Stoicism is this idea that we don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens.
The idea for the Stoics is that we should always try to respond with virtue.
In 2014, Ryan published The Obstacle is the Way, his first exploration into Stoic philosophy.
Since then, Ryan has published more books on Stoicism.
Ryan has spent his life searching for wisdom in the words of others and in doing so, has quietly helped millions of people feel less lost on their own.
When you're dealing with a jerk, that's an opportunity, right?
They don't only cause problems.
They are also presenting you a chance to be patient, to be considerate, to be creative.
That's kind of the mentality of the Stokes.
Again, you don't control so much of the interactions that we have in life.
Those are the kinds of things the Stokes want us to focus on.
It's wrong to think of death as something that happens at the end of your life.
Death is behind us.
Every minute that passes is dead to you.
How do you spend your time accordingly?
If you know, hey, I'm paying for this with a day of my life.
Often the things that we chase, that we think are going to make us happy, have the exact opposite effect.
This is something we see happening in the US right now, where you have these like tech billionaires who have to stay on the administration's good side.
You would like to think like, hey, if I ever had $100 billion, no one could tell me what to do.
No, actually, I'd have to go to the fucking Melania premiere.
No spoilers, please, Ryan.
I haven't seen the Melania.
So we are about to chat to Ryan Holiday who is just – I can't believe this is happening.
I can't believe it either.
It feels like we get to speak to lots of interesting people, but this is someone who has really affected – well, at least definitely your life in a huge way.
Mine in a way.
Josh couldn't give a shit.
No.
No, no, but it is.
He's one of the bigwigs.
He's huge.
And so we'll chat to him in a second.
But after we have that conversation, we're going to come back.
We don't often do this after Academies, but I've just got a little quick reflection I want to share with people around.
We'll be talking about stoicism, and I'm going to chat about five stoic quotes that have had a huge impact on my life, especially through some of the challenging stuff we've been through as a family with neurodiverse parenting, and then my burnout last year and unexpected diagnosis along the way.
The stuff that Ryan and I can't wait to tell him this in a second, but the stuff that I've discovered that he has looked into has been life-changing for me.
Let's transition to Ryan Holiday.
This is so exciting.
Very, very exciting.
Many people will recognize the name of the man that we have on today.
So we want to get straight into it.
So please get so excited for the man himself, Marcus Aurelius.
It's an absolute pleasure.
Absolute pleasure to have you here.
He is here behind me.
He is.
For those of you who are listening and I'm not watching Marcus Aurelius' head is on a shelf behind Ryan Holiday, so that's what's happening there.
Well, a statue of the head.
Yeah, sorry.
It's just that.
I mean, we know you're a collector, Ryan, but not to that extent.
Exactly.
Ryan, we're so thrilled to have you with us here today.
I'm going to read a bio on you in a second.
But before we do that, I just want to show you something.
Do you know much about our national sport cricket?
I know a little bit about cricket.
And then I did see a video once of somebody reading one of my books, like during the middle of a cricket match.
Oh, wow.
Like some athlete was, what other sport can you read during the middle of it?
I guess it's only cricket, but it's a great sport for writing.
Yeah.
But some star cricket player was sitting on the bench reading my book on stillness, which I thought was hilarious.
Well, I just want to show something very quickly.
So, well, I've got a photo here of someone.
It is Pat Cummins, who's the captain of the Australian cricket team.
I don't know if you can see that there, but...
Oh, yeah.
Yes.
Do we look alike?
Yes.
I mean, well, two things.
There we go.
The answer is yes.
And the second thing to say is he might be the most handsome man I've ever met in the flesh.
So just... I'll take the compliment, sure.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like you should know that.
There he is.
I'd love to find out that I have relatives in Australia, because when it all goes to shit in America, that's sort of where I'd like to end up.
So it would be good to have somebody I'm related to there.
Well, there is.
And he's got really nice houses, I'm sure.
So he's probably got lots of room for you.
Well, it could actually work when everything goes to shit in America.
It might be.
I mean, you're coming to Australia in October and New Zealand in October to do some live shows.
So maybe you might stay or maybe you might be coming out before then, the way things are going.
Yeah, that's when I was planning on declaring asylum when I get there in October before the show.
Well, for those of you who don't know Ryan, I'll just give a quick bio for you here.
Ryan Holiday uses the past to help us appreciate the present.
Dropping out of college at 19 to become an apprentice under prolific American author Robert Greene Ryan began to grow his knowledge of the intersection between power, psychology and strategy.
Ryan worked as a director of marketing at American Apparel before founding his own marketing agency, Brass Check, which advise clients such as Google, Neil Strauss and Tim Ferriss.
Ryan has published 12 best-selling books which have collectively sold over.
I have seen so many different accounts of this Ryan, but I'm going to go with 3 million here.
I read $10 million somewhere.
I read $14 million somewhere else.
You decided to round down to the lowest number?
Oh, nice.
Well, I went with the one that I saw most often, which was $3 million.
But there are so many different accounts out there.
But let's just say lots.
In 2014, Ryan published The Obstacle is the Way, his first exploration into Stoic philosophy.
Since then, Ryan has published more books on Stoicism, including The The very popular Ego is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic and Stillness is the Key.
Ryan also hosts the podcast The Daily Stoic, as well as creating videos for his 2 million subscribers on YouTube.
Ryan has spent his life searching for wisdom in the words of others and in doing so has quietly helped millions of people feel less lost on their own, and for a lot of people that hasn't just been helpful, it's been deeply and quietly life-changing.
I am one of those people, Ryan.
Just background for you.
My life has been researching and working resilience.
I run a resilience program in schools, which is quite big here in Australia.
But when things got quite difficult for me in my life, which our audience know about, I've been through a little bit of light.
Um, I found you and I found your stuff and I discovered um stoicism and it was absolutely life-changing to me.
I did your, I've got it here, the Daily Stoic Journal.
I pretty much filled it out every day for the whole 366 days.
Huge for me.
I think what would be really helpful for people to start, just in case they're not on this journey, and I'm sure they've probably heard the word stoic before
Before I discovered you and stoicism.
If someone said stoic, I would have thought of Josh and my grandpa, who was a man who really just kind of Never showed an emotion externally.
He never showed emotion externally.
I'm sure he'd been through a lot, but his response was just to never talk about it, to never be vulnerable ever and just continue on sort of with minimal warmth and
Actually I'll stop there because he doesn't come across too well, but that was my sort of thought on what being stoic was.
Before we get into this conversation, which I can't wait for, could you give a quick overview of what stoicism really is?
Well, it's not that, right?
We tend to call that lowercase stoicism, right?
That's having no emotions, sort of being invulnerable, stuffing it down maybe.
Keep calm, carry on that kind of thing.
Not that being in command of your emotions isn't part of stoicism, But as an ancient philosophy which dates back almost 2500 years, it's something quite more than that.
I sometimes define it as stoicism is this idea that we don't control what happens.
We control how we respond to what happens?
And the idea for the Stoics is that we should always try to respond with virtue.
That isn't to say that we respond impassively in all moments.
I think it's saying that we try to respond to the best of our ability with virtue. positively, productively, resiliently, all these things that we sort of celebrate as being part of the toolkit of a person who's got life under control.
But what it's not is just unfeeling and unmoved and disinterested and resigned.
That's what the word stoic sometimes means in the English language.
But that's sort of a perversion of what this philosophy that dates back all the way to the days of ancient Greece is actually about.
And so who are the key Stoics?
Who are the best ones?
The big three that we call them are Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome, Then we have Epictetus, who's a slave in Rome, roughly a generation before Marcus.
So in these two, you have sort of incredible power and incredible powerlessness.
Epictetus being the favorite philosopher of Marcus Aurelius.
And then, kind of in between, we have another famous philosopher, probably the best writer and the most, um sort of prolific of the Stoics, which is this guy named Seneca, who lives in the time of Nero, about 100 plus years before the two of them.
And he's a famous playwright and a political power broker and investor, just sort of one of Rome's sort of leading intellectuals and intellectuals and thinkers.
And so these three are sort of the best known Stoics.
And they're kind of the only ones whose complete works, or a chunk of their complete works, survive to us.
What drew you to Stoicism and the Stoics?
Was there something that happened in your life or a shift that happened that woke you up to it?
There wasn't, like some crisis or you know, major setback, although that tends to be where a lot of people find stoicism.
I was going through something much more normal.
And yet I think destabilizing and disorienting for people. for people, you know, time in memoriam.
I was, you know 18, 19 years old, and I had just gone away to college and I was just trying to figure out life.
I felt like I had a... a real absence of role models and guidance.
I just didn't know who I was, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go.
And to be introduced.
Mark Surrealist was the first stoic that I read.
To read the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world from almost 20 centuries ago.
Looking at the self-talk of somebody who's really working on themselves, I just found incredibly inspiring and eye-opening.
I just didn't know that's what philosophy was.
If you'd asked me to say what philosophy was, I would say it was impractical and theoretical.
It might be fun for a a class in university, but it couldn't actually help me be a person that I wanted to be.
It couldn't help me navigate life.
And then when you read the Stokes, you go, oh, this is what philosophy is.
It's not these complicated questions or impossible riddles.
It's it's really sort of wrestling with the day to day realities of life, which is like so much is outside of our control.
Other people, world events, you know, when we were born, what our parents are like, you know.
What's going on in the economy?
All these things are outside of our control.
And here you have even an emperor trying to make sense of that reality and navigate it.
I just found that incredibly fascinating and helpful.
Yeah, well, then it obviously became helpful to so many more people.
I remember when I first got told about Obstacle is the Way, which is one of your books, it was just a phrase that I just said over, and I was always saying it.
Whenever anything bad happened, I would just say, Obstacle is the Way.
Almost like use it as an excuse.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Obstacle is the Way.
It's all good.
But it was very genuinely helpful.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny that that quote.
Obviously I built that book around sort of what the Stoics had to say about obstacles difficulties problems, adversity and sort of their framework for for turning that around.
But the funny thing is what Marcus Aurelius is talking about specifically in that passage is he's just talking about like annoying and obnoxious and difficult people.
He's saying that like, when you're dealing with a jerk or an asshole, that's an opportunity, right?
Like you are being challenged by the frustrating or difficult or dishonest nature of this person.
And he's saying they don't only cause problems, they are also presenting you a chance to be patient, to be considerate, to be creative forgiving, to problem solve.
And so that's kind of the mentality of the Stokes.
Again, you don't control that this person is yelling at you.
You don't control that that person just stole from you.
You don't control that this person is incompetent.
You don't control so much of the interactions that we have in life, But we do control whether we let that upset us.
We control whether we let that make us angry.
We control whether we let that make us give up on other people, whether we let it make us bitter.
Those are the kinds of things the Stoics want us to focus on.
Brilliant.
I think I'm of the three of us, I think I'm by far the newest to this, to Stoicism, and I think I am guilty of, to my own detriment, of ignoring or not going down the path of looking into this area, because I have been, I've spent a lot of my life, I've had many struggles throughout my life, but I'm also a person that is, I think, inherently incredibly emotional.
Like I cry very easily.
I engage with the world in a very sort of emotive way.
And I think I believed the wrong press for way too long.
That, like I don't know if a philosophy that is going to be like just you know, to use a pretty bad phrase kind of man up about the world is going to be for me.
You know, it's funny.
Like, so you were talking about, was it your father or your grandfather earlier?
Grandfather, yeah.
Yeah.
So it's like when you have someone that's sort of naturally contained and circumspect and sort of doesn't like to get emotional, doesn't let things bother them, you know that's probably not a person that you would go.
Hey, let me tell you about this stoicism thing.
You really got to ratchet it down another couple notches, right?
I actually think it's when we wear our hearts for people who do wear their hearts on their sleeves or who do get frustrated easily or maybe are sort of very, very creative and open and vulnerable.
Like, you kind of need it because that's something you're not sort of naturally inclined to.
My wife likes to joke that one of us is stoic and the other writes about stoicism.
And...
I write and think a lot about it because it's not.
I do tend to get bothered by things.
Or I take things personally, or I get upset, or I get really excited.
And so it...
That's not to say I'm trying to sort of crush that within me.
I just know that when I look back at scrapes I got into or foolhardy things that I participated in or times I was really hurt.
I brought a lot of that to the table and I could have used a little bit more reflection, a little bit more self-control.
I could have used maybe a slightly better pause there.
And so, you know, I think stoicism is something that some people kind of intuitively have.
And then for the rest of us, it's something we... we sort of need to work on.
And you know, different times, different societies kind of, are more in line with the ideas than others.
But I would also say, you know, in a time that is sort of very driven by social media, that's very interconnected, that's very sort of follow your passion, follow your dreams, do what feels good.
This is kind of actually where we need these ideas because culturally, every image you're seeing in the media, every part of you that's being stimulated, is designed to kind of make you not those things.
What we thought we would do today is the three of us have thought about an issue or something we're struggling with in our own lives.
We'd love to share that with you and just get your thoughts from a stoic point of view, and how maybe –.
Marcus and his mates would respond to the issues we had if we were able to take them to them.
I don't know, Josh, if you want to go first maybe.
Yeah, well, yeah, all right.
I'll start with something small.
So you sort of alluded.
There's been a bit of alluding to it today already, but I find myself really struggling with the reality.
This is broad, big stuff, actually, but the reality of the world.
There's...
So much to be... Go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's more.
I'll extrapolate more.
On a day-to-day basis, I get by pretty well.
I've got two kids.
I love them.
I've got a wonderful wife and things are good.
But I find that if I open myself up to the reality of the compounding existential threats in the world so global warming, nuclear annihilation, AI and I
I don't want to be – I find myself thinking am I getting sort of drawn into the sort of moral panic that comes along with any new technology, with AI, or is this genuinely a threat?
And I feel like, if I'm not – if I haven't slept perfectly, if I haven't eaten well, if anything has pushed up against my day that's made my mental capacity a little under –
And I look at this stuff, I'm bogged down and overwhelmed and overcome with dread.
And then that pulls me out of my life and the life that I want to live.
I'm unable to be the dad I want to be.
I'm unable to be the...
And, I think, most pertinently for me.
I think the thing I feel most precious about in the world is time.
Yeah.
And I feel like I'm wasting it.
Yeah.
I mean look, if you're worried about what's happening in the world, I guess as an American I'm obligated to say sorry because we're responsible for like half of it right now.
And when I was in Australia last I guess this was like maybe 18, 19 months ago one of the interesting things was like it was so.
It was so different to be in another country and watch your guys' news.
Because like, unfortunately, a lot of it still was American news.
It's like inescapable.
It was sort of run up to the 2024 election here.
But.
But it was from the distance of a different country, thousands of miles away.
It did feel less like hair on fire.
And I think it's just a reminder that, like sort of The inputs often determine sort of how we feel and think about these things right.
And if you're sort of mainlining disaster porn and sort of worrisome, horrible information all the time, The human brain is just not designed for that.
Like I think about, so Marx really is the most powerful man in the world.
And basically everything that could go wrong goes wrong during his reign.
There's a famine, there's floods, there's a plague, there's wars, there's a coup.
It's like terrible stuff all the time.
But he probably got less bad news over the course of his reign than we get in a week or a month.
Just because he gets a scroll with some information on it.
Meanwhile, this is mainlining it directly into our brain.
It's just not... Our information diets are just... as unhealthy, if not more unhealthy than most people's like actual diet in the modern world, right?
Like if there's sort of literal obesity, there's also kind of informational obesity.
And then there's also like sort of anxiety obesity, like you're just consuming information that's just impossibly bad and designed to sort of put you in that catatonic state, because then you'll keep watching, right.
Like you'll refresh it again and you'll check it again.
So this isn't to say that we don't have an obligation to be informed and we shouldn't know the broad strokes of what's happening in the world.
But I try to remind people unless you're working for a hedge fund or you are literally working in the highest levels of government, you probably do not need to follow things as closely as you are.
I always you were saying you're worried about AI.
Like I would ask, like, you know, so how's that worrying helped the global AI situation so far?
Like, do you feel like it's making a difference?
You know, are they like, oh, well, was those three guys in Australia there?
They're putting a lot of brainpower on it, too.
And, you know, we can feel it's making a difference like that.
We tend to monitor situations in real time as a kind of substitute for action, as a sort of I don't know like, like a junkie, basically of just getting our fix.
And I try to remind myself, like from my study of history, that there's not a single time in human history when existential dread was not a pretty pervasive emotion.
And obviously we wouldn't be here if that had come true, But that the feeling of the existential dread like okay, nuclear annihilation is like I would say that we are probably closer right now to nuclear war than we have been in a very long time.
Again, largely because of America's totally incompetent and, you know, irrational leadership.
But unless I'm going to channel this energy into building a bunker in my backyard like me, thinking about it is not really doing anything.
Mm-hmm.
What do the Stoics have, I'm sure they do, insight into why it's more alluring to worry than to act?
Yeah.
I mean, the worry kind of puffs you up, right?
The worry is like, well, I'm the center of the universe and obviously this affects me.
And obviously I have a better version of how this should go, blah, blah, blah.
And then the doing it, you know, hey, I'm going to vote.
Hey, I'm going to donate to this campaign.
Hey, I'm going to go to this protest.
In that, we're sort of reminded of how little impact we actually have.
I do think there's part of it there.
Just the, you know, do you want to think about it and feel fully engaged?
Or do you want to...
Do your little part and then go back to your life.
So I think that's part of it.
But but you know, negative emotions tend to linger and be felt more profoundly than positive emotions, like they find like, for instance, in news articles, like negative articles have a higher virality potential than positive articles.
And certainly, you know, that's just the extreme between like negative and positive.
Like nobody shares, hey, things are pretty okay.
It wasn't as bad as we thought, you know?
Like that obviously is super not spreadable, right?
You do want to share something about the latest outrage, about something that's incredibly scary, about something that is uncertain because you can speculate about it.
But like, okay, hey, they...
They caught the guy and, you know, now the law is going to take its course.
You know, that's not super interesting.
But like fugitive at large in your neighborhood, you know, is incredibly activating.
And so I think that's part of it.
Yeah, it's sort of at a place where the news is a genre of entertainment now.
Yeah.
And news not even just news organisations but, I think, any media organisation publisher, including us it's like you, you have to put everything through the filter of like.
Well, we want as many people to see this as possible, and so this is like a thing that we struggle with all the time, especially on like youtube, where it's like we know the tricks that we've been told that we have to use in order to get more people to see this, but it just feels at odds with our.
It's icky.
It feels icky.
And so it's a tricky thing because even we're so conscious of it.
But at the end of the day it's like if you want people to see this really helpful content that we believe is helpful at a certain point, you have to kind of play the game and then it just makes.
If everyone's playing the game, then you're playing at these extremes.
Yeah, and it's like I think having some insight into the game, how the game is played, should affect your own habits as far as what you consume, you know.
Like, I think it's really important to be informed about what's happening in the world.
I would just dispute whether, like refreshing your twitter feed is the best way to do it.
It's like pick up a book right, go travel um, talk to an actual expert.
You know there's a lot of things you can do to understand what's happening and and and.
A lot of what's happening is not good and and it's going to require action and change and involvement and creative solutions.
It's just following the news in real time is probably not the way to do it.
Sometimes you hear people and they're like, well, I'm just really concerned.
What's this going to mean for my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren?
And it's like, dude, you're going to be dead.
I'm not saying you shouldn't care.
I'm just saying you...
You have children in front of you right now that you're neglecting for worries about how they're going to handle something 20 30, 40 years from now.
And that's really the thing is like.
We sometimes spend a lot of time and energy thinking about what things are going to mean in the future.
And what that takes us away from is the things we can and should be doing right now.
Yeah.
I mean, this is sort of a massive hypothetical question, but if Marcus Aurelius were alive today and was elected into power and was running America,
And you know, or maybe like in the not too distant future, we will be able to elect an AI version of Marcus Aurelius to run the country.
How do you think he would be, how do you think it would be different?
