Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 8

When You���re Too Busy Aiming For It, You Miss The Moments In Front Of You

It���s one of those lines we throw out casually: ���I want to spend more ���quality time������ ��� whether it���s with friends, with family, with your kids, or with yourself. We spend an inordinate amount of money and effort at creating opportunities to get this time too. We plan for it. We pay for it. We���re anxious at the slightest delay or weather that might disrupt it.

While it all comes from a good place, there���s a disconnect: The perfectionist side of our brain, fueled by movies and Instagram, wants everything to be special, to be ���right.��� But that���s an ideal the busy, ordinary, doing-the-best-we-can versions of ourselves can���t always live up to.

The result? An inevitable sense of disappointment. A sense that other people are doing better than us. We feel guilt. We feel pressure. We think ���Oh, if only I had more money, or a better job, or lived in France where the child care benefits were different, if I had more custody, then things would be good...���

That���s not fair. And it���s also damaging.

The reason, as I ended up writing about extensively in the new book, The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Love, Parenting and Raising Great Kids, is that there is no such thing as ���quality time.��� Jerry Seinfeld, father of three, put it well:

I���m a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about ���quality time��� ��� I always find that a little sad when they say, ���We have quality time.��� I don���t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That���s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o���clock at night when they���re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that���s what I love.

To be fair, Seinfeld is the master of the mundane. Banality has made him a near-billionaire. But there is a deeper truth to what he���s getting at. Special days? Nah. Every day is special. Every minute can be ���quality time.���

The Buddhists say this too. That happiness can be washing the dishes. Happiness can be doing farm chores. That enlightenment is about who you are while you���re doing it, provided that you���re present while you���re doing it.

I remember when my book The Obstacle Is the Way first started making its way through professional sports, I was invited to see the Seahawks training camp up in Renton, Washington. I had just gotten married and my career was really firing, so I asked Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll how coaches manage to make a personal life work with such insane hours. Pete, who has been married for more than 40 years, looked at me and said, ���You have to find the moments between moments.���

Another way to say this might be to just say: Take every moment you can.

It���s something I���ve seen inside the buildings of most of the sports teams I���ve visited. Yeah, the coaches and staff often get there before the sun comes up and leave long after it���s gone down. Yeah, they travel a lot. But their families are always around. They���re doing lunches and dinners at the office. They are taking time between sessions to sit and talk, to hang out, to work out, to do things together.

It���s all about the moments between the moments for ordinary people, too. I���ve never understood parents who complain about ���being a chauffeur��� to their kids. ���What am I, your driver?��� they say. Sure, it can be a pain in the ass to drive your kids around. To day care. To school. To a friend���s house. To a doctor���s appointment. To soccer practice. Sometimes it can feel like this is all parenting is ��� driving a little person around. For free.

But instead of seeing the drive as an obligation or an inconvenience, why not choose to see it as a gift? A moment between moments. In fact, it���s a lot of moments. Even better, it���s captive time. You are stuck together! This is wonderful. This is what you wanted, right? An opportunity to connect? To bond? To have fun? So use it!

As many parents with older children will tell you, something changes when kids are in the car with you. Suddenly, you���re not the parent. You���re just a companion, a fellow human being equalized by traffic. Kids will share things in the car they wouldn���t say anywhere else. Better yet, when their friends are in the car too, you fade into the background and suddenly you can watch how your kid is with other people. It���s like you���re a detective watching through one-way glass. You���ll learn things about your own son or daughter that you���d never know otherwise. You���ll get a glimpse into who they are in a way they could never articulate to you directly.

This isn���t only true for kids. Some of my best memories with my wife, or friends, have happened in the car. Or when we were sitting at the gate, waiting for a delayed plane. Sometimes these awkward, in-between moments allow for conversations that never would have happened otherwise. Even some of my best writing and thinking have come when I was stuck somewhere I didn���t want to be, or doing something I didn���t want to do. When you���re out of excuses for being busy, when you can���t defer or plan for some idealized future, you���re forced to just make do with what���s in front of you. The distinction between ���quality��� time and ���garbage��� time falls away and you���re left with what simply is.

Yet I also look at other encounters we had in similar moments and feel regret. Because I let that delay get to me���I spent the 40 minutes nervously pacing, or being irritable or worse. I was so eager to get where we were going that I didn���t appreciate that we were already doing something that could be fun. My inability to accept deprived me of what actually was quality time all along.

Often when we are trying really hard to attain something, we end up missing the fact that we���ve had it in our hands the whole time. Sure, letting your kids blow off school for a fun day together can be wonderfully special ��� but so can the 20-minute drive in traffic to school. So can mailing a letter or watching a garbage truck meander through the neighborhood.

All time with your kids ��� all time with anyone you love ��� is created equal. What you do with it is what makes it special. Not where. Or for how long. Or at what cost.

Think back to your own childhood. Rushing around to get somewhere on time. Packing for that trip to Disneyland. Getting dressed up for those ridiculous matching group photos. ���Why are we doing this?��� you asked when you were old enough to notice that it seemed really stressful and not fun. The answer was always something like: ���Because we���re a family.��� As if you couldn���t be a family anywhere, doing anything. As if you couldn���t do it right here and now (and without the matching shirts).

This is worth remembering in all facets of life: You can be a family without getting dressed and leaving the house. You can be in love in the McDonald���s drive-through. You can be romantic near the eggs at the grocery store. You can be a writer as you ride the elevator down to take out the trash. You can be a good person in how you answer the phone or how you send emails.

There���s a Tolstoy quote I love: ���There is no past and no future; no one has ever entered those two imaginary kingdoms. There is only the present.���

No vacation, no special experience, not even a family outing, just happens on its own. There is planning. There is time off work. There is the expense. There is the intention���and this is wonderful and it should be celebrated, soaked in when it happens. Just be sure not to give yourself too much credit because you booked a trip to the beach or got them excited for ice cream or the movies.

Because in some ways, this is actually the easiest option. What���s tougher? To just be present right now. Anyone can wow their kids with dessert or Disneyland���but can you make them feel special playing Legos on the floor? Just sitting and talking about life?

All time is quality time���if you choose to make it so. And you can���t let your future plans���to have a great time together, to go do something together, to all be together���let you off the hook right now where you are also together, in the living room, at the doctor���s office, FaceTiming from the business trip.

This moment in front of you is a gift. It���s everything you���ll ever need and ever want.

Should you choose to accept it. Should you choose to embrace it.

All Time is Quality Time

It���s one of those lines we throw out casually: ���I want to spend more ���quality time������ ��� whether it���s with friends, with family, with your kids, or with yourself. We spend an inordinate amount of money and effort at creating opportunities to get this time too. We plan for it. We pay for it. We���re anxious at the slightest delay or weather that might disrupt it.

While it all comes from a good place, there���s a disconnect: The perfectionist side of our brain, fueled by movies and Instagram, wants everything to be special, to be ���right.��� But that���s an ideal the busy, ordinary, doing-the-best-we-can versions of ourselves can���t always live up to.

The result? An inevitable sense of disappointment. A sense that other people are doing better than us. We feel guilt. We feel pressure. We think ���Oh, if only I had more money, or a better job, or lived in France where the child care benefits were different, if I had more custody, then things would be good...���

That���s not fair. And it���s also damaging.

The reason, as I ended up writing about extensively in the new book, The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Love, Parenting and Raising Great Kids, is that there is no such thing as ���quality time.��� Jerry Seinfeld, who has three teenagers put it well:

I���m a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about ���quality time��� ��� I always find that a little sad when they say, ���We have quality time.��� I don���t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That���s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o���clock at night when they���re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that���s what I love.

To be fair, Seinfeld is the master of the mundane. Banality has made him a near-billionaire. But there is a deeper truth to what he���s getting at. Special days? Nah. Every day is special. Every minute can be ���quality time.���

The Buddhists say this too. That happiness can be washing the dishes. Happiness can be doing farm chores. That enlightenment is about who you are while you���re doing it, provided that you���re present while you���re doing it.

I remember when my book The Obstacle Is the Way first started making its way through professional sports, I was invited to see the Seahawks training camp up in Renton, Washington. I had just gotten married and my career was really firing, so I asked Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll how coaches manage to make a personal life work with such insane hours. Pete, who has been married for more than 40 years, looked at me and said, ���You have to find the moments between moments.���

Another way to say this might be to just say: Take every moment you can.

It���s something I���ve seen inside the buildings of most of the sports teams I���ve visited. Yeah, the coaches and staff often get there before the sun comes up and leave long after it���s gone down. Yeah, they travel a lot. But their families are always around. They���re doing lunches and dinners at the office. They are taking time between sessions to sit and talk, to hang out, to work out, to do things together.

It���s all about the moments between the moments for ordinary people, too. I���ve never understood parents who complain about ���being a chauffeur��� to their kids. ���What am I, your driver?��� they say. Sure, it can be a pain in the ass to drive your kids around. To day care. To school. To a friend���s house. To a doctor���s appointment. To soccer practice. Sometimes it can feel like this is all parenting is ��� driving a little person around. For free.

But instead of seeing the drive as an obligation or an inconvenience, why not choose to see it as a gift? A moment between moments. In fact, it���s a lot of moments. Even better, it���s captive time. You are stuck together! This is wonderful. This is what you wanted, right? An opportunity to connect? To bond? To have fun? So use it!

