Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 3

The Fascinating Power Of Human Wormholes

One of the most mind-blowing experiences of my life happened on a porch in East Austin. I had brought George Raveling, then 80, to visit with Richard Overton, then 111.

It struck me as ���these two kind and wise men��� chatted that I was in a sort of human wormhole.

When George was born in 1937 (he writes about this in his beautiful new book ���What You���re Made For��� that I was lucky enough to play a small part in getting published), the Golden Gate Bridge had just opened, the Great Depression ravaged America and Pablo Picasso was putting the finishing touches on his haunting, heartbreaking anti-war mural, ���Guernica��� as Europe plunged itself back into violence.

When Richard Overton was born in 1906, just a few miles down the road from my ranch, Theodore Roosevelt was president. As a child in Texas, he remembered seeing Civil War veterans walking around. Not many, but they were there���men who had fought for a Confederacy that had enslaved his ancestors. When he was a kid, Henry L. Riggs, a veteran of the Black Hawk War, was still alive. Riggs was born in 1812. And when Riggs was born, Conrad Heyer���a Revolutionary War veteran and the earliest-born person to ever be photographed���was still alive.

It���s easy to forget how little time separates us from what we think of as ���history.��� Richard plus two other people takes you back to before America was a country. He was a teenager during WWI, served in WWII, and then lived long enough to be the nation���s oldest living veteran at 112 and to hold my son, who, born in 2016, might live to see the 22nd century.

Here���s my son with Richard Overton

It���s easy to see history as this distant thing that happened to other people���people on the page or in old portraits. George played college basketball against Jerry West���the man who became the NBA logo. George Raveling was there the day of the March of Washington in 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. came down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and handed him the copy of the speech he gave that day. And then just a few decades later, George helped bring a young rookie named Michael Jordan to Nike, beginning a process that would turn Jordan into a billionaire. George would meet six or seven presidents starting with Truman. Richard would be flown to the White House to meet Obama.

Just two guys and you have a good chunk of American���and world���history. Just two guys shaking hands or witnessing or taking part in events and people that resound to this day.

History isn���t something distant or abstract. It���s just a few handshakes away. Just a few degrees of separation, it turned out, from one of my neighbors.

The past is not dead and distant, Faulkner observed. It���s not even past.

Did you know that England���s government only recently paid off debts it incurred as far back as 1720 from events like the South Sea Bubble, the Napoleonic wars, the empire���s abolition of slavery, and the Irish potato famine? For more than a decade and a half of the twenty-first century, there was still a direct and daily connection to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even today, the United States continues to pay pensions related to the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.

Did you know that in 2013 they discovered living whales��� born��� before Melville published ���Moby Dick���? Or the world���s oldest tortoise, Jonathan, lives on an island in the Atlantic and is 192 years old? Or that President John Tyler, born in 1790, who took office just ten years after little Jonathan was born, still has living grandchildren?

And that���s all relatively ���modern��� history. The woolly mammoth was still roaming the earth while the pyramids were being built. Cleopatra lived closer to our time than she did to the construction of those pyramids. When British workers dug the foundations for Nelson���s Column in Trafalgar Square, they found the bones of actual lions���creatures that had once roamed the exact spot they were standing on. History isn���t some far-off, untouchable thing. It���s right under our feet.

When we were doing a small construction project at the bookstore recently, we moved an old antique bar and found some paint on the wall, covered in plaster. Carefully scraping it away, we found a date and a kind of sign���January 16, 1922. What was happening in the world that day? Who were the people who stood there and supervised it being painted? A young Richard might have walked by and looked at it (from the outside, of course, as it was probably segregated).

When I lived in New Orleans, my apartment was partitioned out of a 19th-century convent. I���d head uptown ���to write what became my first book���, hopping on the longest continually running streetcar in the world, the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar Line. A train that has traveled the same tracks for nearly 200 years. How many millions of people have ridden those same rails? Sat, even, in the same seat? Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, George Washington Cable, Edgar Degas���could have looked out those very windows. They, along with so many others not as easily remembered, lived and struggled just as I did. Just as you do.

