It’s Time To Change (And You Know It) | Keep The Rhythm

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:18Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

1:58It's time to change, and you know it. We've been this way for a while. We're set in our ways. We continue to be someone with a short fuse, someone who eats poorly, someone who can't stick to an exercise routine, who has a mean streak, who is too timid. Maybe you don't like to try very hard, or you don't think you're good enough. And how is that working out for you? Why do you keep going down a road that leads to nowhere. Marcus Aurelius talks about how crazy it is that we just go on staying the same person we've always been, how we just keep being mauled and degraded by the life we're living. And for what?

2:38It's not even pleasurable. It's not getting us what we want. People who can't change, people who refuse to change, he says, are like those animal fighters at the games, torn half to pieces, covered in blood and gore, still begging to be held over tomorrow to be bitten and clawed again. This is the definition of insanity, they say. It's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. There's nothing sadder than a person who can't grow, who can't turn over a new leaf, who cannot take a leap of faith forward into the dark. You've got to be willing to change. You must change.

3:13You must get better. Not later, not eventually, but now. And what if this year, what if 2025 could be the year you lived up to your potential? How would that compound in the years to come? And this is what we built the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge around. It's a set of 21 actionable challenges presented, one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. The goal is to make 2025, your best year yet. It's not pie in the sky, theoretical discussions. That's not what the Stoics are about, but clear, immediate exercises, things you can start doing right now and keep doing throughout the year.

3:56In the Daily Stoic New Year New Challenge, we tell you exactly what to do, how to do it, and why it works. And we'll give you strategies for maintaining this way of living, not just for the next year, but ideally for your whole life. I want you to think about what getting rid of one bad habit is worth, what you'd give to add a new positive way of thinking or acting into your daily routine, how great it would be to be part of a community, part of a tribe, people like you struggling and growing. We're making satisfying progress towards being the kind of person they know they can be. Well, here's the chance you can sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash challenge.

4:29You'll get 21 days of challenges. You'll get three live Q &A sessions with me, access to our private community. You'll get a course calendar. And since we created the New Year New You Challenge seven years ago, over 20 ,000 people have bet on themselves. People from all walks of life, teachers and executives, stay-at-home moms, students, retirees, and everyone in between all use getting better. Last year, one of the participants said, this is a quote, it was genuinely transformative for me. They said, I've tried all sorts of different New Year's resolutions over the years, but this one was novel and challenging.

5:04They said, I learned things that helped me center and change the way I thought about things, and I'm excited to do it again this year. I myself am excited to do it again this year. I'll be doing it alongside all the participants, and I hope I'm doing it alongside you because I know you've always wanted to change, and let's make 2025 the year where we do it, where we become closer to living the best life we're capable of being. So don't wait to demand more of yourself. Don't wait to change the course of your life. Let's do it now. Starts on January 1st, but you got to sign up now. The Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge begins on January 1st, 2025 and sign up at dailystoic.com slash challenge.

5:49We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr.

6:25Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being.

7:07And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

7:22keep the rhythm this is from this week's entry in the daily stoic journal 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living marcus aurelius must have known that as emperor he was part of a grand and great history as a philosopher he knew that all people are part of the rhythm pulsing through both history and their own lives and he liked to remind himself not to lose that beat Return to your philosophy, he would tell himself when he drifted. Don't give in to distractions. In fact, he tried constantly to return to it. That kind of awareness, that paying special attention, is something he learned reading from Epictetus.

8:03He told his students that while none of us can be perfect, we can catch ourselves when we begin to slide, when we drift from where we should be. So can you feel that rhythm this week? Can you point to examples when you really feel locked into it? And we have two quotes from Marcus and one from Epictetus. Walked along gallery of the past, of empires, of kingdoms, succeeding each other without number. You can also see the future, for surely it will be exactly the same, unable to deviate from the present rhythm. It's all one, whether we've experienced 40 years or an eon. What more is there to see?

8:42That's Meditation 749. And then Meditation 6.11, he says, When forced as it seems by circumstances into utter confusion, get a hold of yourself quickly. Don't be locked out of the rhythm any longer than necessary. You'll be able to keep the beat if you are constantly returning to it. And then Epictetus' Discourses 4.12, he says, When you let your attention slide for a bit, don't think you will get back a grip on it whenever you wish. Instead, bear in mind that perhaps because of today's mistake, everything that follows will be necessarily worse. Is it possible to be free of air? No, not by any means.

9:20But it is possible for a person to always be stretching to avoid air. And we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide. There was something I was just thinking about as I read this to you. I wrote a blog post. I'm looking at this. This is March 4th, 2012. Trust me, I'm lying. It's mostly written, but it's not out. I've moved to New Orleans, transitioning towards a sort of different life. And anyways, I wrote a blog post on my site called Return to Philosophy, and I'll read it to you. I have written this post before, but it remains a common theme. The busier we get, the more we work and learn and read, the further we drift.

10:02We get in a rhythm. We're making money, being creative. We're stimulated and busy. It seems like everything is going well. but we drift further and further from philosophy. So we must catch ourselves and return to it. Pick up meditations, Seneca, Plutarch, Hideo, our note cards of quotes and reminders, anything from that shelf of great books. Stop and evaluate. Read something that challenges, that informs. No matter how much learning or work or thinking we do, none of it matters unless it happens against the backdrop of exhortative analysis. the kind rooted in the deep study of the mind and emotion and demands that we hold ourselves to certain standards.

10:45We must turn to the practical, to the spiritual exercises of great men and actively use them. It's the only way we'll get anything out of the rest of our efforts. It's simple. Stop learning or working for a second and refine. Put aside all the momentum and the moment. Tap the brakes. Return to philosophy. And then I found the other post, which is, wow, dated December 22nd, 2009. So, wow, I guess I'm 22. And I wrote, lately I have felt off. As I felt down, it occurred to me how long it had been since I sat down and read philosophy. I knew I should fix this, but I didn't. A new book would come and I'd immediately pick it up.

11:34I'd think I've spent so little time reading now it would be a shame to sit down with something I've read before. But this was a sham. What I was doing was distracting myself. It's what Steven Pressfield calls the resistance. I made myself busy so that I would have no chance to feel better. I knew that philosophy requires work and self-criticism and one inevitable conclusion, that my problems were almost entirely my own fault. Their resolution requires an active process that only I can initiate. Philosophy is the tool with which to do so. As one would say, and I think this is Marcus Aurelius I'm quoting, doctors carry their tools on their person, or more ideally, a boxer's tools are their person.

12:21We should seek to do the same. There is no excuse for being too busy or too distracted, nor is there any alternative. So anyways, if you feel like you're slipping a little bit, know that I do that too. And I have now for well over a decade and a half. And you just pick yourself back up. You go back to the rhythm, as Marcus Aurelius says. You pick up your philosophy. You return to it. You keep going. So I'll leave you there. And I hope you pick up the rhythm this week. And I'll talk to you soon.

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