The Daily Stoic - Can You Return With Honor? | Why You Need To Do Something Hard EVERY SINGLE DAY

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Each of us is sent on missions, each of us does our stint in this situation or that one. The question is, then, will we return with honor?👉 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/📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.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 to 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, visitdailystoic.com. would have wanted to get home, to get free, to get safe. There, in that horrible, fetid prison camp,

you'd think that those soldiers would have done anything to leave. But no, they insisted on conditions. They held themselves to a standard. Led by future Admiral James Stockdale, himself just recently steeped in stoic philosophy, the prisoners of war in North Vietnam sought to conduct themselves with honor and insisted they would not return home without it. it. So they resisted. They took care of each other. They suffered greatly rather than cooperate with

the enemy or criticize their own government. They would not accept special treatment. They would not undermine each other. The idea again was to live, even in a prison, even under torture, in such a way that when or if they did ever make it back, they could hold their heads high. Now, hopefully we will never be subjected to such a thing. But each of us leaves our house each day. Each of us is sent on missions. Each of us does our stint in this situation or that one. The question is then, will we return with honor? Or will we be changed and degraded by the circumstances, by our choices?

Marcus Aurelius' famous line about striving not to be stained purple was his own way of talking about returning with honor. He wanted to be able to leave public life with clean hands and a clean conscience. Cato approached his job in Cyprus the same way. Most Romans before him returned from the provinces with full pockets and shameful secrets. He returned honestly and with honor. Again, what about you? Whatever you do, wherever you're going, today and in life, can you conduct yourself in such a way that you can return with honor?

Let that be your standard, not just to make it back, but to make it back with your character in tact. When you're busy, when you work hard, when you push yourself, one of the things that's really important is recovery. And recovery is not just about rest. It's also what you put in your body. So you take advantage of that rest. So get what it needs to recover. The creatine is one of the most essential nutrients for your body and brain to do that. It supports strength and power and recovery, even memory and mental sharpness. And now, thanks to momentous and Today's sponsor is easier and more refreshing.

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And listeners will get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your job more visibility at Indeed.com slash daily stoic. Just go to Indeed.com slash daily stoic right now to support the show and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. deed.com slash daily stoic terms and conditions apply hiring deed is all you need. So look, why do they do it? Why did the Stoics do it? Why do we do hard things? The reason we do hard things is because life is hard and we want to be prepared. Remember Seneca says there's exile and war and torture and shipwreck? There's all the things that can happen to a human being

and you want to be ready. But I also think doing hard things teaches you about the world teaches you about life. I'm Ryan Holiday. I just went for a long run here in Ithaca, up and down some hills to the top of the mountain. That's what I want to talk about today. Why we do hard things, why the Stoics did hard things, and some lessons that doing challenging, difficult, painful, scary, exhausting things, what they can teach us and what they have always taught great men and women. Doing hard things is good for you. plunges, long hikes, long run, challenging yourself, pushing your limits.

Seneca says, we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedience to the mind. Doing the things you don't want to do, but that you're glad you did after. That's the skill that life demands more than any other skill. The ability to push yourself a little bit further, to hold on a little bit longer, to go a little bit further than you thought, to put up with a little bit more than you thought, that's what it's about. We find practices, we find places, we find experiences that allow us. to practice that. They're also beautiful and enjoyable, but they allow us to build that muscle,

the muscle that says, hey, I'm in charge, hey, I push myself, hey, I'm comfortable being uncomfortable. In fact, not just that I can do hard things, but I do hard things on a regular, consistent basis. That's what it's about. You have to treat the body rigorously. Maybe it doesn't feel like philosophy has a lot to teach us, but it does. The Stoics were active. They hunted and wrestled and lifted weights and ran. These were active people. Mensano Incorporated Sano, right? Strong mind and a strong body. So look, no one needs to tell you why you should eat healthy and work out. You got that, right? Look, when you picture a philosopher, you probably think of some ancient figure in a toga or a

college professor and a Tweed jacket. You're not thinking like an active person. But in the ancient world philosophers were warriors and athletes and hunters and boxers and wrestling. and distance runners. They did hard things. They pushed their physical limitations. Socrates was a soldier. He was admired for his ability to endure cold weather. Marcus Aurelius wrestled and hunted.

Cleantis was a boxer. Epictetus lifted weights. Seneca started each year with a cold plunge. He threw himself in the freezing Tiber River. But the Stokes didn't just do this because they wanted to have big muscles and show off. It wasn't vanity for the Stoics at all. Seneca said, we treat the body rigorously so that it is not disobedient. disobedient to the mind.

For the Stoics, physical practice was a metaphor. It was a path to mental toughness. One of the best ways you increase your mental capacities is by doing things that are physically challenging. The Stoics wanted to push themselves day by day build the muscle that says, I can do hard things. The thing that says, I'm in charge. What you learn in a physical practice is who you are and what you're capable of. What you really learn is that you're capable of more than you think you are. This morning, I got up, I dropped my kid at school, and I went swimming in Barton Springs.

And it was cold, and it was a long swim. It's hard. I would have liked to stop earlier. But I didn't. I forced myself to do something. I pushed myself further than I wanted to. And I carry that energy back towards the rest of my day, towards any other challenges that I'm going to experience.

And when you push yourself physically this way, when you build a physical practice in your life, you are helping yourself. be healthier and stronger and all of that. You're also getting mentally stronger. You're building your capacity to deal with challenges, to endure, and you are becoming a more well-rounded, strong, and resilient figure. The rule for successful people for great writers, artists, creators,

it comes from the poet William Stafford. He says, do the hard thing first. And he's saying, don't procrastinate, don't put it off, don't try to do piddly stuff, work your way up to it. He says, no, you tackle the hard thing first. That's what I do in the morning. I tackle the writing first. Before I check email, before I get sucked into social media, before I have meetings, before I can come up with, or life can make up excuses to not do that thing. Edison said that we pick up the heavy end first.

That's the idea you do the hard thing first. And then once you've done that, once you've crossed up. off once you've made progress on that, not only will you have momentum for the rest of the day, but even if you don't, you've already won. You've already made a dent in things. So that's the rule for this morning. Do the hard thing first. Getting up early is no fun. It's hard every single time. I don't enjoy it while I am doing it, but I am almost always glad after that I did. One of the most famous passages in Marx's Reelius' Meditations is, is him struggling to do He says, at dawn, when you awake and you have trouble getting out of bed, he says,

you have to tell yourself, I was meant to do things. I have to get after it. And then he says, but it's so much warmer here under the covers. And indeed, it is. It's nicer there. But he says, is that what you were put here to do to huddle under the covers? Is that what you were put here to do? To feel nice? No, you were meant for something more than that. And by the way, you know what's nicer than staying in bed? What you experience in the morning, when it's quiet out, when the sun is coming out, when you're the only one on the trail, when you're the, you're the only one on the road when you've got quiet time to focus and work or read or spend time with people you love, that's amazing.

So getting up early is hard, sure, but you'll be glad that you did it. Trying hard things, focusing, getting after stuff, that's hard, but you'll be glad you did it after. Starting over is hard. Starting at zero is hard. I just started my next book and one of the things you learn is an author. is that every book starts with a blank page. Your last book won't help you write your next one.

At Amazon, they say that it's always day one, right? You're always starting afresh. And it is. It's a little demoralizing. I'm also in the process of putting the final touches, the final edits on my last book. And the difference between those pages and these pages, the one that I'm just starting,

I mean, they're not even in the same ballpark as each other. They don't even look like they were written by the same person. But that's one of the things you have to remember, that every finished thing starts as this thing. You're always starting afresh, you're always starting with a blank page. But if you show up, if you do the work, if you do what you're supposed to every day, if you trust the process, you will get from there to here. So yeah, it can be a little overwhelming. It can be a bit demoralizing, but it's also exciting. It's also exhilarating.

The whole project is there before me. And that's the part of it that you should love anyway. the edits polishing something, making something 1% better, that's not the fun part. That's not what makes you want to become a writer. What makes you want to become a writer or an entrepreneur or a director is the creative act creating something from nothing. That's what lights you up. But it is also the hardest fucking thing. Again, I have zero idea whether cold plunges have any health benefits. They probably don't. me the benefit is that it's hard and unpleasant, that you're intimidated to do it, that you don't

want to do it, but that you're glad afterwards that you did do it. Seneca says, we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. It's good to have things that are hard that you're intimidated by that you don't want to do, that you're glad that you did after. The benefit comes from being able to stay in a little bit longer than you thought, to go a little bit further than you thought, to go a little bit colder than you thought. That's what it's about. that's the muscle that you're trying to build because life demands that of doing hard things is good for you. A philosopher once went to visit the Spartans

