The Daily Stoic Author, Ryan Holiday, On How Discipline Is Destiny & The Key To Finding Peace

I think about what do I want my life to look like, what do I want my day to look like? And then I have to make decisions that either get me closer or further away from that. Right? And if I don't have the discipline to do that, I'm going to say yes to something because other people want me to, because it seems in the short term like it's good. And that's going to ultimately take me away from the kind of life that I want and the kind of work that I need to be doing.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today is a big day for me. There are some people that when you start a podcast, you have on your list, you know what list I'm talking about, your dream list of guests that you're like, maybe someday we can get them on the show. Today is that day, you guys. And I can tell you that this interview was even better than I could have imagined. I to go in with no expectations, but I really just fell in love with this person as a human being. And I think that is what makes my favorite podcast on the show is when I just feel like they could be an old friend. And truly today that is exactly how I felt when talking to Ryan Holiday, everyone. If you don't know who it is, he is a writer and media strategist. When he was 19 years old, he dropped out of college to Apprentice under Robert Gre, author of the 48 Laws of Power. He had a successful marketing career at American Apparel and went on to found a creative agency called Brass Check, which has advised clients like Google, Taser and Complex, as well as many prominent best selling authors including Neil Strauss, no big Deal, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss and Ryan is the author of several books. And this is how I found Ryan actually was the book the Obstacle is the Way. And I just love when a book title on its own can change your life. You guys, if you just grasp that the Obstacle is the Way, I'm telling you, it's changed the way that I look at everything that's challenging. His other books, Ego is the Enemy, the Daily Stoic, which I absolutely love, Conspiracy and Stillness is the Key, which have sold more than 2 million copies in 30 languages and have a following among NFL coaches, world class athletes, TV personalities, political leaders and other people all around the world. He spends much of his time on his ranch outside Austin, Texas where he does his writing and work in between raising cattle, donkeys and goats. We had the best conversation you guys. Like, I learned so much about how this human being can create so Much content. And let me just tell you, just to get a look inside of his brain and have a conversation around discipline was really life changing for me. So I hope that you love this podcast and as much as I did. Let's get started. Ryan, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. You normally don't talk back to me on Instagram when I'm watching all of your stuff, so I'm typically just double tapping on your face, so.

Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. What I like about social media is that it is primarily a one way conversation and I could just say what I want.

Isn't that great? Give me one and done. You're like, I don't need to go back and look at the comments. This is totally fine today.

Yes, you should never read the comments. That's always a rule.

Seriously. I did a TED Talk and I read two of them and I was like, we're done forever. Actually, this is all there is to it. So. Well, I'm so excited to have you on. I've read many of your books. You definitely have been someone who's just really changed my thoughts around being able to have control over my own brain and just my life. So I'm really excited to dive into this. And you guys, for those of you who don't know who we're talking with today, Ryan, you are truly, you know, one of the most incredible, I think, authors of our time. And you are such a researcher, like the amount of research you do. I was also just watching a video on how much research you put into all your books. Like, how much time do you actually spend researching and learning per day?

That's a good question. I mean, it's more of something that's kind of always happening as opposed to, like, this is the time that I set aside to do that. But each one of my books is obviously having read hundreds of books, not just for that book specifically, but then all the books that I've read up until that point. So, you know, each one of my books is probably five or six thousand note cards of research that I've taken from the books that I've read. You know, documentaries I've watched, in some cases interviews that I've done. I've said this before, but people often think, you know, that writers experience writer's block, which is when you sit down and you don't know what to say. I actually don't know if that exists or not. I think research block, like, or an insufficient amount of research is a very real thing. And so, you know, all of my writing, being a nonfiction author, it's probably different when you're a novelist or something. All of my writing comes from or is a result of whether I did the work days, weeks, months, years beforehand with the inputs. That's what generates ultimately the outputs.

Oh, man. That just sparked the thought for me where, you know, you're. You obviously show up on social media all the time, but you're also a writer, which then those thoughts go into your social content as well. But I've been doing this podcast now for five years, and I do three episodes a week. And truly, when I have podcasters block, it's being. Because I haven't put in the time in the research. And every time I do, I have notebooks of topics and I can't stop, like, being an observer of, wow, how can I tilt this? Or show people different things?

So I just went through that the other day, actually, as I have a podcast too, with Daily Stoke, and I had this guest on, and I felt like we had a really good interview. And then I read some, like, another one of their. I read something that I hadn't read before the interview, and I was just like, oh, man, this interview would have been so much better. So there's this kind of. There's an opportunity cost to research that you don't do. I did a piece about this recently, too. I was talking about how, like, all kinds of success in life are basically lagging indicators of whether you did what you were supposed to do a long time previous. Right. So even relationships, right. The health of a relationship is not about whether you put the cap back on the toothpaste today or what your mood was like this morning. It's the deposits you made in that relationship a year ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And the same goes for writing or creative work. It's. It's not this magical thing that. That visits you when you sit down in the chair in the morning. It's six months ago. Were you chasing down this loose end? Did you say, you know, I. This is good enough, or do you say, I really not sure I have what I need in the book. Just did the discipline book. I had a. I wanted to write about Queen Elizabeth ii, who. Who was still alive when I was writing the book, but I knew she would be a character and I knew what I wanted to say about her, and I read one, actually, I think this is it here. I read like one maybe 800 page biography. And I was like, oh, that's pretty good. I think I could probably do it. And then I was like, you know what? I'm not sure that I can. And then I read another 800 page biography and another 800 page. I think I read about 4,500 pages about this single woman to write what was ultimately about 5,000 words in the book itself. So if you want to get a sense of like the research to writing ratio that was about a page a word that ultimately came out the other side, or a word a page.

I actually love this that we got into this so naturally right now because it's like the track that is playing in the back of my head so much. I had the opportunity this weekend to be in a room with people who I looked up to my entire life, like 40 of them. And I was in the room and we were all going around a roundtable and everybody was adding value. And not out of a sense of me feeling, like unworthy, but out of a sense of me observing that they were doing something different than me to be able to feel they could add so much value to each other. It's not that I was like, oh, I'm not worthy of being here. It was a noticing of they've done more work on mastery, of going deeper in areas that I have not been willing to do. Like, I've been more efficient than deeply effective. And I took that away. And so that's what I'm observing about you, is you get so deep into the topics in which you're looking at or researching. But I also love that you probably. Okay, so when we were in that room, this is what I want to ask you.

Yeah.

And I think it pertains to this and the just like kind of mastering, you know, something and being able to go deep. So we were talking about creativity and the ability to continue to create. And where does that come from? And Jay Shetty said, how much randomness are you allowing into your life? And he tries to always go random. Which we can be talking about mastery in one thing, but for you, it seems like you research everything to connect it to the idea of a topic.

Yeah, I mean, serendipity is a huge part, not just of the research project, but I think just like learning and growing as a person, like, you get vaguely interested in something and you chase it down. And that desire, that curiosity to chase things down, that's ultimately what it is. Like, I don't have really any skills, certainly not like classically trained Certainly not professionally trained. I don't think I'm a genius or anything like that. Like I have the reading ability or the reading comprehension of your average ordinary person. But I'm very curious and I'm very committed. And so where that takes me is ultimately to a lot of interesting stuff because I read something and then I read what that suggests and that suggests. And then I say I want to consume everything ever done about that person. And that's the process for me. Although I want to go back to that meeting you were just talking about, because I have a line in discipline is destiny that I found when I was. I was reading a book about the Spartans. Plutarch wrote this book called on Sparta, meant 2,000 years ago. And there's this quip about this Spartan. All the Spartans ate in this communal mess. All the Spartan men had to have dinner together every single day. And so they're sitting and in this mess, they would make fun of each other, they would talk about topic, they would quiz each other. It was this sort of communal educational process. And at one of the dinners, there was a young Spartan officer was sitting there and he didn't say anything. Everyone else was talking and sharing and adding value, like you said. And he was silent and somebody looked at him and he said, are you stupid? What's wrong with you? Basically he said, are you stupid? And he said, certainly a stupid person wouldn't be able to be quiet. And the point is that sometimes listening or sitting back and observing or simply having the humility to say, I have less to add to this conversation than the people who are dominating it. And so I'm going to take that in. I'm going to wait for my shot. That requires a certain amount of self discipline that I think we don't prize enough in society. Obviously this also intersects with class and race and a bunch of other things. There is the sort of confidence, they say, of the mediocre white man that feels compelled and entitled to opine about everything. And different races and genders are not socialized the same way, or it's not accepted the same way. But I think it's admirable to go, hey, I'm just going to watch and observe. The Stoics have an expression, two ears, one mouth for a reason. And maybe that's what was happening with you at that event.

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You know, right? I'm just going to listen to that over and over and go with that. But I did have, truly, truly, I did have moments where I was like, they've done more work. I want this person to hear what that other person has to say until then. So.

In my first job, I worked for this talent agency in Beverly Hills, and I was sitting in on this meeting that I don't even know why I've been invited. It was probably sort of a privilege to be there. And they were talking about something that I kind of knew about. And so I butted in, I said something. I don't even remember what I said, but I had this mentor who took me aside after, and he said, why did you say that? He said, did it actually need to be said, or did you just want to have something to say? And I think about that often. You know, it's so. It's. We do this on social media, too. This isn't just the dynamics of meetings, but we feel prompted to opine and discuss and interject and, you know, it's not always to our advantage.

Oh, my God. I've learned that so much on a podcast. Because, you know, Ryan, when you have your podcast, you get so attached to, like, oh, they just dropped this amazing thing. I also have one that everyone needs to hear, but, like, the topic's actually dead. You've moved on from it, and then you wreck it by bringing it back.

Or you're like, I have my list of questions. We need to get to my questions as opposed to, I'm gonna let this go where it's gonna go.

Yes. Oh, my God, that has taken me so long. And it's a level of just, like, letting it be okay to kind of lose track sometimes or, you know, just to intently listen from a place of being interested. And what would the most natural. Like, what is your most natural next question? So my most natural next question feels like, I really love the topic of discipline because I will tell you, I come from a really small town. I was homeschooled through high school. I've never actually graduated. And so for me, I was always like, well, I feel like it's challenging for me to get smarter in areas that don't feel natural. But I have always been extremely disciplined, and I learned it from my parents. So tell me about the topic just of discipline and why that got you interested.

I think it's important that we don't just see discipline as something physical, Right. So I think we were like, discipline. Oh, the discipline of the professional athlete. Right. The discipline of doing more, pushing harder, enduring more. You know, and obviously there's a synonym there of punishment, right? We think about it as discipline and punishment. I think if we see discipline also as restraint, we get closer to the definition. Epictetus, one of the great Stoics, he tried to define the philosophy itself. He said with two words, persist and resist. Right. Sometimes discipline is pushing through, doing more, going harder, but a lot of times it's not doing something. So the discipline to not interject, the discipline to ignore a distraction. Right? The discipline to be what you need to be in a situation and not something else. Right. And so it's this kind of physical, mental, but also spiritual domain. And I think as a society, we tend to. To focus primarily on the physical. Right. It's like, it's what I eat, it's how much I sleep, it's how much I work out. That's whether I am a disciplined person or not. And that's why I ended up spending so much time talking about Queen Elizabeth in the book. Because, like, this is a little old lady who had a job that people don't think is hard. Right. It seems like it would be easy to be a queen, but actually, the discipline in that job, that's not the discipline of a. Of a soldier or the discipline. Right. Of an athlete. But it requires an immense amount of discipline to let people talk about you and not respond. It's an immense amount of discipline to hold yourself in a certain way. It's also an immense amount of physical discipline to have the same job every day for 70 years that you can't ever go home from because your home is also the office. So I think we often mischaracterize or can limit how we think about discipline. And a big part of the book is that there is physical discipline, temperament as a kind of discipline, and then also this kind of spiritual discipline.

I love that. And I can tell you firsthand, it is not easy to be a queen. So.

Okay.

So I. Okay. I love looking at it this way, because when you were talking and I was thinking of all the things that I obviously want to improve on and whatever I used to look at it more as I was adding things to my schedule, get to the gym, healthier eating, you know, more studying on X, Y and Z. I need to learn funnels more, I need to learn marketing more. All of these things. And right now I'm in this place of less, of okay if I. I need to be disciplined to get in bed at 9. Because when I do that, I have so much more energy and clarity to be able to even know what direction I want to do. I have to have a lot or I want more discipline around, you know, not drinking wine during the week, because I love wine. But it's takes away from a practice that I'm doing right now. And so it almost feels lighter and easier to look at it, as if I can just focus on some restraint around a few things. I feel like it opens up so much more rather than like, maybe I just need to double down over here or maybe I need to go for another jog. It's like when you. I just had this realization of kind of taking away is going to like add so much energy to the things that I want to do.

Yeah, that's actually my. My word. My wife and I sort of picked a word or a mantra we want to focus on this year. And the word we picked is less. Like, we want to do less, we want to acquire less, we want to be involved in less drama, distracted, just less. Right. And this requires. It doesn't seem like it would require discipline, or at least it seems very. It's like a champagne problem. But just because it's a champagne problem doesn't mean it's not a problem. Obviously, at one point in your career, discipline is about like, am I putting myself out there, sending the emails, making the asks? And that required discipline. You had to get up and do something that maybe you weren't inclined to do. But as one becomes more successful, the exact opposite becomes required, which is now you have so much inbound that you can't possibly do it all. And it becomes a matter of prioritization and preference. And so the discipline to say, as Marcus Aurelius does in Meditations, he says, you have to ask yourself in every situation, is this necessary? Right. And if it's not necessary, don't do it. And he says, when you don't do unnecessary things, not only is that good, but he says you get the double benefit of doing essential things better. Right. And I have. You can't see it. It's right off the screen, but I have between two pictures of my kids and my oldest and My youngest, I have a picture, and it's a sign. It just says no. Right. The point is, I have to say no to things that come in so I can say yes to those two people. And understanding that it requires discipline to be willing to upset certain people, to miss out on something that could be otherwise fun or exciting or validating, and to sort of have the courage to be like, no, what I should be doing is X. And I'm going to do that even if people don't understand, you know, even if it's, you know, X, Y, or.

Z. Oh, man, I love this because this is absolutely the year that I am having right now. And it's the clarity around. There are a lot of things I really, really want to be doing. There was actually. So I was. I was going to. This is big news to everyone on my podcast, but I just decided not to write a book this year. I was going to do it this year. We were just about to shop it, and I went away to really think about what I want space for and what I want to do. And I was in a season of having a lot more energy than usual, so it felt like, oh, I could totally do this. Except I know that when those times come, like, when the time actually comes to doing it, it's almost like you have to picture your day. And I know that you talk about this like, you need to picture what your perfect day is. And when I picture my day and, like, what I can handle and can I get better at the things I want to get better at, when I sat down and I was like, that's going to take some serious chunks of time. And I am not going to be able to have the type of day that I want all year long if I do this. And it wasn't until, like, really, really letting myself say, what does this look like in this schedule? Now, instead of, you know, when you're excited, you make these decisions, and it's going to feel like this and that, and. And instead, you got to do the boring stuff, like actually schedule it in your schedule and see what that's going to look like.

Yeah. I mean, I think about, what do I want my life to look like, what do I want my day to look like? And then I have to make decisions that either get me closer or further away from that. Right. And if I don't have the discipline to do that, I'm gonna say yes to something because other people want me to, because it seems in the short term, like, it's good, and that's gonna Ultimately take me away from the kind of life that I want and the kind of work that I need to be doing. And this is what strategy is, right? Strategy is knowing what your desired outcome is, the objective that you're going after, and then charting a course, you know, more than just a few feet in front of you that, you know, that that makes it possible for you to get there. And, you know, we don't do this enough. We're just reactive and emotional or, you know, we consider things in isolation, but the reality is they're all interconnected and interrelated. And how you choose or how you make one decision impacts not just how you make other decisions, but even what other decisions potentially or don't potentially, you know, come across your desk.

How did you figure out kind of what your energy expenditure from, for the day is like? I really feel like I only have three to four hours of creativity. So what does this look like and what fits in there? How did you get real with yourself to figure out that out? If someone's listening and they're, you know, they want to take on all these projects, but realistically, they could look at their history to figure out how much energy they actually have for the day?

Yeah. I'm not sure if there's a way to do it other than to do it. You sort of figure out your capacity. It's not like you go to some government rating agency and they go based on your thing. You know, this car can go 34 miles a gallon, right?

That would be great, though.

The dining capacity of this restaurant is 112 people.

Like, there's.

There is none of that. So you figure it out as you go. I think, I don't think you just commit to everything all at once and then see how it works. I think you add and add and add slowly and steadily until you get to the point where, okay, if I take one back, you know, that the tower moves a little less. Right. It's sturdier for me. And you learn trial by error, like when you do what you do best. I heard a great question from a novelist recently. He said you have to be very careful about what you give the best part of your day to. And I've been thinking about that a lot. Like, so my best part of my day creatively is in the morning, right? And so if I schedule meetings or, you know, a doctor appointment or, you know, I procrastinate from 9 to 1pm and then I get serious about it at 2:30, I'm not giving the best of myself to the Writing. Like, my wife and I recently were just coming back from a trip and we got into town at like 2 in the afternoon and I was like, you know what? I haven't worked in a couple days. I'm gonna go to the office, I'll try to get some writing done. And so I get to the office at say 3. I'm fresh. I'd slept in. I thought it would all whatever. Time is time. And when I sat down to write at three and it was just garbage, it was a nice reminder. It was like, oh, yeah, this is why I don't do this, right? This is why by 3pm on most days, I've already done everything I've needed to do. And it's just wind down and wrap up stuff that late in the afternoon. You don't just learn how much you're capable of doing, but you have to learn what is the order or the system in which you do that stuff best.

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Oh my God, I love that that is in my hours are earlier too. And I find. And even though you. It's interesting even though sometimes you have energy at 3 or you're like, I feel like I could do this. It's so true that it's just there's a difference between actually being able to, like you said, being able to do something, but being in that zone where you feel fresh and your mind is like in a different state. And maybe you Just went for your walk and you got new creative ideas and things like that.

So.

Okay, let's talk about. I love this. You had a post on this. And my husband and I actually sometimes get into arguments over this. So I'm wondering if you and your wife ever, ever deal with this too. The don't say maybe when you want to say no. Like we absolutely. Like sometimes I've gotten better with it before my husband, but I was so guilty forever. But we'll do it sometimes in conversation with people and I'm. Because you're just kicking the can down the road and it's causing more trouble. So tell me about this.

I think this is an important reason. Once one can afford it or finding a way to do it and there are cheaper ways to do it or ways to fake it. Also, this is why important or powerful people have assistants, secretaries, agents, lawyers, publicists. The job of, let's say a publicist for a very well known person is not to go out and get them publicity. Right? This people don't understand this. 99% of the time it's passing on things or eliminating the need to do things entirely. And I think it's easy, it's easy to say maybe or say I don't know, or just as I sometimes find myself doing, hope it will magically go away. And it doesn't. It doesn't. Right. You have to say, you have to say no. The idea that no is a complete sentence was helpful to me. I was reading a book actually for something I was researching about the Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day o'. Connor. And one of her aides was saying what was so powerful about her, what she so admired about her was that she never said sorry before she said no. She just said no. So if someone said, hey, I want you to come, you know, do X, Y or Z. And she said no. You know, she wouldn't say, I'm so sorry, I'm not going to be able to. And I think we often find. And sometimes I nudge my wife on this and she nudges me on it. Is. It's like what you just did was you told that person to argue with you about why you actually can and should do it, right? You said, hey, I can't because I'm busy that weekend. And then they go, oh, well, then let's do the weekend after that, right? So not, not only did you not kill the thing, but you actually even made, even if you did it of doing the thing. You made the conversation before doing the thing longer, right? So so sometimes being blunt, being firm, saying clearly what your boundaries are and aren't, it's actually not rude and it's better for you and what you're. You're doing. And so it's certainly not perfect at this. But I do try to be clearer and firmer.

What would you tell me? What is the discipline that has to come after me saying no with no context? Not even an emoji, winky face emoji after no or high fives, I just say no.

Now.

What is my discipline around letting it be okay to be misunderstood? How do I deal with. With the aftermath?

I think about that all the time. So when you ask people to do stuff and they go, no, I can't come, you're not like, what a garbage person? You know, like, how dare they? And then you're not like, well, I saw they were over here and they didn't like, you're just like, okay, and you move on, right? Like, I, I think about this with the podcast, right? You ask people to be on the podcast. When I send, or someone on my team sends it a request to someone and they don't get back, I take that as a no. If there's some other circumstances in which, you know, we get bumped into each other, maybe I'll make a second ask. Or if I, if I have some reason to suspect they didn't get the communication in the first place. But I always love when it's like very clear that you got a request from someone and they have some timer that sends you that resends the email every seven days or whatever, and you're just like, the silence is a no, right? And so as a person, I understand that. So when people give me silence, so I guess I'm comfortable either answering with silence or answering a no. And then when I see the response about, blah, blah, blah, what about this? What about this? I go, you know, this is for you to figure out. You know, I just don't respond. And being comfortable sort of walking away, you know, and not getting tangled up in, what does this person think about me? What do I think I owe them? I think being a parent has helped me in this regard too. You're just like, clearer and firmer because you're like, I have, like, shit I have to do. And the potential feelings of this person who I never met, who I didn't ask to be asked something of, you know, is not someone that I have the bandwidth to allow to take from me. And if I do, I'm not just harming myself, but I'm also harming the people who I promised a large amount of my time to.

This is so good. I think this is the majority of. If we could master not worrying about, like, these open loops, right? Like, all of these little moments and these misunderstandings that we can construe. Why didn't they email me back? What did that email mean? What does this mean? Why wasn't I invited? Like. Like, oh, my God, the mental bandwidth that all of that takes up that is constantly my work around, like, going to a room this weekend and being able. We have the ability, and I know you do because this is what you do, to analyze. We have the capability and ability to analyze and make meaning over everything that could drive us absolutely nuts and suck all of our life force out of us. So for you, what is your daily discipline around the little pings when you're like, oh, you feel yourself going down the rabbit hole of analyzing something doesn't feel good, or what are they thinking or something like that?

Well, Ramit Sethi told me once, and I think about it a lot. He said, you know, you don't owe anyone a response, especially over email, right? Like, just because someone calls your phone doesn't mean you have to call them back. And so I, I've. I've just gotten comfortable not responding to stuff and just deleting it. You know, if. If it's important, it'll come back around. That's not who I needed to be when I was 20 years old, right. And it was, you know, I had more bandwidth when I was 30. And, you know, today, in sort of the prime of my career, with the stuff that I'm going on, that's the place that I'm in. And maybe that will change, though. Maybe in the future there will be some point where I want to talk to everyone that wants to talk to me, and I have the room to do it, and it doesn't come at the expense or the cost of anything. And that will be a different season, and I will handle that differently, but I'm just comfortable saying no. I'll give you another example. So I have a bookstore here in Texas that I opened a few years ago, and it's great. I love it. I'm honored and flattered that fans come to the place. And there's a part of me that every time somebody passes up a message that says, this person drove all the way from Maine to come to the store and they want to meet you, there's a part of me that of course wants to come down and say, wow, what's your life story? And talk to this person for an hour. But I didn't ask them to come from Maine. Right. And if I stopped for this person from Maine, not only would I owe everyone who stopped in, but I would actually be depriving another person in Maine who just wants to read my books. Right. That can't, because that book isn't done and isn't published. Right. And so you have to figure out your competing responsibilities and what are the best and the most efficacious uses of your time. And sometimes the things that make people immediately around you most happy are actually not the things that are best that you have to be doing. And so, you know, it's been a journey for sure and it requires an immense amount of discipline. And you often get it wrong and you're like, that was a total waste of time and I'm never going to get that back. But you know, I just, I just tried to get more comfortable being like, this is what I have available. You don't even need to take it or leave it. Like it is what it is.

What is something right now that you have maybe that you're working on that's a loop. If you can share anything that you're trying to just have discipline around letting go of, maybe it's something, who knows, I don't know what you, you know, if it's a deadline that sometimes you can get hooked into or something someone said. Is there anything that you're really working on this year that you love? Kind of that idea that you talk about in the book of like the self mastery that you're trying to like. Oh, I'm so excited to be able to and have all the opportunities to master this.

I'll give you a somewhat unusual one. I can't be super specific about it, but I'm just dealing with it today. There's sort of a, kind of a conflict with someone in this small town that I'm in. And I think if I was younger and I was thinking about it differently and I hadn't practiced the things I've been practicing, I think I could see that situation escalating, expanding into a full blown conflict and perhaps even an unsafe one as this person's a little, you know, like.

Yellowstone.

