26 Stoic Rules to Survive an Uncertain 2026

The year ahead is unknown, but one thing you can control is how you show up. In this episode, Ryan breaks down 26 timeless Stoic rules you can rely on when things feel overwhelming, chaotic, or out of your control. 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://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 https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  The one thing we can say for certain about the year ahead is that it is uncertain. We don't know what's going to happen. But one thing you can count on in the year ahead is yourself. Things are going to be unnerving and overwhelming and confusing. But if you have a set of guidelines, if you have a set of values, if you have what they call panic rules, things that you do when things feel like they're falling apart, that's going to help you. You want to be able to count on yourself in 2026. So here are 26 Stoic rules, Stoic guidelines to help you in the uncertain year ahead. And if you follow them and if you live by them, I can guarantee you will have a great year regardless of what's happening in the world around you.

• 1:32Ryan Holiday?

  Number one, don't have an opinion about everything. This is what Marcus Aurelius says, "Remember, we always have the power to have no opinion." We are going to be flooded with the latest breaking news, with hot takes, with trends, with everyone's opinions. It's way too much to manage. And while some things you should have an opinion about, some things you don't need to have an opinion about. Things are not asking to be judged by you, Marcus Aurelius says. Leave them alone. Leave other people to their own opinions. Leave their arguing alone. Don't chase every trend. Don't chase every latest outrage. Focus your attention Where it matters, focus your attention on what's important. Leave the rest alone.

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  This is the essential task in life. Epictetus says, some things are up to us, some things are not up to us. Focus your attention on what is up to you. That's the core of Stoic philosophy. Yeah, the world is chaotic. It doesn't make sense. It's overwhelming. You don't control everything that happens. You don't control all that. You don't control what other people do and say, but you control how you respond to those things. You control your mind. You control your values. You control your actions. You control what you do about it. Number three, you need to cut out everything that isn't essential. This comes to us from Marcus Aurelius as well. He says, we should ask ourselves at every moment, is this thing essential? And he says, if it isn't, we should get rid of it. And by the way, much of what we do is not essential. It's not important. It's not helping us. It doesn't matter.

• 3:01Ryan Holiday?

  It's an obligation we inherited. It's a glittering distraction that caught our attention. It's something that doesn't move the needle. And he says, when you get rid of the inessential, you get this double benefit. He says, because then you can do the essential things better. So going into the year, you want to stop wasting your energy, wasting your time, wasting your mental bandwidth. You only have so much energy. You only have so much time. Focus it on the essential things. Look, the morning is calm. The morning is quiet. Less has happened, less is asked of you. And most people sleep through this golden, wonderful time. The morning is the most important time of the day. I'm not saying it's easy to get up early.

• 3:42Ryan Holiday?

  One of the fascinating passages in Meditations, as Marcus Aurelius arguing with himself about why he should get up early. He says, you were not put here to huddle under the covers and stay warm. The morning is a sacred, special, wonderful time. Wake up, get after it. You were not meant to huddle under the covers and be warm. Take this quiet time. Don't get sucked into your phone right away. Use it. And if you're getting up early, then number five, bookends very nicely with that. At the end of the day, take some time to reflect on the time just passed through journaling. This is basically what Stoics Is I would say Stoicism and journaling are inseparable practices.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  And given how crazy, given how frustrating, given how overwhelming the year is likely to be, where and how are you going to be processing that? Where and how are you going to be holding yourself accountable? Seneca says we should basically interrogate ourselves at the end of the day. He said he waited for his wife to go to sleep and he would sit down and sit with the pages of a journal and look at what he did well, look at what he didn't do so well. He said, let nothing pass you by, put it up for review. The evening review is the perfect way to wind down the day, go to sleep and wake up and do better tomorrow. Stop giving your time away. It's crazy, the Stoics say, that we are protective of our property and of our money. And then we're frivolous with our time.

