Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 9

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

All Success Is A Lagging Indicator

The other day I sat down to write.

But it didn���t happen.

It just wasn���t there. The words. The momentum. One thought leading into the next. I knew I wanted to say something. I knew what I wanted it to be about. But I couldn���t get much further than that, beyond just a few sentences.

A classic case of writer���s block, right?

Maybe. Except I happen to think that writer���s block doesn���t exist. I���m with Jerry Seinfeld who said, ���Writer���s block is a phony, made-up, BS excuse for not doing your work.���

The words I chose above were illustrative:

It just wasn���t there.

What is it?

It wasn���t the muses. Or inspiration. And I���ve never been a genius so that hadn���t abandoned me. What wasn���t there then?

The work.

I hadn���t done the work. Writing is a byproduct of hours and hours of reading, researching, thinking, making my notecards. When a day���s writing goes well, it���s got little to do with that day at all. It���s actually a lagging indicator of hours and hours spent researching and thinking. Every passage and page has a prologue titled preparation.

The solution to my writer���s block that day was not to write at all. It was to stop for the day and go research the topic more. It was to go for a run and a walk. It was to do the prep work.

Success as a lagging indicator is a phenomenon that holds true across most areas in life.

When I look in the mirror and I���m a little flabby, that is a lagging indicator that, for weeks and months, I���ve slacked on eating healthy and exercising. When I���m grouchy and frustrated and anxious or short with my wife, that is usually a lagging indicator that I need to eat (in 2014, ��Researchers from Ohio State University found�� that most fights between couples are because someone is hungry). When I���m getting sick a lot, that is a lagging indicator that I have not been taking care of myself, working too hard, ��not sleeping enough��.

Your retirement accounts are a lagging indicator of whether or not you have your financial act together���earning enough, saving enough. Pulling an all-nighter is not a sign of dedication but a lagging indicator of the exact opposite. It means you plan poorly, you procrastinate, you aren���t proactive enough, you don���t know how to effectively manage your work and your time. Not being able to ��fully disconnect from your devices�� on vacation is a lagging indicator that you don���t have good systems in place. Hitting a personal record on the bench press is a lagging indicator of a lot of discipline and hard work. Receiving a promotion is a lagging indicator of a lot of quality work. Delivering a keynote with confidence is a lagging indicator ��of a lot of preparation��.

All my books are lagging indicators. ��They are a culmination of years of work��. That���s actually Robert Greene���s definition of creativity. He says, ���creativity is a function of the previous work you put in.��� Creativity is not mysterious or romantic. It���s tedious, Robert says. ���If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading, hour after hour���a very tedious process���creativity will come to you.���

But so are their sales. ��The Obstacle is the Way�� sold in its first year what ��Discipline is Destiny�� sold in a week. How? Because day after day after day, I worked to build a system, a platform, that has become a flywheel that day after day spins faster and faster. Combined, over a million readers have subscribed to ��Daily Stoic��, ��Daily Dad��, ��The Reading List Email��, and this RSS email lists. Of course, I have social media, too (you can follow me on ��Instagram��, ��Twitter��, ��TikTok�� and ��YouTube��). In other words, I���ve filled a dozen football stadiums worth of ���true fans��� who I have built a relationship with.

This is what keeps me moving���knowing that I have to keep filling and refilling the creative well. Knowing that creative output is a lagging indicator of a lot of hours of tedious work. Knowing that if I want to publish more books in the future, the only question is, am I doing the work now?

It���s what keeps my priorities straight as a parent. I want to have a relationship with my kids as long as I am able to���which means investing in it now. In twenty years, attendance at Thanksgiving will be voluntary. ��Attendance will be a lagging indicator of who I was as a parent today��.

It���s true as a spouse too. Fifty years of marriage is a lagging indicator of how quickly arguments are resolved today, how mistakes are handled today, the pressure of (or better yet, the lack thereof) today.

And it���s true of fame and celebrity���at least the good kind, not the famous-from-a-sex tape kind. Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden ��would say in an interview�� that ���fame is the excrement of creativity, it���s the shit that comes out the back end, it���s a by-product of it.��� It���s a lagging indicator of years of making stuff that people like and get to know you through.

Even this article is an example. It���s a lagging indicator, a byproduct of a process that started with an idea on a notecard, to an idea I kicked around with others in conversations and with myself on walks, which led to a first draft I spent time on across several days, which I returned to across several weeks whenever I had tweaks and improvements, which was edited by a team, and then finally published.

Nothing comes from nowhere. Not success. Not inspiration. Not the muses. Not writer���s block. Everything is a lagging indicator. Of whether or not you did the work.

The Secret To Better Habits in 2023

It’s kind of crazy to think how recent December 2019 feels. Not that long ago, it seems, we were getting ready for what a new decade might bring us. It’s even crazier when the truth settles in: 2019 was THREE years ago. We are well into that decade.

And so much has changed. So much has happened. But at the same time, so little has changed. We’re still struggling with the same things. The aspirations we had back in 2019���this was the year we were going to lose weight, start that big project, learn a new language, work on our temper���are still there, still waiting to be realized.

How much longer are we going to wait though? How much time are we going to let escape us? Hopefully not much longer.

The main thing is that we stop expecting this to simply happen. In one of the best passages in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (check out this awesome leatherbound edition), Marcus tells himself to stop hoping and “be his own savior while he can.” It’s great advice���advice we should follow this year.

