Keskustelussa Ryan Holiday kertoo stoalaisuudesta käytännön elämän työkaluna, ei tunteiden tukahduttamisena. Hän korostaa, että stoalaisuus auttaa luomaan etäisyyttä omiin ajatuksiin ja tunteisiin: kysy, onko huoli totta, onko se tuottavaa, ja mitä tapahtuu, jos pelko toteutuu. Marcus Aureliuksen teos "Itsetutkiskeluja" toimii esimerkkinä henkilökohtaisesta harjoituksesta, jossa maailman mahtavin mies käsittelee ahdistusta, vihaa ja epävarmuutta päiväkirjamaisesti. Holiday painottaa, että stoalaisuus ei tarkoita tunteiden kieltämistä, vaan niiden prosessointia ja palaamista tasapainoon mahdollisimman nopeasti. Hän puhuu myös egosta, joka on menestyksen este, ja siitä, miten menestys voi paisuttaa egoa ja vääristää palautetta. Median osalta hän varoittaa vahvistusharhasta ja siitä, miten informaatioympäristö palkitsee äärimmäisyyksiä ja voi olla ulkomaisten toimijoiden manipuloitavissa. Lisäksi hän pohtii poliittista rohkeutta ja sitä, miten pelko ja mukautuminen estävät totuuden puhumista; rohkeus on kuin lihas, jota on harjoitettava pienin teoin. Vanhemmuudessa hän korostaa ulkoilman merkitystä ja sitä, miten menestyneet vanhemmat voivat välttää kasvattamasta etuoikeutettuja lapsia. Lopuksi hän toteaa, että stoalaisuus on jatkuvaa itsereflektiota ja itsensä kehittämistä, ei kertaluonteinen ratkaisu.
Perustin pyöräilyvää teitä valmistavan ornotin vuonna 2013. Mielestäni parasta Shopify saan se, että voimme harjoittaa liiketoimintaa ilman teknistä osaamista, voimme hallinnoida yrityksen taustajarjestelmien ja frontendia sekä myydä verkossa, vaivatta, jos Shopify olisi pyöräilyvaruste, sollisimielestäni itse polkupyörä. Sillä asiat hoidetaan ja meidän liiketoimintamme hoituu Shopify-sa. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu, Shopify piste.com sivustolla. [Musiikkia] Ryan Holiday, Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me. It's our honor to have you, Mike Wise. So, yeah, this year, one of my goals is to become a little more stoic, as the political and world current events just continue to spiral out of control. That's when one of my goals, primarily for my family, you know, it's just. You seem stoic though, lowercase stoic. That's it, you see? Are you not? I tend to lose my shit every once in a while, but as we all do. But, yeah, I want to be a little more stoic primarily for my family, my kids. Yeah, I'm the same way. I mean, I think there's some people who are sort of naturally there, and then you have kids, and then you realize you're not there at all. Yeah, but. And actually, several. My wife's been wanting me to do this for a while. And about five, six years ago, she gave me one of your books. And I actually first heard about you and read it. It was like a daily. Yeah, a daily stoic. Yeah. And read through that, and then this year got Marcus Aurelius' book on stoicism. And so, this is perfect, now you're here. All right. Well, I brought you a good edition of Marcus Aurelius. I don't know what one you have. This is my favorite translation. So, I think what's cool about this is, in my own way, here you have the private thoughts of the most powerful person in the world. And almost certainly not intended for publication. Like, he might be mortified that we're holding this right now. So, you know, most books are written for the audience, right? But this is a book for the author. Like, that it's a book is the byproduct of the philosophical process, which is like, he has a temper. He has anxiety. He has a shitty job with people he can't trust and an empire that's coming apart. And he has health problems. He has marital problems. He has a plague. There's floods. It's a series of endless wars. And what he's doing is sitting down and writing to himself trying to get back to center. Right? Interesting. And it just wasn't burned upon his death or it wasn't destroyed when he died. And so, it doesn't read like a typical book. I mean, it's 12 books, each passage is numbered. But it's really like almost like journal or diary entries because that's what stoicism is. Is like this. You know how you're trying to be and then you're here. There's a great line of meditations where he's saying, like, "Fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you." And that's what he's doing. And you say that again? It says, "Fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you." Or, "Fight to be the person that philosophy wants you to be." Right? It's like we all know the idea, the ideal, like what our best self is. And then we're dysregulated or we're tired or we're hungry or somebody's being really awful and annoying. And we're struggling to get from the lower self to the higher self. Gotcha. Right? And that's what this is. So I got this. And then this one will hopefully, like, meditations should be. Thank you. It should be a book that you. Like, most books you read, right? Meditations should be a book that you are reading. Like, it should sit on the nightstand and you pick it up and you read it throughout your life. Because it was written throughout someone's life. But the idea is that you don't know what passage you're going to need until you're flipping through the book and it jumps out at you. That's the idea of meditations. Roger that. Thank you. All right. I got a bunch more. I won't take so much time, but I know you got. I know you got young kids. Do you know Steve Runella? Yeah. He's a meat eater. This is. I think this is. He wrote an amazing book about hunting called "American Buffalo," which is one of my favorite books. He gets a Buffalo tag in Alaska and he goes to hunt the American Pysin and it's all about that. That's my favorite Steve Runella book, but as a parent, this is outside kids in an inside world. I think that's what every parent is struggling with right now. Because screens are so addictive and video games are so exciting and we're all glued to our devices. People are probably listening to this almost certainly listening to this on a device right now. But the point is you want to raise outdoor kids. He says you want to raise kids that don't say you a lot. Because they're good being outside, getting dirty, doing nonsense. I love that book. I think it's amazing. Do you spend a lot of time outdoors with your kids? Yeah, we live in a ranch in Texas, so we're pretty outdoorsy, but you know it's a constant fight. It's like they love it when they're out there, but they hate the process of getting out there. Really? Do you know what I mean? Like when we were yesterday, we went on a hike. They did not want to get out of the car. They did not want to go on it. And then as soon as we were in it, they loved it. And that's like I think the struggle is the starting. You know what I mean? Yep. All right, so we got that. Oh, this is another interesting parenting one. This is about Churchill and his son. So Churchill has a horrible father and horrible mother basically neglect him becomes a great man. And he tries to do better with his son, but he doesn't do a great job. And I think I think that's another thing that keeps us up at night as parents. It's like if you're successful, how do you not raise spoiled entitled kid? You don't they have comforts and security and love that maybe we didn't get. But how do you make sure that that works to their advantage, not that they're to their disadvantage, right? And so I thought it's a it's a really interesting sort of because it looks at three generations, right? It looks like Churchill and his father and then obviously Churchill and then Churchill and his son. It's a great book. I thought you meant like that one. Have you read any stockdale? No, I haven't. All right, so this is thoughts of a philosophical fighter pilot. So Stockdale goes to the Naval Academy in '43. Graduates becomes a pilot. And it's not until he's since 20 years as a pilot, it's not until the Navy sends him to Stanford, where he gets a graduate degree that he's introduced to Stoke philosophy. On his last day at Stanford, his philosophy professor goes, "Hey, I think you might like this book. It gives him a copy of Epictetus, the Stoke philosopher." And he does two more deployments there before he gets shot down. And that's his sort of, every night in his bunk on the Tykkon Rogan and the Constellation and a little bit on the, on the, on the Eriskini, he's reading Stoke philosophy. So when he gets shot down in '65, he says, he famously says to himself, "I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus." And it's in the Hanoi Hilton that he basically takes Stoke philosophy as a, which was a sort of, you know, theoretical thing. And he applies it in this, what he calls the, the laboratory of human behavior. Holy shit. Did you get to meet him? I see. I never got to meet him. He died, yeah, I think he died in 2008 or six, what does it say? He died in 2006 at the age of 81. Yeah, no, I met his children and I met a lot of people that have met him. But just, I mean, one of the greatest Americans ever. Incredible book. You'll love that. I was just, I'm, I'm doing, I'm actually doing a book on Stockdale right now. And this is, do you ever read the right stuff? Tom Wolf book? No. Oh, you would like that too. So that's about test pilots who become the first astronauts. So it's about John Glenn and Chuck Yeager. Really good. But this is, this is about, there's a little Stockdale on there too. This is like about carrier pilots in Vietnam. Not enough people know about this book. It's incredible. It's called Over the Beach. It was Stockdale's favorite book about, about the air war in Vietnam. And then the guys that get shot down. So I just read that. I think you would like that. If you don't read a lot, I think you would like that book. Perfect. And then the last one, you ever read any Hunter S. Thompson? Yes. Okay, so Hunter S. Thompson, we think of as the bad ass wild man crazy guy. ja käsitään. Käsitään, että onkoin Lothengön ja Las Vegasin, että onkoin puhutaan drugan ja alkohon.
it is, but the subtitle of that book is about the American dream because he's also one of our most astute sort of cultural and political writers. And so this is Freak Kingdom and it's about Hunter S. Thompson as a political thinker and critic because he covers Nick Sinney covers Carter, he covers like every presidential candidate between, you know, sort of the late 60s and then his death. And I don't know, I got the sense, I think it would line up with where, because you're kind of like a man without a party, you're politically engaged, but you're not like Democrat Republican, I think you like that book. What he's primarily is anti-fascist, not like Antifa, but anti-fascism, doesn't like fascism, doesn't like people telling him what to do, doesn't like liars, doesn't like hypocrites, doesn't like corruption, and I think you're going to like it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you. What's okay with me busy? Yeah, I think so. I appreciate it. So my wife and I have a bookstore outside Austin. And so my favorite thing is when I'm going to meet someone or someone comes in like what books would I think they like, that's my, that's my, that's what gets me excited. So those are ones I thought you'd like. Thank you. I really appreciate that. I'm actually, I want to talk about this one later, a fatherhood segment. Done. This is something I talk about all the time, with a lot of, a lot of different people, how they do it. But, well, my gift is not as exciting, this is the gummies, the vigilance lead gummy bears, legal and all 50 states made the USA. All right, horrible for you, but they taste amazing. So, but let me, let me give you an introduction here real quick. Ryan holiday author of 12 books on stoicism with more than 10 million copies sold, including the obstacle is the way ego is the enemy and stillness is the key. You're the founder of Daily Stoic, reaching millions through books, podcasts, newsletters and YouTube. Your work is right in NFL locker rooms, special operations units, I can attest to that and Silicon Valley boardrooms. In 2025, you completed your four books, stoic virtue series and launched a sold out world tour across Australia, Ireland and beyond. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks. And so we have a Patreon account. Yeah. And it's turned into quite the community. And to be honest, there's a reason I get to sit down here with you today. All right. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. This is from Corey Smith. Ryan, for people battling anxiety, depression or the long recovery from a brain injury, when the brain can feel like at the obstacle, how can stoic principles be applied most effectively? Oh, I mean, I can speak more to the first two than the brain injury. That's not something I have direct experience with. But I think basically what stoicism is at its core is this kind of distance between you and your thoughts, right? This is similar to eastern philosophy, but it's the idea that you have the opinion, you have the feeling, you have the dread or the anxiety or the worry or the frustration or the anger. And you're trying to take a second and ask yourself, is this true? Right? Like, you're worried about this thing happening. And what you're not stopping and thinking is like, Hey, is my worrying about this affecting the outcome in any way? Or am I just torturing myself? Right? You're not asking yourself, Hey, let's say it does happen. What then? Right? Because oftentimes what we're torturing ourselves with is this kind of vague idea that like, Oh, if this happens, that will be bad. And I won't be able to handle it. But the truth is we handle stuff all the time. We've handled everything in our lives up until this point, or we wouldn't be here. We survived everything in our lives up until this point, or we wouldn't be here. And so, stoicism is the is it's funny. He said here, she said about, you know, your brain is the obstacle. Sometimes the brain is the obstacle. Injury or not. Like, we have biases. We have patterns. We have things that we make up. And they're not true. Right? It's based on things that we haven't really worked through. And stoicism is the idea of kind of working through that. And that's again, what Mark Shiroz is doing in the meditations is not like this magical formula that as soon as you hear it, you don't have that problem anymore. It's the how I'm going to pause and think about this and work through it. And decide whether I'm going to a sense to it or not. Epictetus is one of the Stoke philosophers. You would talk about how, like he says, a good money changer, like a person you would get money from in the ancient world. You know, he said they know how to tell a counterfeit coin from a real coin by banging it on the table. Like, they don't have to melt it down to test them out. They just know, right? You have that intuition. You just know. And I think what stoicism is, whether you're doing a journal angle, whether you're taking a few minutes, whether you take a long walk or you're just talking through it with someone you know, stoicism is about asking yourself, hey, is this real or not? Is this true or not? Is this productive or not? Is this helpful or not? Again, this is all very easy to say. But that's what it is as a process is to deal with precisely those feelings, which every person ever, whoever lived has struggled with it some way or another. Most guys will spend money on gear, training, supplements, everything else, and then still wear the same uncomfortable underwear all day. If you're moving, traveling, working out, or sitting for hours, you feel it. That's why I like sheath. What makes sheath different is the dual pouch design. It keeps everything separated, supported, and comfortable, so you're not constantly adjusting or thinking about it. 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And you know, when I read some of these books and start dig it in, it kind of feels like I would go back into bottling it back up. So I just want to ask you, you know, where's the release valve in stoicism? Yeah. It's not bottling it up. I think, I think, obviously, the word stoic in English. Like, so stoicism comes about the 4th century BC. This kind of Xeno found this school of philosophy. He's inspired by the cynics. In another word that we don't do great justice to in the English language. We think cynics or cynicism means sort of negative or skeptical or, you know, it doesn't believe in anything. Not what it is at all. And stoicism is called stoicism because Xeno sets up his school on the stoapokile, the painted porch in Athens. Stoa just means porch. These were guys hanging out on this porch talking about these ideas. Now, flash forward 2,500 years later, when we go, "Oh, that guy is really stoic." We take that to mean, like, he doesn't feel anything. He's a robot. He stuffs it down. And that's not what it is at all. To me, it's about processing that emotion, asking yourself, "Hey, is this productive or not productive?" Like, is losing my shit about this? Is that helping anything? Or is it, in fact, hurting myself, other people, making the situation worse? So it's not like, "Hey, I'm feeling an emotion. Emotions are not okay. Let me, let me whitenuckle it." To me, it's about asking yourself, working through it. "Hey, why am I feeling this way? What is this doing for me?" And then I think your question about, like, where's the release valve? It's a good one because to me, I find that release valve in the work and usually in some kind of physical activity. Like, I think you've got to have outlets for it. But the idea of just getting to a place where you're pretending it's not happening. Like grief, you know, if you just go, I don't feel that that's not real.
We have multiple stories about Mark's really as crying, right? The most famous Stoic in the world, that we don't have that much like the historical records relatively thin on this person like we don't have that many stories about him, right? And I think there's four about him crying. One is over the loss of a tutor, like one of his favorite teachers dies. Another is when he's told he's going to become emperor, he's just like so overwhelmed that the at the weight of the job, he doesn't think he can do it. And then two others are about the victims of the plague, Mark's realises the emperor of Rome during what's called the Antenine plague, which is this devastating pandemic that kills millions and millions of people. And then another is when he's told that an earthquake has flattened this Roman city. And so, like in all these cases, he's not stuffing his emotions out. In fact, in the first story about the beloved teacher, he's trying to not feel the emotion. He's like a young kid. And you know, he probably, some of the ideas of masculinity that we all know, like boys don't cry, don't be a little bitch, right? He's clearly upset that the fact that this person he loves has died. And one of his philosophy teachers goes to him and tries to tell him, like, you know, let's keep it under wraps, kid. And his stepfather, who's the emperor of Rome, Antenine, his piece, he sees this and he goes, no, no, no, no, no. He says, let the boy be human. And so I, stoicism to me is not, you never have the emotion or that you stuff it down. I think it's more like, okay, look, if you're still paralyzed by this grief a year later, you can't get out of bed, you know, that's a problem, right? To me, it's the processing, the passing of the emotion and then it's getting back to center as quickly as possible. That to me is what the philosophy is. Okay. Yeah. I think this book here, Meditations, is going to be very interesting. I think you'll like it because I just, it does seem, it does feel like kind of stuffing your emotions, what you're saying makes me thinking before acting, but really, you don't really got me. And do it as I've started bitching all the time about what bitch, it's just bitching about, I mean, I just feel on it. I haven't been happy with the last two administrations, but at all. And I feel like I really got duped on this one and, you know, and so I want to be more solutions based and focus on actual solutions than just do what everybody else does and let's bitch about all the problems, let's bitch about the Epstein fossil, let's bitch about the wars. There has to be, let's bitch about the stuff that we've been bitching about for, you know, ever. And at least as long as I've been around and there's just very few people that take the time to take the things that make them angry and come up with real focused, potential solutions. Well, and it's important, one of the things you hear the Stokes talk about is like getting some perspective, right? Like, none of this is new. So Seneca is one of the famous Stokes, you know who his boss was, who's Nero. Like his boss is the worst leader maybe of all time, right? And I got to imagine this is stressful, I imagine, it's demoralizing, I imagine there's a lot to bitch about like in a way, none of this is new, right? Corruptions not new, hypocrisy is not new, declining empire is not new. The only thing that's new about any of this is that we have a lot more information in real time about what's happening, right? Like, it was possible to get away from it in the past in ways that we can't. It was also worse in the past in other ways, right? No one's being forced to fight for their life in the Coliseum, let's say, right? There's definitely some things that are better. But like, I think about even Socrates, right? Socrates, you think, oh, that was that guy. He wore the toga, he walked around Athens, he asked those questions, you know, must have been pretty chill. And it's like Socrates lives through the Peloponnesian war, like Athens fights like a generationally long war against Sparta and loses. Like his country, like loses a world war effectively. And then Athens is ruled by 30 tyrants, literally it's known as the time of the 30 tyrants. I mean, like the world must have felt like it was falling apart and it was falling apart. And so I think one of the things you can take from the study of history and I think, I think we all need to study history more, right? Like people, like people watch too much news and don't read enough history. And the reason for this is like, they think that being that their job is to be an informed citizen and it is your job is to be an informed citizen in America in any democracy. The problem is watching news in real time is not necessarily the best way to be informed. And so I urge people to read more history, but not because it takes anything away from the moral calamities that are happening in this moment, but it allows you to understand them in context. It allows you to understand which ones are really important and which ones are kind of par for the course, right? And it allows you to also remember that like no one has lived in a perfect society and that most of the people that you admired were looking around at the world and going, what the fuck are we doing? This is insane, you know, like, and that actually the job is to not despair, not to get into like bitterness and anger, not to, not to, like, one of the things Mark Lewis talks about in meditation. He talks about revenge a lot. You can imagine the most powerful man in the world if he wants to get revenge on someone if you can do some pretty heinous things to people, but he says, you know, he tries to remind himself the best revenge is to not be like your enemy. And one of the things I look out at the world and I go, I don't like the corruption, I don't like the cruelty, I don't like the dishonesty, I don't like the pettiness, I don't like the craftness, I don't like any of this. Now obviously as a citizen, my job is to vote against those things, speak out against those things, but my main job as a person philosophically is to not be those things, right? Like if what you allow is the shittiness of what's happening around you to make you feel shitty and worse to be shitty, like they're winning. And so I think that's, to me, that's where stoicism really has a lot to offer because we are living in disorienting, disappointing, disillusioning times. And if you allow that to strip from you, your happiness at home, your productivity at work, your, you know, your decency, your kindness, your connection to other people, like it is winning. And that's that's kind of how I think about it. I mean, how do you, I'm curious too, because I mean, it's, you know, I brought up, I brought up politics, but there's just so many other, and I think that's something that everybody can relate to one way or another, right? But I mean, we're going to talk about this, you know, towards the end of the interview. And I guess we're talking about a little bit right now, but, you know, as you find success, you also find very disingenuous people that start to come around, they want to take advantage of you. Sure. They want to take advantage of your kids to get to you. They want to take advantage of your wife to get to you. They are not honest people, you know, and, and you've threw out the word revenge, you know, and that's, in my mind, I mean, revenge used to be something that, I mean, I would waste an entire day planning all the things that I could do to somebody that took advantage of me or wronged me or, or fucked over my family or myself or whatever, right, whatever the circumstances are. And then I, you know, back in the long time ago, I would act on that, but this is the best plan. Let's we're going to do this. And then I, you know, and then I realized this is just a total fucking waste of energy. Yeah. And it just makes you look like an asshole, I think. And so now I'll, I can't help myself a lot of times and I will still go through the planning phase on what I could, what can I do to get back at this person? And then I've developed one where somehow I've developed enough discipline to never act on it. Well, that's a good first step. Just to let it go. I imagine it's, there's an extra level of, that temptation, but we're like, I could break this person in half, you know, like I don't, that's not a thought that enters my head, but I, I imagine when you are trained to do what you are trained to do and at different points in your life, that has been unleashed, that just for just the restraint of going, Hey, that's not the, that's not the, the rules of engagement in, in the world that I'm in now. That would be like a, a level of like, restraint that you would have to practice. But one of the things I think about is like, okay, if somebody tried to control my thoughts or controlled what I said.
controlled what I did, I'd like, I'd resist that. Like just instinctively, that's, now I get to decide, I'm in charge. And yet, we kind of hand our minds over to people all the time. Like we let them, we let them just take up like inordinate amounts of time and space in our life. I was talking to this writer I know, and she was saying, you know, she really didn't like what was happening politically. And she was saying that she was having trouble. She was like, I just can't, I can't work right now. Like, she's like, I'm so outraged, I'm so upset, so pissed off that like, I just, I can't, I can't do it. And I was saying like, okay, but like, if this administration came to you and was like, hey, if you keep doing your work, we're gonna throw you in prison, you'd be like, like you would, that would be so immediately galvanizing that it would fire you up, right? You would never allow a government of any persuasion to tell you what you can and can't say. Like that's the job of an artist, right? And that's what it means to be an American. That's what's all right there in the first amendment. And I was like, but here voluntarily, you're doing precisely that because you don't like what's happening in the world because it's dark or pissing you off or whatever. You're allowing it to consume so much of your mental bandwidth and your motivation that it's having the same effect. Like they might as well be putting a gun to your head and saying you can't do this, but it's actually worse 'cause they're not doing that. And so I do think it's really important that we, we, you gotta have some mechanism by which you put up some walls and boundaries and then you protect the thing that is yours. Like you, like the Stokes would say, the greatest empire is like command of yourself, your sovereignty as an individual. And the problem is we give that up all the time because somebody cut us off in traffic, because we opened up our phone and the news was bad, because our parents are visiting, or we just let these things get inside us and then determine our mood, determine our focus, determine what we think about, determine our behavior. And I mean, it's not easy, it's a lot of work and I fall down this sort of into these traps all the time, but I am trying to go, hey, like I gotta protect this. Even if it feels good or it feels natural, I can't allow that. - Have you ever done psychedelics? - No. - Oh God. - Well, the reason I'm asking, yeah, I did a I began treatment in Mexico four years ago. I haven't had a drop of ooze since, but a lot more in the moment. It was very, it was a life changing experience for me. Anyways, the reason I bring it up is it's, there's been very few times in my life where I've been able to completely separate myself from, I guess maybe my ego and look at things from a just a detached point of view that's maybe a different perspective than what I'm feeling in the moment. - One of the things I did this really intense therapy thing and I was sort of like just vomiting all this anger and resentment I had at this group of people and the therapist was like, you know, they're not thinking about you at all, right? And he was like, they're just doing their thing. That's who they are. They have no awareness, not only are they not doing it on purpose, but like, they're utterly ungrateful. Unconcerned and disinterested of its effect on you. Like, they're not waking up and thinking about torturing you in this way, they're not waking up and thinking about abusing you in this way, they're not waking up and trying to make you miserable. They're inherently selfish, narcissistic people. Like, they're waking up and thinking about them. He's not saying it's awesome to be them. He's just saying like, they're not thinking about you at all. And it's like, we can see this, I think much more clearly in other stuff, like, the economy's not thinking about you. Like a hurricane's not thinking about you. That truck barreling towards you on the freeway is not thinking about you. But then for some reason, because people do have intentions and obviously we have to be aware of them, we do, I think, project a lot more intentionality on other people than is actually happening. And I think when you have someone who's like, like, way inside your head, reminding yourself that you're not inside their head is really important. And then I, like, you all sometimes will be like, I just planned out, like, a whole operation in my head of what I'm gonna do if they do this. And it's like, this is a hypothetical. Like, I just, my whole run, I was thinking about what I'm gonna say if they say this and then I'm gonna say this. And then, and it's like, this conversation might not even happen. - Convingency planning. - Yeah, for a made up scenario, about a person that, again, if you ask them, you're like, they'd be like, who? They wouldn't think about me at all. And so it's like, you're not the center of the universe and almost certainly you're not the center of whatever the situation that you're making all about you is. - Makes sense. - Also where I was going with that is, is stoicism the ability to kind of view things not as a participant of what's happening? It's just a strictly in observation or observing a situation. - Yeah, it's like, sometimes it's really helpful to zoom way in and then sometimes it's helpful to zoom way out. But it's like, a lot of times it's like, how do I take myself out of this equation? - Okay. - And that's what ego does, right? Ego makes it all about you. It makes you at the center of things. And even just remembering that like everyone is the center of their situation and that like, you're not the main character and all these other people's stories. You're the tangential character at best is helpful. He's like, yeah, why am I making this all about? Like this was not, whatever this was was not specifically chosen to drive you nuts. Like, and that again, it's totally indifferent to you. Like one of the ideas for the stoics is events or objective are opinions about them or not. Like the situation is what it is. And then we say like, this is good or bad. I don't mean morally positive or negative. We say like, this is fair or unfair. We say this is like mean or cruel. We say this was, you know, targeted. We say like we've been harmed by it. Like the thing is and then we decide what it means. And a lot of times the stories we tell ourselves about stuff are pretty self-absorbed, pretty distorted and like pretty emotional. And I think how do you get better at going, what if I could see this from another perspective or another way or what if I told myself a different story about this event? - Yeah. What happens, I mean, what goes through your, when I told you, you know, I'll spend an entire day planning revenge or vengeance. What happens in your head, when you're wronged, when you think you've been wronged, when civilities? - Well, often times I go, okay, let's say I pull this revenge off. In all the times in my life when I have done it, how did I feel after? - Pretty shitty. - Yeah, shitty or at best disappointed, you know? And why am I telling myself it's gonna be different this time? And the idea of thinking about what you're gonna think after is like a really powerful way. Do you know the word Epicurian? - I don't. - That was the rival school to the Stoics. There's the Stoics and the Epicurians. And Epicurian also in English tends to mean like, loves pleasure, you know, indulges every whim. And that's not really what they thought at all. But Epicurus, what he would say, he was, let's say, more pleasure seeking than the Stoics, he would say that like, if you're gonna, you're like, hey, let's share this bottle of wine. He's like, you can't think about just how it's gonna feel on the way down. You have to think about how you're gonna feel after. And that part of the experience has to be put into the calculation. - Oh good. - But humans are bad at this, right? Like we tell ourselves, oh, if I make this amount of money, then I'll feel secure and good. If I get with this person, then I'll feel, it'll be amazing and then I'll feel good. And people will look, if I get this car, if I win this office, if I, you know, hit this number on the chart, like we just, we tell ourselves this lie that, like, this thing will do something for us. Now, the first time, or when you're younger, we can experience it.
excuse this because like we don't have, although there's all sorts of wisdom out there telling us that it's not gonna do what we think it's gonna do for us, we don't, we haven't directly tested the hypothesis ourselves. But I think as you get older to still be falling for that lie is a problem, right? You know, like you know how you feel when you have a hangover, you gotta take, that should change the drinking that you do. You know that, I don't know, your marriage is incredibly important to you, and certainly not worth a few minutes of pleasure. And yet you in the moment are considering doing something that you know would blow that up. Or you know all your other accomplishments have never made you feel secure or like you've arrived, that there's an emptiness or a hollowness to them. And yet you go, it's different this time. Like why do we, I mean, yeah. - Well, I think from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense, right? Like if humans were good at being like, I'm good, I don't need anymore. Like, enoughness is not a great evolutionary feeling, but like insatiability makes you go on to the next than the next than the next thing. And so that can be good for the species as a whole, but really bad for the individual. - Makes sense. - I think it's, we're not, we are not designed to, our biology is not inclined to make us feel content and happy and secure. And it takes a lot of work like to counteract that impulse. - How have you done it? - I mean, I struggle with it like everybody else. I try to walk through this process. Like how am I gonna, like, am I, it's not that, to me, like going like, okay, hey, if I get on the other side of this, this accomplishment, this achievement, whatever, it's not gonna make me feel, it's not gonna magically feel some hole in my soul. That doesn't mean it's not what we're doing. I can find other reasons to do it. Like, it's challenging, it's interesting. It's beneficial to people around me. Like there's other reasons to do it. So I, and then what I find is that if I'm doing it for those different reasons, the outcome, if I'm lucky enough to get it, I feel differently about it too, because there's not a false expectation that was impossible to meet. But I think I, I mean, I'm constantly trying to stop and go, why do I keep finding myself in this same, why don't, you know, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Like that's kind of the human condition. And I'm like, why do I keep sort of backing myself into this corner, finding myself going down this lane, and then I'm like, I know better than this. I'm doing it, I think I'm doing it better than I was when I was 19, but like, I'm still doing some version of it. And I think that's kind of, we're all battling these kind of scripts or these patterns that we picked up on in our lives. And we're trying to get a little, trying to get a little better at it, because we go. - Yeah, it reminds me of the saying, nothing's what it's cracked up to be. Well, how did you get into this? - I was. - Socism, I thought your interest. - Yeah, it's funny. I was in college. I was taking a philosophy class. And then I went to this conference. I was for the college newspaper. And I asked the guy who's speaking. I said, like, hey, you got any book recommendations. And he was like, you know, I'm reading this guy epititus. I think you would like it. And I ended up getting somehow, I forget how, but I ended up with Marcus really since then, probably 'cause I saw the movie Gladiator. And I just, I open this book and I go, what the fuck has this been? You know, like, this exists. Like, this advice is there. Like, and it kind of just, it kind of just turned my world upside down. - Oh, so, just that, I think all young people, anyone coming of age, but men, especially in this world, are looking for, like, the path. Like, what should you do? What should you not do? And they're looking for it in a way that, like, school doesn't address. They're looking for it in a way that the church doesn't address. I mean, especially, I think it's some ways, like, you know, some sports programs and definitely maybe like a military tradition, it is based on certain values and you're being inducted into a way of life, right? But if you don't have that, you know, you go away to college and they're like, you can do whatever you want. Like, you can be whoever you want. You can do whatever you want. If it feels good, it's right. You know, you just have effectively unlimited choice, right? Like, we live in a world like religion used to go like, hey, don't do these things or you'll go to hell. And I think obviously that puts a lot of fear and shame and control on people that's not good. But the problem is when you say, hey, do whatever you want. Nothing's wrong, everything's right. Trust your gut. You know, like, the last thing a 19 year old should be doing is trusting their gut, like you're an idiot, you know? Especially like a, especially a 19 year old dude, you know? Like, and so I think what struck me about stoicism was like, oh, this is a, this is a 2500 year tradition. This is a tradition that's been followed by the most powerful people in the world. Some of the most powerless people in the world. Hepatitis is a slave and these are people that were dealing with uncertainty and chaos and disorder and dysfunction. They were dealing with temptation. They were dealing with adversity. They were dealing with loss and pain. And, hey, they wrote some of their experiences down and they put it into a framework that is actually strikingly modern. Let's just say it's timeless. And I think that's what, like sitting at the table in my college apartment, I was like, oh, okay. Like, this makes sense to me. In a 21, you were the director of marketing for American Apparel. How did that happen? I mean, it says more about the company than it does about me, you know, it was a dysfunctional, crazy, you know, shit show, really. But, I mean, it was to be a huge company. It was, I mean, it was a huge company when I started there. I had nothing to do with it becoming what it became, but I got sort of thrown into the deep end. And yeah, it was, yeah, my 20s were nuts. But I watched a guy create a billion dollar company and then destroy a billion dollar company. And I watched people get caught up in it. I watched people get sort of spun sideways by it. I watched people enable it, you know. I enabled it. And so, you know, in a way, it was like, it was quite an education. And, I mean, it was like, it was like a king's court. Like, he was the sort of king and everyone was, you know, courting favor and wanted something. And, you know, it was a, it certainly informed it was like what I ended up writing about a lot. - At a 25, you wrote, "Trust me, I'm lying." Where did that come from? - It was also, you know, American Pair was one of the sort of most controversial companies in the world at that time. And so, you know, I had sort of a window seat to how the media environment worked. And then I worked with a number of other controversial clients and stuff over the years. So, I wrote an exposé on sort of the media system and marketing and PR. I mean, I basically wrote a book on fake news in 2011. - That's what it seems like. - Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing is I thought, I thought, I remember trying to get the book out as quickly as possible, going like, like, this is right now. And, you know, if anything, I was probably 10 years early. But I was watching how, like the sausage got made, right? like how true stories got distorted.
and how made up stories became true and how people could get attention, what attention would do to people, the incentives of the media system. And so the book was me kind of trying to rip back the curtain on what that was and how it worked. Can you go on to it a little bit? Yeah, I mean it's it's funny because I mean I wrote that book. It is. It's now. Yeah, but it's fun. It's like you know I wrote that book before TikTok existed before before I think maybe Instagram had just come out. I was writing mostly about a world of blogs and you know sort of not traditional media, but like traditional media as it was being intersected by social media. And I mean if anything just all those trends have accelerated now. But it was ultimately that what I'm trying to say in the book is like you have to think about the incentives operating on both sides of the equation. The people that are trying to get messages out and then the people who are communicating those messages and that everyone is effectively competing for attention in this enormous ecosystem or this marketplace. And so in a world where it used to be okay half the world's half the country subscribes the New York Times, half subscribes to Washington Post. Now both these papers have an agenda. There's a bias, but like mostly they're trying to deliver value for the subscribers of the of this paid product and they're putting out a you know a 40 page newspaper where once you buy it all the information is there, right? Like if you look at like the headline in the New York Times for the Pentagon papers, it's like there's no sensationalism in it, there's no crazy, because like you're not buying the New York Times in grand central station with a news boy like shouting like extra extra read all about it, right? Which was the media environment in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And so basically what the internet did is it broke all that apart and it made it so every story, every headline, every article, every clip is competing with everything else out there, right? So it's like what's the craziest? What tells people what they want to hear? What pisses people off, right? What offers the most certainty? That's what draw like an analogous way like what happened in the early to mid 2000s is akin to what's happening now with podcasts like which I'm sure you've experienced, which is like there was this period where podcasts were long form interviews that subscribers of that podcast listened to, right? So you have all the subscribers to this show and you think about like delivering high quality guests who you have a long form conversation with and people listen to the whole thing. And then what's been happening the last I don't know two years is like the sort of the clip economy, right? Where now it's like about the most sensational clip, like so that two-hour conversation is distilled down into a 22nd clip or whatever. And what that's doing is creating, as I'm sure you're seeing it with peers, viewers is like a lot of competition for like the craziest clips like gotcha moments or or conversely like you're just having the same conversation but then people are coming and cutting out those clips and spreading them. And so it's create it's now it's creating a lot of pressure and a lot of noise and changing the incentives of the medium. And so what I was writing about and trust me I'm lying was that sort of first wave of that happening where like now you don't read a website. You read articles from that website and you only read them because it's showing up in your Facebook feed or showing up in Twitter or it's because somebody emailed it to you, right? And that's creating an incentive of bias towards certain kinds of emotion. Like for instance they they found that like the valence of the extremeness of the emotion is like the number one predictor of virality. So like something that makes you feel pretty good is not going to be shared as something that makes you extremely angry or something that makes you kind of angry is not going to spread as well as something that makes you laugh really hard. And so it's creating this incentive for extremes, right? So everything becomes inexaggerated, you know, distorted version of itself to meet that. And then you layer on top of that. Like this is the first in the sort of blog world one of the first kind of big breakthroughs was like reporters or influencers or what you were your job performance was like how much traffic your article got or how many views your video got, right? Which is different than how journalists had basically been paid for the entirety of the institution. And so in the same way that you wouldn't want a journalist to own like shares and a stock that they were reporting on, now they own stock in the story. Like they want instead of being like, Hey, it's complicated. We don't know which isn't going to do well. They're like it shapes the story that they're writing. And I think what we're seeing now, now that people are working for outlets less and less and working for themselves more and more. Like, are you going to tell your sub-stack audience what they don't want to hear? Are you going to have a guest on like not you, but like you can imagine someone in a different financial position. You're like, Hey, when I when I have these kind of guests, my Patreon numbers go down. And when I have these kind of guests, my Patreon numbers go up, or donations go up when I do this. And they go down when I do this. And so now, again, these financial incentives are acting on the information that people are getting. And people are not good at evaluating the reliability of the person they're getting information. We're just really bad at it. When I'm traveling in the summer, the routine is always the first thing to slip. Different schedule, different bed, late nights, early mornings, and you're usually not eating the same way you would at home. And that's why I rely on AG one. It takes 30 seconds. One scoop, eight ounces of water. And I know I'm getting a daily health drink with a multivitamin, pre-improbiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants. In the next gen formula, deliver 75 plus ingredients that are clinically shown to support gut health, fill common nutrient gaps, and improve key nutrient levels within three months. For me, it's one simple thing I can keep consistent. Whether I'm home on the road, filming, or trying to get back on track after a long weekend, visit drinkagone.com/srs to get a free AG one travel case with seven free AG one travel packs in your welcome kit with your first AG one subscription. Order while supplies last. That's drinkagone.com/srs. I think we've lost that because I think I think that the thirst for real information has significantly diminished because now people are more concerned with confirming their opinions and their own thoughts. And so rather than actually search for some kind of truth or really try to figure out what the hell is going on. What's at the bottom of this? Instead of doing that and spend of the time to research and hear other opinions and perspectives, they immediately sift through everything they possibly can to find the one person that is going to tell them everything that they're thinking is correct. And they should. And then it turns into they tell them how to think. And it's become like this lazy search for just confirming your own biases, opinions and thoughts. Yeah, and and there's always going to be someone who will fill that need. So like we saw this like in the aftermath of the 2020 election, right? It's like, oh, if you're not going to if you're not going to tell the audience what they want to hear, then they're just going to go watch this channel. And if that channel isn't going to do it, they're going to watch this channel. And so it's it's hard like choice is good, but the problem with choice when it comes to information is that you're creating a market incentive for people to lie to you. And typically that incentive is mitigated or by the fact that the media outlet is owned by a big company or the reporter themselves is a salary to employ you identifies as a journalist or a writer or whatever. They're it's different when it's like, no, no, like I write for sub stack and I am directly dependent on how many subscribers I have paying subscribe. So like
audience capture, there's fewer intermediaries between the creator and the sort of payment structure. Now in many ways, it's great for creators because there's fewer people taking their pocket along the way, but it also means that they are directly exposed to some perverse incentive. Like, audience captures right there. There's an influence. Yeah, and like, it takes a person, it takes, it takes some character and some self-control and some ideals to be like, no, no, no, no. I, I, I have an audience. The audience doesn't have me. Like, I say what I think needs to be said, not what's going to do well. That's what I try to do. I think that's what you do too. Yeah. I mean, do you think that because I've always been more of a long game person than a short game? And so I see exactly what you're talking about all the time. But I would say that the majority of those people don't last very long. Eventually, it patterns out. And by being, being true to yourself and not being beholden to an audience or financial incentive or whatever, I mean, you're, you're going to do this. And it's a fucking roller coaster. Yeah, yeah. They're outraged about this. And then, oh, no, no, we're not outraged about that anymore. Now we're outraged about this. And no, no, actually, I never said that. Like, they're, you're, you're surfing, you're surfing the audience. And it's both exhausting. And also, it just doesn't feel like success to me, right? Like if, if success is like, I have to tell you what you want to hear, then like, I work for you. It's boring. I mean, just to sit in here, I mean, I get a lot of people pissed at me right now because I've leaned across the aisle because I like, I like new perspectives. That's how shit gets done. You know, and, and, but I just don't, I just don't fucking care. You know, it's some like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm just, you, I'm not going to be beholden to anybody on who I talk to and do not talk to. Yeah. And, and I'm, it's boring to me to sit there and talk to somebody that has the exact same opinion to me over and over just to confirm to each other that we're the, we're in the right way of thinking. But I'm, I'm, I'm curious how you navigate it because I, you know, when I started this thing, it was just military guys and, you know, intelligence folks and people that I'd work with in the past. And I really just wanted to kind of correct the record and, and, and actually have people that had been in the events that these reporters were talking about. Yeah. Well, actually, here's what actually happened to a guy that was there. You know, and, and then we started talking about political issues, issues with kids like lots of different problems that society faces. And it would be a discussion inside one of those. Yeah. And then to make a bigger impact, I actually started going to the, to the, to the lawmakers, you know, to the people in charge, people that can make a difference. And, and then I realized they all just lie to you, you know, and they use the platform to, to advance themselves. And so now, now I'm extremely particular, even have friends that are running for Senate for Congress for whatever places in the administration. Doesn't matter. Yeah. You know, and, um, I won't have them on. Interesting. Because I just, you're just going to tell me what you think I want to hear and what I think my audience, what you think my audience wants to hear. Yeah. And then even if you do have great intentions, I've seen it too many times. You're going to get in there. You're not going to make an impact. You're not going to. They're going to own your ass. Yeah. You're not going to be put on committees if you go against the grain. And you're just going to turn it into the same shit that we see every, every single time. Yeah. But if you do hold true to your word, I'll help you with your reelection. Yeah. You know, that's interesting. Yeah. I think deciding. Deciding what you're going to be a part of and not be a part of to me is like what it's kind of all about. And, um, I think I've been amazed at the degree to which, um, people I know don't think about like, Hey, is this a good person? Do I agree with them? And just not to just agree with them. But like, are they a bad actor or, you know, someone at least operating from good faith? Whatever. And they just think about like, how's this going to do? You know, and like, to me, success and a platform comes with responsibilities. Not just like, Hey, how do you look yourself in the mirror? But like, like, people are, if they see you have someone on or they see you writing about something or talking about something, like, they assume that it's not a cosine, but you're, you're, you're participating, right? You're like, you're, they're going, oh, they wouldn't have this person on if they were a psychopath or a lot. Like, people, like, I just think there's a responsibility that comes from having a platform or having influence. And the huge responsibility. Yeah. Have people make decisions based off what, what's set in this room? Yeah. Like life changing decisions. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there was, I remember finding when I was writing Trust Men lying, there's some, some, and it's funny. None of this stuff is new. There was this media critic and he was writing in like the late 1800s, early 1900s. And he says, you know, American, America is a country ruled by public opinion. That's what a democracy is. And he says, therefore, what determines public opinion rules America? And so the people that own newspapers. Yeah. Sure. It's a for-profit business. But like, they are responsible for something that in a way affects like the whole country. And there has to be a response, he was saying there has to be a responsibility that these things are kind of public trusts. And look, I'm, again, I think you get a real problem territory when the government is deciding, you know, like, I'm not saying it should be like this, this isn't something that should be legally policed. But like, if the people with the platforms are not policing themselves. That's a problem, right? Because then basically people without character, people with agendas, they can take advantage of that, you know, they take advantage of that. And, and we're so consumed in America by like our political disagreements that we forget that there's, there's people outside America that are also trying to steer and navigate this discourse, right? And just as, by the way, historically, we have done that in other countries. But like, we seem to think that like the only agenda someone could have is like left or right, not like Russian, Chinese, Iranian, like like our, our enemies see these gaping holes in our media system. They see these people who are basically available to the highest bidder. And they're like, do I want to go to a war with America? Or do I want to make America go to war with itself? And I think one of the things I was trying to write and trust me in line is, is like, hey, look, here's how I'm getting you to buy t-shirts or getting you to follow this brand or this person or whatever. But like, real bad people can do these same things. And in fact, are doing these same things. And I think that, to me, though, even the craziest part of our system isn't just like that bad actors can do, but also like the system can manipulate itself, just like, like, it's so primed for like going to where the energy, the action is that sometimes things that start as jokes become real things or things that start as the most hair brain conspiracy theory that you could imagine, like, becomes real. Like, I live in this town called Bastrop, Texas. And one of the first ones that really caught my eye on this, do you remember the Jade Helm conspiracy? No. There was this conspiracy that like, this is during this 2015, so it's during the Obama administration. They were doing like these big training exercises in like the South and the Southwest. And this conspiracy theory comes out that like, it's actually this falls. It's this crazy operation where they're going to like, I don't know, the federal government was going to like occupy the Southern States. It was like the faux military training exercises, a pretext to like start a civil war. So it was this conspiracy theory that starts online and starts on Facebook. And one of the exercises was happening in where I live. And like, the governor of Texas ends up sending the National Guard.
to observe the exercises to make sure this didn't happen as if, as if, uh, yeah, I could do anything. Uh, but, but, but anyways, the point was it, it came out in the years after that this was mostly like a, a foreign sort of propagated, like that, like this thing, some crazy person online said this, and then, um, injected from a foreign influence. Yeah, exactly. Like they went and they put, they put energy behind, they put spend behind it and spread and whatever. And so it was like, oh, okay. So again, we're so consumed with like what we're doing to each other that we don't think about the fact that other people haven't even bigger incentive to get us really focused on this or that. And so, again, you know, countries that are real close to Russia, like Finland, they spend a lot of time teaching media literacy to their kids, because they know that it's real. And they know that these operations and this agenda is right there all the time. And I think we, we live in a bubble, uh, because we've so often been the exporter of culture that we don't think about the ways that, you know, different, uh, nations, causes, et cetera have invested interest in directing that culture in certain ways. Mm-hmm. And so that's one of the things I was talking about in the book, too. Yeah. I've, I mean, I've, like I said, I've changed my tune since the last election. And you know, whatever realizes, I think I think that the, you can have a better, bigger impact in just initiating in how you initiate certain conversations rather than who you initiate them with. Mm-hmm. If you start the conversation properly and plant the seed, then it, it will grow. It will grow into what it needs to be. Yeah. Instead of trying to hit the headhuncho and, and, and pour your ideas into them and, hold them accountable. Interesting. What do you mean? I mean that, what do I mean? I mean that I've just, everybody I've brought on here that, that, that, that can make an immediate impact. There's in a position to make an immediate impact. They always fall short. Okay. No matter what they tell you. But what I have noticed is the things that, that, that, that just in my own personal experience with some of the discussions that I've had in here, the biggest impact that we've made is by starting a conversation and watching the conversation grow through the, through regular people through the population, not, not from getting direct to a president, a congressman, a senator, a CEO of a company, uh, uh, somebody that owns a nonprofit, whatever. It's, it's the conversation that happens that, that engages the population as a much, much bigger impact than going directly to the decision maker. Do you hear that expression that politics is downstream from culture? No. I think that's sort of what you're saying is like, uh, what matters is the consensus or the idea, like the, the, the energy, the vibe is more important than like a single decision maker, which is, by the way, our whole system, like, are, we have a decentralized system. So we're decision-making is decentralized and, and widespread because the founders were so concerned about sort of man on horseback. And, and so there really isn't one singular person who can make a difference. Now the problem is, that is also allowed a lot of people who are in positions of power to abdicate their responsibility to make a difference, right? Like everyone, everyone is trying to save their jobs for some point in the future when they'll be the decision maker. You know, and like, look, you do need those people, but chances are you're not that person. Yeah. Like chances are you should do the right thing right now. Yeah. It's interesting. It's interesting. I think of, what do you think it is? I think it's addiction to power, but then looking at it from the outside, and it does appear that they have a lot of power. But then when you see it and you're like, you're, you're fucking completely powerless because you're not saying what needs to be said, even though you know exactly what the fuck you need to do, because you want to hang on to the fake power that you think you have, but you're actually powerless because you're not saying what you know needs to be said because you know you won't have that position anymore when that position represents your power, your relevance in society. I think the difference here, there's power and their status, right? And so they don't exercise the power because they want to keep the status. Like, I mean, look, Thomas Massey is not going to be a congressman much longer. The irony is when you meet a lot of these politicians, privately, not only will they tell you a bunch of things that they won't say in public, but they will also tell you how much they don't like their job. Like, they fucking hate it. Like, it's a miserable job. They don't like their colleagues. They think there's a lot of, you know, performance and they have to spend all this time, fundraise it. They don't like the job. And yet, when it comes down to these votes that seem to me to be very clearly conscience based or very stark moral choices, they're like, well, I got to do what I know is wrong to keep this job that I don't fucking like. I'm like, I don't get it at all. It doesn't make any sense to me, right? But the problem is, I remember I was sitting in the Senate dining room talking to Senator and I was saying, like, hey, why don't you guys, you and I probably have very different politics, but I was like, why don't you know this Trump thing? It's crazy. Like, what are we doing here? And I was like, why don't you speak out about it, you know? And, and he goes, see that guy over there? And he's like, other, yeah. And he's like, that guy was going to be head of the CIA. And he's, and I go, okay. And he's like, and then I can probably say who it was. He said that the White House was like adult daycare over there. I think it was Senator Corcor. And he's like, he's not even going to be a senator anymore. You know, he was like, that guy was in line for the next office, the next level. And he made a comment. And it's not happening anymore. And the guy was basically saying, like, that's, that's why. And he was laying it out for like a, like, it's, it's just, it is crazy because like me as a citizen, I'm like, you're one of the, you know, 100 most powerful people in the world. And that's not how they see themselves. And so, I don't know. Why would you want, I, and look, I write about this, I wrote this book on courage. I talk about, I was once, when I was in America, I was once asked to do this thing that was profoundly wrong in a moral and, um, and, uh, I didn't do it, but I thought about doing it. And I struggled with doing it. And, and, and the reason that I didn't, I didn't like, challenge my boss about it was that I didn't want to get fired, right? Now, in retrospect, why would I want to keep a job that speaking up about something that was wrong would get you fired from? That's crazy. It doesn't make any sense. But this is, these are the equations that we make in our heads. But why would you want to work in an administration where even the slightest criticism gets you on the shit list? It's not going to be a good job. This thing, this job that you dreamed of of having your whole life, it, it's not what you think it is, right? Like, they just showed you it's not what you think it is. But, um, we rationalize where everybody, everybody is saving themselves for this. They are calling this higher call. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I remember, you know, Adam Kinsinger. Uh-huh. I remember he was saying he felt like a lot of, I was talking to him once. And he was telling me that he feel, he, he feels like, um, members of Congress tell themselves there's a super Congress and their job is like that super Congress will take care of it. And it's like, no, no, you were elected to take care of this. This is what we sent you to Washington. We didn't send you there to be in the job for as long as you could have it. We sent you there to represent our interests and to solve the problems of, uh, governance, right? That's the fucking job. And you think your job is to continue to be congressman or congresswoman. And, um, you're so afraid of being the former senator from Massachusetts or the former congresswoman from California, that you aren't making the tough decisions that you, you have to, you have to make. And, look, one of the things I've been trying to remind myself of is like, it is very easy as citizens to be like, why aren't these people risking their jobs to do what is right? And why aren't they putting themselves out there? And then it's like you and you, I mean, like the person listening, you are working a job, you fucking hate. And, uh, you know, you could
be doing something different or better, you work, you're working in an industry that you know is fucked up like blah blah blah. What was the last risk you took like that? Like it's, you know what I mean, it's very, it's very easy to evaluate the moral choices and the complicity and the contradictions in other people. And of course, as citizens, it's our job to do that and to throw those people out. That's that you cannot, we cannot keep this republic as Benjamin Franklin said, if we don't do that. However, to me, the main purpose of looking at this, the cowardice and the contradictions and the shamelessness and the sort of petty turf wars is, is it, it should, it should be a mirror reflected back at ourselves and go, well, I could be doing more. Like I could be, I tell my kids to follow their dreams and then I'm like, not doing it, you know? And so I, I don't know, I just think it's really easy to kind of just point this, like judgment lens at Washington or the state house or whatever. But ultimately, you've got to point it out yourself. Yeah. It's interesting. You read that up because I wanted to talk to you about hypocrisy being a hypocrite. I'm sure we all are. I mean, I'm real quick, yes, real quick to point it out at everybody else. But I do do a lot of self-reflection and I talk to them, you know, how can I improve what I'm always thinking about that, whether it's being a dad, being a businessman, being a pod, whatever it is, you know, and I can't find the, I can't find my own hypocrisy. Does that make sense? I'm on. I don't know what it is. I don't know. I mean, now I'm sure it'll show up in the comments. The comments can be helpful for that. But I don't, I can't see it in myself. A lot of times I can't see it in myself right now. No, no, I mean, look, this is why, this is why a company's going to have a board of directors. This is why a president is supposed to have a cabinet. I think the most alarming thing about where we are politically right now is that not only are a lot of the governmental checks and balances not there, but a lot of the, a lot of the cultural checks and balances aren't there. Like, the press is supposed to be hostile to power. And the cabinet is like the founder set up a system where ambition was supposed to be a check against ambition, right? The congress was supposed to zealously enforce its prerogatives. Like part of being a senator, like part of the perk of being a senator and having a six year term, whereas the president has a four year term, is you're supposed to be able to go like this to the president when the president is wrong, right? Like, Congress has war-making powers, not the president, but if Congress decides that they don't want to enforce that power, then the president has that power, right? And you know, if, if we have a partisan news environment where the left-wing media sloppers all over the left-wing president, and the right-wing media sloppers all over the right-wing president, and then if the president has a cabinet and has been allowed to confirm a cabinet of people who are dependent on him and fully bought in on him, then the president is never going to hear no, and never going to hear, that's a dumb fucking idea, like, what about this? What about that? And, and so, I mean, we know historically what happens when people in positions of power are not subject to any checks and balances, and when their information diet is degraded. Like, one of the oldest stories that we have about this is that the emperor has no clothes, right? And when everyone says, "Hey, sir, we love your new outfit," and he's walking around naked, that there was a, there was a reason, there's a moral to that story. And it's funny, actually, Mark's Relius, the reason Mark's Relius becomes emperor is actually like 2,000 years earlier in illustration of that story. So, the Hadrian does not have a son, he's the emperor of Rome, he doesn't have a son. So, he has to choose his successor, and there's this kid, he's a member of a sort of prestigious Roman family who somehow he meets, that kid is Mark's Relius. And for some reason, Mark's Relius, as a young kid, just doesn't seem to be intimidated by the emperor at all, and he tells him the truth. And you can imagine that the emperor of Rome does not hear the truth very often. It's actually a famous story about Hadrian, where Hadrian is in an argument with one of his advisors who's a philosopher. And some, it's like, we don't know exactly what it was about, but it was something where it was like, it's like an objective, you know. Anyways, the philosopher ends up saying, you know what, sir, you're right. I was wrong, you're right. And later one of his friends comes up to him and he says, why did you tell the emperor? He was right. The math equation is very clear, he's wrong. And the philosopher looks at him and he says, this is what you don't understand. The man who controls 50 legions is always correct, right? Like people don't tell powerful people the truth because they are afraid of powerful people, right? And Mark's Relius supposedly tells the emperor Hadrian the truth. And his nickname is Verismus, like the truest one. Part of what makes Hadrian ultimately select Mark's Relius is that he is like the boy in the story. The emperor has no clothes who actually says to the emperor, sir, you're naked. What are you talking about? Like, I don't care what these people said. You know, I mean fucking clothes on. You got conned, right? And so you, as you become powerful and important and as you put this is why revenge is bad when you get a reputation for punishing your enemies or punishing your perceived enemies like critics. It degrades your picture of the world because you have just sent a message to everyone around you. Do not challenge that person. Do not tell them the truth. Do not tell them what they don't want to hear. Like, do you think there were many advisors who told Putin that invading Ukraine would be a bad idea? Like, do you think anyone laid out like, this is how bad it could go? No. No, because you don't want to end up fucking in a plane crash, right? Or like, you don't want to fall out of fourth story window. And so oftentimes you think you want control. You think you want people on board. You think you want true believers. And you don't. Like the antagonistic hostile, like the system of government we have is set up there for a reason. Even even the so-called deep state is also there for like, you want career governmental employees who are not necessarily political. I mean, there can be problems with it too. I'm not, don't mean overstated, but like, you want a bureaucracy that doesn't want to swing too far in one direction or the other direction. You want Congress to be oppositional. You want your cabinet to have their own political ambitions. Like Lincoln staffs his cabinet with his political rivals because he wants, he knows that what he has to do is extremely difficult. And if he only has people telling him what he wants to hear, he will not actually be able to do it. And so that to me is what alarms me about where we are. I'm just, you know, you brought up an interesting point about, I mean, where do you draw the line between sending a message, maybe now revenge or vengeance, but sending a message because I've done this where I will never initiate. I shouldn't say never. I will not initiate arguments, blast people, getting fights on the internet. I just think the shit's stupid and it's a waste of time and causes a lot of stress. But there have been times where powerful people come after me. And then I think it is not just, I think it, for a variety of reasons, I think it's important to stand up into engage one to set an example to anybody else out there that's planning on coming after me. If you do come after me, this is what the fuck's going to happen. If you back me into a corner, I think it also gives other people courage. I just went through one of these at the beginning of the year. A congressman went after me and went right back at him. And now he's no longer in fucking congress. But, you know, I did that because I, I mean, I said,
I started this in my attic, so I still come into the full realization of the magnitude of the shit that can come out of here, because I still consider myself that guy in the attic that was doing this with my wife, and it's a small thing, and so I'm kind of in the middle of, you know, that makes sense, but I also did that because I wanted to show people like, you don't have to get fucking pushed around by these people, man. They're gonna come after you, and it is scary to have somebody that high up in government coming after you, but they don't have as much power as you think they do, and I just proved that. And at the same time, I don't want to, you know, for my immediate team, like I ask anybody that's been here for a little bit, you know, especially the guys that have been here from the beginning, which is only a handful of them. Yeah. I'm always asked them like, "Hey, what do you think of this? Am I off on this?" You know, and I think they tell me, you know, especially my top two guys tell me, they tell me. But, you know, I don't want to, do you see what I'm getting at? No, totally. I mean, sometimes you gotta establish some deterrence, or you get pushed around. I think that's important. But yeah, I do think what we're talking about culturally is the problem. Like, we want people to stand up. We want people to do the right thing. And then what examples do they have of that happening? And I think we're in like almost like a cultural death spiral of a lack of those examples. And so I do think it's important, but making a martyr of yourself, you know, is usually not a great thing to do. But like, the idea that like, there are more people out there that feel this way than people think is really important. And because it's so easy to think like, "Oh, everyone's going along with this. Everyone's okay with this. Like, this is just this is just what we have to put up with." And, and I think it's important, like acts of courage, like cowardice is contagious and so is courage. Moral courage and physical courage. Like, if you see someone else do it, it changes your sense of what's possible and what is sort of the cultural expectation. And I think, when I say we're in a death spiral, it's like, it's like everyone is saving themselves for some crisis. And it's like, "Dude, this is the crisis, man. How much worse are you expecting it to get?" And look, like, the Stoics are not exempt from this. As I said, Seneca works for Nero. Now, Seneca probably told himself, he was the adult in the room, that he was making a Nero less bad. And that he prevented Nero from doing a lot of bad stuff. And he almost certainly did. But as a result, he also allowed Nero to do a lot of bad stuff. And these are not easy moral choices. And I, the only reason, I think, like 2,000 years later, it becomes a little clearer, right? But in the moment, they're vexing emotional and moral choices. And when you're asking someone to choose, "Hey, you're going to lose your job over this. You're going to be attacked. Maybe your family will be threatened." This is a lot to ask of people. I get that. But chances are, when you look back, you're going to wish you did more. You're going to wish you said more. You're going to wish you, you're not going to be like, "I'm so glad I waited." And because here's the thing about waiting, is that you can always tell yourself that this isn't the right time, that, like, again, no, no, no, I need to be, I need to stay in the room until the real crisis happens. And then, and what you've actually done is over and over and over again, built the habit of not doing the thing, right? And the idea that suddenly, when you're at the second to the top level, that's when you're going to gamble at all and do the hard thing. Like, you have to build it as a hat. Like, Aristotle said it was wrong to think of virtue as this thing that you have or don't have. Like, that people are born courageous or born generous or simply are, you know, smart or, you know, any of the things that we hold up is good. He's like, "No, no, it's a verb, not a noun. It's a thing you are doing or not doing." Like, courage is a muscle you are exercising. Like, speaking truth to power is a muscle you are exercising. It's a thing you are doing, not a thing you are or aren't. And so, the good news about that is like, if you want to be generous, if you want to be a generous person, you can start right now. Like, start tipping bigger. Like, tie the percentage of your salary, right? You can start doing that right now. That's the good news. The bad news is, if you are not doing it, you are building the habit and the muscle of not being that person. And it becomes harder and harder to break as the stakes get higher and higher. It's a damn good point. Ryan, let's take a quick break. Alright. Most guys try to cover a body odor with cologne or body spray. But if you've been training, traveling, out in the heat, on long flights or just grinding through a long day, that only goes so far. That's why I use Mando. Mando is a whole body deodorant, so it's not just for your underarms. You can use it on your pits, feet, below the belt, basically anywhere sweat and odor become an issue. What I like is Mando handles odor at the source. Instead of just trying to cover it up, it's safe to use anywhere on your body. They've got solid deodorant sticks, sprays, for harder to reach places, clinically proven to block odor all day and control it for up to 72 hours. Want to try America's number one whole body deodorant formula right now? For the best deals, go to shopmando.com and use code SRS for 20% off. S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O.com. Please support our show until then we send you. Mando's got you covered. With the odorant plus sweat control, say goodbye to sweat stains and hello to long-lasting freshness. Again, go to shopmando.com and use code SRS for 20% off. Come to Hollywood vs Reality. They do it, right? What does he do in the movies to tell me if I'm doing this rock? 'Cause I don't watch it. Little fleck like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Got to silence it. In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for living. The proprietary magazine. Supposedly the best engineering in the world. When that breaks, you're. and now we're bringing them back. It does look pretty cool. I got it. I got it. Met that. Alright, we're back from the break. I want to dive into ego. Okay. Ego is the enemy. We wrote a whole book on this. (laughs) Where do we start? I mean, is there anyone that thinks ego is good? Is there anyone who's like, "We need some bigger egos." No, thanks so. I like to think of ego as being the thing that gets between you and whatever it is that you want to do. So in a way, I'm not saying OP sort of humble so low to the ground that you don't want anything, you don't try to do anything. I actually think ego is the enemy of the ambition that you have. Whatever you're trying to do. What you need is a sense of reality. You need self awareness. You need a sense of connection. You need truth. The ingredients to doing what you want to do are for the most part not delusion and grandiosity and selfishness. It's the opposite of that. So when I say ego is the enemy, I'm not saying like, think you're a piece of shit. I'm saying just don't think your God's gift is humanity. Like, confidence to me is somewhere in the middle between those two extremes. And yeah, chances are ego is causing the problems not solving the problems and personally or in your organization. How do you keep yours and check a big Europe in extremely successful guy? Well, I mean a lot of people that find success. And then their ego just fucking explode.
