How Fortune Favors The Brave w/Ryan Holiday EP 1171

This is episode number 1171 with New York Times bestselling author, Ryan Holiday. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. welcome back, everyone. My guest today is Ryan Holiday. He is one of the world's foremost writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life. And his incredible books, the obstacle is the way, Eagle is the enemy, the Daily stoic and Stillness is the key have sold millions of copies and been translated into over 30 languages. And he's now written a new book called courage is calling. Fortune favors the brave. And in this episode, we discuss how fear is actually a good thing for us, why people struggle to have courage and how to overcome that in your life, how thinking about your own mortality can help us rather than hurting us. The biggest lessons we can learn from stoicism when it comes to finding peace, wealth and developing discipline and so much more. And if you're enjoying this, make sure to share this and spread the message of greatness to a friend that you think would be inspired by this as well. And if this is your first time here, click the Subscribe button over on Apple podcast right now and leave us a rating and review letting us know the part of this episode you enjoyed the most or the part that really inspired you the most. and a big shout out to the fan of the week. This is from Susie who left a review over on Apple podcast that said, this podcast continues to inspire and change my life. It's educational, it's therapeutic. Thank you, Lewis and Team Greatness. Every time I listen, there's always a takeaway. Definitely one of my favorite podcasts. And to add, I don't usually leave reviews, so that's how much this show has helped me. So big thank you to Susie for being the fan of the week. We appreciate you and your constant support. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Ryan Holiday. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about my guest, Ryan Holiday, in the house. My man. Good to see you. So good to see you. You are changing millions of people's lives with your book, with your work, with your articles, with your content. Now you're this YouTube star as well.

Can you believe we've known each other for 10 years?

I was thinking that. I was like, when did I meet you? It was like 2011, I think.

Yeah.

Was it Tim Ferriss's event, 2011?

Neither of us had books, neither of us had online platforms in any way.

Both of us had big egos. And then you wrote...

I don't know about that. But I do think sometimes people think that either it's random luck that you just get lucky, or they think it's impossible to do. And I would say it's a good example that neither of those things are true.

Right. And we've been consistent for, well previous than 10 years. I mean, we were working very hard to get to where we were 10 years ago.

Yes.

But the last 10 years have been constantly showing up, self-discipline, consistency, surrounding yourself with people wiser than ourselves.

Sure.

And overcoming fears, leaning into courage to put ourselves out there, taking risks.

Yeah, I mean, so I identify as a writer. That's the medium that I'm comfortable in. That's like what, and part of the reason I feel like I gravitate towards writing is that I was less comfortable being up in front of a room or putting myself out there. I wasn't a kid who wanted to be in drama class or be in front of people. I was the quiet introvert writer. So even within the thing that you're good at, the irony of success in any field is that it forces you to do a bunch of things that you are not good at.

Scared of, yeah.

That are, yes. So it's like you write, you think like, oh now my job is writing. It's like, actually no, you have to go talk about what you wrote in front of large groups of people, or you have to make videos. So like all of that stuff, yes, as far as overcoming fears, like.

It's kind of like the idea of the most talented musician in the world who's undiscovered, who just like plays in his basement. You can't just become a master of your craft, you have to learn how to promote yourself, put yourself out there, create content. be in relationship with managers, do deals, and not rub people around, show up on time, like all these other things you gotta learn in order to get your craft out there.

When you talk to writers or anyone, like creatives, I just love doing this stuff. It's good, it should just find its audience. Never works. I see it as like two consecutive marathons. So like, you run the marathon, you win, you think, they're like, oh, great job, Louis, here's your medal. And you think they're like leading you over to the podium to stand in front of everyone. and they're actually just leading you over to like the second marathon that starts right now.

Right now, start running.

Yes, just back to back marathons, like making it, you put everything you had into it, you put your whole life on pause, you know, you gave everything, you have nothing left. And if you do have something left, then you cheated, you know, like you didn't put everything into it. And then they're like, now you have to go on the road, now you have to write articles, now you have to go talk to people, now you have to make all these decisions about the COVID or the title or release date, all the stuff that goes into creative work. And then probably like the third marathon is just like, and now you wait. Now, because it never happens as soon as you want. I started my first blog in 2006. I sold my first book 2011. My first new, and then my first book about philosophy, the Obstacles Away, came out in 2014 and it didn't hit a best seller list until 2019.

Crazy.

So it's on top of all that, then you just have to master your.

Craft or acquire a skill and become really great at it. Then learn how to promote and market it and get it out there in the world. Then wait another five to 10 years for it to actually get the results you wanted to get.

Yeah, it's like investing. First you have to make capital, like earn wages, you have capital, then you have to find the opportunity, the thing you invest in, then you have to wait.

To wait five, 10 years till you make some money.

Yeah, compounding returns, interest, you just have to let time do its work.

And I don't know if you're like me, 10 years ago, I invested in a lot of things that never made money, that I lost all the money. So you have to make a lot of mistakes through the lessons of promoting, marketing, or putting yourself out in the second marathon. In the third marathon of just waiting around for time to pass.

And then what if your thing is like really ahead of its time? Right? Then you don't even care.

Then no one cares. Yeah, you have to wait longer. I kind of feel like masculinity for me was a little ahead of its time. It came out like right when MeToo was happening. And they're like, oh, we don't want to listen to a guy talking about vulnerability. We just want to yell at men.

Yeah.

Or expose the men who have actually done the really hard things, the really bad things. And men weren't looking to find the answers or seek within. And so now I see it having like a second wave four years later where people are like finding it, buying it, sharing it. They're like, wow, this is really powerful to understand this.

Well, there's this expression that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And so the difference I found, yeah, like you work really hard, you make something, it's objectively good, but then timing is not perfectly right. It doesn't fail. It's like a single. But then when you have something and it's exactly timed to the moment, then it's a home run. Or your thing is just kind of floating there waiting for the moment. So like, I saw this during the, I've been writing about stoicism and so resiliency and obstacles and also stillness. These things, they worked, but then, you know, March 2020, they take on a different relevance to people and suddenly- Six.

Years ago, they weren't as powerful.

Yeah, and now also suddenly people have time. Right.

And so- To do a daily meditation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then it's like, then yeah, you can either get a second life or a third life. And so I think the important part is like, you do the work, you put yourself out there, you have to trust that it's gonna work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but yeah, it's a grind.

I have a thesis that if you wanna overcome your fears, you have to go all in on it. I don't think you can out-think your fear. You have to go all in on your fear in order for the fear to start to disappear.

Okay.

You'Ve got to have a lot of courage in order to face the thing that you're insecure about, that you're afraid of, people judging you, that you're afraid of failing or falling down in your face. Sure. But once you overcome it, or at least you're able to face it in a comfortable stance, maybe you're never fully comfortable, but at least you're like, I can do the thing, that's when I feel like your greatest gift can come to the world, or that's where I feel like there's so much reward on the other side. But it's extremely scary to face our fears. Why do you think it's so hard for people to face their insecurities, their shame, their fears, their doubts?

Well, if it wasn't scary, then courage wouldn't need to be there. So it's good that you're afraid, right? I guess one way to think about it is if there wasn't a risk, let's say it's starting a business. If all you had to do was have an idea for a business and then it was guaranteed that you'd be successful, then there'd be a lot more businesses. Right? Like everyone would do it. So the fact that it's scary is partly what makes it valuable. Because most people are not going to get over the fear. So like when you think about things that are scary or challenging, it's like you could think about it like a heavy weight. If the weight is easy to lift, you're not going to build any muscle. So like that you have that sensation of fear or hesitation or doubt. One way to think about it is that it's a positive sign. Like Steven Pressfield talks about that the resistance you feel is commensurate with the value. So you're not afraid to do things that don't matter. You're only afraid to do big things that matter.

So the harder, the scarier it is, the more valuable that thing is for you sometimes.

I think I would say a lot of the times, not all the time, maybe it's scary because you're about to you know, implode or drive off a cliff for no reason. Like, it's not that fear has no place, but it could be a sign that you're on the cusp of something. And so when I think about it, I go like, okay, if I'm not pushing myself, if I'm not scared, that's probably a sign that I'm just doing something that I'm already really comfortable with and therefore not growing. So I think it's good. It's a good sign. But I think the reason it's scary, you said you can't out-think it. I don't know, I disagree a little bit. What I would say is that oftentimes the reason we're scared about it is because we haven't really thought about it. So we have these kind of vague fears, you know, like, well, I don't want to do it because... And then you're like, because why? Tell me what you're really thinking about.

The worst thing that'll happen, because I got made fun of, because I get, I lose my money.

It's actually not that big a deal. I talk in the book, there's this story about Pericles. He's this great Athenian general and he's leading these troops in a naval convoy and suddenly there's an eclipse. And imagine living in an eclipse. Yeah, thousands of years ago, you don't know what an eclipse is. Just all of a sudden, in the middle of the day, it starts. Right? And so everyone's scared and they thought, is this like an omen? Is this the gods? Are they angry? There's a similar story where like thunder happens and they're like, what is that noise? What's going on? And he just goes like, so plunged into darkness and he grabs his cloak and he puts it over this guy's head and he goes like, are you scared of this? Like he goes, no. And he's like, but it's just darkness. He's like, what does it matter if the darkness is because the sun disappears or because like I put, you know, my cloak over your head. So I think some of the times we're scared because we haven't really thought about what it is. And so it's kind of this enormous boogeyman that if we actually took a minute and we broke it down and we thought about it, it wouldn't be as scary as it was.

Sure.

So I agree that you want to go head on, but part of head on is just like, what am I actually afraid of here? Like, what is this? Right. And oh, it's not nearly as big as you think it is.

I hear you there. For me, I guess the thing that I'm thinking of is like, when I was a teenager, I was terrified of talking to girls. Sure. And I wasn't able to out-think it and be like, okay, they're just gonna laugh at you and then you're gonna be fine. I almost needed to experience it and realize physically I'm okay.

Yeah.

Same thing with salsa dancing. I was fascinated by watching salsa dancers, but I was terrified to get laughed at. Sure. And to look out of place and not in the right cultural fit. And for months, I was paralyzed at the idea of looking silly, making someone else look bad, getting laughed at, not fitting in, not belonging, all these things, just not understanding the language of salsa dancing. And finally, I did it for the first time in the middle of, I don't know, probably 100 dancers, and I was shaking, trembling, terrified. And I remember after about 10 minutes, I looked up and no one cared. No one was watching me, no one was looking at me, but I don't think I'd have been out-think it because the fear was in my body, It was almost like I needed to physically do the action and feel it until I was like, okay, I'm still not comfortable in this situation, but like Batman, he had to live in the cave. He didn't just say, well, let me just think I'm a bat. He was like, I need to become the bat. I need to live with the bats and let them swarm around me and realize, like, I'm not that afraid or it's okay. I can learn to embrace this discomfort as opposed to Out-think the fear.

I remember one time I was sitting in a cafe on Houston Street and you walked by and you-- In New York? Yeah, it was like it had like a glass wall and all of a sudden I heard this knocking on the store. It was you. And you were like, Hey, I'm going salsa dancing. Do you want to come?

And I just remember thinking like, I.

Would literally rather die than do that. Because that's terrifying. But I do think physically experiencing it can be really valuable because you realize, yeah, it wasn't what you thought it was. But it is interesting, so like you, you're afraid of salsetans and tiger girls. At the same time, you were playing football at an elite level. You were going up for passes, getting smacked by someone running full. You could literally die. You were not afraid to be hit basically by a car, and yet you were scared of what people thought. So it's funny, because when we think about courage, we tend to think of physical courage. as being like the end all be all.

I almost feel like it's easier to run into a building that's on fire than it is to like go up and talk to your crush when you're like terrified of the rejection. Because maybe physical instincts would be like, I'm gonna go rescue this person out of a car, out of a crash. Like I would just get up and go, but I would be like, as a teenager, this girl's gonna laugh at me and all my friends are gonna laugh at me and I'm not gonna be accepted and no one's gonna love.

Me and I'm gonna die alone. Well, there's war heroes that run for political office that then are afraid to vote against their party because people will be mad at them or they could lose their job.

Exactly. So different types of courage, right?

Yeah, so we often think of physical courage as the end all be all, but I would actually argue that moral courage is the hardest.

It's the hardest.

Is hardest and more rare. And the tricky thing is that people will have one and not the other and it could go in either direction, but that's really the tricky thing.

What it's been before you wrote this book, because I feel like every book you write, there's always something in you of like, I gotta write this because I know I haven't been fully mastered this thing yet. Of course. So where were you lacking courage in your life before or during writing this book? Was there parts, or maybe it was years ago that you've mastered now, but what was the thing maybe that was the hardest for you to have courage around?

So I mean, I've gone through scary things in my life, whether it was dropping out of college, the decision to leave the corporate world to become a writer, these are all scary things, and even the decision to go from the marketing track I was on to writing books about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. That was, I took a major hit in the advances. It didn't work right away. I was worried whether people were going to like it or not. But I do, one of the last stories in the book I talk about when I was at American Apparel. And I think one of the scariest things that people face is, If I do this, I could lose my job, right? Even though this might be a job they're thinking about quitting, like at that very moment, we had this huge mental block between quitting and being fired, right? And I was thinking, the story I tell is I was thinking about leaving American Apparel to become a writer, and then I get asked to do this sort of unethical thing at work, and I say, I'm not gonna do it. I don't do it. But that was as far as I took it. I didn't want to stop, I didn't want to go toe to toe to stop it from happening.

You just did it, said, I'm not gonna do this, but you knew it was still happening.

I said, that's a bad idea. I'm not gonna do it. Find somebody else. But I could have said, that's not right. Don't do that. And I didn't have to watch as it happened. And I think back, I go, why? And it was like, well, you didn't want to lose your job. A job that I left shortly thereafter anyway. And I think what I think about in retrospect is like, why did I want to keep a job that you could get fired from for doing the right thing? And so when we, I think the reason I tell the story is that I wanted to make an important point, which is The excuse, I was worried about X or I was afraid of Y does not age well. Like when you look back, you're never glad that you chickened out. Like you never are.

That's the truth.

And so yeah, I don't want the book to come across as like, you know, I'm super brave. This is my story. The story is, the book is, Here are inspiring people throughout history whose courage is calling to us to be better. And like, I actually end the book not with a story of courage, but a story of sort of a failure of courage. Because I think that's really like, it's funny. If you should be afraid of anything, it should be afraid of like, you should be afraid of betraying your principles, of falling short, of not doing what you know is the right but hard thing at the time.

How does someone develop their principles or their values if they're not clear on them? Or if they were taught different values by their parents, by society, by friends in high school, college, how do they get clear on those core things?

I think you develop them as you go, and that's why you can't be too hard on yourself when you fall short, because that's one of the ways you are learning.

I can learn, yeah. By being a coward.

Yes, you're right.

By making the mistake of being a coward, you learn through pain.

Yes.

You should have done it differently.

Well, and you learn, oh, the thing you, the self-preservation that you were trying to, that you were following, it's not a guarantee anyway. You know what I mean? You're like, oh, I don't want to mess this up. I don't want to piss off this or that. And it's like, you're assuming that it's yours anyway, that you have control of it, and you don't. And so it's kind of like, It's like the Stoics talk about momento Mori, right? One of the benefits of momento Mori is like actually life is too short to try to hang on to it too tight anyway. Yeah, but I think you develop your compass. One of the ways I think you do it is is like who are your heroes? Like who do you look up to?

The models, yeah.

What would they do in this situation? What is the code that they lived by? That could be your grandparents, it could be your spouse, it could be Jesus, it could be Marcus Aurelius, it could be anyone from history, could be a character from your favorite book. Like, what would they do? I think that's a really key way to do it.

But interesting.

What the book, this book and then the series of books is built around what's called the cardinal virtues, which are actually the virtues in Christianity and Stoicism, actually appear in a bunch of different philosophical schools. But the idea is courage, self-discipline, justice, wisdom. So to me, that's kind of what I, those are the principles that I try to live by. And I think every situation that we face calls for one or all of those things.

Where do you think people lack courage the most? In what parts of their life? Is it in just being honest with themselves? Is it in how they lie to other people? Is it in how they don't stand up for what's right, or at least what they believe is right. Is it physical courage, emotional courage, you know?

I think it's all of the above, and I think it's important, it's like no one is fully brave or fully a coward, right? It's more like day in and day out, what do you do? Right. But I think one of the places we struggle with the most is if courage is rare, Courage in pursuit of the right thing is rarer still. So the virtues are interrelated, right? Like one of the stories I tell in the book is, okay, think about Michael Jordan. The decision for Michael Jordan to walk away from basketball. And play baseball. Immense courage, right? Think of the amount of people who told him it's a bad idea, told him he couldn't make it, wasn't gonna work. Think of the money he left behind. Real courage. But I contrast that with Maya Moore leaving equally dominant in the WNBA. She leaves at the height of her career, not to go play a different sport, not to go on some spiritual pursuit, not to spend time with her family, but to free a man wrongly convicted who's spending his life in jail. So courage is important, right? The courage to like, oh, I'm gonna quit my job and start a company. Great, very courageous. But the person who quits a job to dedicate themselves to some meaningful cause, that's to me the level above. So I think it's courage, but courage in pursuit of what? We all know people who are savvy investors, they're great at taking risk, managing risk, they're bold, they're making cool But is it in service of their bank account or is it in service of doing something that matters? Right.

Where do you feel like you struggle the most with courage still?

I think that's a good example. The story I'm telling is where I continue to struggle. It's really hard to say or do things that you know.

Will.

Have financial or career repercussions for you. Right. Right? So, like, I think early in my career, I was like, oh, I don't, I guess I've said this to people where it's like, I was just too, I was, like, happy to be here or happy to be wanted. So, like, I would go like, oh, this is the opportunity. I'm excited. Grateful. Let's do it. Not like, does this align with my values? Do I feel like this makes the world a better place?

Right.

So, it wasn't greed so much that was motivating me, but a fear of what would happen if I said no. So, I often find myself saying yes or not objecting or being fully articulating what I think and feel because I don't want to be on the outside or I don't want to rock the boat, right? So I think what I've been working on is just like, this is what I think, this is what I feel needs to be done, like come what may. I'm trying to get to a place where that is consistently who I am and what I do, but it's scary because like, first off, what if the opportunities dry up because of it, right? And then I think as I've gotten older and you have more responsibilities, you realize like, It doesn't just affect you. It affects the people who work for you.

Your kids, your family.

