You Must Read To Lead | 10 Stoic Strategies To Deal With Anxiety
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Why does Ryan Holiday say “you must read to lead” and how does reading shape leadership?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. You must read
to
lead. Not all the Stoics were leaders, but all of them were readers. And the ones who were leaders? Well, they were the biggest readers of them all. Marcus Aurelius opens meditations by thanking the teacher who taught him to read attentively, and who loaned him the copy of Epictetus that shaped the rest of his life. Scipio Emilianus, one of Rome's great generals and a patron of Stoicism, was said to be constantly engaged in the pursuit of arms or his studies. He was either training his body by exposing it to dangers, or his mind by learning. Literally in the final moments of his life, Cato took another pass at reading Plato. As president, Theod Roosevelt was always squeezing in time to read, and later out of office he took a copy of Epictetus with him on his perilous journey down the river of doubt.
Stockdale talked about how, deployed in the South China Sea, when he was not flying, he was in his bunk reading Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and the other ancients. These were men of action and lifelong learners. Reading deeply and thoughtfully gave them all what they needed to succeed, the knowledge to be great leaders, the virtue to be good people, the will to survive. In English and history classes, reading often meant memorizing names and dates and places, who, what, when, and where. Much less so how or why
What is the “Read to Lead” program and how can listeners join the five‑week reading challenge?
or what it meant. You learn to extract what the teacher needed you to remember, not what the author wanted you to know, not the moral and philosophical lessons the books and the events were meant to teach. If you wanna be a better leader, you're gonna have to become Better reader. How? Well, that is what we designed Read to Lead all about. We're doing a five-week deep dive here with Daily Stoic into becoming better readers. I'm going to walk you through my system that I've used not just to write my books, but the practice that I've used in my life. How to find books that are worth your time, how to work through ones above your level, how to keep what matters, how to turn. What you read is into action as Seneca said how to turn the words into works.
And uh since we made this class many, many years ago People have loved it. One person wrote in to say it was the best online learning investment they have ever made. And they said that on day one. If you want the beginnings of a real library and a foundation for lifelong learning, I'd love to have you join us. I'm gonna be doing a QA about my reading strategies as well. And if you join by September 30th, you can get 20% off all the books that we recommend in the course of the class. It's gonna be awesome. As we said, not all readers lead. But the ones who do have to be great at it. And you can join us in ReadToLead at dailystoic.com/slash read to lead. I'll see you in there.
If you've ever talked to your bank or cell phone company or insurance or whatever, you know, customer service where you're talking to robots and you get in that endless loop. Ugh, it's not fun for you and either customers. It's also not great for the company, right? They know they're not serving their customers well. When a person has to intervene, that person is dealing with someone who's mad at them. It's a whole system that I think is due for a rethink, and that's where 11 Agents come in. 11 Agents is a platform for AI voice and chat agents that can actually listen, understand, and resolve customer issues.
How can focusing on small, actionable steps reduce anxiety according to Stoic practice?
They can look up your account, they can process requests, and then they hand it off to a person when needed. It's made by 11 Labs, the AI research and product company known for their realistic voice and audio models in over 70 languages. If you've heard AI voices that actually sound natural, it was probably 11 Labs. I actually was shocked. I was listening to this audiobook. I found out it was produced by 11 Labs. If you run a business or handle customer service operations, you can start with a demo at 11labs.io slash Doak and see how 11 agents can fit into your workflows and help build experiences that your customers and employees will actually.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why does Ryan Holiday say “you must read to lead” and how does reading shape leadership?
0:00–1:51
2
What is the “Read to Lead” program and how can listeners join the five‑week reading challenge?
1:51–4:08
3
How can focusing on small, actionable steps reduce anxiety according to Stoic practice?
4:08–9:49
4
What Stoic mindset helps us stay present and stop worrying about imagined futures?
9:49–15:03
5
How does the Stoic practice of processing emotions differ from suppressing them?
15:03–16:21
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Daily Stoic
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