The Daily Stoic - Don’t Waste Your Gifts | The Secret To Better Habits in 2023

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

There is, as we have talked about many times, a tinge of sadness in the story of Seneca. This immensely talented and wise man spent the best years of his life advising and collaborating with one of the worst emperors in history. As James Romm illustrates in his fascinating book, Dying Every Day (and you can listen to our podcast episode with James here) Seneca’s ambition, his drive, it took him fatally off track from where he should have been.We should all see it as a cautionary tale.---And in today's video excerpt, Ryan outlines some of the best ways that you can have better habits in 2023.Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TfzaMr0Lxc✉️ 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. Don't waste your gifts. There is, as we have talked about many times, a tinge of sadness in the story of Sennaka. This immensely talented and wise man spent the best years

of his life advising and collaborating with one of the worst emperors in history. As James Rahm illustrates in his fascinating book, Dying Everyday, and you can listen to our podcast episode with James, I'll link to it. Senuka's ambition, his drive, it took him fatally off track from where he should have been. And we should all see this as a

cautionary tale. Nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand, Oscar Wilde writes, in day profundess. Wild himself traded his genius for pleasure and parties and family, let his ego get the best of him, let his anger get the best of him. I ceased to be the Lord over myself, he said of himself, I was no longer the captain of my soul. It wasn't his fault that he was ultimately persecuted under unjust laws, just as Senika was unjustly killed by the man he taught, but wild had committed his own crime against himself long before that. As Senika said, we must always be under our own power, even as we walk the halls of power or chase success. We must be the captains of our souls, even if we walk the halls of power or chase success. We must be the captains

of our souls, even if we are the captain of industry. We cannot waste the gifts we have been given. We cannot give ourselves over to superficial pleasures or honors. Both Seneca and Oscar Wilde were victims, and they couldn't have stopped that, but they were first victims of themselves, and that, in the end, was what they regretted most as will we. It's funny I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it and I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading, they're reading more than ever and I go, let me guess, you

listen audiobooks don't you? And it's true and almost invariably they listen to them on Audible that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from best sellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs and of course ancient philosophy all my books are available on audio read by me for the most part Audible let's you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app You'll always find the best of what you love or something new to discover And as an audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog including the latest best sellers and new releases You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites exclusive new series and exciting new voices in audio

You can check out stillness is the key the daily dad. I just recorded so that's up on audible now Coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books. So all those are available and new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. There's never a bad time to examine your habits to set new ones. But at the end of one year and the beginning of a new one, there is the opportunity to what you might call a clean break. Seneca starts each year plunging into the Tiber River in Rome.

I think he's washing off the old year and starting fresh for a new year. He's also, I think, starting by doing something hard and difficult and challenging. That's one of my favorite parts of Stoicism and one of my favorite parts of the year. Every year, I try to think about who I want to be in the year to come and make real choices about how to get there. One of the most important habits you can practice is patience. One of the things I learned with this bookstore is the truth of what they call Hofstetter's Law. Always takes longer than you expect even when you take Hofstetter's Law into account. We want our progress now, we want our success now, we want our

rewards now, but if you can practice delayed gratification if you can understand that it takes a while, that it's part of a process, they're almost always going to be more successful. Think of Mark Serelyse, he's told he's gonna be emperor, but Antoninus is gonna rule first, and I think it's gonna be one or two, or three or four or five years. It's like 20 years.

He has to wait 20 years before he can become the emperor. So if Mark is doesn't have patience, if life doesn't force him to practice the virtue of patience, he'd have gone crazy, he'd lost his mind, and then he wouldn't have actually been as good as he was as and for all things require patience whether you're writing books whether you're being a leader, whether you have kids. Learning how to practice patience is critical. And what I think when I'm stuck in traffic, when a flight is delayed, when my

book's going slower than I thought I go, this isn't frustrating, this isn't annoying, although it is those things. I say, this is an opportunity to get reps with patients. This is the opportunity to practice patients, and I will be better for having gone through this. I own the morning. I am a morning person. I tackle the morning, I kick the shit out of the morning. I am successful in the morning.

I wake up early, I take the shit out of the morning, I am successful in the morning. I wake up early, I take my kids outside, we run, or we go on a walk. One of my rules, I don't touch my phone for the first one hour that I'm awake. Then one of my big habits is I tackle my big creative project first. I don't get sucked into email first. I don't have a meeting first.

I don't watch TV first. I tackle the big creative project first. That wasn't have a meeting first. I don't watch TV first. I tackle the big creative project first. That wasn't just naturally who I was. This is something I had to develop and build. Senaqa says that life without design is erratic. Build a routine instead. Little things are not small. Well, being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Mark's really says we assemble our life action by action Step by step no one can stop you from that. So today as you get discouraged as you look at this goal It's way way off in the distance. Don't focus on that. Focus on the immediate task in front of you concentrate like a Roman as Mark's really

Says as if it's the only thing that matters as if it's the last thing that you're doing in your life. Many Michaels make a mucco as Washington said, stuff adds up. That's how you get there. One step at a time, one day at a time, one action at a time, one insight at a time. Just go now. Most people don't read enough or at all. Those of us that read,

there's all these books out there that we haven't read that we wanna read. But what about the books that we read when we were 20 and we didn't even understand what we weren't understanding about it? What about a book like Marcus Realis' Meditations that every time you read it something new or better appears in it? One habit we can practice is here it's not just reading but it's reread. Sennaka talks about lingering on the works of the Master Thinkers. One of the pieces of advice that Marcus says he gets from Rousticus's philosophy teacher is that he can't just be satisfied getting the gist of a book, is to really understand what it means, which means reading it not once, but twice, or ten times, or a hundred times. Think about better habits

in 2023. Think about going back to books that were influential when you were younger, that you didn't like when you were younger, that challenged you when you were younger, or just feel apropos or of the moment right now. Go back and we read them this year and you'll be surprised what you find out and learn. Who do you associate with? Studies show like if you have unhealthy friends, you're going to be unhealthy. If you have ambitious friends, you're going to be ambitious. My father said this to me as a kid, he said, Ryan, you become like your friend. So who do you surround yourself? Who is your peer group?

We have the daily life community, by the way, which I'd love to have you join Others said this to me as a kid. He said, Ryan, you become like your friend. So who do you surround yourself? Who's your peer group? We have the daily life community, by the way, which I'd love to have you join. Facebook group, and extra emails, you get Q&As with me. But the idea is who's your community? In the ancient world, the Stokes had the Scipionic Circle, a group of Stokes who would get together

and have dinner parties and events and debate philosophy and read books and share with each other. Even the relationship between Seneca and Lensilius, which we get in Seneca's letters of a Stoeic, it's them talking with each other. Even the relationship between Senaqa and Lensilius, which we get in Senaqa's letters of Estoic, it's them talking to each other, it says we learn as we teach by having this peer group they both get better. So who are you spending time with this year? One foundational habit for next year, I think would be free up precious resources. You say you don't have time, but feel you are watching this video. You watch too much news, spend too much time doom scrolling.

We spend too much time on things that don't matter. One of the best habits changes I've made is sort of winnowing my worldview. Of course, you have to know what's going on in the world, but you don't have to obsess about it in real time. You don't have to consume things that make you feel crappy or awful or suck you into the catastrophizing mindset.

If you wish to improve, Epictetus says, you have to be willing to not know about some things. Lock in, time to focus on making better habits by eliminating things that are sucking up too much of your time out. You have to say no to the essential. Marcus Realis is most of what we do is not essential, but when we say no to those inessential things, when we eliminate them, it gives us a double benefit because then we can do the essential things better. So you have to realize that everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else, but conversely and most importantly, when you say no to the things that don't

matter, it gives you the opportunity to say yes to the things that really do matter, and not a little yes, not a soft yes, but an emphatic, both feet, yes. And that's what you need to be successful and happy and good. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon music download the Amazon music app today Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts Hey there listeners while we take a little break here I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like It's called how I built this where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind

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