And we do that by starting with some foundational habits and mindset shifts. Or at least, that’s what I am trying to focus on as I prepare for 2023.

Think Small

The writer James Clear talks a lot about the idea of ���atomic habits��� (and has a really good book with the same title). An atomic habit is a small habit that makes an enormous difference in your life. He talks about how the British cycling team was completely turned around by focusing on 1% improvements in every area. That sounds small, but Clear emphasizes that repetitive actions accumulate and add up in a big way over time. Don���t promise yourself you���re going to read more; instead, commit to reading one page per day. Thinking big is great, but thinking small is easier. And easier is what we���re after when it comes to getting started. Because once you get started, you can build.

Lengthen Your Timeline

One of the most important habits, the habit that makes all other habits possible, is patience. This was one of the lessons taught to me through opening my bookstore, The Painted Porch (delayed a year by COVID). It always takes longer than you think it���s going to take. That���s Hofstadter���s law. And even when you take the law into account, you���re still surprised. We want our progress now. We want our success now. We want our rewards now. But if you can practice delayed gratification, if you can understand that all good things take time, that it���s a process, you���re almost always going to be more successful. Think of Marcus Aurelius, who���s told that he���s going to be emperor, that he just has to learn under Antoninus for two or three years. As it happens, Marcus has to wait in the wings for twenty-three years before putting on imperial purple. Whether you���re writing a book, whether you���re being a leader, whether you have kids, whether you���re wanting to lose weight or improve your mile time���having patience is critical.

See Everything as a Challenge

In 2018, we did our first Daily Stoic Challenge, full of different challenges and activities based on Stoic philosophy. It was an awesome experience. Even I, the person who created the challenge, got a lot out of it. Why? Deciding what we want to do, determining our own habits, and making the right choices is exhausting. Handing the wheel over to someone else is a way to narrow our focus and put everything into the commitment.

To kick off 2023, we���re doing another Daily Stoic Challenge. The idea is that you ought to start the New Year off right���with 21 great days to create momentum for the rest of the year. If you want to have better habits this year, find a challenge you can participate in. Just try one: it doesn���t matter what it���s about or who else is doing it.

Do The Important Things First

Hugh Jackman reads right after he wakes up (early) in the morning. As he explained: ���I read a book with my wife. So we get up and we read to each other for half an hour. It���s the best. I recommend it to anyone���It���s the greatest way to start the day. Right now I���m reading Stillness Is the Key���I���m really into philosophy. So we read, and we talk, because stuff���s on your mind���That way, no matter what happens through our day, we know that we���ve had quality time together. You always think, tonight; after work; after this; when we put the kids to bed, but that doesn���t always happen.���

Camilla Cabello told me she starts her day by reading the Daily Stoic email (which you can sign up for here) and then one page from The Daily Stoic. Me personally, I try to get some exercise in the morning and I for sure write in the morning. My assistant knows not to schedule calls or meetings in the morning because they make it too easy to let the day get away from you. They sap your willpower early. By tackling writing first, by getting some time outside (with the kids usually) first, I have already won the day and everything else is extra from there. Well-intentioned plans fall apart. Our willpower evaporates. So it���s key that we prioritize the important things and we habitualize doing them early.

Set a Bedtime

All the other habits and practices listed here become irrelevant if you don���t have the energy and clarity to do them. What time you wake up tomorrow is irrelevant���if you didn���t get enough sleep tonight. One thing every parent knows is that kids are a mess when they don���t sleep. But for some reason, we think we���re different. We think we can get away with pulling an all-nighter here and there. We think we can substitute stimulants for sleep. Nonsense. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards their sleep carefully. The greats���they protect their sleep because their best work depends on it. The clearer they can think and the better their mental and physical state���the better they perform. In other words, the more sleep, the better. The philosopher and writer Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that ���sleep is the source of all health and energy.��� Certainly, no one is thriving who is not sleeping enough. If you want to have a good year, if you want to be up and at ���em in the morning, start small, choose a bedtime.

Say No To Say Yes

A few years ago, Dr. Jonathan Fader, an elite sports psychologist who spent nearly a decade with the New York Mets, gave me a picture of Oliver Sacks. Sacks is in his office speaking on the phone, and behind him is a large sign that just says, ���NO!��� I have that photo hanging on the wall in my office now. On either side of it, hang pictures of each of my sons. I can see them���all three photos���out of the corner of my eye even as I am writing this. I recently added to this motif with a small memo signed by Harry S. Truman, shortly after he became president. His secretary wrote to ask whether they needed to start saying no to things with all the demands he had on his schedule. That is the correct response, he wrote back. I just love the energy of that and the history of it (and the insane fact that it only cost a few hundred bucks to get such a unique piece of history). These physical reminders make it impossible to avoid considering each opportunity and each ask carefully. What���s at stake is my finite resources. So are yours!

Discipline Now, Freedom Later

The famous line from Musonius Rufus was that labor passes quickly but the fruit of labor endures. It���s the same with discipline: the vigilance is temporary, but the fruit of that vigilance can be enjoyed long after the sacrifice has been forgotten. When you���re on the fence about going for a long run or working on a big project, remind yourself: discipline now, freedom later. The labor will pass, and the rewards will last.

