Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 14

34 Mistakes on the Way to 34 Years Old

The great Hyman Rickover used to say that success teaches nothing, only failure is educational. I don’t know if that’s completely true, but I will say that my own short time on this planet has had its share of teachable moments rooted in mistakes, usually of my own making. 

For going on ten years now, I have done a piece on my birthday around the idea of lessons learned, either from preceding twelve months or over the course of my life up to that point. This year, at 34, I thought I’d focus exclusively on my failures and what they’ve taught me. And I can assure you, ten years into my career as a published author, ten years into entrepreneurship, and going on fifteen years with my now wife, five years into having a family, I have made lots of mistakes. 

If I have been successful at all, it’s been through learning from these mistakes (painfully) and by benefiting from the mistakes of others (a less painful way to learn). With that, I share these things I learned the hard way…or continue to struggle with.

Also check out my pieces from 33, 32, 31, and however else long I have been writing this annual piece.

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[*] If I had to go back and give a younger version of myself one word of advice it would be: “Relax.” It’s almost preposterous how intensely, passionately, anxiously I was worked up about certain things—how seriously I took things that, in retrospect, matter so little that I don’t even remember them. Of course, earnestness, commitment, and ambition are virtues (more so than their opposites, anyway) but taken too far they become liabilities, to happiness and objectivity most of all. 

[*] When I look back on my own writing, the stuff that makes me cringe isn’t necessarily even stuff I was wrong about. What disturbs me is the certainty. I thought I knew, but I didn’t really know. I wasn’t even close to knowing. Ego never ages well, even if it was correct in a narrow instance. As I get older, I’d like to think I am more open to nuance, less prone to black and white statements, and humbler in how I come off. 

[*] My first book was an exposé about media manipulation and fake news. I was convinced that if it didn’t come out right away, I’d get scooped, or miss my window of opportunity. This is what I was anxiously insisting to my publisher…in 2011! I thought I was out of time, in fact I was probably a half decade early (it’s second best sales week was in 2017!). Stuff is better when you don’t rush. If you think you have to rush, you’re either whipping yourself for no reason, or pursuing something too ephemeral to begin with. 

[*] I also should have fought harder on the title of my first book (I wanted to call it Confessions of a Media Manipulator, not Trust Me, I’m Lying), and I should have stuck to my guns about the prologue of Ego is the Enemy (I didn’t want to be in it, they wanted me in it). In creative disputes, the publisher/studio/investors/etc are not always wrong but they often are. And even when they’re not, you have to remember, that whatever the decision, you have to live with it in a way that they do not. I’ve regretted anytime I did not go with what was in my heart as an artist.

[*] The book I am most proud of is my book Conspiracy. The only parts of it I wish I could do differently are the few instances which, in retrospect, I was too conscious of what other people might think (particularly journalists). I should have just played it exactly how I felt like playing it. Again, do what’s in your heart. 

[*] Why did I move to New York? I guess I thought I was supposed to. It wasn’t a mistake exactly, but it’s definitely not the right place for me to live—not permanently anyway. Life is too short to live somewhere that doesn’t make you happy. 

[*] As I explained on reddit a while back, I wish I had gotten married and had kids earlier. I wasn’t really late for my age bracket (29 and 30), but when I look back at the last few years—including even the pandemic—I’m not sure what I waited for. Elizabeth Bruenig’s New York Times piece on having kids at 25 expressed this better than I can, but I think I was worried I wasn’t ready, but the truth is you’re never ready. You learn by doing. You’re only putting off the thing that will provide you the most meaning and joy in your life. 

[*] In 2013, I started a business with a partner that my wife warned me against working with. I remember explaining to her why she was wrong and that I couldn’t possibly not do this because of some vague gut instinct of hers. It would turn out to share a commonality with almost all my mistakes and regrets: Not listening to my wife from the beginning. Anyway, this business turned into a nightmare, and it turned out that this partner was not someone I should have worked with. Who knew?

[*] Why have I so often expected differently of people who have already shown me who they are? Character is fate. Character is fate. 

[*] I bought my first bitcoin somewhere under $500. I’m still here working for a living, so that should tell you all you need to know about what kind of investor/gambler I am. It’s not that I’m afraid of risks, it’s that I have trouble putting the right amount behind risks when I take them. 

[*] Most of my regrets—things I wish I’d done, things I wish I’d said, stands I wish I’d taken—have one thing in common: Fear. We worry about what will happen if… But Marcus Aurelius has the answer: “You’ll meet tomorrow with the same weapons you have now.” I should have quit certain jobs sooner, I should have come out and said what I thought more clearly, I should have believed that I’d figure out how to get through it, even if things went wrong. 

[*] If you’d asked me in January 2020, if I could survive—professionally and personally—with no travel, no events, no dinners out, no get-togethers, I’d have said absolutely not. As it turns out, the last fifteen months have been not only rewarding but immensely productive in every sense. Why? Because clearly, those things I thought I had to do, I didn’t not actually have to do. I’m actually better and happier when I don’t. 

[*] That’s another lesson learned the hard way: Don’t say “Maybe” when you really want to say “no.” Just say no. The only person making a big deal about it is you. Just say no. How many events/meetings/wastes of time are you going to agree to and then regret before you learn this?

[*] It was sweetly painful over the fifteen months of the pandemic to get more than a year of consecutive bedtimes with my kids, to get an uninterrupted streak of morning walks and afternoons in the pool. It was sweet because I loved every minute of it. It was painful because I had chosen not to have this before, I had so often chosen the other things, the less important things we throw into that bucket of “work responsibilities.” It is intimidating to contemplate how easily it will be to slip back into the old way of doing things too. 

[*] It’s clear to me in retrospect that my desire for approval, for being seen, for being a part of something important or newsworthy or exciting, blinded me to the character of certain people I worked for. Of course, this was something those people understood and exploited in me and lots of other more vulnerable victims, but it’s still on me. You have to wake up to the ways that the wounds you experienced as a kid make you a mark, or create patterns in your life. It’s not your fault things happened to you, it is your fault if you don’t learn how to adjust accordingly. 

[*] Of all the people (or types of people) I’ve had strong negative opinions or judgements about from afar, only few turned out to be even close to as obnoxious or stupid or awful as I thought. In fact, more often than not, I ended up liking them quite a bit. The world works better when we get to know each other. 

[*] You know deep down that accomplishing things won’t make you happy, but I think I always fantasized that it would at least feel really good. I was so wrong. Hitting #1 for the first time as an author felt like…nothing. Being a “millionaire”…nothing. It’s a trick of evolution that drives us, and no one is immune from making this mistake. The mistake to really avoid though is the one that comes after the anti-climatic accomplishment, the one where you go: “Ah, it’s that I need to repeat this success, it’s that I didn’t get enough. More will do it.”

[*] There have been a lot of problems I could have solved earlier if I’d been more willing to seek out experts on the topic. It’s funny, that’s clearly what sports teams and military leaders and politicians were doing when they emailed me after having read one of my books. How much growth have I left on the table, how much pain have I needlessly endured by not picking up the phone myself?

[*] Somewhat less related but still related: It’s good to be frugal, but if you don’t spend your money to make your life or your relationships or your work easier, what exactly are you going to spend it on? Actually, what I’ve found is that it is very expensive to be cheap. You just pay for it in the form of a frustrated spouse or a stressful life or with shit that never works and you have to end up replacing a bunch of times anyway. Don’t grit your teeth and bear it. You can only get so far white knuckling things. Remove the friction, improve the system—and money (not a lot usually) should help you do that. I thought of this just the other day as I reached for a Sharpie that was nearly dry, that I had clearly put back in the drawer in my desk for like the fifth time instead of buying a new one (and there was still a part of me that hated throwing it away). Replace your dull tools! Upgrade your workshop! Find quality help! You are expending energy in the wrong places.  

[*] There’s a great Kurt Vonnegut story about marriage. He realized, fighting one day with his wife, that what they were really both saying was, “You’re not enough people.” You can only expect so much from a person. They can only deliver so much. When I think of relationships that have not worked out, or near breaking points of others, at the root of them was that: Expecting them to be too many people. 

[*] With 34 years of data now, I can confidently say that I have never once lost my temper and afterwards said, “I’m so glad I did that.” A corollary to this: I don’t recall the last time I spent time on social media and felt better after either. A corollary to this corollary: I regret almost every time I have expressed an opinion on social media. I don’t necessarily regret the opinion, I regret the lapse in self-control that culminated with me shouting into the void. 

[*] There are many books I regret powering through, far fewer that I regret quitting. Life is too short to put up with bad writing—bad anything really. If the food sucks, don’t finish it. If the speaker is boring, get up and leave. If the party is no fun, go home. 

[*] Needing things to be a certain way has continually prevented me from enjoying them as they are. 

[*] I’ve been lucky enough to sit across the table, literally, from some incredible people. Astronauts, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs, politicians. The mistake I’ve made far too many times? Talking more than I listened. You get nervous, you want to impress, so you open your mouth. I tend to forget: Two ears, one mouth for a reason. In thirty years, are you going to want to look back on this chance encounter and think about what you said, or what you got them to say? So shut up!   

