1086: Ryan Holiday | How to Fix Your Life with Stoicism

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Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show. How do you think it makes Alexander the Great feel that Alexandria is still a city with hundreds of thousands of people in it? And he founded that city.
It doesn't mean anything to him. You know what good it does them to be remembered? Zero.
They're f***ing dead. Welcome to the show.
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Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Actually, he interviewed me right after I interviewed him and it was such a natural extension extension of our conversation.
It's almost a sequel, or maybe it was a prequel, memory's a little fuzzy, of our other conversations. So if you like conversations with Ryan Holiday and you like conversations with me, which theoretically you kind of must if you listen to this podcast, you're going to like this episode as well.
We talk about integrity, comparison, misinformation, parenting, and a whole lot more. Really, it's just another conversation with a very smart guy.
And Ryan Holiday was there too. Now, by the way, also the the dad jokes never quit people.
My kids are young. Get ready for decades of this.
Also, I've got a little cold right now, as you can tell, that is not present in the episode. So if you find this kind of like nasally voice that I have right now a little bit annoying, fear not.
The rest of the conversation was recorded months ago when my voice was actually in decent condition. All right, here we go with Ryan Holiday.
It's funny. I haven't used my iPad in such a long time because my kids took it over essentially.
And my wife was like, you want me to wipe it off? And I was like, you know what? Nah, let the stuff stick all over it because then when I'm using it, I'll be like, oh, I and i'm like it there's like cheerio mark on the space bar there's a key missing that's hilarious and it's humbling man because you're like this is where daddy creates his masterpieces and they're like look i pried a key off with the fork and you're like oh cool thanks was it you who told me that one of your kids picked up one of your books and was like, look, The Daily Butthole or something? Yeah, that's in the afterword of this book. That's what my son says.
That's right. The other day he goes, Dad, what do you think the worst book in the bookstore is? I mean, beside yours.
Okay, that was good. I respect that.
Yeah. Shots fired.
Man, how old was the kid who said that? This was like like eight months ago it was not like so because the thing is you think about like was that actually a joke or was he does he just really regard my work as the crappiest thing in the whole story i think they're they like bullying me i think they're they're like testing and trying to see like how they can burn me for stuff yeah it's i go back and forth between both being hurt by it and finding it hilarious yeah it seems like you shouldn't find it hurtful because you are their fault like they don't mean it mean it yes it's probably a mark of social intelligence yes they are trying to rip you down to shreds well yeah there and the idea that he would like ask it in such a way that would like get me like he had me interested in the question just to like stick the knife in you know like, like I respect that level. And then I was like, you know, the books paid for this house, man.
Let's let's chill out. Hadn't thought that far ahead.
You know, I think it's quite funny. Like my son, he's at the point where he's like making a mess is funny, which I that's not the humor I can share in because I'm like, I've got to clean all this crap up.
Yeah. But he will often ask a question that's so innocent, but so harsh, like just so brutal, like a brutal observation.
Yeah. That's framed in a way.
It's all I can do to resist being like, go ask mommy that question. Cause I'm like, okay, is this going to hurt her feelings? I don't want to do that.
But I feel like she should share in this particular bit of misery. Yes.
Yeah. I tend to get the brunt of it.
But I think that's like a two boys, girl, whatever. That's the dynamic in her house.
I get the most of it. My dad gets the most of it.
He'd be like, grandpa stinks. And he's like, you stink.
So it immediately turns my dad into a six-year-old child, which is maybe not the best thing for a kid. No, it's the best.
But it's like, you stink. And he's like you stink so it turned immediately turns my dad into a six-year-old child yeah which is not maybe not the best thing for now it's the best but it's like you stink and he's like well i'm not playing with you grandpa and he's like i'm not playing with you and it's it's really it's funny but other times i'm like can you guys can we not do this right now it's really funny to watch your your parents turn into kids yes while your kids are also being kids and i'm like i'm parenting both of you i have to cook my kids he'll eat.
Right. And then my dad's like, I don't want this.
I want pizza. I'm like, can you maybe behave like an adult for a second? You're 80 years old, for God's sake.
That's amazing. You've been on the show so many times.
How many? You know, that's a good pop quiz. I bet it's like five times.
I bet it's way more than five. You might be right.
If you count my old show and the show, it's probably like, yeah, it might be twice that. Well, I think you were one of the first podcasts that I ever did.
Yeah. We've known each other at least 12 years.
I think that sounds right. Yeah.
When was your first? 2012. Okay.
That makes sense. Cause you were on for that.
Yeah. July of 2012 was when my first book came out.
I remember one of the times was quite funny. Afterwards you go, wow, that was like a real interview.
And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, you know, you might want to consider videotaping these. And I was like, oh, that's a good idea.
I never thought about that. So I was doing them in Skype.
And he's like, you should do some sort of video. And I was like, oh, Skype video really stinks, though.
And you're like, yeah, but then you could see the person. I thought that was quite a nice compliment.
It was like a real interview. I was like, oh, what are you normally dealing dealing with do you remember one time you were interviewing me and someone like broke into my office yeah yeah yeah yeah and you uh to quote you if i may said get the out of here and it was like i'm just asking if i can landscape your but i'm like you're like this is you just went into like an open i don't know it was an open window or what i mean? I mean, I didn't just scream.
No, that's not what. We were doing an interview and it was remote.
This isn't like the middle of the pandemic. Yeah.
We just set up in this space and someone was like knocking on the door and I ignored it because I was in the middle of something. Yeah.
And my office, this is where I was doing it upstairs. I heard them knock a couple more times and I ignored it.
And at some point you're supposed to go away when no one answers right and then i hear them like enter the building which was not an open facility i mean it's like it was not uh everything was closed it was the middle of the pandemic yeah and not even the middle very early in the pandemic i hear what i think is someone stomping around i hear enough i'm like okay yeah they entered the building i look down i see a landscaping truck which i did not have landscapers yeah you don't have a lawn yeah that's the weirdest thing about this yeah there's no i'm like hey can you hold on a second it's still recording so i was like hello and you know then they're like hey i'm the landscaper and i go what that doesn't shit i keep i've thought about that so many times since that happen because it was so weird. Now I'm like, was that guy casing vacant property to steal stuff? Because you don't have a lawn.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's like some weeds and stuff maybe, but I was like, yeah, I think that's what was happening.
And then he thought it was, I was not, no one was there. And then when I answered, he kind of made up this flimsy excuse.
Something about it i was like you know what like get the fuck so what because at some point like we're separated by a we can't see each other and i don't know who this person is or what they brought like so i was i was like you know what i'm gonna overreact here to make this go away yeah they did stomp away but it was so plus it was we were like well into an interview so i was there was no one else here so someone else usually would have run interference but i don't know about you but like when you get into something it's like when you go to the movies and then you leave and it's like gotten dark out yeah you're like i was oblivious to the outside world sure so i was in that space and then there's just like someone stomping around yeah it's very strange it's very strange yeah but i think about that all the time at first i thought like gosh this guy's really going to extra lengths but who walks into a vacant building in texas yeah that has clearly got stuff in it like that seems like a really good way for unsolicited landscaping work on a commercial building it was yeah you're right that's uh probably what was yeah so that it's kind of funny so of course I'm reminded of that consistently when something weird like that ever happens.

I have to say, it's fun to be here

at the Painted Porch doing this

in this hallowed studio

where you destroyed all these books.

I know you kind of revere the book.

Was it weird?

I mean, none of those are ever going to be able to get read again.

So when I emailed my publisher, I was like,

okay, I've been building out a studio.

So I was like, please send me a couple copies

of all of your books.

Oh, interesting. So they'll be in the shot.
So especially behind you, there's a lot of portfolio books there. I think some are here.
And then there were books like, I had more than one copy, or I didn't like the book, or somebody sent me the galley and then a copy and then the publicist. I see.
And then some of them are foreign translations of my books, which is this weird thing. That's cool.
Where you write a book and then they're like, and here's 15 Mandarin copies. And you're like- What am I going to do with these? Yeah.
I can't throw it away, but I don't know 15 people that want to write. Not only do I not know 15 people who speak Mandarin, I don't know 15 people who would like a book for me in Mandarin.
Oh yeah. It's a subset of a subset.
That's right. So I have a bunch of those.
And then the rest, there's a company called Book by the Foot. And they sell books for movie sets.
Oh, nice. Art projects and whatever.
So we calculated after we took all the ones we had, we were like, okay, we need 20 linear feet of books or whatever. And then they just mail them to you.
That's pretty cool. I wondered how you cut the edge piece.
So for people that are not watching this, this is a studio where the whole wall is stacks of books. Yes.
Glued to the wall and glued to each other. And it looks really good.
Did you go in the store? I haven't yet. I'll show you.
The reason we did this is because in the bookstore, this is cool, but the bookstore has a big indoor fireplace. It's a building from the 1800s.
So we did the whole fireplace in books. So it runs, it's like 22 feet tall.
I assume you're never going to use that because that sounds it doesn't work okay good because i was like let's it's not a fahrenheit 451 situation let's line this fireplace with old paper no no and this is the not the inside of the fireplace it's that of course yeah even still yes it's funny because when i was like oh we should do another podcast and whenever i usually dictate text because it's faster but whenever it's you or other author friends, I'm like, I got to freaking proofread this because you got like 15 bestsellers, 16 now maybe. I think this is my 16th book.
Yeah. So I got to make sure there's like an Oxford camera in the right place.
Otherwise it's like, do I, I didn't know Jordan was a moron. I would not notice if it was incorrect.
I do appreciate that you dictate the text. You know hate i hate voice memos voice memos they're inconsiderate of course yeah it always screws up my thing because i'll see i'll open and be like oh great it's a voice i gotta play this later yeah i'll play it later and then i never play it later and then because i'm with people i don't want to play your text in front of it's like watching a video at full volume like i put my airpods to listen to this thing no thank you put it up to my ear at a table the voice memo thing is there's probably a writing at full volume.
Like I put in my AirPods to listen to this thing. No, thank you.
Put it up to my ear at a table. The voice memo thing is there's probably a writing corollary or there's a similar example with writing, I'm sure.
But if I have to write something, I have to clarify my thinking, right? And I go, are you going to be there tonight? Looking forward to seeing you. But if it's a voice memo, it's, hey man, oh, what's up? Oh, sorry, I'm just getting in my car.
Dude, it is so hot today. Oh man.
And I'm going to get like a smoothie or whatever i'm with the kids so uh do you think uh are you gonna go to jimmy's thing tonight uh and if you do like let me know because i might go too and if you don't well whatever i'm going anyway so i guess and you're just like this could have been one sentence what are you doing i actually i was just working on it yesterday and in the book that i'm doing now i have a chapter on writing to think, that you write to think right. Like at Amazon, you can't just call a meeting.
To call a meeting, you have to submit a three-page memo. Oh, wow.
That's a good idea. That everyone reads at the beginning of the meeting.
Oh, wow. Then the meeting is the discussion about the idea or the proposal or the whatever.
And I was thinking about why they do that. And it's so you can't just wing it and half-heartedly think about it.
You actually have to think about what you think. And by definition, when you're writing, you have to think all the way through.
To get to the period, you have to think all the way through. You can't just start and figure out the act of the act of thinking to completion, that's so important.
Yeah. Yeah, for people who don't know, so this table we're sitting at was Joan Didion's table, and I have a line in the thing.
She says, writing is a hostile act, because you're trying to persuade someone, or worse, force them to understand your thinking about something, right? And to do that, you have to comprehend first what you are thinking. Yeah.
And so there's something, there's something about just winging it that is just never going to be as, it's rude not to take the time to do it. And look, if you're disabled or dyslexic or something, totally different story.
Yeah. But there is something about the like, well, I'll just throw a bunch of shit at you and then you process it and then you come back to me even if you are though you could still dictate it if you unless you can't talk right but in which case yeah or don't edit it and whatever if there's a wrong word in there and i can read between the lines fine it's the mumbling and the rambling where i'm like we're not on a phone call this is i can't even i'm not even spending time with you like if i'm on the phone with somebody and they're like, I'm just getting in the car, man, it's so hot in Texas.
I'm like, we're at least we're talking. If you're just talking at me, it's the equivalent of a podcast where I'm like, Hey, um, so what do you guys want to talk about? I don't know.
Oh, you wrote a book, didn't you? That's cool. Like, no, you don't handle a podcast like that.
So now I'm, I'm a victim of your four minute podcast that could have been one sentence yeah that's what a voice memo is it's unbelievable you're in this weird place where people analyze everything you do through a lens of stoicism and it's a little bit it's a little bit hard to watch sometimes like recently you were cleaning up like a dog carcass and garbage that had just been thrown in a road yesterday you filmed because you were like hey i want to set an exam i assume because you're like i want to set an example of what it means to live a good life and encourage other people to do the same and people like why are you filming your virtues bro that's not stoic that's not stoic bro what do you think is happening there i'm more perplexed as to how the thing keeps happening that's probably why i recorded the video so i'll give you an example i drove driving my son home yesterday we live on this dirt road all the houses are on this dirt road and uh we have this shared mailbox like you know like oh so the postman doesn't have to go so you can't because they can't drive on the road and so pull up and there's like 10 enormous black garbage bags of trash that someone had dumped since i had driven on the road this morning and i'm like ah yeah it's disgusting it's 100 degrees outside yeah and part of me is like i should just i didn't do this yeah this is a mile and a half from my house so like i'm sorry i'm gonna smell it but i'm like no one else is gonna take care of it this is not a public road i called my wife and i was like what kind of person yeah drives their car to a place i was trying to wrap my hand around getting out of the car undoing the back of your truck or your trailer and then picking this up and throwing it on the ground first off like how scary that would be we could get caught at any moment yeah but i was like don't they know that there's a dumpster behind like every business yeah and it's illegal to do it here it's also illegal to do it there but like i gotta figure the guy working behind the counter at the gas station cares a lot less sure and then also it's less bad for it like what are you doing you know so anyways i agree i'm sure you use the word person yeah i would have used a different word yeah it's true i so i had to pick up this trash i threw in the thing it was disgusting there were maggots everywhere and then i had to like i only have one trash can so i had to like stop at every neighbor's house like on the way home and they're like to give one bag like in the thing you know i was like so i had to touch all this but you're gonna get you're going to be like, we have footage of you dumping illegally. A couple of years ago, someone had thrown a mattress.
And so I'm in there loading this mattress in the back of my truck. And one of my neighbors pulls up and is like, what are you doing? I go, bro, I've lived here way longer than you.
Also, it's the middle of the day. Where were you when this was being dumped? You know, but anyway, so I can't wrap my head around that.
And that more baffling is they tend to dump like dead animals so yeah that's kind of deer carcasses or what it's a lot of dead dogs and i can't figure out if it's a dog fighting ring or if it's a do they not know you can bury things in your own yard or again you can just throw it in a dumpster somewhere i guess like the deer thing is maybe hunting but the dead dog carcasses if you find one you're like oh man that's someone's pet but when you find five dead dog carcasses something personally disposed of at least 10 dead dogs that sounds like illegal activity and that's the only the ones that i was like this is fresh enough for me to do something about not like i just have to falling apart so so anyways i'm baffled by that but i was filming the video because I was trying to talk about this thing, which is kind of what the new book is about.

But when I first moved there, and I think this is how I went through life, I'd be like, well, I hope someone takes care of this.

Yeah, sure.

You know, I just hope someone takes care of this.

I would call the police and be like, hey.

I remember one time I was running right after one of these had happened. And a police car was driving down my road which never happens this is a private road and so i flagged down the officer and i go hey man like i don't know if you saw but there's like and he's like it's weird huh you know he's like baffled by it too not like hey i'm gonna like take care of this for you right but like he's like i wish they wouldn't put them in the bags because then it makes it harder for him to decompose.
He was just thinking about it like purely from a like, this is just how it goes. It would be better if it was more natural because it would go away faster.
Yeah, I mean, okay. So I grew up where I lived and how I thought like, this is what government is for.
This is like what the police are for or the sanitation department is for, animal control is for. And one of the things you learn in Texas, I'm not saying it's good, I hate it about Texas, but you're just like, no, no, no, no, nobody gives a shit.
Yeah. I was like, oh, if I don't like this and I don't like it because when I have to drive by it or I have to run by it, I have to smell it, it's awful.
And then also bad for the environment. I guess the dogs are fine but the trash i was like i have to take care of this like i have to pick this up and put it in my truck and it's gonna stink like i have to do it yeah when we think of something like that happening we think justice is like well i'm gonna call the police they're gonna investigate the crime they're gonna arrest the person person to be punished and that is a version of legal justice for the situation but there's also just the fact that the thing is there and it has to be resolved.
Like, there's two ways this goes. One is I drive by it every day and birds slowly tear the bags of trash apart and the trash spreads everywhere.
And then eventually leaves fall and it gets covered up. Or there's a version where I get disgustingly dirty, picking this up and throwing it away and taking time out of my day.
And I have to choose between which one of those I'm going to live with. And that's what the video is about.
And then, yeah, some people manage to get upset by this, which is always strange. It is strange.
It is strange. I noticed you're not in the comments as much on social media as in years past.
You write like the plague that infects your character. Is it related to that? I think so.
I mean, it's weird. You're always in the comments on my thing.
So I mostly see the field to you. Yeah, I'm sort of like ashamed of that.
But yeah. No, I think it's hilarious.
But no, I realized it was making me, it wasn't bringing out a good part of me. Like, and then I was arguing with people that I was never going to convince.
And it was also just making me less motivated to do good stuff in the world and to do good work because I was bumping up against the existence of these people who I'd prefer not to think about. I agree.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. I see a lot of hate now with the Israel stuff.
You just see people post like, really gross stuff about one ethnic group or another. And I used to be like, explain this to me, like, let me and then you realize very quickly, like, this is not it's either not a real person at all.
That's a huge part of it. I think, like I see people post these like, I can't believe someone said this.
And it's like, I can't believe it either because a person did not say that that was a bot or it's artificial intelligence or it's a troll doing something, saying the most extreme thing to get you to do this. I think that's really hard.
And then also the people who are doing it who are real are in a way not real. You know what I mean? Like there's something broken in that person.
It's not a level playing field. You're not going to convince them.
Their whole point is to provoke, distract, or make you despair. And so I've tried to do a lot less of it.
Sometimes I see them, so it's still getting me, but I'm at least not doubling down once I see it. It's funny you mentioned that even the alive living person is not a real person.

