BONUS | Another Year Gone By. What Have You Done?

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  Another year gone by, what have you done? It went by fast, didn't it? 12 months. Just 12 months ago, you were right here, thinking about how 2025 would go, thinking about changes you were trying to make, things you were gonna start, things you were going to stop. Well, it's like that verse in the beautiful John Lennon and Yoko Ono Christmas songs.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  So this is Christmas.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  And what have you done?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Another year over.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  And a new one just begun.

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  The first part of that haunts us a little. There was more that we could have done. There were things we fell short with. There was life left unlived. And it's a little bittersweet and sad, isn't it? A little disappointing, even shameful. But it's that final line that has the hope in it, as well as the imperative. We've been blessed with another go, or at least the start of another go. Will we take it? Or will we go on the same as we did before and before and before? Marcus Aurelius had a powerful thought exercise that is worth trying here at the close of the year. "Think of yourself as dead," he says. "Imagine that your life has come to its end.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  Think about what you left undid. Think about the perspective this puts on things. Think about what you'll regret, what you'll wish you could do differently, what you wish you'd started and stopped. Now," he says, "you've been given a second chance. So take what's left and live it properly." 2025 is over, but now 2026 is just beginning. Live it properly.