In Goethe���s ���The Sorrows of Young Werther��� (a favorite of Napoleon���s), there is a scene in which Werther writes to a friend about his daily trip to a small, beautiful spring. He sees the young girls coming to gather water and thinks about how many generations have been doing that���have come and had the same thoughts he is having.

���When I sit there,��� he explains, ���I see them all. The ancestral fathers, making friends and courting by the spring, I sense the benevolent spirits that watch over springs and wells. Oh, anyone who cannot share this feeling must never have refreshed himself at a cool spring after a hard day���s summer walking.���

I think about the things that happened in George���s life. I think about the horrible things that happened during Richard���s. I think about the progress made in both. I think of how much has changed���and how much has remained the same. I remember as I sat there on the porch, as Richard told me about a tree he had planted that was, some seven decades later, pushing up the foundation of the house, thinking of the Bible verse that Hemingway opens his book, ���The Sun Also Rises���, with: ���One generation passeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose.��� It was this passage, his editor would say, that ���contained all the wisdom of the ancient world.���

Richard Overton on his porch (2017)

The view from Overton’s porch

And what wisdom is that? One of the most striking things about history is just how long human beings have been doing what they do. Though certain attitudes and practices have come and gone, what���s left are people���living, dying, loving, fighting, crying, laughing.

Instability. Uncertainty. Danger. Division.

This is one of the most consistent themes of the Stoics and particularly of ���Meditations���, the way that events flow past us like a river, the way the same things keep happening over and over again. That���s what history was, Marcus Aurelius said, whether it was the age of Vespasian, his own, or some time even more distant���it was ���people doing the exact same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die, complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office and power.���

From this angle, human life looks very small. But also a connection with the past can make you feel very big���like you���re a part of something. That we are much more interconnected and closer to the center of things than it sometimes feels.

Indeed, these wormholes, illustrating the ���great span��� as they do, give us perspective. They remind us how many have been here before us and how close they remain. That even though we are small, we are also a piece of this great universe.

���Look at the past,��� Marcus Aurelius writes in ���Meditations���, ���and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events.���

There���s something lovely about intersecting with the past, about connecting with it.

I���ll cherish that day with Richard and George, as long as I live.

Hopefully, that will be a long time in the future���but even if it���s not, I feel like by spending time with them my life has already stretched far enough back in time.

Here’s How I’m Preparing For The Next Four Years

I can’t predict the future, but I feel pretty confident in predicting that the next four years are going to be crazy.

For political reasons, sure, but we don’t need to agree about that. I know I am right because you can’t find a four-year period in history that wasn’t filled with chaos, upheaval, and uncertainty. Never forget, Seneca reminds us, Fortune has a habit of behaving exactly as she pleases. Why would the next four years be an exception to this rule? There is no normal in this life…except disruption, change, and surprise.

And yet, I do think these next four years are going to be particularly challenging. We’re five weeks into the year and there have already been horrendous wildfires, intense political fighting, earthquakes, wars dragging on, a terrorist attack. My kids have already been sick. And 2025 is yet young!

Need I remind you what happened from 2020-2024? Or 2016-2020? Or 1940-1944? How about the first four years of Marcus Aurelius’ reign, which saw a brutal war with Parthia, a devastating plague that killed millions, and one of the worst floods in Rome’s history, leaving the city in famine?

The question, then, is not how we can avoid these challenges but how we can prepare for them.

Does that mean I am building a bomb shelter? Stockpiling supplies? Fleeing to a foreign country?

No, I’m not doing anything quite so severe. But I am future-proofing myself. Not with panic, paranoia, or an escape plan, but with a handful of ideas and practices—many from the Stoics—that have carried people through uncertain and turbulent times throughout history…

I’m focusing on what I can control. Epictetus described this as our “chief task in life.” We have to get real clear about what’s up to us and what isn’t. What Putin does? Inflation? Tariffs? My mother’s health? The weather? Not up to me. My attitude? My emotions? My wants? My desire? My focus? My response to these things? That is up to me. Who I am is up to me. So that’s what I am focusing on.

