Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 382: Mastering the Mind for Better Hunting with Ryan Holiday

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Ep. 382: Mastering the Mind for Better Hunting with Ryan Holiday · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
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  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
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  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
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  Speaker 1: eight two and todate. I am joined by New York
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  Speaker 1: Times best selling author Ryan Holliday to discuss the mental
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  Speaker 1: side of hunting in a series of time tested philosophies
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  Speaker 1: and principles that can help us improve. All right, welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Wired Hunt Podcast, brought to you by on
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  Speaker 1: X Today. We have got a very unique episode for you.
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  Speaker 1: For one, we've never had a New York Times best
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  Speaker 1: selling author on the show before, and uh, I'm not
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  Speaker 1: sure any deer hunting podcasts ever has before, So check
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  Speaker 1: that one off the list, I guess um put more wortantly.
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  Speaker 1: Number two, we've never had an episode one dedicated to
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  Speaker 1: the part of deer hunting and hunting in general that
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  Speaker 1: goes on just between the ears, that mental side of things,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: of course, understanding dear biology and behavior, how to read maps,
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  Speaker 1: and how to shoot a bow, and how to play
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  Speaker 1: the way, and how does set up good rust stands.
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  Speaker 1: All that stuff matters, and it's obviously a huge part
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  Speaker 1: of the equation for hunting success. But there's this whole
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  Speaker 1: other side of the game that influences everything, and that's
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  Speaker 1: what's going on in your head. How do you make decisions,
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  Speaker 1: how do you learn from your mistakes, how do you
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  Speaker 1: learn from success? How do you deal with challenges? How
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  Speaker 1: do you handle failure? How do you deal with all
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  Speaker 1: these things? How we deal with all these things, and
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  Speaker 1: and much more. It all depends on the tools we
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  Speaker 1: have at our disposal and our mental fitness, And just
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  Speaker 1: like physical fitness, you know, this is something that can
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  Speaker 1: be improved or strengthened with some proactive work. And so
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  Speaker 1: that's what today's show was all about. Now, admittedly, this
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  Speaker 1: episode is very different than usual. Um humor me here, guys,
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  Speaker 1: play along for a minute, listen with an open mind,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm betting you're gonna find some ideas that are
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  Speaker 1: gonna help you this season, maybe just as much or
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  Speaker 1: or more than any rut tactics or scouting ideas we've
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  Speaker 1: covered in previous conversations. So Ryan Holliday, our guest, He's
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  Speaker 1: written this series of books that explores how to improve
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  Speaker 1: our mental fitness and our day to day lives and
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  Speaker 1: how we handle adversity and how we accomplish our goals
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  Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff by way of studying
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  Speaker 1: the philosophies and principles of a group of ancient thinkers, writers,
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  Speaker 1: and teachers, and these people come to known as these Stoics.
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  Speaker 1: These books include The Obstacles, the Way, Ego is the Enemy,
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  Speaker 1: Stillness is the Key, and most recently, Lives of the Stoics. Now,
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  Speaker 1: these folks, the Stoics, way back in the heyday of
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  Speaker 1: Rome and Greece. We're talking a long time ago. The
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  Speaker 1: people spent a lot of time thinking about some of
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  Speaker 1: the core principles for success in life and achieving goals
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  Speaker 1: and handling tough times and all that kind of stuff,
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  Speaker 1: and they wrote it down, and it's been passed down.
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  Speaker 1: These words have been passed down through the ages and
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  Speaker 1: time and time again. People working on important things or
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  Speaker 1: during important times have turned to these old words of wisdom.
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  Speaker 1: You know, whether it be George Washington or Winston Churchill
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  Speaker 1: or the New England Patriots from two hundred years ago
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  Speaker 1: to two weeks ago, these ideas are still relevant and
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  Speaker 1: they're helping people. Ryan's books about these foundational ideas they
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  Speaker 1: sold millions of copies, and they become kind of a
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  Speaker 1: cult hit across a lot of different parts of the
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  Speaker 1: professional sports world. Interestingly, Sports Illustrated called one of his
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  Speaker 1: books the book That's taken the NFL by storm. So
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  Speaker 1: professional athletes like Chris Bosh and Manage Nobly, from the
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  Speaker 1: NBA and C. G. McCullum to uh Lance Lance Armstrong
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  Speaker 1: even they swear by it. Eaders such as Nick Saban,
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  Speaker 1: General Stanley McCrystal and Senator Ben Says they endorse it.
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  Speaker 1: All this is to say that a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: achieving big important things are finding these ideas helpful. So
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  Speaker 1: why couldn't we two that. That's it. That's my pitch.
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  Speaker 1: I know some of you might be hearing words like
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  Speaker 1: ancient and philosophy and New England Patriots, and you might
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  Speaker 1: be thinking, no, this, this is not for me. I
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  Speaker 1: want to listen about deer hunting. I want to hear
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  Speaker 1: about how to kill a buck during the rut, uh, etcetera, etcetera.
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  Speaker 1: I get it. But if you're willing to stick with
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  Speaker 1: me here for a bit, stick around, I think you're
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  Speaker 1: gonna be surprised by how useful some of these simple
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  Speaker 1: ideas can be I can tell you personally, these books,
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  Speaker 1: these ideas have really helped me to develop my own
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  Speaker 1: mental toughness and the mindset that I think is necessary
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  Speaker 1: to have consistent success as a hunter. And if you
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  Speaker 1: listen to show you know that something I'm always trying
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  Speaker 1: to work on is is is sharpening that ax, fine
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  Speaker 1: tuning what I'm doing out there, whether it be how
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  Speaker 1: I read a map, or whether it be how I handle,
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  Speaker 1: you know, missing a deer and getting back in the
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  Speaker 1: saddle right afterwards. How to handle all these different things
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  Speaker 1: really separates, you know, the week from the chief, I guess,
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  Speaker 1: is what they say. So I do think that you're
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  Speaker 1: probably going to hear some things today that you will
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  Speaker 1: recognize because I've brought them up in past episodes. And
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  Speaker 1: I never said that, oh, this is an idea I
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  Speaker 1: learned from a book about the stoics. I didn't say
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  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But there's some things in here
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  Speaker 1: that you're like, oh, yeah, Mars preached about this before,
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  Speaker 1: and that's because it helps me and I think it
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  Speaker 1: will help you too. So there it is. There's the plan.
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  Speaker 1: That's a long window way of saying. This one is
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  Speaker 1: different but interesting give it a listen, think about it.
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  Speaker 1: If the stuff is intriguing, I highly recommend his books,
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  Speaker 1: in particular The Obstacles the Way. Um. Basically, the books
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  Speaker 1: go through and they take this kind of old timing wisdom,
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  Speaker 1: and then he applies it to people in more recent
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  Speaker 1: times who are using these things to be successful. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: Really good stuff. So there it is. Tune in, enjoy,
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  Speaker 1: let's get after it all right Here with me on
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  Speaker 1: the line is Ryan Holiday. Ryan, thank you so much
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  Speaker 1: for making the time to do this. Yeah, it's good too,
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  Speaker 1: good to chat with you again. I mean, I thought
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  Speaker 1: we were going to get to go hunting in April.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to be Turkey. But obviously that I felt
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  Speaker 1: by the wayside for good reason. Yeah. We we've had
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  Speaker 1: a few plans like that that keep on getting pushed
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  Speaker 1: to later dates. I do hope that eventually this thing
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  Speaker 1: clears up and maybe next year or someday down the line,
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  Speaker 1: we can we can finally do that. But it's it's
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  Speaker 1: really cool to be able to connect in this way
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  Speaker 1: where we're not talking about a future hunt, but actually
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  Speaker 1: talking about how your day job might apply to hunting,
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  Speaker 1: which is my day job and for a lot of
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  Speaker 1: other people, it's something they're really passionate about and they love.
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  Speaker 1: So I want to get into how these philosophies and
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  Speaker 1: ideas you've been writing about could be applicable and really
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  Speaker 1: relevant to a pursuit like hunting deer or turkeys or
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  Speaker 1: whatever it might be. But before that, we really do
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  Speaker 1: need to quickly touch on what you just mentioned, which
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  Speaker 1: is that you have yourself been exploring hunting really quick.
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  Speaker 1: What's that experience been like for yourself far? It seems
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  Speaker 1: like you're it seems like you are getting into it
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  Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't sort
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  Speaker 1: of fancy myself particularly good at it. But I moved
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  Speaker 1: to Texas guess seven eight years ago now, and and
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  Speaker 1: that was sort of my first experience hunting and went
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  Speaker 1: hog hunting. I've I've really enjoyed that I've been deer
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  Speaker 1: hunting and rabbit hunting and stuff like that. Um, I've
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  Speaker 1: always been sort of an outdoors person. I grew up
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  Speaker 1: my dad was a police officer, so so I was
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  Speaker 1: familiar with guns. Um. But but being in California and
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  Speaker 1: northern California, it wasn't there wasn't sort of like a
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  Speaker 1: hunting culture that we were a part of, and and certainly, uh,
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  Speaker 1: like we fished and and and spend time outdoors, but
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  Speaker 1: there was never really any of that. Like I grew
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  Speaker 1: up going to Lake Tahoe and that's just not really
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  Speaker 1: a place that people do a lot of hunting. Um,
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  Speaker 1: So it wasn't It wasn't until later in life that
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  Speaker 1: I moved out here that I got to sort of
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  Speaker 1: mess around with it. And then when we bought our
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  Speaker 1: we bought about forty acres outside of Austin that we
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  Speaker 1: spend most of our time on. Hunting became more than
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  Speaker 1: just like a thing you might do occasionally for fun,
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  Speaker 1: but almost you know, with the case of boars and hogs,
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  Speaker 1: like actually part of the management of the land, because
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  Speaker 1: if I don't go out there on a regular basis, uh,
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  Speaker 1: you know, they're going to be out there on a
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  Speaker 1: regular basis and they'll they'll mess up the land. So
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  Speaker 1: it's it's been a it's been an eye opening experience
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  Speaker 1: because it's not just the thing you do and hey,
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  Speaker 1: this is where your food comes from, but it actually
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  Speaker 1: becomes like sort of in the case of like you know,
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  Speaker 1: an invasive species, almost like a moral obligation it's not
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  Speaker 1: your problem. You didn't create the problem, but if you
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  Speaker 1: don't do anything about it, you will be stuck with
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  Speaker 1: the consequences of that problem. It is interesting how mother
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  Speaker 1: nature can pull you into that cycle and you quickly
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  Speaker 1: realize that um that we we do and can and
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  Speaker 1: sometimes have to have an influence to to write the
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  Speaker 1: ship on occasion where an invasive species is brought in
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  Speaker 1: by you know, our predecessors, and your left to pick
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  Speaker 1: up the pieces now. But I imagine a lot of
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  Speaker 1: good protein comes out of that. So it's not all bad, right, No, No,
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  Speaker 1: it's great, And like what I like to do is
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  Speaker 1: all And I think I got this from from Steve,
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  Speaker 1: which is like, uh, I'll shoot the hogs on my
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  Speaker 1: property and then I'll pay to have it. You know,
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  Speaker 1: although I've done it myself. I've processed it once myself
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  Speaker 1: as a paint and as I sent it to Hudson
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  Speaker 1: Meats in Austin, and then I just give that. I
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  Speaker 1: just give like the sausage out, you know. And it's
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: like a nice neighborly sort of thing to connect over
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: because I mean, frankly, the hogs are eating on all
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  Speaker 1: of our properties and uh and actually, so I go
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  Speaker 1: for this long walk with my kids each morning and
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  Speaker 1: and I'll often see them and then I'll sort of
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  Speaker 1: text to one of my neighbors and well, please take
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  Speaker 1: care of it. So it's it's it's weirdly been kind
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  Speaker 1: of a thing that's been a source of connection between
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  Speaker 1: me and the neighbors, because I think that's that's another
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  Speaker 1: point where um, it's a it's a problem that affects everyone.
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  Speaker 1: And and because there there isn't, you know, a sort
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  Speaker 1: of a strong governmental program to deal with it, everyone
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood has to come together and sort of
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: decide what we're gonna do about it. Interesting way to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: bring your your local community together, I guess, yeah, yeah, definitely. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I'm glad that you've been able to have that this
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  Speaker 1: insight in this experience of hunting, and you're able to
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  Speaker 1: feed your family now with that and and see what
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  Speaker 1: it is that you know that a lot of folks
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: across the country are finding a lot of value in
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and I'm glad you are too, And that that is
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  Speaker 1: why I thought that you would be a particularly interesting
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  Speaker 1: person to bring on this show, because this podcast is
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  Speaker 1: about hunting, but what you talk about and right about
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  Speaker 1: is a way of of living life and making decisions
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  Speaker 1: and judging right and wrong, and and a lot of
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  Speaker 1: different things that are on this higher plane. But as
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  Speaker 1: I followed along and read your books over the years,
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  Speaker 1: I continually find myself coming back and saying, Oh, this
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  Speaker 1: is so applicable to what I do in the woods
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  Speaker 1: or what I do in the mountains. This is so
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  Speaker 1: applicable to this challenge. This is exactly what I need
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  Speaker 1: to be thinking when I face this obstacle. So over
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and over and over again, I'm pointing back to things
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  Speaker 1: you've written, or things that the the philosophers or thinkers
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: or teachers that you cite are talking about. And I
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  Speaker 1: I'm finding and I've seen and I've heard that that's
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  Speaker 1: not a unique thing for me. There are professional athletes,
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  Speaker 1: There are professional sports team coaches. There are business people
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  Speaker 1: and other high performers all across every realm of the
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  Speaker 1: world out there who are becoming both fans and advocates
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: of your books, but also of applying stoic philosophy or
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  Speaker 1: other ancient ideas to their pursuit of excellence or or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: Why do you think it is that what you're writing
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  Speaker 1: about in these philosophies, Why is it resonating with with
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  Speaker 1: people like this, with athletes, with people striving to achieve something?
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  Speaker 1: What's there that's making this all relevant and applicable thousands
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  Speaker 1: of years later, um, thousands of years after this stuff
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  Speaker 1: was written and done originally, we have this idea that
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: philosophy is sort of abstract or theoretical, like it's, uh,
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  Speaker 1: it's just for the mind. But in reality and engine world,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: philosophy was this sort of a way of living. It
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: was sort of a guide to light for people who
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  Speaker 1: were active and busy and quite frankly much more connected
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  Speaker 1: to nature, uh and the sort of realities of the
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  Speaker 1: human existence than than we are today. So the the
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  Speaker 1: virtues of Stoicism, forriences of four virtues of Stoicism are
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  Speaker 1: the same virtues of christian of Christianity, courage, self discipline, justice,
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  Speaker 1: and wisdom. We could see how you know, even an
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: activity uh like hunting, but the same as playing professional football,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, being in the Special forces or you know,
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  Speaker 1: trading stocks at a high level requires those for traits
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: in some form or another. You know, maybe in some
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  Speaker 1: cases more than others, but um, you know, let's say
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: somethings like self discipline. When you're sitting there waiting for
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  Speaker 1: hours for the dear to show up, that's a test
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  Speaker 1: of one's sort of patience and self control. Um, you
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  Speaker 1: know justice, Are you gonna do this sort of ethically
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  Speaker 1: uh compassionately you know, um as as unwtefully as possible,
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  Speaker 1: you know sort of wisdom that can you learn how
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  Speaker 1: to do this thing? Can you understand it? Can you
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  Speaker 1: do the research? Can you you know, get you know,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: get your head around it and encourage I mean obviously,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: you know, hunting rabbits is probably different than hunting uh
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  Speaker 1: grizzly bear or something. But but you know, the getting
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: out there, sort of pitting yourself against nature in some
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  Speaker 1: way is the other. The other sort of translation of
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  Speaker 1: courage when they sort of render these virtues is fortitude.
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  Speaker 1: So I think we can all see how hunting demands
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  Speaker 1: a certain fortitude out of a human being. And so
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: whether you're hunting or you know, playing sports or you know,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: you know, laying bricks like whatever it is that you're doing,
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  Speaker 1: demands that you use those virtues, or at the very
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: least is an opportunity to use those virtues. Yeah, I
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: really like how You put it at the end of
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  Speaker 1: your newest book, which is The Lives of the Stoics. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: Towards the conclusion, you wrote kind of synthesis of what
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: stoicism is, that it being a playbook for how to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: how to become better or how to how to progress
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: their life. And I'll just quote this bit here and
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and and this just really clearly articulates why I find
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  Speaker 1: what you're doing so relevant to what I'm doing. You
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  Speaker 1: wrote a quote, as Epitus wrote, is it possible to
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: be free from air? Not by any means, but it
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: is possible to be a person stretching to avoid air.
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  Speaker 1: That's what stoicism is. It's stretching. It's training to be better,
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  Speaker 1: to get better, to avoid one more mistake, to take
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: one step closer towards that ideal, not perfection, but progress,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and that that idea right there, those couple of lines,
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  Speaker 1: That is what I preach every week on this podcast
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: when we're trying to teach people how to hunt, how
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: to get better, how to perfect what we're doing, how
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to take the next step in your growth. Um. And
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: this is something that a lot of people are really
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: really passionate about and spend a large part of their
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: year focusing on, like like a marathon runner, a mountain
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: climb er, how to perfect this craft. Um. I feel
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  Speaker 1: like the principles of stoicism and what these ancients taught
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  Speaker 1: perfectly provide a playbook for how we can do that
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  Speaker 1: still today. So totally agree. I think I think any activity, um, well,
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  Speaker 1: just about any activity can function as a kind of
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: metaphor or training ground for those virtues. So I'm forgetting
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: the author's name, but there's that great book shop Classes
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: soul Craft, and he's talking about how, uh, you know,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: he builds motorcycles, and how what he learns putting together
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: motorcycles and and working on you know, sort of cars
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: and bikes sort of teaches him philosophically. And I think,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you know, the practice of hunting just as the practice
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of fishing, um it is a way to do that.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know. Herbert Hoover wrote a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: book after he was president called um uh it's called fishing,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and then it's in Fishing for Fun, and then it's
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: in parentheses. Uh. The subtitle is or how to Wash
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Your Soul. And I love the idea of like getting
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: out and getting in the water as as a as
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: a means of sort of examining oneself, flushing out toxic
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: things from the self. You know, like if you're sitting
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: there in the river for hours by yourself, it's just
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: you and the silence, this is a chance to get
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  Speaker 1: in touch with yourself, to explore things, to think, and
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: yet at the same time you're also forced to be
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: present and focused on what you're doing, and it kind
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of gives you a distance from what's happening. So I
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: just I just love uh, hunting and fishing and all crafts. Right,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Winston Churchill was a painter um and and I love
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: what craft can teach you philosophically. Yeah, So to to
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: really pull this into the realm of of what the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: listeners are doing on a day to day basis, I
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: thought I could present you with a scenario that someone
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: might experience out there as a hunter, and then I'd
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you how you think the stoics
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: or Stoic philosophy, how we might apply these philosophies to
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: this situation, whether that be with examples from the ancient writers,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: or whether it be modern practitioners that you've written about
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: as well. I'd love to see what types of tools
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: or thought processes we could apply to these real life
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: scenarios that could happen to any one of us tomorrow
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: or next week. So I'm gonna lay them out and
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: then walking. I had one, I was going to run
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: by you. I was curious to get your thoughts, and
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I am I allowed to do that. You certainly did
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: you see the video of this guy. I was watching
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: it last night, the guy he was running in Utah
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and that he's being charged by that mountain lion. Yeah,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I just saw it this morning. Oh man, it's incredible.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, one, you just see what it sort of
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: a magnificent animal, that is um. But I thought that
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: was such a good example of stoicism and that this
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: guy is his life is flashing before his eyes, which
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: is itself sort of a stoic practice, the idea of
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: sort of meditating on one's mortality. But I just I
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: just thought it was incredible, the sort of the self
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: discipline that this guy, I mean, every part of his
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: body and he's literally wearing running shoes. He wants nothing
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: more than to run as fast as you can in
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the other direction, and that's probably what his mind is
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: screaming at him to do, and yet he knows enough
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that that's like the worst thing you could do. And
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you sort of watch him, uh, sort of extricate himself
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: from the situation. You see him sort of reassert and
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: calm over and over again, with the panic though too
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: that he then controls again, and he's verbalizing all the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: ways you're you're feeling it along with him, yes, yes,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: and and you know there's this moment he goes, where's
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: my gun? Right because obviously doesn't have when he's running,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But like he's also just sort of like making I
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: think a very stoke ideas like, Okay, this is the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: situation that I'm in. No amount of wishing that were otherwise,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: no amount of complaining, no amount of screaming, no amount
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: of crying. It's going to get you out of it.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: All you can do is sort of what you can do.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: And I thought there was a you know, there's also
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: a moment where he goes like, you know, I don't
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: want to die today. But I think the stokes will
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: go like, there's not really something you have much of it.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: If your number comes up, your number comes up, you know,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: So there's just I just thought it was a very
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: illustrative moment. Obviously, it's a moment nobody hopes to find
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: themselves in. But as far as like being a stoke
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: goes like this guy could not have done a better job,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and your point about like there are moments of panic.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: The Stokes were not like superheroes, right, Like Seneca talks
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: about how if you throw cold water on someone, they're
