9 Stoic Habits For A Better Life

Virtue is like any other skill. It’s not something you either have or you don’t. It’s something you practice, and the more you practice it, the better you become. This was Aristotle’s fundamental insight: excellence is not innate. It is a habit. 👉 The Daily StoicHabits for Success, Habits for Happiness https://dailystoic.com/habits course is a six-week challenge designed to change your entire relationship with habits for the better. Sign up https://dailystoic.com/habits to take the first step toward a more effective, happier life | https://challenge.dailystoic.com/habits 🎥 VIDEO EPISODE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt5RR2nghzk| Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt5RR2nghzk 🎟️DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| 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/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC http://ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. 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.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

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

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Most of us aren't satisfied with who we are. Most of us know we're leaving something on the table, and we know it because we see what other people are capable of. At the same time, sometimes we let ourselves off the hook by saying, oh, it's easier for them. They have better genetics and better upbringing. They had a head start. But the truth is that virtue is not different than any other skill. You don't have it or not have it. You do it or you don't do it. And you get better at it the more you do it. This is the fundamental insight of Aristotle, that excellence is not innate, it is a habit. Epictetus says something similar. He says, "We tell ourselves what we want to be, and then we do what we have to do."

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  And that's what we're going to talk about in today's Daily Stoic video, foundational Stoic habits to help you be that person.

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  And that brings us to where we have to start. The Stoics would say that procrastination, which we all do, which we are all inclined to do, is not just inefficient, it's not just wasteful, it's entitled and arrogant. When we tell ourselves, "I'll do it tomorrow," as Marcus really says, "We could be good right now, but instead we tell ourselves, 'I'm going to do it tomorrow.'" But that presumes you have tomorrow. That presumes you have next year. That presumes you can do it when the kids are older. That presumes the opportunity will still be there in the future. That is arrogant, and that is entitled. And it's, by the way, something that all foolish people have in common. Seneca says, "What fools are always doing is telling themselves they're going to start later." And he says, "This is the biggest waste of life.

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  It snatches away the present moment." He says, "It denies us the present by promising the future." And nothing can promise you a second chance at this thing later. It's in front of you, it's possible now. If you're going to do it, you should do it now. There's all these things that we want to do. There's all these things that it's possible for us to do, but they're not going to be quick, and they're not going to be easy. So if we want to do them, if we want to get them done, now is the time, not later, but now, because we don't know how much longer we have.

• 2:28Ryan Holiday?

  One of the reasons we procrastinate, one of the reasons we don't make changes, one of the reasons we don't do what needs to be done, is that we make it bigger than it needs to be, right? We think about transformation, we think about dramatic gestures, when in reality, most of the change, most of the things we need to do, pretty small, right? James Clear talks about atomic habits, and he doesn't mean explosive habits. What he means is like, the smallest possible thing you can do, the little things that make an enormous difference. Zeno, 2,500 years ago, talked about the same thing. He said, "Well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing." And there's a million examples of this. James Clear talks about like, the cycling team and atomic habits that focuses on these 1% changes.

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  They've done analysis where like, if you improve your business by 10% in just a handful of areas, cumulatively, that can lead to an enormous increase in sales. These little things add up, right? That sounds like a basic idea, and it is basic, but so many people ignore the basics. Marcus really, in Meditations, would talk about how we change our life, action by action. No one can stop you from doing that next right thing. And you're not going to stop yourself from doing that next right thing, if you make it small enough. Like, as a writer, you don't think about writing a whole book. You don't do it in one day. You sit down and you go, "What's my page count for the day, right? What's the little thing that I have to do today? What's the positive contribution that I make today?" Seneca would talk about this as well, that he says, "All you got to do is find one thing a day."

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  The path to wisdom is paved by doing one thing per day. So if you're procrastinating because you're thinking about these big, big things you have to do, the first step should be small.

• 4:11Ryan Holiday?

  That thing that causes us to procrastinate, sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's entitlement. On the other side, sometimes it's perfectionism. Churchill said that perfectionism could also be spelled paralysis, right? We have these extremely high standards. We make up in our heads, we compare where we are, which is in progress, against completed things, polished things, right? Published things. And then we despair, right? We go, "I'm never going to get from here to there." But this is one of the reasons we think about these small steps. And then, we also should give ourselves permission to be imperfect. Marcus really talks in Meditations about celebrating behaving like a human being, which is to say, "Not perfect," which is to say, "Flawed."

• 4:55Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I don't just think, "Hey, what's my contribution to my writing today?" I try to dramatically lower the stakes, right? There's a writing rule, it's like, just a couple crappy pages a day. And by giving yourself permission to be crappy, but forcing yourself to produce, you're reducing that resistance, you're reducing that intimidation, you're reducing that desire to procrastinate because the task is manageable and not intimidating. And oftentimes, by the way, quantity is a way to get to quality. When we're not being so intentional, what the Buddhists would call willful will, like, expecting things or needing them to be a certain way, we actually make it easier to do things well. So remember, as Hemingway said, "The first draft of everything is shit." I have that on my wall as a reminder.

• 5:39Ryan Holiday?

  My job is to show up, my job is to make progress, my job is to make a contribution, my job is to make shitty first drafts, because that is the only way to get to a publishable, finished manuscript. And what is true for books is also true for changing and growing and becoming the person that you want to be.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  One of the ways to do more is by doing less. Less stuff, less distractions, less screen time, less commitments, right? We do less so we can do more. I was talking to Matthew McConaughey once, and he was telling me about this moment in his career where he felt like he was doing all this stuff. And he says, "He was making Bs in five things." And he said that he made the decision instead to make As in three things. And that meant some painful elimination. That meant canceling some stuff. That meant detangling some stuff. But those three things were really important. It was his family, his career, and his charitable foundation. Those were the three things that mattered. And Marcus really says that we have to ask ourselves, as Matthew McConaughey did, "Is what I'm doing essential? Like, is it important?

• 6:46Ryan Holiday?

  Is it really moving the needle? Is it what I'm supposed to be doing?" And he says, "Because most of what we do and say and think is not essential." But when we eliminate those inessential things, Marcus really says, "We get the double benefit, the double satisfaction of doing those essential things better." So if you want to do more, do less.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  It's easy to miss because it's a piece of ancient literature, because it's a story, maybe because you were taught about it in school. But the Odyssey actually contains one of the first and best observations about behavioral psychology that we have. Odysseus has to sail past the sirens, and he knows he's not going to be able to resist them. So what does he do? He does what psychologists today call "a commitment device." He plugs his men's ears with beeswax, and then he lashes himself to the mast. He's able to hear the sirens, what he wants to experience. But fundamentally, what Odysseus understands is that who he is at this moment of temptation, when his willpower is being tested, is not who he wants to be.

• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  He wants to make his decision before that happens. He wants to defer to the sober Odysseus rather than the seduced Odysseus. So the commitment device takes over for him. Like, look, it would be wonderful if we always made the right decision, if we didn't write checks that we'd have trouble cashing later, but that's what commitment devices are for. Because the world is filled with temptations and distractions and forces tugging us towards the rock, we need things that keep us constrained, that prevent us from doing what our weaker self is inclined to do. I'll give you one. I don't have social media on my phone. It's on my waistbone, which makes it harder for me to get to. So what makes Odysseus different

• 8:35Ryan Holiday?

  from all the other sailors that go past the sirens? It isn't that he had more willpower or discipline. He knew that he didn't. What he did was make his decision before he got there. He understood that in the moment, with those beautiful voices calling him, he'd be just as weak as everyone else. So he came up with a way to protect himself from himself. And look, there's a million examples of commitment devices. There's non-refundable purchases. There's signing up for a marathon and announcing it. There's accountability partners. There's making bets with your friends, bricking your phone or putting on a website blocker. I heard a great one. You order a big entree at a restaurant, and you tell the waiter, as you're ordering it, to box up half of it to take home, right?

• 9:18Ryan Holiday?

  So you're not making the decision in the moment when you're tempted, you're making the decision beforehand to keep yourself honest, to keep yourself on the right track, to keep yourself from crashing into those rocks. And that's what Odysseus was doing thousands of years ago.

• 9:38Ryan Holiday?

  You look at people who are in great shape, people who are active, people who push themselves physically, and you go, "Oh, I want to be a person like that. That's who I want to be." But they weren't born that way, they became that way, right? That's the whole point that Aristotle is making. A person who plays music wasn't born musical. They learned an instrument, and they practiced that instrument. So if you want to be a physically active person, there's no other way to do that, then start being physically active. Get off the couch, go for a walk, go for a run. You have to do it. And this is the tension, this is the battle. Seneca talks about how we treat the body rigorously, he says, "So that it's not disobedient to the mind." We are building the muscle of doing the thing that we don't want to do.

• 10:21Ryan Holiday?

  This is why I think cold plunges are great. Not because they have any magical health benefits. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But it's good to do things that are hard while you're doing them, but you feel good about it after. You want to build that meta-muscle that says, "I do hard things. I don't let my reluctance decide. I don't take the easy road." So you take the stairs. So you do another set at the gym. So you walk an extra mile. So you jump in the cold water. So you sign up for that race, or that competition, or that challenge, and then you do it. And you don't just do it once. Like, in a way, doing the marathon is easier,

• 11:03Ryan Holiday?

  one-time thing, than the day-to-day-ness, doing it every day. Being the person who gets up when it's cold, who gets up when it's wet, who gets up when they're tired, not because it's fun then in the moment, but because that's what the person they want to be would do.

• 11:25Ryan Holiday?

  If you're trying to grow, if you're trying to get better, if you're struggling with difficult things, at some point, inevitably, you're gonna hit a wall, you're gonna run into trouble. That's inevitable. The question is, what do you do when you get to that point? Do you just push and push and push? Do you quit? Or I think there's another option here, which is, do you ask for help? There's this great kids book I love. It's called The Boy, the Fox, the Horse and the Mole. There's this scene, and I think about it all the time. I try to talk to my kids about it. And in the scene in the book, the, the character says, you know, asking for help isn't giving up, it's refusing to give up. Is there a better way to do this? What am I doing wrong? What did you do when you hit a point like this? These are all really important questions, right? Even just asking

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  for encouragement or support is really important. Whenever I talk to military groups, I tell them, one of my favorite quotes in meditations is about Marcus Aurelius saying that, like soldiers, we're trying to storm a wall if we fall and have to ask a comrade for help, have to ask them to pull us up. He says, so what? I love the shrug there of the so what? It's not only not a big deal, I would say, to ask for help. Like, when people ask you for help, and you're like, ugh, screw this guy. Or you're like, oh, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. You feel flattered by it, right? So not only is it not an imposition, the way we sometimes think it is, it's not shameful, but to refuse to ask for help, to just lay there while the other people are still storming the wall, you could actually

• 12:47Ryan Holiday?

  say is a dereliction of duty. So in your desire to change, in your journey to become the person that you want to become, you're gonna have to be brave enough to ask for help. You're gonna have to be disciplined, committed enough to understand that there are gonna be moments where it's really hard. And sometimes the solution is not working harder, but finding a smarter way, right? Those breakthroughs, those gains, those efficiencies, that's what mentors are for. That's what coaches are for. That's what your fellow human beings and family members are for, to help you get through that moment. And so you have to be willing to ask for help. And there's nothing unstoic or weak about doing that.

• 13:29Ryan Holiday?

