The Daily Stoic - No Time Like The Present To Drink These Draining Seconds | The Most Secure Fortress

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

There is no time like the present because, really, there is no time but the present. 📔 Pick up your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here |  https://www.dailystoiclive.com/🎙️ AD-FREE | 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/✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail--Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are.--Wealthfront’s high-yield cash account: https://www.wealthfront.com/stoicThis experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Ryan Holiday, who’s a client of Wealthfront, receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in his podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link. The Direct Deposit Plus Investing Program from Wealthfront Advisers LLC and Wealthfront Brokerage LLC provides eligible clients a 0.25% APY increase above the base APY on eligible Cash Account balances (up to an overall boosted rate of 4.30% for a limited time when including the three month 0.75% APY boost for new clients) when you direct deposit $1,000 a month, plus open, fund, and maintain an investing account. Wealthfront may change or end the program at any time and determine eligibility at its discretion. Terms apply. Full details at wealthfront.com/promo-terms.The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage does not pay interest. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY.Instant and same-day withdrawals use the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network or FedNow service. Transfers may be limited by your receiving institution, daily caps, or participating entities. New Cash Account deposits have a 2–4 day hold before transfer. Wealthfront does not charge fees for these services, but receiving institutions may impose an RTP or FedNow Fee. Processing times may vary.. Fees & Eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features.Investment advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Securities investments are not bank deposits, bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value.See 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, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. No time like the present to drink these draining seconds. It may not feel like it, but it's slipping away from you. It's slipping away from all of us, all of it, this period of our lives and our lives themselves. The present moment is an ephemeral thing. ancient said. It was even an expression adapted from Virgil, Tempice fugit, or time flies, and it does, away from us. While we are anxiously fretting about the future or ruefully regretting

the past, we are losing what is in front of us. The important conversations we aren't having, the changes we aren't making, the work we aren't investing in. Seneca talked about how death is not something in the future, but something happening right now. We can't waste it. We can't let it pass us by. We have to live immediately, he said. We have to be here now. There is no time like the present, really, because there is no time but the present. These seconds are draining away, whether we use them or not. So use them. Have the conversation. Make the change. Do the work. Be here while you are still here. It has been insanely hot here in Texas. We live in an old house, and the AC cannot handle it. It just, it can't.

can't keep up. But you know what can keep up? What is always cool? My bed, thanks to my eight-sleep pod. The pod is this smart mattress cover. It cools both sides of the bed independently. My wife's at one temperature. I'm in another one. It even gently vibrates me awake in the morning instead of an alarm. It's got built-in sensors that monitor sleep stages, heart rate, respiratory rate. It tracks your sleep, gives you sleep suggestions. And that's why pod users report up to 32% in improvement in sleep quality and up to 30% more deep sleep. Use my code DailySloic at 8Sleep.com slash Daily Stoic for up to $350 off, and you can get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't love it.

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The Most Secure Fortress remember that your ruling reason becomes unconquerable when it rallies and relies on itself so that it won't do anything contrary to its own will, even if its position is irrational. How much more unconquerable if its judgments are careful and made rationally? Therefore, the mind free from passions is an impenetrable fortress. A person has no more secure place of refuge for all time. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 848. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance,

and the Art of Living by yours truly. My co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman, you can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic Store. But let's get on with today's reading. Bruce Lee once made an interesting claim. I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, he said, I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. times. When we repeat an action so often it becomes an unconscious behavior, we can default to it

without thinking. Training in the martial arts or combat is a deeply thoughtful study of movement. We sometimes think of soldiers as automaton's, but what they've actually built is a steady patterns of unconscious behaviors. Any of us can build these. When Marcus says that a mind can get to a place where it won't do anything contrary to its own will, even if its position is irrational. What he means is that proper training can change your default habits. Train yourself to give up anger and you won't be angry at every fresh light. Train yourself to avoid gossip and you won't get pulled into it. Train yourself on any habit and you'll be able to unconsciously go to that habit in trying times.

Think about which behaviors you'd like to be able to default to if you could. How many of them have you practiced only once? Let today. be twice. Stoicism is linked to what they call cognitive behavioral therapy, which, as I understand, is one of the few forms of therapy that has demonstrably proven results. And I've done my share of it as well. The idea being that the mind has sort of patterns, loops that it goes into. And every time we do this, we're reinforcing the loop. And if it's a bad loop, every time we break it, we're training the opposite. So I think today's message is really thinking about how you've trained your mind,

what you've practiced, what habits you've built in, what patterns you default to, and what do you need to work on, right? I think about what Dr. Frankel says when he says, you know, between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space, we choose how we need to be. But of course, that space is as big or as small as you've trained it to be, right? The person who can think, who can use that space is someone who's self-aware, who has some control over themselves. And the vast majority of people have no space because they've trained themselves that it's stimulus response, stimulus response, stimulus response, where you're just sort of emotionally reactive. That's, I don't think, how you want to live, even if it is how you are living. So today, I just want

to leave you with this idea that you train the mind like any other muscle. You train yourself. My wife and I are working on this with one of our kids. You know, your kids do something. They knock something over. They do the opposite of what you ask them to do. They fight or kick. They do the things they do because they're kids. And then you have a response because you don't like it because it triggers something in you because you're worried about them because you don't want that glass to break, you know, whatever it is. And then the two of you or the three of you, you get in a loop. Families have patterns too. There's also this sort of intergroup dynamic where this stuff happens. And it becomes a feedback loop. But we notice that our son does stuff to get attention, even though that's bad stuff that we

don't want him to do. And so we're having to see, okay, when he does it, what's our response? Because we can't really control him, right? I mean, obviously you can control your kid. But what I mean is that our actions are much more in our control and have a greater influence than just how we try to force someone else to do something. So we're thinking about how do we create the incentives, how do we create the pattern, or how at least do we not create disincentives or create the wrong pattern in how we react. We're trying to spend a lot of time being overly positive, really nice, give him lots and lots of attention so he doesn't do exactly what we don't want him to do to get attention. Just a little insight I've been thinking about as today's entry really hit me with that.

And I'm sure some of you parents can relate. The idea is that, the patterns, what are you practicing, what loops are you stuck in? And then how can you get in good loops where you respond to things the right way? That's also what this is all about. And with that, I'll talk to you soon.