YouSaid · the spoken record

Ryan Holiday

lines on the record: 129
first: 2024-11-26
most recent: 2024-11-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We're really good at giving advice to other people and then not so good at applying it ourselves because we have that cognitive distance. We're able to, it's our identity is less at stake or our emotions are less tied up in it. With your kids, you're You're able to see The impotence and the Funness of the frustration. And you also feel obligated To help them with the metaskill of that because of the specific instances with a kid, you're like, well, how is this going to matter for their life? But we're not as good as that for us. We're just like, I'm mad that someone said X, Y, or Z, not, hey, how can I get better in my life at not responding when people say X, Y, or Z? So yeah, you learn as you teach, the Stokes say.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know I'm not born that way I wouldn't say that I am now that way, but I think I am further along in becoming that way than I was at the beginning. I think it's probably true for a lot of the decision-making and cognitive stuff that you talk about, which is like, are there people who are naturally gifted and have this sort of a computer mind? Yes. And then there are those of us that are not that way, but in the process of studying and thinking about them, can we slow that process down? Can we? Be more conscious of the things, less of a slave to the things, I would say yes.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there is no complaint about the unfairness, the capriciousness, the surprise, just a what do we have him for lunch?”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's told that he's been convicted and you know he has like there's like an hour before the verdict comes down and I think he exercises or so he just like does whatever he just goes about his day and then they're told okay you're being you're being exiled and you can take some of your property with you just was it going to be a penniless exile or not he finds out he can take some of his property and then he says to his friend okay we'll have our lunch on the road then or i forget what it's attica or something he's like we shall have our lunch in attica you know he's like basically like we'll just get on the road and to me there's that is close to the stoic idea of joy and happiness of uh you just Just guy told everything was stolen from you. You just got told you have cancer, you just got told insert horrendous event.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're always thinking about stuff, and yet you also have to listen to this ridiculous story about a video game character or something. You have to be present even though you're waiting for an email telling you that your job has been made redundant and you're about to be laid off, or you have to have fun with your kids at an amusement park as somebody you know is dying in a hospital or whatever. And I think when the Stoics thought about joy and happiness, they were thinking about a more resilient form of that emotion, not fun.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“likely that they would all be evaporated in a nuclear strike. And if that was to happen part of his job was to like... Flee and survive, you know, not with like, it's not like the doctor got to take their family with him. So she was just talking about the compartmentalization that that would require. And I think that's interesting because, one, that is actually, I think, more relatable to every parent than you think it would be.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She had what she thought was a normal childhood. Her name is Mary Philpod, I think. She had what she thought was a normal childhood. And then she only found out later that her father they lived outside Washington DC that her father's job was to basically set up the government facilities. He was a doctor, so he would have gone in there if it happened. But to set up basically like the government in exile underground in the case of a nuclear strike on Washington. And so she's kind of thinking about what it must have been like for her father to go to his kids' soccer games or punish them for not doing their homework or, you know, do anything at home with like a literal sort of Domocles over him at all moments. Like his job was to prepare for”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why could you experience happiness as your being tortured to death? And I don't think they necessarily thought you could, but it is an interesting thought experiment. The idea like if joy and happiness are dependent on external circumstances, how good is it? And therefore, how fragile it is. And so the idea to be able to experience joy and happiness in any and all situations is, I think, provocative and interesting. There's this woman, she wrote this book called Bomb Shelter. I think about it all the time.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure one has to make room for the low lows in the sense that life will force that upon you. I think when the Stoics talk about joy, they are trying to remind you that if joy for you is only possible when things are going amazing, you're or your happiness is therefore out of your hands. Like one of the philosophical questions that we get from a lot of the agents is like could a person be happy like on the rack”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're racked every time you lose someone, life's going to be very hard because losing people is a part of life. So I think they're trying to. to balance both a healthy set of emotions and an unpredictable often painful existence and this sort of lowercase stoicism that we have is about as far from the mark as lowercase epicureanism is from the philosophy of Epicurus who didn't eat at fine restaurants or engage in orgies or truly give his life over to pleasure as we understand that to mean now.