Managing Ego and Responding to Insults

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world really be different. If you were in their position, if you had their power, if the decision fell to you, you'd do it right You would not be such a coward. You would not be so weak. You would not be driven to excess. You would not be selfish. you would do it right sitting on the outside, this is all easy to think But as the lyrics to the song a satisfied mind go, F Wh I would do things my way. The problem is that we know how it actually goes. Power corrupts, wealth entitles, suuccess distracts. peopleople make excuses. peopleeople fall prey to the same traps the ones that have existed since the days of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and indeed for all time We must understand that success, as the great Tennessee Williams put it is a kind of catastrophe It's something to be looked at suspiciously, something that will screw up your compass The Stokes believed that we had to train and virtue to prepare for adversity. Sure also for the fortunate situations in which we get our way. becausecause this is precisely when we are most tempted and most under strain All of a sudden, those ideals have a big price tag attached. All of a sudden, there are fewer constraints upon us And just like in adversity, we will find in these moments that our training is being put to the test Did we really mean what we said? Are these values really important to us? We have the strength that Marx Surus did, for instance, to remain good when we don't actually have to be Can we be different or will we as the song goes Be one of the nine out of ten who show themselves to have been Oh By the way, that's something we talk about in our course, The wealthy Stoic, like actually be wealthy However much money you happen to make? likeike what did the Stokes think about having money spend it how to think about it. What are some of the habits and practices to help you get it to? I think it's a great course, not always totally understood by S people who don't like what we do here at Daily Stoke, but I think you'll like it. And by the way, if you're Daily Stoke L lifeife member, you get it for free. So dailystokelife dot com for that or you can check out the wealthy stoic at dailystoke dot com slash wealthy and I'll link to it in today's show notes. Look, you should be able to be comfortable anywhere, but you should also be comfortable in side your own house. 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Get long lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series three Intel Core so you can work from anywhere And now starting at six hundred and ninety nine dollars with the exclusive student pricing, starting at five doll ninety nine cents It's lightweight, portable, and packed with enough processing power to make multitasking a breeze So say goodbye to distractions and hello to more free time because you finished your work faster Complete your setup with savings on select monitors and more must have electronics and accessories. Limited time deals and free shipping on PCs and more await you at deell. com slash deals deell. com slash deals Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.' been chugging away on this tour and starting think about the fall. I'm going to be in Australia. New Zealand DC Boston, I think, a bunch of w. Anyways, it's far out. it's forever from now So on the one hand, I'm not thinking about it. On the other hand, I'm thinking about it because they're having me do some like interviews in these Differe markets, right to tell people about it. So I just had to do this interview in the evening the other day. Usually I like to do all my stuff earlier in the day, but they were like, no, no, it's a big time zone difference And I was like, how big? And they were like, New Zealand time zone, very big. It was actually a show, a radio show called Matt Heath and Tyler Adams Afternoons. It was on NewsTalk ZB in New Zealand And we had a nice little chat about some Stoke themes. and I wanted to bring you a chunk of that for today's episode. If you want to come see me, you can, as I said, bunch of dates, Minneapolis in August, Chicago in August. We just added Nashville in November. so that'll be fun. All that stuff is at Daily Stoke Live. And if you want to come see me in New Zealand on october thirteenth, you can do that. I found Noah Khan is going to be there while I'm there. so we're grabbing tickets to that. so I'm excited. So you can see that show also Anyways, dailystokelive dot comot thanks to Matt Heath and Tyler Adams for having me on the show. and hopefully you'll get something out of it too News talks, Z be bestselling author and one of the most influential voices of modern stoicism. Ryan Holiday is coming to New Zealand for a one night event at Auckland's Bruce Mason arerena. It's happening on october the thirteenth. and evening with Ryan Holiday, it we willll explore how the ancient philosophy can help navigate pressure, setbacks and uncertainty in the modern world. Tickets are on sale. Now go to ticketmaster dot co dot nz And Ryan Holiday joins us now, a very good afternoon, Ryan. Yeah, you too. Now we'll start off with with an obvious question. why do you think Stoicism as a philosophy for life works as well in the modern world as it did in the ancient world. Well, you know, unfortunately, the modern world is not that different than the ancient world You know, it's uncertain. It's crazy. inststitutions feel like they're falling apart. You know, you've got pandemics and plagues, corruption, dysfunction, tyranny, you know, all the things that we worry about today, they worried about in the ancient world only more so. They also worried about dying from an infected cut on your finger. Right? or your baby not surviving infancy And so What they were talking about in the ancient world, how do we deal with the fact that so much of what happens is outside of our control? kind of frameworks should guide our behaviors should should help us navigate how to respond to these things outside of our control That's what philosophy was, or at least Stoicism as a philosophy was in the ancient world. I think today we tend to think of philosophy as theoretical and abstract, even impractical. But you know for Epictetus, who's a slave in the Roman Empire and Marxrilius, who's the head of that empire Both are trying to wrestle with ins and out the everydayiness of life and trying to do it Well, and that, I think is why sticism lands all these years later That's interesting that because there are So those are two heavyweight influential stoics with very, very different paths. You got Marcus Aurelius andetetus, as you say, Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emmperor who had all the power in the world could have indulged in cruelty But chose as a lot of emperors did And but chose service and justice over vanity and excess. Well, you've got Epicesus who was at the very other end of Roman society as they say, a slave crippled by his master It became You know powerful from a position of weakness using stealthicism. So which path is more impressive or admirable And your eyes r Well, I think it's interesting to think about which path was more admirable in Marcus Aurelius's eyes. Like Marcus Aurelius is the most powerful man in the world, But the person he's looking up to, the philosopher he quotes more than any others, the person he's trying to base his life on is basically epictetus, right? So here you have the most powerful man in the world looking at this effectively powerless man and going Yeah, but look how he controls himself. L at look at his dignity, look at his self respect. Look at his resilience. lookook at his U optimism and perseverance And so for Marcus Aurelius, he sees Epictetus as the more powerful figure. And I think For this stokes, it was this realization, and I'm sure you've had this too with some of the people you've interviewed on the show or you've met in the course of your life Actually being successful, being famous, being rich This is pretty common, right? Like you realize it's actually there's actually a lot of those people out there Those who are not slaves to their ambitions or their tempers or their emotions, those that are good people, those that have some semblance of self awareness, that's actually a much rarer thing. And so I think Marcus Aurelius looking up to Epictetus gives us a sense Just how powerful someone under their own power truly is So linking that into ego Ryine, and you've written extensively about this ego of is the enemy and many other books How do you recognize when ego is getting in the way of good decisions or progress, particularly in a world that seems to reward self promotion Yeah, look, I'd love to say that ecotistical people never succeed. But of course they do, right? Like you look around actually many, many if not most peoplee who are successful are quite egotistical. But I think anyone that knows The Aamer sees them up close understands how that ego often makes what they do harder. gets in the way of what they're trying to do, or in many cases, it leads to their downfall I've never been dealing with a problem or some situation or you know a team that's not coming together and thought like The bigger egos would solve this. rightight? it's always the opposite. right? The ego is the thing that's getting between us and what we're trying to accomplish And so so you know I sometimes liken it to how look a lot of musicians might have a drug problem or a drinking problem. That isn't what's fueling the creativity. It's actually a drag on the creativity. They're just so talented and inspired or brilliant that they're able to compomensate for it for a time. And so I just tend to be suspicious when any of that kind of