Some people travel for the food.

Others for the nightlife.

Some travel for work.

Others travel to get away.

I travel for the swimming.

I mean that’s not really why I travel–I’m usually on the road because I’m giving a talk or I have a meeting–but if I am on the road, what I am looking for is somewhere to swim.

Believe it or not, I actually planned the ​Stillness Is The Key​ book tour around cities that had cool athletic club pools. In 2019, I swam at the ​Olympic Club in San Francisco​, the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle, the basement pool at the University Club in DC (I prefer the William H. Rumsey Natatorium near the Library of Congress), the New York Athletic Club overlooking Central Park and the Denver Athletic Club, too.

I once accepted an offer from my Dutch publisher to speak in Amsterdam on the condition that they show me a good time while I was there. And by that I meant, to their surprise, that they’d find me a cool swimming pool. (I am in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Dublin and Rotterdam in November. ​You can get tickets here​…or give me some swimming recommendations).

It was Robert Greene who first got me hooked in 2007. I grew up on swim teams but had fallen out of the habit in favor of running. When I started working in Downtown Los Angeles for American Apparel, he told me to join the Los Angeles Athletic Club because it has one of the greatest swimming pools in the country. It’s one of the oldest athletic clubs in the country (1888!) and the pool they built in 1912 is an engineering marvel–8 feet deep, six stories off the streets below, beneath a glass atrium and chandelier you’ve seen in a million movies and never known where it was from.

But the real secret, he told me, was their reciprocal benefits. I will never in my life be able to afford (let alone be invited) to join the New York Athletic Club…but for like $100 a month, my membership to the Los Angeles Athletic Club got me in the door. (To be clear, it’s a back door…they make us plebes use a special staircase so as not to touch the regular members).

Swimming laps at the Los Angeles Athletic Club

It was also Robert who told me that the ocean rock pools in Sydney were bucket-list-level good more than 10 years ago. I was blown away on my first trip there in 2013–I think I accepted the speaking gig just to have an excuse to go. This summer, I brought my family for my two talks in Sydney and Melbourne and crossed a bunch off my list.

I’d already done Icebergs and Bronte and Clovelly but this time I also squeezed in South Curl and North Curl, Manly, as well as a short swim at Cook and Philip Park and the Melbourne Public Baths.

Over the years and hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, I’ve seen some amazing pools and ponds and swimming holes and lakes. Hampstead Heath. Balmorhea. Yrjönkatu in Helsinki (where you have to swim naked). The Biltmore in Downtown LA. Gellert in Budapest. Sydney’s Olympic Pool. Badeschiff (a pool floating in the River Spree). The saltwater pool at the New Orleans Athletic Club. The Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. Swimming against the current and the billowing Texas rice plants in the San Marcos River. ​Slide Rock in Sedona​. ​Lake Tahoe​. ​The Blue Hole in New Mexico​. Jacob’s Well. And countless streams and oceans and bays and hotel pools and public parks.

But why? What’s so special about swimming?

Sure, it’s low-impact whole-body exercise and it’s good for you to be active, but I consider all that as a bonus.

What I love about swimming is that it’s one of the few places on Earth where screens can’t reach you. My phone doesn’t ring. My eyes can’t wander to the big TV playing CNN or CNBC the way they do at the gym. My eyes can’t wander at all actually, they stay locked at the bottom of the pool or the pond, ‘prisoner of the black line’ to paraphrase Joni Mitchell. It’s just the rhythm of kick, stroke, breath over and over ahead in a kind of wonderful, active meditation.

I forget whether it was at the 24 Hour Fitness off 35th or the YMCA off Town Lake in Austin, but someone came up to me once and said they were reading my book ​Ego is the Enemy​. I said thank you and laughed, telling them that I’d written a good chunk of the book in that very pool. They were surprised but it’s true, just like when I run, I’m amazed at the words that pop into my head when I have gotten up and left the computer to do something other than writing. And because I can’t immediately write it down, I have to run the phrases or the idea through over and over again…often forgetting my lap count in the process.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to keep swimming.

It’s not the only problem I’ve solved in the pool. I’ve had investment ideas. I’ve planned difficult conversations. I’ve gotten over grudges. I’ve calmed down. I’ve gotten much-needed space.

I remember waking up early one morning in Los Angeles, while on the book tour for ​Stillness Is The Key​. It was the day I was supposed to find out whether I’d hit the bestseller lists…or not. Glancing at the home screen of my phone, I could see there were texts from my agent and from my editor. I knew they could either be congratulations or condolences, but instead of checking, I took the elevator down to the 6th floor and swam for a mile. It was just another ordinary, rewarding swim.

I came back to the room and found out that not only had I hit the New York Times Bestseller list for the first time, but I’d debuted at #1. It was wonderful news but I was prouder of that little act of discipline that preceded it–ignoring the phone, insisting on that stillness. And if I hadn’t hit the list? I’d have been glad for the wonderful morning swim all the same, glad that I hadn’t ruined it.

It’s fitting, too, because I wrote in ​Stillness Is The Key​ that there are few better ways to settle yourself in the present moment—to wash away the distractions and the noise and the troubles of everyday life—than through being in or around water. More specifically, natural water. There’s just something about it. The sight of it contrasted against the environment it’s in. The sound of it. The feel of it closing in on you once you finally take the plunge.

Sometimes I think that half the victory of swimming is just that–the initial jump or dive in. The payoff is different depending on the season. In the summer, Barton Springs in Austin is a welcome relief against the heat. But in the winter–Robert and I once went on a snowy Austin morning a few hours before I got married–the reward is different. The aliveness creeps back into your body as you shiver to get warm, invigorated by doing something so crazy.

It was actually that abrupt entrance into a cold body of water that drew Seneca back to the Tiber River year after year. A self-proclaimed “cold-water enthusiast”, Seneca “celebrated each new year by taking a plunge into the canal.” Seneca couldn’t have known any of the since-proven health benefits of a cold plunge. He wasn’t competing or on a swim team. He wasn’t going down to the canal to literally clean himself, but he was starting the year clean. Even better, he was starting it with a challenge.

Water played a big role in Marcus Aurelius’ life, too. He liked to spend time in the many bath houses across the Roman Empire, where he’d wash off the dust of everyday life. In Budapest, you can still sit in baths that draw from the same thermal pools that Marcus would have used.

In her incredible book, ​Why We Swim​, Bonnie Tsui discusses the human inclination toward water and uncovers the deeper instincts that pull us to it. When Bonnie came on The Daily Stoic Podcast (it’s one of my favorite episodes, ​you should definitely give it a listen​), I asked her to share a discovery she made while writing the book that stood out to her, even as a lifelong swimmer and water enthusiast. “I loved learning about how we are biologically driven to respond to certain set points in the environment—that our brains love to be near water and blue spaces,” she said. “We love immersion and the feeling of physically being in water because our brains produce more alpha waves—those wavelengths associated with relaxation, calm, and creativity—when we are merely listening to or looking at it. There is a benefit to both body and mind to get in and swim.”

For all of these reasons, swimming has been a predominantly solitary practice for most of my life. But as I’ve gotten older and have a family of my own, it’s become something we all do together. In the last month alone, we’ve done the Blue Hole in Georgetown, Landa Park in New Braunfels, Barton Springs, Deep Eddy, and Krause Springs. At first, the kids are hesitant to jump in, maybe a little intimidated by a rope swing or a diving board. The same goes for us as parents, only the night before. How will the day go? Will it be a disaster? Isn’t there a bunch to pack up?

But after they, after we, work up the courage and do it? Well, you’re always glad you did.

I guess that’s the real message of this post–to pass along the wonderful habit that Robert Greene gave to me all those years ago. It made my life better and I bet it will make yours better, too.

It wasn’t exactly a nervous breakdown, but it was something close.

Around the time I was finishing ​Ego is the Enemy​, I ran into a wall.

I had just watched American Apparel implode. I had lost a mentor and friend I had looked up to and cared about (who had let me know the feeling was not mutual). The talent agency I had started at went bust, too.

These people who said they “saw themselves in me” turned out to be people they didn’t want to be. I myself was becoming someone I did not want to be. I was working all the time. I was splitting my time between Austin and Los Angeles. I was angry and stressed all the time. I worked late, taking and making phone calls well past midnight, as I had seen Dov Charney do for years (something ​I wrote about recently​). To say I was burned out was an understatement.

