“Embracing Change Will Set You Free”
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And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have

have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Social media has largely not been great for humanity, certainly not been great for us as individuals as far as our habits and practices. It's just an enormous time suck. It ripped apart our political system. It polarized us. It distracted us. It probably made us more materialistic, evaporated our attention spans. It didn't do a lot of great stuff for us.

But it's not all bad. I mean, look, maybe you found out about stoicism through social media. These algorithms are, of course, very powerful. I try to take advantage of them where I can. And I'm also always interested in other people who have used the algorithm for good, right? Who have used it to spread positive messages or have used it to popularize things that

are difficult to popularize. An obscure school of ancient philosophy, not the easiest thing to get the algorithm to pick up. And I'd say poetry, not the easiest. We had Rupi Kaur on not long ago. Her counterpart, another very popular Instagram poet who I've known now, I guess, for three or so years is Young Pueblo. Young Pueblo came on the podcast back in 2022. And

And we had a delightful conversation then, and we had a delightful conversation this time. He came out to the Painted Porch. His books have sold over a million and a half copies worldwide, been translated in over 25 languages.

One of the things we talked about that I didn't know about him, I didn't know how steeped he was in meditation and Buddhist thinking. He kept talking about people who spent tens of thousands of hours meditating. And I never really thought about the cumulative amount of time spent studying or practicing a philosophical practice, right? It made me wonder how long I've actually put into Stoicism over the years.

Certainly, I would tend to measure my output in words rather than hours, but it was a really interesting conversation I was glad to have. He has a new book out called How to Love Better, The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion. He's got a bunch of very popular poetry books, which always immediately sell out at the bookstore where you have trouble keeping them in stock. And he signed a bunch of them. He signed Lighter, Inward, Clarity, and Connection, and The Way Forward.

You can follow him on Instagram at Young Pueblo. That's Y-U-N-G underscore Pueblo. Follow him on Twitter at Young Pueblo, no underscore. Look, here's a guy with an online audience in the millions.

When poetry is, you know, seemingly anachronistic or antiquated or just the domain of tenured university professors, he found a way to bring that to millions of people. I'm really fascinated by that. So here is us talking about how not to let your emotions rule, how to have empathy for people you disagree with, where the Stoics and the Buddhists overlap, and quite a bit about Emerson. Also, here is my conversation with Diego Perez, a.k.a. Young Pueblo.

where do you live i live in the woods in western mass the woods i'm like literally in the middle of nothing like uh like thoreau kind of woods yeah like literally pretty quite close yeah yeah um two hours west of boston three hours north of new york city why there just i was tired of the concrete yeah it's tired you know i grew up in boston and then i lived in new york city for seven years and

And I don't know, I just needed some nature. Yeah. I was reading about Thoreau one time that it's more wooded now than when he lived there.

Yeah. When he lived there, they just cut everything down. Yeah. All the trees are a hundred years old. Yes. So we have this sense of like the landscape being one thing and actually like what we think of as like the good old days or when things were more rural, it was actually worse and more industrialized. Yeah. Way worse. I think it was just the same as the UK where they cut everything down. They came to New England, cut everything down. And there is like one tiny little place where there's an old growth forest that I went to that was like,

It looks like Lord of the Rings. It just looks very different than these skinny little... Obviously, I know they needed the stuff, but what did they think as they were chopping down these...

800-year-old trees or whatever. Yeah. You know, like, there's something about, inexplicable to me about, like, the human mind that some people are like, this seems like a good idea. Yeah. Like, you know, you're not filled with guilt and disgust and shame. Yeah. It's just production. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's just like, you know, going from survival to maybe thriving on a very material manner. But also probably just if you think there's an infinite amount of it and there was a good chunk of human history where we just didn't know where the limits were. Like we just assumed there was, it went on like this forever. Right. There was just more land. Yeah. Yeah. But then we got to the end of it. Yeah. Yeah.

And maybe they didn't fully know how old the stuff was, like how long it took, but they're just like, hey, you're chopping down a thing. That's like the human condition right there. Like you are, or this silliness of humans where it's like, I know this thing took 300 years to grow. Yeah. And I'm going to chop it down. Yeah.

But they grow back, right? And it's like, yeah, every 300 years. Yeah. When I was in, I spent a little bit of time outside of Portland, Oregon, and there were some sick old growth forests. And it just looked otherworldly. Like, I almost felt like you were just stepping into a different world because...

it wasn't organized the way woods are now. Like when you walk through woods in Western mass now, they, they do feel a bit organized. Cause they, they replant. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, um, you know, having that like, uh, unmanicured feeling is, I think it's really special. Cause it reminds you that you're like an animal. Yeah. Or like we have some property in Southern California that's like up in these mountains and they have these, uh, these

that are like several thousand years old. Like they're some of the oldest trees in the world. These like little pine trees. And it was like some guys walking over and chopping it down for firewood. Just like that. Oh, shoot. But I mean, for hundreds of years, people have been doing that. This thing is 3000 years old. It's older than basically every civilization. Yeah. And somebody's using it for an,

an hour of warmth. Yeah. Just the, the ephemerality of it is kind of insane. We just don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's some people who care and some people who don't care. And there's probably more people that don't care than care. And so there's this battle between those two sort of forces. But also like how the relation between, you know,

you have the awareness, you have the information and then as necessity grows. Sure. And then like the importance of it just decreases and you're like, eventually, you know, if the, if the world, like that scene from, um,

What was that movie? Like 2012 and like, or everything falls apart and the whole, and then they're in the library just burning all the books, you know? And it's like, cause we're dying. That's true. Yeah. There's a, it's hard to tell someone who's shivering to death that they should be chopped down this tree. Sure. But just, just the, that is like, what's crazy to me too about Walden is, is,

Thoreau talks about this, that they would chop ice from Walden Pond and ship it to India. Like, like even at that global commerce at that period of time was already so complex and, and multinational and, and whatever that like, yeah, if you are, I don't know, you're a, you're part of the British Raj, some army ops and you're drinking, you know, a cocktail with ice in it.

They may have chopped that ice from Walden Pond, loaded onto a ship in Boston Harbor. They covered in sawdust, ship it across the ocean, and then they're taking back, you know, whatever they're looting from India. Yeah. Like spices and, you know, goods and whatever. But that like,

What he's sort of commenting on there, it's not just, hey, I'm retreating from the busyness of Boston. Yeah. But that Boston has this global commerce hub. Yeah. It means that everything is so interconnected and global. And he's just trying to make everything small again. Yeah. That's wild, man. Isn't that crazy? I've never thought about that. I imagine, like, what? Did it take...

A month to get there? Probably. Yeah. Or, yeah. But even just like that they could chop ice and keep it. Yeah. For the journey and all of that. That's been, I mean, that's been one of my experiences from just like, you know, traveling around for this book launch and just for the past few years, like doing speaking events and being around the world. The world's not that big.

No. It's not that big. It's like, it takes a long time to get to Japan from here. Yeah. But other than that, like you can really get to a place in like 14 hours. You can basically get anywhere in the world in a day. Yeah. But to me, it's like, there's so many of us, so much culture, but then even amidst all that culture, like we're pretty similar. Yeah.

Like there are a lot of things about the human mind that are like, you know, we react, we have anger, we have gone through the same series of emotions. And I've been talking to my wife about this. I'm like, we're like Jitra Krishnamurti was so correct. Like you think you're different, but we're the same. We suffer in the same ways and we like are moving through the same field of emotions.

Well, I think that's why probably almost all art, all religious insight, all philosophical insight is saying like the five or six same things. Oh, yeah, totally. Totally. You go through like that's what's so interesting about history is like you have these different people who either move through philosophy or move through, you know, some type of special experience that, you know, illuminates them in some manner. Yeah.

And they keep revealing the same truths about how important unconditional love is, how valuable it is, you know, to have goodwill and move through goodwill and how that supports your own peace and the peace of the community. Yes. And like these like fundamental things just get rediscovered over and over again through like different people's perspectives. Yeah. Like, you know, sort of making meaning from suffering and how we're the cause of most of our own suffering. Yeah.

And that it's our opinions and expectations that are the problem. These are like just the same sort of core insights, whether it's Buddhist thought or Hindu thought or Stoic thought or whatever. Totally.

Yeah. And they're very like, I think there's a connection between like awakening the individual and stabilizing the community where like a lot of times it feels like the two things are moving in sync where like during the Buddhist time, you know, all these people start practicing, some of them become enlightened, but a lot of it is then like turned towards like, how are we going to treat each other? And I think that's pretty special. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's happening all over, all the time. And whenever we forget, someone's going to remember. Yes. Someone will rediscover the old idea or repopularize the old idea. That's sort of the... Largely because something will happen that reminds us of the consequences of not doing that. Yeah. Chaos. Yeah. Chaos, cruelty, things that make you feel ashamed of your country or your community. When you're like,

oh yeah, we built this in response to that. I heard someone say that tradition, and it's not always true, but the expression is tradition is a solution to a problem we forgot about. We invented this to address that. So you'll see someone go like, monogamy, it doesn't make any sense. It's not biological. And it's like,

Yeah, society has invented monogamy so people would stop killing each other. For the sake of order. Yeah. Or so things were fair, you know, or because it was making people so profoundly unhappy. And they're choosing one form of unhappiness for another. You know, it's not always perfect and no one is saying there are good solutions, but it's addressing a root cause. Yeah.

And you rip out the tradition or the assumption at your peril if you haven't explored why...

we slowly evolved or developed. Can we go on that tangent though, which is really interesting because it's a conversation I've been having with myself and like with friends where I think a lot of my, so I'm releasing my fifth book and I think a lot of that, that even being possible is directly tied to me being in a long-term relationship and having the stability of being with one person and having

having enough satisfaction where I'm not looking at other places and like having that part of my mind just like be chilled out so that I can just focus. Well, I hate the idea that to be successful at what you do, you have to be like a monster or you have to be,

Yeah. Yeah.

or it was immensely expensive for them and everyone else involved. So it seems like one fueled the other, but actually it was...

more suppressing than it was empowering and it i wouldn't say they were paragons of happiness either no totally and i've been thinking this in the same lines too where like the idea of the tortured artist and like that's where the and like the epitome of art comes from it sounds like nonsense to me it's like i'd rather you know i'm curious to see when we're living in this world now where there's so many people actively trying to cultivate self-awareness yeah and it's like what art

transforms into and reaching these sort of almost like new heights because it's a special time. Like people are reflecting in so many different ways. Millions of people are, you know, using therapy to their benefit. Millions of people are meditating. Millions of people are reading your books. They're like trying to self do some self analysis. And I think that's pretty like pretty different in terms of like how

connected the global community is and how like you know whether you're here or you're in Singapore you could probably type in like how can I deal with my anxiety like is there someone I can talk to and you can find somebody within like 10 15 miles you know yeah pretty special yeah that's true I mean look

athletes used to just get by on raw talent. Even not that long ago, you see pictures of them and they're smoking in the locker room or they were partying all night before. Or, I mean, look, baseball players used to play in wool uniforms. So, like, they were obviously good and the product on the field was pretty impressive. But what we...

slowly, steadily, we realized, oh, hey, if you play in this fabric versus that fabric, you perform better. Hey, like the NBA has limited the amount of back-to-back games

road games because the players play worse when they're on, when their sleep is disrupted. Like we just realized these things. And so the idea that like the artist doesn't become professionalized and have to take care of their habits, you know? And like when you look at older musicians and

The shoe choice they have is because they're worried about their back. You know, they're just, they're, they're doing it for like when everyone died at 27, uh, because they OD'd. Yeah. What it meant to be a rock star was different than if you can theoretically do it till you're 85. And if your goal is to do it till you're 85, you have to rethink some of your assumptions and your practices. And yeah, the, the idea that,

You should just be treating your body like a garbage can and that that's going to be conducive to creative expression strikes me as anachronistic.

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I'm so curious. I mean, just because I have you here for this moment and it's, I'm curious, can we talk about the relationship between creating something that you want

that hopefully, you know, hopefully brings value to people, like putting a book together and what your relationship is to marketing that book. Because I think there's like, there's- You're in it now, aren't you? Yeah, I'm in it right now. And I know like, we're always in it together. You know, like I released a book and you release a book two months after. Whenever I write, put together a book, I tell my editor, Matthew Benjamin, I'm like, can you find out when Ryan's releasing his next book to make sure it's not on the same week? Yeah.

you know, and I'm like, careful with this. I'm like, there's a few people I'm like, we have to kind of be mindful of when things are, you know, but you must have learned so much about marketing. I know I've learned a bunch about it too. It's not the thing I wanted to learn. It's not, it's not the reason why I feel like you've learned. I've learned how to like, honestly, just the different platforms, how to use them in concert to be able to get the most eyes to even realize that I have a new book out because, you know, it'll be like,

three, four, five months and people will still be, people who are really committed to your work, they'll be like, oh, I didn't know you had a new book out. Sure. So there's a lot to it. I mean, people tell me they just read The Obstacles of the Way. It's been out for 12 years or whatever. It's new to someone if they haven't heard of it. I do think it's, for both of us, what we do is crazy in the sense that like-

You do poetry and people are like, poetry? Nobody reads poetry anymore. And I do ancient philosophy and it's like ancient philosophy. And so you already have this uphill battle and that there's a perception that what you do is irrelevant or quaint or silly or just not what people want. Yeah.

And so you have to figure out like marketing to me is not like degrading. It's, it's the process of, it's like another puzzle you have to figure out. Like you have to figure out how do I get the words to go in this order and rhyme and say what I want. That's like the constraints. And I feel like,

I have what I want to say and what I'm excited about. Yeah. And then you have the world that's totally indifferent to that. And you have to figure out how to get your vision to align and be interesting to someone else. And some of that's just raw, like, you know, boot leather going on shows and talking. But a lot of it's like, how do you make...

the thing that's relevant now and then also hopefully so it's both that you how do you make a thing that's both timely and timeless that's right that's both a creative puzzle but also a marketing puzzle yeah i had one of these original sort of moments of inspiration before i released my first book um i used to i was living in new york city and i would go to the strand bookstore a lot and in the strand bookstore they have these like two tables right at the front there's like

the best of the best. And then there's also like timeless classics. Yes. And I'm like, I need to figure out how to write something that helps people, uh,

so much that it ends up on one of these two tables as like a personal goal. And what's been interesting is I'm releasing my second nonfiction book. So I've been stepping a little bit away from poetry. But in doing the second nonfiction book, I had the clear idea of what I wanted to write about. But then I had learned enough about sort of, you know, human psychology and how to like structure chapters in a way where it's like,

the person who's reading it is feeling one victory after another. So it's not like this giant slog. So you're not only getting good information, but you're working with the mind as opposed to against it. Do you think about that too? Yeah, no, my books are deliberately short. And I just did this four book series on the cardinal virtues. I could have just written one epic book on the cardinal virtues, but four books...

that allows someone to breeze through each one of them. And then it feels like you're creating the sensation of, wow, that went by really fast. It was very compelling. And that's also, it's true, but it's also because it's half the length of a normal book or whatever, right? And so thinking, I think, like, look, there's lots of forms of poetry you could do, but I think you probably gravitate towards, like when I read your poems on Instagram, I'm not scrolling like

10 slides. It's one. I'm getting most of it there. Some of them are longer, but when I read poetry and I hear about some poem and I look it up and it comes up on poetry.org or whatever, if I'm scrolling, I'm like, I'm probably not going to read this. But that's just a fact on the ground. You have to figure out how to navigate. And do you feel like there's... When you rev yourself up for another launch, it feels...

In some ways, I'm reaching this point where I am obviously... Like, this book that I just wrote, How to Love Better, I personally think it's better than all the other books that I've written just because it's taken a long time to... Otherwise, you're going in the wrong direction. Right. But it's taken time to, like, to honestly just learn how to be clearer. Like, how to, like, just be more clear, how to, like, use sentence structure in a better way and...

And the material, like it's taken a long time, you know, so many thousands of hours of meditating and all that stuff to be able to even fix my personal relationship with my wife and also take that understanding and put it into the book.

But then it's like another launch and a launch is like a little bit of a battle. You know, it's like you're battling the algorithm. You have to maintain your own stamina. You have to then go on tour. And it's like, I'm like, dang, how many more of these am I going to do? Like, I'm like willfully entering a battle here. Well, the fantasy is you just make something that's so good that it just does it. And I think that misleads a lot of people. It's another...

like the tortured artist. It's a myth like the, you know, Kerouac sat down and wrote on the road in 24 hours on a bender. And it's like, no, almost everything that is impressive was methodically and gradually built. And painstakingly so. And like a launch is, it would be amazing that you put out the book and,

And then you give it to your publisher and then they call you and they go, the New York times doing a front page excerpt and a trend, you know, like everybody you're on these five morning shows. And then all the, and I've never, never done a book where I felt like I got all the things that I thought were possible to get, you know? And so you're always kind of in this street fight for attention and you

You also, I think early in your career, you're like, I want to go on a book tour. Yeah. I want a publisher to send me on a tour. And then you do it. And then you're like, I hope I never have to do that again. I know. To be able to stay at home and be able to put a book out. I mean, it's nice to be able to connect with people, honestly, in person and hear the stories. But it's also...

I think, though, that like when I went into writing, I also felt that same thing. Like, you know, not too far from each other. Rupi Kaur releases Milk and Honey. James Clear releases Atomic Habits. And these books just sell 10 million copies on their own, you know, like, and they just keep growing. I know James very well. Yeah. And we have this mastermind group. We met every year for three years. Mm-hmm.

And he paid for it all out of his own pocket. He invited all these different authors, a bunch of people you've heard. And he just literally downloaded everything that everyone had learned into that launch. Yeah.

Which then, you know, he did like 200, like he built an email list for years. He did like 200 podcasts. He did media. It was as good as I've ever seen anyone do it. And then people are like, that book came out of nowhere. And it didn't come out of nowhere at all. He's the only guy who anytime I'm ever ahead of him on any list, he's the only guy.

he reaches out. He's like, congratulations. And what did you do? You know, like he's always trying to learn and it's really cool seeing that. But I brought that up because not having that experience has honestly been really liberating where it's like having one book that's just like a major bestseller, you know, seems like an ideal, but honestly it's,

It's been fun fine-tuning the craft, learning how to do it better, continuing to grow as an individual and understand what am I learning that's really affecting my life in a better way? And putting it together in a set of books that can hold much more weight than just one individual book that hopefully takes off to the stars. Well, you think you want it. I know. You think you want it all...

upfront in a lump sum and you want to get every break that you can. And maybe, I don't know, I haven't experienced it, but it's probably not as good for you. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's probably better to look, fame and success are a poison. Highly dissatisfying. No, I mean, like, look, it kills people. So it's obviously at some level it is potent.

And so the question is how big of a dose do you want to take all at once? It's probably something that you want to take slowly and steadily over time and build up a tolerance or an immunity for it. Like Ego is the Enemy came out basically the same month as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. And...

Uh, yeah, that book probably cumulatively has sold more than all of my books combined. I've done all right. But like, if you had asked me what I wanted, I probably would have said that. But Mark's been really honest about this. Like, it's a lot. It's destabilizing and disorienting. And I mean, it's lucrative, but it's a lot. And, um, I think everyone wants kind of transformative, uh,

generational success. And actually, you probably want about 50%. Yeah.

And you want it doled out steadily. Yeah. Because it's just the chances of it killing you are less or breaking you are less. Just totally destabilizing you. I think that's one of the things that I really like about sort of the newer translations coming out of the Buddhist teaching where he would refer to life as dukkha, this word that means suffering, esri, right? Yeah.

But another way to translate it is life is dissatisfying. Life is stressful. And that's much more relatable. And in my experience, I've both been extremely poor, like grew up extremely poor growing up in Boston, where my mom, she cleaned houses. My dad worked at a supermarket. And then now since, you know, writing my fifth book, I've had success. I'm not like crazy wealthy, but I'm not poor anymore. And after having experienced both things,

they're both quite dissatisfying. You know, they're both like, it's like, yeah, the mind is just like, when the mind especially is untrained, it just is constantly reaching out for more. And especially if so many people are turning the light on you and giving you all that attention. And then the mind is like, okay, more, more, more like a,

crab that's endlessly trying to grab. Well, no one feels like they've done it. Like, that's what's interesting that James is messaging you and going, Hey, what have you done? He's not like, there's obviously humility in that. Like, which has only happened twice, by the way, like only two times I've gotten it. Every time I, every, like there's a number one plaque up there. Yeah. James was the week before and the week after. Yeah. Um,

Which is also, there's something helpful about that too. You realize like, okay, this thing that I worked all these years for directed all this accomplishment. Yeah.

I did it. That's a normal week for someone else. Yeah. Right? Like my best week ever was a slight deviation above his normal week. Yeah, these 30,000, 40,000 copies that took so much work for a regular week. And you have that experience in life. You'll meet someone who's usually they were in like finance or business or whatever and they go-

you realize, oh, this person, this person has spent on a house remodel every dollar that I've ever earned in my life. What is my giant, enormous, I'm piling all my accomplishments up in one thing. They're like, I did that. There's actually a famous exchange between Joseph Heller and

and Kurt Vonnegut. They're at this party of this billionaire. Do you know this story? No, tell me. They're at the party of this billionaire and Vonnegut is teasing Joseph Heller and he says, you know, this guy, there is this house in Long Island. He goes, this guy probably made more money this week than Catch-22 has made in its entire run. And Heller says, yeah, that's true, but I have something that this person will never have. And Vonnegut says, what could that possibly be? And he says, I have enough. Hmm.

And so what is interesting when you meet very rich and powerful and important people is how many of them or rather how few of them feel that. Like they don't feel rich and powerful or sufficient or that they've done it. They feel exactly like you feel, which is like they're measuring themselves against someone else. And so to get to a point of enoughness or to feel good or to just feel proud of yourself is actually an extraordinary accomplishment and a like,

Probably the rarer form of wealth. I mean, you can't pay for it. No. You can't pay for it. And I've seen that happen a lot where, you know, I'm friends with Jack Kornfield and he has... You would not believe who called him. Yeah. You know, it's like any time, I think probably in the past like 20, 30 years when some...

you know, billionaire gets a divorce, they call him because he like has peace in his mind. And I've, you know, I've gone to dinners and like been around like people who are really wealthy and like, you can feel their agitation. You can just feel like how they're looking at you trying to listen to your words, but they want what's deeper than the words. They want the peace that's inside that you can't really transmit. And the answer is usually like,

You know, I feel the way I feel. I have a long way to go, but I feel the way I feel because like I meditated for like 12, 13,000 hours, you know, like I put a lot of time into it. Sure. It's also funny. You meet those people and you know, the, the lunch or the dinner goes on. And then at a certain point they tell you their book idea. So it's like, they have all the money in the world and what do they do? They would like to do what you do. Yeah. And like, that was something that I realized really early on.

this is more an analogy than anything specific about writing, but like you tend to be jealous of what other people have and you don't think about the people that would kill to do what you do and how lucky you are. If you found something that is worth doing, that people think is worth doing and you get to do that, that is, that's the lottery. That's the jackpot. And you, and so you go, Oh, these people, their dream is,

is to do what I get to do. And did I wake up this morning and feel like I have an incredible, rare, you know, sought after thing? No, I just was like, oh, I gotta go do this. You know, and when you can remember that, it helps you. I mean, what you don't have often looks very shiny. And I've heard the same thing from a friend. She was like, at the time when she told me this, she was like, you know, the number two at this like billion dollar thing

She was like getting her book together. She was like, I can't read.

to be like you. And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, are you serious? Like, it's, you also say like, I'm, my context is like, one of my jobs feels like I'm, it's my job to pull my family out of poverty. Like we immigrated from Ecuador. Like, so when I'm listening to this really wealthy person be like, oh, I want to like do what you're doing. I'm like, that's a wild because I'm trying to like lift my family up and, you know, have that sense of economic stability so that we don't have to struggle anymore. For you, it's striving. Yeah. To her, it's tranquility and peace. Yeah. Yeah. It's really,

funny. It's funny too, like, because you live in the woods, I live on this ranch, like, whenever people, if you have, like, sort of a weird life, like, you don't just live in a

you know, a condo tower somewhere and people hear about it, they always do something like, oh, I've always wanted to do that. Or that's my dream someday. And you go, yeah, it's not like I, you know, I didn't have to like get through Navy SEAL hell week to live on this farm. Like it's, anyone can do it. It was a choice. Yeah. It was a choice. Yeah. No. And it was, it was so interesting to that moment. Like my wife and I were holding it as this like

dream that we were going to walk into at some point. And then the first wave of the pandemic hits and we're both like, let's get out of this tiny ass apartment. Like, let's just go, let's go to the woods. Like we've always wanted to. And it's been the best because we ended up moving near the meditation center that we always go to. And over there, there's just like so many people who have meditated for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Like, you know, literally like people who are walking around and have put

have put like 30, 40,000 hours of meditation into their minds. Like their minds are like weapons, like so highly cultivated, but they're the most peaceful people in the world. So it was nice not only, you know, getting some sense of external tranquility to support internal tranquility, but the people that we were around were just very different than, you know,

the haphazardness of New York City. Yeah. It's not like getting accepted to Harvard. Like you can move anywhere. Yeah. You can just do it. And often it's, it's cheaper and easier than whatever you're currently doing. It just requires making it that choice. Especially when you move out of the city. Like when we, when we got our house, we were like, it felt like we were living in a

Like we went from this tiny one bedroom apartment and then we're paying the same for a mortgage. And we're like, you know, five acres of land and all that. And it's just... No, my ranch, I mean, obviously it's different now because Austin's blown up. But my ranch, my first mortgage payment on my ranch was less than a studio apartment we had renting in New York City. And so, yeah, when people have always wanted to do that, it's like...

I think it's easier than I think it is. Did you ever live in New York? I did. For how long? Like less than a year. Yeah, you're out of there. I hate it. I hate the idea that to be an artist, you have to go live in a noisy, dirty place.

cement place. New York was special. I think the one thing that I was happy about was, you know, I did my seven years of hard time there. And when we got there, we had nothing. And then when we left, we were, we had a little bit of something, but what I did have was the inspiration and the support from sort of key people. Like I remember I had, um,

my first like a self-published book release. My friend, Elena Brower, she co-hosted that event. And because she co-hosted that event with me, it opened up the rest of the country to me. People were like, come, like come to DC, come to LA, do all these things. And like sort of these sort of key little moments, I got my first literary agent there, you know? And then when I felt like I had enough sort of

where, because I don't like networking. Networking to me is pretty lame. I rather make strong friendships and then it feels reciprocal that we can support each other. But once I had those friendships and I was like, oh, I'll have these friendships whether I live here or not. Let's just bounce. Let's go. Well, one thing I wanted to talk to you about is because I think people, they think this with Buddhism too, but when people think stoicism, they think it's like the absence of emotion. Right.

Right. They think like if you meditate enough, you have transcended the feeling. Yeah. But.

But this is one of my favorite poems. You have this one. Emotional maturity is not about being above your emotions. It is about being able to sit with the rawness of every feeling without letting it take over your mind and actions. It's about facing storms without getting blown away. I think the distinction between having the emotion and then acting on the emotion or having the emotion and being overwhelmed by the emotion, that's the best you can hope for. There's no point where you...

They cease to exist. No, they don't cease to exist at all. And I think what's hard for people is that we often live in a very sort of like we're trapped in our own black and white thinking where it's either yes or no. And it's these solid either ors. And what stoicism introduces you, what the Buddhist teaching introduces you to is basically like the gray area, the subtlety. And that's something that.

If I had not experienced it myself, I wouldn't know it exists, but you can feel the difficulty of a tense emotion, honor that it's there. You're not suppressing it. You're feeling it, but you're not acting out on it. You're simply just observing it, giving yourself time, and then you start seeing all the different options that you can take. I can either...

act on this dense emotion and do an action that I might later regret, or I could just slow down and choose something a little more skillful. But that openness of mind, like I just was oblivious to it until I, you know, cultivated it. Well, I think the reason people struggle with it, obviously on the personal level, it's difficult. But the example that I get all the time is I go, well, what about an injustice? Shouldn't I be angry about the injustices in the world?

And it's only if you can understand this distinction between having the feeling and then being sort of driven by the passion that it makes sense because, yes, the injustice, the cruelty that you saw, the unfairness, the persecution, the corruption, whatever, that should make you angry. But if you are going to defeat

Exactly.

Are you going to stop them with a mind that's riddled with stress and that's riddled with, you know, fear, hate, anger, whatever it could be. But then your perception is immediately so unclear. Your strategic thinking goes out the window and then you're just, you know, probably end up acting with...

brutality with the same brutality that you saw. Sure. So I think it's much more skillful to, to, you know, this is wrong. This needs to be stopped. And you can also, and this is like, sort of like the really asking a person to step up to the higher level, which is like, you can have compassion for the person that's committing harm too. Yes. You know, compassion for the person who's being hurt, compassion for the person who's doing the harm because they're like, they're rolling in their ignorance. Like, can you imagine living in their mind in a mind that's so,

full of tension that they're willingly causing harm to another person, that's horrific. Or just like, I try to remind myself, they're not getting away with anything. Because that's one of the things, when someone speaks to us poorly or that you see someone cheating and getting ahead, one of the things that triggers in us, it's not just the injustice, but the sense that the universe is unfair and that they're getting away with this thing, that they're not being punished.

And if you can step back and you understand history, you understand psychology, you have your own experiences, you realize, oh, they're not getting away with anything. They might be winning the contest or getting the money or, you know, getting the thing that they said they want. But you also understand that this person is

incapable of getting what they actually want, which is some semblance of peace or happiness or worth, trying to treat some wound that they have, which is feeling good. You realize like they're not getting away with anything because it sucks to be them. No, they're living in the torture of their own mind. And I would never want that for myself or for other people. So I think when you really take a step back, it's like,

you know, someone who's like just decimating a population who's just, you know, doing some type of harm and either on the individual level, on a group level, like it takes a lot of internal intensity to even produce that action into the world. And you don't want to live like that. That's just like, I don't know. Yeah, look, philosophy isn't this like math equation where you do this and then the variables cancel each other out and then you don't have to do anything. Like you can have empathy and understand, okay, it's actually tortured to be this person. It sucks to be them.

I'm still as a prosecutor have to bring them up on charges as a, you know, a friend, I still have to speak up. You still have to do something about the problem, but you just understand that it helps mitigate that distress you feel when you're like, Hey, this is breaking the order of the universe that this person isn't doing their fair share and being rewarded for it. This person is actually shitty and they have a good reputation. You know, that, that, that,

kind of bothers us because it doesn't line up. And it's like, no, no, no, there's just another part of it that you're not seeing, which is that it sucks to be them. And there's so much that you're not seeing too. Like, I think there are times where, and I'm not trying to name any names, but there are times where like people have public personas, but then like us who write books and do things, you know, we all like know about each other. People will tell you like, you know, you don't want to be around that person. And like, so even though outwardly they look, you know, so nice and kind,

in the background, you know, I'm sure people are saying, you know, the same things about Diddy. Like, they're like, just be careful. Like, don't stay at a party too late. Sure. But the actions reverberate. People see them, people feel them, and then they talk about them. So I think whether you win or lose, you know, one battle, I think if you're causing a lot of harm, like,

Not that the harm's necessarily going to come back to you in the same way, but people are going to know about it and they're going to change their actions around you. You're doing the violence to yourself also. It doesn't mean you're necessarily suffering to the same degree that the other people you're making suffer, but like it sucks to be you. Yeah.

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50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code FactorPodcast at FactorMeals.com slash FactorPodcast. Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. It's really challenging, I think, with what you see online, how you think these ideals of people are. And I'm sure you get this a lot too, but

I think one of the things that I find challenging about putting myself out there and doing events is like, I don't want anybody putting me on a pedestal. Like there's literally nothing special about like, I'm not perfect. I'm not enlightened. You know, I like to meditate, but I'm still very much on the road. I make mistakes, fully imperfect person, have so much to learn. But I think sometimes just because people are accustomed to seeing your face, they give almost like a,

not just the trust to read your book, but like a higher level of trust where like Ryan definitely has all the answers, you know? Yes. I mean, that's just in some ways, just misunderstanding what art and philosophy is, which is you're crediting the person with the thing that they're a conduit for. Yeah, exactly. We're learning like literally actively learning. And I think that's like, it's tough because part of us, we have this, um,

You know, it's funny because it like reminds me of like Freud. It's like we want to create these like images in our minds that are the perfect mom, the perfect dad. And like these people who can we can truly depend on. But like we're all these highly imperfect human beings. We're figuring it out. Yeah. No, there's a difference also between articulating something. Yeah. And.

fully integrating it into your own life. And so we're all sort of on this spectrum and sometimes we can articulate it very beautifully and then struggle to apply it. Sometimes we can apply it, but have trouble articulating it. And yeah, you don't want to assume a person is like what they produce.

Yeah. And they could be similar to it, but I think that's why, like, I really enjoy, I have these two people who I think of as my teachers who I meditate with and they, neither of them have written books. Neither of them have, you know, they don't go on podcasts. They don't have Instagrams. Like their lives are strictly devoted to service. Like, you know, one's 50 and has probably meditated around 30,000 hours. The other one's in his mid

mid-70s. And to me, like what I find inspiring about these individuals is not only are they devoted to service and helping others,

but they live very simple lives and they're like, they're not afraid of death. They're not like, so like these key things where I'm like, I'm still cultivating that strength that they have. And like, they may still be cultivating this within them. But when we're talking, when I'm receiving inspiration from them, when I'm receiving direction from them, I'm just like, you have all the things that I really need to develop. Yeah. At some level they've, they've conquered everything.

whatever part of it in you or in most artists that's like, I hope this does well. Like I need people to know this. You know what I mean? There is a sort of a monkish level you can get to where you are totally self-contained. And like the world would be in not a great shape if everyone got there because, you know, actually a whole part of sort of Buddha's breakthrough is the realization that you can't

pursue your enlightenment on your own. This is also the allegory of Plato's cave, which is the idea that you discover something, do not then have an obligation to teach it and share it. But the line between the obligation to teach and share and the ego is unparalleled.

always hard to discern. It is hard. It is hard. But I'm grateful to the people who are at the sort of like the far ends of the bell curve, you know, like James Clear, like I'm so happy that we even have this model of like,

I'm grateful that we have a Jordan to know where we're going, you know, to know like what, what is it even like I can put more energy and like sort of maneuver things in different ways. You thought the market was this, you thought the ceiling on the market was here. And actually there's a whole, clearly a whole group of people that are not normally reachable that you can reach. Yeah. I mean, even when, when all that stuff came out about, you know, between the trial, between the, the different publishing agencies and like all the information came out and it's literally like,

200 authors that sell enough books to pay off the advances of all the other authors. Like it's wild. Just like knowing that information. And I was talking to a friend about how the publishing industry is

It's just an investment firm. They're just, they're basically VC firms. They make tiny little bets and maybe 5% of those bets are going to work out and pay everything back. And I'm like, well, I'm fortunate that I'm on that end that like I can sell books and like the books are good enough that, you know, you'll share them with a friend. Yeah. But it's also like a very haphazard relationship where,

Like, I talked to my wife the other day and I'm like, I almost feel like a young basketball star. You know, you get invited up to these, like, rooms with the CEO of, like, you know, the publishing house. And I know I'm only being invited because I can sell. Like, I can, you know, we have this relationship where we're both benefiting from these books being out. Yeah.

No, you're like a mine that's struck gold and they're just trying to extract everything they can of it. And then they'll, as soon as it goes dry, they'll-

Cover you up. The relationship's over. Yeah. But I'm grateful for it. Like, I'm also happy. Like we work together because I love, you know, for the publishing house I'm a part of and all that stuff. But I know that the relationship wouldn't work if I wasn't selling. Yeah. Well, and the metaphor of like, hey, I have this thought. I'm not going to attach my identity to it. I'm not going to identify with it is also true for success, which is like, hey, I'm having the success.

The success can't have me. Like at this moment, I am New York Times bestselling author. At this moment, I am delivering certain amounts of revenue or sales or reach, but it's not me. Yeah.

Because it can go away at any time. And it 100% will go away. Either I will die and I'm gone, or the well will be tapped out. So this is what I say to people all the time, and sometimes it makes them uncomfortable. I'm like, it's going well right now. Like, things are going well right now. I don't know how it's going to be, you know, when I drop book seven, book eight. It may be better, it may be worse. I have no idea. But what I do understand...

is that everything is fundamentally impermanent at the atomic level, the sort of the biological level, the cosmological level, everything is just flowing impermanence. It feels like this universe is just one giant river that flows forward. And you want to work with that as opposed to against it. And what that really means is you have to embrace impermanence. And I mean, the Buddhist teaching is, you know, just revolves around this idea of embracing impermanence that helps you understand why life is dissatisfying and then helps you understand why

the sense of self isn't fundamentally real. But does your boy, Marcus Aurelius, talk about embracing impermanence? Yeah, yeah. He talks about how everything in your life came from change. Same. Including existence, right? So at one point you didn't exist. Yeah. And now you exist. And then what happens is then you fear death, which is just the same change happening again. Yeah.

Or, you know, everything in your life that you like was a result of change, right? Like something wasn't permanent. And so you got this. The problem is the irrational thing that we do is even though to get where we are or to get things the way we liked them, we had to embrace and in fact, seek out all sorts of change. Yeah.

It's like, we think that we can choose how much change we get. Like, we're like, hey, I'm stopping now. Like, this is when I take my cards off the table and I get to keep my winnings and stay. And that's not how it works. It's always in this state of flux. And what I try to remind myself of, because that impermanence can be scary. You're just like, oh, you can take away the success. Yeah.

And that's true, right? They could take away your success. They could take away your children. They can take away your happiness. They can take away your health. All that stuff can go away. But what I try to remind myself, and the Stoics aren't as explicit on this, but I think it's fundamentally a Stoic idea. I go, they can take away everything that I have except the fact that I had it. So like you can't take away that I did it.

And that you can't take away this moment where I'm looking around and my kids are playing and my wife and I are sitting or I just finished this meal or I just had this great day of writing. You can take away the product, the thing, but you can't take away that I had it, that I did it, the feeling that I had in that moment. That's the one thing that I...

Man, that's so powerful. Like, cause it hit me once when, when I was like, you know, in the middle of a, like I go away to meditate for like 30, 45 days. And when you're away there meditating, you're there, you know,

in the darkness of the meditation cell, 'cause you'll meditate with a group and you also have these little rooms inside of a pagoda, which is basically a closet. And so it's like fully dark and you're there meditating maybe for like 10, 11 hours a day. But it hit me so hard that like our universe is not just one of change, but that change directly describes motion.

Like our universe is one of motion. Everything is moving. And what does that mean is that nothing is ever static. Like it's constantly dynamic. And because of that dynamism, we have life, you know? And I think that it made me think so similar to what you were talking about. It hit me that we have this combative relationship of change where we fear it because we're afraid of what it will take away, but we'd never have a relationship of gratitude towards change because it's

it gave us the people that we love. Like the fact that the earth even exists is because of change. You know, the fact that we even have these opportunities to be around our parents, even though our parents may die someday, we got to know them. We got to learn from them. We got to embody these characteristics that then we can hopefully give to our friends and children someday. So to me, it's like, um,

It feels really important to balance out our relationship with change. Like, yeah, change can be scary sometimes, but man, everything we have is because of change. Yeah, the Stokes talk about how like everything is coming in and out of being, time is zipping by us, you know, everything is in a state of motion. And Marx really says, so it would take an idiot to feel angry at any of this as if any of it lasts, right? There's like a Southern expression, you don't like the weather, well, just wait a minute.

Because it's always changing, right? And so I think in the moment, you don't like where we are politically. You don't like some state in your relationship. You don't like what your neighbor is doing. You don't like any of this stuff. Don't worry. It'll change. None of the things actually last both in a sort of a cosmic sense. We definitely know that. And then also think about times you've had that feeling before when you were like, I'm sick.

sick of it. It's too much. It can't go on like this. Well, what happened? It didn't go on like that. Like everything is constantly changing and evolving. Sometimes it's getting worse, by the way. So maybe you might be, there might be a point where in the future you feel grateful for this thing you were lamenting and, you know, despairing about right now. But for the most part-

the things that are distressing you and making you, like I think about like whenever I'm like really sick, when I'm just like on the floor, in the bathroom, hugging the toilet or whatever. And I go like, it can't go on like this. I think about something that Mark Struis talks about in meditations where he goes like,

he was a person who had this sort of chronic health issues. He just goes like, the future is going to take care of this because either you're going to die and it'll go away or you'll get over it and it'll be gone. And just going like, oh yeah, even like those moments where you're like, this is horrible.

Where is that now? That feeling is gone. Yeah. So this reminds me, and now I'm like really curious about the relationship here. So one of the things that the Buddha talks about a lot is the danger of being attached to your view, basically meaning your opinion. And he talked about it. There are, you know, there's 80,000 suttas that sort of take his teaching and divide it up.

And in so many of them, he's constantly hammering about how the attachment to views will not only create your own suffering, but it'll create discord. And even right before he passed away, he warned the Sangha, the community of enlightened monks. He was like, the attachment to views has the potential to divide the Sangha. Dogma, basically. It's one of the last things that he said before he left, you know, before he passed away. And I'm really curious about like, you know, in terms of the Stoic view on

Being a, because you have to be a productive individual and be able to organize yourself in a skillful manner. But then the attachment to views, I mean, it just divides. It creates discord in my mind. Whenever I feel myself clinging to a view and I hear it. By that, you mean like an opinion? Yeah, an opinion. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the fascinating ideas for Marx to realize is, you know, we always have the power to have no opinion.

Oh, sick. But I think about how many powerful people actually don't have that power. Yeah. Like, can you wake up and not think this is my thing to insert myself into or that the world is dying to hear my opinion about it? I mean, Elon Musk can't do that. You know, like he wakes up every day.

And for all of his power and wealth, he is a ceaseless opinion haver. And it is the source not just of much of the harm that he does, but it's also the source of his unhappiness, which he's been very clear about, right? That no one would actually want to be him if they knew what it was like. And so I do think about how can I have fewer opinions? Mm-hmm.

And understanding the ceaselessness of change helps you with that because you're like, why am I having an opinion about a thing that is probably going to resolve itself or won't even be... Like, how many fads have I had opinions about that the fad took care of the need to have an opinion about it? Because it's not a thing anymore. No, I think it's... Wow. I think of the attachment to views and just like getting stuck in your own opinion. It's so...

detrimental to your inner relationship and your interpersonal relationship. And what I've been trying to do is lately is when I hear someone say something that I, my mind doesn't agree with, instead of turning it into a debate, I just say, tell me more because like one, do I even need to prove my point? Like, is this, if you think about it, like it's not worth fighting every battle for sure. Like sometimes just like here where the person is coming from. And that's been so helpful. And I think about that in terms of like our country, right. Where like,

every time the other side wins, the one, the side that lost feels like the world is ending. Everything is over. Everything is totally gone. And I've been thinking about things in the context of like, you know, I was born in Ecuador and in Guayaquil, Ecuador. So it's devastatingly poor there. It's way we came to the United States when I was four years old, because my parents wanted to roll the dice. Literally, they don't know what's going to happen here. They're rolling the dice, maybe the chance that have better life. And when,

when I think about American politics and how fearful the two sides are of each other, I'm always thinking like, do you guys know that your post office works? That your banks work? Yeah. Like you put your money in the bank and you can take the money out? That you have pipes underground? Like,

Like there are so many things that we forget to protect, like just basic American stability. The fact that our businesses can grow, the fact that, you know, you can like have property. Like these are things where, you know, Ecuador will go through periods where it's calm for like eight years and then boom, everything gets washed away and everyone, people are starting from a clean slate. Yeah. And I mean, the tricky thing is you can fuck that up. Right. So that's, that's the stakes of it. Totally. Fuck it up. Totally. But yeah, I think it's like, look,

Nobody consulted me on whether we should change it to the Gulf of America or Mexico. And the fact that it's been called one thing for 600 years, you know, it's not like that was an honorable name for it either. That was like Spanish conquistadors deciding that it was called this, right? Like there are things that are stupid. Mm-hmm.

That if you'd asked me, I would have done them differently, but I don't, it doesn't need to get me worked up. Right. And then, and then I think where maybe sometimes people's problem with philosophy is they think, well, you know, you're just, you're, you're doing this sort of mind trick on everything and saying that nothing matters. I think philosophy in the real world is like, how do you do that on truth?

trivial semantic things like, what are we going to call this body of water? Which by the way, you can call it whatever the fuck you want. What Google Maps says, it doesn't matter, right? It can be whatever you want it to be. You can call it your personal thing. You can call it the native name, whatever. And then how do you save that energy? And how do we collectively save our energy so we can come together and talk about and deal with the

actual injustices or, you know, real problems. During the times of... I mean, there were different stomach periods, I imagine, and...

And I know Marcus Aurelius as a Stoic, and even when he was living in those imperial times, he was in charge, right, by far. But were there other Stoics that lived in times where there were checks and balances? Because that's what I'm thinking about in terms of America and now. Well, the better example, so Cato, probably widely respected. But Cato is your favorite Stoic's favorite Stoic. He is the one that...

The other Stoics admire not because of how wonderful his writing was, but because of his example. And Cato lives in the decline and fall of the Roman Republic. He is there when Julius Caesar overthrows the Roman Republic. So he watches the thing that he dedicates his life to,

get taken. And he doesn't do it, you know, it's not like he just says, oh, it is what it is, you know, like he's philosophically involved in the thick of it, but he watches that happen. And he has to deal with that. I think about, like, people think of Socrates as living in this sort of golden age of Athens. Socrates lived in a time known as the time of the 30 tyrants. Yeah.

And that was after the Peloponnesian War, which was a war that raged for almost his whole life. And so this idea that these philosophers lived in this like wonderful time is true.

Just historical nonsense. I mean, like Confucius didn't live in this quaint, you know, like same thing about the Buddha. Yeah. Like lovely China, Chinese, like a landscape painting. Like he was surrounded by corruption and disease and death and and all this awful shit. And almost all the philosophers did. It's that they managed to carve out enlightenment.

inside that? Like, if everything was going well in Buddha's life, would enlightenment be that impressive? No, I mean, wisdom amongst the chaos. I think that's like a constant trend. And even in the, you know, S. N. Goenka's life and Sayajubakin's life, like,

They're sort of the ones that brought up this Vipassana tradition that I'm a part of. You think about the times that they were living in and it's sort of like moving between like wars and sort of Japanese rule, democracy, dictatorship, and it's just pretty chaotic. And I think about now and like how even like these really wise people will exist and they influence, but they don't necessarily have power. Like they don't necessarily have power over the situation. They're not...

always in government like you know even though kato was so close but um it's interesting that that happens like and it's a constant phenomenon like the good guys usually don't win that's just a a story we tell ourselves that they do um yeah it's rough uh i mean it's hard to live your virtues it's hard to leave these rules like i have this one rule that i live by and people are always asking me you know political opinions but i have this rule like

I can't support you if you're going to kill people. So like when I have politicians, when I have politicians that reach out and stuff who are like, can you help me with my campaign? I'm like, I can't support you if you're going to kill people. Like, that's just what, you know, what I'm hoping is like, I know that's a very hard ask when we live in this like anarchic system and whatnot and wars are happening all the time. But like, I can't help you there, man. Like, that's just like one of the things I want to live by. And I'm,

I rather stick to that virtue and quietly, you know, tend to my garden and I'm happy to talk about it. But no, I'm not going to join you at the White House, you know. Well, you want to go check out some books? Yeah. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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