Like what would he implement?
Obviously there'd be lots of differences, but what specifically would change?
Do you think that we need?
Yeah, I mean look, hopefully he wouldn't be, you know, taking billions of dollars from foreign governments starting stupid wars, you know.
Marcus Aurelius is an interesting leader because... he's sort of late in the Roman period.
Rome's already having a number of problems.
It's sort of falling, coming apart at the seams.
He deals with one crisis after another.
I do think it's really interesting.
You know uh Obviously, we went through the pandemic six years ago, almost exactly.
You know, Marcus Aurelius lived through what's known as the Antonine Plague, one of the worst sort of plagues in human history.
Seems to have done a reasonably good job, you know listening to the experts.
He doesn't, he doesn't take rash action.
He doesn't run around with his head cut off.
Like he's.
He's sort of calm and collected and he's empathetic and, and you know, tries to do what he can.
Um, So obviously it was striking the first go around with Trump to just sort of watch what sort of totally ineffectual leadership looks like in the middle of a crisis.
But, you know, sometimes philosophers don't make the best rulers.
We'd like to think they would.
But politics is kind of a tricky, you know, unsexy business of a lot of compromise.
So there was another Stoic a few generations before, named Cato, who is widely considered, you know, one of the most principled and honest and you know, sort of towering figures of integrity.
And he was just horrible.
Like he was just really bad at it because he couldn't do the kind of dealmaking and campaigning and compromise that was required.
So it's kind of interesting.
I would like to think that good people can make for good leaders.
That's not always the case.
But I certainly think you want from your heads of state both sort of competence and cunning, as well as integrity and values.
And I think we're seeing in America what happens when you sort of throw all that out and replace it with what's effectively like a cult of personality.
Mm-hmm.
I'm keen to move to your challenge in a minute Ryan, but I just have a question for you around – I think I'm particularly interested in maybe Epictetus' – like what his thoughts would have been on empathy because born into slavery –
I feel like empathy can be a double-edged sword.
It's something we talk a lot about in our school programs.
Empathy can often lead you to action that you mentioned before, but it can also be overwhelming and lead you to worry.
Yeah.
Stoics in general, but also Epictetus, how would he talk about empathy?
Well, what's really interesting about Epictetus, so he is a slave.
He's not working in the fields.
He's owned by a high-ranking member of Nero's administration.
So he has this interesting life where he is owned by someone else who treats him very poorly, and yet he's surrounded by incredibly wealthy, powerful people who are jockeying, you know, in the king's court.
And What he comes to understand is that there are a few different kinds of freedom, right?
There's sort of the literal freedom, and then there is sort of emotional freedom, there's spiritual freedom, there's intellectual freedom.
And he sort of realizes, looking around at Nero's court, that he's actually freer than a lot of these people.
He notices at one point he tells this story about this guy, this sort of powerful Roman, who comes in and he tries buttering up Nero's shoemaker like Nero's cobbler, because he wants to get in good with Nero, right.
Right.
And so he's kissing this guy's ass, and and and Epictetus goes like oh, I'm more powerful than this guy.
Like.
I'm freer than this guy who, because of his business interests, can't tell the truth.
Can't afford to piss off this person in Nero's administration.
And and he sort of comes to pity it.
And again, this is something we see, you know, we see happening in the US right now, where you have these like tech billionaires who have to stay on the administration's good side.
So they make donations to these, you know, silly projects.
They say nice things on social media.
They have to attend the like.
Tim Cook, worth billions upon billions of dollars, has to go to the White House to watch the premiere of the Melania documentary which, by the way, another billionaire
No spoilers, please, Ryan.
I haven't seen the Melania.
Another billionaire, Jeff Bezos overpaid $25 million for as a bribe to the administration.
So so you're like you would like to think like Hey, if I ever had a 100 billion like Jeff Bezos does, or if I was the CEO of Apple, like that'd be pretty sick, right.
Like, no one could tell me what to do.
I would be the master of my fate.
And then you go, no, actually, I'd have to go to the fucking Melania premiere because...
Because if I don't go, and then Trump gets mad at me, he's going to slap tariffs on Apple products, and then the stock price is going to go down, and then the investors are going to yell at me and then my own net worth is going to go down.
So the point is And Epictetus is realizing that often power and Seneca talks about this too, because he's there in some of the same moments that this power is actually a form of slavery.
And this wealth is actually like a... a golden prison.
And so they're just sort of talking about what it actually means to be sort of free, in command of yourself, what it means to sort of live your life on your own terms.
And like what we're actually chasing.
And it's just a fact that often the things that we chase, that we think are going to make us happy, or think are going to make us free, or think we're going to make us feel secure, have the exact opposite effect.
Yeah, so this is a bit of a shift in topic.
One of the things that I've struggled with, I think as long as I can remember, really is just this fear that I am a bad friend.
And the reason I often think I'm a bad friend is that even the people that I really love so much and I want to see them all the time and every time I do see them, I leave thinking why don't I see you more?
But even though I have all that, I always forget to message them or to like say let's catch up.
I'm terrible at the... For want of a better term... The maintenance?
The maintenance of a friend, yeah.
And I just wonder what...
Maki would say about that.
I mean, I would just say first off practically people who are actually bad friends are not thinking about this at all right.
Yeah.
They're actually convinced everyone else is the bad friend and everyone's, you know what I mean?
The fact that you're like I'm not sure I'm being like considerate and kind enough and checking in enough and putting myself out there enough.
That's probably a good sign.
It's not proof, but it's probably a good sign.
The Stoic I would actually point you to is Seneca.
Seneca writes his most famous work, which is often titled, at least in English, Letters from a Stoic.
And it's Seneca writing to his friend, Lucilius, who's a governor in a Roman province.
And they just sort of go back and forth and they have this like kind of multi-year exchange of wisdom between each other.
But he has this great line.
And I think maybe it goes to your, your, your specific struggle.
And he's talking to Lucilius and he says, you know, how do I know I'm making progress as a Stoic?
And he says, I know it because I'm starting to become a better friend to myself.
And what he's saying, I think is like, I'm not beating myself up.
I'm not criticizing myself.
I'm giving myself some grace.
That isn't to say you don't also hold yourself accountable and push yourself to be better, as friends do.
But if one of your friends, If you found out that one of your friends felt that they were in your shoes, you'd probably be like dude.
No one's thinking about this at all.
You're totally fine.
Like we love hearing from you when you reach out.
And when you don't, we assume you got shit going on in your life, you know?
So sometimes these problems that we have are really just like these kind of rumination traps we get stuck in in our mind.
Like imposter syndrome is a great example of this.
Everyone's like, you know, I don't think I'm qualified.
I think they know I'm a fake.
It's like, they're not thinking about you at all.
Like, nobody's thinking about you.
I think some people are thinking about me, but yeah.
I take your point.
But no, that's so true.
And I feel like I actually tell that to other people when they bring up imposter syndrome to me.
Yeah, i mean, i have imposter syndrome and i've had it.
Every new thing i start, i have it.
But it's so true, it's like whenever i go and see someone's you know show or film or whatever and they've done it for the first time uh, they might be really worried, but i'm i haven't thought about it until i'm in there looking at it, and then i was like oh, this is cool, And then that's it.
It's like when you go over to someone's house, you're like, oh, this is nice, cool house.
And then you're like talking to them.
And then you have people over to your house and you're like, they're judging me.
They're going to think it's a mess.
It's like you see only the problems, the things that are not taken care of, and nobody is aware of these things at all.
They're busy.
They're nervous.
They're like, am I dressed okay?
Did I bring enough stuff?
What's going on with the babysitter?
Everyone's sort of stuck in their own minds, but then we...
We get caught up like.
The other example I sometimes point people to is like and this is another stereotype of stoicism like people are afraid to ask for help, right?
Like they're afraid to be like hey, I'm struggling, or I'm lonely, or this is hard, or I don't know what to do.
And then it's like okay, but the last time somebody asked you for help, how did you react?
Were you like what a fucking loser.
You know?
Like, how dare you?
It's like you're tapping my phone.
No, you were like... You were like... It's like...
You're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you came to me.
Like, I'm so... Thank you.
Like, we're almost like excited and grateful when people come to us with stuff.
And then when we have problems, we're like, well, I don't want to impose.
And it's like, it's not an imposition.
This is like literally what we're here for.
And so yeah, so much of this is just kind of a a figment of our worst assumptions that we make about other people and ourselves.
Thanks, Ron.
That's really helpful.
Hey, Hugh and Josh, get this.
From the people who brought you the Resilience Project Schools Program comes workplace wellbeing done differently.
That's right.
Yes, Josh?
Is this the tone you want for the Resilience Project, Dad?
I'm trying to kind of get the excitement up for the Resilience Project Workplace Program.
Okay, well, keep going.
Our program is engaging, practical and accessible.
Is that all right?
Yeah, yeah.
That's all true though, isn't it?
It's all very true.
Can I suggest an approach?
Yeah, of course.
Over to you, Josh.
I feel like it's extremely compelling what the Resilience Project does for kids in schools.
The research is unbelievable.
So that is extremely compelling, and the fact that almost 50 of adults will experience mental ill health in their lifetime.
I'm very excited about it because I've seen the work that's gone into it and I know it's going to have the same impact in workplaces as it does in schools.
Awesome.
That's Hugh van Kylenburg, founder of The Resilience Project.
So to find out more about the Workplace Wellbeing Program, head to theresilienceproject.com.au.
The thing I wanted to chat to you about, and I feel like we're definitely favoring Marcus here, but I do feel like, with what you've spoken about, what he had to deal with, the things he went through in his life, maybe he would be a good philosopher to find out how they would feel about this.
But I'll leave it up to you who you want to – Yeah, yeah.
Like many people in the world, I'm very aware of what I value or what I think to be important.
Things like family, presence, as in being present, not giving good presents, but like being present.
Sure, sure, sure.
Being loving, being attentive.
Yeah.
But where I fall down and I think a lot of people will probably relate to this is the actual practice of these things.
So the example I'll give is yesterday at work, we had a really, really important meeting.
Someone was presenting something that meant a lot to them.
And I found myself thinking about an issue with the kids.
And I found myself thinking about the kids.
And then when I got home, my youngest, who was three, wanted to go to the park.
So we went to the park together and I was pushing him on the swing.
And he was telling me about his day, which for someone who values presence and family...
That should be... I mean, that right there is everything you could ever want.
But if he was to turn around and give me a comprehension test on what he just said, I honestly couldn't tell you what he said, because I really wasn't there.
I was pushing him on the swing, but I was a million miles away thinking about something from work ironically, where I just come from.
The thing that you had ignored to think about your kid earlier.
Yeah, and then that same night I put my daughter to bed and I read her a book and I she asked me a question about something that happened in the book.
And I realized I'd read the entire book and I'd read the words out loud, but I hadn't thought about what I was actually reading to her.
And the reason was I was thinking about something that had nothing to do with where I was.
And I guess my question is how did the Stoics go with, I think, two things living a life that is where you practice what you really value, but also for anyone who's struggling with being where you want to be or presence.
What did the Stoics write about that?
Yeah, I mean, look, that's the whole game.
It's easy to talk about all this stuff, and then how do you actually apply it, and can you apply it in the big moments and the little moments alike?
That's the whole challenge.
And I struggle with it as much as anyone.
I think there's a couple of things here.
I mean, look, it is easier to focus and to stay on task when you're not doing...
50 tasks, 25 of them of doubtful importance.
One of the things Mark Suarez talks about in meditations is asking yourself do you really need to be doing this thing?
And he says, because most of what we do and say and think about is not that important.
And he says when you eliminate those things, you get the double benefit of doing the important things better.
Right.
And so you know when you agree to be in a meeting that you shouldn't be in it's you know that could have been an email or that could have been nothing at all.
It's hard to then kind of lock in and focus on the thing in front of you because deep down you know like you probably shouldn't be doing it anyway.
So I think part of this, we have to solve upstream by just not agreeing to do so much stuff.
But then when we are doing this stuff, we should say to ourselves OK, if this is worth doing, you know it's worth doing right and it's worth being present for.
And that, you know, none of us are as good as multitasking as we'd like to think we are.
And the Stokes sort of talk about doing this thing as if it is the last time you get to do it.
That's the sort of practice of memento mori.
Like hey, I got to wrap this up because this is the last time I get to get up here and give this talk.
Or this is the last episode you guys are recording.
Or it's the last time you get to go surfing.
Or it's the last time you get to read a book to your kids before bed.
How would that change how you do it?
Um, to me that's a really powerful way of just sort of coming in and focusing, because you know uh, you know you're doing the dishes.
Okay.
Are you actually present for doing the dishes or are you like, uh, trying to do 10 things at once?
You're doing a shitty job.
You're resenting getting to do it.
You know, at some point you're going to Love to be back in this space where your kids are on the couch.
You just had dinner together.
You know it's a long summer evening.
Whatever it is like there, there is going to be a point at which you miss this or which you would trade anything to get back to this.
Even something as annoying as a work meeting and and decide to be there, for it is is, i think, you know uh, a kind of a reframing that can be really helpful.
It's kind of like our brains have been conditioned now, and our expectations have been conditioned, to never do one thing at a time.
There's now an assumption of like, okay, well, I'm going to do the dishes.
So while I'm doing the dishes, I'm going to listen to a podcast.
And so there's always this sort of want or need or expectation to have multiple things going at once, because we can.
And as a result, it's so hard to focus on just the one thing.
Maybe that's why.
Yeah, and we tell ourselves, oh, I'm going to get to do this an infinite number of additional times.
Yeah.
So we don't value it.
Yes.
And you know, obviously life expectancy is much longer than it is today, than it was 2000 years ago.
But...
You that's an average.
Right.
You have we have no idea what the time span is for each one of us.
And one of the things Seneca talks about, which I think is one of his most powerful sort of sort of flipping of things, is he says you know, it's wrong to think of death as something that happens at the end of your life.
He says, actually, death is behind us.
Not that it's coming to get you.
He means like every minute that passes is dead to you.
And so how do you spend your time accordingly?
If you know hey, I'm paying for this with a day of my life or a 10 year commitment on my life or whatever it is like.
When that's over, you can't get that back.
And so to think of time, to think of death as something that's happening to you always, instead of something that happens to you once at the end, is to me just a totally different way of thinking about it.
That's brilliant.
That is so good.
I'll write that down in.
I had a journal.
Well, I was writing each morning at the start of the year when I was really good at my news resolutions and stoicism was right at the top.
The last thing I wrote every day before I left, before I started the day, was this could be your last day.
Yeah.
And it had a massive impact on me.
I guess the issue I brought up with you before was just like being wherever I am because I want to fully experience.
If this is my last day, live the way that you want to live.
It very much aligns you with your values very quickly.
Can I ask something on that?
Because one thing that I, I find that to be a useful framing.
And I also think that I remember Hugh telling me about I think it was a Marcus Aurelius thing to imagine everyone you love dying.
Is that it?
Yeah.
And one of the things I've realized I do that naturally.
Yeah.
Unfortunately.
And as a way of kind of reminding myself of what's dear to me.
But then when I live a day where I don't live up to that expectation, like if I set myself the expectation that this is the last I have with them and I waste that
I am so down on myself and I find it really hard to apply some of the rules without compassion for myself.
Sure.
Yeah.
Any help with that one?
It is a challenge, but it's like the irony there.
You're like, okay, so I blew it today, right?
Like I was too much on my phone.
I was in a shitty mood.
I wasn't, you know, we could have done more stuff or, you know, I was selfish.
I let work get in the way, whatever it is.
So you fucked up.
And then you're like okay, so the solution to that is for me to go internal spiral about this, regret it, you know, feel guilty about it and waste.
It's like throwing good money after bad right.
You could go like, okay, I'm going to be better starting now.
Instead you go, I fucked up and I'm going to keep fucking up.
And also I suck and I'm worthless.
Like it's not helping at all.
It's just so crazy how we do that.
So, like, I guess I'd just ask what the productive use of that sort of guilt and shame actually is.
Like, it's not only not productive, it's counterproductive.
It's more of the thing that you're supposedly feeling guilty and shameful about, which is wasting time and energy. it's yeah it's definitely a hundred percent great it's just something so naturally alluring about it i think about that spiral yeah well because i think it's it's hard to actually do it like the being present uh bringing your best self like that requires a lot of concentration and focus and discipline and you know all these things and so you're like Well, you know, it's like, so you slipped up and you ate some, you know, you fell off your diet or whatever.
And then you're like, well, I guess that's it for me now.
You know, like it's, you get to keep doing the thing that you were doing.
It's just a trap where we get to excuse ourselves from doing the actual hard thing that we've been avoiding all along, which is being present, which is bringing our best self to things.
And so, yeah, we just kind of do that.
And...
You know, look, you screwed up on your diet and you ate something you shouldn't.
Are you going to finish the bag or are you going to go, hey, I don't need to keep making this worse?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's great advice.
Yeah.
Um, well, it's been amazing chatting to you, right?
It's, um, it's, it's kind of like, I mean, like this is an academy of imperfection, but we, we could, it could, you could call it the practicality house because it is, this is like one of the most practical, useful, but there's so much to take away from this episode.
And Ryan will be in Australia and New Zealand in October.
We'll put a link if you want to go and see him.
Highly recommend.
We will definitely be there.
Thank you for everything.
Just personally.
It's a great opportunity for me to thank you for everything you've done through a very tough time in my life.
You have been incredibly present.
So thank you so much, Ryan Holiday.
Ah, well, I really appreciate it.
I um, I'm sort of paying for.
I feel like what I'm doing is paying forward what stoicism has done for me.
And, uh, I'm very excited to get to Australia, which is one of my, my favorite places in the world.
I'm going to bring my whole family and, uh, we're going to make a thing of it.
So I'm, I'm excited to get out there.
I'll look forward to meeting you guys.
Sounds great.
Thank you, mate.
Did you guys love him?
Absolutely love that man.
He is great.
And I think, before we get into Hugh, your reflections on what's helped you and go into more of that, I think we all just need to acknowledge now that we have a moment, properly acknowledge Josh's doom scroll joke, which Ryan Holiday unfortunately didn't hear because he was talking at the same time.
But I think if you didn't hear it, you need to go back and appreciate what was a fantastic joke.
So I just want to say that.
Thank you.
That means a lot.
It's important.
It's important.
I was so sad he didn't hear it because it would have helped him to like us more.
I think you liked us.
I think you liked us.
No, we would have gone, I like them and they're hysterical.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, at least Josh was hysterical.
Thank you.
Okay.
So I'm going to just do pretty quickly here, but I want to go through five quotes.
And the way that I got into stoicism was like how we discover many things these days was through social media.
But it did feel like consuming Stoicism through social media was very.
It was just.
It was almost like the reverse.
Yeah, it was almost like the antithesis of what it is, what the Stoics are all about.
Yeah, so I actually purchased.
Because the Stoics were against social media, weren't they?
I didn't.
And they're the first ones to push the social media ban.
No, I think Marcus Aurelius was on Blogger.
But he stopped short of MySpace.
He just said, no, I can see this is going to go bad.
He's actually against AI as well.
He doesn't think you should use it.
Well, okay.
I trust his opinion.
So I ordered.
I very quickly ordered because I talk about journaling and how important journaling is.
I very quickly ordered the Daily Stoic Journal, which I recommend, second behind My Imperfect Life as a journal.
But what happens with this journal is it gives you at the start of every single week, Ryan has his reflection on a topic.
So week one, for example, the topic is what's up to us, what's not up to us.
And then he'll give you a quote from three of the Stoics and then you'll be asked questions on that topic and every morning and night you journal about the question.
And so that's how I've sort of discovered these.
Some of the quotes work for me.
Others don't have much to do with my life.
But here are five that have been so, so powerful for me and the way I've moved through the world with all the challenges that have come up in the last few years.
Brilliant.
It's such a good setup and, I think, a good thing to mention, because one of the things that you alluded to with the Instagram thing is, like it's so easy to see a surface level, really powerful quote that like hits you and then forget about it and it never actually does the work.
Yeah.
So I wanted to get to how you actually make these a part of yourself and actually benefit long term.
So this is awesome.
So some of them I'll go and read the journal entries that I wrote off the back of them.
Others I'll just tell you the quote and then we'll just have a quick discussion after it.
So the first one, which I think probably has had the biggest impact on me, is this one from Marcus Aurelius, and that is you could leave life right now.
Let that determine what you do and say and think.
Which is sort of similar to what Ryan sort of touched on, where it's like imagine, this is the last time you're doing something.
Yeah, it is exactly what it is.
And what I've found that to do is it's directly, very directly enriched my relationship with my family.
And really anyone that I come into contact with, for some reason I came across this.
Well, I just thought to myself the longer my conversations go for with people, the more enriching those relationships are.
So even people that I don't know that well, in my head I just sort of have this thing of like see if you can extend this conversation beyond two minutes.
And that because, if it is my last day on the earth, I would like to engage with people other than just be on surface level.
So that's been really big.
And it also really helps me with a very, very direct correlation with the patient levels that I have with my kids when something is not going well for them or they're upset about something or whatever.
There's a meltdown or they're not doing – Patrick is not putting on his shoes.
He refuses to put on shoes every morning.
I just have more patience because, if it is the last time, I would like him to have a positive memory of me, not me like storming out and getting angry about the shoes, just sitting with him while he tries to – well, he doesn't try to put his shoes on.
He has a positive memory of me.
And that sounds like quite a morbid thing, but that's what it's helped me do.
Love that one.
The next one from Epictetus.
So this I mean, I have realized I didn't do this deliberately, but they do.
A lot of them relate to gratitude, empathy and mindfulness.
But this one's from Epictetus.
Here we go again.
He's always banging on about this.
It's like he actually believes it or something.
He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.
And actually, so this came from the journal.
I will read this here.
So this is a competition between the two of you.
Who's better at Roman numerals?
What week is this?
Right, yep.
XXX11.
33.
Two.
32.
Oh, did you only do two ones?
Fuck.
32.
You were both very quick.
Yeah, because you only said two ones.
Yeah.
If you had have said three, you would have been right.
Yeah.
Just count.
Just count.
It wasn't the trickiest Roman numeral.
It'd be good.
Yeah, no Vs. No Vs. And no numbers before big numbers to subtract the... It was only after.
And three, yeah.
Anyway.
So week 32, the theme was what little wins can you find?
And Ryan's reflection here.
He said Stoics would be skeptical of the so-called epic wins and quantum leaps that our culture obsesses over today.
Instead, they would urge you to focus on your daily duties on making incremental progress.
Spend your writing time this week.
Thinking about the small wins you can rack up, while little gains can be had from this improvement or that one.
A decision here or a decision there.
Be satisfied with each small step.
Keep moving and don't give up.
And so I wrote here, there was a...
The morning reflection was so every morning.
There's a question which you reflect on the morning and night.
The question was, what small progress can I make today?
And my morning reflection was, be patient with the kids, give a genuine compliment to Penny.
I just wrote training um uh, out the door on time and, if not, forgive yourself uh, no phone until i'm in the office.
Um, don't look at phone during meeting, listen to music, patient with kids at bedtime and then so they're just like little dot points.
But the evening reflection i wrote was um, When I did my nightly breath work and the question of gratitude came up, I was asked what made me smile today.
And it was all the things that I listed this morning above.
I've learned today that it's so helpful to schedule and plan the little things as they are the most influential in my wellbeing.
Brilliant, yeah.
So that was a.
So that's the second one.
Love, that gratitude.
So the third one is from Seneca.
This is probably, you would argue.
This is what I'd argue.
This is very much about mindfulness.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere, And I felt like so.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
I feel like that is the experience of so many people.
Like when you're on social media, when you're on Instagram, for example, you are everywhere.
Yeah, it's true.
In the space of one minute, your brain goes to so many different places, so many different emotions, so many different thoughts and feelings.
And I feel like when you put your phone down, your brain doesn't just stop moving at that pace.
It continues to want that much stuff, need that much stuff.
Um, it has this like it's like it's trying to be everywhere still.
So I think to be everywhere to be nowhere for me is a very specific reference to social media and social media use.
But I think it really speaks to.
What I spoke about during that episode was when I'm pushing Patrick on the swing.
I was everywhere, which meant I was nowhere.
And I need to, that's special time.
You link it to the first one.
You could leave right now.
Let that determine the way you act and the way you behave.
So that's, you know.
Yeah.
Can I add to that?
Because I lost, I was just saying to you guys before we started recording, I lost my phone.
Sorry, I didn't lose my phone.
My phone stopped working last week.
And I didn't want to get a brand new phone.
And I'm like, I'll get a refurbished one.
And there's a bit of a wait for that to be delivered.
So I've been about four days now without a phone.
And I found that the the being everywhere thing, like that it sort of relates to that.
But i found that on the weekend it to be quite a painful process of not having the phone to distract me and to take my mind elsewhere.
Well you you're, essentially you've gone cold turkey on an addiction, probably It's kind of what it felt like, and I've found myself really sad at the end of every day because I realise how many times it's not the knowledge of this, it's the actual experience of it, of how many times I'm using the phone throughout the day to distract myself from boredom or pain.
And so accumulated many moments of pain throughout the day.
Not big pain, but just little bits of sadness that I would have got a little endorphin hit from that.
Put my mind elsewhere.
I found myself being quite down at the end of every day.
And not a pleasant experience at all.
But I'm also starting to see it's about four days in I'm starting to see glimmers of how great it is.
But also just to acknowledge that the process from having your mind going from everywhere to being on a singular task or not distracted can be quite painful.
Yeah, it is.
It's like a crutch.
It's like a thing that we rely on to kind of in any silence or moment of discomfort.
It's like you just instantly, habitually refer to just looking at your own little world that you can control.
Yeah.
It's really good.
The next one.
Which is a very specific thing that I've started doing this year, as everyone will know, because it got a lot of attention when I presented to everyone as a typo.
For those of you who knew the podcast, I sent a text message to a friend talking about how I walk the dog, but I said that I wank the dog every morning.
So this one here-
Never has a moment in our podcast required more context than you saying wank the dog.
But yes, it is contextual.
So this one here, I reckon you'll really like this one, right?
Because I think this is something you do naturally and you've always understood the beauty of this or why this is such an important one.
I feel sane already.
So this is the theme here.
So this is – I won't do that activity again, but this is week 25.
And the theme was – Great.
We're all thinking it.
One all.
Some of us don't need to show off.
So the theme is take a walk.
So the quote that Ryan includes in the journal here is from Seneca, and that is we should take walks outdoors so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed.
God, yeah.
We should take walks outdoors so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed.
So this year a very new thing to me, but I started off the year taking the dog for a walk in the morning and I always had my phone with me.
So I'd listen to, I was like, well, I could write emails or I could be a great wife.
He's so productive write emails.
I could um uh, i could listen to podcasts, listen to music um, but when i stopped doing that, i just felt like, in fact, there's a really as a can i throw in a bonus quote because it's a long one, but it's a beauty okay um sorry, i gave him an all clear way too quickly.
Uh, this is from seneca as well, And this is what like.
When I read this, I thought about the time without the phone, just going for a walk in nature.
The mind must be given relaxation.
It will rise, improved and sharper after a good break.
Just as rich fields must not be forced, for they will quickly lose their fertility, if never given a break.
So constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind, but it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while.
Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul.
You love walks.
I love walks.
Well recently, some people know that I did a – I walked from – people in Victoria will understand the gravity of this or the strangeness of this.
I walked from Frankston to Fitzroy over two days and I did it for like just a –
I was actually reading a book about philosophers who walked and it's like it was a big way, of a big way that philosophers used to think, like the way that I would think that would go for walks.
And that was sort of part of why I did it.
Cause I want to just go on as a different way of thinking.
But on that walk, it's sort of all up was about 10 or 11 hours.
And um, At the start I would do voice notes and stuff, but at no point did I listen to any podcasts or anything.
Most of the time, I was just walking in silence.
Wow.
And it was really amazing.
During it I realized, because we've heard from so many people how important it is to be bored, but we're not bored anymore.
We never let ourselves get bored.
And so I now call that the boardwalk.
And so I feel like doing a boardwalk is really really like, clearly so healthy and good for us, which is essentially just to go walking and get bored on purpose.
Yeah.
And bored has this negative annotation because I'm bored, I'm bored as a kid.
You want to be entertained, you want to have a dopamine hit, but actually now, because of the world, it's like being bored is crucial.
I remember as a kid and it's hard to know whether this is just like as a kid or not, but as a kid you're often just like.
I don't know, staring or just like walking in this because there isn't a solution to being bored or, like you know, this example has been given lots, but it's like when you are, like at a restaurant with someone, that the other person goes to the bathroom and you're at the table.
You wait for them.
Yeah.
You just have to wait.
But now we've got a phone, so we bring out our phone.
But to not bring out our phone and just sit there, even though it's boring, is actually from.
I mean, I'm not an expert so I can't explain why.
Scientifically it's good, but
I just know that every time that I allow myself to be bored, I just feel a little bit I don't know lighter or something.
Yeah, you said it's crucial.
To me.
The feeling for me is being bored when I go for a walk with the dog is it's like plugging my brain into a charger for a bit.
It feels like I'm recharging my brain because everything else is draining it.
Well actually, now that you say that, it reminds me of what Maria Roberto said when she was talking about the importance of what did she say?
It's we should reflect, not receive.
Yeah, more reflection, less reception, because we're spending so much of our time receiving information and content and whatever.
And not enough time actually thinking bored, reflecting on the things that we've seen or talked about.
And I know that whenever I spend time just either walking and being I mean I say bored, but like Reflecting yeah,
It turns into reflecting and thinking.
Whenever I do that, I always pretty much think of like a good idea or...
Or I think of something that's actually really important to my life, as opposed to just consuming like an article about something or a video about something that really doesn't affect my life that much.
There's nothing I can actually do about it that I always feel like it's really beneficial for me to just reflect, be bored even for a minute.
So boardwalk.
Boardwalk.
I love it.
And so would Marcus and friends.
And the last one, which I think is a really important one for all of us.
These days with, I feel like, people's opinions and judgments and weighing in on everything and anything just for attention, is just so rife.
So Evictetus says – in fact it came up – this is in week six – and the theme was suspend your opinions, which is something a lot of people could probably – listen to at the moment.
But Epictetus says throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.
And the question that I answered a few days after that.
Well, the question for the whole day was what needless conflicts can I avoid?
So not exactly around opinions, but it's adjacent.
So what needless conflict can I avoid?
And I just reflected on this here.
Um, this is like a reflection on something that happened a week before.
Last week at hilltop cafe, i found myself in what felt like a treasured memory, sitting outside in the sun with my mum and dad at a cafe we used to go to as kids, with my youngest son, patrick.
An old lady walked past and snarled at Patrick.
It's not a playground as he climbed all over the chair.
I smiled at her and went promptly back to my idyllic situation.
Um, I just, I was very impressed with myself that I didn't seek to like win that argument.
Like I just very quickly went to like, I'm not ruining this moment.
This is special.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause the temptation is to kind of like put her in her box and like explain to her why she's wrong.
I was going to say to her, it's not an old person's time either, but you're here.
But that came out very quickly.
I was like, no, no.
That's pretty good.
I'll save it for the podcast.
Get way more acknowledgement doing it on there.
Much more people are here.
What would I have said for just one person?
No, but I...
I was scared at how quickly I thought of that, but I very quickly went to like I just smiled and let's just
Save your winners for the biggest audience.
Anyway, that evening the reflection I had that evening, that night before I went to bed, was today in traffic I attempted a three point turn.
That turned into a seven point turn.
I stopped traffic in both directions.
I encountered distinctly opposite reactions on either side.
It was an identical inconvenience for the two men that were waiting either side of the car in their cars.
One man smiled and gave me the thumbs up and the other sat on his horn and yelled.
One man moved through the interaction, building a connection and was frictionless.
The other left angry and resentful.
And so I just feel like that one that quote throughout your conceded opinions is It's a way of moving through the world with less friction and less conflict, in a more humble and curious way.
So you have energy for what really matters.
So they're the five quotes.
Just if I could just put into things very quickly having an awareness that it could all end tomorrow has a very positive impact on your day-to-day encounters.
He who is not satisfied with the little is satisfied with nothing.
Just paying attention to what you have.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere, to be present.
We should take walks.
It's almost like nourishing your mind or just scheduling time to nourish your mind.
Boardwalks.
Boardwalks.
And –
And yeah, save your good comebacks for when there's an audience.
Absolutely.
No, just be humble and be curious and be frictionless.
Love it here.
And yeah, so those five had a very big impact on me this year, especially.
Yeah, awesome.
So how wonderful to meet Ryan.
Yeah.
Who knows, maybe he'll reach out to us and say, let's hang out when I'm in Melbourne.
Yeah, who knows?
He might.
Yeah, he might.
He might, yeah.
Especially if we send him lots and lots of emails between now and then.
Yeah.
Never know.
Thanks to Ryan Holiday.
Thanks to you.
See you next time, everyone.
Bye.
Ciao.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A show made on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people and we pay our respects to elders, past and present.
The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment.
The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11, 14.
