Our job is to avail ourselves of this information and put it to use where we can, however it makes sense for the situations in which we find ourselves. What we don't have time for are pedantic debates about whether so-and-so was a true Stoic or in-fighting about whether this person or that person is continuing the Stoic legacy properly. There are no winners in philosophy, though there certainly are losers. The best person to be, of course, is a user of the philosophical knowledge we have available to us.
In one of the most watched videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel this week, you can watch the making of The Girl Who Would Be Free—from the moment Ryan Holiday conceived the idea for the book to opening the box with the first physical copies. Along the way, Ryan explains the thought process as the initial idea evolves from one draft to the next, the crucial advice he got from the great children's book author Adam Rubin, the obstacles that delayed the book's release several months, and the best writing advice he's ever gotten:
"One of the best pieces of advice I ever got about writing came from Steven Pressfield. He said, 'As soon as you're done, start the next one.' So there's always this excitement and joy and anticipation of putting the book out in the world. What are people going to think? How's it going to do? I try to tune that out because as Epictetus would say, it's not in your control. Maybe they hate it, maybe it's ahead of its time, maybe there's some crazy world event that distracts everyone from it. So I try not to think of those things. I try to take satisfaction in the work itself. But most of all, I try to do that by turning my eyes and my attention to the next thing. So as this book is coming out and entering the world and I do eagerly await it arriving, what i'm really focused on is the layout and research and then ultimately starting the first section of what will be my next book. I always celebrate the end of a project, congratulate myself for finishing a project, by starting the next one."
I was making B's in five things. I want to make A's in three things—I want to be an actor for hire, have my foundation, and be a family man, boom. And that was a great decision. I cleared two things off my desk, which was hard to do…but it was what I needed to do. And I did start making much better grades, so to speak, in those three things than I was making when I had five."
"It is difficult to accept that the best learning road is slow, and that doing poorly now is essential for better performance later. It is so deeply counterintuitive that it fools the learners themselves…Learning deeply means learning slowly."
Like a boxer training for a prize-fight, Epictetus said, look at adversity as a sparring partner:
"The true man is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material."
To cower or run from adversity is to rob yourself of discovering what you are capable of.
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