Lay Out Your Supplies

Our mornings at home go best when the kids��� clothes have been chosen the night before, sometimes even for the whole week. We get out of the house with less trouble on mornings where the lunches have been packed the night before. When I get to my desk in the morning, the three journals I write in are sitting right there. If I want to skip the habit, I have to pick them up and move them aside. So most mornings I don���t move them, and I write in them. You can use the same strategy if, for example, you want to start running in the morning. Place your shoes, shorts, and jacket next to your bed or in the doorway of your bedroom so you can put them on immediately. You���ll be less likely to take the easy way out if it���s embarrassingly simple to do the thing you want to do. The same applies with meals. Pack your lunch the night before and you���re less likely to order spur of the moment takeout.

Create Positive Peer Pressure

The proverb in the ancient world was: ���If you dwell with a lame man, you will learn how to limp.��� It���s a pretty observable truth. We become like the people we spend the most time with. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the importance of who you surround yourself with. ���One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior,��� Clear writes. ���Your culture sets your expectation for what is ���normal.��� Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You���ll rise together.��� As Goethe says: Show me who you spend time with and I will show you who you are.���

Keep Coming Back

The path to self-improvement is rocky, and slipping and tripping is inevitable. You���ll forget to do the push-ups, you���ll cheat on your diet, you���ll say ���yes��� and take on too much, or you���ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of Twitter. That���s okay. It doesn���t mean you���re a bad person. You���re only a bad person if you give up. As the great Samuel Johnson wrote in his diary near the end of 1775 with a New Year on the horizon,

“When I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment which have year after year been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity; when I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.���

No one is perfect. We all have bad days. It���s okay to feel a little discouraged. But to give up? To not even try? That is criminal. ���Disgraceful,��� Marcus Aurelius would say, ���for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.���

All of us have fallen short in the last year���and the years before that. We broke our resolutions. We made the same mistakes again and again. We were ���jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,��� as Marcus said. But now it���s time to pick ourselves up and try again. It���s time, Marcus continues, to ���revert at once to yourself, and don���t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You���ll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.���

In other words, when you mess up, come back to the habits you���ve been working on. Come back to the ideas here in this post. Don���t quit just because you���re not perfect. No one is saying you have to magically transform yourself in 2022, but if you���re not making progress toward the person you want to be, what are you doing? And, more importantly, when are you planning to do it?

I���ll leave you with Epictetus, who spoke so eloquently about feeding the right habit bonfire. It���s the perfect passage to recite as we set out to begin a new year, hopefully, as better people.

From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer���

Why A Stoic Wakes Up Early

One morning in the middle of the second century AD, the most powerful man in the world was awakened by his orderly.

It could have been in his tent on the front lines of the war in Germania.

It could have been somewhere along his frequent and arduous travels across the empire���in Asia Minor or Syria, Egypt, Greece, or Austria.

But chances are it was at the palace in Rome.

It was early. So early.

The sun still hid. It was cool and dark and quiet.

Like any normal person, a deep part of Marcus did not want to wake up, instead wanting to ���huddle under the blankets and stay warm,��� he would say. It was nicer there. Easier there.

But then he caught himself. ���Is this what I was created for?��� he said to himself. To feel nice? To have it easy?

���I have to go to work���as a human being,��� he said, hauling his feet up and onto the floor. ���Don���t you see the plants, the birds, the ants, and the spiders and the bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can?��� he said to himself but also to us. ���And you���re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren���t you running to do what your nature demands?���

I first read a passage from Marcus Aurelius about this in his Meditations when I was 19 years old. It was before I dropped out of college, and I was having a similar back-and-forth with myself most mornings. Stuck in an early class I could never seem to get motivated for, my lower self desperately wanted to blow it off. So it was amazing to read the most powerful man in the world chiding himself for wanting to stay in bed. A guy reluctant to get out from under the blankets and put his feet on the cold floor���just like the rest of us. I printed out the full passage and put it on the wall next to my desk.

At the time, that advice was a helpful reminder to myself to get off my ass, to stop being lazy, and to work hard. It was an important early lesson in discipline. As I said in Discipline is Destiny, this decision we make in the morning, it not only determines how our day will go but it determines who we are.

It was early, always early, when Toni Morrison awoke to write. In the dark, she would move quietly, making that first cup of coffee. She���d sit at her desk in her small apartment, and as her mind cleared and the sun rose and the light filled the room, she would write. She did this for years, practicing this secular ritual used not just by writers, but by countless busy and driven people for all time.

���Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact,��� she���d later reflect, ���where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It���s not being in the light, it���s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.���

But of course, it was as practical as it was spiritual. Because at the beginning of her career, Morrison was also a single working mother of two young boys. Her job as an editor for Random House occupied her days, her children every other minute, and by the late evening she was burned out, too tired to think. It was the precious early morning hours between the parting dark and the rising dawn, before her boys uttered the word Mama, before the pile of manuscripts from work demanded her attention, before the commute, before the phone calls, before the bills beckoned, before the dishes needed to be done, it was then she could be a writer.

Early, she was free. Early, she was confident and clearheaded and full of energy. Early, the obligations of life existed only in theory and not in fact. All that mattered, all that was there, was the story���the inspiration and the art.

There she was, starting her first novel in 1965, freshly divorced, thirty-four years old and struggling as one of the few Black women in an incredibly white, male industry. Yet in her mind, this was ���the height of life.��� She was no longer a child, and yet for all her responsibilities, everything was quite simple: Her kids needed her to be an adult. So did her unfinished novel.

Wake up.

Show up.

Be present.

Give it everything you���ve got.

