We Can’t Let Them Stop Us | Ask Daily Stoic
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We can't let them stop us. They can be as awful as they want, and apparently they want to be quite awful. They can be cruel. They can attack us. They can undermine our institutions. They can spread lies. Not only can people do these things, they always have and always will. What do you think it was like to live in Epictetus and Seneca's time, watching Nero and his goons run loose?

It can seem reasonable in light of this then and now to despair, but we must not. In Meditations, Mark Sruis writes that if an underground spring is powerful enough, someone could shovel mud into it or dung and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean and remain unstained.

He was saying that the goodness within us, or determination to keep going and keep making a difference, it has to be like that spring. We have to be inexhaustible, eternal, fed by something deep and profound. We cannot let them sully us, although we have to accept that they are going to do their best. We can't let them break our will. We can't let them make us like them.

Our job is to keep flowing with determination and virtue no matter what mud they throw at us and no matter what challenges we face. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm about to go give a talk. I'm here in Sundance, Utah. Then there'll be like a Q&A after. I've said this before, but that's like my favorite part. It's

It's not that I don't get anything out of giving the talk. Of course I do. I'm mostly giving, right? Like I'm saying what I think. I have to learn and study and practice. I'm challenged in a bunch of ways doing it, but I'm not like being exposed to things I didn't know about. I'm not hearing anyone else's perspective. That's why I love the Q&As or the discussions that come after because I hear from people and I have to think about things that I never thought about before.

I'll probably bring you a chunk of today's Q&A at some other point. I usually mic myself for them. But back a couple months ago, I was in Phoenix. I don't know if you've been to the Global Ambassador. It's a lovely hotel. And I was talking to a mastermind. Do you know what a mastermind is? We've

We've talked about them a bunch here. It's like a group of people that get together and think and learn and help make each other better. This is actually Dean Graziosi's mastermind. It's his and Tony Robbins' private business club. It's called Zenith Mastermind. And Dean had me out. We just talked for an hour or so. He gave everyone a copy of Ego is the Enemy, which is very nice. But I thought I'd bring you some of that conversation because I thought it was interesting. And hopefully I'll see you at a talk one of these days as well.

So on the opposite side, the ego is the enemy that I just read this week.

Even though you wrote that, and this is your study, is there ever a time being a dad, being a leader, being a partner, being a husband, where the ego gets in your way? Oh, all the time. Yeah. I think if you think ego is not a problem for you, you are talking about ego. You know, that's one of the more insidious things about ego is that we can spot it so clearly in other people. Like your ego almost says there is no ego. Yes. Right? Yeah. Well, it's just we can so very clearly see how ego holds other people back.

But they're like, me? No, no, no. I've transcended this. I'm over this. And it's like, no, you just can't see...

if you could get honest feedback from people around you, they'd be like, here's all the ways that your ego is holding you back. But what ego does is it sort of blinds us to that thing. And so I make a big distinction between confidence and ego. Confidence is essential. If you don't think you can do something, you're probably not going to be able to do it. The problem is just because you think you can do something doesn't mean you can. And I think where ego gets in the way is it says you already have all the tools, all the skills,

all the signs point to yes, instead of doing the work to earn those things, right? There's a quote from Epictetus, one of the Stoics. He says, remember, it is impossible to learn that which you think you already know. And so where like being a know-it-all is so problematic is that you're kind of right. You can't know anything more. And humility or confidence is,

can continue to learn and grow because it's secure with itself but also aware of how much more it needs. And so, yeah, look, I just got notes back from my last book and my first reaction every time, even though I know this is like, how dare you? You know, I sent you a work of art and you- You told me to use a different color. Yeah, you sent me back this thing covered in red marks. What is this?

And then I go, okay, that's ego. Ego doesn't like to be criticized. Ego doesn't like to have to do extra work. Ego doesn't like to be challenged. Ego thinks I'm the expert. You're the assistant to the editor. You know, all the things that you're pushing back on. And then I go, all right, let's sit on that for a day. And then usually what I tell myself is,

let's do all the easy notes first, you know, let's do all the ones, all the ones we agree with. I'm only going to put in the ones that are obviously right, that I agree with. And then, you know, by the end I put in all the notes because I've gotten over that initial resistance. Right. And, you know, anytime you get criticized or you screw up, you want to think about how it was somebody else's fault, how you didn't deserve it. They don't understand.

And then once you can let that subside a little bit, or what I try to do is once I let that subside, I go, okay, and now where's the truth in this? Where was I responsible? What do I want to take from this experience? And that's kind of how I think about it. But I generally, ego is not this thing that you don't have. It's not this thing that you kill and it goes away. It is a constant process. And would the opposite of ego be humility? Or what would be the opposite of

Well, the ancients had this idea of the golden mean and the golden mean being that most virtues are actually in the middle between two vices.

And so I'd actually say that confidence is there in between a sort of humility as a positive connotation, but there's certainly people who are too humble, too self-effacing, riddled with imposter syndrome and doubt and feelings of worthlessness. On the one hand, we have this. And then ironically, ego on the other end is actually quite similar, right? Ego is an obsession with the self. Actually, when you meet really egotistical people, you see how insecure they are deep down.

So to me, confidence is there in the middle. It's an understanding and an awareness of our strengths coupled with an awareness of our weakness, of our need for improvement, where we can get better, what we don't know. And it's these two things fused together that is what we're aspiring to be as opposed to stuck on either end. Love that. Love that. You know, in a room of

high achievers, one of the principles, stoic principles is surrendering control. Yeah, that's tough. And there's time, like even this year in 2025, I never really thought through the term leadership bias, right? So I'm just going to give you one example in my office. And I realized when I'm really excited about something, I want to shift the marketing. I want to write something new. I want to change the direction of the company just a little bit. And I'll call on the leadership team. What I just realized is

at the end of the year, because I was really journaling on how can I be a better leader in this next year, I realize that I go into the room and I speak first. And I have so much passion and so much like, this is where we're going. Then I'm like, what do you guys think? And everybody's like,

Yeah. Hey, that sounds great. And what I realized is I'm selling them so hard to go. Even if I say anything, he's not going to, I'm going to ding his ego or he's not going to feel in control, but I would address it like, Hey, now that you have mine, I want to hear yours so we can come up with something. Everybody's like, nah. And I just made it a point this year when I go in a room, I'm the last one to speak. Yeah.

And I know that might sound, I'm giving up, it's a tiny bit of control, but it's huge for me because half the time I'm here and I'm going, that's dumb. Like mine's better. Right. But I'm like, no,

That's because you've been in control and it might be your ego. So I'd love to hear your philosophy on how that works into leadership and personal growth. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, famously, Kennedy realizes that everyone in the room is telling him what he wants to hear and that people aren't saying what they really think. And he realizes that he, the president, has to remove himself and let what was called XCOM discuss all the different options and then present to him

hey, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, and here's what we as a group think, not here's what I as the individual worried about losing my job is saying in the meeting, but then whispering to other people. And so sometimes the leader realizes, hey, I have to step out or I have to let things settle. I can't be...

I can't direct this or I'm not going to, this is why dictators have such a big problem. They don't get feedback. They don't get feedback. They don't get truth. Yeah. So that's one form of control. That's the leader being in control. But I also think, you know, nobody in this room got here by accepting the

things, right? You got here by changing and your force of personality and your drive, but part of life is also about surrender and accepting the limitations of your control. And so it's talk about the need to sort of understand, hey, here's the things that are up to me and here's the things that are not up to me. And that can be really tough. But I guess what I would just say is that

Even the things that we have changed, we first had to accept the status quo as a fact before we could change it, right? You have to accept the facts on the ground before you can set about building something new, changing, whatever. And sometimes I think our lack of acceptance

acceptance or our fear of surrender makes it hard for us to get started on solving the problem because we would rather spend our time denying the problem or fighting the problem instead of first accepting. So there's two different ways we could talk about this, but I think that's where it's at. No, it's a really good point. And it

And it takes time because especially most people in here is kind of bootstrapped your business or raised money or borrowed money on the way up. Your brain, at least I'm going to share, maybe I'm just being transparent here. It's like, hey, I built this X million dollar a year company from starting with nothing. I think I know better than you've been here for seven months, right? Yes. And when I can shut up and actually listen, some of the best ideas come from somebody looking from the outside in. Yeah.

And it doesn't mean that I won't go with my idea with a twist or adjustment, but sometimes it's altered a little and it's better. Yes. And it took me a long time to realize that.

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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