The Daily Stoic - Try To Surprise People This Way | Ask DS

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

He didn’t dress in fancy clothes. He didn’t support a large entourage. He liked to walk the streets of Rome, meeting his fellow citizens, being of use and helping them. As a politician, Cato traveled across the empire, again, without a large baggage train or an advance party to make sure he was treated with the respect accorded to his official position. --And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks stoics and answers questions for 300+ Risk, Safety, Compliance & HR Leaders from across the country for True North Companies. Overall the goal is to guide our clients and manage the complexities of risk management & workforce.Registration is only open until TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7TH.Take the next step in your Stoic education today.Click here to sign up.⏳ You can view our entire Memento Mori Collection at dailystoic.com/mm✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What a life these celebrities lead. Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face, the designer clothes, the worst dress list, big house. The world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account, the people trying to get the grubby mitts on it. What are you all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous. It's not always easy.

Whee! I'm Emily Lloyd-Saini. And I'm Anna Liang-Grofi. I'm Anneliong-Rofi. And we're the hosts of Terribly Famous from Wondery, the podcast which tells the stories of our favourite celebrities from their perspective. Each season we show you what it's really like being famous by taking you inside the life of a British icon. We walk you through their glittering highs and eyebrow raising lows and ask, is fame and fortune really worth it?

Follow terribly famous now wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Sirete. And we are the hosts of A Red Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases. But we also dig into those you might not have heard of. Like the Nephiles Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices.

Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behaviour. Find, download and binge Red Handhanded wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners in fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily Stoic life members, or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording

But thank you for listening and we hope this is of used to you Try to surprise people this way Kato was a rich and powerful man It came from a family that for generations had been rich and powerful and a cast society with all the privileges and norms generations had been rich and powerful in a cast society with all the privileges and norms that that entailed. And yet, Kato dispensed with most of this, at least, and how he went about his day. He didn't dress in fancy clothes, he didn't support a large entourage, he liked to walk the streets of Rome, meeting his fellow citizens, being of use, and helping them.

As a politician, Kato traveled across the empire, again, without a large baggage train or advanced party to make sure he was treated with the respect, according to his official position. Sometimes arriving before the rest of his group, he would arrive in a small town and sit and wait, often without being recognized, sometimes quietly enduring snubs or indignities from people who had no idea who he was. When his identity became known, and that treatment suddenly changed, Cato would smile and remind them that not all future visitors would be Cato's. Not every Roman would be so understanding or low maintenance. Needless to say, this was all very surprising. One of Rome's greatest men walking barefoot and

bare headed without fear or favor, a representative of Rome's great imperial might being kindly and patient and respectful and prudent. This just didn't happen. Kato could have gotten away with so much worse, indeed he was entitled legally and culturally to all sorts of pretentiousness and deference. Perhaps your job affords you similar privileges. Perhaps you are used to being treated a certain way. The measure of the measure of who you are is how lightly you wear these honors, how approachable you are. Be the kind of person that surprises people. They were so nice. I was so surprised at how easy they were to deal with. Be the

kind of person that surprises other people with how interested you are in them, and how much respect you treat them with, how little use you have for formalities or status symbols. You'll be amazed that the kind of respect this affords you in the long run, and how surprising this really is. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. Today we are doing a Q-r-let's write it apart. I am back in May, I guess. I did a little talk and see the rapids and I went for run in a place that I'd never been before

I thought it was quite beautiful and I Thought it was weird to see the rapids like the cap. I guess is a capital or the city hall of the Whatever's like in the middle of the river and I was talking to someone on about that I was like I've never seen that before. It's pretty cool. And he's like, yeah, it does flood and then I thought oh Yeah, that's probably why I've never seen that before. I could see why that would be a bad place to put a municipal building. But anyways, I had a good time and I gave a talk to some folks at a company called True North, which is a risk management and insurance company.

And then we had a nice little Q&A session and then a sort of informal working lunch with some execs. So I'm going to bring you the best of that Q&A now. Let me kick in some questions around. So thanks to all those folks. Enjoy. I try to do something hard every day. That's sort of how I think about it. I'm not like training for something or trying to do it. I just try to do something hard every day, that's sort of how I think about it. I'm not like training for something or trying to do it, I just try to do something that pushes myself physically for some amount of time. And what I like about it is it usually means no screen time, usually means outside. And then it's also probably also good for physical health, but I'm almost thinking about

that as way down the line. I got a cold blend recently and obviously there's some science about what it does for you, but to me the thing is the benefit is the doing it. I'm going to do this thing for however I'm going to push myself to see how long I can do this thing that is hard. That's the value of it, as opposed to, does it help your circulation or your nervousness? You know, maybe, hopefully, but weirdly, it's like, I think the doing the hard thing is the thing of it. So yeah, I just try to do something that pushes myself every day.

Was that part of why you chose your place? Yeah, I mean, it's nice. Yeah, it's nice. I can run on dirt instead of paved roads and stuff, although I have to worry about dogs from the most part. But yeah, no, it's great. I think, are we meant to live in big concrete jungles, probably not?

And so anything that gets you away from that is nice. Reborn amazed in that area? No, no. I'm from California. We just ended up in Texas. How did you meet your wife? In college. Yeah. In college. Yeah.

Yeah, in college. So we've been together a long time. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. She didn't want to come to Des Moines. Or I mean to, I see the recider habits as you can imagine. It's beautiful here. Yeah, this is the best time we've heard.

I'm actually like it. Are your kids snowing too? Well, they're six and four, so they're more like feral animals, but especially living where we live, you know, yet have lots of discussions about where you're allowed to pee when we're out in public, stuff like that. Do you have a snowy, snowy, children? I do, actually, I did a book called The Boy Who Would Be King,

which is about the story of Marcus Realis, and then I did a book called The Girl Who Would Be Free, which is about epictetus. So I serve a boy and a girl one. I actually did him during the pandemic. My kids are not interested in hearing them about them at all, but other kids of life. I hearing them about them at all, but other kids of life. I was writing about Marcus really,

because I think it's an interesting story in that Marcus is not born to any kind of royal family. Like there was five Roman emperors in a row who don't have any male children. Roman emperors in a row who don't have any male children. And so each one had to choose an error. And some did good, some did not so good. But in Marcus's case, he was very young. When the Emperor Hadrian sort of realizes that it's coming

to the end. And so making a kid, the Emperor is probably a really bad idea. So he adopts this older man who's in his 50s, thinking that he'd live for like five more years or something, given life expectancy then. And he adopts this kind of Antoninus, Antoninus, then has to adopt Marcus Reales and they set motionless sort of plan. But then Antoninus lives for 20 more years. And so Marcus basically gets this kind of leadership apprentice program that's very unusual in all of human history. And they're basically sort of two good emperors in a row, which is pretty rare also.

And so it's kind of a remarkable story. Because absolute power is supposed to corrupt absolutely. It's like a handful of exceptions in history. And this is this kind of two of them. Do you like any contemporary authors? I thought you're ego-sexual. It's really good. I thought of- any contemporary authors. I thought, I thought your ego section was really good. I thought, oh, thanks. Realty similar to Cycle Equin.

She's been some whole Millie notes. Very good. Yeah. Check it out. I thought your mindset stuff, you might need some of Carol Black. She's great, yeah. Yeah, so I was just curious if you like anybody

and kind of pay attention. I love a lot of people. I actually have a bookstore in Texas in this little town that we live in. And basically, the premise is it's only books that I like, which is one of the perks. There's not many perks to running a bookstore, but that is one of them.

I like David Epstein. A lot of us is called Range, which I think a lot about. I like a lot of biography, so there's a big biography section. I don't tend to read a lot of books like in the category that I write in, just as I try to keep other people's work out of my head. But I like Count Newport a lot. As I was talking about deep work and the talk about focus and concentration, I like his books a lot.

