#321 Ryan Holiday - The Stoic Survival Guide

**Shawn Ryan** (0:05)
Ryan Holiday, welcome to the show, man.

**Ryan Holiday** (0:07)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:09)
It's an honor to have you.

**Ryan Holiday** (0:10)
Likewise.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:11)
So, yeah, this year, one of my goals is to become a little more stoic, as the political and world current events just continue to spiral out of control. That's been one of my goals, primarily for my family. You know, it's just...

**Ryan Holiday** (0:28)
You seem stoic, though, lowercase stoic. You seem, are you not?

**Shawn Ryan** (0:34)
I tend to lose my shit every once in a while, but as we all do. But yeah, I just, I want to be a little more stoic, primarily for my family, my kids.

**Ryan Holiday** (0:47)
Yeah, in the same way. I mean, I think there's some people who are sort of naturally there, and then you have kids and then you realize you're not there at all.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:55)
Yeah, but, and actually, several, my wife's been wanting me to do this for a while, and I'll bet it five, six years ago, she gave me one of your books. And that's when I first heard about you and read it. It was like a daily.

**Ryan Holiday** (1:10)
Yeah, the Daily Stoic maybe?

**Shawn Ryan** (1:11)
The Daily Stoic. And read through that, and then this year, got Marcus Aurelius' book on stoicism.
And so this is perfect. Now you're here. All right.

**Ryan Holiday** (1:25)
Well, I brought you a good edition of Marcus Aurelius. I don't know what one you have. This is my favorite translation. So I think what's cool about this is like, am I on the right? Here you have the private thoughts of the most powerful person in the world.
And almost certainly not intended for publication. Like he might be mortified that we're holding this right now. So, you know, most books are written for the audience, right? But this is a book for the author. Like that it's a book is the by-product of the philosophical process, which is like, he has a temper, he has anxiety, he has a shitty job with people he can't trust, and an empire that's coming apart, and he has health problems, he has marital problems, he has a plague, there's floods, it's a series of endless wars, and what he's doing is sitting down and writing to himself, trying to get back to center. Right?

**Shawn Ryan** (2:29)
Interesting.

**Ryan Holiday** (2:30)
And it just wasn't burned upon his death, or it wasn't destroyed when he died. And so it doesn't read like a typical book. I mean, it's 12 books, each passage is numbered, but it's really almost like journal or diary entries, because that's what Stoicism is, is like this.
You know how you're trying to be, and then you're here. There's a great line in Meditations where he's saying, like, fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you. And that's what he's doing in Meditations.

**Shawn Ryan** (3:01)
Can you say that again?

**Ryan Holiday** (3:02)
He says, fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you, or fight to be the person that philosophy wants you to be. Right? It's like we all know the idea, the ideal, like what our best self is, and then we're dysregulated, or we're tired, or we're hungry, or somebody's being really awful and annoying, and we're struggling to be, to get from the lower self to the higher self.

**Shawn Ryan** (3:28)
Gotcha.

**Ryan Holiday** (3:29)
Right? And that's what this is. So I got you this, and then this one will hopefully... Like Meditations should be...

**Shawn Ryan** (3:35)
Thank you.

**Ryan Holiday** (3:36)
It should be a book that you...
Like most books you read, right? Meditations should be a book that you are reading. Like it should sit on the nightstand, and you pick it up, and you read it throughout your life. Because it was written throughout someone's life. But the idea is that you don't know what passage you're going to need until you're flipping through the book and it jumps out at you. That's the idea of Meditations.

**Shawn Ryan** (4:03)
Roger that. Thank you.

**Ryan Holiday** (4:04)
All right. I got a bunch more. I won't take so much time, but I know you got young kids. Do you know Steve Ronella?
He's a meat eater. I think this is where he wrote an amazing book about hunting called the American Buffalo, which is one of my favorite books. He gets a buffalo tag in Alaska and he goes to hunt the American bison and it's all about that. That's my favorite Steve Ronella book, but as a parent, this is outside kids in an inside world. I think that's what every parent is struggling with right now, because screens are so addictive and video games are so exciting. We're all glued to our devices, right? I mean, people are probably listening to this, almost certainly listening to this on a device right now.