EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,102 words- 0:00 – 5:34
Talking Vs Doing
- CWChris Williamson
I've collected some of my favorite quotes from you over the last year, and I wanna go through some of those-
- RHRyan Holiday
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... and, and get your reflection. "Talking about the thing and doing the thing vie for the same resources. Allocate your energy appropriately."
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, I don't talk about projects as I'm working on them. That's just a rule I've found. Um, there was this thing many, many years ago, it was this Twitter account that just collected tweets of people talking about the novel they were working on, which they were obviously not working on, otherwise they wouldn't have been tweeting about it. And... Look, I'm not saying you do the thing for validation. T-That's a bad reason to do things. But there is some sort of light at the end of the tunnel that keeps you going, right, when you're doing a thing. Like, "Hopefully people will like this, hopefully it will be received well. Hopefully they'll pat me on the back," whatever. You don't wanna take that on credit. You wanna earn it. And so, when I am working on a project, I wait until I am nearly done, or done, before I start to talk about it, because what it does is it starts to make this thing feel real that is not yet real, and that you are the only person that can make real. So, it's this sort of temptation, this ba- uh, Steven Pressfield called it the resistance. The resistance wants you to go, "Hey, I'm training for a marathon," and people to go, "That's so great, I'm so impressed," um, but they're impressed with the thing you haven't done yet, you know? Tell them after you run the marathon, you know? That, that's when, that's when you want, that's when you want to cash in on the work that you've been putting in. And I think about, I think about... The people that I really admire are people who work for years and y- years on things, and I just think about what it must be like to be in the wilderness that long, to just show up every single day and work on a thing and not get any recognition or appreciation for that thing, to not know if you're heading in the right direction or not. Um... The kind of character and determination that that takes. And so my, my projects are thankfully much shorter than that, usually (laughs) . But, you know, you just, you just do the thing, and then i- if people like it at the end, that's great.
- CWChris Williamson
I mentioned that quote to Andrew Huberman, and-
- RHRyan Holiday
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
... he told me that there is a, uh, neuroscientific basis for that too.
- RHRyan Holiday
Huh.
- CWChris Williamson
That you actually get little sort of titrated drips of dopamine when you do talk about doing the thing-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... so your philosophical, artsy, wanky insight is also reflected quite nicely in the neuroscience.
- RHRyan Holiday
I worked for this guy for a long time, and he had this habit of telling people, like, what he was gonna... Like, his plans for sort of world domination (laughs) , like all the things he was working on. And I noticed that he would tell the story so many times, in so many ways, and it was always so smart and clever and bound to work, but he would do it so prematurely that it would almost be that he would get tired of it, right? Like, he would tell it-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... it would become real in his mind, and become real, you know, reified, as they say, in these conversations, that he would, he would get bored of it before it came time to actually do the thing.
- CWChris Williamson
He's almost got the satisfaction from completing the thing by talking about it so much before he's completed it.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, and he was so good at entertaining people about it, and, and making it feel real, and making it, the genius of it, so obvious, that, yet he would, he would just move on to the next thing. And, and in his mind, this was never quitting, right? In his mind, he, he was never like... Uh, it, it was like, "I could've, I just chose not to," or, or maybe even like sort of blurring in his mind that he did do it, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- RHRyan Holiday
And, and so it's this very seductive, insidious thing, where the more you talk about it, the more real it is, but by definition it's actually less real-
- CWChris Williamson
Pushes you further away from it.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, because you didn't... You, you had an hour conversation about this thing you're gonna do and how it's gonna blow everything up. You didn't spend one hour making that thing closer to reality. And so I, I have an aversion to it. It w- I just found that so, like-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... so gross, and, and then I saw what it was doing for him. But, but in, in my own practice, just like, "Hey, I'd rather just do the thing," and I've o-... The other, the other side of it that I have found is that whenever... One of the hardest parts about doing a book is that you usually have to sell the book, the idea, from start to finish before you've done any of it. So you have to have this vision of this thing, um, that you can't actually really have a vision of 'cause you haven't done it and, and, you know, when you, when, when you make contact with the enemy, or reality, it changes, right? So this, this part of talking about it is really awkward and weird, because it's not, it's not real, and i- if you're intellectually honest, and you've done it enough times, you know you can't possibly know. And so, what I would find is I would talk about a thing and, and then, you know, describe a project I'm working on or this idea I have, and then people go, "Well, what about this? Well, what about this?" You know, they'd, they'd... And then I would lose confidence in the thing I was doing-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... because I was, uh, I was out... Like, I didn't believe it and I didn't know it because it wasn't real, and so I just thought, "You know what? I'm just gonna spend all this energy and all this attention on doing the thing, and if people like it at the end, great. But, but I'm not gonna get, I'm not just gonna get caught up in this thing."
- 5:34 – 11:19
Run a Race With Yourself
- RHRyan Holiday
- CWChris Williamson
From Peter Thiel, "Competition is for losers. When people compete, someone loses. So go where you're the only one. Do what only you can. Run a race with yourself."
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah. Uh, that's a great line in, in Zero to Win that I've always loved. Um, the s- the, uh, the essence of Stoicism is this idea that you focus on what's in your control. And Epictetus said something very similar about 2,000 years before Peter Thiel. He said, uh, "If you only run races where winning is up to you, you'll always win." Right? If, if winning for you is, "I have the most money.... uh, if winning for you is, "I'm the most beloved, I'm the most well-known, I received the most awards," um, if winning to you requires someone or something to deem you something, uh, you might get it, but you also might not get it. If your goal is to be the best version of yourself, or to put a certain amount of time or energy, or to push yourself to a place that you've never been before, well now winning is something that's in your control. And so I just, I just try to focus on that. I try to run my own race. I've, I've been a runner most of my life, and that's one of the things you learn very early is that, like, you know, you have these competitive in- impulses. So somebody blows past you or whatever, and you go, "I gotta keep up with this person, I gotta beat this person." And then you real- you have no idea when they started and you have no idea when they're finishing. You're, you're almost never actually running a race with a predetermined beginning and end. And so when you can be really clear about defining success in your own terms, then success is much more attainable. And, and this isn't just, like, some cop out where you, you make, you know, you're just-
- CWChris Williamson
Sell yourself short, you don't try hard.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah. Y- you're actually, I think, determining standards that are much higher and much harder, but you are not allowing other people to do it. And now, what Peter Thiel is also saying, uh, he's pointing out this thing that people, people almost instinctively go to well-defined spaces because they don't have a clear sense of what they wanna do or why they wanna do it. And so they just try to do something else someone- that everyone else is doing. And, and by definition, it's a commodity, right? So they go, "Oh, this person has a big podcast, I wanna have a big podcast." Or, "This person, like, this is where restaurants tend to go in this town." And so they just go where everyone else goes. And this feels safer in that no one's gonna laugh at you, it won't be obviously stupid. You know, the chances of catastrophic failure are lower, but also the chances of, like, real and profound wins or gains is lower. This is the red ocean/blue ocean distinction.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you heard Rory Sutherland's take on no one ever gets fired for hiring McKinsey?
- RHRyan Holiday
(laughs) That's right, yeah. You do the thing that everyone in your position does, and this is ... I mean, you have experiences with people in publishing, right? Like, the main thing is you don't want people to go, "Why the hell did you buy that book?" Right? "What the hell were you thinking giving that book a big marketing budget?" Right? And so, um, people go towards what's safe, what doesn't feel, you know, obviously, uh, wrong or ridiculous. But the reality is a lot of things that really do succeed seem to that way, like an obscure, uh, book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy that would've been preposterous to think it would go on to do ... you know, my books would go on to do what they did. But I was really interested in them, I had a very sort of clear and set defined market that I wanted to reach and I was really interested in it, and that was it. And then everything else was extra. And it's funny now, you know, remembering going to my publisher with that idea for that book and them giving ... you know, basically humoring me with it. To now hear (laughs) all the people who want me to blurb books that really exist only because they are trying to reach the audience that I-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... have cultivated is, is a surreal experience. That's like you do this thing and everyone tells you it's crazy and it will obviously not work, and then not long after that those same people are copying you.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you keep your ego in check when things like that happen? How do you keep the chip off your shoulder and not get bitter, resentful, self-righteous?
- RHRyan Holiday
Well, b- those are two different sides of, uh, the same reaction that can happen to this very common thing, which is you did something that everyone said wouldn't work, and then it does work, so what lesson do you take from that? Is it, "Fuck other people, they're trying to hold me down, I gotta prove them all wrong"? Or is it, um, "They're, uh ... nobody knows anything. I'm the only one that knows"? I saw this in American Apparel, Dev Chandpreet did this, built this fashion brand from nothing that should not have worked, and the result was he lost the ability to calibrate good feedback from bad feedback, um, you know, warnings from, uh, you know, unwarranted criticism. So, like, I try to ask myself, like, when I get feedback and, and you get this thing in you that's like, "Who the fuck are you?" Or, "What-" you know, "What do you know?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
To go, like, first off, "Let's not trust that reaction." And then second, "Let's, let's, like, wait it out." Right? Like, like, uh, this idea that, "Who are you to tell me this?" is almost never gonna be the right way to come at any kind of feedback. It may well be that you should completely disregard this advice and this person doesn't know what they're talking about. You just wanna make sure that you're, you're doing that calmly and rationally and kindly-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... and then you can be more confident-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RHRyan Holiday
... that you're not doing it from a place of fragility or sensitivity.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah. All right, next one.
- 11:19 – 20:13
Life-Changing Decisions Are Never Simple
- CWChris Williamson
"The idea of 'fuck yes' or 'no' is far too simple and has caused me quite a lot of grief. Dropping out of college, I was maybe 51/49 on it, leaving my corporate job to become a writer, maybe 60/40. The certainty comes later. The truly life-changing decisions are never simple."
- RHRyan Holiday
I would love to say in retrospect that I knew all the big risks that I took in my life were gonna pay off, but if I did, I guess they wouldn't have been risks and they probably wouldn't have paid off, because I would've been doing them from a place of entitlement, or ego, or certainty rather than a place of openness, self-awareness, humility, hunger. So you ... I think, "Hell yes/hell no" or "Fuck yes/fuck yes- fuck no" is a nice rubric for, like...... do you wanna go to this conference or not? (laughs) You know.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
Uh, do you want to have coffee or not? Mi- some friends are getting together, do you wanna come or not?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- RHRyan Holiday
But when it's taking your life in your ha- like, when you're deciding to move here-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... that it could not have worked, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Yep.
- RHRyan Holiday
And it ended up working out great for you. It's been crazy to watch. But like, if you had f- if you had been 100 or 1,000% certain that it was going to work, first off, you would have been willfully ignorant of all the reasons that it couldn't work and the things you needed to... and most importantly, you would have been, therefore, discounting all the things you actually had to do to make it work.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. That's interesting. So, is it your belief that sufficiently big or complex decisions are always going to have so many things on both sides of the ledger that the "fuck yeah" is o- often very hard to reach?
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah. There's... Some historian said the, the one thing you can never miss out on when you're studying a person or a series of events is that it could have been otherwise.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
Like, it seems obvious in retrospect that it was gonna go the way that-
- CWChris Williamson
Depression, 1920s.
- RHRyan Holiday
... yeah. But it c- it always could have gone otherwise. And most importantly, to the people in that moment, it could have gone otherwise, right? It could have gone... Th- they could have done this, or they could have done that. And so, when you look back at your successes and your failures, understanding that, like, it was the result of these choices that you made or these things that you did is really, really important because you don't... The Midas touch is an ancient story that is a cautionary tale, right? The idea that you are perfect, that you know, that you knew better is almost always a very dangerous way to come. It doesn't do anything about like... Me making up a story about how I always knew I was gonna be a writer, even though that wasn't true, me knowing that dropping out of college would lead to this and this and this, or that my first book would do this, or that stoicism would do this, me telling myself a story about those things doesn't change why and how it actually happened. That's not the danger. The danger is me carrying that story forward to the next thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Sort of undue confidence that doesn't reflect where you were at the time, this retrospective sort of, um, glow up of your...
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes. You're-
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah.
- RHRyan Holiday
... you're discounting the lucky bounces. You're discounting the things that you actually did that determined why you were successful.
- CWChris Williamson
Look how hard I had to work. This wasn't a "fuck yeah." This wasn't an easy win. This was something that took... Blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, okay.
- RHRyan Holiday
That's totally... And so, and so, it, it... You tend to see this with, like, people who do, like, really, like, groundbreaking, revolutionary things. In reality, they were trying to do something much smaller or, uh, they had a much humbler view of it, and then it became this thing. But then if you update your identity as visionary, revolutionary, uh, future seer, you're gonna overreach on the next thing almost certainly. And m- most things start small, and you build on them. And so, that's just a much safer, better way to come from it, in my view. So, I just try, I try, I try to stay in reality, not the narrative that other people make up or you make up. And that... When you do things that are in the public eye, it's not just your own version of your story that you have to be, uh, careful of. Like, uh, because I was so young when I was doing a lot of the stuff, uh, e- early in my career, there was this sort of whiz kid, kid going places, and that never works out well for those people. You know, you don't want that. I- I wanted to just be a person. I would... Just trying to... I was trying to strip that away-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... and see it for what it was. And I was always trying to, in a way, like, actively give credit to the things that were not up to me so I wasn't overemphasizing the credit warranted by the things that I did control.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. How do you maintain confidence when so much of what you're doing is kind of disparaging of that? Do you know what I mean?
- RHRyan Holiday
I... Yeah. Like, there was some joke about, uh, the author Ayn Rand who wrote this book, The, The Virtue of Selfishness, and the, the writer said something like, uh, "Has that ever been something people needed a reminder of?" Like, "Uh, does anyone need help being more selfish?" Like, we're intrinsically, intuitively that, right? And I- I- I tend to find, for the most part, that I need, I need help stripping the ego away, not-
- CWChris Williamson
Is that true? I wouldn't have guessed that about you.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah. I think, I think if you're ambitious, if you're talented, if you're driven, you are... You know what you can do.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- RHRyan Holiday
I just think you wanna be reminding yourself of where you have the limitations or where you can get better. And, and, and that's a, that's a h- that's a, uh, a helpful feedback loop versus the other, right? So if your feedback loop is, "Look how amazing I am. Look at everything I've done. Uh, I shoved it all in their faces," you know, that, that, to me, tends to create superiority complex, entitlement, complacency, et cetera. If you're focusing on where you can get better and what else you need to do, I find that tends to make you better, and it tends to make you do those things. So, to me, confidence is based on the evidence of what you've done, um, but it is coupled with an awareness of where you could have done better, what wasn't a result of your effort, so th- that balance of those two.
- 20:13 – 29:40
The Value of Going Through Difficulty
- CWChris Williamson
talking before we started about the live things that I was doing.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You've got some live shows coming up this summer. Australia?
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Australia. Um, and I did this last year. And, uh, you know, I had a phenomenal first show in Dublin on a Thursday night, and it was classic sort of slightly rowdy Irish crowd that had had a few drinks beforehand. And it was- I mean, I got like, a 500 person standing of it, which was totally like- like I'm- I wasn't going out there giving a sermon. But it was just very nice-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
...and a lot of positive encouragement. And then the Manchester show, which was the Friday, I just ate shit.
- RHRyan Holiday
(laughs) Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I- it was a Friday, it was a slightly bigger venue, it was a bit brighter, maybe my delivery wasn't quite there, my mom and dad were in the crowd and loads of my friends were there, so I- I was a little bit more tense and more nervous. And, uh, I- at the halftime interval, 45 minutes in, uh, I was like- I just wasn't happy with how it was going and I went and I looked in the mirror, and I had a little word with myself. And I was like, "Hey, 600 people came to see you in Manchester on a Friday night. Some of your best friends from your entire life are here, and your mom and dad are sat four rows back. Like, if you can't have fun with this-"
- RHRyan Holiday
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
"...as your second ever show, and give yourself a bit of grace that-"
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"...it- you- this is a great learning experience for you. And also, how can you turn it around? How positive can you now come out in the second?" And that, you know, of all of the shows that I had, that little 30-second chat I had with myself in the mirror-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
...is one of the things that sticks in my mind the most. And that's an undeniable piece in my stack of proof that I can do the things that I say that I can do.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, and if it had gone the way- if it had just gone swimmingly, you wouldn't have had that sort of moment where you- I think what you actually emerge from that with is a str- is a better thing, which is you have the sense that it can- you can lose your grip on it a little bit and grab it back.
- CWChris Williamson
Bring it back, yeah, 100%.
- RHRyan Holiday
And- and so that's a super valuable skill because now when you go up there, uh, you're like, "I got this," right? You- you want to be-
- CWChris Williamson
Things can go wrong. The- the prese- the, uh-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
...projector can stop, the mic can die. We did this show in uh, uh, Vancouver, and it was so much fun. That was another Friday night in- in Canada. This time it was me and James. And dude, it was the audience was great, venue was fantastic. Mic just kept on dying.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Kept on dying all the time. And we had so much fun with it because we were both really comfortable. And I was like, again, going back now, uh, I was telling you about Jimmy Carr, one of the first shows I ever saw him do, his mic kept on dying, and he just styled it out. And you want- you love the guy even more-
- RHRyan Holiday
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
...because of how charming he is with going through the nightmare. He doesn't get uptight, he doesn't start shouting at people. It- it was awesome. So yeah, I think, um, oddly what we want in anticipation is for everything to go smoothly-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
...and for nothing to go wrong.
- RHRyan Holiday
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And what we value in retrospect is all of the shit going sideways as long as we come out of it, like, relatively unscathed.
- RHRyan Holiday
Or even not unscathed, right? Because you- let's say you just completely bomb, like it's just the worst. And I've had some- I've had some where, you know, like they told me the audience was this so I built it around that, and then oops, we miscalc- like I've had it go really bad.
- 29:40 – 40:00
Be Quiet, Work Hard & Stay Healthy
- CWChris Williamson
most popular tweet.
- RHRyan Holiday
Ooh.
- CWChris Williamson
Most consistent, most popular tweet.
- RHRyan Holiday
I have zero idea what this would be.
- CWChris Williamson
"Be quiet, work hard, and stay healthy. It's not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart, but sanity."
- RHRyan Holiday
I would say that the thing, when I hire people, the number one thing I'm looking for is, uh, I'm looking for, it's something I'm looking, I'm ho- I'm looking for the absence of, I want someone who is not nuts.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RHRyan Holiday
Like, (laughs) I want someone who's not nuts. And the problem is, a lot of young, ambitious people, they have shit that they have to deal with first. You know what I mean? The- they're- they're- they're too high strung, they're too worried, they're- they've got bad boundar- like, they're not ... I- I- I was very cognizant early in my career of, like, not giving anyone the creeps, not- not having bad energy. And, uh, that wa- that was why I would get invited to things. That's why I would get, you know, asked to participate in things, is that, that trust, that, "Hey, this person isn't gonna fuck this up," is almost more important than ... They know you're not gonna knock it out of the park. You're 20, you know? They- they (laughs) want you to not fuck it up. So anyways, I- I just try to- I just try to work on my shit. And- and I th- I- I ha- did have a lot of momentum early in my life, uh, you know, the kid going places, "I can't believe you're this young. How did you get here?" And I just wanted that to play actually no part in my identity-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... and how I saw myself, because I- I also know that most of those people regress to the mean. So, to actually have staying power, to like take advantage of getting shots early at stuff, the main thing is not fucking it up. That's like the main thing.
- CWChris Williamson
It sounds like, uh, "Be quiet, work hard, and stay healthy. It's not ambition or skill, but sanity," it sounds like there's a sort of long-termism ...
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... component in there as well.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah. I wa- I wanna- I don't wanna do something, make a bunch of money, and then not do the thing. I like doing the thing. (laughs) I wanna be able to do it, and I wanna, I want ... I remember I listened to someone once say, they were like, "If you stick around long enough, you'll get a shot. Everyone gets a shot."
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. Correct.
- RHRyan Holiday
"Just don't fuck the shot up." And that's, to me, I felt very fortunate to get those shots early, so it was actually more imperative that I didn't -
- CWChris Williamson
But it's also more risky.
- RHRyan Holiday
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, because you haven't put the requisite preparation-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... and work in that whole, "If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready," thing. But, I got the opportunity before I had a chance to get ready.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes. Yeah, you're- you- you think you want these things in your early 20s. You know, you want your first, uh, video to go super viral.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
You want your first show to get purchased. You want your first book to- to, you know, get a- a- a bidding war. You- you want your first company to have all the VCs knocking on the door. You think that's what you want.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
If you get it, you're immediately behind. You know, you immediately now have to go retrofit, or- or earn this somewhat misguided faith that they've put in. You know, you h- you have t- there's a lot of catching up you have to do.
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, you are- you are speaking to me. So, I signed with Portfolio, uh, and, uh, Hodder Hatchet in the UK.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And, there's- they're expecting a- n- they're expecting me to not fuck it up.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- 40:00 – 55:48
Be Clear on What Success Is
- CWChris Williamson
next one. Uh, if it makes you a worse person, it's not success. If starting a business tears your relationships apart, makes you bitter or frustrated with people, then it doesn't matter how much money it makes or external praise it receives. That's not success.
- RHRyan Holiday
What do you want your life to look like, right? I think it's very easy to go, "These people are successful, I'm gonna do what they do," but if you don't have a sense of day-to-day what you want your life to look like or who you want to be in your life, uh, it's very easy to lose your bearings very quickly. 'Cause you're gonna get offered things, you know? Do you wanna go over here? You wanna do this? You wanna do that? It's where the audience capture thing comes in too. You are doing what makes rational sense or is in your immediate self-interest, but it may well be taking you much, much further away from where you wanna go or where you should go. Then you wake up one day and, you know, your spouse leaves you. You wake up one day and your children hate you. You wake up one day and you go, "Oh, wait, I'm the bad guy." You know, like, "I'm, I'm not a positive contributor to humanity." And so I think being really clear with yourself about what success looks like is, is really important because it... if you start to get it, it becomes this rocket ship that you're riding on, and, and you are not gonna have the control then of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't it strange that...... the judgment we all have, most of us have, about what is success. We have to swim so fast upstream to get towards something which we probably actually value. Almost... I've- I've got this really lovely idea I'm working on with a friend at the moment about hidden and observable metrics.
- RHRyan Holiday
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's my contention that we often trade hidden metrics for observable metrics. So for instance, hidden metric might be time that you get to spend with your kids, quality of sleep, uh, how much you don't need to work.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, and will trade that for an increase in salary, f- will trade an increase in salary for a longer commute, which downstream-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... from that, how much more stressed are you? You have less-
- RHRyan Holiday
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... time with your kids, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because the best game in the world is money, and job title, and the way that you look, and... But what is it that you actually do? And trying to bifurcate that s-
- RHRyan Holiday
The observable metrics are easy to compare against other people, and so we default t- to them because we go, "Oh, this person has it, so having more than them is winning." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- RHRyan Holiday
This is where that competition impulse-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... is so insidious. You go... Like, I talk... Whenever I hear someone tell me that they have a certain number of books that they're trying to sell, like, they're like, "I want this book to sell a million copies," I'm immediately not interested because, uh, I know that they just pulled this number out of their ass. There's no... There's no reason that a specific number is a goal. Like, you're... So they've already said that their goal for the project is not to write something amazing, (laughs) it's not to write something meaningful.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- RHRyan Holiday
Um, and also, what timeline are we talking about? You know? Um, are we talking in- in a year or are we talking 50 years? Right? So they're... The... What they have effectively done almost always is they heard some book that they like sold this many copies, and then they've said, "Well, that's my thing," as opposed to figuring out their own race and thinking about it in a way that's sort of up to and about- about them. So...
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, we- we, um, w- we look at people who have achieved things, and we don't spend a lot of time thinking about what it's like to be that person.
- CWChris Williamson
100%. Dude, I'm- I'm obsessed with that question.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's... Neil Strauss was sat in that seat a couple of weeks ago.
- RHRyan Holiday
Oh, he's the best.
- CWChris Williamson
I- I... First time I met him, we got on super well. Like, he- he's- he's a real one. Um, and he told me... Do you know what the title of his next book is?
- RHRyan Holiday
No.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, it's called The Power of Low Self-Esteem.
- RHRyan Holiday
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Fucking awesome. I've texted him a bunch of times 'cause I was like, "Dude, I just want you to know how sticky that idea is."
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- 55:48 – 1:03:02
Stop Wanting Things to Be Easy
- CWChris Williamson
finally sufficiently successful, you can allow yourself to be happy if you just cut off this sort of need for validation?
- RHRyan Holiday
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, dude, it's, it's so interesting. It's so, so interesting. All right, let's do one more. Let's do one more-
- RHRyan Holiday
All right.
- CWChris Williamson
...and then we can get into the new book. Uh, what do I love from these? This is good. "Stop wanting things to be easy, and prepare for them to be hard."
- RHRyan Holiday
That seems pretty straightforward. Uh, I... You think you want it to go, you think you want all green lights, and you think you want all the things to pop every time. And, you know, show me someone for whom that went well. (laughs) Uh, where you build... I- It's like, look, you wanna be... You think you wanna have all these natural resources, like, you wanna be super tall. It'd be wonderful if you inherited money. Um, and then you look at the people to whom that advantage also created a pretty great deficiency.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
And then you go, "Oh, no, maybe you need just..." There's a right amount of struggle and difficulty. You don't want everything to go wrong.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
But it's probably not gonna all go right. And, and so when you get those, those moments of struggle to just go, "This is actually what I asked for." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah.
