The Peter Attia Drive - #90 - Ryan Holiday： Stillness, stoicism, and suffering less

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

00:00:15.480 my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity

00:00:19.800 into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and

00:00:24.760 wellness full stop. And we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen.

00:00:28.880 If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more

00:00:33.280 in-depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level at

00:00:37.320 the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now,

00:00:41.740 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay, here's

00:00:48.080 today's episode. I guess this week is Ryan Holiday. Ryan is the bestselling author of many books,

00:00:54.900 including Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, his first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying, which basically

00:01:00.560 predicted the rise of fake news, the conspiracy, and a number of other books about marketing,

00:01:07.260 culture, the human condition. His most recent book, Stillness is the Key, came out recently.

00:01:12.480 And while we talk about it quite a bit, it's actually not even the focus of our discussion.

00:01:17.080 Instead, I think we talk more broadly about Ryan's influence, his work, the influence that stoic

00:01:22.420 philosophy has had in his thinking. And obviously, as it permeates into this book, we talk about anger,

00:01:28.060 we talk about just a number of things that I think factor into the way I try to think about longevity

00:01:34.460 more broadly than just living longer, but also this idea of suffering less. And if there's anything I've

00:01:39.620 learned from Ryan, and I've learned a lot from Ryan, because as I mentioned in the podcast, and I'll

00:01:43.660 say it again, now, his daily newsletter, The Daily Stoic is one of the most important things that I look

00:01:48.800 for in my inbox every morning. Being able to kind of go into a little bit more detail on that for me

00:01:53.120 was great. And I've been wanting to talk with Ryan for probably about a year. And maybe six months ago

00:01:58.500 when we sort of realized, well, the book was going to be coming out, we decided this would be as good

00:02:01.380 a time as any to do. So the book is fantastic. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation

00:02:06.840 with Ryan Holiday.

00:02:13.500 Ryan, thanks so much for making time and for coming out here today.

00:02:15.940 Of course. Like I was saying to you a minute ago, I'm kind of bummed I didn't get to come to the

00:02:19.280 farm. Yeah. So the problem with the farm is it's very wonderful, except we've got like a weird animal

00:02:25.080 balance going right now. So it's like, what'll happen is like a cow will come, and then the dogs

00:02:30.800 will bark, and then that will make another bark, dog bark. And then it can be this whole cycle that

00:02:37.000 takes many minutes to settle back down. So it's great for writing, it's great for learning, it's not great

00:02:43.160 for podcasts or interviews of any kind. Also, the internet's no good. Well, I guess we're not doing

00:02:48.820 this live to anything. But that's the other big problem.

00:02:52.300 Talk to me about the joy of having lousy internet.

00:02:55.660 Yeah, it's great. Weirdly, the crappier it is, the more expensive it is. Like I have fiber at my

00:03:01.420 place in town, and it's like 50 bucks a month for the fastest internet you can possibly imagine.

00:03:06.640 And then in the country, it's like 150 or 200 bucks a month for like, barely Netflix streamable

00:03:16.020 speeds. And it goes out, you know, if it rains, it goes out all the time. But it's nice, because

00:03:21.580 that's not what you're there for. And we have, I've said this before, but we have like T-Mobile.

00:03:27.840 And it works great in Austin for cell phones. But out there, it sucks. And AT&T and Sprint both work

00:03:34.480 pretty good. But we purposely haven't switched, just because you get less phone calls. Like if I

00:03:38.940 have it at the house, like because you pick it up off the Wi-Fi. But if you walk too far from the

00:03:43.400 house, you basically lose cell service, which is good. 99.9% of the time, I'm sure there will be

00:03:50.320 some time when I cut off my leg with a chainsaw, and I desperately need a call for help. And I can't.

00:03:55.120 But otherwise, it creates a sort of an artificial silence, which is great.

00:04:00.060 Yeah, it's hard to believe that 20 years ago, the maybe a bit longer, but directionally

00:04:04.460 20 years ago, the idea that we would have had cell phones with us 24 seven seemed kind

00:04:10.680 of foreign, certainly 30 years ago, completely a foreign idea. Yeah. So from a relative, you

00:04:16.200 know, standpoint of our existence on this planet, this notion of being tethered to that type of

00:04:21.240 device is basically unbeknownst to our DNA. Yeah, or 20, 30 years ago, maybe you would have

00:04:26.440 a cell phone, but you weren't getting called on it all the time. So it was like, like, I remember

00:04:31.000 when I got my first I got a BlackBerry when I got my first job in Hollywood. And it was

00:04:36.420 great, because now I didn't feel like I had to rush home because there might be emails waiting

00:04:40.960 for me. It gave me some more freedom. And then increasingly, that freedom turned into now

00:04:47.660 I all you know, you know what I mean? Like, so and I think about that with Twitter, I remember

00:04:51.840 when Twitter first came out, and Facebook first came out, and all these things, when I was using

00:04:55.860 them on the desktop, they were wonderful. But then when I was carrying them around in

00:05:00.160 my pocket, and I could always access them, they're always there. That's when it became

00:05:04.740 much worse. So I think, I think we're trying to figure out how do we like just suddenly we

00:05:10.020 want these things to go away. Like when I hear someone, they're like, I don't even have a

00:05:13.140 smartphone. I go, well, what if you get lost? Like how to use directions? You know, there's

00:05:16.480 a lot of benefits to it. But how can you how can we find a way to just turn back the clock

00:05:20.300 a little bit? Because it was like, we almost had the right amount. Now we have too much.

00:05:24.680 That's right. Yeah, it's a min max problem that just missed its optimization point, I

00:05:29.100 think, at least if you were optimizing for our lack of misery. Yeah, yes. We still have

00:05:34.580 more to gain on the max if the objective is, you know, making money for the companies

00:05:39.040 that produce things like that. Now, you know, I read something that you wrote, and I got it.

00:05:44.680 You know, I've been following you for so long, Ryan, I've read so much of your stuff that at

00:05:48.720 this point, I can no longer remember. Was this in a daily stoic one day? Was this in

00:05:54.020 this newsletter? Was this in this book? So I apologize in advance that I'm not even

00:05:58.260 going to try to reference for the for the listener where this came up. But you talked

00:06:02.020 about the sort of harsh realities of living on a farm. And we don't live on a farm. But

00:06:07.480 you know, we've got our chickens, we've got our garden, we've got all that kind of

00:06:10.040 stuff. And I remember the first time one of our chickens got killed by what turned out

00:06:15.180 to be a bobcat at the time we took it took me a while to figure out if I assumed it was

00:06:18.700 a raccoon or a coyote. Man, it was super upsetting. And more upsetting than you'd think

00:06:23.480 you'd be upset over a chicken, right? Like you're like, come on, they're chickens. They're,

00:06:26.720 you know, how can you, you know, it's not like it's one of your kids or something.

00:06:29.980 Someone asked me not that long ago, they were like, what is strangest or most surprising

00:06:33.880 thing about a farm? And I was like, there's a lot of death, like just overall a lot of death.

00:06:40.280 Chickens die. Chickens are, I weirdly, I think chickens are the hardest animal to have because

00:06:44.780 they're the most defenseless and evolutionarily like the most pointless. And pretty much everything

00:06:50.580 is a predator to chickens, like including other chickens. We had chickens when we were more on

00:06:56.060 the east side here in Austin. And I remember I met my neighbor because I had to go over and say,

00:07:01.560 hey, a raccoon grabbed one of my chickens, ripped its head off, and then left its carcass on your roof.

00:07:09.020 You know, I need to go get this, right? So it just familiarizes you with death in a way.

00:07:14.780 That I think human beings used to be a lot more familiar with because like your grandparents would

00:07:20.680 die in your house, you know, or your wife would die of childbirth in your house, or you would die

00:07:27.660 being killed by Native Americans in your house, you know, like, like we were much more familiar

00:07:34.420 with death. Life was more brutal and violent, but it was also more present. You know, when we first got

00:07:40.900 our farm, we bought this goose and we had this goose and it was super sweet and nice. It would

00:07:45.680 follow you everywhere. We played with it. And I remember I was sitting in my office watching it and

00:07:50.360 I watched it get attacked by something in our lake, either a snake or I think maybe a snapping turtle or

00:07:56.320 something in it. So it waddled back up onto the thing and it was like gutted. And we, you know,

00:08:01.860 we hadn't lived that long. And so we rushed to an emergency vet. We paid like $300 to get this

00:08:08.060 goose, you know, that cost, you know, eight bucks or whatever that had no purpose for the farm

00:08:13.100 whatsoever. But this is what you do with pets. And so we had it all stitched up. And then, um,

00:08:17.940 and then we had some other goose or geese, I guess, but, uh, nurse it back to health. And then,

00:08:22.940 you know, a couple months later, like a dog killed it. Someone, one of the neighbor's dogs,

00:08:27.520 just like that gone. You're like, okay, one, I was pretty ridiculous that we paid $300 to have

00:08:32.660 this thing stitched back up. But I thought it was also interesting. The other geese,

00:08:36.680 like they just didn't even care. Like, like it was just like, we're, what is it? A gaggle?

00:08:41.800 We're a gaggle. And there were five of us. And now there's four of us. Do you know what I mean?

00:08:46.120 Like it wasn't this like elaborate morning thing. Well, my daughter asked about this right after,

00:08:52.140 cause all the, all our chickens have names and I forget the first one that bit the dust,

00:08:56.300 but we've lost a couple of them. But whatever the first one was, I think it was go, go was the

00:09:01.560 first one. And I mean, and it was really sort of tender to watch this, but you could tell like

00:09:06.780 she was devastated, but she was also very sad for the other ones. She was like, well, what do you

00:09:11.680 think Sarah and ginger and so-and-so think? Like, do you think they're afraid at night now? And I was

00:09:18.260 like, I mean, those are great questions, sweetie. I don't know, but I don't think their brains are the

00:09:23.840 same as ours. I'm not, I don't know, you know?

00:09:26.780 No, that's what's interesting. It's like, well, they probably are afraid at night, but

00:09:30.460 they've always been afraid at night. That's, that's why it's no fun to be a chicken. There's

00:09:34.460 a D.H. Lawrence poem where he says, you know, like, I've never seen an animal feeling sorry

00:09:39.260 for itself. A bird will drop dead of the cold before it feels sorry for itself or something

00:09:44.920 like that. That's sort of one of the lessons I've taken from living in a farm is that like

00:09:48.800 the animals are much more present and focused and not worried the way that humans are worried.

00:09:57.720 And, and ironically, they have way more to be worried about. Like a mountain lion isn't going

00:10:02.220 to come and attack me, but if I'm a goat, like there's a pretty reasonable chance that could

00:10:07.420 happen. So you can take some interesting lessons from it for sure.

00:10:11.120 What do you think that that's robbed us of? What do you think our sterile environment of not

00:10:16.740 having the concerns you've described? Now that's not true. Of course, for our species

00:10:20.680 across the whole, there are plenty of interview to an amazing doctor who is the only doctor

00:10:25.760 that serves a million people in South Sudan and they get bombed by their government every

00:10:31.480 couple of weeks or months. And every time it happens, people are getting killed and he

00:10:35.600 has to, you know, put bodies back together. But if you're living here in the United States,

00:10:40.320 for the most part, you've become insulated from that. There's lots of good that has come

00:10:45.580 from that. What do you think is the most negative aspect of that?

00:10:48.420 You begin to assume that you have unlimited amounts of time or that you're in control

00:10:53.380 of your existence, right? So you look at the actuary tables and it's like, oh, we're living

00:10:58.340 longer on average, but we forget that we're individuals, right? So the average means nothing

00:11:05.760 to you, right? And even if it did, even if you were given the genetics and you've taken

00:11:10.440 care of yourself in such a way that you have the chance, you know, you're likely to, let's

00:11:14.860 say like, it's all preordained in the biological sense that like, I'm going to be 78, you're

00:11:20.240 going to be 112 or whatever it is. But like, I could still get hit by a bus. A war could

00:11:26.980 break out tomorrow. I could, you know, I could still have an allergic reaction to something.

00:11:31.240 So, so I think we have this sense of unlimited time that we take from it. And we just believe

00:11:35.820 we're much more in control of our existences than we already are. So there's like a form

00:11:40.420 of arrogance there. That's the biggest one. You know, Seneca talks a lot about how we're

00:11:46.100 really tight fisted over the things that don't matter, which would be like money, property

00:11:50.580 stuff, things you can get more of. And then time we're the most generous with. And I think

00:11:57.320 that is rooted in the sense that all we think about are old people. We don't even think about

00:12:02.620 the people that died because they're not around. So you just assume, like I even think about

00:12:08.500 this with like war. I think when we think about wars, we don't think about the people we, like

00:12:14.640 my grandfather fought in World War II. So when I think about World War II, I think about it

00:12:19.580 being really bad and horrible, but you come out the other side, right? I don't think about

00:12:25.060 the people who got shot before the boats, like as soon as they put down the door on the landing

00:12:32.740 craft. I don't think about that guy. And so there's this weird survivorship bias that I think

00:12:37.620 our lack of familiarity with death exposes us to. And that's why we're so shocked when it does happen.

00:12:44.520 Do you think it's even deeper than that, which is in addition to everything you've said,

00:12:48.960 let's assume that not only do you, do you have the biologic track to get you to 78, but let's

00:12:54.920 assume you are guaranteed to get to 78. So somehow we've built a cocoon around you that no bus can hit

00:12:59.540 you. No, you know, no peanut can get lodged in your throat or give you an allergy. Isn't the other

00:13:06.680 issue potentially that we are not in the moment that we're in anyway, because we have this view of

00:13:12.900 infinite time. And so in other words, there's sort of a lack of quality in our life beyond just

00:13:19.540 quantity. Is that possible? Yeah. So there's two really good insights from the Stokes I love. So

00:13:23.900 one, Marcus Rios goes like, are you afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore? He's

00:13:30.120 like, you should ask yourself that question all the time. So much, we want to live forever. We want

00:13:34.840 to think about, we don't want to think about death. We don't want anything bad to happen, but we don't

00:13:38.660 really actually judge the quality of the existence that we have very much. I think there's a lot of

00:13:43.520 people who are alive who are basically dead anyway, right? Or sleepwalking through life. So I think

00:13:49.260 that's one part of it. The other interesting way, and let's say, because I do think a lot of people

00:13:54.260 go through, they go, oh, the average person is 78, lives to be 78 or whatever. That's when, so they go

00:14:00.680 like, okay, I'll start thinking about death at 60, right? They're like, I'm so far from that. It's way off in

00:14:07.380 the future. I'm not going to think about that. Just like when you're in elementary school, you're

00:14:11.740 not thinking about graduating from college. You're like, I got to get through all this other crap

00:14:15.640 first. The big flip for me, Seneca talks about, we think that death is something that lays off in

00:14:21.420 the future, but actually death is something that's happening right now. He was saying, so you don't

00:14:26.720 think about it. In my case, I'm going to live to be 78. So that means I have 40 years left. You should

00:14:31.580 think about it instead that I've already died 30 odd years, right? So he's like, the time that he's

00:14:38.320 like, most of our time already belongs to death. The time that has passed is dead. And I think that's

00:14:45.020 a much more active, empowering, adaptive way to think about it. It's like, oh, I'm dying all the time.

00:14:53.220 And I'm every second that passes, you don't get back. And then that allows you to decide how you're

00:14:59.000 going to spend that time, or at least think about that you're, you are spending it. You were given a

00:15:04.460 finite amount of time. Are you going to spend it on whatever you're going to spend it on? And then

00:15:09.420 I think the other, the part where this gets tricky is people go, oh, I have to do this. I have to do

00:15:13.600 that. Or this happens, this happens. Totally agree. But are you going to spend time on top of that being

00:15:18.480 mad that that happened or resenting that it happened that way or regretting that? So, so people go,

00:15:24.640 oh, I spent this, you know, I'm mad that I had to spend an hour unnecessarily in traffic.

00:15:29.540 Sure. But now you're spending an extra minute and a half complaining about it. And which part of that

00:15:33.740 do you control? So I think the death conversation gives you some perspective and some urgency. And

00:15:39.560 I think some prioritization and perspective on the day-to-day reality that's really valuable.

00:15:45.380 Now, I suspect the number of people listening here are not going to be as familiar with stoic

00:15:49.220 philosophy as you are probably very few are, but at least I've had the luxury of,

00:15:53.600 I read your newsletter every single day or Monday through Friday. And then there's a

00:15:57.000 weekend summary, uh, the daily stoic. I can't, I can't plug it enough. So thank you very much for,

00:16:03.060 I mean, it literally is the single most important thing I subscribe to an email. So thank you.

00:16:07.180 Can we give people a little bit of stoic one-on-one here? Can we explain

00:16:10.620 who Marcus Aurelius was, who Seneca was, who Nero was at least enough to give people a context of the

00:16:16.340 world in which these people came from, how it shaped a philosophical field or bent,

00:16:21.700 and more importantly, why should anyone care about this today?