I just was reading Gretchen Rubin's new book. She has this book on forgetting what it's called exactly. But it's on exploring and improving each one of the senses, which is really interesting. But yeah, I have, I like lots of contemporary authors. I try not to read in my own space as much, but yeah, there's tons of people I like. What prompted you to decide with all you've got going on in like opening bookstore?

Well, it's all about the money, as you can imagine. That's why I open a bookstore. Well it's all about the money as you can imagine. That's why I open a bookstore. Sure, it's my wheeled restaurants. Yeah. I don't know. My wife and I were sitting at this little restaurant in the town that we live and we were looking at these this building across the street that had been vacant for a really long time and she was like, well that would be a cool bookstore And she was like, well, that would be a cool bookstore. And I was like, yeah, it would be really cool if someone else did that. And I don't know, we ended up doing it. I like that it was her idea. So then if it went badly, it wasn't all on me.

But it's usually the big, bad ideas are our mind. But it was probably a crazy idea under ordinary circumstances. And then we started construction in the first week of March, 2020. So it was a little behind schedule and looked to be a really, really, really bad idea for quite a while. And now it's great, it's been really fun.

And it was actually awesome to have like our own space that wasn't open during the pandemic, during that first summer. But yeah, it's been really, really fun. And it's actually, as an author, it's been interesting to really understand the business side of the thing, to see it. Oh, this thing that I thought my publisher was screwing up,

all publishers are screwing up. Or just the economics of it's been really interesting. And then it's nice to have, like as an author, you can kind of work from anywhere, you can work from your house or whatever. This is kind of also like a headquarters, like there's offices upstairs and stuff. So it's been nice to have like a place that all my stuff is rooted in and then to get that stuff out of my house, you know. So I go to the office, people that work from here at that office, and I go home and I'm not at that office. So that's actually been a really nice nice part of it. So like a lot of people took for the pandemic like working from home and I went

the exact opposite. I've been working from home for a long time and I was like, I got to get out of the house. So it's been beneficial in a bunch of different ways and then it's been a cool part of this, you know, little town. Yeah, yeah, and it's called the painted porch. You can just look it up, but yeah, it's about 30 minutes from downtown off. About 8,000 people. The county is the county is big. It's the county is about 80,000, but this little town is say 1000. It's yeah, it's about 30 minutes from Austin. Now it's blowing up because Austin's blowing up and lots of stuff is moving there, but it's still this little like sort of Disney-esque main street. And it's pretty cool. Wow, where? Not much Disney, just about an hour and a half Southwest.

Texas has these sort of little perfect, almost look fake, main street towns. So what are you working on now, man? So I'm doing a series on the Cardinal Virtues. So I've done Courage and Discipline. It was the first two. And then the next two are going to be Justice and Wisdom. So I'm mostly done with the Justice book,

but I decided to space them out. So I was supposed to come out in September of this year, but actually took some discipline to pause it. So I'm sitting on it for basically a year and trying not to work on it. And then it'll come out the following year. I'll probably pick it back up in the fall. And then the following summer, I'll have to start the fourth book. So I'm doing those those four. And then that that gets me out of ways. I can't think that much further than that, but this is the first time I've been working

on books that are related to each other, which is I always like to do something that sort of challenges me or makes me do what I do in a way that's different than how I've done it before. And so, you know, when I wrote, the opposite goes away, then I wrote, he goes in me, and then I wrote, so this is the key. And they ended up being related to each other, but they were each independent, independently conceived projects. Whereas this was four books, you know, on similar kind of overlapping topics as part of one, those are the four virtues of Stozen. So they all kind of fit under this large umbrella. And so

it's really forced me from a planning perspective to think about all of it differently because if I put you know a chapter that's encouraged that you know three years later, I wish is in It's encouraged that three years later, I wish, is in discipline or something. It's too late. And so I've had to think about it in terms of a bigger chess board, which has been really interesting and maddening, but also fun and rewarding.