I remember a panic attack because the wifi wasn’t connecting. I remember being too tired to think. I remember being glued to my phone. I remember juggling way too many balls at the same time. I remember coming across a quote from Bertrand Russell that the first sign of losing your mind was the belief that your work was terribly, terribly important.

I ended up telling this story at the beginning of ​Ego is the Enemy​, but it’s something I had to work out in my actual life, too. Therapy. Some Workaholics Anonymous meetings. Some not-so-fun conversations with my future wife (I’m sure they were not fun for her either, but anyway, I was the one on the receiving end of the hard truths).

Basically, like a lot of people, I had worked myself pretty close to the edge. I’m lucky in that I didn’t quite go over the side.

This is why I don’t like a lot of the hustle porn and grind culture that entrepreneurs and influencers try to sell young people. It’s not healthy. In private, it’s not glamorous. It doesn’t lead to anyone’s best work. In fact, it usually prevents people from doing their best work.

Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, brought much-needed order and routine to the life of his queen. He streamlined processes and took up a share of the burdens that had previously fallen on Victoria alone. Indeed, many of the so-called Victorian traits of the era originated with him. He was disciplined, fastidious, ambitious, old school.

Under his pressing, their schedule became one meeting, dispatch, and social obligation after another. Albert was almost constantly busy, working so much that he occasionally vomited from stress. Never shirking a responsibility or an opportunity, he took on every bit of power his wife was willing to share. In turn, they seized every formal and informal bit of influence the monarchy had in the British Empire at that time. They were a pair of workaholics and proud of it.

As Albert wrote to an advisor, he spent hours a day reading newspapers in German, French, and English. “One can let nothing pass,” he said, “without losing the connection and coming in consequence to wrong conclusions.” He was right, the stakes were certainly high. His expert understanding of the international situation helped Britain avoid being drawn into the U.S. Civil War.

But the truth was, Albert threw himself equally hard into projects of much less importance. Organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, a nearly six-month-long carnival that showed off the wonders of the British Empire, consumed years of his life. A few days before it opened, he wrote to his stepmother, “I am more dead than alive from overwork.” It was, to be certain, a beautiful and memorable event, but his health never recovered.

He and his wife knew no moderation and had little fun. “I go on working at my treadmill, as life seems to me,” Albert said in 1861. It’s not a bad description of the exhausting and repetitive life he and Victoria led. Starting in 1840, Victoria bore nine children in seventeen years, four of whom were born in consecutive years. In a time when women still regularly died during childbirth (anesthesia—chloroform—only became available for her eighth pregnancy), Victoria, who was a mere five feet tall, was constantly pregnant. Even with the benefits of limitless household help, she bore an enormous physical burden on top of her duties as queen. Upon her death, it was found that she was suffering from a prolapsed uterus and a hernia that must have caused her incredible pain without end.

There’s nothing wrong with having a large family—the throne did need heirs—but it never seemed to have occurred to the couple that they had any say in the matter. “Man is a beast of burden,” Albert wrote to his brother, “and he is only happy if he has to drag his burden and if he has little free will. My experience teaches me every day to understand the truth of this more and more.” As a result, his and Victoria’s existence was hardly one of privilege or relaxation or freedom. It was instead an endless cycle of obligation after obligation, done at a breakneck pace that the two of them inflicted on themselves.

It is a testament to their affection for each other that their marriage survived. Victoria was at least aware of the deleterious effects all this work had on Albert. She wrote of the consequences of his “over-love of business” on their relationship, and she also noticed that his health was flagging. His racing mind kept him awake at night, his stomach cramped, and his skin drooped.

Instead of listening to these warning signs, he soldiered on for years, working harder and harder, forcing his body to comply. And then, suddenly, it quit on him. His strength failed. He drifted into incoherency, and at 10:50 p.m. on December 14, 1861, Albert took his three final breaths and died. The cause? Crohn’s disease, exacerbated by extreme stress. He had literally worked his guts out.

Is that what you want to be? A workhorse that draws its load until it collapses and dies, still shod and in the harness? Is that what you were put on this planet for?