00:16:24.940 Yeah. So it comes to be in Athens, the founder of stoicism is this guy named Zeno. He was a Greek

00:16:31.140 merchant who sort of suffers this terrible shipwreck. He loses everything and he gets exposed to

00:16:36.360 philosophy, probably like a lot of people expected that philosophy was abstract, that was academic,

00:16:41.480 was not things you use in real life. And he gets introduced to Socrates and cynicism and ends up

00:16:48.960 becoming instead a student of his own school, which becomes stoicism. And then stoicism worms

00:16:55.440 its way from these sort of interesting Greek figures into Rome as Rome takes over the world. And so this

00:17:03.120 is Cicero and Julius Caesar and Cato. It sort of follows the rise of the Roman Empire, the fall of

00:17:11.300 the Roman Republic. And then it's so integral into Roman life that it becomes not just philosophy of

00:17:18.260 ordinary people and senators even. But Marcus Aurelius becomes the emperor of Rome, and he's

00:17:25.040 this avid student of philosophy. So it's fascinating. Basically, in two generations, so Epictetus is this

00:17:32.100 former slave. Philosophy is banned from Rome, so he's like sort of sent into exile. But this slave is

00:17:38.340 writing about philosophy, writing about how to achieve freedom when you're literally in chains,

00:17:42.640 all of this. And then a generation later, Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world,

00:17:48.200 is a student of the same philosophy. So it's this really sort of open-ended, flexible philosophy

00:17:55.120 for people in the real world doing real things. And it's sort of built around, depending on who I'm

00:18:02.800 explaining to, I sort of go one of two tracks. I'll do both. So I would say the sort of central

00:18:07.220 precept of stoicism is basically this idea that we don't control the world around us,

00:18:11.740 but we control how we respond. That's like, that's the main, if I had to give you one thing,

00:18:16.860 it'd just be like, you don't control other people, you control yourself. You don't control what happens,

00:18:21.000 you control your reactions. So that's like the core of it. If I was going to get a little bit more

00:18:25.720 nuanced, I'd say sort of stoicism is built around four virtues. And the virtuous life is what they're

00:18:31.760 aiming towards. And today when we hear virtue, we think like purity, chastity, some sort of religious

00:18:38.680 component. To the Stoics, the four virtues were courage, justice, temperance, so moderation,

00:18:45.860 and then in wisdom. So it's sort of truth, self-control, doing the right thing, having the

00:18:53.180 stones to stand up for those things, right? That to me is the essence of this philosophy.

00:19:00.080 Tim Ferriss sort of refers to as an operating system. I think that's an interesting way to do

00:19:04.500 it. Although that might, that might be a bit reductive. I think it's more of a way of life

00:19:10.820 than an operating system. We've learned a lot from the Stoics. And I always find, I think one of the

00:19:16.820 things I appreciate about the way you write about them is they're still humans and they still make

00:19:20.620 mistakes. I mean, you, I think a couple of days ago you were talking about, I mean, Seneca is a great

00:19:25.320 example, right? On the one hand, this remarkable example of Stoic philosophy. And yet in the end,

00:19:30.740 probably a little bit of his desire to be, you know, approved by Nero, his desire to be in his

00:19:37.000 good graces effectively cost him his life. Well, not just cost him his life, but it may well have

00:19:41.660 forced him to contradict all the things he believed in. And for people who have no idea what we're

00:19:45.780 talking about. Yeah, let's tell the story about that transition. Seneca is this fascinating figure in

00:19:50.480 that he's a Roman senator, he's a philosopher, he's a playwright, he's probably the smartest man

00:19:56.200 in Rome at this time. And he's sent into exile by an emperor, Claudius, who sort of doesn't like him,

00:20:04.000 he sends him into exile. And so there Seneca is, he's sort of on this rock in the middle of nowhere,

00:20:08.140 and he's writing his philosophy. And it's sort of like, for a philosophy all about adversity and

00:20:12.920 perseverance, it's like this sort of perfect opportunity. And then he gets this call, or,

00:20:17.480 you know, a letter, I'm sure it was a messenger. But he basically gets summoned back to Rome.

00:20:21.220 And they said, look, you can come back. But your job is you have to be the tutor to this young boy.

00:20:27.320 And that young boy turned out to be Nero. And so Seneca has this complex, like, Nero was this very

00:20:33.900 promising student, but was about to be dictator, essentially. At the same time, you know, just a

00:20:41.160 couple generations before, the Stokes were the ones who were fighting to preserve the Roman

00:20:46.220 Republican. Here is this guy as a sort of emperor's guy behind the throne. And so there's a little

00:20:51.560 contradiction there. But really, this promising student also has a dark side. It's almost like

00:20:56.960 the plot of Breaking Bad, right? Like, he starts good, and towards the end, he's writing speeches

00:21:03.800 that help Nero justify why he murdered his mother. You know, it gets very dark very quickly. Seneca becomes

00:21:10.780 extraordinarily wealthy for his association with Nero. Ultimately, he, it's sort of like, you know,

00:21:16.840 there's some analogies, I think, to the Trump administration, where you're like, I don't like

00:21:20.620 the guy, but I feel called to serve. How can I mitigate the impulses? But it's, you know, it's a

00:21:27.300 tough balance, right? And you're suddenly morally compromised in a bunch of ways that if you had your

00:21:32.320 choice, you wouldn't be. But you also have the choice to leave at any time. And so ultimately, Seneca

00:21:36.960 decides to leave towards the end. And Nero's like, no, you don't get to leave. I decide when you

00:21:44.060 leave. And so he, it's sort of this, he basically is caught up in this thing he can't get out of.

00:21:48.420 He ultimately sort of goes into a second exile. But he knows he traded his life for whatever he got,

00:21:55.560 you know, and at a certain, eventually, you know, sort of Nero sends his, his goons to call in the

00:22:02.380 chit. And that's the end of Seneca.

00:22:04.200 Seneca. And it's interesting, because Seneca, of course, is ordered to kill himself rather than

00:22:07.960 being killed, which was the way that the time, you can't help but wonder, what would Seneca go

00:22:13.580 back and tell himself on the day that he was called to come and be the tutor for this boy,

00:22:18.280 knowing what he knew at the end of his life?

00:22:20.220 Yeah, it's endlessly complicated and complex, because maybe he said yes, because he thought he

00:22:27.060 could prevent this from happening. Or maybe he thought, like, I was, again, I'm not being political,

00:22:32.960 I think we just want to look at analogies. But like, John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff,

00:22:37.380 just gave these interesting comments where he was like, look, when I left, I told Trump, like,

00:22:42.720 you're going to be in trouble, because there are other people who are not going to be able to tell

00:22:46.700 you no the way that I can tell you no. And it's going to be worse. He's like, you'll be impeached if

00:22:51.420 I leave. And, you know, he ended up leaving, or Trump had him leave. But I think what Seneca probably

00:22:56.720 told himself is like, I don't think he was in any denial about who Nero was, right? But I think he

00:23:03.360 told himself who will do a better job than me. It's interesting. It's a slippery slope.

00:23:10.880 It's very complicated.

00:23:12.280 It begs broader questions, right? Which is, what are our obligations? Do we have a greater obligation

00:23:16.060 to our own principles and our own personal beliefs? Do we have a greater obligation to society

00:23:19.980 to maximize the impact we can have on others? Again, through the lens you just described,

00:23:25.200 you could argue that Seneca did the best he could have, which was if, I mean, Nero was obviously a

00:23:30.680 complete dictator, were lives saved as a result of Seneca's association with him.

00:23:35.420 Yeah. And there's another few Stoics. He's not the only one. There's other Stoics who did actively

00:23:41.060 conspire to assassinate Nero, right?

00:23:43.840 Which is ultimately what Nero accused Seneca of, right?

00:23:46.620 Yeah, this is the pretext that he uses. And I would say, you sort of go back and forth on

00:23:52.640 the evidence. The evidence is not conclusive that he did. In some ways, it would be redeeming if he

00:23:56.600 had. But I'm actually writing about this right now for a set of biographies I'm doing. But you only

00:24:01.720 have to go back a generation or two with Julius Caesar to find that it's never as clear cut as you

00:24:09.180 think, right? Like, Cato is the sort of Stoic philosopher, resistance leader at the time. He was

00:24:16.320 so led by his principles that one read on it is that he drives Caesar to do what he did. Like,

00:24:24.440 like, Cato's inability to compromise, his insistence on principle and perfect solutions

00:24:31.220 essentially grind the Roman political machine to a halt. And there's all, like, there's this

00:24:37.820 interesting story where, so Pompey returns from his conquests. This is before Julius Caesar and Pompey

00:24:44.200 and the Lepidus have joined together in the Triumvirate. But what happens is Pompey, seeing

00:24:50.320 Cato, largely agreeing with Cato, says, well, we should come together. And in the way that one did

00:24:57.580 back then, he proposed that he would marry Cato's nieces, or one of Cato's nieces. And Cato says,

00:25:04.520 you know, how dare you try to bribe me? He's like, I will not have my politics corrupted through

00:25:10.160 sort of female influence. What do you mean? I'm not going to create this alliance. So Pompey is

00:25:15.420 surprised by this. But then he looks at his options, and he ends up allying with Julius Caesar

00:25:20.920 instead. And even at the time the historians noted this, they were like, because of his purity,

00:25:26.960 his inability to sort of make things work in a less than perfect scenario, Cato ends up bringing

00:25:34.700 about exactly the thing that he was trying to prevent, right? Instead of allying with

00:25:40.480 the lesser of two evils, the two evils teamed up and destroyed the thing that ultimately Cato gives

00:25:47.140 his life for. And what I think is really interesting is that then, not long after, another sort of

00:25:54.200 inspired Stoic character takes up to assassinate Julius Caesar, thinking that this will be the end of

00:26:01.280 it. And it's not the end of it. It sends Rome into a second civil war in which hundreds of thousands

00:26:06.980 of people die, and more people are destroyed, and ultimately ensures that another emperor takes

00:26:14.760 Caesar's place. So I think one of the things you end up taking as you study philosophy and history

00:26:21.480 is just some humility about how complex these things are, and how rarely they are as black and

00:26:27.660 white as they seem. And that I think what Stoicism is really about is a sort of a personal code

00:26:33.320 that lets you try to figure out what you should do in your individual situations, and not be so

00:26:40.340 concerned about what other people did, or why, or how, or whether they were perfect.

00:26:44.160 I wasn't even planning to ask you about this, because there's so many things I want to ask you

00:26:47.020 about, but I can't resist a slight detour in going down sort of your past and how you got here. I mean,

00:26:52.720 you grew up in Sacramento, you go to college in LA. I remember the first time I heard about you

00:26:58.280 was somehow after your time at American Apparel, and how you'd done all this amazing stuff there.

00:27:03.740 Can you pick up the story there? Like, what are you doing, and how, at this point in time,

00:27:07.360 have you already acquired a taste for Stoic philosophy?

00:27:10.960 Yeah. I think I got introduced to philosophy early on in college. I'd read Epictetus, I read Marcus Aurelius,

00:27:17.100 so sort of interested in it. It was definitely life-changing for me when I

00:27:20.520 was exposed to it, but how much you're really getting at that age, you know, it's hard to tell.

00:27:25.320 So this is a detour from the conversation. It was a detour in my life. I basically went, and I was a

00:27:30.960 research assistant for a really great writer. I did marketing for a couple other writers,

00:27:34.840 and then through sort of all those experiences, somehow ended up as the director of marketing

00:27:39.560 at American Apparel, which was a, you know, a crazy, dysfunctional, chaotic, but ultimately

00:27:46.020 really fascinating place to work for about six or seven years.

00:27:51.380 What year did you start there?

00:27:52.680 Oh, seven, maybe, oh, eight, something like that. So the company was already, you know,

00:27:56.120 doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, but was sort of still early on in what its next

00:28:01.620 phase was, which was as a retailer in a publicly traded company. And, you know, it turns out a lot

00:28:06.640 of the same dynamics that have always been true in sort of upstart, ascendant sort of movements

00:28:12.040 or businesses. It was just, it's a lot of money, a lot of temptations, a lot of conflict, a lot of

00:28:17.160 politics, a lot of the human condition out on display. But there was also just, it was a really

00:28:23.280 interesting, creative learning opportunity. And then I, you know, I got to do all sorts of cool

00:28:29.480 stuff from a marketing perspective that got seen by millions and millions of people. And so I sort of

00:28:33.740 learned how this might be how you write stuff, but this is where the rubber meets the road, where you

00:28:39.300 sell it to people. What was the most or set of insights that surprised you most as you made that

00:28:47.060 transition? I mean, obviously you're an, you're an excellent writer, but I have no delusions that

00:28:51.620 people are born excellent writers. You've worked very hard at your craft, but how did you make that

00:28:55.800 transition from being able to write to being able to market? Because they're not really one in the

00:29:00.320 same. No, I mean, they're both in the ideas business, but they're very different ways of

00:29:04.580 communicating ideas. One of the things Dove was fond of talking about that I liked, and it's from...

00:29:11.340 Dove was the CEO.

00:29:12.320 Yeah. This is actually from Robert Green, who wrote the 48 Laws of Power and was on the board

00:29:17.200 of directors and how I ended up working there. But there's a thing in the 48 Laws of Power, he says,

00:29:21.340 you know, like, never appeal to mercy or gratitude, always appeal to self-interest.

00:29:25.680 His premise was like, look, I want to build a company that's ethical. I want to build a company

00:29:30.660 that, you know, pays its workers fairly, that, you know, doesn't destroying the environment.

00:29:35.680 But he's like, no one will buy clothes for those reasons. Like they ultimately buy clothes because

00:29:41.440 they look good in them, or they feel comfortable in them, or they're the right price or whatever.

00:29:46.420 And that it's this sort of tension between this sort of pure expression and the realities of the

00:29:53.980 market. And I think one of the things I definitely took from that as a writer is like, first off,

00:29:59.760 it's not just what you want to say. It's where that overlaps with the market, right? Like the

00:30:04.280 perfect book idea is like what you can't stop thinking about, and what people can't stop saying

00:30:09.600 they need a book about, right? When those overlap, you get something really powerful. But more,

00:30:14.740 it's that you have to figure out where people are. Like people are not thinking, I really care about

00:30:20.280 those workers slaving away in sweatshops. They're thinking, I need a t-shirt for tonight. So you can

00:30:26.220 deliver them a t-shirt that solves that first problem. But if all you're solving is the first

00:30:31.260 problem, you're not going to be successful. And so like, it's funny, like people, because of my

00:30:36.260 marketing career, they'll be like, oh, you know, he's like a mercenary, or he's just in this for

00:30:40.320 money, or, you know, he's in this to get rich. And it's like, dude, of all the things that I could

00:30:46.160 apply my marketing skills to, it seems kind of preposterous that I would have chosen an obscure

00:30:52.080 school of ancient philosophy as like, where I was going to cash in, right? Like, so it's more like,

00:30:59.020 I'm really interested in this stuff. This is what I find endlessly fascinating. I could nerd out with

00:31:03.740 you about stoicism all day. We're having dinner tomorrow night. So we're going to do just that.

00:31:08.320 But it's how can I find a way to channel that passion I have for this obscure, boring, complicated

00:31:16.640 thing, and give it to people who are busy, tired, overwhelmed, don't like books, don't like big

00:31:23.540 ideas, can't pronounce any of the names. Do you know what I mean? Like, how do you? So it's about

00:31:27.820 finding a way to take your idea and delivering it to people who are not interested in your idea.

00:31:34.520 I see this often. It's like, oh, you know, this is just pop philosophy or, you know, oh, this is,

00:31:40.080 he's simplifying, oh, why don't you read the originals? And it's like, I would love for people

00:31:44.460 to read the originals, but guess what? They're not, right? They were not doing it, right? The 1% of

00:31:51.040 people who are reading the originals, sure, don't read my books, right? That's not who I'm writing these

00:31:55.340 for. I'm trying to reach people who wake up in the morning and think philosophy, I don't have time for

00:32:01.760 that. And I think you learn that if you get out of the artistic side of your profession a little

00:32:07.980 bit. At the outset of that, you explain sort of that Venn diagram of things that are in your sweet

00:32:13.420 spot, meaning you as the creator, the author are thinking about this constantly. And if you're not

00:32:18.300 doing that, you probably shouldn't be writing about it. And then secondly, the market says,

00:32:22.260 I want this. Those things rarely line up. Sometimes it's, you're thinking about this a lot,

00:32:28.160 but you almost have to make a market. You almost have to create something that can be a bit more

00:32:33.200 timeless. And again, you've either spoken about or written about this idea, which is

00:32:36.620 you generally try to think about things that have a little bit, I don't want to say they're timeless

00:32:41.920 because maybe nothing is purely timeless, but they just have a longer tail to them. Was that a

00:32:46.880 conscious decision or is that some, meaning it was that a conscious decision at the outset,

00:32:50.060 or is that something that looking back now, nine books into your career, you can say,

00:32:54.720 no, that's actually, I got lucky in that I was always doing the right thing that was sort of

00:33:00.180 creating content that was going to be relevant after a year after the book came out.