- RHRyan Holiday
"Like, this is, this is what I need." Um, you can, I can make the best of anything. That's kind of how I think about it.
- CWChris Williamson
I've heard you say before that you're a naturally anxious person, or you have a, a, a, a sometimes anxious disposition. How have you overcome that, or how do you, uh, deal and compensate with that?
- RHRyan Holiday
I'm working, I'm working on it all the time. Uh, I'm, I mean, I go to therapy for it. I build a routine around it. I build, uh, you know, I built my life around it. It's, it's understanding, like, my desire to control things or have them be a certain way, uh, is, is a recipe for misery. You know? That, that, I, it's like my, my wa- Like, it's, it's usually the expectation or the, the desire that gets you into trouble, right? Like, like, "I, I need it to go this way or it will be stressful." And I, what I notice in my own life, what I'm working on is I, I noticed the way in which... This is where you know you have a compulsion about something. Like, it's one thing to just be like anxious, like, "Hey, is the sky gonna fall?" That, I don't wake up just feeling anxious like that. What I do is I create sort of a cycle. So, I pack things or I set things up in a way where they need to go a certain way, and then the reward for them going that way is not good, it's relief.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
And so you have this sort of compulsive cycle where you are creating tension and stress. You're just ratcheting that up, the stress. And the only reward is that there's some moderate release of the stress.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, but it's-
- RHRyan Holiday
It's never good.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, Oliver Burkeman calls it productivity debt.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
He says you start each day at minus 10, and the best that you can-
- RHRyan Holiday
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
...hope for is to get back to zero.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You don't start at zero and good things take you to plus 10.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, and it's a very fragile place because all of these things have to go right for you to feel not shitty. Not like, "Hey, if everything goes right," you're like, "What an awesome day."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
But if everything goes right, you feel like you kept everything perfectly balanced.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. What-
- RHRyan Holiday
And that's a... Yeah?
- 1:03:02 – 1:12:07
Self-Improvement as a Parent
- RHRyan Holiday
rather than the same sort of compulsion or emptiness.
- CWChris Williamson
Scarcity cycle.
- RHRyan Holiday
Exactly. 'Cause it's- it's objectively not true anymore.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah, I, uh (laughs) , I have a good amount of work to do before I have kids. I can't wait to be a dad. But that is going to be a, uh, red pill and a half for me to-
- RHRyan Holiday
It's- it's good to try to do that work before, and then, in some ways, it's like the, you know, you've got to succeed to realize success. It's not gonna be- You have to- you have to just do it.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, the forcing function of the child is ultimately going to be the thing, right?
- RHRyan Holiday
Because it changes you, like hormonally and- and biologically and logistically.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RHRyan Holiday
And you know, it just changes you in every way. And- and so all these things that you could only consider or contemplate before are now real. And you also have this thing of the consequences of your deci- You- you realize the- the willingness with which you would subject yourself to abuse or consequences to your decisions and just grit your teeth and bear it. Um, you have to be a real asshole to not be affected by watching the consequences of the decisions or habits or lifestyle that you have manifest in a child, an innocent person.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's- isn't that interesting that, uh, it's kind of like that, I think, on average, people finish 50% of antibiotics courses, but they make their dogs finish 95%.
- RHRyan Holiday
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, that, you know, we're prepared to torture ourselves in a way.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But the second that we have this external thermometer-type thing, that says things like, "We've got nowhere to go and nothing to do-"
- RHRyan Holiday
Well, have you done any inner child work?
- CWChris Williamson
I- I'm gonna leave from here to go and do some. I've been doing it every- twice a week for a- a couple of months now.
- RHRyan Holiday
I- it can be... It's been a transformeral- a transformational thing for me. But, um, I was very stuck understanding who and what that child was. Like, my- my memories of childhood are not great-
- CWChris Williamson
Me too.
- RHRyan Holiday
... which is not a great (laughs) , uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Let me fix this thing I can't remember.
- RHRyan Holiday
... well, which is not a great verdict on your childhood. Like, m- most people are either really good or really bad. They know what they were feeling when they were 6 or 10 or 11, and you're just like, "I don't really remember." That's a- that's indi- indicative in and of itself. But, um, when you have a physical manifestation of you at every age, and every day, it's you one day older, it's- this isn't a reason to have kids, but it's a very, um, powerful thing about having kids, is suddenly you go, "Oh, this is what a seven-year-old thinks. This is what a seven-year-old needs."
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, wow, so you- you-
- RHRyan Holiday
"This is who... And they look like me and they talk like me."
- CWChris Williamson
You- you s- you started to see yourself and your own development arc, despite the fact that much of it was omitted from your own memory in the experience of...
- RHRyan Holiday
And you can have- you can have compassion and-... feel, like the part of what inner child work is, as I understand it, is about loving and reparenting that child, um, who, if you're disassociated from that person, that can be difficult to do.
- CWChris Williamson
So if you've, if you've got a surrogate you-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... in front of you-
- RHRyan Holiday
You're like, you know, a- and you also have this benefit, this be- this reality of, like, you can see that seven-year-old interacting with your own parents, and that's-
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- 1:12:07 – 1:22:40
Is Justice the Most Important Virtue?
- CWChris Williamson
by going to the link in the show notes below, or heading to drinkag1.com/wisdom. That's drinkag1.com/wisdom.You're in the middle of The Four Stoic Virtues at the moment.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I think maybe the only one less sexy than justice is temperance.
- RHRyan Holiday
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) So why say that justice is the most important? Like, what happens without justice?
- RHRyan Holiday
Well, justice is, justice is what everything else has to be directed towards, so the courage to put yourself out there, to take some risk. Is it admirable in pursuit of, uh, a socially destructive end or a nonsensical end because you've had your brain scrambled by things that you watched online? Um, it's funny. Temperance, temperance is not sexy, so I render it as discipline, uh, and it- it's far and away the best performing in the series-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... and almost certainly will be because it's a thing people-
- CWChris Williamson
Want.
- RHRyan Holiday
... think they want and, and definitely need the most. Justice to me, though, is the North Star, the value that unlocks the others. If you don't, if you don't have a code, a moral compass, a sense of, you know, what's right and wrong or, or why you're here or not here, what is, what is any of it for?
- CWChris Williamson
What is the... Talk to me about the relationship between justice and the other three.
- RHRyan Holiday
Marcus Aurelius' line is, is, "The fruit of this life is good character and works for the common good." I like that definition of justice. So first off, like, just the things that you control. Do I keep my word? How do I treat other human beings? You know, um, like, w- what ethics do I operate under? How do I run my business? How do I, you know, uh, do I litter or not litter? You know, like the, just the little decisions we make about what kind of person we're gonna be. That's character. And then the other side of that is, you know, the impact that we try to positively have in the world, in the political sphere, the social phere- sphere, the things we write, the things we say. Do we participate in the issues of our time? So that tens- that, the, the balance of those two is, is how I would define this idea of justice, like, what the right thing is. Um, and then the other virtues are in pursuit of that, like courage. It ta- uh, if we lived in a perfectly just world, it wouldn't take any courage to pursue these things, but we don't, right? In fact, most of the people that we admire, say a, a Martin Luther King or a Gandhi, um, we admire them simultaneously not just for their strong sense of right and wrong. They're not just these monkish figures who retreated from the world, but the wa- the, the courage and the tenacity with which they, uh, they brought that thing into being. And then we throw the fourth is like, the, the, the learnedness and the, the astuteness. In some cases like the, the, the, the political genius of them, this is where the discipline of wisdom comes in. So there, there are, there are these inseparable interrelated virtues that for the most part you cannot separate. You know, knowing what the right thing is and doing the right thing are very different things, and so e- even the virtue of justice, just having a good-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RHRyan Holiday
... conscience is in and of itself only so valuable.
- CWChris Williamson
So that's why it's right thing right now.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Because presumably deeds are important here. There's no point in just thinking-
- RHRyan Holiday
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... about justice. There's a role of practicing and actually doing the thing.
- RHRyan Holiday
Yeah, I don't know about you, but I, like, I didn't spend a lot of time in the book in these sort of incredibly complex philosophical discussions about, you know, should you do this or should you do that. I tend to find, at least in my own life, knowing what the right thing is is usually pretty obvious to me. Should I say this or not say this? Should I go with this or that? Should I work with this person or not work with this person? Should I refund this money or keep this money? You know, uh, should I buy this or buy that? Like, what is right is usually pretty obvious. Where the complexity comes in is when the mind works on the reasons why you don't have to do it this time. (laughs)
Episode duration: 2:05:29
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