Stop Chasing Quick Wins: What Ryan Holiday Wants You To Know About Success

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. You know, if you want to make work that lasts not just for a minute, but maybe a decade or even a lifetime, this is the episode for you.

Ryan Holiday is a writer and media strategist and the founder of the creative agency Brass Check. He’s the author of six books including The Obstacle is The Way, Ego is The Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and his latest, Perennial Seller.

His work has been translated into 28 languages and retains a cult following among NFL coaches, world class athletes, TV personalities, and political leaders. Ryan lives on a ranch outside of Austin, Texas where he does his work in between raising cattle, donkeys, and goats.

Ryan Holiday.

Hi.

Hi. It’s been a while. Like we’ve wanted to do this well over a year.

Yes.

I’m so thrilled to have you here.

Thank you.

I want to take it back before we take it current and forward. So you’ve had such a fascinating and interesting career so far. I feel like a lot of folks in our audience are either writers, want to be writers, dream of that.

Yeah.

Let’s go back to when you were the – Robert Greene’s apprentice and also the American Apparel days. What lessons did you glean from them that informed how to make a living as a writer and who you’ve become today?

Yeah. You know, it’s – I think one of the things that’s interesting about sort of mentors or apprenticeships or whatever is that they’re only that in retrospect. Right? It’s not as if you know. So like Benjamin Franklin, his father wants him to be a – in the newspaper business, a printer. So he assigns him to his older brother as an apprentice. It’s like a literal contract for like seven years you’re basically this person’s slave. They have to like provide your room and board and all this stuff.

Well, that’s not how an apprenticeship works in the modern era. Right? It’s an informal arrangement. So, you know, I now look back and I say “Robert Greene was my mentor, I was his apprentice,” but really it just starts like a job, like any other. Right? I was working for someone else who was working with Robert, and I was a huge Robert Greene fan. And so my reward for working so hard for this other person was that we got to have dinner or lunch with this – my idol, basically.

And I remember Robert was talking and he was complaining about how he didn’t have a research assistant. And he was drowning in this book. And I, you know, I was like “I’ll do it. Like whatever it, you know, whatever. Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it. You don’t have to pay me. Like, please.” Like, you know, it’s my dream job, basically. And he was like “no one works for me for free. I’ll pay you to transcribe these interviews.” So that was my first job. I just – I had to transcribe dozens of hours of interviews between Robert Greene and 50 Cent. And everyone in 50 Cent’s entourage. It was a very surreal experience.

I had a day job, and then at home I would go home and just listen to these interviews and transcribe them and transcribe them. And then I did a good enough job that he gave me another thing, and I did a good enough job that he gave me another thing. And I would try to, between those projects whenever I would get Robert on the phone I would ask him a question. You know, I’d say, you know, when you’re – “how do you do your research?” Or, you know, “when you had your first idea for a book, you know, how did you know it was real?” Or, you know, “what can I do better?”

And I would just – and I would see it as okay, he’s paying me to do these tasks and that rate is probably below market rate or, you know, whatever. Below what would be a livable wage. But what is an hour of Robert Greene’s time worth? And if I can sneak 15 minutes here, there, that’s a huge reward for me. Like I remember a couple of years ago there was a controversy where Sheryl Sandberg was trying to hire an unpaid intern, and a bunch of people got really upset. It’s like, you know, “you’re a billionaire. How could you not pay someone?” And I think it’s so short-sighted to think that the value of working for Sheryl Sandberg is $15 an hour.

Yes.

It’s what is an hour of Sheryl Sandberg’s time worth? If you could theoretically even purchase it. And this person is going to be around her. So what I really learned from Robert was the craft. I learned how to make a book and how an author lives and works before I’d ever even really had anything to say. So then when I had – when I did discover something to say I was like, “oh. I can just put these two things together and I know where to go from here.”

Was that dream of being a writer as a livelihood alive in you? Or was it kind of perhaps almost like a hidden seed where then you became around someone who you greatly admired who happened to be a brilliant writer, and then, again, as you went on your journey you found like “I have something to say too, and now I have these tools and this framework?”