00:33:05.000 Yeah. In publishing, like there's the front list and the back list and all anyone cares about is

00:33:10.640 the front list, even though the back list is, is not only where all the money is, is the only reason

00:33:15.600 the industry can afford to buy front list titles, right? Because the vast majority of books never end up

00:33:20.920 selling. They buy a celebrity cookbook for $2 million and it sells 20 copies, right? Or, or the,

00:33:27.880 you know, this big book flops. The reason this works is that the great Gatsby is selling all these

00:33:32.240 copies and good to great is selling all these copies and the four hour work week is selling all these

00:33:36.080 copies and to kill a mockingbird, you know, it's the back list, right? And so it was, I mean, it was

00:33:42.400 certainly both convenient, but also cultivated that I write about a philosophy that has endured about

00:33:50.920 2,500 years of diverse human experiences. Like, I think if you're sitting down and you're writing

00:33:57.780 something that you just made up, the chances of it being relevant 2,500 years from now are much

00:34:05.940 slimmer. Like, I mean, it can happen. Maybe you're such a genius that you nailed it, but I'm not so

00:34:11.440 convinced I have that ability. So I do think about that. I would say almost every single one of my

00:34:17.540 books is rooted in or inspired or in some way almost a rip off of some very brilliant, sometimes

00:34:28.120 obscure, sometimes popular title from the past. So even my, my first book was this book called Trust

00:34:33.580 Me, I'm Lying, which is sort of a, an expose of how the media works. And it was...

00:34:38.760 Which many people, by the way, have said in retrospect was sort of the canary in the coal

00:34:42.580 mine talking about what would become fake news. And this idea that you sort of called a shot on

00:34:48.100 that one.

00:34:48.600 Yeah. I mean, I wish, I wish subsequent events had proven me terribly wrong. That would probably

00:34:53.620 be a better world to live in. But yeah, I think I got some things right with that book. But ironically,

00:34:58.860 that book was, as much as I'm talking about blogs and social media and tech and all these sort of

00:35:04.020 things that were even more new then. My main model for that book was a book that Upton Sinclair published

00:35:10.400 in 1913 called The Brass Check. And that book sold well when it came out. It's still in print today.

00:35:15.960 It sold quite well. And so the point is, I'm less interested in doing, although I do want to do

00:35:21.140 things that haven't been done before, I'm still kind of thinking like, how can I, how can I take some

00:35:26.520 risk off the table by modeling it on something that has some proven staying power?

00:35:31.560 That's a really interesting way to think about it. Actually, I'd never considered that the idea

00:35:35.800 that you can at least de-risk the market appetite for something. And again, you still have to do a

00:35:41.580 good job, but that's one fewer risk.

00:35:43.840 Well, you think about Star Wars, like on the one hand, you can see Star Wars as this cutting edge

00:35:48.160 sci-fi movie, sort of inventing a new genre. It's using all these expensive technologies,

00:35:54.240 it's breaking, you know, it's introducing like robots and all this, all this sort of stuff and what it

00:36:00.000 was. Or you can see it as a timeless story based on the hero's journey, right? I mean,

00:36:06.280 40 years later, people are still watching the movie. I'm not sure it's because of the cutting

00:36:09.720 edge special effects. It's the story, right? And so I think when you root things in some arc or story

00:36:17.540 or deeper truth, you are taking some of that risk off the table. I just think that's a strategy not

00:36:24.280 employed enough. When did you first become aware of this idea that we all tell ourselves a story?

00:36:30.740 Well, I mean, I think narrative is one of the things that makes us human. We've been telling

00:36:35.240 stories in writing for 5,000 years. We've been telling sort of, we have an oral epic poem

00:36:39.720 tradition that's, you know, probably 10,000 years old. So it goes to the core of who we are. And I go

00:36:44.900 back and forth. Sometimes I think it's very powerful. Sometimes I think it's very dangerous. I sort of

00:36:48.600 written about it both ways. But at the end of the day, the core premise of my writing also ripped

00:36:54.520 off from someone. This is what I got from Robert Greene, which is like, you can tell people facts

00:36:59.380 or you can tell them stories that leave them with the conclusions that are the same as the facts that

00:37:06.160 you would have told them, right? And so what I decided to do with Obstacle You Go and Now Stillness

00:37:12.460 was not write a book that tells people what the Stoics say, but give people books that illustrate

00:37:19.800 what the Stoics said or believed through story. And ironically, this is also often how the Stoics

00:37:26.860 told stories, or, you know, sort of made their points themselves. But it's just, I think, a far more

00:37:32.920 compelling medium. It's far more memorable. It's far more enjoyable. And it's less preachy and

00:37:39.080 condescending as well, I think. What do you think is the downside of the story, the story we tell

00:37:44.200 ourselves? Like, how does, again, you've written about both sides of that, or both ends of that book.

00:37:49.540 What are the negative parts of this? So I think stories are a great way to learn lessons about

00:37:53.700 other people. Stories are a bad way to think about your own life. So I just see lots of people who are

00:38:00.340 very clearly believing that they live in a movie or a novel, you know, and they are going through life as

00:38:06.380 if they are performing for an imaginary audience. And I think this is a very dangerous, egotistical,

00:38:13.920 and often misleading sort of tendency, right? So I think this is honestly why social media has

00:38:21.600 exploded in terms of, like, why it's such a valuable, lucrative, addictive business.

00:38:27.120 It's that people want to, like, we all used to have an imaginary audience. We thought people cared

00:38:33.700 about us a lot more than they did. And what Twitter allows you to do, or Instagram allows you to do,

00:38:39.120 is, like, actually believe that your life is a movie. So we get caught up in this sort of performance,

00:38:44.900 and this sort of comes at the expense of actually living in that moment.

00:38:49.640 I want to come back to talking about stillness and being present, but I know that once we start

00:38:54.320 there, we're not going to leave it. So there are a few other things I want to talk about first.

00:38:58.020 You alluded to it just briefly at the outset of what you said there, this idea of having enough.

00:39:01.640 If you tell a story, again, I can't even recall where. I know it's not in, well, I shouldn't say

00:39:06.080 that. Again, your worlds are all one to me now. But you tell the story about Kurt Vonnegut at a

00:39:10.780 party. Yeah, that's in stillness. Is that in stillness? I guess I had such an early copy of

00:39:15.540 it, because the book only actually came out in about a month ago, right? Yeah, exactly a month ago.

00:39:19.900 But I think I got a copy like six months ago. Maybe that's why I don't realize it. Tell the story

00:39:23.500 about the party that Kurt Vonnegut was at and the discussion that ensued. So Kurt Vonnegut was at a party

00:39:28.240 with Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five,

00:39:33.260 two of the sort of writers of the generation. And they're at the party of this billionaire.

00:39:38.580 And I'm sure you've been at events like this, where you're sort of the candy, you know, you're

00:39:43.140 like the status symbol, like, look who I got to come to my party. And I'm never that guy, but I can

00:39:47.560 picture it. I know that you have been that guy. Because you're like, why am I here? I have no business

00:39:52.620 being here, right? And so they're sort of standing in this enormous mansion. And Vonnegut is teasing

00:39:57.520 Heller. And he says, how does it feel to know that he made more money this week than your book will

00:40:00.940 probably ever make in its life? And Heller said, well, I have something he doesn't have. And Vonnegut

00:40:05.700 said, what could that possibly be? And he said, I have enough. You know, I have a sense of what enough

00:40:10.200 is. And I just, that's a very powerful word. I think a lot of people see enough as the enemy,

00:40:16.500 right? Like if I have enough, I won't be good at what I do. My lack of satisfaction is what's

00:40:23.280 propelled me to greatness. And this is certainly true is, I guess, with athletes, especially where

00:40:28.540 it's like, your desire to always improve, to always get better, to never be satisfied with

00:40:33.700 your last performance is what compels you to keep going. And it can be responsible for a lot of

00:40:42.300 victories. It can also be responsible for why you fail to appreciate or enjoy any of those victories.

00:40:48.360 So when I talk about the book, what I'm interested in, what I'm exploring myself, having, you know,

00:40:53.000 experienced some success and certainly accomplished more things than I thought I would

00:40:56.520 relatively early in my life, is this idea of like, and I think this is what Heller meant,

00:41:02.060 can you do what you're doing well, like at an elite level even, from a place of fullness? Or does

00:41:09.400 it have to come from a place of craving? Do you know what I mean? Like, is it? Yes, very much so.

00:41:14.120 Does it have to come from the, I'm going to prove them all wrong. I am going to beat anyone that

00:41:20.660 doubts me. I'm going to earn my father's approval. You know, whatever that motivation is, does it have

00:41:26.660 to be from there that's never good enough? Or can it come from a place of passion and appreciation

00:41:37.020 and gratitude and, you know, what they call the sort of the love of a game? Like, is it possible

00:41:42.260 to do it the other way? Could you at least have a balance of the two? That's what I think about.

00:41:47.240 I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this because it's a topic I've been interested in since I was

00:41:52.900 a teenager. But what is your take on that now? Do you think those states can coexist? Do you think

00:41:57.840 one can achieve the highest levels without, call it, a certain fire that is coming from a place

00:42:07.240 of more rather than enough? Well, you know, it's hard to know because you're only speculating about

00:42:12.340 other people and then it's sort of awkward to think about it with yourself. But I suspect you've

00:42:16.460 spoken with a lot of these people as well. Yeah, yeah. I would say my opinion is probably the minority

00:42:21.460 view, right? Like, I think you can do it from a place of fullness. But, you know, most coaches are

00:42:27.080 like, oh, you gotta, the guy's gotta have the hunger, he's gotta have the, you know. My goal in my life

00:42:32.020 is to be great at what I do, but somehow be a normal person. Like, that's, for whatever reason,

00:42:38.160 that's important to me. Not to not, to have some semblance of a normal life, to not be so lopsided,

00:42:44.460 to not be miserable, to actually like what I'm doing. And I would like to think that I'm, I sort of

00:42:49.780 know objectively in one sense, like I'm performing at an elite level, like there's the results and there's

00:42:55.800 the impact the work has had and there's the sales and there's the financial success.

00:42:59.960 So I go, oh, it's working, right? Like you can. But then I also, sometimes, you know, the doubts come

00:43:05.320 and you go, oh, but what have I left on the tape? Like, could I have sold more copies? Could the books

00:43:09.660 have more impact? Could my speaking fee be higher? You know, blah, blah, blah. If maybe I was a little

00:43:15.480 hungrier. So I, again, I think these are complicated questions and I don't, I don't pretend to have the

00:43:21.800 definitive answer, but I do generally think fullness is better than craving and it's more sustainable,

00:43:29.320 right? Like how long can you exist in the, I'm going to shove it all in their faces. That's what's

00:43:36.740 driving me. How long can you operate on that fuel? Or does it eventually corrode the engine?

00:43:43.460 Especially with writing, I think about it as like a, I'm not in this to win in the short term. I'm

00:43:48.600 interested in to do, to do this for a long time. And so you've got to come up with a sustainable

00:43:54.940 process and a sustainable motivation because maybe it works in football or basketball because your

00:44:00.520 career, even if it's a great one is like 20 years max, but probably closer to two years. I don't have

00:44:06.380 a good answer, but I'd be curious to hear what you think. Well, I don't think my thoughts are nearly

00:44:10.240 as well thought out as yours, frankly, but I, I think the way I look at it is it all comes down to

00:44:14.560 these optimization problems and what you're optimizing for. So if you're optimizing to have

00:44:20.660 the most trophies or the most dollars or the most, whatever metric it is by which we measure things.

00:44:28.080 And by the way, those things generally have to be external and quantifiable for this game to work,

00:44:33.420 right? You have to be able to display it. It can't be ambiguous, right? And again, lots of things in

00:44:39.940 our life do fit that criteria. If you're playing the pure max game, so you're looking for the absolute

00:44:47.300 maxima, the low, not versus the local maxima. My view is it's probably difficult to achieve that

00:44:54.420 without being myopically focused on that. But I also think like when you talk about multivariate

00:45:00.700 calculus, every time you go to a absolute maxima, you're achieving local minima elsewhere or

00:45:09.420 if you're going to be more accurate, you're very likely not achieving local maxima in other areas.

00:45:15.900 So if one of those other areas is some measure of suffering or the inverse of supper suffering,

00:45:23.840 I just think the likelihood. So again, it's all stochastic. The likelihood you're going to hit an

00:45:29.960 absolute maxima, not the local, the absolute maxima of your quantifiable metric money likes,

00:45:37.780 acceptance, you know, whatever, trophies, whatever, and that you could actually hit

00:45:42.400 a local maxima of the inverse of suffering. I think that's incredibly rare. I just don't see

00:45:46.940 how that would happen. I think that would be, that's like, you know, getting hit by lightning

00:45:51.240 three times in terms of probabilistic. I think more likely if you choose to select a local maxima

00:45:59.240 around some measure of the inverse of suffering, you probably aren't going to hit an absolute maxima

00:46:05.820 on those other things. But as we were talking about, even before we started the podcast,

00:46:09.900 who cares? Like what game are we playing? And I, I just think if I'm only speaking for myself,

00:46:17.240 if I, if I'm, if I'm not thinking about or speculating on anybody else and only viewing this

00:46:23.240 through the lens of my own life, I think sometimes we suffer and we don't even know we're suffering.

00:46:28.380 We've been suffering so long. Yeah. It's like, uh, you eat carbs. You grew up not knowing anything

00:46:33.200 about gluten or carbohydrates. You know, you had a sandwich for lunch, then you had pizza for dinner,

00:46:37.520 and then you had cereal for breakfast. You cut all that out and you're like, well, I didn't even know

00:46:41.340 I felt like shit, but I felt like shit every day of my life. I was fascinated. That's why I wrote a lot

00:46:46.160 about him and I'm fascinated with him now. Someone like Tiger Woods, where, you know, he, that's what he said.

00:46:51.220 He was like, I don't play because I love golf. He's like, I play for the hardware. He's like,

00:46:55.380 he didn't care, even care about the money. He's like, I care about the trophies. And he even said

00:46:59.400 this, like after, even after all the shit happened, he said, winning is great, but beating someone is

00:47:05.980 always better. And there's no question that made him the greatest golfer of all time, maybe the

00:47:12.220 greatest run in the history of sports. I mean, he was the number one ranked golfer in the world.

00:47:17.160 So the number one ranked person in his sport with a lot of really good people in it for like,

00:47:21.220 252 consecutive weeks. You're just like, that's unprecedented. And he did it all on his own.

00:47:28.600 It's not like, you know, Tom Brady also has the benefit of Bill Belichick, right? Like,

00:47:32.160 and an entire team of other people. He did this all on his own. And yet, as you said, he's not just

00:47:38.720 not achieving good results in other areas. Those other areas are actually ticking time bombs that

00:47:44.720 when they go off, those charges take down the entire edifice that he'd spent so much time

00:47:50.720 building and doing. And I don't know him. I've never met him. I don't really even know anyone

00:47:55.040 that knows him. But I would imagine these last two victories, the US Open and then the tournament that

00:48:00.300 he just won. From what I can see, and maybe I'm projecting, but like, I bet those victories feel

00:48:06.340 profoundly different. And I bet they are coming from a different place. Because there's no,

00:48:11.680 if all he was motivated by was beating other people, he would not have survived that 10-year

00:48:17.500 drought. You know, that would have been inhumanly difficult. He must have come to actually like

00:48:23.140 golf in some, like to love the process of it in some way. Because why wouldn't he just walk away?

00:48:29.380 I mean, he has unlimited amounts of money. He hates the public side of things. So even playing in a

00:48:34.920 tournament that he wins has some cost to him, right? And yet he doesn't. I don't know.

00:48:39.560 But I also go like, look, you look at some of these sort of tortured artists and actors,

00:48:43.900 and then you go, Tom Hanks looks like he's having a good time. You know what I mean? And doing great

00:48:48.960 work. So I'd like to think that there is some balance where you can be world class at what you

00:48:55.420 do, not be a shitty human being. Like my friend Austin Kleon, who was in Austin, he said, he calls

00:49:01.040 them art monsters. You know, like the writer who's been married six times, there was just a baseball

00:49:06.420 player who got arrested for beating the shit out of his daughter. It's like, there's got to be a way

00:49:10.380 you can be world class at what you do, and you don't have to trade that. And I think the reason

00:49:15.580 for that balance is like, and this is where we get back into the Stoics, like Tiger Woods will be

00:49:21.980 remembered for many, many years after his death, right? Like maybe in a hundred years, we'll still

00:49:27.260 be talking about Tiger Woods. But what good will that do Tiger Woods, right? And that Marcus Realist

00:49:32.420 goes like, people who long for posthumous fame forget, first off, that the people in the future

00:49:37.540 are just as dumb as the people who are alive right now. And second, you're not going to be

00:49:41.560 around to appreciate it. So what are you trading now, like happiness now, for the fact that,

00:49:48.580 you know, Alexandria is still named after Alexander the Great? Like it doesn't do him any good.

