The Daily Stoic - Somebody Lit From Within | 10 Stoic Habits To Practice In 2024

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Agrippinus once told another philosopher that while everyone else wanted to blend in, he was content to stand out—to ‘be the red thread’ in the sweater, the one that makes the garment beautiful. It wasn’t attention and fame he was after, nor was he rewarded for standing out in this way. In the end, Agrippinus was exiled (his father was executed for similar crimes). Cato could have made a fortune in politics, if he was after the same things his peers were after. He could have wielded enormous power. But he wasn’t willing to do what everyone else was willing to do. Fame and money were not what motivated him, it’s not what lit him up.It was a loose cohort of Stoics—we tell their stories in the book Lives of the Stoics—was heroic and incredible, as virtue always is. They stood out, backlit against the sameness, the cowardice, the complicity of their times. Still, they suffered for this courage, these principles, this desire to be themselves. We should take their example, but be sure not to take it lightly._If you can cultivate good habits, you can survive—even thrive on—what lies ahead. If you relapse and fall to the level of your worst habits, these hard times will only be harder. Epictetus said habits—good and bad—were like a bonfire. Every time we perform a habit, we reinforce it, we add fuel to the fire. In this video excerpt Ryan Holiday outlines 10 Stoic habits that can change your life in 2024.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas and how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. Somebody lit from within. From the time of Caesar through the end of the reign of Nero, there was a remarkable run of heroic stoics. There was Cato, there was Portia, there was Thrasia, Agrippinus, Helvideus, Epictetus.

Nearly everyone else was willing to go along to get along. Everyone else was corrupted by their ambition, by their self-interest, by their love of money or attention or validation. But not these delics. They were lit from within, you might say, motivated by their own values, their love of virtue, rather than trying to get ahead. Agrippinus once told a philosopher that while everyone else wanted to blend in, he was content to stand out, to be the red thread in the sweater, the one that makes the garment beautiful.

It wasn't attention and fame he was after, nor was he rewarded for standing out in this way. In the end, Agrippinus was exiled. His father was executed for similar crimes. Cato could have made a fortune in politics if he was after the same things his peers were after. He could have wielded enormous power, but he wasn't willing to do what everyone else was willing to do.

Fame and money were not what motivated him. It's not what lit him up. It was this loose cohort of Stoics, and I tell their stories in the book Lives of the Stoics, that was heroic and incredible as virtue always is. They stood out, backlit against the sameness, the cowardice, the complicity of their times. And still they suffered for this courage, these principles, this desire to be themselves. We should take their example,

but to be sure not to take it lightly. It's the right road, this road to greatness. Yet it is a rough and dangerous road, all the same. And it's funny, you know, Lives of the Stoics is a book I'm super proud of, but I probably learned the most about the Stoics writing. I learned about Thrasia and Cato and Portia Cato, his daughter. I learned about Agrippinus Helvideus.

I learned about Epictetus' teacher, Mussonius Rufus, who was exiled on four different occasions. So we have to understand that the Stoics weren't just the famous Stoics, but there's all these other Stoics, and in fact, they might be the most inspiring and impressive of all the Stoics. So check it out. You can grab Lives of the Stoics, Anywhere Books Are Sold, but you can also grab a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com. This podcast is brought to you in part by Audible. Every year offers us the opportunity to get closer to the best versions of ourselves. No matter where you are on your well-being journey, Audible is there for you. They have an ever-growing selection of stories to inspire, sounds to soothe, and voices that have the potential to change your life.

Sometimes we need a little encouragement to truly spark change in our life. If you need something a little more than someone simply telling you to be more positive, check out Don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements. He dissects how people impose limitations on themselves that rob them of true joy and provides a simple to follow code of personal conduct to start living life more freely. Get closer to the best you with Audible. Explore a wealth of well-being titles like Bestsellers, New Releases, and Exclusive Originals.

Listen now on Audible. How much longer are you gonna wait to demand the best of yourselves? We all know we have potential. We all know we have things we need to stop doing. We all know we have things that we should start doing. But we tell ourselves we'll do it later. But will you? The New Year

At the end of the year, everyone thinks about how the year went and how they want the new year to go better. What they're really talking about is habits. Epictetus once encapsulated all of Stoke philosophy in just two words, resist and resist. Meaning there were some things we had to keep doing and as we look out here at the beginning of a new year, it's the perfect time to start quitting some destructive habits. What are you day to day?

Your actions big and small. That's how we become better. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written books about soad philosophy. I've been lucky enough to speak about it to the NBA and the NFL, sitting senators in Special Forces Leader. But I'm also just a regular person who's trying to get a little bit better every single year. And in today's episode, I want talk about some Stilix inspired habits

that you can look at as we go into a new year. Habits to stop doing, habits to start doing, who the Stilix want you to be, to create hopefully a new you. I think the first place to start is the idea of thinking really, really small. George Washington's favorite saying was, many nickels make a muckle.

This is an old Scottish proverb. It basically just means like things add up. Zeno, the founder of stoicism says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. You don't promise yourself that you're going to read more, you decide you're going to read a page a day. You don't decide that you're going to more, you decide you're gonna read a page a day. You don't decide that you're gonna transform your diet or your exercise, like you start going for a walk.

Make a small decision and then you build on it. About this, I love James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. I got to see him put this book together, we go way back. We sell this book at my bookstore, The Pain and Portion. But I think the idea of Atomic Habits is like, as the subtitle says, tiny changes, remarkable results. But even think about what an atomic, what it means to say an atomic habit.

It's not just explosive. Like an atom is the smallest possible building block you can think of. So when we think about habits, let's start really, really small. Don't lie to yourself, don't get ahead of yourself. Just think of the smallest thing you can start with. Don't give in to your anxiety this year. You have to stop letting anxiety rule you.

In one of the passages in Meditations, Marcus really says, today I escaped anxiety. He said, wait, wait, no, that's not right. This is actually, I discarded it. It was within me. The plane, the airport, that's not responsible for your anxiety. You're responsible for anxiety. You're responsible for your feelings.

You're responsible for the worry that you're projecting at this thing. And it's not helping you. It's not making you better. It's not doing anything about the problem. You're just torturing yourself in anticipation of what might happen or might not happen. I've never been in the thrall of anxiety, right?

Traveling somewhere or some big project. And then afterwards, I'm like, I'm so glad I was so anxious about that. No, it made people around me upset. It made me upset. It made me miserable. It didn't do anything for me, and it's not going to do anything for you this year.

I think it's impossible to have good habits without a routine. So you have to develop and build a routine. Habits and routines, they work together. So for me, I wake up early, I take my kids outside, we run, or we go on a walk. One of my rules, I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm awake, I journal in the morning.

Then one of my big habits is I tackle my big creative project first. I don't get sucked into email first. I don't have a meeting first. I don't watch TV first. I tackle the big creative project first. Again, that's one of the things I identify with that I own the morning. I'm a morning person.

I tackle the morning. I kick the shit out of the morning. I am successful in the morning. That wasn't just naturally who I was, this is something I had to develop and build. So you need a routine, you cannot win it. Seneca says that life without design is erratic. It says principles are necessary,

there's nothing more shameful than uncertain chaos and disorder. So build a routine and stick to it. Stick to the routine. And again, these are little things. What time do you wake up? What time do you go to bed? What time do you have lunch? What do you do? What do you not do? Build a routine and stick to it. One of the stories I was most moved by that I was most excited about when I was writing Discipline as Destiny is the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had a four pack a day, 40 year smoking habit.

And his doctor said, you're gonna die if you don't stop. It's screwing with your heart, it's screwing with your lungs. If you want to continue to be a service to the country, you got to stop. And so Eisenhower famously said, I gave myself an order and I stopped. He quit cold turkey after 40 years. It's actually a very stoic idea.

