Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 17

10 Ways to Find Stillness in Turbulent Times

Perhaps it takes something as crazy as the world right now to understand what that word stillness means. Intuitively, instinctively, when we hear it—especially right now—we know the importance of stillness. 

The quiet. The confidence. The gratitude and happiness. The beauty. The ability to step back and reflect. Being steady while everything spins around you. Acting without frenzy. Hearing only what needs to be heard. 

As Rome was being scourged by plague and war, Marcus Aurelius wrote about being “like the rock that the waves keep crashing over,” the one that “stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.” “Shrug it all off,” he writes, “wipe it clean—every annoyance and distraction—and reach utter stillness.”

YES! 

But how?

Thankfully, there are thousands of years of teachings about how to get there, proven exercises that will help you keep steady, disciplined, focused, at peace, and able to access your full capabilities at any time, in any place, despite any distraction and every difficulty. 

They come from across all the wisdom of the ancient world. I detail all of them in my book Stillness Is the Key, but here are 10 I adapted specifically for the crazy times we currently find ourselves in. These 10 ways to achieve stillness will work… but only if you work them.

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Stop Watching the News. The number-one thing to filter out if you want more equanimity in your life? The news! Epictetus had it right: “You become what you give your attention to… If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.” He also said that if we wish to improve, we must be content to be clueless on extraneous matters— the chatter, the idiots, the breaking gossip and the trivia that everyone else obsesses over. Not only does the news cost us our peace of mind, but it actually prevents us from creating real change, right now. Being informed is important… watching the news in real time is not how you get there. If you’d turned off the news in the US in March, what would have missed? You’re still supposed to wear a mask, it’s still wrong to be a racist, still wrong to loot or burn, incompetent leaders are still incompetent. But if you’d spent that time productively working, what could you have accomplished? And how much less anxious would you be?

Read Books. When I look at the stack of books I have managed to get through since the pandemic began seriously in America in March, not only do I feel fondness for the hours spent in those pages, but I know I am better off for what I learned. Dorothy Day, the Catholic journalist and social activist, wrote in her diary in 1942, “Put away your daily paper… and spend time reading.” She meant books. Read big, smart, wonderful books. Read the works of writers who took more time thinking about what they write than their readers do. Read what a writer poured their heart into, not what tries to pull yours out. Read what’s timeless, not timely. If you’re stressed, stop whatever you’re doing and sit down with a book. You’ll find yourself calming down. You’ll get absorbed into a different world. William Osler, one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins University, told aspiring medical students that when chemistry or anatomy distressed their soul, to “seek peace in the great pacifier, Shakespeare.” It doesn’t have to be plays—any great literature will do. Books are a way to get stillness on demand.

Journal. According to her father Otto, Anne Frank didn’t write in her journal every day, but she always wrote when she was upset or dealing with a problem. One of her best and most insightful lines must have come on a particularly difficult day. “Paper,” she said, “has more patience than people.” I journal each morning as a way of starting the day off fresh—I put my baggage down on the page so that I don’t have to carry it to meetings or to breakfast with my family. I start the day with stillness by pouring out what is not still into my journal. It’s a frustrating world out there, and Anne Frank is right: Paper is more patient than people. Don’t forget that there’s no right way or wrong way to journal. The point is just to do it. Whether you’re brand-new to the concept of journaling or you’ve journaled in the past and fallen out of practice, this ultimate guide to journaling will tell you everything you need to know to help you make journaling one of the best things you do.

Go for a Walk (or a Run). We are an ambulatory species and often the best way to find stillness—in our hearts and in our heads—is to get up and out on our feet. Personally, I’ve run and walked close to 1,300 miles since lockdown started. It’s not about burning calories or getting your heart rate up. On the contrary, it’s not about anything. It is instead just a manifestation, an embodiment of the concepts of presence, of detachment, of emptying the mind, of noticing and appreciating the beauty of the world around you. Walk away from the thoughts that need to be walked away from; walk toward the ones that have now appeared. On a good walk, the mind is not completely blank. It can’t be—otherwise you might trip over a root or get hit by a car or a bicyclist. The point is not, as in traditional meditation, to push every thought or observation from your mind. The point is to see what’s around you. The mind might be active while you do this, but it is still. It’s a different kind of thinking, a healthier kind if you do it right. A study at New Mexico Highlands University has found that the force from our footsteps can increase the supply of blood to the brain. Researchers at Stanford have found that walkers perform better on tests that measure “creative divergent thinking” during and after their walks. A study out of Duke University found that walking could be as effective a treatment for major depression in some patients as medication. When you inevitably find yourself a little stuck or frustrated today—go for a walk. Or better yet, go for a run.

Enjoy the Simple Pleasures. If you can teach yourself to be grateful for and to enjoy the ordinary pleasures, you will be happier than just about everyone. A bowl of cereal. A good sunset. A nice conversation with a friend. These are the moments to treasure. We don’t need to become emperor to feel good. We don’t need fancy restaurants. We don’t need to travel to exotic locations. We have so much available to us right now. The only catch is that you have to be here for it. You have to be present. You have to be grateful. You have to understand that every day you wake up alive and well is wonderful.  

Build a Routine. When things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it’s falling apart, we need to create structure. Eisenhower famously said that freedom was properly defined as the opportunity for self-discipline, and so it is with disorder—it’s an opportunity to create order. Without a disciplined schedule, chaos and complacency and confusion move in. What was I going to do? What do I wear? What should I eat? What should I do first? What should I do after that? What sort of work should I do? Should I scramble to address this problem or rush to put out this fire? That’s not stillness, that’s torture. But when you routinize, disturbances give you less trouble. They’re boxed out—by the order and clarity you built. We need that order and clarity, especially now. (If you need some ideas on how to structure your day, here’s the routine Marcus Aurelius followed every day.) 

Seek Solitude. Randall Stutman, who for decades has been the behind-the-scenes advisor for many of the biggest CEOs and leaders on Wall Street, once studied how several hundred senior executives of major corporations recharged in their downtime. The answers were things like swimming, sailing, long-distance cycling, listening quietly to classical music, scuba diving, riding motorcycles, and fly fishing. All these activities, he noticed, had one thing in common: an absence of voices. Bill Gates schedules “think weeks” where he goes off by himself and just reads and thinks. I like to do my thinking while running and swimming and taking walks—and many of my book ideas have come from these activities. And how wonderful have the last few months been with fewer meetings? Fewer events? With quiet time to yourself? To think? To learn? To reconnect with what matters?  

Zoom Out. Marcus Aurelius wanted us “to bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.” That’s not to say this problem isn’t serious. That’s not to say we aren’t facing real troubles. Of course we are. But we can turn down the volume of our anxiety and fear when we realize that this is just history unfolding before us. When we get overwhelmed or puffed up, we must find relief in remembering that none of this is new. That, in fact, this pattern of disease is nauseatingly familiar. It’s a pattern that has repeated itself like a fractal across history. Indeed, we could be talking about the “Antonine Plague” that killed millions of people during Marcus Aurelius’s reign, the Black Death, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, or the cholera pandemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, just as easily as we are today talking about COVID-19. As Marcus would say, all we’d have to do is change a few dates and names. All of this is running according to a tired script as old as time. Don’t let it get you down. This, Seneca believed, is the way to make all our problems, even the really vexing and painful ones, loosen their grip on us and seem less severe as a result. All you have to do, he says, is this: “Draw further back and laugh.” 

Make Time for Hobbies. “If action tires your body but puts your heart at ease,” Xunzi said, “do it.” Winston Churchill loved to paint and lay bricks on his country estate; his predecessor William Gladstone loved to chop down trees by hand. Even Jesus liked to go fishing with his friends! Assembling a puzzle, struggling with a guitar lesson, sitting on a quiet morning in a hunting blind, steadying a rifle or a bow while we wait for a deer, ladling soup in a homeless shelter, a long swim, lifting heavy weights—these are all great hobbies. One of the lovely trends I’ve been seeing is people baking bread, canning jams and pickles, and making food for friends and neighbors. They are rediscovering that life is made for living, not just for working. They are discovering the joy of simple activity. Mine are running and swimming and working on my farm. The last five evenings, my four-year-old and I went fishing for a few minutes after dinner. Engaged in these activities, my body is busy but my mind is open. My heart is, too.

Do Something for the Greater Good. The phrase “common good” appears more than 80 times in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. He said a good life is simply about moving from one unselfish action to another—“Only there,” he said, can we find “delight and stillness.” If we want to be good and feel good, we have to do good. Remember the Boy Scout slogan: Do a good turn daily. It can be big, or it can be small. It can be picking up trash you find on the ground or rushing to the scene of an accident. Doing good creates spiritual stillness. It makes the world a better place. Especially in a time where we seem to have lost our community-mindedness. Instinctually, overwhelmingly, everyone is now focused on themselves and their immediate unit. Gone is the spirit of the common good that Marcus talked so much about. Replacing it is anti-vaxxing, anti-masks, people having COVID parties so they can get the virus and be done with the hassle, the immuno-compromised be damned. Don’t let the modern spirit of selfishness infect you. Instead, focus on remembering what we are here. We are here for each other. We are part of something bigger than ourselves, a greater good to which we all owe a duty, above and beyond our own selfish concerns and desires. There is no one more still and admirable than the person who takes that duty seriously—and no one less still and admirable than the person who blows it off. 

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Stillness has been the secret weapon of the Stoics and the Buddhists, the Christians, the followers of Confucius, Epicurus, and so many others for thousands of years for a reason. Because it can help us thrive in a world that’s spinning faster than ever. 

Stillness is the key to the good life, whatever that looks like for you. It’s the key to career success, to happiness, to enduring adversity, to appreciating the wonders of existence. You know you want more of it. You know how special it is. We have all felt its power.

Now go get more of it.

It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by what’s happening in the world, but there is no greatness without stillness. It’s why the Stoics, the Buddhists, the Christians all talked about it as an essential virtue. My latest book, Stillness Is the Key debuted #1 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists and is a formula for finding calm (and focus) amidst the din of everyday life. Check it out now.

The post 10 Ways to Find Stillness in Turbulent Times appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

Welcome to Life. There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions.

One thing this pandemic has shown is that people have a problem facing facts. 

I don’t mean facts in the sense of the scientific data, although that’s clearly a problem as well judging by the litany of conspiracy theories that have become acceptable even in polite company. 

I mean “facts” in the more colloquial sense—of coming to terms with reality and accepting it on reality’s terms. Just look at COVID-19.

We’ve taken a merciless, apolitical, indifferent but pretty well-understood virus, scientifically speaking, and turned it into a divisive, partisan argument. Every molecule seems subject to debate, because we have somehow come to believe that what we think about it, or our own personal needs in relation to it, have some relevance to its airborne spread from person to person, and its ability to kill with ruthlessness and painful efficiency. 

Perhaps nothing captures this impotent rage better than a tweet I saw from Laura Ingraham…

OK, Karen, would you like to speak to COVID-19’s manager?

Back here in reality where the rest of us live, it is an inescapable truth of human existence that there are some crises and problems so bad that they force those affected by them to live with the uncertainty that the crises create. They force us to stop doing things we’d like to do. They cost us things we really can’t afford. 

But, alas, there is no degree of forcefulness to an opinion nor staggering amount of need that can change those facts. 

Imagine someone living in America in 1942. No one could have told them when they’d be able to travel to Europe to see their aging parents again. No one could have told them when the rationing would stop. No one would have been able to say when their son would be released from the Army. No one could promise them that they were safe in their homes and would ultimately survive. The world war was a fact, and everybody had to deal with it. Like it or not. 

Life is like this. It’s uncertain. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t really care whether we really want or need something. It doesn’t care about us at all, really, it just is. 

Many years ago, I wrote a piece about our tendency to think that we could “vote on reality,” and how the internet was designed to encourage this impulse. From Twitter to Facebook to blogging, the platforms of social media are designed around the insidious idea that your opinion about things changes what they unflinchingly are. 

I think this is what Foster the People is singing about in their song, “The Truth”:

Well an absolute measure won’t change with opinion

no matter how hard you try

It’s an immovable thing

We are seduced by the idea that not liking some element of reality is powerful enough to will it to be different. That a simple objection is more powerful than objectivity. Of course, the Stoics had no time for this. Facts are facts, they say. Fate or Fortune or death have no care for your opinion. 

They were like Civil War historian James McPherson who, responding to Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 claim that European allies seemed to care more about tiny Northern defeats than his major victories, said simply: “Unreasonable it may have been, but it was a reality.” 

When we talk about facing facts, we are in part talking about making the hard choices that life demands—which usually means doing the harder thing. “At the top,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson once observed about the presidency, “there are no easy choices. All are between evils, the consequences of which are hard to judge.” He meant that all the simple, easy stuff gets handled by people lower down on the chain. The obvious stuff never makes it to the Oval Office. And so it is with life, too—the easy stuff is never much of an issue. There’s never any uncertainty about the things that don’t require any sacrifice and pain. 

I think he also means that it’s not the choices that are hard. In fact, the right thing is often obvious. It’s the consequences and the costs of that choice that are hard. It’s the complicated, difficult, unpleasant stuff that we adults end up having to wrestle with on the other side of our decisions that make the decisions seem so difficult. 

In reality, when it comes to a pandemic or a bankruptcy or a failing marriage, the choices are easy to the extent that they are simple and clear. It’s this or this. It’s A or B or C. The difficulty comes with the hard facts that must be swallowed as a consequence of picking one of those easy choices. Don’t you dare think that Acheson, when he said the consequences were hard to judge, was excusing leaders who preferred their own fantasies or wishful thinking to the hard realities of geopolitics.  

I see this with some of my friends, now considering whether to send their kids back to school. Even though most of the advice is against it; even though they regularly go overboard protecting their families from all sorts of much less dangerous things than a pandemic; even though they are otherwise good people who care about how their actions affect others—here they are saying something to the effect of “Well, it’s just so hard to know what the right thing is.”

Or my favorite: “How much longer can this go on?”

Truth goes on as long as it’s true!

What we’re saying when we throw up our hands at something like reopening the schools is, “I have a sense that I’m not making the right decision, but if I act bewildered, it excuses me from the consequences.” Or they are saying, “I get that generally this is a really bad idea, but my specific circumstances should be exempt from the otherwise unfavorable facts because it hasn’t been a problem in my town yet and the consequences of the other choice are more difficult than I’m comfortable with.” No! 

How has the track record for not listening to expert opinion gone in the United States over the last five months? Oh, right, it’s created one of the worst coronavirus breakouts in the world, one that has seen US citizens banned from international travel en masse, and has mayors from Texas to New York City requesting extra freezer trucks to support their overflowing morgues. We’re zeroing in on 200,000 dead! 67 9/11s. Four Vietnams. Eight times more than the American Revolution. (And the fact that lots of people also die of heart disease is not a response. They are dying of that too.) The country that, for a century, was called to rescue other countries from natural disasters is now the unlikely recipient of pity from New Zealand, Italy and Denmark. People love to talk about American exceptionalism—well, we are being exceptionally stupid.

And so we are now entering another phase of the crisis that will undeniably be shaped by people who, instead of dealing honestly and critically with the reality of the situation, are letting all sorts of other factors shape what they’re seeing (note: obviously the real blame lies with the feckless leaders who put them in the position in the first place). No sane person would look at a country with tens of thousands of new cases and 1,000+ deaths a day and think: “I should probably send my kid to hang out with thousands of other kids in small rooms, right?” Yet here we are, talking about how life has to go back to normal sometime…

But kids need school! you reply. 

I am reminded of a conversation between Col. Harry G. Summers and a North Vietnamese colonel after the Vietnam War. Summers pointed out that the US was never beaten on the battlefield. The man replied, “That is true. It is also irrelevant.”

We need a lot of things. My kids certainly do. But the facts come first, so we’re staying home. Not because we want to, but because, in truth, there is no choice. It’s why my businesses remain closed too. 

There is not much upside in a pandemic—not one that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and close to a million people worldwide. But there is a lesson in it. 

It’s a lesson that we have done our best not to learn, that we have fought for some time now. 

That lesson is this: Life is hard. It is filled with hard facts and hard decisions. 

You cannot flee it. You can only defer the consequences for so long or, perhaps, if you are content to be an asshole, shirk them onto some other innocent person. 

Facts don’t care how hard they are. Just because you can’t bear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be borne. Just because you have an opinion—or a need—doesn’t mean it’s relevant. 

“There is a truth,” it says in the song I mentioned earlier, “I can promise you that.” 

It’s time to wake up, put on our big boy pants, and accept that we are living through a period of great discomfort and frightening uncertainty, and what you think or feel about that fact has precisely zero impact on the truth of our new reality  

We have to face the truth. Do the hard thing. 

*Two wrap up notes:

If you really really disagree with me on the school thing, just plug in any number of other examples: People going ahead with their weddings. Random hookups on Tinder because they “need the spontaneity.” People going on vacations. Pro football stadiums in Florida filled with fans. People who say things like, I like Trump but hate his tweets. 

