Stop Waiting To Demand The Best For Yourself | Taking The Bite Out Of It

Ryan talks about how people tend to put off making changes and improving their lives, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.→ We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It kicks off in a little over a week. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st! Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:40Ryan Holiday?

  Stop waiting to demand the best for yourself. Look, guys, two days left to sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. Stop putting it off. If you're gonna do it, let's do it. I can't wait to see you. Sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge. But anyways, here's today's message. This is that weird time of the year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. In this case, how we want 2022 to go. We start thinking about what we call resolutions, the promises we make to ourselves about what we're gonna 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. Now, on the one hand,

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  it's a wonderful and inspiring bit of reflection that the whole world comes together to do this at the same time. 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, or 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, praying that maybe our teachers or parents will handle it for us. Well, they won't. Epictetus asked, "Why is it that we wait to demand the best for ourselves? It's crazy." And here you are today staring down the barrel of 2022.

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  And while the best time to demand the best for and of yourself was years ago, second best time is now, right now. Put the missed opportunity behind you and repeat this passage from Epictetus. "From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think the best law is that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now. You are at the Olympic Games. You cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event." Can you do that? Can you start right now? Stop putting stuff off.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  No more, "I'll start on Monday." No more, "In the future, I'll do better and expect better." No. Demand the best for yourself now. It's what a grown-up does. And look, for the last four years, we've been doing this, the New Year, New You Challenge here at Daily Stoic. Twenty-one actionable challenges presented, one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. If you're serious about wanting to get the best out of yourself, this challenge has done that for literally thousands of people over the last four years, all over the world, in all different walks of life. Three weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day from me. I do the challenges right alongside you. You'll see me in the Discord chat.

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  You'll see me on the weekly calls we do together. But look, there's just two more days left to register. We always watch people wait. They always put it off, and then they don't come around to it. So, don't wait. Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to start 2022 off right. You can do that at dailystoic.com/challenge. We'd love to have you. And remember, Daily Stoic Life members get this challenge and all the other challenges we have planned for next year for free, plus our really popular past ones. So, we'd love to have you there, too. Sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge.

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  Taking the bite out of it, and I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the bestseller list. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. "To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden."

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  That's from Seneca's play Hercules. "The people you admire, the ones who seem to be able to so successfully handle and deal with adversity and difficulty, what is it that they all have in common? Their sense of equilibrium, their orderly discipline. On the one-yard line, in the midst of criticism, after a heartbreaking tragedy, during a stressful period, they keep going. Not because they're better than you, not because they're smarter, but because they learned a little secret. You can take the bite out of a tough situation by bringing a calm mind to it, by considering it and meditating on it in advance. And this

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  is true not just for our day-to-day adversities, but for the greatest and most unavoidable trial of it all, our own eventual death. It could come tomorrow, it could come in 40 years. It could be quick and painless, or it could be excruciating. Our greatest asset in the ordeal will not be religion, will not be the wise words of philosophers. It will be simply our calm and reasoned mind." You know, I was just writing about this. I'm writing the Temperance book right now. And there's a quote from

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  Angela Merkel that she has on her desk. I won't try to do the German pronunciation. She's saying there is strength in calm. Right? Try to think about a situation that you've ever made better by freaking out. Try to make, try to think of a situation where you're glad you were anxious. You're glad you were worried. It doesn't help things. It stresses you out, stresses the people around you out. It tires you out. Right? It messes with your decision making abilities. And so the reason the Stoics think about the worst case scenario, we do the premeditatio malorum.

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  The reason the Stoics aren't looking at the world through rose colored glasses is that, you know, they don't want to be saying, as Seneca said, I didn't think that could happen. Right? You want to be able to say instead, as Epictetus said, ah, this is what I trained for. This is what I've prepared for. I recognize this. I know what I'm supposed to do here. Right? That's what philosophy is about. That's what Stoicism is about, for the big and little adversities of life. It's a tool. It's a way to prepare. It's a way to take the bite out of them in advance. And most of all, this, the, the, the big elephant in the room, the thing this is directed

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  at, which the whole sort of final month of the Daily Stoic is directed on, is that idea of death or mortality. Cicero, Montaigne, they're all riff on this idea that to philosophize is to learn how to die, that ultimately that's the thing that we're all preparing for. It's the one thing that we're all gonna do. And so we think about that in advance, too. I don't like dwell on death. It doesn't depress me, but I do. I do think about it often. I mean, look, here's my

• 8:10Ryan Holiday?

  memento mori coin. I've got a reminder of like a piece of a tombstone. I've said this before on my bathroom counter. I've got a bunch of different little reminders of mortality for a reason, right? Because I don't want it to be a looming thing. I want it to be something that's there, that I'm familiar with, that I'm intimate with, that I understand. And then that shapes how I act in the present. It makes me quicker to apologize. It makes me quicker to move on. It makes me quicker to accept. Also makes me quicker to feel gratitude and joy and happiness. Because I don't know how long I have. None of us do, right? So we prepare. To philosophize is to learn how to die. That's

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  also philosophize is to learn how to live, how to live with the reality of this predicament, this fact that we were all, all born with a terminal diagnosis. The prognosis was fatal from birth. So we study it. We get up close and personal with it. Just as the prognosis was difficulty, adversity, Murphy's Law, it's always there. It's always there. But to be calm, right? To be calm is to be strong. To prepare for them in advance robs them of some of their

• 9:33Ryan Holiday?

  power, makes us stronger, better, braver, calmer. So here we are almost wrapping up the year. I hope you can, I hope memento mori has been a part of your practice, but I hope it maintain, I hope you, if it hasn't been, I hope you make it part of your practice. It's been totally life-changing for me. And I wish you all the best. I hope to see you in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge that we're doing. And it's really my honor and pleasure to be able to produce this podcast, to make this stuff for you guys, to be supported in my pursuit of this philosophy, to be made better. You know, Seneca says-

• 10:15Ryan Holiday?

  We learn as we teach. I feel like I got the best job in the world. I appreciate all the support. It's been wonderful meeting many of you at the Painted Porch this year. It's been wonderful hearing from you, the way that Stoicism has changed your life, the impact that it's had. That keeps me going. I feel the same way. And wishing you a happy new year, and we'll talk soon. Demand more of yourself in 2022. And one of the ways you can do that is by joining us in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. All you have to do is go to dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up. Remember, Daily Stoic Life members get this challenge and all our challenges for

• 10:57Ryan Holiday?

  free. But sign up, seriously. Think about what one positive change, one good new habit is worth to you. Think about what could be possible if you handed yourself over to a little bit of a program. We all pushed ourselves together. That's what we're going to do in the challenge. I'm going to be doing it. I do the challenges, all of them, alongside everyone else. I'm looking forward to connecting with everyone in the Discord challenge, all the other bonuses. Anyways, check it out. New Year, New You, the Daily Stoic Challenge. Sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge.