#101 – Ryan Holiday: Finding stillness amidst chaos

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Adversity is a chance to audit how your life is set up

  Ryan Holiday, author of 'The Obstacle Is the Way', 'Ego Is the Enemy' and 'Stillness Is the Key', spoke with Attia at the start of the COVID lockdowns in March 2020. Both noted that if someone had told them in January they couldn't fly from March until perhaps July, they'd have been horrified. Now that it was happening, the question was what to do with it: what would you do on the 17th floor of a 600-square-foot New York apartment?

• 02

  Humans have always faced plagues

  Marcus Aurelius, the central figure in most of Holiday's books, ruled during the Antonine Plague, which struck Rome, lasted about 15 years and, Holiday says, likely killed Marcus himself in 180 AD. Holiday finds perspective in history. Attia adds that the gap between a virus killing 1% or 0.1% of those infected 'makes all the difference', alongside an undeniable economic tragedy like 2008–09.

• 03

  Shared crises can unite people

  Holiday cites Sebastian Junger's 'Tribe': after 9/11, New York's suicide rate went down as people were united by urgency and a sense of having been wronged, and pettiness fell away. But he notes that a pandemic isolates people and affects the whole world at once, unlike 9/11, or even World War II, which spared large parts of the planet.

• 04

  Crises reveal what leaders are for

  From Doris Kearns Goodwin's 'Leadership in Turbulent Times', Holiday retells LBJ's analogy from his ranching youth. When cattle get stuck in a ravine or mud, the foreman has to charge in and lead them out with confidence and clarity. Holiday argues we too often choose leaders to 'juice the stock market' or cut taxes, then discover that their real job is to show up in a crisis.

• 05

  Stoicism is about what you control

  Holiday describes the central precept of Stoicism: we don't control what has happened or is happening, only how we respond. That means letting go of much of what we'd like to control and focusing on what is in our immediate purview. It isn't the same as being reactionary. He links it to unbreakable figures such as James Stockdale and David Goggins ('can't hurt me'), whose endurance under crisis comes from that internal locus.

• 06

  Churchill's 'wilderness years' were alive time

  Churchill was born early enough to witness, as a young war correspondent, the British Empire's last cavalry charge, and lived into the jet age. He was taken prisoner at about 22 and escaped. In the 1930s he was a political pariah warning about Hitler. Instead of the equivalent of watching Netflix, he read everything he could about Hitler, wrote prolifically, and was ready when called.

• 07

  Churchill used routine to find stillness

  At his country home he visited his goldfish pond every day, fed the swans, painted daily in a studio attached to the house, and laid the bricks for his estate's wall himself. Holiday argues that these rituals let him get into the flow state needed for enormous work. Attia notes the war lasted years, whereas the Cuban Missile Crisis was over in 13 days.

• 08

  Make room for detachment every day

  Holiday says moments of detachment are non-negotiable, or you'll spend the whole day buried in the news. Attia asks whether there's any harm in watching 'Breaking Bad' for a fourth time. Holiday's answer is about choice. Some rest is fine, but ask when else you'll have this time with little expected of you.

• 09

  Structure protects you from constant reacting

  Routines, exercise outdoors every day where it's safe, and a project to work on give shape to formless days. Holiday has felt 'on fire' as a writer, since writing is where he works out his thoughts. Both treat journaling and goals as ways to come out of the crisis with something that lasts.

• 10

  The US federal system adapts best to local disasters

  Holiday describes the American design of 50 strong states backed by a stronger central government as resilient for local disasters, such as a hurricane in New Orleans or Florida. That model strains when every state is hit at once and the federal government can't be everywhere.