So I'm a little bit past the halfway point on this thing that I conceived in 2019. So it's also the longest I've worked like on a single, you know, a single project. So that's been fun. What's the most important differences to like New Garage and the Queen and Churchill? Are you researching all of that? Sort of the most part. So what are your team that are helping?

For the most part, I mean, I sort of pick who I want to be in the project. It's usually sort of the way I'm doing these series is there's kind of like three tentpole characters in each book and then there's obviously other characters running through it. But yeah, I have to find all that. You really can't. I do use research at a research assistant and research assistant, but it's mostly on finding small stuff for very specific things. I need a quote about this or I need, I need to know more about this thing, but most of the heavy lifting stuff, I, it's not that I have to do, I mean,

I like doing it. It's my favorite part of it, but yeah, I try to outsource everything but that, but the research and the writing of the books for the most part. So your sports fan, you get really detailed, he's one of my least favorite people in the whole world, so I may have gone overboard there. But yeah, yeah, I love sports. And I think what I found is if I go to and depth on the philosophy of people, like, what are you talking about? Where's this coming from?

But if I connect it to things that are wider base of people are familiar with, that can illustrate the ideas. So I try to look for contemporary or modern examples of kind of timeless problems. And guys like that have always existed, and they always do what they do. And there's a certain amount of people who think they can fix them, or that it'll be different

with them. I mean, that's a very old, just as a sports story, that's an old sports story. But the cool thing about the books going the their way through sports is that I get to be like the ultimate bandwagon fan because I just got to be connected to all these different teams and you know to follow them in different ways. But yeah, there's basically like Bill Belichex, the only coach

that's ever rehabbed a terrible player and not lived to regret it for the most part it seems. But I think what happens is most people, most organizations think their culture and their system is stronger than it is. I mean, you could argue this is what America is doing now, too. Like, we think that the norms and the system and the rule of law, whatever that is all, always going to be there. Instead, these things are really, really fragile.

And if you have one person that's, you either raise above those rules or you make exceptions too many times, what you get is rot or destruction that really either takes a very long time to fix or you can never fix it. And so I think yeah, most coaches are always going,

hey, we'll work them into our system and it's like, shh, sure, maybe. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens. I always think what you tend to find in companies is like whatever the thing that ultimately sinks them or causes problems for them or whatever, like the fatal flaws, it's not like it's a secret. Like it's not like it's like some, you know, it's not like the challenger explosion or something where it turns out, it's this really, you know, frequent, it's like everybody

knows, the information is just not working its way up, right? And so, you know, how do you create the channels or the culture or the communication where the thing that, you know, you need to know or the feedback you need or the idea, like the new idea or the grant, like, how do you make it where that makes its way up? To me, that's that's that's the thing. And ego tends to shut that down or, you know or doesn't want to hear it or whatever that is. So to me, that's sort of the killer variable there.

Writing professionally is hard. We've got friends who write and do it. They join these writers clubs and help each other, but I want to just... Yeah, I mean, I wanted to be a writer. That's what I wanted to do. But I knew it would probably be better to go do other stuff first, just to experience things and learn things.

And I think if all you do is write, then how do you know what you're talking about? So I just took a bunch of different interesting opportunities in my 20s. And one of those was I was a research assistant for a writer named Robert GreenQueen who wrote 40 Ozpower and Mastery and a bunch of other amazing books. So I was sort of doing both of them simultaneously and then I was just sort of waiting for my

shot and I did a marketing book first, actually two marketing books first and then when I had a little bit of leverage I was like, well, here's what I really want to write about and they were like, that sounds like a really bad idea. No one will be interested in that. And they weren't really at first. It's kind of been a slow, but steady sort of word of mouth, word of mouth thing. It took the obstacles away.

It was my first Stoicism book. And it took six years for it to hit a bestseller list. So yeah, it's kind of been a slow process, but it's been really cool. And there's a question coming to mind. So you're on a bookstore. Yes. A freaking border. Only books like you enjoy.

