Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 36

The Walk

Heading down the sidewalk of a street in New York City, you get the sense that there is something wrong with many people. Look at the way that they walk. Look at the momentary hold ups they cause. It’s a river of people creating its own eddies and backflow.

When I don’t have anywhere I need to be in a hurry, I like to take a second to watch: how they have no idea where they are going (and how hard navigating is). How unnatural it seems to be for them to walk in a straight line, or walk quickly. They veer this way and that way, or more often, drift slowly off kilter and don’t even realize it.

Two people manage to take up 6-10 feet of lateral space between them, conspiring unintentionally to block others from going around. Where on the earth is stopping abruptly when there are people behind you a common practice? They get surprised and scared because they get bumped, as if there wasn’t such thing as spatial awareness. Nobody snuck up on them, they just weren’t paying attention.

I see it as a metaphor. Here are a bunch of different people trying to go in different directions and do a bunch of different things. It’s life.

Some are deliberate and self-contained. Others are not. Is there more aggression in the former than the latter? Absolutely. But more responsibility as well. Less externalizing and disruption too.

How out of reach that all seems to be for many. These are easy things that seem to be so hard. And then we wonder why real obstacles seem to set people back in life. How we are caught off guard or easily discouraged by them.

We can’t even walk straight. Go or wait? I don’t know, what do the rules say? We see a runner bearing down in the opposite direction, left or right? There are no rules, better freeze.

A few simple traits cut through this knot of indecision and impotence: knowing where you’re going (or rather, that you are going somewhere), knowing the value of your time, appreciating the existence of other people (and treating them as they deserve), and proper carriage. That is, to carry yourself properly, directedly and under your own volition.

And to not be alarmed when you realize how much this sets you apart from the crowd.

Soft

You are soft. If you were born in my generation or thereabouts, you are almost certainly soft. You live a nerf life in a nerf world, filled with nerf delusions.

Check the boxes. Put in your 8 hours a day. Get what you you earned. Get anything.

Nope.

That’s not how it works. But you don’t get to complain that the game is rigged. Why? Because it’s basically fairer than it ever has been. It’s unlikely you’ll suddenly die. You don’t have to go to war. You can travel from place to place and never, ever worry about pirates.

Yet we’re soft. We quit early. Settle. Complain. Think we deserve a break. Make lazy, self-serving assumptions. Try to get the most for the least work.

Stoicism is hard. Cato was hard. They were obstinate, in a good way.

Consider what hustlers call their work: “grinding.” Not “the grind,” diminutively like us, but grindin‘. The hustle. Working all day and all night, looking for an angle, taking their share. They have to, there is no other way.

You have to cultivate that hardness. And you better start soon, because we’re all in the same ghetto now. How? Savagery is one way. You have to learn to love the struggle. To know how to grit your teeth, and promise yourself that you will never, ever let something like that happen to you again.

Everything is a test. It’s a test to see how hard you are. Will you keep going? Can you get to your knees? Can you get you to your feet? Can you try again? Can you bear it? There’s no end in sight, how long can you last?

Stop failing this test. Stop being soft.

Cato

How could one of Rome’s—and history’s—most respected “philosophers” have gotten away with never really writing anything? Because stoic philosophy is about action, not words. Men were considered philosophers based on how they lived life, not on how they studied, wrote or spoke about it.

Cato was such a man. He was a soldier, a politician, a thinker and most important an example. His unassailable place in Roman culture is best seen in the old proverbial expression used to make excuses: “We’re not all Catos.”

He lived on principle—often stubbornly and ineffectual so. But it wasn’t just for show. Cato also died on principle—gruesomely, and heroically so.

For whatever reason, as a historical figure, he has been so intimidating that basically no one has written about him since Plutarch. The legends, it seems, were more appealing than a human biography. I’ve tried to write about Cato before. And I’ve referred to him in other posts and places. But in terms of books, the offerings are scant.

Two friends of man have taken a stab at it though. I’ve been lucky enough to see the book develop, and as a result of the early drafts, been thinking about Cato for close to 18 months now. Like the authors, I struggled with strong feelings about Cato—both respect and disgust in fact. It’s hard to wrap your head around a man who was so brave, yet often so petty. He was a constant violator of the final law of power: assume formlessness.