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  The one thing you can't recover, the one thing they're not making any more of. Life isn't short, Seneca says. A year is a long time. The problem, we just waste it. We waste it on inessential things. We waste it getting distracted and upset by things that have nothing to do with us, that we can't control. Time is precious. Act accordingly. You only have so many hours in a day. You only have so many hours in a year. How are you going to spend them? And how are you going to spend them on things that matter? Always be challenging yourself. The Stoics would say, life is uncomfortable, so get used to being uncomfortable. Seneca would set aside a certain number of days throughout the year

• 5:52Ryan Holiday?

  where he would survive on very little food or sleep on the ground. He would try to rough it, basically. And he said, the point of this was to get up close and comfortable with conditions that you can then say to yourself, this is what I was afraid of? Most of the time, we're trying to make life easier and smoother. And it's a good instinct, I guess. But the problem then is that this makes us afraid of losing that comfort. And if we can actively challenge ourselves, get outside our comfort zone, get familiar with other states of living and being that other people are petrified of, it makes us freer because then we can be more courageous. We understand we can handle whatever happens and we're toughening ourselves up as we go. And that's always Good thing. You should do something for the common good every single day, right?

• 6:34Ryan Holiday?

  The world is dark. Bad things are going to be happening in 2026. Things you don't like are going to happen in 2026. If you want to make sure you don't live in a dark, screwed up, awful world, well, one thing you can do is not be dark and awful. You can do good things, right? Stoicism is not just about self-improvement. It's a philosophy around helping others and improving the world. Marx was talks about the idea of the common good, something like 80 times in meditations. He says, actually, the fruit of a good life is good character and acts for the common good. So what is the good you're going to do? And if you can set a rule that you always try to do good, you'll have a good year. Number nine, silence distractions. Here at the beginning of the year, get a TV out of your bedroom. Get the phone out of your bedroom. Delete apps from your phone.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Limit the inputs. We are needlessly bombarded by way too much noise, way too many things competing for our attention. And you got to learn how to shut this out. Stoics talk about concentrating like a Roman, doing it as if this thing in front of you matters. Being philosophical is the ability to go deep. It's the ability to lock in, the ability to tune out. And you're gonna need this in a crazy year. 10. Pause before you react. Athenodorus, an ancient Stoic who lived in the time of Augustus. He's an advisor to the future young emperor back when his name was Octavian. And he tells Octavian that one of the keys to being a successful leader

• 8:00Ryan Holiday?

  is that before he reacts to anything, before he does anything out of anger, he should count all 24 letters of the alphabet. There only being 24 letters in the alphabet then. The idea is pause and reflect. You can have the emotion, you could have the feeling, you can be triggered. But what matters is whether you take the action on it or not. Pause and reflect. I actually carry a coin in my pocket that reminds me of this very idea. It's awesome. One of the things we do when we pause and reflect is to put every impression and emotion and opinion to the test, right? This is what Stoicism is saying. I'm having this feeling, I'm having this thought. Is it true? Is it important? Is it in line with the values I have with the person I want to be?

• 8:45Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus talked about how a philosopher should be able to take every impression, opinion, bit of information it gets and test it the way a money changer checks for counterfeit currency. He said they can bang it on the table and tell in an instant if the metal is diluted or not. The idea is you're going to have emotions, you're going to have strong opinions, you're going to think things, want to do things in 2026. But do you have the ability to go, hey, is my assumption here correct? Is my information correct? Right? Is this what I want to do? Is this who I want to be? You want to put all this stuff to the test. The Stoics were not emotionless. They just tried not to do things out of emotion, and that is a critical difference. If you want to have a rich 2026, reduce your desires.

• 9:28Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus says that if you wish for things to be as they are, you will have them. And so if you can reduce your needs, if you can reduce your baseline, if you can reduce your expectations, you'll have a rich and prosperous 2026. If this year or any year is dependent on you achieving or getting things at a certain level, then your success is going to be dependent on things going a certain way. And that's a vulnerable place to be. If you need a bigger house, a bigger car, if you need more followers, more attention, right? You're going to be on a treadmill this year. And that's what Seneca means when he said, it's not the person who has little that's poor, it's the person who wants more. The most avoidable form of poverty is wanting more than you have. The idea is being able

• 10:13Ryan Holiday?

  to be grateful, to appreciate, to be good with what you've got. That's the recipe for a great year. Number 13, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. That's Marcus Aurelius writing to himself in Meditations. The Stoic virtue of justice has nothing to do with whether things are legal or not. It doesn't matter if people are watching or not. It doesn't matter if you can get away with it. What they cared about is, is it the right thing to do? You have to have your code, you have to have your values, you have to have your ethics, and you stick by them. And by the way, in a world where it seems like everything is upside down, when, when bad people Are getting ahead when horrible things are happening and no one's being held accountable.

• 10:54Ryan Holiday?

  One way you can get your bearings, one way you can make things right again is by focusing on doing the right thing. Again, not expecting a reward, not expecting a parade, not expecting recognition, but saying, hey, I do what's right because that's what's in my control. That's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of world I want to live in. The rest, the Stoics say, doesn't matter. I mean, of course, it does matter, and this is why we have a legal system and all of that. They're just saying that's not as up to you. And so what you should focus on is the part of it that's up to you, which is the standard of behavior you set and keep for yourself. Number 14, practice acceptance. Look, there's going to be stuff that happens in 2026 that you don't like, that you didn't want.

• 11:39Ryan Holiday?

  And I don't just mean like out in the world. I just mean like that's life, right? There's going to be travel delays, the stock market's going to go up and down. People are going to say things you don't like, like stuff's just going to happen. Nobody gets their way. And so what Stoicism is, is an, is an understanding that we have to accept this. That's very different than resignation, right? You accept that this happened and you focus on your response, your attitude, what you're going to do about it. This is what they mean when they say the obstacle is the way. You want to treat what happens as an opportunity, but to first do that, you have to accept what it is and what it represents. You have to accept the things it closed and you have to accept the things that it opened for you. That's the form of acceptance you're going to need to practice in the year ahead.

• 12:32Ryan Holiday?

  Don't suffer more than you have to. As I said, bad things are going to happen. The problem is the anxiety and the fear that we have about the potential of that happening. Seneca says that he who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary. And he says, the reality is, a lot of us suffer more in our minds than we do in reality. The dread, the torture, the anxiety, what if this, what if that, what if this, what if that? That's not Stoicism. You want to be prepared. You want to be trained to handle the various contingencies that might come up. You want to make sure you're not torturing yourself in advance. What's going to happen is what's going to happen. What matters is are you the kind of person who can roll with the punches? Are you the kind of person who doesn't lose their cool?

• 13:16Ryan Holiday?

  Are you the person that focuses on what you're going to do about it? Emoting about the problem, fretting about the problem, worrying about the problem, talking to people about the problem. None of that does anything about the problem. So don't suffer more than you have to this year. Number 16, talk less, listen more. Zeno says we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Let's try to orient our outputs and our inputs around that ratio this year. When you open your mouth, you stop listening. So let's focus on learning. Let's focus on hearing. Let's focus on connection. Let's focus on chattering less. And this goes back to that idea of cutting out the inessential. Most of these things don't need you to talk about them.

• 14:01Ryan Holiday?

  Most of these things are not asking for your opinion. Talk less, listen more. 17, let's focus on progress, not perfection. Like, of course, we're going to want things to go well. We want to hold ourselves to our standards. We want to make sure everything's going the right way. But also, this perfectionism is often just a dressed up version of procrastination. Churchill actually said a great way to spell perfectionism was paralysis. Just get after it this year. Get moving. You don't need a perfect, complete solution to every problem. You need to make progress. This is one of my rules, like just a couple crappy pages a day as a writer. As long as I'm making a contribution, as long as I'm getting better,

• 14:45Ryan Holiday?

  as long as I'm moving forward, I'm happy with that. I'm going to celebrate that as a win. I'm not going to expect perfection because perfection is impossible, especially in a flawed world that we don't control. And this is actually something the Stoics talk about. They said, we don't despair of a pursuit because perfection is impossible. No, we want to get better. We want to improve. And by the way, that's how you do get to some impressive. Place. The Stoics said that well being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Little contributions day to day, refine as you go. That ends up somewhere much more impressive than the paralysis that perfectionism can induce in us. Number 18, be strict with yourself, but tolerant with others.

