The Daily Stoic

“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...

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...

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 Dail...

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...

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 t...

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...

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 Dail...

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 an...

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 c...

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 Aureliu...

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 202...

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...

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...

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 h...

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 bett...

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 wh...

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...

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...

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 Ho...

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 do...

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-...

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. Co...

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 the...

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...

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...