The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Ryan Holiday - How To Say No, Do Hard Things, & Create Space For Yourself

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

#711: Today we're sitting down for the fourth time with Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday is one of the world’s bestselling living philosophers. He has authored books like The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness Is the Key. He joins us for a conversation surrounding success, creating boundaries, and how to differentiate between ego and confidence. We also discuss how to audit your life and learn to say no, how to simplify your productivity, and know when it's time to take a pause. To connect with Ryan Holiday click HERE To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes. This episode is brought to you by AG1 If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Go to drinkAG1.com/SKINNY to get a free 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase.   This episode is brought to you by Dreamland Baby Use code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off sitewide & free shipping at dreamlandbabyco.com This episode is brought to you by Squarespace From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Go to squarespace.com/skinny for a free trial & use code SKINNY for 10% off your first purchase of a website domain.   This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions. So you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy & you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/skinny. This episode is brought to you by Jaspr Visit jaspr.co and use code SKINNY for 10% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Primally Pure If you're tired of discomfort during your menstrual cycle, try the Cycle Soothing Spray from Primally Pure at primallypure.com/SKINNY and use code SKINNY for 15% off your order. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. All right. So yes, the ice roller. Everyone needs one. It's the best. It's superior. But we just launched Mint Roller. Okay. And this is like ice therapy, cold therapy on the go. You could be playing tennis. You could be walking the baby in a stroller. You could be working out. You could be traveling. The Mint Roller is for you. So it's essentially a little compact bite-size ice roller. This is going to save you time because you don't have to bring the big one with you. And we made caps on each side and there's two rollers. So you get the ice roller side, but you also get a contouring side. And I like to use this on my cheekbones, on my jawline. It's absolutely insane.

I've been traveling to LA for the last week and I cannot live without this thing. I literally have it in my purse right now while we're podcasting. It's really nice to travel with because it does have the caps on it so it protects it and keeps the cold in. Definitely check out the mint roller. I have a code for you. Go to shopskinnyconfidential.com and use code mint. You get 15% off the mint roller. That's shopskinny confidential code mint and the code's live until the end of June. Enjoy. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And lauren everts and michael bostick are bringing you along for the ride get ready for some major realness welcome to the skinny confidential him and her my goal is to write one book like i just thought if i could

write a book that would be the dream what happens is then you like, and then I want to sell it to a major publisher for more than somebody else. And then I want it to sell a certain number of copies. And so you're adding, you're moving, you're moving what you define as success. And so that's why it's never enough because you're not able to go, I did it. I did my thing. You should get to a place where you're still trying to get better and do more. You're just, your sense of value as a human being is not rising and falling on whether

you're reaching the goal that you deliberately move right outside your grasp. Good day or good night, everybody. Welcome back to the Him and Her Show. Today, we are sitting down for the fourth time with one of our good friends, one of our longest returning guests, Ryan Holiday. I'm sure many of you are familiar with Ryan. He has graced us with his presence on this show for years now. We have become friends. And Lauren and I for years have been admirers of his work. For those of you who do not know who Ryan Holiday is, Ryan Holiday is one of the world's bestselling living philosophers. He has authored books like The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and Stillness is the Key. He joins us for a conversation surrounding

succeeding, creating boundaries, and how to differentiate between ego and confidence. We also discuss how to audit your life and say no, how to simplify your productivity, and know when it's time to take a pause. We also discuss his new book called Right Thing Right Now, which is all about good values, good character, and good deeds. Lauren and I love talking to Ryan every time we do. And like I said, this is the fourth time we've sat down with him on this show. We get something, we learn something, and we just have a great time. He's easy to talk to, and he always brings value to the audience in our opinion. So with that, our friend Ryan Holiday, welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her.

I want to talk to you about how you think about time. Okay. Because anytime you post anything about time management and time and having blocks on your calendar, I'm inspired and I think the audience would gain a lot of value. There's this part in your career where you have to say yes to everything. That's how you like get something from nothing, right? You just like jump on every opportunity. And then there's a point in your career where it switches and it can come really fast where you have to develop essentially the opposite skill set, which you go from the yes person, I'll do any amount of work,

go anywhere at any time to the person who said, so you say yes, and then you have to become a no person. And that was a learning curve for me. And it's tough. I have all these like reminders in my office about saying no, like I have a picture that literally is just the word no, between two pictures of my kids. This sports psychologist named Jonathan Fader gave it to me. He works with all these NFL teams. It's a picture of Dr. Oliver Sacks, this famous writer. And he had a picture of,

he just had a no sign in his office. So I think I put it there between my kids because when I'm saying yes to stuff, I'm saying no to them. And conversely, when I'm saying no, I'm saying yes to stuff, I'm saying no to them. And conversely, when I'm saying no, I'm saying yes to them or to me. Right. And so I, that reminder, and then I bought this other one recently. That's like a memorandum from the Truman administration right after he became president. I actually have a couple, but, but it's this memorandum from right after he became president and he's being asked to go to all these places and do all these things.

And his secretary says something like, "'Should we ask that the president be excused "'because of too many inquiries?' And he gets ahold of it and he underlines it. And he goes like, the proper response is underlined. And I just love this idea, like the most powerful person in the world is like having to remind like his staff,

like you gotta protect me from this stuff. And I think that's sort of what you have to develop is you can say yes to one of the weird features of success at something. Usually you become successful because you're very good at a specific thing, and that's the thing that you wanted to do, that you risked a lot to be able to do, that you fall in love with. And then you get all these things that are not that thing. And that's the fundamental tension. How the reward for making it as a writer, which I've been lucky enough to do, would be strange that the reward for that is that I don't have time to do that thing anymore.

That could very easily be my life. So I've tried to become very protective of like the couple hours in the morning first thing where I get to do what I wanted to do my whole life. You're right. Right. Yeah. So is there any other things that you do specifically that you can tangibly give us? Like, I know you take walks in the morning with your kids. Can you give us little peeks at your day where you have that space and how you create it? Yeah, I have a couple. I mean, you get up early.

If you get up late, you're already behind the eight ball. One of the benefits of being not in California is you're not behind no matter what time you wake up. That's one of the best things that's happened since we moved here. Yeah. So I think the mornings are really important. Mornings are sacred. And then my rule is you don't touch the phone first thing. That's poison. You should not have fucked up your day before your feet touch the ground for the first time. And look, stoicism is all about focusing on what's in your control, right? And you don't control the shittiness of the world. You don't control the fires that happen at work. You don't control what your family does. You don't control all the things that can come at you, but you do

control how early in the morning you peek at them. This is going to be different for everyone, obviously. But at what moment in your career did you realize, okay, it's got the yeses have to slow down and the noes have to start? And it doesn't have to be a specific, but like, was there something that happened? Was there... Well, I think with the phone thing specifically,

it was like, don't, it was just like, why am I in a shitty mood? And it's like, I'm in a shitty mood because I got this dumb email from someone about something I already talked to them about like 10 times that they didn't need to bother me with in the first place that I chose to look at before I'd said hello to my wife, before I'd played with my kids, before I'd worked out, before I'd gotten any writing. I was losing before I started you know and I I'm a big believer in like energy and being in the right headspace and

and I was just finding like that I was like deliberately I was leaving that up to random luck like some mornings everything was fine but a lot of mornings it wasn't. But I think generally like realizing that, okay, so you fight really hard to get into something, right? Entrepreneurship or podcasts or the movie industry or writing or baseball, like you fight to do your thing, right? And you make it and then you quickly realize like it's going to require just as much, if not more work to stay here because you realize how many other people are trying to get in, right? And how replaceable you are. And so if you think the reward or the luxury of your success is you can just chill, you're sorely mistaken. And hopefully you've also added things to your life,

like relationships and children and hobbies and other things. So if you wanna be able to stay good at your thing, which you should also hopefully love, you better get really ruthless really fast about stuff that doesn't matter to you. And so I think there's this mix, there's a Mitch Hedberg joke that I always loved where he was talking about how the second you make it as a comedian, they try to make you an actor.

And he's like, that's like going to a chef and saying like, but can you farm? It's like this totally different thing. And that's like the reality of life. And oftentimes the things that are kind of tangentially related to what you do are more lucrative. So it's not like I say no to literally every opportunity. I just had to be really disciplined about what I said yes to and didn't say yes to because I wanted to maintain my level of performance at the thing that I love and think is important. No, it's a timely conversation. It's a timely... I had a literal panic attack. This is the perfect person to have on the podcast last night because I do look through

the same lens of is this worth being away from my children? I've learned a lot of that through your content. Oh, thanks. Not trying to be creepy, but you are in the shower with me. Whoa. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You listen to the Daily Stoic in the shower, right?

I do. That's crazy. I listen to the Daily Stoic because it times my three minute cold shower. Like the little clips are perfect for my three minute shower. So when I'm thinking about writing a longer one, I'm deliberately torturing you? Yeah, well, no, I'll bring you along to other areas,

but the shower is where your voice is most. That's so funny. Like I'm around your voice in the shower. The audio book or the podcast? The podcast. But I've listened to your audio book, but the podcast right now, I'm just having moments. You guys should all do it. Three minutes in the shower.

No excuses. So I was having a panic attack last night because I feel like I am saying I feel like I'm over committing. Yeah. And then I'm disappointing people who I'm close with and care about. Yeah. And that's where it's, I think, no offense to you guys,

it's a little bit harder for a woman. Yeah, I would agree with that. It's a little bit harder. It's almost like he gives off a vibe like, no, my vibe is more like- I just want a big disappointment at the start. Yeah, my voice is like, no, but. You know what I found with my wife?

So my bookstore, about 30 minutes from here. And so people come in all the time. They'll see my wife. She's like hanging out or work and they'll go, where are your kids? No one has ever asked me that once in my life. And it's such a weird double. So like, as a man, you get like, if you're like, sorry, I can't, I got to pick my kid up from school. People are like, can I throw you a parade right now? And then, and then, you know, women is just sort of assumed. So there is that weird double standard. And I think like, there is the assumption that like, if you're a man though, that like, you will go to the dinner meeting or that like, like I just get invited, I get invited to do lots of cool stuff and people are always like surprised that, that

I say no, because like, that's what someone in my position should want. Like they haven't read your book. Don't you think they need to listen to your podcast? So don't you think though, at least for all of us here, just in this room, I may have at a time said yes or no to some of those cooler things but with kids now i'm brutal with it because you can't you just you can't like you can't it's just if like i look at it's like okay there's what i have to do for my profession and then there's what i have to do as a husband and as a father and like the rest of the stuff is it falls outside

of that and if it's convenient and i'm really excited maybe but if it's even just the slightest bit inconvenient it's a no do Do you guys know Austin Kleon? I know the name. He wrote Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work. He's awesome. He lives here. He's the first person that I met when I moved here. And when I was thinking about moving to Austin, he was like, I'll take you out. And we drove around, we ate, he showed me a bunch of stuff. He had kids. Our first books came out at roughly the same time and he had kids and he was like, what you have to understand is that one of the best pieces of advice I ever got. He said, he's like work, family, scene, pick two. The scene being like parties, events, the perks of whatever your success is. It's like work, family, scene, pick two.

It's totally been true in my opinion. Like you can do good work and enjoy the perks of the stuff, but your family's going to suffer. You can do good work and be a dedicated family person. And then people are going to be like, but I never see you. And like, I would much rather have random people who I don't really like that much be like, Ryan never goes out. Then my kids say, where's dad? You know? So I try to measure the things that I, and you gotta know what's important to you and how your family life works. But I try to measure the stuff that I say yes or no to

in bedtimes. So like how many bedtimes am I gonna miss? Ooh, that's a good one. So, you know, like I'm doing something next week and I can like leave after they go to bed and I'll be home in time to pick them up from school. So like, yeah, I'm gone, but it's not that different than me leaving for the office early one morning and then being home for dinner. So like that is a easier yes than this thing where, because of where it is, like I just got,

I got asked to do this talk in Mallorca, which I've never been. It seems awesome. And it was paying a ton of money, but I would be gone for four nights to do one hour of work. Meanwhile, I've been offered similar amounts to do something 40 minutes from my house. So like, I try to think about, you know, like how much am I going to miss? That makes total sense. You're walking me off the ledge of my panic attack. It's hard though when you disappoint friends and extended family members and you're trying to sort of do it all. Balance is fake in my opinion, especially if you're running a business and an entrepreneur,

it's just like you really have to prioritize. My argument to her though was I'd rather give them the disappointment up front by saying no. And it's like, okay, that's the no as opposed to committing and half doing what I say. And then like giving a real big disappointment that they either feel secondary or I can't finish the task or I can't see something through. The Supreme Court Justice Sondra Day O'Connor, one of her clerks said what I always, she was the first female Supreme Court Justice to say. She said what I always admired about Justice O'Connor was that she never said sorry before she said no. She just said no. And like, I think that's especially true for women, the sort of like people pleasing side of things or where maybe men are maybe a little bit more used to just being

selfish. But like, I try to be upfront and clear about it. At the same time, one of the things I'm struggling with, I'm trying to get better at is like the deferring of the no. So I don't want to do it. I'm not interested, but it seems far away. So I leave it dangling and then it just sort of lingers. And then maybe there's like a hard and fast no is probably the best way to do it. And the things that I really hate are where I should have said no early, but like three months seemed like a long time from now. And so I said yes, or I tentatively said yes. And then as it gets closer to, it's really clear that it's something I shouldn't do. And now I have to be the asshole who cancels,

or I have to be the person who is there that doesn't want to be there. And that's not good for anyone. So like those kind of, like I saw a shirt once that said like, don't say maybe when you want to say no, you know? And like, those get me in trouble. When I like, I should have just said like, I'm sorry, this is not a fit for me or I can't say yes to stuff like this. I should have just said no.

And then now I'm in this awkward position where like either I'm being the bad guy or I'm having to like ask like an agent or publicist or something to be like, can you get me out of this? I think there's this girl, Tinks, she's on TikTok. She's like very famous on TikTok and Instagram. And she said, if it's not a yes, right this second, in this moment, right now, don't do it. So the hard thing, like there's that expression, like it's hell yes or hell no,

or fuck yes or fuck no. The problem with that, I think that works, like it's hell yes or hell no, or fuck yes or fuck no. The problem with that, I think that works for like little things, but then I think about like the most life-changing decisions that I've made or like the biggest risks I took, I was like 51, 49, you know? So there's also this tension of like, I think about how did I meet some of the people that changed my life? How did I find clients? I think about also though the role of serendipity and how things that I thought would be a complete waste of time changed the trajectory of my life. So it's like, I think you want to get to a place where you say no to the stuff that's obviously a hard and fast no. And then you have room to like, oh, maybe I'll swing by, you know, like little things. Cause you, you also never know. You can't be a,

you can't be a hermit at the same time. Robert says all the time, like, don't make yourself a fortress. I'm like, oh, I like my sanctuary. You know what I mean? I do want to say though, just so that it's clear for people that are maybe earlier on the path, that in the beginning, I think many of us, we were saying yes to a lot of things before. I mean, even like thinking back to when we interviewed, you get on a plane, carry all the stuff. That's what he said. You say yes to everything and then you just reach a point where it doesn't work anymore. Yeah. And I would still travel for you, but you're in rare air. There's a lot of people like, no, you're going to have

to come here. I'd like to know all your little disciplines, meaning like daily disciplines, monthly disciplines, yearly disciplines. You're one of the most disciplined people that I look to on the Internet. How do you think about that? And what are some little things that you do that help hold you accountable? I think people think that I have all these complicated systems, you know, like I do these quarterly board meetings or I do this time blocking thing or whatever. I am much more a believer in just like steady day to day, like show up, do a pretty good job. Like in writing, there's this rule, like just a couple crappy pages a day. Yeah. that or tracking that seems, it, it seems so incomprehensible to me that I'm, sometimes I just don't believe it. Like, I don't think that they're doing it because my, my system is much

more informal. Like I take my kids to school every day. I pick them up most days. I leave the office usually, like I, I'm, I'm usually picking them up and then I'm not at the office after that. Like, so my, I'm working like pretty regular hours, but like, to me, I'm front loading. Like one of my hard and fast rules is like, I do the hard thing first, which is writing. So I, I go and I write. What time? It depends like school, not school, but like, let's say I'm writing by, if I'm not writing my 915, I'm like, you know, like I'm starting to feel the out of the rhythm, you know? So every day, pretty much every day, the weekends, maybe not, but pretty much every day. And then I finish a

thing and I start the next one. I'm always like in the NFL, they go like, if you don't get out of shape, you don't have to get back into shape. You know, like, I think also what happens is people do things in this sprint, you know, whether it's like, I'm going to, I'm going to train for this marathon. And then they're like, never again. And then like eight months later, they're like, I should start training again. You know, I'm just always, I just try to stay in the same level, the same shape and the same routine and stuff comes out of the other side I like when they say trust the process that's what I try to live by have you always been like that since you were a little boy I don't think so your parents won't tell you that they they won't say you like

did things and concentrated it's hard to know because afterwards I think we kind of retcon these like yeah sense of who someone was, but like, I don't remember being that way. I don't remember wanting to be a writer and I don't remember, I don't remember there being much in the way of expectations. Like, like in the, like, I thought, I thought I was average. Certainly I feel like I was treated like I was just some average person, which to me, that's the funny thing is though, like showing up and being pretty good a lot is better than average. Like the reason we have the story of the tortoise and the hare is because it's like a timeless

distinction between types of people and approaches. And like, that's kind of how I do it. I, I think all-nighters are bullshit. I think like, you know, when people are bra- like, I just, I think there's a lot of sort of the glamour of like the grind. And I just, I don't, I don't see it. Like, I don't see it working for me. And then I'm not, I think, I remember I was supposed to do this book with these rappers this one time and they were like, yeah, like meet us at the studio, like midnight, like 1 AM.

And I was like, oh, this is like the grind, you know, they're all thinking about. And then I realized like they'd woken up at like, they'd woken up like three hours earlier, you know, like, like it was just, it was, they weren't like working till 2 AM. They were, and it was like also highly, highly inefficient. The whole thing was like so weird. You know, it's know it's funny like even sitting in the seats that we sit in now we've been doing this a long time and people

will come and say like hey i want to do something similar to this and what i just point out to people is like it's just been eight years of just consistently every even we just went to la and record like oh you're taking a break i'm like no like we'll be back like it's just it's just the the thing and what i see people struggling i'm like well you're not going to cram this thing into a short window of time and then compete with the people that are doing it you know at a high level by just like kind of doing this at a sprint and then leaving it and then coming like you if you're either going to do something it's just like like you said you have to just commit to the thing and it's boring consistent steady over long periods of time. There's a Zen story about this student who wants to learn Zen

and he goes to this master and he says, you know, how long will it take me? And he says, 10 years. And he goes, well, what if I work like twice as hard? And he go, you know, and I put in twice as many hours. And he says, okay, 20 years. And then he goes, no, no, no. I'm going to work like extra, extra, extra hard. And he goes, okay, 20 years. And then he goes, no, no, no. I'm going to work like extra, extra, extra hard.

And he goes, okay, 30 years. Like he just, he just, it, the faster you try to do it, not only are you probably going to do it worse, but you're missing the whole point. The point is slow, steady, but compounding returns. The Obstacles Way came out in 2014. I think that's like right around the time we met. And it hit the bestseller list like in 2019. You know, it took a long time.

It sells more most years than previous years. You know, it's this thing. And like, when I think of my journey as a writer, obviously I note that, like how long a book took. But I also think like, who was I then? And who am journey as a writer, obviously I note that like how long a book took, but I also think like, who was I then? And who am I as a writer now? I think that gain is more considerable. Like I think I'm, I'm getting better at it because I've steadily consistently shown up

and done the thing. It's all, it's like, it's just all about the amount of reps that you get. And if you think the thing you can compress the reps into a shorter amount of time, you're just getting shittier reps and you're not getting better. Speaking of that book, The Obstacle is the Way, this is a perfect example. That was a moment in my career before I read that book that I was trying to compress everything and do everything fast. And I crashed and burned almost to the floor and pulling myself up out of that tailspin, I found your book, which is how, and that was a very helpful book to me to be like,

oh, the opposite was that. That's like how I found you. But it's very, it's funny hearing you say this now all these years later, because that was me trying to do everything as fast as possible as a young guy and then doing it in a sloppy way and, you know, almost getting in trouble doing it that way because it wasn't sustainable. And then I read that book and I was like, okay, this is the way out of it. It's funny, that book came out in 2014,

but in 2008 or 2009, I'm forgetting when exactly, a publisher, I'd written an article about stoicism and a publisher asked me if I wanted to turn it into a book. So I'd probably wanted to be a writer. I'd probably been working at writing there for four or three or four years, maybe, maybe four or five, but that was it. Like, I was like, this is my shot. This is the thing that I want. This is my, yeah, this is my shot. And I went to Robert Green, who I was then a research assistant for and so much other stuff. And I said, you know, this, what do you think? Like, I was like, this is what they're offering. And I thought

he would be like, well, you should ask for this or you should, I thought he'd give me like contract negotiation advice. And he was like, you should turn it down. And I was like, what? This is it, man. Like, you don't get shots like this. In retrospect, it was actually a terrible deal. But he was like, no, he's like, you'll be better in a couple of years. The book will be better. You'll be a better writer. You'll know more. You'll have understood more. The stoicism will be, the world will be more, you know, inclined to hear what you have to say. You should do it. And so it, that was what, I mean, he said it all very nicely, but he was also saying a not nice thing. Like he was saying like, you don't have what it takes. And he was totally right.

But that was one of the hardest things that I've had to do. I mean, it's a very good champagne problem, but like if I had come out with that book in 2010, I don't think we'd be sitting here. Maybe somebody else would have written a better book or maybe I would have written such a shitty book. Like it would have killed the whole thing. I don't think we'd be sitting here. Maybe somebody else would have written a better book or maybe I would have written such a shitty book. Like it would have killed the whole thing. I don't know. But it was, you want to think you're ready. And sometimes you are, but a lot of times you're not.

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Being a new mom is tough if your baby is waking up all the time, but I have the hack, okay? This is a hack that I think every mother should know about. I do three things. I have my air purifier on in my baby's room. The room is completely black, so there's no light, not even like the diaper pail light. I don't have any light. And then my third thing that I do is I use a gently weighted sleep sack. The one that I have used with Townes is Dreamland Baby. It's amazing. It's really cute. It's gently weighted. And what it does is it just tells their nervous system to relax. It gives a little bit of weight on the baby. I've been using this, I want to say, since he was like maybe five months old. He associates

it with sleep. So when I pull it out, he knows it's time to go to bed, which I think is really relaxing and calming for the baby. And he also sleeps, don't mean to brag, from 7.30 to 7.30. And I really think this is attributed to his fresh air in his room. I think it's attributed to his gently weighted sleep sack. If your baby is waking up every couple of hours, definitely check out these sleep sacks. I got his in like a natural color. Really cute. And like I said, he loves it.

He gets like a deeper sleep. It's a better sleep. It's easy to use, quality material. And it's also super soft and holds up after washes, which is really nice. Go to dream by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online, whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand. Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content to time,

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to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Again, that's squarespace.com slash skinny to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Again, that's squarespace.com slash skinny. How do you look at social media with all these people going viral quick? What do you think the long-term effects of that are? Well, I think it's really tough to be blessed by the algorithm and to get the thing that in previous environments or markets you would have had to slowly acquire over years and years because you can learn, instead of going, hey, I'm lucky, you go, hey, I'm good. And maybe you are, but you're probably not. You can learn the wrong lesson from your success. Even with The Obstacle's Way. And I'm speaking here from experience. When The Obstacle's Way came out, it came out, it did okay. I don't think it didn't hit any bestseller

lists, but it wasn't a failure. It was sort of slowly chugging away probably did what the publisher hoped it would do. And then maybe six or seven months in, I suggested we like discount the ebook. I'd seen these like sort of email newsletters that just specialized in discounted ebooks. They were like, okay, let's give it a try. And it did really well. Like it sold the sales spike that week that we did it. And then for whatever reason, Amazon just kept it discounted. And they, like, I think it was either a glitch or like some person was putting their thumb on the scale for me,

but the result was that it stayed discounted for like 10 or 11 months. And they kept paying the royalty too. So no one at the publisher was like, fix this. So it was basically like a loss leader for Amazon for 11 months. So I can, I no one at the publisher was like, fix this. So it was basically like a loss leader for Amazon for 11 months. So I can, I remember looking at the sales and they were like, you know, this, this part's me. And then there's this part that's not me. And I remember sort of very clearly saying to myself, you have to filter all of these numbers out when you do your second

book. Like you earned like the first sales and then a chunk of these ones, but then the other one was this other thing. And don't adjust your baseline to be like, this is who I am. This is what I deserve. It's funny because I was writing a book about ego. So I think it was fitting, but like I was trying to say like, I got a really lucky bounce and now it's my job to take advantage of that bounce. But it's also my responsibility not to update my identity to reflect what the bounce could say. Right. And so I was trying to be, I was trying not to let it make me complacent or entitled and to just do the work. And I think what can happen is, you know, you've, you guys have put stuff up that you thought was amazing and it did nothing.

And then you've done stuff that you just, you just threw up and it crushed. You have to have this sort of confidence versus ego to, to, to know which of those, which of that feedback to take. And, and when you get these spikes or when someone endorses you, you get this rush of stuff, you have to go like, this isn't me. This isn't a reflection of the work. This is just a nice thing to have,

which I'm going to enjoy, but I'm not going to let it change my ethic or my understanding of myself or any of that because that is like death. You have to stay driven by getting better at the thing, which is almost never going to be reflected in the audience numbers. We talk about this all the time. I, I, in a way sometimes feel, I don't want to say sorry, but I feel empathy sometimes

for younger creators or, you know, any creative people that, that are, that have the benefit of an algorithm kicking in and shooting them to the moon when they first start, because that is like, they think that that's the baseline. And I've, we've been doing this for so long, even swimming in these waters with us for a long time. And I think about what that looks like over the next five, 10 years for that person. And when that algorithm stops pushing and if they, if they start to believe their own hype, and you see a lot of people kind of get washed out because they can't handle the downswing, right?

Yes. Yeah, look, if you identify with it on the way up, especially if you get like a lucky bounce or just some, the first thing you do just crushes. If you identify with that, you're also going to identify when it does zero or you get criticized or the trends change or whatever. You want to cultivate this kind of like, even kill this sense of yourself that's based on ultimately what's in your control. You want to

root, when I'm patting myself on the back, I want it to be for things that were up to me versus things that were not up to me. And the algorithm, look, you could put out a book one week and there wasn't any competition and you could put the same book out the next week and there isn't. And that could be the difference between number one and number 10 that has no bearing on whether the book was good or not. And so if you now are like, I am a number one New York Times bestseller, you are letting a random set of circumstances that you had nothing to do with a decision that you made months and months previous change your understanding of yourself.

And so conversely, when you get skunked or you get unfairly attacked or you're ahead of your time or whatever, you're going to do the same thing. And there's this great writer named John Kennedy Toole who wrote maybe one of the funniest books of all time. It's called A Confederacy of Dunces. It's about this hotdog seller in New Orleans. It shouldn't work. And it didn't work. He writes his manuscript and it's not just like rejected by everyone. His agent, I believe, fires him. So he's devastated by this rejection. They told him this thing you did is not good.

And he committed suicide. He put a garden hose through the tailpipe of his car and like the side of the road in Biloxi, Mississippi, and he died. His mother finds the manuscript like months or years after his death. She takes it to this university professor in New Orleans who goes, this is a work of genius. He gets it published. It wins the Pulitzer Prize. The book does not change in any, the book is the same book. And so if you're going to, and look, it's a tragic story. He's a victim in this, but at the same time, if you let the crowd say you're worthy of living or not living, you better hope you get a lot of

lucky bounces because you've now handed over your happiness or your life to this fickle thing. This is one of the themes in Marx's meditations. He goes like, he's like, people who long for posthumous fame forget that the people in the future will be just as stupid and annoying as the people now. Like the audience has been wrong about so many great works of art, so many great ideas. Just think of like the horrible things that society has been okay with, like not even artistically, just like injustices. Right. So the idea that like these people get to tell you whether you're good or not, that's death.

Yeah. No, it's funny. I did an interview yesterday with a publication. So I won't, I won't say who, but they were like, do you feel any level of responsibility to behave in a certain way? Or, you know, um, basically like, uh, cultivate your content in a way way or, you know, basically like cultivate your content in a way that keeps, you know, that keeps everybody happy. And do you feel responsible? I said, I feel absolutely no responsibility whatsoever. It's not that I want to do harm. I want to do good, but I feel no responsibility in the sense that like, I cannot at any time make everybody happy and please everybody. I can only do what I think is good the way that I believe it to be good. And if somebody doesn't like it, I can't worry all

the time about how I'm going to be received at any given moment by everyone. And it's not that I, meaning, yes, I want to do good. Yes, I want to put good, helpful content, all the stuff that we want to do. But at the same time, I don't feel this pressure from society to appease everybody and keep everybody happy all the time because it's not possible. And if I live that way and I'm constantly working for the critics or speaking to the critics, then I'm going to drive myself insane. Well, the idea is that you should have a sense of honor and rectitude and standards that you live by that ideally are higher than whatever the crowd will

let you get away with or not get away with, as opposed to, oh, I should comment about this because people are yelling at me in the comment section of my posts. When I decide to talk about an issue, it's because I think that issue is important. I think it's imperative to speak about it. And there's other issues that I don't feel qualified to talk about or that I don't feel are imperative for me to talk about, or I don't feel like it's appropriate for me to talk about. But the idea should be like Chris Rock had a joke about like, you don't take care of your kids and not be your spouse to be a role model.

You don't do those things because they're wrong. And so the idea of doing it because that's what the pressure of the ecosystem is pushing you towards is sort of missing the point and kind of meaningless and empty. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. You have to cultivate this standard of like, here's what I think. This is creatively and morally. Here's what I think is good. Here's what I think is right.

Here's what I will do. Here's what I won is good. Here's what I think is right. Here's what I will do. Here's what I won't do. And then you live by that code. It's not to say you could ever be not wrong and update it and change it in midair, but like you should be relatively insulated from like angry people that dislike you. Yeah, and the reason I mention it,

and there's a lot of aspiring creators that are listening to this, is because I think I watch this now, observing it so many years later and working with a lot of young creators, and so many people I think now are so worried about a misstep. Even if they believe that this message from their perspective is the right message, they're like, well, what's everyone going to say? What's everyone going to think? What's everyone going to do? And I think that's really difficult to put anything out there that's meaningful if you're constantly worried about what everyone's going to say all the time. How do you think about everyone? In your comments,

in your DMs, the reviews, what's your vibe on it? I don't. I mean, so the daily stoic email goes out to a million people every day. Me. Thank you. So if I read the responses first off, I would have zero time, but second, I would have no sense of what is good or not good working or not working. Am I hearing from the right people? Am I hearing from the people in the time zone who happened to be seeing it first? Am I hearing it because they're, you know, responding to something in the moment and actually I'll be vindicated by subsequent. So like, I try to be as insulated as possible from the stuff. Chelsea, who does our social media, I don't have any of the logins like on my phone because I don't want

to look at the things. Sometimes I'll check here, there, but like I, I've never gotten that feedback and been like, this has made me better as an artist. There are human beings that I know whose opinions and feedback matters to me, but you get to a level where if you were to like, listen to the people you would, I think, drown. It's not a healthy or sustainable amount of data that a person can possibly process. And sometimes like I'll do, someone will like, they'll be so upset at something I wrote or said

that they'll find out, they'll find like my personal contact. So I'm already like, okay, this person is like super triggered, right? But they'll be like, how could you say this? Why did you say this? And I go, because that's my job. Like my job is to say what I think is true.

That is my job. And what I think is important. Not, my job is not to grow my audience. My job is not to make as much money as possible for my audience. My job is not to make my audience feel good. My job is to say what I think is true to the audience. And sometimes I'll reply, I did not build this audience to not say what I think, right? I built it to say what I think. That's the whole, I built it by saying what I think and I built it to say

what I think. And you have to ask yourself like who, you know, are they your followers or are you following them? And I think a lot of people are, in the last couple of years have been super destabilizing, I think, for people in this regard, but like they're following the audience, not the other way around. Well, you just said it much more articulately than me. That's exactly the point though, is what you said is, are you doing this because you're serving them or are you doing it because you're taking orders from them? Right. It's two things. So, okay. Your first three books, well, not your first three,

but the first three in the series, Obstacle, Ego, Stillness. We talked about all of those on the show. We haven't had you on to talk about courage or discipline. This is the third one, right thing right now, but there's going to be four, right? In the series. Is that the idea? Yeah. So the cardinal virtues of stoicism are courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. So I've been working on the series now for... So this is justice. Yeah. This is the fifth year of the series. I sold it in 2019 and I've always start

the next project right when I finished. So like this book has been done almost eight or nine months and I'm like well into the third, the fourth one. So gnarly. But yeah, the idea of, like, because if you think about these other virtues, right? So courage or discipline for what? Aimed at what? You could be very brave. You could be very dedicated. But if you're an asshole or you're actively harming the world, how impressive is that? So I think about this actually, it's funny. With my audience, I know when I talk about how to manage your routines, when I think about this actually, it's funny, like with my audience, I know when I talk about how to manage your routines, what's still, when I talk about what stoicism can do for you,

people are all about it. Right. And I relate because that's what drew me to it originally. But then when I say what stoicism asks of you, and that's where this discipline or this virtue comes in, then people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, like, why are you talking about this? Like, and they get mad. And so like when I did this series, I sort of went into it knowing that at least at first, this is going to be the sort of, not the hardest sell, but this is going to be the one

that there's a headwind about. And I had to think a lot about, you know, what do you call it? How do you approach it? How do you talk about it in a way that doesn't make people think this is moralizing or it's full of lectures or it's judgmental? Because I think in broad strokes, most of us agree. There's a reason essentially all religious and philosophical

traditions have, even when they develop totally independently, have some formulation of like the golden rule. We're all pretty clear about like what it means to be a good person. There are very specific cases where we have some disagreements and these possible vexing choices, sure. But like, I just tried to, I try, I'm very, I've noticed it with my audience too. Like just this, if you think stoicism is a recipe for being a better sociopath, like you're missing the whole point, you know? Yeah. And I think a lot of people really focus on this sort of self-help, self-improvement stuff as a way of like, just, they're like, I want to live forever. I want to be in great shape. I want to make lots of money and fuck everyone else. You know, that's like baggage.

