Transcript
Ryan Holiday (0:00)
Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom into the real world. Winter has a way of lulling us into bad habits and old vices. Like bears in hibernation, we're burrowed deep in our comfortable routines. We found our favorite spot on the couch, our go to delivery meals, our perfectly temperature controlled environments. We've mastered the art of avoiding the cold, the wind, the discomfort. They call this the velvet rut, and it's soft and pleasant, but it's still a rut. And yeah, after months of dark mornings and early sunsets, after trudging through slush and scraping ice off windshields, it's natural to grow comfortable. It's reasonable to seek shelter in these comfortable patterns. But the Stoics remind us that true growth requires resistance. Just as seedlings must break through the soil, we must break through and out of these patterns. Nature doesn't stay dormant forever. Neither should we. The idea is that we move with the seasons and we must face the brisk winds of change head on. And that's what the Spring Forward challenge that we do each spring with Daily Stoic is about not quick fixes, but it is about getting set for spring. And with 10 days of stoic inspired challenges, one per morning, the idea is that you'll clear away some of winter's accumulated habits. Just as you would clear dead leaves from the garden, you can plant new patterns that will grow and flourish throughout the year. Yeah, the world is crazy right now, but as Marcus Aurelius reminds us, these external circumstances don't define us. It's our response to them that does. And we have the power to transform challenges into opportunities for growth. Stop wandering about, Marcus says to himself in meditations, perhaps on the eve of a seasonal change like this one, he says, get busy with life's purpose. Toss aside your empty hopes. Get active in your own rescue. If you care for yourself at all, he says, do it while you can. This is the time. Do it now. We'd love to have you join us and thousands of Stoics all over the world in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. The idea is it's gonna help you with anxiety and stress. How to be present, how to get after it, how to get active in your own rescue, as Marcus really said. So we'd love to have you join us and we'd love to have you stop procrastinating. Breakout. Break free. Get cleaning. Challenge yourself. And you can sign up right now@dailystoic.com spring we start in less than 24. I will see you in there. I'm going to be doing it myself. We've got a special offer for podcast listeners. 20% off. When you use code DSPOD20 at checkout, you can join me and thousands of other Stoics in the daily Stoic Spring Forward challenge. Just head over to dailystoic.com spring and enter code DSPOD20 to get 20% off. I know it's not good for me to just run. I need it for my mental health. But it takes a toll on me physically and I need to mix it up. So one of the things I'm trying to work on this year is doing more diverse kinds of workouts and specifically doing more strength training. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Tonal provides the convenience of a full gym and the guidance of a personal trainer anytime at home with their one sleek system designed to reduce your mental load, Tonal is the ultimate strength training, helping you focus less on workout planning and more on getting results. Plus, there's no more second guessing on your form. Tonal gives you real time coaching cues to dial in your form, which I need a lot of help on. And it helps you lift safely and effectively. Plus, Tonal sets the optimal weight for every move and then adjusts it, makes it a tiny bit harder each time in one pound increments as you go and as you get stronger. Right? So you're always challenged, which is one of the other things, Right. We gain in our rut. 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And that's where DuckDuckGo comes in, because they just built Duck AI for folks who want to keep their conversations with AI tools private, you go to Duck AI and you can chat privately with the same AIs that you're already using, whether that's ChatGPT or Claude or whatever. And it protects your info from hackers, from scammers and data hungry companies. It's a win win. Plus it's from DuckDuckGo, the company known for protecting your data, not collecting it. No signups, no subscriptions, no learning curve. Just visit Duck AI and start chatting. If you want to use AI without giving up your privacy, visit Duck Aistoic today. That's Duck AI Stoic, a private way to chat with AI from DuckDuckGo, where AI is always optional and private. Hello there, Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. As you know, I love answering your questions, whether I get to see you in person doing a bunch of talks. As I said, you can come see me in a bunch of American and Australian cities if you go to dailystowcolife.com but if you don't want to travel all the way to Australia, maybe we just sit down and talk about how to have a good spring. That's what we're going to be doing in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. It starts on March 20, so if you want to get in there and do that together, you should join@dailystoic.com spring. But in the meantime, here's some questions that I answered last year during the Spring Forward Challenge. Maybe it'll help you think about what you ought to be doing going into the spring.