As many parents with older children will tell you, something changes when kids are in the car with you. Suddenly, you���re not the parent. You���re just a companion, a fellow human being equalized by traffic. Kids will share things in the car they wouldn���t say anywhere else. Better yet, when their friends are in the car too, you fade into the background and suddenly you can watch how your kid is with other people. It���s like you���re a detective watching through one-way glass. You���ll learn things about your own son or daughter that you���d never know otherwise. You���ll get a glimpse into who they are in a way they could never articulate to you directly.

This isn���t only true for kids. Some of my best memories with my wife, or friends, have happened in the car. Or when we were sitting at the gate, waiting for a delayed plane. Sometimes these awkward, in-between moments allow for conversations that never would have happened otherwise. Even some of my best writing and thinking have come when I was stuck somewhere I didn���t want to be, or doing something I didn���t want to do. When you���re out of excuses for being busy, when you can���t defer or plan for some idealized future, you���re forced to just make do with what���s in front of you. The distinction between ���quality��� time and ���garbage��� time falls away and you���re left with what simply is.

Yet I also look at other encounters we had in similar moments and feel regret. Because I let that delay get to me���I spent the 40 minutes nervously pacing, or being irritable or worse. I was so eager to get where we were going that I didn���t appreciate that we were already doing something that could be fun. My inability to accept deprived me of what actually was quality time all along.

Often when we are trying really hard to attain something, we end up missing the fact that we���ve had it in our hands the whole time. Sure, letting your kids blow off school for a fun day together can be wonderfully special ��� but so can the 20-minute drive in traffic to school. So can mailing a letter or watching a garbage truck meander through the neighborhood.

All time with your kids ��� all time with anyone you love ��� is created equal. What you do with it is what makes it special. Not where. Or for how long. Or at what cost.

Think back to your own childhood. Rushing around to get somewhere on time. Packing for that trip to Disneyland. Getting dressed up for those ridiculous matching group photos. ���Why are we doing this?��� you asked when you were old enough to notice that it seemed really stressful and not fun. The answer was always something like: ���Because we���re a family.��� As if you couldn���t be a family anywhere, doing anything. As if you couldn���t do it right here and now (and without the matching shirts).

This is worth remembering in all facets of life: You can be a family without getting dressed and leaving the house. You can be in love in the McDonald���s drive-through. You can be romantic near the eggs at the grocery store. You can be a writer as you ride the elevator down to take out the trash. You can be a good person in how you answer the phone or how you send emails.

There���s a Tolstoy quote I love: ���There is no past and no future; no one has ever entered those two imaginary kingdoms. There is only the present.���

No vacation, no special experience, not even a family outing, just happens on its own. There is planning. There is time off work. There is the expense. There is the intention���and this is wonderful and it should be celebrated, soaked in when it happens. Just be sure not to give yourself too much credit because you booked a trip to the beach or got them excited for ice cream or the movies.

Because in some ways, this is actually the easiest option. What���s tougher? [To just be present right now](https://dailydad.com/be-more-present-...). Anyone can wow their kids with dessert or Disneyland���but can you make them feel special playing Legos on the floor? Just sitting and talking about life?

All time is quality time���if you choose to make it so. And you can���t let your future plans���to have a great time together, to go do something together, to all be together���let you off the hook right now where you are also together, in the living room, at the doctor���s office, FaceTiming from the business trip.

This moment in front of you is a gift. It���s everything you���ll ever need and ever want.

Should you choose to accept it. Should you choose to embrace it.

15 Questions That Will Make You A Better Parent (and Person)

As parents, we worry about having all the right answers.

But I think it���s better to focus on asking the right questions.

The right question at the right time can change the course of a life, can still a turbulent situation, can provide a totally different perspective.

While every situation can generate its own, here are 15 questions that have challenged and helped me the most every day both as a parent and then as a writer, as I researched and wrote what became The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids, (it would mean so much to me if you could preorder it!!!). These 15 questions from some of the wisest philosophers, most incisive thinkers, and greatest parents that ever lived.

I���m not saying I know the answer to any of them, but I can say there is value in letting them challenge you. Certainly they have challenged me and continue to challenge me���

Start now by asking:

Will I Be An Ancestor or A Ghost?

In his Broadway show, Bruce Springsteen���whose songs have often focused on the painful legacy of our parents���explained the choice that all of us have as parents.

���We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children���s lives,��� he said at the beginning of his broadway show Long Time Comin���. ���We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them, and we haunt them, or we assist them in laying those old burdens down, and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behavior. And as ancestors, we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way, and some transcendence.���

Will you be a ghost or an ancestor to your children? Will you be the kind of example they need? Will you leave the kind of legacy that will guide them? That will inspire them to be decent and disciplined, great and good? Or will you haunt them with your mistakes, with the pain you inflicted on them, with the things left unsaid or unresolved?

Of course, we all know which of those two we want to be, just as Bruce���s flawed father surely did. But then our demons, our issues, the ghosts of our own parents, get in the way.

That���s why we go to therapy and read good books. That���s why we stay up at night before bed talking to our spouse about how hard this parenting thing is, to exorcise those demons by bringing them into the light. It���s why, wordlessly, when we hold our kids, we promise ourselves to do better, to try harder, to not repeat the mistakes we endured growing up. Because we want to be an ancestor���someone who guides them and inspires them. We don���t want to haunt their future selves like a ghost.

Am I Cherishing The Garbage Time?

We save and plan for elaborate vacations. We anticipate for months and months. And when it inevitably isn���t as special or elaborate or photo-worthy as we���d hoped, we feel awful, like we���re not enough, like we haven���t done enough.

Yet the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who has three kids, questions the ���quality time��� that so many of us chase.

I���m a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about ���quality time������I always find that a little sad when they say, ���We have quality time.��� I don���t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That���s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o���clock at night when they���re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that���s what I love.

Special days? Nah. Every day, every minute, can be special. All time with your kids���all time with anyone you love���is created equal. Eating cereal together can be wonderful. Blowing off school for a fun day together can be wonderful���but so can the twenty-minute drive in traffic to school. So can taking out the garbage or waiting in the McDonald���s drive-through.

In my pocket, I carry a medallion that says Tempus Fugit (���time flies���) on the front and ���all time is quality time��� on the back, so I���m constantly reminding myself to cherish the ���garbage time.��� Because it���s the best kind of time there is.

Am I Doing What I Want Them To Do?

The bestselling author and father of two Austin Kleon talks about how this is the hardest part of parenting: You have to be the kind of human being you want your children to be. You have to do the things you want your kids to do.

���I find this with parents all the time,��� he said. ���They want their kids to do things that they don���t do themselves.��� He wants his kids to be readers, so he makes sure they see him reading. He wants them to explore different hobbies and interests, so he makes sure they see him practicing an instrument or tinkering in a sketchbook. He wants them to work hard and find work they care about, so he makes sure they see him working in his studio. He wants them to treat others with respect and kindness, so he makes sure they see him giving their mother something he made for her.

Who you are forms who they will be. So be who you want them to be. Do what you want them to do. It���s hard, but it���s the only way.

Does This Really Matter?

Your kid wants to go swimming, but you have to make this phone call. Your kids want to wrestle, but you have to cook dinner. Your kids want you to come tuck them in, but it���s a tie game with forty-two seconds left in regulation.

We pick these things because they���re urgent. Because they���ll only take a second. But mostly, we pick them because we can get away with it.

If something seemingly more urgent or out-of-control were to intervene, you would push the phone call. If you were stuck in traffic, you would order delivery. If the boss called and needed something, you would find out later who won the game. Yet here you are, telling your kid (and their earnest request to spend time with you) that they are not as important. Here you are choosing it over your kid.

Most of whatever we���re doing can wait. Not indefinitely, of course. No one is telling you to put it off forever. But this moment right now, you won���t get back. Take it. Play. Sit with them. Talk with them. Pause the TV. Save the draft and come back to it. Let dinner get cold. Tell so-and-so you���ll have to call them back.

Your kids are more important than any and all of that stuff.

What Am I Putting First?

Queen Elizabeth II had just returned from a six-month trip abroad. Her kids had been aboard the royal yacht for days, eagerly awaiting her return. Did she have presents? Would she tell them wonderful stories? Would she smother them with kisses?

As she stepped aboard, Prince Charles ran to her. Always a stickler for protocol, however, the queen politely greeted a group of dignitaries first. ���No, not you, dear,��� she chided him, finishing her business before embracing her family.

Even some sixty-five years after the fact, even if you have an important job, even if you���re an avid rule follower, even if you don���t like Charles, it still breaks your heart. Especially when we know that she knew better, having moved her weekly meeting with the prime minister to be there for her babies at dinnertime.

But now, after that much time apart, those were her first words to her six-year-old son? What changed? Couldn���t she see the awful symbolism? Literally putting work before family? After having already put them on pause for six months?

Your kids must come first. Not just in the very first months or years but always. You must say to them, ���Yes, you, dear,��� and never the opposite.

Am I Setting Them Up To Thrive?

Several years ago the writer Malcolm Gladwell pointed out how surprising it is that even in the NBA, which is filled with objectively talented and elite athletes, it sometimes requires a team change or a head coaching change (or a mental skills professional) for a player to thrive. They might have bounced around to two or three places, had multiple disappointing seasons and then suddenly, when the environment around them is right, when they have the support they need, bam, they���re great.

His point was this: If athletes being paid millions of dollars to perform need this, how can we possibly just expect kids to succeed in any old classroom we drop them into? We are so quick to write kids off���even our own kids���as not good at math, as a so-so student, as ADD or whatever. So quick!

But of course, environment is everything. The right supporting cast is everything. Timing is everything. We have to be patient. We have to be flexible. We have to take a page from these sports teams that, understanding they have a very valuable asset on their hands, do not despair when things don���t immediately click. No, when things aren���t working, they invest more. They don���t blame the star. They blame the system���and then try to fix it.

Am I Making Deposits or Debts?

Here���s a quote from Charles R. Swindoll: ���Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.���

Deposits are made when we love them, when we support them, when we protect them. Being there, helping them, nurturing them, cheering for them, giving them space to make mistakes and grow���this is how we fund that account.

But we also have to understand that we make debts our children will have to pay. When we lose our temper, fight with their mother or father, forget about what really matters���these things linger and haunt them for years and years into the future. This is why the writer Jancee Dunn got the advice from a therapist to keep a photo of their daughter in the bedside table:

Whenever I was about to lose my temper with [my husband], he told me, I was to run to the bedroom, pull out the photo, and say to it: I know that what I���m about to do is going to cause you harm, but right now, my anger is more important to me than you are.

As you can imagine, she writes, this was an exercise that did not need to be done more than a few times. Which is why we should each try a version of this in our own lives. Because so much of what we get angry about is not only not more important to us than our children or our marriages���it���s not important at all.

What If We���re Actually Just Hungry?

Any experienced parent can tell you about the magical panacea called food.

Why is your kid screaming? Why are they terrorizing their sibling? Why can���t they focus during homeschooling? Why can���t they fall asleep? Why is your teenager so moody?

The answer is simple. They are hungry. They���re hangry. And they don���t know it.

Moms have long carried snacks in their purses for a reason. Because it will solve most problems. Soothe most frayed nerves. Calm down most difficult situations.

Somebody always forgets to eat. So feed them. Ask them if they���re hungry. Remind them that they���re hungry. Keep a tight meal schedule. Watch what happens.

Oh, also, when you���re grouchy and frustrated and anxious and short with your spouse and your kids���you might be hangry yourself. In 2014, researchers from Ohio State University found that most fights between couples are because someone is hungry. So, like taking a walk or taking five deep breaths, grabbing something to eat will probably solve most of your adult problems too.

What Are They Really Trying To Say?

It doesn���t matter how old your kids are. It doesn���t matter where you���re from or how many tutors you���ve hired for them. It doesn���t matter if they���ve gone to therapy. It doesn���t matter if you have the most connected and open relationship. It doesn���t matter if they���re in college studying language.

The primary language of children is behavior. Not words. This is for one simple, undeniable reason: they don���t have the words yet.

This is why we need to ���listen��� to our kids in more ways than just the obvious, literal way. We have to watch them. We have to be patient. We have to understand that a tantrum���even if it���s screaming about the iPad���is almost certainly about something else. We have to understand that lethargy or sliding grades are statements. So is wanting to dye their hair, so is getting arrested. It���s your child speaking to you through behavior. They���re telling you they are hungry. They are telling you they are stressed. They are telling you they don���t feel secure, that they need something, that they need someone. Even if they are saying the opposite of those things.

The question is: Will you hear them? Will you be able to talk to them about it? Not just with your words but with your own actions.

What Am I Measuring?

Tracee Ellis Ross has a famous, successful mother: the singer Diana Ross. You might think someone that successful would care a lot about success. Indeed, it���s a pretty common pattern: the driven parent drives their children���to get good grades, to win games, to be the strongest, prettiest, or most popular. They want to continue their pattern of excellence down through the college their kids go to or the profession they work.

But Tracee got lucky. Her mom did it right. While most parents would ask their kids, ���How are your grades?��� ���Did you win?��� ���Are you number one in your class?��� Diana Ross would ask, ���Did you do your best? How do you feel about it, Tracee?��� Tracee, who amidst some fits and starts would go on to become a very accomplished actress, would explain that her mother���s emphasis taught her an essential perspective shift: ���How to navigate a life through how it feels to you, as opposed to how it looks to everyone else.���

What really matters? Not school. Not grades. What matters is what your kids learn about the world through these things, the priorities they pick up and the values they absorb. So that���s the question: Are you teaching them that test scores matter, or that learning counts? Are you teaching them that success is winning arbitrary competitions, or that it is becoming the best version of themselves?

Results don���t matter, not the obvious ones anyway. What counts is the person you are shaping them to be. What counts is who they are shaping themselves into.

How Can I Use This?

In the 2008 American presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously used the Reverend Wright scandal as what he later called a ���teachable moment������a chance to discuss race with the American people. Whatever you think of Obama���s politics or of that scandal, it���s hard not to like that phrase. A ���teachable moment?���

It���s an essential fact of parenthood: everything that happens is an opportunity, a chance to teach your children.

The question is, will we seize that chance? Will you take advantage of that opportunity? And are you paying close enough attention on a regular basis to notice when these opportunities arise?

The mistake your daughter made. The knock on the door at 2 a,m, from a police officer bringing your son home, having caught him getting into trouble. The failed math test. A room they forgot to clean, again. That nasty remark you heard them make. None of it seems good, but there is something teachable inside each one of those things.

It might not be obvious, and it won���t necessarily be easy, but you have to find it.

What If I Took A Walk?

Seneca said that ���delay is the greatest remedy for anger.��� That���s the truth.

And there is no better way to delay than by taking a walk. Because a walk is the best way to let your mind clear, to make sure you don���t do something you will later regret. Anger is an exaggerator. It magnifies the worst in every situation. Anger is an exacerbator too. It takes a bad situation and makes it worse with the overreaction it produces in us.

Taking a walk makes sure that doesn���t happen, that anger doesn���t win. The next time you���re angry, take a walk and see if you can get yourself that wound up again. It���s next to impossible.

No one is saying you can���t respond at all. You probably will have to address whatever has made your blood boil. You will have to say something. But wait a minute. Take a walk and think about the best way to respond. Make it a teachable moment. Teach them that it���s possible to control how you react.

Am I Being A Fan?

Jim Valvano wasn���t yet out of high school when he first told his dad he had decided what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He wasn���t just going to be a collegiate basketball coach, he told him: ���Dad, I���m going to win a national championship.���

A few days after Jim told his dad about his dream, his dad called him into his bedroom. ���See that suitcase?��� his father asked, pointing to the luggage in the corner. Confused, Jim replied, ���Yeah, what���s that all about?��� ���I���m packed,��� his dad explained. ���When you play and win that national championship I���m going to be there. My bags are already packed.���

���My father,��� Jim would later say in his legendary ESPY speech, ���gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: he believed in me.���

Have you given this gift to your children? Our job is to spur our children to conceive of big dreams, to encourage them to go after them, to give them the greatest gift anyone can give another person: belief. If you don���t believe in them, who will? If you aren���t their biggest fan, who will be?

Will I Have A Crowded Table?

It���s helpful to sit back and really think about what parental success looks like.

First, of course, it���s having healthy kids who survive to adulthood���that���s obvious.

But second, when you flash way forward into the future, what is it? It���s that beautiful phrase captured in the title of the Highwomen���s hit ���Crowded Table.��� At Thanksgiving. On birthdays. At some summer house on the beach you all rent as a family. That is, having kids whom you get to see, whom you have a good relationship with, whom you want to spend time with . . . for the rest of your days.

If you want a garden, the song reminds us, you���re going to have to sow the seed.

And if you want a crowded table, you���ll need to make the right decisions now so they���ll want to make the decision to fly from their homes to yours when they���re older and have families of their own. You���ll have to plant a little happiness, give a little love, if that���s what you want to reap.

You���ll need to set the table today to have the one you���ll want tomorrow.

Ask Them This Question Every Day

Those are 14 questions for you.

But here���s a question to ask them every day, one I try to ask my son when I pick him up from school each afternoon

What did you do that was kind today?

Instead of asking your kids if they behaved well or performed well or even if they had fun, be sure to check in with them about whether they did something kind. Ask them, every day, What good turn did you do today? What was something you did for someone else? Who did you help?

Think of the message this sends. Think of how it makes them think about their own day���to review their own actions through the lens of empathy, how their actions affect others. Think of the priorities it sets through your monitoring���that their parents are on top of not how many answers they got right but how many right things they did. Think about how much better the world would be if everyone thought this way, if everyone was raised this way.

2 Years Of Lessons From Running My Own Bookstore

It is only from doing hard things, the Stoics said, that we learn what we���re capable of.

A little over three years ago, my wife and I had the craziest idea we���ve ever had in our lives: to open a bookstore in Bastrop, Texas.

Opening a small business is always hard. But opening a small business during a pandemic in a small town in rural Texas? To call it a challenge would be an understatement.

We���ve learned a lot���about business, about books, and about what we���re capable of. Last year, I wrote a piece on the lessons we���d learned in our first year of business at The Painted Porch. Now, another year has passed and we have learned a few more���and re-learned some of the ones we thought we���d gotten the first time. I share them here so you can perhaps learn a little from my experiences and hopefully go create something cool of your own out of it.