Cato could not compromise, ever, even when it was best for the cause he claimed to hold dear. He’s a tragic figure in that sense, more Greek tragedy than Roman pragmatism. But an inspiring, bold and self-sufficient moral example nonetheless.

I’ve recommended a lot of biographies on this blog, from Everitt’s books on Augustus, Hadrian and Cicero to Liddell’s Sherman. I love biographies. I think they are the best way to start a deep study of a subject. Start with people, move on to events and then you can understand the ideas behind them.

Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar is a book like that. It’s subject is worth studying, particularly today. There’s a lot to learn from a politician who couldn’t be corrupted. A philosopher who refused to write. A millionaire who lived among his soldiers and people. He is Marcus Pocrcius Cato, a man of a different epoch—some two thousand years passed—but a man, who we, without a question, are better off knowing. Cato, as Paul Johnson said of Socrates, is a man for our times.

Never Be Like Them

About two years ago, I went to an advertising conference in New York City. I was the youngest person in the room by far. The only one who wasn’t in a suit, wasn’t talking about vacation houses, about cars, wasn’t hoping to hook up with some other gross lonely person while away from home. I remember thinking very vividly at the time: this is the track I am on. Right now I am young but soon, soon I will be one of these assholes.

I can’t express how much this shook me. I felt a kind of creeping dread that I would be absorbed into this crowd. That the things that were important to them would be important to me. That I would become just as parasitic as them; selling the same shit they sold, convinced—because I would have to be—that it wasn’t shit. It was not long after this that I dropped out.

Last week, I happened to be in town during the same conference. So I went again. How different it felt. The claustrophobia was no longer there, the anger and resentment too. All I felt was relief. Why relief? I am nothing like these people. I am firmly off this track. The preceding two years were very good to me: bestselling book, national media platform, new clients.

But the irony did not escape me. Last time, I was despondent. I felt like that I’d never be able climb high enough on this pile to breathe my own air, not in that suffocating rat race—that because I could never play by their rules, I’d forever be some bit player. So I resigned. I took my sharp right turn. And the result? Well, that’s the irony.

Today, I am very busy and no longer as obsessed with the industry as I once was, but last week there wasn’t a single presentation at this conference that wasn’t in some way chasing work that I had done. Facebook showed a screenshot of one of my articles and tried to dispute it on stage. Other companies were “announcing” the opening of platforms I’d been using for more than a year. I’m not saying that people were whispering my name or anything, but my finger prints, well I could see them everywhere. I was the only one in the room with a book, the only one doing the thing I’ve done.

That is not to say it was an easy year, leaving this world was incredibly difficult. And scary. And uncertain. It took denial and discipline. And to quote Henry Flagler, “it was hard on me but I would rather be my own tyrant than have someone else tyrannize me.”

So it goes, now on to the next worry. I’ll never be one of those assholes, sure, but now it’s time to make sure I don’t become some other type.

Some Recent Writing

Here are some recent articles from me:

New York Observer (where I am now a contributing editor)

Apple’s Free Ride: Why Journalists Treat Product Launches Like News

Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right

Forget Lehrer and Zakaria—Most Online Journalism Is Rotten to the Core

Fast Company

Why Books Are The Ultimate New Business Card

And some info on my next book, which will be on the intersection stoicism, opportunity and strategy.

A Hustler’s Art

I have three pieces of art in my house. One is a beautiful wax portrait of my hero William T. Sherman, one’s a painting done by an elephant and the other—my favorite—is a framed, signed original Joey Roth Hustler poster.

I’ve come to know Joey Roth since I discovered the piece. But even if I hadn’t, it would still be one of the most striking pieces of art I’d ever seen. It’s the only piece of art I’ve ever given as a gift (to Robert Greene, Neil Strauss and others). It’s one of the few things I’ve ever thought of getting as a tattoo.

Why? Because I think it properly defines the differences between a charlatan (all talk), a martyr (only action), and a hustler (action and talk in a feedback loop, fueling each other). The message was exactly what I needed at 22 or however old I was when I got it. I was a hustler then, and it’s taken me to where I am today. Now, I feel like I’ve internalized the message. I was ready for what comes next.



And now there is a second piece in the series. Where the first was about just one side of the equation. This one is about the whole thing. Inspiration, discipline, risk, humility. The virtues, the epithets of people who get shit done. Together, they form bullet, the bullet that if assembled properly, if struck correctly fires at four thousand ft a second.

To me, the second poster unpacks the hustler column from the first poster—perhaps, a more accurate version of it too. There’s no better metaphor for a hustler than a bullet. Lethal, vicious, a machine. All these things, yes. But as a hustler gets better, they realize there is more to the game. They decide they don’t want to be a casualty of it. They can start to transcend the rules they understood and manipulated.

As Roth writes, they learn to “design your project to cut through apathy and reach those who will appreciate it, but realize that once it’s in the world, its success and failure are no longer yours. Temperature, dew point, and Earth’s rotation affect a bullet’s flight as much as the shooter’s intention.”

A young hustler is supremely confident. A wise hustler is confident, but detached. They know that nine of ten projects will fail—rounds will miss their target—and they’re ok with that, they can see the bigger picture. They’ve moved from the short play to the long play.

I find myself wrestling with that transition now. So this poster will go on my wall alongside the others.

How to Repay Your Enemies

How do you repay the people who fucked you over?

It is a little harder to get into one post just because there are so many ways that people can wrong you. There is the overt action: the attack, the theft, the lie, the deliberate slight. And then there is the let down, the negligence, laziness, and occasionally, there’s someone with contagious bad luck. Most of the time, we ignore it. As we should. But sometimes, we can’t.

Imagine you are Sam Zemurray. You try to give friendly advice to the company you love, try to contribute through the proper channels, but they slam the door in your face. They are running your baby into the ground. You know what must be done.  So you go to the board meeting in New York City, you sit there quietly. Then you raise your hand and speak. They laugh in your face, mock your difficult accent. You storm out, maybe they think they’ve won.

When you return, it’s armed with the stock proxies for a majority share in the company. “You gentlemen have been fucking up this this business long enough. I’m going to straighten it out.” And now it’s time to drop the hammer: “You’re fired. Can you understand that, Mr. Chairman?” as you fling the bag of proxies across the table.

Sometimes an aggressive strike, or even revenge, is not emotion—but strategy (like a co-worker who is steadily encroaching on your projects despite discussions, or perhaps you need to generate a little controversy to get press). Robert Greene calls this “knowing when to be bad.”

One element of mastery is the ability to no longer need to react emotionally. To know what you need to do and not be distracted by immediacy. Repaying your enemies properly—and effectively—maintains that rule.

Only the top predators can afford to toy with their prey. As Ambrose Bierce once said, real skill is to “stab, beg pardon and turn the weapon in the wound.” Only the best can manage effective action as an artistic statement. But those who can, have all the fun.

A sad part of it all is this: people do you wrong out of incompetence a lot more of than they do out of malice. If they were consciously trying to harm you, believe it or not, they’d probably have done less damage. I’m not saying that because it take the sting out of it. Rather, that you can’t get back at someone who already lost—who can’t get things right even when they try. These people, you must ignore.

But as for the rest of our lives, there is one unescapable political fact: People will fuck with your stuff. They will treat you bad. Mess things up. Try to disrespect you or keep you out. What happens? You get pissed and you feel like murdering them. You sit there and stew and rage and rant. You’re only tipping the scales further out of your favor.

As I tried to explain to myself a few years ago in exactly one of these moments, this is no reason to grind your teeth. Smile, they just gave you an opportunity. Not an excuse, but a justification.

Enjoy it. Learn from it. Remember, as Plutarch one titled an essay, How To Profit By One’s Enemies. In a world, where so much will go wrong and sadly, so many people will wrong you, you better know how to turn it something positive or at the very least, into a cathartic game. Or you will be one angry person.

How to Repay Your Mentors

How do you for people who have done so much for you? How do you thank them?

Well, first let’s get something out of the way. Very rarely does anyone else help anyone else out for genuinely altruistic reasons. Unless your mentors were blood relatives, they took an interest in you in large part because there was an interest in it for them. Having a whiz kid or a protege around is good for business, that’s why they’re doing it.

So deliver. Have your shit together. Want it more than they want it for you. Don’t be crazy. Spot new opportunities, never care about credit. All the “Advice to a Young Man” stuff.

But after that, when it comes to all the intangibles–everything they gave you that extends way past any reasonable definition of “work obligation”–there is only one thing you can do: earn it. They invested time in you, they gave you a bit of their truly non-renewable resource. You can’t pay them back. You can only make it have been worth it. Validate the investment and make it clear that you appreciate it. Be a good person; do what you love.

Without being cheesy, I also have to discuss the final step: paying it forward. The people who gave you your first job, showed you their secrets, picked up the check when you couldn’t afford to? They don’t want that stuff back. They want you to see you learn from their example. I’m not saying it’s good karma, but think about it like this: the stuff they gave you, that wasn’t a gift. It was given to you in trust. You don’t exclusively own that knowledge, you aren’t entitled to profit from the advice, you didn’t get some free ride. No, you just got access to it for a while, access that was contingent on you referring other deserving people to it down the line. Got it?

As we get older and more successful, we find ourselves in the position to help people. We were once in their shoes, and we know how we got from there to here. We find meaning in that journey and want other to experience it. At the same time, success makes us soft. It alienates us, makes us a little less hungry. But our experience makes us smarter–we know that our skill combined with someone else’s inefficient but fresh energy would be potent. More potent than either attribute in isolation. Which is why both parties seek each other out and benefit from it.

Just remember that that’s what mentorship is. And that whatever role you play in that equation at whatever time, you better fulfill it completely. It’s what you owe.

Savages

I think savagery is underrated. We talk so much about personal development and refinement that what gets lost is that other part of ourselves, the darker, animalistic part. “Inspiration” is so much cleaner and less objectionable that it’s all we want to focus on. I’ve never been one for convention, so I’ll say what needs to be said here. Being savage is a good thing.

Let me be clear, what I’m not talking about are the kind of evil people who inflict harm on others. Or rely on physical intimidation for their success. There is little excuse for that in today’s world. What I’m talking about is a kind of self-directed savagery in a contained setting. When William Hazlitt was talking about the “wild beast resuming its sway within us” he was condemning the mob/tribe mentality, but I think it can also be a positive motivational factor.

I think about savagery when I go out and run–after hours of work, weeks of it in a row–every single day in the Louisiana heat. I enjoy sweating so hard it stings my eyes. I smile if I catch myself teetering a little bit towards the end. I’m not running for exercise, I’m running because there is a part of me that is a little bit savage. And I give it free reign and I benefit from it. There is savagery in juijitsu, which I do 4-5 days a week when I’m not traveling. There’s something savage about getting destroyed round after round and the fact that I keep coming back for more. I suppose I could get better faster by reading and studying but I think it’s better to do it this way. I go to get my ass kicked for a reason, and it doesn’t bother me that I do. I relish it a little bit. And mostly I learn from it.

In 19th century dog fighting, bull dogs weren’t the strongest or most aggressive dogs, but the fat and extra skin around their neck made it harder for other dogs to tear their throat out. Dogs could clamp down on it, but they couldn’t kill. That’s fucking savage. There’s a lesson there.

You don’t have to be the best, you just have to be harder to destroy. You have to be relentless. Indefatigable. Sometimes, to get in the right position, you have to be able to absorb a lot of blows. You’ve got to know you’re taking hits for a reason, and have the tolerance and endurance to bear it. If you can actually enjoy and seek out that process? Well, then you’re a fucking savage. And you’re going to be very successful.

Responding to Peter Shankman

Some of you may not have seen this because it was buried in a lot of the other more interesting press, but last week I completely blew up the PR/blogging industry by revealing the fatal flaws in HelpAReporterOut.com (HARO). The revelations garnered such an enormous outcry that HARO (and some lazy, entitled people in the journalistic and PR communities) had to respond. Naturally, they decided to strike back at me personally. It doesn’t surprise me that they did this, but that doesn’t mean I am going to tolerate it.

You can check out my reply at the Huffington Post: Honoring a Reporter’s Obligation: Dissecting Peter Shankman’s Hypocrisy

Did I expect people to have a strong reaction to this book? Sure. Did I think that, when faced with my accusations, some in the media would try to blacklist or marginalize me? Of course. But they forgot one thing: I don’t need them to get my message out. I never have. And unlike Shankman, since I am not repressing my hypocrisy–in fact, I have unloaded it–I am able to to look at all this calmly, and rationally and respond appropriately.

I hope you enjoy it. Let the discussion begin.