So This is the New Year? | Make 2026 Your Best Year With These 6 Simple Stoic Rules

What about if, instead of fighting against the current, we fought instead “to be the person that philosophy tried to make us?” Make 2026 the year where you finally bring yourself closer to living your best life. No more waiting. Demand the best for yourself. Sign up for The Daily Stoic New Year New You https://join.dailystoic.com/nyny26/ challenge at dailystoic.com/challenge http://dailystoic.com/challenge. 👉 Get The Daily Stoic New Year New You https://join.dailystoic.com/nyny26/ & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life |dailystoic.com/life https://dailystoic.com/life/ 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  So this is the new year. You heard people celebrating, you saw the ball drop, the calendar turned over. How many days led up to this? Well, at least 365, but you could say that thousands of them, centuries of days, led us to this bright, shining moment of the future, 2026. Here it is in all its underwhelming glory.

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  That's a Death Cab for Cuties song called "The New Year." Maybe the new year doesn't feel any different because we're not any different. We got up at the same time, ate the same breakfast, went straight to our phones, were annoyed by the same things, had the same attitude, resigned ourselves to the same world. We are already repeating old patterns, going into the new year like those weary gladiators in the Colosseum that Marcus Aurelius talked about, "Determined to keep on living the lives we've been living, even though we're bedraggled and degraded, torn half to pieces," he said, "covered in blood and gore, and still pleading to be held over till tomorrow, to be bitten and clawed again." Come on. Why? Why not try something new?

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  Why not really get after it this year? What about if instead of fighting against the current, we fought instead to be the person that philosophy tried to make us? And that's what thousands of Stoics all over the world are doing right now, kicking off the new year. We started on January 1st with the 2026 Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It's 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges to help you practice this philosophy, to become that person that philosophy wants you to be. And it's not too late to sign up. I'd love to see you in there. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/challenge. I'm already loving the challenge. I think you'll love it, too. I will see you in there.

• 3:16Ryan Holiday?

  Here are six Stoic rules that will make you unconquerable in 2026.

• 3:24Ryan 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.

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  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. 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?

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  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 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.

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  We understand we can handle whatever happens. And we're toughening ourselves up as we go, and that's always a good thing. And by the way, that's why I start the first three weeks of every year with Stoic challenges. We've been doing this now for seven or eight years. The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge is 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges that get you out of your comfort zone, that challenge you to do things you wouldn't otherwise do. Do things that might not always be fun, might not always be easy, but you learn something about the world and you learn something about yourself by doing them. I'd love to have you join us. January 1st, it starts, so you've got to sign up now, dailystoic.com/challenge. I'm going to do it. Thousands of other Stoics all over the world are going to do it. It's an awesome community to be a part of and a great way to take your study of Stoicism to the next level.

• 6:22Ryan Holiday?

  If you've been liking these videos, dailystoic.com/challenge. I will see you in there.

• 6:28Ryan Holiday?

  You should do something for the common good every single day, right? 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. Mark Schurles 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.

• 7:09Ryan 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. But 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?

• 7:53Ryan 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.

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to have a rich 2026, reduce your desires. 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 as. 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, 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."

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  The most avoidable form of poverty is wanting more than you have. The idea is being able to be grateful, to appreciate, to be good with what you've got. That's the recipe for a great year.