Somebody Lit From Within | 10 Stoic Habits To Practice In 2024

Agrippinus once told another philosopher that while everyone else wanted to blend in, he was content to stand out—to ‘be the red thread’ in the sweater, the one that makes the garment beautiful. It wasn’t attention and fame he was after, nor was he rewarded for standing out in this way. In the end, Agrippinus was exiled (his father was executed for similar crimes). Cato could have made a fortune in politics, if he was after the same things his peers were after. He could have wielded enormous power. But he wasn’t willing to do what everyone else was willing to do. Fame and money were not what motivated him, it’s not what lit him up. It was a loose cohort of Stoics—we tell their stories in the book Lives of the Stoics—was heroic and incredible, as virtue always is. They stood out, backlit against the sameness, the cowardice, the complicity of their times. Still, they suffered for this courage, these principles, this desire to be themselves. We should take their example, but be sure not to take it lightly._If you can cultivate good habits, you can survive—even thrive on—what lies ahead. If you relapse and fall to the level of your worst habits, these hard times will only be harder. Epictetus said habits—good and bad—were like a bonfire. Every time we perform a habit, we reinforce it, we add fuel to the fire. In this video excerpt Ryan Holiday outlines 10 Stoic habits that can change your life in 2024.✉️ 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, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:25Ryan Holiday?

  Somebody lit from within. From the time of Caesar through the end of the reign of Nero, there was a remarkable run of heroic Stoics. There was Cato, there was Portia, there was Thrasia, Agrippinus, Helvidius, Epictetus. Nearly everyone else was willing to go along, to get along. Everyone else was corrupted by their ambition, by their self-interest, by their love of money, or attention, or validation. But not these Stoics. They were lit from within, you might say, motivated by their own values, their love of virtue, rather than trying to get ahead. Agrippinus once told a philosopher that while everyone else wanted to blend in, he was content to stand out, to be the red thread in the sweater,

• 1:07Ryan Holiday?

  the one that makes the garment beautiful. It wasn't attention and fame he was after, nor was he rewarded for standing out in this way. In the end, Agrippinus was exiled, his father was executed for similar crimes. Cato could have made a fortune in politics if he was after the same things his peers were after, could have wielded enormous power. But he wasn't willing to do what everyone else was willing to do. Fame and money were not what motivated him. It's not what lit him up. It was this loose cohort of Stoics, and I tell their stories in the book Lives of the Stoics, that was heroic and incredible, as virtue always is. They stood out, backlit against the sameness, the cowardice, the complicity of their times. And still, they suffered for this courage, these principles,

• 1:50Ryan Holiday?

  this desire to be themselves. We should take their example, but... To be sure not to take it lightly. It's the right road, this road to greatness. Yet it is a rough and dangerous road, all the same. And it's funny, you know, Lives of the Stoics is a book I'm super proud of. But I probably learned the most about the Stoics writing. I learned about Thrasia and Cato and Portia Cato, his, his daughter. I learned about Agrippinus, Helvidius. I learned about Epictetus's teacher, Musonius Rufus, who was exiled on four different occasions. So we have to understand that the Stoics weren't just the famous Stoics, but there's all these other Stoics. And in fact, they might be the most inspiring and impressive of all the Stoics. So check it out. You can grab Lives of the Stoics anywhere books are sold,

• 2:34Ryan Holiday?

  but you can also grab a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com.

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best of yourselves? We all know we have potential. We all know we have things we need to stop doing. We all know we have things that we should start doing, but we tell ourselves we'll do it later. But will you?

• 3:01Ryan 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 habits. Epictetus once encapsulated all of Stoic philosophy in just two words, persist and resist. Meaning there were some things we had to keep doing. And as we look out here at the beginning of a new year, it's the perfect time to start quitting some destructive habits. What are you day to day in your actions, big and small? That's how we become better. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written books about Stoic philosophy. I've been lucky enough to speak about it to the NBA and the NFL, sitting senators and special forces leader. But I'm also just a regular person who's trying to get a little bit better every single year. And in today's episode, I want to talk about some Stoic inspired habits

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  that you can look at as we go into a new year. Habits to stop doing, habits to start doing, who the Stoics want you to be to create, hopefully, a new you.

• 4:01Ryan Holiday?

  I think the first place to start is the idea of thinking really, really small. George Washington's favorite saying was "many mickles make a muckle." This is an old Scottish proverb. It basically just means like, things add up. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, says, "Well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing." You don't promise yourself that you're gonna read more. You decide you're gonna read a page a day. You don't decide that you're gonna transform your diet or your exercise. Like, you start going for a walk. Make a small decision and then you build on it. About this, 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.

• 4:41Ryan Holiday?

  But I think the idea of Atomic Habits is like, as the subtitle says, tiny changes, remarkable results. 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.

