This Is What They Do | Give Thanks

The latter was something that the late Paul Woodruff tried to remind himself, having picked up the insight from Marcus Aurelius. The squirrels were not trying to give Paul a hard time, they did not mean any harm when they stole the birdseed he was putting out. As Paul explained in his wonderful episode on the Daily Stoic podcast before he died, he came to understand that the squirrels were simply doing what they do. They were doing what their nature demanded. Some people are thieves. Some people are exaggerators. Some people are moody. Some people are exasperatingly friendly. Kids are loud. Mosquitos bite. This is their nature. They are doing what is demanded of them, what’s been ordained for them.-And with today's meditation on the day's Daily Journal excerpt, Ryan reminds us that gratitude is something we gift ourselves by actively practicing. For the last five years, we have 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 in Stoic philosophy. 21 challenges designed to set you up to be able to say, whatever happens in 2024 and beyond, this is precisely what I trained for.. Demand more of yourself in 2024. Prepare for whatever is ahead. Head over todailystoic.com/challengeand sign up NOW!✉️ 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  This is what they do. People are people. Kids are kids. Mosquitoes are mosquitoes. Squirrels are squirrels. The latter was something that the late Paul Woodruff tried to remind himself of, having picked up this insight from Marcus Aurelius. The squirrels were not trying to give Paul a hard time. They did not mean any harm when they stole the bird seed he was putting out. As Paul explained in his wonderful episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast before he died, he came to understand that the squirrels were simply doing what they do. They were doing what their nature demanded. Some people are thieves. Some people are exaggerators. Some people are moody. Some people are exasperatingly friendly. Kids are loud. Mosquitoes bite. This is their nature. They are doing what is demanded of

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  them, what's been ordained for them. Why get angry? Why resent it? Why expect anything different? It doesn't change them, but it does change you. It makes you bitter, resentful, and tired. Accept them. Adjust to them. Love them.

• 1:49Ryan Holiday?

  Give thanks. This is the December 29 entry in The Daily Stoic.

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  In all things, we should try to make ourselves as grateful as possible, Seneca says in Moral Letters 81. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves in a manner in which justice, commonly held to belong to others, is not. Gratitude pays itself back in large measure. Guess what you could say is that gratitude is a gift you gave yourself, even though you are expressing your gratefulness to other people. But think of all the things that you could be grateful for today, that you are alive, that you live primarily in a time of peace, that you have enough health and leisure to read a book or listen to this podcast. But what of the little things? The person who smiled at you, the woman who held the door open, the song you liked on the radio, the pleasant weather. Gratitude is infectious.

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  Its positivity is radiant. Even if today was your last day on earth, even if you knew in advance that it was going to end in a few short hours, would there not still be plenty of things to be grateful for? How much better would your life be if you kicked off every morning like that? If you let it carry through from morning to night and touch every single part of your life? I think about gratitude a lot. Obviously, we did our Thanksgiving message a month ago where we're talking about gratitude. I have a gratitude journal. Actually, Mona Caton, the makeup artist and online influencer, sent it to me as a gift a couple of years ago. And I write like one or two things that I'm grateful for a day.

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  You know, my family, my friends, my success, you know, the obvious things. But I try on a really consistent basis to take the time to express gratitude for things that maybe on the surface I'm not grateful for. The pandemic, political polarization, Trump, you know, critics, problems I have with my parents, pain that I feel, an argument that I just had, that I'm sick. You know, I try to express. Explicitly there on those pages, gratitude for things that, again, I'm not feeling grateful

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  for, but in taking a moment to write why I am grateful for them, I become grateful for them. I force myself to see something good in them. I force myself to find a positive in it. I force a way to see that actually I'm quite lucky, even if this thing is itself an unlucky thing, right? In the perspective of all the ways that I am lucky, this little bit of bad luck isn't so bad. And so forcing myself to write that down to think about is really great. My friend Pete Holmes, a comedian, talked about how when he thinks of his parents, he says to himself, I forgive them, right? He's actively practicing like what he wants to feel, even though he doesn't actually feel that. And it becomes true over

• 4:49Ryan Holiday?

  time. And I think this is an exercise we can apply to gratitude. And, you know, Marcus says, convince yourself that everything is a gift from the gods, that it's all a gift, that you're grateful for all of it, that it's great, even though it doesn't always feel that way. That's the kind of gratitude we're expressing. And that's the kind of gratitude, you know, this month in the book is about death, when you go, hey, I could die at any moment, or people all around me are dying at any moment, right? It does force a little bit of a different perspective where you can find some stuff to be grateful for. So that's today's message. A reminder here, two days from the end of the year, the Daily Stoic New Year, New Year Challenge, it's just about to start. You've clearly already

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  procrastinated quite a bit if you haven't already signed up, but I would love for you to pull the trigger on starting the year right. 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges that will make you better. They are challenges. It's not going to be easy, but that's the whole point. You know, we really push ourselves in the challenge. It's one of my absolute favorite things to do as a participant and as a writer. We've been working hard on it the last three or four months. The Daily Stoic team has, I think it's our best year yet, been doing it for five years now. Thousands of people all over the world have done it, are gonna do it together this year. All new stuff. Check out the Daily Stoic New Year, New Year Challenge. DailyStoic.com/challenge. I'd love to see it in there. And let's, uh, let's blow out 2023. Let's start it with a bang.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  Let's start it with some gratitude and then let's make some stuff to be grateful for with the changes and challenges we're going to accept and push for. I'll see you soon. DailyStoic.com/challenge.

• 6:36Ryan 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.