I've read this article years ago, and I have no idea where it is. Maybe my producer can find it.
But it was about how this woman who's a journalist, she was looking at this really bad troll that was horrible online. And it turned out to be her husband.
and she attracted, and she's like,

but wait, my husband's not an angry guy

who's, what is it it nihilistic or whatever and cynical so what's going on and it turned out that he just found it kind of cathartic yeah to be this horrendously terrible person that posted kind of some evil stuff and harassed people not harassed to the point where he was going out of his way but he would just just be like, oh, I'm going to push that button. He just kind of got like a juvenile kick out of it.
And it got worse and worse. And he was, she's like, you need to stop doing this.
And he was just like, okay. And we need to get a divorce.
Right. No, but he's not being real.
Like he's acting. He is doing, he is playing a role.
Yeah. Or a character that, you know, solves some deep psychosis in the person, of course.
But like, so what I mostly just do now is like, I don't even have it on my phone, but I have the person who does our social media stuff. You can just shadow ban people.
And so it's like, I'm just going like, hey, they were letting me know they would like to be shadow banned. That's how I think about it.
Scream into the void. Yeah.
And then so they continue to post, but they just have no idea that they're not affecting anyone. Yeah.
That's a good idea. I see.
It's just interesting to think that the person who posted something horrible about like Jews or Palestinians or African-Americans is like the same guy or gal that is at the grocery store. That's like, Oh, I think you dropped your wallet, sir.
And you're like, Oh, thank you so much. That would have ruined my day.
And they're like, yeah, no problem. And you're like, that's the guy who secretly posted this thing and is like at my kid's soccer games and there's Jewish kids on the team and he doesn't have any real issue with them at all.
It's just an online thing that gets him like feeling powerful. It's kind of sick, actually.
I had a weird experience. I can't talk too specifically about it because I think it'll feed the thing.
But there was someone where someone posted something very negative about me online, but in a way or at a place that I've seen it happen before. So before I would see it and I was like, oh, like, this is the world not liking me.
These are people telling me I suck and whatever. And then I saw it happen in the same place.
And I realized I knew the person that did it.

And I was like, oh, and I knew why they did it because we'd had an interaction.

And so I was like, oh, so it was very clear.

Like this person was going through some stuff and decided to like blow off some steam by

encouraging people to shit on me.

And I'm realizing, oh, that's what the other people are doing.

I just don't know them or the story.

That's interesting.

And so it was like this weird, I was like, this is like this whole thing that only very loosely has anything to do with me. And I have to just not let it in because it's toxic and dysfunctional and weird.
But it was like this very weird experience where like you think of trolls and criticism and whatever that happens on the internet as being this sort of like faceless big thing in a way. All these people and then realize like, no, no, no, it's a very specific person acting for a very specific reason.
Yeah, that's interesting. It was strange, but it's helped me in a weird way.
I will say to people who are maybe tempted to engage in this kind of thing or respond to it in a way that's also extreme, because that's how it escalates, right? Someone responds to it and they well now i have it out for you i use my real name online i know you do too it makes things a lot easier because you go oh this i'm gonna let this person have it then you're like but then everybody who sees that is going to be like jordan harbinger said this kind of awful thing to a person and that person you know their comment kind of deserved it but shouldn't you be above that like a guy who was above this kind of crap? And you go, yes, but if you're posting under your like pseudonym or whatever, then people will go, you get away with it. Yes.
So I sort of created accountability for myself in that respect. Yeah, no, I realized I was not, I was getting sucked into stuff.
And even if I was winning the exchanges, I was losing. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, the plague that infects your character.

Yeah, yeah, which is a thing.

So Marcus realized in his meditations,

he says basically there's two kinds of plagues.

And he's writing in the middle of a plague,

which I did not realize.

It just sort of, I didn't understand

until I went through a plague, as we all did.

And he's saying, look, there's the part of the plague

that kills your life, that can kill you,

which he may have ultimately succumbed to. And he says there's this other part that infects your character.
And so all the things that we saw during COVID must have happened during the Antonine plague. Also, the radicalization, the conspiracy theories, the callousness, the cruelty, just the catharsis of attacking people and persecuting people.
I think that's what he's talking about. What I came to understand when I would interact with some of these people, when I do something very innocuous or say something very right down the middle of just like ordinary human behavior when millions of people are dying or something, people would freak out and I'd be like, oh, you're infected.
Like you caught something. And I think you and I both saw people we know become very different people as a result of what they went through.
And so that ironically tied into the shadow banning thing because I would ban these people for saying horrible stuff or spreading misinformation or whatever. And then I would see them comment later on other things, like on people I know or on my accounts.
And when you shadow ban someone or you ban someone on Instagram, when you're a verified account or whatever, it turns their thing gray and it says like restricted comment. Oh, interesting.
I was like, oh, these are like infected people. It's like their label that I'm seeing that they're like an infected person.
Oh, that's interesting. And I'm watching them go around and try to infect people with their awfulness or stupidity or deeply held but nonsensical belief.
And, oh, that's... That is interesting you labeled them.
It'll be weird, like a couple of years, some of this has been going on for a long time. I'll notice them, post something, I don't know why, but I'll click it and I'll be like, love your stuff, you're doing great, you know? And then I realize, oh, they were infected in this moment and maybe they're better now, you know? It's a weird thing.
And I do think we live in a time where it's very easy. You watch one thing or you talk to one thing and then you just watch this process happen to someone, like a set of symptoms in an illness.
And then the next thing you know, they're like... Broken brain kind of situation.
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It's interesting because part of it is social media, bringing people down rabbit holes. And part of it is people getting way into social media during the pandemic because they couldn't leave their house.
They had nothing better to do. So that was like a part of a vicious cycle.
And I think the other stuff is stuff that's been around for thousands of years when plagues hit, which is isolation, feeling of helplessness, desperately trying to regain a sense of control. And all of this ends up being, it can manifest itself in pretty horrible ways.
Yeah, I was going to write this thing. I didn't end up writing it, but I was going to say like the oldest virus is antisemitism, and you can watch people get like infected with it.
Like they watch a documentary or a book, or they have an interaction, or they go to a certain university. It's a thing that has been infecting humans and societies.
There are other of these similar kind of mind viruses but like that's just a thing that specific virus has been infecting people's character for literally thousands of years and it happens in different ways and the different symptoms of it can manifest themselves differently in different societies but it is weird that it's just this thing that's always been there. It is.
And then people will use that to justify the anti-Semitism like, oh, yeah, well, y'all have been kicked out 110 countries or 109 or whatever it is. I can't remember.
We've lost track of how many countries we've been kicked out. And they'll go, yeah, it's been around for thousands.
So it must have some shred of truth to it it's like well actually we're still around that's

why this is still around because jews are still around if we weren't around anymore like no one's

complaining about ethnic groups that they exterminated 100 century bc or whatever no

one's like oh those babylonians right yeah no no humans humans have been doing awful things to each

other for a very long time but yeah this sort of othering and deciding like someone is going to be

the scapegoat for a society that's always been there. But anyways, just this idea that there's different kinds of viruses, to me, has been a helpful way of understanding the world and that you can catch good things and bad things, but a lot of people catch bad things.
I definitely, I would love to talk about misinformation. We talked about it a little bit on your show.
Do you feel like having kids has caused you to do more things in your life the right way? Because maybe before having kids, you were like, I can get away with this. And now it's like, well.
I think so. I mean, you are trying to model good behavior and you're trying to show things.
And I do feel like you have this obligation when you have kids to, I think, raise them well. I think it's made me think about things.
I don't know. It is funny people will be like, I have two daughters and that's what made me like care about this for the first time.
Right. That's a little weird, you know? Yeah.
Where you're like, I don't know if you need to have daughters. To know that sexual assault is bad or something.
Yeah. Yeah.
I got those too. I see those people too.
But I don't know. I think mostly what parenting did was it opened me up.

Like, it's very easy to be selfish and to just think about you because you've got your own pain and your own problems

and your own ambitions and to just sort of be closed off.

And I think what parenting should do is, I mean,

it forces you on a daily basis to spend a lot of time thinking

about what these other people are thinking

and what they're going through and why they're acting this way. I think one of the things that hit me earlier was like, I'd be like, why are our kids acting this way? And my wife would be like, oh, it's because we skipped nap or whatever.
Or it's because we didn't take lunch seriously and they didn't really eat anything. And realizing, oh, there's this very specific cause and effectiveness of behavior in children, but also in people.
And when you're forced to see it over and over and over again with your kids, what I tried to take from that deliberately was like, okay, everyone is acting for a reason. And I myself act for a reason, and I always let myself off the hook for that reason, right? I didn't mean it.
I'm tired. I'm overwhelmed.
I'm whatever. I think it did cultivate some extra empathy in me because it forced me to, it's not that your kids are never in the wrong, but like they're kids, right? And so you have to think about why they're acting this way.
You can't just be like, it's because they're an asshole. It's because they suck.
It's because those people are like that, right? All the things we do to not empathize or care about other people because it would be a burden. And so kids force you to do that.
And I tried very deliberately as that process happened to take out sort of a meta lesson from it that I think made me better. I like that.
I think for me, you kind of encouraged me to think about this, I think, in some ways, which is that, for example, every time you go somewhere, I know you're traveling today, so I'm twisting the knife, but whenever you have to choose to go somewhere, it's like, this has to be important. I came to Austin because it's like, I'm going to be on your show, I'm going to interview you, I want to see the bookstore.
Haven't seen you and your wife in years or whatever it's been. And I would love to visit.
And then it's like, and then I'm going to New York to do 8 billion things. Not to hang out for four days and like maybe do some, no, it's like back to back to back to back.
It's not going to be all fun and games. It's going to be quite stressful.
And then my wife's like, do you want to take it easy and come back on Friday? Or do you want to, I'm like, nope, come back on Thursday night and get back late and then go straight to bed after a really long ass day. And the next day I'm going to be on a plane to San Diego to go to Legoland.
And I can't be like, oh, daddy doesn't want to build Legos. I'm tired.
It's like, no, I'm going to caffeinate and get her done. You have to have a reason to do all of these things that take you away from your family.
Before I had kids, I was like, I'll go somewhere. Why don't we stay at this place for like a month? Let's throw an extra week and just stay in Hawaii and fart around.
It's like, you really have to prioritize. You don't have to though.
I guess you could screw up your kids and not do that. And I would say a lot of people don't, right? It's true.
I don't think everyone does think that way. Maybe not.
I don't know if my parents always thought that way. I don't know if generations of parents have always thought that way.
The idea that you owe the first slash best of your time or self to these people, I think that's a somewhat recent and wonderful cultural consensus. You might be right.
Consensus, you know? But once you concede to it, then yeah, it does challenge you and it forces you to change because i realized i was it's not that i was not selfish i think i was selfish but i was very willing to do things that incurred a cost to myself or even to my relationship or to my health or to my work because people asked because they were lucrative because because it would be good for my career. I would

just say yes. And I think fundamentally, a lot of it was just insecurity.
I knew that at some point people would stop asking, and so I had to say yes now. I just didn't have the confidence to be like, it'll come around.
And so seeing the cost of that embodied in a very sweet three-year-old on the verge of tears or whatever it is,

forces you to see the cost of the yes-ness from a different perspective. That's been very powerful and life-changing for me.
Likewise, and I think you're right. There's most of these examples I think you've given me.
Gandhi was like, the last, kids were last in line. Angela Merkel, her dad was, I think, a pastor or a priest.

He was like a pastor for disabled children.

Right.

But his own children were always kind of last in line.

Last in line.

And then was it the Queen of England who was gone for months at a time?

And then she sees her kids and they run up to give her a hug.

And she's like, no, not right now.

And then she greets some dignitary.

Yeah, she's been gone for months.

The royal yacht comes in.

Her kids rush up to her. And there's like a protocol which the queen is supposed to like greet, I don't know, the prime minister.
There's some protocol she was supposed to observe and like your kids are not part of that protocol. And Prince Charles, like now the king of England runs up to his mom.
He's like five or six. She says, not you dear, I have to do this first.
Right, heartbreaking. And I think it's even like a title of one of the chapters in his memoir so like these little decisions that you make they have this searing impact on a person i was actually just thinking about that on the way here like the way in which like we say our kids come first and then like i don't know i was on the phone yesterday my kids are making crazy noise but i'm on this phone i'm like you shut up yeah Not you who by the way work for me put up with this background i was trying to sell me something yeah yeah like i was saying like saying to my kids these people are more important than you or like i was going somewhere and like i don't like to be late but am i rushing drop off with my kids right so this other person doesn't have to wait one minute? Obviously, it's not good to make anyone wait.
We should have left a little earlier. But the point is I'm saying, no, no, no, no.
What you need is less important than this trivial inconvenience to this other person, the ease with which we do that. I feel like it's forced me to just think about things differently and I think become more just generally empathetic.
But the sad thing is, yes, most of the great men and women from history were not good parents. Yeah, it sucks to read that stuff because you think, is this a necessary trade? It's not.
I don't think it is. I mean, look, do you think Zelensky has been a great father the last couple of years? I'm sure there's a cost to it, right? I think a lot of times it's rationalized in a disturbing way.
We say we're doing it for them and it's not. He might have a decent excuse.
No, no. When you're saying this is necessary, I'm saying like, you know, Winston Churchill is saving humanity from the Nazis.
Was he as hands-on with his children and grandchildren in that period? Probably not, right? And like, there are moments where... So, I guess I was trying to let Zelensky off the hook.
He seems like actually a great human being. Speaking of Zelensky and parenting, there's that thing.
In his first inaugural address, the famous, like, we do this in the US. There's a picture of the president at the airport or whatever.
Ukraine's a patriotic country. He was like, don't hang up pictures of me in your house.
He was like, hang up pictures of your kids in your house and try to honor them. You know, and I loved that.
I thought that was cool. He seems like a lovely person.
I'm saying, look, sometimes you're going to be faced in situations where you can't, you have to be gone or away or that's not what I'm saying. I do think

what tends to happen is we say we're doing these things for our kids, but we're doing them for

ourselves. And if we were actually doing it for our kids, we would not be doing it.

It's tough when you face yourself with that reality. I, for example, and I've told you this

a thousand times, but whatever, it's a podcast. So you have to put up with that.
I haven't written a book. And one of the reasons is I want to write a book when I really have something to say, not when my agent wants like a house in Nantucket or whatever for a commission.
But one of the other reasons is my kids are two and four or almost five. And your agent will always tell you, we're going to help you with the ghostwriter.
It's going to be a lighter lift. I'm like, what about the five years? First of all, no, I don't want to have somebody do this whole thing for me and that it's crap

or mediocre.

And then I have to promote it for five years.

I could say to my wife, look, look how much money they're offering me.

Isn't this going to be great?

We can send them to any school we want, any college we want.

We can go on vacation.

We can take them to Disneyland every weekend with all this money.