Remember, the main cause of injury for elite athletes is not tripping and falling. It’s not collisions. It’s overuse. Pitchers and quarterbacks throw out their arms. Basketball players blow out their knees. Others just get tired of the grinding hours and the pressure. Michael Phelps prematurely ended his swimming career for this reason—despite all the gold medals, he never wanted to get in a pool again. It’s hard to blame him. He put everything, including his own sanity and health, second to shaving seconds off his times.

We think that to be great at what you do requires complete and total dedication. That there’s no time for anything else.

Nonsense.

After the implosion of my personal and professional life in 2014/2015, I moved to a ranch in Texas. I started a family. I started keeping more regular hours. I put less into my work. And you know what? My work has gotten better. (Cal Newport would call this ​“Slow Productivity” in his book​, which you should take a break from your work and ​go read​).

In fact, some of my biggest creative breakthroughs came to me when I was doing anything but working. The idea for ​Ego Is The Enemy​ came to me while I was doing laps in a pool in Austin (which I talk about ​here​). The idea for the Stoic Virtues series struck me while on a hike in the Lost Pines forest in Bastrop with my family. A few weeks later on vacation in Florida, the idea for ​The Daily Dad​ came to me as I built a sandcastle with my son.

I’ve been repeatedly gifted with ideas—from the muses, from my own subconscious, I don’t know—when I least expect it. In Zen, they talk about the problem of “too much willful will,” basically, trying too hard, being too intentional. Real breakthroughs come when you’re not so controlling, when you let go. I find this to be true in my own life. By not putting my work first, by not taking it all so seriously, I’ve been able to reach for and hold on to more than I was with a very tight grasp.

Don’t get me wrong, executing projects at a high level requires an immense amount of work and uninterrupted focus. It requires being at the office. It requires trying very hard to get it right. But the point is that none of that would have been possible without first letting go a little, without deciding to take a hike or go to the beach.

The best of the best know this.

In ​Stillness Is The Key​, I tell the story of Eilud Kipchoge, possibly the greatest distance runner ever to live. Kipchoge is known for actively working to make sure he is not overworking. In training, he deliberately does not give his full effort, saving that instead for the few times per year when he races. He prefers instead to train at 80 percent of his capacity on occasion to 90 percent—to maintain and preserve his longevity and sanity as an athlete. Runners know this is called threshold training, but it has major lifestyle implications too. When Michael Phelps came back to swimming after his breakdown in 2012, it was possible because he was willing to reimagine his approach to training with more balance.

You are not a beast of burden. You are not meant to be ridden into the ground, shot and then replaced by the next horse.

Yes, we have important duties to provide for our families and to be a reliable coworker, boss, employee. Many of us have talents and gifts so extraordinary that we owe it to ourselves and the world to express and fulfill them. But we’re not going to be able to do that if we’re not taking care of ourselves, or if we have stretched ourselves to the breaking point.

It’s important to remind ourselves that life is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint. In a way, this is the distinction between confidence and ego. Can you trust yourself and your abilities enough to keep something in reserve? Can you protect the stillness and the inner peace necessary to win the longer race of life?

The email you think you need so desperately to respond to can wait. Your screenplay does not need to be hurried, and you can even take a break between it and the next one. The only person truly requiring you to spend the night at the office is yourself. It’s okay to say no. Your interior life will thank you. You’ll be much more clear-headed and equipped to do a good job when you’re not weak from complete and utter overwork.

It’s human being, not human doing, for a reason.

The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery. To push yourself too hard, too fast. To overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork.

To last, to be great, you have to understand how to rest. After all, it’s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity, balance and the discipline of your discipline.

On stage in Sydney, Australia. Get tickets to see me live in Europe and Canada here.

I was coasting on fumes when he asked me the question, so I don’t think I got the answer right.

To be fair, I was 90 or so minutes into being on stage for my talk in Sydney when I was asked: “If obstacles make us better, should we seek them out (or create them for our kids)?”

Like I said, I was a little fried, so I said something like: “Life is full of obstacles already, I’m not sure we need to go around creating additional ones.”

It’s strange that I said this because I was in the middle of doing the exact opposite… and it’s Chris Williamson’s fault.

He and I were talking in Austin back in May and he told me he had just gotten back from a speaking tour. “What kind of presentation did you do? Did you have slides?” I asked, curious because I was getting ready to head out of the country for my own set of theater dates (which, by the way, ​you can get tickets for my next stops in Europe and Canada here​) and Chris had spoken at some of the same venues I was going to be at.

“It was just me and a microphone,” he said.

This struck me because most of the talks I do—usually at conferences or to companies or to sports teams or soldiers—are not that way. You’re expected to have a slide deck that walks the audience through what you’re talking about. This extra work can really help drive your points home, but it’s also a bit of a safety net because you never forget where you’re at and you always have something behind you to keep the audience’s attention.

In any case, I’ve been doing this so long, it’s what I’m used to. It’s what I’m comfortable with. I know that the material works and I know I have it down.

Which is precisely why when I heard Chris say he was doing it alone with a mic, I thought, I want to try it that way.

Because it seemed harder and different.

General Sherman, the great military strategist and Civil War hero once wrote in a letter to his friend that he had an “old rule never to return by the road I had come.” Meaning, he favored blazing new trails to retracing his steps, picking the more difficult journey over the easy and familiar.

This is a great rule for life.

In ​Meditations​, Marcus Aurelius writes about holding the reins in his non-dominant hand as both an exercise to practice and a metaphor for doing the difficult thing. He wanted to get good at doing things both ways, at developing the ability to thrive in any and all situations. Naturally, we’re more confident where we are dominant. But the problem is you become progressively weaker in the hands or the areas that you neglect through this favoring.

I felt like I’d gotten comfortable with one way of speaking. Why not change it up?

Well, one reason is that to fail in front of 2,000 people in Sydney would have been pretty mortifying. But that reason was also pretty motivating!

Epictetus said when a challenge is put in front of you, think of yourself as an athlete getting paired with a tough competitor or a sparring partner. You want to be Olympic-class? “This is going to take some sweat to accomplish,” he said.

It took a lot of preparation–much more so than if I had done what I normally do. It also meant settling a lot of nerves. But these are features, not bugs of picking the harder path.

The point is: If it’s easy, you’re not growing.

Not everything that’s hard is good of course, but almost everything good (and worth it) is hard.

Think about all the things you’re good at. There was a time when you weren’t good at them, right? When they were hard. But you chose to work at it despite that initial difficulty. Even though it was frustrating, even though you had to fight the urge to quit, you saw a glimpse of goodness, you clawed out a bit of progress, you felt a glimmer of confidence, and you chose to keep at it. To keep pushing. And you grew from the fight against the resistance.

Even more, you found something on the other side of it all—a you that you realized you didn’t entirely know and had possibly never met. You learned something incredibly valuable about yourself: you’re capable of more than you know.

This is why the Stoics urge us to fight our tendency toward complacency. We have to keep pushing, adapting, shaking things up. We have to seek out challenges. Because would we know anything about ourselves if we never did?

I don’t just mean in big ways, but in small ways, too. Every day, you stand at little crossroads—decisions about how to do things and what things to do. Should you walk the 15 minutes to your meeting or take an Uber? Should you pick up the phone and have that difficult conversation or leave it to an email? Can you choose to do kick turns in the pool instead of push off? Can you choose to pick up a journal instead of your phone first thing in the morning?

As you weigh these competing options, always lean towards the hard one. Don’t be that person that Seneca talks about, the one who skates through life without being tested and challenged, who deprives oneself of opportunities to grow and improve.

Jump into the colder water. Have that tough conversation. Use the weaker part of your game. Take ownership where you can. Choose the more difficult option. Seek out the challenge. Lean into it.

Iron sharpens iron, after all. Resistance builds muscle.

Sparring partners make us Olympic class.

You’ll be better for it—not only for the improvement that comes from the challenge itself but for the willpower you are developing by choosing that option on purpose.

So, to revise my response to the question I was asked in Sydney:

Life is full of obstacles already, but if you want to be more adept at overcoming them, you should always try to do it the hard way.

It wasn’t until I was off-stage, coming down from the rush of trying something new in front of that many people, that I could fully understand that.

And now…I’m on to figuring out how I can challenge myself in November on these other dates. ​See you there​!