Yes, yes. Yeah. A vampire. A vampire type, you know, and my wife and I were talking about it and just realizing like, this isn't something we need to win. This isn't something we need to be right about. This is something that needs to go away, right? And for both our professional priorities, but then also our personal safety. And so realizing that it takes two to tango, right? And that every time I respond, this person's going to respond to a certain level. And so how do we de. Escalate this thing, make it go away as quickly as possible? And in another context, there was. I was just doing this in the business sense where it was like, look, look, here's the case we have, here's the argument, we have here what our rights are, and we could make that case, or we could just pay a certain amount of money and make the issue go away, right? And the discipline to go. I know that I'm right. I know that I shouldn't have to do it this way, but that doing it this way is actually vastly preferable to me than the chaos and uncertainty and consequences of doing it the less disciplined, perhaps more immature way. And, you know, being able to go like, okay, doesn't feel great, but it's vastly preferable. And so it is what it is.

I think that was one of the biggest lessons that I've learned that has given me the most peace is a lot of the outcomes to the things that, that are troubling me or feel like these lifelong, maybe family relationship type things, those outcomes aren't necessarily going to end the way you want whatsoever, but they can end like eventually. And making peace with that somehow, how do we either get to the end or a fresh start or whatever that is has been like, okay, that loop did not close the way that I wanted. And then sometimes like five years later, it's. It opens back up in a good way on their end. Like they'll come back and say something or whatnot. But. But like, how have you do you just essentially like not talking about this particular scenario, but things like that, letting them go, letting them like working through the solution, letting it be okay that someone else thinks you're wrong, or maybe someone thinks you're horrible, or you know, you've got a level of celebrity that also, I'm sure. Cause I don't know one person who has a level of celebrity who hasn't been kind of dragged through the dirt. And that choice to not dig into it, how do you deal with that?

There's a. The line in Meditations or Mark serious goes, is a world without shameless people possible? He goes, of course not. Right? So he's like, when you meet someone that's shameless, you have to go. This is one of those numbers. And I think of that exercise often because I don't think Shamelessness. You could plug in anywhere, right? Sociopaths, energy vampires, cheaters, liars, racists, whatever it is. Right. There's a certain amount of every type of person. It's important to remember that the vast majority of people are not those people, but there are a certain percentage of those other people. And this is something you realize if you do any kind of work in public, right. Is it possible that every single person will like what you do? Of course not. Right. And the more people who know about what you do, even the more people who like what you do, the gross number of people who don't like what you do is going to be higher, even if it's one in a million. Let's say I was lucky enough, I was so talented that one in a million people hated me and my work. I've sold a couple million books. That's a handful of people who hate my guts. Right? The number is much higher than that in real life. Right. Like, lots of people don't like me. That's the reality of doing work. But when you come to understand that there's a certain number of them and you can cognitively understand that the more people who like you, the more people there are that dislike you, it allows you to just kind of sit with it and go, oh, yeah, this person who is commenting on every single thing that I do, this is not a person that needs to be convinced and won over. This is one of those people. Right? And that, you know, again, I feel like I keep saying it, but it is what it is. They're one of those people, and you got to accept it and to focus on this thing, which is largely not in your control, that's what another person thinks about you. Not only is that not fair to yourself, it's not fair to the people who do like you, who deserve your attention or your work or your focus and would appreciate it. Anyway.

The more I'm thinking about, like, you know, because this is things that stop people, I really think the more that I talk to people, it's not like they don't know what to do. There's so much free strategy. There's your podcast, my podcast, a zillion other. There's everything out there in the world that's accessible and free. And when I think about what stops people and when I have conversations with friends and when I'm talking to groups of people, it's like, it's always the open loops. It's the home life. It's the, what are people saying about me? It's the discipline to stop thinking about, to stop spiraling in the resistance. Like, I feel like the resistance around, let's say someone on here wants to write a book or go, you know, start a business for the first time. I feel like people are getting caught in the resistance around. I don't know what to do and letting that thought take takeover or what are people going to think of me? Or I don't have friends who write books yet like those thoughts. So can you tell me a little bit about how your book can help people learn how to get that discipline to actually go for the thing and start taking action?

Yeah, I heard a great line once, they said, perfection is also spelled paralysis. And we often either some people, it's procrastination, it's doubt, it's this or that, and that prevents them from taking the steps or doing the things that they need to do. Then another kind of person, they have such high standards or they're so strict with themselves, they can't get started, right? They can't get started. One of the things that I have learned doing the amount of books that I've done, is the wisdom of Hemingway's line that the first draft of everything is shit, right? And you realize that you're always starting at zero, that it's always rough, it's never what you want it to be. But you also learn that the process, if you stay at it long enough, if you show up long enough, gets you somewhere pretty good. And so I have just learned that the way you get through problems, the way that you endure a pandemic, the way that you run a marathon, whatever that thing is, is by showing up and doing the thing you can do today, right? Not expecting it to necessarily lead to X, Y or Z, not expecting to be appreciated for it, not expecting even to feel good for it, but just to go like, what can I do right now? And how can I make a positive contribution to what I'm supposed to be doing? And trust that if you make enough positive contributions, it adds up.

Up.

Zeno, the founder of stoicism, you would say, well, being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing. And if you, if you, like a manuscript is, you know, a few hundred pages in a word document, which started as one page in a word document, right? And you filled up that one page with, with paragraphs and before that with sentences and before that with singular words, right? And, and, and the idea that, hey, if I just sit down and I do one thing right now, if I make one positive contribution, it'll get There. And that's kind of how I think about it. To me, that's what discipline is. The ability to put your ass in the chair and do the thing that you should be doing.

And there's a lot of freedom in that. I think about the days where one of my goals last year was like, be consistent, just even with social media. And it's not my absolute favorite thing whatsoever. But even days that I was putting out posts, I was still like, okay, well this is how you get better. And you were consistent today. So it made me feel actionable. Same thing with writing a book. I was like, oh, that was subpar all day, but I was still there.

You also learned some humility along the way. Right. So the thing that you didn't think would do well does extremely well.

Yeah.

And the thing you thought was amazing that you neglected these other things in order to do doesn't work at all. So that's why I've always been a big believer in like, what is the thing I should be working on? What is the commitment that I have made? I am going to do that thing. I'm not going to cut corners, but I'm also not going to be self conscious. I'm going to make the thing and I'm going to trust that. Quantity is also a way to get to quality. Right. Like a comedian thinks about getting better in terms of, of how much stage time they're getting, how often are they going up. Right. Going up on stage. And I think in a lot of professions, a lot of work, you have to just get up a lot. Right. And if you are, oh, it's got to be perfect, it's got to be this. I only want to do things that you, you are assuming that you actually know what works and what doesn't. And the truth is you don't. And so I, I am just much more, I understand different people have different strategies, but I am much more of a day in and day out kind of guy.

That's the only way to know what works. Like, I always think of ideas in terms of, yeah, it's a great idea, but is it. You don't know if it's a great idea till other people have feedback on it. So honestly, the only way to do that, like you said, is to get it out there and test, are there things that you do for concepts of your book? Like, I was just thinking, because I can see the book title in the back, Discipline is Destiny. And first of all, I want to ask like, exactly why that title? But I'm sure that you went through a ton of different ideas and maybe you tested stuff on Twitter, maybe you started testing concepts on Instagram or just ideas around, like, what worked. Tell me about kind of how you test some of the ideas when you're going into something more specific. Like if someone's thinking about podcast titles or book titles or things like that.

Yeah, I mean, one of the benefits of this sort of digital world that we live in is it's possible to get data, real time feedback on what works and doesn't work. I'm helping a, a friend work on a book right now, and we're opening the book based loosely on what is his best performing video. Right. So instead of going like, hey, what do we think is cool? What struck me as I sat down, we're letting the data point us in a direction that at least confirms that people are interested in this idea. Right. And so like, you can, you can take it too far. You can not take it not far enough. But, but basically one of the things that I like to do is always be testing, putting stuff out in the world and then finding what's working, what's resonating. And I don't necessarily let that dictate what direction I go in. Like, I'm not like, oh, you know, everyone's angry about this. I'm going to make more stuff like that. I think that's a good way to fall prey to what they call audience capture. But if something resonates, like, let's say I do a tweet about something and it resonates well, I go, well, how can we expand that into an article? Article. Right. Or how can I write that? I do this, this email for Daily Stoic every day. How can I maybe build a couple Daily Stoic emails about. I just, I expand the theme once it's resonated, I, I take it at further than it might, might. I might have ordinarily been inclined to go. So, you know, you have the ability to. And then whatever my best selling, you know, my best performing article is, I want to turn that into a video. Right. Or vice versa. Right. If something worked well on Instagram as an Instagram reel or a TikTok, okay, maybe that should be incorporated into my talks or that should be built into an article or maybe that's a chapter in a book. So I kind of let the data filter for me what seems to be resonating and what doesn't.

Yes. So good. That was a, that was actually a really pivotal thing I learned in the past year or two. Just that saved energy for me because so many people, when you start or, you know, even if you were like me and you, you were, were long time into it, I still did not have this figured out. I was like, how do these people come up with fresh content all of the time? And it's actually hard to feel it like really coming from an authentic place when it's new stuff all the time. So when I find something that hits and also I enjoy talking about, you can create a million topics around the things you love to talk about. So that was like life changing for me.

Yeah, yeah. And I do think, you know, having a team that helps you surface ideas and then you're approving and rejecting or saying, hey, find me more stuff like this that also helps.

Oh yeah, that's. That's huge. Even I was just, I have a team. I can have them just go back for me to content in the past and bring me some stuff. Like, hey, check this one out. You haven't even, you know, noticed this one. Okay, so why discipline is destiny? Like what around the word destiny for you is like, if people could just grab grasp this concept of discipline. Tell me.

Yeah, I mean, to me, what I was trying to say is that discipline is not just an end. Like if you are disciplined, you will be great. Right. I also wanted to say that discipline itself is your destiny. It is great. Right? So like showing up every day and working on my book, not cutting corners, not phoning it in, not taking the easier path, path, obviously this contributes to whether the book succeeds or not. But also sitting there, doing the thing, being in the moment, being present, to me, that is great. That is the job. Right. And I wanted to make the argument that being disciplined can make you a great physicist or, you know, physician or, you know, professional athlete. But also like if you're disciplined and committed and connected to whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's sweeping the floors or running a laundromat or something, that itself is great.

Tell me about some of the things that are coming out of the book. I know it's been out for just a little while. That number one, you felt like you knew were gonna hit. And number two, you were like, really? That, that one is hitting, you know.

What the whole book. I mean, like, obviously I hoped it would do well. Obviously I, I had some reason to suspect it would do well. And then it sold, you know, it sold in like six weeks. What Courage is Calling, which is the first book and doing a four book series. It outsold the first book in the series in six weeks. Wow. You know what? What? Like, six. What? Took more than 60 weeks for the first book to do. And so it just. It just resonated in a way that I. And much faster in a way that I had not anticipated, which is great.

People are craving that, like, message right now.

Now. I think so, but. But honestly, one way that I think about it is that I don't think about it. I have two more books in the series to write. And so when it came out, when my agent called me to say, hey, the sales numbers are in for the first week. Here's where you are on the list, I had to stop writing to take that call, which is where I like to be. The marketing, the launch, all that stuff of books that can be validating and fun, and I get to talk to people. But, like. Like, what I like to do is the thing. I like doing the thing. That's the discipline. For me, it requires discipline, but the discipline of writing is putting your ass in the chair and doing that thing. That's what gets me excited. That's where I get the pleasure. Whether people love it or hate it, obviously, I would prefer that they love it than hate it, but that's not what I measure my success on.

And then what was the. Was there a surprising concept that you were like, wow, people are really grabbing onto this theme in here that you weren't expecting?

Yeah, I mean, I was talking about Queen Elizabeth earlier. That was obviously one of the chapters that resonated the most that I heard from a lot of people about. I did a big, deep dive in the book into Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. And I contrast him with Babe Ruth, who people sort of understand and, you know, tend to celebrate more. So, yeah, I mean, those are two big ones, for sure.

What is your level of peace? Because you have such an amazing practice. I feel like when I am in practice, like, when I'm, like, on it, when I'm in the thing, I have such a level of peace. I sleep well. I feel like my relationships go well. Just being in it. Like, I don't stress about things. And when I don't have a practice, I just. My brain fixates on everything that I wish I was doing, or I just. I go to places that are like, idle hands.

Right.

It's just, if you don't have the piece, are you successful? Like, what is the point if you don't? Right.

And that.

That. That was something I have to think about a lot. I actually got some advice on it from the basketball player Manute Ginobili. He was telling me, you know, he. He. They just lost the NBA Finals. It had been sort of a devastating loss. And he was like. Like, he's like, my house was like a funeral. And then he thought, I just played in the NBA Finals. Like, if I can't be happy playing in the NBA Finals, like, how great is it to be a professional basketball player? And so, as I have thought about that over the years, I had tried to make the process, the time doing the thing more pleasurable, and I've tried to be more present for it. And like I was saying, one of the ways I think you do that is by thinking less about the results and thinking about more about how you do it, how you enjoy doing it, how it has to be for you to enjoy doing it, and then building your life around that, as opposed to, I'm going to be deeply miserable for the next 36 months while I build this company. But then when I sell it, I'll have a boatload of money and then I'll be happy. Like, first off, you get hit by a truck 34 months into that process, also, it could not work. It could also take 10 years instead of three years. And three years of your life is a lot to trade. And so I try to focus on that happiness and that pleasure and that presence in the moment that I'm in instead of really anything else.

What are you excited to practice at? If there was nothing else, if there was no winning, what are you excited to practice at? Like, NFL players, if they only wanted to win, man, they would. I mean, if that's what they're in it for, they're going to be sorely disappointed. Spend a lot of this epic career in these moments with, like, miss out on the audience cheering the whole time and, like, those running through the tunnel and, oh, my, all the exciting parts over each particular game. But I always think of them like, what do what gets excited for me to practice that. Because that's all this might ever be, is just continued practice because I may never really win or my concept of winning at certain things.

You know, the practice is in your control. How you play is in your control. How the athletes around you play is not in your control. How the crowd reacts is not in your control. How the refs decide, you know, this or that call is not in your control. And ultimately the score is not in your control. Right. How history judges you is not in control. You control how you play. You control how you think about things, and that is about it. And the sooner you realize that not only will I think you enjoy what you're doing more, but I think you'll actually be better at it.

I love it so much. I love this conversation more than I can tell you because I just think this is. If you want peace, if you want to actually enjoy your life, if you want to get present in your relationships and the things that you're doing, I think that this practice is. Is so incredibly important. So where can we get your book Yesterday?

You can get Discipline is Destiny anywhere books are sold. Or you can come to my bookstore, the Painted Porch, the next time you're in Central Texas and we know you're.

Going to be there. Just kidding. He's not going to be there, everybody. You can go to his Instagram handle and I'm telling you, he's so much fun to follow. I feel smarter in 30 seconds. It's fantastic. And more peace as well. What's your handle on Instagram as well?

Well, at Ryan Holiday and at Daily Stoic.

Amazing. And you guys, you know, one of the biggest things that we can do for our guest, obviously, is to go out and get his book, but also let him know what your biggest takeaway was. So it's always so nice to hear what people got out of the conversation. Ryan, I'm so grateful for you. Thank you for being so committed because it's impacting all of our lives. And you guys, until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.

It.