[1] Anything can be a good business if you treat it like a business. Too many indie bookstores are started because people think they���ll be fun���or because they love books. No, you have to be serious. I learned this as a writer: treat it like a job.

[2] The bookstore of course is not just a bookstore. It is my office. It is my employee���s office. It is where I record podcasts and film YouTube videos. I rent part of the building to another business (a really cool record store called Astro Records). When you are thinking about taking a big risk, look for little ways to take some risk off the table. Find multiple uses, multiple options so that if one fails, you can still succeed.

[3] On the Daily Stoic podcast, Matthew McConaughey gave me a better framework for making big decisions. He told me he���s known in Hollywood as a Quick No, Long Yes. His No���s are quick. But before he says Yes to something, ���I give myself about 2 weeks in each frame of mind���Yes I���m in, No I���m out���and then I measure what keeps me up at night.���

[4] Keep your eye on the prize. What is success to you? What metrics actually matter to you? Remembering why you did something and how you measure success helps you calibrate your decisions properly. I���m happy enough to be putting books out in the world, making this community better, having a physical space, challenging myself, etc���as long as I don���t lose lots of money, that���s a win.

[5] Forget the politics. It���s been interesting to watch people in our small town care a lot about what other people in the small town think. Except this small town isn���t big enough to support a bookstore. When you���re starting out doing things, you get strong opinions from people in your local scene etc. But that���s not who you should be trying to impress, or who matters in the long run. Look outward, onwards. Don���t be stuck thinking small, don���t let the scene you chanced into constrain you.

[6] Don���t be afraid to be political though. We delayed opening during the worst days of COVID. We kept up safety protocols even after the state of Texas washed its hands of its responsibilities last year. We did it even though people got mad at us for it, even though it probably cost us business. My conscience is clean and that���s what counts. Keeping your community and your staff safe is good for business in the long run anyway.

[7] Beware of mission creep. Our original plan was that we���d have only a couple hundred books, only my absolute favorite books, only the books I put in my Reading List Email. It would only be those books. But the problem is, I���m always reading and discovering new favorite books. So the temptation to add and add and add is always there. In the military, they call this mission creep. It���s hard to predict exactly how things are going to unfold, so there tends to be a gradual broadening of objectives as a mission or battle progresses. If you are setting out on a project, just something to be aware of.

[8] For everything you add, take something away. There���s a great story of Mark Parker who, just after he became CEO of Nike, called Steve Jobs for advice. ���Just one thing,��� Jobs said. ���Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.��� ���He was absolutely right,��� Parker said. ���We had to edit.��� Because we���ve always done it this way, is not a good reason. Or in our case, because we���ve always carried this book or because it sold well in the past, is not a good reason. We have to edit.

[9] Whenever I am at the store, people are excited to see me and ask a bunch of questions. Whenever my wife is there people ask her, ���Where are your kids?��� No one has EVER asked me that. It���s just a reminder that entrepreneurship is easier for some than others and the whole idea of just pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps is nonsense. Be aware of your advantages and privileges.

[10] Speaking of which���something that���s been hard to navigate is all the people who come to the bookstore to see me. On the one hand, it is awesome. But on the other hand, if I give everyone twenty minutes, my day is gone. This means I sometimes have to be rude���but if I am not, then I am rude to my writing, to my family, to myself.

[11] If you���re successful, your people should be successful. Nothing feels better than distributing profits or raises to the team. If you don���t take pleasure in that, you���re doing it wrong, prioritizing the wrong things.

[12] A few weeks ago, an employee made a bad call and the result was an unnecessary $7,000 shipping bill. It was a tough pill for me to swallow, but I tried to think of the story about the late IBM CEO Tom Watson. In the 1960s, Watson called an executive into his office after his venture lost $10 million. The man assumed he was being fired. Watson told him, ���Fired? Hell, I spent $10 million educating you. I just want to be sure you learned the right lessons.���

[13] As I said last time, I think one of the best decisions we made was 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 to do. 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.

[14] For similar reasons, we put a tree in the bookstore (watch the video, it���s awesome). When we were lugging the tree across Main Street, people stopped us and asked what we we���re doing. We told them, we���re putting this in the bookstore to look like it���s growing out of the ceiling. Wow, people would say, that���s incredible. I talk about this in Trust Me I���m Lying��� if you want to be in the news, you have to do things that are newsworthy. If you want attention, you have to do things that capture attention.

[15] There���s a great Hemingway line���we actually have a shirt with it, and I have a print of it on my wall���it���s one of my all-time favorite quotes: the first draft of everything is shit. I love how The Painted Porch is now, but it took weeks and months to get it to where it is. It���s been a continual process of improvement and growth and making changes.

[16] The Odyssey is roughly 2,800 years old. We sold a copy of it yesterday. Books are a great reminder of the staying power of something great (there���s a latin expression: Ars longa, vita brevis. Life is short, art is long). But then again, the translation we sold (my favorite) from Emily Wilson is fresh and new. Never underestimate the power of new packaging of something timeless and old.

[17] Every month I still send out my reading list email. We sell several hundred books in the store, but a permission asset where I recommend 5-10 each month? It���s very powerful. Cultivate these assets, and practice the art of curation. It���s a recipe for success.

[18] When we find that sales are low, one thing we do is just move stuff around in the store. I don���t know why but it seems to create a new energy, not just for the customers but also for the staff.

[19] The number one thing people say when they hear we have a bookstore is ���I���ve always wanted to do that.��� That���s a sad thing to say. If you want to do something, do it. I���m not saying it will be easy or even fun���but Seneca is right when he said that the one thing fools all have in common is that they are always telling themselves someday.

[20] The idea of ���Fuck Yes���or No��� is far too simple. Dropping out of college, I was maybe 51/49 on it. Leaving my corporate job to become a writer, maybe 60/40. Opening the bookstore, I was simply terrified. The truly life-changing decisions are usually like that. If I had only ever done things I was absolutely certain about, I���d have missed out on experiences I love. Conversely, I regret a good chunk of my ���Fuck yes���s.���

[21] One thing I���ve observed about people who are successful at one thing is they transfer their high standards over to new projects. The problem is when you have really high standards, it���s hard to be comfortable with something that���s kind of crappy or mediocre or not all the way there. But there���s a reason most tech start ups think in terms of a minimum viable product. Like I said about Hemingway, you have to be comfortable with crappy first drafts. The bookstore today is way better than it was the day it opened, and if it���s not better next year, then we���ll have let ourselves down.

[22] In the fall of 2019, as I was thinking about doing the bookstore, I was with James Clear, Mark Manson, Shane Parish, and Tim Urban, and they all said, definitely don���t do it���there were way better ways to make money, they said���and they were probably right. But what���s the point of success if you can���t use it to do stuff that���s cool? Turning money into more money is not the only aim in life. What is the point of being successful if all you do is reinvest that money into shit you don���t really care about?

[23] One of the dangerous things that can happen when you succeed at doing something a lot of people told you was a bad idea���is that you stop listening when people tell you your ideas are bad. You stop listening when people raise doubts. This is the worst lesson you can learn in life. The bookstore worked, but that doesn���t mean my next crazy idea will work. I have to do real work to make sure the next one isn���t actually crazy, I have to work extra hard next time. That���s the lesson to take from success.

And I actually have one more bonus piece of advice: When I asked Tim Ferriss for advice when I was kicking around the idea, he said to think of it as an experiment. Try it for two years, he said, and if you hate it at the end or it���s failing, then walk away. This piece of advice was so freeing. It gave me an out���which allowed me to bravely dive in. Because I wasn���t betting my whole life on sometime, just a contained time commitment.

Well, two years have come and gone and we love it. Maybe that will change in the future, but for now we���re locked in. But thinking of every venture, every project as an experiment is a great way to go through life. It lowers the stakes. It minimizes the downside. It lets you take a shot on something that otherwise might be way too intimidating. Even if the bookstore had failed, or even if it never makes another dollar, learning the value of that advice, that insight, has changed me for the better.

So go try a hard and challenging thing. You���ll emerge better for it���probably in more ways than one.

This Decision Changed My Life and My Business

 

I know someone that spends close to $20,000 a month on a publicist.

I know an author who spends something like that out of their own pocket each month on what���s called co-op, or extra prominent placement at airport bookstores.

I know many people who spend more than that on advertising.

I myself have hired publicists. I have paid for co-op. I used to spend six figures a year on Facebook ads for Daily Stoic.

But several years ago I made a decision that changed my business and radically transformed my career.

I stopped spending money on all of that.

It���s not that I wasn���t getting a return on my investment. But it struck me just how empty it all was. I was putting all this time and energy and money into something, which were I ever to stop, would leave barely a trace behind!

I was thinking of a wonderful quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who, while criticizing advertising and publicity, pointed out that a person, ���cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.���

So I took that money and did something very different with it: I used it to start making stuff.

I hired a videographer. I hired a social media manager. I hired another researcher. I hired a bunch of people. I took the entire budget that I had been putting into advertising and built a content team. We built the Daily Stoic podcast. We started making YouTube videos. We started cutting clips from the talks I gave. We wrote explainers and SEO pieces about philosophy. We launched DailyDad.com. We started @DailyPhilosopher on Instagram.

Some people might shrug and say, ���Yeah that���s called content marketing,��� but it���s actually a deeper philosophical shift.

Over the years, Daily Stoic has created hundreds of videos, articles and emails. With the 500-word daily newsletter, that���s a little more than two books a year of free content delivered straight to email inboxes around the world every morning. We���ve essentially created the largest Stoic library in the world. Hundreds of hours of video on the great Stoic works, the rules the Stoics lived by, Stoic habits, Stoic don���ts, and Stoic questions for a better life. Hundreds of thousands of words across articles on the Big 3 (Marucs Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus), timeless Stoic strategies for happiness, dealing with stress, getting and staying motivated, overcoming procrastination, and handling rude people.

A lot of people have seen that stuff as a result. We���ve done something like 63 million views on YouTube (4.4 million hours watched), and we just hit 1 million subscribers to the channel last week. The podcast does around 5 million downloads a month (well over 120M downloads). The email goes out to nearly 600,000 subscribers every morning���and has been sent something like 450 million times. You can add on top of that this bi-monthly email you���re reading here, plus my monthly Reading List Email too.

Some of the people that have found this content have gone on to be customers, sure. Advertising and publicity are largely used as a means of attracting attention for someone���s business. Content marketing is also a way of doing that. But I���m not saying you should trade Strategy A for Strategy B, or that Strategy B is more cost effective. It probably isn���t���making all this content has been an enormous amount of work and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What I am saying is that instead of using your energy and resources and effort to make stuff that converts, you should use your energy and resources and effort to make stuff that matters.

Because it is valuable in and of itself.

Someone gets shown an ad and buys something, that���s great. But the people who get shown an ad and do nothing? What a lost opportunity! What a waste of their time and yours. It���s nice for the ego to get profiled in some publication���but it is quickly forgotten.

Deciding to make videos, write articles, produce thousands of hours of audio���what I decided to prioritize my work around was making work.

Creating value for others that lasts.

I have a little notecard on my wall next to my desk that says ���Am I Being a Good Steward of Stoicism?��� I found I couldn���t sleep with myself knowing I was spending a bunch of money on extractive ads. But I can swell with pride knowing I spent the profits that my books have earned making content that millions of people have consumed for free, that has helped spread the ideas in Stoicism to people who would have never heard them otherwise. One helps the world, one helps no one but the ad network.

I could stop making new content today���I could die tomorrow and the stuff we have made would keep on keeping on, reaching people, helping people. And this is really the best part: I would die a better person for having made it too. It was fun. It was educational. It was rewarding.

I must say I wouldn���t go as far as saying all advertising is worthless (we have ads at the bottom of our emails a few times a week, including this one). At American Apparel, nothing was more rewarding than using our advertising budget to support causes like legalizing gay marriage or immigration reform. We also deliberately sought out publications that we believed were doing important work, that we felt contributed to the scene or the community���we put our money there, knowing that in addition to reaching people about our products, we were also helping that publication survive or thrive.

The other reason I want to make it clear that I���m not just talking about content marketing versus ads is that I have very much stretched the definition of ���content.��� The decision to open a small town bookstore in rural Texas? That���s not the same as a blogpost but it is doing stuff, it is making something that matters.

The Painted Porch as a business makes very little sense on its own. It���s too risky, too expensive, too regional. Yet it���s accomplished so much���not only has it gotten tons of publicity, but it���s been a story I have been able to tell in my content as well as make my content in. It���s also a physical space people have been able to travel all over the world to visit, to bring people to, to post pictures and talk to other people about.

I promise you, the feeling of walking into it���this modern version of the ancient Stoa���is vastly more satisfying than looking at some spreadsheet looking at which Twitter or Reddit ad is converting better. The same goes when I see the people who are on our team: Billy, Dawson, Chelsea, Kristen, Rachel, Ernie, Deezie, and Jess (plus many great contractors all over the world). To be able to provide a living for them, to see them learn on the job, to benefit from and learn myself from their contributions, to watch us come together and make something larger than the sum of our parts? It���s cool seeing your books on an end table at Hudson���s at JFK, but I like this a lot better.

If you���re going to do something, I say, do something real. Do something that matters, that makes a difference.

Each of us is only here so long. We can only work on so many things. We can spend our time, energy and resources in only so many ways.

The question is how are you going to use these limited resources?

To me, the answer is to do stuff that matters. Make things that matter to people, that help people.

Make a constructive contribution to humanity.

It will come back to you.

19 Rules For A Better Life (From Marcus Aurelius)

Marcus Aurelius never claimed to be a Stoic.

Gregory Hays, one of Marcus Aurelius���s best translators, writes in his introduction to Meditations, ���If he had to be identified with a particular school, [Stoicism] is surely the one he would have chosen. Yet I suspect that if asked what it was that he studied, his answer would not have been ���Stoicism��� but simply ���philosophy.������

He then notes that in the ancient world, ���philosophy��� was not perceived the way it is today. It played a much different role. ���It was not merely a subject to write or argue about,��� Hays writes, ���but one that was expected to provide a ���design for living������a set of rules to live one���s life by.���

That���s what this philosophy gives us: a design for living. Which is great because, as Seneca wrote, ���Life without a design is erratic.��� What were some of Marcus���s rules?

These are some of my favorites.

Put people first. My favorite story about Marcus Aurelius comes in the depths of the Antonine Plague, a horrible pandemic in Ancient Rome that killed millions of people. Rome���s economy has been devastated, people are dying in the streets, and everyone feels like it can���t possibly get better. What does Marcus do? He walks through the imperial palace and begins marking things for sale. Then for two months, on the lawn of the great emperor���s palace, he sells jewels, furniture, and finery owned by the emperor. He���s sending a message saying, ���I���m not going to put myself first. I don���t need these fancy things���not when people are struggling.��� To me, this is like the CEO who takes a pay cut in a bad economy. This is the athlete who renegotiates their contract so the team can bring on new players. This is the leader who sacrifices and struggles and puts their people ahead of their own comfort and needs. That���s what greatness is.

Never be overheard complaining���Not even to yourself. In Meditations, Marcus speaks to this idea over and over and over again: Look inward, not outward. Don���t complain. Don���t meddle in the affairs of others. When you see someone acting objectionably, remember when you have acted that way. The Stoic does not have time to complain about others because they have too much to improve on at home. When we make the distinction between what���s in our control and outside our control, we see very quickly that it is only our own decisions and actions and words and thoughts that are worthy of our attention. Everything else is the business of everyone else.

Do only what���s essential. This was Marcus��� simple recipe for productivity and for happiness. ���If you seek tranquility,��� he said, ���do less.��� And then he clarifies. Not nothing. Less. Do only what���s essential. ���Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.��� Follow this advice today and everyday. Put it somewhere you will see it frequently: do only what���s essential.

Waste no time worrying about other people���s opinions. Marcus talked about a strange contradiction: we are generally selfish people, yet, more than ourselves, we value other people���s opinions about us. ���It never ceases to amaze me,��� he wrote, ���we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.��� The fundamental Stoic principle is that we focus only on the things that are within our control. Other people���s opinions are not within our control. Don���t spend any time worrying about what other people think.

Don���t suffer imagined troubles. ���Don���t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole,��� Marcus reminded himself. ���Stick with the situation at hand.��� Focus on the moment. Waste no time thinking about the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.

Focus on effort, not outcomes. It���s a strange paradox. The people who are most successful in life, who accomplish the most, who dominate their professions���they don���t care that much about winning. They don���t care about outcomes. As Marcus said, it���s insane to tie your wellbeing to things outside of your control. Success, mastery, sanity, Marcus writes, comes from tying your wellbeing, ���to your own actions.��� If you did your best, if you gave it your all, if you acted with your best judgment���that is a win���regardless of whether it���s a good or bad outcome.

Ask this question. Marcus liked to filter his choices through the question, ���You���re afraid of death because you won���t be able to do this anymore?��� That���s the thing about memento mori��. It���s so clarifying. If you had unlimited time, maybe you wouldn���t mind spending two hours a day in traffic. Maybe you wouldn���t mind endlessly doom scrolling the cesspool of Twitter or tackling the blackhole that is your inbox. But if death was suddenly real to you���if you were given a few months or years to live���what would you immediately spend less time doing? What would the ���this��� Marcus referred to that you would cut out? Well cut that thing out now, not later.

Choose sympathy over outrage. In Meditations, Marcus writes that asking for a world without shameless people and evil acts is to ask the impossible. He adds that people who do harm others end up only harming themselves������To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice���it degrades you.��� Marcus says these people actually deserve pity. ���When people injure you,��� he wrote, ���feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they���re misguided and deserve your compassion.���

Blow your own nose. Marcus noticed how often he found himself praying to get something. Wouldn���t it be better, he thought, to make yourself strong enough not to need whatever you were hoping the gods would grace you with? Epictetus calls this blowing your own nose. Don���t wait around hoping for someone to save you. Instead, listen to Marcus��� empowering call to, ���get active in your own rescue���if you care for yourself at all���and do it while you can.���

Think progress, not perfection. Marcus reminded himself: ���Don���t await the perfection of Plato���s Republic.��� Because if you do, that���s all you���ll do���wait. That���s one of the ironies about perfectionism: it rarely begets perfection���only disappointment, frustration, and of course, procrastination. So instead, Marcus said, ���be satisfied with even the smallest progress.��� You���re never going to be perfect���there is no such thing. You���re human. So instead, aim for progress, even the smallest amount.

