11 Stoic Secrets To Better Habits in 2022

The Stoics had a word, arete, which was the ultimate expression of human greatness—moral, physical, spiritual. It’s what the Stoics were chasing. It’s what you’re chasing today. But how do we get there? Well, it requires a certain philosophical approach. Because brilliance and inspiration and skill are not enough. Here are some Stoic secrets to better habits that Ryan Holiday is taking in the new year, and we hope you do too. Watch the video: https://youtu.be/0OV4sl7SV-E → We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It kicks off in a little over a week. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st! Centered is the only To Do list app that actually helps you get your work DONE. You enter your Tasks and while you work on them, Centered blocks your notifications, plays scientifically-designed Flow Music and has a virtual coach who helps keep you on track. Download Centered today at centered.app/stoic and use the Promo Code “STOIC” to get a free month of Centered Premium. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. The Stoics had a word erite, which was the sort of ultimate expression of human greatness, moral, physical, spiritual. That's what the Stoics were chasing. I think that's what you're chasing too. Epictetus talks about how some people delight in improving their farm or their horse. He says, "Me, I delight in my own improvement day to day." That's what erite is about. But how do we get there? Well, it requires a certain philosophical approach, because obviously, I think just being brilliant or talented is not enough, because that just keeps you as you are.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  So if we think about that, as excellence not being this thing that you are, but as something that you get towards, that you move towards, a way of living, then I think that is also a recipe for having a really great year, a really great 2022. Wouldn't you rather, I think, be at the end of 2022, looking back as you're looking back on 2021 now, and be able to say, "Here's all the ways that I improved. Here's where I was at the beginning of the year. Here's where I am at the end of the year." Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about 11 Stoic practices, exercises, ways of thinking and being that will Build better habits and a better you in 2022.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  And as you can imagine, one way to do that is the daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, which we are coming up on the deadline for. I'd love to have you join us. Go to dailystoic.com/challenge. I'll be in there doing it with you. But anyways, we'll get into that later. Here are 11 Stoic secrets to better habits and a better you in 2022.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  At the end of the year, everyone thinks about how the year went and how they want the new year to go better. They're really talking about is better habits. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've been writing about Stoicism now for almost 15 years. I've spoken about it to everyone from the NFL, sitting US senators and special forces operators. And I, of course, try to practice the philosophy in my own life. I try to be productive. I try to be a good person, try to be a good parent. I try to be present. I try not to be addicted to my device. All of this is about habit. So in today's video, I want to talk about better habits to create, hopefully, a new you.

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  The first place to start is the idea of thinking really, really small. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, says, "Well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing," right? You don't promise yourself that you're going to read more. You decide you're going to read like a page a day. You don't decide that you're going to transform your diet or your exercise. Like, you start going for a walk, right? Make a small decision and then you build on it. I love James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. I got to see him put this book together. We go way back. We sell this book at my bookstore, The Painted Porch. But I think the idea of atomic habits is like, as the subtitle says, tiny changes, remarkable results.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  But even think about what an atomic, what it means to say an atomic habit. It's not just explosive, like an atom is the smallest possible building block you can think of. So when we think about habits, let's start really, really small. Don't lie to yourself. Don't get ahead of yourself. Just think of the smallest thing you can start with.

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  Join a program. Look, there's a reason that Alcoholics Anonymous and programs like that have helped so many people. Also, like, weight loss bootcamps or whatever. Programs work because it's about handing over control, right? When you were in control, it wasn't working, so you're handing over control to someone or something else. One way to have better habits this year, one way to move forward, would be to find some sort of program or challenge that pushes you out of your comfort zone, that you see control to, and you let it boss you around a little bit. About four years ago now, we started these Daily Stoic challenges, like a month challenger, a three weeks challenger. We've done all these different challenges about different things. My favorite one that we do is the New Year, New You Challenge, which we start

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  on January 1st of every year. And I know it works because I do the challenge every year, and I've taken so many new habits, changes out of it, because every day, there was a thing in my inbox that said, "You have to do this. You have to do that." And we are doing the New Year, New You Challenge with Daily Stoic right now. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge. We'd love to have you. I'll tell you a bit more about it right now. How many times have you told yourself, "This was gonna be the year. Like, this is the year I'm gonna get serious. This is the year I'm gonna start making the changes." What happens? You don't end up doing it. We never do. That's why we made the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, just launching now. It starts on January 1st. Three weeks

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  of Stoic-inspired challenges that are supposed to prepare you, make you adaptable enough, make you wise enough to be able to deal with whatever life throws at you. So we'd love to have you join us. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge, click the link, but you can't put it off, because the signup ends on January 1st. That's the deadline. Love to have you in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge.

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  We have to decide who we're gonna be. What kind of identity are you gonna have for yourself this year? Do you see yourself as lazy? Or do you see yourself as a hardworking person? An honest person? Decide who you're gonna be. Because this identity is gonna be really important as far as the individual decisions you make. I don't know if you saw that Taylor Swift documentary that came out on Netflix, but she's talking about some of her struggles with like the eating disorder or body image issues. And she talks about how she saw this picture of herself that made herself feel really uncomfortable and she didn't like it. And she was about to judge herself and maybe go down this spiral. And then she said to herself, no, we don't do that anymore. Right?

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  She identified with like a version of herself that doesn't do that to herself anymore. And I love that. So who are you gonna be this year? That's gonna allow you to say, no, I don't do that anymore. Or yeah, I am the kind of person that gets up early and goes for a run. I am a person who doesn't lose my temper around my family. Right? What are you gonna identify with? This is gonna be really important for your habits.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's impossible to have good habits without a routine. So you have to develop and build a routine. For me, I wake up early. I take my kids outside. We run or we go on a walk. One of my rules, I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm awake. I journal in the morning. Then one of my big habits is I tackle my, my big creative project first. I don't get sucked into email first. I don't have a meeting first. I don't watch TV first. I tackle the big creative project first. Again, that's one of the things I identify with, that I own the morning. I'm a morning person. I tackle the morning. I kick the shit out of the morning. I am successful in the morning.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  That wasn't just naturally who I was. This is something I had to develop and build. Seneca says that life without design is erratic. Build a routine and stick to it. Focus is everything, man. It's how you write a book. It's how you come up with an idea for a book. So focus is everything. And your ability to intensely focus on the task in front of you. determines, I think, the amount of success you're going to have in life. And that's what makes today's sponsor so great. Centered is a Mac and Windows app that helps you get into flow and work faster and healthier. They've taken the principles that I've written about in my books, particularly Stillness is the Key, and rolled them up into an easy to use desktop app that helps you manage tasks and tune out distractions.

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  Early Centered users completed their tasks 30% faster than expected, and so can you, thanks to their simple task management software, 100-plus hours of flow music to keep you in the groove, automated coaching to encourage you and nudge you when you get distracted, a Do Not Disturb app to put your Mac in do not disturb mode, to set your Slack to away, all of that, plus breathing and break reminders to keep you healthy. Download the Centered app today at centered.app/stoic and use the promo code STOIC to get a free month of Centered Premium. Lay out your supplies. Get your stuff ready. If you're just winning it, or if you have to do a lot of setup each time, you're going to be less likely to do that thing. So if you want to be a runner, lay out your running clothes in the morning. Put out your running shoes.

• 9:39Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to be a journaler, put a journal in a place that you can't miss it. So lay out your supplies. Find a way to grease the wheels of the habit that you're struggling with, or the change that you're trying to make, or the person you're trying to be, so you're not jammed up. You're not like, "Oh, it's going to be so hard. I'm just going to go order food from McDonald's," or whatever, right? Lay out your stuff, or "Ah, I'd have to go back upstairs and get my stuff." No, make it so you have to step over the running shoes. You have to violate your identity to not do it, as opposed to going with it.

• 10:14Ryan Holiday?

  Who do you associate with? Studies show like if you have unhealthy friends, you're going to be unhealthy. If you have ambitious friends, you're going to be ambitious. My father said this to me as a kid. He said, "Ryan, you become like your friends." So associate with people that make you better. If you dwell with a lame man, was the old expression, you will learn how to limp. So who do you surround yourself with? Who's your peer group? We have the Daily Stoic Life Community, by the way, which I'd love to have you join. A private Facebook group. You get extra emails. You get Q and As with me. But the idea is, who's your community? In the ancient world, the Stoics had the Cypionic Circle, a group of Stoics who would get together and have dinner parties and events and debate philosophy and read books and share with each other.

• 10:56Ryan Holiday?

  Even the relationship between Seneca and Lucilius, which we get in Seneca's Letters of a Stoic, it's them talking to each other. He says, "We learn as we teach by having this peer group. They both get better." So who are you spending time with this year? I think habits are also a muscle, right? Are you building the muscle of forming or breaking habits? Sometimes just for the fun of it. My wife was always complaining that she didn't like how I chomped when I chewed gum. And I just realized, like, okay, I kind of like chewing gum. It's like a nervous way to expend some energy. It tastes good or whatever. It's not like good for health or it's not positive in any way. It's bothering this person.

• 11:40Ryan Holiday?

  Can I just quit this? And I'd probably chew gum every day of my life for a decade and a half. What are things that you can think about quitting? How can you flex this muscle? Show yourself that you're in charge. Build the muscle that you're someone who can start a habit, that you can quit a habit. Try to develop this muscle. At a meta level, can you cultivate the ability to form and break habits? I think this is really important. One foundational habit for next year, I think, would be free up precious resources. People say, "Oh, I don't have time." But pull up the Screen Time app on your phone. You have time. You just choose to spend it on things that don't matter. You watch too much news. You spend too much time doom scrolling.

• 12:25Ryan Holiday?

  You say you don't have time, but here you are watching this video. We spend too much time on things that don't matter. One of the best habits changes I've made is sort of winnowing my worldview. Of course, you have to know what's going on in the world, but you don't have to obsess about it in real time. You don't have to consume things that make you feel crappy or awful or suck you into this catastrophizing mindset, right? If you wish to improve, Epictetus says, "You have to be willing to not know about some things." So focus on what matters. Lock in time to focus on making better habits by eliminating things that are sucking up too much of your time now.

• 13:08Ryan Holiday?

  One thing to think about might be like some physical reminder, some sort of totem, some sort of thing that bumps you. The author and minister Will Bowen came up with this thing a couple of years ago called the No Complaint Challenge. And the idea was you would put a bracelet on this wrist. You would try to keep it on this wrist as long as possible. But anytime you complained, you had to switch it to the other wrist. So could you go 30 days without having to move the bracelet? I've talked about this a bunch of times. I carry physical reminders with me. I have them on my desk, but you can see some of them. These are some of the things that we sell in the Daily Stoic Store. But in one pocket, I keep the Memento Mori coin, a sort of a reminder of the finiteness of life, the fragility of existence.

• 13:51Ryan Holiday?

  The other one, I keep the Four Virtues coin, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. Those are the principles, the kind of watchwords that I try to live by. And again, having a physical totem, a reminder of this, is really, really helpful.

• 14:07Ryan Holiday?

  Of course, one of the most important habits to me is reading. And I know I talked about routine. I know I talked about consistency. I do think it's important that people figure out a way to do something that works for them. So some people, that's going to be, I read 20 pages a day. Me, I tend to be more of a binge reader. Sometimes I'm reading nothing. Sometimes I'm reading a lot. But that's what works for me. I'd rather read five books in a week and then not read for a week than try to average that out. That's just how it works for me. Sometimes people go, what's the best way to do this? Or what's the best way to do that? The truth is, the best way is the way that gets you to do it, that works for you. So you should tune out what other people are doing. You should ignore what other people are doing.

• 14:53Ryan Holiday?

  Don't compare yourself to other people. You're focused on your own internal progress. That's what matters.

• 15:02Ryan Holiday?

  We always tell ourselves, this year, it's going to be different. I'm going to change. Then come another 12 months and we haven't changed as much as we liked. The truth is, we're not perfect. Change is never as rapid or as transformative as we'd like it to be. And slipping and tripping are going to be inevitable. Marcus really says, when you're jarred by circumstances, like revert to yourself. He says, don't lose the rhythm more than you can help it. You've got to come back to it. We're going to mess up. But what matters is that we pick ourselves up when we fail. And we celebrate, as Marcus really says, being a human, but that we try to become a better one. So come back to the habits that you're working on.

• 15:44Ryan Holiday?

  Expect that there's going to be stumbles along the way. Don't quit just because you're not perfect. Come back to the ideas in this post. Come back to the, the goals you set for yourself. And if you get a little better in 2022 and you're lucky enough to be here in 2023 and you get a little bit better, right? Those changes are cumulative. They compound on each other. Don't put it off. Struggle with it, but get better because you are struggling with it. That's what Stoicism is about. To me, that's what New Year's resolutions are about. And I'm wishing you a great new year and hopefully new you as well. Demand more of yourself in 2022.

• 16:25Ryan Holiday?

  And one of the ways you can do that is by joining us in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. All you have to do is go to dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up. Remember, Daily Stoic Life members get this challenge and all our challenges for free. But sign up seriously. Think about what one positive change, one good new habit is worth to you. Think about what could be possible if you handed yourself over to a little bit of a program. We all pushed ourselves together. That's what we're going to do in the challenge. I'm going to be doing it. I do the challenges, all of them alongside everyone else. I'm looking forward to connecting with everyone in the Discord Challenge, all the other bonuses. Anyways, check it out. New Year, New You, the Daily Stoic Challenge. Sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge.