at the beginning of a new year we look at all the things we want to start doing this year habits we want to build practices we want to start routines we want to develop and this is great A new year is a chance for a new you new things that you can start doing but stoic philosophy is also a philosophy of elimination senica started each year by plunging into the freezing Tyber River this was a way of washing himself clean he thought it was like a metaphorical cleansing and Mark Ser said the essential question in
all things but especially at the end of the year was to ask yourself is what I'm doing essential he says because so much of what we do is inessential or worse it's destructive and harmful and so here looking at a new year let's ask ourselves what habits what practices what routines are we going to let expire at the end of 2024 and with their elimination who will we allow ourselves to become in 2025 because that's what stoic philosophy is looking at ourselves in the mirror and saying which parts of myself should I keep should I
continue to develop and which parts of myself do I need to stop and so here at the end of a new year let's think about what habits and practices and routines we're going to stop we're going to eliminate so there can be a better and new you in 2025 nobody likes getting up early not even Marcus Reus in meditations talks about trying to get up early and he has this fantastic conversation with himself he goes but it's warmer under the covers and he says is that what you were put here to do to huddle under
the blankets and be warm he says we're all put here for a purpose we have a nature we have a duty and we have to go and we have to do that and the morning is the best time to do stuff to get stuff done so that's why the stoks tried to get up early I say tried cuz they didn't always do it and it wasn't always easy and they didn't always like it they tried to do it anyway Marcus aelius had a lot to complain about a lot goes wrong he doesn't meet with the
good fortune that he deserved he's betrayed he's misled people lie to him people try to take things from him he has a job that he doesn't even want and yet nowhere in meditations what he thinks is his private diary that no one is going to read we never once see him complain about any of this he doesn't complain about being unappreciated he doesn't complain about being abused he doesn't complain about being put upon he doesn't complain about the stress he doesn't do any of it because as he says in meditations we should never be overheard
complaining not even to ourselves people don't seem to understand this one really important thing it's that you have a superpower you have the power Mar celus says to have no opinion he says remember events things are not asking to be judged by you you don't have to have an opinion about this he says you can just see it as it is you you can think nothing of it you don't have to label it you don't have to put it in categories you don't have to say it's fair or unfair positive or negative smart or dumb
just accept it as it is the stoics try to see the world as objective try not to insert opinions or judgments on top of things because this is the path to peace it's the path to wisdom and of course being agnostic in this way allows you to get to work doing what you need to do rather than wasting your time labeling judging and having opinions about stuff that is not up to you you can't learn that which you think you already know that's epicus he was sent the the best and the brightest students from all
over the Roman Empire but he understood that conceit was the enemy the problem with being a knowt all is that it's true it's impossible for you to know anything more if you come to learning from a place of humility if you come to it like Socrates did the Great Hero of the stoic that you know what you don't know or that you you understand that you know very little then it becomes impossible for you to learn so much more it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know focus on what you don't know
focus on how much there is left to learn always stay a student that's how you get better smarter and [Music] wiser the essence of stoic philosophy is being in command of yourselfa says no one is fit to rule who is not first master of themselves and the reason we're not masters of ourselves is we give that power over to someone or something else drugs alcohol codependency the stoics it was about being in control of yourself not your urges not your desires Sena himself actually defines poverty as not having too little but wanting more the reason
we battle our addictions the reason we try to get clean the reason we practice discipline so we can be fit to be good parents to be leaders to be bosses if we're not in command of ourselves if something or someone some urge or some substance if that's really what's ruling our life that is not a good place to [Music] be you have to stop doing less than your best there's this great story about Jimmy Carter he's being interviewed he wants to get this job when he's a naval officer and after Carter has talked about how
he did in school the grades he got the tests he passed the things he learned the interviewer looks at him and goes but did you always do your best and Carter has to answer him honestly and he goes no I I guess I didn't always do my best and the man looks at him and he says why not and gets up and he leaves the room and that question haunts Carter for the rest of his life why didn't he always do his best and as you look back on your own life on last year and
the years before why didn't you always give your best why are you doing things that you don't think deserve your best this year we have to do our best at whatever we're doing we have to give everything that we have that is one of the things that we control right we don't control whether we succeed we don't control whether we win we don't control whether we get recognized for what we do but we do control whether we do our best whether we give everything we have and as the great Steve Prefontaine quote goes giving less
than your best is to cheat the gift not just the gift of your talents I would say but also the gift of the time in front of you the life you've been given look it's a bad use of your creativity the time you're spending imagining what might happen the conversations you're making up in your head the things that you think people are thinking about you this is a bad way to deploy your Crea you're using it to make yourself miserable you're imagining these terrible scenarios notice you're never imagining things going well people liking you you're
putting your imagination to work on your anxiety on your self-consciousness on your doubt and it it's just not a good use of it the sto would say our mind is this incredibly powerful thing how are you going to deploy it how are you going to use it are you going to use it to torture yourself or you're going to use it to move yourself forward to solve problems or create them [Music] you have to quit holding on to stuff I don't mean physical possessions although you should stop hanging on to those too The Stokes would
say that you have to let go right it already happened it's done grudges aren't helping you regrets aren't helping you there's a great New Year's tradition where people would write down all the things that they're hanging on to that they regret that they're mad about and then on New Year's they would light it on fire and they'd watch sort of dissolve into smoke the stoics would say that holding on to things regretting things hanging on to grudges or pain like it's not serving you it's not serving the world and it's not going to make you
who you're capable of being this year so let's start the new year by letting go of things we have to quit holding on to [Music] things I don't have goals I have zero goals I'm not trying to sell a certain number of copies I'm not trying to write a certain number of books I'm not trying to beat anyone I'm not trying to be the best at anything don't really care about bestseller list I'm trying to do the thing I like doing the thing I wake up every day I try my best I put in my
hours I focus on what I control I control what I put in I control the effort that I put in I control the energy that I direct at it the brain power that I put in it everything else is not really up to me so I leave that where it is my goals are to be the best that I'm capable of being to realize my potential that's what I wake up and do and to to focus on specific metrics or specific goals or specific accomplishments to me is artificially delimiting it's like putting a ceiling on
it my job is to do my best to do the thing that's what I want to keep doing to do the thing to do the writing to do the work let the chips fall where they may I don't need goals I don't need that as my motivation so that's not what I focus [Music] on actually RIT Sati said this to me once he said you don't owee anyone a response and his point was that you know just cuz an unsolicited email comes in doesn't mean you have to reply to that person there was a time
early in my life when I believed in inbox zero and that that that plan has had to get abandoned as I've gotten older and more successful because I value other things of course again I want to reply and and there are people I I do get back quickly to but I've had to realize that the preconceived notion I have of what being caught up is is actually preventing me from getting caught up on what's truly important Eisen hour has that decision Matrix about what's urgent and what's important and sometimes the things that come in the
inbound inquiries they feel important but actually they're just urgent and as you're tackling them what you're ignoring is what's actually important an but not necessarily urgent don't look for the third thing this year in meditations Mark Ser says okay you did something good someone benefited from it right that's one and two the third thing he said is asking to be recognized for it asking to be thanked for it asking to be paid in return for it he says no you have to stop looking for the third thing right again what do we control whether we
what we don't control we control what we do we don't control whether people appreciate it we don't control whether people understand it we don't control whether it's liked in its own time we only control what we do if you want to have more resources more happiness this year one of the things you can do is stop looking for credit attention recognition compensation in return and focus instead on did you do your best did you do a really good job did you give everything that you had do you think you made a positive contribution to the
world to humanity to the common good if so then you have been paid back you have been recognized you did what your nature demanded The Stokes would say you did your job and that's enough show me who you spend time with and I will show you who you are the Great Expression it's this idea that we become like the people we spend the most time with but I think it's true not just for people but for information what does your information diet look like who are you spending time with who are you giving access to
your brain in meditations mark C says our soul is dyed by the color of our thoughts you know we're colored we're dyed by the inputs by the things that we allow access to so if you're spending all your time on social media if you're following nothing but breaking political news an opinion if you're dwelling on things that are inconsequential or superficial or materialistic you're going to become died and changed by that but if you spend time with the wisest and smartest people who ever lived if you look backwards to history you surround yourself with great
books and great ideas and great people you can become like that too when people find out that you're a runner they always ask are you training for a marathon and the answer is no I'm training for this right running every day that's the marathon right running when you don't want to running when you're tired running when it's cold running when it's hot doing it pushing yourself that's the marathon Sonica says we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind we're training ourselves we're training our muscles literally we're also building the muscle
that makes us do stuff dayto day that runs a marathon of life we're developing the ability to push ourselves to demand stuff from ourselves and that's the ultimate race that's the competition right you're competing with yourself you're competing with the desire to not do it if you're competing with anyone you're competing against all the people that are doing nothing that are staying on the couch epic titus' great line was run races where winning is up to you the race against yourself the race against the desire to not do it the race against the impulse to
stay on the couch that's where we're challenging ourselves that's where we're pushing ourselves that's the race that you're doing every single day all fools in life have one thing in common according to the stoic senica says what they all have in common is that they're always getting ready to start they are delaying to live because they think they have the future they think they have forever they say I'm not ready or they say I'm going to do it after I'm going to do it once this thing happens when conditions are more favorable they never say
to themselves I'm never going to do it they say I'm going to do it later but no one knows what the future holds no one knows how much time we have left life is happening right now this second in fact the time that ticks by the stck say belongs belongs to death it's dead it can never be recovered so don't be a fool don't delay you could be good today Marcus realas reminds us but instead you choose [Music] tomorrow here we are we're staring down the barrel of the new year it would have been better
to make changes make improvements in yourself 10 years ago a year ago 10 minutes ago but as they say the second best time to do it is now I try to kick every year off with some challenges that help me get towards where I want to go that's actually what we built the daily stck New Year New You challenge it's 3 weeks of stoic inspired challenges one after another that gets you out of your comfort zone that pushes you to be what you're capable of being and the powerful thing is that you're doing it as
part of a community of other stoics who are trying to get better it'll be an email every single day from me videos resources and a prompt a really important stoic inspired challenge or exercise almost a book's worth of content there's going to be weekly Zoom calls with me and other stoics and a bunch of other awesome stuff stop putting it off come join us come join the daily stoic New Year New You challenge you can sign up at daily sto.com challenge or just click below [Music]
