Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 4

This Is The Most Important Thing For These Crazy Times

It���s the hardest thing.

Especially right now.��

Not making money in this economy. Not climbing a mountain. Not running a marathon or writing a book or building a business. Not dealing with the high interest rates or the technological disruption.��

No, right now and indeed for all time���the hardest thing in the world is to not be infected by what���s happening around you. To not lose your mind���or your decency���or your sense of what matters.��

Look around. You see it everywhere. People melting down on airplanes and in traffic. Social media turning into a cesspool of rage and conspiracy theories. Families estranged. The news cycle ping-ponging between crisis and catastrophe. Real awful things happening.��

I remember a couple of years ago, I interviewed Mike Duncan about his fascinating book The Storm Before the Storm and he was telling me about some Stoics who lived during the tumultuous years of 146-78 BC, a period that set the stage for the fall of Rome. Their attitude, he said, was this:

The winds may howl, but I will not be swept away.��

That may well be one of the best definitions of Stoicism I have ever heard.

The world seems to be going crazy… and it’s trying to take you with it.

But here’s the thing: You can’t let it.

I���m reminded of Marcus Aurelius, who faced what might have been even darker times than our own: A devastating plague killing millions. A coup attempt by one of his most trusted generals. The empire literally crumbling at its edges. Yet, in his private writings, we see him constantly reminding himself: Don���t let it infect you. Don���t lose your humanity. Don���t go crazy with the craziness.

���No matter what anyone says or does,��� he wrote, ���my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, ���No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.������

Think of Montaigne, retreating to his study. Think of Stefan Zweig (whose biography of Montaigne I have been giving out since 2016) discovering Montaigne in a cellar as a refugee from Germany in 1941. Think of Cicero and Cato having to get out of Rome for a while. Think of Chrysippus who liked to see that the whole point of being a philosopher was to not join in with the mob and the rabble.

It���s not that they were disengaged���they were very engaged. It���s that they strove, however, not to be consumed by the passions that had wrecked their society. Lincoln had to strike a very similar balance: He knew that slavery was wrong. He knew that a good chunk of people were hell-bent on destroying the country. He also understood that he could not afford anything other than calmness, foresight, clarity. He could not lose his humanity. He could not lose his mind.

Neither can you.��

When you see that inflammatory post on social media? When someone cuts you off in traffic? When the news makes your blood boil?

Don���t let the crazies make you crazy.��

Again, this isn���t to say you���re indifferent to injustice���it���s that you can���t let it break you, you can���t let it make you despair, you can���t let it distract you from your own work for justice.��

Stay good. Stay focused. Keep your eyes on the prize.��

When tensions are high, when political dysfunction spills out into the street, when anger and frustration abound���When misinformation and extremism and utter nonsense pervade���When cruelty and meanness become acceptable���

���treat it not as disaster, but as opportunity.��

This is what Marcus was talking about in the line that inspired The Obstacle Is the Way: ���The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.��� Since the book came out a little over ten years ago (check out the new 10th anniversary edition), that line has inspired millions to do remarkable things���entrepreneurs pivoting during downturns to build thriving businesses, athletes turning injuries into remarkable comebacks, artists transforming hardship into their finest work, and so on.

But do you know what Marcus was really talking about when he wrote those words? It wasn���t success. He was talking about dealing with the world, seeing it as an opportunity for virtue���even the frustrating, disappointing, even disgusting things that happen.��

���In a sense,��� goes the full passage, ���people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them���Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.���

The conspiracy theorist in your Facebook feed. The politically radicalized family member. The angry stranger looking for an argument. Crazy people and crazy situations are opportunities to practice virtue. To show courage by standing firm in your principles. To demonstrate justice by treating them fairly despite their unfairness to you. To exercise temperance by controlling your emotions when they’re trying to provoke you.

To insist on what���s right. To fight for change where you can. To put your efforts where they make a positive difference.��

Is this easy? Of course not. That���s why I said it might be the hardest thing you���ll ever do.

We don’t control what other people do. We don���t control the news cycle or the political climate or the general level of sanity in the world.

What we control is ourselves. We control whether we let bad times turn us into bad people. We control whether we maintain our humanity when others are losing theirs. We control whether we carry the fire���as Cormac McCarthy would put it���or join in the darkness.

The winds may howl, but we must not be swept away.

The world may go mad, but we must remain sane.

This is our job. This is our proper occupation. This is the most important thing for these crazy times.

29 Lessons From 150 Million Podcast Downloads

In one of his most famous letters to Lucilius, Seneca gives a pretty simple prescription for the good life. ���Each day,��� he wrote, ���acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.���

One gain per day. That���s it. One quote, one prescription, one story.

George Washington���s favorite saying was ���many mickles make a muckle.��� It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know: things add up. Even little ones. Even at the pace of one per day. Because, as the Stoics would say, it���s the little things that add up to wisdom and to virtue. What you read, who you study under, what you prioritize. Day to day, practiced over a lifetime, this is what creates greatness. This is what leads to a good life.

Obviously, that���s what I���m doing with my daily emails (���Daily Stoic,��� ���Daily Dad���), but it���s also just the way I try to live. Every time I listen to a podcast or record one myself, I try to walk away having grabbed at least one little thing.

Over the last several years, I���ve had the chance to spend thousands of hours interviewing people for The Daily Stoic Podcast (which ���you can subscribe to here��� and ���check out on YouTube here���). And with over 150 million downloads so far, the people I���ve gotten access to have been beyond my dreams. I am certainly better, smarter and wiser for the privilege.

So in today���s email, I wanted to share some of the absolute best things I have learned that I think are worth passing along���

This is the best way to grieve. During ���my conversation with Francis Ford Coppola���, he shared that he had just recently lost his wife of 60 years. In coping with her loss, he came across a Marcus Aurelius quote that lifted his spirits. If you lose a loved one, it said, honor them. ���My wife was very good,��� he explained. ���If someone was alone or sick or something, she’d call them up and be comforting to them. And I’m not like that, you know? So I started to do that. People that I know, some guys my age who have no grandchildren, I call them up and say, Hey, how are you? And they are so pleased and so kind. And that���s how I keep my wife in my life.��� It was a wonderful conversation���seriously one of the best I���ve ever had���so ���if you haven���t checked it out, give it a listen here���.

Find your reps. Lacrosse legend Paul Rabil had a coach tell him that the key to making it in lacrosse was simple: take one hundred shots a day. The caveat? Holidays, bad weather, sickness���none of that can get in the way. ���You can���t miss a day,��� the coach said. And that���s what Paul did. Every single day from high school through his professional career���for twenty years. Everywhere he went, he found a wall to throw against, a goal to shoot on. One hundred shots a day, no exception.

I like that idea because it translates to almost everything in life. Whatever sport, business, or field you���re in: figure out what your reps are. Something you can commit to, every single day, that���s completely in your control. The key is: never miss a day. (���Listen to the full interview with Paul here���, and check out his book ���The Way of the Champion���.)

Be an ���everyday guy���. ���Buzz Williams���, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, brought up a similar point. He talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: ���Whatever it is that you���re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?��� he asks. ���If you���re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.���

Dress for success. Speaking of Buzz Williams���One of the benefits of being a writer is that I can dress how I want: tshirts, jeans, shorts, whatever. But when one of my favorite guests (Buzz) ���was coming out to record an episode���, I figured I���d dress up for him. Of course, Buzz showed up in basketball shorts and a tshirt. It made me laugh because in ���Discipline Is Destiny���, I have a chapter called ���Dress for Success���. In it, I wrote about General Zachary Taylor, a General who notoriously hated wearing a uniform. Yet when he met with a naval officer, Taylor dressed up to make his guest more comfortable. Meanwhile, the naval officer, in a gesture of respect for his peer’s humble style, came in civilian dress! It���s just a reminder that just because we don’t put much stock in superficial things doesn’t mean that other people’s impressions don’t matter. Presentation counts…and so do other people’s feelings. It���s good to keep this in mind in life. Anyway, you can see what I���m talking about by ���watching the interview on YouTube���.

Remind yourself what really matters. Grief and loss expert David Kessler has spent serious time with people on death���s door. One of the most impactful experiences he shared was when he was at the home of someone in the last few moments of their life. They were surrounded by friends and family and one of the friends asked if they wanted to see their new car, which was parked outside in the driveway. The dying person said no, they didn���t care to see the new car. ���How ridiculous was that concept all of a sudden?��� David Kessler said. ���You just realize everything that what we thought was going to make us happy and become how we identify ourselves just means nothing. It means nothing. What matters is the people, it���s the love, it���s everything else.��� ���This was a hard-hitting episode that everyone would benefit from listening to���.

Fall in love with the moment. Dr. Michael Gervais is the world���s leading performance psychologist. He says that the remedy to the anxieties of a new project, a growing to-do list, an uncertain future, is falling in love with the present moment. ������As opposed to being anxious, protective, trying to control stuff, can you just be in love with showing up and experiencing this moment?������ Too often, we refuse the gift of the moment in front of us. We dwell on what���s long behind us, or anxiously project ourselves into an imagined future���either yearning for it or dreading it. But if you care-take each moment, you���ll experience an instant lightness���a feeling you can have all the time if only you can get out of your head.

You���ll almost always be improved by this one thing. I wrote a whole book about slowing down (���Stillness Is The Key���), so when Cal Newport���s new book, ���Slow Productivity���, came out I was so excited to read it and talk with him about it ���(please read it, it���s so good���). One of the things ���we talked about in his episode��� is the importance of taking walks, not only for your mental and physical well-being, but because it actually stimulates productivity: ���The motor neurons involved in walking act as a dampener on neural noise (those distracting thoughts),��� he explains. ���When you���re sitting still, sometimes the problem is there���s not enough dampening going on in your brain so it becomes hard to sustain your focus. When you���re walking, it puts on some cognitive blinders and you���ll find it���s easier to hold your focus on an abstract idea.��� You can ���watch the whole clip of this part of our conversation here���.

Keep a physical practice. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to swim in some of the best pools in the world while on tour in Australia (by the way������I���ll be in London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver and Toronto in just a few weeks, so get tickets here���). I was reminded of ���a wonderful conversation I had with Bonnie Tsiu ���about her incredible book, ���Why We Swim���: ���We are biologically driven to respond to certain set points in the environment���our brains love to be near water and blue spaces,��� she said. ���We love immersion and the feeling of physically being in water because our brains produce more alpha waves���those wavelengths associated with relaxation, calm, and creativity���when we are merely listening to or looking at it. There is a benefit to both body and mind to get in and swim.��� It���s just another reminder that having a physical practice is essential to the creative life (���as I write about here���).

Nobody can ���make you��� upset. ���A reminder from Timm Chiusano��� for the next time you open your inbox to a nasty email, or you���re passed over for a promotion, or your co-worker throws you under the bus at the meeting: ���You���re complicit when somebody else says something and you���re like, ���I take offense to that��� or ���I���m so annoyed right now.��� If you���re able to actually accept that that is true, that you���re complicit in those situations, do you know how much stress that you���d relieve for yourself in corporate America on a day-in and day-out basis? It���s nuts. That���s like 90 percent lift of weight off your shoulders.���

You just have to accept it. ���Former U.S. Senator Martha McSally��� (and first American woman to command a fighter squadron in combat) on overcoming obstacles: ���Stop resisting what is. We spend a lot of energy resisting what is, whether we don���t like our boss or the relationship we���re in, and we really want other people to change. If we can accept what is, then you can address what is, then you can address the things that are in your control to actually create the life you want, the relationship you want, the situation you want.���

Have fewer of these. I���m an adamant proponent of having less opinions. ���I���ve talked about it��� and written about it for ���Daily Stoic��� and ���Daily Dad���. I really liked the way ���Renee DiResta frames it��� in the context of getting angry at something online: ���You don���t actually have to do anything. You can let it go by. What an incredible experience it is to let someone be wrong on the internet without weighing in on it.���

Be YOU. ���Rainn Wilson shared a story��� of a painful period when he was trying to be someone he wasn���t. It was 1995 and he was cast in his first Broadway play. In his head, he had this preconceived notion of a Broadway actor: very professional, very serious, very matter-of-fact. Rainn tried to be that person. ���And guess what? I sucked,��� he said. Night after night, for the entirety of the six-month broadway run, ���I sucked. And it was a miserable six months. There���s nothing worse than knowing what you are doing is terrible���And when I finished the play, I said, Never again. Never again am I going to do that. I���m going to find my authentic voice as an actor. I���m quirky, I���m kind of weird���I���m going to embrace that. I���m not going to try to be something to please someone else. I gotta be me. And I really just changed how I was as an actor at that point.���

Not long after he made the decision to embrace being himself, Rainn landed not only the biggest role of his career, but what would prove to be one of the most iconic characters in the history of television: Dwight in The Office. ���I never would have gotten Dwight had I not gone through the suffering on that play. Because getting Dwight was embracing my nerdy weirdness. If I hadn���t totally embraced that, I wouldn���t have gotten the role of Dwight.���

When we are ourselves, we have value. ���Gary Vee said something similar to this���: ���The people that really lean into themselves, like really don’t try to put other things on a pedestal, other people, other opinions and just get really comfortable with the purest form of them? Yeah. Those are the people that have impact, because that’s where the uniqueness���the way you say things, the analogies, the stories, the interpretations, the subtle observations that are unique to you���come out.��� No one has ever been like you before. No one will ever be like you again. So why would you copy other people? Why would you try to be like someone else? That���s where the fun is (you don���t have to fake anything). That���s where the value is (when we are like everyone else, we are replaceable���by definition). You should be you. That’s your monopoly. That���s your edge.

Be careful who you admire. ���A good chunk of these people are just maniacs,��� ���Morgan Housel pointed out on the podcast���. ���They���re either fundamentally broken or wounded in some way, or their success is a byproduct of some profound dysfunction.��� The most glaring example, he says, is Elon Musk. ���He���s achieved some of the greatest success of any entrepreneur, but the same personality traits that got him there are the traits that lead him to do things people hate.��� Fighting with random trolls online, getting into spats with journalists and politicians, that���s the same person we glorify for his genius. ���Bill Gates was the same. Walt Disney was the same. Steve Jobs was the same. They’re all maniacs at their core. That’s why they were successful.���

You���re stronger than you think. I was thrilled to have Dr. Becky Kennedy on the podcast because her work has impacted me in innumerable ways. If you haven���t read her book, ���Good Inside���, yet���what are you doing?! ���We had an incredible conversation that every parent���or really just any human���needs to listen to���. In the episode, she says that anxiety is ���some amount of uncertainty coupled with our underestimation of our ability to cope.��� It reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Marcus Aurelius quotes: “Remind yourself what you’ve been through and what you’ve had the strength to endure.”

Get clear on what you want. ���Productivity expert Ali Adbaal��� consolidated 90% of the world���s productivity advice into three points: ���Number one is figure out where you actually want to go. Number two is to convert all of those goals into words. So if you’re trying to write a book, your goal could be to write 500 words a day. And three is to just put it into your calendar and hold yourself accountable.���

Amateurs love tools. To that note, ���we also talked about how amateurs are obsessed with tools���, but the only thing that���s actually going to get you anywhere is sitting down and doing the work. You can have the best software in the game, but if you���re not willing to do the thing you���re trying to do, day in and day out, you���re never going to get anything done.

More on thoughts of tech tools������I asked Robert Greene what he thought about Artificial Intelligence���. He said: ���I study a lot of languages. That was sort of my major in college. I think back to the moment when I was 19-years-old and at Berkeley. I remember they gave us a passage of Thucydides, the hardest writer of all to read in ancient Greek. So I had this one paragraph and I must have spent ten hours trying to translate it. Finally, I think I have the answer, so I turned it in to my professor and he said, ���Robert, you were almost there, but you missed it. You completely mistranslated this beautiful paragraph. But,��� he said, ���you were getting at something.��� And that had an incredible impact on me. Even to this day, it has developed character, patience, and discipline. You’ve got kids nowadays who are never going to have that experience. These incredible skills that the brain has are going to be atrophying, I fear. The brain is so much more interesting to me than any piece of technology. That’s what we should be worshiping, not these little toys that we create.���

Show, don���t tell. ���Austin Kleon��� on parenting���: ���You have to be the kind of man that you want them to be. You have to become the kind of human being that you want them to become.��� ���Marcus Aurelius��� was talking about being a human being: ���Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.���

Build the damn frog float. Early in his Seal training, ���Admiral McRaven��� was called to meet with his commanding officer. Thinking he was about to be sent on a mission, he rushed to the office. When he got there, the chief officer asked him to build a frog float for a local parade.

It was in his disappointment that he was given the best advice he���s ever received: ���I bet you thought you were going to be jumping out of airplanes, blowing things up and saving the world!��� Senior Seal Herschel Davis said to him later that day. ���Let me tell you something, I���ve been in this canoe for thirty years. If the skipper wants you to build the frog float, then you build the best damn frog float you can.���

���Ryan,��� ���McRaven said after retelling this story.��� ���We all get these jobs that we believe are beneath our status. But if you take the job on and you do it well, one: people will think you are good enough to do the bigger job. But I also think you have a responsibility when someone gives you a job, to do it the best you can. Throughout the course of my career, I had to build a lot of frog floats.���

The important thing is not to be afraid. I���ve talked to a couple professional baseball players on ���the podcast��� (���James Outman���, ������Ian Happ������, ������Scott Oberg���) as well as professional basketball players and coaches (������George Raveling���, ���Chris Bosh������, ������Cuttino Mobley������) and entrepreneurs (������Tim Ferriss������, ������Rob Dyrdek������). One thing they���ll all tell you is that a person who is afraid to strike out, afraid to miss, afraid to fail is a person who will not succeed.

Focus on the effort, not the outcome. Speaking of Ian Happ������he shared the story��� about the time he got sent back to the minor leagues after a great rookie season with the Chicago Cubs in 2017. The reason? He was too worried about the things he couldn���t control: ���When you worry about the things that might get you put on the bench, the end result of that is always, you do the things that get you put on the bench,��� he explains. ���Instead of wondering why or trying really hard to impress a coach or the people who make the decisions, I said, ���you know what? I���m going to believe in myself, put in the work, and at some point, they���re not going to be able to keep me out of the lineup.��� This mindset got him back into the Cubs��� lineup with a breakout season, and ultimately landed him on first MLB All-Star team. It was only when he cared more about what he was doing (and less about what others were thinking) that he was able to really perfect his game.

Guard your time. ���The novelist Philipp Meyer��� (whose book ������The Son������ is an incredible read) ���said���, ���You have to be very careful about to what (and to whom) you���re giving the best part of your day.���

Tempus fugit (time flies). ���Professor Scott Galloway told me��� about the profound grief he felt looking at a picture of his 11-year-old, who was now a great 14-year-old. The 11-year-old, Galloway realized, was gone for good. Every parent���s deepest fear is losing their child. And the terrible, beautiful tragedy of parenthood is that, indeed, we are constantly losing our children. Day, by day, by day. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that they are constantly growing, changing, becoming someone different. On a daily, if not an hourly, basis.

Forget about competition. One of the things that fascinates me about Tim Ferriss is his ability to spot something before anyone else. ���He explained this philosophy on the podcast���: ���When I find an area that is crowded or competitive, I look at that as an opportunity to find something that is uncrowded. Podcasting has become incredibly competitive, so instead of trying to fight for space, I���d start to look for what���s neglected.��� Not only does this help to limit comparison, it���s also a brilliant business strategy (there is a wonderful book on this called ���Blue Ocean Strategy���).

There���s no such thing as being ���self-made���. On the surface, Arnold Schwarzenegger���s life story is a classic example of that idea of the ���self-made man.��� Born and raised in a small village in Austria, seemingly on his own sheer will and determination, Arnold achieved extraordinary success in the worlds of bodybuilding, acting, business and politics, ultimately becoming a global icon. ���But, he told me,��� he didn���t do it on his own. ���I have been a creation of hundreds of people,��� he said. ���Thousands of people. It���s unbelievable the amount of people that helped me and pushed me,��� he said. This is true for all of us, we are all the sum of our surroundings, the products of our influences, our environments, our family and friends. Success is a collaborative effort. Doesn���t that make it more wonderful? ���This was one of the craziest episodes I���ve ever filmed (I flew to LA to record it). If you���re going to tune into this episode, definitely watch the video here���.

The Obstacle Is the Way. After running 100 miles in less than 24 hours, ���Nate Boyer told me���, ���the worst part was the expansive flat portions without the ups and downs ��� there might be a life lesson in that.���

Exercise this muscle. The mental performance coach ���Greg Harden������ worked with Tom Brady and Michael Phelps, (among countless other top performers) had a great line: in the way that the ability to quickly recover after a workout is an indicator of physical fitness, ���People who are mentally fit recover faster than the average person.���

This is life. In 2017, ���I interviewed the writer and Southern Stoic, Peter Lawler���. He passed away a short while after. We had the great ���Paul Woodruff on the podcast to talk about his love of Marcus Aurelius���, and we didn���t even know that he was dying of bronchiectasis. Just last year, ���we interviewed the indelible Dr. Sue Johnson���, who wrote the must-read ���Hold Me Tight���, and she sadly passed away this April. ���Greg Harden came out to the podcast last year, too���. Just a little over one week ago, he passed away.

���The Daily Stoic Podcast��� hasn���t been around that long, but guests whose work has had an enormous impact are gone, already receding into memory. This is a great Stoic reminder. None of us last forever, none of us are invincible, none of us are exempt from death.

We have to notice this. We have to think about this. Because we can���t stop death from happening. We���re all marked souls, living on borrowed time. Let���s not waste what time we have left.

Everything I Learned From Iron Maiden About Life

What does Iron Maiden have to do with Stoic philosophy?

Nothing really, but this is my newsletter and it���s what I want to talk about.

I���ve been an Iron Maiden fan since I was a kid (more about how I found them below). I���ve seen them live in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Austin and San Antonio (2x). If you���ve ever seen me on a podcast or in a ���Daily Stoic video���, if you’ve come to ���one of my talks��� or bumped into me in person���there���s a very good chance you saw me in an ���Iron Maiden t-shirt���. I even wrote about them in my book ���Perennial Seller���.

But mostly, what inspired this piece is that I am taking my 8-year-old to see them later this month���exactly twenty years after I went to my first Iron Maiden concert.

So what have I learned in two decades of an unhealthy fandom of a British heavy metal band?

A lot.

Let me tell you.

Know what business you���re in. There is a story about the manager of Iron Maiden, Rod Smallwood, who has worked with the band since 1979. He is at a dinner honoring the group. A young agent comes up to him and says how much he admires his skillful work in the industry. The manager looks at him and says, ���HA! You think I am in the music business? No. I���m in the Iron fucking Maiden business.��� The publishing industry? The retail business? These are not the businesses I am in���just like you���re not in the coffee industry or B2B. No, you���re in the business of you. You���re in the business of serving your customers in your city with your unique offering. The trends of the bull or bear market? It doesn���t matter, just as the trendiness (or lack of trendiness) of heavy metal hasn���t mattered to Iron Maiden. What matters is their relationship with their fans. That���s who they are in service of. That���s the job. And so it goes for all of us, whatever we do.

Develop range. Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, has incredible range. I don���t mean his voice (though it���s very impressive). I mean that he has done more than just sing in a band that���s sold millions of records. He���s done more than have a decent solo career. He wrote a couple of popular children���s novels. He became an Olympic-level fencer (seriously, nearly making the British Olympic team). Oh, and then he learned how to fly planes���like really big ones. Here���s a picture of the Iron Maiden plane���which he flies after the band performs, taking the group to their next gig.

That is preposterous! The only thing more ridiculous is that for many years he also worked for Astraeus Airlines and ���once airlifted British tourists stranded in Egypt���. It���s one thing to master one skill, but to master a couple different domains? That’s hard. But it pays off. Because we learn skills and are introduced to new ideas that we can bring back to our main thing (a bunch of the best Iron Maiden songs are about flying���and swords). A book recommendation in this regard is David Epstein���s book, ���Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World���.

Create spectacles. The ���Ed Force One,��� as they call the Iron Maiden plane, is not just a mode of transportation���it’s a flying billboard, a conversation starter, a part of the Maiden mythology. Wherever it lands, it captures attention, sparks curiosity, and draws people into their world. Are there cheaper, more efficient ways to travel on tour? Probably. But that���s not the point.

I always think about spectacles (albeit on a much smaller scale). When we were setting up ���The Painted Porch���, that blend of function and spectacle inspired one of the best decisions we made���making ���our book tower���. It���s 20 feet tall and made of some 2,000 books, 4,000 nails, and 40 gallons of glue. It was not cheap to do. It was not easy. It took forever. We had to solve all sorts of logistical problems to make it work. But it���s also probably one of the single best marketing and business decisions we made in the whole store. Because it���s the number one thing people come into the store to take pictures of.

Focus on what���s in your control. Ok, maybe there is one Stoic lesson. As you know, the core of Stoic philosophy is focusing on what���s in your control. It���s about ignoring what other people do and say and putting that energy into what you do and say. Bruce Dickinson explained Iron Maiden���s philosophy: ���We have our field and we���ve got to plough it and that���s it. What���s going on in the next field is of no interest to us; we can only plough one field at a time.��� Do you���you���re the only one who can. It hasn���t always been easy, but I���ve tried to remind myself that it doesn���t matter how many books other people sell. It doesn���t matter what anyone else is doing. I���m writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. It has its own ceiling and its own floor. I���m comfortable with that.

Success and fame are byproducts. It���s fair to say that Iron Maiden is a cult act rather than a mainstream act. And yet, it���s a very big cult. They���ve sold millions of records. ���Here���s a video of them performing in front of 250,000 people���. The point is: The band is famous. But what is fame? Marcus Aurelius would say that it���s nothing���the clapping of hands and the clacking of tongues. Actually, Bruce Dickinson has a better quote, I think, because unlike an emperor, their fame was slightly more meritocratic. ���Fame is the excrement of creativity,��� Dickinson once said, ���it���s the shit that comes out the back end, it���s a by-product of it.��� So yeah, chasing fame is not only not really worth it, but you don���t get it by chasing it either. An audience, a reputation, fame, these are ���lagging indicators��� of years of making stuff that people like and get to know you through. It���s the byproduct of doing the work.

Build a resilient career. As a British heavy metal act, there���s naturally a bunch of Churchill cameos in their work. It���s fitting because Maiden���s career bears some resemblance to Churchill���s approach to building a resilient career. In ���Perennial Seller���, I tell the story of how Churchill maintained influence even when exiled from politics in 1931. Unlike an ordinary politician, who would have been powerless when voted out of office, Churchill had something more valuable than office���a platform. Between 1931 and 1939, during his so-called political wilderness, he published 11 books, 400+ articles, and delivered more than 350 speeches. The result of this was an enormous worldwide platform that allowed him not only to survive financially but wield influence that kept him relevant and guided policy and opinion across the globe. This is not unlike Iron Maiden, whose platform transcends the typical constraints of the music industry. Instead of relying on album sales or radio play, they created a multi-faceted empire: elaborate stage shows, their iconic mascot Eddie, comic books, video games, and even their own beer. It���s what���s solidified them as a perennial force in the music industry, enabling them to endure fads and technological shifts. Of course, it���s meant financial success, but what���s even more impressive is that their platform frees them to communicate to their fans without interference from intermediaries and allows them to create work on their own terms.

Respect the boundaries. What���s interesting is that despite all Bruce���s range and all the decades Iron Maiden has made music, there���s not a huge difference between their first album and their most recent, Senjutsu. Basically���and this includes the different lead singers���Iron Maiden has been following the same formula on all their albums for the last 49 years. I don���t think that���s an insulting thing to say���it���s no small feat. It���s also something they���ve done on purpose. As Bruce has explained,

���There is an unspoken contract between the band and the audience. If you���re David Bowie and your fans want you to change every album then that’s his style. With Maiden, that���s not our style, fans like us to play something that’s identifiable; they want to see nuances of change but they���re happy with Maiden. Maiden���s music appeals to a certain person and in every generation there’s a certain amount of those people born, that’s why Maiden’s appeal is finite in terms of the number of records we sell in the short term.���

I know what my audience expects from me. I don���t find that constraining, it���s actually liberating. One of the Stoics, Cleanthes, would talk about how the ���fetters��� of poetry actually unlock creativity���I think that���s true. You establish a contract with your audience, an expectation of the medium, and you have to deliver on that. The freedom is in the how.

What matters is that it���s interesting to you. On some level, Iron Maiden���s songs are absurd. Music is supposed to be about stuff that people relate to���falling in love, growing up, partying, having fun. Iron Maiden writes 10-minute songs about literature and history. They have songs inspired by Coleridge poems, science fiction novels, historical figures like Genghis Khan and Alexander The Great. They���ve got a song about Passchendaele (one of the most horrific battles of the First World War) songs about D-Day and the Crimean War. Steve Harris, who writes most of the band���s songs, clearly loves to read. Which is the point���he finds these things very interesting. And as a result, they become very interesting to the audience. Again, on the surface, an obscure school of ancient philosophy should be pretty boring. My publisher and most of my friends suspected it would be���but my passion for it was contagious.

Build on greatness. They don���t just write songs about ancient history. They���ve got songs based on lines from Shakespeare, the ���epic novels of Frank Herbert��� and the myth of Icarus. It���s very hard to do better than Tennyson or Coleridge (a poem of whose Iron Maiden has a 14-minute song about), so don���t fight it. Or what about Aces High, for which the music video opens with Churchill���s greatest speech? Iron Maiden is very good at incorporating great works of art into their art. Never underestimate the power of repackaging something timeless and old. In my teens, I discovered so much stuff through Iron Maiden. None of my teachers read us ���The Charge of the Light Brigade������I heard it from Iron Maiden (my son can recite a big chunk of the poem now). I read ���Brave New World��� because they have an album based on the book. I���ve taken a lot of joy out of paying that process forward in my own books, finding stuff that I love, that I think is great and introducing people to it.

Make it a universe of true fans. There is a theory put forward by Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired magazine. He calls it 1,000 True Fans: ���A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author���in other words, anyone producing works of art���needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.��� Iron Maiden is this idea on a massive scale. Somebody once joked that Iron Maiden has sold more t-shirts than albums. If that���s true, it���s no small feat (the band has sold over 130 million albums) and not exactly a bad thing (you make more money on merch than music). But I think that���s why I���ve always liked the band. It���s not just music but a whole universe of art and imagery and themes. There���s even a phrase that the fans say to let each other know their identity: Up the Irons! This is something I thought a lot about with ���Daily Stoic���. I don���t just ���write books���, but I have ���designed��� and ���made things��� that continue that experience in many ���different mediums���. It can���t be, as Lady Gaga warned, ���Thanks for buying my record, fuck you.��� It should be, ���Oh, you liked what I did? Here���s a bunch of other cool stuff that I designed for people just like you.��� Don���t stop at the surface with what you���re building���make it a world. Better yet, make it a universe of hard-core, true fans.

Backstage of the Tamron Hall Show

Find ways to spread. When I was on ���Jocko���s podcast last year���, he asked me how I became an Iron Maiden fan. ���As I explained���, I was trying to illegally download a Metallica album and ended up with an Iron Maiden album. But then again, how else was I going to discover them? It had been years since they were on regular rotation on MTV and unlike Metallica, rarely got radio play. Solving the problem of discovery is the thing all arts and companies have to figure out. Sometimes traditional avenues are open, but often they are not���or they are very clogged. When Iron Maiden sells out a stadium in Brazil or Colombia or India, how do you think most of those fans heard about them? In a lot of cases, it was via bootlegs. It was YouTube. The same is true for writers. Obviously, piracy is not ideal. It would be better if everything was legitimate and affordable. But that���s not the case. If you want to maintain relevance and sustain an audience, you have to embrace these other channels. You can���t sweat every YouTube upload or every time someone rips you off. In fact, you can appreciate that what it���s doing is adding to the universe you���ve created. There���s a reason I give away the vast majority of stuff that I make���I want to find its way to people, I want the barriers of entry, of discovery, to be as low as possible. You never know what kind of journey you might kick off for someone who comes across your stuff.

Play the long game. Iron Maiden has been at it for nearly 50 years and counting! They���re playing the long game, defying every stereotype in the music business. 17 studio albums, 14 live albums, 2,000 concerts in 59 countries, over 130 million albums sold. They performed for 250,000 people as the headliners of the Rock in Rio festival���26 years after the band formed. This empire wasn’t built on one hit album or a viral single. It���s the result of applying a perennial seller mindset to everything they do. It���s easy to chase quick wins, but Maiden reminds us that real magic happens when you zoom out. When I first started listening to Iron Maiden, I remember reading that they had sold something like 50 million albums. That was a lot then, but what���s amazing is that twenty years later, that number has almost tripled. Do you know how insane it is to sell that many records these days? But that���s the thing���time and momentum are incredibly powerful forces. In the beginning, small efforts might seem insignificant. But they accumulate and compound over time. Whether it’s a decades-spanning discography, a business, a career or an anthill, impressive outcomes start with humble beginnings.

The more the merrier. In 1990, Adrian Smith, one of the band’s best guitarists, left the band. He was ably replaced by Janick Gers for 9 years, until Adrian asked to rejoin the band. There is something special about original lineups so you might expect that Gers left the band, but nope. The band just switched to having three guitarists! And why not? It just means more guitar solos for everyone! Is there an applicable lesson here? I dunno, I���ve just always liked it.

My Iron Maiden Christmas sweater

Just keep going. How has Iron Maiden lasted through the years? It wasn���t just by making great work���it was by making a lot of it over and over again. Some of Iron Maiden���s greatest songs are on ���Brave New World��� (released 25 years after the band was formed) or ���Dance of Death��� (released 28 years in). It���s easy to be intimidated by success, or to be made complacent by it or to give in to the fan���s reverence for the past. But it���s better for you and your art to put those feelings aside, to keep trucking along, to keep making stuff. When I first heard Iron Maiden in 2001, they had already been going for 26 years at that point. And they���re still going! Every time I see tour dates, I get nervous and tell myself, I should probably catch them one more time. That���s what I did on this tour and then you know what I saw? They announced another tour for 2025. But that���s the thing when you make great, perennial work���it creates momentum for you to keep going. Not only that, it means it will live on well after you stop.

I���m nearly two decades into my career. Sometimes I get tired, but that���s when I remind myself that I have a lot further to go, that I���ve got a lot more in me. Just keep going. Maiden taught me that.

Iron Maiden shoes backstage of The Daily Show

This Is Why I Don’t Have Goals (And What To Do Instead)

I don’t have goals.

I know that might seem a little crazy, but it’s true. I don’t.

There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to write. There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to sell. I don’t have a “number” that I’m trying to hit financially. There’s not a certain number of downloads I’m trying to get ​my podcast​ to or followers I want to reach.

I run every day, but I’m not training to run a marathon. I swim a lot (​as we talked about recently​) and bike, too, but it’s not because I want to do an Iron Man.

That’s sort of the point. What I want to do is run and swim, what I want to do is write—to me that is the win.

I don’t fault other people for having goals—if that’s what motivates you, enjoy. And obviously, companies and coaches need to set goals for their staff and for their team—this is how they evaluate and compare performance. A public company has to have revenue targets because investors demand them.

They’re just not for me.

I’m much more focused on process.

That is to say, I focus on doing the thing as opposed to achieving some particular thing.

Why?

It mostly has to do with control, that central issue for the Stoics.

Most goals are rooted in an external result that’s not in your control. Writing a book is not the goal most people have. No, their goal is hitting a bestseller list. Only you determine whether you write a book or not, but the bestseller list? That’s up to the New York Times. Winning a Grammy? That’s up for the Recording Academy. A Nobel Prize? That’s up to the folks in Stockholm. Even competitive goals like being the fastest person in a race or the richest person in the world—these depend on what your competitors do.

The fixation on external results that are not in your control carries a hidden cost. It consumes a significant amount of time and energy that would be better spent doing things that actually generate those results. A musician chasing a spot on the charts churns out derivative work, never finding their unique sound. A speaker fixated on the audience’s reaction loses their train of thought. A swimmer who glances over at the competition or up at the finish creates drag and slows down.

Over the years, I’ve worked on lots of book and product launches for people. One thing I like to find out right away is what ‘success’ might look like to them. When a person starts to talk about very specific numbers like “Success is hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List” or “Success is making [$$$,$$$$$,$$$$]” or “Success is selling one million copies,” I get a little pit in my stomach for them. First, because of how random these goals tend to be. I remember asking one guy why he had chosen “two million books” as his number and his answer was because someone else he knew had done one and a half million. He’d just pulled the number out of his ass! (And of course, he never came close to this number because almost no books do).

Second, I am struck by what they didn’t say. They didn’t say “Success is making something amazing that really helps people” or “Success is creating something that I’m deeply proud of”. All they’re thinking about is some benchmark, rather than thinking about what it takes to even have a chance at hitting such a benchmark: being present, dedicated, pure-hearted, disciplined, creative, self-aware, patient. Someone who comes right out and says they’re chasing a number, competing against someone else, or needing external validation often reveals that they lack those very qualities.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive to accomplish great things or to do and be all that you’re capable of—you definitely should. It’s that in my experience, the best work comes out of just that: doing the work. Not in visualizing success. Not in trying to reverse engineer what’s working for someone else. Not in setting a “big hairy audacious goal” as some advise. But in the quiet day-to-dayness of the work. In immersing yourself in the craft, not the charts. In being process-driven, not goal-driven.

It comes from loving the process, not from thirst.

When I was chatting with Buzz Williams, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, on The Daily Stoic Podcast (​listen here​), he talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: “Whatever it is that you’re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?” he asks. “If you’re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.”

I’d say when you remove goals, that’s what it comes down to. Do you have the consistency and discipline to show up every day? Are you working on getting better every day?

In ​Discipline Is Destiny​, I write about the practice of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Always finding some way to make a little progress. Focusing on the joys of getting a little bit better every day. This is the secret to being internally driven, to being Every Day. “Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse,” Epictetus would say, riffing, as it happens, on Socrates, “so I delight in attending to my improvement day by day.”

I like the way Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who has helped thousands of startups over the years at Y Combinator and then created Open AI, talked about this idea in an interview with Tyler Cowen. “Strive to be internally driven,” Altman said. “Driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament. Even if you ‘win’, you lose. But if you’re competing with yourself, and all you’re trying to do is be the best possible version you can—there’s no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform.”

And Sam has done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he?

In a way, I think getting rid of goals is actually more ambitious.

Goals, by their nature, are finite and fleeting. Once you achieve them, what then? You might experience a brief moment of pleasure and satisfaction, but soon, you’re left with two choices: either stop doing the thing altogether, having reached your destination, or realize that there is no destination, that you keep going and going and going.