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: gonna shiver. If you jump out and scare them, they're
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: gonna be taken aback. What matters is not that immediate action,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: but it's it's how quickly, as you said that, you
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: managed to reassert yourself over that primal impulse. That's what
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the philosophy is actually about. Yeah, and you brought it
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: up just a moment ago, that being the idea of
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: recognizing that this is the hand I've been dealt, This
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: is the situation, and there's nothing I can do about
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: what led up to this. All I can do is
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: is make a choice about how I proceed from here.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: That concept just comes back to me over and over
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and over again throughout my hunting pursuits. There's so many
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: things that get thrown in your way. There's so many
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: surprises and so many failures, and so many. I mean,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: you're dealing with mother nature and other people and uh
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: so many outside factors that you could bitch and moan
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: about and you can get disheartened about and you could
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: let drag you down. But I continue to go back
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: to and I think again it was it was a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Petitus who in this out. And so there's there's only
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: two things in life. There's the externals that you can't control,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and there's those which you can control. And and really
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: you only have a sale over that last part. So
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? What's what's next? What's that
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: next move you're gonna make? That is if there's anything
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I've taken from all of your work and all of
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: these writings and philosophies that just seems to be so foundational.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: You miss a deer, you can complain about it, and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: you can let it ruin your day, in your season,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: you can quit, or you can say, Okay, what happened happened.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I can't control that. Now. All I can control is
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: what am I gonna do tomorrow? How am I going
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: to change this? How do I make sure that what
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: happens next is better? Um? Can you just expand a
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: little bit on that, because that seems to be something
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that comes up over and over again in so many
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: examples you've written about. I was reading Theodore Roosevelt's book
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I Forget what the modern library has one that's like
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the sort of big game book, and then his Ranch
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: his Ranch book, it's combined. I was reading that maybe
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: a year or so ago, and there's this great scene where,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you know, you get off the train and meets like
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: his guide and they were late, and then it was
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: getting dark and then it was raining, and you know, uh,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: tr says something like I would rather this not be
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: uh you know how this goes, and like his guide,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: who's you know, sort of some you know, hard boiled
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: hunting guide from you know, Montana or something, he says, well,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: we're not having our rathers on this trip, are we.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: And I thought that was just such a good way
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: to express it, like, um, life doesn't care about the
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: way you'd rather things be. Life just is what things
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: are in that moment, you know. And for the Stoics,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: they have this idea of ascent, so not like ascent
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: up the mountain, but a S S E N T.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Or it's another way of the word acceptance. And so
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the discipline of ascent for the Stoics was the discipline
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: of accepting and enduring and persevering through um. And I
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: think that's kind of an underrated quality today. You know,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: you have a lot of people who have opinions about reality,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and then because reality doesn't match their opinions, they been
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: they spend a lot of time arguing with or against
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: or indicting reality. Instead of saying, Okay, I don't control
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: what's happened, but I control how I respond to what's happening.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: That's been what I've tried to take, for instance, in
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: this pandemic is like, it is what it is, But
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: what I do with this time, What I do with
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: this unusual, you know, moment of my life that is
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: up to me, and I can choose to use it
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: well and productively and and happily. So so let's say
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: something that's happened, Like let's say the scenario if if
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: the one I just brought up is what we're in
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: focus on here, Let's say you've some of these people
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: listening right now, or myself. I've been in this these
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: shoes before. We've worked all springing summer to practice with
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: our ba is. We've cultivated the land, We've scouted public land.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: We've been out there for days and days and weeks.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: We've saved up our money. Now we're going for a
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: ten day trip out of state. We've sunk all of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: our vacation time into this. This is what we've looked
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: forward to all year. We've been away from our family
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: to prepare for it, and so they're sacrificing for us
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: to A lot is built up into this. We get
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: out there and we missed the deer. The thing we've
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: been working towards the mountaintop, we've been climbing towards. Now
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: we've we've failed in that way. And I think the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: first the first place I go after something like that
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: is what we just discussed. Okay, that happened. Now what
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I can't control the past, only the future. But how
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: how would how a stoic or any one of these
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: people you've been studying, how would they deal with the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: next step, which learning from that failure or or moving on.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I read somewhere, and I think in your most recent
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: book or one of them, about a live time versus
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: dead time, which I thought was an interesting concept relevant
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: to this um. But but what would you what would
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: you share when it comes to those next steps after
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: the miss. So I've got a bunch of thoughts on
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: a lifetime deadtime. I think one of the things that
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I would point about point out about that situation that
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you just mentioned is that part of the disappointment is
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding both of hunting and of life. Right, Like,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the purpose of hunting is not to get the deer,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: it's to go hunting right. And so you were successful
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: and that you did all of those things right, and
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: all of that was in your control. But fundamentally, you know,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: does the bullet or the arrow land where it's supposed
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to land? You know, does the does the deer get
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: away to some freak you know, incident interrupt what was
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: otherwise a perfectly planned moment that's not inner control. And
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: so I think one of the things that stoics want
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: to do is re to find what success is. So like,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: even this book, right, the book came out and uh
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: it debuted, it at number one on the best seller list,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Does that mean it was a successful, fruitful book? I
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: mean sure in one sense if if all you care
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: about our external results, But what if what if it
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: had hit number one. But I knew that actually I'd
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: phoned the book in, or that it was riddled with inaccuracies,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: or that you know, I actually was only doing it
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: for financial reasons. Like I don't think I don't think
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that would be I don't think many people would go, oh,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that was a huge success, you know what I mean.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I certainly wouldn't. I wouldn't say like, oh, this thing
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: was a huge success because the external results were what
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: they were. You know that the success was I wrote
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the best possible book that I was capable of writing.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I poured my are and sole into it. I did
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: what I wanted to do, and I, for the most
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: part where it was possible, enjoyed that process, right, Like,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: that's what made it a success. That the arrow hit
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the bull's eye is is a bonus on top of it, right,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: And and I remember in the Ranchman book there's a
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: similar moment where he's like, you can Roosevelt saying, you
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: can easily miss that the purpose of hunting was to
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: be outside, was to be out nate, out in nature.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Was to challenge yourself, was to get active. It's getting
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the moose is the extra. So I think if we
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: start by defining there. It allows us to always be
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: happy with what happened. You mentioned a lifetime deadtime. I
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: think the pandemic is a great example of that. How
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: do you use the time apporticularly when you know you're
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: sitting away? So like a great example, Let's say you
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: know you're sitting in the blind in the morning, and
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you make a mistake and you scare the deer for something,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and now, you know, should I have to sit here
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: now for twelve plus hours until it gets dark again
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: and there's a chance that they come back. You know,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: you're now faced with twelve hours? How are you going
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: to spend those twelve hours? Is that gonna be twelve
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: hours you spent moping? Is that going to be twelve
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: hours you spend drinking? Uh? You know, is that going
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to be twelve hours you spend glue to your phone?
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Or is that going to be twelve hours that you
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: spend reading, enjoying nature, learning from your mistakes, you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: drinking in the moment that you're in, um, you know,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: connecting with your son or your brother or your wife
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: or whoever is with you. Um. You know, these are
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: all choices that we have to productively use our time.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: As opposed to throwing up our hands and writing off time. Yeah,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: that's a that's a great point. Do do you find
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: any examples in history of different ways that we can't
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: examine a failure or examine a mistake ache Um. Again,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: it comes down to something you brought up, which is
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: this differentiation between being results focused versus process focused. And
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: I've been doing a lot of studying, studying of decision making,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and in poker, there's this idea of resulting where a
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: cognitive bias of sorts that often times we will judge
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: ourselves or judge our decisions based off of just the result.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: But there's so many as we've been talking about, there's
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: so many things that can be outside of our control.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we might get the result we want, but it
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: was actually pure luck. Or on the flip side, we
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: could do everything right and get a result we don't want.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: And if we look at that and judge ourselves as
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: as if we had made a mistake, we're actually missing
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: out in the fact that we did have everything right
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and it was a fluke. Is there anything you can
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: pull back or or point to that might help us
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: better understand how to do that, how to really accurately
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: assess our our performance or our decisions, because that's that's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a huge part of hunting, is being able to look
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: at Okay, I did this because of this, this and this,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: and it didn't work out. What can I learn from that?
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: How do I do things differently next time, or or
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: not differently. I had a shock Is Smart on my
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: podcast a couple of months ago. He's the head basketball
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: coach in the Texas and he was saying one of
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the things he's taken from stoicism and I in turn
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: taking it back from him, is he goes like, as
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: a coach, I can't get I don't get mad at
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: my players for missing a shot. I will because they
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: don't control that. I only get upset or happy if
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: it was a good shot to take. So if they
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: take an open three and miss it, um, he's not
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: going to get upset because you know, even the best
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: three point shooter in the league is probably only going
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: to shoot you know or thereabouts right, So a certain
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: number of times they're just gonna miss. That's just the
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: reality of it. So you can't get upset that they
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: missed the shot. Now, if they force a three pointer
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: because they abandoned the scheme they practiced for weeks and
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: weeks because they were, you know, being egotistical if they
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: if they missed the shot, because they forced it, and meanwhile,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: a teammate was wide open and they neglected the opportunity
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: to pass them the ball. That's something he's gonna get
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: upset about. And he's gonna get upset about it even
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: if they make the shot, because again, the results don't
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: change whether it was a good decision or a bad decision.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I remember in the playoffs a couple of years ago, Uh,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Damian Lillard drained a shot in Chris Paul's face, like
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: way back from the three point line and and it
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: it it ended the series against Oklahoma, and you know,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Chris Paul was like a man, you know, that was
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: a one in a million shot. You know, I don't
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: feel bad about it. But the reality is Damian Lillard
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: like hits that shot like fort of the time, and
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: he knew that when he took the shot. And the
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: point was Chris Paul was rationalizing why you know, his
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: playoffs hopes were dashed, and Damian Lillard was confident when
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: he took that shot because he'd practiced that thousands of
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: times and he knew that there was at least, you know,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: a non reckless chance that he could pull it off,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and that was his only option. So I think, really evaluate,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like you take a shot at a
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: deer and then you know, uh, you know, you know,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: after pulling the trigger, it reveals that there was you know,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: a better deer just behind the tree and you didn't know.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Now the question is is not like should you kick yourself,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: it's you know, did you have any idea? And had
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: you been more patient, would that you know have revealed itself.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: So I think it's looking at, you know, what's the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: information that I had at the time, and did I
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: make the right decision with the information that I had
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: at the time. That's how I think his stoic would
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: think about it. So it's really this is one of
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: those things that's easy to talk about and say, oh,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: this is what you should do um, but in the
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: moment it's I think particularly difficult to be objective when
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: judging ourselves. I think this is something I honestly I
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: can't remember where I've heard about this or read about
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: It's probably multiple places, but there's this idea that it's
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: when judging a situation or a decision. It's often easier
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: to pretend that you are judging a friend's decision or
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: their problem, um, and then applying that and saying, Okay,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: if this is my friends problem or my friend's mistake,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: what should he do? It's it's some for some reason,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: easier for us to look at it objectively if it's
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: our friend or a family member, much easier than it
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: is to look at our own failings or process. Um.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: So so all has to say, all this is easier
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: said than done. Any recommendation or things we can look
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: to to help us with the actual act of this
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: reflecting on our process and decisions in an objective way.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I know, journaling something that some people have done, Marcus
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: really is for example, any other examples like that, or
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: actual steps we can take to become better at judging
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: ourselves in an objective way, to to get better down
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: the road. Well, look, I think it is all easier
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: said than done. But that's the point is that. I mean, look,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: obviously you do this professionally, but for the vast majority
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: of us who are hobbyists, this is where we are
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: practicing it. Right. What am I getting better at through
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: practicing it while hunting. Right. So, like we think about
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I mentioned Churchill as a painter. Um, he'd spent his
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: whole life very ambitious, very unartistic, aside from his love
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: of the written word. When he gets introduced to painting,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: it forces him to use all these different parts of
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: his brain. It forces him to be present, It forces
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: him to observe beauty. It forces him to be bad
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: at something and then get good at it. Right. Um.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: It forces him to take instruction, It forces him to
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: see the world differently. So I think one of the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: ways to think about this is just actually it's in
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: like like again, like you know, you're you're you're you're
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: sitting in the blind, or you're you're walking through the woods,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: and then you hear the rustling and you get that,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: you know, your heart just starts pumping, right. Um. This
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: is a you know, this is obviously a very primal
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: experience thing you have that like boxers and police officers
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: and soldiers have a lot of experience dealing with but
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the rest of us is regular people don't have. I
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: think one of the reasons we are hunting is to
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: practice that. Okay, I'm experiencing this. How do I call
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: myself down. How do I not rush what I need
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to do because it's demanding something of me that can't
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: be rushed. And so I often see hunting as as
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: precisely the kind of practicing ground, uh that that we're
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: talking about, that then better prepares you for the rest
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: of life too, right, Yeah, exactly. It's like it's like, Okay,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: you're sitting there and you're you're literally choosing your shot right,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and you're having to calm yourself down, control your breathing,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: not be rushed, not let the adrenaline lead you astray. Well, okay,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: you know, flash forward two years later and you now
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: have two competing job offers from two firms, and they
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: tell you that they one of them needs an answer
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: by tonight and the other needs an answer by tomorrow.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: You know, that is an analogous situation that if you
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: are not familiar with making you know, sort of high stakes,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: you know, high pressure situation decisions, if you're not good
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: at you know, dealing with the rush of adrenaline, if
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: you know, making a slightly uninformed call, or you know what,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with that, you're gonna bungle it.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: And the and the cost of that is going to be,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: you know, much higher than you know not coming home
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: with you know, a backpack full of meat. So what
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: would the Stokes say to someone in that situation? Uh, Today,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: someone who has faced without adrenaline, rush with that shot,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: with the challenge of calming their nerves, refocusing, handling the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: next few moments as as best as possible. I know
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: you've written about some things related to this in your book.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Stillness is the key, Um, what what can we take
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: for that kind of situation? I mean, I think what
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: we're talking about in that situation is presence, right, It's
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: sort of calming the mind down. It's breathing in and out.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: It's really focusing on what's in front of you, um,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: and and and and focusing on what you're training has
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: prepared you to do it. Like when I look at
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: most of mine is like, let's say I'm fishing and
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: you get something on the line, It's it's when you
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: jerk the pullback or you run away too fast, right,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: or it's when you excitedly, you know, excitedly shout I've
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: got something, and you you make everyone rushing. Look, that's
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: when you bungle it, right. And so so it's it's
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the I think for the Stokes, it was it was
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: realizing that it's often in rushing to do the thing
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: that we we get in our own way or rip
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: over ourselves. Is there any way you know of to
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: to recenter yourself in that moment and become present, Um,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: any little tricks over the years you've learned that help
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: you attain that state of mind? I mean, weirdly, I
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: think that the Zen teachers are probably more explicit and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: better about this than the stoics. Um. You know, like
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Zen and the art of archery, it's sort of like
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: pulling back and then letting it fall from you, not
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: forcing it. You know. It's sort of the focus on
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the breath is obviously, you know, sort of super important.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: So as as I'm firing a show, I'm what I'm
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I'm focusing on nothing but my aim and and the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: and the breath that's coming in and out of me.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And I find that that sort of zeroes me in
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: and and it just immediately calms me down. And I
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: do always try to remind myself. It's it's like this
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: tricky thing right where it's like you're like, it's there
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: if I don't take this shot, I won't get another one.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: And the reality is that may be true, right, there's
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: a chance said that's true. But you know, if you
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: shoot and miss, you will definitely not see anything again
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: because you will have scared them all off. So I
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: think also just the balance of the sort of rational
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: mind against the emotional sort of fear of missing out
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: mind is kind of attention that you have to balance. Yeah, yeah,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: you can never take a shot back, but you can
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you can always have another shot if you hold on.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: So but that that whole battle between the rational mind
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: and the emotional self is something that obviously impacts everything
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: in day to day life. But again, hunting is a great,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: uh analog for that, where you have all these different
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: moments where things happen, and again looking at someone who's
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: putting so much time and effort and money and vacation
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and and personal sacrifice to to get this trip or
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: this experience or whatever, and maybe what happened like we
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: described the missed or maybe they're just faced with a
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: tougher situation than they expected and everything's going wrong, and
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: you have this this mix of things um that seems
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: to again go to the biggest thing. The stoics seem
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: to offer us is how to remove yourself from that emotion.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Um if if if Seneca or Marcus Aurelius was on
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: attendee hunting trip and everything seemed to be going wrong,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: and they're out there, and they're tired, and there's austin,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: they're cold. Other than what we've described already, are there
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: any other things that they'd be sitting at the campfire
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: at night telling you or telling themselves to try to
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: keep them going for the next four days of the hunt.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, one thing I try to think about. You know,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: economist talk about the idea of sunk costs and that, like,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: so we have these biases, right, We're like, well, I
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: just spent all this time, all this money, and then
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: so that makes us even more result focused, right, because
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: we think that somehow we're owed a result, we're more important.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: We think that, uh, the only way to get something,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: to get paid back for the effort, is to get
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: the result. But the reality is the past is dead.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: The money you've spent is already lost. Right, the time
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: you've spent has already been spent. No amount of future
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: spending can can make it worthwhile. You have to Again,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I think the Stokes are. The Stokes are trying not
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: to ever regret the past and then not also be
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: anxious about the future. And so where does that leave you?
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: It leaves you right here in the present moment, which
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: is a wonderful place to be, you know what I mean.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's you outside in the trees with a friend,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: with you know, by yourself, whatever it is you're You're
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: in a wonderful moment. So appreciate that as opposed to,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: you know, stressing about all the all the what ifs,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: or the could have ends or the uh you know,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: how unfair this or that happens to be. Yeah, another
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: one of those things that is it's hard to do,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: but when you do it, it is almost instantaneously recentering
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: if you can step outside of the situation and remember
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: why in the first place. Um, but that perspective is
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: really important, right, So it's like, okay, yeah, you did
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: you You got up at four am and you got
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: out there, and you you not only when you're not successful,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: you didn't even see anything, right, It's perfectly reasonable, I
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: think to have a tinge of disappointment or uh, regret
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: their right And and the Stokes are saying like you're
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: a human being. That's what That's what's going to happen, right,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: that's the emotion you're gonna have. But like when now,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: like I've been hunting in several months, uh, just as
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: I've been busy and and uh and and you know
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: I haven't been able to But I don't think back
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: to any of those experiences and regret them. I don't
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: even remember like what dates I was successful in which
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: dates I wasn't successful, you know what I mean? Like
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: it's all blurred together as as positive experiences. And so
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: one of the things I think a stoic once the
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: stoics want you to realize is like, well, if I'm
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: going to think about this positively in the future as
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: time goes by, why am I going to beat this
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: ship out of myself now? You know what I mean.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's like, think back to all the times
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: you've broken up, all the times you've gotten bad news,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: all the times you've failed, all the times you've embarrassed yourself,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: so and so forth. You you see them now is
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: having contributed positively to where you are in life? You're
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: not like, oh man, I wish I hadn't gotten dumped
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: by my high school girlfriend, like my whole life is
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: a disappointment because of that. You understand that if that
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: hadn't happened, you wouldn't be where you are now. So
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the I think again the idea of the rational mind
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: against the emotional mind being able to go, oh okay, well,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: here's logically how this is going be integrated into my
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: life in the future. I'm gonna go ahead and give
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: myself the benefit of that feeling now because I deserve
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: it and I'm not going to be miserable if I
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: don't need to be. Yeah, that's a great point. Um,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Is there any I know that you have, you know,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: certain sayings or quotes that are particularly impactful for you
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: and and for me, There've been there have been a
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: handful of things that continue just pop up where I
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: encounter a situation and this one line will be something
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: that will kind of center me back on to kind
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: of remove you from the emotional place and put you
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: back in the rational place. Is there anything that stands
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: out to you that would help you in a situation
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: like this where you had some kind of failure and
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: you're you're trying to do what you just described. Um,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: any one liner or any thing that folks listening can
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: can try to add to their lives so that next
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: time something goes really bad in the woods or something
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: isn't a planned, that this thing they can be like that. Okay,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: I'm back, And it's it's important that we don't think
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of stoicism just as a philosophy for like insulating against failure,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: because it cuts both ways. Right. So there's this great
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: quote from Market's relay. He says to accept it without
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: arrogance and to let it go with indifference, meaning you
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: accept the failure with indifference or you shrug it off.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: But then you also have to accept the success with
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: a certain kind of indifference. Like as an example, so
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I went, I went deer hunting on the Uh, I
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: guess it was. It was Thanksgiving the day before Thanksgiving whatever,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: the day in Texas last year, um, the antlerless deer day.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: And so I was in the deer blind of my property.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Uh and uh, you know, a deer, a big sort
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: of like seven eight deer show up. And there was
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: one that was really dark, but I couldn't tell it
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: was still pretty dark. Uh. And there was one that
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: was really dark, and so I was like, oh, that's
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: the one I'm gonna aim at. And I shot that
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: one and it was a decent shot, sort of right
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: through the heart, and you decently proud of myself. I
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: didn't know. I'm again not being an expert like herself.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that much about deer hunting. This is
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: maybe the second or third time i'd really ever gone.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: So I you know, we skinned the deer. We took
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: it to uh the tax Germans down the street. Um
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: forgetting that. I wish i'd know the name. I'd give
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: him a shout out. Oh, Ryan Reinholder, Ryan Lander Reinholder.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: It's it's off A twelve right outside Austin. Anyway, I
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: took it there and you know, he sent it to
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the tannery and then I called back, Uh, you know,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: it's like, hey, is this done? This is maybe in
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: April and he said, oh, you mean the melanistic deer
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And I was like what's that? And he's like, you
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: shot a melanistic deer and he was I was like,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: what does that mean. He's like, look it up. So
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I look it up and it's like I don't know,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: like one in a million something some crazy number to
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: get basically a black white tail, and so all of
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: a sudden, this thing that was I just thought was like, hey,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: I successfully got a deer. I did what I did
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: suddenly changed because the information that I was given change. So,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: you know, this could suddenly be like this proud story
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: that I tell everyone, and and I, you know, I
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: shave off the details and give myself more credit for
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: it than I But but it's like the point of
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: stoicism is that stuff just kind of is what it is,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: and that like, you know, what what mattered is that
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: I did what I set out to do, that I
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: happened to get a one in a million bonus on
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: top of it. You know, you can't let that go
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to your head. You can't let it really even change
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: your perception of whether that was a success or not.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Like it was a success because I went out, I
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: had fun. Uh, you know, I learned something from the experience,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: We got the meat out of it, and then months later,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: you know, you get the extra bonus of of sort
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: of knowing and now I have you know, I have
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the skin on on my couch as a blanket and
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: it's cool. But again, I think the what the purpose
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: of these aphorisms is is it's to protect you from
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: both extremes, like kicking yourself but then also patting yourself
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: on the back too hard. Yeah, avoiding the highs and
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the lows and finding a center ground. Yeah. And like
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: you know, how many times, uh do you take a
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: shot and the result turns out to be great, But
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: if if you could somehow break it down on film,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: it was actually that you got lucky rather than you
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: were skilled. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's lots of examples
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: of that, whether it be a shot, or whether it
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: be that you sat somewhere and just by chance the
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: big giant buck comes walking by. But you really had
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: no idea that was going to happen, or you hadn't
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: planned it. Um. And like you said, it's really easy
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: afterwards to be you know, high falutin and take all
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: the credit and claim that you are this masterful hunter. Um.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: But yeah, to your point, what good does that do? Uh?
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: You're you're you're you're cheating yourself. You're lying to yourself
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: in a certain way, and I think it will make
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: you a worse hunter, right because now you've you've attributed
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: yourself to yourself a certain unearned confidence. So like let's
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: say you take a shot and you know it's the
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: perfect shot, but you know, if you actually broke down
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: you recited your rifle, it's like, hey, actually you were
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: aiming like three inches this way and you got lucky.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: You know, like, um, now you may take your your
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: next shot with a certain amount of uh, either you
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: rush it or you take it with a certain amount
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: of certainty that's frankly undeserved, and you're actually going to
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: be worse at it. And this is definitely true in
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: business right, or trading stocks right. You buy a stock low,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: you sell it high. Now you think you're a genius,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and so the next time you have a random impulse,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: you take a bigger bet on it than you should
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: and lo and behold. It turns out you got lucky
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: the time before, and this time you got unlucky, and
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: because you were overconfident, you bet too much, and now
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: you've wiped out your your your winnings. And then something, Yeah,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: so what does we've talked about what the stoke would
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: do after failure? What would the stoke do after success
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: to ensure that what you described doesn't happen? Well, I
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: think it's first that that the extra and results don't
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: change anything about you or what happened. Um, you know,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: I think I think one of the things I take
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: from hunting as exhilarating and challenging and rewarding as it
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: can be, just also like I've never once shot something
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: and I didn't also immediately feel not a pang of regret.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: But there's the life and deafness of us, right and
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: and there's I think a kind of a humility inherent
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: in that. And so I think I from what I
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: know of the Stokes who hunted, I've got to suspect
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: that feeling was something that they they they dwelled on
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: for a second, you know, like that they didn't just
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: rush through. Because it is meaningful and it does put
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: you in the right perspective. Yeah, Yeah, it's nothing more
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: serious than life and death, and and hunting has a
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: really profound way of reminding you at and and bringing
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: you back to to earth in that in that kind
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: of way. Totally totally tell me, tell me a little
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: bit about what we can take from these philosophers when
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: it comes to perseverance, because that's so much of hunting
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: is just weathering the storm, going back out there for
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: another day. Leah, literally in some cases, or some days
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: it's okay, Can I go out for the twelve day
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: and a row be up at three thirty am? Again?
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: I told myself I was gonna do this. I did
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: everything to do this. Now can I actually execute on
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: this plant, put in place and and persevere day after
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: day after day after day. UM. Is there anything that
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: stands out to you, whether it be from from the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: ancient philosophers or the more modern UM practitioners. I suppose
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: that you've studied anything that stands out that we can
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: keep in mind when it comes to persevering through trying times.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean for me, like, so I
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: I run or swim or bike every day. I started
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: biking and swimming, you know, in the last few years.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: But I've been a runner, uh, my whole life. And
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: so a lot of times when people here that you run,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: they go like, oh, are you training for a marathon?
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Or like, oh, do you do races or something? And
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I always sort of laugh at this because to me,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: the marathon is the lifelong pursuit of the sport or
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the activity, right, So the marathon is not like, Oh,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: on one Saturday, I'm gonna go run twenty six miles.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: It's that I run and I do my exercise every day,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: rain or shine, you know, tired or hungry, you know,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, I I do it even if I
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: don't want to do it. And so I think that
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: you know your point about like the twelfth day in
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: a row, it's just sort of realizing like, hey, that
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: this is the thing I'm doing for a lifetime. So
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: one one unpleasant day is not a you know, a
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: big deal in the midst of all of that, but
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: that it's it's actually it's the it's the the kind
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: of the putting in the hours, like seeing yourself as
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: like every time I'm doing doing this, I'm getting a
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: little stronger, getting a little more experience, I'm getting a
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: little wiser. And I think in the case of hunting,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: it's also like I'm putting myself in a position to
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: get lucky, right, Like it's like if you do it,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: you know, you hear someone You're like, oh, I've lived
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: in you know, uh, Montana for twenty six years and
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I've seen one mountain lion or something. Right, It's like, oh,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: these things are rare, and you gotta you gotta, you
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: gotta take a lot of shots before you, and literally
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: and figuratively before you. You know, you get that one
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: in a million thing like that morning that I saw
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: the melanistic deer. That that only happened because I got
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: out of bed that morning. So I think realizing that's like, hey,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the longer you're in this, the greater your chances of
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: getting lucky. Is maybe one way I think about it. Yeah, yeah,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: I was who who? Where was I? I was listening
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: to something right along these lines. And and the simple
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: truth of it is that life is in certain ways,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: and hunting in certain ways too. It's it's a game
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: of chance, and you can certainly put things in your
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: favor as much as possible, but eventually, when it comes
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: down to it, you simply need to play the game
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: enough and be out there enough for good luck to
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: find you. And if you do it long enough, bad
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: luck will find you too. But but good luck will
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: eventually as well, and you simply need to be out
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: there to take advantage of it. Um and and and
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: there's something to be said that you can make all
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: the right decisions, you can do all the right things,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: you can have all the right gear and and work
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: your tail off, but you do need to simply be
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: out there, put in the work of the time, persevere
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: and and sometimes accept the gifts that that nature gives. Um. Yeah,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: that's that's the truth. Is there any final final thought
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: that anything that stood out to you when you've talked
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: to you, know, whether it be NFL teams or athletes
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: or marathon runners. Are these folks that are pursuing excellence
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: in some kind of pursuit like this? Is there anything
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: that has stood out to you as is this most
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: impactful concept of everything we've talked about or something else?
