Now Is The Time For Structure

"Maybe right now you’re stuck at home, maybe you’re not working. Your kids might be home with you. Certainly the normal way of doing things has been significantly altered. Well, now is the time to follow the Stoic practices more than ever." Find out what kind of practices you should incorporate into your life in today's Daily Stoic podcast.****If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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 at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Now is the time for structure. When things are chaotic and crazy, when the world can feel like it's falling apart, this is when we need to create structure. Eisenhower famously said that freedom was properly defined as the opportunity for self-discipline, and so it is with disorder. It's an opportunity to create order. Maybe right now you're stuck at home, maybe you're not working, your kids might be home with you, certainly the normal way of doing things has been significantly altered. Well, now is the time to follow the Stoic practices more than ever, to follow the kinds of routines that Marcus Aurelius followed every day, or the practice that Seneca followed with his evening journaling:

• 1:09Ryan Holiday?

  get up early, be deliberate, exercise, set up, stick to a diet, create limits and order, clean your house, attack problems or projects that have piled up. Marcus said that we must concentrate like a Roman, and there is no time to do that like the present. There's not a lot of good that can come out of a global pandemic, but one positive can be that we used it as an opportunity to get our act together, to adjust and fine-tune our habits while we had the time. More importantly, one of the best ways to cure anxiety, to deal with stress, and to become present is to really throw yourself into some means of self-improvement. "Don't allow yourself to be crushed by life as a whole," Marcus said. "Start with what's in front of you. Create some order today. Focus on your habits.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  You'll find it does wonders." And I strongly urge you to check out our Daily Stoic Habits for Success Habits for Happiness Challenge. It's six weeks, which might get you all the way through this quarantine of great emails, insights, and exercises from the Stoics about creating foundational habits that will make you happier, more resilient, healthier, and of course, more successful. You can check that out right now at dailystoic.com/habits.