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About to head over and pick my kids up from school. And after I do, I know what they're going to ask. They're going to go, hey, can we go to Whole Foods? And I am going to say yes, one, because then keeps them off their screens. But two, groceries are my responsibility in our household. And so, yeah, we usually swing by the Whole Foods headquarters and we get all our groceries for the week. My wife has like a bazillion dietary restrictions. Sometimes that can be tough. But not at Whole Foods. They got everything, even for Valentine's Day. They got mild of these chocolate dipped strawberries that I think we're gonna get. They got gluten free stuff, they got dairy free stuff. They got basically everything. And I usually pick her up flowers while I am there too. If you're looking for something for someone for Valentine's Day this year, Whole Foods has got bouquets and arrangements. They've got succulents. Sometimes I'll just bring home a plant. She always appreciates it. The point is, you can taste love all month at Whole Foods and maybe you'll see me there here at Austin. You know what has also been crazy? Because it integrates your Amazon account. When I pull up Amazon, I can see all the stuff that I ordered, which is always good to remember. Pull up my little Amazon in store code, get all my prime benefits. It's lovely. Anyways, I'm off to Whole Foods and you should too. Welcome to the daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom, into the real world. You can't let the setbacks win. You had big plans. You had earnest intentions. You were really going to get after it. You were going to do things differently. It was going to be a dry January for you. It was going to be a January filled with workouts and better eating. You were going to pick up your guitar again or finally quit smoking. What happened? You got sick. Your kids got sick. Work got crazy. You got distracted by the events in the news. And the result was you kept on being, as Marx really said, the person you've always been, even though you were being mauled and degraded by the life you were living. That's okay, right? It happens. Stoicism is not about perfection. Life is going to interrupt. Things are going to challenge us. Things are going to happen. We're not always going to follow through on what we said. But when that happens, we can't just resign ourselves to our fate. We can't just accept mediocrity or monotony. Or settling because we got off track. Track, right when jarred by circumstances, Marcus Aurelius writes in meditations, we have to revert back to ourselves. We have to come back to the rhythm. We have to intervene, can't let the challenges win. We have to challenge ourselves to get better. And by the way, I experienced this myself. As I said, the first two weeks of the year were crazy for us with the flu and strep throat and then the other strain of the flu. So we're going to be doing another session of the 2026 Daily Stoic New Year New you Challenge. Right? The year got off to a rocky start. Stuff happened that was outside your control or you fell behind or whatever it was. Well, you can still revert back to yourself. You can take control. You can decide right now you're gonna get back on track, you're gonna stop waiting, you're gonna make those changes. And that's what the Daily Stoic New Year New you Challenge is all about. It's designed to help you do precisely that, to push you, to challenge you, to help you do what you need to do. And if you wanna do that with thousands of stoics all over the world, myself included, I would love to have you in the Daily Stoic New Year New you can sign up right now@dailystoic.com challenge and if you join Daily Stoic Life or if you are a Daily Stoic Life member, you get this challenge and all our challenges that we do throughout the year, plus our courses, plus a bunch of other awesome stuff, totally for free. So you can sign up there@dailystoiclife.com or just go to dailystoic.com challenge and I'll walk you all through it. I hope to see you in there.
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Before we had ATT Business wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn. An influencer even livestream the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT&T business wireless routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though at&t business Wireless connecting changes everything.
Host: Ryan Holiday
Date: February 2, 2026
In this bonus episode, Ryan Holiday addresses the all-too-familiar experience of setbacks and how embracing Stoic philosophy can help us overcome obstacles and return to our sincere aspirations—even after we’ve stumbled. Drawing wisdom from Marcus Aurelius and the daily challenges we all face, Ryan reframes failures and detours as opportunities to “revert back to ourselves” and get back on track.
Ryan Holiday delivers a concise and practical Stoic lesson: setbacks are a universal experience, but we have the power—and duty—to respond by recommitting ourselves to our goals with discipline and wisdom. Rather than lament lost momentum, the Stoic approach is to recognize disruption, reset, and begin again—never letting the setbacks win.
For more on Stoic challenges and community: dailystoic.com/challenge