The Stoic Art Of Not Panicking | Ryan Holiday Speaks To The U.S. Marine Corps
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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life.

Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It is 1.55 a.m. as I am recording this on my phone. It is sitting on top of a water glass and I am in Abu Dhabi on Almeria Island. I think that's how you say that.

The reason I am up is because I am not allowed to go to bed for another couple hours. So I'm not a total zombie tomorrow. I'm trying to get adjusted to the time span here. I'm giving a quick talk and then flying home. I don't know when you guys will be listening to this, but that's where I am as I am recording this. I am all...

out of sorts, but I was reading a book about Stockdale, actually one of Stockdale's books on the plane. So it's sort of fitting that I would be queuing up today's episode from a different trip that I took back in June of 2023, which seems like an eternity ago. I flew out to Los Angeles. I drove from Los Angeles to Riverside, California, where I went to school, got a quick run in, and then I drove out to 29 Palms,

to talk to about 4,000 Marines who were stationed out there, part of the Ripper leadership event. They were focused on resilience and readiness on and off the battlefield. There's a huge Marine base out there. Actually, one of my cousins reported for duty there,

not long after I was there for the talk. It was a really cool experience. It was in a movie theater. I actually did the talk twice. So I did a talk. They had like 2,000 Marines in there and then they swapped out 2,000 more. It was quite a whirlwind of a day, but it's one of my favorite talks that I've done. We put it up on YouTube and it's done well over half a million views, which I wasn't expecting, but it was a nice talk.

Cool treat. And so I thought I would bring it to you. Basically, the idea in the talk is like, what are our panic rules? Like, what are the principles, the bedrock ideas, the things we want to train into ourselves so that in moments of crisis and difficulty and uncertainty, we know what to turn to. We know what's expected of us. We know who we want to aspire to be. So that's what that talk is. And, you know, depending on how tired I wake up tomorrow,

I know some of mine. I know I'm going to go for a run. I'm going to check into my family, try to eat something good, try not to eat something bad, right? And then do my little sort of routine. I'll jump in a cold shower before I head over and do the talk. And then I'll head to the airport and fly home. I'll link to the YouTube version of it if you want to share that. And in the meantime, thanks to the Marines for having me out. You were wonderful hosts. Enjoy.

They say how you do anything is how you do everything. This is what the Stoics are talking about. This is excellence. We think that life is about epiphanies, about bursts of creativity or genius where we get it all right. No, it's much slower than that. The most dangerous enemy that you face, that this country faces, is not another country. It's not an external opponent at all. It's the idea of ego. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

It is very good to be here with all of you. Can you guys hear me all right? Yeah? This is not the first time I've talked to a group of Marines, but it is the first time I've seen Marines eating popcorn while I talk, so this is quite a privilege for me. We're going to talk about ancient philosophy, and I know that sounds strange. Pretty much every audience I get in front of, well, they put the popcorn away real quick when they hear that I'm going to talk about ancient philosophy because it doesn't sound like the most exciting thing in the world. I get that.

It seems old and dusty and ancient.

A couple years ago, I had the opportunity, I went and I talked to the Los Angeles Rams at their training camp up in Irvine. And it was a pretty cool experience. And you might be thinking again what they were thinking, which is, what does ancient philosophy have to teach a professional football team? What is an old dusty book from an obscure school of ancient philosophy possibly have to do with winning, with victory, with beating the shit out of someone else? I get that.

And, you know, they had a terrible season the next year, so maybe it doesn't have anything to do with it. But in fact, ancient philosophy in the ancient world, philosophers weren't like your professors or your teachers. They didn't wear turtlenecks. They were active people in the actual world. They fought in wars. They started companies. They ran for political office, right? They did things in real life. The Stoics were athletes and generals, thinkers,

writers, they did stuff, right? Philosophy was something that informed what they did. It shaped what they did. It made them better at what they did. And as it happened, the Rams managed to turn things around. They had a bad season and then a pretty good season. They won a Super Bowl. They sent me a pretty cool Super Bowl ring.

But I got to know Les Snead, who's the GM of the Rams, and we've become friends over the years. And when I was talking to Les, I interviewed him on the Daily Stoic podcast not too long ago. One of the things we talked about, he brought up this idea of panic rules.

He said a panic rule is like what you do when you're overwhelmed, when things are falling apart, when you're flooded with information, with conflicting information, right? What do you revert to in moments of crisis, personal or professional, right? The things that always stand true, sort of really short aphorisms or epigrams or slogans that

that you stick to, that you go to in moments where you really need clarity. Some of his, you gave me some, uh, there's a batting order for a reason. Nip it in the bud, right? We is greater than me. Wake up sprinting. Don't be scared. Keep the main thing, the main thing. And, uh,

He's got a bunch of them, just like every team has a bunch of them, just like you guys have a bunch of them. Actually, General Mattis calls these his flat ass rules. Right. And when I told him I was coming to talk to all of you, he actually talked to me about one of his rules. He said it's the art of not panicking. Right. So this idea of panic rules, I think it's pretty applicable. It's what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. The art of not panicking.

Oh, sorry, is that better? Sorry. The art of not panicking, right, getting clarity. I know you guys have some of your slogans, right? You have Semper Fi, of course. You have First to the Fight. You've got Never Leave a Marine Behind. You've got Have a Plan to Kill Every Person that You Meet.

You've got no better friend, no worse enemy, right? You've got your slogans, right? It could all be distilled down in some case to a single word, right? Honor. These are the rules. These are the principles. These are the core ideas that animate us, that motivate us, that give us clarity in moments of panic, in moments of stress, in moments of adversity, in moments of difficulty.

And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to give you a handful of these panic rules, timeless principles from the ancient Stoics, from philosophy, from my own life, that I think you can rely on whatever the future has in store for you. So we'll start with one that's important enough to me that I have it tattooed on my arm here. It's the idea that the obstacle is the way. And if I could take you way back,

We're going to go back about 2,000 years. Marcus Aurelius is the emperor of Rome. It's been 20 years of peace and prosperity and stability. And then suddenly a plague breaks out. It's actually brought back by soldiers from the eastern provinces. They bring it back to Rome. It overwhelms Rome in every capacity you can imagine. Unlike COVID, it doesn't last for one or two or three years. It lasts for 15 years. Millions of people die. They have no ability to develop back

or they have no ability to stop the virus. They don't understand it. And it's all on Marcus Aurelius' shoulders, right? What can go wrong will. That's the life of a leader. And this goes wrong, and so does a bunch of other stuff. Then there's a series of historic floods. He spends more than half of his reign at war. If you've seen the movie Gladiator, it begins with Marcus on the front there of the Roman frontier. It's one thing after another for Marcus Aurelius.

Actually, one ancient historian, a contemporary of Marcus, says Marcus does not have the good fortune that he deserved, and his entire reign is involved in a series of troubles, right? And

Marcus staggers under the weight of this, but we have his journal, we have meditations. This is the book that he writes to himself, his private journal. This is a book actually that General Mattis carries with him on 40 years of deployments. But Marcus writes in meditations this prescription for us that we can use in moments of adversity in our own life. He says,

the obstacle, he says our actions can be impeded but nothing can get in the way of our intentions or dispositions. We always have the ability to accommodate and adapt and adjust, right? He says the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way. This is the essence of Stoic philosophy, right? The core of it, which is basically that

In every situation, even if it's not one we wanted, even if it's not one we chose, even if it's one that's not our fault, we have the ability to use it to practice erite, or virtue, or excellence, as it's translated, right? Every situation, it could be sideways, it could be upsetting, it could be frustrating, it could have been totally avoidable, and yet, while we're in it,

It presents us the opportunity to be excellent, perhaps not excellent in the form we would have chosen, in the form we like, in the form that we are most practiced or comfortable in, right? But every situation is the opportunity to practice excellence. When you internalize this, you start to get what the Stoics would say,

indifferent, right? You don't care what the situation is, you just know that it's an opportunity for you to be excellent, right? You have the opportunity to be excellent. We don't control what happens, we control how we respond

to what has happened. We control our ability to choose to use this to move forward in some form or another personally, professionally, right? The disadvantages are also advantages. We have the ability to shoot, to sit there and decide here's all the things I can't do because of what's happened, but here's all the things I can do, right? And some of those things in interpersonal

Context might be as simple as just putting up with it, forgiving, right? Giving someone a second chance, moving on, letting it go, right? But in every situation we have

things that will allow us to move forward, and things that will keep us where we are. And this choice to use what we are facing to do good, to be better, to move forward, this is the most essential choice that we have, right? As that historian was saying, Marcus doesn't have the good fortune that he deserves. He didn't want a plague. He didn't want wars, right? He didn't want betrayals. He didn't want natural disasters. He didn't want the one thing after another that seemed to happen.

