What Are You Waiting For? | 10 Timeless Meditations From Stoic Philosophy

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$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 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, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

1:45What are you waiting for? And by the way, today is the last day to sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge, dailystoic.com challenge. Let's get into it. this is that weird time of year that sneaks up on us. We knew that last year was winding down. We knew that the date was coming. And then suddenly it's here, the last day of 2024. Faced with a calendar turning over, we suddenly have to get serious about the vague plans we had for next year. Because that year is almost here. Those resolutions we were thinking about that we've been kicking around, the things we were going to start, the habits we were going to quit, all our runway has run out.

2:26Now we have to decide. Will we commit to them? Will we make a serious go of it in 2025? Or not? It's kind of mind-blowing to think of how many of us are coming simultaneously to this same crossroads, the kind that Hercules came to thousands of years ago in the hills of Greece, the one that inspired Zeno to start Stoicism. Across the globe, millions of people simultaneously decide to embrace change, to get in shape, to start that big project, to be more present for their families, to give back, to finally read those books, gathering dust on their shelves. Or they'll tell themselves it's just another day.

3:09They tell themselves that they'll start when they get back to the office. They are already deferring, making excuses, choosing the easy way, the betrayal of self that Hercules knew he could not make. You don't love yourself enough, Marcus Aurelius writes in meditations as he worked on a habit that you might be thinking of starting this year. He's talking about waking up early. Or you love your nature too, he says, and what it demands of you. So here you are today, staring down the barrel of another year. The truth is, the best time to demand more of yourself was years ago. But the second best time, it's right now.

3:49Do what your nature demands. Choose to challenge yourself this year. Make a firm and clear resolution. Quit being a slave. Stop delaying. You are out of runway. You are at a crossroads. Make the right call. And as I said, the Daily Stoic 2025 New Year New Year Challenge begins tomorrow. I'm pumped. I'm doing a polar plunge tomorrow morning. and it's going to be awesome. That's how I'm starting off the year, a Seneca-inspired thing, which is partly how we start the challenge. So I am giving you a little bit of a teaser there, I guess. It's going to be a set of 21 actionable challenges presented one per day built around the best stoic practices to help you have an awesome year.

4:34The next 12 months, I don't know what's going to happen. I just know that I don't know what's going to happen, but I would predict challenges and difficulty and we got to prepare accordingly. You've been meaning to get out of your comfort zone and make serious changes. Well, now is the time to do it. We here at Daily Stoic have been doing this challenge every year for the last seven years. I've done it every year for the last seven years. I have all these different habits, practices in my life that have come from the challenges each year. Thousands of Stoics from all over the world join us for three weeks of new and unique challenges designed to help them get the best out of themselves and to start the year off with a bang.

5:10Will you join us? You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash challenge. Let's put missed opportunities behind us and think about this passage from Epictetus. From now on then, he says, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now. You are at an Olympic Games. You cannot wait any longer, and your progress is wrecked and preserved by a single day and a single event. Well, that single day and single event is right now.

5:47Today is your moment, not Monday. Not next year, not when things settle down, now. So I would love to see you in the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. I will be in there with you looking forward to all the different Q &As and all the stuff we get to do together. What will you choose? You are at that crossroads. Demand the best from yourself or not. Push yourself or not. Sign up or not. You know what to do. DailyStoic.com slash challenge for the 2025 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. This is your last day to sign up. The challenge begins tomorrow. I will see you in there.

6:29Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am recording this late. Apologies to Claire, the editor of the Daily Stoic Podcast. The internet went out. My kids took forever to go to bed. But now I am recording this down here in Florida. I was just sitting with my father-in-law. And I said, you know what's crazy? Next year, not like the year that starts in a day, but 2026 will be the 10 year anniversary of the Daily Stoic, which is absolutely insane to me. I would have been writing it about this time, finishing it up. I'm reading this book about Vietnam, where I've never been, but it's made me think of where I was when I was finishing up the book, I was doing a talk in Thailand, and I remember sitting down and editing some of the final entries.

7:23And then on my run this morning, I was running down the road, and I passed, you know, sometimes you have kind of one of those fleeting little memories. You go, I remember something totally insignificant, but it happened exactly in this spot. And I remember I was having breakfast with my family at this little restaurant. I guess I only had one kid then. And I had stepped out to take a call from my publisher. There was something about getting scrubbed from the New York Times list. We'd sold enough copies for the Daily Stoic to hit it. And suddenly it wasn't there. And the reason it was happening exactly, I guess this would have been maybe six or seven years ago to now, to the end of January, is we started doing this thing about a year or so after the Daily Stoic came out, which is that we would discount the ebook going into the first week of the year just to get people who were maybe interested in trying Stoicism.

8:20They wanted another more portable copy or whatever. And so we started back, maybe it was 2017, 2018, we started doing this and we've done it every year since, including this year. So if you want to get the ebook of the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. You can grab it right now as an e-book for$2.99 anywhere you get your e-books in the US. That's at dailystoic.com slash discount. It'll redirect you to the right link. And then of course, we have the Leatherbound Edition, which has got some signed copies in the painted porch. And at store.dailystoic.com, we've got obviously the regular hardcover edition, which I will also sign to go to store.dailystoic.com.

9:00But in today's episode, I wanted to bring you some thoughts from the Daily Stoic. Here's some entries that I think will help you kick off this final day of the year. And then if you want to check out the book, you can dailystoic.com slash discount. We'll get your signed leather edition at store.dailystoic.com.

9:25We just took our kids to an outdoor performance, 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.

10:02Becky'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.

10:43And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

10:57every good thing in your life has come from change don't fight it accept it bend with it be flexible about it embrace it and flow alongside the river

11:08for 2500 years the stoics have been putting out wisdom and insights about how to get better the hard part is knowing where to start should you read epictetus should you read seneca should you read Marcus Aurelius? I'm Ryan Holiday and I feel so blessed that 15 years ago I randomly got the right translation of Marcus Aurelius at the right time in my life. But a different translation at a different time, the entire scope of my life might have turned out differently. I wouldn't have written these books. I wouldn't have got to speak about stoicism to the NFL and the NBA to special forces and sitting senators.

11:41I wouldn't be standing here in this bookstore right now. So one of the reasons I wrote The Daily Stoic was the idea that first off don't start with one of the stoics, Start with all of the Stoics. There should be a sampling of the best of Stoic wisdom available for everyone. And since that didn't exist, I wanted to make that. And so this book now has sold more than a million copies. It's translated in dozens of languages. I hope you check it out. But in today's video, I wanted to give you a sampling of some of the best Stoic quotes from pages in the Daily Stoic that I think you will get a lot out of.

12:14I hope you check out the book. We have a leather edition also, which you can check out. But here's the book. Enjoy.

12:26God laid down this law saying, if you want some good, get it for yourself. I mean, what I think this is saying is there's one way to guarantee that you have a good day today. It's that you do good, right? You can always do that. It's always in your control. Doesn't depend on other people. Doesn't depend on things going right. if you want to feel good, do good. It's as simple as that.

12:52Whatever anyone does or says my part is to be good in the same way that an emerald or gold or purple must always claim what anyone else does or says. I must be what I am and show my true colors. The Stoics believe that we all have a purpose. We all have a task. We all have something we were uniquely fitted to do. And I think our job is to not only do that well, but to be good in the world, to be a positive difference maker. Marcus says in meditation, this is one of my favorite quotes, he said, you have to remain the person that philosophy tried to make you. You have to be good. Whatever anyone says or does, whatever other people's jobs are, however well or poor they do them, your job is to be good and do good.

13:38Hey, it's Ryan. Quick interruption from me. Crazy news. The Daily Stoic is$1.99 as an e-book. This week only. Amazon iBooks. Anywhere you get your iBooks. Check it out. We do this every new year. It's the cheapest the book will ever be. It's like one-tenth of the retail price. It's like 1 % of the Leatherbound Edition price. So check it out. If you were on the fence about checking out the book, it'll never get cheaper than this. Hope you like it.

14:09This is Epic T. he says, you can bind up my leg, but not even Zeus has the power break my freedom of choice. And this happens to Epictetus. His leg is broken by his slave master. He walks with a limp his whole life. And I think what he's saying is that those things can happen to you. Life can literally break you, can take things from you, but nothing can affect the power you have over your own choices about your thoughts, about your opinions, about the story you tell yourself about things. And I I think he's literally doing that there. He's deciding to tell himself a story that says, yes, he's been deprived of one thing, but he still maintains, even in Roman slavery, which is a horrible institution, even within that, he still has control over so much, his power of choice, and you have that power today.

15:00Meditate often on the swiftness, which all that exists, is coming into being, is swept by us and carried away. Substance, he says, is like a river's unending flow. It's constantly changing and causes infinite shifting and so that nothing stands still. I think the Stoics say this over and over again that the one constant in life is change. You try to keep everything as it is. Not only are you acting contrary to nature, what the Stoics say is not right, you are preventing good things from coming into being as well. Borrowing from Heraclitus, Marcus says that we never step in the same river twice.

15:33The river is changing and also we are changing. right? Even this book, you read the Daily Stoic one or two or three times, you come back to the entries, you are different. Even though the words are exactly the same, the world is different. I am different as the person who wrote them. And so we have to remember that everything has changed. All is changed. Life is changed. Every good thing in your life has come from change. Don't fight it, accept it, bend with it, be flexible about it, embrace it and flow alongside the river.

16:04silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life one of my favorite quotes actually from robert green is one of the laws of power he says always say less than necessary the more you say the more likely you are to say something foolish what we learn by messing up by saying too much saying the wrong thing at the wrong time is that we are better to shut up and That's why Zeno said two ears and one mouth for a reason.

16:32Who is invincible, he said, the one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice. So as we said, the job of the philosopher is to distinguish what's in my control, what's not in my control. And then to tune out all those things. The person who can't be upset by things that are not up to them, that only measure themselves by what is up to them, that person to the Stoics is invincible. And you are invincible in the sense that you are impervious to the things that are happening in the outside world. What other people are saying, what other people are doing, the random bad news that just got tweeted out, the thing that your phone is buzzing about.

17:07All that matters is what's up to you, what you're doing, what's in your control. And if you focus on that, you become in a sense invincible.

17:19That which isn't good for the hive isn't good for the bee. You know, Marcus Reelus talks in meditations more than 80 times about the common good. He said, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. The Stoics believed that we were all interconnected. There was a kind of mutual interdependence of all of us. We were woven together. We were put here for each other. And to do something that's good for you at the expense of everyone else is not only not right, it is ultimately a punishment of yourself. The Stoics believed in this connectedness. It guided why they participated in public life, and it should guide you and it should be something to think about today.

17:54What isn't good for the hive isn't good for the bee. What isn't good for the whole isn't good for me.

18:03Don't let your reflection on the sweep of life crush you. Don't think about all the bad things that might happen. Stay focused on the present situation. Ask yourself why it's unbearable and can't be survived. He says, you will find that it can be. There's a great line from the writer Chuck Palnia that I like. He says, the trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at it up close. Sometimes, yeah, we have to zoom way out and see the big picture, but sometimes we have to zoom way in because the big picture is overwhelming and scary and, quite frankly, more than we can bear. Zoom way in. Focus on a small piece.

18:36You're crossing a tightrope. You don't think about how high up you are. There's a great Hebrew saying about how the world is a narrow bridge don't look down don't be afraid to zoom in on the next step you have to take

18:52philosophy calls for simple living but not for penance it's quite possible to be simple without being crude i love this because seneca was i think the most worldly and practical of all the stoics he's wealthy he has nice parties his friends it's important that we don't see stoicism as like self-flagellation or needless deprivation the stoics say if it's there enjoy it you just don't needed. And in fact, the Stoics sort of are rejection of the cynical idea that nothing matters. Diogenes sort of walks around in a barrel. He's very uncouth. The Stoics are saying, no, you should be a part of the world.

19:24You should figure out how the world works. Just don't be addicted to it. Just don't be dependent on it.

19:33Often, injustice lies in what you aren't doing, not only what you are doing. This goes to that that famous quote that's now a sort of a common expression that the only thing that evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing, right? Yes, other people might be committing the injustice, but if you don't say anything, if you don't try to stop it, if you just go along with it, then you are complicit in it happening.

19:59So we talked about this before, but Seneca says that one of the ways to get to wisdom is by like finding one thing a day, one thing to chew on each day that makes you better. His exchange of letters with his friend Lucilius, that's what they're doing. And that's also what I tried to build the Daily Stoic around. The idea of one quote from the Stoics, which had never before been in one book together, one thought from the Stoics each day, and then some analysis, a meditation, a prompt from me about how to apply that in your actual life. So that's what the Daily Stoic is. I wrote this book now five years ago.

20:31It sold over a million copies it spent something like 300 weeks on the bestseller list but my favorite thing about the first week of january is that the publisher discounts it as an ebook it's as cheap as it'll ever get that's like a tenth of the retail price that's like one percent of the leather bound edition price so check it out and uh why not start the new year with daily stoic and audio digital leather bound hardcover whatever but i'm wishing you a very stoic new year look ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist.

21:09That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free, no interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

21:53And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.