The Daily Stoic

Yeah, it’s frustrating. Yeah, it was preventable. Yeah, you told them it was preventable, you warned them what would happen. They didn’t listen and now here you are. Yeah, it’s gonna be costly. Yeah, you’re pissed.But you know what you should do? You should solve the problem first. You can put your emotions about it aside. You can worry about blame later. “You don’t have to turn this into something,” Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations. “It doesn’t have to upset you.” He also writes about how easy it is to waste energy investigating the causes of things, taking things personally, extrapolating out what everything means. He’s saying: Just deal with it. Solve the problem, worry about ‘accountability’ later.Right now, you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do about the fact that your spouse left the keys at home. Right now, you’ve got to deal with the fact that one of your kids is hurt and crying—that your other one is responsible can be addressed later. Right now, you’ve got payroll to meet, you’ve got

With a business partner, some investors, and his life savings, Brent Underwood bought the abandoned mining turned ghost town, Cerro Gordo, in 2018.The plan was to bring the town back to life, to turn the 336 acres and 22 buildings into a historical destination. That plan largely revolved around the American Hotel, the literal and metaphorical center of town. But then on June 15, 2020, 149 years to the day it opened, the American Hotel caught fire and burned to the ground.“It was probably the most devastating day of my life,” Brent would recall. “You are literally watching your life savings and hopes and dreams burn in front of you.” As he stood atop the ashes, the town’s previous owner put his hand on Brent’s shoulder. “You can’t change what happened,” he told Brent, “but what happens from here is up to you.” More than just providing comfort, Brent wrote, those words were “a call to action.”It’s a reminder that for everything outside of our control, we retain—at the core of our being—an incredible power: The

It’s funny, over here at Daily Stoic, we do these challenges throughout the year (maybe you’ve joined one before). On the one hand, this name is probably bad marketing. People don’t usually get excited by the thought of being challenged. In fact, what they usually want is a secret or a shortcut or a hack. They want someone to solve the challenges for them. On the other hand, isn’t embracing life’s challenges what Stoicism is all about? So naturally, we couldn’t call the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge anything but that. It is a challenge. 10 days straight of them. Starting now.So yes it’s been a long December, but as the song also reminds us, there’s reason to believe that this year will be better than the last. And that reason is you—if you allow yourself to be, if you challenge yourself, if you decide to climb out of your velvet rut. A person who has never been challenged, Seneca said, who always gets their way, is a tragic figure. They have no idea what they are capable of. They are not even close to

On this weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan talks with Kentucky Wildcats Men's Basketball Team in which he focuses on the timeless wisdom of the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance—Holiday adeptly tailored his message to the elite world of collegiate basketball.-----------------------------Today is that day many dread—the day the clocks spring forward. Yes, in the middle of the night, you lost an hour that you’ll never get back. An hour of sleep, an hour of leisure, an hour to spend with your kids. You mourn that loss of time, wondering all the ways you could’ve spent it otherwise.Don’t fall into this trap and join us TODAY for the Spring Forward challenge. It starts March 19 and is set up to push you to examine your habits, your choices, and your relationships to move you closer to living your best life here and now.*A note on the audio for this episode: an issue with Ryan's live mic resulted in the discrepancy in audio quality that you hear. We apologize for the incon

Ryan continues his conversation with computer science professor and bestselling author, Cal Newport. They discuss how to be indispensable in your personal and professional life, the myth of busyness, Cal’s latest book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, and more. Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. His scholarship focuses on the theory of distributed systems, while his general-audience writing explores intersections of culture and technology. He is the author of eight books, including Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. Newport is also a contributing writer for the New Yorker and the host of the Deep Questions podcast.Watch or listen to Cal’s podcast, Deep Questions.Subscribe to Cal’s newsletter, here. Listen to Cal’s take in The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide To Being Rich, Free, and Happy. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail

That was the purpose behind Stoicism, behind the journaling, and the reading, and studying of this philosophy, behind the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge (which starts on Tuesday, the first day of spring)—to use each day as an opportunity to improve yourself action by action, step by step. This might not seem like much, as Zeno said, but it adds up to no small thing.Every one of us wants to improve, wants to be better, wants to have better habits, live better, think better. But most of us wait to launch that business, write that novel, develop that fitness routine, to do what we know is right. We’ll do it when we’re more secure, we say, we’ll do it later, or in the fall, or next year, when things get back to normal. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life, Seneca reminds us. It snatches away the present in exchange for some promised future.Every day is a new season. Every day is spring, whatever hemisphere you’re in. Every day is a chance for a new beginning. That every day we awake, we can c

Seneca makes the point, however, that what we are really rushing towards—with all deliberate speed—is death. That’s what he means when he says that we get death wrong. Death is not some distant thing in the future, not some one-time thing that looms ahead. Instead, death is something happening to you right now. It’s happening as you read this email (hope it’s been worth it!), it’s happening as you struggle to put your daughter’s shoes on so you can drop her off at school and then it’s happening still more as you sit down to that coffee meeting you rushed to even though you didn’t want to have it in the first place. It happens as you procrastinate, it happens as you distract yourself, it happens as you make bad choices, it happens as you worry and dread and whine.And that’s why we created The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. It’s a set of ten brand-new actionable challenges designed to push you to examine your choices, your relationships, and your day-to-day patterns and move you closer to living your bes

In the first half of this two-part conversation, Ryan talks with computer science professor and bestselling author, Cal Newport. They discuss the facade of hustle culture, understanding what really moves the needle in your process, Cal’s latest book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, and more. Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. His scholarship focuses on the theory of distributed systems, while his general-audience writing explores intersections of culture and technology. He is the author of eight books, including Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. Newport is also a contributing writer for the New Yorker and the host of the Deep Questions podcast.Watch or listen to Cal’s podcast, Deep Questions.Subscribe to Cal’s newsletter, here. Listen to Cal’s take in The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide To Being Rich, Free, and Happy. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailyst

Marcus Aurelius was, of course, an incredible man. He endured more than most people. He had more power than most people—and wore it more lightly. He did more work on himself than most people, understood people, and himself, better than most people.Was he perfect though? Of course not. No one is.In Lonesome Dove, the Texas Ranger Captain Woodrow Call seems almost superhuman, especially to the young cowboy Newt. Newt worships the ground the man walks on, believing he isn’t like the rest of them. And in a sense, he isn’t. The Captain can ride further and faster, is more principled, less afraid, tougher than everyone on the Plains.We know Marcus Aurelius made mistakes. We know he paid lip service to admitting error in Meditations, to not continuing in error just because you began in one. But how good was he in practice? It’s less clear. He was wrong about his son Commodus for example. Was he too proud to admit this? Here, or elsewhere, did he have trouble owning that he was just like everyone else? That he could

That obnoxious person. That contractor who ripped you off. That slow driver. That overly enthusiastic exercise instructor. That brusk receptionist. That clingy parent. That friend holding a grudge. That loud neighbor.They’re not exactly your favorite. They don’t exactly make your life easier. But you know what you need to remember? You need to remember that they are just doing their jobs. “Is a world without shameless people possible?” Marcus Aurelius asks in Meditations. No, it isn’t, he reminds himself. So why am I surprised to find one he says? Somebody has to be that person and this person is it.---In the first century AD, few would have argued that Epictetus was the most powerful person in Rome. Few would have argued that this lowly slave possessed any power at all–in fact, the name said it all: Epictetus means acquired one.Most of us are born into this world closer in status to Epictetus than Marcus Aurelius. We are more lowly than we are exalted. Yet each of us, as Seneca said, has access to the greate

That obnoxious person. That contractor who ripped you off. That slow driver. That overly enthusiastic exercise instructor. That brusk receptionist. That clingy parent. That friend holding a grudge. That loud neighbor.They’re not exactly your favorite. They don’t exactly make your life easier. But you know what you need to remember? You need to remember that they are just doing their jobs. “Is a world without shameless people possible?” Marcus Aurelius asks in Meditations. No, it isn’t, he reminds himself. So why am I surprised to find one he says? Somebody has to be that person and this person is it.In her wonderful book on parenting, Good Inside, Dr. Becky Kennedy discusses what to do when a young child is having a full-on meltdown, what to do when they’re hitting a sibling because they’re upset or frustrated. Of course, your job is to keep them safe, to intervene but as that’s happening, she says we ought to say to ourself, “My child is doing their job of expressing feelings. We are both doing what we need

Today is that day many dread—the day the clocks spring forward. Yes, in the middle of the night, you lost an hour that you’ll never get back. An hour of sleep, an hour of leisure, an hour to spend with your kids. You mourn that loss of time, wondering all the ways you could’ve spent it otherwise.He is the pupil and successor of Dioghenes ho Babylonios (Diogenes of Babylon or of Seleucia) as head of the Stoic school. Antipater is also the teacher of Panaitios ho Rodos (Panaetius of Rhodes). In the field of ethics, Antipater seems to take a higher moral ground than that of his teacher Dioghenes.Today, Ryan reads from his book Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius to share the winding and often confounding story of one of the most important figures of Stoicism.To pre-order Ryan's latest book, Right Thing Right Now, click here.Don’t fall into this trap and join us TODAY for the Spring Forward challenge. It starts March 19 and is set up to push you to examine your habit

Ryan speaks with author Alexandra Hudson about how to navigate pragmatic situations through civility, unbundling the mental framework of people, her new book The Soul of Civility, and more. Alexandra is a writer, speaker, and the founder of Civic Renaissance, a publication and intellectual community dedicated to beauty, goodness and truth. She was named the 2020 Novak Journalism Fellow, and contributes to Fox News, CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, TIME Magazine, POLITICO Magazine, and Newsweek. She earned a master's degree in public policy at the London School of Economics as a Rotary Scholar, and is an adjunct professor at the Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy. She is also the creator of a series for The Teaching Company called Storytelling and The Human Condition, now available for streaming. She lives in Indianapolis, IN with her husband and children.Get a signed copy of The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves from The Painted Porch.IG: @alexa

For as long as there have been groups of people, people have wanted to be in charge of those people. For as long as there have been armies, people have tried to use them to conquer, to rule, to accumulate empires.Was it worth it? Did they enjoy it? Did it mean anything? Few, if any of them, ever bothered to honestly answer that question. This is what makes Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations such a remarkable and unprecedented text. Here you have the most powerful man in the world, head of the most powerful army on earth, a victorious general whose triumphs warranted an 130-foot tall marble column lauding his achievements. And what did he say that all this amounted to?Not much! Meditations is Marcus Aurelius’ refutation of the idea that you should want to rule the world. It strips it of its glamor and delusions (literally at one point, Marcus breaks down the feast he was given, removing, he said, “the legends that encrust it”). Being famous is empty, he tells us. Being remembered is worthless. Power is corrupting an

Seneca reminded himself that death is not this thing in the future, but something that is happening now. It is always happening. It is the ticking hand of the clock. It is the spring flowers. It is the fall harvest. It is the summer rains. It is the first snow of the year.This idea is a reminder that each moment is precious. It tells us to wake up and really live, not just watch time go by. To embrace the longer days and make the most of it. If that sounds like something you’re up for, why don’t you join is in what we’re calling the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge?The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge is set up to push you to examine those parts of your life, to examine your choices, to examine your relationships and move you closer to living your best life.Participants will receive:✓ 10 Custom Challenges Delivered Daily (Over 15,000 words of all-new original content)✓ One live Q&A session✓ Printable 10-Day Calendar With custom daily illustrations to track progress✓ Access to a Private Community P

Ryan Holiday is joined by Lt Colonel Mike Erwin. Together they discuss the central practice of journaling and reflection, how wisdom and discipline is a form of freedom, and although emotions make us human, it is critical for us to control them. They also discuss his two books Lead Yourself: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude and Leadership is a Relationship: How to Put People First in the Digital World.Lt Colonel Mike Erwin is a West Point graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics. He was commissioned as an Intelligence Officer and served three tours. Following his third deployment, Mike attended the University of Michigan, where he studied positive psychology and leadership.Mike is the founder of a non-profit organization named Team Red, White & Blue (Team RWB). Team RWB’s mission is to enrich the lives of America’s veterans by connecting them to their communities through physical and social activity. He is also a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, assigned to the US Military A

Seneca was exiled to what he felt was a rock in the middle of the ocean. He hated it. He thought it was torture. And of course, it was unfair that he was sent there—on trumped up charges no less—and it would have been lonely and sad to be so far from his family.Yet it is a little funny that the place he was sent to, Corsica, is a beautiful vacation spot for people all over the world today.Seneca couldn’t see that, just as perhaps you can’t see what’s just underneath the rough exterior of the situation you’re in. We’ve talked before about the Maggie Smith poem Good Bones. It takes a certain eye to be able spot what others are too depressed or too cynical or too devastated to see.Think of the settlers and developers who were able to see what later became bustling cities in the uncultivated land. Think of the people who were able to see the potential for renewal and growth in a run down neighborhood. Think of the leaders who saw a future in an organization or franchise that everyone else gave up on.We can forgiv

Spring is the most beautiful of the seasons. Suddenly, after a dreary winter, the colors come back. The birds are out. The days last longer. The breeze is light and the air is cool.But as Phillip Larkin’s bittersweet poem reminds us, beneath this turning of the seasons is a kind of darkness.The trees are coming into leafLike something almost being said;The recent buds relax and spread,Their greenness is a kind of griefThe inherent grief is the passage of time. Each season brings new life, yes, but also marks the cessation of life. It’s a painful truth, the poem points out, written in the rings of the tree. Winter is dead and over…and all of us a little more so too.This notion serves as a gentle nudge, reminding us of the preciousness of every moment. It urges us not merely to exist but to truly live, to seize each season and extract its full potential. It’s saying don’t let a new season come and go without springing forward with it—not just meeting it, but making something of it. If you’re up for that, why do

Marcus Aurelius opens Meditations reflecting upon what he has learned from various influential individuals in his life. It’s titled “Debts and Lessons,” and the 17 entries spanning nine pages and more than 2,000 words make up nearly 10% of the entire book! Marcus writes with the humility of someone in the final act of their life taking stock of how lucky they are to be where they are.It’s beautiful. And it totally dispenses with the notion of the "self-made man," the idea that someone got somewhere all on their own. Marcus knew he was a product of so many mentors, influencers, advisors and teachers. Debt is the operative word in that title—he owed them so much.When we talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger on a recent episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, he talked about this very idea (in fact, he references how inspired he was by Meditations in the final chapter of his fantastic new book Be Useful). Because on the surface Arnold Schwarzenegger’s remarkable life story is a classic example of that idea of the “self-ma

In today's weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan reminds us How To Remain Calm When The Rest Of The World Is Freaking Out: 9 Tips From The Stoics by the way of voice actor Michael Reid. The article delves into specific Stoic practices, such as mindfulness, self-reflection, and the deliberate contemplation of worst-case scenarios, to empower individuals to confront challenges with equanimity. Additionally, it highlights the importance of maintaining perspective, recognizing the impermanence of external events, and reframing hardships as opportunities for personal development. Overall, the article serves as a practical guide for applying Stoic philosophy in modern times, offering readers a timeless toolkit to remain composed and centered when the world around them seems to be unraveling.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail