The One Thing All Humans Have In Common | What’s Up To Us, What’s Not Up To Us

It’s January 1st. It snuck up on you, didn’t it? You knew the year was wrapping up, you had resolutions you meant to make, a review you meant to do of the last twelve months, goals you intended to set, habits you were going to start in 2024…and then here it is already. Or worse than procrastination, you may have already relapsed on your resolutions. You had a late one last night, and you’re already saying to yourself this morning, what’s one cup of coffee or one cigarette? (even though you were quitting). Does getting up early really matter that much?, you’re asking yourself. Do I have to workout every day? So you give yourself a mulligan and say that actually tomorrow is the real first day of the year. This is what we humans have been doing and saying for thousands of years. Twenty centuries ago, Seneca said that it’s the one thing fools all have in common: they are always getting ready to start. We see this every year. It’s pretty funny actually. Starting in early December, we start talking about the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge.--In this first Daily Stoic Journal entry of the new year, Ryan revisits the most important Stoic task that there is: distinguishing between what is in our control and what isn't.✉️ 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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:36Ryan Holiday?

  The one thing we all have in common, it's January 1st today. Maybe it snuck up on you. It did sneak up on you, didn't it? You knew the year was wrapping up. You had resolutions you meant to make, a review you meant to do of the last 12 months, goals you intended to set, habits you were going to start in 2024. And then here it is already. Or worse than procrastination, you may have already relapsed on your resolutions. You had a late one last night, and you're already saying to yourself this morning, what's one cup of coffee or one cigarette? You know you were quitting. Does getting up early even really matter that much, you're asking yourself? Do I have to work out every day? And so you give yourself a mulligan, and you say that actually tomorrow is the first real day of

• 1:20Ryan Holiday?

  the year. This is what human beings have been doing and saying for thousands of years. 20 centuries ago, Seneca said that it's the one thing that all fools have in common. They're always getting ready to start. We, I see this every year, pretty funny, actually. Starting in early December, we start talking about the Daily Stoic New Year, New Year Challenge. And you're probably already tired of hearing about it. And I'm sorry about that. But you know what day gets close to the most signups? It's January 1st, after it's already started. Daily Stoics customer service spends like the first three or four days of the year, just filtering through emails from people saying something like, "I know I'm late, but I'd love to do it. Can you still let me in?" And it's also funny to watch how the challenge goes. Among the people who do sign up later, otherwise,

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  I can watch how quickly many of them drop out or drop off. No matter the changes that we make or the incentives we set up to keep going, it's just how humans operate. We make commitments, we set goals, we start things, and then our willpower collapses. We make mistakes, we miss stuff, and then we have trouble getting back on track. And this too is something that Stoicism helps with. As Marcus Aurelius reminds himself in Meditations, "The key is how quickly you can repair, pick up the pieces." "When jarred unavoidably by circumstances," he writes, "revert at once to yourself and don't lose the rhythm any more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it." Well, the thing about rhythm is that it doesn't get lost. Only we can. The beat goes on, the right path stays open. We just have to come back to it.

• 2:47Ryan Holiday?

  We have to pick it up again. Doesn't matter how badly we've messed up, how much we've stumbled. It's still there. It's open for us. It's not exactly waiting for us, but it continues on, ready for us whenever we choose to join or rejoin. And look, if you felt like I was talking to you in today's episode, if you've been procrastinating, if you've already relapsed on some habits, if you've been thinking about emailing Daily Stoic's customer service to see if it's not too late. I just talked to Ashley and she is plenty ready. You can still join the Daily Stoic New Year, New Challenge. We're keeping it open just a little while longer so you can let it in. You can do the Q and As with me and all the other stuff. I'd really love to have you join us. I'm already off to the races on it, but I hope to see you in there.

• 3:30Ryan Holiday?

  You can sign up now at dailystoic.com/challenge. Not "I'm gonna do it tomorrow, I'm gonna do it later next year." No, just do it now. Let's do it together. Join me and thousands of other Stoics trying to kick the year off right. And by right, I mean with challenges, things that push us out of our comfort zone, force us to do things we wouldn't otherwise do, help us set those new habits and stay on that path or stick with the rhythm. Again, it's not too late. I'd love to have you join us, dailystoic.com/challenge. I'll see you in there today and tomorrow, hopefully.

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've got my Daily Stoic Journal in front of me. It's actually got the new cover on it, which is pretty awesome. I'm actually sliding it in here. Let's riff on today's entry. This is the first week in the Daily Stoic Journal, and it starts with the most important Stoic task that there is: What's up to us and what's not up to us? Epictetus's handbook, the Incoridion, begins with the most powerful exercise in all of Stoicism: the distinction between things that are up to us, in our control, and the things that are not up to us. It is this,

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  the dichotomy of control, that is the first principle in the entire philosophy. We don't control many of the things we pursue in life, yet we become angry, sad, hurt, scared, and jealous when we don't get them. In fact, these emotions, those reactions, are about the only thing we do control. If that is the only lesson to journal on and think about this year, consider it a year well and philosophically lived. And then Epictetus's Discourses, which we actually opened the Daily Stoic with, so I'll riff on that in a second, but he says, "Look, the chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are

• 5:48Ryan Holiday?

  externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not in uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own." And then in Incoridion 1.1, he riffs on what is and isn't in our control. He says, "Some things are in our control while others are not. We control our opinion, our choice, our desire, our aversions. In a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body, our property, our reputation, our position. And in a word, everything not in our own doing. And even more, the things in our control..." Are by nature free, unhindered and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak and slavish and can be hindered and are not our own.

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  And then 122, he says, "We control our reasoned choice in all acts that depend on moral will. What's not under control are our body and any of its parts, our possessions, our parents, our siblings, our children, our country, anything with which we might associate." Look, I think what Epictetus is saying here is that not just the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer, you know, you separate things into the categories and you only focus on what's up to you, but that a lot of things that we think of as being up to us are not even up to us, right? Really, at the absolute core of it, what we control are our thoughts, our emotions, our opinions. We don't control what happens, control how we respond to what happens,

• 7:18Ryan Holiday?

  but even then, within a constrained amount. And this might seem kind of resigned or a sad way to start the year, but I, I don't think it is. I think it's the only way to start the year. It's certainly the only way I thought we could start The Daily Stoic, which I'll read to you the, the January 1 entry. "The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can't, what we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather. No amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can't make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  is time not spent on the things we can change. The recovery community practices something called the Serenity Prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices that they have made or the hurt they have caused, but they can change the future through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus says, they can control the choices they make right now." The same is true for us today, for the year that stands before us. If we focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting.

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  An unwinnable battle. It's funny, I think when we're younger, we have an outsized view of what's in our control and what isn't, and as we get older, we ratchet that back, which is ironic, because as we get older, we're also more powerful, more successful, etc. But you, you just realize, like, look, you don't control what other people do. I mean, even the more, the longer I've been a parent, the, it's not the less strict I am, but I do feel a more chill I am, because I've made the mistakes, I've tried to control things I don't control, I've seen where my anxiety, or stress, or worry, or whatever gets me, and I cultivate the ability to step back, to focus on what I control.

• 9:32Ryan Holiday?

  My son was like, I was working, I was playing on the floor with one of my sons, and my other son drew on my jacket with a pen a couple of days ago, and it's like my favorite jacket, it's like ruined, he wrote all over it with a red Sharpie, I don't know why I didn't notice, but I didn't, and, you know, I was mad, but there's a part, I was like, hey, look, like, no amount of being mad at a child is going to undo the ruined jacket, and what's the opportunity that I want to seize here? What good is it to make this person feel bad about what happened? Or to, no amount of yelling is going to undo what happened. So I want to, I want to take the opportunity to talk about, instead, calmly, respectfully,

• 10:16Ryan Holiday?

  talk about what it means to respect other people's persons, their stuff, etc. And to talk about, hey, how would you feel if I did that to something that you like, or that you care about, right? And I didn't do it perfectly, but my wife and I were talking about it after, just like how, compared to how our parents would have reacted, how different it was. But the idea is, look, I just control what I do about it, I just control how I respond, I just control whether I let my emotions get the best of me or not, or when I catch myself, at what point in that process do I walk it back, right? What's up to us and what's not up to us.

• 10:59Ryan Holiday?

  I feel like so many of the things that I'm upset about, that I get in arguments about, what I'm really saying is, I wish that hadn't happened. I want to undo that that happened. And that's not how life works. That's not something that's up to me. And so I'm practicing the idea of getting a little bit better at letting go of that thing, of moving on from that thing. And so must you. This is a year that we try to focus more on what's in our control. We argue less with reality. I have a whole set of note cards. It's a theme I often journal and think about how often I find this. We're in arguments with reality. We wish things were different. They weren't the way that they were. And this isn't like

• 11:42Ryan Holiday?

  resigning yourself to the state of society. This is resigning yourself that something that did happen, happened. Arguing and relitigating and relitigating, it doesn't change it. You don't have the power to make it unhappen. But you do have the power to decide how it's going to make you feel, whether it harms you or not, what you do about it, who you are because of it. That's the part of this that's up to us. That's where I'll leave you today. It's a wonderful new year. Like I was saying, I've got the leather cover on the journal, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com. It's really cool. I'm glad to have one. This is the copy I keep at the office. I have one at home. And on the front, it just says, "Make time," which is what we should be doing for journaling. We should make time to think about what's in our control and what isn't. You can check

• 12:27Ryan Holiday?

  that out at store.dailystoic.com. Happy New Year, everyone. Hope you're enjoying the challenge and we'll talk soon.