The Daily Stoic

Ryan speaks with Humble, the Poet about his new book How to be Love(d), why our passions often get in the way of real love, viewing love as a service to others rather than a reward for ourselves, and more.Kanwer Singh, professionally known as Humble, the Poet, is a Canadian poet, author, YouTuber, rapper, and spoken word artist, as well as the son of immigrant Indian Punjabi Sikh parents. In 2010, he left his job as an elementary school teacher in 2010 to become a poet, and since then, he has authored three books, including Unlearn: 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life and Things No One Else Can Teach Us. He received a nomination for Best Original Song at the 2014 Streamy Awards. His work can be found on his website, his YouTube channel, and on Twitter and Instagram @humblethepoet.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When he was starting out in Hollywood, Judd Apatow began to have panic attacks. The stress of rewriting a script. Getting a film in on time. Managing all the moving pieces on a project. He felt the enormity of the pressure and like a lot of us, he took that to an irrational extreme.The Stoics would say panic, stress, and anxiety are feelings, and you can’t prevent them from happening. And if you try to suppress these emotions, like stuffing junk in your closet, it eventually comes exploding out. The bill inevitably comes due…and with interest attached.Today, Ryan explores how the Stoics approached getting through life's most difficult situations using the same principle that Friedrich Nietzsche developed as a formula for human greatness: Amor Fati - a love of fate.🎧 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the Premium Leather Edition of the Daily Stoic Journal.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We worry about the future. About who might win an election we’re closely watching. About what some foreign leader might do. About the markets and your portfolio. About the climate. It’s so uncertain, we think, unpredictable and potentially overwhelming.But is it really?In today's Daily Stoic Journal reading, Ryan explores why the Stoics viewed the soul as a sphere which is strengthened or weakened only through one's choices, and how meditating on this can set us off on the right foot in 2023.🎧 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the Premium Leather Edition of the Daily Stoic Journal.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan celebrates country living with this presentation of the first in a four-part reading of MD Usher’s translation of Princeton University Press’s How to Be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land. This excerpt examines the benefits of living with nature, dealing with good and bad days on the farm, being neighborly in the country and more.Ryan’s conversation with MD Usher can be heard here🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan looks back on some of the best interviews of 2022 about writing. Featuring Steven Pressfield on what it takes to build discipline and why it’s so important, Robert Greene on our natural tendency as humans to take the path of least resistance, Jack Carr on how your character impacts your work, Meg Mason on how important it is to develop taste as a writer, and Adam Hochschild on how history can inform the push for change in the present.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan discusses how he cultivates better habits, people with habits that he admires, and books that you can read to help improve your routine. If you want to develop better habits in your own life, check out the Daily Stoic Habits Challenge at dailystoic.com/habits.📙 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s not for posterity that the Stoics sat with their journals. It wasn’t whiney self-indulgence either. They weren’t cataloging their achievements or pouring out their fantasies. They were doing important work.📙 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“If it is not right, do not do it,” Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, “if it is not true, do not say it.” But it’s worth pointing out that as a philosophy, Stoicism demands more of us than just this negative. As Marcus would also point out, “Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”📙 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Meditations is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made. It is the private thoughts of the world’s most powerful man giving advice to himself on how to make good on the responsibilities and obligations of his positions. Trained in Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius stopped almost every night to practice a series of spiritual exercises—reminders designed to make him humble, patient, empathetic, generous, and strong in the face of whatever he was dealing with.Today, Ryan breaks down 100 applicable life lessons from his years of reading and studying Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the new premium leatherbound edition of Meditations (Gregory Hays translation).📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You don't lift a weight one time and become strong. You aren’t taught something once and it stays in your mind forever. You don’t do the right thing once and it becomes a lifelong habit.It would be nice if it worked that way, but it doesn’t.Many, many more reps are required. In life and in philosophy. It’s about taking the right actions and holding yourself to the highest standard, day by day by day.Today, Ryan outlines the 4 Stoic virtues that will improve your life, if you live by them.📙 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We think we want to be rich. Or famous. Or powerful. We want to succeed, we want to achieve. We want more of this. We want less of that. These desires of ours are explicit, they define our goals and order our priorities. We salivate over them.But deep down, they don’t reflect what we actually want. They’re proxies, indirect ways of getting to what we’re really looking for.---In this first Daily Stoic Journal entry of the new year, Ryan revisits the most important Stoic task that there is: distinguishing between what is in our control and what isn't.For a limited time, you can purchase the Daily Stoic Journal ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In April of 2022 Ryan Holiday traveled to Oxford Mississippi to speak to the Ole Miss Football team about 5 strategies that can improve your performance no matter what you do.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan looks back on some of the best interviews of 2022 about sports and building resilience. Featuring football legend Tony Gonzalez on the path to becoming your best self, basketball player Keita Bates-Diop on doing what you do for love over money, ultramarathon runner Courtney Dauwalter on her metaphor of the pain cave that she visualizes when pushing her body, and hunter Steven Rinella on the temperance that is required to be a great hunter.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 41 AD, Seneca was exiled from Rome. He was at the height of his senatorial career but found himself facing trumped up charges from a petty emperor who was driving him into the wilderness. He was reeling from the loss of a young child, he was leaving behind a grieving mother. But what could he do?Nothing. All he could do was try to survive and endure it, to not be broken by it.---In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents part 2 of his 2020 Q&A at the Young Presidents Organization of Michigan - West Chapter in which he discusses how the Stoics battled plagues that can destroy one's character, and the traits of ego-driven leaders.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We all have vices. We all have flaws. We all have things we know we want to change.Make this the year. This is the year you drive the bad habits out. This is the year you follow through. This is the year you demand the best of and for yourself.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s perfectly reasonable to tremble in the face of danger, Donald Robertson writes in his wonderful book, How To Think Like a Roman Emperor, and it was likely that Cato and Marcus Aurelius were scared on the eve of battle or before an important speech. But we don’t hold that against them, because what mattered is what they did next.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the new premium leatherbound edition of Meditations (Gregory Hays translation).📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan talks with author James Clear about practical ways to shift your internal narrative, how to begin and maintain productive habitual action, being flexible with your goals as you set and achieve them, and more.  James Clear is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, Atomic Habits, as well as a world-renowned speaker. His weekly 3-2-1 Newsletter has over 1,000,000 subscribers and is sent out every Thursday. 🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Seneca had money and privilege. Lots of it.Yet where did it get him?It didn’t save him from illness, or spare him from years of convalescence. Does this mean there is no advantage to having money? No. Nor does it imply that not having money is better than having it (Seneca would deem money a ‘preferred indifferent’—better to have than not have).--- In one of the best passages in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Marcus tells himself to stop hoping and “be his own savior while he can.” It’s great advice — advice we should follow this year.And we do that by starting with some foundational habits and mindset shifts. Today, Ryan outlines some of the best ways that you can have better habits in 2023.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We start thinking about what we call “resolutions”—the promises we make to ourselves about what we’re going to do in the next 12 months. The habits we’re going to quit, the skills we’re going to learn, the standards we’re going to hold ourselves to.Here you are today, staring down the barrel of 2023. And while the best time to demand the best for and of yourself was years ago, the second best time is right now.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Back in October, Ryan presented the first of four audiobook excerpts from Steven Pressfield’s “Turning Pro.” In this excerpt Steven talks about identifying and battling the habits and addictions that hold us back, the fears of the amateur, the simplicity of life once one turns pro, and his own story of turning pro. Published by Recorded Books on Brilliance Audio.📕 Grab a copy of “Turning Pro” at the Painted Porch Bookshop and on Audible✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan speaks with Tyler Shultz about his new audiobook Thicker than Water, the harsh realities of being a whistleblower, how he overcame the fear of backlash from his decision to expose Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes’s motivation, and more.Tyler Shultz is an entrepreneur and author whose work focuses on driving innovation in healthcare. He graduated from Stanford with a Biology degree and entered the national scene when he blew the whistle at Theranos by exposing the company’s dubious blood-testing practices activities to the public health regulators in New York and the Wall Street Journal. He is featured in Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary The Inventor. Tyler is the CEO and Co-Founder of Flux Biosciences, Inc. His efforts were recognized by Forbes when he was named to their “30 under 30” Health Care 2017 list. Tyler can be found on twitter as @TylerShutz_.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Cynic philosopher Diogenes was once criticized by a passerby for not taking care of himself in his old age, for being too active when he should have been taking it easy and resting. As per usual, Diogenes had the perfect rejoinder: "What, if I were running in the stadium, ought I to slacken my pace when approaching the goal?"---Ryan speaks at the EO Alchemy entrepreneurial conference about his early career and his view on interpreting the Stoics.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dwight Eisenhower gave himself the order.Quit smoking.It had been a 38-year habit, and he knew it was time. His health was on the line. His ability to be of service was in jeopardy. So he quit. After 38 years of smoking, he quit—cold turkey.“The only way to stop is to stop,” Eisenhower would tell an aide, “and I stopped.”🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan speaks with former pro basketball player Cuttino Mobley about the challenges of adjusting to life after basketball, growing up with Kobe Bryant and Rasheed Wallace, why pursuing greatness is not for everyone, how Cuttino approaches parenting as a single father, and more.Cuttino Mobley, a.k.a. “Cat”,  is an entrepreneur, podcast host, and former American professional basketball player who played in the NBA from 1998 to 2008 for the Los Angeles Clippers, Orlando Magic, Houston Rockets, and Sacramento Kings (Ryan’s favorite team). He announced his retirement in 2008 due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Following his retirement, Cuttino was named the recipient of the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association “Native Son” Award. Since 2017, he has competed as co-captain of Power in the Big3 3-on-3 retired NBA players and prospects league. In his podcast, Dad’s Point of View, Cuttino discusses the journey of Fatherhood with sports, entertainment, and media personalities.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marcus Aurelius wasn’t magically Marcus Aurelius. Cato wasn’t born that way. All their virtues–their assiduous self-control, their patient wisdom, their commitment to justice, their courage at critical moments–this didn’t just happen. It wasn’t a biological freak event.It was the result of hard work.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Stoics were not afraid of joy, but they found joy in a different place than most people. It wasn’t pleasure. It wasn’t accumulating money. “Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse,” Epictetus liked to say, “so I delight in attending to my own improvement day by day.”---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.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s easy to look at history and despair. Humans have been terrible to each other–going back to Marcus Aurelius’s time all the way through today. In fact, sometimes it feels like that’s all we’ve ever been.The writer Mary Karr once asked a religious friend, “How can you believe in God, you know, when there was a Holocaust?” The friend had a reply that stopped her cold: “But you’re not in the Holocaust.”✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It is amazing that Meditations, year after year and read after read, feels both incredibly timely and incredibly timeless (there’s a reason the book has endured now for almost twenty centuries). It’s amazing that a person so famous—known to millions in his own lifetime and subject to countless books and articles and movies—could still be giving off new secrets, but indeed that’s what he’s doing.Today, we examine 18 things you didn’t know that shaped the life of that person, Marcus Aurelius.📕 We created a premium leather-bound edition of Meditations. To learn more and to pick up your own copy of this beautiful new edition of Meditations, visit dailystoic.com/meditations✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan speaks with snowboarder Jeremy Jones about his new book The Art of Shralpanism: Lessons from the Mountains, why having discipline on the mountain saves lives, the relationship between courage and fear when approaching the dangers of snowboarding, and more.Jeremy Jones is an American professional snowboarder,businessman, author and filmmaker. He is the founder of Jones Snowboards and the co-founder of Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit that works to reduce the effects of climate change. In 2012, Jeremy was picked by National Geographic as one of the Adventurer’s of the Year. You can find Jeremy’s work, including his books and the films that he makes about his snowboarding adventures (a childhood favorite of Ryan’s), on his website: www.jonessnowboards.com, and on Instagram and Twitter @jeremyjones.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It would be nice to be a comedian, wouldn’t it? Not because it might make you rich and famous, though that would be nice. But rather, for the opportunity it would afford to turn all the things that bother you in life into material.Talk about the obstacle being the way! Comedians get to use everything that happens to them in their life, in their work. Heartbreak. Frustration. Fear. Insecurity. Confusion. It all becomes material.---In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions about living on a farm, and how farm life relates to Stoicism.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including The Obstacle is the Way pendant.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When one thinks of a philosopher, they usually picture something like an ancient figure in a toga, or they think of a college professor in a tweed jacket. They don’t think of an athlete. They don’t think muscles, right? They think brains, not brawn.But in the ancient world philosophers were warriors, athletes, hunters, boxers, wrestlers, and distance runners. They did hard things. They pushed their physical limitations.---In today's Daily Stoic Journal reading, Ryan examines Marcus Aurelius' Meditation 7.69, and why the Stoics didn't believe that striving for perfection should be our primary goal in life.---You can reserve your spot right now in the 2023 Daily Stoic New Year, New you Challenge, at daily stoic.com/challenge.To check out Discipline is Destiny and other books, visit thepaintedporch.com ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A new year is fast approaching, and it's that time of year in which some people will try again and some people won't.Which will it be? Who will you be?For those of you ready for a change, we are back again with our fifth year of the New Year, New you Challenge. You can reserve your spot right now in the 2023 Daily Stoic New Year, New you Challenge, at daily stoic.com/challenge.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan speaks with authors Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski about their new book When You Wonder, You're Learning: Mister Rogers' Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids, how hard Mr. Rogers worked to be who he was, how we can strive to “make goodness attractive”, and more.Gregg Behr is a father, writer, children’s advocate, author, and Executive Director of the Grable Foundation. For more than a decade, he has helped to lead Remake Learning – a network of educators, scientists, artists, and makers he founded in 2007 – to international renown. His work has been applauded by President Obama, the Center for Digital Education, the Tribeca Disruptor Awards, and his hometown, Allegheny County. You can learn more at www.greggbehr.com.Ryan Rydzewski is a teacher, writer, speaker, and member of the Grable Foundation. He writes books, feature stories, speeches, blog posts, and creative pieces that have appeared in Pittsburgh Magazine, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. His clients include Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania, The Pittsburgh Foundation, the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership, NEXTpittsburgh, Kidsburgh, and ASSET STEM Education. You can learn more at www.ryanrydzewski.com.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The causes of things are complicated, and rarely do they go how we’d like them to go. So it’s easy to point the finger— at other people, at unfair conditions, at the weather, at the advice we got. If it hadn’t been for _______, I’d have won. Why did so-and-so have to get involved like that? It’s all _______’s fault.And yet, the causes of things are also quite simple, at least according to the Stoics. Because to them, the fault always lies with us.---It is the only thing you have. Don’t waste it. Seize it. Live it. Ryan outlines some of the tips the Stoics used used to make the most of their time. Meditate on them. Come back to them often. But most importantly, apply them.Check out the Tempus Fugit medallion to help remind yourself why you manage your time.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marcus Aurelius loved history and he loved literature. He loved reading about the courts of past emperors. He loved the plays of the great Romans and their poems. He loved the lectures of Epictetus, which had been given to him by his teacher Rusticus.Sometimes, as he pored over these pages, a thought struck him. Where are they now?✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Which is more effective: theories or practice? Should kings study philosophy? These are the questions that Musonius Rufus examines in the second half of his lesser known Stoic fragments, read today as part two of our Musonius Rufus reading series. You can listen to part one here: https://wondery.com/shows/the-daily-stoic/episode/11074-musonius-rufus-stoic-fragments-pt-1/ Check out “That One Should Disdain Hardships” at the Painted Porch.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan speaks with professor of moral philosophy, author, and activist Peter Singer about the 10th anniversary edition of his book The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty, how Peter’s views on charitable giving have changed throughout the years, the connections between Effective Altruism and Stoicism, applying ethical philosophy to issues in our daily lives, and more.Peter is an Australian professor of moral philosophy who specializes in applied ethics. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and the founder of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University. He is the author of numerous books and essays focusing on ethics, bioethics, global poverty, and animal rights, including The Most Good You Can Do, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," and Animal Liberation. Peter is most known for developing and promoting Effective Altruism, the argument that effective giving involves balancing empathy with reason. In 2021, he won the esteemed Berggruen Prize for his work in the field of philosophy, and was awarded one million dollars, all of which he donated to charity.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There was a message there in the mirror this morning. Did you see it? It must have been a strange experience for Marcus Arelius the first time he saw it…waking up, looking at his reflection, and noticing his hair turning gray. Feeling his body creak. Looking at the crows feet at the corners of his eyes and the wild hairs jutting this way and that in his eyebrows. Even for someone who had so actively practiced and meditated on the idea of memento mori, it would have been a rather vivid reminder to him that he was getting older, that each day a little more life left him, never to return.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It would be wonderful if the Stoics promised you some sort of breakthrough. One that solved for the messy divorce or the unfortunate bankruptcy. One that helped you rehab from the car accident or magically deal with a pandemic that drags on for years (as Marcus knew well). One that soothes you as you sit up sleep-deprived with an infant. The Stoics do, actually, offer solutions for these kinds of struggles. They just don’t come as the kind of breakthrough or insight that you’re necessarily looking for.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You don’t know that someone acted wrongly or that they totally screwed a situation up, because you don’t know the full story. You don’t know their reasons or their side of things. And what do the Stoics tell us to do when we don’t have all the facts about something?They tell us to suspend judgment.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan speaks with historian of Rome Josiah Osgood about his new book Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic, the complicated legacy of Cato, how Caesar and Cato’s relationship can help inform our daily lives, and more.Josiah Osgood is Professor of Classics at Georgetown University. His teaching and research cover many areas of Roman history and Latin literature, with a special focus on the fall of the Roman Republic. Josiah’s interest in the fall of the Roman empire began in high school Latin class, where he read Cicero’s speeches against Catiline. He found Cicero’s rhetoric so powerful that he became enthralled by Roman politics and has been studying the subject compulsively for twenty years since. He is the author of several books, including Caesar's Legacy, Turia: A Roman Woman’s Civil War, and How to be a Bad Emperor.Listen to Josiah and Ryan’s previous conversation from 05/11/22 here: https://dailystoic.com/josiah-osgood/ Check out Rome’s Last Citizen by Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A night spent at the airport. A prison sentence. A two week bout with COVID. The crazy rush of the busiest season of the year for your business. We know we’re in for it. We dread it. We curse our fate.Actually, we should take a page from the great performance artist Marina Abramović, which she shares in her incredible book Walk Through Walls: A Memoir. She was known for her artistic feats of strength—whether it was days in a chair staring at strangers or inviting her audience to use 72 objects on her in any manner they please. In the middle of a project that would test both her and her partner Ulay emotionally and physically, Abramović once encouraged him, “we are not having a good or bad experience. We are having an experience in a period of 16 days. Whatever comes—good or bad—we are in it.”✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As summer now passes into fall and all too quickly fall turns to winter, it is worth stopping and thinking for a second. Where did that time go? Not long ago you were watching fireworks and enjoying the light late into the evening. Now, suddenly, you’re in sweaters, looking at your lawn covered in leaves, wondering why it’s so dark and the evening news hasn’t even finished.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nobody wrote about the “good life” more beautifully than Horace (65-8 BCE). In numerous writings, the Roman poet shared his wisdom on how to use virtue as a key to unlocking contentment and, therefore, happiness in our daily lives. Today, Ryan presents a selection of Horace’s ideas in the second half of the “The Search For the Good Life” chapter in the How to Be Content installment of Princeton University Press’s Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, translated by Stephen Harrison.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the second of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with one of the great non-fiction writers and historians of our time, Adam Hochschild, about his classic 1986 memoir Half The Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, the impetus for his latest book American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, and the process that Adam went through to improve his relationship with his father, and more. Adam Hochschild is an American author, journalist, historian, and lecturer. He has written 11 books, including the highly regarded and influential King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury the Chains. He has written for the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He has received many awards for his writing, including the Duff Cooper Prize and the Mark Lynton History Award for King Leopold’s Ghost, and the California Book Awards Gold Medal and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History for Bury the Chains. Adam graduated from Harvard in 1963, and he holds honorary degrees from Curry College and the University of St. Andrews.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It doesn't matter who you are, the facts are the same. Marcus Aurelius was Emperor. Epictetus was a slave. Two different fates, but the same reality. Most of life, most situations are out of our control. All we can do is respond to them well. All we can do is endure them.✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://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, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We live in unprecedented times, we like to think. Our technology. Our conflicts. The state of the world. It’s all very new, it’s all very different.But is it though?Check out the Read To Lead Challenge 2022 and the Memento Mori Medallion.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the first of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with one of the great non-fiction writers and historians of our time, Adam Hochschild, about how history can inform the push for change in the present, the civil rights trailblazers he examined in his book Bury the Chains (one of Ryan’s favorites), the links between the Stoic virtues and the United States’ anti-slavery movement, and more. Part two will be published on Saturday.Adam Hochschild is an American author, journalist, historian, and lecturer. He has written 11 books, including the highly regarded and influential King Leopold’s Ghost. He has written for the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He has received many awards for his writing, including the Duff Cooper Prize and the Mark Lynton History Award for King Leopold’s Ghost, and the California Book Awards Gold Medal and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History for Bury the Chains. Adam graduated from Harvard in 1963, and he holds honorary degrees from Curry College and the University of St. Andrews.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius marvels at “nature’s inadvertence.” A baker, he writes, makes the dough, kneads it and then puts it in the oven. Then physics, then Nature takes over. “The way loaves of bread split open,” Marcus writes, “the ridges are just byproducts of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.”Today is the last day you can order our premium leather-bound edition of Meditations to ensure holiday delivery!✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“It is a vast kingdom to be able to cope without a kingdom,” Seneca wrote in his play, Thyestes. This was no mere word play. This was hard-won wisdom.No one can stop you from ruling over yourself. It’s the best and the biggest and the strongest kingdom there is.---Those who have never been tested should be pitied, Seneca said, because they don’t know what they’re capable of. To Marcus, philosophy was all about challenging yourself. It was about settling on words and reminders (epithets, he called them) to live up to, particularly in difficult situations. 🃏Get this deck and you’ll be able to test your mind and body and become a better you: https://store.dailystoic.com/products...✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.