[*] I’ve done it so many times it’s now embarrassing but this is a pattern: I have an opinion or a frustration or a need that I don’t speak up about. It builds. By the time it finally does come to a head, the situation is past resolving. I’ve lost agents because of this, employees because of this, friends because of this. You have to speak to be heard. You can’t wait. You can’t let resentments pile up. Communication is not conflict. It preempts and prevents conflict. Everytime I forget this, it has cost me. 

[*] If you keep having to put down your horses, it’s because you’re riding them too hard. Unfortunately, I have lost a lot of otherwise great talent because I put too much on them. Just as athletes have to think about personal load management, coaches and GMs have to think about it for the whole team (and understand that every person has a different threshold).

[*] Good enough is usually good enough…except when it’s not. When I was in high school, I ran a 5:04 mile in one of my last races senior year. I remember thinking, “Well, that’s pretty good!” No part of me (nor did anyone around me) pressed to see if I could shave those few extra seconds off. I was so close! Why did I settle? Only later did I come to regret it…and of course, every day that passed made it more difficult to ever get back there. In my mid-twenties, I did finally break five minutes but mostly as a reminder to myself: Don’t be satisfied with getting close enough. Go all the way. “Almosts” are the most painful regrets. Especially almosts where you didn’t do your best. 

[*] My anxiety has brought about exactly the kind of stress or frustration I was hoping to avoid infinitely more times than it has prevented it from happening. Don’t ride out to meet your ruin...

[*] Epictetus says, “You can’t learn that which you think you already know.” Evaluating my response to the early warning signs of the pandemic, or why I missed taking advantage of certain investing opportunities (see crypto and housing mistakes above, among others), invariably it was my certainty or smugness that blocked me from seeing what a more open, curious person would have seen. 

[*] Just because someone you don’t respect holds a certain position, doesn’t mean the position is incorrect. And vice versa. One of the toughest things to do in this life is to think for yourself, to come up with your own judgements on issues, stripped of bias or preconceived notions. Almost every time I have looked for a shortcut—whenever I have not done the work—I’ve come to regret my views. 

[*] I grew up in a mostly conservative household, one that internalized a lot of that Reagan-esque suspicion of governing. But of course, this suspicion—especially when widely held—contributes to poor governance. Government is not a thing, at least in America. We are the government, just as much as we are traffic, we are culture, we are media. A line I heard that changed my worldview: “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” I wasted a lot of time seeing politics as something you consume, when of course politics—going back to Aristotle—is always something we do. 

[*] Related, if success is not making your life easier—or at least, providing you more autonomy—what good is it? This was learned the hard way in our house. You’re not a beast of burden. Don’t treat yourself like one!

[*] This line from Springsteen captures, in retrospect, almost every argument or grudge I’ve held onto.

We fought hard over nothin’

We fought till nothin’ remained

I’ve carried that nothin’ for a long time

[*] This idea of “Fuck Yes…or No” is far too simple and has caused me quite a lot of grief. Dropping out of college, I was maybe 51/49 on it. Leaving my corporate job to become a writer, maybe 60/40. Right now I’m about to do something big that I am both excited and terrified about. The point is: The certainty comes later. The truly life-changing decisions are never simple. If I had only ever done things I was absolutely certain about, I’d have missed out on experiences I love. Conversely, I regret a good chunk of my “Fuck yes’s” because I was caught up in a fit of passion or bias. The whole point of risk is that you don’t know.

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So here I am at 34 with many more mistakes than these to my name. But the key to progress, I have found, is relatively simple. It’s not to avoid error…but to avoid making the same error more than once. Or, more realistically, fewer times than you might ordinarily be inclined to.

Because the only way to compound an error, to add to the suffering caused by its consequences, is to refuse to see them. To refuse to heed their lessons. 

And so, if I am lucky enough to make it another year, I hope to write to you again in 2022, a tad wiser and as always, grateful for the time and experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have. Even the not so glamorous ones. 

P.S. Seneca said a lot of people don’t have any proof for their age but a number of years. To avoid that mistake, I carry a coin that says “Memento Mori,” which is Latin for ”remember you will die.” On the back, it has one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius: “You could leave life right now.” That is how I try to go through life—not taking time for granted, not leaving anything undone, not wasting time on making the same mistake twice, not ever thinking tomorrow is a given. If you want to create more priority and appreciation in your life, get a Memento Mori coin and carry it in your pocket everywhere you go.

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50 (Short) Rules For Life From The Stoics

What is the job of a philosopher?

“When the standards have been set,” Epictetus said, “the work of philosophy is just this, to examine and uphold the standards, but the work of a truly good person is in using those standards when they know them.”

Pretty straight forward then: Define your rules. Live by them. 

But of course, the Stoics were not quite so direct in practice. One Stoic, Chrysippus—supposedly wrote 500 lines a day…the vast majority of which are lost. The Stoics spoke, wrote, debated, but nowhere did they put their “commandments” down in one place. Not at least in any form that survived. 

Having thought about this, and trying to get them all straight for my own practice, here are 50 rules from the Stoics, gathered from their immense body of work across two thousand years. These rules functioned, then, as now, as guides to what the ancients called “the good life.” Hopefully some of them will illuminate your own path.

Focus on what you can control.You control how you respond to things. Ask yourself, “Is this essential?” Meditate on your mortality every day.Value time more than money/possessions.You are the product of your habits.Remember you have the power to have no opinion.Own the morning.Put yourself up for review (Interrogate yourself).Don’t suffer imagined troubles.
Try to see the good in people.
Never be overheard complaining…even to yourself.
Two ears, one mouth…for a reason (Zeno)There is always something you can do. Don’t compare yourself to others.
Live as if you’ve died and come back (every minute is bonus time).
“The best revenge is not to be like that.” Marcus Aurelius
Be strict with yourself and tolerant with others.
Put every impression, emotion, to the test before acting on it.
Learn something from everyone.
Focus on process, not outcomes.
Define what success means to you.
Find a way to love everything that happens ( Amor fati ).Seek out challenges.
Don’t follow the mob.Grab the “smooth handle.”Every person is an opportunity for kindness (Seneca)Say no (a lot).Don’t be afraid to ask for help.Find one thing that makes you wiser every day.What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee (Marcus Aurelius)Don’t judge other people.Study the lives of the greats.Forgive, forgive, forgive.Make a little progress each day.Journal.Prepare for life’s inevitable setbacks ( premeditatio malorum )Look for the poetry in ordinary things.To do wrong to one, is to do wrong to yourself. ( sympatheia )Always choose “Alive Time.”Associate only with people that make you better.If someone offends you, realize you are complicit in taking offense. Fate behaves as she pleases…do not forget this. Possessions are yours only in trust.Don’t make your problems worse by bemoaning them.Accept success without arrogance, handle failure with indifference. Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom. (Always).The obstacle is the way.Ego is the enemy.Stillness is the key.

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I’ll leave you with the one rule that captures all the rules. It comes from Epictetus: “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” 

Don’t talk about it, be about it. The whole point of Stoicism is what you do. It’s who you are. It’s the act of virtue, not the act of talking about virtue. Or reading about it. Or writing about it. It’s about embodying your rules and principles. Letting your actions speak for you. So, Marcus Aurelius reminded himself and now us, “Waste no more time talking about what a good man is like. Be one.” 

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P.S. If you want to learn more about Stoicism, read the originals. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius , Letters From A Stoic by Seneca, and Discourses by Epictetus are some of the most accessible philosophic works ever published. AND we carry all of them in my new bookstore, The Painted Porch . It’s just outside Austin, Texas—all are welcome! Or you can support the store by picking up a book in The Painted Porch online store. If you buy from those links, your books will be shipped from us here in Bastrop, Texas. Just remember, we’re a small shop and just getting going…be patient and kind. We appreciate your support!

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Opening a Small-Town Bookstore During the Pandemic Was the Craziest Thing We Ever Did

This is a piece I just wrote for Texas Monthly. Yes, I just opened my own bookstore outside Austin, Texas. If you want to support the store, you can follow us on Instagram, sign up for our email list or pick up a book online !

When you tell people you’re thinking about opening a bookstore, they’re quick to respond, I’ve always wanted to do that. 

It’s every book lover’s fantasy. Yet nothing can quite prepare you for the reality of starting any business, even under normal conditions. Certainly, few dreamers think to prepare for the nightmare of a global pandemic that shutters most brick-and-mortar retail, disrupts supply chains, and kills hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens. 

In January of last year, my wife and I put our life savings down on a 140-year-old building on Main Street in Bastrop, a small town outside Austin—East of Weird goes the slogan—where we’ve lived since 2015. We’d spotted the storefront, which is part of the National Register of Historic Places, while having breakfast one morning at Maxine’s Cafe, just across the street and a few doors down. By February we’d hired our first employees and started renovations. We envisioned hosting events, welcoming customers from the community, and drawing people to this beautiful street on the bluffs of the Colorado River.

Yet by the first week of March, what began with such excitement found me, for obvious reasons, standing between the empty brick walls thinking of that Arrested Development line: I’ve made a huge mistake. 

I thought I had some sense of what could go wrong with the venture. Whenever I’m considering an idea I’m excited about, I like to ask friends to talk me out of it. In late 2019, I was cautioned with plenty of pessimistic scenarios and potential difficulties. It’ll take longer than you think. It will cost more than you think. It will be more work than you think.

All of this was correct. 

That it would take longer, cost more, and require more work I understood. But that it would then sit unopened for months?

CONTINUE READING ON TEXAS MONTHLY: Opening a Small-Town Bookstore During the Pandemic Was the Craziest Thing We Ever Did

If you want to support The Painted Porch, these are the three most popular books in the store: The Library Book, The Boy Who Would Be King, and Empire of the Summer Moon. If you buy from those links, your books will be shipped from us here in Bastrop, Texas! Just remember, we’re a small shop and just getting going…be patient and kind.

The post Opening a Small-Town Bookstore During the Pandemic Was the Craziest Thing We Ever Did appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

Life Is About What We Can Do For Each Other

Why are we here? 

It’s an impossible question to answer, I suppose.

Of course, on a fundamental evolutionary level, we’re here to pass along our genes. This is why we strive for success. This is why we lust for sex. This is what keeps the species going. 

But equally encoded in that evolutionary software and in our culture is another purpose, another less selfish drive: The drive for meaning. Merely to subsist, to persist—what kind of existence is that?

Indeed, the greatest achievements in human history are not selfish ones. It’s art that speaks to what it means to be alive, that gives people hope or insight. It’s a scientific breakthrough that makes things better for everyone. It was the invention of the rule of law, it was the notion that government exists with the consent of the people, it’s the collective sacrifices, it’s the tackling of hard problems together.

It’s the idea that we are here for each other, that we are here to make things better for others, for the next generation, that makes life meaningful and worth living. Because in doing so, we find happiness and respect for ourselves. 

“The fruit of this life,” Marcus Aurelius wrote, “is good character and acts for the common good.”

On Easter, James Altucher sent me a verse from the Gospel of Mark. “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,” it reads, “and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

There was a time in my life when that would have made about zero sense to me. Look at the language—servant, slave, give your life? No thanks. 

As I have gotten older, it’s logic is clearer. Perhaps this came, as I wrote a while back, from discovering the relative emptiness of accomplishments. Maybe it was having kids. Maybe it just took a while for the wisdom to seep in. Or maybe it was a byproduct of bearing witness to the rampant selfishness, needless cruelty and displaced rage that has consumed large swaths of our society, over the last year especially.

I suspect, in a perverse way, the ugliness of that prolonged moment–from COVID-19 to our racial reckoning-will turn out to be a gift for us all. Because it’s a compelling cautionary tale of how easily one’s life can go very differently. Because these people are not just ignorant and unattractive, but punishing by their own way of living. If you’ve ever talked to a selfish or deranged person who has been radicalized by politics or untethered by conspiracy theories, or found yourself related—by blood or friendship—to folks who have been infected with this virus, it sobers you up real quick. It breaks your heart too.  It didn’t have to go this way, and yet it so quickly and easily did for so many.

There was a great Huffington Post headline a few years ago that captured the impotence one feels trying to discuss basic human rights or compassion or restraint to some people: I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People.

I have found myself thinking that same thing time and time again over the last year too, whether it was after watching something on the news or talking to a neighbor or even writing to my own audience here. About the pandemic. The social justice and race conversations that exploded this summer. The 2020 election. And now, vaccines. 

Watching friends say things like “I can’t wait for things to go back to normal,” when social media makes it quite clear literally nothing about their habits or social life was impacted by a devastating pandemic that spreads in enclosed places and disproportionally affects the elderly and the vulnerable. Watching members of my own family seek to rationalize something like George Floyd’s death because he might have been on drugs, might have had a criminal record, or that very few people are killed by the police each year. Stuck in my head is an exchange I had with a woman who took profane exception to me referring to the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery as “hillbillies,” yet seemed to not be bothered at all by a video of the man being chased down and shot like a dog in the street.

Just last week, a very accomplished friend sent me a note explaining his resistance to the COVID-19 vaccines (which by the way, marks an incredible collective human accomplishment on par with landing on the moon). “Why should I, a perfectly healthy adult in a safe age bracket, have to risk myself by taking some new vaccine?” he said to me. 

The polite technical term for this is “vaccine hesitancy.” I think it’s more correct to call it an abdication of duty, a rejection of our collective purpose. I’d love a chance to go back and explain this conversation to my grandfather and great-grandfather who fought in World War I and World War II. 

Oh, you’re worried about the possibility of side effects despite the overwhelming available information to the contrary? (And yes, this is true even after yesterday’s announcement about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine). You’re wondering why you should have to take a tiny risk when you’re otherwise healthy and could otherwise go about your life just fine? I’m sure the generations who not only lived through typhus, the Great Influenza and polio but then had to cross the Atlantic to fight in someone else’s war would totally understand. Do you know what the data said about landing at Normandy, I can imagine my grandfather saying, it said we were probably all going to die. And it wasn’t even certain that the invasion would work!

You’re saying it’s unfair of me to compare the pandemic to WWII? That’s true. It is. It took the full might of an axis of industrial powers and four years of war to kill 400,000 Americans. It took COVID-19 just 10 months. And by the way, it’s a lie to say these were all old people. A full 105,000 under age 65 have perished from COVID in the US alone. 

There were definitely isolationists in America in 1918 and 1941, but by and large people got it. The idea of ransoming oneself for the many, as Jesus said, was common. More than 6 million people volunteered to serve during WWII. That’s nearly 40% of the entire fighting force. And the average service length was nearly three years! That’s what happens when a generation of men and women (and children) get to work for a common cause. And they accomplished something incredible as a consequence, something far more impressive than anything any of them did as individuals, when those fortunate enough to survive came back home and went about their ordinary lives. 

But for the last twelve months, in the same country that melted down its jewelry for the war effort just a generation or two ago, we’ve had serious discussions about whether we have any obligations to people who sat vulnerable in nursing homes.

I get it. 

It sucks to have your life and business disrupted, to lose opportunities you worked your whole life for. I make my living flying around and giving talks to large groups indoors. The last twelve months were quite anxious economically. It was stranger still having to turn down offers to speak to groups that had no business getting together during the second and third surges of the pandemic, but that was obviously right. 

I also happened to have dropped my life savings into opening a bookstore in my small town in Texas…two months before the world shut down. Needless to say, it was a financial bloodbath to sit here and not be able to open, as the expenses carried on nonetheless. But again what was the alternative? Put my interests over somebody’s grandma? Or some cancer patient who was already facing high enough odds as it is? Externalize the consequences of the actions I freely took, and make society carry all the weight? 

I think I’d rather die of COVID than that. 

I love sports. I’ve missed all sorts of cool opportunities in the last year not being able to go and speak in various locker rooms. I remain nonetheless appalled at the behavior of so many people in sports, because as always, sports are a metaphor for life. Whether it’s Dan Mullen demanding that the stadium be packed for Florida home games…days before his own team was devastated by a COVID outbreak, or just this month, the Rangers packing a stadium in the middle of the 4th surge of the virus. Was our governor concerned? No, he was throwing a tantrum about MLB moving its All Star game due to a stupid law passed in another state. 

“I don’t want my son’s athletic career negatively affected,” said the parents of college athletes. “But this is my daughter’s last year of academic eligibility!” Ok, so we have a season of college sports and thousands and thousands of cases in the NCAA. The athletes were all mostly fine and it certainly didn’t turn out as bad as some of the more dire predictions, but it’s indisputable that we (if we had even basic contact tracing in this country) could link these cases to hundreds and hundreds of thousands more people out in the community. Go talk to them about negative consequences. 

Of course nobody comes out and says, “I don’t care about other people.” They say a bunch of other stuff instead—stuff that I’m sure some of you are already getting ready to angrily write me in response to this article. They say, “This pandemic is overblown.” They shrug and say, “Well I guess we all have different risk tolerances.” (We can have different preferences about how we invest our retirement money, not whether we drink and drive). They try to claim that what they’re really worried about is how this affects small businesses or lonely people. They say, “But this wedding is really important to my sister.” They say, “My six year old deserves a party with their friends!”

COVID is not the only place this indifference manifests. Rather than wrestle with the police brutality, or the simmering rage of their black countrymen and women, they say, “But what about black on black crime?” They say, “But what about all the property damage!” They said, “What about Antifa?!” 

All of this is a way of dodging the reality of the choice in front of us: Can you subjugate your own interests—if only temporarily—for the sake of someone else? Countless someone else’s. Most of whom you will never know or even meet. Can you serve them? Can you sacrifice for any of them? Can you hear what they’re saying? Can you care? 

