The Daily Stoic - This Is What Kindles The Soul | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

Today, on the 24th anniversary of 9/11, let's honor Brian Sweeney and the thousands of others we lost by striving to be, as Marcus said, "free of passion and yet full of love."👉 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/📓 Pick up a signed edition of Ego is the Enemy! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.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 to 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. hijacked United Airlines flight 175. He knew something was wrong, but he could not have fully understood

that he and so many others were about to be murdered in one of the most hateful and deranged acts of terrorism in history. But in those final few short minutes of his life, he managed to leave a beautiful message on his wife's voicemail. Jules, this is Ryan, listen, on an airplane that's been hijacked, and things don't go well, and it's not looking good. I just want you to know. I absolutely love you. I want you to do good. I so have to find things to my parents and everybody. And I just totally love you and I'll see you away together. Bye, babe. I'll call you. In book one of meditations where Marcus Reelis catalogs the most important things he learned throughout his life, he said that he learned from a teacher named Sextus to be free of passion yet full of love.

Imagine the terror of that moment, yet when you hear Brian's voice coming through the phone, there's not a trace of fear. It's free of passion, free of anger, free of despair, free of everything, yet full of love. Because everything else has been stripped away, rendered irrelevant, and insignificant. Pure love, Seneca said, careless of all other things, kindles the soul, makes us selfless, it emboldens us, makes us courageous, inspires us to be strong. instills us with purpose. It doesn't always win, as Sweeney's tragic death reminds us, but it is an antidote to terror and cruelty and evil. It is the thing that keeps going, that lives

on after us, that brings meaning and comfort even in the worst of situations. So today, on the anniversary of 9-11, let us, as Marcus Rilius said and Sweeney was, let us be full of love. let us tell those we love that we totally love them let us bring love to every situation we face indeed there is almost no situation in which passion helps but almost every situation is made better when it is full of love hey it's ryan holiday welcome to another episode of the daily stoke podcast i'm staring out a hotel room in Vermont, looking out over a beautiful lake. I've never been here before. I thought I had my mic with me. I brought it and it's not working, which is going to cause me some problems

for the virtual talk I'm about to give. But that's something we're going to talk about here very quickly. We're going to talk about ego. I was just doing a podcast for Wisdom Takes Work, which is out in a couple weeks with Chris Williamson. And we were talking about what are some of the things that make smart people stupid. And I was listing a bunch of the things. And I was, again, struck as I have been now writing and thinking about this very idea for over 10 years, how much it comes back down to ego, right? Ego makes us things we already know everything. It makes us uncurious. It makes us not listen to other people. It makes us complacent. Deludes us. It makes us think we have powers we don't have. It gets in the way. And so I thought I would bring you a special Q&A

episode of the podcast where we just talk about ego. Over the last six months, I've been all over the world. As I said, right now I'm in Vermont, but I've been traveling all over, and people have been asking me about ego. It's one of the questions I get the most. So that's what we are going to be answering questions about today. Before I get into that, when Chad was on the podcast from Chad goes deep, he had something interesting to say about ego. Here's that. We kind of experienced that with um we got a show on netflix yeah and it was great the whole experience was great and but to me it was like actually i was listening to ego's enemy a lot during it because i'm like i was like got to keep the ego in check like don't become like too and you know it kind of like

it was like the dream especially growing up is like if you're a comedian like getting a tv show you're like that's the career maker and to me i was like when this comes out i'll you know i'll be you're a made man a made exactly and it was great like a whole experience was awesome and we're really proud of how it came out but it came out and next day it was you know you're kind of like yeah and nothing happened where's the parade yeah exactly yeah yeah and I'm saying I'm like I was miserable for like two weeks and my fiancee was kind of like what's your deal I'm like I'm like I don't you know just you just expect everything to be easy from that point and to and then but it kind of humbled me in a sense to where I was like I was like oh I just I need to get back to that open mic men

of just getting back to the craft and just putting the work in every day. Like, there's never going to be a moment where you're kind of just on easy street. But anyways, let's get into some questions. These are people asking me about ego. If you want a book on this topic, of course we have ego as the enemy. And then I would argue that wisdom takes work is largely a meditation on this theme as well. You can pre-order copies of wisdom takes work and get a bunch of awesome bonuses if you go to dailystowoc.com slash wisdom.

Enjoy. We were just out of town for the weekend, and I was worried when we got back that I wouldn't have the stuff I needed to make my kids' lunches or their snacks for school. But when I got back to the house, you know what was sitting in the driveway? Our box from Thrive Market, which we've been getting groceries and stocking our pantry from I think going on six or seven years now. I love Thrive Market. I invested in Thrive Market.

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That's Dell.com slash deals. You're a very successful writer, bestseller. You give all these conferences. How do you ground yourself? How do you not have an ego? How do you... I mean, you talked about your day, but that's more around how you plan your day. Maybe it's part of that.

