The Daily Stoic - BONUS | 11 Stoic Lessons to Reset Your Mind

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Seneca believed wisdom comes from focusing on one small idea each day, something simple you can sit with and let make you better.📕 The Daily Stoic eBook is on sale for $2.99! Grab yours now at dailystoic.com/discount📔 Pick up your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ 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 FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women help you learn from them. to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visitdailysteoic.com. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. 2026 will be the 10-year anniversary of the Daily Stoic, which is absolutely insane to me.

We started doing this thing about a year or so after the Daily Stoic came out, which is that we would discount the e-book going into the first week of the year, just to get people who were maybe interested in trying Stoicism. They wanted another more portable copy or whatever. And so we started back, maybe it was 2017, 2018, we started doing. doing this, and we've done it every year since, including this year. So if you want to get the e-book of the Daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living, and grab it right now as an e-book for $2.99, anywhere you get your e-books in the U.S. That's at dailystoic.com

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, but in today's episode, I wanted to bring you some thoughts from the Daily Stilic. Here's some entries. 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. 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.

For 2,500 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 Rilius? 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. I wouldn't be standing here on 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 is 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. I hope you check out the book. We have a leather edition also which you can check out. But here's the book. Enjoy it. God laid down this loss. saying if you want some good, get it for yourself.

I think this is saying is there's one way to guarantee that you have a good day to day. 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. Whatever 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 is one of my favorite quotes. He said, you have to remain the person that philosophy tried to make it. 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.

A couple of years ago, one of my wife's words for the year, we try to think about a word that we're going to live by the next year. One of those words was systems. The idea was setting up better systems, putting systems in place that just make us better, more efficient, more effective, more responsible. And nowhere are systems more important than when it comes to your finances, right? Managing your money doesn't have to be a struggle. It can be automated. It can be accessible.

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The family's at the house and we're already like, do I need to pick something up on the way home to cook for dinner? What do we need to do? And then my wife reminded me, no, no, we had a hello fresh box come in. Now we don't have to worry about dinner today. HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit. They've delivered over one billion meals, and their recipes take 30 minutes or less. Everything shows up at your door ready to go, no parking lots, no checkout lines, no forgetting ingredients. And all those recipes are made with wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100% antibiotic and hormone-free chicken.

Just go to hellofresh.com slash stoic 10fm. You get 10 meals free plus, a free zorro, willing knife on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. This is Epictetus. 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, though. Those things can't 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 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 to be that power today. Meditate often on the swiftness, which all of it exists and is coming into being is swept bias and carried away. Substancy says it's like a river's unending flow. It's constantly changing and causes infinite shifting and so that nothing stands still. I think the Stoics says over and over again that the one constant in life is changed. You try to keep everything as it is. Not only you're acting contrary to nature what the Stoics say is, is it 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. The 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 is changed. All is changed. Life is change. Every good thing in your life has come from change. Don't it, accept it, bend with it, be flexible about it, embrace it, and flow alongside the river. Silence 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 learned by messing up by saying too much, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, is that we are better to shut up. Zeno said two ears and one mouth for a reason. Who is invincible, he said, the one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice. So as we said, the job of the philosophers 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. All 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. That which isn't good for the hive isn't good for the bee. You know, Marcus Reelis talks in meditations more than 80 times about the common good good. He said, the fruit of this life, it's a 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. What isn't good for the hide isn't good for the bee. What isn't good for the whole isn't good for me. Don'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.

It's a great line from the writer Chuck Palniott that I like. He says, 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. You'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. Philosophy 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 Stozoism as, like, self-flagellation or needless deprivation. The Stoics say if it's there, enjoy it. We just don't need it. And in fact, the Stoics sort of are rejection of this cynical idea that nothing matters. Diogenes sort of walks around and not bare. He's very uncouth. The Stokes are saying, no, you should be a part of the world.

You should figure out how the world works. Just don't be addicted to it. Just don't be dependent on it. Often injustice lies in what you aren't doing, not only what you are doing. This goes to that famous quote that's now 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, you If you don't try to stop it, if you just go along with it, then you are complicit in it happening.

So 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 thing. 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. It's 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 e-book. It's as cheap as it'll ever get. That's like a tenth of the retail price. That's like 1% of the

leatherbound edition price. So check it out. And why not start the new year with Daily stoic in audio, digital, leather bound, hardcover, whatever, but I'm wishing you a very stoic new year.