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I mean, I make a distinction between being angry and doing something out of anger. I think that's like a pretty basic being, you know. Being sad and then being in despair, again very different. And so I think to me stoicism is a set of exercises and insights and practices to help you understand those emotions, process those emotions, and not be ruled by those emotions. But I don't think there's ever this place where you are you're able to fully transcend them, and I'm not sure you would want to. The Stoics weren't saying like you should never laugh, you should never have fun, you should never experience pleasure. I think they were saying, hey, you know, this thing that feels pleasurable in the moment, how do you feel after? And so let's try to have a fuller picture of that thing. And they're saying, you know,”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Stoics got married, the Stoics had children, the Stoics went to the theater, the Stoics wrote moving works that were performed in the theater, the Stoics fought in battle, the Stoics participated in politics, in the great causes of their time. The idea that these people had no emotions is to me totally belied by their actual day-to-day existences that we have a lot of Evidence for. And when you look at Mark Suleus' meditations, you're not seeing a person who is devoid of emotion. You are trying to see a person who's attempting to be less emotional in high stakes situations or in stressful situations. But to me, that's very different than. denying or disregarding the emotions altogether”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, when think about how much less threatening it is to say, the story I'm telling myself about that is this, as opposed to I don't like that what you're doing is this. Because one implies judgment and then the other implies not just a certain interpretation. Expressing your interpretation of reality as reality, and therefore you are offering the person the opportunity to correct or update or contextualize that thing.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Poor idea of stoicism at Epictetus said that it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things. It's the way the voice sounds to us, that is the problem, not the voice. And when you realize that, it doesn't magically give you the ability to not have the opinion, but it does help you realize I'm bringing a lot to this. I'm making something up about that. That's what an assumption is. I am assuming something. And usually those things are making stuff harder, not easier.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Realize in that moment just how different objective reality and perception are, how sometimes it's good to get external feedback and sometimes it's good to be in a bubble because can you do anything about your voice? No. My therapist uses his phrase that I think about a lot and she catches herself doing it and so on. I catch herself doing somebody does something and then you're like, well, what that means or what you're saying and she always says you should preface it with this phrase what I make up about that is what they're saying, what they're doing, it means something to them and then you're having an interpretation of it. It is a remark and then you are saying it's rude or it's manipulative or it's provocative or offensive or loving or not loving. You're interpreting what it is. And this is a very”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's like also what I'm hearing right now as I'm talking is an understanding of my voice that when I listen to a recording of this, you seem very clearly do not match up. And that's to me a metaphor for so much of this human experience, which is that it feels one way to us as we're feeling it or as it's coming out, and then with distance or from a different lens or a different medium, it suddenly sounds and feels and looks very different. And I think it's because it's like I'm hearing it through my own head right now, like the way the sound waves are literally going through the bones in my own head are different than when I'm have headphones on and it's been recorded afterwards. Yeah, you grow up thinking your voice sounds like one thing and then you hear it recording, you're like, oh, I'm actually a very different voice. You have these thoughts about things that feel like they make sense.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I was just a regular person, I think I would do a lot more journaling than I do, given that I have to wake up and think about all these things and write about them and talk about them and I get asked questions about them. So it's sort of a, there's something, there's a benefit to the profession certainly also. You just kind of pining around in your head. I don't think you're going to be doing it.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think to me this is Stoicism is journaling and journaling is stoicism. Journaling is to Stoicism as meditation is to Buddhism. It is the practice of having a conversation with yourself about your thoughts and beliefs and values and actions. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Mark Serius' sole philosophical work was entitled Meditations, which the Greek title was just to himself. Almost certainly he did not give it a title. And what makes it such a remarkable work is that he What didn't intended as a work it is a work in progress, that dialogue with the self. And so, yeah, I'm usually doing it there. And then obviously the benefit of being a writer, and you know this, is like you have this sort of forced self-reflection.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so, yeah, because we have guilt and shame and frustration, but it doesn't change the fact that it's now there. And I think that's part of what Stoicism is, is the ability to go, okay, how I got here is separate and independent from the fact that I currently am here. I might need to at some point examine those causes so I can learn from it. But my impulse to dissect and blame and question what has happened is actually just a really convenient distraction from the choice in front of me right now, which is what am I going to do about it? There's a passage of meditations remarks realises sort of criticizing the people who are always trying to delve into what lies beneath. Like they're always like, well, what does this mean? Or what does that word mean? Or why is it this way? Or whose fault? What are the root causes? And again, that all matters.