But then what else do you do? Oh, I cannot have this conference of Pepsi or not the greatest because they hired me and stuff. How do you look about that? Well, I think it's important. Everyone has a ego. If you don't think you have one, that's like the most egotistical thing you could do, right? But I find that, like, doing the task is inherently humbling, right? So if you're focused on, like, how you can get better as opposed to look at our

awesome I am. Look at what I've done. You're going to naturally, I think, be humbler. So, like, what I try to do is whenever I finish a book, I start the next one. Because when I start the next one, you're starting with page zero or page one, and it's blank, and it's intimidated, and it's not going to be good for a long time. So, like, by throwing myself into the next project, I feel like I'm not only protecting myself against the ego of like, look how great the last one is selling, look at all the cool things that I've done, look how proud I am of what I've published, but I'm also insulating myself against the failure too, right? Like, so I've had books that have done really well out of the gate, and I've had other books that took a long time

to take off. And I really didn't sweat either one because I had this other thing that was kicking my ass every day. And that was taking up the most of my focus. And so Amazon has this slogan of like, it's always day one, right? And you're always starting an new and fresh. And part of that is not being sort of rigid and set their ways and complacent. But I think it's also always reminding yourself that you're starting at the beginning and to not get too full of yourself. Right. Amazing. You're talking about, as you talked today, about a little a bit about the Patriots and then we heard about the spurs. You talk a little bit about Bill Belichick and how he started and he was like the guy, you know, doing the job that nobody

wanted to do. You probably now know him as, you know, the six-time Super Bowl winning coach and probably Brady was there also. How do they remain eagleness in a multi-billion dollar business with all the hype they get around, et cetera, et cetera, how they ground themselves? How do they ground themselves. Well, I think it's a similar thing. In football, right, the team that wins the Super Bowl, not only played the longest season, but then they have the most trouble retaining talents and coaches. They have the worst draft picks the next year, right? And so they're starting that next season behind April, right? Everyone else got knocked out earlier and has been thinking about how they're going to do the next year, right? And so realizing that actually your success,

you could take this too far and become paranoid and never happen. But if you realize that your success, it's actually putting in a position of disadvantage. Now you've got the most competition. People are the most familiar with what you just did, right? You're the person they're trying to beat, you know, you've got a target on their back. You realize, I think, really quickly, like, There is, the margin for error is so small that if you introduce ego or complacency or entitlement, you're going to get your ass kicked. I mean, I was looking at if I spoke to the Los Angeles Rams a couple years ago, and they ended up winning the Super Bowl last year.

And this year, they didn't even make the playoffs, right? And I'm not saying it's out of ego. It was this team that got ravished by injuries, but it's realizing that, hey, like, just because you were successful before, it is not to be taken for granted. you will continue to be successful. You have to stay hungry. You have to focus on ceaselessly solving problems. And you have to look at what you're doing next, right?

And I think that's a way to just be so locked in that you don't have. You could look at how awesome your career was after you retire, you know? But if you're looking at it in the moment, you take you an eye off the ball. So on the opposite side, the ego is the enemy. that I just read this week, even though you wrote that, and this is your study, is there ever a time being a dad, being a leader, being a partner, being a husband, where the ego gets in your way? Oh, all the time. Yeah. I think if you think ego's not a problem for you,

you are talking about ego. You know, that's one of the more insidious things about ego is that we can spot it so clearly in other people. Like your ego almost says there is no ego. Yes. Yeah. Well, it's just we can, we can so very clearly see how ego holds other people back, but they're like me, no, no, I've transcended this. I'm over this. And it's like, no, you just can't see if you could get honest feedback from people around you. They'd be like, here's all the ways that your ego is holding you back. But what ego does is it sort of blinds us to that thing. And so I make a big distinction between confidence and ego. Confidence is essential. If you don't

think you can do something, you're probably not going to be able to do it. The problem is, just because you think you can do something doesn't mean you can. And I think where ego gets in the way, is It says you already have all the tools, all the skills, all the signs point to yes, instead of doing the work to earn those things, right? There's a quote from Epictetus, one of the stoics. He says, remember, it is impossible to learn that what you think you already know. And so where, like, being a know-it-all is so problematic is that you're kind of right. You can't know anything more.

and humility or confidence can continue to learn and grow because it's secure with itself, but also aware of how much more it needs. And so, yeah, look, I was just, I just got notes back from my last book and my first reaction. Every time, even though I know this, is like, how dare you? You know, I sent you a work of art. And you told me you use a different color. Yeah, you sent me back this thing covered in red marks. What is this?

And then I go, okay, that's ego. ego doesn't like to be criticized, ego doesn't like to have to do extra work, ego doesn't like to be challenged, ego thinks I'm the expert, you're the assistant to the editor, you know, all the things that you're pushing back on. And then I go, all right, let's sit on that for a day. And then usually what I tell myself is, let's do all the easy notes first, you know, let's do all the ones we agree with. I'm only going to put in the ones that are obviously right that I agree with. And then, you know, by the end, I put in all the notes because I've gotten over that initial resistance, right? And, you know, anytime you get criticized or you screw up, you want to think about how it was

somebody else's fault, how you didn't deserve it, they don't understand, and then once you can let that subside a little bit, or what I try to do is once I let that subside, I go, okay, and now where's the truth in this? Where was I responsible? What do I want to take from this experience? And that's kind of how I think about it. But I generally, ego is not this thing that you don't have. It's not this thing that you kill and it goes away. It is a constant process. And would the opposite of ego be humility? Or what would be the opposite of? Well, the ancients had this idea of the golden mean. And the golden mean being that most virtues are actually in the middle between two vices. And so I'd actually say that confidence is there in between a sort of

humility has a positive connotation, but there's certainly people who are too humble, too self-effacing, riddled with imposter syndrome and doubt and feelings of worthlessness. On the one hand, we have this. And then ironically, ego on the other end is actually quite similar, right? Ego is an obsession with the self. Actually, when you meet really egotistical people, you see how insecure they are deep down. So to me, confidence is there in the middle.

It's an understanding and an awareness of our strengths coupled with an awareness of our weakness, of our need for improvement where we can get better, what we don't know. And it's these two things fuse together that is what we're aspiring to be as opposed to stuck on either end. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoag podcast.

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