Epictetus is no man is free who is not master of himself. Seneca said we're all slaves to something. Some people are slaves to sex or they're mistresses. He says other people are slaves to power or ambition. Maybe some of us are slaves to that cup of coffee in the morning. We all have things that we do that we know we need to stop doing to be the person that we want to be. One foundational habit for next year, free up precious resources. People say, oh, I don't have time, but pull up the screen time app on your phone. You have time. You just choose to spend it on things that don't matter. You watch too much news, you spend too much time doom scrolling. You say you don't have time, but here you are watching this video. We spend too much time on things

that don't matter. So one of the best habits changes I've made is sort of winnowing my worldview. Of course, you have to know what's going on in the world but you don't have to obsess about it in real time. You don't have to consume things that make you feel crappy or awful or suck you into this catastrophizing mindset. If you wish to improve, Epictetus says, you have to be willing to not know about some things, right? So focus on what matters. Lock in time to focus on making better habits by eliminating things that are sucking up too much of your time now. Every new year, Seneca started the year off the same thing. of your time now. Every new year, Seneca started the year off the same thing.

He would throw himself into the Tiber River, the freezing river in Rome on the 1st of January. She's saying, I'm in charge, I'm so in charge, I'm hurling myself into this freezing river even though I really don't want to. Who do you associate with? Studies show like if you have unhealthy friends, you're gonna be unhealthy. If you have ambitious friends, you're gonna be ambitious.

My father said this to me as a kid. He said, Ryan, you become like your friends. So associate with people that make you better. If you dwell with a lame man, was the old expression, you will learn how to limp. Now, so who do you surround yourself with? Who is your peer group? Who are the people you spend the most time with

and how do you become the average of them? We have the Daily Silk Life community, by the way, which I'd love to have you join. It's a private Facebook group. You get extra emails, you get Q and A's with me. I think it's one of the best things we do. But the idea is who's your community? In the ancient world, the Stokes had the Sipionic Circle,

a group of Stokes who would get together and have dinner parties and events and debate philosophy and read books and share with each other. Even the relationship between Seneca and Lensilius, which we get in Seneca's letters of a Stoic, it's them talking to each other. He says, we learn as we teach

by having this peer group, they both get better. So who are you spending time with this year? That's a foundational basic habit that will make you better. This year you can't fear change. In one of the beautiful passages in Meditations, Marx really reminds himself that everything in life comes from change, good and bad. And by trying to keep things the same,

not only are you of course focused on something that you don't control, but you're preventing yourself from all the wonderful opportunities that exist that could come your way. Look, we live in a time of disruption. We live in a time of institutions that are falling apart. We live in a time of innovation, new institutions that are being created. So you can't fear what's going to come of that. The stoics would say, all you could focus on this year is embracing those things, adapting yourself to change, acquiescing to that change rather than fighting it,

rather than fearing it, rather than resenting it. Cause it's gonna happen regardless of how you feel about it. So what you should focus on, stoics would say, is what you're going to do about it. You have to say no to the inessential. Marcus Reales says most of what we do is not essential, but when we say no to those inessential things, when we eliminate them, it gives us a double benefit. He says, because then we can do the essential things better. So you have to realize that everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else. But conversely

and most importantly, when you say no to the things that don't matter, it gives you the opportunity to say yes to the things that really do matter. And not a little yes, not a soft yes, but an emphatic both feet yes. And that's what you need to be successful and happy and good. And it is inevitable that we will fall short. Marcus did, I do, everyone does. Antoninus Pius probably did too, which is why in meditations, Marcus really says to pick yourself back up when you fall, but he also says to celebrate the fact

that you're a human being. What matters, he says, is that you come back to the rhythm of it. We're gonna be jarred by circumstances. We're gonna be messed up. We're gonna slip on our diet, on our New Year's resolution, on the progress we were making. That's okay. What matters is that you get back up. What matters is that more often than not, you stick to it, that you always come back home to it.

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