You just keep looking for new ways to challenge yourself, new ways to do things, going towards the harder way, as ​we talked about a couple of weeks ago​. You just keep showing up and getting better, wherever that leads.

This not only keeps things interesting, but it insulates you, ever so slightly, from outcomes, ego, self-doubt, and misfortune. It’s not that you don’t care about results—it’s that you have a kind of trump card. Your successes don’t go to your head because you know you’re capable of more. Your failures don’t destroy you because you are sure there wasn’t anything more you could have done.

You don’t control what happens to you, what adversity gets placed in your path, but you always control whether you show up every day and give your best or not. No one can stop you from that.

You don’t have to end up number one in your class. Or win everything, every time. In fact, winning is not particularly important. What matters is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift.

The gift of your potential. The gift of the opportunity. The gift of the craft you’ve been introduced to. The gift of the responsibility entrusted to you.

Immerse yourself in the work, in the process, in the daily practices that make up the bulk of your life.

Forget goals.

Be process-oriented.

Be internally driven.

Be Every Day.

This Is Why I Don���t Have Goals (And What To Do Instead)

I don���t have goals.

I know that might seem a little crazy, but it���s true. I don���t.

There���s not a certain amount of books I���m trying to write. There���s not a certain amount of books I���m trying to sell. I don���t have a ���number��� that I���m trying to hit financially. There���s not a certain number of downloads I���m trying to get ���my podcast��� to or followers I want to reach.

I run every day, but I���m not training to run a marathon. I swim a lot (���as we talked about recently���) and bike, too, but it���s not because I want to do an Iron Man.

That���s sort of the point. What I want to do is run and swim, what I want to do is write���to me that is the win.

I don���t fault other people for having goals���if that���s what motivates you, enjoy. And obviously, companies and coaches need to set goals for their staff and for their team���this is how they evaluate and compare performance. A public company has to have revenue targets because investors demand them.

They���re just not for me.

I���m much more focused on process.

That is to say, I focus on doing the thing as opposed to achieving some particular thing.

Why?

It mostly has to do with control, that central issue for the Stoics.

Most goals are rooted in an external result that���s not in your control. Writing a book is not the goal most people have. No, their goal is hitting a bestseller list. Only you determine whether you write a book or not, but the bestseller list? That���s up to the New York Times. Winning a Grammy? That���s up for the Recording Academy. A Nobel Prize? That���s up to the folks in Stockholm. Even competitive goals like being the fastest person in a race or the richest person in the world���these depend on what your competitors do.

The fixation on external results that are not in your control carries a hidden cost. It consumes a significant amount of time and energy that would be better spent doing things that actually generate those results. A musician chasing a spot on the charts churns out derivative work, never finding their unique sound. A speaker fixated on the audience’s reaction loses their train of thought. A swimmer who glances over at the competition or up at the finish creates drag and slows down.

Over the years, I���ve worked on lots of book and product launches for people. One thing I like to find out right away is what ���success��� might look like to them. When a person starts to talk about very specific numbers like ���Success is hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List��� or ���Success is making [$$$,$$$$$,$$$$]��� or ���Success is selling one million copies,��� I get a little pit in my stomach for them. First, because of how random these goals tend to be. I remember asking one guy why he had chosen ���two million books��� as his number and his answer was because someone else he knew had done one and a half million. He���d just pulled the number out of his ass! (And of course, he never came close to this number because almost no books do).

Second, I am struck by what they didn���t say. They didn���t say ���Success is making something amazing that really helps people��� or ���Success is creating something that I���m deeply proud of���. All they���re thinking about is some benchmark, rather than thinking about what it takes to even have a chance at hitting such a benchmark: being present, dedicated, pure-hearted, disciplined, creative, self-aware, patient. Someone who comes right out and says they���re chasing a number, competing against someone else, or needing external validation often reveals that they lack those very qualities.

I���m not saying you shouldn���t strive to accomplish great things or to do and be all that you���re capable of���you definitely should. It���s that in my experience, the best work comes out of just that: doing the work. Not in visualizing success. Not in trying to reverse engineer what���s working for someone else. Not in setting a ���big hairy audacious goal��� as some advise. But in the quiet day-to-dayness of the work. In immersing yourself in the craft, not the charts. In being process-driven, not goal-driven.

It comes from loving the process, not from thirst.

When I was chatting with Buzz Williams, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, on The Daily Stoic Podcast (���listen here���), he talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: ���Whatever it is that you���re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?��� he asks. ���If you���re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.���

I���d say when you remove goals, that���s what it comes down to. Do you have the consistency and discipline to show up every day? Are you working on getting better every day?

In ���Discipline Is Destiny���, I write about the practice of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Always finding some way to make a little progress. Focusing on the joys of getting a little bit better every day. This is the secret to being internally driven, to being Every Day. ���Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse,��� Epictetus would say, riffing, as it happens, on Socrates, ���so I delight in attending to my improvement day by day.���

I like the way Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who has helped thousands of startups over the years at Y Combinator and then created Open AI, talked about this idea in an interview with Tyler Cowen. ���Strive to be internally driven,��� Altman said. ���Driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament. Even if you ���win���, you lose. But if you���re competing with yourself, and all you���re trying to do is be the best possible version you can���there���s no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform.���

And Sam has done pretty well for himself, hasn���t he?

In a way, I think getting rid of goals is actually more ambitious.

Goals, by their nature, are finite and fleeting. Once you achieve them, what then? You might experience a brief moment of pleasure and satisfaction, but soon, you���re left with two choices: either stop doing the thing altogether, having reached your destination, or realize that there is no destination, that you keep going and going and going.

You just keep looking for new ways to challenge yourself, new ways to do things, going towards the harder way, as ���we talked about a couple of weeks ago���. You just keep showing up and getting better, wherever that leads.

This not only keeps things interesting, but it insulates you, ever so slightly, from outcomes, ego, self-doubt, and misfortune. It’s not that you don’t care about results���it’s that you have a kind of trump card. Your successes don���t go to your head because you know you���re capable of more. Your failures don���t destroy you because you are sure there wasn’t anything more you could have done.

You don���t control what happens to you, what adversity gets placed in your path, but you always control whether you show up every day and give your best or not. No one can stop you from that.

You don’t have to end up number one in your class. Or win everything, every time. In fact, winning is not particularly important. What matters is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift.

The gift of your potential. The gift of the opportunity. The gift of the craft you’ve been introduced to. The gift of the responsibility entrusted to you.

Immerse yourself in the work, in the process, in the daily practices that make up the bulk of your life.

Forget goals.

Be process-oriented.

Be internally driven.

Be Every Day.

The Hobby That Changed My Life

Some people travel for the food.

Others for the nightlife.

Some travel for work.

Others travel to get away.

I travel for the swimming.

I mean that���s not really why I travel���I���m usually on the road because I���m giving a talk or I have a meeting���but if I am on the road, what I am looking for is somewhere to swim.

Believe it or not, I actually planned the ���Stillness Is The Key��� book tour around cities that had cool athletic club pools. In 2019, I swam at the ���Olympic Club in San Francisco���, the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle, the basement pool at the University Club in DC (I prefer the William H. Rumsey Natatorium near the Library of Congress), the New York Athletic Club overlooking Central Park and the Denver Athletic Club, too.

I once accepted an offer from my Dutch publisher to speak in Amsterdam on the condition that they show me a good time while I was there. And by that I meant, to their surprise, that they’d find me a cool swimming pool. (I am in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Dublin and Rotterdam in November. ���You can get tickets here������or give me some swimming recommendations).

It was Robert Greene who first got me hooked in 2007. I grew up on swim teams but had fallen out of the habit in favor of running. When I started working in Downtown Los Angeles for American Apparel, he told me to join the Los Angeles Athletic Club because it has one of the greatest swimming pools in the country. It���s one of the oldest athletic clubs in the country (1888!) and the pool they built in 1912 is an engineering marvel���8 feet deep, six stories off the streets below, beneath a glass atrium and chandelier you���ve seen in a million movies and never known where it was from.

But the real secret, he told me, was their reciprocal benefits. I will never in my life be able to afford (let alone be invited) to join the New York Athletic Club���but for like $100 a month, my membership to the Los Angeles Athletic Club got me in the door. (To be clear, it���s a back door���they make us plebes use a special staircase so as not to touch the regular members).

Swimming laps at the Los Angeles Athletic Club

It was also Robert who told me that the ocean rock pools in Sydney were bucket-list-level good more than 10 years ago. I was blown away on my first trip there in 2013���I think I accepted the speaking gig just to have an excuse to go. This summer, I brought my family for my two talks in Sydney and Melbourne and crossed a bunch off my list.

I���d already done Icebergs and Bronte and Clovelly but this time I also squeezed in South Curl and North Curl, Manly, as well as a short swim at Cook and Philip Park and the Melbourne Public Baths.

Over the years and hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, I���ve seen some amazing pools and ponds and swimming holes and lakes. Hampstead Heath. Balmorhea. Yrj��nkatu in Helsinki (where you have to swim naked). The Biltmore in Downtown LA. Gellert in Budapest. Sydney���s Olympic Pool. Badeschiff (a pool floating in the River Spree). The saltwater pool at the New Orleans Athletic Club. The Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. Swimming against the current and the billowing Texas rice plants in the San Marcos River. ���Slide Rock in Sedona���. ���Lake Tahoe���. ���The Blue Hole in New Mexico���. Jacob���s Well. And countless streams and oceans and bays and hotel pools and public parks.

But why? What���s so special about swimming?

Sure, it���s low-impact whole-body exercise and it���s good for you to be active, but I consider all that as a bonus.

What I love about swimming is that it���s one of the few places on Earth where screens can���t reach you. My phone doesn���t ring. My eyes can���t wander to the big TV playing CNN or CNBC the way they do at the gym. My eyes can���t wander at all actually, they stay locked at the bottom of the pool or the pond, ���prisoner of the black line��� to paraphrase Joni Mitchell. It���s just the rhythm of kick, stroke, breath over and over ahead in a kind of wonderful, active meditation.

I forget whether it was at the 24 Hour Fitness off 35th or the YMCA off Town Lake in Austin, but someone came up to me once and said they were reading my book ���Ego is the Enemy���. I said thank you and laughed, telling them that I���d written a good chunk of the book in that very pool. They were surprised but it���s true, just like when I run, I���m amazed at the words that pop into my head when I have gotten up and left the computer to do something other than writing. And because I can���t immediately write it down, I have to run the phrases or the idea through over and over again���often forgetting my lap count in the process.

Oh well, I guess I���ll just have to keep swimming.

It���s not the only problem I���ve solved in the pool. I���ve had investment ideas. I���ve planned difficult conversations. I���ve gotten over grudges. I���ve calmed down. I���ve gotten much-needed space.

I remember waking up early one morning in Los Angeles, while on the book tour for ���Stillness Is The Key���. It was the day I was supposed to find out whether I���d hit the bestseller lists���or not. Glancing at the home screen of my phone, I could see there were texts from my agent and from my editor. I knew they could either be congratulations or condolences, but instead of checking, I took the elevator down to the 6th floor and swam for a mile. It was just another ordinary, rewarding swim.

I came back to the room and found out that not only had I hit the New York Times Bestseller list for the first time, but I���d debuted at #1. It was wonderful news but I was prouder of that little act of discipline that preceded it���ignoring the phone, insisting on that stillness. And if I hadn���t hit the list? I���d have been glad for the wonderful morning swim all the same, glad that I hadn���t ruined it.

It���s fitting, too, because I wrote in ���Stillness Is The Key��� that there are few better ways to settle yourself in the present moment���to wash away the distractions and the noise and the troubles of everyday life���than through being in or around water. More specifically, natural water. There���s just something about it. The sight of it contrasted against the environment it���s in. The sound of it. The feel of it closing in on you once you finally take the plunge.

Sometimes I think that half the victory of swimming is just that���the initial jump or dive in. The payoff is different depending on the season. In the summer, Barton Springs in Austin is a welcome relief against the heat. But in the winter���Robert and I once went on a snowy Austin morning a few hours before I got married���the reward is different. The aliveness creeps back into your body as you shiver to get warm, invigorated by doing something so crazy.

It was actually that abrupt entrance into a cold body of water that drew Seneca back to the Tiber River year after year. A self-proclaimed ���cold-water enthusiast���, Seneca ���celebrated each new year by taking a plunge into the canal.” Seneca couldn���t have known any of the since-proven health benefits of a cold plunge. He wasn���t competing or on a swim team. He wasn���t going down to the canal to literally clean himself, but he was starting the year clean. Even better, he was starting it with a challenge.

Water played a big role in Marcus Aurelius��� life, too. He liked to spend time in the many bath houses across the Roman Empire, where he���d wash off the dust of everyday life. In Budapest, you can still sit in baths that draw from the same thermal pools that Marcus would have used.

In her incredible book, ���Why We Swim���, Bonnie Tsui discusses the human inclination toward water and uncovers the deeper instincts that pull us to it. When Bonnie came on The Daily Stoic Podcast (it���s one of my favorite episodes, ���you should definitely give it a listen���), I asked her to share a discovery she made while writing the book that stood out to her, even as a lifelong swimmer and water enthusiast. ���I loved learning about how we are biologically driven to respond to certain set points in the environment���that our brains love to be near water and blue spaces,��� she said. ���We love immersion and the feeling of physically being in water because our brains produce more alpha waves���those wavelengths associated with relaxation, calm, and creativity���when we are merely listening to or looking at it. There is a benefit to both body and mind to get in and swim.���

For all of these reasons, swimming has been a predominantly solitary practice for most of my life. But as I���ve gotten older and have a family of my own, it���s become something we all do together. In the last month alone, we���ve done the Blue Hole in Georgetown, Landa Park in New Braunfels, Barton Springs, Deep Eddy, and Krause Springs. At first, the kids are hesitant to jump in, maybe a little intimidated by a rope swing or a diving board. The same goes for us as parents, only the night before. How will the day go? Will it be a disaster? Isn���t there a bunch to pack up?

But after they, after we, work up the courage and do it? Well, you���re always glad you did.

I guess that���s the real message of this post���to pass along the wonderful habit that Robert Greene gave to me all those years ago. It made my life better and I bet it will make yours better, too.

Please Don’t Do This To Yourself

It wasn���t exactly a nervous breakdown, but it was something close.

Around the time I was finishing ���Ego is the Enemy���, I ran into a wall.

I had just watched American Apparel implode. I had lost a mentor and friend I had looked up to and cared about (who had let me know the feeling was not mutual). The talent agency I had started at went bust, too.

These people who said they ���saw themselves in me��� turned out to be people they didn���t want to be. I myself was becoming someone I did not want to be. I was working all the time. I was splitting my time between Austin and Los Angeles. I was angry and stressed all the time. I worked late, taking and making phone calls well past midnight, as I had seen Dov Charney do for years (something ���I wrote about recently���). To say I was burned out was an understatement.

I remember a panic attack because the wifi wasn���t connecting. I remember being too tired to think. I remember being glued to my phone. I remember juggling way too many balls at the same time. I remember coming across a quote from Bertrand Russell that the first sign of losing your mind was the belief that your work was terribly, terribly important.

I ended up telling this story at the beginning of ���Ego is the Enemy���, but it���s something I had to work out in my actual life, too. Therapy. Some Workaholics Anonymous meetings. Some not-so-fun conversations with my future wife (I���m sure they were not fun for her either, but anyway, I was the one on the receiving end of the hard truths).

Basically, like a lot of people, I had worked myself pretty close to the edge. I���m lucky in that I didn���t quite go over the side.

This is why I don���t like a lot of the hustle porn and grind culture that entrepreneurs and influencers try to sell young people. It���s not healthy. In private, it���s not glamorous. It doesn���t lead to anyone���s best work. In fact, it usually prevents people from doing their best work.

Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, brought much-needed order and routine to the life of his queen. He streamlined processes and took up a share of the burdens that had previously fallen on Victoria alone. Indeed, many of the so-called Victorian traits of the era originated with him. He was disciplined, fastidious, ambitious, old school.

Under his pressing, their schedule became one meeting, dispatch, and social obligation after another. Albert was almost constantly busy, working so much that he occasionally vomited from stress. Never shirking a responsibility or an opportunity, he took on every bit of power his wife was willing to share. In turn, they seized every formal and informal bit of influence the monarchy had in the British Empire at that time. They were a pair of workaholics and proud of it.

As Albert wrote to an advisor, he spent hours a day reading newspapers in German, French, and English. ���One can let nothing pass,��� he said, ���without losing the connection and coming in consequence to wrong conclusions.��� He was right, the stakes were certainly high. His expert understanding of the international situation helped Britain avoid being drawn into the U.S. Civil War.

But the truth was, Albert threw himself equally hard into projects of much less importance. Organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, a nearly six-month-long carnival that showed off the wonders of the British Empire, consumed years of his life. A few days before it opened, he wrote to his stepmother, ���I am more dead than alive from overwork.��� It was, to be certain, a beautiful and memorable event, but his health never recovered.

He and his wife knew no moderation and had little fun. ���I go on working at my treadmill, as life seems to me,��� Albert said in 1861. It���s not a bad description of the exhausting and repetitive life he and Victoria led. Starting in 1840, Victoria bore nine children in seventeen years, four of whom were born in consecutive years. In a time when women still regularly died during childbirth (anesthesia���chloroform���only became available for her eighth pregnancy), Victoria, who was a mere five feet tall, was constantly pregnant. Even with the benefits of limitless household help, she bore an enormous physical burden on top of her duties as queen. Upon her death, it was found that she was suffering from a prolapsed uterus and a hernia that must have caused her incredible pain without end.

There���s nothing wrong with having a large family���the throne did need heirs���but it never seemed to have occurred to the couple that they had any say in the matter. ���Man is a beast of burden,��� Albert wrote to his brother, ���and he is only happy if he has to drag his burden and if he has little free will. My experience teaches me every day to understand the truth of this more and more.��� As a result, his and Victoria���s existence was hardly one of privilege or relaxation or freedom. It was instead an endless cycle of obligation after obligation, done at a breakneck pace that the two of them inflicted on themselves.

It is a testament to their affection for each other that their marriage survived. Victoria was at least aware of the deleterious effects all this work had on Albert. She wrote of the consequences of his ���over-love of business��� on their relationship, and she also noticed that his health was flagging. His racing mind kept him awake at night, his stomach cramped, and his skin drooped.

Instead of listening to these warning signs, he soldiered on for years, working harder and harder, forcing his body to comply. And then, suddenly, it quit on him. His strength failed. He drifted into incoherency, and at 10:50 p.m. on December 14, 1861, Albert took his three final breaths and died. The cause? Crohn���s disease, exacerbated by extreme stress. He had literally worked his guts out.

Is that what you want to be? A workhorse that draws its load until it collapses and dies, still shod and in the harness? Is that what you were put on this planet for?

Remember, the main cause of injury for elite athletes is not tripping and falling. It���s not collisions. It���s overuse. Pitchers and quarterbacks throw out their arms. Basketball players blow out their knees. Others just get tired of the grinding hours and the pressure. Michael Phelps prematurely ended his swimming career for this reason���despite all the gold medals, he never wanted to get in a pool again. It���s hard to blame him. He put everything, including his own sanity and health, second to shaving seconds off his times.

We think that to be great at what you do requires complete and total dedication. That there���s no time for anything else.

Nonsense.

After the implosion of my personal and professional life in 2014/2015, I moved to a ranch in Texas. I started a family. I started keeping more regular hours. I put less into my work. And you know what? My work has gotten better. (Cal Newport would call this ������Slow Productivity��� in his book���, which you should take a break from your work and ���go read���).

In fact, some of my biggest creative breakthroughs came to me when I was doing anything but working. The idea for ���Ego Is The Enemy��� came to me while I was doing laps in a pool in Austin (which I talk about ���here���). The idea for the Stoic Virtues series struck me while on a hike in the Lost Pines forest in Bastrop with my family. A few weeks later on vacation in Florida, the idea for ���The Daily Dad��� came to me as I built a sandcastle with my son.

I���ve been repeatedly gifted with ideas���from the muses, from my own subconscious, I don���t know���when I least expect it. In Zen, they talk about the problem of ���too much willful will,��� basically, trying too hard, being too intentional. Real breakthroughs come when you���re not so controlling, when you let go. I find this to be true in my own life. By not putting my work first, by not taking it all so seriously, I���ve been able to reach for and hold on to more than I was with a very tight grasp.

Don���t get me wrong, executing projects at a high level requires an immense amount of work and uninterrupted focus. It requires being at the office. It requires trying very hard to get it right. But the point is that none of that would have been possible without first letting go a little, without deciding to take a hike or go to the beach.

The best of the best know this.

In ���Stillness Is The Key���, I tell the story of Eilud Kipchoge, possibly the greatest distance runner ever to live. Kipchoge is known for actively working to make sure he is not overworking. In training, he deliberately does not give his full effort, saving that instead for the few times per year when he races. He prefers instead to train at 80 percent of his capacity on occasion to 90 percent���to maintain and preserve his longevity and sanity as an athlete. Runners know this is called threshold training, but it has major lifestyle implications too. When Michael Phelps came back to swimming after his breakdown in 2012, it was possible because he was willing to reimagine his approach to training with more balance.

You are not a beast of burden. You are not meant to be ridden into the ground, shot and then replaced by the next horse.

Yes, we have important duties to provide for our families and to be a reliable coworker, boss, employee. Many of us have talents and gifts so extraordinary that we owe it to ourselves and the world to express and fulfill them. But we’re not going to be able to do that if we’re not taking care of ourselves, or if we have stretched ourselves to the breaking point.

It���s important to remind ourselves that life is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint. In a way, this is the distinction between confidence and ego. Can you trust yourself and your abilities enough to keep something in reserve? Can you protect the stillness and the inner peace necessary to win the longer race of life?

The email you think you need so desperately to respond to can wait. Your screenplay does not need to be hurried, and you can even take a break between it and the next one. The only person truly requiring you to spend the night at the office is yourself. It’s okay to say no. Your interior life will thank you. You���ll be much more clear-headed and equipped to do a good job when you���re not weak from complete and utter overwork.

It’s human being, not human doing, for a reason.

The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery. To push yourself too hard, too fast. To overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork.

To last, to be great, you have to understand how to rest. After all, it���s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity, balance and the discipline of your discipline.

Always Try To Do It The Hard Way

On stage in Sydney, Australia. Get tickets to see me live in Europe and Canada here.

I was coasting on fumes when he asked me the question, so I don���t think I got the answer right.

To be fair, I was 90 or so minutes into being on stage for my talk in Sydney when I was asked: ���If obstacles make us better, should we seek them out (or create them for our kids)?���

Like I said, I was a little fried, so I said something like: ���Life is full of obstacles already, I���m not sure we need to go around creating additional ones.���

It���s strange that I said this because I was in the middle of doing the exact opposite��� and it���s Chris Williamson���s fault.

He and I were talking in Austin back in May and he told me he had just gotten back from a speaking tour. ���What kind of presentation did you do? Did you have slides?��� I asked, curious because I was getting ready to head out of the country for my own set of theater dates (which, by the way, ���you can get tickets for my next stops in Europe and Canada here���) and Chris had spoken at some of the same venues I was going to be at.

���It was just me and a microphone,��� he said.

This struck me because most of the talks I do���usually at conferences or to companies or to sports teams or soldiers���are not that way. You���re expected to have a slide deck that walks the audience through what you���re talking about. This extra work can really help drive your points home, but it���s also a bit of a safety net because you never forget where you���re at and you always have something behind you to keep the audience���s attention.

In any case, I���ve been doing this so long, it���s what I���m used to. It���s what I���m comfortable with. I know that the material works and I know I have it down.

Which is precisely why when I heard Chris say he was doing it alone with a mic, I thought, I want to try it that way.

Because it seemed harder and different.

General Sherman, the great military strategist and Civil War hero once wrote in a letter to his friend that he had an ���old rule never to return by the road I had come.��� Meaning, he favored blazing new trails to retracing his steps, picking the more difficult journey over the easy and familiar.

This is a great rule for life.

In ���Meditations���, Marcus Aurelius writes about holding the reins in his non-dominant hand as both an exercise to practice and a metaphor for doing the difficult thing. He wanted to get good at doing things both ways, at developing the ability to thrive in any and all situations. Naturally, we���re more confident where we are dominant. But the problem is you become progressively weaker in the hands or the areas that you neglect through this favoring.

I felt like I���d gotten comfortable with one way of speaking. Why not change it up?

Well, one reason is that to fail in front of 2,000 people in Sydney would have been pretty mortifying. But that reason was also pretty motivating!

Epictetus said when a challenge is put in front of you, think of yourself as an athlete getting paired with a tough competitor or a sparring partner. You want to be Olympic-class? ���This is going to take some sweat to accomplish,��� he said.

It took a lot of preparation���much more so than if I had done what I normally do. It also meant settling a lot of nerves. But these are features, not bugs of picking the harder path.

The point is: If it���s easy, you���re not growing.

Not everything that���s hard is good of course, but almost everything good (and worth it) 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 chose to work at it despite that initial difficulty. Even though it was frustrating, even though you had to fight 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.

This is why the Stoics urge us to fight our tendency toward complacency. We have to keep pushing, adapting, shaking things up. We have to seek out challenges. Because would we know anything about ourselves if we never did?

I don���t just mean in big ways, but in small ways, too. Every day, you stand at 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? Can you choose to do kick turns in the pool instead of push off? Can you choose to pick up a journal instead of your phone first thing in the morning?

As you weigh these competing options, always lean towards the hard one. Don���t be that person that Seneca talks about, the one who skates through life without being tested and challenged, who deprives oneself of opportunities to grow and improve.

Jump into the colder water. Have that tough conversation. Use the weaker part of your game. Take ownership where you can. Choose the more difficult option. Seek out the challenge. Lean into it.

Iron sharpens iron, after all. Resistance builds muscle.

Sparring partners make us Olympic class.

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.

So, to revise my response to the question I was asked in Sydney:

Life is full of obstacles already, but if you want to be more adept at overcoming them, you should always try to do it the hard way.

It wasn���t until I was off-stage, coming down from the rush of trying something new in front of that many people, that I could fully understand that.

And now���I���m on to figuring out how I can challenge myself in November on these other dates. ���See you there���!

You Don���t Have To Be Lucky, You Just Have To Be Good

These are strange times.

On one level, everything is wonderful���better than it ever has been. On another level, almost nobody feels that way. The world seems like it���s falling apart. It does not seem like there is much anyone can do about it. Most of us don���t feel like we���re in much of a position to do much about anything.

Sociologists and historians speak of something called ���moral luck.���

It���s sort of a confusing term but basically, it refers to being in the right place at the right time for heroics, for activism, for impact. Not everyone finds themselves in a position to reveal some world-changing government secret. Not everyone is there when somebody falls into the water and can���t swim. Not everyone was born emperor in a time of crisis (Marcus Aurelius) or an elected official in a moment of great consequence (Cato), not everyone was thrust into the presidency as Truman was in 1945 or into activism as Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks were in 1955.

This is what Churchill was referring to when he noted, sadly, of the Earl of Rosebery, that the man lived in ���an age of great men and small events.��� We don���t all have the chance to be heroes on a grand scale. We don���t all get tapped on the shoulder by destiny (as Churchill was).

Or so we think.

We could also say that there is no such thing as ���small��� events, that we all have a chance���indeed, an obligation���to get involved in the issues of our time and to try to make a positive difference wherever it is in our control.

Besides, Churchill���s assessment of that period was laughably inaccurate. Rosebery lived from 1847 to 1929���slavery was still rampant around the world. For the entirety of Rosebery���s life, working conditions in England���s factories were heinous and awful. Britain���s colonial system and all its abuses carried on with few objections. The Irish question loomed over British politics and most leaders believed it hopeless. Countries regularly went to war for little reason and with little thought for the people affected. Millions starved. Millions were abused. Countless things went uninvented, unreformed, unchampioned.

And at a smaller level, surely, there were so many things that Rosebery could have done���that anyone could have done���that would not have felt small to the people who were on the other end of that kindness or sacrifice or service.

And the same is true for the moment we are in right now. Depending on where you live or what you do, things may seem relatively calm or even sunny. But the world was also just rocked by a pandemic that killed millions���what did you do to help? Income inequality. Climate change. Disruptive technologies like AI loom before us. Fascism is on the rise globally. More locally, there are people who are hungry, people who need a second chance, people who could use a friend, kids who need to be adopted, students who need mentorship, local offices that could be filled, abuses that could be called out.

Of course, we all have opinions about these big sweeping issues. The question is: Are you doing anything about them?

It doesn���t matter whether the events are big or small, what matters is if you are a big or small person, a ���brave��� and ���just��� person, or a cowardly and selfish person. How are you helping? What are you doing?

We like to let ourselves off the hook by assuring that if we were in charge, we would do things differently. If we were a multi��national conglomerate, we wouldn���t use chemicals that harm the environment. If we were the decision-makers, we���d have a diverse workforce, we���d be family-friendly employers, we���d speak out on political issues. We would pay a living wage. We wouldn���t do business with an overseas company that uses child labor. But then the order for company T-shirts comes across your desk and you suddenly have to choose between the $9 option from China and the $19 one manufactured in the U.S. The right thing is still obvious. It���s just harder.

And I mean it when I say it���s harder. I struggle with this with my own company, with my own decisions. I���m a very small fish and it���s exhausting and expensive to act as if your decisions matter. It���s harder to find suppliers, it takes longer to get things, your pricing is worse. But I try to remind myself: I don���t control what other people do. I don���t control the trends of the world or the market, but I do control the decisions I make. I control how I run my affairs.

I don���t always make the right choices. I look back and see the opportunities I���ve missed. People might not agree with all the decisions I make now. I may come to regret not going far enough on some���or too far on others. But I am doing my best not to think of any of these as small. This is my opportunity right now. I���ll take it.

Maybe it will inspire someone else, maybe it will be the first drip that starts the overflow. In the future, maybe I���ll get luckier���in the moral sense. Maybe I���ll find myself in some big, high-stakes situation. The decisions I���m making now will prepare me to meet that moment.

At the very least, it will make a difference for the laborers, the vendors, the customers touched by my business.

An example I love: Pete Frates was just a guy who got hit by a baseball in an amateur league game. It was his good luck that it happened, and his bad luck because the trip to the doctor revealed he had ALS. It was his choice to decide to do something with this, to change the trajectory of the fight against that disease. Certainly, no one expected him to do anything. He had no duty, no obligation to do anything but live out the rest of his life and to struggle to stay alive. Instead, his fund-raising efforts would not just contribute awareness and $200 million to researchers but spark significant progress in a field that had seemed stalled for so long. Even when he was paralyzed, wheelchair-bound, without the ability to talk, and having to be fed through a tube, he never stopped. To the very end, he was not resigned. He fought. He helped. He made a difference. He did not give in to despair. He adapted and transformed his fate into something that mattered, something that will make the future better, even if he���s not around to enjoy it himself.

There is that expression about how the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. I don���t think that���s really the right wording. It���s that the moral arc of the universe is bent toward justice. It���s bent that way by people who reach up and grab it, people with the ���courage��� to stand against the norms of what was and a steadfast commitment to what they knew was the ���right thing���. It was people who ignored the cynics, the people who told them it was hopeless, told them that one person could not make a difference.

As Marcus Aurelius writes, ���True good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.���

Just because we don���t hear a voice, just because an election hasn���t thrown us into office, doesn���t mean we aren���t called to something, locally or globally.

Curse the darkness or light a candle? Bemoan the calm seas or build a motor?

You can make your own moral luck. In fact, you must.

And it���s not that hard.

You just have to do good.

For a stranger. For a cause.

We choose to be heroes, big or small. We choose to be a part of the problem or part of the solution.

And if we don���t, it���s on us.

This Is Why You Don’t Want To Tell Yourself Stories

The thing about success is that it messes with your brain. It messes with other people���s brains, too.

I���m not saying that it gives you amnesia, but it does change how you see yourself and the events that lead you to where you are. Basically, we start to tell ourselves stories about how it happened and why it happened���specifically, why it happened for us. And if what you did was public, then other people start to do the very same thing.

I���ll give you a story from my own life.

In 2012, I made an abrupt and dramatic turn in my life. I walked away from the marketing world and wrote a book about Stoicism called ���The Obstacle Is The Way���. A book that, against all odds, hit the bestseller list and went on to sell millions of copies. It���s landed in the hands of CEOs, athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians, and so many others. Since then, I���ve written 13 more books, 10 of which are about Stoicism. I spotted a nascent trend and turned it into an international phenomenon, reaching people all over the planet and bringing this obscure, ancient philosophy into the halls of power, boardrooms, Hollywood and professional locker rooms.

It���s a nice thought and it certainly doesn���t hurt my feelings that people are inclined to give me credit for planning and orchestrating the whole thing.

The problem is that it���s not true! No matter how many trend pieces or fans repeat it.

In fact, if I had even once expressed the slightest notion that Stoicism���or ���Daily Stoic������was going to be this popular, I should have been legally banned from writing ���Ego Is The Enemy���.

The reality is much simpler: I was excited about Stoicism. There was a book I wanted to write. I hoped it would do well, but I didn���t know. Neither did my publisher, although I���m sure the industry is inclined to give them credit too because my editor would tell me later that they were hoping I’d get over Stoicism and go back to marketing books. I found out later that someone I thought was a friend in the industry was privately predicting Obstacle would sell maybe 5,000 copies.

It was nowhere near a sure thing.

It���s funny how a success story can warp something as objective as the order of the books I���ve published. The great David Maraniss would write ���myth becomes myth not in the living but in the retelling.��� The actual order is that I wrote one marketing book (���Trust Me I���m Lying���) and very shortly after that came out���before we even knew how well ���Trust Me I���m Lying��� would sell���I sold the proposal for ���The Obstacle Is The Way���. Then, while I was working on Obstacle, I wrote an ebook called ���Growth Hacker Marketing���, which came out before Obstacle. But on paper, it looks like I did two successful marketing books and then gambled it all to write about Stoicism. Again, this is not true!

It wasn���t even a gamble! I kept my day job at American Apparel the whole time.

Nor was Obstacle some overnight hit. It came out in 2014 and did OK. It took five years to hit a national bestseller list. Shortly after the release, Tim Ferriss published the audiobook and told his audience about me (something I couldn���t have predicted until after I wrote it). We did a discounted promotion on the ebook during its first year out and Amazon kept the discounted price for something like the next 11 months. It was from this that it slowly, steadily acquired its audience.

Did I sense a huge trend? Or did I write a good book and catch a couple of lucky breaks?

What story I tell myself doesn���t change what happened in the past, but it does change how I regard myself now���it has the potential to change how I���ll act in the future.

The lesson I take from the success of my books is not that I���m a genius. It���s not that I can predict trends. It���s that following what you���re excited about is the best strategy (because I would have enjoyed the experience even if the book didn���t sell). It���s that trying experimental marketing ideas, like doing a BookBub and Amazon Goldbox deal (as unglamorous as that may sound) can pay off big-time. It���s that success usually takes longer than you expect, but after it happens, all that time disappears. It���s that by writing multiple books, instead of resting on my laurels, I put myself in a position to get lucky and stay busy.

Again, if I had known that this obscure school of ancient philosophy had the potential to sell so many copies, I would have self-published ���The Obstacle Is The Way���. I would have fought for a much bigger advance on ���The Daily Stoic���. I wasn���t thinking about the upside at the time���I was just happy to get paid at all!

Stories aren���t just dishonest. They can be dangerously misleading.

In ���Ego Is The Enemy���, I write about a talk I had seen where one of Google���s founders explained, inspiringly to a crowd, that the way he judges prospective compa��nies and entrepreneurs is by asking them ���if they���re going to change the world.���

Which is fine, except that���s not how Google started. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were two Stan��ford PhDs working on their dissertations. It���s also not how You��Tube started, whose founders weren���t trying to reinvent TV; they were trying to share funny video clips. Among their earliest ideas for the platform was to treat it like a dating site. Not to mention that Google didn���t even start YouTube, one of their most valuable properties. They bought it.

What followed in the mid-to-late aughts was Google repeatedly overreaching on a bunch of bold ���disruptive��� product ideas that went nowhere. Google Pages was a flop. Google Glass was a flop. Google Plus was a flop. These were huge bets that were actually largely outside Google���s core competence but fit nicely with the ���change the world��� narrative they had convinced themselves of.

The investor Paul Graham (who funded Airbnb, Reddit, Drop��box, and others) explicitly warns startups against having bold, sweeping visions early on. Of course, as a capitalist, he wants to fund companies that massively disrupt industries and change the world���that���s where the money is. He wants them to have ���frighteningly ambitious��� ideas, but explains: ���The way to do really big things seems to be to start with decep��tively small things.��� He���s saying you don���t make a frontal attack out of ego; instead, you start with a small bet and itera��tively scale your ambitions as you go.

His other famous piece of advice: ���Keep your identity small,��� fits well here. Make it about the work and the principles behind it���not about a glorious, aggrandizing vision.

Resisting the urge to tell yourself stories, to stay focused on what���s in front of you, not to be distracted by the glimmer of that glowing future you���ve painted in your mind���this is a difficult discipline. We want so desperately to believe that those who have great empires set out to build one. Why? So we can indulge in the pleasurable planning of our own. So we can take full credit for the good that happens and the riches and respect that come our way.

Narrative is when you look back at an improbable or unlikely path to your success and say: I knew it all along. Instead of: I hoped. I worked. I got some good breaks. Or even: I thought this could happen. Of course, you didn���t really know all along���or if you did, it was more faith than knowledge.

But who wants to remember all the times you doubted yourself?

The twentieth�� century financier Bernard Baruch had a great line: ���Don���t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. This can���t be done���except by liars.��� That is, people���s claims about what they���re doing in the market are rarely to be trusted.

Most stories are lies.

Most narratives leave the important things out.

I���m probably even getting some stuff wrong in this post! (It���s a story isn���t it?)

Most labels obscure too���filmmaker, writer, investor, entrepreneur, executive. These are nouns. But what gets someone to that position? Verbs.

We must resist the impulse to reverse engineer success from our understanding of other people���s stories. When we achieve our own, we must resist the desire to pretend that everything unfolded exactly as we���d planned. There was no grand narrative. You should remember���you were there when it happened.

Instead of pre��tending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution���and on executing with excellence. We must defer the credit or crown and continue work��ing on what got us here. Because that���s the only thing that will keep us here.

And whenever we can, we should acknowledge our lucky breaks. There were always more of them than we are inclined to admit.