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like a little of both.

Yeah.

I think I always – like I was obsessed with books. I loved books. But I don’t know about you, but like I didn’t meet anyone doing – like you didn’t meet anyone doing what you were doing when you were 9 years old.

Right.

So it wasn’t like a thing. Like, you know, it’s – you know writers exist because you know books exist. But sometimes it’s not until you really meet one you’re like, “Oh, they’re just a person and this is a profession. Just like, you know, my dad’s a carpenter. You know, like my friend’s dad works at an insurance company.”

And so I think one of the great things about working for someone who does what you want to do or is at least in the industry that you want to be in. Like, you know, let’s say you want to be a musician and you’re a janitor in a recording studio. What you’re figuring out it’s like “oh, this is a business, a system that has a logic, and like anyone can figure it out. And that these other people who are doing it are not that much different than me.”

And so I think it was – I wanted to be a writer, and that’s why I so admired him. And then meeting him it was like – I think it was nurturing the seed and then it was like oh, this is a – you know, if you water a seed, if you give it enough sunlight, if you protect it from the elements, it’s gonna grow into a plant. You know? And I think that’s what that process enabled for me.
You don’t want to be around just other people who are aspiring to do what you’re doing, because you’re all in the same boat. Right? So it’s like I think a lot of people want to be writers, so they go get an MFA. And it’s like really the only person in that environment who is a professional writer is the one teacher.

So it’s like you and like 50 other people, you know, and you’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege when really, you know, you could be the house cleaner to a writer in your neighborhood and have more one on one time with them and learn their routine. And so, yeah, you want to be around people who have done what you’re trying to do so you can sort of destigmatize it and it can lose some of its…

Mystique.

Yeah. Because it’s not – none of this stuff is that, you know, Robert’s a brilliant man, but he’s not a rocket scientist. You know, he’s not – or he’s not LeBron James like doing this sort of unreal thing. He just worked really hard and figured it out, and then he can pass that knowledge on to someone else.

Yeah. Let’s get to – one … I love many of your books, but like Obstacle of the Way, I – The Obstacle is The Way, I remember sitting down and reading that when I was in LA. I just loved it. Like I was sitting there and highlighting and underlining, and I was like, “Ryan, yes.” And then Ego is the Enemy, you know, stoicism, for anyone watching that is not familiar with the philosophy, tell us about it. And then also, what inspired you to make this such a big part of your work?

So I was introduced to stoic philosophy when I was – right around the time I met Robert. So probably like 18 or 19 years old. And I nerded out about it, I loved it. I’ve always loved history and really old things. And then I – as I would go around and be like, “Have you ever heard of stoic philosophy?” to people they’re like, “that sounds horrible.” You know?

So one of the things I tried to do in those books is try to take this thing that I’m super passionate about and translate it to other people. Because I realized the phrase “stoic philosophy” already sets off like 50 red flags for people. Right? Stoic means you don’t have any emotions, philosophy means like things that academics talk about but has no practical real world value. That’s not why I love this philosophy. What it – Stoicism is much closer to Buddhism, but I think it’s even more practical than Buddhism. If you think about like if we take some prominent stoics. Right? You have Marcus Aurelius, who was the emperor of Rome. So you have this philosopher who’s also the most powerful person on earth. And then you have Epictetus. He’s this other famous stoic philosopher. And he was a slave, so he was a slave who gets turned on to philosophy. He gets his freedom and he dedicates himself to this thing.

So it’s this framework for extreme success on the one hand and extreme adversity on the other. And then Seneca, who’s probably my favorite stoic, is on one hand the political advisor to the emperor of Rome, so he’s a Karl Rove type or a, you know, a sort of a political fixer. And then on the other hand he’s Rome’s most famous playwright.

And so you have this philosophy that’s really designed for people facing real world problems. They’re trying to make sense of the world, they’re trying to deal with their temper, they’re trying to deal with frustrating people around them or their fear of death, and they’re just writing their thoughts to themselves or to their friends, and then somehow all of this survives.

So it’s this really great collection of wisdom that you could spend your whole life going through. And what I’ve tried to do in the books is just illustrate those principles and tell them. So the reason you like it is it’s not really my writing. It’s that you’re resonating with this thing that’s been tested on millions of people for 2,000 years. Right? So …

And I’m not making any of it up. I’m – it’s like this was true in this situation, this was true in this situation, and then I’m just collecting them in a narrative that allows you to make sense of it. And to, “Oh, okay. I get…” you know. Because I think a lot of times when you see these big names that you can’t pronounce people are like, “Oh, that’s not for me.”

Yes.

But if you hear the same wisdom applied to a story about, I don’t know, Tiger Woods or Eleanor Roosevelt you’re like, “Oh, I get it, because I’ve heard that before.”

Yeah. I think you do a brilliant job of it. And I love it. And so much of it resonates with the way I intrinsically live my life. So there’s a little bit of affirmation in there as well.

Yeah. I mean, I say stoicism is basically what your grandmother would have told you or how your grandfather would have lived his life. You know, and that’s what stoicism really was too. It was – like Cato is one of the other stoics, and he was considered a philosopher even though he didn’t write anything down. And think about Socrates. Right? Socrates doesn’t have any books. It’s that he lived his life in a certain way that made him a philosopher. And I think we’ve lost sight of that. We think philosopher is like someone who works at Harvard and wears a turtleneck and asks questions that there are no answers to. You know?

Yeah.

And really philosophy is like a really great person who’s excellent in all forms and they’re living an exemplary life. To me that’s what philosophy is.

That’s really cool. I want to talk now about your latest creative baby.

Okay.
Perennial Seller. Which is about creating things that stand the test of time. And you wrote this, which I highlighted. “People claim to want to do something that matters, and yet they measure themselves against things that don’t.”

Yes.

When I read that I was like oh! I got all the chills. Got the highlighter out, all that jazz. Tell us about what that means to you.

I mean, most people don’t remember that Star Wars was beaten at the box office by Smokey and the Bandit its opening weekend. Or, you know, how many copies did the Great Gatsby sell on its first week or its first year? Like, you know, these are really short-term metrics for what we’re trying to accomplish. Right?

It’s like you spend a year or two years or five years of your life working on some project, and then you’re gonna judge it by how the open rate on the first email that you did worked you know? There’s a quote I have in one of my books from Kafka’s editor, and he’s saying “we both know that the things that last are rarely received well when they first come out.” You know, that they’re rarely appreciated because they’re so complicated or they make us feel uncomfortable or new. And so what I’m really urging people to do is to stop measuring. It’s like if you – nobody’s sitting down and writing a book going, “I hope this has two or three months of good, you know, good life in it.” Right?

And then it’s done.

Yeah. The whole point is that you want it to last for your children or your children’s children. Right? And then so if that’s true and that’s – why are you measuring yourself on its success on its first week? Or why are you judging – why are you ready to throw in the towel on this company because you hit a rough spot three months in? You know? Almost all the successful people that you admire took a long time to get where they’re getting, so don’t look at these things in microseconds. You’ve got to give yourself a little bit of runway.

In my case a lot of runway. I mean, I’m one of the slowest people ever. And everyone’s like, “Where’d this girl come from?” Like are you shittin’ me? I’ve been doing this since 1999.

And I think about that too, it’s – I know that I’m heading in the right direction and that’s really all that matters. I’m not planning on going anywhere. And so you’ve got to be – you can’t be whipping yourself like “why am I not doing what so and so is doing?” And especially if those are, you know, if they’re crushing it. Not because they’re not good, but maybe they got breaks that you didn’t get or circumstances lined up in a way that it didn’t work for you. Like if you’re gonna do it I say do it right and then give yourself enough time to see if it’s gonna work or not. Don’t quit early.

Yeah. I think what you did so well too in this particular book is you broke it down. And it’s so understandable in terms of, you know, the creative process itself. Like going into whether it’s a book that you want to make, you know, it’s an online program, it’s a business, it’s an album, whatever the creative act is, is going into it. And I think what’s so interesting about this book to me is I’ve always been like a turtle.

Yeah.

And a lot of folks are like go faster, go faster, go faster, go faster. And I am the slowest ever. Like I write so slow. Most of, not all of them, but a lot of MarieTVs are scripted because I like to build in weird skits because that’s what I do. I like it. But it takes a while. Like, I don’t just sit down. Can’t you go faster? I’m like “no. I can’t.” Like creating good stuff, at least for me, sometimes takes time.

I remember with my first book I was convinced that not only if it didn’t come out by a certain date it wouldn’t do as well, but that it like – it wasn’t even worth doing. You know what I mean? Like that it’s like if we don’t hit this window, we might as well not even do it. Like the world will have moved on. My one window will be crushed. And so like I was whipping myself, I was whipping everyone involved, I was cutting corners – not cutting corners, but I was – I wasn’t taking a week to think about something, I was taking an hour.

And sometimes that can be great, because you can become paralyzed if you have unlimited time. But I was pushing and pushing and pushing myself thinking that if I didn’t hit it it wasn’t worth it. And, you know, I’m just finishing the final pages on the updated version of that book on its 5th year anniversary, and it’s like “what was I thinking? I could have done” – first off, I could’ve done a lot of this on the first time and maybe it would have done better. But also like just the idea. It just seems so crazy to me that like I couldn’t even think five years in the future.

Yup.

But as I’ve worked on more projects you get more confident. And I wish I could give like first time creators that patience and like room to play that you’re gonna get later in your career anyway.
Yeah.

I wish I could gift that to them now, and I think they can gift it to themselves. Go like, look, a week here or there is not going to matter in, you know, unless you’re running for president and the election is on November 4th and so you have to get the book out earlier. You know, there’s a couple of circumstances. Right? You know, Steve Jobs dies, you want to get your biography of Steve Jobs out as soon as possible.

But for the most part on almost every project, a week here, there, or taking extra time to get these things right, they’re not going to matter and they’re gonna seem totally insignificant in the big picture. So like give yourself that. And it’s gonna make a better product. That’s gonna make everything else you do better and more effective for that reason.

Let’s talk about the creative process a little bit. You said, you know, the hard part is not the dream or the idea, it’s the doing. I think one thing that a lot of folks don’t realize or they don’t want to realize is how hard it is.

It’s really hard.

It’s really hard to do the work. It’s really hard. Sometimes I’ll look in comments on social media and I’ll try and like help people or respond or give some encouragement and we’ll get into mini dialogues where it’s like “oh, I wish I could do this.” I’m like, “Well, are you doing it now?” I want to be a rapper. And I’m like where’s this? Like send me some mp3’s. I want to hear your tracks. Lay it down. Or whatever it is.

The hardness of doing. I think it’s intimidating to a lot of people, but it’s like that’s what it takes.

Yeah. And first off, if it wasn’t hard there wouldn’t be any money in it. Right? Because everyone can do it. Like the easy things, there’s lots of competition and there’s very thin margins. Right? The whole reason this is worth doing is because it’s really hard. And just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable. But I love the saying for writing specifically, but it’s probably true – I bet painters would disagree. You know, there’s a saying, painters like painting, writers like having written.

You know, like having an idea for a book is fun and having a finished book is fun, but the difference maker is what happens between, you know, point A and point B. And, you know, when you’re working on something big whether it’s like starting – let’s say you’re starting a company. You’re gonna work on it for months and you’re not gonna really be any visibly closer to finishing. That’s the discouraging part. Like when you, you know, writing an article. No one’s ever discouraged writing an article because you get it done in one day or you get half of it done in one day.

When you’re working on a book or starting a company or you want to launch a channel, you want to do something big, you could work for whole days or whole weeks and not be a percentage point closer to finishing. Or if you’re 2% closer to finishing, that’s not a physically noticeable amount of progress. So you’re – you have to develop this capacity to sort of chug away and be okay without the perception of progress or momentum. You know what I mean?

I experience that a lot and I have to do battle in my own mind, because sometimes when perhaps it’s like working on a MarieTV episode or writing, you know, working on a book, now getting into that, that there’s this period where it doesn’t look like a lot is happening.

Yes.

But it’s actually happening. You’re pulling together. Your subconscious is starting to make connections. And then outwardly you might still be looking at three sentences on a screen. But if you’re not willing to hang with that discomfort, you’ll never get to the chapter or you’ll never get to the end of the book.

Yeah. Ira Glass talks about this thing. I sort of – I love the quote. I won’t butcher it. But it basically I sort of call it the taste talent gap.

Yes.

Right? And he’s saying – and I talked about this in Ego because I think ego plays a part in it. He’s basically saying like whatever creative thing you’re doing, you got into it because you have really good taste. You know what great music is, you know what great art is, you know what great food tastes like. And then you start and you’re gonna be really bad. Right? Like your first – your dishes are gonna suck or your writing is gonna suck. And if you can’t tolerate suckiness, you can’t tolerate crappy first drafts, as we call them, as writers call them, you’re never gonna get to polished, excellent prose.

And so you’ve got be okay. Like, “I worked all day and I got three sentences.” You know, or I worked all month on this manuscript that I thought was done, and it’s actually feels like it’s in worse shape than when I started. But that’s just because they’re moving all these pieces around, and one of these days I have faith in myself that it’s gonna come together. And that will be a great moment, but I don’t need – I don’t need to see it. You know what I mean? You don’t need that light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah. You have to be okay in the discomfort and have that faith. I’ve seen that time and time again with so many things. It almost feels like things get worse, they get messier, it’s all over the place. But you do, you have to keep chugging along.

Well, I love the metaphor of the car on a lonely dark road at night. Right? It’s like you can only see as far in front at the headlights, but that’s all you need. You don’t need to see the destination. Right? You just need – as long as you’re not running off the road ten feet in front of you, you’ll get there. As long as you do what you got to do.

One tactical piece that I thought our audience might find really useful was a concept I identified with, “right to think,” which was inspired by Amazon. And you shared about this in Perennial that Amazon requires managers who are launching new products to write a press release before the idea is given the green light to show how you kind of would think through the marketing of it.

And I feel like, you know, most people who pay attention to my work know how much I love marketing. It’s what we teach in B-School. It’s like if you are a creative, if you believe in what you’re putting out into the world you’ve got to embrace marketing and love it. Let’s talk about this tactic a little. Because I feel like it works for books, it works for companies, it works for product launches.

Well, the worst thing in the world would be to spend all this time on something and then have it and be like, “you know, people don’t really want that.” You know what I mean? And that, sadly, that happens a lot. And it’s not that the thing isn’t good, it’s just the direction they took it in or the way they decided to make it didn’t work for some number of reasons.

And so what Amazon asks its employees to do is like, let’s say you want to launch a product at Amazon. Like you had the idea for the Kindle. Not like you want to sell something at Amazon, but you want to launch some internal thing. You write the press release for that or you write the user manual for it, and the idea is, “I want you to think all the way to the end. So you’re really envisioning – like what they’re saying. That’s like can you see Oprah like standing on her couch shouting about this?” And it’s like if someone’s a huge Marie fan, can they think about you loving what they’ve made and describing why you’re loving it? And so instead of like so much of the time like we love what we’re making or we wouldn’t make it. And so that’s really important, obviously. But it’s – you’re not making it for you.

Yes. You’re making it for an audience.

That’s the – right. Otherwise you would just think about it. Do you know what I mean? Like I’m not writing the books for me. That’s a lot of unnecessary work. I could write in shorthand to myself. You know? So what is this and is it amazing and exciting and awesome, and can I think about it from that “creating value for a customer perspective”? And that forces you to be more empathetic and think all the way to the end. So I write the back cover copy to one of my books or something like that.

Yes. Yeah, and I feel like it also from a messaging and positioning perspective, it trains you as a business person to be really concise, to be really clear, and to be able to make some great creative decisions before you get lost in the muck.

Yeah. So you’re making the creative decisions along that goal that you’ve set. You’re not just taking it wherever it leads you, because, frankly, it could lead you in the wrong direction or just to the easier direction. And then when you have that draft, you can go “did I do it or not?” Right?

Like I think I tell the story in Perennial Seller about Adele’s album that she did with Rick Rubin. You know, she did all the demos for this album and she gives them to Rick Rubin and she says, you know, it’s ready. And he said no, it’s not. Because they had it – and then she said “you’re right.” You know, she – and that was because they both had a shared understanding of where they were trying to get. It wasn’t just objectively the songs were not that good. It wasn’t as good as they were trying to do. And so the reason that album is called 25 is that it was supposed to come out when she was 25 years old. It actually comes out when she’s 27. So like she by sort of having that vision for what she wanted to do, she had something to measure against. And then that was enough to have to keep her going for two additional years. You know, so you need to have – if you don’t know where you’re going, it’s very unlikely you’re gonna end up there.

Yeah.

You could just end up wherever.

Let’s switch gears for a minute, because I know you and your wife just fairly recently welcomed a baby boy into the world. How is having a family, now that you’re a dad, impacted how much you work, how you work?

It definitely messes with your routine. It changes the routine. I really liked it. So like he won’t let me put him to sleep or put him back down to sleep in the middle of the night. So I actually sleep pretty well, which I’m sure will piss off a lot of parents. But I take him in the mornings while my wife catches up on sleep, and so we go for a long walk.

So it’s like I used to just take walks by myself, and now I take a walk with this other person. So I definitely – you want to be adaptable and flexible, and then you wanna – what’s been good for me, what I’ve really taken out of it, is that it gives me a real reason to myself and to other people to say no to things. Like I loved your video and we talked about this about like, “hey, can I pick your brain?” And it’s like I might let you guilt me into picking – not you, but I might let someone guilt me into picking my brain when it’s me, because maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. But it’s been good for me to go, “oh, I’m taking that time from another person who doesn’t care that I was letting some random person pick my brain.”

So it’s been really good for me as someone who has trouble saying no to have this other – it’s like by making a child I promised as much of my free time as I have to this human being, and they need it. And so for me to fritter it away for no reason is actually really selfish. And so it’s made me much more disciplined. I really – I really appreciate that. Plus it’s amazing and i wish I’d done it sooner. But it’s been great.

That’s awesome. I love it. Tell me about being grateful for your least favorite things, which sounds like it’s a relatively new practice or something you’re playing with.

Yeah. Well, one of the things in stoicism is trying to always find the good in things. Right? So the idea of the Obstacle is the Way is that obviously you wanted it to go a certain way, but it went the way that it did and you can’t change it. So what can you do with that?

And so one of the things I’ve been doing in my journal is I try to – I love everyone’s talking about gratitude. But it’s really easy to go like “I’m grateful for Marie” or “I’m, you know, I’m grateful for my mom or I’m grateful for the success that I have.” I’ve been trying to – that’s easy, and I think it doesn’t mean anything because it’s so easy. So I’ve been trying to go like “what’s something I’m upset about and why am I grateful that it happened that way? Who’s the person that I feel the most anger towards and why am I grateful for them in some way or another?”

I read a really great viral piece a long time ago about someone who took something they were really angry about and they had to like – they made their internet password like expressing gratitude for that thing. And how like over weeks and months of having to type this in it totally changed. And so I’ve been trying to like, “oh, this person that I feel resentment for. What am I grateful about them? Or this pressure that I feel, you know, what – how has that helped me in some way?” And so I’ve just been trying to muse on things that I shouldn’t be grateful for, but if I practice gratitude about them, it’s work and it’s stretching my capacity, and there really is something good. And it’s been an experience. Some mornings I can’t bring myself to do it. But – and sometimes I have to do the same one 15 times, but it’s been really good.

I love it. It’s so fresh and it’s so unexpected. And as you say it I can feel the usefulness of it immediately.

Yeah, yeah. Because, look. Gratitude is very important. But, again, like…

It’s easy.

It’s not sincere if you’re not actually…

But I do. I think the expansion of capacity and the expansion of our ability to look at the things that we find irritating or frustrating or perhaps like “this should be that way” to find value or growth or something to actually genuinely, sincerely express appreciation about.

Yeah.

That’s a nice growth edge.

Yeah. And I think – like, this is a weird story that I’m sure most people won’t be able to relate to. But we’re gonna go to my farm later and we’ve got these new cows and they promptly just broke like all the inner fencing in our thing. And so on the one hand this is frustrating. I was somewhat mad as the person who sold me these cows clearly knew this was gonna happen and it’s taking advantage of my complete incompetence in farming.

But on the other hand, now I’m fixing all this stuff and I’m learning something from it. It’s something I should have taken care of earlier. It’s gonna be better for me having taken care of it. It’s sometimes having a project, an emergency, it forces you to prioritize and schedule and you do everything faster. And so it’s like I want to be grateful that that happened. And stoicism is about – it’s not about “hey, everything’s great.” Because not everything isn’t great. Something stuff really sucks.

Totally.

But can you make it a little bit better. Right? So it’s not even saying that, “hey, you know, this negative thing happened. You’ve lost your mother or your company went bankrupt.” These are terrible things that ideally you don’t want to have happen.
Yeah.

But can it change you for the better at some form or another? Can you take something that was 100% bad and make it 99% bad and then be grateful for that 1%? That’s the way of thinking about it.

Love it. And I love how much you practice what you preach. Like whenever I’m following you on Twitter and seeing your tweets and all the things and you’re running it’s like so why I was really excited to have you on. Because having known you for a few years and watch you work and read your work, that’s one of the things that I admire about people is when they really live what they talk about. And none of us are perfect obviously.

No, I mean. Yeah. I actually say – it’s very simple, but it’s not easy.

Yes.

And I’m as bad at it as anyone or I wouldn’t be – it wouldn’t be – if I was really good at it it wouldn’t be interesting to me and I wouldn’t be writing about it.

Yes.

And obviously my wife can tell you any of the unstoic moments that that are then preceded by some level of stoic insight. “Oh, you mean it’s not a good idea to yell about, you know, yell at this inanimate object? It’s not accomplishing anything?” That insight only comes because I found myself, you know, hurling a book at a wall over and over again. I wasn’t sitting there like the sage, you know, I was like “wow, that was really embarrassing.”

Yeah. No, I love it. Well, you’re doing great work. I’m really excited. I know you’re gonna keep going and we’ll have lots more books to talk about and hopefully lots more practices too.

Thank you.

Now Ryan and I would love to hear from you. So we’ve covered a whole lot of things. I really love this conversation. But I am curious, what of the many things was the most impactful for you? And tell me not just why you found it insightful, but what action can you take right now to put it into practice in your life? Let us know in the comments below.

Now, as always, the best conversations happen over at MarieForleo.com, so get your butt over there and leave a comment now. And when you do, don’t forget to sign up for our email list and become an MF Insider. You’ll get instant access to an audio I created called How To Get Anything You Want, plus you’ll get some exclusive content and special giveaways and some personal updates from me that I just don’t share anywhere else.

Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams, because the world needs that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and we’ll catch you next time on MarieTV.

Hot potato. Hot potato. Do you remember Amadeus? That song? I really was convinced they were saying hot potatoes, hot potatoes. Because I did not know the words Amadeus yet.

Don’t handle me, woman.