and had a meal with them. He ate their famously horrendous gruel. And as he picked it, he said, I think I get it now. I think I get why you guys are so brave on the battlefield. I think I get why you're willing to die. He was joking. The food was so terrible that suddenly a lot of it made

a little bit more sense. I'm actually here at Thermopylae where the famous last stand of the Spartans happen. I think there's a general lesson there. When you subject yourself to difficulties, when you have discipline throughout your life, taking cold showers, pushing yourself in endurance sports, sleeping on the ground on a hard mattress,

as Marks really did, those other certain moments of greatness make a little bit more sense. It's consistent. There's a logic to it. The Spartans had hard lives. There wasn't this fancy, soft thing. They were trying to protect that they would sell anything to get back to. Their existence was a hard scrabble one,

and then that made them capable of certain sacrifices and selflessness and strength that seems utterly unthinkable to the rest of us. And that's what self-discipline does. When we say discipline is freedom, this is what we mean. It frees us from the things that tie the rest of us down. The Stoics talk about hard winter training. Epictetus says this.

He says, you must undergo a hard winter training. Exposing yourself, getting out, getting uncomfortable on purpose is preparation for the inevitability of discomfort and difficulty in the future. And the Stoics practice this. They put themselves out there. They would take the cold plunge. They would wear a thin coat. They abstained unnecessary luxuries, so they wanted to toughen themselves up for the

the inevitability of what life had in store. And so if it's cold, step out there, enjoy it, jump into the snow, turn the cold knob in the shower, step out there, get outside your comfort zone. It's toughening you up, making you better, putting you in a better position to be more resilient and strong in the future. I actually don't know what's more impressive about Chrysippus, the ancient Stoic, that he wrote something like 600 books and essays, or that he was a computer in the Dulikos, what's what's known as the long race, three miles of wind sprints, back and forth, back and forth,

200-meter wind sprints over and over again in the Olympic events. But actually, I think these are flip sides of the same thing. I'm a writer and a runner, and you learn running that when you think you're done, you're not even close to done. You learn as a writer that you do it on the days you don't want to do it. You learn that as a runner, too, that it's about getting started, that you're glad afterwards that you did it, even if it's hard while you're doing it. And you learn that discipline is a muscle.

It's this decision to decide who is in charge. I think Chrysippus learned that writing and he applied it to as an athletic prowess, and he learned it athletically and he applied it to his writing and his philosophy practice. They are two sides of the same coin. That's why we push ourselves physically. That's what sports give us. That's how they cultivate a strong mind and a strong body. Look, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

In that way, the Stoics want us to realize it's good that it's hard. It's supposed to be hard. Epictita said the whole point of studying philosophy was to be able to say to whatever situations life puts you in, this is what I trained for. We are undergoing a hard winter's training, Epictita said, because life is going to be hard, right? Because it's going to be challenging, because there's going to be obstacles, because there's going to be difficulties, because it's not going to go the way we'd like it to go the way we hope it would go. If it was easy, everyone would do it, and then it would be commodified. The gains would be worn down. It's that it's hard. It's that most people quit. It's that most people don't have

what it takes to push through it that makes it worth doing, makes it renumerative to do, and then makes it rewarding to have done. So it's good that it is hard. Look, maybe you'll escape by. Maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe it'll always go your way. Maybe it won't. This is why Seneca said he pities the person who has never been challenged, who's never been tested. because they don't know what they're capable of. I would argue that they are also going to have deep down kind of fear of fundamental insecurity as a result of this. What if things get worse? What if it doesn't last? What if they come for me? You don't know what you would do in those situations.

If you don't have good sense of your capacity because you're regularly testing yourself, because you are regularly putting yourself in challenging situations, you're going to have a rough go at it. You're going to need to get lucky. You're going to need things to go your way. The one thing we know about life is that that isn't how it's goes. I had a bunch of perfect reasons to not do it this morning. My flight got in at like 3 a.m. last night. The alarm clock went off in the hotel for no reason, like just a couple hours after I fell

asleep. It's already like 90 degrees outside. I woke up. My phone was at 1%. I'm tired. I got a thing I got to go do in a few minutes. But that's sort of the whole point. Can you do it when you don't want to do it?

Can you do it when it's hard? Discipline is about the times when you don't want to do it. Discipline is also about the times when you really want to do it, but you know it's something you shouldn't do. Can you do it when it's not clear? Can you do it when you have the excuse? Can you do it when no one would hold you accountable when no one would even know when you'd get away with it?

That's what discipline is about. It's for the hard cases, the edge cases. Discipline is for when you don't want to do it. Discipline is for when it is hard. That's why Seneca said we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. We're deciding who's in charge. We're doing it even though there. is a part of us, maybe even most of us, that doesn't want to do it.

Look, no one made me go on this run this morning, just like nobody could make Marcus Aurelius get up early or train and anything. But that's the whole point of self-discipline, right? We could do anything, but we choose to do this. We choose to challenge ourselves. We choose to push ourselves. We choose to see what's on the other side of that hill. We choose to go a little bit faster.

We choose to lift a little bit more. We choose to take another lesson. We choose to do something outside of our comfort zone. That's what it's about. That's what self-discipline is about. It's about cultivating this sort of meta-muscle that says, I don't have to do this, but I'm choosing to do it. I'm going to will myself to do it.

And that is really the most essential of the muscles, right? If someone put a gun to your head, sure, you could probably run pretty far or pretty fast. If your kid's life depended on it, you could pick up something pretty heavy. The point is, what can you do? What do you do when you don't have? have to. What sort of willpower are you cultivating then? What kind of strength are you developing then? Because in the future you may well need it. But certainly this skill, the ability to push yourself to do things that you don't necessarily want to do, that is

one of the most important skills to have. I just did something insane. I ran from Marathon to Athens. That is the original course of the Marathon. Why do people do stuff like that? Why did I do it? What do I get out of it? besides blisters and I guess I burn some calories. I mean what you get when you do hard things is not the sense but the real knowledge that you are a person who can do hard things. You have proved it to yourself. This is what Seneca was talking about when he said that he pities people who haven't been through adversity or difficulty because they don't know what they're capable of. They

don't know how they would handle something beyond their limits, beyond their capacities. I know that. I know that for other reasons but I I proved it to myself today. And that's why it's good to push yourself, to try a hike that you've never done before, to try a race that you've never done before, to try to lift an amount of weight, slowly, intelligently, of course, that you've never lifted before, to take on a project or a responsibility that you've never done before. Kids are one of those things. Like, how do you know that you can do hard things until, and unless you have done hard things? So what you get from any difficult physical activity is that, a sense, no, proof that you're a person who does hard things,

that you are a person who can do hard things. And that's something special. High self-moniters are people who can basically adapt to the situations that life throws at them. So this is like you're a total introvert. You're very shy. You do not like public speaking. But your boss is like, hey, you're going to give a big presentation to the executive suite of, you know, our company. And you're like, okay, right on.

And you work super hard to get back. at public speaking in that intervening time. Like you learn whatever tips and tricks, you try to bring down your heart rate or your stress level, you work really hard on the deck. You're like, I'm gonna do a really good job on this presentation, even though that's an extroverted thing to do, and I'm an introvert.

If you're a low self-monitor, you would just say, I'm not gonna give that presentation. I am an introvert, I don't like public speaking. That makes me nervous, I'm not gonna do it. I think there is something to be said for being a high self-monitor and for taking on challenges that require skills that we don't have yet and kind of and learning those skills maybe in the process. Yeah, it's like if you identify too much with your identity, it freezes you in place.

Exactly. So if you're like, if you identify with your problems or your deficiencies or the status quo, then that's what you are. And you have to have this ability to sort of aspirationally identify with like some person that you're demonstrably not. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And maybe the way that isn't insane is that you are actually identifying with some slightly less visible trait. So I'm always curious, like, how do you know you can do something you've never done before, right? Other than like ego and delusion, which can be helpful as an artist, certainly, or an entrepreneur. But I think what you're identifying with or what you're basing that on is like, I'm a fascinating. learner. I don't quit. You know, I have changed before. I've done hard. I do hard things. So you're like, yeah, I might be like a clerk at a store now, but I'm not identifying in that position. I'm identifying with, you know, as this having all these traits that if, you know, I put resources and energy towards them, they can get me to where I want to go. Yeah. And I think

that's like a much more hopeful way of thinking about personality change than like, I suck. I got to be different. It's sort of like using your existing strengths and times that you know that you've changed or improved or just tackled something really hard in order to make lasting changes to yourself. When I wrote The Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you want to get the email, if you want

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