Yeah, I look the first and foremost admitting that you have one and that it is a problem is like A critical step like like if I'm sitting here going like let me tell you how to conquer your ego because I don't have one like Be real suspicious because you know, I mean my ego causes problems for me all the time It's something I try to work on it's something I try to work on and I'd be aware of and knowing that yeah like Success inflates the ego success. It doesn't just inflates the ego, but it it enables people around you to Inflate the ego right like in a way you need to be more Self-critical and aware the more successful you are for the reason we were just talking about which is you are the air is thinner and you get less Not only do you get less Feedback, but you got this really important piece of feedback that can be really Misleading which is like you did something that wasn't supposed to be possible You didn't listen to the critics and doubters and haters and So do you take from that that you know better than everyone else? Right like this happens to a lot of entrepreneurs like Everyone said it was a bad idea. Everyone said it didn't work How do you know? Went to listen in the future like like when Elon Musk started Space X which was his second company with the money that he made from his first company like his friends Had like a literal intervention like you cannot do this. This is a bad bad idea. You will lose everything I mean it's gonna go public and be a multi-trillion dollar company, right? So like they were wrong so how does he now? And by the way, this is also true for Tesla. That was supposedly a bad idea, right like how does he? I think this is again a sort of larger life story that should help us understand this in our own lives like how does he know? In future instances not to just listen to himself, right? And so, you know, he's done some real dumb stuff too and That's what ego does is that sense of I don't need to listen to you. I know better So with that Earlier we were chatting about trusting your gut instinct. Yeah, obviously Elon trusted his gut instinct What I came to Space X? I know it was it is wildly successful maybe the biggest company in the world and you know, and so how do you differentiate what to take in from external influences and What gut instincts to trust what to me it comes down to like the story you tell yourself? Right, so like like when I went to my publisher and I was like, "Hey, I want to write a book about Stoic philosophy." They were not like chitching, you know, like they were like, "What?" You know, that sounds like a horrible idea. Like literally they were like and I think I said this before, but I took I took less than half What I I took for for the for the book that became the obstacle is the way I took less than half what I got for Trustman line So like they thought it was gonna be less than 50% Wow successful as successful. So What's the lesson that I take from that like it? I mean it ended up selling millions of copies and being this big thing Like do I take from that like those fucking idiots at my publisher don't know shit Right, do I take from that like I'm a genius that I can see around corners that I that like I know what the people want Or do I take from this like hey? I have what I thought was a pretty good idea and I Could see how it wasn't a obvious home run to some other people and the reason it succeeded is because of you know I I did the work. I was willing to roll the dice anyway, and I also because like The downsides of being wrong. We're not that high either, right? Like I took a risk and it paid off It wasn't a certainty that I knew it's I took a risk and it paid off So do I so again you could take and we have a thousand examples of this, but like you could take from this Hey, I'm a genius. I know better. That's that's you go or you can go Hey, I took a risk and it paid off That's to meet confidence with some self-awareness in there And so whatever story you tell yourself about why you are where you are It it doesn't change what happened like the event doesn't know that you're telling a story about it But it does change how you make future decisions Mm-hmm, right? Like If you feel like you're anointed if you feel like the rules don't apply if you feel like you can defy gravity You know all these things make it really likely that in the future you're going to overreach And that tends to be what successful people do right they tend to overreach and so that's that's what I think you want to take from from Like treasure gut, but trust the right part about it not the Delusional part of it. Do you feel that you have ever overreached? Yeah, I mean, I I try to think mostly back around the calls that I made where I was super wrong Like I don't think about the fights. I had with my publisher where I ended up being right I think about the times where I insisted on getting my way and in retrospect They had a point, you know, I try to think about the Times where, you know, I didn't listen to the feedback and I Would have saved myself a painful bump on the head had I done so and I think that's healthy I mean like again like if you focus on all the things you know you don't get any better if you focus on what you don't know You can get better if you focus on where you fell short you can make improvements and if you focus on what you got Right, you're just tricking yourself off How about humility? I mean, I think humility is important to me confidence is confidence is an awareness of strength and an awareness of weakness like To me the story of David and go I is at its core About the power of both those things, right? David doesn't think, oh, I'm anointed by God. Therefore, I of course I can defeat Goliath, right? If if if he knew that he was preordained to win he would have just you know rushed heedlessly into battle and Let God take care of it, right? Like the story to me that the the critical part in the story of David and Goliath is when David tries on the armor Of the soldier his brothers and it's too big and he goes I can't do this like this isn't gonna work I'm he's like as a shepherd. He's just not able to Operate as a traditional warrior and that's when he turns to the sling Right, the sling is hey, he's bigger than me. He's stronger than me. He's better trained than me I don't have these tools in my toolkit, but I do have this thing Right, and so humility to me is a key element in matching what what what every battle figurative and literal is about which is about matching strength against weakness like Strength against strength is stupid It it Usually creates two losers even if there's one winner, right? Like the what a great general does What a great athlete does what a great entrepreneur does? Is matched strength against weakness like and and by the way also protects hides your own weakness, right? Because that's where you don't want their strength to go against yours So so to me this humility is really important like knowing what you're not that good at what you need to get better at Is yeah, it's like a big part of it. How do you keep yourself humble? You know the kids help spouse helps Trying to do hard shit helps Like if you are only doing what you're really comfortable with and you're never in situations that you're outmatched that you're That you're out of your depth in You lose that feeling of like, oh shit. I got to figure this out And so like when I take on projects one of the things I think about is like is this something I've done before and If if it's something I've done before like it's not that interesting to me and If it's something where I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to figure out a lot of different skills to be able to do this And this can be in I don't mean like you're reinventing the wheel every time like I just mean like what's the element of your game that you're working on like if you go into the offseason and you're like I want to practice getting better at what I'm really good at I think that that is
is not just the gains are going to be less than exciting, but it's sort of a confirmation of you go. But if you're like, hey, and I know what I'm not good at is this, what I could get better at is this. And that's what you're going to spend your time on. To me, that helps with humility because you're waking up every day, and it's fucking hard. It sucks. And it's just, you can't feel great about how you're doing when you're getting your ask kicked. And so how are you seeking out those experiences, I think that's really important. What about with just amongst people? I mean, humility is successful as yourself, you reach millions of people with your books. Lots of people seek you out. They want to talk to you. They want to meet you. They want to get on an autograph. They want to pick your brain, they just want to be around, you know, and that can really inflate your ego. So how do you navigate that? How do you navigate that around your kids? Yeah, it is like when you get recognized around your kids, it's a weird thing. My kids, like, they roll their eyes and they, we were in Greece this summer and they started playing this game where they wanted to see if they would see more stray cats than I would get recognized. And the fact that they saw like hundreds of more stray cats than I got recognized was like a thing they were just constantly shoving in my face, which I love. I love. And, you know, so yeah, there is that, I think anything you do in public that has fans or, you know, sort of recognition attached to it can sort of puff you up. I have the benefit in what I do in that it's not mine. Like I write about an ancient philosophy that has been around for 2500 years. Like the reason the books work is 90% the philosophy and 10% me. And I try to remind myself of that fact. Like I am a conduit for a thing that not only did I not invent and can't be credited with, I'm not even good at it. Like my success in writing about stoicism is very different than my individual journey through stoic philosophy as a human being. And I try to remind myself of that. Do you consider yourself a stoic? Yeah, I mean, if this is the philosophy that I am interested in, that I am trying to apply in my life, do I call myself a stoic? I mean, I would say I am an aspiring stoic. Like I would certainly not claim to have attained any kind of enlightenment or mastery of the stuff. Like in fact, the reason that I'm so driven to write about it and talk about it is because it's like, it's really hard and I really struggle with it. So I try to remind myself that like when someone comes to me and says, like, hey, your books change my life, they help, you know, what this is stoicism change my life, it got me through cancer, whatever it is, I go, yeah, it worked for me too. Like, we're on the same journey. Like what they think is my books is really like the philosophy that I am also a student of. If that makes sense. It does make sense. But it's like, you know, when the interview athletes like in the locker room after like a big game and they're like, you know, all going to God, I think they mean that. And I think that's important. I also think that's like a really important professional adaptation. Like if if LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or whoever is like, fuck yeah, that was all fucking me. You know, like I'm the greatest. That's bad. Like that's bad for future performance. It's better. It's better to credit. And I don't just mean like from a public relation standpoint, like you have to mean it. Like if it's false modesty, it's a, it's, you might as well just own it. But if you're like, no, this was the team. This was the training. This is the tradition like you are, you are, that is, that is the right and the healthy way to think about it. First off, because it's true. And second, because it's not good for you to put that on. And credit yourself for things that, why is it not good? Well, I think, as I said, first of it's not, it's not good because it's not true. Right? Like everything is a team sport, right? And second, because it breeds complacency and entitlement. And if it, if it's not a little scary to you and it's not a little hard and you're not, you're not questioning your ability to do it, you're probably going in the opposite direction. Like you're, you're, you're, um, it should be getting, it should always stay challenging and hard or, or else, it's like, you know, you're lifting weights when it becomes easy, you grew, you grew the muscles and you, you, you need to crank the thing up. Make sense of, let's move into, how do I word this? People that have experienced death or been close to death, or I guess not experienced death, but it, they've been around death, people that have killed, people that have seen war, people that have been around death a lot and, and, and kind of knowing when to act, when to let things go, that kind of stuff, I mean, and you have a lot to say on that. I mean, I'd be, I'd, I'd be curious, your opinion, I mean, when, when you experience how fragile life is, does it turn down the volume on stuff for you? For a little bit. Yeah. And then it creeps back. Yeah. I liked everything I was reading and then I did, I compared it to myself and I was like, you know, a lot of this stuff bleeds back. Yeah. And then, and then you get, you know, in my life journey, in my previous life, it was, you know, there was constant, you're humbled again. Yeah. You're humbled again. Somebody died. Somebody died. We killed somebody, somebody, you know, and, and, and so there's that constant reminder and you live in that. Yeah. Pretty regularly. And I'm not around it anymore and things that maybe don't matter or shouldn't matter. They creep back in and they, they, they seem like a bigger deal than they are. And then I go into my revenge planning or, you know what I mean? And it's just, it, I'm just being honest, fucking creeps back in. And it creeps back in faster than you would think. Yeah. The friend of mine is in martial arts was telling me that it's like sweeping the floor. You don't sweep it once and it's clean forever. It's a constant process of sweeping. And I think he goes that way. And I think, like the urgency of life is another one. Like you go to the doctor and they're like, oh, you check that out. There's that moment where you're like, oh shit, is this it? You know, is this just to just get serious or, you know, you were talking to a friend on Friday and then you find out over the weekend they died or, you know, natural disaster, you know, whatever. Anything that happens. And suddenly you're like, oh, I forgot. We are mortal. Yeah. That's the stoic practice is memento more like remember you are mortal. But it has to be an active meditation because like we all know objectively that we're all going to die. Every, every person who's ever lived has, has, has eventually died. There's, there's no way out of life. And we know that although on average, you know, this is about how long you have, people die before they should all the time. The healthiest people in the world dropped out of a heart attack. The greatest people in the world get, you know, murdered for the money in their wallet. Obviously, wars and natural disasters. It happens. But, you know, then you get a little soft, a little entitled, you drift away from that urgency. And so, yeah, to me, it's like an, it's an active process of reminding yourself that, yeah, tomorrow is, is not certain. The future is, is not yours. One of the, I think the most powerful ideas from the stoics, this comes from Seneca. You know, he says it's wrong to think of death as something that happens in the future. Like that death is something we're moving towards. He says, actually, death is behind us. He says, like, the time that passes belongs to death. So instead of thinking like you live.
80 years, he says like you've died however many years you're currently old. So like I'm going to turn 38, no, 39 next month, I don't remember. But anyways, like my birthday, I should look back and go, this is how many years I have died. What do I have to show for that? Not how many years do I have left, but what have I, what do I have to show for the time? Because, because how we spend our time is how we spend our life, right? And so the idea of going like, hey, oh, you know, I'm, I don't like this, but I'm going to do it until my kids grow up or I'm going to do it, you know, for a couple more years, I'm going to do it till things settle down. Like, you know, we, we tell ourselves like, we make these assumptions about the future. And really the only thing that's certain is, is now the thing you're, you're paying for with your life right now. And so that, I do try to remind myself of that, that like, we don't, the choices we're making about our time right now are the choices that matter. The idea of working something you don't like, deferring something you don't like, because what you really want to do is play golf in your seventies is, is, is naive and entitled. And so, by the way, it's just the basic procrastination of like, you know what? I think I'm going to, I'm going to start that project next week. Like, if you're going to do it, you should do it and you should start right now. That to me is the, what you take out of the momentum or you practice. Yeah, I really struggled with those into, in, in, in my personal experience every time that I have been around death, thought I was going to die. There's only one thing that goes through your mind. And that is, that's your family. That's it. That's the, it's not all your shit. Yeah. It's not all your accomplishments. It's not what you've done at work. It's not any of that. It's not how much fucking money. The only thing is like, shit, you know, who's going to watch out for my family? Yeah. What I'm out of here. And, and then, you know, that, that, that creates the fight, you know, to stay alive. But what you're, what you're talking about, I, and I still struggle with this, no matter how many times I thought I was going to die or been around it or been close to it. I, it's been, I've had that constant reminder, like none of the shit matters. Yeah. The only thing that matters in my head is my family. And, but then there's the preparation, you know, I have to hit this financial benchmark. I have to hit this. I have to hit all these accomplishments or, or goals or whatever it may be to make the future of, of my life, my wife's life, my kids life, hopefully easier in the future, which takes away from living in the now because it's all planning, right? Well, you've been more insidious. Like, at some point, you would give literally all of it back for five more minutes of time with them, right? And then here you are fucking doom scrolling on Twitter. With the five minutes that you have for sure right now, like you, you would, you would, you're going to look back and wish that you could have more of this. And what are you doing with it right now? You're wasting it. And that, that to me is what I take from it is like, I have the thing that in the future will be priceless and unattainable. And I'm so frivolous with it. And I say yes to things because I don't want to be rude to someone. I get distracted because something's happening in the world. I, you know, I get overwhelmed and I'm like, I'm, I'm going to take a break. You know, like, like, and you experience it in a little, like already, like, if you're the little kids, you're just like, dude, like a year ago, like, uh, that's gone, right? Like these periods are so fleeting and so short. And in the moment you want it, you want like the next thing, you want to get out of it. I can't wait till they walk. I can't wait till they, you know, talk or can't wait till they drive, whatever it is. And then actually when those moments come, all you wish for is more of what you wish to weigh in the moment because you were entitled or short tempered or frustrated or whatever. Here at Sean Ryan Show, research is a big part of everything we do. We're constantly digging through articles, reports, timelines, and backgrounds so we can ask better questions and understand the subjects we're covering. And one tool we've been using a lot for that is Claude. Claude has become part of our workflow. We use it for episode research, pressure testing, different angles, and even our hot question segment because it helps us connect ideas and sharpen questions before we get on the air. What stands out is Claude does more than give you a quick answer. It helps organize the information, work through the problem, and get to a clearer way of thinking about it. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop it good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. With features like deep research and connectors, Claude can help bring context together from the tools you're already using. Companies like Stripe and Shopify Trust Anthropic with the rollout of AI in their businesses. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at Claude.ai/srs. That's Claude.ai/srs and checkout Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai/srs. How do you reset? Do you find yourself going down those rabbit holes too? Yeah, of course. I mean, I try to. The good news about the present moment is that you're always getting another one until the moment that you don't. To me, how quickly can you get. I'm throwing the phone down. I'm stopping right now. Not tomorrow, I'll do better, but I'm stopping right now. It's like how fast can you get back to center? It's to me like the key skill, both as a parent and as a person in this crazy modern world. But, you know, today was rough. Okay. How do you do better tomorrow? And how do you stop whatever the direction you're going in that you know you shouldn't be going in? And how quickly you can do that? What are your indications? Do they come from you? Do they come from your wife, your kids? Yeah, I mean, I feel like parenting is a lot of after they go to bed. You're like, "Man, what are we doing? Why did it go this way?" You know, it's that sort of debrief at night. To me, that's. You know, and it's very rarely. And we crushed it today. It's usually like, "Why did we try to squeeze one more thing in?" You know? Why did I. I remember I was put my sundown for bed the other night. And, you know, first I've kind of had a little more iPad time, then I got to brush my teeth. Oh, no, now I gotta go to the bathroom again or oh, no, no, in water. Oh, I'm hungry, even though I had dinner twice. You know, all the stuff that is making up for, you know, not going to bed. And then I finally said, "Okay, we're going to his room." And I'm like, "All right, let's get in bed." And he's like, "No, no, I'm sleeping on the floor." And I go, "What? You're not sleeping on the floor." And then we just got in this huge. You know, he's like, "What do you mean you never said I couldn't sleep on the floor?" We're getting this whole fucking argument about why I couldn't sleep on the floor. And then I was finally like, I was like, "Why do I have an opinion about this?" You know? Like, "Sleep on the floor, I don't care." I realized like, I think in the moment, it was like, I didn't want him to sleep on the floor because he was what I knew what happened. He would sleep on the floor until like the middle of the night and then wake up and then he'd come in our room. You know? And I was like, "I want to sleep," right? I was extrapolating what this means, what, you know, like, instead of like going like, "I don't care where you fall asleep," I was thinking about what it means if you sleep here or there, right? And so anyways, finally, I'm like, I just realized I'd gotten down that I was in a battle of wills that like, I had the power to end right then by saying, "Sleep wherever you want." You know? If you want to sleep on this teddy bear on the floor, like knock yourself out. So anyways, he lays down and just when I think he's fallen asleep, I go to leave. He goes, "I'm ready to sleep my bed now." And I go, "All right, let's go." And he walks into the fall asleep and it's bed. And it was such an illustrative one for me because it was like, it's like, I know when it started, it started when we walked into his room and he said, "I wanted to sleep on the floor." And I said, "No." And it ended with him realizing that he didn't want to sleep on the floor and he'd rather sleep in his bed. And that whole argument, you know, where I argued one thing and then I realized I was wrong and then I changed, like, that whole thing in the middle, it just didn't fucking need to happen. You know, like, the whole, like, it would have worked itself out had I been?
in a little more go with the flow about something. And I think what I took from that, what I, as a parent, is it's like, I need to be more in the moment, like does this thing actually matter? Like why am I thinking that this matters? And I'm thinking that it matters because I'm thinking about what it means as opposed to that it means nothing. Right, and that I could save us both a lot, like I could save us both a lot of trouble. And in fact, like not only did it work itself out, but it worked itself out, except we also had a big argument in the middle, which has a cost to it, right? And so like, I'm not saying you do everything your kids want and you let, you know, you got King Baby walking around. But most of the, like when I think about the things I had conflict with with my parents, how many of those in retrospect were significant in any way? You know? And how many of those things are they glad that they went to the mattresses hot? And I'm trying to, I'm trying to get better at that. - You're saying pick your battles? - Totally, and by pick your battles, I mean avoid 99.9% of the battles because they don't fucking matter. - So how do you guide of that? I mean, now we're moving into fatherhood. - Yeah. - How do you guide them without confrontation, without discipline, disciplining them? - Yeah. I mean, yeah, of course that's the challenge is like, you're not creating this fantasy world where they get to do whatever they want whenever they want it, but at the same time, like, like again, why do I care whether you sleep on the floor or they're bad? There's no lesson in here. What there actually is is me wondering about the consequences of this for me, and two, my desire for control, right? Like you wanna do this, and I want you to do this, and why am I gonna let a six year old win? You know, like most, so like, in a way, you think like, oh, I'm giving them discipline, I'm giving them structures, very helpful. Actually, you're just showing them like, authority is arbitrary and pointless and, you know, should be fine against it ever, like, you're actually sending the exact opposite lesson you want. And again, I'm saying this all is someone who constantly struggles with this, so I'm not saying this is something I'm good at, it's precisely the opposite, but I mean, look, you teach your kids by example, and you teach your kids often, in the moments when they are open to being taught, because they've experienced some kind of consequence, or for a choice, or they have, there is an opening because of something that's happened for you to actually insert that thing, that bit of wisdom or experience or lesson or whatever. That's kind of how I think about it. - Okay. I mean, you were able to hold book on stoke fatherhood, right? - Well, I did a book called The Daily Dad, which is just sort of, yeah, classical or ancient lessons, like one a day. I think the problem with parenting books is like, you're supposed to read this book and then just be good. Like, I'm supposed to read about, when my kid is 13 months, I'm reading about how you teach things to a 13 year old. Like, I'm not gonna remember any of this. So the idea of The Daily Dad is it's an email too, that The Daily Dad email is just one thought a day. It's, I think to me, parenting is like a series of values and lessons that you've got of you reminded of over and over and over again. And that's kind of what I've tried to do with it. - What are some of the most important ones that stick out to you? - Yeah, I think that the most important one, I think is just how fast this is all going, and that you, every time I cut my kid's fingernails or take them to get a haircut, I go like, that's that much life right there. That's that much of the brief window that they live in my house, right? That we get to do things together. And I try to be always aware. Just as like, like, Memento Mori is about your own mortality, realizing that like, I don't have a two year old anymore. My three year old is dead and gone. My four year old is dead and gone. Like, you are cycling through those ages and they will never be that thing again. To me, that's like one of the ultimate parenting lessons. And the other one, my wife and I were related to that was like, we were like, do we want to, there was like some kids concert or something we were thinking about going. And we're like, oh, we got to get in the car. It's like a 30 minute drive. Are they going to appreciate it? And it was just like, how many more times are they going to want to do this? You know, probably not that many more. Like at some point, there's the last time. And are we going to be glad that we stayed at home and didn't do the thing or are we going to be glad that we did the thing? So realizing that you only get so many shots of these things. I think it's a big one that you are the voice that's going to be in their head. And what is that voice like? Is it a negative voice, is it positive voice? Bruce Springsteen talked about how we're going to be either ancestors or ghosts to our children, like an ancestor guides and a ghost haunts. And what kind of example are you going to shut your head? I never thought of it like that. And it's not just like what you say, but also like, is dad working on his shit? Is mom working on her shit? Or are they just voicing that stuff on you? And so like thinking about getting serious about the stuff that you know you need to address, you know you need to work on, I think that's one. And then related to that, I think I've never lost my temper at my kids. And then afterward, been like, I'm so glad I did that. I have like on my phone, you know, it cycles through pictures of my kids like as my home screen. And one of the things I'm always struck by is like how little they were. Like, I was real fucking pissed at a very small person. Like, it doesn't age well. Like the things you get upset about, the things that you thought were a big deal, as they get older, and you get a little better at this parenting thing, I think that the disparity of them in you becomes more obvious. And I'm like, why did I like, like, what do I give a shit about the backseat of the car so much for? Or like, you walk in and he's drawn on the wall or, you know, broke something, you know. What, where's, where's the car that my parents were really concerned about me spilling fucking my McDonald's ketchup on? Like, it's in a, it's in a fucking cube somewhere. Yeah. Like, it doesn't, like, it did not ultimately affect the resale value of said car. It did not teach me any lessons about cleanly, like, it was just like a stupid argument that we had, right? Like, and I, I try to think about that. Again, not good at it, but I try to go like, where will this thing be in the future? Am I going to care about it? You don't put importance on anything. Yeah. Yeah, where I try to get better at not a human or the thing. What do I care more about? You know, the marriage advice is like, do you want to be right? You want to be married, you know? Do you, do you want to have a good relationship with your kids or do you want to get your whale the time? How do you know if you're, I mean, this is just a really a good way to put it, if you're a positive or a negative in your, in your kid's mind. How do you gauge that? To me, I think it comes down to, like, like, no, no parents perfect every, every, every therapy session, ultimately, and stuff in all the ways that your parents could have done better or whatever, right? But like, you know, people say like, all my parents did the best they could. I'm not sure that's always true. And so like, are you actually doing your best? Like, that's, to me, the question is like, like, I go, like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing my best. And I go, am I? Because I feel like I try a lot harder at other stuff. Like, I'm not saying parenting is easy. But I feel like I do a lot more work evaluating myself professionally. I bring in a lot more help professionally. I, I measure myself better professionally. And then a lot of times as a parent, I'm just winging it. And then, and then, then I want to, I want them to let me off the hook and go, dad was doing his best. Like, I'm not sure that's true. And so that, that does kind of push me to try to do better. Yeah. So like me, I'm like that.
Yeah, because look, and I think culturally for for men, especially, right? Like your job was where you were supposed to be like your best where you prove yourself and then parenting was like an afterthought. And the expectations were, you know, that expression, now the soft bigotry of low expectations, that that's basically dudes for all of human history when it comes to parenting. And like, I don't know, I want I want to do better than that. What are the, I mean, what are the steps that you are taking that you're thinking about taking that, that, that, that create a better balance? Yeah, I mean, to me, a big one is like, okay, so you're really good at what you do, you're successful at it. And then, and then you think that that somehow like, exempts you from having to do shit at home, right? Like, like, like, obviously look, managing your time and delegating where you can, but you're like, why am I assuming that like, my wife should make the school lunches? Or there's this, they did this interesting study of like schools where like they needed something at home. Like, like, there's some problem at the school, right? And the, the, the receptionist or the principal or whatever had to call the parent. Like, what percentage of the time did they call the dad? Probably a very small percentage. And there's, there's the assumption of the person making the call. And then there's also the reality of like the family. Like, and like, I've worked really hard. And my wife and I, like whenever we hire like an assistant or we, we're like, like, we're like, there's no, we're both the default parent. Like, it's not like, call her if there's anything important. And then call Ryan if you can't reach her. You know, like, I, I want to, I want to make this a thing that I value. And that like, like, I heard someone say like, your kids are not a distraction from your work. They are your work. And it's easy to say, but like, do your, what does your calendar say? You know, what is your division of household labor say? Like, kid has a birthday. Are you just showing up at the birthday party? Or did you make planning decisions? You know, could you make purchase decisions? Did you, did it catch you off car than it was there? But like, like, there's just, there's just a, an assumption, I think it's, look, it's obviously better than it's ever been before. But there is like an assumption that like, that's not like the term for this is emotional labor. That's not emotional labor that the father should have to do. Unless they're like a single parent or, you know, whatever. And I'm not saying it came easy. And I'm not saying it came voluntarily. I'm just saying like in my marriage and in my family, my wife and I have tried to not do that. And it's been like, I've had to learn how to do a bunch of things that I would not, I would not normally be inclined to do or be good at. I've had to figure out how to do. Man, it's just a man, it's such a dichotomy, right? I mean, I think about this all the time. I've talked about this several times on the show. I mean, my wife and I have like this little bitty fucking hunt cabin that's, it is like, looks like you can blow on it, fall over. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's all one room, you know, the kitchen, the bathroom. It's all one room. Yeah. And, and before my kids were born, we would spend weekends down there and just to, we live on the women's, yeah, we live on the woods. We go down there, you're really out in the woods. And that's the some of the happiest times I've had with my wife is down there is zero to, there's no cell reception, there's no internet, there's nothing. And, um, and I keep coming back to this, which I love doing this. But I'm happier right there. No distractions. I'm in the moment. Sure. And, you know, in now, with the, I'm close to being able to just, I could do that. I could give it, I could sell the studio. I could do every, I could get rid of all of this, sell it. It'd be totally fine financially and actually live that life where I'm 100% dedicated to my family. Yeah. 100% of the time. Yeah. And knowing that I would probably be happier. Yeah. I'm 99% sure I would be a happier person. You know, if I, if I put all, even though I love doing this, you know, put all the world's distractions and it's just a way from my life, but I still fucking come back to this. Yeah. Because I love it. And, and I also think about, you know, what would it be better? Would it, would it, would it realistically? Would it be better for me to be there 100% of the time for my, for my wife and my two kids? And what kind of example is that setting for my son? Because that's not how society is set up. Yeah. I think it's, it's an interesting question. Is it better for them? Is it right? It's, it's, it's better for them right now. Is it better for their future? Yeah. Because they're, they're, they're going to hit a point where they're going to have to provide for their family. It's on a track. I personally think it's unattractive for a woman to whether, whether he is a wealthy, financially wealthy man or not, a trust fund baby. You know, I don't think, I don't think women, I don't think that's a real attraction. Sure. You know, yeah, to find it in a partner. Sure. You know, and so if he doesn't, if he doesn't see me providing for the family and in doing things that, in my opinion, men should be doing as the, as the leader of the household, then what, what happens to him when, when he comes of age to find a wife and, and have kids and provide? Well, don't you also think that example them? What is that going to lead to? And he may not ever find somebody if he doesn't, if he doesn't get that example. I remember a couple of weeks into the pandemic. My wife was like, please never be home this much ever again. And like, obviously, I had to do some work on like being like, okay, I have, I have to be, I have to become a more stable, like, chill person because this, this is it, this is a currently operating in a way that's only good in small doses, right? That wasn't good. At the same time, like, to take the energy and the drives and the competence and the mastery, all the stuff that you have and be like, I'm going to put all this at home. You know, I think that's also how you get fucking stage parents and, you know, sports parents, like what are stage parents? I just mean like the parents that make all facets of their existence, their family, right? And then all of a sudden you're just channeling that energy at home. Like, there's an intensity and an energy that has to have to release valve. And I think work and impact, like, that shouldn't all be on your family. Like, there's a, we're meant to go out and do things and to figure things out. And it's like, so you're just going to drive them to school and then play golf all day. Like, I'm not sure that's, that's not thriving as a human being either or setting a good example either. So there's attention. But yeah, I think one of the things that bothers me and, and I think we all dilute ourselves with it is we go like, I do this all for my family. It's like, no, you don't. You stop needing to do this for your family a long time. Well, this is about you, right? And, and that's not to say it's not about them at all, but like, you're a billionaire, dude. Like, you're not doing this for anybody. You're doing this because there's never enough for you. And so it can be very easy to take something selfish and make it seem like it's selfless. Justify it. Yeah. And so understanding the tension between those two things. And like, what I've tried, I've tried to say and work on a way that I can be really good at what I do and keep it within some reasonable hours, boundaries and systems. Like, to me, like, what I'm working on, like, my, I'm not trying to be the cell the most books in the world have the most impact in the world or be the most famous or any, I'm trying to be really good at what I do and be a really good parent. And that in a way, that's actually a more difficult needle to thread.
than just being, all in one or all in the other. And I think it's important that we understand that that's possible to do. Like, the athletes that I admire, or the entrepreneurs that I admire, or the leaders that I admire, are not the maniacs, right? It's the ones who seem to be reasonably well-adjusted human beings also, right? Like, sometimes you read about these, like, this is my daily routine, this is my system, this is how so and so prepares in the off season. And you're like, well, I'm sure that's all really easy to do if you don't fucking see your family, you know? Like, if you're a piece of shit, that's easier. Yeah. It's, can you be in great shape? Can you do what you do? Can you perform at a high level? And do school drop off or, I don't know, be involved and be present when you're around, you know? Like, can you, like, that's the challenge for me. Like, it used to be like when I was working on a book, I was just an all-consuming thing. I don't just mean the hours, I just mean like, I couldn't turn it off. And now I try to judge the success on a book on like, how, how, how not disruptive it is. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. Then you find out pretty quickly what holds up and what doesn't. That's why I keep coming back to Roca. These aren't just lifestyle sunglasses pretending to be performance gear. I've worn mine training on the rains, traveling, and outdoors for long days. And they stay locked in place the entire time. They're incredibly lightweight. The optics are razor sharp with zero glare. And you honestly forget you're even wearing them. But they still look clean enough to wear anywhere, not overly tactical, just modern, functional design that works every day. Roca was born in Austin, Texas. And everything about them reflects that performance first mindset. And if you need prescription lenses, they offer both sunglasses and eyeglasses options built to the same standard. And whether you're outfitting a law enforcement unit, a military team, or looking for corporate gifts that don't suck, Roca offers wholesale partnerships to make it happen. Roca isn't just I wear, it's confidence. You can wear every single day. They're the real deal. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out for yourself at roca.com and use code SRS for 20% off site wide at checkout. That's roca.com and use code SRS. How do you, I mean, what are your indicators for you that tell you if you're late and I'm talking to you. I doubt you lean too far into family. It seems like you probably lean too far into work. Yes. And so what are your indicators that let you know? Is it a personal guilt? Is it some of the way your kids are acting or communicating to you? Is it your wife? What are your indicators? Yeah, I mean, look, just practically, I try to measure like the stuff that I do, or I say yes to, I measure it in bedtimes. Like how many bedtimes are I going to miss for this thing? And like, one is a lot, two is usually too many, right? So I try to measure it in bedtimes. So that's like, that's kind of my north start. Physically, is this taking me away, yes or no? And that's kind of how I judge the stuff that comes my way. That being said, that can be a way of fooling yourself, which is like, you're there, but you're not really there. So I try to think about like, hey, how is my emotional state, my focus, like, am I, am I the reason that this is all dysregulated, or am I the calming presence, right? And I think too often, it's like I came home amped, I came home worked up, I'm stressed, I'm distracted. And you can feel like, I think you can just feel the energy in the family dynamic. And I want to be the solution, not the problem. And I think, I know I'm not taking care of the things that I need to be taking care of. And I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing when I am, I'm the problem. You know, like, if the three-year-old is upset 'cause they're a three-year-old, great. If the three-year-old is upset because you snapped at them because you were trying to play with them and check your phone at the same time, you're the problem. And so I try to think about that, like how am I fitting into this system, this sort of wavelength, as opposed to, I wanna make it all about me. - Makes a lot of sense, makes a lot of sense. - And then you should have a spouse and a family dynamic, co-parent, whatever it is for you, where they're like, dude, what was that? You know, like, I think my wife and I talk a lot about like, like let's back each other up in the moment, you know? Let's not throw each other under the bus in front of the kids, but like afterwards, like, yeah, you can't do that. Like, you know, you can't do that. You saw, you saw when you made that choice, right? It goes both directions, but like, I think if, if, if you're not making each other better as parents, you're not, you're not doing your job. - Yeah, yeah. You know, Steve Rinalo's book. - Yeah. - About outdoor kids and then inside the world. - I mean, there's so many studies to talk about, you know, the more the kids are outside of the percentage of them having depression decreases dramatically. I mean, less screen time, depression decreases dramatically. You're raising your kids on a farm, correct? - My son's, my youngest is in first grade. And when he started in August, it was the first time he ever sat at a desk. 'Cause he went, oh, he did kindergarten and pre-K for several years at an outdoor school. Like they would go, there was no buildings, and they did it outside of rain or shine. You know, they ate their lunch around a campfire, and they did all the stuff outside. - That's awesome. - And it was incredible. - And that kind of education, Gold. - I think it's called, it's like a nature school or an outdoor school. I'm guarantee you there's one around here. And it was incredible. And, you know, that was a big, big choice for us. And then, you know, we, like, one of our big things is like, okay, sure, screens are maybe better parents than us could exist in a screen free household. That, we didn't, that ship is sailed. But, like, we try to use them to, like, how is that an entry point into a world that we are, by nature of where we are financially and the freedom we have, like, we, I can show you that world, right? Like, my, my voice got really into this podcast called "Greeking Out," which is, it's all about the Greek myths. It's amazing. It's like 10 seasons, listen to every episode multiple times. And so, like, we went on a road trip across Greece, we're going to Rome this year. Like, you get, if they get interested in a thing, like, 'cause they watch a video about it, they hear about it. Like, let's go experience that thing in real life. So, to me, like, one of the most important skills you can have in life is, is first curiosity, but then second, the ability to take that curiosity to its natural conclusion, right? Like, if you're interested in something, or you don't know about something, do you have the skills to go figure it out? You know, like, there are books about that. There are videos about that. There are podcasts about that. There are places we can go. There are experts about this thing. There's AI, right? Like, to me, I try to see the screen as an entry point into the enormity of the world, and then it's like, the algorithm is exposing themselves to stuff, and then, because they're interested in it, like, my job as a parent is to take them down that rabbit hole. - Okay. - And so, that's kind of how we think about, like, learning and doing stuff. - I like that. - Like, oh, we're going on this road trip now, I guess. Like, you know, or, and I'm showing them stuff, right? It's like, like, I showed my son this, like, sat in a live video, and he thought it was hilarious. And then, you know, it's like, oh, you want to take an improv class now? Done, you know? Or, oh, did you actually know, like, Lauren Michaels' papers are at a museum in Austin? Let's go do that. So, like, that idea of, like, they have that flicker of interest or awareness of something. How do you take them down that rabbit hole? - So, they show interest, and you immediately act on it. - Yeah, yeah. And, like, it's not heavy-handed, but it's like, oh, there's so much more of that. You don't even know.
And that's like, that gets me excited, right? Because like, sometimes it's something I know a lot about, and I get to show you all the things that I know about it, and that I love about it. And then sometimes it's something I know nothing about, and we get to go learn about that together. - Do you introduce things to them as well? - Yeah, yeah, it's like, you're always like, what about this, what about the, and you know, you don't have a great hit rate, but when it lights 'em up, that's like the best. - Like, music, movies. - Yeah. - Nice. - Let's talk, I'm dying to talk about this. - All right. - Churchill? - Yeah. - Okay. - I didn't grow up with money. - Yeah. - It was never around it, you know? And now I find myself making a pretty decent amount. And I don't know where to look to, you know, how do you raise kids with that? Keep them humble, keep them from being entitled, keep them from idolizing shit, fucking cars, watches, whatever. You know, the luxury items. And when you know, how do you do it? - I don't know. And you don't know whether you see all these people that have grown up with it. And a lot of times I don't like the way they turn out. I don't wish that for my kids, I'll say that. - And you don't know if you're doing a good job until it's like too late. Yeah, no, I think it's the thing that keeps parents up at night. I remember I was talking to Matthew McConaughey at one time and he said, you know, there were a lot of things when he was a kid where it was like, we can't. But then you find yourself in a position as a parent that's very different and it's like, we're not going to. Like, we don't do that. That, that, like, in a way, it's not easier because it's hard to not have enough. But it takes the choice out of things, right? Like, you know, and I think not to idealize the past, but like, there used to be society was the, the income inequality was less. Like, we've never existed with this level of income inequality in this sort of stratified world, right? Where it's like, okay, now it used to be there was first class and economy on an airplane. Now, not only are there these different levels on an airplane, but there's like private. And the people who are flying private are living in a very different world than the people who are not. And how do you, how do you stay in reality? I think it's like the first, the first challenge, especially as, you know, people get to levels where, you know, it's, it's inconsequential to them like what this costs or that costs. You, you have to create some artificial boundaries and rules, I think. I just, I don't know. It's fucking tough. It is. Because they have to, like, you could starve them from all of that. Yeah. There's a parent, and you can, you can still, but then on the other hand, eventually, they're going to be in it. And if they don't know how to act, and when they're around it, then I also think you're doing them a disservice. And so they really need to know how to operate in both worlds. And in my opinion, how do you get them to operate in both worlds without becoming a self-entitled, selfish piece of shit? I mean, for lack of work. It's a time was, it's a time was challenged. Plutarch, one of the great biographers of antiquity was talking about how parents will spend a lot of time on their will, trying to create in a state. Who's going to manage the estate? Who's going to be the guardians? How much money do they get? You know, spend a lot of time thinking about that. And not enough time thinking about, how do I raise a person with enough character that like, they can handle it, right? Like, instead of being like, "Oh, we're creating a trust fund." And the trust fund gives them this much per year, which is just enough and not too many. It's like, you could also just raise, spend your time trying to raise a child who has good values in a good work ethic. And is, doesn't derive their value from luxury goods, right? So I think it's a challenge. Certainly, again, nothing close to the challenge of being a single mother on food stamps, trying to raise three kids or whatever. But it comes with its own challenges. And ultimately, I think we have to model it. And then I think we have to, like the most valuable gift you can give your kid is not, you know, a huge estate. It's like, the ability to, like have the thing that lights them up, like that they like doing, that like they want to spend their life doing. Like Robert Green, my mentor, he calls this your life's task. What is your life's task? Like, what were you put here to do? And I think our job as parents is to help our kids find that thing, to create an environment where they can find that thing and be supported and loved in pursuing that thing. You know, it's not to make them a doctor or a lawyer or to inherit the family business. It's to find the thing that if they didn't do, not only would they be unhappy, but the world would be worse off for them not doing it. - Mm-hmm. I mean, I want to say something too, just for the audience, I don't want to sound like a couple of fucking elitist, you know, sitting up here talking about this, but this is, this is 'cause we're not even talking about what we have, what we don't have. We're just, anybody who finds themselves in a position, that they are doing better than their parents did, this applies to them. Whether it, you know what I mean? - Look at your average American has a level of choice and privilege that a struggling family, almost anywhere else in the world, is not having to think about it. - So this is privilege, but in a way that we're all privileged and there's just different degrees of it. But yeah, how do you, how do you raise a kid who is resilient, who is in, like, stoicism to me is about being in control of yourself, being master of yourself, and that's what we're trying, like, you're trying to raise kids who can go through life and are not gonna be, as we said, don't say, you a lot, don't throw in the towel a lot, don't expect other people to solve their problems for them. How do you raise self-sufficient, resilient kids? That's the challenge of our time. And yet, it's also the most time which challenger is, every parent for all time has had to deal with that in some form or another. And I think, I don't think there's one thing you do. I think it's a handful of things. - Do you think it's how you act? I mean, the things that I'm learned are my kids are very young, my oldest is close to five. But I think it is, I really am starting to think it's the only thing that really matters is the example that you set for them. So if you idolize your shit, they're going to idolize their shit. If you get pissed because they fucking scratch your car, break a window, whatever, break a vase, anything. And you overreact and idolize the thing that's going to be passed on, same with people. They're going to look to see how you treat people, all people, not people you look up to and people that you think that you're above all people. And they're going to take that in and hopefully the financial aspect it doesn't have any relevance if you lead by example. - Yeah, like they say, your kids, kids don't always listen, but they're always watching. And like a way to think about it is like, let's say you never gave them a single piece of advice. Like you never told your kids, do this, don't do that. This is important, that's not important. This is what we believe, these are our values. What do you think they would deduce about what you think about those things from the life that you lead? Like if you were tried in court, would you be convicted of those beliefs from your actions? I think that's like, you know, I think about this. It's like, okay, so I write about stoicism. But if I didn't, would my kids say that That's what I, hmm.
