Do This While You Can | The Portable Retreat

It’s funny, over here at Daily Stoic, we do these challenges throughout the year (maybe you’ve joined one before). On the one hand, this name is probably bad marketing. People don’t usually get excited by the thought of being challenged. In fact, what they usually want is a secret or a shortcut or a hack. They want someone to solve the challenges for them. On the other hand, isn’t embracing life’s challenges what Stoicism is all about? So naturally, we couldn’t call the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge anything but that. It is a challenge. 10 days straight of them. Starting now. So yes it’s been a long December, but as the song also reminds us, there’s reason to believe that this year will be better than the last. And that reason is you—if you allow yourself to be, if you challenge yourself, if you decide to climb out of your velvet rut. A person who has never been challenged, Seneca said, who always gets their way, is a tragic figure. They have no idea what they are capable of. They are not even close to fulfilling their potential. “Stop wandering about!” Marcus Aurelius said to himself, perhaps on the eve of a new season just like this one. “Get busy with life's purpose,” he commanded, “toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue–if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.”And so as the seasons change, as the clocks change, we want to urge you one last time to join us and thousands of other Stoics in The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. Because 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. Stop procrastinating. Break out. Break free. Get cleaning. Challenge yourself.✉️ 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.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  This is how to break out and break free. It's very easy to get comfortable, to build up your life exactly how you want it to be, to minimize inconveniences and hand off the stuff you don't like to do, to find what you enjoy, where you enjoy it, and never leave. A velvet rut is what this is called. It's nice, but the comfort tricks you into thinking that you're not stuck. And look, after a pandemic, after a period of inflation, bad news constantly screaming at you from your TV or timeline, after months of harsh winter, it's hard not to seek out that comfort, to be relieved by it. It's been a long December, as the song goes, and there's plenty of reason to crawl into a velvet rut with a blanket,

• 1:20Ryan Holiday?

  or to jet off somewhere warm and radiate in luxury. But the Stoics knew that this was a kind of death, that as soon as we stop growing, we start dying, or at least we become more vulnerable to the swings of fate and fortune. Seneca talked over and over again about the importance of adversity, if not only embracing the struggle that life throws at us, but actively seeking out that difficulty, so you can be stronger and better and more prepared. It's funny, over here at Daily Stoic, we do these challenges throughout the year. Maybe you've done one before. On the one hand, calling it a challenge is probably a bad marketing decision because people don't usually get excited by the thought of being challenged. In fact, what they usually want is a secret, or a shortcut, or a hack. They want someone to solve the

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  challenges for them. On the other hand, isn't embracing life's challenges what Stoicism is all about? So naturally, we couldn't call the Daily Stoics Spring Forward Challenge anything but. And it is a challenge, 10 days straight of them, starting right now. So yes, it's been a long December, but as the song also reminds us, there's reason to believe that this year will be better than the next. And that reason is you. If you allow yourself to be, if you challenge yourself, if you decide to climb out of your velvet rut. A person who has never been challenged, Seneca said, who always gets their way, is a tragic figure. They have no idea what they're capable of. They're not even close to filling their

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  potential. Begin at once to live, he recommended, and count each day as a separate life. So as the seasons change, as the clocks change, we want to urge you one last time to join us and thousands of other Stoics, join me as well, in the Daily Stoics Spring Forward Challenge. Because one of the best ways to cure anxiety, to deal with stress, to become present, is to really throw yourself into some means of self-improvement. Break out, break free, get clean and challenge yourself. Literally turn the clocks and spring forward into the rest of your year, and really the rest of your life. I'm recording this last little message from my kid's spring break. We went down to the beach, and on the one

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  hand, it was radiating in warmth and luxury, as I said, but I've also been challenging myself like crazy. My wife and I have been talking about what we want our lives to be, decisions we're going to make as we get back, pushing myself physically, really trying to get in shape, trying to break out of some old habits, a little bit of a slump I'm in. And that's what we made the challenge around. I think you're really going to love it. I'm proud of this one. We did it once, like four or five years ago, and we reimagined it and brought it back. And I've already been overwhelmed by the signups, and I would like to have you in there with us. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/spring. Or if you've been thinking about joining Daily Stoic Life, join that at dailystoiclife.com and get this challenge and all the challenges for free. It's gonna be awesome. I'll see you in there. dailystoic.com/spring.

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  But why don't you start spring off by not procrastinating anymore and join us in there, dailystoic.com/spring.

• 4:36Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We're doing some riffing from the Daily Stoic Journal this morning. I've got mine in my leather case. It says, "Make time." I gotta make time to do that journaling. And when I don't, my psyche, my brain, my philosophy practice suffers. You can grab that at store.dailystoic.com. But today's entry is about the portable retreat. "It is in the future, on vacation, on our day off, when we plan to get out into nature, that we think we'll find peace and release from the crush of the everyday demands of life. But this never really seems to happen as often as we think, does it? And when we do get that peace, it's difficult to keep

• 5:18Ryan Holiday?

  it once we're back in the fray. Well, for the Stoic, all this is madness. The true retreat is in the freedom of our own mind and soul. To consider the gifts we already have can be our refuge for all time, if we take the time daily to do so." So, good for you, taking a little quiet time this morning or evening to listen to a podcast. It's not cramming you full of info, but it's a bit more philosophical. And then hopefully you've got the Daily Stoic Journal out, or the Daily Stoic. But we've got three quotes in this week's entry, one from Marcus, one from Epictetus, and another from Marcus. Marcus really is Meditations 4:3. He says, "People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  things. But this is entirely the trade of a base person, when you can at any moment find such a retreat in yourself. For nowhere can you find a more peaceful and less busy treat than inside your own soul, especially if on close inspection it is filled with ease, which I say is nothing more than being well ordered. Treat yourself often to this retreat." And be renewed. Then Epictetus says, remember, it is not only the desire for wealth and position that debases and subjugates us, also the desire for peace and leisure and travel and learning. It doesn't matter what the external thing is, the value we place on it, subjugates us to another. Where our heart is set, there our impediment lies. And then Marcus really says, remember that your ruling reason becomes unconquerable

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  when it rallies and relies on itself, so that it won't do anything contrary to its own will, even if its position is irrational. How much more unconquerable if its judgments are carefully and made rationally. Therefore, the mind freed from passions is an impenetrable fortress, and a person has no more secure place of refuge for all time. That's Meditations 848. I'm thinking about this because I'm just doing a little recording here before I go to town. It's my kids' spring break. We're going to spend a week down at the beach, and I look forward to this and I enjoy it. And I sometimes weirdly get more done there,

• 7:30Ryan Holiday?

  more present there. You know, you are a different person on vacation. But the Stoics would say, why? Does it have to be that way? What does it say that your life is something that you feel the need to escape from? So one of the things that I try to do, I mean, I like going down there. One of the perks of working for myself, I don't have to be in one location. And sometimes a change of scenery is good for things. But I ask myself, you know, what is it about my routine there that allows me to not feel so rushed in the morning, spend more time with the kids, sort of right at leisure? Why do I seem to have more time in the day? Why am I always available to catch the sunset? And what is stopping me from being able to do that at home? That's what Marcus is saying. He's like, look, the

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  thing that's working here is you, like you're finding the retreat in yourself, that moment of stillness or whatever. And that's available to you anywhere. He says,

• 8:26Ryan Holiday?

  That inside your own soul, there is peace and not so much busyness. So why are you letting spring break or summer vacation or, you know, a three day weekend? Why is that the only way you get it? Why can't you get it now? Why can't you see the sunset where you live? I love taking my family. We go to Big Bend a couple of times a year, one of my favorite national parks. And, you know, what I love while we're there is looking up at this incredible sky. There's so little light pollution there. The stars just, they feel like they, you know, just pop right out of the, the black sky. And I remember we went and then I was back a couple of weeks later and I had to go take the trash out or something. And I live out in the country.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  There's not a lot of light pollution where I live. And I sort of looked up for a second and I was like, this sky is almost as good as it is there. We drove eight hours to look at stars. And how many nights do I walk to take out the trash or get something my kids forgot in the car? And I don't take a minute to just step up and look, right? That's kind of what I'm thinking about here is so much of what we give ourselves on those retreats or those vacations or those time away, we could have inside ourself anytime we choose. And indeed, we deserve to do that. And I think about, you know, I read more, but I could read more here. I just, I throw my phone in the other room and I forget about it for a while and I need

• 9:55Ryan Holiday?

  to do that here. You need to do that here. Give yourself a staycation, give yourself a life that's a little bit closer to that vibe where you're a bit more philosophical, you're taking the time, you're retreating into your own self, you're finding the refuge that is there inside yourself. That's what it's all about to me. That's what I think the Stoics are reminding them. So, and look, Marcus really has had a country estate. Epictetus had a country estate. They all traveled, they all saw the world. They weren't saying they never do it. They're just saying, don't do it as an escape. Don't do it. Fooling yourself that it's not something you could have now inside yourself at any moment. And in fact, you must do, it just takes a bit more discipline.

• 10:37Ryan Holiday?

  It's not as easy as, you know, buying a plane ticket and planning a trip. I just had Cal Newport on the podcast, who I love and I love his work. And he was talking about this too, you know? I was noting how busy my week was going up into this trip that I'm taking. And he points out, he's like, yeah, that's fake vacation, fake, you know, break. Because you're just, the same amount of work is being done. You're just concentrating it on this week before and after. So you're not actually preventing any burnout. You're not actually getting any relaxation, not getting any stillness, you're not getting any quiet.

• 11:20Ryan Holiday?

  You're just spreading it around, moving it around on the plate, right? And that's not a good way to do it. So I, I hope whether it's close to your spring break here or not, or what plans you have, you take this lesson from the Stoics seriously, because it's an important one. And it's what I'm struggling with and thinking about myself. And I hope today's perspective was helpful. You can grab this cool cover we have for the Daily Stoic Journal at store.dailystoic.com. If you don't have the Daily Stoic Journal, you can grab them as a package and I'll sign it. And it's cool. It says make time on the front. And it's a reminder from Epictetus, every day and night, keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them. That's what I'm doing on this podcast. That's what you're doing by listening. And I really appreciate the opportunity to do that. I'll talk to y'all soon.

• 12:09Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The Obstacle is the Way, He Goes the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, the leather bound edition of the Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic Store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.