And I think that's one, very sad, but two, totally missing what all these people are talking about. So if someone's like, what is this book going to do for me? How would you explain it in a pretty package with a pink bow? Yeah, I don't know I would, I don't know of a single person who's like, I'm as good of a person as I could possibly be. And I don't want to be any better. I think all of us go like, I'd like to be more generous. I'd like to be kinder. I'd like to be more responsible. I'd like to make more of a positive difference in the world.

And like the people that we admire the most at the end of the day, we're not like, and look how much money they made. Like we were like, look at the impact that they had, look at the good that they did and how, how little they thought of themselves, both in the sense of ego, but also how they put others first. So I just tried to write a book that was a celebration of those sort of timeless traits that make us, make us go, wow, that person's amazing. Like there's this line in Mark's meditation where he goes like, you're working so hard to be a better wrestler. That was like one of his hobbies. So he trained in basically mixed martial arts 2000 years ago. He's like, you're trying to be a better wrestler,

but not a better friend, a better forgiver of faults a better like resource you're not trying to be more generous he's like listing all these other areas that he's not putting in any work on and i think that sort of captures the both like the space of self-help but also the trap we kind of find in it. It's easy to measure whether your deadlift is higher or not, or whether your mile time is higher or not. It's easy to measure your bank balance. So we spend all this energy trying to be like better, but not better. You know, like it, it, it, there's an expression, it's easier to be a great man than a good man and i think that it's hard to be a great it's hard to be great but at the same time

when you look at how many great people were fucking monsters it's actually true it's it's easier to be great than to be like decent and it's extremely hard and extremely rare to be great and successful and a pretty good person. Really? Is that your opinion from what you've seen or just from what you've studied and researched? I mean, look, you look at athletes, right? There's like, there are these athletes who are utterly dominant what they do. And then just like abysmal human beings in the art world, they call them art monsters, right? Like people who were, they wrote amazing books or amazing songs, but they cheated or they abandoned or they abused. You said earlier, like there's the balance,

it doesn't exist. And I think like to be great at something, you do have to be somewhat unbalanced. I think at some point you have to make a decision between deciding to take it to an extreme and not. Yeah, as I've gotten older, I think what we admire most people for are the things that make the most noise, right? You're a great athlete or you're a great musician or a great actor or whatever it is. But there's very little discussion about some of the other areas and some of those people's lives.

And as I've gotten older and I start to look, okay, who are the guiding lights? Who are the mentors? A lot of times you find them in books, but I was just speaking on stage and I said, I'm very cautious now. If I see someone who's just killing it in business, but their personal life is in shambles and they're out of shape and they're divorcing their wife and they don't spend time with their kids, maybe that's not the North star you want to point to. Yes. Or you see somebody that's an entertainer and you're like, wow, look at like how great they're doing. But there's, you don't know. You just don't. So like, those are the things I think I look now for the good. Yes. And not as much for the great. And, and, and mostly because we have the luxury of, we meet a lot of the great. And listen, there's a lot of amazing people, but sometimes you're like, oh, like that's amazing. But there's a lot of stuff here where like that's not so great. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think I've tried, I'm working on this in my own life of going like, okay, how does my single-minded dedication to this thing affect other people? And what are the consequences for that? And how will I think about that later? You know, how, how will I go? Well, I'm sure glad I got two extra books in and my son is in jail or whatever. Or, you know, like Peter Atiyah talks a lot about this too. You know, people are like, oh, what do you, they'll, they'll, they're really focused on like what age they want to live to or how healthy they want to be at that age. But they've also made a lot of assumptions

about the people that will be around when they're that age and are not willing to do any work or prioritize those things in any way. So like, how do you, yeah, how do you, how do you decide what you want? Not that legacy really matters, but what do you want your legacy to actually be? And also when is enough enough? Totally. I mean, that's a question I think all three of us need to ask ourselves. Like, when is enough enough? I think about that all the time. Yes. That's a trip to think about when you constantly get attention for overachieving. I'm trying to get to a place in my life where I'm doing the thing from a place of fullness rather than emptiness. So that's good. Like there's two kinds of poverty, the Stokes would

say. There's obviously the worst and most unjust kind, which is like, you just don't have enough. You've been exploited or sort of screwed over by society. You can't feed yourself. You can't feed your family. That is real awful poverty. But then there's this other kind of poverty. And sometimes you don't believe they exist

until you meet them, where their poverty is their insatiability or their tendency to compare themselves to other people. So they might be, I was talking to this football coach once and he was saying, you know, every year I would open the newspaper and there would be the story of like who the highest paid college football coach was. And he was like, if I wasn't at the top or near the top, I would call my agent and scream at them.

You know, so you go, this person has like one of the greatest jobs, the job they always wanted, but to them it's not enough because they're not also the highest paid. They're not even going like, I'm having the most positive impact on the kids. I'm winning the most. I'm having the most fun.

I built the best program. They're like, I am only the best if I have the most, you know, And that's just a shitty way to measure your life. And it's a way you'll never win because I mean, you, you can achieve all kinds of success in your life. And then you meet someone and you're like, you made more money last week than I made in my entire life, you know? And, and off this insane thing, you know, you did it speculating in cryptocurrencies or whatever. And you're just like, oh, okay. If this is what I'm saying is

good or not, that's a losing battle. So you have to pick something else. And I think deciding like, Hey, like I have had a positive impact on people's lives, or I've been a really good parent, or I've been a positive member of my community. These are the kind of things. So I'm trying to... It's not like I don't want to do what I want to do anymore, but I want it to be extra as opposed to filling some hole in my soul. The Skinny Confidential, him and her podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Lauren and I could not be bigger proponents of therapy, especially online therapy, not only because we think therapy is so important, just getting your ideas out there, sharing with someone else, not bottling it in, not holding your feelings back,

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off your order. One thing that I personally respect so much about you is that you kind of moved out of the city, for lack of a better word, and you opened your own bookstore, The Painted Porch. And to me, that feels really true to who you are and it feels really intentional and it feels like you're doing something, and correct me if I'm wrong, not for money, not for glamour, but more because you just are so passionate about books

and you want people to keep reading books. I don't know though, I heard you own about half the town over there now. That's okay though, that's real estate. You gotta have your business sense too. Yeah, look, if the goal is to make money, opening a bookstore is a bad idea. Like it's not, there are many better ways to make money.

