This is the Most Important Virtue

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  This is the most important virtue.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  We have known forever to master anything, one first must master themselves, one's emotions, one's thoughts, one's actions. From Aristotle to Herakles, Saint Thomas Aquinas to the Stoics, from the Iliad to the Bible, in Buddhism, in Confucianism, in Islam, the ancients have had many words and many symbols for this timeless law of the universe. But whatever the language, it's all a way to spell D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N-E. Discipline. Seneca tried to instill it in the rulers. He advised that the most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. Marcus Aurelius said, "Love the discipline you know and let it support you." Cicero called the virtue of temperance

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  "the polish of life." Discipline, it's the thing that makes it possible to achieve greatness, as well as bring greatness to whatever it is that you do, however humble. I'm Ryan Holiday. You know me in that I deliver the reading of these Daily Stoic messages each day. And for the last five or six years, that's what I've been doing, this daily message, podcast, email. I don't know if I've ever really broken this third wall and said, "Hey, I'm Ryan." But that's what I'm doing now. I'm Ryan Holiday, and my new book, Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, is now up for preorder. And in the book, I talk about this idea, this idea from the Stoics, that discipline is the most important virtue. Without it, without self-control,

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  without boundaries, we risk not only failing to meet our full potential and jeopardizing what we've achieved, but we ensure misery and shame. And what was true in 300 B.C. is truer today. In a world of far more temptations and excess, this ancient idea, the second of the cardinal virtues, is more urgent than ever. And look, I would love for you to consider pre-ordering the new book, Discipline is Destiny, because I've worked very, very hard on it and I'd love for you to read it. Pre-ordering makes a huge difference for authors and bookstores as we try to get a book off the ground. And it'd mean a lot to me if you could support this book. And to make it worthwhile, I put together a ton of awesome bonuses, including signed copies, signed pages from drafts of the manuscript as I wrote it, as well as two full bonus chapters,

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  and a Spotify playlist I use while writing the book. Discipline is Destiny officially releases on 9/27. It's already gotten some rave reviews. Admiral James Stavridis, whose books I've raved about here, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, he called it "a powerful case for the virtues and the values that leaders must live by in the modern world." Annie Duke said "it's a brisk and absorbing read," and Stephen Pressfield just told me that he read the whole thing straight through and really loved it. Said he can't recommend it enough, especially the last chapter. If you want to take their word for it, or my word for it, I'd love for you to preorder Discipline is Destiny right now. But most of all, I want you to practice this most essential of all virtues: self-discipline. And you can do that at dailystoic.com/preorder.

• 3:29Ryan Holiday?

  Check that out. All the awesome bonuses are there. dailystoic.com/preorder.