What matters is what you do today. That's the message stoic author Ryan Holiday emphasizes in this

bite-size episode. Now, Ryan's written a number of best-selling books on stoicism, including

The Obstacle is the Way. And Ryan describes stoicism as the most practical of all philosophies.

And he explains that in his view, it's all about understanding

that our decisions and in particular what we do that defines us. That doesn't mean we will

always succeed, but it does mean we can try. Demonstonese is born with a stutter. He's born,

his parents die,'s orphaned.

The guardians sort of steal all of his money.

And so, you know, this is a classic unfair, you know, life sucks kind of a scenario.

And instead, he basically enacts like the greatest movie training montage of all time.

He shaves half of his head so he is, you know, too scared to go outside and too embarrassed

to go outside.

He trains.

He overcomes his stutter.

He, you know, he works out to build up.

He becomes like the sort of most booming order and speaker in the history of Greece.

Sort of makes him, like Roosevelt,

makes his body, makes himself into something great. And it's action, action, action. That's what makes for a great life. That's what makes for a great talk. You have to lead people and you have to lead yourself first towards,

you know, what are you going to do? Right. And Marcus really talks about this too. He says,

it's not what other people say or do. It's not what you say or it's not what you say. It's not what you say. It's what you do that

ultimately matters. That's how you overcome obstacles. That's how you move the ball forward. That's how you improve. It's got to be what you do. I mean, following the process, again, this is kind of the essence of presence, really, isn't it? But, you know, what, one step at a time, bringing just briefly back to sports. So Nick Saban, is that how you pronounce his name. I mean, he's not well known over here. Nick Saban. Nick Saban, so he's, he should be. He should be. He's the great, I mean, he's the greatest, probably the greatest American football coach ever. I mean, him and Bill Belichick are the most sort of winningest college football coaches of all time,

Saban at the University of Alabama, Belichick with the Patriots.

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