And that's actually, so I remember really early on, I was at American Apparel and I was talking to Dev one day and someone was like, you know, if we do this, you'll make a bunch more money. People were always saying like, hey, move the factories overseas. Your profit margins will like quadruple overnight. And he said, he's like, if all I cared about was making money, I'd just be a drug dealer. And I remember going, wait, what? And then I thought, and then I realized, oh yeah, there are so many things you can do in life, legal or not legal, honorable or not honorable.

I could be a prostitute tomorrow. You never know. Yeah, there's there there are things where if the main thing you care about, we should all be Wall Street bankers or run hedge funds or there are so many things you can do where the main and exclusive reward is money. And where, by the way, the whole thing is optimized around making money. And so sometimes like when I, I like, I'll be like this person selling more books than me, or this person's doing better than me. I go, Hey genius, you chose to write about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. You, you publish books for a living you idiot you know like this this is you you already chose that that was not the main thing you know like you chose this you chose classical music instead of pop music one has got a lower ceiling than the other that's not to say you can't be great at it

that's not to say you can't be successful and that's definitely not to say you shouldn't get paid every penny you're worth like i fuck fuck this. I'm just happy to be here shit. Especially that women will sometimes accept, like, I just want, you know, like you should get paid every penny and whatever the maximum you can get paid for that thing is you deserve that thing. But understanding that every choice you make has trade-offs and limitations and realities. And so, yeah, I oriented my life around a thing that is never going to be the most lucrative thing. So it seems weird to then decide that I'm not good at what I do because I've not made a lot of money. So I just tried to remind myself, like the bookstore, like my wife and I go,

we did this because we thought it would be meaningful and we thought it'd be fun and we thought it'd be a big, a positive impact. Okay. So when we're judging whether it's successful or not, sure. Is it still in business? That's a criteria, you know, is it, are we bleeding from it? You know, that that's the thing, but then we go, is it fun? You know, is it sustainable? Is it, we have, we're just thinking about it differently. And I think understand, that's why like public benefit corporations, I think are interesting. Like you're making this decision that like maximizing shareholder revenue from the outset is not your main thing.

And that's good. You know, you just see people, they're like, I don't care about money. It's like, then why did you make a venture-backed startup that you're going to have to have a huge exit from to not have these people yell at you? You fucked up. And so thinking about the decisions you make and then what you define success as is really, really important. And look, when Dove was motivated by meaningful, positive things, like he wanted to change the fashion industry and he wanted to have a non-negative impact on the environment and all this, it was one of the fastest growing,

biggest companies in the world. And so he was getting both. And then when he sort of put that aside and became very obsessed with other not good things, he destroyed it and he destroyed himself in the process. And so like your North Star, what you decide to measure success by is like maybe the most important. Did he ever recover? He has another company now. I mean, he's running Kanye West fashion brand right now. So, you know.

That's a book. Yeah. That's a book. You want to write that? That's a good book. Go ask him if he can write that book. You've made a decision about what your values are as a person when you take that job.

And it's, I would say, not good. Speaking of obscure categories, though, and I see this and I know you've seen it. It's all over. Like, the algorithm is blessing this. Jerry Seinfeld all over stoicism. Crazy. That's cool.

That's super cool. I sent him that copy i'm saying i was going to ask like okay you so you do you are responsible in many ways for that but i i imagine that is really cool for you to see someone like him i assume you admire him and what he's done and then to see him kind of talking about that everywhere yes so okay so when i saw that video where he did a thing for GQ, where he's holding up like the 10 things I can't live without, and he held up a leather edition of Daily Stoke that I published, or a leather, he held up a leather copy of Mark Struis' Meditations that I publish.

That what flashback to me is I'm in my college apartment and someone recommended this obscure ancient philosopher to me and I bought it and it came on Amazon. And that's the edition that I read. And I remember reading it and thinking, this is the most amazing thing I've ever read. I wish I'd known about this earlier. I wish I want more people to know about it. And I said, like, this is what I wanted this. At some point, I decided that that's what I wanted to do is to tell people about this amazing thing. And then there it is happening, right? Like one of the most famous people in the world, a person whose work I admire is talking about. And I've had a lot of moments like that, but I just, I have to remind myself going back to that period. Like that's what I, the fact that I've, I've also made money and gotten to do things I love doing and I've learned a lot. That's all on top. But the main thing that I was trying to do was that was get people who I thought should know about it to know about it. And I did it. And so you kind of got to go back to it. Yeah. What was I, you're like, my dream was to like step onto the field of, you know of the football field.

And at any level, I want to do that. And then you're going to feel like a piece of shit because you lost the Super Bowl. You have so far exceeded what was actually your goal. And remembering that and then everything is extra. I wanted to write one book. My goal is to write one book. I just thought if I could write a book,

that would be the dream. What happens is then you're like, and then I want to sell it to a major publisher for more than somebody else. And then I want it to sell a certain number of copies. And so you're adding, you're moving, you're moving what you define as success. And so that's why it's never enough

because you're not able to go, I did it. I did my thing. Again, you should get to a place where you're still trying to get better and do more. Your sense of value as a human being is not rising and falling on whether you're reaching the goal that you deliberately moved right outside your grasp. You need to take the picture of Jerry Seinfeld holding that book and put it above the no. That's a good, yes.

Put that one there. Put Sam underneath. Sam, if you're listening, put Sam underneath. Sam, you can ice roll in the picture. Sam's going below Jerry? I'm an ice roller for Sam. Okay. And that's all you need around your no.

She does that mask thing that you guys recommend every night. The one that makes you look like man in the iron mask. I love it. The red light? Yeah, yeah. I love that. Before you go, I i want because i have to ask you this you do daily dad and i want you to talk about yes i want you to talk about how you think about being and showing up as a father to your kids how you want to be as a parent and also how you want to show up

as a husband michael's going to get his composition notebook out i'm just kidding michael's a great husband yeah he's a great husband i'm just trying i'm just i'm trying i'm trying to work as hard at being better at that stuff as the other stuff um it's a good one i'm not religious but i read this read this story about Jimmy Carter. He'd run for like his first public office, which he lost. He's a very devout Christian. And he hits him, he's sort of, you know, sifting through the loss. He's like, I just knocked on like 10,000 doors to try to get people to vote for me. And he was like, how many doors have I knocked on to like preach the word? Right. So again, I can't really relate to that, but I could relate to the idea of like, oh, he's saying like, I did all this work and

sacrifice and I put myself out there for this like professional thing. And then I'm essentially putting in no work in this thing that I'm, I believe is actually more important. And I think that's the, it's like, we'll work so hard to make more money or to get in better shape or whatever. And then we're just kind of like winging it at home. And, and so I'm, I, I am trying to just actively get better at those things and to be not just like what is societally accepted, which for men is higher than it's ever been before, but also pretty fucking low. Like the bar is like pretty low. Trying to like be what I'm capable of being in that thing,

if that makes sense. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. It's hard though. It's hard because it's very rewarding, of course, but effort and success are not necessarily correlated. There's a book called All Joy, No Fun. By the way, it is fun. Don't go fucking wild on YouTube. But I'm just saying there are moments. Yesterday, I had one where I was just like, oh my gosh, the tantrum is tantruming.