Which she did. Even after The Bluest Eye was published to rave reviews in 1970. She followed it with ten more novels, nine nonfiction works, five children���s books, two plays, and numerous short stories. And she earned herself a National Book Award, a Nobel Prize, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Yet for all the plaudits, she must have been most proud of having done it while being a great mother���a great working mother.

Of course, it���s not exactly fun to wake up early. Even the people who have reaped a lifetime of benefits from it, still struggle with it. You think you���re not a morning person? Nobody is a morning person. In the military they speak of sleep discipline���meaning it���s something you have to practice. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A disciplined person knows this and guards it carefully. A disciplined person knows that getting their 7-8 hours of sleep every night does not negatively affect their output, it contributes crucially to their best work. It allows them to wake up and take advantage of the most productive hours of the day���before the interruptions, before the distractions, before the rest of the world gets up and going too.

Hemingway would talk about how he���d get up early because there was ���no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.��� But we can imagine the mornings when he was hungover or exhausted from partying���those were not as fruitful. Morrison found she was just more confident in the morning, before the day had exacted its toll and the mind was fresh. Like most of us, she realized she was just ���not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.��� Who can be? After a day of banal conversations, frustrations, mistakes, and exhaustion.

Not that it���s all about being clever. There���s a reason CEOs hit the gym early���they still have willpower then. There���s a reason people read and think in the morning���they know they might not get time later. There���s a reason coaches get to the facility before everyone else���they can get a jump on the competition that way.

Be up and doing.

While you���re fresh. While you can. Grab that hour before daylight. Grab that hour before traffic. Grab it while no one is looking, while everyone else is still asleep.

Today, my routine is a little different than it was when I was in college, but I���m still up early. Now I���m not alone in a dorm but in a house with young children. Instead of an alarm clock, the kids wake me up before 6 a.m. My rule is no phone for at least the first hour of the day. I get the kids in the stroller and go for a three-mile walk. Then I journal for fifteen minutes before tackling the hardest task on the to-do list��� it���s always something writing related. I write for about three hours then break the intermittent fast I started at around 6 the night before and do some reading over an early lunch. The pandemic was rough for me like it was for many people but one good thing about it was that I really dialed in my routine (I talk about this at length in the afterword of Discipline is Destiny if you want more detail). I think back now to those endless days of being in the zone, of having few interruptions, and as crazy and weird as they are, I have a nostalgia for them.

���I think Christ has recommended rising early in the morning, by rising from his grave very early,��� observed the theologian Jonathan Edwards in the 1720s. Is that why quiet mornings seem so holy? Perhaps it���s that we���re tapping into the traditions of our ancestors, who also rose early to pray, to farm, to fetch water from the river or the well, to travel across the desert before the sun got too hot.

When you have trouble waking up, when you find it hard, remind yourself of who you come from, remind yourself of the tradition, remind yourself of what is at stake. Think, as Morrison did, of her grandmother, who had more children and an even harder life. Think of Morrison herself, who certainly did not have it easy, and still got up early.

Think of how lucky you are. Be glad to be awake (because it���s better than the alternative, which we���ll all greet one day). Feel the joy of being able to do what you love.

Cherish the time. But most of all, use it.

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The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2022

Before the best books of 2022 ��� The 2023 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge is open for registration! For the last four years, the New Year New You Challenge���a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best wisdom in Stoic philosophy���has helped thousands of people get the best out of themselves. Don���t wait to better yourself. Don���t wait to demand more of yourself. Become the better you. The new you.

I am very blessed, I always say, to get to read for a living. If I don���t read, I can���t write, it���s that simple. But of course, that���s not the only reason I do it. I read to live.

It���s how I relax. It���s how I make sense of what���s happening in the world. It���s how I get better as a parent. It���s how I visit different worlds and travel through time. One of the nice things about the last few years was there was plenty of time for reading. But in 2022, I had less white space on the calendar. There were speaking engagements and a book tour and TV appearances. My oldest started school. I even took our family to Disneyland. Protecting my reading time took more discipline this year���and one of my resolutions is to be even more disciplined about it in 2023.

At the end of every year, I try to narrow down all the books I have read and recommended in this email list down to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I���d read that year, I���d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. (You can check out the best of lists I did in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.)

My reading list is now ~250,000 people, which means I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you���you can���t go wrong with any of these.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

There���s a great analogy at the center of this book that I think works as both an approach to life and to learning. In order for a doctor to cure you of your ills, Wilkerson writes, you have to give them a medical history. If because you���re ashamed of something or in denial of something, and you hold back, you���re not helping anyone. In fact, you���re hurting yourself. Our own history���in America or anywhere in the world���is not a list of the things we���re proud of. It is a list of the things that happened. In order to get better, to improve, to get closer to ���a more perfect union,��� we have to gather and put up for review an unflinching history. It���s not always fun���but it���s the only way. A few years ago, I read and loved Wilkerson���s other book Warmth of Other Suns���a beautiful, painful and eye-opening look at the Great Migration through biographical sketches of Blacks who left the Jim Crow South for a chance at a better life in California, in Chicago, in New York City. Her newer book, Caste, is less a historical analysis and more of a philosophical and sociological book, but equally powerful. ���All men are created equal��� might be the goal of the American experiment, but no medical history is complete without an honest look at the racial hierarchy that not only existed for hundreds of years but was enforced with violence and cruelty at first and then more passively and systemically after that. Caste is a human folly, a human evil���but one we can address by facing it. A few related books I read that I can���t recommend highly enough: Last year I raved about Tom Ricks��� book First Principles, which is about the deep influence the Greek and Roman philosophers had on the American founders (here are his first two appearances on the Daily Stoic podcast about it). His new book Waging a Good War (which he talked about in his most recent appearance on the podcast) is about what he calls the greatest war in American history led by what he describes as the greatest generation in American history���the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who came to Washington in 1963 to ���cash a check,��� to redeem that promise first made in the Declaration of Independence. Influenced by Gandhi���s work with the untouchables, King came to understand the role that caste played in American society, and his I Have a Dream Speech was a direct attack on it. I was also deeply moved, in some cases to tears, by David Halberstam���s book, The Children. You can listen to my interviews this year with Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine, and Eric Holder, who wrote an important book on voting rights.

Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller

When he was a young man, Charles Bukowski came across an all but forgotten novel in the Los Angeles Public Library called Ask the Dust (my favorite novel. Please read it!!!). It was like finding gold in the city dump, he said. Well, nothing gets me more excited than discovering long-forgotten or out of print classics. I think I found one in this biography of Harry S. Truman. Of course, the David McCullough bio of Truman is a classic (and we carry it at The Painted Porch for a reason), but this one���this one is one of the best leadership books I have ever read. I actually bumped into it when I was trying to track down a passage about how Truman read and marked up a copy of Meditations (check out the leatherbound edition of my favorite translation). Originally conceived as a television project, what emerged is just an absolute masterclass in self-education, decency, loyalty, patriotism, making tough decisions and leading a good life. Read it���it���s worth every penny of however much Amazon charges for used copies. Or pay homage to Truman���s love of libraries (he read every book in his local library as a kid) and check out a copy. We built the Daily Stoic reading course around his famous quote: “Not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers.”

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.

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

Over the last couple years, my family and I took many road trips in a small camper trailer we bought in the early days of the pandemic. We drove across Texas and New Mexico and Arizona and up the middle of California. We drove across Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and Florida. As we spent time at campgrounds and RV parks, I often wondered who the other people staying there were���people who did not seem to be just passing through like us. So I grabbed this book, which is about a whole hidden segment of the working population. People often in their late fifties and sixties, who live in vans and RVs, traveling not unlike the nomads of the past, looking for seasonal work���often in backbreaking Amazon warehouses���trying to make ends meet and enjoy what is supposed to be the best years of their lives. I don���t mean to make the book sound like some sociological study. It is also just great narrative journalism (good enough that it was also made into an award-winning movie). It was strange though, as I read the book, there was this part of me that tried to take issue with each of the character���s stories. Like where their own decisions had held them back, where their mistakes had caused all this misfortune and struggle. What I was doing, I came to see, was trying to find reasons that I didn���t have to care. In truth, society has failed these people (not that they always made great decisions), but a better and more accessible American dream would be more forgiving, sturdier and rewarding. Anyway, if you want to understand some of our broken and angry political system, this is a good book to read. If you are in tech or in the modern economy, in a nice house in a nice city���read this book. Discover how another part of the country lives. Try to care. Try to understand it.

Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature by Steven Rinella

I first met Steve Rinella at a coffee shop in New York City many, many years ago. I���ve recently gotten reacquainted with him because my 5-year-old son is obsessed with his videos on YouTube (you can listen to him at the beginning of my podcast with Steven). His new book���which was perfectly timed for our recent family trip to Big Bend���is about how to cultivate a love for outdoors in a time where cultivating a love for outdoors is both more important and harder to do than ever. It���s funny that a YouTube video would kick this all off, but the book is not some anti-screen screed. It���s about encouraging curiosity and interest, and cultivating resiliency and self-sufficiency. We try to learn about places we���re going, discover new hobbies, find cool stuff to check out. I loved this book and we wrote a number of Daily Dad emails about it which I think you might like (try here and here and here and if you���re not signed up for it, please do!)

More���

I can���t leave it at just seven books. As you���ve seen in the list this year, I published two books myself this year, The Girl Who Would Be Free and Discipline is Destiny. 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. But in 2022, 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. I quite enjoyed Chuck Klosterman���s book The Nineties. I liked Anne Morrow Lindberg���s A Gift From The Sea. David McCullough���s The Night of the Johnstown Flood was terrifying and riveting. Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile was a fascinating look at London during the Blitz���and relevant to what���s happening in Ukraine. Kathrine Kressmann Taylor���s Address Unknown was something I re-read in light of the alarming rise of anti-semitism. And finally, Michael Schur���s How To Be Perfect was a great work of philosophy that I loved this year.

Children���s Books

Of course, I���ll reiterate Steve���s book on raising outdoor kids and if you haven���t read either The Boy Who Would Be King or The Girl Who Would Be Free, I would love for you to check them out. Stoicism is a philosophy I wish I had found earlier���and I wrote these books to help kids do exactly that. My oldest became obsessed with Minecraft this year so we spent a lot of time going through the 6-book series the Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles. They are great books to do a chapter or two of a night. As far as all-out fun kids books, we have returned again and again and again to The Book With No Pictures���my kids think they are pranking me by asking me to read it���of course what they���re actually doing is falling in love with books. Along those lines, we loved I Need a New Butt (there���s a series). For some insane reason some people are trying to ban this book in Texas, but that���s just another reason to buy it (I���ll spoil the ending���he needs a new butt because his has a crack in it.) If you���re trying to raise a reader, Maya Smart (podcast episode here) wrote a great book on exactly that���I think every parent should read Reading for Our Lives. Finally, we���re still loving The Boy, The Horse, The Fox and the Mole, which is absolutely beautiful and a monster bestseller for a reason.