The religious stuff I put up top, maybe that turns you off a bit. I get it. I myself am not a Christian, but I use the verse not only because it’s beautiful but because it seems that Christians have struggled more with the lesson at the core of the verse than almost any other group. The most vaccine hesitant group in America is Republicans and White Evangelical Christians. This video of a woman explaining why her faith made her exempt from COVID-protocols at the beginning of the pandemic sticks with me. So does this photo of an Easter service, attended by a president who quite nearly died of COVID, indoors, without a mask in sight…a year into a pandemic that has killed more Americans than every war the United States has ever fought except for the Civil War—and we’re giving those war dead a run for their money. 

Hillel was once asked to explain the Bible in a short sentence. He stood on one foot and said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself—all the rest is commentary.” 

I would argue that this is a great answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?” as well. 

We are what we’re able to do for each other. 

We’re here to serve. We’re here to help, to have good character and do acts for the common good.

That’s not always easy. In fact, it’s often quite hard. 

Did the pandemic or the racial events of the last year reveal the difference in privileges that some of us have? Absolutely—and this knowledge should increase our sense of obligation. 

We are made for each other. We forget that to our peril. We ignore that to our shame.

P.S. My newest book, The Boy Who Would Be King, tells a timeless story about putting others before yourself. It’s an illustrated fable about Marcus Aurelius and how the influential figures in his life guided him along the path to becoming one of history’s greatest figures. You can order it in the Daily Stoic store, where you can also get a personalized signed copy. And we have some great news—for some reason, the ebook version of The Boy Who Would Be King is on sale on Amazon right now for 60% off. It won’t last long so grab it now.

The post Life Is About What We Can Do For Each Other appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

This Is the Test to Apply to Everything

We can imagine he was a busy man, perhaps the busiest man in the world. 

He had 14 children.

There was a pandemic. 

He had a nagging stomach ailment. 

He was taking philosophy classes.

Oh, and he was the emperor of Rome. His domain stretched some 2.2 million square miles and included some 120 million people for whom he was both responsible for and in charge of. 

How did he manage it all? How did he get it all done? Without losing his mind? Without falling behind? 

We know that one question played a huge role. 

“Most of what we say and do is not essential,” Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations. “If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”

How much or how little you work. Where you live. What your marriage or your relationships look like. The political policies you support. What you spend money on. What your goals are. The way your schedule is arranged. The things taking up room in your junk drawer…or the thoughts running through your head. 

Ask yourself about everything you do and say and think, “Is this necessary?” “Is this essential?” “Does it have to be this way?” “Why am I doing this?” “What would happen if I changed?”

We wonder why we’re not doing our best. We wonder why we’re not happy. We wonder why things are hard. 

It’s because we’re doing too much. Or we’re doing the wrong stuff. Or doing it in the wrong way. 

Greg McKeown has a great book called Essentialism. I love that word. You want to get to a place where your life is defined by it—where you’re doing only what needs to be done, in the way it ought to be done. 

That’s going to mean getting comfortable with saying “No.” It’s going to be mean cutting fat from your life, maybe even hurting some feelings. But that’s OK. You’ll soon realize: When you say no to something, you’re saying yes to something else. And conversely, when you think you’re saying yes to one thing, you have to understand all the things you’re saying no to in the same breath. So you might make some people upset by saying no, but you’ll make other people a lot happier too. 

A little while back, I was on Greg’s “What’s Essential” podcast. He called this the “non-essentialist trap.” When you haven’t distinguished between what is and isn’t essential, how do you decide what to yes to and what to say no to? Usually, we default to filtering opportunities by what’s most lucrative or what’s most impressive. Greg quoted Seneca to me, and that passage is worth putting here in full,

“We are told that life is short and the art is long…It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough and a sufficiently generous amount of it has been given to us for the highest achievement if it were all well invested. When it is wasted in the heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life, but we make it short. We are not ill supplied but wasteful of it. Just as when ample and princely wealth falls to a bad owner it is squandered in a moment, but wealth however modest, if entrusted to a good custodian, increases with use, so our lifetime extends amply if you manage it properly.”

One thing the pandemic has helped me with is it has shown me—in most cases without my consent—just what doing less looks like. 

Less flights.

Less dinners out.

Less meetings. 

Less income. 

Less errands.

You could argue that COVID-19 was the largest forced lifestyle experiment in history. It shattered so many of our assumptions about what is and isn’t essential. Oh, this can’t be done remotely? Just watch. Oh, I couldn’t live without childcare. Well, now you have to. Oh, I’ll never have time to do ____. OK, here it is. 

We’ve had to make due with less. We’ve had to reinvent how stuff was done. We had to reorganize everything. 

Some parts of this have been hard to bear. Some have made us sad and lonely. But other parts have been downright liberating. That’s the thing about less—why we ask Marcus Aurelius’ version of the question: Is this necessary?—is that it also reveals what more looks like. Because as tough as the last few months have been, it’s also meant:

More sunsets from the back porch.

More dinners at home.

More focused writing, about weightier topics. 

More appreciation for the people and things that matter.

More understanding of the urgency of memento mori.

“Doing what’s essential,” Marcus said, “brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.”

So take a minute today and ask yourself Marcus’ question. Is this necessary? Is it essential? Do I really need to do this? What if I said no? What if I opted out?

What would happen?

You will find the answer, in many cases, is that no, it is not essential. It’s not important nor necessary. And by saying no, you’re not “shirking” your responsibilities. On the contrary, you are better fit, better able to actually fulfill your important duties—to your family, to your work, to yourself. 

And that’s the real double benefit.

The post This Is the Test to Apply to Everything appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

This Is the Secret to Business and Artistic Success

One of the strangest things about business to me has always been how damn far everyone is from the products they create and the customers who use them. 

You have a problem with a product you bought and you call customer service, but you’re not actually talking to an employee of the company who made it—you’re talking to a customer service contractor, who is employed by an agency that runs third-party customer logistics, who in turn was hired by the company you purchased from (if in fact you bought direct, instead of through a retailer). 

Whenever companies are investigated by labor activists, the story always follows a similar path of intermediation: Shoe Company X outsourced to Manufacturer Y who outsourced to Factory Z who in turn used slave labor to make shoes not just for Shoe Company X but for all their competitors too. 

“We had no idea that the workers were being treated so poorly,” a spokesperson for the company explains, who is often a crisis PR flak, not an employee. What’s more, they are usually not totally lying. Neither the company, nor their spokesperson.

Even my profession—books—is illustrative of this phenomenon. You walk into an independent bookstore in your town and purchase a book because you like to “support authors’’ or “support local small business.” But what actually happened is this: you bought a book from a shop, who in turn bought their books from a large distributor like Ingram (est. annual revenue of $2.4 billion), who in turn bought their books from a publisher like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (market cap of nearly $1 billion), who in turn had acquired the book from the writer. In the business of books, the creator and the customer (i.e. the author and the reader) are several steps removed from each other. Even a multi-billion dollar behemoth like my publisher, Penguin Random House, sells the vast majority of their books to Amazon, who in turn uses a complicated algorithm to decide what to show to customers, and what to charge them.  

This has always struck me as weird, as well as ethically fraught. On top of that, it’s also felt like bad business to me. We say marketing is important, that knowing your customer is key, but then businesses hand responsibility for those areas off to a bunch of contractors? And then use their insights and choices to decide what to make next? Imagine a sports team who doesn’t do their own scouting, player development or coaching! Who doesn’t interact with their own fans!

How can you do a good job of making stuff for your customers if you don’t have a relationship with them? The short answer is, you can’t. Publishers are quick to tell authors about what audiences like and don’t like, but where are they getting this information? Not from the source, that’s for sure! 

When I was in marketing, I loved talking to people with the same job at other companies and in different industries. Or, not really the same job, because the “Director of Marketing” at most companies is often supplemented by an outside advertising agency, a creative agency and a PR agency. Like The Bobs in Office Space, I’d ask my own version of their question: What would you say you do here? 

As the flywheel of my own books has begun to spin faster and faster—nearing 4 million copies sold—I have become increasingly less satisfied with this intermediated status quo. I remember once talking to an author who had sold a million copies of a book that was published seven or eight years previous. Ok, I asked them, what kind of email list have you got? They started telling me about how many contacts were in their Outlook. Meaning: They didn’t have an email list at all. They’d sold a million books… but that relationship was Amazon’s to own (or in their case, Borders, which had existed when their book came out).

Since my first book was published in 2012, I’ve made sure the last page of the book asked readers to send me an email to sign up for my list. Hundreds of thousands of people have done that. I have entered many of their emails into my list personally. Their names have passed from my eyes through my fingertips into my customer database. I have heard what they liked and don’t like about the books. I have seen what’s worked and what hasn’t. I have gotten to know them.

Of course, I have social media, too (you can follow me on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube). But in the last several years, I’ve decided that those communication channels were not sufficient. I needed to be in the business of transacting directly to my readers, as well.

I had Tobias Lütke, the founder of Shopify, on my podcast recently and we talked about the power of a platform like his, one that allows people to become their own retailers. In 2017, with DailyStoic.com, we opened our own store. We started with a print, then moved on to challenge coins and then online products and a premium leatherbound edition of The Daily Stoic too. Since we launched, we’ve directly sold to north of 100,000 customers. Or rather, to a whole football stadium worth of “true fans” who we now have a relationship with. 

Imagine standing on the 50-yard line of the Big House at the University of Michigan, packed with people to the very rim of the stadium, and knowing you’ve sold something to every single face staring back at you. It’s an immensely powerful feeling. 

Mostly though, it’s a liberating one. I’ve said before that I spell “success as a-u-t-o-n-o-m-y,” and this fits with that philosophy. I don’t want other people telling me what to do. I don’t want to be dependent on other people either. Yes, I work with a traditional publisher on my bigger books, but by choice.

Early in the pandemic, I started working on a fable about Stoicism that came out of stories I was telling my then 3-year old son. After I had finished the outline of the idea, I went to my publisher—who had done 10 books with me at that point—to see if they wanted to work on this one. They came back with terms that just made zero financial or creative sense for me. Part of me was frustrated, but I also believed that they had given me a great gift. Now I could do The Boy Who Would Be King myself. 

I did it faster. I did it cheaper. I did it with complete creative control. I even got to print it in the United States. In its first week, it sold more than 5,000 copies without a peep of external marketing or PR, just an email and a social post to my own fans, sold through my own store. It would have been enough to debut on any of the major bestseller lists—but of course, it didn’t appear on any because those lists had no way of tracking it. 

But what do I care? Well, let me tell you. I care about the fact that something I care about got into the hands of people who care about it. 

Isn’t that the whole point of art? Isn’t that the true basis of sustained (and sustainable) success in business?

Fewer middlemen. Fewer impediments. No delays in getting to market.

I did a talk for a fashion company a few weeks ago. When they started, they did 90% of their sales through retailers and 10% direct-to-consumer. That ratio has flipped as they have grown, based on the CEO’s strategic plan. Imagine if that hadn’t been the plan? They would have been destroyed during the pandemic, when physical retail was largely shut down or severely sidelined. And even without something like a pandemic, by going direct-to-consumer, they improved their margins, as well as the quality of their product… because, you know, they actually knew who their customers were and what those people liked. And by cutting out all those middlemen they could take the savings and apply it to the substance of the product itself.

Nobody knows what the future holds, that’s true. I will continue to traditionally publish many of my projects. My publisher helps me do things I can’t do and I help them do things other authors can’t do—which is why we choose to work together. Even right now, I am working on a distribution deal to get The Boy Who Would Be King sold through other stores. 

Still, I’m not sure how anybody goes broke working directly—as much as possible—with the audience and market they serve. Are there efficiencies that come from outside contractors and manufacturers? Of course. Are there great opportunities selling through other people’s platforms or stores or audiences? Obviously.

But if you’re not also cultivating a direct line to your people, what are you doing? Being arrogant and reckless is the answer, in my opinion. You’re gambling that the middleman will always need you, you’re gambling that your intuition will always land with the audience. You’re also giving up autonomy and creative freedom, too.

I’ll conclude with a great passage from The 50th Law by Robert Greene, as it defines the imperative for all creators perfectly:

Your goal must be to break down the distance between you and your audience, the base of your support in life. Some of this distance is mental—it comes from your ego and the need to feel superior. Some of it is physical—the nature of your business tends to shut you off from the public with lawyers of bureaucracy. In any event, what you are seeking is maximum interaction, allowing you to get a feel for people on this inside. You come to thrive off their feedback and criticism. Operating this way, what you will produce will not fail to resonate because it will come from the inside. This deep level of interaction is the source of the most powerful and popular works in culture and business, and a political style that truly connects.

The post This Is the Secret to Business and Artistic Success appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

This is the Secret to Business and Artistic Success

One of the strangest things about business to me has always been how damn far everyone is from the products they create and the customers who use them. 

You have a problem with a product you bought and you call customer service, but you’re not actually talking to an employee of the company who made it—you’re talking to a customer service contractor, who is employed by an agency that runs third-party customer logistics, who in turn was hired by the company you purchased from (if in fact you bought direct, instead of through a retailer). 

Whenever companies are investigated by labor activists, the story always follows a similar path of intermediation: Shoe Company X outsourced to Manufacturer Y who outsourced to Factory Z who in turn used slave labor to make shoes not just for Shoe Company X but for all their competitors too. 

“We had no idea that the workers were being treated so poorly,” a spokesperson for the company explains, who is often a crisis PR flak, not an employee. What’s more, they are usually not totally lying. Neither the company, nor their spokesperson.

Even my profession—books—is illustrative of this phenomenon. You walk into an independent bookstore in your town and purchase a book because you like to “support authors’’ or “support local small business.” But what actually happened is this: you bought a book from a shop, who in turn bought their books from a large distributor like Ingram (est. annual revenue of $2.4 billion), who in turn bought their books from a publisher like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (market cap of nearly $1 billion), who in turn had acquired the book from the writer. In the business of books, the creator and the customer (i.e. the author and the reader) are several steps removed from each other. Even a multi-billion dollar behemoth like my publisher, Penguin Random House, sells the vast majority of their books to Amazon, who in turn uses a complicated algorithm to decide what to show to customers, and what to charge them.  

This has always struck me as weird, as well as ethically fraught. On top of that, it’s also felt like bad business to me. We say marketing is important, that knowing your customer is key, but then businesses hand responsibility for those areas off to a bunch of contractors? And then use their insights and choices to decide what to make next? Imagine a sports team who doesn’t do their own scouting, player development or coaching! Who doesn’t interact with their own fans!

How can you do a good job of making stuff for your customers if you don’t have a relationship with them? The short answer is, you can’t. Publishers are quick to tell authors about what audiences like and don’t like, but where are they getting this information? Not from the source, that’s for sure! 

When I was in marketing, I loved talking to people with the same job at other companies and in different industries. Or, not really the same job, because the “Director of Marketing” at most companies is often supplemented by an outside advertising agency, a creative agency and a PR agency. Like The Bobs in Office Space, I’d ask my own version of their question: What would you say you do here? 

As the flywheel of my own books has begun to spin faster and faster—nearing 4 million copies sold—I have become increasingly less satisfied with this intermediated status quo. I remember once talking to an author who had sold a million copies of a book that was published seven or eight years previous. Ok, I asked them, what kind of email list have you got? They started telling me about how many contacts were in their Outlook. Meaning: They didn’t have an email list at all. They’d sold a million books… but that relationship was Amazon’s to own (or in their case, Borders, which had existed when their book came out).

Since my first book was published in 2012, I’ve made sure the last page of the book asked readers to send me an email to sign up for my list. Hundreds of thousands of people have done that. I have entered many of their emails into my list personally. Their names have passed from my eyes through my fingertips into my customer database. I have heard what they liked and don’t like about the books. I have seen what’s worked and what hasn’t. I have gotten to know them.

Of course, I have social media, too (you can follow me on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube). But in the last several years, I’ve decided that those communication channels were not sufficient. I needed to be in the business of transacting directly to my readers, as well.

I had Tobias Lütke, the founder of Shopify, on my podcast recently and we talked about the power of a platform like his, one that allows people to become their own retailers. In 2017, with DailyStoic.com, we opened our own store. We started with a print, then moved on to challenge coins and then online products and a premium leatherbound edition of The Daily Stoic too. Since we launched, we’ve directly sold to north of 100,000 customers. Or rather, to a whole football stadium worth of “true fans” who we now have a relationship with. 

Imagine standing on the 50-yard line of the Big House at the University of Michigan, packed with people to the very rim of the stadium, and knowing you’ve sold something to every single face staring back at you. It’s an immensely powerful feeling. 

Mostly though, it’s a liberating one. I’ve said before that I spell “success as a-u-t-o-n-o-m-y,” and this fits with that philosophy. I don’t want other people telling me what to do. I don’t want to be dependent on other people either. Yes, I work with a traditional publisher on my bigger books, but by choice.

Early in the pandemic, I started working on a fable about Stoicism that came out of stories I was telling my then 3-year old son. After I had finished the outline of the idea, I went to my publisher—who had done 10 books with me at that point—to see if they wanted to work on this one. They came back with terms that just made zero financial or creative sense for me. Part of me was frustrated, but I also believed that they had given me a great gift. Now I could do The Boy Who Would Be King myself. 

I did it faster. I did it cheaper. I did it with complete creative control. I even got to print it in the United States. In its first week, it sold more than 5,000 copies without a peep of external marketing or PR, just an email and a social post to my own fans, sold through my own store. It would have been enough to debut on any of the major bestseller lists—but of course, it didn’t appear on any because those lists had no way of tracking it. 

But what do I care? Well, let me tell you. I care about the fact that something I care about got into the hands of people who care about it. 

Isn’t that the whole point of art? Isn’t that the true basis of sustained (and sustainable) success in business?

Fewer middlemen. Fewer impediments. No delays in getting to market.

I did a talk for a fashion company a few weeks ago. When they started, they did 90% of their sales through retailers and 10% direct-to-consumer. That ratio has flipped as they have grown, based on the CEO’s strategic plan. Imagine if that hadn’t been the plan? They would have been destroyed during the pandemic, when physical retail was largely shut down or severely sidelined. And even without something like a pandemic, by going direct-to-consumer, they improved their margins, as well as the quality of their product… because, you know, they actually knew who their customers were and what those people liked. And by cutting out all those middlemen they could take the savings and apply it to the substance of the product itself.

Nobody knows what the future holds, that’s true. I will continue to traditionally publish many of my projects. My publisher helps me do things I can’t do and I help them do things other authors can’t do—which is why we choose to work together. Even right now, I am working on a distribution deal to get The Boy Who Would Be King sold through other stores. 

Still, I’m not sure how anybody goes broke working directly—as much as possible—with the audience and market they serve. Are there efficiencies that come from outside contractors and manufacturers? Of course. Are there great opportunities selling through other people’s platforms or stores or audiences? Obviously.

But if you’re not also cultivating a direct line to your people, what are you doing? Being arrogant and reckless is the answer, in my opinion. You’re gambling that the middleman will always need you, you’re gambling that your intuition will always land with the audience. You’re also giving up autonomy and creative freedom, too.

I’ll conclude with a great passage from The 50th Law by Robert Greene, as it defines the imperative for all creators perfectly:

Your goal must be to break down the distance between you and your audience, the base of your support in life. Some of this distance is mental—it comes from your ego and the need to feel superior. Some of it is physical—the nature of your business tends to shut you off from the public with lawyers of bureaucracy. In any event, what you are seeking is maximum interaction, allowing you to get a feel for people on this inside. You come to thrive off their feedback and criticism. Operating this way, what you will produce will not fail to resonate because it will come from the inside. This deep level of interaction is the source of the most powerful and popular works in culture and business, and a political style that truly connects.

The post This is the Secret to Business and Artistic Success appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

A Practical Philosophy Reading List: A Few Books You Can Actually Use in Real Life

You must know by now: I don’t believe that philosophy is something for the classroom. It’s something that helps you with life. It shouldn’t be complicated. It shouldn’t be confusing. It should be clear, and it should be usable. As Epicurus put it, “Vain is the word of the philosopher which does not heal the suffering of man.”

Some of the best philosophers never wrote anything down; they just lived exemplary lives and provided an example which we can now learn from. That was philosophy. It was practical and it was applicable and it made life better. But thankfully some philosophers were doers and writers, and the books below will help you understand the words that they lived by—and hopefully apply them to your own opportunities, obstacles, and experiences.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

It still strikes me now, some 15 years into reading this book, how lucky we are to even have it. Meditations is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made: the private thoughts of the world’s most powerful man about how to make good on the responsibilities and obligations of his positions. Marcus stopped almost every night to practice a series of spiritual exercises—reminders designed to make him humble, patient, empathetic, generous, and strong in the face of whatever he was dealing with. You cannot read this book and not come away with a phrase or a line that will be helpful to you next time you are in trouble. Read it, and then read it again as often as you can. (Note: I strongly recommend Hays’s translation above all others and you can also read my interview with him here.) And if you end up loving Marcus, try The Inner Citadel and Philosophy as a Way of Life by Pierre Hadot. Hadot is maybe one of the smartest people I’ve ever read. The Inner Citadel is mostly about Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic concept of the self as a fortress. Philosophy as a Way of Life is essentially a book about the wisdom of ancient philosophers cumulatively acquired and how we can use the same exercises in our struggles. Also Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar. There are not many great works of fiction about Stoicism, but this is one. Written from the perspective of Hadrian, the book takes the form of a long letter of advice to a young Marcus Aurelius, who would eventually succeed him as emperor. It’s somber but practical, filled with beautiful and moving passages from a man near death, looking to prepare someone for one of the most difficult jobs in the world.

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca 

Seneca, like Marcus, was a powerful man in Rome. He was also a great writer and from the looks of it, a wise man who dispensed great advice to his friends. Much of that advice survives in the form of letters, guiding them and now us through problems with grief, wealth, poverty, success, failure, education and so many other things. Seneca was a Stoic as well, but like Marcus, he was practical and borrowed liberally from other schools. As he quipped to a friend, “I don’t care about the author if the line is good.” That is the ethos of practical philosophy—it doesn’t matter from whom or when it came from, what matters is if it helps you in your life, if only for a second. Reading Seneca will do that. (Other collections of his thoughts are great too. Penguin’s On the Shortness of Life is excellent, and if you’re looking for an audiobook of Seneca, try Tim Ferriss’ edition of The Tao of Seneca: Letters from a Stoic Master.) I also recommend The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca by Emily Wilson. Wilson’s translations of Seneca are excellent and her insights are provocative. Must read for any student of history or philosophy. (Also, read the interview we did with Emily for DailyStoic.com.)

Enchiridion by Epictetus 

Unlike those two powerful Stoics, Epictetus overcame incredible adversity. A slave who was banished from Rome, he eventually became a philosopher and opened a small school. Notes from his classes survive to us in what is now called the Enchiridion, which translates as a “small manual or a handbook,” and it is exactly that. It is the perfect introduction to Epictetus as it is packed with short Stoic maxims and principles. Unlike both Seneca and Marcus, Epictetus is somewhat more difficult to read, and I recommend beginning with those two if you haven’t yet read them. The next step would be Epictetus’ Discourses, which are much longer and deserve a bigger commitment. And for more related to Epictetus, you can look into the short autobiography Courage Under Fire by James Stockdale.

That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic by Musonius Rufus

Unfortunately, most of the works of the Stoics not named Epictetus, Seneca or Marcus Aurelius have been lost to history. Others are poorly translated or organized. Musonius Rufus has been neglected for both these reasons, but this new book is a great step forward into making him accessible to modern readers. He’s very quotable and very direct—tellingly, the opening essay is That There Is No Need of Giving Many Proofs for One Problem. His most provocative belief in first-century Rome? That women deserved an education as much as men. Two of Musonius’s 21 surviving lectures (That Women Too Should Study Philosophy and Should Daughters Receive the Same Education as Sons?) come down strongly in favor of treating women well and of their capabilities as philosophers. He wrote movingly on companionship, love, and marriage (What Is the Chief End of Marriage and Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy?). And he’s perfectly suited to this moment: Musonius was exiled at least three, possibly four times, so he knew about being locked down. He knew about losing your freedom. He knew that all a philosopher could do was respond well—bravely, boldly, patiently—to what life threw at us. That’s what we should be doing now.

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus by Publius Syrus

A Syrian slave in the first century BCE, Publius Syrus is a fountain of quick, helpful wisdom that you cannot help but recall and apply to your life. “Rivers are easiest to cross at their source.” “Want a great empire? Rule over yourself.” “Divide the fire and you will sooner put it out.” “Always shun that which makes you angry.” Those are a few I remember off the top of my head. But all of them are good and worthy of re-reading in times of difficulty (or boredom or in preparation of a big event).

Fragments by Heraclitus

The Stoics, especially Marcus, loved to draw from Heraclitus, a mystic, ephemeral philosopher whose beautiful fragments are eminently quotable. My favorite line from Heraclitus is his line about how no man steps in the same river twice—because it is not the same river and he is not the same man. Another favorite: “Applicants for wisdom / do what I have done: / inquire within.” And of course, his most direct and timeless remark: “Character is fate.” If you’re looking for philosophy that is poetic but also practical, give Heraclitus a chance.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

A man is sent to a concentration camp and finds some way for good to come of it. He uses it to fashion a set of principles for life: we have little control over our circumstances, complete control over our attitude, and the ability to make meaning out of the things which happen to us. In Frankl’s case, we are lucky that he was a brilliant psychologist and writer and managed to turn all of this into one of the most important books of the 20th century. I think constantly of his line about the man who asks, “What is the meaning of life?” The answer is that you don’t get to ask the question; life is the one who asks and we must reply with our actions. I was stunned to find that a new (lost) book from him was published in 2020, with a beautiful title worthy of a daily mantra, “Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything.” 

Essays by Michel de Montaigne

Montaigne was deeply influenced by some of the books I mentioned above. He was the epitome of Heraclitus’s line about “inquiring within,” so much so that he spent basically the entire second part of his life asking himself (and other people) all sorts of interesting questions and then exploring the answers in the form of short, provocative essays. (A favorite: Whether he was playing with his cat, or whether he was the toy to his cat.) These essays are always good for a helpful thought or two—be it about death, “other” people, animals, sex, or anything. Also, read Stefan Zweig’s Montaigne. I think it is one of the most beautiful biographies ever written. It’s a book about a man who turned inward as the world was tearing itself to pieces… written by a man forced to do the very same thing some 350 years later. It is timely and important. 

Nature and Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

While Montaigne’s essays are good for making us think, Emerson’s essays make us act. They remind us that we are ultimately responsible for our own life, for making ethical choices and for fulfilling our potential. Unlike most classic writers, Emerson embodies that uniquely American mix of drive and ambition (but in a healthy way). If you have not read Emerson, you should. If you have—and you remember fondly his reminders about recognizing our own genius in the work of others, or his reminders to experience the beauty of nature—that counts as philosophy. See how easy it is? Also, read Walden by Emerson’s friend and protégé Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau did what everyone who has ever lived a normal life has considered doing at least once: he ran into the woods. He retreated into solitude on Walden Pond where he built himself a tiny cabin, in which he lived alone for two years. Thoreau immortalized those two years and the lessons he learned in Walden, concluding with why you can put to bed any considerations of escaping to the woods.

The Art of Happiness by Epicurus

Epicurus was a rival to the Stoics… and today, both schools rival each other for the title of most misunderstood school of philosophy. Epicureanism is not hedonism. In fact, Epicurus preaches restraint and self-discipline. “The pleasant life is not the product” of drinking and sex, Epicurus said; “On the contrary, it is the result of sober thinking—namely investigation of the reasons for every act of choice and aversion and elimination of those false ideas about the gods and death which are the chief source of mental disturbances.” That being said, Epicurus was much more explicit about joy and happiness than Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. The Epicureans were less concerned about duty and honor and other earthly obligations—they were more Eastern in that way. They were also pithier, in my opinion. Which is probably why Seneca joked, after quoting Epicurus, “I don’t mind quoting a bad author if the line is good.” Anyway, read this… and it’s probably OK to skip the stuff about atoms. 

Plutarch’s Lives and Plutarch’s Moralia

Is there anyone better than Plutarch? No, there is not. I think he’s the best, most interesting, most accessible biographer to ever do it. There’s a reason he was the favorite of everyone from Napoleon to Alexander Hamilton right on down to people today. Funny enough, his grandson was one of Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy teachers. Anyways, I read mostly from his Lives of the Romans this month—Cato the Elder, Coriolanus, etc. He’s hard to beat. If you haven’t read Plutarch, do it! Try Penguin Classics; or the new little translation How to Be a Leader from Princeton Press is also good. 

The Tao Te Ching by Laozi

It’s fascinating that both Epictetus and the Tao Te Ching at one point use the same analogy: The mind is like muddy water. To have clarity, we must be steady and let it settle down. Only then can we see. Only then do we have transparency. Whoever you are and whatever you’re doing, you would benefit from having more of this clarity. The Tao Te Ching is made up of 81 short chapters, a mixture of poetry and prose aimed at giving you that clarity. Also read Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy by Philip J. Ivanhoe. Don’t dismiss it over the boring title! The book is an amazing anthology of the best of Eastern Chinese philosophy (most of it pre-Zen Buddhism). I folded so many pages reading it that I dreaded having to transfer my notes to notecards. It took forever, but it was worth it. This is a great introduction to Confucius, the Tao Te Ching, and other important texts. I also like Buddha by Karen Armstrong. It’s scholarly without being pedantic, inspiring without being mystical. Armstrong is actually a former Catholic nun (who teaches at a college of Judaism), so I loved the diverse and unique perspective of the author. And Armstrong never misses the point of a good biography: to teach the reader how to live through the life of an interesting, complicated but important person. 

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel 

I was sitting back taking notes after my reading of both these books when my wife yelled “HOGS!” I rushed downstairs, grabbed my rifle, and as I walked slowly through the trees towards the small pack of wild hogs, I practiced both the breathing exercises in the book and the art of letting the shot fall from the weapon (rather than being forced). It was a rather perfect moment—and so too was the delicious boar sausage I had made afterwards. Of course, Master Kenzo would say that whether the shots hit their mark (three of four did) is irrelevant. What mattered was the moment and the practice. Because this is ultimately not a book about archery, but about zen, and the mastery of the soul. Also read The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph by Shawn Green. It’s a great, accessible book about peace and peak performance that doesn’t hit you over the head with Buddhism, yoga, meditation or any of that. It’s about how Shawn Green struggled as a major league baseball player and through repetitive simple practice turned himself into one of the best home run hitters in the game. And Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball by Sadaharu Oh. As a testament to my embarrassing American-ness, I hadn’t heard of Sadaharu Oh until a baseball coach I know mentioned him (and therefore didn’t know he was a better home run hitter than Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds). It turns out that in addition to being an incredible athlete, he’s also a beautiful writer and storyteller. I’ve recommended and written about Musashi before—well, Sadaharu actually designed his infamous swing around the teaching of Musashi (famously practicing swinging at pitches with a sword). This book was great. It’s a memoir more than it is a book about baseball, so even if you don’t like sports, I promise you will get a lot out of it.

—

And one final recommendation…I’ve talked a bit about Marcus Aurelius here and why we should study the LIVES of the Stoics. Well, one more short read for you: The Boy Who Would Be King.

It’s one of the most incredible stories in all of history. A young boy, out of nowhere, is chosen to be the emperor of most of the known world. How did he do it? What did he need to learn? Who taught him? What do his experiences teach us? I answer those questions in my first illustrated fable, which I’m so excited to tell you is available for preorder: The Boy Who Would Be King. It’s an ageless story of Stoicism… for all ages… and it happens to be printed right here in the US. You can preorder it directly here, and there are signed copies as well.

The post A Practical Philosophy Reading List: A Few Books You Can Actually Use in Real Life appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

100 (Short) Rules for a Better Life

In his essay On the Happy Life, Seneca makes an extended list of rules for living a good life. Because it is everyone’s wish to live better, he says, but we are often in the dark on how to do so.

Except, we’re not…since so many people have struggled in the dark before us and their experiences create light.

With that in mind, here are 100 rules that have helped me live better based on my own experience, the advice I’ve been given and the things I’ve studied. Your mileage may vary, but hopefully some of these will help you in your own pursuit of living a good life. And in case you want to read further on any of the rules, I linked to where I’ve written about them in depth.

1. Wake up early.

2. Ask: Am I using this technology, or is it using me?

3. Forget about outcomes—focus on making a little progress every day.

4. Say no (a lot).

5. Read something every day.

6. Don’t watch television news.

7. Comparison = unhappiness

8. Journal.

9. Strenuous exercise every single day.

10. Character is fate.

11. Practice the law of action, not attraction.

12. Get up when you fall/fail.

13. Prove your philosophy more than you talk about it (and that’s not easy).

14. Don’t argue with reality (facts) you don’t like.

15. It’s not about routine but about practices.

16. Follow the canvas strategy.

17. Do a kindness each day.

18. Every situation has two handles—choose to grab the “smooth handle.”

19. Success = autonomy.

20. Pick up trash when you see it.

21. If you want to be good and feel good, you have to do good. There is no escaping this.

22. Deliberately think about death. Every day, multiple times a day.

23. “Trust the process.”

24. Do your job—whatever it is—well, because how you do anything is how you do everything.

25. Always choose “Alive Time.”

26. What’s a book that changed your life? is a question you can ask to change your life… if you read the books.

27. Forget “quality time”; embrace garbage time.

28. Do the verb, rather than being the noun.

29. Take walks.

30. The present is enough.

31. Fuel the habit bonfire.

32. Have a philosophy.

33. Make time for philosophy.

33. Don’t just read—you must read to lead.

34. Collect little sayings about how to live (keep a commonplace book).

35. Stop looking for shortcuts. Do the work.

36. Build an Inner Citadel.

37. Let it go—those who wrong you wrong themselves.

38. Spend time with old people.

39. When evaluating an opportunity, ask yourself: What will teach me the most?

40. Purpose, not passion. (One is about you, the other about something bigger than you.)

41. Have kids. (Being a parent is your most important job).

42. Read biographies—the best way to study the lives of the greats.

43. Don’t try to beat other people, try to be the only one doing what you’re doing (“Competition is for losers”).

44. Know why you do what you do.

45. Be strict with yourself and forgiving of others.

46. Don’t post pictures of your kids on social—they are not props for validation.

47. Practice the art of negative visualization.

48. Cut toxic people out of your life—life is too short.

49. Before starting any project, have a “draw-down period.”

50. “If you’ve been blessed, be a blessing.”

51. Don’t wait until later, do the thing now.

52. No day without some deep work.

53. Put yourself up for review (Interrogate yourself).

54. Ask yourself: How does this action I’m about to take affect other people?

55. Don’t take the money (see “success = autonomy”).

56. Always stay a student.

57. Break things down to see what they really are.

58. “If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.” — Nassim Taleb

59. Undersell and overdeliver.

60. You must tame your temper.

61. Never recline your seat on an airplane. (See also: “How do my actions affect others?”)

62. Belief in yourself is overrated. Generate evidence.

63. Never check the price on a book. Just buy it if you think you’ll read it.

64. Good things happen in bookstores.

65. See what you can learn from every person you meet—even people you don’t like.

66. Set a bedtime.

67. A successful marriage is worth more than a successful career.

68. “Go straight to the seat of intelligence.” — Marcus Aurelius

69. Human being, not human doing.

70. Amor fati.

71. Go the f*ck to sleep.

72. “Always say less than necessary.” — Robert Greene

73. Never take a phone call sitting down. Go outside and go for a walk.

74. Champion other people’s work (see my reading list email)

75. Make commitments—short, regular deadlines that you have to meet.

76. Animals make life better.

77. “Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those who you are capable of improving.” — Seneca

78. See the beauty in the mundane.

79. Print out good advice and put it right in front of your desk, or wherever you work everyday.

80. Remember: Nobody is thinking about you. They’re too busy thinking about themselves.

81. Don’t just read books, re-read books.

82. Make haste, slowly.

83. Don’t talk about projects until you’re finished.

84. Go into the wilderness.

85. Try to see opportunities where others see obstacles.

86. Inner scorecard vs. outer scorecard.

87. Have unrelated hobbies.

88. You don’t solve problems by running away. Travel will not make you happy. (“Wherever you go, there you are.”)

89. Seek out challenges.

90. “Whenever you are offended, understand that you are complicit in taking offense.” — Epictetus

91. Think progress, not perfection.

92. “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’” — Marcus Aurelius

93. Lighten up. Relax. (Whatever it is, you’re probably taking it too seriously.)

94. Focus on what you can control.

95. Wrap up each day as if it were the end of your life.

96. Live an interesting life.

97. Value the Four Virtues.

98. The obstacle is the way.

99. Ego is the enemy.

100. Stillness is the key.

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Fight to Be Who Philosophy Wants You to Be

Like all of us, there was a part of Marcus Aurelius that wanted to be good and a part that inclined towards something worse.

He had ideals, he had a temper. He had ambitions—some of which were selfless and some of which were selfish. He made commitments—as a father, a spouse, a leader—and then he also had urges and drives as a human being. There was a part of him that was lazy and a part of him that was hardworking. He was a good person and then he was given absolute power… which we know has the incredible power to corrupt.

Martin Luther King Jr. would talk about how each of us has a Northern and Southern soul, and that these two halves, like America for most of its history, are in a war with each other. And if you know anything about the life of Martin Luther King Jr, you know that as great and magnificent and wise and brave and just as he was, there was a baser part of him, too. And these parts are in conflict with each other.

This was true for Marcus Aurelius. It’s true for you too.

In one of the notes Marcus writes to himself in Meditations, he captures the struggle perfectly. “Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you,” he writes. Lately, I’ve taken to signing books with my own spin on it and I have the same thing written on a notecard on my desk: “Fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be.”

I guess the first step in winning that fight is defining our objectives. After all, the North won the Civil War because Lincoln and Grant actually had a strategy. So, who exactly are we fighting to be? What does philosophy want from us?

Who was that person Marcus was fighting to be? Who was he actively practicing his philosophy to become?

Marcus answers this later in Meditations, where he lists “epithets for the self,” which include:

Upright. 

Modest. 

Straightforward. 

Sane. 

Cooperative.

We could add the Four Stoic Virtues to that list too:

Courage.

Justice.

Temperance.

Wisdom.

That’s who philosophy wants us to be. That’s who we want to be–who we know we’re supposed to be. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is living up to those epithets. Epictetus, one of Marcus’ favorite philosophers, said, “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

How do you do that? How do you embody your philosophy, especially when it’s tempting not to? I’ve found some ways in my own life, and in studying the lives of the Stoics.

The first: it’s important to have touchstones. I carry this coin in my pocket. The front features four elements representing the Four Virtues: a lion (Courage), a man sprinkling water into a jug of wine (Temperance), a set of scales (Justice), and an owl (Wisdom). It was actually manufactured at an old mint that first made the AA sobriety chips. Bill Westman’s advice when he created them was to carry one “in your pocket or purse and when temptation is great, reach into your pocket and feel the medallion and remember your struggle to get this far.”

I like that. When I reach into my pocket and feel the coin, it reminds me who I want to be. Those are the traits I want to embody in this decision that I’m making, this opportunity I’m pursuing, this risk I’m about to take, this stressful and difficult moment I’m in.

Next, Seneca said we have to choose ourselves a Cato. He says, “Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model.” Choose someone who you want to be like, and then constantly ask yourself: what would they do in this situation?

In Seneca’s last moment, when Nero comes to kill him, it’s Cato that Seneca channels. It’s where he gets his strength. Even though Seneca had fallen short of his writings in a lot of ways, in the moment it mattered most, he drew on Cato and became as great as philosophy could have ever hoped for him to be.

Without a ruler, Seneca said, you can’t make crooked straight. This is what I was trying to write about in Lives of the Stoics. I wanted to show how the Stoics actually lived, so that we can try to make crooked straight against that. The quotes and the writings are one thing… I like to have a model. What would Marcus do here? What would Epictetus think? How would Cato have responded?  When we are trying to fight to be who philosophy wants us to be, it’s good to have somebody who embodied that, who lived up to it, who we can think about in those situations.

Another important part of this is stopping to reflect on your progress. If you’re just winging it through life, if you’re just going day-to-day, how are going to know if you are actually getting closer to who you want to be? For Marcus Aurelius, Meditations was his hand-to-hand spiritual sparring partner. It’s in that journal where we see Marcus trying to become who philosophy was trying to make him. He was writing in these pages every day about where he was falling short, about what he could do better, and reminding himself what his philosophy taught and wanted from him. We see his struggles. We see sometimes the Northern part of his soul won. But other times, the Southern part won. We see him fighting to get back to the Northern part, picking himself up when he fails.

This is important. It’s an ongoing war that you’re fighting. And it can’t just be in your head. Epictetus said, “Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand—write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.” That’s what journaling is. That’s how I think of journaling: it’s me actively fighting to be the person that philosophy wants me to be. So each morning, usually after a long walk, I go to my office and pull out three small notebooks. In the first one—a small blue gold leafed notebook—I write one sentence about the day that just passed. In the next, a black moleskine, I journal two quick pages about yesterday’s workout (how far I ran or swam), what work I did, any notable occurrences, and some lines about what I am grateful for, what I want to get better at, and where I am succeeding. And then finally, I pick up The Daily Stoic Journal, which was created around the Stoic methodology of preparing for your day in the morning and reviewing your day in the evening.

This is what Seneca did. In a letter to his brother, he said he waited for his wife to go to sleep before he journaled on a few questions: Did I do things I said I was going to do? Did I hold myself to the standard I said I was going to hold myself to? How can I be better tomorrow? He wasn’t doing this for career purposes. He was interrogating and analyzing and holding himself accountable and looking at what he could do better and where he’s not looking up to the philosophy.

These exercises are great, but there’s one other important thing: It’s easy to be the person philosophy wants you to be in your own little bubble. But can you do it in the real world? Can you do it when the world is fighting back against you?

It would have been easy for Marcus to just focus on his studies. He knew that more was demanded.  “Throw away your books,” Marcus wrote. Get active in life’s purpose now, he said. The Stoics talked derisively about the so-called “pen-and-ink philosophers”—the academic philosophers, the sophists. When Marcus is fighting to be the person philosophy tried to make him, it’s on the ultimate testing ground. It’s as the Emperor, the ruler of the known world. It’s against this force that never before hadn’t succeeded in corrupting absolutely. He’s not just talking about philosophy in the classroom. He’s having to actually live it. He’s actively engaged in the world.

If the purpose of Stoicism is to get to a place of equanimity and peace and poise and self-discipline, sure you can do that by retreating to a monastery. I get some semblance of that at my farm outside of town. But if I disengage from the world and retreat to my fantasy world, I’m not being the person Stoicism wants me to be. Stoicism says we have to be active—we have to participate in politics, we have to try to make the world a better place, we have to serve the common good where we can. You can’t run away from these things. The battle can’t just be an academic one. It can’t just be a battle in your mind. It has to be a battle you’re actively engaged in—in the world, in your job, in the community, in your neighborhood, in your country, in the time and place that you live.

We know what philosophy wants us to be—Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Courageous. Temperate. Just. Wise. We know who are inspirations are—we have a Cato, a Marcus Aurelius, a grandfather, a grandmother, a great athlete, a leader in your field. You know who you are trying to be.

The reality is: we will fall short. We all will. The important thing is that we pick ourselves back up when we do. As one Japanese proverb says: fall down seven times, get up eight. Marcus said it too. “When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,” he wrote, “revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.” You’re going to have an impulse to give in. Your temper is going to get the best of you. Fear will get the best of you. Ambition might lead you astray. But you always have the ability to realize that that is not who you want to be, that is not what you were put here to do, that is not who your philosophy wants you to be.

That’s when you fight your way back.

When you look at the great armies of history, it wasn’t victory after victory after victory. There’s a victory, then a setback, then a loss, then a moment where it looked like it was all going to go sideways. But they kept going. They didn’t quit.

That’s the real lesson: this is a lifelong fight we are in. Marcus even talks about it towards the end of Meditations. He asks himself, How old are you? How much longer are you going to keep falling short? When are you going to get this together? It was the battle of his life. Up until the day he died, he was struggling with this. But he always kept fighting.

And that’s what we have to do. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s why I’ve taken to signing it in books. Fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be. Fight for those virtues. Fight against your Southern soul—it will win if you don’t give it everything you got.

I’ll leave you with one final reminder from Marcus:

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.

It’s just interesting to think that he was most worried about attacks not from the outside… but from the inside.

But it makes sense. Most failures in life, most evil, is not done to us but by us. We are our own worst enemies. The Southern soul is our worst enemy. You have to fight it. You have to fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be.

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