How Stoics Build And Maintain Self-Discipline | With @RyanHolidayOfficial

and we think discipline is a punishment but actually nobody has a shittier life than a person who has no self-control No Boundaries no rules you know who whose life is chaos it sucks you know the world has become infatuated with not being accountable yet one of the increa incredibly easy straight paths to being happier and more content and joyous is to be more accountable Vayner Nation what is good we are back with the garyvee audio experience with one of my favorite guests of the past and I'm just going to predict it right now one of my favorite guests of the future I expect to have a very long friendship with this tremendous young man and so I'm excited to get right into it because we don't have too much time on this episode Ryan holiday is one of the more thoughtful characters I've come across over the last 15 20 years of this version of my career um and it's been really nice we've gotten closer in the last five to seven years after I admired him from afar um he's rep by Vayner speaker workers which is a real honor I'm super happy about it because I was the one pushing for him to be signed by Vayner speakers after I had a good talk with him in La at an event and most importantly I think he's a very thoughtful author and voracious reader and a Trevor Trove of a treasure Trove of information so uh Ryan how are you I'm doing good I'm in La you guys just sent me here on a gig so I'm uh you're putting me to work I love it so right tell us about the new book let's just get right into it yeah I'm doing it about something I think you know is equally important as I do I'm doing this series on the cardinal virtue so I just did a book on courage and then this new one is about discipline which I think is a critical ingredient to success uh I would I would be shocked to find someone who is successful who did not become successful because of both their personal discipline and their study of a discipline deciding to see what they do as a practice and a crack so discipline is Destiny is the name of the book and for someone who's hearing that like oh crap I'm super disciplined or I'm not disciplined what's uh what's the opening rant you can give to people to why this is so significant in success or Joy or happiness yeah my point isn't just that discipline will make you successful like it's a means to an end discipline is also an end in and of itself a rewarding one right so like obviously if you want to be in good shape you have to be disciplined about what you need how you work out Etc um if you want to be successful in podcasting or writing or any profession you have to be disciplined but if you're if your profession is mowing lawns or uh sweeping the streets if you are disciplined about that if you treat it seriously if you get the edges just right you care about every facet of it makes you great even if nobody else cares notices so I want to think about discipline in two senses it's not just hey um I'm disciplined because I want to get to a place in the future where I have more money more time and we tell ourselves I can be less disciplined but it's actually that discipline in the moment right now is a sort of guaranteed form of greatness taking what you do seriously sweating it working on it caring about it even if nobody else notices you know Steve Jobs famously would talk about how his father told him that you a carpenter cares about even the back of the drawer the inside of the computer that's discipline too and a lot of it's totally invisible to people you know it's funny that makes it's funny where my brain went with that I would argue that really lands with me because and this might be valuable to the audience especially the parents who are raising kids who are finding interests in new things that parents don't believe can be professions if anything of the last 10 years should teach parents it's a lot of the things that we didn't think were jobs are or at least things that make you know parents worry about I want my kid to make enough money to sustain their life likelihood the parents of my generation did not think all those hours of video games was one of those things my mom famously told AJ get off the computer you're on it too much and made him get a job at amp Supermarket because she didn't think us playing on selling on eBay or like what he was doing was going to be a thing these are really interesting what when you said that I would argue that's what entrepreneurship was for me I you know when I was selling lemonade and shoveling snow and even when I was selling baseball cards I remember making like 300 bucks at a card show seemed like a trillion dollars and I remember teachers and my friends parents not my parents which is why what happened kind of scoffing at it or like thinking that the D I got in

science which is was a much bigger indicator than what I did with the baseball card show but what's funny is I've always talked about it as I knew but I would argue what sprung to me when you were talking was I just enjoyed being an Entre it's how I am today I yeah I get way more joy in the process of what I do than the fact that I'm garyvee or the financial ramifications of what I do came along with it yeah look there's a difference between writing and Publishing in my line of work I love writing I sometimes publish right publishing is when it goes out in the world when it makes money when it's released and all that and that's important but writing is what I wake up early to do because I love doing it and I think your point about you know anything can be a discipline craft is really important my son likes to watch these videos by this kid becro Jack on YouTube who does Minecraft videos yep and I and you know I don't love it I don't it doesn't make any sense to me why you would want to watch someone play YouTube but I was trying to tell my son that this person is also an entrepreneur also an artist and that's why he has an on an audience of millions of people in that you can enjoy it but you should also respect the fact that he got really he got so good at something that he's one of the few people in the world that makes a living doing that thing and that's what we should take away whatever it is that you love if you like throwing darts be the best Dart thrower in the world to me it's why even in the 80s growing up when I felt that stay-at-home