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've come to define it as this idea that we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. And then when people go, what does that mean? I usually fall with this idea. And then Stoic is predicated on this idea that you can respond with virtue or erit ⁇. Annoying people, a natural disaster, extreme success, Death sentence. You don't control that happened. Maybe you controlled whether it was or wasn't going to happen, but now it is happening. And to me, Stoicism is the framework for which you orient your response.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's a Latin expression called Festinalente, which just means to make haste slowly. We often look for shortcuts, and it takes longer than if we just sort of done it slow and steady. It is amazing at some level how it all can be reduced down to something in ASOP's fables or a cliche or a little proverb. I've been amazed lately at the idea that like somebody said that for the first time. Someone will invent a new word to express a concept or someone will invent a new way of thinking about things like, oh, that's great. But a lot of these things that we take for granted, like it's not like they're hardwired into our DNA. And so somebody who's now lost. came up with that idea the timelessness of the truth of that I just I just love and that it's been true for 2300 years or whatever”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I didn't listen. And the irony whenever I do this, and I've done this many times, you end up losing more time than you would have if you just taken the prescription when it was there. It's when we rush the comeback or we rush the recovery.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we all have these in our personal lives, right? Like you sensed you were coming across some sort of personal limitation or you sensed that you were straining a relationship or working with someone that you didn't quite think was right, but you ignore that and then it becomes very clear why you should have listened to that kind of gut level instincts. I just take on too much and then I'm like, oh, okay. Like earlier this year, I rolled my ankle really bad. I had to go to the yard and they were like, you know, you got to take like six weeks off. And I took, you know, like a week and a half off. I heard it again so badly like I thought when I looked down I would see like the bone sticking out of my leg. Like it wasn't, thankfully I had been given a very clear message, not just like from my own body, but from a medical professional that said like, you got to slow down and take a break.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do those things, a story you tell yourself about your own experiences is really interesting. And then the story that society says about your experiences is also really interesting too.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and what we take from that is not he was right in these specific instances for these reasons. What we tend to take from that is the shorthand don't listen to other people, or conventional wisdom is always wrong. But of course, many, many people had failed. There was a graveyard of millionaires and billionaires who'd lost their fortunes starting private space companies. I think a good part is like not taking these sort of business book headline cover story narratives from people's trajectories or from history, but actually really drilling down and getting to the actual reason as to why something worked or didn't work. Elon Musk sees himself as this groundbreaking precedent shattering entrepreneur. And another version to look at is this guy who took massive government subsidies at critical points that allowed him to”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A reasonable person adapts to the world and an unreasonable man adapts the world to themselves, and so therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. So often this thing that makes one a groundbreaking artist, discoverer, Inventor, an entrepreneur, an artist, whatever it is, the thing that makes you great is this ability to not listen to feedback at some point invariably you come across feedback that you should listen to. You go past the point that you aimed for, you go past a convention that is there for good reason.”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to be a really tough spot. So take Elon Musk, right? When Elon Musk was planning what became SpaceX, his friends held a literal AA style intervention that said, you cannot start a rocket company. This is the worst idea. You will lose all your money. Obviously, he was correct. And there were moments when he probably, the conventional wisdom or the data or the advice from the investors overwhelmingly was to sell Tesla or to do X, Y, and Z. So what happens when it's sort of a passing fancy or an impulse consideration to buy Twitter? Some people told them it was a good idea. Some people told him it was a really, really bad idea. Some people told him it was totally outside of his domain of expertise and all these things. How do you know whether to listen or not? This is like the essential question. The quote is something like”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this is really hard. You can see that often to be successful as an entrepreneur, you get there by not listening. You get there by not listening to the odds, not listening to the doubts, not listening to the critics. You succeed. So then you get this very wicked learning environment where you succeeded precisely because you did not listen to the message that the world was trying to send you. But if what you generalize from that is never listened to people,”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In sobriety circles, they talk about like two cars in the garage attics. What rock bottom is for you is a choice that you kind of get to make. So do you realize that you're heading down a bad path after you've had to sell your house and your cars and you've lost literally everything? Or is it that embarrassing evening at the company Christmas party that serves to send the message? How are you hearing what the world is trying to tell you? Or are you very much not hearing it? And at some point is it going to have to hold you down and scream it into your ear?”
2024-11-26 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT