BONUS: How Rory McIlroy Fueled His Comeback with Stoicism
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Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a bonus episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. This is a bonus episode because it was a bonus surprise. Very cool thing that happened last week. So if you were watching the Masters, Rory McIlroy has this incredible victory, not just over the competition, but over himself. He's been trying almost for a decade to finish up his Grand Slam. Incredible. It didn't look like he was going to be able to do it. And then just out of nowhere, he pulls it off. And so many people sent me this clip. So right after

wins, the Masters coverage cuts to this discussion. And let me just play this for you.

A few years ago, I sat with Rory. I did a story. He had been doing a deep dive reading the Ryan Holiday books about the Stoics, the Epictetus, the ancient Greek philosopher. And this is a quote from Epictetus. And Rory was really into this. It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. That was it. Which, you know, again, not expecting. It was cool. My dad's a big golfer, so he saw it and sent it to me.

Because of that clip and because of the win, I wanted to actually show you some of this larger context of how Rory had come to stoicism. Almost five years ago, the Golf Channel profiled me in that piece about Rory and his reading habits.

I thought I would just play that episode for you. You can watch a video of it if you want. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's just, you know, incredible. Obviously, the person who did all the work here is Rory. I just love the idea, though, of the Stoics holding up under all different sorts of pressure, working for people in all different lines of work.

And I don't know, maybe there's something in here that applies to you and some sort of internal or external obstacle you are trying to get over. Maybe it's maybe it'll inspire you to tackle some kind of project

I wanted to throw this bonus episode together in honor of that incredible feat. If you notice, I actually wrote about Rory a little bit in Right Thing right now. You know, part of what I think has been so impressive is that he hasn't just been able to focus on golf. He spent the last couple of years sort of

fighting for the integrity of the PGA Tour against the sort of threat of the Live Golf League, where he turned out millions and millions and millions of dollars because he thought it wasn't the right thing to do. And how does he get rewarded for that? Well, he basically gets screwed over and sort of hung out to dry. And so, you know, he was going through personal things. And then also, it's just really hard to be elite at Anteroom.

anything and to be elite at something for as long as he's been elite and to be elite at a game as humbling as golf, you know, to not just give up and to call it. It's just an incredible feat of human performance. And I think, you know, the Stoics help us do things like that. So enjoy this bonus episode and I will talk to you all soon.

It probably doesn't seem like golf and stoicism have anything in common. And that's certainly not what I was thinking about when I was writing the book. So I was super surprised to hear that Rory McIlroy, now the number one golfer in the world, one of the highest earning golfers of all time, the best athletes in his sport, read both "Obstacles Away" and "Ego's the Enemy." And he actually said "Obstacles" is, I think, his favorite book. So the Golf Channel is here, and they want to do a session where they sort of probe that. I guess he got interviewed about it too.

So I'm a little nervous, but it should be pretty cool. It's so difficult to watch. A nightmare day for Rory. Where did that come from? There's one word for it. The word is choking. Mentally, it was a demolition of Rory McIlroy. When Rory McIlroy buckled beneath the weight of expectations, the kind that come with a swing you can hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he turned not to a new coach for help,

but to Epictetus, the ancient Greek philosopher known as a Stoic. What the Stoics believed is that we don't control what happens, but we always control how we respond. Everything that happens to us in life is an opportunity to practice excellence or virtue. Ryan Holiday wrote, "The obstacle is the way, the timeless art of turning trials into triumph." So in his quest to improve, Rory hit more than just golf balls. He hit the books.

Just a journey of personal growth and development and trying to be the best golfer I could be, be the best person I could be. The moment that you stop wanting to learn, that's not a great place to be. Fundamentally, the book is about how do you react. Golf is a game where because it's so mental,

The reaction or the disposition you bring is most, if not all, of the battle. Oh, you're kidding. Yeah, that's a lack of concentration, a lack of poise. Now he's in trouble. It might not be how you want it to go, but you still have a chance to be like your best self in that situation. Chasing the crown, no chains, no rings to keep me down.

It's forced me to embrace difficulty, embrace impediments in my way. I used to shy away, but now I don't seek out failure, but if it comes, I welcome it. No failure stung more than the 2019 Open when a first-round 79 brought both pain and a chance for growth. Sometimes you go out in a first round and you're trying to play your way into the golf tournament, and that's never really been in my nature. That's something that I'm going to try to improve on.

It made me realize I need those failures to get to the point of winning four times, winning player of the year and all that. Roy McIlroy is a two-time FedExCup champion. The modern athlete must learn not only to deal with failure, and in this sport even the best will lose 95% of the time, but also shut out the noise. And with social media, it's never been louder.

with referendums, harsh judgments rendered every minute, refreshed and rehashed. That led Rory to another book, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Social media can be like poison for these deep-rooted human instincts we have.

The people that you actually encounter are not a fair sample of the people out there in the world. Rory is reading these books on technology, he's reading books on stoicism because he realizes what happens between the ears is a significant contributor to what actually happens on the course.

One of the hardest things about the judgment, about the comments, is learning not to read them. It's taken me a while to not read anything that's on Twitter or anything that might be said about me in a forum or online or media article. It's going to optimize for outrage. It's going to optimize for trolling. It's going to optimize for aggressive pushback because that's what keeps people's eyeballs on it.

I have opinions of the people around me that I value, but someone that's never met me and makes a comment or a judgment on a presumption of who they think I am or what they think I might be like. I try to lock my phone in the bedside drawer for the weeks of majors and just do anything I can to just get away from that.

The future of high performance athletics is going to treat the smartphone and its role in the athlete's life just as importantly as weight routines, just as importantly as diets. And you think Rory is ahead of the curve on this? He's that type of guy, looking for every edge he can get. And I think we see it's working. Rory is a players champion.

Working in part by tuning out a world in which with one click, you can hear the roaring chorus of the rarely satisfied, always in need of more. You move up in the FedEx Cup standings, this sort of changes your goals. How do you assess looking ahead to 2020? What's next for you? We kind of unthinkingly ask people that, and we don't really think about what it's implying. What it's implying is that what you've done is not enough. This could create a poverty in the sense that

Never satisfied. They're never happy. In his quest for a balanced existence, Rory's contemplated these profound subjects, even the heavy garment of fame. The more time I've spent in the spotlight, the more uncomfortable I've become with it.

Rory McIlroy had the spotlight of sports on him. Bigger than it's ever been. I can't imagine how he feels. I used to love the adulation, but now you crave that anonymity. That's an old idea considered by another Stoic, Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius says, you know, what is cheering but, you know, the clacking of tongues? What is clapping but the smacking of hands?

What he's trying to remind himself is that these things that maybe you wanted early on or you thought would be amazing are actually not that meaningful. And what matters is the love of the process of doing. Love what you do, not what it brings you. Progress, not perfection. Practice in golf, yes, but virtue as well. Books as part of the process. And ultimately, a purpose deeper than shooting 65.

It's a part of my life that I take very seriously and I want to make the most of. But I have other purposes. I have responsibility to be a good husband, a role model to people that might want to emulate me. That's all a part of my purpose.

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