But the truth is, I'm not going to be done with work at 5 p.m. anymore.
I'm going to be done at 8.30 or whatever, because I'm doing maybe four days a week. Maybe on Friday, I'll leave a little.
What is really going to matter more? And if you really think about it, your kids are not going to care if when you're dead, they get a little bit more. Yeah, book royalties or like more money in the will and the trust and estate.
They're going to be like, I just remember playing with my dad like every day after school. Or do they remember you not being available at all after school? But cool, I got a boat because my dad passed away.
You know, like what you really have to ask yourselves these questions. Sure.
And you find out that the answer is no, you wanted to write that book so you could get that money. And then you could do a book tour and everybody thinks you're brilliant and special and fun and you're talking and people are admiring you and maybe you hit the list so you get that cool thing, you get a plaque, you know, that stuff is meaningful, but is it better than spending time with your kids? The answer is almost always no, but there's so much shine on that stuff, man.
Yeah, I think about that, but then I catch myself because conversely, you say you're doing stuff for kids, and then you're not. You can also tell yourself you're not doing things for your kids, so you can spend more time with them or whatever.
And then you go, but how am I spending my time? Right? You know what I mean? How am I spending my time? First off, when I'm at home or around them, am I actually home or am I preoccupied or busy or thinking about the work that I do have? And then also, am I just filling that stuff up? So I'll go like, okay, do I want to take this flight or this flight? One gets me home an hour earlier, but it's crazy. And then I go, okay, but how often do I waste an hour at home when I have it? No kidding.
Because I'm going to go, I'm going to go run this errand or, oh, I'm going to go, I'm going to. So I think it should keep you honest in both ways, not just, hey, I don't do stuff, but also where am I when I'm not doing stuff? Just doing it to pat myself on the back.
Yeah, it's interesting. But I'm actually not being parent of the year with the time that I have, right? Or it's like, do you want to be a person who's gone from time to time or, you know, have this temporary thing where you're working a lot? Or do you want to be the person who's bitter and frustrated or not present because, you know, you could be doing something or you should be, you know what I mean? Like, to me, it's- Yeah, I suppose.
I get that. I've chosen my kids over my career in many ways.
That's good. It is kind of tough because you go, oh, I bet I could build something.
Well, no, it's going to take a lot of extra time. But then you just really have to be honest with yourself.
And ideally before you have kids, ask yourself what you really want. Because we've all seen those kids whose parents actually just wanted to be the best plastic surgeon in Michigan instead of being a dad.
And I saw what happened to those kids and it wasn't good. I try to make decisions.
I try to go like, is this the thing that looking back, I go, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. That's why mom and dad live in different houses.
You know what I mean? And so there's been moments where like, I've had cool job opportunities or cool projects or, you know, and I had to go, look, that seems cool, but I can see the wreckage that comes along with it. So I've chosen that too.
And I think it's good, you know, in that I don't think men were ever expected to make those kind of choices. And certainly not, wouldn't like proudly say that they had done that.
So I think that's- You ever hear older guys be like, I've never changed a diaper in my life. And I'm thinking like, you don't know what you're missing, pal.
Yeah. Actually, it's quite funny and fun to be that intimately involved with the caring of your kids.
But you're right. Maybe a generation ago it was kind of considered like, oh, what are you, some kind of loser? You don't have anything better to do? Yes.
You could have been a better plastic surgeon in Michigan. Right.
Like, there's a line in writing, and I forget who said it, but something like, every kid you have is a book you won't write. And there's probably something to that.
I meant negative two books. The answer to that is to shrug.
Yeah. Because they're not that, like, you're not changing the world with any of this shit.
It's not that important. There's an ego in thinking, like, I chose not to have kids because my work's so important.
Yeah. If you don't want to have kids don't have kids i'm not saying it's like morally good or bad to do it i just the narcissism of like no no these are my children right it's like all right it's cringy bro you yeah you make makeup tutorials or whatever right yeah it's true i i do look and i'm always if people are on the fence about not having kids i always say don't because i say this when people are on the fence about writing a book.
Yeah, don's true. I do, look, and I'm always, if people are on the fence about not having kids,

I always say don't.

I say this when people are on the fence

about writing a book.

Yeah, don't do it.

Yeah, please don't.

Yeah, please don't for the rest of us

and also for the kids.

I guess the book itself doesn't have feelings,

but it doesn't need to be out there.

Save the trees.

There are people that have work and you go,

I couldn't do this if I had children,

so I decided not to.

And you're like, but you do a radio show. So like, I mean, it's a great show, but really like when you're gone, maybe people will replay this occasionally, but they're just going to be like old folks when they're gone.
No one's going to go back a hundred years and listen to your old interviews. Really? I mean, it's very unlikely.
I was interviewing some television hosts and he was like, I don't see my kids as much as I like, but I'm doing these shows for them. And I was like, that's not why you're on TV three times a day, bro.
That has nothing to do with them. You're on TV three times a day because they pay you millions of dollars, one.
And two, you like fucking talking. That's what your superpower is.
Don't make it about them. You got to be intellectually honest about why you're doing the thing.
There's something uniquely egotistical about doing a selfish thing and then making it a statement of your selflessness and sacrifice. Sure.
I think there's a good chance that in 100 years, somebody will read a book about stoicism that you've written. That's pretty cool.
I was telling my producer, like when my kids are grown and they're listening to this and he goes, funny of you, bold of you to think that your son Jaden is going to be listening to more than one of these ever. He's going to listen to a couple and be like, that's kind of fun.
Never again. Maybe when he's like 75 and retired, he'll be like, oh my God, my dad has all that audio.
Maybe I'll listen to that when I'm cutting the lawn or whatever the equivalent is then. Maybe.
But otherwise, no. So the idea that you're trading time with them or trading some experience or thing that you could build with them to create that is laughably, it's totally ridiculous.
So why not just shut down your show and be a stay-at-home dad? It would be great if I could earn a living. And I love do that has value but no but i mean you could you i'm sure i could retire you could retire at a it would it wouldn't be easy necessarily but you could but good yeah so so i don't know there i'd still like to do something other than you know i thought about that i was like what if i took a hiatus it would it's it's tough with creating things like a podcast because you lose your audience like you never get it back but I'm taking way more time like I'm taking two months off starting next week actually Legoland is the beginning of the end of my work until the fall honestly if my kids magically were going to stay five and two forever I would just retire because I would take care of them the problem is when I retire and then they're like 12 and they're like, why are you home? What are you doing? I know, my mom, I've told this story before and my relationship with changes over time because I can relate to it more.
But my mom worked, she was a school principal. She worked my whole life.
But about like 12 or 13, she was like, she came home one day, she's so excited. And she was like, I've switched to part-time so I can be home when you get home from school and we can spend more time together and i was like get out of here i was like what i was like what like you don't do this shit for me i'm 13 yeah i don't want to hang out that's funny uh brutal so i mean i didn't say any of this but the point is like there is a point where they don't want to see you anymore yeah and yeah the earlier you make the decisions there's that whole 18 summers thing and i'm like whoever said that did they really have kids because when they're 13 the last five summers they do not want any okay so i think about that quote a lot right so people go there's only 18 summers with your kids and one of the things that's changed for me like i think it's important that you another joan didion thing she said i don't trust anyone that never moved away, like that stays in your hometown.
She was like, you got to get out. That's funny.
You meet different kinds of people, different cultures. I think people with different economic classes.
I think one of the things that's changed me as a parent, I remember growing up and you're supposed to move out when you're 18 and the kids who didn't move out when they were 18 were weirdos or losers. And there was like something wrong about those families.
One of the things that's changed, and maybe it's a generational thing. I meet all these other people who are a little older than me or have older kids than I do.
And they're teenagers. They spend tons of time together.
Their kids are in college. They spend tons of time together.
That sounds cool. And what I realized is like, yeah, you only get 18 summers with your kids.
But also, if you have a good relationship with your kids and they don't hate spending

time with you, you might have lots of summers with your kids.

You should never take any of them for granted because you never know what's going to happen

to anyone and life is unpredictable.

But also, the idea shouldn't be, this is when we're together and then you move out and then

we go do our life, which is kind of what my parents did.

My parents moved to Hawaii when my sister and I graduated from high school and college. They were just like, good for them though.
So that's our time now, which is good, but there's a loneliness to that. I think also the ideal scenario is that you have a great relationship and you enjoy spending time together and you love and support and enjoy that company.
Like the founder of Kinko's was on a podcast once I was listening to him and he said, you know what rich is? Rich is your kids come home for the holidays. And $1.8 billion, but whatever.
But he was saying how many people have $1.8 billion. I mean, not a lot, but enough of them that we have a pretty large sample size that most of them do not have great family lives.
And his point was, you could have this stuff, but what you're really gonna want is this thing. And so I just try to think about like, what are the decisions? What are the practices? What are the way you work on this? So it's not like it was for me.
And I think a lot of kids where you're like, I cannot wait to get the out of here and away from these people. Psycho, yeah, psycho parents.
Yeah. It's, I think a lot about investing in the relationship with my kids and you know, I'm reading like, what's the book he recommended constantly good inside.
Yeah. That's like the current play on my phone.
She's, I find myself just starting over. Cause I'm like, I just need to absorb this even more.
Have you had her on yet? Not yet. It's only a matter of time.
I'm like the biggest Dr. Pecky evangelist.
Yeah. I'm going to take that warm intro at some point because everything she says is like either confirming a hunch where we're like, oh good, we're doing the right thing.
Or I'm like, oh, I like the way of looking at it. So we'll link to that book in the show notes for this episode.
But I found that, and I think I'm digressing from a point she made, but I find almost like less motivation in building my business, same work ethic, less drive to expand things at the cost of having a relationship with the kids. And it seems like I used to do all my shows in person, right? And it was great.
But now I would never make the choice to fly out to New York for just one show or something. It has to be this like fully packed time.
Even a world-class scientist, it's like I'm spending three days essentially away from my kids. Like it's a really different calculation.
I think about it in terms of bedtimes. And like I was just talking to my wife last night.
So I've got this book coming out. It comes out on Tuesday.
And so I have to go to New York for the launch or whatever. And you work so hard at the beginning of your career.
You're like, I want to go on book tour. I want to do all this press.
Because I think you're rooted in this kind of insecurity. First off, there's a financial interest to it.
You're just like, if I get that, then I'll be special. I'll be loved.
I'll be validated, whatever. Then you get there and then you realize the cost of it.
And then you're like, how can I get out of this? I was like, how can this be as short as possible? Do I have to do that? Is that worth doing? Is there a return on investment for doing that? And so it feels a little ungrateful and certainly privileged, but there is this other part of me that's like, oh no, I just wasn't aware of the cost of it before. And now I have this other thing that I love more than that.
And so now I'm torn, you know? This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with my guest, Ryan Holiday. We'll be right back.
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I think it was Dan Ariely on my show who said something like,