moms were disrespected way more by the way for all the youngsters who are socially like thoughtful um it was way worse in the 80s and I remember being very affected by that because I actually really knew while it was happening that my mom was orchestrating a masterpiece I like literally vividly remember being 12 13 that range 12 13 14 and saying my mom's smarter my mom's doing it better and I think please oh I was gonna say I think about this I remember you know I would take my our two kids to this daycare and I think about these three women that put 24 year olds down to bed at the same time for nap in the middle of the day and you think about the energy and the skill and the craft of even that so that think of the emotional discipline the patience the calmness that you have to radiate outwards to do something Ryan wouldn't what couldn't the argument in this Checkers chess game of this conversation play out with a Checkmate that says discipline could be a gateway to all eight billion people's happiness yeah I mean I don't think here's the funny thing we think that discipline sucks right like not getting to eat everything you want not getting to do spend well we we think discipline sucks in the things that don't come natural to us you know to me you know what I mean I'm saying is yeah we think discipline is a punishment but actually nobody has a shittier life than a person who has no self-control No Boundaries no rules you know it's the way life is chaos it's the way I think about accountability on P you know the world has become infatuated with not being accountable yet one of the increa incredibly easy straight paths to being happier and more content and joyous is to be more accountable yes so tell us please go ahead sorry I really want to get into the book a little bit because I feel like a lot of my audience is going to buy it or is considering it because they've they have a sense of you and things of that nature so I guess you know who's this for or how do you write it in a way that brings value to someone who views themselves as already disciplined or if someone's listening and saying [ __ ] I'm really not disciplined like how did you structure it in a way to give somebody maybe a spark to start the process or is there you know how do you think about that well I obviously like you identify with the first category I'm a very disciplined person I've always been disciplined that's been the root of a lot of My Success but you and I own battles um overwork burnout over committing uh you know not uh can I say something right like no [ __ ] this is really actually just a moment to jump in actually I'm probably saying this because I'm asking you because I do find you very thoughtful I I am very overrated and misunderstood on the like I've never felt professional burnout in my entire life I'm not joking I this is why discipline is interesting to me I'm trying to like put these puzzles

of all these emotions together I the best way I've articulated it the place I've gotten the most DMS and emails about where I'm like oh now I get you Gary and this works for me too is when I talk about the reason I don't have burnout is two things one I genuinely am not attached to my public or even private success I don't care if my parents or my siblings or the world thinks I'm successful I am very good at being disciplined to live within my means I spent all of my 20s all of them not making up even a hundred thousand dollars a year which is a lot of money but like in the way that people think about money you know I didn't that didn't happen for me nor did into my early 30s so I'm very good living within my means I'm not attached to my success and then comma what I do for a living is truly my hobby truly so like my disciplines are more of like I don't want like eating habits working out I only developed that in my late 30s uh Candor in my personal life was something I really struggled with I'm not disciplined saying it like it is garyvee is great at it which is the irony of it all the pup my public Persona went on public in a meeting in an interview like this I'm very good at it because I'm talking to the world but when 25 people I love or the 500 employees that I love I really struggled with it very undisciplined with Candor but not burnout and things that nature and so just I'm sorry to deviate but when you hear that of somebody who loves to like what is that combination of emotional traits that allows someone like me to truly not be there like I'm genuinely not stressed professionally ever well that's great I mean I think it requires a certain amount of discipline for me it you know saying no is something I have to be disciplined about because I always want to do one more I'll always want to commit to one more thing yeah and if I'm not disciplined about that then inevitably I will burn out or people around me I that's something I have to be conscious of is like hey if my capacity is a hundred but people on my team's capacity is 75 I can only commit to what the team can handle unless I want to be constantly replacing those people like or for all the operators I couldn't agree more such a brilliant statement I'm obsessed with the concept of creating infrastructure for them to play at their 75 and then I have to be on an island from my 76 to 100 and not require anyone to be the facilitator of it hence why I have two Chiefs of Staff and three full-time admins that was a big learning step all my Executives all my operators all my you know CEOs and CEOs they could I could easily manage them with that my infrastructure of my time that was why I built out such a large team people laugh at it but it was actually through empathy and compassion to the ones to keep them at their 75. no it's like you'd think okay I'm operating at this level I'm having one person come handle my extra stuff that should be enough like I should only need one person to do that it's like no actually it might be three or four or five people and you empathy is a great word there uh and then also understanding hey I just noticed I kept burning through people and it was expensive and difficult to have to replace them each time and so I had to say hey I have to think about what I'm able to take on what each person is able to handle or I'm being short-term disciplined at the expense of long-term discipline right just because I know there's a lot of these characters on the