And most importantly, if you disagree with me so much that this article makes you angry? Do me a favor and don’t reply. Your opinion will not change the facts, and I’m too tired to deal with anyone’s cognitive dissonance these days.

The post Welcome to Life. There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions. appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

10 Books That Will Blow Your Mind

In a book that changed my life, Marcus Aurelius thanks his mentor for introducing him to the book that changed his life. 

One person passing along brilliant writing to another: it’s a tradition as old as time. You may even already be a part of that tradition. You may have been introduced to a life-changing book by a friend or a family member.

But do you actively seek out more of these experiences? When was the last time you asked someone you admired for a book recommendation—or more specifically, for the book that changed their life? You hear smart people talking about books they’re reading or thinking about all the time, but do you make the effort to read them too? Or do they just sit on your mental to-do list or your Amazon “save for later” list, never to be read?

Imagine if Marcus just let that book sit on his desk. Imagine if he kept saving it for later. His whole life would have turned out differently. The history of the Western world may have been altered. Don’t let a version of that happen to you. Read these books. They will change your life.

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Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

To me, this is the greatest book ever written. I’ve read it a couple hundred times and have a large passage that I printed out and posted above my desk to look at before I start each day. For me, it was what Tyler Cowen calls a “quake book”—shaking everything I thought I knew about the world. It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization and strength. If you read it and aren’t profoundly changed by it, it’s probably because, as Aurelius says, “what doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” You HAVE to read the Gregory Hays translation. If you want a preview of Marcus, here are five of his best quotes in a video I did. 

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

If you want to live life on your terms, climb as high as you know you’re capable, and avoid being controlled by others—you need to read this book. Robert is an amazing researcher and storyteller. He has a profound ability to explain timeless truths through story and example. You can read the classics and not always understand the lessons. But if you read The 48 Laws of Power, I promise you will leave not just with actionable lessons but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it, be able to defend against it, and know how to know what you’re not willing to do. Here is my podcast with Robert about this book and others. 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X 

In 1946, Malcolm Little went to jail. Looking at a decade behind bars, he faced what Robert Greene calls an “Alive Time or Dead Time” scenario. He could have served his time simply counting the days. Instead, he started reading. He literally copied the dictionary word for word. Every minute he wasn’t in his bunk, he was in the library. That was how Malcolm Little was transformed into Malcolm X, one of the great civil rights leaders of the 20th century. There’s a lot to learn from his life and his choices. Two other timelessly relevant books these days are Invisible Man and My Bondage and My Freedom.

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell 

Montaigne is one of humanity’s greatest treasures—a wise and insightful thinker who never takes himself too seriously. This book is spectacular. The format is a bit unusual—instead of chapters, it is made up of 20 Montaigne-style essays that discuss the man from a variety of different perspectives. Montaigne was a man obsessed with figuring himself out: why he thought the way he did, how he could find happiness, his fetishes, his near-death experiences. He lived in tumultuous times too, and he coped by looking inward. We’re lucky that he did, and we can do the same. (You might also like this piece I wrote almost a decade ago for Tim Ferriss’ blog, The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne.) This year I also re-read Stefan Zweig’s book about Montaigne, which is incredible. It’s the biography of a man who retreated from the chaos of 16th century France to study himself, written by a man fleeing the chaos of 20th century Europe. When I say it’s timely, I mean that it’s hard to be a thinking person and not see alarming warning signs about today’s world while reading this book.

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

“There is no History, perhaps, better adapted to this useful purpose than that of Thucydides,” as John Adams wrote to his son in 1777. “You will find it full of Instruction to the Orator, the Statesman, the General, as well as to the Historian and the Philosopher.” Indeed, people in the State Department right now are reading Thucydides to better understand the rising threat of China. Countless millions—including many of the Stoics—have read it over the last 2000 years to understand the ethical dilemmas inherent in leadership, in war, in politics, and in life. Because Thucydides was so smart, so timeless, he is able to teach lessons to us even now. And because the countries and the events are so distant and impersonal to us, we can actually hear them, learn them, and apply them to the political situations we face today. 

Plutarch’s Lives

The structure and style of my next book—Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius—was inspired by Plutarch, the master of one of my favorite categories of books to recommend—moral biographies. That is, short biographical sketches about great men and women, written with an eye towards practical application and advice. As Plutarch prefaced his portrait of Alexander the Great, “I am writing biography, not history, and the truth is that the most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues or vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles in which thousands fall.” That’s why Shakespeare based many of his plays on the stories of Plutarch; not only are they well-written and exciting, but they exhibit everything that is good and bad about the human condition. Greed, love, pain, hate, success, selflessness, leadership, stupidity—it’s all there. 

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg

This was one of the first books I read when I started working in Hollywood, and it had a powerful impact on me at 19. Some 10 years later, I pulled the book from my shelf while finishing the first draft of Ego Is the Enemy and rediscovered three handwritten pages of notes I folded and stuck in the back. Those notes expressed many of the painful lessons I wanted to share in Ego, so I adapted them into the epilogue that made it to publication. What Makes Sammy Run? is a novel that reminds us that even when egotists “win,” they lose. My favorite quote: “What a tremendous burning and blinding light ambition can be where there is something behind it, and what a puny flickering sparkler when there isn’t.” It’s also a fascinating look at the entertainment industry and what makes hustlers and strivers do the things they do.

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 finds some way to turn it into the ultimate metaphor for life: that we have little control over our circumstances, but 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 this into one of the most important books of the 20th century. I constantly think 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.

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen

There is nobody who has exposed me to more books and ideas than Tyler Cowen. Tyler is a polymath, a diverse and contrarian thinker who has incredible taste in ideas, ways of thinking, and modern and classical wisdom. In terms of business/economics, Average Is Over is one of the more important books I’ve ever read. For a long time, I even kept a framed passage from it on my wall (it also inspired a piece of writing I am proud of). Although much of what Cowen proposes will be uncomfortable, he has a tone that borders on cheerful. I think that’s what makes this so convincing and so eye-opening.

Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This is an absolutely incredible book. It is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, and it is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research… and yet, somehow, it is not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even with things I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now. 

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Now, the most important part. “To read attentively,” as Marcus put it, “not to be satisfied with ‘just getting the gist of.’” Go to the library. Pull up Amazon and buy the cheapest used copy you can find. “Borrow it” from a friend. Whatever it takes—read. It will change your life!

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9 Short Quotes That Changed My Life and Why

Like a lot of people, I try to collect words to live by. Most of these words come from reading, but also from conversations, from teachers, and from everyday life. As Seneca, the philosopher and playwright, so eloquently put it:

We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works.

In my commonplace book, I keep these little sayings under the heading “Life.” That is, things that help me live better, more meaningfully, and with happiness and honesty. Below are 9 sayings, what they mean, and how they changed my life. Perhaps they will strike you and be of service. Hopefully the words might become works for you too.

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

This little epigram from Nassim Taleb has been a driving force in my life. It fuels my writing, but mostly it has fueled difficult personal decisions. A few years ago, I was in the middle of a difficult personal situation in which my financial incentives were not necessarily aligned with the right thing. Speaking out would cost me money. I actually emailed Nassim. I asked: “What does ‘saying’ entail? To the person? To the public? At what cost? And how do you know where/when ego might be the influencing factor in determining where you decide to go on that public/private spectrum?” His response was simple: If it harms the collective, you speak up until it no longer does. There’s another line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar, having returned from the conquest of Gaul, is reminded to tread lightly when speaking to the senators. He replies, “Have I accomplished so much in battle, but now I’m afraid to tell some old men the truth?” That is what I think about with Nassim’s quote. What’s the point of working hard and being successful if it means biting your tongue (or declining to act) when you see something unfair or untoward? What do you care what everyone else thinks?

“It can have meaning if it changes you for the better.” —Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl, who was imprisoned and survived three separate Nazi concentration camps, lost his wife, his parents, job, his home and the manuscript that his entire life’s work had gone into. Yet, he emerged from this horrific nightmare convinced that life was not meaningless and that suffering was not without purpose. His work in psychology—now known as logotherapy—is reminiscent of the Stoics: We don’t control what happens to us, only how we respond. Nothing deprives us of this ability to respond, even if only in the slightest way, even if that response is only acceptance. In bad moments, I think of this line. It reminds me that I can change for the better because of it and find meaning in everything—even if my “suffering” pales in comparison to what others have gone through.