Yes. And you're also on top of so our name is on what is in love. Yeah, I mean, part of the reason I wanted to open my own bookstore was I realized like the that so about 75% of most book sales are through Amazon in one form or another and then almost 50 to 60% of sales are digital. So eBooks, audio books. And so I'm just like a physical books person. That's what I love.

And the idea that you just don't know the vast majority of your customers, because you sell your book to a publisher. And then the publisher sells the book to a wholesaler. And then the wholesaler sells the book to either a retailer or to Amazon, that's sort of like how the book market works. And so, I don't know, I just thought, like, why not cut out some of the middlemen, not as a whole, but just in this one instance,

like, why not have some direct access to people in the physical world, and, you know, was in a position financially that I sort of take that risk or do that mostly as a hobby, and as opposed to like a really sound business decision. But it's been really, really cool. And I think coming out of COVID, we are also reminded and remembering why physical spaces are so important.

And so it's been this sort of cool community thing. It's been a cool place to meet people. and remembering why physical spaces are so important. And so it's been this sort of cool community thing. It's been a cool place to meet people. But it's also been just a way to do what I do a little bit better. So like when my books come out, I can say, don't go buy these from this multi-billion dollar conglomerate. Like you can buy it for me.

And I don't care where you buy it, but if you want to support me more, you can do that. And that's been a really cool part of it. It's been fun. And I think it's such a small number that Amazon doesn't care. I mean, Amazon, if they could, would probably get out of the book business altogether.

They sort of can't, because it's what they're known about and people will get mad at them and it's probably not. The only reason Amazon hasn't closed its book business is probably because it's not worth the public relations headache. But it is a rounding, a rounding error of rounding errors for them. And so, you know, they're like whatever. Yeah. I mean, they opened some bookstores, which were actually really cool and better than

I think a lot of bookstore chains out there. And then, even though they were doing great, they were just like, whatever, it's not worth it. And they closed them all. But the Amazon bookstores were similar. If you ever went in one, they were one. They only had a couple hundred books and they were all face out, which is very different. You go even to a Barnes and Noble. There's 20, 30, 40,000 titles in a large Barnes and Noble and they're all sidelined.

And it's hard to see what you want, hard to see what's good. And so our thinking was much just sell books, like a few books that were really behind, it'll be way easier if you want to carry all this inventory. And you know, my thinking is actually, if people know what book they want, they will buy it from Amazon Cheaper and faster, but if they're

Going to a bookstore. It's because they don't know what they want They would like to find something that they don't know about and that's sort of what we built the bookstore You're coming up physical spaces. Have you think about your store? Yeah, you're down You know all the talk about The wheels that you have used since. Good move, but back physical spaces compared to three boats. I don't know.

I mean, it's probably a very different story. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, these major cities and office space, obviously very different. But I do know a lot of the people that I know that make, that do all their stuff on the internet with their social media influencer or an artist or they are like, I want some kind of physical space. So like, they need a place to film stuff. They need a place to, you know, they need like a podcast studio.

They need a space to do what they're doing. And since the margins of what they do are like 100% because it's a digital product, you know, the, in my case, you know, space in a small town is like not, not struck. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't have this bookstore in Manhattan, but in Basterop, Texas, it's like, sure. You know, and so I do see people, especially with some freedom of movement, just going and doing their sort of dream project

or some cool thing, just because they can. And then they, you know, like for me, the videos that we shoot in the bookstore, the podcast that are recorded, all that stuff means that like actual sales of books, two customers walking into the bookstore are like the third or fourth, you know, revenue stream for the, like in terms of priority, right? And so, you know, the space pays for itself and then you have the mixed uses

or that cool stuff you wanna do with it. It's just an interesting balance thing because you come in on it and then not just commercial or anything, but like, hey, I, feels like continues there's so many pressure-driving people into themselves and into their interaction. So I'm curious what you see as your travel ride.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the town's been there 150 years. It's probably not going anywhere in my lifetime. You know, that's sort of how I think about it. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. Tomorrow sounds like hydrogen being added to natural gas to make it more sustainable. It sounds like solar panels generating thousands of megawatts.

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