“We all do this. Instead of using our minds to solve problems, we set it to work on problems that don’t exist. Instead of using it to move forward, we use it to look backward, pouring over what already happened. Instead of using it to feel good, we use it to torture ourselves. How crazy is that? And how counterproductive? You have been given an incredibly powerful too—this brain and imagination of yours. But like a gun or a knife, it can just as easily harm the user as it can protect or serve them. We have to train and discipline ourselves, we have to direct these resources properly. We have to channel our creativity not into fear and anxiety, but into purpose and progress.”
Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday Quotes
“A lot of what disturbs us from our tranquility is not literal noise. It’s not the pinging of our phone. It’s when we pull up our phone and see what other people are doing, when we have that FOMO or jealousy or we feel inadequate that we’re not accomplishing or achieving the way they are. Because what we’re forgetting is the path that we’re on, we forget what we’re trying to do, we forget what’s important to us.”
Ryan Holiday
“I try to remind myself that having to stay late at the office to write, trying to push through on no sleep, is disrespectful to the craft. When I spend that extra time on my phone instead of going to bed, when I plan a trip or a week poorly, I am cheating my work, cheating my family. I’m doing something unfair to the stranger I happen to bump into. Mostly, I am cheating and harming myself. A 2017 study actually found that lack of sleep increases negative repetitive thinking. Abusing the body trains the mind to abuse itself.”
Ryan Holiday
“Anger is easy. It’s easier to be angry than hurt. Being angry is active, it’s aggressive, it’s distracting. Hurt is acceptance. It’s something you sit with. It’s something you wish you didn’t feel, but you do. It’s something you wish hadn’t happened, but did. When Marcus Aurelius said it wasn’t manly to get angry, perhaps this is what he was saying. That the childish thing is to yell about and fight about and reject the hurt that you feel. The adult thing is to try to understand it, to come to terms with it, to understand that—like all things—it will pass, and that if you’re patient and have perspective, it will help. The responsible thing is to explore the roots of an emotion, to ask why you’re feeling a particular way, why something was so triggering or painful and to try to deal with that.”
Ryan Holiday
“In the struggle against injustice, it’s easy to let bitterness and hatred harden your heart. As Marcus Aurelius wrote: ‘What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.’ When we close ourselves off to love and hope, we naturally experience less love and hope. The Bible reminds us that ‘whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.’ And James Baldwin, that ‘hatred…has never failed to destroy the men who hated.’ Hatred corrodes. It takes you south, backward, down, down to depths. Love, on the other hand, protects, trusts, hopes, preserves. Love does not fail. It takes you north, it leads you forward. It always wins. Which way are you going? Is your heart growing or shrinking? Is your love and compassion and connection for other people, your hope for a better future, growing or shrinking?”
Ryan Holiday
“The point of philosophy is to challenge you, to make you uncomfortable. It’s to fix the illnesses of the soul, of the mind. Even though there are passages of Meditations that are soothing and reassuring, a lot of them are jarring, a lot of them are uncomfortable or make you think a lot, and a lot of them you might instinctively disagree with. But that’s the point of philosophy: it’s not supposed to be your instructor, it’s supposed to be a kind of medicine.”
Ryan Holiday
“What’s the point of success if it doesn’t free you up to do the right thing? If your money doesn’t give you the security to tell a jerk or a racist to go to hell, how much is it actually worth? The Stoics said that money, like power, was neither good nor bad—that having it was not itself virtuous—but they also believed it was better to have than not, especially if it facilitated being able to act on your virtues”
Ryan Holiday
“In the same way that a vaccine exposes our body to a manageable amount of the virus or the disease, teaching it how to fight the illness, talking to ourselves (or our children) about what is going to happen in advance of it happening helps us deal with it. It removes the surprise, it removes the suddenness of it. The last thing you want to do is to face anything—a virus or a trip to the grocery store with a tired kid—defenseless. Especially when there are defenses available.”
Ryan Holiday
“The idea of ‘Fuck Yes…or N’ 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. Right now I’m about to do something big that I am both excited and terrified about. The point is: The certainty comes later. The truly life-changing decisions are never simple. If I had only ever done things I was absolutely certain about, I’d have missed out on experiences I love. Conversely, I regret a good chunk of my ‘Fuck yes’s’ because I was caught up in a fit of passion or bias. The whole point of risk is that you don’t know.“
Ryan Holiday
“When someone tells me that it’s going to take six weeks for our bindery to make another run of the leatherbound Daily Stoic, I want to ‘start the clock’ as soon as possible. Meaning, I’m not pleased if I hear it took two weeks to make the decision about how many to order, or that somebody was slow in processing an invoice. I don’t control how long it takes to make stuff, but I do control when the clock starts on it. The project is going to take six months? Start the clock. You’re going to need a reply from someone else? Start the clock (by sending the email). It will likely take a while for the bid to come back? Start the clock (by requesting it). It’s going to take 40 years for your retirement accounts to compound with enough interest to retire? Start the clock (by making the deposits). It’s going to take 10,000 hours to master something? Start the clock (by doing the work and the study).”
Ryan Holiday
“Stoicism is not just invulnerability…if such a thing even exists. Stoicism is also having the self-awareness to know when you are struggling. It’s having the courage to admit when you could use a hand. It’s having the wisdom not to pretend you know the answer (you can’t learn that which you think you already know, Epictetus says). It takes daring and toughness to go to therapy—perhaps more than just white knuckling it. It’s a brave thing to share your struggles with a friend or to hire a coach or expert to help you get better at something. It takes a confident person to ask a question or admit, ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t be like the cowards who are too fragile or fearful to do this. Be truly courageous.”
Ryan Holiday
“Even if you have drifted off the path. Marcus Aurelius tried to remind himself that there was a spring of goodness inside of him and that no matter what he or anyone shoveled on some of it, it was still there, still fresh and new and ever-flowing. The Stoics did not believe in original sin. They did not think we were hopelessly broken. They believed that being who we were—living well, living as our nature intended us to live—was always possible. You might be low and awful right now, Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, but in just a few days you can be worthy of being seen as a god. He was telling himself he just had to go back to the teachings, go back to his principles, go back to the spring.”
Ryan Holiday
“It doesn’t matter what you do, the criticism is always going to be there. So you might as well do what you think ought to be done. You might as well do what seems meaningful and important and fulfilling and right to you. People are going to say what they’re going to say, haters will find a way to hate. In the meantime, just be true to yourself, be true to the mission you have, fight for the respect (and praise) of yourself, not the mob, not the future. That’s hard enough to win anyway.”
Ryan Holiday
“Bad character might drive someone into a position of leadership—because of their ambition, their ruthlessness, their shamelessness—but eventually, inevitably, this supposed ‘strength’ becomes an Achilles’ heel when it comes time to actually do the job. Who trusts them? Who actually wants to work with them? What kind of culture develops around them? How can they learn? How can they know where the landmines are?”
Ryan Holiday
“Seneca would say that he actually pitied people who have never experienced challenges. ‘You have passed through life without an opponent,’ he said, ‘No one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.’ Epictetus said when a challenge is put in front of you, think of yourself as an athlete getting paired with a tough competitor. You want to be Olympic-class? ‘This is going to take some sweat to accomplish,’ he said.”
Ryan Holiday