Believe in or care about that. Would that be how they would describe me? You know and that that like that's the message that ultimately matters like what do you? What are you saying with your your deeds not your words and? You say this matters and this doesn't matter and then you know your your Your decisions tell a very different story. I like to say like you're you know your calendar doesn't lie. Yeah And neither Neither ultimately does does your you know your sure behavior at home Olen Shannon Maldonado Käsintecht ja artesaanitua teita myüven jaui lahi kaupan perusta ja Valitzin Shopify koska alustoja testa testa ni totesin sen ehdottomasti yhdeksi helpokäyttöisimmistä alustoista Valitzin Shopify koska alustoja testa ni totesin sen ehdottomasti yhdeksi helpokäyttöisimmistä alustoista Valitzin Shopify koska alustoista alustoista minulo oli tärkeä pohtia kehittymistämme tulevaisuudessa Kaikki myyntiin tarvittava työkalut kuten varaston suunnittelu ovat kätevästi dashboardissa Aloita ilmainen kokeilu Shopify piste komsi vustolla Do you ever ask your kids for input? What are you doing? Oh, like what can I do better? Yeah, all the time. Do you really? Yeah. What do they say? They usually like can I you should give us our iPads more stuff like that. I think it's it's a lot to ask them to be able to I think when they're older they're going to be better at being able to verbalize like what? What they need more of and what they need less of. But I do try to think like hey, like why isn't this working, you know? I try to like why is it this isn't having the effect that I wanted to have? I need to do something differently instead of insisting over and over again that this is how it should go. This is you know, this is what I think. But I don't know it's it's it's it's a constant fucking challenge. And one of the one of the things I heard someone say that was helpful to me is like like the bad parents aren't thinking about whether they're doing a good job or not. You know, so the fact that it is a challenge and that you are thinking about it and that you're, you know, how are we doing here? Where can we do better? I'm worried about this like that's not that already puts you in in somewhat elite company. You're a better parent by yeah, you're in the better parent category. Yeah, yeah. Well, I look a lot of people have kids not everyone's a parent. And the decision to be like, Hey, I'm going to I'm going to take this thing seriously. I'm going to it's not this side hustle, but I have it's like my pain thing. It's the main reason I'm here. And I'm going to work at this like I work at anything else, which means I'm going to take it seriously, which means I'm going to ask for advice, which means I'm going to actually look at how it's going in the results. And then I'm going to be willing to change and try try it differently. I'm not just going to go, well, my parents sit at this way or well, this feels right to me. But actually be willing to change and take feedback is not just changing to take feedback. I think I think also apologize like there are things that 30 years later, my parents apologized for it would want to be right like I don't know about you, but like if my parents were like, Hey, you know what, when you were a teenager, you really clearly needed this and we didn't do that for you. And I bet that was hard and like we thought about it more and like we wish we'd done it differently. I'm like, Oh my god, right. So it's never too late, right? Do apologize. How, how quickly can you do it now though? Like, like can I go, Hey, like the next day, Hey, I don't know why I picked this fight with you about you wanted to sleep on the floor. It doesn't matter to me. I just love that you still let me put you down and picking a fight was not how I wanted it to go, but I did and I don't want to do that. I'm sorry. I mean, I don't know about you, but I didn't get apologize too much was a kid. And, and you know, maybe some people think that's weak or softer or whatever to me, I'm trying to get better and I do it. I'm not going to get better if I'm not taking accountability and responsibility for when I don't do it the way that I want to do it. I do it, especially about the phone. Yeah, I feel so fucking guilty and I keep doing it over and over and over again. Yeah, but I probably, you know, I'm like, I do I just I have to do it. Yeah, because I think that once again, a lead by example, because it also teaches them like they need to be able to do that too. We're just to see you struggle with like you're like, hey, this is a thing I have to use, but I use it way more than I have to and I want to use it less. So here's where I want to be and here's where I am and here's your dad trying to get there. To me, that's a much more relatable, a much more inspiring and ultimately much more practical perception of your parents than mom and dad are perfect, their word is law. Like, because kids know that's not true. They sense the bullshit and they resent it and it undermines it undermines their connection and their belief in you. And so, yeah, I try to I try to own that shit when I can and I try to be I try to be clear about the stuff that I'm working on and the stuff that I'm trying to get better at. Yeah, you know, I'm doing a I got so much out of my first psychedelics. I've again treatment. I'm doing it again in the in the foreseeable future. In what I'm really hoping I get out of it is some kind of perspective of what my kids think of me. No, interesting. I really want to see what I look like through their lens. Yeah. And that's probably going to be a hard time to see. But yeah, I just want to I want to improve and I just I really want to see that. I saw this video of this billionaire and someone was like, you know, what's it like to have a billion dollars or what's it like to be rich and he was like rich isn't having a billion dollars. Rich is having kids who want to come home for the holidays. I think it's it's really important that you sort of define what success is right like people go, you only get 18 summers with your kids and it's like legally. But like you meet families and they spend a lot of time together and you're like, oh, that's a whole different thing. I didn't know we could do that. You know, I didn't know that was something we could work towards. And so thinking about like what the goal is. And so the goal is not to have the shoes nicely lined up by the back door the shoot that the goal is not to have. I remember I was talking to someone once she was she's in her 90s and she's like people used to come over and be like it doesn't look like you have kids and she was like I took that as a compliment and I. I don't she's like I don't know how I could have possibly been so wrong. She was like your house should look like you have kids. Your life you have kids. Why what are you doing so like the goal is to have. It's to not have these people for 18 years and then eject them and go back to your selfish life like you started a family the goal is to have the family in the future. And so remembering that running the things through the lens of that again it doesn't mean giving them whatever they want whenever they want it because that is also at odds with that. I would also say though like if you're a billionaire you can go visit your kids for the holidays. You don't they don't need to come home. The point is they should want they should want to come home right like like you should the success here is that that when the authority ends the relationship is still there. And I think people lose sight of that. That's really good. Let's talk about speed reading speed reading is a scam. Well how do I read faster. I don't know it's I think it's illustrative that that's what you want to do you're not like how how do I eat food faster. Is there a way to have sex faster like the point is stuff that's good you want to you want to take how long it's supposed to take.
So I don't know why we want to read faster. Like, if the question is how do I read more, I got lots of answers to that question though, but I don't think we should try to read faster, right? Like I would say I read at a medium speed, I just spend a lot of time reading. And I spend a lot of time reading because it's worth doing, it's enjoyable to do. And also it's magic. The founding of Stoicism has a story about this. Because you know, the founder of Stoicism, he visits the Oracle at Delphi, the famous Oracle, and he asks what the secret to the good life is. And he's told that wisdom comes when we begin to have conversations with the dead. And it's only later at a bookstore that he realizes that that's what books are. It's a way to talk to people who are dead. That we can converse with Marx really as through meditations, but we can read the speeches of Churchill that we can read, you know, the poems of Emily Dickinson that, you know, we can read great novels or the campaigns of the greats. It's magic, it's fucking time travel. Like, here is someone who's no longer with us, transporting us to them, them to us breaking down, you know. There's a famous poem that says, you know, books are door-shaped, like they're portals to another world. And so anyways, the point is reading is spectacular. Like, for $15 or $20 or fucking free at the library, that you can have access to the brain of Julius Caesar or Napoleon, you know, you can read from Stockdale, you can read from Marcus Aurelius, you can read from Epictetus, you can read from Frederick Douglass, you can read from Abraham Lincoln. You know, this is incredible. Like, like the amount of wisdom and hard one experience inside the pages of the book is an incredible thing. And like, most people are like, I'd like to learn by trial in here, or they're like, eh, I don't know. A lot of good stuff on Instagram too, right? Like, it's ridiculous. Tolstoy talked about like, you can, you can, converse with the, why is this people who ever lived and you choose not to? So, I think first and foremost, understanding what reading allows you to do makes the ROI of it much clearer. Is it also entertaining and fun and relaxing, sure? But it's an incredible thing that we have contained in these pages. The other thing is, is like, you gotta make time for it. Like, there's no, there's no shortcut. Like, you gotta do it, you gotta make time for it. And if I looked at your screen time app, I promise you I could find the time, you know? Like, you have the time, you're just not spending it. And this is for all of us. Like, I could read more, I just get distracted by things. And so, one of the reasons I like carry a physical book with me everywhere is like, when I sit down, 'cause I'm a little early or someone's late, or I have a few minutes between here and there, like, I wanna read a book. I don't wanna go into social media. I don't wanna go into work, I wanna read. And I see that as part of my job. Like, it's crazy. Like, some of my best ideas, some of the biggest successes I've had as an entrepreneur, but also as an employee came from things I read in books. But for some reason, if someone had come into my office and I was sitting in a chair like this reading, they'd be like, I don't pay you to do this. Yet, if I was sitting at my computer monitor, check an ESPN, they'd have no idea. And so, it's, I think we need to do a better job understanding that reading is not just work, like, has a work benefit, but it's like some of the best, single best way you could spend your time. And, I know, that's my case for reading. Right, on that. Well, Ryan, I know you had a flight to catch, but this was amazing. This was an awesome conversation. I'd love to have you back at some point. - How'd it be on it? - We do have a hot question. - Oh, I was forgot. - One last thing, hot question. Audie Murphy tried to enlist in the Marines at 17. They rejected him for being too small. The paratroopers rejected him too. He finally got into the army by gaining weight before the physical five, five, 112 pounds. He went on to win every U.S. combat decoration for valor, including the Medal of Honor, 28 medals total, the most decorated American soldier in history. He came home, became a movie star, and was haunted by PTSD for the rest of his life. Slep with a loaded pistol under his pillow, got addicted to sleeping pills, locked himself in a hotel room and kicked it cold turkey. And then he did something nobody at his level was doing in the 1960s. He went public, talked openly about combat trauma, demanded the VA take it seriously, died in a plane crash at age 45. Here's the question. Tell me about Audie Murphy. What does the smallest, quietest guy in the room becoming the most decorated soldier in American history? Tell us about what real toughness actually looks like. Well, they told us quite a bit about Audie Murphy right there. It's just an incredible human being, an incredible American. He has a memoir called "To Hell and Back," which I should have brought you because it's an amazing book, one of the great memoirs of the 20th century. I'll tell you one little story about Audie Murphy. All those accomplishments are incredibly impressive. One of the ones he doesn't get enough credit for that I think in a way, it's not harder, but it's rare. So he becomes a movie star, a contribution musician, right? And he's asked to do a bunch of endorsements. And he turns down all cigarette and alcohol endorsements because he doesn't want to model that for kids. And so I just think, he did a lot of feats of discipline and a lot of feats of courage. Saying no to money is a thing that a lot of brave and powerful people have found it hard to do. In a way, there's physical courage and then there's moral courage. And the moral courage to say, "Hey, I'm not going to do that. "It doesn't feel right to me." It's courage that we don't celebrate enough. We don't give out medals for that kind of courage. And then the courage to speak out and to speak honestly about what you're struggling with, like vulnerability, like, "Hey, I'm not okay." Hey, even though I've capable of all these things, this thing is kicking my ass. I'm struggling with this thing. Again, that's another form of courage that we don't celebrate enough and we don't hold up enough. And it's a. And we wonder why it's rare. And it moved me just as much. It's an incredible person. And you read some of those medal of honor citations for those guys and it's just absolutely unreal, right? There's a follow up here. I think you're going to like this. What does a story say to every influencer right now selling alpha male stoicism? Yeah. I. Andrew Tate is a fucking abuser of women, a shitty person, a sex trafficker. And the idea that that's who you should be taking life advice from is insane, right? Like, stoicism is not a recipe for making you a better sociopath. It is not this pick and choose thing where you take a couple motivational quotes and then, you know, you put it up next to a AI generation, AI generated a picture of Marx to realize with a 12 pack and you're like, "I get it," right? It's a philosophy. And it's a philosophy built around virtue. And the four virtues of stoicism, courage, essential, discipline, essential, wisdom, essential. But the fourth is justice. That's ethics. That's the standards you hold yourself to. That's your contribution to society, to the world. And none of the other virtues are of any worth. If not balanced out by or, in fact, directed at justice, right? Like, courage on the battlefield, sure, very impressive. But what if you're fighting a horrible war? Like, I was in state in Franklin and, you know, walked past the Confederate statue. And, you know, it says, "There have never been braver men "or a cause more honorable." It's like, I can think of quite a few causes more honorable. Like, other than not. It was literally the worst cause, like literally the worst cause to ever go to war for. Now it's complicated, and a lot of the men were drafted. Most of them didn't own slaves. They were told a bunch of lies by the slave powers. But let's not lie to ourselves about what that heroism was used for. And what it would have looked like had it triumphed. Like the world would have been a worse place. In fact, their virtue, that military valor was weaponized and spent in the wrong way for the wrong cause, right? And so that's ultimately what philosophy is designed to help us wrestle with, was like, what's right and wrong, what do we owe other people? Are we making the world a better or a worse place? And look, if the idea is of masculinity and toughness and resilience, if that's what initially attracts you to stoicism, awesome, right? You just can't stop there. And I think probably you see this in your line of work, like the recruiting posters is what gets the people in the door, right? But ultimately you got to buy into the values and the cause larger than yourself. And if that's not you, that's actually like the most dangerous person, because the violence and the power and the strength, all that stuff is dangerous, if not moderated by and controlled by this ethical compass. It can become very addictive. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. Everyone should read To Helen Back by Audie Murphy, just like an incredible, an incredible book. Right on. Yeah. Well Ryan. Dude, thank you. Thank you, man. This was awesome. This was awesome. I really appreciate you coming. That was great time. I hope you come back. Yeah. Sweet. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review. [Spanish]
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Ryan Holiday keskustelee stoalaisuudesta, sen historiasta ja käytännön soveltamisesta arkielämään, erityisesti ahdistuksen, vihan ja poliittisen epävarmuuden keskellä.
Stoalaisuus ei tarkoita tunteiden tukahduttamista, vaan niiden käsittelyä ja kysymistä, onko tunne tai ajatus totta ja tuottava.
Marcus Aureliuksen "Itsetutkiskeluja" pidetään henkilökohtaisena päiväkirjana, joka auttaa palaamaan keskittyneeseen tilaan vaikeina aikoina.
Ego nähdään esteenä menestykselle ja itsetuntemukselle; sen hallinta vaatii itsekritiikkiä ja kykyä ottaa vastaan palautetta.
Media- ja informaatioympäristön ongelmat, kuten vahvistusharha, klikkiotsikot ja ulkomainen vaikuttaminen, vääristävät todellisuutta ja kannustavat äärimmäisyyksiin.
Poliittisten päättäjien pelko ja mukautuminen johtavat siihen, että totuutta ei sanota; rohkeus ja totuuden puhuminen ovat lihaksia, joita on harjoitettava jatkuvasti.
Vanhemmuudessa korostuu lasten vieminen ulos ja ruutujen vastapainoksi; myös menestyksen varjolla on vaara kasvattaa etuoikeutettuja lapsia.
Summary:
Keskustelussa Ryan Holiday kertoo stoalaisuudesta käytännön elämän työkaluna, ei tunteiden tukahduttamisena. Hän korostaa, että stoalaisuus auttaa luomaan etäisyyttä omiin ajatuksiin ja tunteisiin: kysy, onko huoli totta, onko se tuottavaa, ja mitä tapahtuu, jos pelko toteutuu. Marcus Aureliuksen teos "Itsetutkiskeluja" toimii esimerkkinä henkilökohtaisesta harjoituksesta, jossa maailman mahtavin mies käsittelee ahdistusta, vihaa ja epävarmuutta päiväkirjamaisesti.
Holiday painottaa, että stoalaisuus ei tarkoita tunteiden kieltämistä, vaan niiden prosessointia ja palaamista tasapainoon mahdollisimman nopeasti. Hän puhuu myös egosta, joka on menestyksen este, ja siitä, miten menestys voi paisuttaa egoa ja vääristää palautetta. Median osalta hän varoittaa vahvistusharhasta ja siitä, miten informaatioympäristö palkitsee äärimmäisyyksiä ja voi olla ulkomaisten toimijoiden manipuloitavissa.
Lisäksi hän pohtii poliittista rohkeutta ja sitä, miten pelko ja mukautuminen estävät totuuden puhumista; rohkeus on kuin lihas, jota on harjoitettava pienin teoin. Vanhemmuudessa hän korostaa ulkoilman merkitystä ja sitä, miten menestyneet vanhemmat voivat välttää kasvattamasta etuoikeutettuja lapsia. Lopuksi hän toteaa, että stoalaisuus on jatkuvaa itsereflektiota ja itsensä kehittämistä, ei kertaluonteinen ratkaisu.
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Stoalaisuus on filosofia, joka auttaa käsittelemään tunteita ja ajatuksia etäisyyden ottamisen kautta. Se kannustaa kysymään itseltä, onko huoli tai ahdistus totta ja onko se tuottavaa.
Stoalaisuus auttaa luomaan etäisyyttä omiin ajatuksiin ja tunteisiin. Se rohkaisee prosessoimaan tunteita kysymällä, onko niissä järkeä ja miten ne vaikuttavat toimintaasi.
Stoalaisuuden mukaan paras kosto on olla tulematta vihollisesi kaltaiseksi. Sen sijaan, että suunnittelet kostoa, keskity siihen, ettet anna negatiivisten tunteiden hallita elämääsi.
Historian lukeminen auttaa ymmärtämään, että korruptio, tekopyhyys ja kaaos eivät ole uusia asioita. Se antaa perspektiiviä ja auttaa erottamaan merkittävät asiat vähemmän tärkeistä.
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