The Daily Stoic - Everything Is Changing. Are You? | Stake Your Own Claim

Starting point is 00:00:00 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, visitdailystoic.com. Things falling apart, traditions crumbling, new technologies, new threats, new trends. Welcome to ancient Rome.

Starting point is 00:01:09 Welcome to the past, the present, and the future. It has always been this way, you understand. Change and flux constantly remake the world, Marx Reelius wrote in meditations during an indisputably tumultuous period of history, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. Things were confusing and difficult, sure, but he understood that things were always changing, always in crisis, always being disrupted, always becoming something new. The question then is not how do we stop this. The question is how are we going to change and adapt to it? We don't need to be scared of change, the Stoics remind us, because we ourselves are

Starting point is 00:01:52 products of change. And if we want to survive and thrive in this moment we're in, we're going to need to keep on changing and evolving. It is the only way. Whether it's AI or economic instability or conflict or climate change, whether it's big macro issues or stuff in your personal life, a marriage coming to an end, a baby coming home from the hospital, a new job, the loss of a loved one. 2026 is going to come at you fast, as every year does.

Starting point is 00:02:22 It will bring challenges and it will demand changes. it will not take no for an answer. You are going to need to change. You are going to need to grow. You're going to need to adjust and adapt and evolve. So why don't you get started on that right now? I start every single year with a bunch of changes, with a bunch of deliberate challenges.

Starting point is 00:02:45 That is the Daily Stoic New Year, New You challenge, which is 21 days of stoic-inspired challenges that helps me become better at the start of every year. and 2026 is no different. We've been working hard on this thing for months, and I'm really excited about it, and I hope you will join me and thousands of other Stoics

Starting point is 00:03:03 all over the world doing the Daily Stoic New Year, New Year, New You Challenge. It's going to start on January 1st, but you can sign up right now and hopefully get ready to tackle a new year before it is here. I'd love to see you in there. You can sign up right now at daily stoic.com slash challenge.

Starting point is 00:03:22 It's going to be awesome, but it starts here really soon. It's going to start on January 1st, so you've got to sign up before it's too late. DailyStoic.com slash challenge. I will see you in there. Human. Your body has a performance superhighway.

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Starting point is 00:05:08 So we live on a Halloween street. We knew it was a Halloween street when we moved there. And then it has quickly become a Thanksgiving and then a Christmas street. Everyone's vying to outdo each other with their decorations. And I'll admit it sneaks up on us, especially as the competition gets more and more. The holidays are here. And if you're looking for holiday decor or last minute refreshes around the house, get what you need fast with wayfair. That's where we got a bunch of our Christmas decorations and a bunch of essentials because we have some of my wife's family visiting us for the holidays, blankets, linens, all that kind of stuff.

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Starting point is 00:06:18 stake your own claim this is the december 22nd entry in the daily stoic and our quote today comes to us from seneca moral letters 33 for it's disgraceful for an old person or one in sight of old age to have only the knowledge carried in their notebooks zeno said this but what do you say cleanthes said this what do you say how long will you be compelled by the claims of another take charge and stay your own claim, something posterity will carry in its notebook. Musing in his own notebook about the topic of immortality, Emerson complained about how writers dance around a difficult topic by relying on quotes. I hate quotation, he wrote. Tell me what you know. And I'm going to tell you a little backstory about that in a second.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Seneca was throwing down the same gauntlet some 20 centuries before. It's easier to quote to rely on the wise words of others, especially when people you're deferring to are such towering figures. It's harder and more intimidating to venture out on your own, to express your own thoughts. But how do you think those wise and true quotes from those towering figures were created in the first place? Your own experiences have value. You have accumulated your own wisdom, too. Stake your claim, put something down for the ages in words and also an example.

Starting point is 00:07:41 So I was maybe like 20, 21 years old. I was writing for the college newspaper and I'd written this review. and I published it and did okay. And then I actually heard from the person I was reviewing in it. You know, they gave me some feedback. And I said, hey, could we, like, get on the phone? I would really, I just want to grow as a writer. Can you give me some feedback?

Starting point is 00:07:58 And they're going through it. And he was just pointing out all the quotes in it. And he gave me that Emerson quotation for the first time. He said, Emerson said something like, I hate quotation, tell me what you know. And that lesson has stuck with me in all of my writings. Yes, I talk about the Stoics. My writing is influenced and is in. any ways an attempt to introduce the Stoics people. But one of the passes that I do on my own books

Starting point is 00:08:22 as I go through them after I've written, I write them just, what do I want to say? What's my, you know, what's my supporting arguments? Like, how do I want to illustrate it? And then I go through and I go, where am I over relying on quotes here? Where can I get rid of them? Where am I over arguing things or not telling you what I know, but telling me what someone else knows? Speaking of quotes, there's a rule I heard from Nassim Taleb where he actually said, you should only quote people when you disagree with them. The point is make your own arguments on your own merits. But I think this is a really important part of the Stoic practice.

Starting point is 00:08:55 If you think about what Meditations was for Marcus, right, it's not him arguing stoicism to the public. It's him arguing the Stoics to himself. So he does use quotes from time to time, but he's not really having to think that much about attribution. And he's not really trying to think about publication or the audience at all. He's just thinking about what does you need to hear, what does you know to be true, and what needs to be said? What does he need to be reminded of? And I think it's important that we understand that stoicism, the study of stoicism, is not a one-way street. It's not just downloading the information from the originals, from me, from other people, but it's also putting your own spin on it.

Starting point is 00:09:33 It's disagreeing with them. It's adding your own view. Stoicism should be better, different, added to, as a result of you having studied and learned about it. That doesn't mean you're all going to publish best-selling books or articles or videos. It's all going to be well known. But make your own contributions. Put your own spin on it. Feel free to disagree.

Starting point is 00:09:58 Feel free to argue. Feel free to push back. Feel free to add. I feel like one of my contributions to soicism was the connection between stoicism and. And Nietzsche, the idea of Amorfati, I brought that in to also with the help of Robert Green, but I brought that together. That's a practice of Stoicism that, you know, did not exist before or an explicit connection that did not fully exist before. In lives of the Stoics, I put all the Stoics, their biographies in one place. In the Daily Stoic itself, I combined the Stoics in a way that they'd never been combined before.

Starting point is 00:10:34 And I made arguments that some people disagree with. I made statements that I think are true, but not, again, not everyone agrees with, but they didn't exist before. I put my own spin on it. I put my own stamp on it, which is what you and everyone listening needs to do, not just with words. In fact, with words least of all, most of all with our actions, with what we do, with who we are. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to The Daily Stoag podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, it's Ryan. I try not to make too many puns on my last name because I've been hearing it my whole life. But if you want to give a holiday gift of me, Ryan Holiday, and the Daily Stoic, well, you can. We have a special offer.

Starting point is 00:11:58 If you want to give Daily Stoic premium as a gift, you can do that, your friends, your family members, coworkers, whoever you give it to, can get ad-free episodes, early access, and exclusive bonus content. Plus, we'll even throw in premium episodes of the Daily Dad podcast. You can get both premium plans together for 25% off. It's a limited offer available now through the end of the holidays. That's through December 31st. You can click below to get it for them today. Happy holidays.

The Daily Stoic - Everything Is Changing. Are You? | Stake Your Own Claim

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