call and I think this will land and I you know you're a humble dude but I'm gonna ask you to be for it right about it um why do you think you're such a successful author because I think a lot of people please I treat it like a job I show up and I do it every day you know right I was thinking about this when you were talking about some of these social media people I think people look at an influencer and they go oh that's fun you just wake up and write pictures and you're gonna do whatever you want and it's like no I work at this every single day I show up I do the work and I love it and I can't not do it right there's a bunch of factors but I think people they look at something and they see the output and they assume it's easy and they don't understand the day-to-dayness of it the commitment to wanting to get better to really thinking about hey here is here is me doing it at 50 and then here's me doing it 100 and if there's a huge difference between giving all like your best to something and then just you know sort of phoning it in I think that's right and I think back to where this is why I'm so passionate about passion because I think it's a lot easier to be disciplined like if people said the five people you love the most health is dependent on you writing actually writing every morning I would like go visit those five people and give them a kiss and say let's reminisce because you're going downtown Charlie Brown because I'm incapable of

writing every day like you know it's like you know this is I think the extremities of what comes natural and easy to me versus what comes so hard to me and this is that was a part of I've forever have been affected by how I was so atrocious at school I'm just like I'm fascinated by it because I meet so many people like I did nothing but I got C's and I was like why didn't I get C's and I think to your point the influencer thing I'm glad you brought that up I laughed when people make fun of them because I know how hard it is and how much work is required what's a common thing that you've seen people do to start the plot process to become more disciplined is it try to become micro disciplined about something small and then you build on that is it just rip the Band-Aid off and go at it like is it a babysitter so for me I got to I used a babysitter for working out changed my life I finally figured out I'm so disciplined at being accountable to others I'm in charge of my siblings I love my parents I love my employees I love the world oh [ __ ] and literally the reason I got a full-time trainer was to not let Mike down that drives me more than going to the gym actually sure yeah I mean I think there's two easy ways to tackle discipline one might be routine and structure in your life like what time do you wake up what's your calendar look like stop sort of winging it and I think people figured out during covid like oh wait now I'm My Own Boss I actually have to be in charge I can't just do whatever I want when I want it to me another really easy place is what you're talking about with is a physical practice something where you at Seneca one of my favorite quotes from Santa Cruz says we treat the body rigorously so that it is not disobedient to the mind and the point is you want to develop the practice of being in charge like with the the practice of oh I'm tired oh it's hard oh it's difficult oh it's not going well you want to cultivate the muscle that is able to override that and keep going it's like when you crank the knob in the shower towards cold every time you do that you are developing a strength over yourself that I think is transferable to the rest of your life I think that's right um what does someone here's a good one because I see this through my DMs and emails do you read your DMs and emails right like a lot a little like how do you play that I've had to be disciplined about that like because I know that I focus best when I'm not thinking about what other people think of me and when I'm not getting random criticism or people telling me that I'm awesome so I've had to set up some boundaries like I have a social media person I also my personal social media is on my wife's phone so I can't check it as much as I would ordinarily check it and so I do get feedback I like to get that feedback in person when I meet like real humans like on the street or at a talk or something you feel people are more civil and more themselves in that environment correct yeah and I just don't want a lot of unsolicited feedback just direct access to me at any moment I found that that's not can do it doesn't work for like me keeping my own internal compass on point good for you uh I uh and this goes back to like self-awareness I on the other hand I'm so detached from it even when people like you're the goat or you're a scam artist I'm actually spending all my energy on trying to understand why one is doing that more so that it's almost like I don't even like exist it's super interesting how I treat it nonetheless this leads me to this question because I've seen this a lot of people struggle with the restart of discipline after sustaining discipline and falling off the horse help us talk through this for four years you've been great on your eating and diet and working out and then covet happened you lost your way and you feel like all those years were wasted and you're kind of getting to this depression Circle for you know for 17 months you were disciplined with containing some of the feelings you had and you were more civil and somebody triggered you and you lashed out and now you're lashing out every like and there's a million different versions of this uh here's a big one that I hear a lot about a lot of people really struggle with being upset that they're late to everything like a big one yeah I get a lot of that like I suck I'm like you don't suck like you know and so that person gets good they created a system admin calendar alert systems apps who knows what they do it for three and a half years oh darn they got out of that pattern and they're no longer help us get back once disciplined lost their way how do I get back on the discipline train I'm given that you've looked at this subject matter I'm sure you got some thoughts on this yeah look Gill is not a constructive

emotion whipping yourself telling yourself that you suck it's not helpful right it feels self-indulgent it feels like it's helping but it's not right uh one of my favorite lines from The Stokes they say how do you know you're making progress you're being a better friend to yourself and you know a friend doesn't go like Gary you're such a piece of [ __ ] you're late I hate you right they go hey uh what's up with you are you okay do you need something right like I'm just checking in I'm seeing how you're doing and so realizing that we all fall short we're human beings it's going to happen um and then that's the end of that discussion and then it's about getting back closer to where you want to be or who as opposed to this downward spiral because you slipped up or you fell off like I just think about it as like there's this kind of Rhythm this bass line of who I want to be and sometimes I'm way above it and sometimes I fall below it but I just I know where I want to come back to all the time and it's like if you're ever playing music you know the beat is going and you can come and go with it but it's always there you just got to come back to that beat I love that what uh what did you learn most you know this is obviously something you've been into aware of thoughtful about research you associate with it so it's been very tried and true for you for a long time you write this book you have to go a little deeper thus you must have stumbled on something what was that well one of the things I'm thinking about in my life that I've taken from it is that you know discipline is not just rigidity like you talked about being on my mind I love it five minutes early or like I never do this you know that rigidity is also a form of fragility you have to be able to be flexible right adjust especially as you get you know in the higher levels of things so like when you see athletes that have this routine they're like I always do it this way well what if the team playing is late because of weather you know what if you're not playing on the home court because something changed you have to like you have to be resilient and part of resilience is flexibility being able to say I can work with this it does would it would it wouldn't you argue that's the highest level of discipline I mean for me when I think about discipline it's that my mental status with myself when I talk to myself is always apologetic and understanding of things out of my control yes that is my core discipline is I wanted this to be the case the plane it snowed Mother Nature said go [ __ ] yourself I said thank you mother nature and we got in at 3am it's okay that I'm not gonna wake up at 6am and work out because I'm tired and it's okay and I'll pick it back up tomorrow and that's that well and that actually requires more discipline I think so get in at three you normally work out at six you like working out you get the dopamine from working out you have a streak going on your smart watch that you don't want to break but sleep is important you know being fresh for the meeting in the morning or the talk that you're giving in the morning and your health is important and if you force a workout when you're stiff or you know not prepared not to you could hurt yourself and so you have to have the discipline like for me I it's harder for me not to work out but I'm not feeling well than it is for me to force it anyway right and so it takes discipline to be flexible actually and say I'm going to adjust I'm going to sleep in I'm gonna move this thing in my calendar I'm gonna do X Y and Z and I'm gonna I'm gonna adjust I don't control what happens to go to your point but we control how we adjust to what happens how we respond to what happens that's actually the essence of stone philosophy right there you know it's funny well I got you for five minutes it like my brain's just racing and where it wants to go is the rigidness the people in my life who are obsessed with the world being black and white are incredibly unhappy I breaks your heart it breaks my heart watching them many are the closest of the closest to me others are the next Circle in the next Circle and all of it traces back to fear you know that they they're trying to protect themselves from an unknown because it hurts they're scared of you know and I think you've said something so powerful that got me going to this place which is like do not consider discipline being rigid and it's funny because it triggered me in a good way I'm like right like I think my superpower is you know you said this to me on a podcast not judging myself and I think it speaks to a deep Obsession of flexibility and non-rigid I mean I it's actually scary to me how not

rigid I am and I think about this you know great athletes have discovered that hey pliability flexibility is actually more important than strength you know if you're just lifting lifting first off you're going to hurt yourself you're going to wear yourself down but what about when you get tackled what about you of course you have to reach for the ball if you're not pliable if you're not flexible that's when you pull a muscle and I think there's a metaphor in there for the rest of us we have to be able to adjust and bend and go with the flow of things as opposed to diluting ourselves so we can be so strong and rigid that we've never been we never break you know life's gonna disabuse you of that ocean I think that's right I you know if there's anything I want people to leave with is emotional flexibility as a North star is just so good like it's probably what I've spent the majority of my life trying to do through osmosis around my inner circles professionally and personally it just it's so darn clear well I think about this with routine right it's one thing that I wake up at this time I do this and then what about when you're on the road right so I actually think about it routines plural right I'm just I have different routines that I do in different ways hey actually the morning one's not going to work I'm gonna move into the afternoon it's important that you have key practices things that you always try to do but you have to be able to shuffle them around adjust because life is constantly shuffling you around and adjusting you yeah and the thing that I always worry about for the people I love and this is probably an important conversation for people to listen to is when people struggle with things changing that are tiny what happens when things change when they're big yeah like when you lose a loved one when there