Let go of anxiety. ���Today I escaped from anxiety,��� Marcus says. ���Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions���not outside.��� He writes this during a plague, no less. We tell ourselves we are stressed and anxious and worried because of the pressure our boss puts on us or because of some looming deadline or because of all of the places we have to be and people we have to see. And then when all that gets paired down, you realize, ���Oh, no, it was me. I���m the common variable.��� The anxiety is coming from the inside. And you can choose to discard it.

Do the more difficult thing. Whenever we come to a little crossroad���a decision about how to do things and what things to do���Marcus said to default to the option that challenges you the most. He writes in Meditations about holding the reins in his non-dominant hand as both an exercise to practice and a metaphor for doing the difficult thing. Jump into the colder pool. Walk instead of drive. Pick up the book instead of your phone. Take responsibility instead of hoping it goes unnoticed. In matters big and small, courage is choosing the more difficult option. Make it a habit. Iron sharpens iron, after all. 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.

Wake up early. Speaking of doing the difficult thing���one of the most relatable moments in Meditations is the argument he has with himself in the opening of book 5. It���s clearly an argument he���s had with himself many times, on many mornings���as have many of us: He knows he has to get out of bed, but so desperately wants to remain under the warm covers. It���s relatable���but it���s also impressive. Marcus didn���t actually have to get out of bed. He didn���t really have to do anything. The emperor had all sorts of prerogatives, and here Marcus was insisting that he rise early and get to work. Why? Because Marcus knew that winning the morning was key to winning the day and winning at life. He wouldn���t have heard the expression ���the early bird gets the worm,��� but he was well aware that a day well-begun is half done. By pushing himself to do something uncomfortable and tough, by insisting on doing what he said he knew he was born to do and what he loved to do, Marcus was beginning a process that would lead to a successful day.

Be strict with yourself and tolerant of others. It���s called self-discipline. It���s called self-improvement. And remember: Stoicism is a personal philosophy that���s designed to direct your behavior. It���s tempting to try to hold others to the very same standards you hold yourself to, but this is not only unfair (they didn���t sign up for that), it���s often counterproductive. An observation from Marcus��� most thoughtful biographer, Ernest Renan, explains the right way to do it. ���The consequence of austere philosophy might have produced stiffness and severity. But here it was that the rare goodness of the nature of Marcus Aurelius shone out in all its brilliancy. His severity was confined only to himself.��� That���s exactly the key. Your standards are for you. Marcus said philosophy is about being strict with yourself and forgiving of other people. That���s not only the kind way to be, it���s the only effective way to be.

Don���t be afraid to ask for help. Yes, a Stoic is strong. Yes, a Stoic is brave. Yes, a Stoic carries the load, and willingly carries the load for others when necessary. But they also have to be able to ask for help. Because sometimes that���s the strongest and bravest thing to do. ���Don���t be ashamed to need help,��� Marcus Aurelius wrote. ���Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you���ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?��� If you need a minute, ask. If you need a helping hand, ask. If you need reassurance, ask. If you need a favor, ask. If you need therapy, go. If you need to start over, go for it. If you need to lean on someone or something, do it.

Treat success and failure the same. Some days, Marcus wrote, the crowd cheers and worships you. Other days, they hate you and hit you with brickbats. You get a lucky break sometimes���get more credit and attention than you deserve. Other times you���ll get held to an impossibly unfair standard. They���ll build you up, and then tear you down���and act like it was your fault you got way up there in the first place. They���ll criticize you in public and privately tell you it���s all for show. There will be good years and bad years. Times when the cards fall our way, times when the dice keep coming up snake eyes. That���s just the way it goes. The key, Marcus said, is to assent to all of it. Accept the good stuff without arrogance, he writes in Meditations. Let the bad stuff go with indifference. Neither success nor failure say anything about you. A rock thrown in the air gains nothing by going up, Marcus said, and nothing by falling down.

Be free of passion and full of love. Marcus wasn���t an unfeeling robot. He didn���t stuff things down. He was a husband and a father. He wrote beautifully, took principled stands, worked hard and sacrificed. None of these things are possible for an unfeeling person. Yet, it���s undeniable that he and the Stoics talked extensively about the management of one���s emotions. He talked about conquering their temper. He talked about overcoming grief. He talked about quenching lust and dispelling fear. It���s a paradox, but quite a wonderful one. At least, it is in Marcus��� expression. He explains at the opening of Meditations that he learned from his teacher Sextus, ���not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love.��� Beautiful. It���s not that the Stoics had no temper or had no fear. It���s that they controlled those emotions and replaced them with love. They loved their fate (amor fati), they loved other people, they loved every minute they were alive. Love, love, love. That���s what you replace it all with.

The obstacle is the way. When you think you���re stuck, Marcus said, you���re not. Yes, one path might be closed, but there���s always others that remain open. The impediment to action advances action, Marcus famously wrote. What stands in the way becomes the way. That���s not to say that nothing can ever get in your way. It���s to say that nothing can stop you from accommodating and adapting. There is nothing so bad that we can���t make some good out of it. We can treat every problem as an opportunity to practice virtue.

Always do the right thing. ���Just that you do the right thing,��� Marcus wrote. ���The rest doesn���t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying���or busy with other assignments.���

11 Important Things I’m Thinking About In 2023

Marcus Aurelius thought a lot about thinking.

���Our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts,��� he wrote. So naturally, he tried to be thoughtful about what he thought and how he thought. ���Get used to winnowing your thoughts,��� he said, ���so that when someone asked you what you were thinking, you could answer straightforwardly.���

This is a good test for us today as we run around busy and preoccupied by our thoughts. If someone asked us, ���What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What are you thinking about?������would we have a good answer?

One of the things I am doing at the beginning of this year is meditating on a handful of ideas���most from the Stoics���that will hopefully make me better. Things that will hopefully dye my life a good color.

Here are some of them���

[1] Doing less, better. One of the challenges of the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge was to pick a mantra. I picked, ���do less,��� an idea that comes from Marcus Aurelius. ���If you seek tranquility,��� he said, ���do less.��� And then he follows the note to himself with some clarification. Not nothing, less. Do only what���s essential. ���Which brings a double satisfaction,��� he writes, ���to do less, better.���

[2] Being fast now and later. I had Olympic mountain biker Kate Courtney on the podcast while I was working on Discipline is Destiny and she told me a piece of advice she had gotten from her coach when she was pushing herself too hard in practice. ���Do you want to be fast now,��� they asked, ���or later?��� Meaning, do you want to win this workout or win the race?

[3] Being a good steward of Stoicism. Next to my desk, I have a notecard tapped to the wall that says, ���Am I being a good steward of Stoicism?��� Writing books is a business. My bookstore, The Painted Porch, is a business. Daily Stoic is a business. But I always try to ask myself not if I am making good business decisions, but if I am being a good steward of Stoicism, of the philosophy that���s given so much to me. Am I being honest and ethical and fair and reasonable and moderate���I try to think about all those things.

[4] Not always having an opinion. It���s possible, Marcus Aurelius said, to not have an opinion. You don���t have to turn this into something, he reminds himself. You don���t have to let this upset you. You don���t have to think something about everything.

[5] One small win per day is a lot. One of the best pieces of advice from Seneca was actually pretty simple. ���Each day,��� he told Lucilius, you should, ���acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well.��� One gain per day. That���s it.

[6] Paying my taxes. Not just from the government. Seneca wrote to Lucilius, ���All the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life���things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.��� Annoying people are a tax on being outside your house. Delays are a tax on travel. Haters are a tax on having a YouTube channel. There���s a tax on money too���and the more successful I have been, the more I���ve had to pay. There���s a tax on everything in life. You can whine. Or you can pay them gladly.

[7] The garbage time. There’s no such thing as ‘quality’ time. Time is time. In fact, as Jerry Seinfeld said, garbage time���eating cereal together late at night, laying around on the couch ��� is actually the best time. Forget chasing HUGE experiences. It can all be wonderful, if you so choose.

[8] Having a crowded table. It���s helpful to sit and really think about what success looks like. When you flash way forward into the future, what is it? You���re not going to think about how much money you made, how great a business you built, how many books or albums or companies you sold���if you���re alone, if your kids won���t answer your call, if your friends won���t have anything to do with you. Success, at the end of your life, is a crowded table���family and friends that want to be around you.

[9] The mundane is beautiful. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius marvels at ���nature���s inadvertence.��� A baker, he writes, makes the dough, kneads it and then puts it in the oven. Then Nature takes over. ���The way loaves of bread split open,��� Marcus writes, ���the ridges are just byproducts of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.��� It���s a beautiful observation about such a banal part of daily life, something only a poet could see. It���s also just a beautiful way to move through life. Notice the soft paw prints on the dusty trunk of a car. Marvel at the steam wafting from the vents on a New York City morning, the sound of a pen gliding across a notecard, and the floor filled with a child���s toys, arranged in the chaos of exhausted enjoyment. Find the beauty in the mundane.

[10] Patience. Seneca wrote, “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” And Robert Greene said, ���practice patience. Wait a day before taking action on the pressing problem.��� And Joyce Carol Oates had a simple rule, ���I almost never publish immediately.��� Every first draft is placed in a drawer where it sits, sometimes for a year or more. When three of my all-time favorite thinkers converge, I know I���ve found an important thing to think about.

[11] Alive time of dead time? Speaking of Robert, a few years ago, Robert gave me a piece of advice I think about just about every day. At a time when I was stuck in a job I wanted out of, Robert told me there are two types of time: alive time and dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are in control, when you make every second count, when you are learning and improving and growing. So I decided I would make the absolute most of every moment while I was stuck in that job. It became an incredibly productive period of reading and researching and filling boxes of notecards that helped me write The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy.

And bringing it full circle, I���m excited to announce that Robert and I are hosting an evening of conversation and philosophy on Power, Seduction, Ego and Destiny on March 10th and 11th.

Tickets are on sale now at ryanholiday.net/tour. If you are in or can make it to San Francisco or Seattle, I would love to see you any and all of you there!

20 Best Lessons From Interviewing Today’s Top Performers

I���m not saying everyone should start a podcast. In fact, I have said the opposite many times. There are way too many of them out there���and most are not good.

I���m just saying that having a podcast is pretty magical because you get (for free) something that no amount of money in the world could buy: Access to some of the smartest and most interesting people in the world. ���Picking someone���s brain��� is really a form of picking their pocket and yet with a podcast, you get to do that and usually the person says ���Thank you so much for the opportunity��� at the end.

It���s pretty magical!

Over the last several years, I���ve had the chance to spend more than a few hundred hours interviewing people for the Daily Stoic podcast (which you can subscribe to here and here). And with over 100 million downloads of Daily Stoic���s episodes so far, the people I���ve gotten access to have been beyond my dreams. I am certainly better, smarter and wiser for the privilege.

In today���s email, I wanted to share some of the absolute best things that I���ve learned in that time.

�����Les Snead, the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams, told me that inside the Rams organization they talk about having ���panic rules.��� What do you do when everything gets mixed up, when the coverage is confusing, when the play breaks down and there���s havoc on the field? How do you respond when the play clock is running down and the play call hasn���t come in yet because the headsets aren���t working? ���When there���s chaos and your brain is panicking,��� Snead said, ���go to your panic rules. Slow down and go to your panic rules.��� This isn���t just an on-field thing. For the chaos of life, we all need panic rules. Otherwise, you���re liable to make panicked decisions. You���re liable to do something emotional, something short term, something that violates your principles and hurts your cause.

��� The Olympic mountain biker Kate Courtney told me a piece of advice she received from her coach when she was pushing herself too hard in practice. ���Do you want to be fast now,��� her coach asked, ���or later?��� Meaning, do you want to win this workout or win the race? In Discipline is Destiny, when I say that self-discipline saves us, part of what it saves us from is ourselves. When we are committed, when we are driven, self-discipline isn���t always about getting up and getting to work. It���s easier to workout than to skip a workout, easier to write than relax. The problem with that is that if you want to last, you have to be able to rest.

��� Here���s another from Les Snead where he told me his strategy for ignoring the constant criticism from Monday morning quarterbacks and living room GMs. ���I intentionally practice Stoicism enough to know, ���Okay, this comment or this tweet or this simple take shouldn���t disrupt or even ruffle my emotions.������ Les said. When you know what you���re doing, he explained, you have to let your competence double as armor against criticism and complaints. It���s not that he���s egotistical���it���s that he knows his decisions were well thought out by him and his team.

��� Matthew McConaughey told me he shut down his production company and his music label because ���I was making B’s in five things. I want to make A’s in three things.��� Those three things: his family, his foundation, his acting career. Marcus Aurelius would say that doing less ���brings a double satisfaction.��� You figure out what���s really essential and you do those things better.

��� Along the same lines, Maya Smart told me about how she had to start saying “No” so she could say “Yes” to writing her first book (which you can pick up at the Painted Porch Bookshop). ���I had to start setting boundaries,��� she said ���Steven Pressfield writes about this idea that you do this shadow work. For me, it was volunteering���So I started resigning from boards and telling people, ���I���m no longer able to do this thing that I used to do because I���m focused on this book.������

��� Speaking of Pressfield, the distinction between amateur and professional is an essential piece of advice I have gotten, first from Steven���s writings and then by getting to talk to him over the years (here, here, and here). There are professional habits and amateur ones. Which are you practicing? Is this a pro or an amateur move? Ask yourself that. Constantly.

��� Somewhat related, the NASCAR driver and student of Stoicism, Brad Keselowski, talked about what distinguishes a professional in his field (and it applies to most fields). ���If the conditions were always perfect, the average 12-year-old could do my job,��� Brad said. ���The problem is that those days are very seldom.��� Can you still show up and perform when the conditions aren���t perfect? That���s the question.

��� I talked to one of my favorite writers, Rich Cohen, about the many lessons he learned from his father (who is the subject of Rich���s latest, The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator), including: ���One of my father���s big things is that the key to success is to care, but not that much. To remain detached. To look at this situation you���re so worried about and say, ���it���s merely a blip on the radar screen of eternity.������

��� After a billionaire-backed lawsuit put him $200 million in debt (which you can read about in my book Conspiracy), AJ Daulerio was finally driven into drug and alcohol recovery. He told me about how critical it���s been for him to have ���emergency routines��� that he can rely on when, to borrow Marcus Aurelius���s phrase, he is ���jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances.��� Whether it���s waking up to bad news, getting hit with a sudden craving, or being sent into a downward spiral by some painful memory flooding back���he has routines that bring him back to center and keep him from giving back all the progress he has made. He gets to a recovery meeting. He picks up his journal. He spends a few minutes meditating. He calls someone else and helps them. As with Les Snead���s panic rules, what you choose doesn���t matter as much as that you choose.

��� Another from McConaughey. He told me he���s known in Hollywood as ���a quick no and a long yes.��� What a great expression! Before he says yes to doing a movie, he sleeps on it for ten days to two weeks in the frame of mind that he���s not going to do it. If he sleeps well, he doesn���t do it. If the thought that he has to do it wakes him up at night, he does it.

��� I told Dr. Edith Eger I felt guilty about someone I had lost touch with and only recently reconnected with. She cut me off and told me she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. ���I give you a sentence,��� she said, ���One sentence���if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.��� That���s the end of that, she said. ���Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.���

��� When I talked to Dr. Sue Johnson, she talked about how when couples or people fight, they���re not really fighting, they���re just doing a dance, usually a dance about attachment. The dance is the problem���you go this way, I go that way, you reach out, I pull away, I reach out, you pull away���not the couple, not either one of the people. This externalization has been very helpful.

��� George Raveling told me that he sees reading as a moral imperative. ���People died,��� he said, speaking of slaves, soldiers and civil rights activists, ���so I could have the ability to read.��� He also pointed out that there���s a reason people have fought so hard over the centuries to keep books from certain groups of people. I���ve always thought reading was important, but I never thought about it like that. If you���re not reading, if books aren���t playing a major role in your life, you are betraying that legacy.

�����Tim Ferriss advised stripping these three words out of your vocabulary: it���s not fair. Because they are impotent and meaningless. Because they don���t do anything but make you upset.

��� ���Sometimes,��� the professional baseball player Ryan Lavarnway told me, ���you just have to say, ���good swing, bad aim.������ Sometimes you put a great swing on a pitch but hit the ball right to a fielder. Great effort, bad result. So it goes in life. Try to think less about results. Just try to make contact with the ball, just try to give your best. If you do, that���s a win, regardless of whether it���s a home run or an out.

��� I asked Matt Quinn, the frontman of indie rock band Mt. Joy, about Mt. Joy���s rise and how the band has navigated success. ���It���s helpful to tether to controlling what you can control,��� he said. ���That���s the thing we think about all the time. We���ve put in a lot of hard work. And if we just keep doing that���if we just keep getting better and practicing our instruments and doing the controllable things���then the outcome will at least not be a failure. I believe that for us. That���s really kind of been our motto.���

��� When I interviewed Dr. Lisa Barrett for the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, she had a great question to ask whenever you have an emotional reaction to something that happens, ���Is this the only story?��� Is this the only interpretation that fits here? No? What are my other options? What are some other stories I could make up about what happened here?

��� James Clear, author of the wonderful bestseller Atomic Habits, told me he carves out ���two sacred hours��� in the morning to do his writing. ���I fit it in,��� he said, ���before everybody else���s agenda creeps into my agenda.���

��� Ron Lieber���the longtime ���Your Money��� columnist for The New York Times and author of The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money (one of my all-time favorite titles)���told me a story about a time his three-year-old daughter asked, ���Daddy, why don���t we have a summer house?��� He said that she clearly had been pondering the question for some time, that she clearly had an interest in where her family stood in relation to other families, and that she clearly had a hunch that her family could have a summer house but made a decision to not have a summer house. It struck Lieber in that moment: how you spend money is a signal of what you value. ���Our choices, not just our words, but our choices have meaning. They are modeling something. They model a certain form of trade-off.���

��� Randall Stutman, leadership coach to some of Wall Street���s biggest CEOs, told me his teenage kids taught him an important lesson about power. You gotta figure out how to get people to think it���s their idea to do what you want them to do. ���You gotta give up power to keep power,��� he said. ���You gotta give up power to maintain power.��� One of the interesting things about power is that the harder you try to hold on to power, the less of it you actually have.

Thanks for reading these 20 lessons from the hundreds I’ve learned on the Daily Stoic podcast. Remember you can find the full archive at DailyStoic.com/podcast and subscribe to upcoming episodes here and here.

If You Only Read A Few Books In 2023, Read These

It���d be wonderful if a new year magically marked a new beginning. But 2022, like all years, reminded us that the same things keep happening, that world events continue on in their own unpredictable way and that in the end, we control very little but our own actions and opinions.

One of my favorite quotes���enough that I have it inscribed on the wall across the back of��my bookstore���comes from the novelist Walter Mosley. ���I���m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world,��� he said. ���I���m saying it helps.���

2023 stands before us promising nothing but the same difficulties and opportunities that last year and every year before it promised. Maybe even new and worse ones. What are you going to do about it? Will you be ready for it? Can you handle it?

Books are an investment in yourself���investments that come in many forms: novels, nonfiction, how-to, poetry, classics, biographies. They help you think more clearly, be kinder, see the bigger picture, and improve at the things that matter to you. Books are a tradition that stretches back thousands of years and stretches forward to today, where people are still publishing distillations of countless hours of hard thinking on hard topics. Why wouldn���t you avail yourself of this wisdom?

With that in mind, here are 12 books���some new, some old���that will help you meet the goals that matter for 2023, that will help you live better and be better.

���Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be��by Steven Pressfield

Before I start any book project, I take a few hours and re-read��The War of Art��by Steven Pressfield, maybe the greatest book ever written on the creative process. Well, on this book I just started, I changed it up a little because I got an early copy of Pressfield���s new book,��Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. I love the title so much because it���s the perfect advice for nearly every difficult thing. If you want to get in shape, put your ass in the gym. If you want to have a great relationship with your kids, get your ass down on the floor where they���re playing. If you want to write a book, put your ass in the chair. Even when you���re tired. Even when you don���t want to. Even when you don���t see the point. That���s what it���s about. You don���t have to be perfect, but you do have to show up. (In a word, he���s also talking about discipline). I was very glad to have him out to interview about the book too, (which you can listen to here).

���Range��by David Epstein

David was one of my few author friends who did not discourage me from opening a bookstore. He was consistent in encouraging me to extend my range! I loved this book when it came out, and have often told people I think it���s a parenting book in disguise. It opens with the contrasting careers of Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, one a specialist from an early age, the other a generalist (who seemed to have a much more pleasant childhood and life), but both became great. I have always seen myself as a��multi-hyphenate��and believe my books have benefited from the experiences, interests, and occupations I���ve had. Having range also makes you more resilient in a recession. Those who are relying exclusively on one industry or company or job are the most vulnerable. I recommend pairing this book with Robert Greene���s��Mastery��� both are classics in my eyes.

���Meditations��by Marcus Aurelius

For this piece last year, I recommended��this new annotated edition��by Robin Waterfield. I���m a champion of the Gregory Hays translation but reading a new translation of a book you���ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle���or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. Marcus, like Heraclitus, believed we never step in the same river twice. More recently, I had a similar experience. Since my 16-year-old (nearly) completely marked-up copy was starting to get a little worse for wear, I created��a premium edition��designed to stand the test of time, just like the content inside. That���s the amazing thing about reading Marcus���whichever translation you go with���year after year, he feels both incredibly timely and incredibly timeless. There���s a reason this book has endured now for almost twenty centuries (here are some lessons from me having read Meditations more than 100 times). If you haven���t read Marcus Aurelius or if you have���you should read this book and then read it again.

���The Choice: Embrace the Possible��by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

���I told Dr. Edith Eger��I felt guilty about someone I had lost touch with and only recently reconnected with. She cut me off and told me she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. ���I give you a sentence,��� she said, ���One sentence���if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.��� That���s the end of that, she said. ���Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.��� Dr. Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she���s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger���s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we���re going to be inside of them, what we���re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes Frankl, who she later studied under, ���Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ��� to choose one���s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one���s own way.��� It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering, but to find meaning in it. She went on to become a psychologist and survives to this day, still seeing patients and helping people overcome trauma. I���ve had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger twice (here��and��here) and the joy and energy of this woman, this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is just incredible.

���The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness��by Morgan Housel

This year began with a booming economy, and is ending in recession. Crypto has crashed. The real estate market is not so hot. If you���re looking to navigate the whipsawing, unpredictable nature of the global economy as an individual who hopes to plan (and be secure) for the future, I think this book is a great one. It���s filled with great stories���like the kind I try to tell in my books���that teach big lessons. There���s no better way to learn in my eyes���I had a great conversation with��Morgan on the podcast, which you might also like. But speaking of podcasts and financial advice, I have LOVED���like LOVED���Ramit Sethi���s podcast��this year which focuses on couples and their financial issues. It���s riveting and super educational. I���ve learned a ton.��Here���s my interview with Ramit��in that regard.

���The Life You Can Save��by Peter Singer

The past few years have proved that many people miss this about the philosophy, but Stoicism isn���t just an individualistic philosophy. It���s a collective philosophy. The Stoics tells us to think not just about how our actions impact other people, but what we owe other people and how we can orient our actions and our lives around that. Peter Singer is pioneer of the ���effective altruism��� movement and just a wonderful example of someone who has oriented everything he does around other people. Sam Bankman-Fried put EA in the news but let���s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. EA has guided a lot of good���more than most philosophies���to people all over the world.

���Leadership: In Turbulent Times��by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This is an absolutely incredible book. I think I marked up nearly every page. The book is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, and it is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research��� and yet somehow not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even stuff I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin���s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now���a timely reminder that��leadership matters. Or as the Stoics say:��character is fate.

���Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark��by Julia Baird

I LOVED��Julia Baird���s biography of Queen Victoria��and have raved about it many times. When I heard she was writing a follow up, I assumed it would be another biography. I did not expect this powerful, inspiring book about resilience and powering through. Through some dark times, Julia said what sustained her was ���yielding a more simple phosphorescence���being luminous at temperatures below incandescence, having stored light for later use, quietly glowing without combusting. Staying alive, remaining upright, even when lashed by doubt.��� She���s basically talking about Stoicism���without talking about Stoicism (though she does that too). I found myself marking dozens of pages in this one and just continually smiling throughout. It���s a great little book and, among other things, reminds me why I need to get back into swimming. I had a great conversation with Julia on the podcast, which you can��listen to here.

���A Calendar of Wisdom��by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy believed his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read,��A Calendar of Wisdom. As Tolstoy wrote in his diary, the continual study of one text, reading one page at the start of each day, was critical to personal growth. ���Daily study,��� Tolstoy wrote in 1884, is ���necessary for all people.��� So Tolstoy dreamed of creating a book composed of ���a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people��� Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal.��� As he wrote to his assistant, ���I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers��� They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.��� As you can imagine, I am a big fan of daily devotionals. Check out��DailyStoic.com��and��DailyDad.com��for the free daily email versions I do.

���Death Be Not Proud��by John Gunther

Written in 1949 by the famous journalist John Gunther about the death of his genius son Johnny at 17 from a brain tumor, this book is deeply moving and profound. It���s impossible to not be awed by this young boy who knows he will die too soon and struggles to do it with dignity and purpose. Midway through the book, Johnny writes what he calls the Unbeliever���s Prayer. It���s good enough to be from Epictetus or Montaigne���and he was just 16 when he wrote it. It���s worth reading the book for that alone.

���Buddha��by Karen Armstrong

It���s scholarly without being pedantic, inspiring without being mystical. Armstrong is actually a former Catholic nun (who teaches at a college of Judaism), so I loved the diverse and unique perspective of the author. And Armstrong never misses the point of a good biography: to teach the reader how to live through the life of an interesting, complicated but important person.

���Gift From The Sea��by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I always associated Charles Lindbergh with Hawaii because when I was a kid, I visited his grave at the end of the road to Hana in Maui. I was totally surprised to find this book at one of my favorite bookstores, Sundog Books, in one of my favorite places in the world, 30A in Florida. It���s a beautiful philosophical book about rest and relaxation. For each chapter, Lindbergh takes a shell from the beach as the starting point for a meditation on topics like solitude, love, happiness, contentment, and so on. For a 67-year-old book, it feels surprisingly modern���especially, I would think, for women. The only thing I didn���t like about this book is that I didn���t read it when I was writing��Stillness is the Key��as I almost certainly would have quoted it many times.

As I have published different versions of this piece over the last couple of years (2018,��2019,��2020,��2021,��2022), I made one final recommendation worth repeating: Pick 3-4 titles that have had a big impact on you in the past and��commit to reading them again. Seneca talked about how you need to ���linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.���

We never read the same book twice. Because we���ve changed. The perceptions about the book have changed. What we���re going through in this very moment is new and different. So this year, go reread��The Great Gatsby. Give��The Odyssey��another chance. Sit with a few chapters from��The 48 Laws of Power. See��how these books have stood the test of time��and see how you���ve changed since you���ve read them last.

It can be some of the best time you spend with a book this year. Happy reading!

Robert Greene & Ryan Holiday Live in Conversation

Power, Seduction, Ego and DestinyAn Evening of Conversation and Philosophy withRobert Greene & Ryan HolidayFriday, March 10, 2023Sydney Goldstein TheaterSan Francisco, CAhttps://www.cityboxoffice.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=2874Saturday, March 11, 2023Moore TheatreSeattle, WAhttps://www.stgpresents.org/calendar/event/4824