you know how to get out of saying yes to things that you regret later? He's like, instead of, hey, in six months, you're going to do this. We're going to go to Austin, New York.
Then you're going to go to Mexico. And then you got to go to Europe and do your European whatever.
You have to imagine that it's next Tuesday. Yeah.
Can you go to New York for a week? Oh, that sounds awesome. It's next Tuesday.
No, actually, I don't feel like it. And I've got some stuff I want to do.
You're going to have stuff you want to do in 18 months during that trip that you're planning to go to New York for a week. Do you want to go? The answer is always- No, it's easy to not think about it.
Yeah. It's like filling a calendar that's empty.
Okay. That calendar is eventually going to be full.
And now you got this big block thing that you kind of didn't really want to do. You said yes, because it was like a problem for future Ryan.
You don't envy that guy. Yeah.
The other thing I think it makes it easier is you imagine your kids dying vividly, not like graphically, I guess you should say, but was it you who wrote about imagining visiting your child's grave? Well, there's an exercise from Marcus Aurelius, which he takes from Epictetus. He says, as you tuck your child in at night, you should say to yourself, they will not make it through the morning.
Memento mori is morbid enough for people, the idea of meditating on your own death. The idea that you would meditate on the death of your own child seems insane.
Now, in Marcus's case, he buries half of his children. He buries, I think, six children.
So the ancient world was a horrendous place. And this is the guy with the best medical care money could buy, I guess, right? Sure, sure.
But I don't think what he's doing is trying to detach from the person. It's the opposite.
The way I've taken it, the way it's informed how I parent is I'm, my son's like, can I have another glass of water? What, I need this. Really, you're suddenly hungry 46 minutes into bedtime? Yeah, yeah.
Like, no, you're extending this thing, right? And I go, all right, you know what I mean? What do I care? I'm gonna go not watch as much Netflix now or like the email's gonna wait a little bit longer. Like, what am I rushing through this for? First off, there's also these moments you have with your kids where one night, they're like, all right, night.
night and then it hits you the things that we used to have to do as part of the routine then it slowly fall away those are gone forever and you're gonna miss them when they happen and yet while you have them you're like when the fuck will this be over right so so to me that exercise is a way of putting a very radical and almost deranged perspective on it. And then you realize, oh, actually what's insane is this thing that I'm rushing through.
You only get so many of these and here you are taking it for granted and someday you'll miss it. And so I'm not perfect at it by any means because sometimes it's like, go the fuck to sleep, bro.
I want to go to sleep, yeah. But no, we're not going to get in the pool now.
It doesn't matter that we normally go in the pool before bed. You had a choice.
You decided not to do it. And now you're already in your pajamas and the sound machine is on and you've been quietly laying there for 15 minutes.
We're not going backwards. It's a swimming time.
What are you insane? Yeah. But like, how am I going to react to this? How am I going to talk about? Because why would I make this wonderful thing a negative exchange? And so it does catch me that way.
And the Stokes were talking about it from the perspective that we, it was much harder for them to take it for granted because death was ever present. But for us, thank God, infant mortality is incomprehensibly low compared to what it was then.
So it's even easier for us to go, there's always going to be another bedtime. It's always going to be tomorrow.
And that's not true. Yeah, that's not true.
By definition, childhood ends. Yeah, man.
It is kind of depressing when you think about a lot of it. By the way, you have a pool here.
That's a good call. It's like 97 degrees today.
Yes. Yeah, it must be so nice to swim.
But like this is climate change. People I know are getting pool chillers.
Like you have to have something to cool your pool because it gets so hot.

Because it's just a warm, it's too hot of a pool.

It's like a hot tub?

Yeah.

Oh gosh.

That is a little, even when it's in the ground.

I mean, yeah.

If you have a pool in Dubai, how hot do you think it is?

But that's climate change for you.

It's just because it's so hot.

That's, yeah.

Well, I mean, it does sound nice to jump in a nice cool pool.

I actually wish I had kids earlier.

I never. Yes, I do too.
It's funny. I never used the freedom I had back then.
Yeah. I wouldn't say never, but I also paid for it in loneliness in some ways, right? Sure.
In 2020 hindsight, I was ready a lot earlier. Well, let's, actually, you're never like ready to have kids.
You're as ready as you're going to get. Yeah.
And you think you're going to be readier later, and you just aren't. You're just older.
The the other interesting thing like there was some wisdom in the way that they had kids earlier because like your time was worth less like yeah like my time in my 20s was worth less than my time in my 30s now is my time in my 30s valuable because of what i did in 20 sure but the point is the way we do it now you're like having kids in the busiest part like the teenage part like when you're at like the peak of your powers or your peak of your earning potential. So there's a weird, like what I would have been saying no to in my 20s because I had kids was like stupid social things.
And now I'm like, we took a family vacation last summer and I was like, we were gone for a month. We went somewhere for a month.
That's awesome. It's so hot here.
We're like, we're going to go somewhere for a month. a month and this is like a full this is the only time i the first time i've done this where i was like and i will not be accepting no matter how lucrative anything it was like you want to fly here for 12 hours to do a talk and come back i was like no and so my agent was like i know you said this but like it's the most you've ever been offered for a thing i have to show it to you you know and i was like no i, I'm not going to do it.
And so I'm like, well, fuck, this was an expensive vacation. This was like a house vacation.
Gosh, good for you. But the point is, nobody was throwing that kind of money at me when I was 27.
And so it would have been nice to have a five-year-old then. You know Casey Neistat? Casey had a kid in high school, obviously which is not what you should do but the point is like his kid was in college when he was like hitting the peak of his career like exactly when your kid's like doing their own thing there's some logic I don't know I think it's funny now you're right it depends on the support structure you have it's a shame I'm not trying to shame anybody who doesn't want kids I think it's a fair choice I just wasn't I't, I wish it wasn't all the smart, good people who were like, you know what? No, choosing my career or, you know, or they wait too long and they can't.
Yeah. I would have gotten married earlier too.
I think I just waited. I think so too.
On everything. Every time it was like, oh, well, I don't want to get married right away.
And then it was like, well, I just got married. I got to enjoy being married for a while.
And then suddenly you're just like, oh crap, if I don't have kids now, I'm going to be like 60 moving my kids into college, which is actually possibly going to be true for

me.

And depending on when they go to, well, maybe moving them out of college, I'll be 60 and

it'll be like, holy crap, I can't lift this by myself.

I got a bad back.

Chasing money and status, it makes sense when you're single.

Yes.

But if you're doing it when you're married and you have a family already, I think you're

kind of doing it backwards.

Interesting. What do you mean? I think we get stuck in that mode and it's hard to escape.
It's like a black hole. You start to feel good about it.
Like you said, you rationalize that you're doing it for your kids. But if you're really honest with yourself, a lot of it is for yourself.
My YouTube is like 1% of my audience, right? But all of the fame comes from the people recognizing you from YouTube. Is that the sound of Jordan Harbinger's voice? That does happen, but it's pretty rare.
And I know friends who are YouTubers that have like millions of subscribers and they make a fraction of what a podcaster makes. So there's a big audio audience, but you can't even go to like Starbucks with them without people being like, whoa, I can't believe it's you guys.
And they have a meetup and like 600 people show up and they thought maybe like 30 people are going to show up. It's like a real thing.
My team was like, you know, you can build that. You have all the raw material.
You just need to start doing your shows in person. They need to be a little bit longer.
You need to pick these certain controversial guests to sprinkle in because they get a lot of clicks. And you go, I think we talked about this on your show, like, oh, I'll make extra money and I can send our kids to school and do this.
Now I'm forgetting what we talked about in your show and what we've already talked about here, but you really do rationalize it. The problem is it's never enough to fill the hole.
The fame, here's something we definitely haven't talked about. The fame is it's a weirdly intoxicating thing.
Before I had any money, I didn't really care about being wealthy. I just thought like, if you're well off, you win.
Sure. Which is true, by the way.
But then you get some money and you go, wouldn't it be cool if also I was recognizable? On your show, we talked about those rich people that are like suddenly want to be YouTubers. And it's like, what are you doing? Yeah.
Don't get me wrong. Beyonce is famous.
I'm just a podcaster. But you really start to, it's like this insidious hole in your soul.
And when you think about it, I drilled the hole in my soul that could be filled with things. Well, not just that you drilled it, but then you're actively drilling it bigger.
Deeper, yeah. So there's this weird thing where it's somewhat strange to be recognized.
It's uncomfortable. There's some safety or privacy concerns that come along with it.
And then what do you do? You don't wake up and try to make yourself more anonymous. You wake up and you try to make yourself more famous.
So there's something fundamentally irrational about it. Yeah, it doesn't really do anything.
It is weird. It sort of snuck up on me because my books have been popular for a long time, but authors have a relatively anonymous life.
How many people make it to the end of a book? How many people even know the name of the author, let alone flash forward to see the picture at the back? Yeah, and they all blur together. Yeah, so I never got right.
And then the social media stuff happened, and all of a sudden, people are like, oh, you're that guy. There's been advantages to it for sure.
But like what? I'm curious. Besides ego,.
Besides ego, what is it? Okay. So I'll give you an example.
So for Daily Stoic, we used to just like post quotes every day. And then when it would come time, I'd be like, hey, I have a book coming out.
People would be like, who the fuck are you? Yeah. Or when I would want to talk about something that I thought was important, people would be like, well, what are the quotes? Daily Stoic was supposed to not be about me, and it ended up actually needing to become about me to say and communicate the things that I wanted it to communicate.
And especially as more and more people just sort of ripping off what we were doing, right? And so- I noticed that there's like 10 Stoicism podcasts now. Yeah, it's hilarious.
It's like the weekly Stoic, the bi-weekly Stoic, whatever. But anyways, when someone knows who you are and they trust you and they like you, they'll hear what you have to say.
So there's a reason. It's a form of power that can be used to do things that you want to do.
Just comes at a cost also. Yeah, I noticed you never show your kid's face on social media.
And when Jen and I were talking, she'll sometimes go, oh my God, cute and she'll send me a photo and she's like you should post that and then she's like oh wait no no no and i never would i mean the only way she posts all of our family stuff and she's got a private whatever we have to be like accepted yeah so there's like little downsides like that and then there's also it's just not good it's a corrosive power also though, right? You can identify with it and change you. And it's funny, this is like, again, one of the themes in Mark Struess' meditations is he's like, he's this powerful guy that's worshiped as a god.
And part of what he's trying to do there is remind himself that he's not special, that it doesn't say anything about him, that being recognized doesn't mean anything. He's just cheering and clapping, it's the smashing of hands together, the clacking of tongues.
And he also tries to look at, he's like, let's talk about some of the most famous people of all time. How famous are they now? How many people remember that? He'll run through the names of like really powerful, important people from like the court or two before his.
And he'll be like, these are vaguely familiar at best now. I think as long as you're

doing it because you have, it's a means to an end, it can be okay. If you're doing it because you think it's helping you achieve immortality or because it fills some hole in your soul, you're not, you're probably going the wrong direction.
I always try to think about it like the most famous person that my mom had heard of growing up is somebody that you and I will have never heard about.

I can't even imagine who that person might be. And, you know, those things that make all your parents feel old, like when they go, oh, that's like so-and-so.
And you're like, who? Yeah. Even now it's starting to happen to me where I'm like, oh, yeah, this is like this person.
And I'm not talking about like Charlie Chaplin. I'm talking about somebody who I think is reasonably current.
And I'll be talking to somebody who's like 29 and they just go, who is that again? And I have to explain who this person is. And I realize I'm the weirdo.
It's not that this person is profoundly disconnected from history. It's that they don't have any clue who like Audrey Hepburn was, which is also before my time.
This is the beginning of the absolute fading of that person in the zeitgeist or the cultural memory. And this is a super famous person, which you have no, this is when there was a handful of famous people at any given time.
Now there's a gazillion podcasters and YouTubers and musicians and whatever else. You're just going to blend into the cacophony of that.
Even if you're an A-list film celebrity right now, which you're not. Which you're not.
I remember when I was first starting and I worked with a bunch of different authors, you know, every once in a while I would meet someone and they'd be like, they'd done like a book that sold a million copies, but it'd been like eight years before, nine years before. Their new one was coming out and nobody cared.
Sometimes that was due to decisions that they'd made, but over a long, you stretch it out long enough, it happens to everyone. Yeah.
And just realizing that this force is acting on you and that there's this statue of Marcus Aurelius outside Budapest. And I was really struck by it because I think it embodies a very stoic idea.
So it's a statue of Marcus Aurelius, but they noticed that the head is removable. And what they discovered is that there are a lot of emperors.
Interesting. So they didn't want to have to carve a new statue every time.
So this is an ancient statue. This is an ancient statue.
I was going to say probably Stalin before. They uncovered it, you know, dug deep in.
Oh, okay. They excavated.
It's in a museum. How did they not make it a Stalin statue? And what they discovered that even back then, what the Romans would do is they're like, look, we're not going to carve a 15-foot statue every f***ing time.

Might not even be done by the time this guy's dead.

There was one year, there's a year called the year of the five emperors, right?

And so like there was just a lot, or it was four.

Anyways, the point is they were like,

you're the most famous, important, powerful person in the world,

but you know what you are?

Replaceable.

Yeah, literally in this case.

And when you go, we're just going to pop the head off,

carve one of the new guy, and that's how this is going to go.

Thank you. but you know what you are? Replaceable.
Yeah, literally, in this case. And when you go, we're just going to pop the head off, carve one of the new guy, and that's how this is going to go.
And that's what's happening to all of us, right? Like you're the number one podcast for a brief moment, and then you're not the number one podcast. And then podcasts are not even a thing anymore.
And it's this relentless, merciless process by which you are slowly, inevitably made irrelevant by time and age and indifference. And some of us may have blips that last longer than others, but it happens to all of us.
And for those few exceptions, like the fact that I'm talking about Marcus Aurelius or mentioned Charlie Chapman or Catherine Hepburn or whatever, you know what good it does them to be remembered? Zero, they're f***ing dead.

They're taking zero enjoyment out of it right now.

They didn't get any pang of validation

that their name has survived.

How do you think it makes Alexander the Great feel

that Alexandria is still a city

with hundreds of thousands of people in it?

And he founded that city.

It doesn't mean anything to him.

He died a horrible death, needlessly premature because his ambition was endless and his men wanted to go home and he died there. And that was the end of that story.
It's been a part of other people's stories since, but it did him zero good. How did he die? I don't even know, actually.
Well, there's one theory is that his men killed killed him because they were like you said we would go home once we got here and he didn't want to go home right he wants to keep and then the other one is he caught this like weird disease and it paralyzed him and he was basically snow white for like a number of days he was alive in like in a coma but he could hear and comprehend what was happening and then it was like it's a particularly really gruesome death. And then there's some other ones, but he died and then he's gone.
And as Marcus writes in meditations, he's like, Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and were both buried in the ground. The same thing happened to both of them, which is that they became worm food, you know? And so there's something, I think, humbling and clarifying about that.

Does that mean nothing matters and you should do nothing?

No, it just means you have to figure out

how to do it in a balanced way inside your life.

Yeah, I think you're really, you're onto something.

A lot of people who get caught up,

my friends were like making tons of money and stuff.

They start going like,

looking at what they're going to buy online,

even fantasy shopping.