• 15:29Ryan Holiday?

  It's good to have high standards. It's good to know what's important. It's good to know what works. It's good to know how things should be done. But we have to remember the virtue here is self discipline. We don't get to be a tyrant. We don't get to be a strict taskmaster. Marcus Aurelius writes this in Meditations. He says, remember tolerant with others, strict with yourself. You control you. You don't control other people. You don't get to go around being disappointed in them because they didn't live up to your standards, especially if they never signed up for your standards in the first place. They don't have the advantages you have. They don't have the training you have. They didn't ask to be bullied or judged by you. So let's be appreciative. Let's be understanding. Let's celebrate other people for what they are and what they're capable of.

• 16:14Ryan Holiday?

  Let's leave the strictness and the standards for ourselves. Number 19, stop complaining this year. Complaining doesn't make situations better. That's not what people who change things do. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, never be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. Traffic is annoying, but yelling in your car isn't changing anything. Yeah, that thing that somebody said to you was rude or crappy, but whining about it later, letting it ruin your day, that doesn't change anything. Complaining doesn't change things. Focusing on what you're going to do about them is a much better use of your energy. Don't be a downer. Don't be a whiner. Focus on what's up to you. That's what matters.

• 16:57Ryan Holiday?

  Number 20, love everything that happens. It's one thing to practice acceptance, and we're going to have to do that in the year ahead. It's another to see opportunities inside obstacles. That's another thing we're going to have to do this year. But this concept of amor fati, which comes to us from Nietzsche, but is essentially Stoicism 101, is the highest level. It's the idea of saying, hey, it's actually great that it happened. It's good that things are so screwed up. It's good that things are so frustrating and dysfunctional. This is the opportunity. This is the opportunity for me to do good. This is the opportunity for me to grow. This is the opportunity for me to be heroic. This is the opportunity for me to step up. This is forming me, shaping me. This is exactly the way it's meant to be.

• 17:41Ryan Holiday?

  And I'm going to meet this moment. That's what loving everything that happens is about. Now, that doesn't mean you love that the economy crashed. Doesn't mean you love that someone just robbed you. Doesn't mean you love that you got a cancer diagnosis. That would be profoundly insensitive. The idea of a mor phati is you love what it's going to do to you. You love how you are going to change in response to it. You love what this is going to teach you. You love what you're going to make of it. That's what Stoicism is. That's the attitude we need to bring to the new year. Number 21, you have to detach your self-worth from outcomes. As they say in the Bhagavad Gita, you are entitled to the work. You are not entitled to the fruits of the work.

• 18:26Ryan Holiday?

  Most of the outcomes are not in our control. When I write a book, I control what I put into it. I control the writing. I control that work. I don't control, once I put it out, what people say about it, how it sells. I don't control any of that stuff. I have to learn to love that part of it. I have to learn to love sitting down and writing. I have to learn that success is doing that, that that's my job, that that's the part to appreciate. As Marx says in Meditations, it's insane to tie your well-being to things outside your control, to let other people say whether you succeeded. He says, happiness and tranquility is tying your success to what's in your control, to the reaching of your standards, to the effort that you put in, to what you learned, what you take out of the process.

• 19:11Ryan Holiday?

  That's what we have to focus on. Focus on the process in 2026. Focus on what's up to you in 2026, not what other people say about you, not the results that come in in the year ahead. 22, take a book with you everywhere you go. The foundational story of Stoicism is Is Zeno learning from the Oracle of Delphi? That the secret to wisdom is to have conversations with the dead. That's what reading is. It's a superpower. It's a chance to talk to people who aren't here anymore. I'm talking to you about Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus, some of the wisest people who ever lived, as if they're still with us. Because they are still with me. I carry them with me everywhere. I engage with them on a daily basis. The year ahead is going to be rough. It's going to throw a lot at you.

• 19:54Ryan Holiday?

  You want to annex the wisdom from the past into your own life. That's what Seneca said the study of philosophy allows you to do. Read less news in the year ahead. Focus less on what's happening in any given moment and talk to the dead instead. Talk to the wise people who have been through stuff like this before and learn what they have to teach us. Twenty-three, say no a lot this year. I think this is one of the hardest things to do in life, to say no to invitations, to requests, to obligations, to the stuff everyone else is doing, to say no to money. The problem is, we don't understand that when we're saying yes, we are in fact saying no. We're saying no to ourselves. We're saying no to our family. We're saying no to our work. We're saying no to our health. We're saying no to what we should actually be doing.

• 20:38Ryan Holiday?

  For some reason, it's harder to be rude to this person who sends you an email asking you to do them a huge favor than it is to be rude to your seven-year-old who wants to play, who wonders why you're not home when you're usually home. Say no this year. Say no to the things that are inessential, as Marcus Aurelius reminds us. So you can say yes to the things that are essential. Remember, no is a complete sentence. You don't have to explain. Don't be rude on purpose. Don't be a jerk. But if it's not essential, if it's not important, if you know it's not what really moves the needle, what you really need to be doing this year, say no to it. And that's going to mean saying no a lot. Number twenty-four, ask for help. One of the big misconceptions about Stoicism

• 21:19Ryan Holiday?

  is that it's about creating invincible, untouchable, invulnerable superheroes. You are not an island. You are not in this alone. You are not capable of doing this alone. One of the most beautiful passages from Marcus Aurelius has him saying that we are like soldiers storming a wall. He says, if you've fallen and you have to ask a Comrade for help, so what, right? He's saying, so what? Because that's actually the job of a soldier. They are meant for each other. They are meant to help each other. When your friends ask you for help, when they come to you with something they're struggling with or thinking about, or whatever it is, you're never like, get the fuck out of here. No, you're like, thank you. It means something to you. And then for some reason, we're reluctant to do that ourselves. Ask for help this year. It will make you better. It will connect you more to others.

• 22:03Ryan Holiday?

  It will make you capable of doing what you need to do this year. Number 25, stop comparing yourselves to others. We are running our own race here. You don't know other people's races. You don't know when they started. You don't know how far they're going. You don't even know if they're telling the truth, right? Most people are lying about their success. You think Instagram influencers actually live like these photos look? Of course not. And yet here we are, like being envious and insecure, asking ourselves, well, why am I not doing that? Are they doing better than me? Do you think it's good for business, for competitors to talk about how much trouble they're having? No, everyone is lying. Everyone is pretending. Everyone is painting a false picture. Seneca said, "The key to a good life is to have a sense of the path that you're on."

• 22:48Ryan Holiday?

  And he said, "To not be distracted by the paths that crisscross yours." And this is the important part. He said, "Especially from the footsteps of those who are helplessly lost." Know where you're going. Know the race you're running. Run that race. Ignore everything else around you. And number 26, this might seem a little morbid, but it is essential. Think about death every day. The Stoic exercise here is memento mori, right? Remember you are mortal. You're not going to live forever. You do not have unlimited time. You don't control when or how you go. This isn't supposed to be depressing. It is a tool to create priority and meaning. You could leave life right now. Marx really says in Meditations, "Let that determine what you do and say and think."

• 23:32Ryan Holiday?

  And this has been a tool for generations. Philosophers use it to create perspective and urgency and priority and clarity. When you think about your life coming to a close, it tells you what's essential and what isn't. It turns down the volume on so much stuff. So do this practice. And understand, as Seneca says, that death isn't this thing that's going to come at us once. But in fact, we are dying every day. We are dying every minute. A year has just come to a close. You'll never get that year back. It is gone forever. We are dying every day. We are dying every minute. So we should live accordingly. And that's what this practice of Memento Mori reminds us to do. Life is short. We don't know how long we have. Let's live accordingly.