Beware The Little Things

“It can be easy to make an excuse. Oh, it’s just a bad habit. Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s also easy to think you’ve got this life thing handled—because you’ve survived some big adversity in your time. In truth, we are all vulnerable. To our habits. To unexpected weaknesses.”Ryan explains why small steps are no small thing, on 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: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See 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.

• 0:08Ryan 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 at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  Beware the little things. It can be easy to make an excuse, "Oh, it's just a bad habit. Oh, it doesn't matter." It's also easy to think that you've got this life thing handled because you've survived some big adversity in your time. In truth, we are all vulnerable to our habits, to unexpected weaknesses. "Great things can kill a man, but if they don't, he is stronger and better for them," John Steinbeck once wrote. "A man is destroyed by the duck nibblings of nagging, small bills, telephones, athlete's foot, ragweed, the common cold, and boredom. All of these are the negatives, the tiny frustrations, and no one is stronger for them." From the Greeks, we get the reminder of the Achilles' heel,

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  a great and powerful man undone by his only weak point. From Xeno, we are reminded that small steps are cumulatively no small thing. And the same goes for the list of ailments and entropies that Steinbeck mentioned. Cicero was undone in the end by a simple act of indecision. Marcus was troubled by a stomach ailment, and Xeno saw the end coming when he broke his finger. We must beware the little things. We are not invincible. We should not take our health, wealth, or strength for granted. We should be aware of our weak points. We should beware of tiny frustrations, lest they come together and cease to be so small. Design your life and your defenses accordingly. And look, we have this Daily Stoic Habits Challenge, and it's six weeks of habit formation.

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  And positive habits are important, but one of the whole weeks is about breaking bad habits. And I do think that bad habits add up, and they exact a pretty profound... toll on us. I'm always thinking about what I need to cut from my life, what's, what's holding me back, what's, what's contributing to unhappiness. And so I do think you'll like this challenge. You can check it out at daily stoic.com/habits. And of course, you can get it for free. If you sign up for daily stoic life, you get a whole bunch of awesome stuff, including a cloth bound book that's not for sale anywhere of my best meditations. You get some interviews, you get quarterly chats with me, you get a bunch of great stuff. So check that out, daily stoic.com/habits.

• 2:47Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. As you know, these are really short episodes. I think it's about packing as much as possible in every punch. And we've been trying our hand at Tik Tok doing these short 60 second inspired clips. I'm Ryan underscore holiday and daily stoic is daily underscore stoic. Check it out for some quick stoic hits every single day. Follow us on Tik Tok.