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: I know for me that just the idea that the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: obstacle is the way the title of one of your books,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: has been something that I always keep in mind that
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: whenever I'm facing adversity, that's as always the obstacles the
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: way this is a thing that I can I can
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: turn around into a positive. So that for me has
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: been a foundational um reminder of sorts or concept. Is
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: there anything that you would leave our listeners with? I
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: I absolutely love hearing Man, and I have that praise
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: tattooed on my arm for reason because I am trying
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: to remind myself of it. I have on my other arm.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: I have ego as the enemy, and then I have
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: stillness is the key to sort of each book and
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: the title, because I think those are sort of mantras
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I try to repeat to myself. I was just struck,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and I think maybe your listeners might like us. But
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: as I was researching the life of Marcus Surrealius, Marcus
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Surrealius is an incredible figure because he becomes the Emperor
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: of Rome, but his father was not emperor. He was
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: just as a relatively ordinary, uh, sort of upper class
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Roman who is selected for the throne by the Emperor Hadrian.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Hadrian sees something and Marcus he adopts an older man
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: in exchange for that man adopting Marcus, and that puts
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: him in a position to become emperor. But one of
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: the things that they bond over, Marcus and Hadrian is hunting. Uh.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: They went boar hunting, and I I just obviously part
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: of this is speculation, but I just suspect that what
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: he sees in this young kid, and they tended to
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: hunt boars either on foot or on horseback in Rome
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: with spears, and then there was usually nets involved, so
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: they like they would have slaves follow them with nets,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: or they'd set up nets in the forest and they
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: would sort of charge the boars at them, uh and
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: and then maybe they'd get off and dispatch them on foot.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: But I just I just make up that that mark
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: that that Hadrian begins to see in Marcus some of
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: the virtues that are going to be necessary to be
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: a great king in how he handles himself in the
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: thrill in the chase of of a hunt. And so again,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: if we go back to this idea that what we're
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: doing is training for the really essential things in life.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: That's not to say that hunting isn't essential. And if
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: it's you know, maybe what you do for a living,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: and it may be how you feed your family, uh,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: you know again literally or or because that's what you
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: do for a living. But again, choosing to see it
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: and everything we do as a kind of metaphor as
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: a as a as a chance to practice these virtues,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to me is just really beneficial. There's that great saying
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: how you do anything, that's how you do everything. You know,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Hunting for me is just an opportunity to practice skills
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: that are important in the rest of my life. And
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: so if we can see it that way, then then
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I think we're always going to have a successful trip,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: you know, regardless of what the external results happened to be. Yeah, well, Ryan,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: I know you've got a busy schedule. I don't want
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: to keep you much longer. I appreciate everything you've shared
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: through your books and podcasts and and all that. It
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: certainly helped me a lot. Um. I'll certainly talk about
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: this a little bit in my own conclusion, But is
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: there anything that you would like to say, specifically to
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: those listening about your newest book that they should be
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: thinking about and thinking, uh when they're trying to stay
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: if this is a good fit for them to pick
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: up and give a reading. Yeah. Look, the premise of
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: the new book is that philosophy is not about what
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: one says, but it's about what what one does. So
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: I was really interested in who these philosophers were and
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: how did they live up to what they believe. So
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: if someone's things like, look, I don't have time for
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: these big philosophical ideas, I would say, like, I agree,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: and I totally relate to that. So I wanted to see,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: like who these guys and and and gals were as
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: human beings, because I, frankly I think we learn more
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: from studying the lives of people and then we ever
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: do from studying the words of those people. Yeah, lots
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: to learn from the book. I really enjoyed it. I've
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: enjoyed every one of them. Ryan, So I'm gonna let
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: you move on to the next adventure of your day.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: I hope you do get out and do some honey
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: this fall, and uh keep me posted. Yeah, thanks man,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: We'll have to do it in person soon. I'm looking
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: forward to it. Yeah, let's make it happen. Ryan, Thank
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: you so much for the time doing this. Alright, Peace
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: up later. So there you go. For those of you
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: who tuned into this one and listen to the end,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: thank you. I hope some of these things can be
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: helpful to you. And I want to leave you with
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: with two of the most important concepts that we discussed
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: here and that I've kind of taken from some of
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: these books and things that Ryan has has shared over
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: the years that have been most applicable in the hunting
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: world to me. Two concepts. I've brought these up in
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: the past, most recently I talked about them in Ten
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Steps to Your Best Hunting Season Ever. But they they're
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: just little reminders that I always need to keep in
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: my head because time and time again, I find myself
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: out there in the woods frustrated about something, or confused
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: about something, or you know, struggling with something, and I
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: come back to this Number one, Control what you can,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: let go of what you can't. There's so many things
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: that happened out there in the woods that we can't
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: ultimately control. But we can get all wrapped up about
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: it and upset about it and frustrated by it, or
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: we can choose to say, Okay, this thing happened, I
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: can't change it now. I just have the decision about
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: what to do next. This is a concept that we
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: talked about today that came from, you know, some of
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: these ancient writings. This is one of those foundational principles
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: they talked about time and time again, and man, it
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: is it is just it comes. It hits home to
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: me so many times in the tree. Number two, this
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: idea that we talked about in the title of one
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: of his books, that the obstacle is the way, which
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: basically means that oftentimes the challenge, the bumping the road,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the adversity you're facing, that is oftentimes the catalyst. It
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: is oftentimes the thing that leads to your success if
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: you're willing to push through it. So when you miss
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: that buck, or when you show up on public land
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: and hunt five days straight and see zero deer because
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: there's too many hunters, if you can push through that wall,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: if you can look at it as not this thing's
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: going to bring you down, but instead an opportunity and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: you can grow from it. That's the way to get
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: where you're trying to go, Not by avoiding the obstacle,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: not by seeing the obstacle and turn around and giving
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: up and going home. It's by pushing right on through it.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: That's the way to get to where we want to go.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: So think about that this fall, think about that during
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: the rud when the ships hitting the fan, the obstacles
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: the way push through it. That's gonna get you where
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: you want to get to. And that's all I got today.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you all, best of luck out there hunting, and
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: until next time, stay wired to hum