This Will Not Free You | The Secret To Better Habits in 2023

Seneca had money and privilege. Lots of it. Yet where did it get him? It didn’t save him from illness, or spare him from years of convalescence. Does this mean there is no advantage to having money? No. Nor does it imply that not having money is better than having it (Seneca would deem money a ‘preferred indifferent’—better to have than not have).--- In one of the best passages in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Marcus tells himself to stop hoping and “be his own savior while he can.” It’s great advice — advice we should follow this year. And we do that by starting with some foundational habits and mindset shifts. Today, Ryan outlines some of the best ways that you can have better habits in 2023.🎓 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, 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.

• 0:31Ryan Holiday?

  This will not free you.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca had money and privilege, lots of it. Yet where did it get him? It didn't save him from illness or spare him years of convalescence when he got sick. It didn't protect him from the whims of an emperor who exiled him for false charges. It didn't save him from tragically losing a child. In the end, it didn't even give him the freedom to walk away from Nero's service when he wanted to. Even with his vast wealth, it was a problem he couldn't buy himself out of. Does this mean there's no advantage to having money? No, nor does it imply that not having money is better than having it. Seneca would deem money a preferred indifferent, better to have than not have. It's just a reminder that all the work and sacrifice and fantasies or desires, fame and power, none of it will give you what you think it will.

• 1:20Ryan Holiday?

  Your fortune will not protect you from what fate has in store for you. At best, it will insulate you from some inconveniences, but your money will not buy you happiness or peace. These things can never come from externals. They will not be found in a bank balance or a magic number. They will only come from within.

• 1:42Ryan Holiday?

  There's never a bad time to examine your habits to set new ones, but at the end of one year and the beginning of a new one, there is the opportunity for what you might call a clean break. Seneca starts each year plunging into the Tiber River in Rome. I think he's washing off the old year and starting fresh for a new year. He's also, I think, starting by doing something hard and difficult and challenging. That's one of my favorite parts of Stoicism and one of my Favorite parts of the year. Every year I try to think about who I want to be in the year to come and make real choices about how to get there. 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,

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  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 that you can look at as we go into a new year, as we face down 2023, habits to stop doing, habits to start doing, who the Stoics want you to be in 2023. One of the most important habits you can practice is patience. One of the things I learned with this bookstore is the truth of what they call Hofstadter's Law. Always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. We want our progress now. We want our success now. We want our rewards now. But if you can practice delayed gratification,

• 3:07Ryan Holiday?

  if you can understand that it takes a while, that it's part of a process, you're almost always going to be more successful. Think of Marcus Aurelius. He's told he's going to be emperor, but Antoninus is going to rule first, and they think it's going to be one or two or three or four or five years. It's like 20 years. He has to wait 20 years before he can become the emperor of Rome. So if Marcus doesn't have patience, if life doesn't force him to practice the virtue of patience, he'd have gone crazy. He'd have lost his mind. And then he wouldn't have actually been as good as he was as emperor. All things require patience, whether you're writing books, whether you're being a leader, whether you have kids. Learning how to practice patience is critical. And what I think when I'm stuck in traffic, when a flight is delayed, when my book's going slower

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  than I thought, I go, this isn't frustrating. This isn't annoying, although it is those things. I say, this is an opportunity to get reps with patience. This is the opportunity to practice patience, and I will be better for having gone through this. 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. 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. Then one of my big habits is I tackle 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.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  I tackle the big creative project first. That wasn't just naturally who I was. This is something I had to develop and build. Seneca says that life without design is erratic. Build a routine and stick to it.

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  Little things are not small. Well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Marcus really says, "We assemble our life action by action, step by step. No one can stop you from that." So today, as you get discouraged, as you look at this goal that's way, way off in the distance, don't focus on that. Focus on the immediate task in front of you. Concentrate like a Roman, as Marcus really says, as if it's the only thing that matters, as if it's the last thing that you're doing in your life. "Many mickles make a muckle," as Washington said. Stuff adds up. That's how you get there, one step at a time, one day at a time, one action at a time, one insight at a time. Just go now. The one thing all fools have in common, Seneca said, is that you're always getting ready to begin. They're always putting it off. They say, "I'll do it later. I'll do

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  it at some point." New Year's is such a perfect time to break that cycle, to get serious, to say, "I'm going to make that change now." We created this really awesome new challenge for Daily Stoic. It's the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. You get over 30,000 words worth of content. There's multiple video sessions with me and all the people in the challenge where we ask questions, we hold each other accountable, we share the things that we're learning and going through as part of the challenge. There's a private Discord with all the people. We can find an accountability partner. You can meet new friends. It's designed to get you out of your comfort zone, to help you build new habits, to take charge, to learn new skills, to go to what's essential, and to eliminate the inessential, to take real steps towards being the person that you are meant to be

• 6:17Ryan Holiday?

  this year. So don't put it off. Don't delay. I'd love to have you join us in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge at dailystoic.com/challenge.

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  Most people don't read enough or at all. Those of us that read, there's all these books out there that we haven't read that we want to read. But what about the books that we read when we were 20 and we didn't even understand what we weren't understanding about it? What about a book like Marcus Aurelius's Meditations that every time you read it, something new or better appears in it? One habit we can practice this year, it's not just reading, but it's reread. Seneca talks about lingering on the works of the master thinkers. One of the pieces of advice that Marcus says he gets from Rusticus, his philosophy teacher, is that he can't just be satisfied getting the gist of a book. He has to really understand what it means, which means reading it not once, but twice, or 10 times, or 100 times. Think about better habits in 2023. Think about going back to books that were influential when you were younger,

• 7:16Ryan Holiday?

  that you didn't like when you were younger, that challenged you when you were younger, or just feel apropos or of the moment right now. Go back and reread them this year and you'll be surprised what you find out and learn.

• 7:29Ryan 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 who do you surround yourself with? Who's your peer group? We have the Daily Stoic Life Community, by the way, which I'd love to have you join. Private Facebook group, get extra emails, you get Q and As with me. 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. 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?

• 8:13Ryan Holiday?

  One foundational habit for next year, I think, would be free up precious resources. You say you don't have time, but here you are watching this video. You watch too much news, spend too much time doom scrolling. We spend too much time on things that don't matter. 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 the catastrophizing mindset. If you wish to improve, Epictetus says, you have to be willing to not know about some things. Lock in time to focus on making better habits by eliminating things that are sucking up too much of your time now. You have to say no to the inessential.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Verity 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, 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.

• 9:32Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.