“Thou knowest this man’s fall; but thou knowest not his wrassling.” —James Baldwin

As James Baldwin reflected on the death of his father, a man who he loved and hated, he realized that he only saw the man’s outsides. Yes, he had his problems but hidden behind those external manifestations was his own unique internal struggle which no other person is ever able to fully comprehend. The same is true for everyone—your parents, your boss, the person behind you in line. We can see their flaws but not their struggles. If we can focus on this, we’ll have so much more patience and so much less anger and resentment. It reminds me of another line that means a lot to me from Pascal: “To understand is to forgive.” You don’t have to fully understand or know, but it does help to try.

“This is not your responsibility but it is your problem.” —Cheryl Strayed

Though I came to Cheryl Strayed late, the impact has been significant. In the letter this quote came from, she was speaking to someone who had something unfair done to them. But you see, life is unfair. Just because you should not have to deal with something doesn’t change whether you in fact need to. It reminds me of something my parents told me when I was learning to drive: It doesn’t matter that you had the right of way if you end up dying in an accident. Deal with the situation at hand, even if you don’t want to, even if someone else should have to, because you’re the one that’s being affected by it. End of story. Her quote is the best articulation I’ve found of that fact.

“Dogs bark at what they cannot understand.” —Heraclitus

People are going to criticize you. They are going to resist or resent what you try to do. You’re going to face obstacles and a lot of those obstacles will be other human beings. Heraclitus is explaining why. People don’t like change. They don’t like to be confused. It’s also a fact that doing new things means forcing change and confusion on other people. So, if you’re looking for an explanation for all the barking you’re hearing, there it is. Let it go, keep working, do your job. My other favorite line from Heraclitus is: “Character is fate.” Who you are and what you stand for will determine who you are and what you do. Surely character makes ignoring the barking a bit easier.

“Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.” —Marcus Aurelius

Marcus wrote this line at some point during the Antonine Plague—a global pandemic spanning the entirety of his reign. He could have fled Rome. Most people of means did. No one would have faulted him if he did too. Instead, Marcus stayed and braved the deadliest plague of Rome’s 900-year history. And we know that he didn’t even consider choosing his safety and fleeing over his responsibility and staying. He wrote repeatedly about the Stoic concept of sympatheia—the idea that all things are mutually woven together, that we were made for eachother, that we are all one. It’s one of the lesser-known Stoic concepts because it’s easier to only think and care about the people immediately around you. It’s tempting to get consumed by your own problems. It’s natural to assume you have more in common and the same interests as the people who look like you or live like you do. But that is an insidious lie—one responsible for monstrous inhumanity and needless pain. When other people suffer, we suffer. When the world suffers, we suffer. What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee, Marcus said. When we take actions, we have to always think: What would happen if everyone did this? What are the costs of my decisions for other people? What risks am I externalizing? Is this really what a person with good character and a concern for others would do? You have to care about others. It’s sometimes the hardest thing to do, but it’s the only thing that counts. As Heraclitus (one of Marcus’ favorites) said, character is fate. It’s the fruit of this life. 

“Happiness does not come from the seeking, it is never ours by right.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was a remarkable woman. Her father killed himself. Her mother was verbally abusive. Her husband repeatedly betrayed her—even up to the moment he died. Yet she slowly but steadily became one of the most influential and important people in the world. I think you could argue that happiness and meaning came from this journey too. Her line here is reminiscent of something explained by both Aristotle and Viktor Frankl—happiness is not pursued, it ensues. It is the result of principles and the fulfillment of our potential. It is also transitory—we get glimpses of it. We don’t have it forever and we must continually re-engage with it. Whatever quote you need to understand this truth, use it. Because it will get you through bad times and to very good ones.

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” —Marcus Aurelius

If there is better advice than this, it has yet to be written. For many civilizations, the first time that their citizens realize just how vulnerable they are is when they find out they’ve been conquered, or are at the mercy of some cruel tyrant, or some uncontainable disease. It’s when somebody famous—like Tom Hanks or Marcus Aurelius—falls ill that they get serious. The result of this delayed awakening is a critical realization: We are mortal and fragile, and fate can inflict horrible things on our tiny, powerless bodies. There is no amount of fleeing or quarantining we can do to insulate ourselves from the reality of human existence: memento mori—thou art mortal. No one, no country, no planet is as safe or as special as we like to think we are. We are all at the mercy of enormous events outside our control. You can go at any moment, Marcus was constantly reminding himself with each of the events swirling around him. He made sure this fact shaped every choice and action and thought. 

“Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.” —Seneca

After beginning with Seneca, let’s end with him. Inertia is a powerful force. The status quo—even if self-created—is comforting. So people find themselves on certain paths in life and cannot conceive of changing them, even if such a change would result in more personal happiness. We think that fickleness is a negative trait, but if it pushes you to be better and find and explore new, better things, it certainly isn’t. I’ve always been a proponent of dropping out, of quitting paths that have gotten stale. Seneca’s quote has helped me with that and I actually have it framed next to my desk so that I might look at it each day. It’s a constant reminder: Why am I still doing this? Is it for the right reasons? Or is it just because it’s been that way for a while?

—

The power of these quotes is that they say a lot with a little. They help guide us through the complexity of life with their unswerving directness. They make us better, keep us centered, give us something to rest on—a kind of backstop to prevent backsliding. That’s what these 9 quotes have done for me in my life. Borrow them or dig into history or religion or philosophy to find some to add to your own commonplace book. 

And then turn those words… into works.

The post 9 Short Quotes That Changed My Life and Why appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

How to Have the Best Week Ever

Life is short, so it matters how you spend it.

As Seneca points out, “We are not given a short life, but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.” A minute is long if you know how to use it. A week is plenty of time if you don’t waste it.

So that’s what the Stoics thought so much about: How to break down and organize their time. What to do—and not do—in the course of a life in order to ensure we effectively live the time we have been given.

We now have 2,000 years of stress testing applied to some of their insights and so based on their time-proven wisdom, I present to you how to have a great week, per the Stoics.

1: Rise and Shine

“On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind—I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I am going to do what I’m made for, the very things for which I was put into this world? Or was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It’s so pleasurable. Were you then made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself?” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.1

It’s comforting to think that the emperor of Rome (who was reportedly an insomniac) had to give himself a pep talk in order to summon the willpower to throw off the blankets and get out of bed.

From the time we’re first sent off to school until the day we retire, we’re faced with that same struggle. It always seems nicer to shut our eyes and hit the snooze button a few times.

But we can’t—because we have a job to do. Not only do we have the calling we’re dedicated to, but we have the larger cause that the Stoics speak about: the greater good. We cannot be of service to ourselves, to other people, or to the world unless we get up and get working—the earlier the better. So c’mon. Get in the shower, have your coffee, and get going.

2: Prepare Yourself for Negativity
“When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous, and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don’t know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me … and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. For we are made for cooperation.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1

Life is full of suffering, acute and benign. We come down with the flu. We are hit with a costly expense. Someone with power over us abuses their responsibility. Someone we love lies or hurts us. People die. People commit crimes. Natural disasters strike.

All of this is commonplace and inevitable. It happens. Everyday. To us and to everyone else.

That would be bad enough, yet we choose to make this pain worse. How? By pretending we are immune from it. By assuming we will be exempted. Or that only those who have somehow deserved it will find themselves in the crosshairs of Fortune. Then we are surprised when our number comes up, and so we add to our troubles a sense of unfairness and a stumbling lack of preparedness. Our denial deprives us even of the ability to tense up before the blow lands.

“You should assume that there are many things ahead you will have to suffer,” Seneca reminds us. “Is anyone surprised at getting a chill in winter? Or getting seasick while on the sea? Or that they get bumped walking a city street? The mind is strong against things it has prepared for.”

This is premeditatio malorum. What is likely to happen? What can possibly happen? What are the tortures that life inflicts on human beings? And then, more importantly, am I ready for them?

3: Clarify Your Principles
“You’ve wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere. Then where is it to be found? In doing what human nature requires. How? Through first principles. Which should govern your intentions and your actions.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.1

In the opening chapter of his book Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead, the retired US Marine Corps general and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis talks about the fundamental lessons he learned in his early years as a Marine. In particular, he writes: “Know what you will stand for and, more important, what you won’t stand for… State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” Least of all, you.

Marcus Aurelius called them “epithets for the self.” Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Disinterested. Those were his non-negotiables. Think for a second about the position Marcus was in. He had absolute power. In his own time, his statue was displayed in homes across the empire. He could have done whatever he wanted.

Isn’t that why people chase power, success, greatness? So they can be freed from trivial rules and regulations? So they can do whatever they want?

But what the truly great know is that complete freedom is a nightmare. They know that no one has less serenity than the person who does not know what is right or wrong. No one is more exhausted than the person who, because they lack a moral code, must belabor every decision and consider every temptation. No one wastes more time than the person who is winging it. Life is meaningless to the person who decides their choices have no meaning. Meanwhile, the person who knows what they value? Who knows what they will and won’t stand for?Who has a strong sense of decency and principle and behaves accordingly? Who possesses easy moral self-command, who leans comfortably upon this goodness, day in and day out? This person has clarity and tranquility.

That’s what Marcus promised would happen if one followed this prescription. “If you maintain your claim to these epithets,” he wrote, “without caring if others apply them to you or not—you’ll become a new person, living a new life.”

What are your flat-ass rules? What are your principles? Your epithets? Don’t wing it. Life is chaotic and confusing enough. Give yourself some clarity and some certainty.

4: Be Ruthless to the Things That Don’t Matter
“How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements—how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!” —Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, 3.3b

One of the hardest things to do in life is say “no.” To invitations, to requests, to obligations, to the stuff that everyone else is doing. Even harder is saying no to certain time-consuming emotions: anger, excitement, distraction, obsession, lust. None of these impulses feels like a big deal by itself, but run amok, they become commitments like anything else.

If you’re not careful, these are precisely the impositions that will overwhelm and consume your life. Do you ever wonder how you can get some of your time back or how you can feel less busy? Start today off by utilizing the power of “no”—as in “No, thank you,” and “No, I’m not going to get caught up in that,” and “No, I just can’t right now.”

It may hurt some feelings. It may turn people off. It may take hard work. But the more you say no to the things that don’t matter, the more you can say yes to the things that do. This will let you live and enjoy the life that you want.

For more on saying “no,” you can check out this video, Why You Should Say No, as well as this article, To Everyone Who Asks For “Just A Little” Of Your Time: Here’s What It Costs To Say Yes.

5: Turn “Have To” Into “Get To”
“The task of a philosopher: We should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen.” —Epictetus, Discourses, 2.14.7

What does a Stoic say to adversity? To recessions? To pandemics? To setbacks and struggles and months stuck inside? To uncertainty and cramped quarters and a collapse of confidence? What do they say to the looming question that has so many people scared—“What if things get worse?”

They say what Bruce Springsteen said:

Bring on your wrecking ball

Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you’ve got

Bring on your wrecking ball

Marcus Aurelius didn’t believe that it was unfortunate that bad things happened to him. He said, “No, this is fortunate that it happened to me.” Because not everyone would have been able to handle it.

But you can. Because you trained for this. Because you know how to find the opportunity inside of difficulty, because you have harnessed the power of amor fati. Other people might be thrown back by what has happened, others still might be able to muddle through, but not you. You’re going to be improved by this. You’re going to triumph over this. You get to prove your mettle.

That’s why you say: Bring it on. That’s why you say hit me with your best shot. Because you have plans to use it. Because you’re going to step up and make something of this moment. Because you know that’s the only part of this that’s up to you.

6: Take a Walk (or a Run)
“We should take wandering outdoor walks, so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing.” —Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 17.8

In his famous Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertes tells us that the philosopher Chrysippus trained as a long-distance runner before he discovered Stoicism. One can only imagine the influence this training had on Chrysippus, and how it put him in a position to understand a philosophy based on self-discipline, inner-control and endurance. The saying in the ancient world was, “But for Chrysippus, there had been no Porch” (the stoa in Stoicism). But if not for the many miles of running, would there have been a Chrysippus?

There are plenty more philosophers, writers, and poets who have found the same benefits not just in running but in walking. In a notoriously loud city like Rome, it was impossible to get much peace and quiet. The noise of wagons, the shouting of vendors, and the hammering of blacksmiths all filled the streets with piercing auditory violence. So philosophers went on a lot of walks—to get where they needed to go, to clear their heads, and to get fresh air. In the process they discovered an important side-effect: it helped them make better work. As Nietzsche would later say, “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” Thoreau, another avid walker, claimed “the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”

Remember that if you find yourself a little stuck or frustrated today. Go for a walk. Or better yet, go for a run. And in the future, when you get stressed or overwhelmed, take a walk. When you have a tough problem to solve or a decision to make, take a walk. When you want to be creative, take a walk. When you need to get some air, take a walk. When you have a phone call to make, take a walk. When you need some exercise, take a long walk. When you have a meeting or a friend over, take a walk together.

Nourish yourself and your mind and solve problems along the way.

If you’re not yet convinced of the power of walking, I encourage you to read this piece: Take A Walk: The Work & Life Benefits of Walking.

7: Review
“I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.” —Seneca, Moral Letters, 83.2

Winston Churchill was famously afraid of going to bed at the end of the day having not created, written or done anything that moved his life forward. “Every night,” he wrote, “I try myself by Court Martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day. I don’t mean just pawing the ground, anyone can go through the motions, but something really effective.”

In a letter to his older brother Novatus, Seneca describes the exercise he borrowed from another prominent philosopher. At the end of each day, he would sit down with a journal and ask himself variations of the following questions: What bad habit did I curb today? How am I better? Were my actions just? How can I improve?

At the beginning or end of each day, the Stoic sits down with his journal and reviews what he did, what he thought, and what could be improved. It’s for this reason that Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is a somewhat inscrutable book—it was for personal clarity, not public benefit. Writing down Stoic exercises was and is a form of practicing them, just as repeating a prayer or hymn might be.

Keep your own journal, whether it’s saved on a computer or on paper. Take time to consciously recall the events of the previous day.

Be unflinching in your assessments. Notice what contributed to your happiness and what detracted from it. Write down what you’d like to work on or quotes that you like. By making the effort to record such thoughts, you’re less likely to forget them. An added bonus: You’ll have a running tally to track your progress.

If there’s been a silver lining in the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that we were reminded immediately and unceremoniously that life should never be taken for granted. Sometime during the Antonine Plague, Marcus admonished himself to not put anything off until tomorrow because today was the only thing he controlled (and to get out of bed and get moving for the same reason). The Stoics knew that fate was unpredictable and that death could come at any moment. Therefore, it was a sin (and stupidity) to take time for granted.

Today is the most valuable thing you own. It is the only thing you have. Don’t waste it. Seize it. Live it.

The post How to Have the Best Week Ever appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

It’s Not About Routine, but About Practice

In a world where everything is uncertain.

Where things are changing quickly. 

Where chaos reigns. 

And very little is under our control.

What we need is simple. 

It’s something that human beings have needed for all time—whether they were kings or artists, parents or farmers, senators or soldiers. 

We need practices.

What I’m not talking about are routines. Although daily routines are important, and many of us rely on them, the truth is that routines are fragile. 

Hasn’t this pandemic shown that? Suddenly you aren’t taking your kids to school. And then every part of your routine that is triggered by dropping the kids off starts to shift, like tectonic plates after an earthquake. Assuming, of course, that those other parts haven’t been crushed or subducted themselves. Suddenly you’re not able to go to your favorite  gym at your favorite time. Suddenly you’re not going into the office at all… because there is no office to go to. Your job no longer exists. 

Practices are different. Practices are things you do regularly—perhaps daily, perhaps not—but in no particular order. They are things you return to, time and time again, to center yourself. To reset. To reconnect. To focus. 

Waking up everyday at 6 a.m. and watching the news while you have your coffee: that’s part of a routine. Prayer or meditation: that’s a practice. Eating at the same lunch place and same time everyday is a routine. Being vegan or eating kosher is a practice. Journaling is a practice. Going to the 9 a.m. CrossFit class is a routine. Exercising regularly is a practice. 

The difference is in the flexibility. 

One is about daily rhythm. The other is a lifelong pursuit. One can be ruined by something as simple as hitting the snooze button one too many times or getting called into work unexpectedly. The other can adapt accordingly. One is something you made up. The other is something you do. 

Over the last couple years, I’ve gotten to interview some of the best artists on the planet about the behind-the-scenes of their work. “It’s a wild collage of human behavior,” as Austin Kleon has said about studying the routines of creative people, “like visiting a human zoo.” Some artists like the quiet before everyone else wakes up. Others like the quiet after everyone has gone to sleep. Some treat it like a 9-5. Others like a shift worker. Some break up the day with a nap. Others with a run. Some stop working when they run out of momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. Others when they are building momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. No two routines are the same.

And yet the key practices are nearly universal…

…journaling

…set wake up time

…quiet moments of reflection

…exercise

…reading

…walks

Think of someone like Marcus Aurelius. As we’ve talked about, he lived in a time of chaos and dysfunction, featuring brutal wars, devastating plagues, natural disasters, famines, political turmoil, and a plummeting economy. That’s to say nothing of his personal life—he buried eight children, his wife was probably unfaithful, his stepbrother and co-emperor was a ne’er-do-well, and his only son to outlive him was deranged. While his adopted father and cherished mentor, Antoninus, enjoyed a peaceful reign for over two decades, from the day Marcus put on the purple, it was one obstacle after the next. And it didn’t let up for any of the 15 years during which he ruled. 

It’d be hard to sum it up better than Cassius Dio: “He didn’t have the luck which he deserved… but was confronted, throughout his reign, by a multitude of disasters.”

But what centered him through all this were his daily practices. Journaling. Reading. Hunting and riding horses. A quick dip in the baths. Some friendly philosophical banter with Fronto or Sextus. Family time. If any of these were routine, he would have written somewhere in his journals or letters about when he preferred doing this or that. He didn’t have the luck or luxury to be rigid. Instead, he said, “to live life in peace” requires resilience and adaptability. Resilience is “keeping your mind calm… sizing up what’s around—and ready to make good use of whatever happens… while Adaptability adds, ‘You’re just what I was looking for.’”

Same with Seneca. His daily routine was undoubtedly subject to intrusion from his health problems, his exiles, and Nero’s descent into madness. But what remained remarkably consistent and unperturbed was his practice of letter writing, his habit of “wandering walks,” his cold plunges, and his search for “one piece of wisdom” per day. 

When we talk about stillness, we don’t mean the absence of activity. In fact, what we are referring to are activities that create stillness while the world is spinning out of control around us. Marcus Aurelius used the image of the rock surrounded by the raging sea. Perhaps a better image is of the Buddhist that Eugen Herrigal writes about in The Method of Zen, who calmly meditated through a terrible earthquake. 

This is what daily practices give us. 

Winston Churchill is a great example of how a good life should have both routine and practices. When at Chartwell, his estate, he liked to wake up at the same time each day, do the same things each day—especially when he was writing. There was the time he took his afternoon nap, the time he poured his first drink, the time he took his bath. That was part of the routine. But the bedrock practices—reading history and poetry, painting, bricklaying—these things transcended the day. They were lifelong pursuits. They were things he turned to whether a war was breaking out or whether his depression was creeping back into view. 

If he had time for these practices, then certainly you do too.

There is not a lot of good that can come out of a global pandemic, but one thing we can use it for is to reset and reorganize the building blocks our lives and our days are set upon.We can get our act together. We can create and adjust and fine-tune our habits and practices while we have the time. Because in a world filled with despair and chaos, what we need is hope and dependability. We have the power to create ritual and the moments of peace that ripple out from them. 

Maybe right now you’re stuck at home. Maybe you’re not working. Your kids might be home with you. Certainly the normal way of doing things has been significantly altered. Almost certainly, your routines have been blown apart. 

I experienced this when I had kids. I also experience it when I travel. As much as I would like this to be simple and controllable, it isn’t. So I’ve had to work to loosen my grip on the routines (plural) I’ve built over time and focus more on practices that don’t depend on my ability to do the same thing everyday in a precise way to be “successful.” 

Maybe your work is shift-based, or it’s the feast or famine life of a freelancer. It doesn’t matter. Routine might be out of reach, but practices never are. 

Wherever I am, whatever is going on, what know is that every single day, I am able to make time to journal, to exercise, to walk, to write. The order can change, but the activities remain the same. I have rules too—for instance, no touching the phone for one hour after I wake up, I don’t watch television news, I’m only reachable through three channels, I never put more than three things on my calendar per day if I can help it, I fast for 16 hours, I don’t buy wi-fi on planes, I always carry a book with me. And if I am unable to do these things, or if the rules are violated, my productivity and my mental health suffers. 

That’s what the Stoics meant when they said you don’t control what happens, you only control how you respond. That’s what they meant when they said the one thing people can always change is themselves. And that’s what they meant when they said we are what we repeatedly do—when or how we manage to squeeze them in is less important than our religious commitment to their continued existence. 

Start today. Focus on your practices. In a world where everything and everyone else seems to be falling apart, you can make good use of this time and say, “You’re just what I was looking for.”

The post It’s Not About Routine, but About Practice appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

The Best Career Advice I’ve Ever Gotten

At the height of the financial crisis in 1975, Bill Belichick—the now six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach of the New England Patriots—was 23 years old and unemployed. Desperate for a job in football after an assistant position fell through, according to his biographer David Halberstam, he wrote some 250 letters to college and professional football coaches. Nothing came of it except a unpaid job for the Baltimore Colts. 

The Colts’ head coach desperately needed someone for the one part of the job everyone else disliked: analyzing film. 

Most people would have hated this job, especially back then, but it turned out to be the springboard through which the greatest coach in football was launched into his legendary career.

In this lowly position, Belichick thrived on what was considered grunt work, asked for it, and strove to become the best at precisely what others thought they were too good for. “He was like a sponge, taking it all in, listening to everything,” one coach said. “You gave him an assignment and he disappeared into a room and you didn’t see him again until it was done, and then he wanted to do more,” said another.

Most importantly, he made the other coaches look good. His insights gave them things they could give their players. It gave them an edge they would take credit for exploiting in the game. 

It’s a strategy that all of us ought to follow, whatever stage of our careers we happen to be in. Forget credit. Do the work. 

I’m lucky enough someone told me that early on, and I still try to follow it today. Don’t worry about credit, they said. Starting as an assistant in Hollywood, the best thing I could do was make my boss look good. 

Forget credit so hard, they said, that you’re glad when other people get it instead of you.

It ended up being pretty decent advice, but it was nowhere near the right wording. I certainly wouldn’t have moved upwards as quickly as I have if I’d just sat there and worked on the way people thought about my boss.

Now that I’ve been around a bit, I think a better way to express it would be:

Find canvases for other people to paint on.

It’s what I now call the canvas strategy.

I used it as a research assistant for bestselling authors. I used it as Head of Marketing for American Apparel. And I continue to use it with my company Brass Check, advising companies like Google and Complex, as well as multi-platinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world.

I even wrote a chapter about it in Ego Is the Enemy.

One of the things I kept coming across in my research was that Belichick wasn’t unique. So many of the greats—everyone from Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin—used the same strategy to become great. The strategy? The canvas strategy.

In the Roman system of art and science, there existed a concept for which we have only a partial analog. Successful businessmen, politicians and rich playboys would subsidize certain favored writers, artists, and performers.

More than just being paid to produce works of art, these artists performed a number of tasks in exchange for protection, food and gifts. One of the roles was that of an anteambulo, literally meaning one who clears the path.

An anteambulo proceeded in front of his patron anywhere they traveled in Rome, making way, communicating messages, and generally making the patron’s life easier. The artists who did this were rewarded with stipends and commissions that allowed them to pursue their art.

That takes humility. The canvas strategy takes humility.

It’s a common attitude that transcends generations and societies—the angry, underappreciated geniuses forced to do stuff she doesn’t like for people she doesn’t respect as she makes her way in the world. How dare they force me to grovel like this. The injustice, the waste.

But when you enter a new field, we can usually be sure of a few things:

You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are.
You have an attitude that needs to be readjusted.
Most of what you think you know, or most of what you learned in books or in school, is out of date or wrong.

There’s one fabulous way to work all of that out of your system:

Attach yourself to people in organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously.

It’s certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory, though hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward. That’s the other side of this attitude. It reduces your ego at a critical time in your career, letting you absorb everything you can without the obstructions that block other’s vision and progress.

Imagine if for every person you met you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them, and you looked at it in a way that entirely benefitted them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have overtime would be profound.

You would learn a great deal by solving diverse problems.

You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable.

You’d have countless new relationships.

You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road.

That’s what the canvas strategy is about—helping yourself by helping others, making a concerted effort to trade your short term gratification for a longer term payoff.

Whereas everyone else wants to get credit and be respected, you could forget credit. Let others take their credit on credit while you defer and earn interest on the principle.

The strategy part of it is the hardest. It’s easy to be bitter, to hate even the thought of subservience, to despise those who have more means, more experience, more status than you, to tell yourself that every second not spent doing your work or working on yourself is a waste of your gift to insist, I will not be demeaned like this.

Once we fight this emotional and egotistical impulse, the canvas strategy is easy. The iterations are endless.

Maybe it’s coming up with ideas to hand over to your boss.
Find people, thinkers, up and comers to introduce them to. Cross wires to create new sparks.
Find what nobody else wants to do and do it.
Find inefficiency and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas.
Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.

In other words, discover opportunities to promote their creativity, find outlets and people for collaboration, and eliminate distractions that hinder their progress and focus. It’s a rewarding and infinitely scalable power strategy. Consider each one an investment in relationships and in your own development.

If you pick up this mantle once, you’ll see what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating. The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.

The post The Best Career Advice I’ve Ever Gotten appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

If You’re Not Seeking Out Challenges, How Are You Going to Get Better?

If it’s easy, you’re not growing. 

It’s like lifting weights: if you can do it without trying, you’re not going to get any stronger.

The whole point—of life, of working out, of work—is to push yourself, and to grow as a result of pushing against and through that resistance. 

A couple years ago, after a book signing, someone proposed to me that I might write a book about the billionaire Peter Thiel’s conspiracy against Gawker Media and its founder, Nick Denton. 

There were more reasons to say no than yes: It was outside my wheelhouse; it would be a ton of work; it would be the kind of project that would upset a lot of people. And frankly, it was personally quite risky… to be writing about a powerful gossip merchant and a right-wing billionaire who had just shut down a media outlet he didn’t like. 

I was also just about to have my first kid and it seemed like it would be terribly difficult to manage a newborn and a new kind of book… particularly one that required me to read something like 20,000 pages of legal documents just to get started. 

So you can imagine what I said. I said yes. 

Although I knew it would be hard, and I knew that it might not work, I could also see that it might be the most interesting thing I ever did. And if it did work, it would be a book unlike almost any other I’d ever write. But mostly, I said yes because a writer betrays their craft if they do not push themselves.

In fact, I think that’s true of all crafts. If you’re not seeking out challenges and getting better through them, what are you doing? And what are you doing it for?

One of my favorite passages in Meditations is this one:

Practice even what seems impossible. The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice.

Not everything that’s hard is good of course, but almost everything good is hard. Think about all the things you’re good at. There was a time when you weren’t good at them, right? When they were hard. But you worked at it. Despite feeling deficient and frustrated, and fighting the urge to quit, you saw a glimpse of goodness, you clawed out a bit of progress, you felt a glimmer of confidence, and you chose to keep at it. To keep pushing. And you grew from the fight against the resistance. 

Even more, you found something on the other side of it all—a you that you realized you didn’t entirely know and had possibly never met. You learned something incredibly valuable about yourself: you’re capable of more than you know. 

That’s why we have to fight those urges to quit. That’s why we have to keep at it. That’s why we have to seek out challenges. Because would we know anything about ourselves if we never did?

In my writing career, I have grown from each of the challenges I took up. I was asked to write a piece about Stoicism for Tim Ferriss’ website in 2009—one of the first times my work would be in front of a large audience. Tim is a tough editor and I grew for having that experience. The things I wrote and researched for Robert Greene were so beyond my depths that I was constantly worried I’d be exposed as a fool, but with time, I grew—because of the material and ideas I was exposed to. My first book was like flying off a cliff without a parachute and trying to build a plane on the way down… I made it but just barely. 

In 2016, having reaped the benefits of those decisions, I was sitting in a nice, comfortable spot. I had two books under contract, nearly finished. I had a backlist that was selling. I had a niche applying ancient philosophy basically all to myself. 

So when I got those two surprise emails, first from the billionaire Peter Thiel and later from the founder of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, the decision to write a book about them was essentially gambling all those gains. If it didn’t work, wouldn’t it set me way back in the business? Wasn’t it very likely that I would fail with this project? Isn’t narrative non-fiction a totally different genre than what I know how to do? Isn’t it insane to compete with those other pros?

Perhaps, I thought, but there is also almost no chance that I won’t emerge as a better writer. That was why I jumped at the chance. Forget the business logic. I figured it would make me better at my calling and that was reason enough to do it. 

I got down to work.

It was even harder than I thought. It kicked my ass. It made me feel stupid. I doubted myself everyday. 

But when I emerged, to paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, my left hand was now stronger. It could guide the reins… my practice had seen to that. 

When the book came out, it received rave reviews. The New York Times called it “a profound masterwork,” said I was a “genius” and had written “a helluva pageturner.” (I’ll take it!) Its movie rights were optioned (I can’t say who will play Peter Thiel, but it should be very cool). That was all good.

From a sales perspective, it was slower-going. The book has done very well but has struggled to find its own audience for exactly the reason some people warned me not to take the project on. It was different. It was weird. It wasn’t what people expected from me. It didn’t fit in a nice neat box.  

Yet neither this success nor this struggle is why I look at that book as a massive win for me. 

Defining it early on as an opportunity for growth meant that I controlled the outcome. Even if it had sold another 100,000 copies it would not have made it more successful to me—because the success is there for me on the page. It’s in my mind. It’s in my toolkit, which I am using right now on this article. 

I got better because it was hard. Because I took a risk. Because there was so much resistance. 

This is the essence of “the obstacle is the way” philosophy of Stoicism. Each obstacle, everything that goes wrong is just an opportunity to practice a virtue—to give you a chance to work with your non-dominant hand. One obstacle gives you a chance to practice controlling your temper, another perseverance, another a chance to take a long walk through the park. There is always something you can do.

Including right now, today. 

You are going to face plenty of little crossroads—decisions about how to do things and what things to do. Should you walk the 15 minutes to your meeting or take an Uber? Should you pick up the phone and have that difficult conversation or leave it to an email? Should you apologize and take responsibility or hope it goes unnoticed? Should you swim in the outdoor pool or enjoy the warmth of the indoor one? 

As you weigh these competing options, lean towards the hard one. Let it steer you away from the drift of least resistance. Seneca talked about how a person who skates through life without being tested and challenged is actually depriving themselves of opportunities to grow and improve. 

Jump into the colder pool. Have the tougher conversation. Walk instead of drive. Take ownership where you can. Choose the more difficult option. Seek out the challenge. Lean into it. 

Iron sharpens iron, resistance builds muscle. 

You’ll be better for it—not only for the improvement that comes from the challenge itself, but for the willpower you are developing by choosing that option on purpose. When you have two choices, choose the one that challenges you the most. 

Choose the one, as Marcus would agree, that allows you to take the reins in any situation.

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Every Situation Has Two Handles. Which One Will You Grab?

The last few months have been rough for me, as they have been for most people. Most of my talks have been cancelled. Without retail stores open, physical book sales have fallen by a third. We had two new employees start work on February 15th, in new offices we just had renovated, which now sit empty. 

There have been trying supply chain and inventory issues with Daily Stoic. My retirement accounts were savaged and then bounced back and then savaged like everyone else’s. We estimate our total business losses, so far, to be well into the mid-six figures, and that hurts a lot less than watching my son cry that he can’t see his friends at school. My other son had ear infections we couldn’t go to the doctor for, and the stray cat we rescued managed to get pregnant and have kittens before we could get her fixed. 

So like I said, it’s been rough. That’s one way to see it, anyway. I could also choose to see it as not so bad, considering the fact that, unlike 130,000 other Americans and at least 400,000 others worldwide, none of my family members nor I have died in a pandemic.

Still, it has been rough. It would be untrue to deny it, even if other people have it much, much rougher. But just because something is objectively difficult or complicated or unenjoyable, doesn’t mean that’s what you should focus on. 

“Every event has two handles,” Epictetus said, “one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other—that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.”

This is a critical life question and particularly relevant right now in light of the mountain of adversity we are facing, individually and collectively. Which handle will we grab?

When I look at the last three months, I don’t grab onto the things that were taken from me. I could grab on to blame or despair. I could grip the anger and frustration and impotence. I could even latch onto some pretty valid excuses to sit around and wait for all the chaos to pass, or…

I could look at what I’ve been able to accomplish despite a quarantine and the obstacles it has presented: 

I’ve run and biked and walked more than 1,200 miles
I’ve written close to 100,000 words
I’ve launched four new challenges and courses for Daily Stoic
I’ve recorded over 40 hours of content for the Daily Stoic podcast and YouTube channel
I’ve gotten in the pool with my kids almost every day
I’ve read a few dozen books and filled over a thousand notecards
We’ve had 360 meals together as a family
I haven’t missed a bathtime or a bedtime
We cleaned out the garage
With sales from the Daily Stoic Alive Time Challenge, we raised enough money to provide 75,000 meals
We donated $100,000 to Alan Graham’s Community First! Village

Not a bad handle to seize hold of, right?

If you’ve ever been stuck in Los Angeles traffic at night, you know it’s miserable. But if you’ve ever flown into Los Angeles at night and seen the lit-up city from above, you’ve noticed how from a different perspective this same miserable experience can suddenly seem almost beautiful and serene. We call one a traffic jam, the other a light show.

The chaos of international politics can strike fear in us—wars break out, property gets destroyed, people get killed. Yet if you zoom out just slightly—across time, rather than space in this case—all those terrifying CNN updates seem to blur together into an almost coordinated dance of nations lurching towards a balance of power. We call one journalism, the other history.

Same thing, different perspective.

Life is like that. We can look at it one way and be scared or angry or worried. Or we can look at it another way and see an exciting challenge. We can choose to look at something as an obstacle or an opportunity. We can see chaos if we look close, we can see order if we look from afar. 

We can focus on our lack of agency in what has happened or we can focus on what we do control, which is how we respond.

Isaac Newton did some of his best research when Cambridge closed due to the plague. Shakespeare wrote King Lear while he hid out from the plague as well. Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang while he was laid up in the hospital, expressly forbidden from working on something as tough as a novel. Malcolm X educated himself in prison and turned himself into the activist the world needed. Seneca produced some of his best writing in exile. Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations while Rome was being scourged by the twin evils of plague and war. 

This is what the idea of Alive Time vs. Dead Time, which I’ve written about before, is really all about: which handle will you grab? The one that bears weight? Or the one that won’t take you anywhere?

So yes, things are rough right now. That’s not your fault. But what you do during these rough times? That’s on you. How are you going to look at things? Will you choose to be miserable or awed? Will you choose to sit around and wait for things to get back to normal or make the most of every second of every day? Will you choose to focus on all the ways this has been a rough few weeks? Or will you choose to step back and look at all the things you still have and still can do?

It’s up to you. It’s always up to you. Because there are always two handles. 

I’ve come to see this pandemic as a radical lifestyle experiment that would have been impossible under any other circumstances. What does zero travel look like? Or full remote work for the team? What if your outside income sources evaporate? What if you completely eliminated meetings? What if you politely excised subtractive people from your life? What if you stopped eating out? What if your day didn’t have to be built around anything you didn’t want to do? What if there was a lot less peer pressure? 

This has been an opportunity to try different things… things that, as it turns out, I much prefer to how things were before. Things I’ll be trying to preserve when “we go back to normal” (which of course, we won’t). 

Given the immense devastation and tragedy of this pandemic, that hardly makes up for what has happened. It would be blasé and offensive to claim that it does. Dialing in a bit better at home, becoming more productive, finding things you like better than what you’re supposed to like—these hardly compensate for the rising death tolls. 

But the Stoics would urge us still not to dismiss this progress we have made as meaningless. Because it isn’t. It’s the only handle we can grab right now. It’s the only meaning and good that can come out of this suffering and uncertainty. 

Which is why I will continue to grab what Thomas Jefferson—paraphrasing Epictetus—would call the “smooth handle.” Because what else am I going to do? What would be better?

I urge you to do the same.

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The Definition of Success Is Autonomy

None of us truly control our own destiny.

Fate has too much power over us puny humans.

Still, we often suspect that were we just a little richer, just a little more famous, if we were in charge and got the success we craved, then we’d finally have some say over the direction of our lives and of our world.

How naive this is. How many false prisons this has created!

Now to be sure, the poor and disenfranchised amongst us suffer greatly. Some lack access to basic resources. Some are held down by systemic forces. Some are buffeted by adversity that we cannot even imagine.

And we think, if we can just be the opposite of that, then everything will be great. In many ways, that is at the root of our pursuit of fame and fortune. And yet, it’s worth noting that the people we envy, who have reached the pinnacle of success as we have defined it, are hardly as free as we think.

There is a revealing scene in Miss Americana, Netflix’s Taylor Swift documentary from earlier this year, that speaks to just this point. Here is a young woman who has accomplished in her field nearly everything you could ever dream was possible. She’s rich. She’s famous. She has millions of fans and followers. She’s sold tens of millions of albums. She’s won Grammys. She has challenged and beaten Apple and Spotify, as well as a man who sexually assaulted her.

And yet there she is, on film, confronting her manager, her parents, her publicist and nearly everyone who works for her, fighting—no, begging—for permission to make a standard political contribution to a candidate in a Democratic primary election in her home state.

Eventually, she breaks down in tears. Why can’t you let me do this? Don’t you see that it’s important to me?

You might think that all this resistance is just a quirk of her particularly risk-averse team, that it would be easy to push past it, but it isn’t. With power and success come all sorts of limitations and constraints. It’s not worse than oppression or actual slavery or incarceration, obviously, don’t be crazy. But it doesn’t change the fact that to experience the kind of suffocating restriction on display in the Taylor Swift documentary is to feel like you are living within a prison of your own making, a slave to what you have built.

“Today, I’m sort of a mannequin figure that’s lost its liberty and happiness,” Napoleon once wrote to a friend. “Grandeur is all very well, but only in retrospect and in the imagination.”

Ernest Renan, writing about Marcus Aurelius, observed that the “sovereign… is the least free of men.” You’d think that being a millionaire or being a celebrity or being the CEO would be empowering. If done right, perhaps it is. But the reality is that most of the time it is inherently disempowering. How is that possible, you might ask?

Many years ago, Mark Bowden answered that question in a fascinating article about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. While ostensibly a detailed day-in-the-life portrait, Bowden illustrates many of the paradoxes of power. This paragraph is worth reading in full:

One might think that the most powerful man has the most choices, but in reality he has the fewest. Too much depends on his every move. The tyrant’s choices are the narrowest of all. His life—the nation!—hangs in the balance. He can no longer drift or explore, join or flee. He cannot reinvent himself, because so many others depend on him—and he, in turn, must depend on so many others. He stops learning, because he is walled in by fortresses and palaces, by generals and ministers who rarely dare to tell him what he doesn’t wish to hear. Power gradually shuts the tyrant off from the world. Everything comes to him second or third hand. He is deceived daily. He becomes ignorant of his land, his people, even his own family. He exists, finally, only to preserve his wealth and power, to build his legacy. Survival becomes his one overriding passion. So he regulates his diet, tests his food for poison, exercises behind well-patrolled walls, trusts no one, and tries to control everything.

Lest you think this is an edge case in the history of power, know that it is in fact the oldest story in the world. There’s even an ancient myth about it: The Sword of Damocles. We think a king is free… in fact, terror hangs over him.

The point of painting this picture is not to get you to pity the powerful; it’s to get you to ask some important questions about your own ambitions and desires. Are you sure the goals you pursue are what you truly desire? Are you sure you understand what success entails? Are you sure you have defined it properly? Are you sure it will make you happy?

Over the years, I have wrestled with this. As I wrote a while back, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a highly-paid one. I wanted to have influence and a platform. But one of the very interesting things about becoming a writer—a job which is a calling and a craft—is that the more success you have at it, the less time you actually have to write.

Suddenly, people want you to speak. They want you to be on social media. They want you to consult. You have all sorts of decisions to make about covers and titles and foreign publishing deals. You have gratifying emails from fans, from people who want your advice, but all of that–to read it, to respond to it—takes time.

It is very possible, and very tempting, for this to consume your life. Write another book? Who has the time? Sitting down on a quiet morning with your thoughts? Ha! Quiet mornings don’t exist anymore.

Think of the actor who gets typecast. Think of the billionaire whose every waking second is consumed by managing their fortune. Think of the CEO who is at the mercy of the enormous beast that is their business. Think of the prime minister whose schedule is controlled by their staff. It might seem glamorous, but looking closer, it’s hardly so enviable.

It took me a while to realize that it was quite possible that the success I thought I wanted would prevent me from doing the thing I actually wanted to do. What kind of sense does that make?

Today, I don’t define success the way that I did when I was younger. I don’t measure it in copies sold or dollars earned. I measure it in what my days look like and the quality of my creative expression: Do I have time to write? Can I say what I think? Do I direct my schedule or does my schedule direct me? Is my life enjoyable or is it a chore?

In a word: autonomy. Do I have autonomy over what I do and think? Am I free?

Free to decide what I do most days…

Free to do what I think is right…

Free to invest in myself or projects I think worth pursuing…

Free to express what I think needs to be expressed…

Free to spend time with who I want to spend time with…

Free to read and study and learn about the things I’m interested in…

Free to leave the office to enjoy dinner with my family before tucking my kids into bed…

Free to pursue my definition of success…

This also always helps me to weigh opportunities properly. Does this give me more autonomy or less?

Screw whether it’s fancy.

Screw whether it’s what everyone else is doing, whether it gets me a few more followers or a couple extra dollars. What matters is freedom.

Because without freedom, what good is success? As Seneca said, “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”

Don’t just nod your head at that. Think about it for a minute. Or for the rest of the day. Was this morning your own? Or were you rushed through it, to go somewhere, to do something, for someone you don’t actually like?

Are you sure that “getting everything you want” is what you actually want? Will it mean the ability to dictate what you do today? Will it give you control of your life—insofar as that is possible as a puny human being?

Because if it doesn’t… well, what’s the point?

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