00:49:54.000 I mean, this is why I think Stoic philosophy is unbelievable to me, not being a person who ever

00:50:00.420 studied philosophy. So I'm exactly the person that the philosophy snobs hate, right? Because I just

00:50:06.720 wasn't smart enough to study philosophy, right? I mean, it's just, I'd like to make the excuse and

00:50:11.280 say it was because I was taking all those math and engineering classes. But the reality of it is I

00:50:15.340 wasn't smart enough. If I showed up to philosophy classes, I would have done, I would have been a very

00:50:20.260 mediocre student. So now I'm just a poser who gets to go back as an adult and do it. But to a point

00:50:26.720 you made earlier, I wasn't ready to hear it then. I'd love to believe I could have been caught sooner,

00:50:33.300 but I don't know if I would have. I think it's very difficult for humans to change without hitting

00:50:38.000 a local minima. You have to have pain to change. And you know what, even if that's not true, it's true

00:50:43.460 of me. Even if it's not true broadly, it's absolutely true of Peter Atiyah. He must hurt to change.

00:50:49.380 This idea that it used to matter to me that I did something that was going to be bigger than me.

00:50:55.800 You could look at that at the first layer and say, oh, that's nice. That's altruistic. Like,

00:50:59.080 you want to serve something that's larger than you. But I actually don't think it was altruistic

00:51:02.160 at all. I think it was really this sense of insecurity. Like, I want to do something that

00:51:07.120 will be remembered after I go away. I want to advance thinking in a way around a discipline of

00:51:13.260 science or medicine or something like that. But as Marcus Aurelius points out, who cares? You're not

00:51:18.760 going to be there anyway. And furthermore, even though this is to me the subtext of what he says,

00:51:24.200 what does it cost you while you are alive?

00:51:27.780 Yes. And I think maybe this is evidence of my point that you can do important, meaningful things and

00:51:33.600 not need to do it from that place of craving, which is what's interesting about Marcus Aurelius is that

00:51:38.160 we are talking about him right now 2,000 years. So unless he was lying or really didn't mean what

00:51:43.280 he was saying, and he really did just crave and care about his legacy and surviving for thousands of

00:51:48.560 years, which it seems like he would have taken more active steps, but somehow the journal that

00:51:54.640 he wrote to himself privately for his own self-betterment and never wanted to be published,

00:52:01.240 somehow the purity of that experience and the lack of intentionality in it and the true egolessness

00:52:09.800 inside of it is what actually allowed him to create something that has survived for thousands

00:52:17.460 of years. And trying to be a good person as an emperor rather than trying to expand the empire

00:52:24.420 or build enormous buildings in his own honor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, somehow managed to create

00:52:30.400 an example or a sort of a different story that's actually proved more enduring. More people know

00:52:36.960 who Marcus Aurelius is the Nero, right? And one of them was trying and one of them wasn't.

00:52:42.700 And so I think that's really interesting. What role do you think ego plays in this? You know,

00:52:48.760 you've written about this idea that there are just certain things where the harder you try and the

00:52:53.520 more you want them, the further you get from them. Yeah. I mean, I make a big distinction. I didn't do it

00:52:59.760 as well in Ego's the Enemy as I should have in retrospect, but now I'm able to be a bit more explicit

00:53:04.360 about it. But a big distinction between ego and confidence. Confidence is important, right? You've

00:53:09.600 got to know what you're capable of. You've got to have some evidence of it. You've got to have

00:53:14.220 some knowledge of strength and weakness. I think the problem with ego is it's not any of that. Ego

00:53:20.000 comes from some third place, right? And I think at the core of ego is an association of our identity

00:53:29.580 with results or with external things. And so in some senses, it's, it can be helpful in terms of

00:53:37.960 driving external results, but it, we, we see just as often that ego undermines those results once we

00:53:44.800 get them. Yeah. I think you, you said that again, it's a long tail game here, but in the long run,

00:53:51.020 you're probably coming out below than above if you're driven exclusively from this place.

00:53:57.720 How would you explain that to the 15 year old version of you?

00:54:03.100 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like historically it's like, are there any super egotistical people

00:54:09.540 who died with their boots off surrounded by people who loved them? Do you know what I mean?

00:54:16.460 Or does the dictator tend to die like Saddam Hussein or Julius Caesar or what, you know what I mean? Like

00:54:22.940 it very rarely ends well over a long enough timeline, the ego eventually comes back to get

00:54:29.960 you, you know? So I think the problem for young people, and I think this is also true for people

00:54:39.280 who are more sheltered, right? Who have less sort of life experiences or, or more sort of outsiders.

00:54:44.640 It's very easy to confuse ego and confidence because you don't, you don't actually know,

00:54:51.880 right? Like I think it's interesting. There are people who go, we need a president. I always get

00:54:55.780 in trouble talking to politics, but we need someone like Donald Trump. You know, he knows what he's

00:55:00.000 doing. He's someone like Putin is like, I can't wait to get in a room with this person. I'm going to

00:55:06.260 break this guy in half. Do you know what I mean? Because he knows that Trump's simplified version

00:55:13.560 of reality, he can see all the weaknesses in that ego and bluster. Do you know what I mean?

00:55:19.560 I think the problem when you're 15 is you see Kanye West, or you see, you read a book about Steve

00:55:24.760 Jobs, or, you know, you see these athletes doing X, Y, or Z, and you think that's what confidence

00:55:30.620 looks like because you're not, you haven't experienced it enough to know what profound

00:55:37.360 insecurities and weaknesses these strategies are compensating for, and how, how vulnerable

00:55:45.720 these guys are to slumps or mistakes or, you know, how often they get in their own way. I think that's

00:55:52.560 the other interesting thing we don't calculate when we think about ego. We look at super successful

00:55:57.260 people who have egos and we go, Oh, look at what they've done. The graveyard is something we don't

00:56:02.920 get to examine. We have no idea what the denominator looks like for that field of observation. That's

00:56:08.100 true. But look at Steve Jobs, right? He comes back, he's the most successful CEO of probably the 21st

00:56:13.720 century, blah, blah, blah. But like, what about that loss period? Was that necessary? Did he actually

00:56:19.200 have to get fired from Apple? So the graveyard is we don't think about all the people who got fired from

00:56:24.020 the company they started because of ego and never came back, right? Like the Adam Newmans of WeWork

00:56:29.020 or whatever, we don't see how many of them never even got that far. But let's say Travis Kalanick

00:56:35.560 comes back and is the CEO of Uber again, and he leads it to stratospheric success. He learned blah, blah,

00:56:42.320 blah. What did he lose? Think about the time that he lost, the mistakes that he made. And yes,

00:56:47.240 of course, we learn by experiences. Sometimes you have to touch the stove. But the point is,

00:56:52.240 we're really bad at calculating how much more successful a person could be if their ego wasn't

00:56:58.920 getting in the way. Anyone who's ever worked with or for or around other powerful people,

00:57:05.200 like everyone knows. Do you know what I mean? I bet if you took every presidential candidate right now,

00:57:09.640 and you talk to the people on their staff, they could give you a list of five ways that person's ego

00:57:14.760 was hurting them in the campaign, right? So one of them is going to win. But that doesn't mean those

00:57:20.780 traits were good. Yeah, that's right. You can be successful despite ego. And that's different

00:57:26.020 from saying you can be successful because of ego. Yes. We're really bad at calculating that cost. And

00:57:31.720 I think maybe you just have to see it enough times to know. I mean, Dove ended up getting fired from

00:57:37.980 the company. The company goes bankrupt twice. He lost everything. Not only did he lose everything,

00:57:42.060 he lost shares. His shares were worth about $500 million. He now owes, which he will never be able to

00:57:47.160 pay. About $20 million to the hedge fund that effectively destroyed the company in his plan to

00:57:56.200 save it. And 10,000, 12,000 people lost their jobs. It's not until you really see just how toxic and

00:58:03.580 dysfunctional ego is at the sort of malignant level that you walk away and go, I don't want any of that

00:58:10.280 in my life. So what's our checklist? If we weren't sitting here on this podcast and we're just sitting

00:58:14.700 here talking about this and I'm saying, Ryan, I want to make sure that I have an internal audit.

00:58:20.300 I want to catch my ego when it is creeping up. What are some of the things you would teach me?

00:58:27.040 Yeah. I wish I had a magical checklist, but it's more just sort of ideas. And I think why we look

00:58:32.300 at stories from history is we go, oh. It's the pattern recognition of. Being a little bit like

00:58:37.300 this person here. Being a little bit like this person here. I think when you feel like it all rests and

00:58:43.180 falls on you. You know what I mean? Like when you're Atlas with the world on your shoulders,

00:58:47.720 you have profoundly inflated your importance in whatever situation you're in. So that it's like

00:58:53.860 when I feel, when you feel that like Herculean, I'm the one, like that is ego, right? The other one

00:59:01.180 is like when you feel paranoia, like people are out to get me, they're fucking me, they're screwing me

00:59:05.880 over. I'm being held back. I usually find that's ego. Colin Powell talks about like, you know,

00:59:11.660 making sure your ego is not associated with your position, right? So it's like when your identity

00:59:17.040 and worth as a human being is tied up in what you have or what you've done, and this is where that

00:59:21.860 the story you're telling yourself can be so dangerous. When you have really started to identify

00:59:26.900 with what you've accomplished, when you're like, you know, I've hit this bestseller list. My podcast

00:59:32.160 has this many downloads. You know, I'm the best in the world at X. When you have really locked in

00:59:37.940 these sort of arbitrary ratings or rankings or status, to me, that's ego because now you're not

00:59:45.820 present. You're thinking about how do you maintain and control and get these things. The last one I

00:59:51.180 would probably say is when you are comparing yourself to other people. So like if you're

00:59:57.000 comparing yourself against other people versus comparing yourself against your intention or your

01:00:01.180 own standards, also probably a decent sign that you go.

01:00:04.080 Those are actually really great. One I might add to it that, that I find myself having to check

01:00:09.420 is when I'm more interested in being right than knowing what the truth is, which I find can happen

01:00:18.460 in the stupidest example. Like literally an argument with my wife could easily, if I'm going to be

01:00:26.300 brutally honest, turn into, wait, stop for a second, Peter. This is an internal dialogue. You're arguing with

01:00:32.580 her. And because you're a better arguer, you can probably look like you are right here.

01:00:39.920 There are five other ways that this could be viewed. If you're really being brutally honest,

01:00:45.460 you should be stepping out of yourself and seeing them all of these other ways. That's a loving

01:00:50.360 example because it's with a person you care about. Where you really see it, I think, is when you're

01:00:57.200 having a debate with someone like you don't care about, like someone on Twitter, right? Like some

01:01:02.380 random person on Twitter attacks you. For me, at least, that's very powerful. And that's certainly

01:01:07.160 where I catch my ego the most.

01:01:09.120 Right. Because what you're doing is you're associating your identity with a totally

01:01:14.220 meaningless encounter or situation. And you're like, I can't let this person be better than me.

01:01:19.500 Or my identity is that I'm the best, I win, I'm right. Not, I just want to know what is true or

01:01:26.040 real or I want to have a conversation with this person. So yeah, I think that's ultimately why

01:01:29.900 ego is so dangerous is that it just sucks us into bullshit that we don't need to be doing,

01:01:34.340 whether they're competitions or they're arguments or they're, you know, I think that the sort of rise

01:01:39.780 and fall of WeWork is such a great example of someone who is just like, what happens when ego is

01:01:44.720 just utterly unchecked? And how it served him well up until the point it all came, you know,

01:01:52.620 there's a joke about gangsters that like everything is wonderful until the last 15 minutes and then

01:01:58.200 it's brutal and violent and pathetic, you know? And I think that tends to be, it goes and it often goes

01:02:04.700 much longer than anyone thought. And then when it crumbles, it crumbles very quickly. Not only there's

01:02:12.700 nothing left, but there's not a lot of mercy from other people. Again, I always think about things

01:02:18.140 in terms of math. So to me, like, that's just an amazing example of non-linearity in everything,

01:02:23.940 non-linearity in time and non-linearity in response. Yeah. So that's an interesting thing.

01:02:29.740 You can think of ego is, is an amplifier of those curves. Yeah. Cyril Connelly's line is that ego sucks

01:02:35.560 us down like the law of gravity. And so I think the way you think about it is like, look, if you're not

01:02:40.360 ever getting up off the couch, gravity is not a big problem for you. But if you know, you're jumping

01:02:45.380 between buildings or you're doing something really hard, really high up there, the falls can be real

01:02:51.480 painful. What do you think are the antidotes to the negative effects of ego? Well, it's very hard to

01:02:58.860 be egotistical while you're learning something. Ego can prevent you from learning something. But I think

01:03:04.420 the philosopher's mindset, the martial art mindset of like, I am a student in a thing in which you never

01:03:10.340 truly master is sort of humility embodied. So Epictetus' line is, you can't learn that which

01:03:18.000 you think you already know. John Wheeler, the physicist, he says, as your island of knowledge

01:03:22.860 grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. And so if you think about it that way, it's like, oh,

01:03:27.240 as I'm getting smarter, I'm actually getting more aware of what I don't know. And to me, that's a much

01:03:34.780 better way to get through the world. There's people who, as they get more successful, there's less and

01:03:39.300 less you can teach them. And there's less and less that they want to hear. And then there are people

01:03:43.380 who, as they get better, become more curious, more interested, more open, less rigid. I think

01:03:50.240 that's where you want to go. Bob Kaplan, who's my head of research, he says this eloquently, and I'm

01:03:54.980 sure he's paraphrasing it from somebody else, but the further and further you get from the shore,

01:03:58.420 the deeper and deeper the water gets. I mean, sometimes Bob and I, we talk almost every day.

01:04:04.300 And a lot of times I'm just lamenting how little we know. I'm like, God, Bob, does it ever just

01:04:09.300 bug the shit out of you that we spend so much time, we've got seven analysts, like we eat,

01:04:15.180 sleep, and breathe this literature. And I think I know less than I knew three years ago. On a

01:04:20.900 relative basis, that's absolutely true. On an absolute basis, it might not be true. But on a

01:04:25.000 relative basis, which is we perceive relative changes, not absolute changes, that is unquestionably

01:04:29.460 correct. It's also sort of like the second valley of the Dunning-Kruger curve, right? It's like once

01:04:35.140 you, you know, you, oh, I think I know what's going on here. Nope, actually, I have no clue what's

01:04:38.720 going on here. I've written about this before where it's like, okay, when you, let's say the Civil

01:04:44.160 War, you learn about it in elementary school, whether you live in the north or the south, it's

01:04:50.240 very simple. It's like, we went to war to free the slaves, it was a war of northern aggression,

01:04:54.380 right? Like, you learn one of two things. It's very simple. Then you read about it a little bit

01:04:59.880 more, and it's really complicated. Now it's not so clear. It's like, hey, Lincoln said over and

01:05:04.940 over again, he didn't really want to free the slaves, you know? And oh, how can we say it's a,

01:05:10.240 it's just a war of northern aggression when the states wrote all these, you know, constitutions

01:05:14.680 that basically all they talk about is slavery, you know? It becomes complicated. And then there's,

01:05:19.520 there's really no good guys, there's really no bad guys, and then it, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah,

01:05:24.120 blah. And all of a sudden, you're in this morass, and you've, this is like, you heard it from a

01:05:27.860 teacher, it's simple. You've read one book, it's complex. You've read 10 books, it's complex.

01:05:32.780 You can't, and you read 20 books, you really study it, and then all of a sudden, it's very simple

01:05:37.960 again, right? And like, you go, oh, the Civil War was 100% about slavery. It was only about slavery,

01:05:44.500 and it's very simple. Even though you've come to the same conclusion that you had before,

01:05:50.700 you're understanding it in a profoundly different way. One is sort of egotistical, and one is a

01:05:57.860 humility, because you're aware of all the threads that go into it. Do you know what I mean? When I

01:06:03.160 look at this trilogy, now that I've just finished it, like, when I look at Obstacle, in some ways,

01:06:08.520 it's the tightest of the books, and it's sold, you know, it sells great. I hear from people how it's

01:06:15.500 resonated, but I don't know if I could write it again. I couldn't write it that way again,

01:06:20.900 because I wouldn't, in having done two other books, having read more, studied more, experienced

01:06:25.800 more, I don't think I would allow myself to be as simple as I was. Does that make sense?

01:06:33.540 It makes so much sense, Ryan, because I'm, which I wanted to ask you this tomorrow night over dinner,

01:06:39.300 but I think I'm going to ask you now. Apologies to the listener if you don't care about the nuts and

01:06:42.840 bolts of writing a book. As I'm getting closer to that first submission, which is probably a month

01:06:48.120 away, and by the time people listen to this, I will have already submitted it, and it'll be, you know,

01:06:52.320 going through the editing process. For so long, because I've been working on this book for three

01:06:56.460 years, all I wanted to do was get here, and now I'm like, oh, no, no, I don't want to hand it in,

01:07:00.580 because I'm still learning, and I know things today I didn't know three years ago, and that means

01:07:06.640 that on the day this book comes out, there's going to be things I know that aren't in the book,

01:07:10.200 and there's probably going to be things in this book I don't fully think are the most accurate

01:07:14.180 representation of knowledge, and I just, now that I've had this profound empathy for authors now,

01:07:20.700 which is how the hell do you do this? How do you take your hands off something knowing that knowledge

01:07:25.760 isn't static? Yeah, it's really tough. Winston Churchill, who most people don't think of as a

01:07:31.140 writer, probably wrote more books than just about anyone in the 20th century, and he says at some

01:07:36.260 point, you have to like, kill the book and fling it to the public, and I think it's right, you do,

01:07:41.080 you have to, you have to stop at some point. That's why the book has to be what you were capable of in

01:07:46.560 that moment, and it has to be a closed thing, like, the game is four quarters, and then it's over,

01:07:52.300 you, you don't replay the same game, you, you play again the next night or the next season,

01:07:57.840 do you know what I mean? And, and, but my point was more like you, you, I look at the book,

01:08:02.820 and it's just, I didn't know what I didn't know. So there's a certainty to some of the things that

01:08:09.120 in retrospect I see of, I see with more nuance now. And so in a way, each of the books is a,

01:08:14.900 is a balance, right? Because you want the books to be tight, you want them to be straightforward,

01:08:19.480 you want them to be compelling, but also you have to be intellectually honest. So each one of the books

01:08:23.780 has gotten a little bit longer because, not because I'm, I feel like I'm droning on, but because

01:08:28.500 what I was comfortable saying in one short sentence before, I now have to qualify and talk,

01:08:34.260 you know what I mean? So it becomes complicated, but you, at a certain point you have to go,

01:08:38.600 this is the best I was capable of up through November, 2019. And that's where I'm, when I can,

01:08:47.460 when I look at it in the future, I can't be comparing it to who I am now. I have to be asking,

01:08:53.600 did I leave anything on the table in November, 2019? Did you learn that from Robert?

01:08:59.600 Yeah, a little bit. I, you just learn it from the process. I had a weird experience because,

01:09:03.800 so trust me, I'm lying. How did you meet Robert Green?

01:09:05.960 Through another author who I was working for and we had lunch and then Robert was looking for a

01:09:10.820 research assistant. Yeah, it was just transformative. You describe him as one of the

01:09:16.200 most important mentors you've, you've had with respect to writing and maybe beyond?

01:09:19.700 Of course. Yeah. As a, as a person, as a writer, as a professional, he's just fantastic. So with my

01:09:26.400 first book, I wrote it in 2011, came out in 2012. I did the paperback, which is an expanded edition

01:09:33.280 of some extra stuff and some changes in 2013. And then I wrote an updated edition after the 2016

01:09:39.220 election. So it's like, I've had this weird interaction with the text where I had to go back

01:09:44.140 and edit and change. This is where the ego thing comes in. Mostly what I take from that and what I try

01:09:49.360 to think about on a regular basis is that certainty is the enemy because certainty is what you regret

01:09:56.360 when you look back. It's not that you took a stand or you thought this or you said this.

01:10:02.300 It's the tone with which you did it that you can come to regret. It was the pretension that of course

01:10:09.580 I'm right. When in retrospect, it's like, how could you have thought that you knew this? You'd only

01:10:14.760 thought about it for 10 minutes. I'd like to think that as I go on as a writer, that it's softer and

01:10:21.460 more balanced and more nuanced because if that's not the direction you're going in, I think you're

01:10:27.520 going in the wrong direction. Stillness to me seems like a lonely thing, but you say just the opposite,

01:10:34.880 right? Yeah. Well, I think that we confuse stillness. We think stillness is synonymous with

01:10:40.880 meditation or we think it's like stillness is what the Dalai Lama has or some person on a 30-day

01:10:46.900 silent meditation retreat. Now, even outside of that, there still is this connotation of solitude,

01:10:51.880 right? Like we practice stillness by ourselves, with our thoughts, with being present, et cetera.

01:10:57.100 Well, that's the easiest way to get there, right? Do you know what I mean? Like if you were busy and

01:11:02.880 overwhelmed and stressed and having trouble coming up with your thoughts, like you're finishing this book,

01:11:07.400 the easiest way to break through that would be to travel to a place you don't live, like go to a cabin

01:11:13.860 in the woods and just work on it. And I'm not saying there's not a place for that in life, but that's not

01:11:19.800 sustainable. Like you can't do that every day if you want to maximize for these other things we're

01:11:26.640 talking about. So I'm interested in how do you have stillness in the real world where you have bills to pay

01:11:34.280 and, you know, a family and a house and neighbors and you drive a car in traffic. Do you know what I

01:11:40.520 mean? Like, so how do you find, how do you access stillness in the course of normal real life? I think

01:11:46.840 solitude and silence are a big part of it, but I'm thinking, you know, just the stillness of reducing

01:11:53.100 expectations, you know, reducing or extracting the unnecessary, locking into what you're doing,

01:12:00.560 whatever it is, even if it's a minor thing, you know, so I'm interested in Kennedy and the missile

01:12:05.380 crisis or Anne Frank and her, you know, sitting in front of her diary, or I'm thinking of the opposite

01:12:11.260 of whatever Tiger Woods' life was like. I'm thinking about stillness for actual people in the real

01:12:17.860 world. Stillness for Marcus Aurelius as the emperor, you know? So actually I want to talk about meditation

01:12:22.800 because you specifically don't talk about it. And I think that was a deliberate decision, right?

01:12:27.620 Yeah, it was. What was the basis of that decision? Well, again, we were talking about,

01:12:31.440 you know, how do you find people where they are? I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that

01:12:36.040 people don't meditate, don't really want to meditate. The evidence is equally overwhelming

01:12:40.700 that it works, right? And that it's great, but we have trouble getting there. And so when I'm talking

01:12:46.740 about stillness, I didn't want to talk about, first off, I think it's problematic that people live

01:12:51.920 chaotic, dysfunctional, disorganized lives, and then they think going on a seven-day silent meditation

01:12:58.200 retreat is magically going to solve all of that when they're just coming back to their same life

01:13:04.580 right afterwards. So it's like going on a juice cleanse or something. Do you know what I mean?

01:13:08.980 It's not really doing anything. And so the idea was there's lots of great stuff about meditation out

01:13:15.940 there. It's not really what I do anyway, so I'm not going to pretend I'm the expert on it.

01:13:21.000 But what I can talk about is a more comprehensive, sort of philosophical approach to stillness.

01:13:29.380 And let's see if we can't start there. And then at the end of it, I think you're in a better place

01:13:33.940 to try some of those things. Let's start with journaling. Yeah. Stoics journaled.

01:13:41.060 Yeah, we wouldn't have any Stoics. We wouldn't have Marcus Aurelius if the Stoics didn't journal.

01:13:46.600 And what I think is so interesting about Marcus Aurelius, having now started to really study some

01:13:51.360 of the more obscure earlier Stoics, is you realize even a lot of the stuff, like a good chunk of

01:13:58.040 meditations is like quotes, like from other people. But even a chunk of the stuff that's not quotes,

01:14:03.680 he didn't make up. Like that he's almost running through like flashcards in this journal. He's like

01:14:09.880 running through exercises or thoughts or things that he's, he's paraphrasing things that he was

01:14:17.040 taught by his teachers. And you realize that philosophy is actually an active word-based

01:14:24.480 writing process, not a book that you read one time and then you've magically absorbed the insights.

01:14:32.200 Let's talk about this process because I think the way you describe meditation, you know,

01:14:37.480 the way I asked you to explain it to patients is sort of similar, right? Which is, it's not about

01:14:41.640 meditation. Meditation is, it's a tool, it's a training platform, if you will, that teaches you

01:14:48.020 a skill that for me, and I think people more sophisticated than me will be able to talk about

01:14:53.200 much more nuance around this. Like to listen to Sam Harris talk about this, of course, it's

01:14:56.860 infinitely more enlightening. For me, it's simply gap awareness. That's literally all I care about is

01:15:03.600 the gap between stimulus and response. I want a bigger gap. Sure. And I do this goofy thing every

01:15:11.360 day, most days, this practice where I sit there and I, you know, focus on my breath and I catch

01:15:17.720 myself thinking and I come back and forth and back and forth and back and forth because as Jeff Warren,

01:15:22.900 who's a great meditation teacher, describes it, that's just a bicep curl. Yeah. I might go into the

01:15:26.500 gym and I'm doing curls or squats or whatever exercise I want to do so that when I leave the gym and I go and

01:15:32.460 pick up my bag of groceries or I go pick up my kid, I have some muscle to do that. And with physical

01:15:38.160 muscles, it's so easy. We're so wired to see that. I think with some of these cognitive emotional

01:15:43.880 muscles, we don't have quite the same. So how do you think about the exercise of bringing stillness

01:15:53.260 in? I mean, you've talked a lot about it. I think we should talk about these in detail. What are the

01:15:56.740 enemies of stillness, right? You know, jealousy and things like that. Maybe we start there actually,

01:16:00.760 and then we'll sort of, unless you think it's better to talk about it in the, yeah, whichever.

01:16:05.140 Let's start with, what are the things, what are the obstacles to stillness?

01:16:08.480 I mean, overactivity, certainly sort of committing to more than you can conceivably handle.

01:16:13.220 We talked about sort of enough, like an insatiable demand or need, certainly one of them. I think

01:16:19.980 noise is the enemy of stillness, like unnecessary noise. And that can be internal noise or exterior noise.

01:16:25.800 Bad habits, bad routines, certainly. I think people can get to, you know, they can go on a

01:16:31.660 wonderful vacation, and every day they go to this coffee shop, and they sit around, and they hang out.

01:16:36.300 It's wonderful. And then they go back to their sort of life where they wake up five minutes before

01:16:41.120 they're supposed to go to work, and then they're sprinting around. You know what I mean? Like,

01:16:44.860 or they have a couple days without their phone, and then they get addicted to some new app. So it's

01:16:49.600 sort of routine structure limits. The lack thereof is, to me, a huge, you know, obstacle to stillness.

01:16:57.240 I think a deficiency in terms of, like, hobbies or practices in their life. So I think meditation is

01:17:05.720 not just the practice of doing it, it's the having a practice, period. So if you're like,

01:17:12.480 my practice is that I cook dinner every night. That could be your thing. Like, having a thing that

01:17:17.800 you do, that you control, that you can access on demand, is hugely important. So for me,

01:17:25.380 it's running or swimming. You know, just having this place I can go to when I'm stressed or

01:17:31.800 overwhelmed, or when I'm struggling with some big decision, is a huge source of relief and reflection

01:17:38.920 for me. How long does it take you to finally look at your phone in the morning? My thing now is,

01:17:45.140 like, so this morning, it was about two and a half hours. So what's your morning routine?

01:17:50.220 So I wake up early. With or without an alarm? I mean, I got a three-year-old, so, and a four-month-old,

01:17:55.160 so usually it doesn't even matter if I have an alarm. If I am using an alarm, it's by phone, but it's in

01:18:01.320 the other room. Like, it's not near the bed. And that's a huge, minor thing, but can have a major

01:18:06.300 impact, is like, do not sleep with your phone in the room. But so I wake up, you know, let's say six or

01:18:11.860 seven, don't touch the phone. Have you used Spar, the app Spar? No. Basically, you do these

01:18:17.760 challenges. So it's like, let's do 50 push-ups a day. You do the 50 push-ups a day, but you have

01:18:23.800 to, like, video yourself doing the thing on the app, and so people can verify whether you did it

01:18:28.940 or not. And then if you miss, it charges you, like, five bucks or ten bucks, or I'm sure it could be

01:18:34.120 a hundred dollars. But it charges you each day that you miss, and this goes into a pot, and then at the end

01:18:38.880 of the challenge, the people who didn't miss split the pot, which is awesome. I use that to

01:18:45.020 start the habit, which is I'm not going to check my phone for the first 10 minutes, then we worked

01:18:49.080 our way up to 30 minutes, then an hour. How do you videotape that? You only do it if you made it. So

01:18:54.400 like, I woke up at 6, 7.30 right now, it's an hour and a half. Awesome. And people go, oh, great job.

01:19:00.440 You know, it's like, there's a community thing. But so I started, I worked my way up to about an hour,

01:19:04.200 but now it's just like, how long can I go? And, and it really, it's very helpful for me in terms

01:19:11.380 of just starting the day, not from my back foot. So what did you do with that two and a half hours

01:19:18.100 you had that weren't cursed with the phone? Yeah. So this morning, I took my son for a bike ride,

01:19:23.340 like in a bike trailer. So that was, you know, 45 minutes. Then we had breakfast, then I worked.

01:19:28.880 Like I went, I went, sat with a journal, and then I went straight into the writing for the day.

01:19:32.640 And I forget why I had to get a photo off my phone for something I was doing. So it wasn't

01:19:37.300 even like, ooh, now, you know, now I'm going to go respond to text messages. It was just like,

01:19:42.220 the phone is a value. I mean, like, you know, yesterday, it was probably two, two and a half

01:19:46.400 hours, but then I needed directions to somewhere I was going. So I'm, it's not that I don't want to

01:19:52.160 ever use the phone. It's just like, I want to be using the phone rather than be used by the phone,

01:19:57.840 which is what I think most of the time our use of these devices is. We're being used

01:20:02.500 by the technology. Now I'm guessing many people listening to this will think,

01:20:06.380 what the hell is this guy talking about? I don't have that luxury, right? And there's going to be a,

01:20:11.520 and whether that's true or not, I don't know. Like I, of course, I'm just thinking about it

01:20:15.280 through my lens. Like how long could I realistically go without the phone? You know, like you, I sort of

01:20:20.120 have the privilege of working for myself. I probably have more things that are pinging me that may be

01:20:25.360 time sensitive, you know, vis-a-vis a patient or something like that, or someone on my team needs to get a

01:20:29.140 old of me. But, but in the end, I still live a pretty privileged existence relative to someone

01:20:34.120 who's at the bottom of their pyramid, whatever their organization is. And they're at the, you know,

01:20:39.740 they're beholden to somebody else. Yeah. And I went through that phase in my life and you're trading

01:20:45.140 things to get where you want to get. So I, I'm totally not saying that this is for everyone for

01:20:50.320 right now. But if what usually people go, Oh, this is, I'm early in this phase. What actually

01:20:57.700 tends to happen though, is that you actually get less freedom, the more successful you get,

01:21:04.560 right? Which is precisely the wrong way for it to go. So I'm, I'm thinking it's, I don't know though,

01:21:10.160 it's weird. I think people actively like, Oh, like when you hear someone's like, Oh, I don't even

01:21:15.280 have a smartphone or they go, Oh, I, you know, I have, I meditate for an hour each day or I do this

01:21:20.080 that people immediately try to make up some story about why that's their sort of privileged existence.

01:21:26.760 And that could never work for me rather than thinking about how can I have my version of that?

01:21:31.060 And it's like, I am probably busier than most of the people who are saying, Oh, you, how did you have

01:21:37.780 two and a half hours without your phone? Do you know what I mean? Like I've got people who work for me,

01:21:42.480 I've got projects that are going on. I've got deadlines I have to meet, but it's precisely

01:21:46.580 because I have all of that going on. I'm not fucking sending Snapchat DMs. Do you know what

01:21:53.940 I mean? Like it's not, it's not that I wasn't working. I was at my computer. I was connected,

01:21:59.100 but what I wasn't doing is using a device. That's main purpose is to make me use the device.

01:22:05.560 When you're on the computer, what is your relationship with that? You know, obviously email,

01:22:10.620 people who listen to this podcast, I feel, I feel like I must be spending way too much time

01:22:15.360 railing on email because I'm at the point now where the first time somebody meets me,

01:22:20.300 they usually say, I know how much you hate email. You know, I'm sorry for emailing you or whatever.

01:22:25.240 So for me, I like emails, my preferred medium in the sense that like, I want it all funneling towards

01:22:32.700 there so that I can have control over it. So like, that's one of my things is like, you're not also

01:22:38.980 DMing me on Twitter. You're not also, you know, sending me Facebook messages. You're not also

01:22:44.120 chatting on LinkedIn. Email is like a pretty good medium for me because it's asynchronous.

01:22:49.320 That's what I like about it. What I hate are fucking phone calls. That's what I want to have

01:22:54.280 the least amount of in my life. Or God bless WhatsApp with the little timestamp of, you know,

01:22:58.940 when you actually saw the message versus, I can't stand WhatsApp. Yeah. Yeah. Or the,

01:23:03.440 hey, let's get together for coffee. And we'll, you know, like these sort of things where it's like

01:23:07.900 a thing that could have been a phone call that could have been an email. Do you know what I mean?

01:23:11.640 That could have been nothing because you could have just Googled this, right? Email is good for me.

