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The Daily Stoic
So This is the New Year? | Make 2026 Your Best Year With These 6 Simple Stoic Rules
00:09:16
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, where.
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Each day we bring you a Stoic.
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Inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.
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Each one of these episodes is based.
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On the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to 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, visit Dailystoic.com.
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So this is the new Year. You heard people 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 led us to this bright shining moment of the future. 2026. Here it is in all its underwhelming glory. So this is the new. I don't feel any different. That's a death cab 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, were 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 coliseum 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 and gore and still pleading to be held over till tomorrow, to be bitten and clawed again. Come on.
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Why?
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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.
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Kicking off the New year.
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We started on January 1st with the 2026 Daily Stoic New Year. New you challenge. It's 21 days of stoic inspired challenges.
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To help you practice this philosophy, to.
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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@dailystoic.com challenge. I'm already loving the challenge. I think you'll love it too. I will see you in there. Support for this show comes from Fundrise. Look, investing in companies already in The S&P 500 can sometimes feel like you're being served someone else's leftovers. Could still be a good meal, but it's hard not to imagine what that food tasted like when it was fresh. You know, historically it's only VC investors and, you know, insiders and hedge fund managers and stuff who had access to the best companies in the world before the public did. One of the things you find out when you get money is that, you know, there's certain things that are available to you that weren't available to you before and aren't available to most people. Well, fundrise is completely upending that dynamic with a new venture capital product with just a $10 minimum investment. Fundrise's mission is to give everyone the access required to invest in the best tech and AI companies before they go public. Just visit fundrise.com daily stoke to check out Fundrise's venture portfolio and start investing in min. Obviously, all investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal. Past performance is not indicative of future results. And this is a paid advertisement. Just this morning, as I do every morning, I was taking the supplements that I take. And if you're not taking any supplements, well, January is a good time to think about doing that. Choosing the right supplements can be confusing because there's so many brands and you know, it's kind of a low trust category. It's not super regulated, the products are easy to make and the companies don't even have to say everything that's on their label. That's why we are happy to work with Momentous and why I take their supplements. They've become a high trust brand in a low trust category. They don't just meet the industry standard, they built the Momentous standard, which is their commitment to doing things the right way, not the easy way. Momentous sources only the highest quality ingredients on the planet. Their whey protein comes from grass fed European dairy cows. Their creatine uses the purest form of creatine monohydrate. And nearly every formula is made with clinically backed, highly bioavailable nutrients with no fillers and no artificial sweeteners. My wife is like allergic to everything. She's very sensitive about what she puts in her body and when she doesn't. And she loves their stuff too. If a product doesn't meet Momentous standards, it doesn't hit the shelves. In a space where trust is rare, Momentous is redefining what trust looks like. And right now, Momentous is offering our listeners up to 35% off your first order with promo code DAILY STOIC. Head over to livemomentous.com and use promo code DAILY STOIC for up to 35 percent off your first order. That's livemomentous.com promo code.
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Daily Stoic.
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Here are six stoic rules that will.
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Make you unconquerable in 2026. Number one, don't have an opinion about everything. This is what Marcus Aurelius says. 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. Marx really says, leave them alone. 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. It's crazy. The Stoics 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. 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 to get outside our comfort zone, get familiar with other states of living and being that other people are petrified of.
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It makes us freer because then we.
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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. You gotta sign up now. Dailystoic.com challenge I'm gonna do it.
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Thousands of other Stoics all over the.
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World are gonna 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, Dailystoic.com 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. Stoicism is not just about self improvement. It's a philosophy around helping others and improving the world. Marc Realis talks about the idea of the common good 80 times in meditations. He says, actually, the fruit of a good life is good character and acts.
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For the common good.
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So what is 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. 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 this, 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. 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. So don't suffer more than you have to this year. If you want to have a rich 2026, reduce your desires. Epictetus says that if you wish for things to be as they are, you will have them. 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, tension, right, 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, 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. Foreign.
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