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  Don't give in to your anxiety this year. You have to stop letting anxiety rule you. In one of the passages in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, "Today I escaped anxiety." And said, "Wait, wait, no, that's not right. This is actually, I discarded it. It was within me." The plane, the airport, that's not responsible for your anxiety. You're responsible for anxiety. You're responsible for your feelings. You're responsible for the worry that you're projecting at this thing. And it's not helping you. It's not making you better. It's not doing anything about the problem. You're just torturing yourself in anticipation of what might happen or might not happen. I've never been in the thrall of anxiety, right, traveling somewhere, some big project. And then afterwards, been like, "I'm so glad I was so anxious about that."

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  No, it made people around me upset. It made me upset. It made me miserable. It didn't do anything for me, and it's not gonna do anything for you this year.

• 6:02Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's impossible to have good habits without a routine. So you have to develop and build a routine. Habits and routines, they work together. So 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. That wasn't just naturally who I was.

• 6:47Ryan Holiday?

  This is something I had to develop and build. So you need a routine. You cannot wing it. Seneca says that life without design is erratic. He says, principles are necessary. There's nothing more shameful than uncertain chaos and disorder. So build a routine and stick to it. Stick to the routine. And again, if this is, these are little things. What time do you wake up? What time do you go to bed? What time do you have lunch? What do you do? What do you not do? Build a routine and stick to it.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  One of the stories I was most moved by, that I was most excited about when I was writing Discipline is Destiny, is the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had a four pack a day, 40 year smoking habit. And his doctor said, you're going to die if you don't stop. It's screwing with your heart. It's screwing with your lungs. If you want to continue to be of service to the country, you gotta stop. And so Eisenhower famously said, I gave myself an order and I stopped. He quit cold turkey after 40 years. It's actually a very stoic idea. Epictetus says, no man is free who is not master of himself. Seneca said, we're all slaves to something. Some people are slaves to sex or they're mistresses. He says, other people are slaves to power or ambition. Maybe some of us are slaves to that cup of coffee in the morning.

• 8:00Ryan Holiday?

  We all have things that we do, that we know we need to stop doing to be the person that we want to be.

• 8:09Ryan Holiday?

  One foundational habit for next year: 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. 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. So, 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. If you wish to improve, Epictetus says, "You have to be willing to not know about some things." Right? So, focus on what matters.

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  Lock in time to focus on making better habits by eliminating things that are sucking up too much of your time now.

• 9:05Ryan Holiday?

  Every new year, Seneca started the year off the same thing. He would throw himself into the Tiber River, the freezing river in Rome, on the 1st of January. She's saying, "I'm in charge. I'm so in charge. I'm hurling myself into this freezing river even though I really don't want to."

• 9:24Ryan 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." Now, so who do you surround yourself with? Who is your peer group? Who are the people you spend the most time with? And how do you become the average of them? We have the Daily Stoic Life Community, by the way, which I'd love to have you join. It's a private Facebook group. You get extra emails. You get Q and As with me. I think it's one of the best things we do. 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.

• 10:09Ryan 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? That's a foundational, basic habit that will make you better.

• 10:32Ryan Holiday?

  This year, you can't fear change. In one of the beautiful passages in Meditations, Marcus really reminds himself that everything in life comes from change, good and bad. And by trying to keep things the same, not only are you, of course, focused on something that you don't control, but you're preventing yourself from all the wonderful opportunities that exist that could come your way. Look, we live in a time of disruption. We live in a time of institutions that are falling apart. We live in a time of innovation, new institutions that are being created. So you can't fear what's going to come of that. The Stoics would say, all you can focus on this year is embracing those things, adapting yourself to change, acquiescing to that change, rather than fighting it, rather than fearing it, rather than resenting it. Because it's going to happen, regardless of how you feel about it.

• 11:16Ryan Holiday?

  So what you should focus on, Stoics would say, is what you're going to do about it.

• 11:24Ryan Holiday?

  You have to say no to the inessential. Marcus really says, most of what we do is not essential. But when we say no to those inessential things, when we eliminate them, it gives us a double benefit, he says, because then we can do the essential things better. So you have to realize that everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else. But conversely, and most importantly, when you say no to the things that don't matter, it gives you the opportunity to say yes to the things that really do matter. And not a little yes, not a soft yes, but an emphatic, both-feet yes. And that's what you need to be successful and happy and good.

• 12:02Ryan Holiday?

  And it is inevitable that we will fall short. Marcus did, I do, everyone does. Antoninus Pius probably did too. Which is why in Meditations, Marcus really says to pick yourself back up when you fall. But he also says to celebrate the fact that you're a human being. What matters, he says, is that you come back to the rhythm of it. We're going to be jarred by circumstances. We're going to be messed up. We're going to slip on our diet, on our New Year's resolution, on the progress we were making. That's OK. What matters is that you get back up. What matters is that more often than not, you stick to it, that you always come back home to it.