is a pandemic when they're when your country is going through turmoil or anxiety like you know there's just like all these things that are happening in our world today and like you know the lack of flexibility is leading people into deeper and deeper spirals yeah that doesn't mean you don't have principles that there aren't codes that are core to who you are but it's about the little things that don't matter that you want to be able to adjust so precisely as you said in the big things you don't change this is why I love you because you touch on things when I make statements in a similar manner that I do like you so were able to take that last sentence and speak to another common thing that you hear from the Counterpoint which is you're absolutely right my principles are non-bendable the problem is they're so macro and so like universally based on things like kindness and love that you know it's not about like people being late yeah like my poor father for example like like somebody being late to this like and actually I'll use a business example to help people my father growing up we had this crazy good employee the guy was getting ten dollars an hour Ryan like he was a young kid the kid clearly was like in that I'm late life you know and he would come in at 903 and 904 and 906 and 902 and 901 and my dad would like obsess over his punch card this kid was disproportionately the most valuable employee in the company besides me and he was making ten dollars and that was when we were very small business and I just like really struggled with and my you know with my dad and we would argue and fight I would cry I was really 15 16 at this point so I was really like emotionally charged and arguing with my dad if it went a certain way I would cry I'd be like Dad the VA like I don't get it like the value this guy brings and look what he does and what if he quits and this and that and like you want to yell at him for this and I'm like it's a couple of millions like the principle it's the principle and like the discipline like and I was like No it's really not and I think the reason I want to tell that story is an Ender is I think a lot of people right now are running families organizations relationships companies one employee a virtual employee and they're getting hung up on something that they think is an important principle and they think it's important because you know I could see somebody taking this conversation from the wrong angle and trying to deploy discipline on their employees instead of disciplining themselves in the macro right they leave here and be like oh please it's important to realize we're talking about self-discipline yes right you're not a drill sergeant yes you don't you don't control these other self-discipline the stoics say tolerant with others strict with yourself correct and that you can decide that I'm punctual I'm never late you should be flexible you should be able to adjust but the point is you don't get to decide these rules and then project them onto other people and this is the important part be disappointed or frustrated or despair what Ryan what is

that called if stoics are doing it that way what are people that are doing at the reverse because I'm very hot on these last four minutes because I got real feelings about leadership parenting so what is that called do we categorize that like how is that talked about in slang that's called being a tyrant you know if you're trying to control every little thing that every people other people do you're trying to monitor their personal decisions and you know you're you know yeah and what bothers me the most is always out of self-interest often Financial yes yes [ __ ] but short-term Financial because the long-term no [ __ ] we want to cultivate great talent and do what that Talent needs to be successful and if that's being two minutes late who cares retention matters I know that you've written a book that went crazy viral in the sports world because I'm always recruiting and this and that and plus I think you know Belichick liked it which really pissed me off and kind of hurt our friendship but you know I think about retention all the time um and I think about it from Sports quite a bit teams that have that same core it's very clear and you see it in golden state and basketball right now and um and I believe in it so much in the workplace and to your point another tremendous add-on a good cherry on the end of this once again you added a tremendous point because it bleeds retention and you're absolutely right the financial value is extremely short term yeah brother you and I are always on the same wavelength it really are and like the one thing that you do that I like so much is and maybe because it comes so natural to me is I like that you're able to take a sentence and like take it to the next place you did it two or three times here and I really noticed it this time even more in the past so I admire that because it is a higher understanding of the thing you know and I think actually I'm really excited I think this is really going to be valuable for a lot of people listening even if this isn't for you about discipline I think if you really maybe even re-listen to this podcast I think the thematics play out in a lot of Arenas a lot of self traits of this gray versus black and white um I really like that strict with yourself I mean you know I say it differently and it drives people around me crazy I always say I don't have expectations of others I just don't I just try to take their reality and try to make it good you work with what they give you a hundred percent I'll give you one more minute here because I'm enjoying this too much what did we not touch on in the bouncing around that we just did that's core to the book or something you wanted to say or something I'll bring value to someone to understand why they want well look when you're talking about high forms of discipline I do think that the highest form of discipline though is when you are so strict with yourself and you model these behaviors and it inspires others to be more disciplined right so the great leaders make everyone else on the team more disciplined not by force not by yelling but by modeling those traits they don't talk about it they are about it that's what I think ultimately we want to Aspire to do as leaders we'll leave it with that Ryan thank you so much you're the best man cheers