The Daily Stoic - This Is The Year! | Give Thanks

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

We all have vices. We all have flaws. We all have things we know we want to change.Make this the year. This is the year you drive the bad habits out. This is the year you follow through. This is the year you demand the best of and for yourself.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  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 Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stokeic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics,

from Epipetus Markus, Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. We all have vices. We all have flaws. We have things we know we want to change.

What happens? Nothing happens. This is true for everyone, even Martin Luther King Jr. One day King said, we tell ourselves, I'm going to rise up and drive this evil out. I know it's wrong. It's destroying my character and embarrassing my family. But then, he said, at last the day came and you made a New Year's resolution that you

would get rid of that whole base evil. And then the next year came around and you were still doing that same old evil thing. Can you remember the surprise and disappointment that gripped you when you discovered that, he said, after all that you had done through your resolutions to get rid of it? The old habit was still there. And out of amazement, you found yourself asking, why could I not cast it out? Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished so much because of his ability to rise up and drive evil out. But how much greater would he have been if he'd been able to purge some of his own evil habits?

It was too busy. He had trouble delegating. He ate poorly. He was disorganized. He had affairs. Seneca reminds us that all fools have one thing in common. They're always getting ready to start. They're always getting ready to change. They're always getting ready to start the diet in the exercise ready to change. They're always getting ready to start the diet in the exercise program. And then, and then, and then, they'd ever do. Don't do the work. Is that who you want to be?

Is that who were meant to be? Of course not. Let's make this the year. This is the year that you drive it out. This is the year that you follow through. This is the year that you demand the best of and for yourself. That's what I try to do in the Daily Stoke New Year New Challenge, which they're seriously just like two days left to sign up for. Maybe procrastination is something they're struggling with and here you are, wrestling with it's still.

A whole point is we're trying to rise up, drive the bad take action take a step towards being the person we're meant to be. And these don't have to be pie in the sky you know super ambitious things that can be small they can be little. But we should take that step now we should cast the bad stuff out make room for the good stuff. That's what we've been doing now this our fifth year of doing the daily stroke new year new challenge thousands of people all over the world of done it. doing the Daily Stoke New Year, New Challenge, thousands of people all over the world have done it. It'll be my fifth time doing it. I've gotten so much from this challenge, all the challenges we've done.

I'd love to have you join us. You can sign up at dailystoeak.com slash challenge. If you sign up for Daily Stoke Life, you get this challenge, all the challenges for free. But I'd love to see you join us, ask some friends to join with you, do it with the spouse, whatever I'd love to see it. And I'll see you in the group Discord channel and all the other ways that we participate and engage. We're

going to do a bunch of live chats with me, video chats, Q&As during as part of the challenge. A bunch of other awesome stuff. So I will see you soon, but don't delay. Sign up now at dailystoic.com slash challenge. And I'll see you in a couple days. Let's get to it. Give thanks. This is the December 29th entry in the daily stoic. 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Steve Enhancelman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them,

read them aloud, and talk to yourself, and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stoke Journal anywhere at Books or Sold and also get a signed personalized copy for me in the Daily Stoke store. It's store.dailystoke.com. In all things, we should try to make ourselves as grateful as possible, Sanaka says, in moral letters 81. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves in a manner in which justice commonly held to belong to others is not. Gratitude pays itself back in large measure. Guess what you could say is that gratitude is a gift you gave yourself even though you are expressing your gratefulness

to other people. But think of all the things that you could be grateful for today, that you are alive, that you live primarily in a time of peace, that you have enough health and leisure to read a book or listen to this podcast. But what are the little things, the person who smiled at you, the woman who held the door open, the song you liked on the radio, pleasant weather? Gratitude is infectious, its positivity is radiant. Even if today was your last day on Earth, even if you knew in advance that it was going to end in a few short hours, would there not still be plenty of things to be grateful for? How much better would your life be if you kicked off every morning like that if you let it carry through from morning to night and touch every single part of your life?

I think about gratitude a lot, obviously, we did our Thanksgiving message a month ago or talk about gratitude. I have a gratitude journal actually, Mona Katan, the makeup artist and online influencer, sent it to me as a gift a couple of years ago. And I write like one or two things that I'm grateful for a day. You know, my family, my friends, my success, you know, the obvious things. But I try on a really consistent basis to take the time to express gratitude for things that maybe on the surface, I'm not grateful for, the pandemic, political polarization, Trump, you know, critics, problems I have with my parents, pain that I feel, an argument that I just had that I'm sick. You know, I try to express explicitly there on those pages, gratitude for things that

again, I'm not feeling grateful for it, but in taking a moment to write why I am grateful for them, I become grateful for them. I force myself to see something good in them. I force myself to find a positive in it. I force away to see that actually I'm quite lucky. Even if this thing is itself an unlucky thing, right? In the perspective of all the things that I am lucky for, this little bit of bad luck isn't so bad. And so forcing myself to write that down to think about is really great. I friend Pete Holmes, a comedian, talked about how whenever he thinks of his parents, he says to himself, I forgive them. Right. He's actively practicing like what he wants to

feel, even though he doesn't actually feel that. And it becomes true over time. And I think this is an exercise we can apply to gratitude. And Marcus says, convince yourself that everything is a gift from the God. So it's all a gift. They're grateful for all of it. That it's great, even though it doesn't always feel that way. That's the kind of gratitude we're expressing.

And that's the kind of gratitude, this month in the book is about death, when you go, hey, I could die at any moment, or people all around me are dying at any moment, right? It does force a little bit of a different perspective where you can find some stuff to be grateful for. So that's today's message, a reminder here, because it's two days from the end of the year. The Daily Stoke, New Year, New Year Challenge, it's just about to start. You've clearly already procrastinated quite a bit

if you haven't already signed up, but I would love for you to pull the trigger on starting the year right 21 days of Stoke inspired challenges that will make you better. They are challenges. It's not gonna be easy, but that's the whole point. We really push ourselves in the challenge. It's one of my absolute favorite things to do

as a participant and as a writer. we've been working hard on it. The last three or four months, the daily stoke team has I think it's our best year yet, been doing it for five years now. Thousands of people all over the world have done it are going to do it together this year. All new stuff check out the daily stoke new year new challenge daily st.com slash challenge. I'd love to see it in there. And let's blow out 2023. Let's start it with a bang. Let's start it with some gratitude. And then let's make some stuff to be grateful for with the changes and challenges we're going to accept and push for. I'll see you soon, dailystoke.com slash challenge. challenge. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies

of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The obstacle is the way. You go as the enemy, still in this is the key, the leather bound edition of the Daily Stoke we have them all in the daily stoke store which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com Hey, prime members, 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. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded, with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air, from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse.

An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondery comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today. music app today.