I was talking to my wife,

because one of my friends is selling his company for like hundreds of millions. And I'm like, what are you going to get? Are you going to get a plane or a boat or both? It's fun to think about.
And I was telling my wife, I was like, yikes, probably never going to get there, not even headed towards that, don't really care. And she's like, yeah, I don't really think we need that.
And I was thinking, what would I take in a fire? My kids, my wife, maybe my laptop would be a little inconvenient, but I'm like, I don't really need that. My cats, I take my kids, my wife and my cats.
I would stand in the street and watch my house burn down. I wouldn't even go back in for anything else, even if I thought I could get it.
What do I need? I don't need any of that stuff. The other thing is like, yeah, sure.
You're not selling your company for a hundred million dollars. But like, I bet I met you in 2012.
If I was like, Jordan, I'm going to tell you about a future in which 12 years from now this is how many downloads your show is doing this is what you're getting paid per year this is how many years you will have done it and have taken this much out of the business you'd have been like that is incomprehensibly lucky and plentiful and would be enough and the problem is we get used to it and then we move the thing thing and it gets more. I wanted to write one book.
So I was like, if I could write a book, that would be so cool. And this is 16.
Does that mean I should stop and just... No, because what am I supposed to do with my time? There's other things, like my kids are at school.
I have time for myself also. So I'm just trying to get to a place where...
Or what I think the struggle is, and there's not a lot of resources and discussion about it. It's like, how do you do what you do and be good at it, but from a place of enoughness? Yeah, it's tough.
It's easy to be like, hey, I do this thing and I work on this thing and I compete at this level because this is my goal or this is what I have to prove or this is my number, the money I'm trying to make. Or not even to think about this and do it more from a place of like, I'm going to prove those people wrong.
I'm going to be the greatest ever. I'm going to make the most.
I'm going to be the number one, the indisputed goat or whatever. That in some ways is easier because you're like, this thing is deciding what I do and how much of it I do and how much it takes out of me.
But to try to be like, I'm good at what I do. I care about what I do.
I'm trying to do it well. I'm in the league, but I'm trying to do it from a motivational place that is not outcome dependent.
Yeah. It is funny to look back historically on, you're right.
When I first, not even when I first started, halfway through, when I started this second iteration, when I started the Jordan Harbinger show from my previous show, kind of like unplugging things and plugging it back in, I remember going, okay. And it was a very small number of what I thought I would need.
And of course, that's like what you get in a week now or whatever. But when I first, first started, I remember I was an attorney before and I go, if I could make one half as much as I make as a lawyer doing this other thing that I love, that would be so awesome.
And of course now it's beyond that. And then you think, oh, but how do I double this? And it's just so silly because the way you double it is to ruin this thing that you love by doing it a hundred times more than you want to and not seeing your family.
I remember James Altucher said to me once, he was like, you know, you don't have to put your money to work. And I was like, what? He was saying like, people are like, you got to earn money.
They're going to put that money to work. And then he's like, and then you got to buy a house and he's got to appreciate.
His point was like, you could also just make money and then live. It doesn't have to be this thing that you're building or accumulating.
Look, some people don't have this problem at all and some people don't have this impulse at all. But then I think people are hearing this probably do relate to it.
Yeah, I think so. Where you have a business and revenue of the business was X.
So next year, it should be X plus 20%, right? And if it's 90% of X, then you're going in the wrong direction and you're failing. Yeah.
And so like it becomes this thing of comparing instead of just like, hey, this is what I do and I'm gonna show up every day and do it and do it well. And obviously if it makes no money or if it's like losing money, you're probably not sustainable, but it's equally unsustainable to grow at an infinite level for an infinite amount.
I am trying to sort of free myself from expectations. I don't have sales goals on my books anymore.
Really? I don't have like bestseller list goals. I wanted to reach as many people as possible and I do the things required, but I have tried to get the sort of hunger out of it.
That's amazing. I would love, I mean, that's, how did you do that? Well, part of it is doing it once.
Like winning one gold medal and realizing your life isn't completely true. Yeah, that's helpful.
I mean, I remember when Obstacles Away hit number one for the first time, I was like mowing my lawn. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I'm like, oh, okay, what does this mean? Nothing, you know? Okay, so Stillness is the Key was my first book to hit the New York Times with Sellers and it debuted at number one. And so I was like, holy shit, I've done it.
So then as I've done these other books, you have to make these different decisions. Like, hey, do you want to go on a book tour? Why do you go on a book tour? It's because it spreads the sales around and then it helps for the list better, right? But that requires being gone for a long time.
Or I have my own bookstore. I have Daily Stoic has a store.
I can sell my books directly to the readers, which is better in some ways financially, but also then there's a direct relationship between you and the people. So I can be like, when I have a new one, I can be like, hey, hear about this one, right? But literally every time I do this, the publisher goes, but you know, that's gonna hurt your chances to be on the bestseller list.
Because you're supposed to spread them out. You're supposed to spread them out.
And then the New York Times list, I think, understandably, when I report, hey, I sold 30,000 copies of my own book from my store, they're like, eh. Did you though? Yeah.
That makes sense. I was like, oh yeah, but my goal is not to do that.
It doesn't mean I've done it. It didn't change my life in any considerable way.
And by doing it this way, I am cultivating a more sustainable relationship with the audience that allows me to then just be like, hey, I have a thing. You want to hear? So anyways, the point is, how do you set up your life in the way you run your business, your career, or whatever, that it is as independent of other people and institutions as possible.
That's where you want to get. Because then you can just do the thing because you like doing the thing.
And if other people like doing the thing, then it can be financially sustainable. But it's not run through the thing about it.
So you make this great movie, you put it out. But if you want it to win an award, you have to do the award season campaign.
You have to go to the things. You have to send it out to the people.
You have to buy ads. It's a process.
And the second you decide that that thing is meaningful to you, you are accepting the obligations of doing that thing or the disappointment of not getting the thing because you didn't do the process. Yeah, man, I find this is really helpful because the whole comparison thing, right? It's the thief of joy and all these awards that you can get for books or like sales goals and little press release things.
Look, that stuff can be motivating, I guess, but for me, usually it's like four o'clock in the morning, I get up to pee. I don't need to be motivated then.
That's called anxiety at that point. And I just find the negative comparison stuff, it kind of all, it blends together and it kind of cures almost like concrete or asphalt in a way that's really, you have to scrape it off your soul at the end.
And it's not good. I was so much happier with podcasting before you could know how many downloads you had.
There used to be this time where you would rent server space on like GoDaddy and they would go, oh yeah, this file was access. Like there was no stats dashboard.
You just have to look at how many MP3 files were downloaded over a 30 day period. And it would be like 80% partial downloads because that's the files are long and you had no idea what that really meant.
And you go, okay. And then there were 40,000 full downloads.
Does that mean it's 40,000 people? And then they would explain to you that you can't really tell how many unique people it was without doing like some sort of complex calculation that they aren't going to do for you. And you go, oh, okay.
Well, I guess since I like it, I'm just going to keep doing it. I was so much happier when that was it.
Now you can look every minute and there's up-to-date statistics and it shows you where your rank is compared to somebody else. This is the most unhealthy way to do something you love.
It really is. I've said before, I think with my first book, I was like 90% like, how's this going to do? That determines my happiness.
And 10% like, I think I wrote a good book and I'm really proud of it. I think I flipped it.
Yeah, that's great. Or I think it's been a process getting towards being close to saying that I flipped it.
That's what I'm trying. Would I be disappointed if it sold zero copies? Of course, right? And that would also be, people would be upset with me because I publish it with someone.
Right. You would have failed people who have invested in you.
I understand Yeah, and it also decreases the chances of my ability to do it again, to do the next book. It changes the resources that I have available, the time I have allotted.
You know, it changes things. I just try to channel that energy towards doing the thing well.
That's true, right? Once you're at the top tier author level, you're still getting paid for talks. It's still worth it for you to write another book.
You already have a topic. I know you have the next like four, three or four books.
This is a four book series. So I have like another, that's the other reason I'm not thinking about how this one is going to do.
Cause like, actually what I'm thinking is like every minute that I'm spending traveling to promote or do was I'm like, I could be working on the thing. Do you take a break between books? This one I took two years on instead of one year.
I decided to take extra time just to be around more and to just slow down a bit. But I try to always, as soon as I finish a book, start the next one.
Not because I have to always be working, but because to me, being in the process is I write books. I'm not in it to publish books.
Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. This is the accidental byproduct of the thing that I do.
You know what I mean? And that's the enoughness, fullness place as opposed to like, no, no, no, what I do is book launch parties. That's actually the culmination of it is the call from the agent that says, hey, here's where the first week sales numbers came in and here's where you rank.
That's to me is like this extra thing. That's like getting the bill at the end almost.
It's not a negative, but like, that's like, I was here for dinner. Yeah.
Like I enjoyed the meal. Yeah.
I like that. I like that outlook.
I always learn a lot from you, whether or not I'm reading your stuff over at the Daily Dad at dailydad.com. That's my major Ryan Holiday fix is Daily Dad stuff.
That's my favorite thing to write. You always text me about it, which I appreciate.
I do, yeah. And I appreciate you, man.
And I know that sounds creepy, actually, when people say that, but I mean it. And thanks for having me over at the Painted Porch as well.
Yeah, thanks for coming. If you're looking for another episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show to sink your teeth into, here's a trailer for another episode that I think you might enjoy.
I was walking from one hotel to another quite late at night. I was at a magic convention in Wales.
I was wearing a three-piece velvet suit. Because why not? Because why not? So this guy is, you know, he's really drunk and he's clearly looking for a fight.
And he's with his girlfriend and all his adrenaline is kind of, you know, up here. And he starts shouting at me and says something like, what are you looking at or what's your problem or something.
In that situation, you can't respond with, oh, I'm not looking at anything because then you're on the back foot and they've got power. Or, yeah, I'm looking at you, what's your problem? Because either way, you're going to get hit.
But you can just not play that game right from the outset so I said the wall outside my house isn't four foot high so his reaction to that is a bit of a pause he's like what and I said oh the wall outside my house isn't four foot high when I lived in Spain the walls there were quite high but here they're tiny I mean they're nothing so so he then... He just went, Oh, fuck! And started crying.
His girlfriend walked off, and he sat down by the side of the road. I sat down next to him and started asking about what had gone wrong that night.
I think his girlfriend had bottled somebody. There'd been some fight.
And weirdly, then I'm giving him advice. I was talking to a friend of mine about this thing, and he's an artist, and he used to walk home from his studio late at night

through a rough bit of London,

and there were always these kind of, like, gangs

on one side of the road,

so he'd always cross over away from them.

Of course, they'd always see that,

and it was always this horrible, uncomfortable,

intimidating thing.

So we spoke about it,

and then the next night,

he crossed over the road to them

and said,

good evening,

as he walked past them, and of course they left him alone because he just seemed like a strange. Yeah, I don't see.
He's crazy. He's just weird.
Yeah. Who wants to see a magic trick? For an inside look at the levers in our own brain alongside Darren Brown, one of the world's most legendary illusionists and mentalists, check out episode 150 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.
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