Will You Face This Truth?

Even though we can’t control time or slow it down, even though we can’t control external forces and external events—we can control ourselves, so we can control how we use our time. SPECIAL OFFER exclusively for podcast listeners 👉 Go to dailystoic.com/spring and enter code DSPOD20 at checkout to get 20% off the Spring Forward Challenge! Challenge yourself to spring forward and become the person you aspire to be. The Spring Forward Challenge starts March 20, 2026.🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Spring is the most beautiful of the seasons. Suddenly, after a dreary winter, the colors come back, the birds are out, the days last longer, the breeze is light and the air is cool. But as Philip Larkin's bittersweet poem reminds us, beneath this turning of seasons is a kind of darkness. As the poem goes, "The trees are coming into leaf like something almost being said. The recent buds relax and spread. Their greenness is kind of grief." The inherent message is about the passage of time. Each season brings new life, yes, but also marks the sensation of life. "It's a painful truth," the poem says, "that's written in the rings of a tree. Winter is dead and over, and all of us a little more so, too."

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  This notion serves as a gentle nudge, reminding us of the preciousness of every moment. It urges us not merely to exist, but to truly live, to seize each season and extract its full potential, which is what we mean when we say here at Daily Stoic that it's time to spring forward. This is the time of year where we're talking about spring cleaning. It's worth pondering, how often do we organize not just our physical spaces, but our minds, our routines, and our assumptions as well? Even if you just reflect on the last week, how many of those seven days were efficient and as productive as they could have been? Or did you find yourself wasting time over complicating things and falling back on old habits? Are you, like many others,

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  still feeling the lingering effects of winter's inertia? Well, the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge is designed to prompt introspection into those aspects of your life, to help you scrutinize your choices, your relationships, and your habits, and help propel you towards a life of fulfillment. As Marx really said, "This is what you deserve. You could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow." Challenge yourself with me and thousands of other Stoics all over the world. Spring Forward and become the person you inspire to be. And you can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/spring. And by the way, we have a special discount for podcast listeners. This year, we're offering 20% off when you use code DSPOD20 at checkout.

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  You can join me and thousands of other Stoics in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. Just head over to dailystoic.com/spring and enter code DSPOD20 to get 20% off.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  You