Excellence Is Not an Act, But a Habit

0:00Ryan Holiday: This year is going to be the 10-year anniversary, not just of the Daily Stoic book, but dailystoic.com. The email, the podcast, all that stuff. And I don't think we would be standing here 10 years later if it weren't for Shopify. Shopify has been the back end of so many things we've done, from the New Year New You challenges to the medallions to posters. Even right now, if you're going to buy a signed book from me, you're going to be checking out through Shopify at dailystoic.com. or if you're buying something from Daily Dad there, or if you come to the Painted Porch, we even use Shopify at point of sale in the store.

0:33Ryan Holiday: And if you've been sitting on a business idea, Shopify makes it easy to make that happen. You've got everything you need to start selling and Shopify handles the setup and the checkout and you can focus on growing the business and they've got all the tools to help you with what you need, which is why Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to small businesses just getting started like Daily Stoic was not that long ago. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and real business, so go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash stoic.

1:04Ryan Holiday: That's shopify.com slash stoic to start your free trial. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:22Erete. That's a powerful word. To the Greeks, it meant excellence. It was the ultimate expression of human greatness, moral, physical, spiritual. It's what the Stoics were chasing. It's what you're chasing today. But how do we get there? Well, Erete requires a certain philosophical approach because brilliance and inspiration and skill are not enough. We are what we repeatedly do, Aristotle said. Therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit. In other words, excellence isn't this thing you do one time. It's a way of living. It's foundational. It's like an operating system, and the code this system operates on is habit.

2:05As Epictetus would later say, capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking and running by running. Therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it. So if we want to be happy, if we want to be successful, if we want to be great, we have to develop the capability. We have to develop the day-to-day habits that allow this to ensue. And that's great news because it means that impressive results and enormous changes are possible without Herculean effort or magical formulas. Small adjustments, good systems, the right processes, That's what it takes. Things like when we wake up, what we study and practice, who we have in our lives as influences, where we go and how we spend our time.

2:52There is nothing more powerful than a good habit. Nothing that holds us back quite like a bad habit. We are what we do. What we do determines who we can be. You know this. You've seen the forces at work in your own life for better and, frustratingly all too often, for worse. Today is the day to start harnessing these powers and wielding them properly, to stop being jerked around by our habits, to no longer be a passive observer of our own virtues and vices. It won't be easy, but it will be transformational. Daily Stoic has been developing the Daily Stoic Habits Challenge. Habits for success, habits for happiness.

3:35We've sifted through the greatest Stoic wisdom and aimed it at one of the most challenging parts of life, habit formation and growth. These are difficult times we're in, economic uncertainty, personal adversity. These things can sink you or they can be opportunities to improve. They can be obstacles you triumph over or setbacks that bring you to your knees. What will it be? Habits answer that question. If you can cultivate good habits, you can survive, even thrive what lies ahead. If you relapse and fall to the level of your worst habits, these hard times will only be harder. We're inviting you to spend the next six weeks challenging yourself to change what you repeatedly do.

4:18And we are promising that if you can do that, you can achieve Erité personally, professionally. If you want to do or be something, Epictetus said, make a habit of it. So let's make a habit of Erité. And let's remember his most urgent and challenging question. how much longer are you going to wait to demand the best of yourself? How about not one second longer? Let's start today. If you want to join us in this challenge, I'll be doing it alongside you. It's six weeks of really awesome life-altering habits based on Stoic wisdom. You can check that out at dailystoic.com slash habits. Dailystoic.com slash habits.

4:57Can't wait to see you. Let's change and improve together.

5:04Thank you.