How Much Longer Are You Going To Wait? | Turn Words Into Works

This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We start thinking about what we call “resolutions”—the promises we make to ourselves about what we’re going to do in the next 12 months. The habits we’re going to quit, the skills we’re going to learn, the standards we’re going to hold ourselves to. Here you are today, staring down the barrel of 2023. And while the best time to demand the best for and of yourself was years ago, the second best time is right now.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ 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.

• 0:39Ryan Holiday?

  How much longer are you going to wait? This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We start thinking about what we call resolutions, the promises we made to ourselves about what we're going to do in the next 12 months, the habits we're going to quit, the skills we're going to learn, the standards we're going to hold ourselves to. On the one hand, it's wonderful and inspiring that the whole world comes together to try to do this at the same time. And it's excellent that everyone has finally decided to get in shape, to stop smoking, to try to give back more, to commit to being a better friend or relative, to read a certain number of books. But it's also strange that everyone puts it off for so long. We treat our self-improvement like it's a school project we hope might just complete itself,

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  praying that maybe our parents or a teacher will handle it for us. Well, they won't. Epictetus asked, "Why is it that we wait to demand the best for and of ourselves? It's crazy." Here you are staring down the barrel of a new year, 2023. And while the best time to demand the best for and of yourself was years ago, the second best time is right now. Put the missed opportunity behind you and repeat this passage from Epictetus. He said, "From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult, or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now.

• 2:07Ryan Holiday?

  You are at the Olympic Games, and you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked and preserved by a single day and a single night." In a single event. Can you do that? Can you start right now? No more putting stuff off, no more, I'll start Monday, no more in the future. I'll do and expect better. No, demand the best for yourself now. It's what a grown up does. For the last five years, we've been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom Stoic philosophy, including that idea from Epictetus, how much longer are you going to wait? When are you going to show up?

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  Be the Olympic athlete that you're meant to be? Well, if you're serious about that, this challenge is, I think, one way to get started right now. There's just a few more days left to register. Don't put it off. Sign up, listen to Epictetus and join us in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It's going to help you stop procrastinating, gain clarity, learn new skills, quit bad habits, make amends, be courageous, break destructive thought patterns and a bunch more. 21 custom challenges, one per day over the next three weeks, almost a book's worth of content, three live Q and As with me, a printable 21 day calendar to track your progress, a group Discord channel for accountability and community, and so much more. To learn more, or more importantly, reserve your spot in the 2023 New Year, New You

• 3:33Ryan Holiday?

  Challenge, head over to dailystoic.com/challenge. Join me, join us, join thousands of Stoics all over the world. We're excited and let's get after it.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. This is the last of these entries of the year, the last, as we pull from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 meditations of writing and reflection on the art of living. I think ultimately, the most important, it's about turning words into works. Marcus Aurelius spent a great deal of time on his journals, yet within these pages, we find him admonishing himself to throw them away, to never read them.

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  Why? Because he didn't want it to be an excuse from the essential tasks at hand. "The art of living will never be found anywhere but in our own efforts to be a good person." Never forget that that is the aim of Stoicism and of your own journals. It's not to fill up pages with pretty thoughts, but inspire you to take action, to turn the words, as Seneca said, into works. And in that, we have the perfect place to end the year with the ultimate Stoic prompt: Get active in your own rescue. And we have two quotes this week from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, and then one from Seneca's Moral Letters. "Stop wandering about," Marcus says, "you aren't likely to read your own notebooks,

• 5:05Ryan Holiday?

  or ancient histories, or anthologies you've collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life's purpose, toss aside empty hopes. Get active in your own rescue. If you care for yourself at all, do it while you can." That's Marcus Aurelius 3:14. "You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere, not in logic, nor in wealth, nor in fame, or in any indulgence. Nowhere. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands. And how is a person to do this? By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles?

• 5:47Ryan Holiday?

  Those to do with good and evil, indeed, in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage, and freedom. And nothing evil except what destroys these things." That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 8:1. And then ultimately, Seneca in Moral Letters 108, he says, "All study of philosophy and reading should be for the purpose of living a happy life. We should seek precepts to help us, noble and courageous words that can become facts. We should learn them in a way that the words become works." And ultimately, look, that's, that's the journey for me, ironically, as a writer,

• 6:28Ryan Holiday?

  is that I write them, that's my job. But if I don't listen to them, if I don't get better at it, then I'm, what am I? I'm not, I'm nothing but a sophist, right? And what are you? If you read about Stoicism, if you listen to this podcast, if you follow the quotes on Instagram or watch the videos, but you're not actually getting better day to day, you're not getting better at those virtues. Courage, self-control, justice, wisdom, right? You're not focused on applying the ideas. Ultimately, that's what matters. As Marcus Aurelius says, we should waste no more time arguing what a good person is, be one. As Epictetus talks about, embody the

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  ideas. Am I as good at that as I want to be? Are you? Right? All this stuff is pretty straightforward, pretty simple. You find yourself nodding your head to it. But then when you're tired, then when you're frustrated, then when you're trying to do something that's really important to you, when things are really going sideways, well, it's hard to actually stick with them. It's hard to actually apply them. Right? But that's the whole point. That's the whole point of the philosophy. Look, I take some solace in the fact that clearly Marcus Aurelius is struggling with that, right? He's saying that even as an old man, right? He's telling himself, you gotta stop wandering about, right? He's saying,

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  you still haven't figured it out. You gotta get active in your rescue now before it's too late. So I take some solace in the fact that one of the greatest Stoics to ever live is still struggling with that, you know, many decades older than I am. But that time is tick, tick, ticking away. And those opportunities are passing us by. And so the purpose of the Daily Stoic Journal, the purpose of the Daily Stoic Podcast, the purpose of all this content, obviously, yes, it's compelling to me as a writer. I feel a duty to bring the ideas to other people. But ultimately, what I'm really trying to work on is just be a little bit better at them day to day in my own life. How would I grade myself on that? I don't know.

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  Not as, not as high as I'd like, but higher than before. Right? Higher than if the intervention had never happened, which is ultimately, right? How we judge medicine? How we judge anything scientifically? We, we compare it against a control group. We compare it against a placebo. And I know how I was before. Right? I know what I'm capable of if I don't try. If I just sort of go the path of least resistance. If I think about what I could get away with. That's not enough. We have to be better than that. We have to push ourselves. So that's ultimately the whole purpose of Stoicism. That's the thought I want to leave you here with at the end of the year.

• 9:27Ryan Holiday?

  That it's about turning the words into words. What do you have to show for it? Right? It's not about pretending. It's not about imitating. It's about action. It's about putting up the numbers, putting up the results, trying to get a little bit better every single day. I don't expect magical transformation from myself or from you. That's not possible. This isn't about epiphany, but it is about repetition and practice, holding yourself accountable. And with that, I bid you adieu to the end of this year. I hope you can look back, reflect here as the year is winding up and see where you could have done better. Hope you can set aside some plans, some goals for the next year.

• 10:12Ryan Holiday?

  And I hope you can build on the successes that you did have. That's what I'm going to try to do. And we'll be right back at this again because we don't stop. Talk soon.

• 10:28Ryan 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.