  And I, I do think it's worth double clicking there on the struggles, the hitting the wall, the running into trouble. Because the path to self-improvement is gonna be slippery, it's gonna be jagged, it's not always a positive arc. There may even be deep valleys, right? As they say on, on every project, at some point, you run into the trough of despair. We're gonna fall short. We're gonna screw up. We're gonna be jarred unavoidably by circumstances, which is something Marcus Aurelius says in meditations. The key to growth is how quickly you come back to it. Do you use the fact that you made a mistake, that you screwed up, that you drifted? Do you say, ah, what the hell, it doesn't matter? Do you use that to rationalize even more bad behavior? Or is it a wake-up call for

• 14:12Ryan Holiday?

  you? Does it reinvigorate you? If you beat yourself up, that's energy you're not spending getting back on track. Like, we're all gonna have bad days. No one is perfect. No one bats a hundred. We can't change that, and, and it's unavoidable, and it's delusional to think otherwise, right? That's where that perfectionism gets us in trouble. So we can't go back and fix what happened, but we can move forward. We can be better here and now. We can get back on track. We can practice those habits now. It's disgraceful, Marcus Aurelius says, for us to give up on ourselves when we've still got capacity within us. Says, the soul can't give up while the body is still going strong. We've got a lot of life left in us. Hopefully, we'll be lucky enough to get not just today

• 14:53Ryan Holiday?

  and tomorrow, but many days after. And so the question is, how quickly are we gonna get back on track? How quickly are we gonna get back in touch? How quickly are we gonna return to those principles that we know are important, that we know that matter? So yeah, we've been jarred. We've been knocked off. But the key is picking ourselves back up and getting ourselves back on track.

• 15:17Ryan Holiday?

  It is interesting how when we think about self-improvement, most of the goals that we have, most of the things we're trying to work on are relatively superficial, if not vain. We think about getting in better shape. We think about eating better. We think about getting up earlier so we can accomplish more. We're, we're trying to perfect our craft, less so like who we are as a human being. And I don't mean this judgmentally, because we all do it. In fact, Marcus Aurelius did this. He talks in meditations, how strange it is that our inclination is to, to be a better wrestler, right? But not a better friend. He says, you're, you're practicing to get better at this hobby, but you're not getting better at forgiving faults, at being a better citizen, at being a better human being. And so when we think about, like, who do we want to be in doing that work?

• 16:02Ryan Holiday?

  This shouldn't just be about being more productive, being more successful, being in better shape. All the virtues follow this same trajectory, right? It, just as if you wanna be in better physical shape, you should exercise. If you wanna be a person who's more generous, who's more supportive, who's more honest, who's more involved in their community. Again, it's pretty straightforward how you do that. Start tipping better. Start helping other people more. Start speaking your mind. Volunteer. Get involved. It's never gonna magically happen. You're not gonna be selected for those things. If you want to be them, if that's a trait that you want people to see in you, you have to do that thing, right?

• 16:47Ryan Holiday?

  My, my friend Austin Kleon talks about the noun or the verb. Do the verb. But let's just make sure that that verb is including more community-minded, more character-based things, that we're directing it at the personal and not just the professional.

• 17:10Ryan Holiday?

  This guy behind me, Marcus Aurelius, he wasn't born Marcus Aurelius. He became Marcus Aurelius, one day at a time, one habit at a time, one change at a time. Which is, by the way, how we all become great. There's all these things that we wanna do. There's these changes we wanna make. There's these habits we wanna start. There are these habits we wanna break. There are these things we know that we're capable of. The problem isn't knowing what we wanna do, it's knowing how to do it. It's how to make that a conscious habit. Well, that's what the Daily Stoic Habits for Success Habits for Happiness course is all about. It is a six-week challenge built around the best Stoic practices to

• 17:51Ryan Holiday?

  help you build better habits, one day at a time. It's challenges, six days a week, that push you to be better, that get outside your comfort zone. The point is, you don't have to figure out where to start. We're gonna take care of that for you. You don't have to rely just on raw willpower. There's no radical, magical transformation. It's one habit at a time. It's not passive stuff for you to read once and forget. It's gonna require showing up every day. There's no way around that. It's a challenge, right? And you're gonna have to show up and meet that challenge. But if you do that, you will become better. I have become better from doing it over the years. Six weeks of daily challenges, better habits. And you can join us at dailystoic.com/habits.