01:23:16.880 So I think people should figure out what's, what's good for them, but email is good for me,

01:23:19.940 but I'm not writing and simultaneously checking my email every time that, you know, it doesn't,

01:23:25.340 so do you have, do you have rules around how often you check email?

01:23:28.560 Not really. My thing is like, since it's my main thing of like how people get ahold of me,

01:23:34.800 it's like, I'm, I'm sort of peripherally checking it throughout the day. So it's,

01:23:38.240 I can see if things are happening, but what I'm, the way my morning is set up and the way my life is,

01:23:43.420 is it's like, I'm getting everything in the right headspace so I can go right into whatever the main

01:23:48.080 writing or the main task that I have to do for the day is before I get sucked into the email,

01:23:55.520 like reactive response stuff for the day. So yesterday I had some articles to write and then

01:24:01.660 I had a presentation I had to make that probably took me through towards, you know, 1230 or one.

01:24:08.100 And then, so it was like after lunch, now I got to respond to all these things people want for me.

01:24:13.480 So how does jealousy factor into stillness? I mean, we've talked about the relationship of

01:24:18.100 jealousy and ego. Are these things synonymous? I mean, when you find something that is anti-stillness,

01:24:23.540 is it pro-ego or not necessarily? Well, I would find there's very few egotistical people who I

01:24:28.360 think we would define as still. Take the five or six most egotistical people that you can think of

01:24:34.220 historically or that, you know, personally, I would say you'd probably trade places with very few of

01:24:40.180 them, even if they are extraordinarily successful, right? I do find ego and stillness are pretty

01:24:46.560 mutually exclusive. Why do you think that is? Let's pick an example of somebody, let's use someone

01:24:52.360 other than the president to throw it at somebody else. I mean, was Bill Clinton a still guy?

01:24:57.320 Bill and Hillary's ego has caused them a lot of problems, but it's in a less sort of day-to-day

01:25:03.800 misery sense of the word, I would think. Who's a good example? I mean, you look at a Kanye West,

01:25:10.580 right? Or you look at an Elizabeth Holmes, or you look at the guy that did Fyre Fest, you know,

01:25:16.980 like those, that's not, you don't want to be that person. And look at the Fyre Fest guy,

01:25:21.940 I think it was a great example. Weirdly, he called me before he went to jail, he wanted to talk. We

01:25:26.580 never ended up connecting, but...

01:25:28.420 That's because he called you, he should have emailed you.

01:25:30.060 Yes, yes. What I found so compelling about the documentary, so, okay, he commits this massive

01:25:34.660 fraud.

01:25:35.020 Yeah, tell folks what Fyre Fest is and, you know, how about that.

01:25:37.500 So, he was a concert organ, well, he was a, basically a scam artist who put together this thing

01:25:42.240 called Fyre Fest, which was supposed to be this enormous concert on this island in the

01:25:47.000 Caribbean, and it ended up sort of blowing up all over his face. They made this fascinating

01:25:51.220 documentary about just, like, what happened. But the point, what I love, have you seen the

01:25:55.820 documentary?

01:25:56.260 I have not. I mean, I'm familiar with the story, but I haven't seen the documentary.

01:25:58.280 You should watch it. It's fascinating.

01:25:58.460 What's it called?

01:25:59.220 They're both called Fyre Fest. One's on Netflix, and one is on Hulu. You wouldn't think this would

01:26:04.300 be worth two documentaries, but it totally is.

01:26:06.900 Really?

01:26:07.400 Yeah, it's fascinating.

01:26:08.440 Okay.

01:26:08.600 But so, in one of the documentaries, I forget which one, he commits this massive fraud. It's

01:26:14.500 kind of intentionally, kind of unintentionally. It blows up in his face. He's humiliated. It

01:26:18.540 costs him all this money. It gets investigated. When he gets back, instead of looking in the

01:26:24.660 mirror and going, how did this happen? What change am I going to make in my life? You know,

01:26:30.160 he ends up starting this other scam. Like, he starts trying to sell these concert tickets

01:26:34.900 that he doesn't have. The point is, like, he couldn't stop himself. It becomes,

01:26:38.600 like, a compulsion, right? And I think, I'm going to keep doing Trump, but when you look

01:26:42.580 at Trump, people are like, why can't he just not tweet, right? Because it's like, that would

01:26:47.840 make sense, right? He could be a pretty good president, I think, in some ways without doing

01:26:51.880 it, but he can't. It's not, he's not in control. The ego is in control, right? And so, you just

01:26:58.160 see that time and time again. It prevents one from being able to stop, and it goes so far

01:27:03.520 beyond self-interest, right? Like, it becomes actively self-destructive. So, I think what

01:27:09.440 you were saying is, you were asking me a specific question about stillness, how it pertained

01:27:13.640 to stillness.

01:27:14.260 Well, and jealousy and ego.

01:27:16.080 Oh, jealousy. Yeah. Theodore Roosevelt's line was, comparison is the thief of joy. I like

01:27:20.720 Joseph Epstein's line. He said, of all the seven deadly sins, envy is the only one that's

01:27:27.680 no fun. And he's totally right, you know?

01:27:31.220 Let me think about that for a second. Yeah. And at least in the moment, gluttony is pretty

01:27:35.480 fun.

01:27:35.940 Right.

01:27:36.280 Sloth can feel okay in the moment.

01:27:39.080 It's the only one that primarily punishes the person.

01:27:43.260 The recipient. When you are envious, it is always a negative feeling. You're only feeling

01:27:49.800 bad about what you don't have. And you are angry or resentful or hurt that someone

01:27:57.420 else has it instead, right? And so, jealousy and envy are just, you know, it's a zero-sum

01:28:04.320 way to go through the world. It's a negative way to go through the world. It prevents you.

01:28:09.380 I think that the irony of envy is often we are envious of people who are envious of other

01:28:19.260 people. In some cases, we don't know it, but secretly, they're envious of us, right?

01:28:24.600 Like, you know, it's like, think of all the people right now who are giving up everything

01:28:30.240 and working incredibly hard because they want to become famous. And then you think of all

01:28:34.300 the famous people who complain about being famous and would, in some ways, give everything

01:28:39.480 to have their privacy back. This is why the Stoics are saying we sort of question these

01:28:43.820 things and we think about them. Because under examination, they make a lot less sense that

01:28:48.880 they do just sort of in the sway of whatever that feeling is.

01:28:53.540 You wrote that the call to stillness comes quietly, but the modern world does not. And

01:28:58.960 that creates a pretty negative pressure against stillness.

01:29:03.920 Yeah. No one's beaten on your door begging you to be still. Like, all the incentives are

01:29:09.860 lined up for the opposite.

01:29:11.000 How much of that do you think is sort of been a monotonically increasing function? In other

01:29:17.580 words, like, if we could transport you back to, you know, just before the Civil War, right? It's

01:29:24.020 whatever that would be, 150 years ago, 140 years ago, I guess 150 years ago now. How still was the

01:29:29.720 world then?

01:29:30.560 I think it's in pockets, right? Rome is a super noisy place. I mean, I opened the book with just

01:29:36.220 the incredible noise of the city that Seneca is trying to tune out as he's writing. But one of

01:29:42.000 my favorite quotes in the book, Blaise Pascal, in like, you know, mid-1500s, he goes, all of

01:29:47.440 humanity's problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

01:29:52.800 What do you think Pascal was getting at there? How much of that is about comfort within our own skin

01:29:57.140 versus the ability to silence our monkey mind versus the ability to distance yourself from all of

01:30:03.660 these other forms of suffering? I mean, Pascal has said some brilliant things about suffering.

01:30:07.360 Yeah, I think he means all of those. I think he means that also in the sense that all of our

01:30:12.340 suffering stems from the things we go out and do to try to alleviate that suffering that ultimately

01:30:18.960 create new forms of suffering.

01:30:19.780 Yeah, I think it was Pascal who actually said the distraction is the greatest thing that we pursue

01:30:23.380 to combat our misery. Of course, I'm paraphrasing, yet it is in and of itself our greatest form of

01:30:27.800 misery.

01:30:28.300 Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's this famous story. It's now like a viral email, but it actually

01:30:33.320 dates to around the same time as Pascal, and he may reference it. But there's that story,

01:30:38.360 you know, it's like the rich CEO is on vacation, and he sees like a Vietnamese fisherman, and he

01:30:44.020 says, this is so beautiful. What's your plan? The guy's like, oh, you know, I fish a couple hours a

01:30:48.360 day. And the guy goes, oh, what you got to do is, you know, buy another fishing boat, and then you buy

01:30:53.300 it. Like, he talks about this whole scale of like how to expand and grow the business. And then

01:30:58.220 the fisherman says, well, then what do I do? He's like, well, then you sell it, and you retire.

01:31:04.360 And basically, the point is, it brings you right back to where you're at. But this story actually

01:31:08.780 dates back like 600 plus years. It's the story of a minister speaking to a king, and the king is

01:31:14.920 saying, well, you know, we have to invade Prussia, and then after Prussia, we have to invade Vienna,

01:31:20.000 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, and then we can live in peace, which is where they were,

01:31:24.560 right? And so that, I think that's part of what Pascal is saying, is that like, if we could sit

01:31:30.020 quietly in a room alone, we wouldn't go do these things that then are prevent us from sitting quietly

01:31:35.660 in a room alone. They've actually done some studies, maybe you know more about it than I do, but the

01:31:40.740 study where they'll sit someone in a room, and they will say, I'm going to come back in 15 minutes,

01:31:45.780 you have to wait here. Or you can press this button, which will give you an electrical shock, and then

01:31:51.040 you can leave right now. And people will take a painful electrical shock than to sit quietly with

01:31:57.980 themselves. So Pascal was more right than he knew. You know, it's funny. I always interpret those

01:32:03.980 studies as, is the pain of the shock worth more than my time, you know, to leave. But I see that's

01:32:11.740 sort of interesting. I thought about that too. Yeah, what is 15 minutes of your life worth? But

01:32:15.580 is that person going to, what are you going to do at home? Like, you're going to sit there for 15

01:32:19.820 minutes, right? So I, I don't remember, maybe there's some reward in the study also. But the

01:32:23.840 point is, like, sometimes you feel this as a father, you're like, I got to rush home, I got to

01:32:29.000 drive dangerously, I got to get, I got to see my kids. Then you see your kids and like, two minutes

01:32:33.340 later, you're like, I'm gonna go in the other room and do my thing now. You know, like, like, we have

01:32:37.700 this good urge to do the right thing to be there with people. But then are we actually doing it when

01:32:44.960 we're there? That resonates a lot. Because I find in my wife was recently away for four days. So I

01:32:53.600 was, that's the longest I'd been with all three kids for that period of time. It was awesome. I

01:33:00.200 actually enjoyed virtually every second of it infinitely harder than one can imagine if you're

01:33:06.180 me, who's not used to being there for throughout all of the interstitial parts of existence. And you

01:33:14.520 sort of realize, like, how many times was I tempted to just get up and go do something that I

01:33:19.820 couldn't go and do in that moment? Because in the if my wife's there, I can just go and

01:33:24.040 training, you're handing them off between each other. Yeah, yeah, totally. I don't know. I just

01:33:28.300 wonder, like, how did we get here? And I guess it's tempting to want to blame our electronic

01:33:34.840 environment. But there was no electronics in Rome. So it's not like electronics are the cause of this.

01:33:40.900 They're simply a convenient outlet for it. What is the cause of this?

01:33:44.860 Well, I don't know. But I was thinking about this, actually, this morning, because

01:33:48.220 on Sunday, I have to fly to Europe. And so there were two flight options. And they were both,

01:33:52.840 I'm not paying for either of them. They were both miles or something like that. But it was like,

01:33:56.320 okay, there's a business class flight at 10. Or there is a coach flight at two. It's a long flight,

01:34:04.620 you know, it's like eight hours. But it was like, obviously, I'd rather be comfortable. But am I

01:34:09.880 gonna, I've been gone so much, I've been on the road for this book. Four hours is a lot. Four

01:34:14.020 hours on a Sunday is a lot of family time, right? You know, it's also like, you know, leaving at 10

01:34:18.760 is profoundly different than leaving at two, because, you know, you have the whole, you know,

01:34:22.680 how much are they awake? What are you doing in the morning, whatever. So I chose the coach flight.

01:34:27.420 Again, this is a very privileged dilemma. But I took the coach flight. And I was sort of proud of

01:34:32.320 myself, they did the right thing, whatever. But then if there was something I wanted to do in town

01:34:37.260 this week, I might be gone for four hours and not think anything of it. There's this subtlety with

01:34:42.840 which that creeps in versus the distinct and stark contrast of the big decision. Yes, when it's a big

01:34:49.800 black and white decision, we kind of know what the right thing is. But the drifting towards this or

01:34:55.540 that where it's a little more gradual, it's harder. And so again, this is where that memento mori

01:35:01.540 stuff comes in, which is like, don't think about it as you have an unlimited amount of this to choose

01:35:07.020 from. You got to always be coming back to it actually kind of is a black and white decision,

01:35:12.040 because you'll never get the time back. And so was it actually more important that you went and did

01:35:17.120 x, y and z? Maybe not. That's a great story. Because I see that example in my life all the time. I'm

01:35:23.240 generally better at drawing boundaries when the asks are enormous. I'm really bad at drawing

01:35:30.520 boundaries when the asks are subtle and tender and slight and barely noticeable. Yeah. Yeah. But

01:35:36.560 the integral of those, the area under the curve of that latter category often eclipses the former.

01:35:43.360 Yeah. Well, there's just way more of them and they probably add up to be. So it's like, yeah,

01:35:48.260 if you went away for two days, you'd feel like, oh, that's a huge deal. But if you went away for two

01:35:52.180 days, but you were present a hundred percent of the time you were home, it'd be nothing. The problem is

01:35:56.700 when you're home, you're also running around and doing this and that. You're not actually there.

01:36:01.820 Yeah. It's, it's tough.

01:36:03.440 This is about living well, but you also say this is about dying well. What is, what does dying well

01:36:08.580 mean?

01:36:09.320 Well, I don't have a ton of experience with dying naturally, but it is the sort of the theme of

01:36:16.200 momentum or the theme about death is this is where we're all going, right? So Cicero and then

01:36:22.460 through Montaigne, they say to philosophize is to learn how to die. It's maybe something we've

01:36:27.600 lost, but that sort of death as your last gesture, as the final thing, the most important thing you

01:36:33.000 do in life is, is maybe something that the ancients were much bigger believers in than we are today

01:36:40.360 down, you know, in some cases it's these dramatic suicides. In other cases, it's just, you know, sort of

01:36:46.340 what are you going to do in these final moments where the last things you're going to say.

01:36:49.780 But I just, I like the idea that you're training for that or that you're moving towards that

01:36:56.320 as a reminder that this stuff matters, you know, these ideas, these things that you're

01:37:02.900 training for something important.

01:37:05.620 Expand on that a little bit, because I think for many people that's counterintuitive, right?

01:37:09.460 Which is, wait a minute, how could focusing on my death make my life any better?

01:37:15.360 One of the things I left from Seneca, he's talking about, he's talking about these sort of old

01:37:19.160 people that you see who can't, can't let go. He's like, you should look with pity on the aged lawyer

01:37:25.740 who continues to plead in court for his clients. He's talking about the, the guy who can't accept

01:37:30.940 that his moment is passed and he has to pass the baton to the next generation, right? That's a,

01:37:36.920 that's a person who, for whom, despite all their success, all their fame, all their money,

01:37:41.140 there's not enough. It's like, they're going to be pleading in court until they drop dead on the

01:37:46.140 spot. Now, what about the argument that says, but if that is their greatest source of joy,

01:37:50.500 don't we want them doing that rather than sitting in a rocking chair as using the proverbial

01:37:54.400 counterexample? Yeah, I guess the question is, is this actually fun or is this a compulsion?

01:37:59.880 There's this fascinating video you can watch of Joan Rivers where they're asking her, she's like,

01:38:04.300 why are you still performing? You know, why are you doing this? Like, not in like a judgmental way,

01:38:08.640 but she, she brings out her calendar. She flash forwards a couple months and she goes like,

01:38:13.020 see these blank pages? She's like, if these pages stay blank, it means that I'm nothing,

01:38:20.420 that I'm, I've fallen off, that my career was pointless. Like, she basically goes in,

01:38:25.440 she reveals that you, sometimes you get those glimpses of people's internal monologue and you

01:38:31.800 get a glimpse of her internal monologue. And on the one hand, it, it gives you a sense of how she

01:38:36.300 managed to accomplish this credit. She built this incredible career. She, it's one of the first sort

01:38:40.820 huge female comics, how she persevered through all the bullshit she would have had to put up with.

01:38:46.020 But I think it's impossible to watch that video and not feel very sad also, right? Like, that's

01:38:51.940 craving versus fullness. It wasn't, see this blank calendar? What am I going to do? I'm going to sit

01:38:57.060 around at home? I love being on the road. I love working. You know, I love being with an audience.

01:39:01.900 Like, this is what I was put on the planet to do. That's a very different answer than,

01:39:06.360 you know, these blank pages mean that I'm worthless as a human being, right? And so the idea of aging

01:39:13.900 gracefully, of going out well, is, it's not this separate thing. It is the culmination of these

01:39:21.880 principles that we're talking about. Death isn't this separate random other thing. It is a process that

01:39:29.220 we're already engaged in, whether we know it or not, right? Like, you're dying now, and that you've

01:39:34.700 already died however many years you've been alive, and you're just doing it every day until you finally

01:39:38.940 get to the last time that you do it. And maybe that's more of it, I find it clarifying.

01:39:44.660 You're a father now twice. How has that changed your thinking about this? Because obviously,

01:39:50.320 you're a father as your, your first child was already born by the time you were writing this book.

01:39:55.160 Your second child came along after you finished the book. How did the influence of them in your lives,

01:40:02.600 I mean, you've written about the, the impact of being a father, but how does that help you think

01:40:08.100 about this runway? One of the interesting things you experienced, it was a, it was a shock for me.

01:40:14.300 When you bring your kids home from the hospital for the first time, maybe people prepared me wrong,

01:40:19.060 but I was prepared for like complete chaos, right? Like the sort of sleep deprived craziness. And that,

01:40:26.300 that's certainly there, but actually it's like those like first couple of weeks,

01:40:30.340 you're not doing anything. Oh, especially as the dad, especially as that, but you and your,

01:40:35.660 your wife or, you know, whatever your arrangement is, it was this rude, but also wonderful awakening

01:40:40.900 that like, that's what being a parent is like being a parent is not like running around and

01:40:46.380 taking them places and doing things like being a parent. It's just what your life is. The stillness

01:40:53.420 of that period I still think of quite often, because you're not supposed to be anywhere,

01:40:59.940 right? You're not supposed to be doing anything. You don't have the ability or the energy to do

01:41:04.800 anything. It's just like what we're doing is being very quiet while this person sleeps. Like that's what

01:41:11.440 we're doing. You're not also mowing the lawn, right? Or, or, you know, renovating your bathrooms.

01:41:19.080 Like you're not doing anything. You can't do anything. That's an energy I try to access quite

01:41:23.920 often as well, which is like, like Saturday doesn't have to be this, you know, complicated

01:41:31.460 orchestrated event. It's not a choreographed dance. It's a, oh, we just sitting out in the yard and,

01:41:39.820 you know, digging holes for the next three hours. Is that what we're doing? And being okay with that.

01:41:44.360 I think parenting and presence are very related because what is fascinating and entertaining and

01:41:54.280 stimulating for them to an adult is usually an incredibly boring thing. And so you, you almost

01:42:00.920 are forced to adopt that, that childlike existence. And it's, I find it very refreshing.

01:42:08.660 How do you feel about Saturdays in general? You've, you've talked about this idea of what is your

01:42:12.460 Saturday look like? And the paradox of those days that are hyper scheduled aren't necessarily very

01:42:20.380 productive days when it comes to doing important work. When I talk to people about success, I sort

01:42:25.960 of go not like, what do you want to accomplish? What do you want to have? What do you want to have

01:42:29.840 done? But like, what do you want? How do you want that to manifest itself into your life? Like,

01:42:35.540 what do you want your life to look like? So, you know, if you're, if you're a basketball player,

01:42:41.100 you want, you know, probably game days, your, you know, your dream life, you know, you got the

01:42:45.680 routine, you go, and then you're in the crowd and you're playing. For me, it's like, I like a day

01:42:50.500 with almost no interruptions, exterior interruptions. I like a little time to write. I like not feeling

01:42:56.800 pressure. I like time with family. I like being outside, you know, like, and so when I think about

01:43:02.600 what that dream day is, you know, it's like when you, you visit somewhere on vacation and then you're

01:43:08.100 like, Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to live here? You know, it's like, I think when you have one of

01:43:12.520 those perfect days, you should go like, how can my whole life be like this? And you have a lot of

01:43:18.260 power over that. But then we go back to green to shit we don't want to do. How much power do we have

01:43:24.180 over that? I mean, again, the skeptic would say, well, Ryan, you're successful. Of course you have

01:43:29.380 control over that, but I have a nine to five job or I'm a single parent or, you know, how much control

01:43:35.220 do I have over my ability to make every day my Saturday? Yeah. Again, using Saturday as this

01:43:41.920 sort of analogy. Yeah. Yeah. And I think Saturday is hard for people because they think like I don't

01:43:46.680 work Saturdays, right? Like my, my Saturday involves me doing what I do. Right. But it wasn't free for

01:43:55.020 me to set up this life. There were real costs to it. I could live in New York and be on television

01:44:01.980 more, you know, I could live in LA and have a bunch of different writing opportunities that I don't

01:44:06.740 have, or I could spend more time in town and it would be better. But it's all relative because

01:44:11.640 we do different things and we have different wants and needs and, and, and different, you know,

01:44:15.560 sort of expectations for life. But the point is like this life that I set up was not gifted to me.

01:44:21.820 This, this required a bunch of different compromises and a bunch of different well thought

01:44:27.720 out intentional decisions. You know, it was buying a house that was less than I could afford

01:44:33.160 so that I didn't, I could actually enjoy it and not have to go be away from said house to pay for

01:44:39.380 that house. It means saying no to things that would be awesome to do or cool to do or great stories to

01:44:45.300 tell someday, but don't want to. How do you navigate that? Well, I try to go, you know, is this getting

01:44:52.040 me closer to that day or further from that day? So this month had maybe one of those days, two of

01:44:58.420 those days. So it's like, look, it's wonderful though. The book has done well. The tour has been

01:45:02.640 awesome. You know, the experience has been great, but like, I've got to figure out how to make this

01:45:07.600 not happen as often. And how do you know how to juggle that? I mean, I've heard you, I think I read

01:45:14.520 it in one of your blog posts. It's actually an old post you wrote a long time ago, I think about,

01:45:19.500 so you want to be an author. Yeah. How long ago did you write that? Oh, that would have been

01:45:23.220 2013, maybe 2012, a while ago. Yeah. And I'm glad I read it because it also, it gave me a great sort

01:45:32.800 of warmup for what's to come because there's a part of me that's sort of thinking, well, look,

01:45:37.340 once I write this book, I'm done. I never want to have to talk about it. I don't want to have to go

01:45:41.380 on any podcasts. I, God forbid, don't want to have to go and do book tours or any of that stuff.

01:45:48.160 And reading that post was a real kick in the groin in a wake up call. It's like, no dude,

01:45:53.300 like you got to work. Yeah. I mean, I finished this book in December. So that's how long this

01:46:00.260 process has been going on. The administrative. Right. Right. It's a nine month lead from the time

01:46:06.180 you are fully done with this thing until it comes out. And, and, and there's lots to do. I guess my,

01:46:11.640 my question really is how do you know you're not just on a slippery slope where you're saying,

01:46:16.520 well, it's because of the book that I'm going to only have one of those days for this month and

01:46:21.920 this month. And how do you know that that doesn't ultimately just become the new norm?

01:46:27.340 Uh, I don't know. I mean, I was just talking to my wife about this. It's like you tell yourself,

01:46:31.540 it'll go back to normal after a certain point, but it doesn't go back to normal. You have to put it

01:46:36.540 back to normal, right? Like you have to, you have to stop. You have to draw a line.

01:46:40.800 Bringing this out of the world of just you and to the average person that's going to be listening to

01:46:45.620 this. It's, it's really easy to rationalize. This is the season when I have to work extra hard.

01:46:51.340 Yeah. People say it's going to be two years while I start this company and then, and it's like, no,

01:46:55.980 it's, that's not how this works. Right. And so that's why I'm much more interested in creating

01:47:01.740 sustainable ways of doing, I'm not like for a launch, there is a little bit of a sprint element

01:47:07.680 to it. It's a month I think is a manageable amount of time. But I think when you start to get into

01:47:13.540 these, like the next 10 years are going to be really hard, but then after that, it's going to

01:47:17.500 be like when that period starts to get more than a couple of weeks or a couple of months, like I think

01:47:22.760 you're probably doing it wrong. You want to be thinking about how do you build something more

01:47:26.420 sustainable and endurable? What do you think is with meditation? Again, one of the things that makes

01:47:33.340 meditation nice is you're talking about the practice, not the state. In other words, meditation by

01:47:39.740 itself is not particularly interesting. It's not even enjoyable half the time, but it's a practice.

01:47:44.720 And once a person understands what that practice is, it allows them to function better outside of

01:47:49.920 their meditative practice. Conversely, you're writing about stillness, which is the desired outcome.

01:47:56.500 And I've always found that to be a harder way to explain the things. I mean, it's a beautifully

01:48:00.780 important way to do it, which is this is the state you want versus this is the practice you do to get

01:48:07.140 a state. So how do you think about the journey there and that the tangible skills that one puts

01:48:13.240 in place? Well, you know, it's interesting to say that because when I think about ego and when I think

01:48:16.960 about this book, I think the title or the premise or the introduction is, okay, here are the costs of

01:48:22.980 ego. Here's maybe what a better place to be in would be like. In this book, it's like, here's how busy

01:48:28.980 and chaotic the world is. Here's maybe a better way to do it. But then when you actually look at the

01:48:32.900 chapters, the chapters of both of those books are either examples or counter examples of processes or

01:48:41.240 practices that allowed that state to ensue. Because the problem with like what you get from meditation

01:48:48.460 or what you get from stillness or whatever the opposite of ego is, is that there's an ineffability to

01:48:54.600 it. Like you can't really describe what it is because it's fleeting and ephemeral and also deeply unique to

01:49:02.540 each person and each time you have it. So what I'm trying to do in the books is just give you a bunch

01:49:07.940 of slices of approaches or ideas that if followed, if thought about, if sort of integrated into who you

01:49:16.020 are, will hopefully inch you to that place. So I'm mostly only thinking about practice. And I can't even

01:49:24.840 give you a definition of what stillness is, let alone like a magical recipe. But I can give you some

01:49:30.180 tools or strategies that tend to be correlated with achieving that outcome.

01:49:35.740 What do you think are three of those that are, I don't actually want to say the easiest to enact, but I'd

01:49:42.100 rather frame it as, let's say the most reliable, the most potent activators.

01:49:47.700 I think walking is a huge one. Every day I walk. Not only do I try to go on walks just like to be outside and do

01:49:54.080 nothing. Usually I take my son if we're not doing the bike thing, but just some sort of low impact physical

01:50:00.140 exercise, but doing the exercise for the eventual benefits, right? Just being outside.

01:50:05.340 And you don't get this from your running and your swimming.

01:50:07.600 I do, but it's separate. The running or swimming I'm doing for the physical benefits primarily. The walking is just

01:50:13.680 for the walking. It's where you think, it's where you're outside, it's where you're looking around. When I'm running,

01:50:19.600 I'm not like, Oh, look how wonderful this is. Do you run with music? I do. Yeah. Swimming. I used to

01:50:24.660 swim a bit. And one of the things people used to always ask me was, doesn't it drive you crazy that

01:50:29.500 you don't have your phone with you or whatever? The whole point. Yeah. And of course, nowadays they do

01:50:33.640 have, and I was like, are you kidding? Like that's the greatest part of swimming is the sound of the

01:50:38.780 water going against your ears. Yeah. Or the fact that it's, it's, it's almost like a sensory deprivation

01:50:43.380 tank. You're so many of the parts that are normally alive or turned off. And I think this is why the

01:50:48.320 mind becomes more perceptive. And obviously you're walking without your phone, without music,

01:50:52.580 without interruption. Are you being deliberate about anything when you, for example, I don't,

01:50:57.200 I don't mean to bring this back to meditation all the time, but one of the things I do enjoy is a

01:51:00.780 walking meditation where you focus on the sensory experience of walking, both in terms of sound,

01:51:06.440 feel, you know, air moving past you. Are you doing anything sort of deliberately in that way?

01:51:11.780 The only thing I'd be doing is if I find I'm getting caught up in something mentally to just be like,

01:51:16.360 come back to the experience. So that is kind of a meditation then?

01:51:21.220 Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay.

01:51:23.080 Walking would be a big one. I mean, I think journaling would be a huge one. We could talk

01:51:27.840 about the exercise thing. I mean, to me, Austin is the most underrated swimming town in America.

01:51:32.980 Like Barton Springs is incredible. Deep Eddie is incredible. Just like the nature you can get here

01:51:37.720 is fantastic. Maybe the other one I would talk about is like a hobby of some kind. What do you do

01:51:44.100 that's not work? I define some of these hobbies as hobbies where pure effort and anger or rage can

01:51:52.780 make you accomplish a little bit more like running or lifting weights and hobbies like golf and archery

01:51:59.420 where that's the opposite and more effort does not. Do you think it's the latter that are,

01:52:04.960 and I'm biased because I love archery, but. Yeah, no, ideally it's, it's not something you can

01:52:10.600 win at. It's something. You know, not hobbies where effort equals outcome. Yeah. And willful will.

01:52:17.240 It's not a willpower related endeavor. I think is painting. If you're an athlete, maybe writing is

01:52:24.200 a hobby, right? For me, I can't also write as a hobby because it's my profession, but I could play

01:52:29.040 sports, right? So having some sort of practice or activity that you do on a regular basis, for me,

01:52:35.320 it's the farm. Like people go, oh, isn't a lot of work? And it is a lot of work, but it's the opposite

01:52:40.480 of my work. So it's restorative. And I think you find people that they're just, they basically sort

01:52:48.180 of become monks in what they do. And that's a very unbalanced, I think, way to live.

01:52:54.560 It's really easy to do this. And I feel like I could be the worst offender of this.

01:52:58.400 It's, it's tempting to optimize our life so much that there is no downtime. It's tempting to

01:53:06.340 say, you know, all play is highly structured. There is no just doing nothing. And I guess that's

01:53:16.400 really one of the beauties of kids as you alluded to is like my middle son, who's five, he loves

01:53:23.480 gardening so much. And he loves Home Depot. It's his favorite place in the world. So really,

01:53:31.840 if you ask him like, what is his perfect day? It's getting up, going to Home Depot, getting paint,

01:53:39.600 getting buckets, getting flowers, coming back, planting them, fixing the hose, painting the fence,

01:53:47.060 all of these things that, one, don't even seem like they're fun things to do. But they turn out

01:53:53.660 to be pretty fun when you're doing them through that lens. And it would be easy to outsource a lot

01:53:58.340 of that stuff. Oh, come on, we're not going to paint the fence. We can hire somebody to paint the

01:54:01.140 fence. And they'll do a better job, by the way, because I'm really bad at painting fences. It's

01:54:06.000 funny, because you alluded to this idea that we expect them to bring a tornado to our lives. And yet,

01:54:12.160 ironically, they can bring stillness despite their movement.

01:54:15.000 Yeah, totally. My son loves to get his hair cut. So we go and get haircuts. It's a thing.

01:54:19.540 But me getting a haircut by myself is in no way a pleasurable, meditative experience. But when I'm

01:54:26.660 getting with him, it's not the haircut that's the thing. It's that we're doing this thing together.

01:54:33.220 Or he wants to go get the mail. There's these little things that you end up doing, and you realize

01:54:37.800 that's all that you have to be doing. And then you're fully present in that thing.

01:54:42.960 Oh, going and getting the mail is an activity for him. I think Alexandra Horowitz, she wrote that book

01:54:49.800 Inside of a Dog, about the umwelt of the dog experience. It's really great. But she wrote

01:54:55.120 another book called, I think, Ways of Seeing or On Looking or something like that. And I've told

01:55:00.180 this story before, and it's obviously in her book, so I'm not making it up. But she went on

01:55:04.180 like seven walks with seven different people in different areas. So she went through on

01:55:10.140 a walk with like a geologist in New York City, and he was like showing her all the different

01:55:14.120 things you could learn about that. Or she went, you know, walked through a field with a biologist

01:55:19.040 and different walks with different kinds of people, you know, a code inspector in a neighborhood

01:55:23.920 and just like what are they seeing that a normal person isn't seeing? That's what the premise

01:55:28.160 of the book is. But on this one, she goes on a walk around the block where her apartment

01:55:33.680 is with like a two or a three-year-old or two or three-year-old son or daughter, I forget.

01:55:38.440 But one of the things I think about that I took from that book is she talks about how she thought

01:55:44.340 the walk began when they left the building. But so she's like interviewing her kid after her talk.

01:55:50.620 The kid thought the walk was from, she's like, we're going on a walk. And to the kid,

01:55:56.700 the walk started when they left the apartment and walked to the elevator and then went down the

01:56:02.160 elevator and then across the lobby and then out the door. Do you see what I mean? And so to a kid,

01:56:09.980 that actually is a far walk. That's the other part you don't realize. You take for granted how easy

01:56:13.940 things are for you. But just the idea that the definition of what the is is, is something kids

01:56:21.980 bring to the table. And as a parent, you're like, oh, yeah, this is what we're doing. My son is like,

01:56:27.920 I want to play dirt. He just means he wants to play with dirt. And it's like, this is what we're

01:56:32.900 doing. We have these expensive toys. I could take you somewhere. I could do anything. But what we're

01:56:36.920 doing is we're sitting here and we're playing with dirt. And there's a purity to that and a magic to

01:56:44.440 that, I think, that that is as much stillness as Kennedy in the Missile Crisis. And I think they're

01:56:49.380 accessing the same place. And what do you think it was about JFK in, you know, certainly three most

01:56:57.660 stressful moments of the 20th century, certainly three of the most high stakes moment of the 20th

01:57:02.960 century that could have truly altered the course of civilization? What do you think prepared him for

01:57:08.680 that moment? In a way, he was like, not prepared. You almost set up to fail in that moment. I mean,

01:57:14.420 if you compare the Bay of Pigs Kennedy to the Missile Crisis Kennedy, and then even the events

01:57:20.320 in between, you're not thinking that's how that's going to go. Had the Bay of Pigs not happened. So

01:57:25.760 let's assume that when Kennedy comes into office in 61, the CIA has already decided the Bay of Pigs,

01:57:32.820 you know, yeah, Johnson wanted to, or rather, Eisenhower wanted to do this thing, but we think

01:57:37.160 it's kind of a dumb idea. And he goes, yeah, yeah, that's a dumb idea. We're not doing it. So

01:57:40.420 there's no Bay of Pigs. And yet, all the events that unfold in the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold,

01:57:46.400 does he behave differently? I don't know. I mean, I think it was a variety of factors. I think one

01:57:50.480 of the biggest ones is that he had read Barbara Tuchman's book, The Guns of August. Like he,

01:57:55.340 he had some understanding of how badly it could go if he wasn't aware of what was happening as it was

01:58:04.580 happening, right? Like the idea that we kind of slept walked into this war that we didn't understand

01:58:10.280 that a lot of people were making very short-sighted decisions, decisions that made sense in the

01:58:15.440 moment, but they weren't thinking about how that decision related to the other decisions,

01:58:20.180 I think was hugely impactful for Kennedy. I think he'd had some humility too, sort of getting his

01:58:26.460 ass kicked by Khrushchev in some sort of diplomatic exchanges had made him realize that the job was

01:58:32.720 really hard and that you can't just go with your gut. You can't just listen to what people say,

01:58:37.680 that it really required sort of deliberation and consultation and consideration. You know,

01:58:46.640 his expression says, we've got to use time as a tool and not as a couch. Just even that the

01:58:51.140 Missile Crisis takes 13 days, it's kind of impressive. Like you could imagine, let's not even say,

01:58:57.400 you could imagine George W. Bush does not take 13 days to think that one through, because it's kind

01:59:03.560 of obvious what you should do. Like our gravest military enemy has put nuclear missiles 90 miles

01:59:12.560 from the shore of Florida. What you're supposed to do there is like very obvious, right? You blew the

01:59:19.500 shit out of that, right? And you believe you are 100% justified in doing so. But it's more complicated

01:59:26.620 than that. You can imagine Bill Clinton, you can imagine Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson gets called

01:59:30.940 into the situation room and they're, I don't know if it was the situation room then actually, but so

01:59:35.440 he gets called in and he's like, we got to do it. There are other presidents who would not have taken

01:59:43.400 13 days to unwind that. What's also interesting is they all have different strengths and weaknesses.

01:59:48.780 You know, I didn't grow up in this country, but I'm still incredibly fascinated by its history.

01:59:52.940 And I'm always impressed by the different character strengths of different presidents.

01:59:57.620 Johnson being like the master politician, right? The master of relationships, but maybe in that

02:00:04.060 moment too impatient. If you do move to Texas, you've got to read the Lyndon Johnson series or the

02:00:09.100 Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson. But he talks about how Kennedy believed that civil rights were

02:00:16.240 so obvious. And so it was such a morally superior position that all he had to do was say, this is what

02:00:24.060 we're going to do. And of course that would happen. And Lyndon Johnson, I would say equally believed in

02:00:31.560 that idea, but, or maybe actually believed in it less, but he knew politically it would be a lot more

02:00:38.800 complicated. And ultimately he was the only one that was able to get it done. And, and actually some of

02:00:44.580 Kennedy's sort of moral superiority and assurance made it harder than it, it needed to be right. Like he

02:00:52.880 sort of telegraphed his intentions. He basically said like, we are going to pass a civil rights bill.

02:00:58.200 And then the sort of solid South was like, well, we're going to make that even harder for you now

02:01:03.280 that you've told us what you're planning to do. Yeah. Different strengths and weaknesses certainly,

02:01:07.260 but if you could bottle whatever he was exhibiting there in that missile crisis, and that there are

02:01:13.400 very few leadership situations that would not be improved by that.

02:01:17.380 It's not like this guy was perfect. It's not like this guy was without ego. It's not like this guy was

02:01:20.860 the flawless character that, you know, you want to believe the first time you read a chapter on him

02:01:25.740 in grade school. I mean, he cheated on his wife in the missile crisis, right? He's, he's expecting

02:01:30.480 that the world could end at any moment and he's spending that time not at home. So it's not, not

02:01:36.960 great. But I think what's, what's so fascinating to me about the missile crisis is it's not just that

02:01:41.960 he slowed it down. He was also incredibly decisive, right? It's not like he, it was non-negotiable that

02:01:47.460 those missiles were going to go. So it's not like he was waffling. You see that bad leadership can,

02:01:53.060 that's what he means by a couch. You can use, you could take 13 days just to think about it and go

02:01:57.160 swing this way and that way. Kennedy was like, this is the outcome, but I am very open to a variety of

02:02:04.400 ways to get there. And that's what he figures out over those 13 days.

02:02:08.800 There's one last topic I want to get to, Ryan, and it's a, it's sort of pivot away from this,

02:02:12.760 but it's something you've, you've written so extensively about and just on a personal level,

02:02:16.660 something that has been very helpful to me, which is anger. Let's start with when it's helpful,

02:02:23.640 when it's not helpful. What is it about anger that can be destructive? What do the Stoics think

02:02:30.020 about anger? Let's say as a group, they're against it. I mean, Seneca writes a beautiful essay called

02:02:35.980 Of Anger. That's basically a warning to young Nero about the costs and the dangers of anger pops up over

02:02:43.880 and over again in his, his letters as well. But I mean, anger is one of those things where like ego,

02:02:51.020 we're really eager to make excuses for it. Like to go, Oh, it's part of who I am. It helps me what

02:02:56.360 I've done. It's great fuel. When I look at all the times I've lost my temper, I've been really angry

02:03:01.320 about anything. I never think back going, I'm really glad. You know what I mean? Like that's different

02:03:07.580 than sort of moral outrage about, like when I hear about something that's wrong and my immediate

02:03:15.400 reaction is that's not okay. I'm upset that that's the status quo. To me, that's different than anger

02:03:22.180 in the sort of the temper sense of the word. So maybe if we're making a distinction that Stoics are

02:03:27.280 very anti-temper, but even Seneca talks about, you know, Seneca's like, look, like someone murdered

02:03:33.480 your father, you'd still get vengeance. You don't want to do it from a place of anger. And I think

02:03:39.560 he just means that like, there's an objective idea of justice. Not being angry doesn't mean you accept

02:03:46.260 everything and that you wilt and you tolerate the gravest injustices, but it's that you're not

02:03:54.280 being jerked around by those reactions. There might be people listening to this who can relate, but

02:03:59.760 sometimes when we're angry, we actually break inanimate objects. You had some really interesting

02:04:04.860 things to say about this recently. You wrote about this in one of the newsletters. Again, reading it

02:04:09.380 is so funny because it's, you write about it in a way that's light, but like, I can't count the number

02:04:14.800 of inanimate things I've smashed in my life. Not that long ago, I had, you know, I had, I couldn't find my

02:04:19.480 AirPods. So I had like the regular iPod headphones and they weren't, they were all tangled. I was getting

02:04:24.160 mad. And then it was like, I ripped, I ripped it apart. And it was like, well, I really punished

02:04:29.500 these headphones. You know what I mean? And now it's like, I can't do the thing that I wanted to

02:04:33.220 do. Yeah, I do think it's interesting. Anger can so get ahold of us that we will essentially be

02:04:39.920 talking through our actions to a stove or a wall or a computer. Yeah, my desk has got, you know,

02:04:47.800 a crack in it from where I hit it because something was, yeah. I don't think the Stoics were perfect.

02:04:53.340 And I feel like if they were perfect, they wouldn't have talked about anger so much. I think they're

02:04:57.640 talking about anger because it's a perpetual problem in their life. Think about Marcus Aurelius.

02:05:04.020 Like, have you seen the movie Lincoln? You know that scene where they're sort of arguing, I think

02:05:09.740 it's one of the greatest scenes in all movies where they're like telling him why he can't do this. And

02:05:13.600 he's like, he pounds on the table. He's like, I am the president of the United States. He's like,

02:05:19.040 I am clothed in immense power. That's impotence. Like he's angry at the impotence that he got

02:05:24.600 this far. And this thing is so obvious. Passing the 13th Amendment is profoundly obviously the

02:05:31.040 right thing to do. It's the only course. And he can't even will it to happen in that moment.

02:05:35.060 That's so much of where our anger comes from. But then when you even think about that situation,

02:05:39.680 it's not the anger that solves it. It's that he then leaves that room and he's willing to

02:05:43.740 basically do all sorts of complicated, even in some cases, morally dubious things to get where he

02:05:50.680 needs to go. So I thought about this a lot because I wrote this book about Peter Thiel and his sort of

02:05:55.300 quest to destroy Gawker. There's that expression, revenge is a dish best served cold. People think

02:06:02.480 that means you want to enjoy the fruits of your victory, but it's, no, it's dish best served cold,

02:06:10.340 which means what they're saying is you don't want to touch a hot plate. You don't want to do it out

02:06:15.660 of anger because you get burned, right? And so that's what I think about anger. I think

02:06:20.620 politically we've now confused anger and political change. We almost conflate purity or moral

02:06:28.300 superiority with how angry you are. That's not how you solve any problems. Do you have a sense of where

02:06:34.000 we are historically on our anger meter? There is so much moral outrage. It's easy to now lose sight of

02:06:40.720 what, what's the root and what's the response. Yeah. It's, it's really hard to tell. And I think

02:06:46.480 what's interesting to me, like people go, are we on the verge of a civil war? I have a friend of mine

02:06:51.420 was, works in DC. He was like, who the fuck's fighting in this civil war? He's like, none of

02:06:55.940 these people were, I think that's, what's actually interesting about all the anger that we have is

02:07:00.260 that it's primarily sort of verbal and social. It's not real. Is that because we're not willing to die

02:07:08.920 for something anymore? I mean, I just don't like going back to stoic virtues. Yeah. I think,

02:07:14.220 I think this is all a performance. I think this is largely a performance or it's almost therapeutic.

02:07:19.440 Like it's a, it's in the way that we used to be really into music. We're now really just into being

02:07:25.040 angry about political and social issues. Anyways, there are very few problems to which anger is the

02:07:31.360 solution. And the most serious problems, the ones that are the most aggravating are the ones that

02:07:38.880 require the most discipline and the least amount of anger. Like I think about that again, politically,

02:07:43.680 it's like, okay, most of the wrong in the world is not being done deliberately. It's being done by

02:07:49.520 people who don't know better, who are ignorant, who are being manipulated, or in some cases think

02:07:55.600 they're doing the right thing, right? So anger at those people is not going to make them change

02:08:00.580 their mind, right? You're not going to yell at someone into waking up to the bad assumption they've

02:08:06.240 taken in, right? And then there are real bad people in this world. There's evil and there's

02:08:11.680 sociopaths and there's, there's real bad actors. Those people, you're certainly not going to yell

02:08:19.160 at a sociopath into not being a sociopath, right? It's like precisely the most dangerous high stakes

02:08:25.960 situations require our utmost cognitive and rational resources. So I'm not talking about anger from a

02:08:34.400 place of someone who has no temper. It doesn't get angry about shit. I'm just stating the fact that

02:08:39.980 less anger is better. The story you led with, or the example you led with, which you've written about

02:08:45.380 as well, I think is it's really humbling, which is go back in time, consider every time you've lost

02:08:51.520 your marbles and ask, when did it accomplish what you wanted? When did it actually make the situation

02:08:58.560 better? And I can't say it's never happened, but it's, I can't remember when it did.

02:09:04.820 Or Seneca talks about like, when you see other angry people, like just really, like I have some

02:09:10.740 memories of Dove who had a bad anger problem. When I think about what he looked like angry and just how

02:09:18.420 shockingly immature and childish and ridiculous and embarrassing it was, you know, you could see his

02:09:26.020 neck and he felt like he was going to drop dead of a heart attack. I've never seen anything like it.

02:09:31.280 But when we see other people get angry, we're like, what are you doing? But how he talks about,

02:09:38.380 Seneca just talks about looking in the mirror when you're angry. He's like, have you ever actually

02:09:41.720 seen yourself get angry? That was, I think, day four of the anger. Oh yeah, sure. Program you put

02:09:49.160 together. Like, did you see that photo in the March Madness from last year of Tom Izzo? He's the coach at

02:09:55.040 Missouri. He ends up, some player messed up and he's yelling at him. And he's so, you got to just,

02:10:00.920 just look at this after. When he gets so angry, he's like clenched his fist. He's clearly, he's so

02:10:06.000 angry. You know how at the end of it, it almost becomes physical, right? He's like trying to

02:10:10.200 physically intimidate a child, like a, you know, an 18 year old basketball player. And he's in his face,

02:10:17.180 he's yelling and he's trying to get his point across. He's, it's like almost like a gorilla,

02:10:20.840 you know, the gorilla's like trying to show, don't mess with me. And he's, the photo snaps him doing

02:10:26.220 this as another student is, another athlete is stepping in to separate the two. Like he,

02:10:32.020 a child is stepping in between a man yelling at another child, right? It ended up a lot of people

02:10:39.380 under-prationalizing, this is what coaches do, blah, blah, blah. And there's like no evidence that

02:10:43.020 yelling makes players better. But if we could get that photo of ourselves, whenever we were the most

02:10:50.980 angry, I think it would cut it in half. Cause you'd be like, I never want to do that again.

02:10:57.720 I agree with that completely. And that was sort of the first thought I had, which was,

02:11:01.140 I need a picture of me like that in my pocket as a reminder, as I'm getting worked up, like,

02:11:08.460 don't go here. Don't become the incredible Hulk. Sometimes I think about like, you know,

02:11:13.720 you have security cameras at your house or whatever. I wonder like, and I know they've

02:11:17.740 caught it before, but I'm actually too scared to look at it. But like, what would watching an

02:11:22.500 argument between you and your spouse, like, what would you actually take from that? Like,

02:11:27.580 I almost know what I would take from it. That's why I don't want to watch it. Do you know what I

02:11:31.480 mean? But like, in the same way, I'm sure you found this with your podcast, when you listened to

02:11:36.240 your first episode with your, you were like, fuck, that's horrible. How can anyone listen

02:11:41.140 to this person? Do you know what? Like when I hear my own audio books, I'm like, oh, this is awful.

02:11:45.240 I can imagine what looking at yourself in an argument with another person would be just

02:11:51.940 utterly repugnant, you know? And you would realize you do a lot of things that you don't realize

02:11:57.940 you're doing. Ryan, this has been great. I've been wanting to speak with you for so long,

02:12:03.280 long before stillness came out, but it just became a great reason to have more than one

02:12:08.080 thing to talk about. Again, as I said to folks, if they don't already subscribe to the Daily Stoic,

02:12:14.040 they should. What's the best way that people can sort of get a hold of all of this type of wisdom

02:12:20.240 that you're very generously providing? So I'm at Ryan Holiday on most platforms,

02:12:25.280 RyanHolliday.net, DailyStoic.com. Do you get the Daily Dad email?

02:12:29.400 It's, I don't, and I realize I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get

02:12:34.160 another email. That's, that's the one I like doing. I got to find some way to combine them or

02:12:37.880 something. I know it's weird that it's two, but they feel very different to me. So DailyDad.com

02:12:42.580 is the other daily one I do each day. I know I said I would, that was my questions. I do have one

02:12:47.240 last question for you. How the hell can you be so prolific? It's my, it's my job. I mean, like I,

02:12:52.340 I have a practice. I follow the practice every day and it comes out the backside.

02:12:56.740 It's unbelievable. It's, I'm, I'm not jealous, nor am I envious, but incredibly respectful.

02:13:04.720 I think that the process is where it comes from. I personally am incredibly grateful as a result of

02:13:09.900 that process. And I know that I'm far from the only one. So thank you very much. Thanks.

02:13:14.960 Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Drive. If you're interested in diving deeper

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The Peter Attia Drive - January 27, 2020

#90 - Ryan Holiday： Stillness, stoicism, and suffering less

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