You Can't Give Up

A new year is fast approaching, and it's that time of year in which some people will try again and some people won't. Which will it be? Who will you be? For those of you ready for a change, we are back again with our fifth year of the New Year, New you Challenge. You can reserve your spot right now in the 2023 Daily Stoic New Year, New you Challenge, at daily stoic.com/challenge.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: 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.

• 0:03Ryan 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.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  You can't give up. Every year, we make resolutions. We're going to be better people. We're going to try new things. We're going to get in better shape. We're going to read more, going to be more organized. We're going to spend more time with our families. We're going to be more patient. We're going to be less stressed. We're going to be happier, going to make a difference. And then life happens. We get busy, we get tired, we get sick, we have a bad day, we slip on, and then completely abandon our resolutions. And around this time of year, we wonder, should we even bother trying again? And this is what the great Samuel Johnson must have been wondering near the end of the year 1775. With 1776 on the horizon, Johnson wrote in his diary,

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  "When I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment which have year after year been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity, when I find that so much of my life has stolen away unprofitably, and that I can describe by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try," he says, "because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal." Reformation is necessary and despair is criminal. That's why we have to keep trying. No one is perfect. We all have bad days.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  It's okay to feel a little discouraged, but to give up, to not even try, that is criminal, disgraceful, Marcus Aurelius would say, for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong. All of us have fallen short in the last year and the years before that, we broke our resolutions. We made the same mistakes again and again. We were all jarred unavoidably by circumstances, as Marcus said, but now it's time to pick ourselves up and try again. We have to keep going. We cannot give up because the alternative is unthinkable. A new year is fast approaching and it's that time of year where some people will try again and some people won't. Which will it be? Who will you be?

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  Well, for those of you ready for a change, we are back again now with our fifth year, the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. This one here for 2023 is a set of 21 actionable challenges, one per day, built around the best and most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Our goal is to help you make this year your best year yet. And the 2023 New Year New You Challenge is all new, guided by thousands of responses and reactions to previous challenges. Lessons I learned doing the challenges myself. It's awesome. I think you're gonna love it. You're gonna learn new skills. You're gonna become more disciplined, strengthen relationships, break destructive thought patterns, get clarity about what is and isn't essential, and start making progress towards

• 3:24Ryan Holiday?

  the life you want to live. Tons of stuff, 21 challenges, almost a book's worth of content, three live Q and As with me, Ryan Holiday, a printable 21-day calendar, daily illustrations, a tractor project, a group Discord channel, and a bunch of other stuff. I can't wait for you to join us. You can reserve your spot right now in the 2023 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge at dailystoic.com/challenge. Can't wait to see it in there. Let's do this. dailystoic.com/challenge. And remember, if you join Daily Stoic Life, dailystoiclife.com, you get this challenge and all the challenges for the next year totally for free.

• 4:07Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.