The Daily Stoic - So This is the New Year? | Make 2026 Your Best Year With These 6 Simple Stoic Rules

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, visitdailysteoic.com. celebrating you saw the ball drop, the calendar turned over. How many days led up to this? Well, at least 365, but you could say that thousands of them, centuries of days,

Starting point is 00:01:11 led us to this bright, shining moment of the future. 2026. Here it is in all its underwhelming glory. That's a death cap for cutie song called The New Year. Maybe the New Year doesn't feel any different because we're not any different. We got up at the same time, ate the same breakfast, went straight to our phones, we're annoyed by the same things, had the same attitude, resigned ourselves to the same world. We are already repeating old patterns, going into the new year like those weary gladiators in the Colosseum that Marcus Aurelius talked about, determined to keep on living the lives we've been living, even though we're bedraggled and degraded, torn half to pieces, he said, covered in blood

Starting point is 00:02:10 and gore, and still pleading to be held over till tomorrow, to be bitten and clawed again. Come on. Why? Why not try something new? Why not really get after it this year? What about if, instead of fighting against the current, we fought instead to be the person that philosophy tried to make us. And that's what thousands of Stoics all over the world are doing right now, kicking off the new year. We started on January 1st, but the 2026 Daily Stoic New Year, New Year, New You challenge. It's 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges to help you practice this philosophy to become that person that philosophy wants you to be. And it's not too late to sign up. I'd love to see you in there. You can sign up right now at Daily Stoic.com.

Starting point is 00:02:59 challenge. I'm already loving the challenge. I think you'll love it too. I will see you in there. So we had an unusual little first world problem in our family. We built a little house down on the Gulf Coast, almost done, and now we're in the process of furnishing it. And we had to get mattresses for all the rooms. And so it was like, what mattresses do we want? And, And I was asking a friend, you know, what mattress do you have? Do you have a mattress you love? And they were like, I love Helix. And as it happens, that's who we grabbed a house full of mattresses from. And they are, coincidentally enough, today's sponsor. It's obvious why people love their Helix mattresses. They're not just comfortable. They're comfortable for a reason. You fill out this quiz that matches you with the perfect mattress based on your preferences and your sleep needs. We ended up getting the midnight mattress since it's got that. medium firmness. It's not too firm, not too soft. And as it happens, it's their best-selling model. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. It's been tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. They've got free shipping, seamless delivery. Like, honestly, the mattresses

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Starting point is 00:04:58 Stoic. I'm at the office right now, but I'm heading home. 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. Hello Fresh 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.

Starting point is 00:05:36 Just go to hellofresh.com slash Stoic 10FM. You get 10 meals free plus a freezwilling knife on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only berries by plan. Here are six stoic rules that will make you unconquerable in 2026. Number one, don't have an opinion about everything. This is what Marcus Aurelia says,

Starting point is 00:06:12 remember we always have the power to have no opinion. We are going to be flooded with the latest breaking news, with hot takes, with trends, with everyone's opinions. It's way too much to manage. And while some things you should have an opinion about, Some things you don't need to have an opinion about. Things are not asking to be judged by you, Marksurelius says. Leave them alone.

Starting point is 00:06:34 Leave other people to their own opinions. Leave their arguing alone. Don't chase every trend. Don't chase every latest outrage. Focus your attention where it matters. Focus your attention on what's important. Leave the rest alone. Stop giving your time away.

Starting point is 00:06:55 It's crazy, the Stoic. say that we are protective of our property and of our money, and then we're frivolous with our time. The one thing you can't recover, the one thing they're not making any more of. Life isn't short, Seneca says. A year is a long time. The problem, we just waste it. We waste it on inessential things. We waste it getting distracted and upset by things that have nothing to do with us, that we can't control. Time is precious. Act accordingly. You only have so many hours in a day you only have so many hours in a year how are you going to spend them and how are you going to spend them on things that matter always be challenging yourself

Starting point is 00:07:38 the stoics would say life is uncomfortable so get used to being uncomfortable seneca would set aside a certain number of days throughout the year where he would survive on very little food or sleep on the ground he would try to rough it basically And he said the point of this was to get up close and comfortable with conditions that you can then say to yourself, this is what I was afraid of. Most of the time we're trying to make life easier and smoother. It's a good instinct, I guess. But the problem then is that this makes us afraid of losing that comfort. And if we can actively challenge ourselves, get outside our comfort zone, get familiar with other states of living and being that other people are petrified

Starting point is 00:08:17 of, it makes us freer because then we can be more courageous. We understand we can handle whatever happens and we're toughening ourselves up as we go and that's always a good thing. And by the way, that's why I start the first three weeks of every year with stoic challenges. We've been doing this now for seven or eight years. The Daily Stoic New Year, New You challenge is 21 days of stoic inspired challenges that get you out of your comfort zone that challenge you to do things you wouldn't otherwise do. Do things that might not always be fun, might not always be easy, but you learn something about the world and you learn something about yourself by doing them. I'd love to have you join us. January 1st, it starts. So you've got to sign up now,

Starting point is 00:08:54 daily stoic.com slash challenge. I'm going to do it. Thousands of other stoics all over the world are going to do it. It's an awesome community to be a part of and a great way to take your study of stoicism to the next level. If you've been liking these videos, daily stoic.com slash challenge. I will see you in there. You should do something for the common good every single day, right? The world is dark. Bad things are going to be happening in 2026. Things you don't like are going to happen. in 2026. If you want to make sure you don't live in a dark, screwed up, awful world, well, one thing you can do is not be dark and awful. You can do good things, right? Stoicism is not

Starting point is 00:09:30 just about self-improvement. It's a philosophy around helping others and improving the world. Mark Surrealist talks about the idea of the common good, something like 80 times in meditations. He says, actually, the fruit of a good life is good character and acts for the common good. So what is it the good you're going to do? And if you can set a rule that you always try to do good, you'll have a good year. Don't suffer more than you have to. As I said, bad things are going to happen. The problem is the anxiety and the fear that we have about the potential of that happening.

Starting point is 00:10:03 Seneca says that he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary. And he says the reality is a lot of us suffer more in our minds than we do in reality, the dread, the torture, the anxiety. What if this? What if that? What if that? That's not stoicism. You want to be prepared. You want to be trained to handle the various contingencies that might come up. But you want to make sure you're not torturing yourself in advance. What's going to happen is what's going to happen. What matters is are you the kind of person who can roll with the punches?

Starting point is 00:10:34 Are you the kind of person who doesn't lose their cool? Are you the person that focuses on what you're going to do about it? Emoting about the problem, fretting about the problem, worrying about the problem, talking to people about the problem. None of that does anything about the problem. don't suffer more than you have to this year. If you want to have a rich 2026, reduce your desires. Epicita says that if you wish for things to be as they are, you will have them.

Starting point is 00:11:02 And so if you can reduce your needs, if you can reduce your baseline, if you can reduce your expectations, you'll have a rich and prosperous 2026. If this year or any year is dependent on you achieving or getting things at a certain level, then your success is going to be dependent on things going a certain way. And that's a vulnerable place to be. If you need a bigger house, a bigger car, if you need more followers, more attention, you're going to be on a treadmill this year. And that's what Seneca means when he said it's not the person who has little that's poor.

Starting point is 00:11:34 It's the person who wants more. The most avoidable form of poverty is wanting more than you have. The idea is being able to be grateful to appreciate to be good with what you've got. That's the recipe for a great year.

The Daily Stoic - So This is the New Year? | Make 2026 Your Best Year With These 6 Simple Stoic Rules

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