have this sort of nervous, weird energy. It's like that Shakespeare line about Between decision and the deed. There's this sort of vague phantasma It's it's I hate that period and I usually try to channel that energy into writing the next proposal. Yeah Well, it's it's it's sort of become your flywheel. I mean you This has been the rhythm now for many years. Yeah. Well, it's sort of become your flywheel. I mean, this has been the rhythm now for many years. Yeah.

Yeah. I imagine it's a tad exhausting. Certainly, my wife has told me it's exhausting. I can't do it any other way. I'm quite sure of that. Yeah, so what I remember is I had the idea for courage and then I was, I don't remember how courage, I originally I remember is I had the idea for courage and then I was I don't remember how courage I originally just thought courage and I don't remember foods you or his nails. My wife says it was her which probably means it was but I don't remember how that became the series but I think that came pretty quickly. Yeah, so, you know, I think I think it was a great, it was a great choice,

particularly for the time that we're living in, right? You don't, you don't see a lot of courage in bravery, a lot of, you know, frank talk in the face of some of the crazy stuff that's going on. And of course, being in a pandemic and on lockdown, oftentimes the only place that Frank Tuck can happen is in social media, which is a complete ruin these days. So. Right. Yeah, and to me, I think what I liked about it was,

I think what I liked about it was the idea of doing a series was obstacle, ego, and stillness, it accidentally become a trilogy. But although it looks like a trilogy afterwards, there wasn't actually the big sort of swing challenge of like, well, what's the series going to be? And what's the arc? And what do I want to include? And what do I not want to include? It was much more ad hoc. And I do think I was attracted to the idea of like the literally like the sort of four-dimensional chest of like, well, how do all these ideas relate to each other? What goes in each book? And like, because there's definitely chapters, like there's a chapter on ego in

ego versus confidence and stillness that I wish was in ego. And there's chapters in obstacle that I wish were probably in stillness and vice versa. On this one, to really like have to think about four books simultaneously in a relatively short runway was just like ambitiously attractive to me. Well, I think it makes sense. And people are gonna understand with this series that basically the Stoics believe that happiness can only be found in virtue, nowhere else.

All the Stoics agreed on this. The happy life is to be found in the pursuit of virtue, which they called Arete human excellence. These sort of forms of knowledge that guide us and everything that we think and do. The Stoics believe that virtue was about the integrity of the self, right? Areas Dittima said that virtue is a disposition of the soul in harmony with itself, concerning the whole of one's life. And, you know, I think

these four books are really going to map that out for people. You know, virtue, the Stoic's thought was our operating system as human beings. It's what we have to use. The program we're supposed to be following to make our way through the world. Well, because any, there's no situation in which one or more of the four virtues is not called upon. Exactly. It's funny though, I remember I gave a talk, so this would have been right as Daily Stoke was coming out.

I gave a talk at Stoicon in New York City. And I think you did too, if I remember incorrectly, but, or maybe that was the next one. But I remember I gave a talk and I said something like, and this is a thing I just gave a talk last week, or this week and I just said the same thing. But I said to the Stokes, and this is what, to me, the idea of the obstacle is the way it is.

It's not that every bad situation is positive. It's that there's no situation so bad, so undesirable, so unexpected, that one of the virtues is not possible. It's not an opportunity. All situations remain an opportunity to practice virtue. That's what the opportunity is. But I remember saying in the talk, like virtue can feel like a very loaded word to people.

Because it has a sort of a Christian sort of sin connotation that can just mean a lot of things that it doesn't necessarily mean. And so I said, I remember saying this. I said, let's put virtue aside and call it excellence. And I remember some people got upset. I remember getting an email about it or some comments about it that that was somehow sort of taking an ancient philosophy and making it too much about

success, literature, or too much sort of a modern context. But to me, that's actually restoring virtue to its proper context because virtue, as you said, is erototic, which means excellence. It's just that excellence has both a moral and a worldly component, right? Like excellence, if you're just good at a craft, but it's done immorally, that's not excellence. But also, if you're just moral, but you can't apply it in the world, you have no sort of skill or expertise. That's also sort of emptiness. So to me, I think if we can think of virtue as human excellence, sort of flourishing as a person in the highest form that we are capable of being, virtue or virtues becomes a lot more accessible.

Absolutely. And I like the point that you hit on about sin versus basically missing the mark. I mean, it's the same word in the New Testament or for the Stoic's, ha-Martia. But for the Stoics, there is no original sin. Yeah. ha-Martia is just missing the mark. It's like we were aiming for something. We didn't get it

You know, we're trying to avoid something and hit us anyway We didn't want to do something we did it anyway, even though we know it was bad So you know, they believe that You know contrary to this any notion of original sin or corruption that we're only in bad environments and any notion of original center corruption that we're only in bad environments. And actually, we have something positive to celebrate. All of us have these great inborn resources. They believe the seeds of virtue are in each and every person. Like, it's in there. But just because it's in there, doesn't mean you're going to make use of it or get benefit from it. Make progress in your life as a human being.

You have to actually engage the disciplines. They are both an aim and a practice. You know, there's something we're directing our life toward, but that we have to practice in each and everything that we choose to do. And to me, the other part of removing it from this sort of sin context is, it's not that falling short or doing a bad thing or sort of not being as good as you can be. It's not that God will be angry at you and that you will go to hell after you die. To the Stoics, it's that to live without eraté, to not fulfill your potential, to continually miss the mark, to not even try

to hit the mark, is to live in hell, like that your life is hell. So to me, it's a much more self-interested logical argument for being good. And I think you see this with all the Stokes, but particularly the Stokes who had sort of close proximity to power, whether it's Nero or Marius or Caesar, the Stoke argument was like, it sucks to be these people. There's not some cosmic karma that's going to punish them in the afterlife. The Stokes are like, it's horrible to be this person. They are not winning. That's why Marx realizes the best revenge is to not be like that.

Yeah, I mean, the only evil that we can do is to abandon our pursuit of virtue to corrupt our own character. So the focus is always back to our choices. What are we putting value on? What are we choosing? How are we responding, you know, to the situations in front of us? And you know, when you engage when as you were saying before when your assumption is that That things are gonna happen

That things are going to happen. Trouble is always going to come. As Seneca says, the wise man accustomed himself to coming trouble. You lighten the evils of life by long endurance, by thinking about them. The wise man knows that everything is in store for them. So, you know, but I think, you know, where one of the things that you really bring out to the fore, and I think it's gonna be a theme in all the books, but in courage is for the Stoics virtue, the practice of virtue, all the virtues were interrelated

and of a whole, right? But for them, our self-interest and our self-concern always had to remain connected to the interests and concerns of others. Like, when you think about doing the right thing and right actions, one of the first measures to bring up to see whether you're really practicing the justice, the virtue you proclaim, is whether it's just, right? Sure. And, you know, Sister Rowne talks about that in moral duties on Deo Fickie's. He's like, you know, we can't trust anyone who has gained a reputation for courage by

treachery and cunning, you know. It has to be morally right. You know, on Moral Ence, he says the same thing, you know, it has to be morally right. You know, on moral answer, he says the same thing, you know, it has to be about what's right. Yeah, this is for people who obviously haven't read the book yet. The third part of the book is, so the first part of the book is about the battle with fear. The second part is about being courageous. But the third part is when we apply this

courage to something other than our own self-interest. So I talked, for instance, about Michael Jordan, the decision to leave basketball, the play-based ball, is immensely courageous. He's walking away from millions of dollars. Everyone has the courage to be bad in front of millions of people. It's a huge career risk. He's walking away from his prime years. But we contrast that with, say, someone like Maya Moore, who walks away from equal heights in her sport in the WMBA to free a man who's wrongly convicted from prison, it's a higher form of courage. And so I think courage is not being willing

to jump out of an airplane because you don't feel fear. Courage would be, you know, parachuting behind enemy lines at Normandy. Or that's what heroism would be. So I think, yeah, the stoic conception, it's very easy to think of stoicism as an individualistic philosophy, which it is because the individual is all that we control. But the sort of the paradox is the stoic controls the individual so as to make the best or the greatest contribution to the collective. To the whole, yeah.

So the stoics were really, they stood apart from Aristotle's school, the parapetetics, who I think had ideas that resonate more with our current culture. They felt that anger, for example, could be like the wetstone of courage, but the Stoics were like, no way. Marcus is like, you feel fit of rage coming on, you know, that's not right, you know, it's more human to be gentle and civil and therefore it's an even says it's a manlier thing than, you know, having anger. But, you know, today a lot of people excuse themselves from the virtues

because they're angry, or as you say in the first part of this book they have fear, or they just want to sit around and complain about what's made the situation this way, or blame whoever they think is at fault. All of those things, anger, fear, complaint, blame, they're all excuses to inaction, right? To avoiding the constructive things that we should be doing, the proper choices we should be making. Well, I've thought about that a lot during the pandemic because we've taken it very seriously in our house, partly because my wife has always had lung issues,

but partly because I have the privilege, the ability to not have to do things that certain people have to do under ordinary circumstances. But anyways, I've taken the pandemic very seriously, and I've talked about it. And it's been interesting. You hear people, and actually Derek Thompson

for the Atlantic, who's great. I've loved his stuff. In the early days, you call this pandemic stoicism, this sort of toxic masculine approach to the pandemic, which is like, I'm not afraid of a virus. I'm not a pussy. I'm not going to wear a mask. Or then later later the sort of

vaccine hesitancy. I think it's so, it's so easy to miss what courage is about. Courage is not about not being afraid of something. It can be, but you have to, you have to do exactly what you said, which is think about how this plays out for people other than just yourself. So if you say, I don't care about a virus, I'm not scared of it. That's great if the virus only affected you. But if by not being afraid of the virus, you then, let's say, first off, just make other people uncomfortable, right? Like you just walk into a store and you make this podcast you're uncomfortable.

That's already damaging the collective whole. Like part of mass is signaling in the sense that we're all saying, Hey, don't worry as much about me. We're all on the same team. But if by not being afraid of the virus, by not worrying about, by not by saying, you don't care about your health, you are actively endangering other people's health, right? They're saying with the Delta virus that the average person infects something like seven to 10 other people. So by having a cavalier, quote unquote, courageous attitude about it, actively harms the collective whole, then it's not just not courageous, it's actively violating the core stoic virtue. First off, it's violating wisdom and courageous, it's actively violating the core Stoic virtue. First of

it's violating wisdom and self-control and all that, but it's definitely violating the virtue of justice. So how our courage connects to an impact other people is not just a core part of it, it's the whole damn point. Exactly. And you know, what the Stoics would say about a person behaving that way is that they're cowardly. It's cowardice. They're proclaiming something terrible, you know, their liberty for masking, right? For you know, they're confusing it with what's really terrible, you know, namely, they're lack of concern for others. No, that's totally right. And honestly, they have found that, like,

at the core of it for a lot of people, it's like deep down a fear of needles. But, which I think is a wonderful irony. But I think you go to the vaccine, right? I wrote this piece, I'm not sure where it'll get published yet, but I've been thinking a lot about it because there's something I was really struggling with. There is seemingly, or at least on the surface,

a certain amount of courage. Like let's say, you know, there's now some vaccine mandates and a significant percentage of like nurses and different people and different professions has said, all lose my job rather than you tell me what to do. There's people in the NFL that have lost their job, there's teachers that have lost their jobs. A whole bunch of people have said,

like, I will lose my job over this principle. Now that might seem like courage, right? Because, and ironically, that is the kind of courage that we desperately need more of as a society. We need more people who are willing to put, you know, principle over professional interests, right? Or who are willing to go to the mattresses on what they believe. But this is where you have to look at how the other virtues interrelate with each other, because what is your courage, what is the principle ultimately at

stake here? You're resisting, you're proclaiming your freedom to infect yourself and therefore very likely other people to say nothing of the cost on the medical system and the economy and all of that. You're fighting for the principle to actively harm other people. That's where these virtues come together. Like, can you sacrifice your own preferences? Can you take a risk? There is a certain amount of uncertainty to it.

Because ultimately you care about other people and not just yourself. That's the whole thing. No. Well, you know, you write about this in the book too, you know, the, you know, being able to speak frankly you know, to people and to let them know, you know, where the line is.

I mean, you've experienced this in your own bookstore, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. With people who don't want to come in and obey the mandate. Do you ever think that I'm depriving myself of an audience or that I am thinking, like, do you ever see stuff that I write or say and think that I should, I don't want to stay in my lane, but do you think that I am potentially not reaching people who I could reach with Stoicism?

Am I doing it? Or do you think it's the right call? I think it's the right call. I mean, look, obviously, this sort of goes back to the conversation about point of view and talking about when Tim was first launching. I mean, if what you have to say polarizes people good, because out of that comes conversation, right?

And those who don't wanna participate in a conversation, they're eventually just gonna drift away anyway, right? They're gonna go pull together with like-minded people and yell and complain and blame others, but there's nothing productive in that. and yell and complain and blame others. But there's nothing productive in that. You're trying to build an audience of people who want to engage the conversation

and they want to pay it forward. So. That's true, but there's that Michael Jordan line that he's sort of pilloried for but he goes like Republicans by sneakers too. It's a tricky thing. I think when people go like, most people are on the, say, like the vaccine bandwagon

or something, but it's like, you know, like 30% of the population is not. That's a large, that's like, if you said, hey, Ryan, if you do this, your book sales are gonna decrease, you're risking pissing off 30% of the audience. I see why people don't do it. I mean, yeah, I mean in theory, but in practice, what do we see?

The audience is growing. The only fallout I see and you see, of course, every day is you get these hatchet job reviews that get posted on Amazon or you know people trashing up your social media feeds. Yeah, no, I think that is a thing. The term they have for these days is audience capture. So what happens is someone, you know, you think you're building or acquiring the audience, but actually at Seneca talks a lot about this as far as money or profession, but actually the audience

or the platform or the success is capturing you. And so you'd think you'd have more freedom when you become successful, when you have followers or fans or an audience. But actually, you become more conservative, more constrained, because now you're afraid of risking them. And this is why people don't say or do unorthodox things. They are worried about the costs. And ironically, the more successful and bigger you get, the more quantifiable and large those costs can be.

What's his name, Darryl Morey, it sort of tweets out some controversial comments about communist China, like two seasons ago in the NBA. The entire salary cap of the NBA is reduced as a result of the direct economic consequences of that decision. No, it's true. It's tough though.

I think, so you go, oh, it's obviously the right thing to do. There's a great Fitzgerald story that I like called the Four Fists. And at the end of it, the guy is sort of put in this difficult unethical business proposition. He ends up sort of telling the person across from the truth instead of, you know, sort of this shark-like business deal. And he goes, it's obviously the right thing to do, but when you're, when you've got a wife and kids, that sort of righteousness can also feel like selfishness, right? Like I think about Rutilius Rufus, right? He's sort of brought up on these false charges, and he just doesn't bother to defend himself

because he feels like doing that is beneath him. I'm not getting off on a little bit of a tangent, but he doesn't, so he ends up being tried, convicted and sent away. And on the one hand, that's very brave and bold, but I'm sure his family was probably a little bit like, Dad, why didn't you just bother to defend yourself? And Musoneus Rufus, doesn't he push back? He goes like, I to defend yourself. And Musoneus Rufus, doesn't he push back? He's like, I will fight.

He makes fun of, this is sort of going back to Socrates too, right? He's like, you know, hey, I'm gonna make a defense of myself. Yeah. You could count on a stoic making a very strenuous defense for themselves. You know, it's funny that another related story in Epic Titus, it's interesting when you read

Epic Titus, like in Marcus, you can find all the four virtues listed, right, in his writings, but Epic Titus never lays them all out, like in a list. But, encourages the one that's usually missing from his list, but he tells all these great stories. And in fact, there's one story that Epictetus tells twice in Aryan's collection of his lectures in book one, chapter six, and in book two, chapter 16. He's talking about how all these terrible things befall us and we just sit around crying. Oh, my nose is running. My nose is running.

And you know, in both places, he's like, Hey, what's up with you? You know, don't you have a pair of hands blow your nose? Right. But, but in both cases, he lists. And again, this goes back to these resources that we have, you know, that are built in in both places. He's like, you know, hasn't God given you endurance, magnanimity, courage? He lists them though in both places in all of those things, endurance, magnanim, and courage, they all fall under the stoic idea of courage. And that's why I think Epochetus loved to tell the story of Helpedius Priskus. And the Gryponus too. I think those are the two of his heroes who stood up in Helpedius' case to Vespasian, right? Threat of death.

So he made out of always listed courage, but he loved to tell, in fact, he would say to his students all the time. Yeah, your lions in the classroom, but your foxes when you get out there in the world. Right. You turn your tail and you run. No, and you think about what courage would mean for someone like Epictetus who's a slave.

I mean, like, courage is having your leg broken. Courage is being executed and, or being exiled, with sort of not a thought. I mean, he's riding the razor's edge. He's not living the sort of posh life of Senica or even Cato. Yeah, that's true. So one one thing I look, this is again, a sort of a minor courage moment, but one of the things I was really conscious of on the launch of the book, and I know I think people someone enjoy the inside baseball, but the decision

Obviously deciding to open a bookstore was one of the crazier Things that I've done in the last couple years, and you know, it's funny I don't know if I told you this but when I have an idea for something I want to do I usually because I get excited about it I usually look for disc confirmation so I call people who are liable to convince me that it's a bad idea. Now you told me it was a good idea because you love bookstores and you used to have a bookstore.

But I was talking to my wife about it, and I was like, who will tell me this is a very bad idea and why I shouldn't do it? And so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna call Tim. I'm gonna call Tim Ferris. Tim, the sort of outsourcer, you know, avoid entanglements, you know, assets that sort of costs time and money. I was like, Tim will tell me this is a bad idea.

And Tim was like, how will you know you if you don't want a bookstore? He's like, how will you know if you really want a bookstore, if you don't try one? And how will you know that you don't want a bookstore if you haven't tried one and see he was one of the few people that gave me the permission to do it. That's cool. I love it. But as part of that this is the sort of first book launch that I've had while the store exists. And so early on sort of strategically in the launch I decided know, instead of routing these orders to these different vendors, instead of sort of, you know, outsourcing the customer relationship to Amazon, to Barnes and Noble, to Audible, to, you know, these big retailers, I was like, I'm going to do it directly,

like I'm going to sell the book directly, which I had a little experimentation with with the boy who would be King and the leatherbound editions of the two books, but nothing at the scale of this book. And I just thought it was interesting. I anticipated it because it's happened on I've seen hints of it, but I thought we should talk about just how much of a surprise this was to people in publishing because not because they thought I wouldn't sell as many copies not just because they thought it would be a lot of work but did it not seem like one of the big objections and concerns was that this would affect my position on a bestsellerist. Oh yeah I mean

completely you know it's all the various lists have various methodologies and they're sort of tried and true and it's a certain mix of accounts that report in different ways and it gets compiled and that's how you know who's on the list in the various categories. Once you start talking about a startup bookstore that is barely on anyone's radar, becoming in essence like one of the largest channels of distribution for the book, it's like, well, that's going to spell disaster because the list keepers won't have you on their radar. No, it's funny. It struck me as a connection to one of my favorite markets of realists, quotes, which I remember really hitting me for the first time when the obstacle

as the way came out sold enough copies to hit more than one bestsellerist, but mysteriously did not appear. And I remember, you know remember turning to and drawing some value from the quote, or Marx really says, we care about ourselves more than other people, but then we care about their opinion more than our own. Even though an author is paid not on how they do on the best soloist, but paid based on how many copies

they sold, and the whole point of writing a book is to reach more people, as many people as possible, the irony that even people in publishing to say nothing of authors value the New York Times, which is admittedly not an objective list. We value whether the New York Times says you're a best seller or not. And even if that came at the expense of selling better, it's a hilarious way of saying that. Yeah, it's funny because people know inside publishing that often a book is on the list

and it really hasn't done that well. Yeah, or it had, it was a one week wonder or whatever. But I do remember distinctly, I had a fairly long career at Harper Collins. Robert Murdock didn't want to hear about the New York Times bestseller list because he knew a lot of those books weren't selling. Interesting. Yeah, and to me, the tricky part about it, and it's not, again, not the courage of, you know, airlifting people out of Afghanistan, but it's easier to measure yourself against external

metrics, right? It's easy to go, oh, the New York Times said I was a success, therefore I'm a success. It's harder to stick with what Mark is just saying, which is to value your own opinion more than these external things because you control it. But to go, I think there was a feeling as I embarked on this approach was like, hey, I'm going to kind of burn the boats behind me. I'm not going to value these sort of easy,

straightforward benchmarks. I'm going to have to measure what success is to myself. And I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to bet on myself long-term at the expense of short-term validation or recognition? Yep. Well, it certainly requires great resources to do what you're doing, especially when you have four palettes of books show up without a fork lift to unload them. But, you know, there is an aspect of the virtue of courage, which the Stoic's prized above all, and it was filiponia, the love of toil, the love of work,

or industriousness, as the translators sometimes refer to it. And they believe that it was a knowledge of how to accomplish what is proposed without being prevented by the toil. And I know you and your team are certainly right up against that wall right now. Yeah, no, it's been a grind. And then, yeah, it may be that even though I would sell enough copies to debut at number one, like Stillness, did, I may not only not do that, I may not appear on the list at all. But to me, I know I'm making a bet on one,

the direct connection to the audience. I know that it's actually increasing the sales. I know that it's, I'm also getting to sort of hand sign the copies to the most loyal fans, which is my, you know, something I feel really honored to be able to do. And it's an investment, again, in the rest of the series, because now, instead of Amazon, being able to say, hey, there's a new book out, I'll be able to say that directly.

And people really want to support the painted porch. Yes, which is incredibly overwhelming, both literally and figuratively and emotionally. Exactly. But like the consequence of all that and there are no decisions that don't have consequences that are not trade-offs is like, hey, I, people will be like, did he fall off? You know, like, why did you, are your book selling worse? And so you, you have to be willing to judge yourself by your own standards, the inner scorecard versus that

external scorecard, and it's not without its consequences. Yeah. Anything else we should say about the book, Steve? Well, I just, do you have courage? I, you know, I just really want to do everything I can to help get the word out about it. I've got copies here that I'm getting ready to send out. I know all your books are being shipped, but I think there's so much here for people to dig into. And from the very first pages of the book

where you talk about Hercules at the Crossroads and how his story is really the story that each of us is facing every day. I think people are, this is going to resonate for people. And it's, again, I think starting with courage was the right place to start. It's the very thing that we all need now, as we're getting a gradual reopening to a very broken world. We all need some more courage.

Oh, that last thing I was going to say because I've been actively working on it, especially now on the self-discipline book. You know that putting out books is frustrating. Working with publishers is always frustrating. Working with people is frustrating, but publishing has always been that way in the middle of a pandemic. Am I doing better at being calmer and less, let's say keeping my temper in check? I feel like I am, but I'll take some radical candor from you. Am I doing better this go around?

I'd like to think that as each book gets out, I'm a little bit less a bundle of nerves, but I know I remain still. of nerves, but I know I remain still given given all the obstacles of the last two weeks, and spending more than a few days nauseous myself, I think you're doing great. All right, I'll take it. I'm trying, I do try to get less attached to the external results with each book, and I try to take, be, anticipate all the things that could external results with each book. And I try to take, be, anticipate all the things that could go wrong with each book. I think the tension is always, how is

this direct? Do you focus on what you control, not taking things personally, you know, understanding that things go wrong and, you know, hold people accountable and expect both competence and accountability from people who have different assignments and jobs. That's the tension. You have to surface the urgency when it's required. And if you don't, things will not be completed. But I know that you did a fair amount of meditating this week. And again, it's back to the William James fair amount of meditating this week, and again,

it's back to the William James that you quote in the book, you know, we're all working on making our nervous system our ally instead of just one more enemy. That's right. And trying not to do things that don't age well is and tantrums or knock down, drag out fights don't age well. No, that's for sure. Steve, you're the best. We'll sell some more books together

and by that I mean more projects. And I really appreciate you helping me make this one a reality. Thanks Ryan, it's been my privilege and go. All right. To be great, Link. Remember, Courage is calling Fortune Favres the Brave is now available everywhere. You can go to your local bookstore and pick it up

and come to the painted porch and pick it up. We are still offering the pre-order bonuses. We've extended it to the end of this week. So you can get that at dailystiric.com slash pre-order but you can also get Audible, you can get e-books, you can get whatever you want from wherever you want it. But I would very much like you to support the new book, Courage, is calling Fortune Favors the Brave.

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