As always, I appreciate you supporting my bookstore,��The Painted Porch. Please note that because a lot of the books we sell are backlist titles, there can sometimes be delays in stocking/sourcing. And with that, I hope that you���ll get around to reading whichever of these books catch your eye and that you���ll learn as much as I did. Whether you buy them at��The Painted Porch��or on Amazon today, or at your nearest independent bookstore six months from now makes no difference to me. I just hope you read!

You���re welcome to email me questions or raise issues for discussion. Better yet, if you know of a good book on a related topic, please pass it along. And as always, if one of these books comes to mean something to you, recommend it to someone else.

I promised myself a long time ago that if I saw a book that interested me I���d never let time or money or anything else prevent me from having it. This means that I treat reading with a certain amount of respect. All I ask, if you decide to email me back, is that you���re not just thinking aloud.

Enjoy these books, treat your education like the job that it is, and let me know if you ever need anything.

All the best,

Ryan

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If You Want to Be Smart, You Must Do This

There are lots of smart people.

There are not a lot of people who can do this smart thing.

The poet John Keats called it ���negative capability������the mental fortitude to be able to entertain multiple contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. Or as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, ���The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.���

The world is complicated, ambiguous, paradoxical, and contradictory. To make sense of it, to survive it, one must be able to balance conflicting ideas. To try to force everything into a simple box, or adhere to a simple theory? It just won���t work.

People will sometimes email me, ���Ryan, Marcus Aurelius contradicts himself. Sometimes he says to zoom in and other times he says to zoom out.��� Or they���ll point out that Seneca���s writings tell us to be aware of the dangers of the future and also never avoid anxiety and worry.��� Or that they are confused because Law 3 in Robert Greene���s The 48 Laws of Power is ���conceal your intentions��� but Law 6 is ���court attention at all cost.���

I���ve even gotten this about Discipline is Destiny which of course talks about being strict with yourself���and also not so strict with yourself. Is that a contradiction?

The answer is yes.

The famous lines from Walt Whitman are,

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Yes, Marcus Aurelius contradicts himself. Yes, the Stoics contradict themselves. Yes, Robert Greene���s laws of power contradict each other. Yes, I contradict myself.

Because the world contradicts itself. Because different situations call for different things. Because everything in life depends on context.

Look, even the premise that only a genius can manage negative capability is itself a little contradictory. Because you know who has no problem holding a bunch of conflicting ideas at the same time? Really dumb people!

So negative capability seems to follow the Midwit Meme curve.

So how do you cultivate the kind of negative capability Keats was talking about? Here are some thoughts:

[1] Read widely and from people you disagree with. One of the most surprising parts of Seneca���s writing is how often the avowed Stoic quotes Epicurus, the founder of the rival school, Epicureanism. The reason he was so familiar with Epicurus, Seneca wrote, was not because he was deserting the writings of the Stoics, but because he was reading like a spy in the enemy���s camp. That is, he was deliberately reading and immersing himself into the thinking and the strategies of those he disagreed with. To see if there was anything he could learn. Epicurus���s dictum was that ���One sage is no wiser than another.��� The Stoics believed this too���that we should actively pursue and engage with anyone who can be a source of wisdom to us, regardless of the school of thought from which that wisdom arose. Because if there is wisdom out there to be had, we���d be wise to avail ourselves of it.

[2] Study deeply. Marcus Aurelius chided himself ���not to be satisfied with just getting the gist of it.��� Instead, he said, ���read attentively.��� Go ���directly to the seat of knowledge.��� Seek out tutors and mentors. Linger, as Seneca said, on a small number of master thinkers, reading and re-reading their work. Go way beyond the ���gist.���

[3] Put yourself in rooms where you���re the least knowledgeable person. Observe and learn. Ask questions. That uncomfortable feeling, that defensiveness that you feel when your most deeply held assumptions are challenged? Do it deliberately. Let it humble you. In my own education, I���ve always followed Marcus Aurelius��� rule: ���go straight to the seat of intelligence.��� He also writes, ���Mastery of reading and writing requires a master. Still, more so life.��� For me, Robert Greene was and is my master in writing and, more so, in life. Go straight to the sources of knowledge, people who have different perspectives and expertise, people who can help you see things from a new angle and to consider alternative viewpoints. Absorb as much as you can from them.

[4] Understand that timing and context are everything. Confucius was once asked for advice by a student, and in replying essentially urged him to wait and be patient. Later he was asked for advice by another student, and advised that student to not be patient and to solve the problem immediately. An observant third student noticed the seemingly contradictory nature of Confucius��� responses and asked him to explain. Confucius replied, ���Ran Qiu is over cautious and so I wished to urge him on. Zilu, on the other hand, is too impetuous, and so I sought to hold him back.��� Everybody is different. Every situation is different.

[5] Embrace epistemic humility. Epictetus reminds us that ���it���s impossible to learn that which you think you already know.��� To the Stoics, particularly Zeno, conceitedness was the primary impediment to wisdom. Because when you���ve always got answers, opinions and ready-made solutions, what you���re not doing is learning. The physicist John Wheeler said that ���as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.��� The point is the more you know the more you realize there is much more to know.

[6] Keep your identity small. This is a rule from the great Paul Graham. His point was that the more you identify with things���being a member of a certain political party, being seen as smart, being seen as someone who drives a fancy car or someone who belongs to this club or that ideology���the harder it is for you to change your mind or entertain new points of view. You want to remain a free agent.

[7] Don���t always have an opinion. It���s possible, Marcus Aurelius said, to not have an opinion. Practice the ability of having absolutely no thoughts about something. You should be able to have multiple ideas you���re working on in your head at one time, as opposed to a bunch of things you have strong opinions about.

[8] Flexibility is key. A colleague of Churchill once observed that Churchill ���venerated tradition but ridiculed convention.��� The past was important, but it was not a prison. The old ways���what the Romans called the mos maiorum���were important but not to be mistaken as perfect. Plenty of people have been buried in coffins of their own making. Before their time too. Because they couldn���t understand that ���the way they���d always done things��� wasn���t working anymore. Or that ���the way they were raised��� wasn���t acceptable anymore. We must cultivate the capacity for change, for flexibility and adaptability. Continuously, constantly.

It���s one of the greatest exchanges between Epictetus and a student. ���Tell me what to do!��� the student says. Epictetus replied, ���you must understand how laughable it is to say, ���Tell me what to do!������ The student is confused. Epictetus says, ���What advice could I possibly give? No, a far better request is, ���Train my mind to adapt to any circumstance.��� . . . In this way, if circumstances take you off script . . . you won���t be desperate for a new prompting.���

It would be nice if someone could show us exactly what to do in every situation. Indeed, this is what we spend a good portion of our lives doing: preparing for this, studying for that. Saving for or anticipating some arbitrary point in the future. But that���s not life. Life punches us in the face. It destroys our plans.

The Stoics did not seek to have the answer for every question or a plan for every contingency. Yet they���re also not worried. Why? Because they have confidence that they���ll be able to adapt and change with the circumstances. Rooted in the teachings of Epictetus, the United States Navy Vice Admiral and prisoner of war James Stockdale perfectly described this mental attitude when he said that to survive years of imprisonment and torture, he needed a paradoxical combination of optimism and realism. He needed to maintain unwavering faith that he would ultimately prevail, and at the same time, he needed to confront the brutal facts of his current situation. As Fitzgerald put it above, Stockdale needed to ���be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.���

Instead of looking for instruction, the Stoic cultivates skills like creativity, independence, self-confidence, ingenuity, and the ability to problem solve. They cultivate negative capability. They cultivate true genius.

In this way, they are resilient instead of rigid.

Can You Be Grateful Even For This?

Gratitude, like forgiveness, is something we pay lip service to but struggle with in practice.

It���s one of those things, as I like to say, that���s simple���but not easy.

Today, Thanksgiving here in America, is a day where we���re supposed to take the time to think about what we���re grateful for. And the candidates are usually pretty obvious: We should be grateful for our families, for our health (especially through a pandemic), that we live in a time of peace (the first Thanksgiving America has not been at war in 21 years), for the food laid out in front of us. All the usual suspects.

I agree, these are important things to recognize and appreciate. It���s also good to have a specific day dedicated to that occasion. So by all means, celebrate.

But what about all the other stuff in the world?

The obstacles. The frustrations. The stresses and difficulties of life. The people that wronged you. The haters. The dilemmas. The bad days.

That too?

Yes, that especially.

The writer Jorge Luis Borges said:

A writer ��� and, I believe, generally all persons ��� must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Or as my mentor Robert Greene once told me,

It���s all material.

He means that everything that happens in your life can be turned into something useful, whether it���s your writing, your relationships, or your new startup. You probably wouldn���t have chosen for things to go wrong���just like no one would choose any of those things on the list of current events above���but they came anyway. Now the question is, how are you going to think about them?

Are you going to think about what you don���t like? What you resent or fear or hate? Or are you going to find the good in them, what you can use in them, what you can be grateful for in them?

In the mornings when I sit down to journal, one of the notebooks I write in is a gratitude journal. When I first got it, I would fill the pages with all the stuff I liked about the stuff I liked. But after a time, this came to feel sort of pointless and rather repetitive. Now what I do is try to find ways to express gratitude, not for the things that are easy to be grateful for, but for what is hard.

Gratitude for that nagging pain in my legGratitude for that troublesome clientGratitude for the challenges of the pandemicGratitude for that delayed flightGratitude for that damage from the storm

Because each one was an opportunity. Because I learned from it. Because it reminded me of what was actually important. Because it���s allowed me to see how lucky I am. Because I became a better person for it.

Every situation has two handles, the Stoics would say. Which one will you grab?

As Cicero explains, ���you may say that deaf men miss the pleasure of hearing a lyre-player���s songs. Yes, but they also miss the squeaking of a saw being sharpened, the noise a pig makes when its throat is being cut, the roaring thunder of the sea which prevents other people from sleeping.���

In the chaos and dysfunction of the world, I try to notice where I have been gifted in the latter category than where I have been deprived in the former.

Besides, it���s already happened���what���s the use in getting upset?

���Let us accept it,��� Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in his journal, ���as we accept what the doctor prescribes. It may not always be pleasant, but we embrace it ���because we want to get well.��� He could have been talking about the pandemic of his times, the stresses of his job or the children he had buried. He could have been talking of his own ill-health, the bad weather, or the noise of the city���s streets. We don���t know, we just know that whatever it was, he was trying to find a way to say thank you for it, to be grateful for it. ���Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,��� Marcus said, ���that things are good and always will be.���

Beautiful.

So as you gather around your family and friends this Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other celebration you might partake in, of course, appreciate it and give thanks for all the obvious and bountiful gifts that moment presents. Just make sure that when the moment passes, as you go back to your everyday, ordinary life, that you make gratitude a regular part of it. Again���not simply for what is easy and immediately pleasing. That comes naturally enough, and may even go without saying.

What is in more desperate need of appreciation and perspective are the things you never asked for, the things you worked hard to prevent from happening in the first place. Because that���s where gratitude will make the biggest difference and where we need the most healing.

Whatever it is. However poorly it went. However difficult the last few years have been for you.

Be grateful for it. Give thanks for it. There was good within it.

Write it down. Over and over again.

Until you believe it.

How The Struggles Of Opening A Small Town Bookstore Made Me A Better Writer

There was more than one moment in the depths of the pandemic that the decision to open a small town bookstore seemed like the absolute worst idea in the world���a monument to arrogance and self-indulgence. At first we couldn���t open. Then we didn���t feel right opening. Then a freak storm (and political incompetence) shut down the power grid, leading to burst pipes and a busted roof. Then books were unavailable due to a global logistics crisis.

In between all this, there were new variants and sick employees. Expensive new air conditioning units. Online attacks from political extremists and trying to raise two young children.

It was, you might say, one damn thing after another.

I don���t know what my wife and I expected the experience to be when we first conceived of opening our store, The Painted Porch, back in the fall 2019, but I���m not sure we could have predicted this. Nor do I imagine we would have proceeded had we had any such inkling.

During one of these many dark nights of the soul, I turned back, as I often do, to Stoicism, the philosophy that I am lucky enough to write about. As it happens, there was plenty to find parallels to. In 160AD, Rome was hit by a horrible plague. The ���Antonine Plague��� would kill somewhere between 10 and 18 million people. No one knew what caused the awful disease, or what had brought it on. But it quickly overwhelmed the country���bodies piled up in the streets, the economy was devastated, civic institutions crumbled.

One ancient historian, Cassisus Dio, would write that Rome���s emperor Marcus Aurelius ���did not have the good fortune that he deserved���and for almost his whole reign was involved in a series of troubles.��� It���s almost incomprehensible and impossible to compare to���and yet not all that different than how life goes for the rest of us: one damn thing after another.

Yet Dio would write that these events made Marcus Aurelius, that he ���admired him all the more for this very reason, that amid unusual and extraordinary difficulties he both survived himself and preserved the empire.���

I���ve always wanted to do that, people will say when they hear you���ve opened a bookstore, not unlike the way we fantasize about being president or famous or achieving some other lofty thing. Of course, they���re not thinking about how hard these things are, why so few are able to do them well���what they take out of a person, what they expose you to.

Dreams are great. They are also burdens, crucibles that can feel at times like nightmares.

Life is rarely easy, nor is doing the things you feel called to do. But it is in the struggle, in what Longfellow called the ���world���s broad field of battle,��� that we decide who we are, that we become who we are capable of being.

Or we don���t.

If everything went as planned, if loving books and culture was enough, well, I suspect every small town would have a thriving bookshop and every author would make not only enough to get by, but to have a lovely cottage too. My years in publishing and in business have let me know that this is not the case.

No, every small business, every book, is a struggle. It���s a struggle against your desire to procrastinate, a struggle against your doubts, a struggle against the obstacles of the industry and the market, a struggle against other people���s doubts too. And then you put your thing out in the world and it���s a struggle against indifferent and a vicious street fight for attention.

Few of us���few ideas���make it out alive.

Some lament this. Some embrace it.

At one point in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius would lament all that had happened to him. It���s unfortunate that this happened. Then he catches himself and decides no, in fact, it���s fortunate. Because this is what he trained for. Because this is a challenge he could rise to.

One of the first things people want to know is how the bookstore is doing, whether it���s a success. I like to say that first, my wife and I are still together, so yes, that���s a big win. We survived. We kept ourselves together despite it all.

Aside from sales���which have been strong���and the community that���s formed around the shop���which has been rewarding���the metric I am most proud of is a bit harder to measure and considerably less binary. I am a better writer, for having gone through the wringer. I am a better neighbor and citizen���I think���for having been made to think about all sorts of things I was blissfully unaware of before. I am a better member of my industry, having had the opportunity to support and advocate for all sorts of different writers and books.

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, happened to realize this first hand. Losing everything when his convoy of ships sank offshore, he washed up in Athens, penniless and directionless. He ended up in a small bookstore where he heard a discussion of Socrates. ���Where can I find a man like that?��� he asked the bookseller. So began his journey into philosophy and so began the twenty five hundred year journey of a philosophy that remains relevant to this day. ���I made a great fortune,��� he would later joke, ���when I suffered a shipwreck.���

Opening a bookstore during a pandemic has been beyond difficult.

But that���s a good thing because difficult things are good for you.

It���s fortunate that it happened to us, I would say. First off, that we were not retirees who put our nest egg into what we thought would be a fun, low key project. Instead, we���re energetic and (for now) well-off young people with the time and the resources. It���s also fortunate because it was an opportunity to put the ideas that I have long written about into practice. Besides, if I had to choose between Rome during the Antonine Plague and Texas during COVID, I���d choose my fate any day.

Yet I���d also choose my fate over not having been challenged the way these last few years have challenged me.

Because I would not be the person I am today without it.

���

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