It’s Scary…But In A Good Way

Without change, we stagnate. Our minds grow complacent, ignorant to new ideas. Our bodies grow weak from disuse. We remain stuck.👉 SPECIAL OFFER FOR PODCAST LISTENERS ONLY | Go to dailystoic.com/spring and enter code DSPOD20 at checkout to get 20% off the Spring Forward Challenge! Challenge yourself to spring forward and become the person you aspire to be. The Spring Forward Challenge starts March 20, 2026. Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🇺🇸 USA dates:Portland, Oregon - June 8 San Francisco, California - June 11Minneapolis, Minnesota - August 18 Chicago, Illinois - August 19 Detroit, Michigan - August 20 🇳🇿 NEW ZEALAND:Auckland, New Zealand - October 13 🇦🇺 AUSTRALIA dates:Sydney, Australia - October 16 Melbourne, Australia - October 18 Brisbane, Australia - October 20Perth, Australia - October 21 🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 VIDEO EPISODES | Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Change is hard. That's why we avoid it. It's easier when things stay the same, when we have familiar ways and routines, our morning coffee, our job, the way we learned it, where no news is good news. Change, on the other hand, requires adjustment. It requires acceptance. It requires us to change. So naturally, yeah, we avoid it. We fear it. But as Marcus Aurelius points out to those of us who are frightened by change, nothing could exist without it. And you know what else change is? It's growth, or at least it is the opportunity for growth. Without change, we stagnate.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  Our minds grow complacent, ignorant to new ideas. Our bodies grow weak from disuse. We remain stuck. We lack clarity. We, as part of the world, part of nature, part of the logos, need to change in order to maintain our well-being. With the new cycle of spring of regrowth and renewal finally upon us, it is time to change. It's time to listen to the rhythm of the seasons, to begin afresh, to grow back stronger than before.

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome back to the Daily Stoic Podcast. It was like 84 on Friday here in Austin, and then it was rainy and wet and cold all weekend. As I'm recording it now, it's, I've got a sweatshirt on and... Got muddy boots by the back door. In Austin, we have something called false fall and false spring. It's hard to know exactly the transitions of the seasons. We have some, we have some false starts, but, but even to be there, right? Even to be here where the, the clocks have just changed is a reminder that time is flying. Right? There's not that much left of winter and spring is basically right here.

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  I was in Phoenix, I was just finishing up that run of four dates. And by the way, we also just announced five more dates in the U.S. And five in New Zealand and Australia. You can grab tickets for that at dailystoiclive.com. I hope to see you, I think San Francisco and Portland. I think there's Minneapolis, Detroit. I'm forgetting some of the others. Where have we got? We've got Sydney, Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth. They're all there. Dailystoiclive.com if you want those dates. But anyways, while I was in Phoenix, I guess this would have been two weeks ago by the time you're hearing this. And that was one of the things that I talked about with them. I'll just play that, right?

• 3:00Ryan Holiday?

  Cause if you're anything like me or them, you had a rough go of it the last couple of months. What a calm and normal and not at all alarming or incredibly long and scary winter has been. Certainly no need for anything like Stoicism, focusing on what you control, not losing your mind, making sense of chaos, resiliency, turning obstacles upside down, right? No, no need for, for any of that. Of course, that's what the ancient world was too. I think sometimes we think, oh, it was simpler back then. They lived in simpler times. No, they lived in exactly the same type of stuff that we're experiencing now. There's problems, difficulties.

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  They lived in the future, they just didn't have that.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  Everything else, though, everything else.

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  It's always been like this, is I guess what I'm saying, which is what Stoicism is there for. Although it does feel like it's been extra crazy lately. You know, there's been crazy news, crazy people, crazy weather. We had this storm in Texas and temperatures dropped way down and then it rained a bunch. So just everything froze. Kids couldn't go to school, we had to shut down the bookstore. People's pipes froze, it was really bad. If you have a heart, I think the only thing you can think in moments like that is fuck ice, right?

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  I'm at an expert of this thing, I think we're just gonna have to abolish it. You just can't afford ice like that.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  Sorry, that's neither here nor there.

• 4:46Ryan Holiday?

  But no, just a few months ago, we were thinking about our resolutions, right? What do we want to start doing in the new year? What we're gonna stop doing in the new year? What kind of new person did we want to be in the new year? And I think it's worth thinking about, like here, almost all the way through the first quarter of that year. Like, how did you do? Did you start doing the stuff you said you were gonna start doing? Did you stop doing the stuff you were gonna stop doing? Did you make those changes? Did you start those habits? How are you doing it? Or did you get rattled? Did you get distracted? Did you get sort of thrown off the path?

• 5:26Ryan Holiday?

  Like, in my family, it's been the entire month of January, sick with one strain of flu after another, and one kid getting it after another, and just watched it go like waves through the whole house. And so, you know, that happens. That is a timeless thing, right? We have our plans, we have our expectations, we have what we want to do, we have what we know we're supposed to do, and then, you know, life says, "I don't think so." Right? And as I said, this is true in the ancient world. One of the best quotes in meditation, this is Marx, really, is six, eleven. This is what he says. He says, "When jarred unavoidably by circumstances." And I think that word unavoidably is key.

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  When jarred unavoidably by circumstances, you have to revert at once to yourself and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of the harmony if you can keep going back to it. So Stoicism isn't like perfection or even consistency, because we're all human beings and therefore inconsistent and imperfect. Stoicism is the ability to get back to it as quickly as you can, to reset, to level set, to restore, right? To repair. I feel like every sort of milestone in the year is a chance to do that, right? The seasons are changing. How do we change? The clocks are springing forward. How do we spring forward? That's actually something we've done

• 6:56Ryan Holiday?

  with daily Stoic for the last several years. Like, we do a challenge in New Year's and then we just take for granted a good chunk of us, myself included, and art is screwed up by March. And so we do, at the end of the March, we do like 10 days of Stoic challenges about sort of cleaning out the junk that's already accumulated in just those couple of months. And so as you get those opportunities, you want to take them. And that's sort of what I wanted to talk about tonight. Like, how do we use this as an opportunity? Having been jarred, having been thrown off, having been distracted or rattled a little bit? How do we get back to it? Because it's too early to give up on 2026. Even though it feels like this is the longest year ever.

• 7:40Ryan Holiday?

  It's too early to give up on 2026. We don't know what the rest of the year has in store for us. Maybe it'll be calm and chill from here on out. Probably not, though. It never is. We can say for certain, though, that what is ahead is uncertain. And it's probably not going to take our preferences into account. And so... It's a good chance then to take stock of ourselves, to get back to those first principles, to get back on track, right? A reset, a return to the rhythm. And for the Stoics, those four principles, the core best practices would be the cardinal virtues. And I thought we

• 8:22Ryan Holiday?

  could talk about that tonight, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. And look, if you're looking for a spring reset, if you want to renew, if you want to refocus, if you want to get back to the rhythm, as Marcus Aurelius talks about, well, I think you would love this challenge. It's gonna be awesome. I'd love to see you in there. We've got a special offer for podcast listeners. 20% off when you use code D S POD 20 at checkout. You can join me and thousands of other Stoics in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. Just head over to dailystoic.com/spring and enter code D S POD 20 to get 20% off.

• 9:08Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.