12 (Stoic) Questions That Will Change Your Life

what do you actually value when you know it's important and you know what you value and know where you're going it makes it easy for you to ignore what doesn't matter and focus on what does matter [Music] i think we often look for answers when really it's the questions that teach us the most i know that the right question at the right time can totally change the direction of your life i'm ryan holiday i've been writing about stoicism now for more than a decade and a half i've talked to everyone from the nba to the

nfl special forces to sitting senators and we talk about how these ancient ideas these philosophical practices can help us in the course of modern life and today i wanted to give you 12 questions that i think about all the time derived from the stoics and otherwise people from the past that will help you whoever you are whatever you're doing in your life who are you spending time with gertrude says show me who you spend time with and i will tell you who you are right seneca talks about spending time with people who make you a

better person my dad said to me as a kid you become like your friends well the question is are you spending time with people who are averaging you towards where you want to go are they averaging you away from where you want to go this is a question that can lead to some hard decisions people that you're going to spend less time with who are you seeing after work who are you reading who are you talking to the people we spend time with are either going to make us better they're going to make us worse

or they're going to keep us exactly who we are which is either a good thing or a very bad thing [Music] is this in my control epictetus says this is the key question this is the chief task of the philosopher in life which is separating the things that are up to us and the things that are not up to us and so much of the time and energy we spend in this life are on things that are not up to us that are not in our control it just started raining i don't need to have

an opinion on the fact that it's raining because it's not in my control but what is in my control is what i'm going to do right what's in our control is our actions our thoughts our opinions right and so the stoic learns to tune out what's not in our control and it focuses on what is in our control and so we ask ourselves about everything we experience everything we're feeling everything we're working on is this up to me or am i throwing good energy after bad am i beating myself against a wall that's never going

to move [Music] what does your ideal day look like a life seneca says is made up of days annie dillard said how we spend our lives is of course how we spend our days right what does an ideal day look like for you how are you trying to design your life if you don't know what a good day is like what your ideal is then you're just going to be working on making more money acquiring more fame getting more power or influence you have to ask yourself is this getting me closer or further away from

the life that i want i've talked about how i know exactly what my ideal day looks like it's a saturday where i wake up early i work out i do a little bit of writing i spend lots of time with my family i have time to think i haven't signed myself up for a bunch of pointless obligations or phone calls or meetings i spend time outdoors i'm connected i'm present and so i have to look at each opportunity then that comes along any day and ask myself is it getting me closer or further away from

the kind of life i want to lead and the kind of person that i want to be to be or to do this is a key question that comes to us from the great strategist john boyd who as he mentored young men and women in the pentagon would see that you kind of can go down two paths in life there's a person who wants to look important that wants to achieve a high rank that wants to be in the newspapers or on tv and then there's the person who wants to quietly get things done you

know i think it was truman who said it's amazing how much you can accomplish if you don't care about who gets the credit to be or to do is is largely about credit do you care about accomplishments or do you care about impact do you care about credit or do you care about getting things done you have to ask yourself am i trying to be an important person am i trying to accomplish important things and this question is critical to be or to do how are you measuring your life [Music] hillel said if i am

not for me who is then he said if i am only for me who am i this i think is related to the idea of to be or to do what's motivating you is it external accomplishments or is it making a difference in this world yes you have to fight for yourself you have to stand up for yourself you get walked all over but if all you care about is protecting yourself if all you care about is attention who are you i think about someone like george marshall who accomplishes so much and perhaps his greatest

accomplishment is turning down the command at normandy he didn't want his personal feelings to be taken into account again to be or to do but also who am i for and who am i yes he fought really hard to get where he was to make a difference but then he also knew that ego didn't matter in the end what mattered is the team effort there's a great expression i heard that says if you play for the name on the front of the jersey they'll remember the name on the back what am i missing by choosing

to worry or be afraid one of my favorite books is the gift of fear by gavin to becker and he says when you worry ask yourself what am i choosing not to see right now right we only have so much in the way of cognitive resources or time or emotional uh energy how are you going to spend it and then often by being anxious by being worried by taking things personally by being afraid we're taking our eye off the ball and so i want you to see those emotions not just as unpleasant but actively destructive

because they are stuff's gonna happen in life that makes us emotional but we have to realize that we're only compounding that by acting on those emotions are you doing your job this is a key question um when sean payton was uh suspended from the nfl pre for a year he put up a big picture of himself in the saints facility in three words said do your job this is the thing i think it comes from bill belichick but the idea is that everyone has a job in every moment sometimes that's a little job sometimes it's

a big job but everyone has to know their job in an organization in life you got to ask yourself are you doing it i think in the end we end up focusing on everyone else's job than our own because it's easier than doing our own and that's why i like this question so much are you doing your job and if you aren't why not if you are good keep doing [Music] what is the most important thing to you what do you actually value if you don't know what's important how do you know that you're putting

it first and so to me all the other questions of life come after you have asked and answered what the most important thing to you is in life if you told me i could sell 10 times as many books but it'd come at the expense of my marriage or my relationship with my kids i'd say screw that right because i know the most important thing to me is how those things are in balance with each other yes my work is important but it's not the most important thing you know seneca talks about this idea of

euthymia he says knowing the path that you're on and not being distracted by the paths of the people who's crisscross yours this is especially the people who are hopelessly lost when you know it's important when you know what you value and know where you're going it makes it easy for you to ignore what doesn't matter and focus on what does matter who is this for this is a question as a creator you always have to know who are you making this for i talk to so many entrepreneurs business people creatives who have no idea they're

just making stuff they just hope it will find an audience they go oh this is a book for smart people you have to know who you're making this for you have to know your audience you have to know the market you have to know human beings this is why empathy is so important who are you making this for who are they where where are they what do they want you have to know who this is for so i always ask myself if they're making a video or putting out a tweet or writing a book screw

your hunches who is this for who are they [Music] does this actually matter right so many of the things we're upset about that we hold on to that we focus on they don't matter not to you to anyone at all they don't they just don't matter marcus aurelius says ask yourself in every moment is this essential this is because most of what we do and say is not essential he says when you eliminate the inessential you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better stephen colbert loses his father and several siblings in a

plane crash as a young man and he said what he took out of this was a question from his mother she said can you look at this in the light of eternity does this matter in the big picture right because so many of the things we trivially get upset about that we focus on in moments of crisis we get real clarity about we realize it didn't matter at all people matter your loved ones matter doing your best matters everything else is irrelevant and yet that's where we focus so much of our time and energy will

this be a live time or dead time that's something robert greene asked me when i was thinking about becoming a writer i had like a year to kill before i could go do and he said what's this year going to be for you is it going to be a live time or dead time for you you're going to use every second or you're going to sit around and be passive and wait that came flooding back to me in the pandemic when we went into lockdown it's going to be a live time or dead time what

am i going to have to show for this whether it's two weeks or two months or two years what am i going to have to show for this period a live time treat every moment like a lifetime because while you have it you're alive but after it's gone it's dead right now is now can you use this time what can you use it for if you always choose a lifetime then you're always getting better then you're always moving forward you're not wasting time seneca says it's not that life is short it's that we waste a

lot of it we kill time as time is killing us and the truth is you always have the ability to make the most of this moment so often we choose not to because we we don't ask ourselves this question [Music] is this who i want to be is this representative of the person that i see myself as that i am trying to become or am i giving into my lower self here am i taking a shortcut here am i doing something that the person that i see myself as wouldn't do cheryl straight says you know

you're becoming who you're going to be so you might as well not be an when you do things you have to ask yourself is this representative of my character of my priorities of my values of what i said is important to me if the answer is no you have to not do it how we do anything is how we do everything you have to ask yourself this question is this who i want to be every interaction every situation big or small because it adds up in the way that nothing else can if i could give

you one more question a last question a bonus question to you it comes to us from victor frankel who survives the holocaust he writes the amazing book man search for meaning you know he says we ask what is the meaning of life but he says actually it is life that is asking us that question and it's our actions it's our decisions that provide the answer meaning is something we create from our actions from our decisions from our choices from who we choose to be these are the kinds of questions that if you ask often enough

you will provide as viktor frankl says the kinds of answers that make you who you're capable of becoming if you want to learn more about stoic philosophy totally for free you can sign up for our daily stoic email it's one free email every morning the best of stoic wisdom dailystoke.com email