The Time To Start Doing This Is Now | What's Up To Us, What's Not Up To Us

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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.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  The time to start doing this is now. We all have vices. We all have flaws. We have habits, as Seneca said, that turn us into slaves. We have things we know we want to change. We know this, but why do we struggle to do anything about it? What happens? Nothing happens. And if we're not careful, our whole life can pass by this way, the world changing around us while we sadly remain exactly the same. "You're an old man now," Marx realized, wrote to himself in Meditations, lamenting his lack of progress on some unnamed habit. "It's time to stop being a slave," he said, "to no longer be pulled along like a puppet

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  on strings, to stop being dissatisfied with today and afraid of tomorrow." It's time. Change isn't easy. It takes work, real deliberate, consistent effort. Quitting smoking, taming your temper, being more present at home, getting over your envy, shedding a few pounds, breaking your smartphone addiction, drinking less or reading more. It's not going to happen by accident. But what is getting rid of one bad habit like that worth? What would that freedom feel like? What would you give to add a new positive way of thinking or acting into your everyday life? Well, that's what we're all coming together to do in January.

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  Thousands of Stoics all over the world, people just like you, struggling, growing, trying to make that satisfying progress towards becoming the person they know they can be. We're all coming together for the 2025 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. I'm going to be in there. Maybe you're thinking about joining me. Maybe you're thinking about joining us, but you've been putting off signing up. Well, stop, let's do it together. Why not kick 2025 off with 21 actionable challenges presented one per day, built around the best exercises in Stoic philosophy and designed to help you do exactly what Marx realist was talking about, rising up, driving out the bad, taking action on becoming the person you know you're capable of being.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  And this year, we've taken the last seven years of doing this challenge, plus everything we've learned, everything I've written about, all the insights from the Stoics, and distilled them into what I think is our most powerful New Year New You Challenge. I think 2025 is going to be the best challenge we've ever made. And look, 2025 is going to be a challenging year, so hopefully it will get you off on the right foot. It's not a rebrand. We redo the challenge every year. It's new stuff, new experience, new challenges. And I think it's going to really help you. I know I'm excited about it. I know I'm going to make a bunch of changes from it. I know there's things I did in 2024 and in 2023 and in 2022 that came specifically from challenges in the New Year New You Challenge. It's going to be awesome.

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  We're going to build resilient through discomfort. We're going to let go of emotional baggage. We're going to form positive habits. We're going to strengthen relationships. We're going to focus on what matters. And I'd love to see you in there. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/challenge. It starts on January 1st, so stop procrastinating. Sign up. I will see you in the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best for yourself? That was Epictetus's question. Well, let's answer it with the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge, and I'll see you in there at dailystoic.com/challenge. There's just two days left to sign up. Let's do it. I'll see you in there.

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've got my Daily Stoic Journal in front of me. Let's riff on today's entry. This is the first week in the Daily Stoic Journal, and it starts with the most important Stoic task that there is: What's up to us and what's not up to us? Epictetus's handbook, the Incoridion, begins with the most powerful exercise in all of Stoicism: the distinction between things that are up to us, in our control, and the things that are not up to us. It is this, the dichotomy of control, that is the first principle in the entire philosophy. "We don't control many of the things we pursue in

• 5:04Ryan Holiday?

  life, yet we become angry, sad, hurt, scared, and jealous when we don't get them. In fact, these emotions, those reactions, are about the only thing we do control. If that is the only lesson to journal on and think about this year, consider it a year well and philosophically lived." And then Epictetus's Discourses, which we actually opened the Daily Stoic with, so I'll riff on that in a second. But he says, "Look, the chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not in uncontrollable externals, but within

• 5:48Ryan Holiday?

  myself to the choices that are my own." And then in Incoridion 1.1, he riffs on what is and isn't in our control. He says, "Some things are in our control while others are not. We control our opinion, our choice, our desire, our aversions. In a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body, our property, our reputation, our position. And in a word, everything not in our own doing. And even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak and slavish and can be hindered and are not our own." And then 122, he says, "We control our reasoned choice in all acts that depend on moral will.

• 6:32Ryan Holiday?

  What's not under control are our body and any of its parts, our possessions, our parents, our siblings, our children, our country, anything with which we might associate." Look, I think what Epictetus is saying here is that not just the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer, you know, you separate things into the categories and you only focus on what's up to you, but that a lot of things that we think of as being up to us are not even up to us, right? Really, at the absolute core of it, what we control are our thoughts, our emotions, our opinions. We don't control what happens, control how we respond to what happens, but even then, within a constrained amount. And this might seem kind of resigned or a sad way to start the year, but I, I don't think it is.

• 7:16Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's the only way to start the year. It's certainly the only way I thought we could start the Daily Stoic, which I'll read to you the, the January 1 entry. "The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can't, what we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather. No amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can't make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change. The recovery community practices something called the Serenity Prayer.

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices that they have made or the hurt they have caused, but they can change the future through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus says, they can control the choices they make right now. The same is true for us today, for the year that stands before us. If we focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle." It's funny, I think when we're younger, we have an

• 8:43Ryan Holiday?

  outsized view of what's in our control and what isn't. And as we get older,

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  We ratchet that back, which is ironic because as we get older, we're also more powerful, more successful, etc. But you you just realize like, look, you don't control what other people do. I mean, even the longer I've been a parent, the it's not the less strict I am, but I do feel a more chill I am because I've made the mistakes. I've tried to control things I don't control. I've seen where my anxiety or stress or worry or whatever gets me and I cultivate the ability to step back to focus on what I control. I was playing on the floor with one of my sons and my other son drew on my jacket with a pen a couple of days ago. And it's like my favorite jacket. It's like ruined. He wrote all over it with a red Sharpie. I don't know why I didn't notice,

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  but I didn't. You know, I was mad. I was like, hey, look, like, no amount of being mad at a child is going to undo the ruined jacket, right? And what's the opportunity that I want to seize here, right? What good is it to make this person feel bad about what happened? No amount of yelling is going to undo what happened. So I want to I want to take the opportunity to talk about instead, calmly, respectfully, talk about what it means to respect other people's persons, their stuff, etc. And to talk about, hey, how would you feel if I did that to something that you like or that you care about, right? And I didn't do it perfectly, but my wife and I were talking

• 10:14Ryan Holiday?

  about it after, just like how like compared to how our parents would have reacted, how different it was. But the idea is, look, I just control what I do about it. I just control how I respond. I just control whether I let my emotions get the best of me or not, or when I catch myself, at what point in that process do I walk it back, right? What's up to us and what's not up to us? I feel like so many of the things that I'm upset about, that I get in arguments about, what I'm really saying is, I wish that hadn't happened. I want to undo that that happened. That's not how life works. That's not something that's up to me. And so I'm practicing the idea of getting a little bit better at letting go of that thing, of moving on from that thing.

• 10:58Ryan Holiday?

  And so must you. This is a year that we try to focus more on what's in our control. We argue less with reality. I have a whole set of note cards. It's a theme I often journal and think about how often I find us, we're in arguments with reality. We wish things were different. They weren't the way that they were. And this isn't like resigning yourself to the state of society. This is resigning yourself that something that happened did happen. It is done. It is in the past. Arguing and relitigating and relitigating, it doesn't change it. You don't have the power to make it unhappen. But you do have the power to decide how it's going to make you feel, whether it harms you or not, what you do about it, who you are because of it.

• 11:48Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say, we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say, thank you.