The Daily Stoic - That’s What It’s Made For | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

You probably wish you didn’t have to. Of course, you didn’t want it to happen. It would be nicer if things went as planned. As we’ve said before, this is what we trained for! 🎟️ Come see Ryan Holiday LIVE: https://www.dailystoiclive.com/San Diego, CA - February 5, 2026 Phoenix, AZ - February 27, 2026 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women help you learn from them. to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visitdailystoic.com. That's what it's made for. You probably wish you didn't have to. to. And of course, you didn't want it to happen. It would be nicer if things went as planned.

But one thing we know about life is that this is just how it goes. Accidents, disasters, difficult periods, challenging situations. Well, as we said before, this is what we trained for. This is the whole point of stoicism. There's a great line in a Nathaniel Raitliff's song about this. Let me play it for you real fast. Now, lean and usually, that's what. lean and use your weight that's what a shoulders made for adversity and difficulty is what you are for it's certainly what stoicism is for these lessons were tried and tested in the furnace of history they were subjected to tyrants and exile

plagues and wars imprisonment and health crises temptations and trials and now now is your chance to apply them to use them you've got the shoulders you've got the shoulders you You are standing on shoulders of generations of Stoics who came before. Lean and use your weight. Carry the weight. I'm at the office right now, but I'm heading home. The family's at the house and we're already like, do I need to pick something up on the way home to cook for dinner?

What do we need to do? And then my wife reminded me, no, no, we had a hello fresh box come in. Now we don't have to worry about dinner today. HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit. They've delivered over one billion meals. And their recipes take 30 minutes or less. Everything shows up at your door ready to go. No parking lots, no checkout lines, no forgetting ingredients.

And all those recipes are made with wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100% antibiotic and hormone-free chicken. Just go to hellofresh.com slash stoic 10fm. You get 10 meals free, plus a freezwilling knife on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

I actually just finished my online therapy session just a few minutes ago. The year's coming to an end. I guess I could have pushed it until January, but I thought, you know what? No, I want the holidays to go well. I want to be focused on what I should be focused on. I want to take care of myself. I want to get better. And that's where today's sponsor, BetterHelp, comes in.

Therapy is a great way to get an unbiased perspective on your life. It's how you can get a weight off your shoulders. It's so you can focus on the future. It's so you can break old patterns and be who you want to be in 2026. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms. They've served more than five million. people all over the world. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct. They are fully licensed in the U.S. and they even do the initial matching work for you so you can focus on

your therapy goals. If you aren't happy with your therapist, you can switch to a different one at any time from their recommendations. If you want to leave some stuff behind, leave it in the past, leave it in 2025. Well, BetterHelp can help you do that. And you can sign up right now for 10% off at betterhelp.com slash daily stoic pod. That's better help.com slash daily stoic pod. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Back in May, I was in Mexico City doing a talk to this thing called Grupo Salinas, their national advisory council. I did a couple different Q&As as part of it. I've really worked hard on this talk. I actually built in a whole story about Frida Callow in there. So that was really cool. And I thought I'd bring you as part

of our Q&A episode. Some questions from that. Here I am being interviewed by Ninfa Salinas. She was asking me some questions on stage. And she is a Mexican politician, a former Mexican senator. And she represents the ecologist Green Party of Mexico. She's also the president of the Advisory Council and leads the Somos Grande's initiative, which was created by Grupo Salinas. to promote entrepreneurship across Mexico. Let's get into it. So I like what you're saying, because with respect to the obstacle is the way,

which is one of your books, and I've read it. You talk about trying to get out of your agenda, the hardest thing possible, the first thing in morning. So can you talk a little bit about this? And, you know, does it apply to entrepreneurial lives? I think it does. I do think what an entrepreneur is, fundamentally, is someone who's having to constantly respond to the things that might, right? Suddenly, any law comes into a fact, or a new change in the market comes into effect, a new technology is invented, one of your employees, you find out is stealing from you, your most trusted employee quits, you're just, stuff is happening, and you've got to respond.

What a great company does, what a great business does, what a great leader does is respond, but how are we going to deal? with this, what are we going to do because of this? I mean, I think you saw this day of the pandemic. How many businesses didn't have an e-commerce component, didn't have a takeout component, didn't have a hybrid or a work-free home component, and they had to suddenly figure that out. Now, if you'd ask them in February of 2020, was this possible, they would have said no, but necessity made it possible.

I mean, how many people become entrepreneurs because they got laid off or because, you know, there was a downturn in their industry. And so an entrepreneur is by definition, someone who responds to what? to what happens in the life. And I do think, to go to your point about sort of routine and structure, you have to create, your life is going to be crazy enough. There was an artist who said, you want to be organized in your life, in your career,

in your workspace, so you can be chaotic in your art. And I think an entrepreneur's got to create structure and discipline so that they can deal with the craziness that is inherent in one thing. if you are adding on top of that just personal chaos and dysfunction you never know where anything is and office is a mess and your phone is always ringing you're you're just adding noise on top of noise i like what you say i think it's very powerful just to wrap it up i would i would like to ask you about your new book yeah which is the right thing right now and here in next school we're living in an environment which is just pretty violent and they're difficulties all around and i know it's not

exclusive to Mexico. But what you say is your urges to act with integrity, even when nobody's going to. Can you reflect more about the, you know, how does this impact businesses? One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you get to make some decisions, right? Like, look, it'd be wonderful if we all lived

under competent governments, if everyone played by the rules, if collectively we all did what was best for each other, the planet, but we don't, right? We do the opposite darkness at the time. And politics is the art of addressing them. But you and I are not the emperor. We are not the president, unfortunately.

So we don't get to pick a lot of us to see. We certainly don't get to decide, you know, what they're doing across some far distant ocean or what another countries do. So do we give up? Do we despair? No, one of the great things about being an object ignored is that we get to make really important impactful decisions.

They don't necessarily impact everyone, but they certainly matter a great deal to the people inside our organization. So the decision to, I don't know, provide benefits or the decision to set certain environmental or equality standards, the decision to treat everyone we deal with therapy. These are decisions that we get to make.

No one's putting a gun to our head and saying you have to do them. And in fact, that's what makes. makes it most meaningful. It's so easy in politics and business, and like, no, it's been true. Straight America is true here, it's been true historically, to go, well, everyone else is doing me.

Well, that's just standard practice. Or to make this distinction between illegal and wrong, you know, it's not illegal, so technically I can do it. There, Victor Franco, the great Jewish writer, comes out in the Holocaust, he said, that it's wonderful that America has a statute of liberty, but he felt that on the West Coast there should be a corresponding statute of responsibility. And I think every business person has the chance to go, hey, look, it's wonderful to live in a society and a capitalistic society

to have the freedom to make these decisions. But that doesn't mean you just get to do whatever you want. What it means is that you now have the freedom to make the right to see it. And you have to do that. And so, hey, there's going to be corruption around you. There's going to be disincentives around you. There's going to be opportunities that you could take advantage of that might be good to you financially, but you understand the VAP for the world or, you know, someone on the other side of that transaction. And then you have to decide, hey, am I going to be that person? And I've just found that so empowering as an entrepreneur myself, is that as frustrated as I am with the state of the world, I've got plenty that I can focus on for my people, for my team, for my community.

And that if everyone took that responsibility seriously, it would make it an enormous impact right away. And that's just something I wish more entrepreneurs would embrace. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything.

I just wanted to say thank you.