You'll Want To Be Able To Say This Next Year | Keep The Rhythm

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2:28Welcome 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.

3:04You'll want to be able to say this next year. In May of 2019, AT &T did something that at the time must have seemed a little ridiculous, even to some of its own employees. The company, as The Atlantic reported, ran an internal war game on how a pandemic would affect its ability to keep phone and internet service running. The company does these exercises routinely to try to get ready to build teams of people and their reflexes. So then in early 2020, as COVID-19 was making quick work of businesses and government agencies and supply chains, AT &T, despite record broadband usage, handled the surges and kept the internet running.

3:47because they had challenged themselves when things were calm, they were able to handle the storm when it came. We have no idea what the next year, what 2024 will hold for us. We know what the past, even the past few years have been like. So as Seneca said, we should be routinely peering ahead, planning for the unexpected, running these war games to lessen the strength of the blow before it lands. We should put ourselves in the position, as Epictetus said, to be able to greet adversity with the expression, you are precisely what I trained for. And this is what we had in mind as we were creating the 2024 New Year New You Challenge.

4:31The idea as I was sitting there with the team trying to come up with these stoic inspired challenges was to set me up, to set them up, to set you up, so that whatever happens in 2024 and beyond, you can say, this is precisely what I trained for. And that's what we have been training for, right? For the last five years, thousands and thousands of Stokes all over the world have joined me in the New Year New Year challenge that we do here at Daily Stoic. I don't remember where the idea came from, But we started it way back before COVID-19 was a thing, before the world was as crazy as it is right now.

5:14And the idea was like, how do we set it up so the first three weeks of the year, 21 consecutive challenges, one per day, built around the best in Soakwism, could set us up so we could make better decisions next year, tougher for next year, so we could have plans for the next year, we could have better habits. We could just be who we want to be in the year. And so as we sit here on the eve of this new year, which is going to be here before you know it, think about the downsides of not taking control of your life. Think about what it would cost you to not live up to your potential next year, but not changing your ways.

5:47Think about all the things that are out there that you are not prepared for and what just a little investment, a little effort towards rectifying that could bring you. Don't let it happen. Run some war games. Seek out some challenges. Have some fun with me and fellow Stoics. Keep growing. Don't stay the same. Don't betray your potential. Demand more of yourself in 2024. And one of the ways you can do that is by joining me in the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. And you can head over to dailystoic.com slash challenge to sign up. It starts on the first. So you got to do it now. Grab your spot before.

6:23Well, we're not running out of them, but before you forget, before your courage fails you before it gets away from you, which is what we hear from people happening every year. So sign up dailystoic.com slash challenge. You're going to be hearing a lot more from me about it, but why don't you just sign up right now?

6:50Keep the rhythm. 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. He 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.

7:33So 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 a long 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? That's meditation 749. And then meditation 611, he says, When forced as it seems by circumstances into utter confusion, get a hold of yourself quickly.

8:15Don'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, but 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.

8:54I was thinking about this and I remember I wrote an article, wrote a blog post. I'm looking at this. This is March 4th, 2012. So this is before this is, this is, trust me, I'm lying. It's mostly written, but it's not out. I've moved to New New Orleans. I'm transitioning towards a sort of a different life. And anyways, I wrote, 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. We get in a rhythm. We're making money, being creative.

9:36We're stimulated and busy. And 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 an exhortative analysis, the kind rooted in the deep study of the mind and emotion and demands that we hold ourselves to certain standards.

10:17We 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.

11:08I'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.

11:55We 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, and 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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