Yeah, my almost five-year-old just would not get in his car seat this morning. And like, I lost it. He lost it. I lost it. Then I feel like we salvaged it. And then one of the things I'm working on is like repair. Like, how do I own it? How do we talk about it?

How do we get better for it? What if he just handed you the Daily Stoic when you're losing it? What are you going to do when he's 16 years old and you're yelling at him about something and he just handed you the Daily Stoic when you're losing it? What are you going to do when he's 16 years old and you're yelling at him about something and he just hands you the Daily Stoic? There's a story I have in the book about this guy, James Lawson.

He was this civil rights pioneer. He was one of the pioneers of nonviolence. He sort of took Gandhi's strategy and brought them to the civil rights movement, particularly in the sit-in demonstrations. And so he's very close friends with Martin Luther King. And after Martin Luther King is assassinated by James Earl Ray, he decides like, I'm going to go visit this man in prison. Like, I'm going to visit the man in prison who killed the person I love more than anyone. And, you know,

he killed like a saint, basically. Shot him down in cold blood, a horrible person. So he goes and they sort of develop this relationship where he goes and he talks and he meets him. And at one point, James Earl Ray asks James Lawson to officiate his prison wedding. And he claims to have found God in prison. He asked him to prison. And so James Lawson is telling his family,

like I just, at dinner, and he's like, I just, I don't know what to do. He asked this and, um, his son's, you know, just teenage son's just eating and he goes, well, dad, if you believe any of this shit you've been talking about, you'll do it. And then he just goes back to eating. And there is something that like, just like an, an, an honesty and, uh, and, uh and a clarity that I think kids have or they see through it. It's great. I mean, it humbles you. Before you go, last thing on this subject, or I think it's relevant. You are a student of history.

These last few years have been contentious. Insane. People are at each other's throats if you could wave a magic wand and point people maybe to history or wherever what like what would you try to tell the general consensus the general collective i guess the population how we should be behaving how we should be treating each other like and and does this correlate i mean there's obviously been much more contentious periods in history. And the election's coming up.

Yeah. But when you think about this, if you could just, one message. Well, look, one of the things that happens when you study history is you realize it's always been terrible and it's always been crazy.

And hopefully the last few years have given people some empathy for what it feels like to live through history. Cause like you, we feel like we're just living through the present moment, but actually we're living through what people will read about a hundred years from now. Right. And so when you live through a pandemic, you go, Oh, okay. Right. The depression wasn't fun. It was terrifying and nobody knew how it was going to go. And some people did good things. Some people did bad things. Nobody was perfect. So I think one of the, one of the things that helps, like

I would, I would just urge people on like a really practical level, talking about saying no, say no to the news and say yes to reading history. Like you would have been far better reading about the Spanish flu in 1918 than watching CNN or Fox News every day during the pandemic. That is such good advice. Like read about moments of history that allow you to understand the moment that you are in. And you understand what you see that's so crazy is like all the same actors and all the same people are existing in every moment. And it just, it turns down the volume on things. It doesn't make it, you go, oh, it's all gonna work out because sometimes it gets worse, right?

And sometimes it doesn't work out. But I think that's something I try to remind, like you're consuming way too much real-time information and you're not getting enough philosophical perspective. You're not studying humans generally. But I think there is this sense that stoicism being about self-help, self-improvement, and focusing on what you control, so self-discipline, that it's indifferent to the things that are happening.

And I think that's wrong. There's this Stoic named Hierocles who he said, there are these circles of concern. So your first circle is you, then your next circle is your family, then it's your extended family, then it's is your family, you know, then it's your extended family, then it's people who live near you, and then it's your country, and then it's your, you know, it's like these bigger and bigger circles. And he said, like, the work of philosophy and the work of life is the art of trying to bring those outer circles inwards. And so I do think there is, like, there is such a thing as virtual signaling, which is annoying and obnoxious. And there's a bunch of people just acting like talking about

stuff is making a difference, which it doesn't. But there's also kind of this like performative heartlessness that I feel like I'm sensing this, like, I don't give a shit. Nothing matters. Fuck those people. There's almost this like energy of like liking to piss other people off or showing that you don't. And like, that's not stoicism. That's not cool. And so if I just, the idea, like there's this great Huffington Post article I think of all the time. It's from maybe like 10 years ago, but the headline is just, I don't know how I'm supposed to tell you that you have to care about other people. And that seems to be a thing that people need a reminder of, that the decisions you make and the policies you support or don't support have positive or negative

impacts on other people. And that this isn't a game that we're playing on the internet. Real people live and die by these decisions we make and that like we all have the ability to have a positive impact sometimes really big sometimes really small i tell the story in this book about thomas clarkson who was this graduate student in the 1700s who just is asked to write this essay about whether slavery should exist or not and he decides that it shouldn't exist. Like it's just an abstract moral question of whether owning a person is right or wrong, which was a open question at that time.

And he decides, he writes the essay, he says, no. And then when he finishes, he goes, if the answer is no, maybe I should do something about it. And this man singularly ends the slave trade in the British empire, which leads to the abolition movement in the US of war. Like one person does have this big impact, right? And what you also find when you study history is that a lot of the worst things that have ever happened, you could lay at the feet of one group or a small group of people and some

of the greatest things that have ever happened. You could lay at the feet of one really committed, passionate person or group of people and like you could be that person. So I just, I dislike this idea of stoicism as apathy or indifference. She fundamentally wasn't and isn't. Ryan holiday, right thing right now. Good values, good character, good deeds. Where can everyone find you? The book, Pimp Yourself Out. When is it out? I believe it's out June 10th? June 10th or 11th, something like that. Yeah. Do you have to read them all in order? Can you

read them individually? I read them out of order. Would you read discipline first? I read discipline first. You know me, come on. So you can read any- Where can everyone find you, everything? Pimp yourself out. Yeah, Daily Stoic and Daily Dad. So that's a daily parenting strategies from ancient history and wisdom. And then Daily Stoic is one stoic idea every day. Those are dailystoic.com, dailydad.com. And those are the Instagrams.

And no big deal. It says on your book, a message all of us needs to hear, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know a lot of people that have Arnold Schwarzenegger as their person that recommends a book on the front. I mean, that's a big deal. That's right, too. I also recommend personally to everybody, The Daily Stoic. I love that book. Michael introduced it to me. I'll give credit. Your dad's out there. I think The Daily Dad's incredible, too. I've been reading that. Did we get you on time for bedtime is the question.

Yeah, I can get home time for bedtime. Perfect. Well, this is full circle. Ryan, thanks for coming on. Go listen to the other episodes of them. Be sure to use the code mint at shopskinnyconfidential.com and you get 15% off the mint roller. It's the cutest thing on the planet.

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