Exactly, exactly. So people will go along to get along, right? And that's like, so one of the things that's done is given me some empathy. I have a chapter in the book about like, basically never question, the title of the chapter is Never Question Another Man's Courage. Meaning, like, we watch, we're like, why are these bums in Washington? Like, why is the mayor doing this? Or like, why isn't LeBron James speaking up about, you know, his indo-- like, why isn't LeBron James speaking up about what's going on in China? Right? And it's like, why don't you speak up about what's wrong in your industry?

Right?

So it's like, it's very easy to get in this trap where you're criticizing other people's courage or lack thereof, instead of doing what we should be doing, what we should take from these examples is like, what am I putting on the line? What deals am I torching?

How am I stepping up?

Exactly. We look at a politician, we go, why won't they vote for this or that? Who cares if they don't get reelected? And it's like, well, they care. And so it's like, what.

When have.

You gambled your career? What stands have you taken where you're like, this is unpopular, but I feel morally obligated to do it, and I'm willing to accept the consequences of that.

What happens if the consequences are really bad, and you are broke for years, and you don't have opportunities for years? Even if you want to self-start and just no one's, you're just so excommunicated from whatever society or community or families that you were a part of that now, okay, I stood up for what was courageous, but what did I get for it? My own personal pride and loneliness?

I mean- well, there's a tension there. So at American Apparel, so I didn't do that, right? And, but by not doing that- you- kept your job. I kept my job, which didn't just benefit me, I was then later in a position when the company had more leverage over the founder and the owner to actually make it right in a way that worked. Noble failure, what good is that? If you take your stand too early, if you're the person who, you and I both have an audience, if we had earlier on in our career maybe taken certain stances, the audience wouldn't be there to then talk about whatever the important thing is. The problem, the trap is we say, oh, I'll do it later. I'll do it later. I'm still building. I'm still working. And then you never do it because now it's actually more expensive.

Right.

Now we have more to, we think like, oh, that guy's a senator. He should be able to, or this woman's the governor of the, third most popular state. She should, but actually the hard part is as you get bigger, it's more to lose. You go, oh, this decision could cost me a billion dollars.

A lot.

Not that I ever have a single cost, but it actually, it doesn't get easier as you get more successful. It can get harder. So you actually need more courage as you go. It's easy to be the guy on the sidelines. saying how things should go. But then when you have, again, when you have people dependent on you, when you have influence, when you have something you've worked your whole career for, it's scarier. So you need more.

So what is something from the Stoics that everyone should learn right now to help them have more courage and live a greater life? If there are three things that everyone could take away from the Stoics to improve the quality of their life right now first, what would that be?

I got some good ones. So one of the questions we ask ourselves when we're afraid of something, when we're thinking about, we go, but what about me? What would I do if? We're worried, and Marcus Aurelius goes, you,'ll meet that with the same weapons you've met all your other problems. So remembering that, hey, you've been scared before and you're still here. So often what our fear is really doing is underestimating or undercounting how good we actually are at what we do. You're not suddenly tomorrow going to be a helpless loser. You're the same person you are today. And what will you do? You'll figure it out. Just like if you quit your job, you'd be like, I'm quitting and I'm going to go find a new job. But if you got fired, that suddenly feels disempowered, whereas the other one feels very empowered. So remembering what you're capable of to me is really important. That's right. Number two, the Stoics say that we should always be training. So one of the reasons I think it's important to have like a physical practice, one of the reasons it's good to seek out adversity and difficulty is so when stuff happens, you're ready. Epictetus, one of the early Stoics, he's actually a slave and he says like, you want to get to a point where when stuff happens, you're able to say like, this is what I trained for.

Right.

Like, you knew this could happen and you did the work.

Yes. Before you go into the next one, it's right when the pandemic happened, I was like, this sucks. And yet I've been training for this for the last 12-13 years of my life.

Yes.

Because in 2008, when I, well, in 2007, I got injured and had surgery. And then 2008, the housing crisis and there were no jobs for someone like me without a college degree that was ignorant from school. I was like, I better develop myself so that when this happens again in 5, 10, 20 years, I'm ready to take on any adversity. Maybe it's not fun and it's still challenging, but I'm prepared and ready. And I spent 13 years training for that moment. And I felt a sense of, kind of weirdly, I felt a sense of peace that gave me the energy and the clarity to take action and shift where I needed to and lead from a place of courage as opposed to, and I wasn't perfect, Yeah. But lead from a more calm, peaceful place as opposed to a frantic, fearful place.

Well, look, preparation makes you brave, right? You prepared so you were ready. And then I think also because you remembered what you felt then, you were also in a position to lead and understand what people who were not as prepared, what they're experiencing.

Yeah, what they're experiencing. It sucks. So you can have empathy like you talked about, you can connect with people in that way. Okay, so always be training, always be learning something new, training yourself physically, mentally, emotionally.

And the third one would be this stoic exercise of memento mori, which basically means remember you will die. I actually carry a coin in my pocket that says this. But I think when you realize like, hey, life is already short and fragile, like I don't need to, if I'm spending my time cowering in fear or worrying, I'm acting as if I have a certain power over things that I don't. There's this famous stoic story where like the emperor sees this stoic philosopher he hates and he's like, I'm threatening you to death or I'm sentencing you to death. And he's like, I was already sentenced to death.

At some point.

Yeah. He's like, you have no more power over me than life itself.

Than mother nature. Yeah, it just means exactly.

And so realizing that life is fragile, I think sometimes people can miss this. Like, momento mori doesn't mean like, oh, don't wear a motorcycle helmet or pretend the pandemic is not real. That's not what it's saying. But it's saying like, hey, focus on the parts of safety and concern that are in your control. But if you're wasting your time being afraid, that's something I thought a lot about in the pandemic. It's like, look, I don't know, especially early on, we don't know where this is going, don't know what it means, don't know what is ticking clock is in anyone's body, right? What pre-existing condition you might have or bad piece of luck you got. So you take it seriously, but within that, what are you doing with your time, right? Like, what are you gonna spend your time on? So if you're spending that time worrying, stressing, watching the news all day. Yeah, what you're actually doing is rejecting the life that you have in front of you at this moment.

It's kind of like a longer eclipse. It's like there's an eclipse that's happening. We don't know what this is, but you could sit there and worry and fear for those five minutes of the eclipse or whatever, or you can look up and enjoy it and do something with your time and make the most of this and prepare and strategize and organize your time.

Yeah, James Stockdale, who spent seven years in a prison camp in Vietnam, who reads the Stoics, he says, you know, he gets there and he goes, I never lost sight of the fact that I controlled the end of the story. Right? So if he got out, that he would control the end, he would decide what he said, and that I could turn this into something that in retrospect I would not have traded for.

Isn't that crazy?

That's incredible.

It's like Mandela as well. It's like 25 years or something.

So, I think we have, it takes courage to say, this thing happened to me and I wouldn't have chosen it, I didn't want it, but now that it's here, I'm gonna face it, I'm going to apply all my training and experience towards it, and then I'm not gonna waste my life being bitter, resentful, afraid, passive about it and I'm just gonna get to work turning it into something. Yeah.

I'm not sure if this is 100% true or accurate, but I heard someone say that Bhutan is like the happiest country.

Really?

I'm not sure if you've heard of this. It's because I don't know if everyone does this or just some people do this there. They focus on their death five times a day. They think about their death five times a day. And so there's an app, I think it's called croaked. Or you will croak or something like that where five times a day, I had it for a while, it sends you a reminder you're gonna die with an inspiring quote that has you reflect on your death five times a day to remind yourself. Do you have this on your phone?

No, no, did I give you one of these? The one I carry in my pocket.

Let me see. Oh, nice.

You should just carry that. It's like a nice way to spin it.

And the idea is, you could leave your life right now.

And the rest of that quote, so Mark says, you, could leave life right now. And then he says, let that determine what you do and say and think. And so that, to me, the power of meditating on your death is that it puts everything in perspective. It doesn't make things meaningless. It actually makes them meaningful because it says like, if this doesn't matter, I shouldn't be doing it. And if it does matter, I should be doing it as if it is the last time that you get to do it.

Right.

Like, I think one of the things, I don't know about you, but, like, as, like, an ambitious or driven person, I find myself, like, rushing a lot, right? Like. Like, gotta go here, gotta go there. This is taking too long. I don't want to wait. I haven't found myself, like. Like, my son, he often, like, naps in the car. So it's like, you're in the car as long as he's asleep. And I'll find myself like, you're behind a slow driver. You're like, I gotta get around this. And then I'm like, but I'm not going anywhere.

Right?

Like, I'm rushing. And so what I've started to remind myself is like, what are you rushing towards? You're rushing towards death, right? Not just 'cause speeding is unsafe, but you're rushing towards, like as you're rushing out of a moment, you're rushing away from life. Seneca talks about, he says, don't think of death as happening in the future. Think of death as happening right now.

Really? Why?

Because the time that passes belongs to death. So when you die, you're like, you've lived 80 years, but also that's 80 dead years that can never come back. So if you think about the time that passing as being death happening, like every minute you're getting closer to death. You don't want to rush through a moment. You want to fully experience the moment.

Even if you're waiting in line or behind a car or impatient.

This is life. And when you're rushing, you're rushing away from it or you're rushing toward death. And so you slow down, you go, okay, I've been alive 34 years. What do I have to sh-- Was I alive for 34 years?

Or was I rushing?

Right, or was I rushing away to get to 35, but maybe I die at 35. Right? You don't know. So, if you just go like, the present is here, I'm going to be controlled enough and courageous enough to just, this is enough, this is it, doesn't need to be anything or anywhere else, I'm just going to be here and I'm not going to rush away. And kids have really been helpful for this because you're like, oh, not only am I rushing potentially towards death, but At the very least, they will never be this age again. So as you're trying to get this over with, you have to miss those years. Yeah. And eventually you're gonna be like, oh, if only they were five again. But when they were five, you wanted it to be over.

The screaming, the crying, the pooping, or whatever it is, it's like, oh, I wish they could do this on their own.

You look back and you don't really want that. Yeah.

So you want them to stay there forever? You're like, I want to capture this moment.

Yeah. And this is true even for the shitty stuff. Like even when you're stuck in traffic, even when you're home with the flu, even with like...

So true. It's like, I don't know if you think about this. I mean, you've always just been like talented and successful your entire life, unlike me, where I struggled and went through pain for years. But I feel like, especially the years after my dream was over playing football, and I was like, well, who am I? What is my identity? What is the value I add to the world if this was my value? How can I, you know, just survive and thrive in this world without that value or identity anymore? I remember just being in a state of uncertainty for a while and wanting to get out of it, wanting to have a job, wanting to launch a business, wanting to have money, wanting to have an audience, wanting to have a book, all these different things, wanting to have something. And when I look back and I'm like, man, those moments were really meaningful of what I was living and learning moment and day by day. The struggle, the pain, the adversity. Like, I'm recreating that in other ways just by trying to get to the next level, but I'll never live that aspect. Those moments again, the specific time, Well.

And when you got those things, was it as magical as you thought it would be? It never is.

It wasn't, yeah, I mean it wasn't as fulfilling. It was cool to see like a full circle and reflect back, but it was never like, oh, this is, I've made it, you know?

You never feel like you've made it. And so that, like, I talk about this a little bit in some of my stuff where, like, what will happen is you get to the metal stand, right? New York Times bestseller, Olympic gold medal. you know, all American, whatever the thing is, right? And there's an anticlimacticness to it.

Very. After 10 minutes, you're like, Now what?

We talk about this in the School of Greatness. You're like, Now what? So the problem is people can learn, you can go two ways. You feel the now what? So you can go, Now, oh, I gotta find something really meaningful.

I gotta go bigger.

Well, no, no. So you either use look at that and you're like, oh, it was never about accomplishments. It was always about being present and meaning and connection and the friends you made along the way. Or you go, oh, it's that I have to do it again. Or, oh, it wasn't a million dollars, it was a billion dollars. And so you can see why that moving of the goalposts creates really successful people, but they are rarely happy people.

Happy or fulfilled?

Yes.

And peaceful inside.

Yes. And I think it's funny, the journey I'm on, what I'm trying to do, I would like to be proof that it is possible to be world class at what you do and come from a place of contentment and fullness, not have to do, not being like, I just need this, then I will be good. Because you're never ever good.

There's always gonna be some writer better than you or someone that writes a book in a way that's different than you or some whatever. This could be Someone more talented, more.

Successful, richer, you know.

Of course.

I mean, you meet someone, there's a story about Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22, two of the great writers of the 20th century. And they're at this party, and you've been at parties like this where you're a much richer person, right? Like one of those, you're like, why am I here? And Kurt Vonnegut teasing Joseph Heller and he says, you know this guy made more money this week than your book will make in its entire life. And he says, yeah, but I have something he doesn't have.

What's that?

He's like, what could that possibly be? And he says, I have enough. Ooh. And it's not that that guy just wrote Catch-22 and then he sat on his ass. He wrote other great stuff. He did great work. He just wasn't coming at it from a place of craving. Like, you know, we had that word thirst. Like, he wasn't thirsty. He was quenched, but he was doing it because he actually liked it. I remember the first time one of my books hit number one, I was mowing the lawn at my house, and my agent, Steve, called me, and I was like, Now I have to finish mowing this lawn. You know?

Like, it was like, I had a 10-minute moment. Yeah. I still hear like pushing this thing.

And then you realize like, oh, it's not. it's never gonna be, I don't know what I thought it was gonna be, but I didn't think it was gonna be that. And I feel grateful that I didn't think, oh, I have to have back-to-back number ones. That will be it. You know?

It's interesting. I remember Steve, when Steve called me, 'cause we were the same agent, and when I hit number, I didn't hit number one, but I went to the New York Times bestseller list, and I remember for like an hour just being like, wow, this is something I dreamed about. But then after an hour, like calling everyone and being like, congratulations, I was like, Did anything change? Like nothing really changed. I accomplished your career. Yeah, there wasn't like opening up the gates and money dropping down or people calling me. It's like a few people noticed and a few, okay, you do one post on Instagram and then people compliment and.

Then people move on. Well, so on this. And time moves on, you know, it's. On this book, I'm actually thinking about that because you know when you do a book, there's this whole lane of prioritization of like how do you get on the list? Yes. And it takes a lot of your time and energy. Man. And why do you do it? obviously there's some business reasons, but part of it is, if not ego, it's this like people said that's important, so you're like, that's as good a target as any. On this one, and I'm a little bit of a thing with my publisher where I'm like, no, I just want to like get as many books in people's hands as possible, so I'm like ignoring all that. But there is a kind of a fear there because it's like, the one benefit of that strategy is that the success is clear and objective and recognizable by other people.

Yes.

The book's gonna come out, I know it's doing well. I already know the track that it's on, but like, I'm not saying I'm gonna get condolences, but there are people who are gonna be like, oh, I guess it didn't work as well.

You know, like, so-- It's kind of been like all your books, they didn't hit right away. It's like two years later, now it's.

Number one, and it's crushing. Just the idea of like, hey, to determine what success is to you, and to not base it on what other.

People-- that's so hard. That's courage. It's hard to do. I'll tell you what, for me the last, Two years, I've been working on developing a new book, but I've also been like, gosh, do I do the traditional publisher thing? And I've been having these conversations, but I'm like, I just want to let that go and just write a good book that people are impacted by. But it's like, oh, do you worry about the advance and what people are gonna ask you about it? Or do you not care about that at all? Self-publish it and just try to help as many people as possible. Is there a balance? And literally, it has been holding me back until in the last six weeks, for the last couple of years, I've been in this limbo. I think one, because I've been trying to build my business in the pandemic and shifting, but this has been on my mind, this conversation for two years during all this. And it's not until now where I'm just like, okay, I need to get clear, I just need to take action and do it from the highest level place possible. Do things that are smart as well for business, but also just do what's going to help as many people.

What's a safety net, right? To do the conventional, like this is how it's done, is safer. Because then no one's gonna be like, what an idiot.

Or like, oh, he's falling off the wagon.

Yeah, he's a loser, it didn't work. He's on the decline. And so the decision to do stuff that you care about, that requires sort of like burning the boats behind you and just going like, I'm on this journey. And I think it's particularly hard in today's world where, you know, there's view counts and likes. Like there's so much more public quantification of what's done. And like when I talk to sports teams, I sometimes say that I'm a little bit jealous. It's like it's obvious whether they're doing a good job or not.

You're jealous?

I love the clarity of sports.

Like win, lose, win, lose. How many points? Did you get the height or not? Yes.

But the reality is, in the world that the rest of us exist in.

It'S like a committee and how many people like it.

You're running your own race. You have to decide what success is.

Yeah, I know. And.

That means criticizing yourself when you fall short of your own metrics. And it also means congratulating yourself on a success that perhaps other people don't recognize.

Right. The success could be just, I'm proud of this chapter I wrote in this week or this month, even though no one's gonna be able to see it. No one's buying this, but I'm proud of the work that I'm putting in, the effort, the energy, the process.

I've tried to get to, I would say that on my first book, I was 10% this is a success because I made it and it was the best I was capable of, and 90% let's see what the results are. Let's see how it does. And I would like to think that as I've gone forward, that slowly flipped and that I'm now 90, it's already a success because it exists.

Even if no one buys this, it's my best work. It's my best work.

Yeah, yeah. And then 10% bonus, like, hey, it worked, won awards, got recognition.

But isn't the, like we talked about in the beginning, there's kind of like three levels to like a book. There's the mastery of writing the book, which you've become one of the greatest writers of our time in distilling wisdom, ancient wisdom, and creating practical examples on how you can actually do this for today's life. And millions of people have read your books. But you could master writing the book, but you also have to master doing the marketing and promotion and now putting yourself out there and communicating it, and then master being patient. Maybe put out the great book. and no one cared about it right now for a few years, but then you'd be patient and people start buying it.

Well, I think you want to rank them. So the first, the stoics say that their first task in life, the most important task in life is what is up to me and what is not up to me. Like separating things into the category of is it in my control? Is it not in my control? So as I look at like any project or business or whatever, I prioritize based on like what's most in my control to what's least in my control. So like the first mastery of the thing itself, like is it the best album, the best video, the best, you know, live event it could possibly be? You have as much control over that as you're gonna have of anything. Because that's yours. So like there you have the ability to get most of the win before it's even out. Then marketing and promotion and communicating and talking about it, that's more something you have influence over as opposed to something you control. Because it's like, what's happening in the world? How on point or trend is your thing? But it's also, are you willing to put in the time? Are you willing to... So many people just think they're better than that and so they don't do it. And then the third part is the patience or the time. It's like you gotta, the audience will like it. Imagine you're Herman Melville, you write Moby Dick, it gets savaged. Everyone's like, this is not just not good, this is horrible. We're offended that you did it. And then only towards the end of your life and after your life does it finally get the recognition you deserve. So that part's the least in your control. and you have to be somewhat detached from that. Because if you're sitting, if you wake up every day and you're like, is this the day that people finally recognize me for all my contributions? You have handed your happiness over to something that's not up to you.

It's true. It's funny as you were saying that, I grew up in a religion called Christian Science that a woman discovered this religion and wrote a book called science and health. And this is the same time back in the late 1800s when Mark Twain was around. And they were kind of like frenemies, I guess. And Mark Twain wrote an entire book trashing this woman, Mary Baker Eddy, and her findings of the science behind healing. It was essentially like the science of Jesus' healing. Here's how it works. Here's how the mind works and how we can heal ourselves. And he wrote an entire book bashing her and the religion called Christian Science, which was like this critical of her work because she kept writing the same book with expanded updates every year, like so many different editions of the same book. And it kept hitting number one. And he had to write new books all the time. So I think he was just frustrated that this woman kept writing the same book over and over with like, here's more finding in research and science of how the mind and body is healed through the mind. And it's funny, like she just kept going because she was focused on the work and healing people one at a time and the message spread. But I think it's interesting that.

For.

The reason that came up for me, because the more you put your work out there, the more criticized it's gonna be open to. You know, there's more people are gonna be willing to criticize it and I think a lot of people aren't ready for criticism. They're not trained to deal. No one teaches you how to deal with criticism when you have an audience.

No, no one teaches. Because it's a champagne problem that a lot of people never get to.

Yes.

So there's not like a lot of instructions, but it is inevitable. And like, you have to realize, I've realized a couple of things. One is like, critics are almost always louder than your fans. Like, people who dislike something are much louder than the people who are like, why is that? That's pretty good.

Why is that?

I think it's one feels more strongly than the other. Like the stuff I like, I'm like, cool. Right. You know, but then when you really hate something, you're like, I need them to suffer how I am suffering. So a lot of times I think you're just different levels of enthusiasm. Even if 10% of the people hated it and 90% of the people liked it, you're gonna hear more from the 10%. Yes.

How do we prepare ourselves to have courage knowing that criticism will come to us.

Well, you have, this is why it's really important to know what you were trying to do or what your successes are. Because a lot of times I will see negative reviews of my work. It'll somehow get to me. And I try not to, I try to like keep it at a distance anyway, but it always gets to me, right? And sometimes the thing people will be criticizing negatively will be exactly what I, they'll be like, you know, there's no original ideas in this book. This is just Ryan popularizing ancient wisdom. And it's like, hey, bro, that's exactly what I was trying to do.

Right, right.

Like, what you are, you're just saying, like, what is this? This guy, he has brown hair. It's like, that's it.

That's what I've been saying.

Like, it's, and it's actually even less than that.

I love when people say nothing new here.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, there's no original, No original idea here. This is just regurgitated or something. But how many original ideas are there? It's kind of like repackaging and purposing something that you can learn in a different way and understand it in a different way, right?

When in my case, I'm specifically not trying to have my own ideas, but to tell you the best ideas from the past. So you have told me that I have succeeded. You've not, like, what? You think you're criticizing me, but you're really saying, I didn't want what you were selling. Cool, right? So when you have a sense of what you're trying to do, then you're able to integrate the criticism. So if someone instead said, Ryan got stoicism totally wrong for the following reasons, well, now we're at least in the same universe as far as the intention of the work. So now I can go like, well, Is this person right or not? But at least we're aligned. Like, I'm trying to get here, you're mad at me for not being over here.

Right.

Well, I didn't want to go over there, so we're just, we just shouldn't be friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? So I think really understanding what you're trying to do is great. And then the third one is just like remembering that it almost has nothing to do with you. Right? What does? The criticism has nothing to do with you. Yeah. Something going on with them. Like, sometimes you'll get like a nasty email and I just go, sometimes I like to reply, I hope this made you feel better. And they'll be like, I had no idea you would respond. I thought this wasn't a real person, you know, blah blah blah. Then you realize like, oh, this person has a life or they're going through something and they thought they were just shouting into the void and you happen to hear it, you know? So realizing that like, hurt people, hurt people, you know that this is like, this doesn't really have to do with you the way that they're making it seem like it has to do with you can be.

And just because someone's criticizing you doesn't mean you have to take it in.

No.

I think a lot of people take it in and they are so affected by it and impacted by it, and that then holds them back from putting their work out there.

Yeah.

Creating more because they're afraid of something penetrating and getting in and them holding on to this. anger or criticism of other people.

Well, there's an exercise from Marcus Aurelius that I think about. It's not specifically about this, but I think we can apply it. He goes like, Is a world without shameless people possible? No. He's like, A certain amount of people are gonna be this way or that way, right? And he's like, so when you meet one of them, you're not like, what is this? You're like, One out of a hundred is this person? Is this kind of person? I just met one. Makes sense. Mathematically, it makes sense. Right? Just like you see a tall person, a certain percentage of people are tall. You're not like, where is this tall person coming from? So like, if you, was it ever possible that you would please 100% of people 100% of the time? Absolutely not. So when you come across someone that is unhappy with your work, you gotta go, this checks out mathematically.

Right, right.

Like, when you look at a YouTube video, you're like, oh, it did a million views. It did 50,000 upvotes and 1,000 downvotes. You're like, who are these thousand people? You're like 1,000 out of a million. Mathematically, that's pretty good actually.

It's pretty good.

You know, that's actually great.

Yes.

And so again, just reminding yourself that mathematically, a certain amount of people, they're just not, you're not for them, they're not for you. Yes.

What do you think the Stoics would think about In terms of the law of attraction, manifesting abundance, and self-discipline, kind of that category.

I think about this a lot because people ask me that question because as stoicism has become popular with self-help stuff, there's overlap. So, the Stoics are very, here's where they would agree. Marcus Aurelius says, Our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts. Which I think is a beautiful way of— Dyed. Dyed. Like dyed the color green.

Yes.

Like if you have positive thoughts, you will see positive things in the world. If you see everything as nasty and bitter and unfair and crappy, that's what you will see in the world. So our perceptions do color our reality, for sure. But the stoic disciplines are the discipline of perception, but the next discipline is the discipline of action.

Perception meaning like how you perceive and look at the world, how you tell.

Yourself what you wish for and think about. But then the next discipline is the discipline of action. So like, I don't think the Stoics say like, oh, if you just see everything positive, it will be positive. It's that the positivity sets up the action which can make the positivity real. So I think where I get frustrated with people on manifestation or the law of attraction, is this idea of like, write yourself a check for a million dollars and it will be true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, wait. No, go do the work.

Right?

So if you want, like when the Stoics see an opportunity inside of a disaster, they're not just sitting around going, oh, this will solve itself. They have to get to work on that thing.

So, yeah, I've always seen the law of attraction. I mean, the word action is in attraction. It's like of taking action to attract what you want. But I think perceiving it first is, I didn't know that was the first principle, is perception.

Perception, action, and the third is will. So like what you endure, what you put up with.

Kind of like your disciplines, your willingness to endure hard things, challenges.

The fact that so much of life is outside of your control, that suffering is inevitable, you know, just the hard parts of life. Those are the three disciplines.

What do the Stoics think about in terms of, accumulating wealth or I mean, I don't know what they were accumulating back then, but the riches of the world.

So the founder of stoicism is a merchant named Zeno who loses everything in a shipwreck and he washes up in Athens with nothing. And he walks into a bookstore.

When was this? What year is this?

Like 300 A.D.

Okay.

Right around the time of the death of Alexander the Great. So he walks into this bookstore and he hears somebody reading philosophy. He goes, what's this? And it changes his whole life. And he would say later, I made a great fortune when I suffered a shipwreck. Meaning he traded worldly goods for real goods, which is wisdom, happiness, purpose, all of that. But the Stoics were business people and generals and politicians. Seneca is like the second richest man in Rome. What the Stoics said was that money isn't good or bad, that it was indifferent, not indifference, but an indifferent, meaning it just was. So if you had it, you should use it. If you didn't have it, you weren't deprived of anything, you just didn't have this thing. Now, obviously, the Romans lived in a time where things were much more hierarchical and people had a lot less control and ability to start a business or you know, you and this was a.

Time- It wasn't decentralized, it was like classes and hierarchy.

Yes, and you inherited certain status and things so they were a little bit more passive than we are today. But I think the idea that like money is a tool, if you have it you should use it, if you don't have it you shouldn't spend all your life obsessing about it. but I think I like to think of the Stokes as being more or less indifferent to it.

So what would be the approach if someone was trying to create more wealth and earn a bun, I mean, like, you know, I don't have that much money, but I like to have a more comfortable or financially abundant life where I'm not stressing about money. Maybe I'm not going to be a billionaire, but.

Well, I think that's the problem. A lot of people think of money as this independent good. So like, they will suffer in life to potentially have lots of money in the future. By the way, the stoic say isn't guaranteed.

And you can lose it too.

You can't take it with you when you die. And so often people will trade time for money, a priceless resource for a less valuable resource. And so Seneca talks about how if your neighbor stole money from you or built their property onto your property, you'd be very upset. But if they wasted your time, you'd be like, oh, whatever, this is what they do. So I think also though the Stoics would go, what is your actual most valuable resource? It's time. It's your independence of mind. It's your autonomy. So I think sometimes, especially people who are really frugal, which the Stoics were humble and didn't care a lot about fancy things, I think you can get to a place where you're often valuing money more than it's actually worth. Like you're trading your happiness to accumulate this thing that isn't going to give you what you think it's going to give you. Right.

I mean, you're a guy who's driven and successful and wants to keep creating. You've got to, you know, a nice ranch, you've got cattle and geese and horses and whatever you have on your farm. You've got family, you've got a bookstore now, a thriving bookstore, you've got all these businesses and you're a team. So obviously money is in your life. You want to have it to sustain a lifestyle. What is your thought process, whether it be on a daily or maybe quarterly or yearly basis of like, okay, Do you think I want to reach this financial goal this year? And then how do you approach making money in terms of a philosophical point of view in your daily practices?

I will say like as an artist, one of the things I, one of the ways I've thought about money that's been helpful to me is I want, I didn't come from money, I didn't inherit money. And so I'm not like independently wealthy. But I want to invest and save and earn in a way where I can make the choices I want to make independent of money. So because I had a corporate job and because I was successful as a marketer and I kept my needs minimal, I was in a position in 2012-13 when I sold my first philosophy book, the Obstacle is the Way, I said, so I just sold, I just done Trust Me on Line, which was a bestseller. I've done this little book of Growth Hacker Marketing. So basically done two marketing books. I said, I have this idea for a book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. And my publisher offered me half what I got for my first book. So if I had been, let's say, financially irresponsible or I I was primarily valuing money as like success, I would have not been able to accept that. But because I was in a place where I'd saved, I'd invested, I had multiple revenue streams, and I didn't drive an Aston Martin.

Right.

You know, I was able to go, whatever, like that's the book I want to write. So it doesn't really matter what you think it's worth. I know what it will be worth in the long term. Right. And so, as I've-- so how do.

You think about that now then?

I think about like, I want to create revenue streams or investments that allow me to do what I want creatively, personally, and professionally, and not have to think like, where does the money come from? Mm-. Right? And I think you and I both know people who are extremely wealthy-- Yes. don't actually have that freedom because their lifestyle is at X. Or, you know, like there's two ways to be rich, right? It's that one is to have lots and lots of money and the other is to like not need lots and lots of money.

Yeah, yeah.

You know? And so if you can kind of split that difference, I feel like you're in a great spot. Like you're talented, you demand to be paid what you're worth. You know, you invest intelligently, you are creative, you work hard and what you need to feel good is attainable, then you have freedom. To me, success is autonomy. If making lots of money makes me feel less free, like I gotta keep all this thing going, then I feel like I'm becoming less successful. If I'm at a place where I'm like, this is what I wanna do, and I am able to do it, I'm like, that's good.

Right. What would the stoics be investing in these days?

That's a good question.

Stoics were around today. Where would they put their money to help their money work for them so they could have this lifestyle of autonomy, freedom, peace, flexibility, creativity, abundance? Would they be investing in crypto? Would it be back in their own business? Would it be real estate? Would it be, I don't know, something more safe?

I think it's really hard to answer that because the Roman world was so different. I mean, this is a world where slaves are doing most of the work and, you know, it's a colonial empire that's like pillaging all these different. It wasn't a good place in that sense.

I'm not stealing and yes.

But I think to me the idea of the best investment I ever made was the decision to move to a little bit of property outside of a big city.

Why is that?

So in 2015, I bought a small farm outside Austin.

Because you were living in Austin.

I was living in Austin.

Near town.

In town, yeah. You came to my house once. You saw my goats. And we need more space for the goats.

Yeah, they can't run around enough yet.

So we moved, we bought about 20 acres and now it's about 40 acres right out about 30 minutes Austin. But it was the best investment, I'll give you a couple reasons. One, it's a quiet place for me to write that I'm not looking around what other people are doing. I'm not distracted. There's not a million things to do. It's quiet and it's a little bit apart. If I need to do something I can, but I'm not like right in the thick of it. Number two, easy access to outdoors. Like being outside, being in nature, Doing stuff as opposed to, you know, sitting in, you know, rooms all the time. That's really important. And then, you know, the pandemic happens and all of a sudden, you know, my friends who had great apartments in the city are like, Get me out of here. I can't do this. Whereas we were like, this is amazing, right?

We set up for years. Yeah.

And we got food here.

We got like, We could hike, we could climb.

But like, you know, every morning I take my kids for a walk on a dirt road. Every evening we take the same walk on the dirt road. We're outside, we have space. So I think, but that's what it was for me. I'm not saying that needs, but I would say, like, find where you're happy, like what your place needs to be. And that, I think one of the reasons a lot of people I know have moved in the last 18 months is since they were finally home for an extended period of time, they realized they hated their house or they hated the city they were in. And they were only there for career reasons, the opportunities, or seeing reasons. And like life is too short to live somewhere that does not make you happy.

You say seeing reasons? Is that what you said?

Scene.

Yeah, being in the scene.

This is the scene. This is where the parties are. I want to get invited to stuff. Yes. And that's just not a good reason to live somewhere.

Right. Where should you live? Somewhere that makes you happy.

Yes. Somewhere that makes you happy, somewhere that gets the best work out of you. So like, I write better out there than I do in other places. And so knowing like what your space is and then investing in that space. So that's something I've struggled with too. You asked like, what do you do with money? I think it's like, How are you investing in your environment? Your environment, just like LeBron James spends a million bucks a year on his body, what are you investing in? I was for a long time was like, all I need is a laptop and I'll grind it out, you know?

And sleep on couches and be fine.

And part of the reason we opened this bookstore was like, I was like, I'm gonna kit out my space. All my stuff's gonna be in one spot. I'm gonna have all the technology I need. It's gonna, you know, I'm gonna, that was an investment that was well worth it. And so sometimes we, it's like we cheap out on the stuff that actually lets us do what we do. And if you're not gonna spend your money on the thing you do for a living, what are you spending it on?

That's a good point. So they would invest in their environment, their space.

I think so.

They wouldn't invest in crypto. I mean, who knows, maybe they would.

I'm sure they would invest.

Or NFTs or...

I'm sure they would invest in whatever they thought was a good investment.

Yes.

But so I don't wanna make a, although I'm interested in all those things. I don't want to use this ancient philosophy, which is about, you know, self-actualization to apply so specifically to this or that, 'cause I think it's more timeless than that.

Yes.

But I think they would be investing in what allowed them to do what was important to them.

How would they use self-discipline in all of this as well?

Well, self-discipline and courage are interrelated, right? Because too much courage, Aristotle says, is recklessness.

Yeah, it's like, I'm going to jump on this plane. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to go around half cocked. I'm going to get in fights that don't need to happen. I'm going to take risks that don't need to happen. I'm going to risk more than I actually need to risk. So also, I think if you're not a driven person, self-discipline is something you need. If you are a driven, ambitious person, you actually need self-discipline about your self-discipline. Tom Brady's struggle isn't like, how do I get out of bed this morning and be great at football?

It's like, how do I sit down and relax?

How do I keep this under control so I can be a good father? So I don't overtrain and hurt myself. So I don't go too hard on my teammates. So I can sustain this over a long period of time. How can I be patient? So self-discipline, depending on where you are, what phase you are, manifests itself very differently. For me, I'm more on the, I need to ratchet it down. I need to think about not forcing it. So I'm here, I'm doing press for this book. You asked me before, what's the next book? Because I am always working on the next book. But I had to go like, okay, these two weeks, I am doing stuff for this book.

Right, now I'm already going to the next one.

I don't need to be whipping myself for not doing the other stuff at the same time. that's not fair to the work, to me, to my family. So to be able to be like, I'm going to turn this down and that I'm going to be present and I just actually do the thing that's in front of me.

Yeah, I feel like every writer feels inferior to Ryan Holiday because you always have, you've like got the book out and you're like, well, if I have the next three done. And those are coming out in six months and then the next six months and everyone's like, how do you do this? machine.

So for me too, it's like if you told me I could put out a book every three months, I'd be like, oh, but actually my struggle is more like I gotta space them out even just for like- Let them breathe a little bit.

Yeah.

That's harder for me to do than to not work. So we all have diff- it all manifests itself differently for different people.

So what are the Stoics talking about when it comes to self-discipline then? Learning a discipline for yourself that works. What is the philosophy of self-discipline in general?

Well, one of my favorite things for the Stoics and self-discipline would be the reminder that it's called self-discipline. Right? Like you can't hold other people to your standards.

Mmm, okay.

Mark says, Tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

Say again, tolerate?

Tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

How interesting.

For instance, Kobe Bryant struggles with this.

He was trying to push his teammates.

To be like him. Rick Fox was like, Dude, we're not all Kobe Bryants, right? And that is a lesson, that's not a lesson that most people have to learn, but that's a lesson that some.

People have to learn.

Tolerate with others, strict with yourself. Yeah, you can only hold yourself to your standards. You can't be like, why isn't this person waking up at the time that I am? Well, it's because it's not their company. Right, right.

Exactly. They don't care as much.

They don't care as much and they just haven't found that thing yet. And so you can only hold yourself to your standards. And I've struggled with that where it's like if you want to go around being disappointed and angry at people all the time, then sure, try to hold them to your standards. If you want to have friendships, if you want to have relationships, if you want to be happy, if you want to be encouraged, You gotta be like, everyone's on their own journey, they're all doing the best they can, and like, I'm gonna meet them where they are.

What about finding peace? How do the Stoics find inner peace?

We tend to associate Buddhism with inner peace, but my book on stillness, which is called Stillness is the Key, the Stoics talk about this too, a lot actually. Marcus Aurelius says you wanna be like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually fall still around. So I love the idea that like, The world is spinning faster than ever. It's noisier than ever. But like, I'm gonna be calm and chill and locked in. And actually, I think you know this from the sports stuff is like, the athlete is stillist when the game is the most chaotic.

Yes. Well, in order to perform at your highest level, that's when greatness comes about. There's 10 seconds left. The play is the last play of the game. You fell down, you gotta get back up. You've gotta make the play, otherwise you lose the game. It's almost like you learn how to calm yourself under the most pressure, otherwise you will not succeed at your goals.

And you'll ask LeBron James, what were you thinking? And he's like, nothing. You know, that's when the training takes over. And I think you see this where like, okay, the world falls apart 18 months ago. And actually most of us did a really good job. We were like, all right, what do I gotta do? What do I do to keep people I love safe? What decisions do I need to make? What precautions do I need? We were just like locked in, 'cause we knew it was serious. But then you're like, get a flat tire and you're like, what the fuck.

Am I supposed to do?

You know? So it's like how, like, if your arm got cut off, you'd go into some state of panic.

Yeah, you'd be like, okay, where's the hospital?

Go get me a belt and call 911. And then you, but then you, you jam your finger playing basketball and you're like, I don't know if I can work You know, like the minor stuff, because you have the luxury of freaking out, you do. So I think courage and self-discipline are related there. The ability to be like, my emotions want me to do X, but X is not helpful.

What's been the hardest thing for you to overcome in the last few years in terms of emotional triggers that maybe you used to or always tend to get under your skin? that you really learn self-discipline or stillness or meditation to become better at. Maybe you haven't perfected it yet, but like it still bugs you when this happens or that happens, but what's the emotion you've had to learn to master the most?

I mean, I think all dri-- I would say the majority of driven people struggle with temper, like your temper, because you want things to be a certain way.

You want it to be done yesterday.

Yes.

A certain way. Yes.

And so you get frustrated that they are not, that it's not how you want it to be, how you asked it to be, how you would do it. So I think the one I'm constantly struggling with is anger.

Really?

Not like, I would say, I don't have an anger problem, but anger is a problem.

Right, right.

You know, it's not the same, it's just not good. Right. Just realizing that it almost never makes things better. I'm never glad that I lost my temper. Most of the things I regret have to do with my temper.

Really?

You know, it's like, why did I send that? Why did I say that? Now, I think as you work on it, there are moments where you need to make a display of anger. to accomplish something, but that's not the same as feeling it regularly. Or as being out of control from your anger.

Right, right, right.

Like, coaches in the NBA will sometimes take a technical, like they'll get angry on purpose to like send a message to the ref or rile the team up. That's different than getting in a fight. Right. And needing to be restrained, right? So for me, it's just like, Is anger gonna make this better? What am I really upset about? I would say anger is the big one and then the other one would be like just anxiety. I think like the pandemic when all of a sudden I was doing a lot less stuff.

Like what do I do now?

I realized like, oh, I thought I was anxious about like needing to get to the gate before my flight, but I was really just anxious period. So it's like, you know, like now that I'm not traveling and I'm still feeling the, nowhere to go, nothing to do, and the anxiety is still there. It's like, oh, anxiety is one for me.

What do the stoics say on how to let go of or heal anger and anxiety? What's the process of healing the anger challenge, temper challenge that I think a lot of people have faced or the anxiety anxious challenge?

The anxiety one is my favorite. Mark Suzor says, Today I escaped anxiety. And he goes, no, 'cause he's writing to himself. You're looking at the journal of the most powerful man who ever lived. It's beautiful. 'Cause I escaped anxiety. He goes, no, I discarded my anxiety because it was within me.

The anxiety was within you.

Yes, the anxiety is a creation. Almost all the things that I am anxious about nobody else cares about.

They're not anxious about it, yeah, in the same way.

Or it's just like I impose this deadline and it's arbitrary and now I'm stressed about it, right? I just talked to someone on my team about this. I was like, okay, obviously I want this to get out by this certain date and I'm worried that if we don't, the customers will be upset or worried or whatever and I was like, so we're still gonna work very hard to hit this deadline. but here's the email we're sending out now explaining to people all the factors that are going into it, why it's gonna, why it may take longer than expected, what the conditions the pandemic has created, so on and so forth, and just to be patient. And so now I still want to hit the deadline, but I don't have this sort of self-imposed anxiety or worry that there's all this stuff that people don't know about and that, you know, like, I'm just gonna go like, hey, I'm gonna manage my expectations. I'm also gonna over communicate, and then I'm gonna detach a little bit. Right.

Okay, so that's with anxiety. What about with anger? What does the dog say about letting that go?

Anger would be, Seneca says, getting angry is like returning a bite to a dog or a kick to a mule. So often what you're angry about, you're just, you're really expressing this like, I wish that hadn't happened. Yeah. And this, and it's like, okay, but it happened. Yeah. So, like, what is this accomplishing? And so I think for me, I think a lot about, like, who's being punished here? Mostly me.

Like, I'm feeling the anxious and angry person is being punished.

Yes. I'm by my, I'm punishing myself by deciding to carry this around and that. I think the other thing that can be helpful is like, have you ever looked at yourself when you're angry?

You don't like that.

Like, yes, you don't look good. You don't look good. And I think one of the scary slash things about being like a public figure or something is you're like, you can catch, you go like, what do you think people would think if they saw this?

Right?

And then that, that, and that is a stoic exercise. Like, what would you look like? What would an indifferent person like a person who didn't know you just standing here in this room. Like, would you be doing this if people could see? Probably not. And so just sort of going like, this is not a good look, man. This is not what you want to do.

At the end of the day, do you look yourself in the mirror ever and ask yourself, how did I do today? Did I show up to the standard that I want to of the Stoics or of my own standard today? Or how do you process and assess your day, whether it was up to your standard or below your standard? Do you journal?

Not consistently, but I do it, yeah.

I kind of like mental journal, you know, or verbal journal. Same thing.

Yeah, verbal journal. So for me, it's journaling. And I think it's almost impossible to separate stoicism and journaling. That's what it is. Meditations is Marcus Aurelius' journal, right? Seneca's work survives to us in letters that he wrote to a friend, also kind of a form of journaling. So for me, like, I do that reflection. Obviously, in my work, I'm always thinking about these things, so I have kind of an advantage. That's one of the benefits of like, you're always working through your stuff with.

Guests or interviews or- I'm always revealing my shame and- Yes, yeah.

Yeah, it's work that if you were a different kind of entrepreneur, you would have to have a different medium to do it in.

Right.

But for me, the journal is like the private space that I do that in.

Interesting.

So like, what am I working on? Where am I falling short? What do I need to be thinking about? What am I proud of? What am I grateful for? I'm just trying to talk through that stuff on that page. And I would say the last year especially has been really good because it was overwhelming. It was not normal. Right? Like it was more spent a year and a half in quarantine with two kids under four. Right? Like that's not healthy. Yeah. Right? Like that's not what anyone would choose. And so you do that, like if you don't have an outlet, where does that go? Comes out in anxiety, anger, fear, all those other places. So I think if you can work either in the morning or at night on a page. Anne Frank says, Paper is more patient than people. Just work it out there instead of.

Voicing it on people. On people, yes. What are the exercises or the hobbies that you dive into in order to release anxiety and anger besides journaling?

So every morning, it fluctuates a little bit, but I do some form of walking. and some form of physical exercise, like an endurance thing. And then usually I do some like training like three to four days a week also. So it's like mostly physicals.

Walking, running, swimming.

So walking is not the exercise. Walking is like for the meditation. And then I run, swim, or bike every day.

Really?

And then I'll do like some kind of weight or body weight stuff a couple days a week.

Really? You do like 10-15 miles a day, I feel like. Don't I always see your watch post every day?

I do run a lot, and then I've tried to merge running and kid time, so I put them in the stroller.

That's smart.

This morning I ran with the kids. But I like to, to me, because my job is sit in the chair, stare at a screen, I want the hobbies to be the opposite of that.

Outdoors or activities or physical. that's cool. Where would you like to be a year from now? You had 18 months of this where you probably were faced with your anxieties or temper or whatever more frequently. A year from now, where would you like yourself to be with your inner world?

Well, you know, people, you probably heard yourself saying, I've heard a million people say, I can't wait for things to go back to normal.

Right.

And. I want the opposite of that. First off, normal doesn't exist. Second, if normal does exist, normal caused this. So I want to preserve what has been the maybe the largest lifestyle experiment in human history. What does less look like? What does more family time look like? What is more focus look like? What does that look like? For me, it's like, how do I preserve those things in an environment where I now can do other, like it was easy to not travel for speaking for 18 months because like there were no live events. But now, and I'm sure you're seeing this, like now the offers are coming in. And to be like, that's very generous. Thank you. But I'd rather not. Right. that's not just hard to do. It's scary to do because, like, there's a part of you that's like, what if I, what if five years I'm kicking myself because I need that now, right? Or, like, what if they never, what if they're offended? You know, what if I miss on this opera? You know, like, FOMO is real. So how are you, how are you.

Making your decisions based on, like, travel and speaking and opportunities? Are you making them based on, like, if, if you really want to do it, or if it's a certain pay that's, like, absurd. You're like, okay, I have to do this because it makes sense now.

I'm having to think about it. I mean, I was doing the math because I did my first in-person a couple of weeks ago. And it was really safe. It was actually done by an air filtration company. So it couldn't have been as... who, by the way, is killing it as a business, as you can imagine. But I realized that on that night, I was ending a streak of 530 consecutive bedtimes. with my kids that I'll probably never get ever again.

That you put them to bed with my wife.

And not saying I did this by myself, but I slept in the same house as my kids, did the same routine for 535 nights.

That's pretty impressive.

I've probably never gone that many nights without traveling in my whole life, even when I was a kid.

That's impressive.

So, I'll never get that again. And so now, really, like, opportunity costs are a hard thing to keep track of because they're hidden. And sometimes when you step away from something or you try it in a new way, you realize, oh, yes, this is lucrative. Yes, this is fun. Yes, this gets me attention or builds a business. But it comes at the expense of quiet evenings at home. Being more connected to the work. Let's say if you travel in a week, your interviews that week are 5% less good. It's really hard to notice that. But over a long enough time, that's actually a huge decrease in quality. And so I think for me, if I'm like, where am I a year? from now. I'd like to think I'm, my goal would be to be in a very similar head and spiritual place, even though life will have resumed some of the busyness and obligations that, you know, do have to resume.

Sure, sure. What's the thing you're most proud of in the last 18 months?

I mean, that bedtime streak is a big one for, I mean, that's like, it means a lot to me, but I would just say that like, You know, the world melted down and I was able to do good work that I think mattered inside of it. Right? Like I started this book, I'd sold it before the pandemic, but I started it on June 16, 2020. So like in the middle of the most difficult world event of my life, like I did good work. I'm proud of that.

People gotta get the book. Courage is calling. Fortune favors the brave. Doesn't it usually fortune favors the bold?

Yes, it does.

Why'd you change the brave?

Because courage and bravery as sort of words, but you know that expression, which is a lovely Latin expression, you know it's actually about This guy named Plyny the Elder who was a naval admiral and Mount Vesuvius explodes and he went to rescue his friend. So when he's saying, basically he's trying to get into this harbor where his friend is trapped and the pilot says, like, the captain says, We can't get in there, it's too dangerous, there's too many rocks. And he says, Fortune favors the bold, like head towards my friend. So we think that that expression means like be a visionary, like take risks, you know, do like the, do the, the, the bold thing. But which it does mean that. But he meant it in a selfless context. And in fact, he, he dies in, in the course of the rescue, which I feel like is a really important spin on a story that people are kind of, we kind of missed the point on. It doesn't mean like plunge ahead, don't think of the consequences. It means like dive into the water to save someone who's drowning.

That's inspiring. Yes, fortune favors the brave. Courage, you know, something, courage is like, for me, I feel like you should really lean into things that are hard for you to have courage on. You know, for me, it's easy for me to think of like, okay, if someone gets in a car crash, my reaction is stop the car, go out and go and pull someone out. Maybe it's because of my size, maybe it's because of sports background. That's kind of like my reaction. It's hard for me to tell my girlfriend something I don't want to tell her.

Yes.

It's hard to be like, oh man, this takes a lot of courage for me to be like, oh, I'm really gonna be honest here.

How's this gonna impact her? Yeah.

Is it gonna change every, you know, whatever it is. Sure. And I think it's important for us, I don't know if you have a practice or if you have this in the book where like exercises on how we could start implementing courage on a daily process, whether it's say the thing that's hard for you to say to your boss or to your friend or to your parent, whatever it is, or do the physical activity that's hard for you. Do you have any of that we can think about as well?

Yeah, I mean, obviously the book is sort of breaking it down and going in the ways that we do that, but you know there's that cliche, the simple ways, like that cliche about do one thing every day that scares you. It's kind of hard to beat that.

Yeah, it's tough.

You know, that's like, Sometimes these things are cliches for a reason. Because I think if you build it as a habit, you're gonna be more likely to do it when it counts. And so when you've done scary, I think this is your point about the pandemic, if you've been through stuff before, it's easy to know what to do. If you've avoided difficult things, if you don't have a practice, of plunging ahead. And even just turning the knob to cold in the shower. Right. Like who's in charge? You know? Like I do the scary, hard thing 'cause I'm in charge. You're gonna be able to do that when, you know, when it counts, hopefully.

What are the, either the Navy, the Army, or the Marine, I can't remember who, but what's the saying? It's like we rise to our training. We fall to our training. We don't rise to our expectations or something.

Yeah, yeah. that it's gonna be like, oh, my best, this situation will bring out my best self. Maybe. But probably not. It's what's your worst best?

Your worst best on your worst day, how good can you be trained for that consistently? Because you're gonna fall down to that. If you're better than that, great.

Well, as a runner, you train your T pace, right? You're like, what's your 90% of your best? your all-out max capacity. Train at that, and then it becomes normal. Easy.

Yes.

And then so when it happens, and this is what we're talking about, preparation makes you break. You've done the work, put yourself in a position where you're like, this is what, this was all for.

Yes. Get a few copies for friends. I'm telling you, Courage is calling. Here's the thing, every one of Ryan's book becomes a bestseller at some point. So whether it's gonna be best selling the first week or first year or first 10 years, it's going to be number one at some point, I'm telling you. Let's support him in getting to number one sooner than later, even though it's not his intention right now, but it'll definitely help get the message out to more people. And I think courage is one of the values that humanity lacks the most. Having the courage to stand up for what's right. Even sometimes you might be wrong later in life, but like having the courage in that moment, like at least I stood up for what I thought was right. Having the courage to say the truth, having the courage to be in integrity with yourself, having the courage to just continue to show up as a good human being. It's not easy. In a selfish world, it's not easy to have courage and stand for what's morally right and what's the win-win-win for this situation. Now how can I win? at all costs.

And where would we be without those people? If you think things are bad now, where would we be without those people in the past? And so you can be one of those people today.

Absolutely. Be a symbol of inspiration. So get the book, Anywhere Books Are Sold, Amazon. What's also the best place for your site so they can learn more about this and all your books?

Yeah, dailystoic.com, I do a free email about stoicism every day.

It's a great email list.

And then my social media, @RyanHoliday@Daily Stoic. And if you want to see a.

YouTube sensation, go to your YouTube, youtube.com/RyanHoliday, right? No, Daily Stoic. Daily Stoic. Yeah, some really great videos there actually from stoicism. You guys do like great storytelling and visuals on that stuff. But now you're vlogging, so you're a superstar on the YouTubes and the TikToks. This is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the Three Truths. I think you've answered it before, but let's see if something comes up different for you. Imagine it's your last day on Earth, many years away, and you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. You're as old as you want to be, but eventually you gotta turn the lights off. And you've lived the life. But all of your written audio or video work has to go somewhere else. It doesn't stay in this world. So no one has access to this interview or anything you've ever put out in your life. But you have a piece of paper and a pen, you get to write down three truths. Three lessons that you've either learned, that you've experienced, or that you want to share with the world. And this is all the lessons we would have to remember you by.

-Okay.

-From all your work or what you know about life. What would you say are those three truths for you?

Let's start at the bottom. Life is very short, right? So, Memento Mori. You've got a brief moment here, right? Life is short. Two, all accomplishments are ephemeral. What matters is what you do for the people you care about.

Okay.

Actually, Jackie Robinson's tombstone is, A life is not important except for its impact on other lives. So, some version of that.

Yes. Interesting.

And then the first would be... What would I say? Do what you love.

There you go. Do what you love. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Ryan, for being an incredible human being. You constantly show up every year. I've known you for 10 years. You constantly improve your life. You do what's right for you. You invest in your family. You invest in your health. You invest in creating art for the world to be a better place. you do, and you're constantly acknowledging where you could improve, anxiety, anger, temper, and for me, you're taking ancient wisdom and teaching it in a new, fresh, practical way while using your creative mastery, your writing, and your skill set. So I want to acknowledge you for always showing up, for being a leader in so many different ways in the world. writing being the most way that people see and read your writing, but in other ways behind the scenes that people don't know about that I do know about. So I acknowledge you for how you keep showing up, man. You're a brilliant human being, extremely talented, probably one of the most talented writers I've ever met and of our time. So I really acknowledge you for all the gifts you have.

That's very nice.

Of course, man, of course. So if your wife doesn't tell you that every day, she needs to start telling you that, right? Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

Definition of greatness. Fulfilling one's potential. So I think it's very easy to define greatness by some sort of external standard, right? Like, do they have the most? Did they win the most? Did they get this or that? Right? And I like to think that as you get better at what you do, you care less and less about that and more about Did you do everything you were capable of doing? Did you take whatever hand you were dealt or set of assets you were given and did you play them for all they were worth? Did you leave anything on the table? If the answer is yes, then that's not greatness. If you touched, however briefly, the full, who tapped in however briefly to the full measure of your powers, that's greatness. Maybe you get it for a whole career, maybe you get it for one thing, one moment, you know? But that, that maybe nobody sees it, but that's, but greatness is that. There you go. Right. How are you? My man.

Appreciate it. The best. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and subscribe over on Apple podcast as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there. and do something great.