But the reason Marcus Aurelius is Marcus Aurelius considered one of the greatest and wisest, most impressive leaders who ever lived, it's because of what he did with it. As that same historian would say, I admired him all the more for this very reason because amidst unusual and extraordinary circumstances, he both survived himself and preserved the empire.

right? Marcus used it as a platform, as an opportunity to practice or excellence or virtue, right? He stepped up and was a great leader, not in spite of the situation that he was in, but because of the situation that he was in. And if it had been otherwise, if it had been easier, if it had been clear, if it had been the way that he wanted,

his life would not have been the same. So when we say the obstacle is the way, that is what we are saying. And we are saying that no matter the obstacle that you face, no matter what is happening in the world, we gotta do our job. I know I talked about the Rams earlier. It was kind of a weird experience for me 'cause I'm actually a Saints fan.

And after Sean Payton was suspended for the trumped-up Bounty Gate scandal, which we don't need to get into here, he put this large poster on the wall of the practice facility. He just said, do your job, right? This is a panic rule situation. Your coach is suspended. You miss him for a year. It's a bunch of penalties.

What are we supposed to do? You're supposed to do your job, right? You're supposed to do your job in every situation and circumstance, right? In things big and small, glamorous or not, your job is to do your job, right? Whether you get credit for it or not, your job is to do your job, right? If you do it right, it doesn't matter if it's not

fancy or special or recognized, right? It's meaningful and important and significant and honorable if you do it well. As they say, how you do anything is how you do everything. You take the task, menial or not, and you do it with everything you have. This is what the Stoics are talking about. This is excellence, right? So

When you're overwhelmed, when you don't know what to do, what you do is the most basic part of your job. When I was writing my last book, this book on discipline, I sort of crashed into a wall. It had been 10 years and 10 books. I was exhausted. I had used up so much of the material that I'd gathered over the years. I had a little imposter syndrome. I wasn't sure if I was qualified, if I could pull it off.

And I started going through my note cards. I write all my books on these four by six note cards, right? My job every day is to do the note cards, right?

And these are note cards that I've gathered over many years of research and study. And I sit down and I start to go through my note cards. And I'm concerned that there isn't a book here, that I'm not going to be able to write the book, that's not going to come together. And even if it does, it's not going to work. People aren't going to like it. And one day I'm going through these cards and I find this one. It says, trust the process. As you go through your note cards, eventually a book will emerge. It said, show up every day.

do your job and trust the process. Now, I don't know why I wrote this note to myself. I don't even know when I wrote this note to myself. But at some point, my past self suspected that my future self would need this reminder to do your job, to trust the process,

show up, right? To not overthink it, not to get too far in the future, not to kick myself about things that are in the past, but to show up and do what I needed to do that day. That's my job, right? So that's what I did. I showed up every single day, right? I sat in my office,

I went through my cards and there was no singular moment where it all came together. We think that life is about epiphanies, about moments, bursts of creativity or genius where we get it all right. No, it's much slower than that. It's iterative, right? It's one little improvement every day. In writing, there's a great rule, just a couple crappy pages a day. If you can

accumulate a couple crappy pages a day, eventually you get to a manuscript and then that manuscript can be polished, can be finished. You can get notes on it, you can get feedback on it. You show up every day and you do your job. You don't question whether you're making progress, you don't kick yourself for not making enough progress, you just show up, do your job,

and eventually inevitably you get where you need to go right and this is what happened right this is what happens it's what always happens in meditations mark surrealist talks about step by step action by action he says this is how we assemble our lives this is how we overcome obstacles

And he says, no one can stop you from that. No one can stop you from doing your tiniest part of your job in this very moment in front of you. And we can imagine he's saying this to himself in the middle of a decade plus long pandemic, in the middle of a multi-year war.

right in the middle of one crisis after another. He's saying step-by-step, action-by-action, no one can stop you from that. He's saying, trust the process, right? And one of the things you learn when you figure out the process, right? When you've been through difficult things before, whether it's a difficult deployment, whether it's a difficult campaign, whether it's a difficult launch, right? Whether it's one, whatever it is, when you've done it enough times,

you do start to trust the process because you've seen you've seen at the beginning it it seems very far away you've seen at the middle it seems like it's not going to come together and then inevitably if you do your job it does it does come together right and when you come out the other side you get not only the satisfaction the the victory of having done it but you get the the

the real kind of confidence, the confidence you earn, right? The confidence that comes from having been through difficult things before having long dark nights of the soul where you want it to give up. Like I wanted to do on this book. The reason I didn't give up the reason I trust the process. Wasn't just the note card I wrote to myself.

It's that on every single one of my books, on every difficult thing I've ever been through in my life, I had those moments where I doubted myself, where I questioned, where I wondered if this was the one time when the process wasn't going to work. But it does. And you trust the process and it gets you where you want to go.

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But I don't think Marcus Aurelius was talking about the process just as a means to an end, a way of accomplishing or doing things. He also meant it in a larger sense. When they're talking about doing your job,

We have our job, and then we have our job as human beings, right? And for Marcus, he says, no matter what anyone says or does, my job, my task in life, he says, is to be good. He says, I'm like an emerald. My job is to be an emerald. It doesn't matter what other people say or think. I shine with my goodness, right? And now this might...

The good news about doing your job, about being good, is that no one can stop you from this, right? No one can stop you from being good. When we say the obstacle is the way, what we're saying is that the most difficult and trying and frustrating of situations are actually the best opportunities to be and to do good. It's not always going to make you popular, of course, as Marcus says, they can kill you with knives, they can shower you with curses, but none of this cuts you off

from sanity and clearness and self-control and justice. Nothing stops you ever from your most important job, which is to be a good person, to do good, to contribute

to the common good. And I'm not saying this will always make you popular. On the contrary, right? It might make you deeply unpopular, and it has through history. When they talk about holding the line, they're talking about holding the line against people who don't want the line to be held, right? People who want you to compromise, people who want you to abandon certain values, right? People who want it done sloppily or quickly or more expediently, right? And you have to hold against that, right?

There's this idea that we can't trust orders, we can't trust commands, we can't trust pressure, we can't trust expectations, we can't trust things that want us to do things that go contrary to our conscience, that want us to violate our most important job. As Marcus is saying, it doesn't matter what other people say or do, our job is to be and to do good for the people around us, for the country that we serve. It's your job to stand up and resist and be brave.

when people want you to do something contrary to said job, right? It's certainly not someone else's job, right? When an order comes down, when a request comes down, when pressure comes down, when you see other people around you doing something you know they shouldn't do, right? It's not somebody else's job to stop that. It's not somebody else's job to speak up about that. When we talk about whistleblowers, right?

The idea of whistleblowing is enshrined in some of the very first laws ever passed in this country. And you know what they were passed to protect, to get people to blow whistles about? It was about corrupt war profiteers and manufacturers, right? Defense contractors that were cutting corners, right? The idea was to encourage people, soldiers like yourself,

citizens like herself to speak up about things that they saw that violated their conscious conscience that they knew were contrary to the wishes or the demands, the organization of the country, right? Think about with a whistleblower, Alexander Vindman, right? Uh, who, who his whistleblowing is so controversial, it gets a president impeached, right? He's doing exactly what

what General Kelly is saying you have all been trained to do. It wasn't popular, brought all sorts of heat on him and his family. He probably wishes every single day that it wasn't his job to do in that moment, but it was, right? He did what all of you, this is what General Kelly is saying, what all of you are trained to do from cradle to grave, which is when someone asks you to do something contrary to your actual job, right, your core job of being and doing good, you're supposed to speak up about it.

And that leads us to the next idea, this idea of ego. It would be my argument that the most dangerous enemy that you face, that this country faces, is not another country. It's not an external opponent at all. It's not an external threat at all. The most dangerous, the most insidious threat to every country, to every empire, to every person

inside of them. It's inside of you. It's inside of this room at every moment, right? It's the idea of ego. They say that ego is the enemy that it sucks us down like the law of gravity. It's corruptive. It's corrosive. It gets between us and our job and our mission and

other people, right? Ego is the most corruptive force in the world. It's contrary to every one of the values of this organization, of the Marines, right? Of common human decency. No one has ever looked around a conference table, been in a mission, been facing a problem, trying to turn around a culture and thought,

What we need here are bigger egos. How can we get some bigger egos in here? We understand that ego gets in the way, it tears teams apart as opposed to bringing them together.

Epictetus, one of the great Roman philosophers, he's Marcus Aurelius' favorite thinker. He brings up an idea of why ego is such a problem. He says, "Remember, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know." Ego gets in the way of learning, of openness, of connection because it thinks it already is connected, because it thinks it already does know.

In a sense, ego is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are perfect, you cannot get any better. If you think you know everything, you cannot learn anything else. So ego stops us cold, it freezes us in place. It prevents us from doing the things that we need to do. This is Nero, he's advised by Seneca, one of the great Roman philosophers, one of the great Stoics.

And the problem with Nero is that Nero didn't like to listen, right? You can see even in this ancient statue, he's hooded, he's sullen, and he's not, he's one of the greatest teachers of all time trying to teach him, trying to show him how to run the empire, but he thinks he already knows. He doesn't want to listen, right? And we've all been there, right? We think we've heard this before. We think we know more than these people, right? We're more intelligent.

we're more talented, we're more experienced, and we don't listen, and it holds us back, right? It closes us off, and it closes our minds. General Mattis has talked about this. He says, look, it's not...

that you can read, it's how much you are reading. He says, if you haven't read hundreds of books about what you are doing, if you haven't read hundreds of books on your path to leadership, he says you are functionally illiterate. And his point was that what ego does is ego says, oh, I'll figure this out on my own. Or it says ego says, oh, I'll trust my gut on this. Ego says, oh, I know this. I'm good enough.

And it tries to learn things by trial and error, which is a very expensive way to learn things. And General Mattis is saying that it's also an unconscionable way to learn things when there are men and women underneath you who bear the consequences of your arrogance, of your experiments, of your sense that you know better, right? That it's different this time, right? So what ego does is it holds us back

because it prevents us from accessing the great store of knowledge, the people who have done what you do for hundreds and thousands of years. The oldest literature in the world is about your profession and how open to that are you, how much have you exposed yourself to it, how much of it have you consumed, right? Or are you thinking about

that you figured this out having been at it one or two or three or even 30 years, right? You have to expose yourself to the great stores of knowledge. You annex, the Stoics would say, all the wisdom of the ages into your own life.

And when we're talking about ego, we're also talking about ego in the sense that Les Snead was talking about it, that we is greater than me, right? And perhaps the greatest example of this in American history is the one and only George Marshall. George Marshall is...

Chief of Staff of the US Army during the outbreak of when World War II breaks out. And he's stateside, right? He doesn't get an overseas command. And FDR realizes this. He realizes just how important Marshall is, but he also realizes that every soldier wants to get out into the field and do what they do. And so when

the invasion of Normandy is set, when they have to choose a supreme allied commander for perhaps the most momentous moment in American or world history, FDR goes to Marshall and he says, the job is yours if you want it. Certainly you have earned it.

And Marshall thinks about it for a second and he says, "You know what? I don't want you to take my personal feelings into account in any way." He says, "Choose who you think will do the best job and who will be best for you in that position." And FDR thinks about it and he goes with Eisenhower. Now he goes with Eisenhower, he knows who Eisenhower is specifically because

For all of his life, for all of his military career, Marshall has kept a little black book with him. And in this little black book, he is writing down the names of young officers whose careers he wants to support, whose interests he wants to advocate for. Omar Bradley, Eisenhower, some of the greatest generals in American history come

from Marshall's coaching tree. Marshall nurtures them, mentors them, advocates for them, promotes them, sings their praises. He does this more than his own praises. And so in this pivotal moment in his career when the command of a lifetime, the command that will ultimately propel Eisenhower to the presidency is there,

He gives it to his subordinate. He gives it to the person who he has advocated for. FDR chooses Eisenhower. Why? Not because Marshall couldn't have done a great job. He chooses Eisenhower because Marshall is so critical in the role that he is in. He says, "I feel like I cannot have an ocean between us." FDR wanted daily access to Marshall. In this moment,

Truman would later say of Marshall that never does Marshall think about himself. In this moment, he's not thinking about himself. Even more poignantly, he is asked to write out by hand the orders giving the command of a lifetime to his protege, which he does here on top,

And then here on the bottom, he says, "Dear Eisenhower, I think you might want to keep this as a memento. Even in the moment when he is choosing the we over the me, he is thinking about the person whose career he is advocating for." Now, it turns out this is the perfect selection. Eisenhower is perfect for the role. Marshall is perfect for the role. But I tell this story because we have this sense that if we are not ruthlessly and constantly fighting for our own interests, if we are not fighting

to beat other people, to get in the number one spot, we will fall behind. Marshall and MacArthur have a rivalry like this throughout their whole career. When Marshall...

is in charge, he's pretty good to MacArthur. When MacArthur is in charge, he sees Marshall as a threat and he banishes him to some backwater posting, right? Then in turn, Marshall is in charge again and he does everything he can to fight for MacArthur's interest, even though MacArthur is a flawed and prickly individual, to say the least. The point is, Marshall doesn't think about himself. Most people do think about themselves. And we have this fear, the reason we

are egotistical or arrogant or defensive or aggressive, right? Or turf warriors. The reason we do these things is because we fear that if we are not, right, other people will get the advantage of us. The job will go to someone else. We won't be remembered. We'll be forgotten. We won't have the opportunity to accomplish things. Well, as it happens, right, most people who have heard of Marshall, heard of Marshall because they heard of the Marshall Plan.

Why is it called the Marshall Plan? It's called the Marshall Plan for two reasons, right? Number one, Harry Truman was a deeply unpopular president. There was a Republican Congress. He was a Democrat. And he said, if they call this the Truman Plan, it's dead on arrival. He chooses Marshall. He gives the name of the thing to someone else instead of selfishly giving it to himself because it increases its chances of

of getting past, right? He puts his ego aside, plays a little political marketing game, and he's able to succeed, right? But secondly, because Marshall was so selfless, because Marshall constantly and at every turn did not think about himself, put the country first, kept his word, right? Did the right thing, right?

When Marshall went before Congress and said, "Hey, I need billions of dollars to give to our former enemies to rebuild Europe," they said, "Sure, we trust you." Same thing went when Marshall went before Congress and said,

I need billions of dollars to develop a super secret weapon that I can't tell you about that we're going to be building out in the desert not far from here, right? The Manhattan Project is possible again because of Marshall's selflessness. The thing about ego is that it is short-term strategy. And the thing about

We over me, right? Putting yourself second, the country first, the mission first, other people first, is that it's a long-term strategy. But it pays off in the end. This is Marshall's resume. Again, not an egotistical man. He asked it for a simple reason.

He has a simple headstone, but the headstone says it all. Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, the most critical moment in American history. Secretary of State, President of the American Red Cross, Secretary of Defense, right? Pretty good resume. Pretty good resume, and he accomplishes it

without ego, right? He accomplishes it because he puts ego aside. So when we say ego is the enemy, we're saying it gets in the way of what we're trying to do. Now, the other rule I want to talk to you about when we talk about Stoics, we talk about discipline, we talk about toughness. Sometimes we get this wrong. The Stoics would say, Mark Srealis writes this in Meditations, he says, the key is to be tolerant with others, but strict with yourself. I'll tell you a little story about

General Kulak, right? General Kulak is watching a parade. He watches the men go by. A major makes a mistake. He knocks off his hat, and he watches as that hat is stamped on by every Marine that comes after. And he's humiliated.

He's concerned. He's wondering if he's going to get in trouble. He doesn't want one of Krulak's very famous dressing downs. And so there is an event later that evening, and the man doesn't appear. The major doesn't appear. He's worried he's going to get yelled at. He's worried he's going to get his ass chewed out, as I'm sure some of you have before. And when Krulak notices that he's not there, he sends one of his aides to the man's house with the hat on.

and with a note attached to it. This is what the note says. The note says, "Dear Major, in 1934, a young Marine and second lieutenant,

knocked off his cover while passing the review in front of President Roosevelt. He says, "I don't think it seriously affected my career." The point is, yes, we are strict, yes, we have high standards, but we also practice a word that the Stoics invented, which was clemency. The idea of mercy, of kindness, of second chances. All great leaders are strict,

primarily with themselves and with other people. They give grace, they give understanding, they give second chances, they build them up rather than tear them down. Lincoln famously, right, took every opportunity he could to pardon young soldiers. It was one of the few moments in the Civil War that gave him a sense of

happiness, enjoy the opportunity to give someone a second chance to spare them. Even his aides would say that he never asked perfection of anyone. He did not even insist on it for others upon the high standards he set for himself. Lincoln's famous team of rivals, his ability to work with people who he had very clear disagreements with,

We had very different opinions then, right? Who had criticized him, who had attacked him. This is rooted in Lincoln's sense that our strictness is internal, not external, right? That we are tolerant with others, but strict with ourselves. The Stokes would say you don't ultimately control other people. You control yourself and you have a lot going on here that you could be stricter and stronger about.

This is one of Lincoln's famous pardon orders. Gandhi even, right? Very high standards for himself.

Eschews all modern technologies, has very strong beliefs philosophically, but his friends would marvel at how at ease he was in their homes, that they never felt judged, that they never felt pressured to live the way that he lived. What he did, what all great leaders do is they set a strong and powerful example which speaks far louder than the most vehement criticism. This is a young Chester Nimitz,

Chester Nimitz is at the Naval Academy right around the year 1900, and his first year. I don't want anyone in here to get any ideas, as I'll get in trouble and not be asked to come back. But Chester Nimitz sneaks out, and he's buying alcohol at a local liquor store in Annapolis. He makes eye contact with a man there as he's checking out.

The next day, he shows up to class and he finds that the man that he made eye contact with was the newest professor at the Naval Academy. Now, his career flashes before his eyes in this moment. Is he about to get kicked out of the Naval Academy? Admiral Stavridis writes in his fantastic book, Sailing True North, he says that in this moment, instantly, Nimitz learns a lesson about whether and when to punish people who make atypical mistakes.

And I actually think it's interesting that he says atypical here, because atypical doesn't mean it only happens once, right? Just a couple years after graduating from the Naval Academy, Nimitz runs a ship aground, and he's court-martialed. And this very well also could have been the end of his career, but he's given a second chance again. And again, America's victory in the Pacific is rooted in the fact

that this man gets two, maybe three, maybe four, maybe a thousand chances, right? And so when we say tolerant with others, strict with ourselves, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about how you see the good in people, how you see the potential in people, and you nurture it, right? And you call them to be what they are capable of being. That's what leaders do, right? This pivotal moment in American history is not possible without the other prior pivotal moments.

moments in American history. And I think it's important that we call it self-discipline. It's self-discipline for a reason. Self-discipline.

It's an outstretched hand, not a weapon. The area that we need the most self-discipline in, the muscle we need to build the most, it's the muscle that takes responsibility because responsibility is a scary, uncomfortable thing. This is Joan Didion, one of the greatest writers.

California history. She looks like a frail little old lady here, I get that, but she has in one of her famous books perhaps the greatest definition of character that I have ever heard. She says, "Character is the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life, and this is the source from which self-respect stems." She says that self-respect is something that the older generations know all about.

and they had it instilled in them when they were young. And she said, "It's the sense that one lives by doing things one does that one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible comforts."

Responsibility is this thing that's scary, that's uncomfortable, that we'd rather other people take, right? Talking about doing the job. Isn't someone else going to say something here? Isn't someone else going to own up for this? Isn't someone else going to take the hit for this? No, the Stoic steps up and he says, that's what I signed up for. That's me. I'll take it.

Even if it's not your fault, it's still your problem. That's what responsibility is. That's what leadership ultimately is. That's the job that you signed up for. If you don't like responsibility, you're done fucked up. You picked the wrong line of work.

It's your job, right? Right? The leader, the president, the head of anything, you never get to say those words. It's not my fault. It's not my responsibility. It wasn't me. It was someone else. No, it comes to you, right? It's on you. This is the great Admiral Rickover, also Naval Academy, the inventor of the American nuclear Navy. He says famously that

This phrase, I am not responsible. He says it's the ultimate cop out. What we're saying is I'm not legally liable, right? You're saying it's not in my job description, right?

And that is a pretty lame thing to say, right? When you are parsing whether something is your fault or not, you are avoiding responsibility. He says, "From a moral or ethical point of view, the person who declaims responsibility," he says, "I am not responsible," right?

is truly not responsible, right? You are being irresponsible, right? And so the idea of responsibility being part of your job that you step up and you take that inflexibly, it is yours, that you

take responsibility and defer credit. Credit, you spread liberally as Marshall did. You put others in front. Failure and difficulty, when things go wrong, that is what you step up and take. You do the hard stuff, you do the thankless stuff, and leaders eat last.

2003, Charles Crulock, General Charles Crulock was showing up. This is the son of Victor Crulock. He shows up at Quantico and he asks who's on duty and he hears the name General Mattis, sir. General Mattis? No, not who's in charge, who's on duty.

And that's when he is told that even though it is 4 a.m. on Christmas Day, General Mattis is working at the guard post. He is on duty at the guard post. And why is he on duty at the guard post? Because General Mattis doesn't have any children and he wasn't married. And the man who was assigned guard duty does have children and does have a family. And Mattis says...

I'm going to take the responsibility, right? I'm going to do the thankless thing. I'm going to do the thing that doesn't get me credit. I'm going to step up and take it. This is what we're talking about. This is your job. And the last thing I wanted to talk about is the idea of stillness.

sort of the ultimate panic rule. When things are going crazy, when things are going a mile a minute, right, when things are hard, what we need, the thing that unlocks elite performance, that unlocks focus, that unlocks solutions, is this idea of stillness. And stillness is a word that appears in all of the religious and philosophical traditions. In the Stoics, it was equanimity or equanimitas. It was ataraxia, a freedom from disturbance, external and internal disturbance.

Marcus Aurelius says it's the even keel. He says it's to be like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually the sea falls still around. In Zen Buddhism, they talk about a cup of muddy water, right? If you let it sit for just a second, the silt starts to settle and eventually the glass becomes clear and you can see things, you can see through things that were obscured to you previously.

Stoicism is not emotionlessness, but it is being less emotional in moments of stress and difficulty. We're talking about poise. Hemingway defined courage as grace under pressure. That's what stillness ultimately is. This is Martin Luther King. It's hard to see in this photo, but right there, that's about a six-inch penknife that's been stabbed into his chest just millimeters from his heart. There he is calmly, peacefully,

receiving medical attention. There's a famous moment in King's life. He's standing on a stage like this one, and a literal neo-Nazi walks on stage and begins to punch him. Now, all of you are trained in hand-to-hand combat. You know the most instinctive and natural thing in the world is to throw up your hands. But King, who was trained over and over again in the practice of non-violence,

Has the ability, people talked about they could hear the fists connecting with flesh all the way in the back of the audience. And the most amazing thing, Rosa Parks talks about this. She said, we watched him drop his hands like a baby.

He had the poise and the stillness and the strength in this moment as he is being attacked, as everything he stands for philosophically and religiously is being challenged, right? The most natural thing in the world would be to defend himself. He has the strength and the poise and the discipline to drop his hands, right? And then ultimately they're separated, and he asked to go backstage and talk with the person that he's just...

been attacked by, right? This is the ability, this is grace and poise under pressure to an almost supernatural level.

And this is what the civil rights movement was built around, the idea that calm is contagious and so is courage, that when you are attacked, what the enemy wants you to do is get rattled, right? When you're playing sports, the purpose of talking shit is to get inside your opponent's head, to rattle them, to make them insecure, to make them angry, to make them overreact, right? This is John Lewis and his...

partner in the Freedom Rides. Look at this motherfucker just eating an apple after they have been beaten nearly to death, right? You can't beat people like this, right? You can beat them physically, but you cannot beat them, right? This is what Gandhi also illustrates in his campaign against the British, right? You can't beat a guy who's smiling in his mugshot. He's arrested like

like 70 times in his life up until his 70s, right? And he's smiling, he calls this good trouble, Congressman Lewis does, right? This is strength and poise and stillness, the understanding of what your opponent wants you to do and understanding of what the most natural human temptation would be to do in this moment and have the poise and the peace to not do that, the strength to not do that.

Seneca says the greatest empire in the world is one's self. And he says, he who is not in command of himself is not fit to rule, right? The greatest empire is here between your ears, right? It's the ability to have self-control and poise, right? Lots of people are very strong. Lots of people are quite lethal. How many could sit there with a knife in their chest, right? How many could drop their hands in that moment, right? This is...

The idea of stillness, it is the greatest weapon that there is. It's an unbeatable weapon. General Mattis has talked about how the biggest weakness of leaders in the information age is their inability to do that, to step back and reflect.

to have solitude or silence. We're flooded with information, we're flooded with news, we're flooded with the exploits of our peers and our friends, we're flooded with frustrating and obnoxious and aggravating images in the media, and the ability to step back

to get perspective, to have clarity, right, whether it's on the battlefield or in life, is the greatest skill that a person can have. The Stoics talk about seeing everything in the calm light of mild philosophy. This is actually Washington's, this comes to us from Cato, and it's George Washington's favorite saying. So

So as we wrap up here, I want four more quick things to guide you, four things to apply in each and every situation. For the Stoics, the four virtues, the virtues that Marcus Aurelius builds his life around, he says there's nothing better than these four things, nothing clearer than these four epithets.

He says, "Courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom." He says, "Try not to exchange these values for others. Try to live by them. Try to exemplify them. Try to model them. Try to apply them in every situation.

right when we say the obstacle is the way we're not saying that the situation you're in is not up that it's not frustrating that it's not scary that it's not hard right we're saying that it is an opportunity for you to apply these four virtues in one situation it demands courage and another it demands self-discipline and another it demands justice and another it demands wisdom most situations demand a combination of these four things

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. The obstacle in front of you is an opportunity for you to apply, to step forward with one of these virtues, to live by them, to embody them, to apply them, to look forward to the opportunity to get to do this thing that under ordinary circumstances you would not be able to do. That in any and every situation, no matter how bad,

or undesirable. It is an opportunity to practice erite, excellence, courage, justice, wisdom, right? And no one can stop you from this, right? They can kill you. They can cut you with knives. They can shower you with curses. None of that cuts you off from the opportunity to be excellent. In fact, it demands, it calls forth precisely that excellence. Thank you very much.

Every big moment starts with a big dream. But what happens when that big dream turns out to be a big flop?

From Wondery and At Will Media, I'm Misha Brown, and this is The Big Flop. Every week, comedians join me to chronicle the biggest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time, like Quibi. It's kind of like when you give yourself your own nickname and you try to, like, get other people to do it. And the 2019 movie adaptation of...

Cats. Like, if I'm watching the dancing and I'm noticing the feet aren't touching the ground, there's something wrong with the movie. Find out what happens when massive hype turns into major fiasco. Enjoy The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+. Get started with your free trial at wondery.com slash plus.