text: So it’s inconceivable that Socrates was not scared, or that Marcus Aurelius was not scared, that he wasn’t getting that sort of flutter that you were talking about, that nervousness before you go on stage, as they were waiting for the sort of bugle to send them into action. That would have been terrifying. The odds of surviving would have been low. I mean, Marcus Aurelius himself, if you want to talk about relating to where we are right now, Marcus Aurelius, his reign is marked almost entirely by what is now known as the Antonine Plague, which was a plague that originated in China, and killed something like 10 or 15 million people over the majority of Marcus’s reign.
  Ryan Holiday: So, of course, he was scared. I mean, how could you not be scared for your children, for yourself, as you’re watching people drop like flies? But the Stoics, being scared, having that initial reaction was not an excuse for stopping or for cowardice. So there’s a [William] Faulkner quote I love, which I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, I put it in the article. He says, “Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.” And I like this distinction because it’s like, yeah, “Look, if you jump out from around the corner, that’s going to startle me. But if I run away, and I refuse to leave my house after that, well, that’s being afraid.”
  Like, you should be scared looking at your retirement accounts having dropped 30 or 40 percent, right? Or you should be scared if traveling and doing in-person stuff is a big part of your life or your job and suddenly you can’t do it anymore. But just because you’re scared doesn’t mean you’re exempt from the responsibilities of life going forward, right? And I think the question is, is being scared, is being afraid, is it helping you solve that difficult problem? And the Stoics would say, if it’s not helpful, then you’ve got to cut it out and you’ve got to focus on how you can move forward.
  Chris Kresser: Right. And this, I mean, was largely the subject of your book, The Obstacle Is The Way.
  Chris Kresser: Talking about strategies, because it’s one thing for us to sit here and talk about this, but how do people actually do that? Because a lot of people are understandably stuck in that kind of visceral response right now of fear, the sensations and the emotion of it and the physical experience of it. How do we move from if someone is feeling like they’re stuck in that experience, what is the stoic approach to, what are some tools or strategies for moving from that to a broader understanding and framing of what’s happening that can allow them to move forward?
  Ryan Holiday: So, sort of like the Buddhists, I think the Stoics sort of realized that you can’t, you have a lot of power over your own thoughts, over your mind, right? And that sort of how you dial things this way or that way can have a huge impact on how you’re able to respond to something. So, and I think the Stoics were a bit paradoxical, too. So sometimes [they’d] tell you to do this thing, and sometimes they’d tell you the opposite thing. It just [depends] on the situation. So one of the things I’m kind of modulating between is zooming way in and zooming way out.
  Ryan Holiday: So it’s like when I get stressed, when I get anxious, when I get upset, I go play with my kids, or I read a book, or I go work out, or I just say, “What is the one task that I have to do today?” And so, by focusing on some immediate thing, then I’m not refreshing the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] website that’s showing how many cases are in my area. I’m not refreshing my stock portfolio or whatever. I’m not just sort of, I’m not just paralyzed with fear because what I’m doing is focusing on something really small.