I’m reading old books, not watching the news. If you want to understand current events, don’t rely on breaking news. Find a book about a similar event in the past. Read history. Read psychology. Read biographies. Go for information that has a long half-life, not something that’s going to be contradicted in the next week. As I said, 2025 will be crazy and weird and tough. But probably not any more than the year 1925. Or the year 25 AD. That means there are lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of history that can help us with what lies ahead…because it will rhyme with what lies behind us. Whether we’re navigating personal trials, global upheavals, or moments of inspiration, books remain one of the most reliable tools to help us prepare for what’s to come. They challenge us, ground us, and offer us the wisdom of centuries. I put together a list of books for my Reading List Newsletter (​sign up here for my monthly book recommendations​) that might be helpful for you to read this upcoming year. Books like ​Address Unknown​, ​It Can’t Happen Here​, ​Man’s Search For Meaning​, ​Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot​– all books that I will certainly be returning to this year. ​Check out the full list here​.

I’m reminding myself what my job is. Things don’t always go the way we want. There will always be uncertainty, upheaval, unfairness. So when the dust settles—after a crisis, a setback, a disappointment—you might find yourself glued to the news, caught in endless speculation, wondering: What happens next? What if it gets worse? You’re not wrong to ask these questions. But you’d be mistaken to think that any of it changes what’s expected of you. The Stoics understood this. No matter what happens—good times or bad, fair or unfair, order or chaos—our job remains the same. It doesn’t matter who is in charge, what obstacles appear, or how much the world changes. Your job is still your job. Your obligation is still your obligation. “Whatever anyone does or says, for my part I’m bound to the good,” Marcus Aurelius wrote. “An emerald or gold or purple might always proclaim: ‘Whatever anyone does or says, I must be what I am and show my true colors.’” Helvidius Priscus understood this. When Emperor Vespasian warned him to stop speaking out, he refused. “It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the Senate,” he said, “but so long as I am, I must say what I think right.” Vespasian warned him again: “If you do, I shall put you to death.” Helvidius answered simply, “You will do your part, and I will do mine.” Our job—today, tomorrow, always—is to be good, to be wise, to stand up for what’s right, to resist what is wrong. The stakes may change. The consequences may change. The duty does not.

I’m trying to raise my kids well. One of my favorite things to do each day is sit down and write the ​Daily Dad email​. It’s one piece of wisdom—drawn from history, science, literature, and other ordinary parents—that goes out to about 100,000 parents around the world. But really, I’m writing it for myself. I’m reading, researching, and collecting the best ideas because I want to be a better parent. I want to be more patient. I want to set a good example. I want to give my kids the wisdom and resilience they’ll need to navigate the world. Raising kids is the most important thing I’ll ever do. So I study it the way I study philosophy, history, or business—because I want to do it well. If you want to have a multi-generational impact, if you want to make the future better—raise your kids right.

I’m keeping a journal. The Stoics lived through turbulent, chaotic times–through Nero and Domitian and Claudius yet they remained clear-headed and principled. How? The answer is, as it is for most things, hard work. The Stoics worked hard to maintain their perspective, to shake off the misinformation and the noise, to find the truth, to maintain control over the greatest empire—themselves. “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” Orwell wrote of living through totalitarianism and authoritarianism. One thing that helps toward it,” he said, “is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events.” If you don’t examine your own mind, who will? If you’re not dumping your frustrations out on the page, who are you dumping them on instead? If you’re not using your journal to gain self-awareness, to cut through noise and illusion, how will you ever see what’s right in front of you? You have to do this. Every day. (​Here’s a video on how I journal using Stoic practices.​)

I’m using my platform to support what I think is important. I have a platform, and I want to use it well. That means amplifying ideas, voices, and causes that matter—not just whatever gets the most clicks. Plenty of podcasters will put anyone on their show, no matter how ridiculous or toxic, just because controversy drives views and downloads. I’m not interested in that. I’m not giving a megaphone to trolls, conspiracy theorists, or bad actors—no matter how much engagement it might generate. My goal isn’t just to get attention…there are things I value a lot more than money. We don’t control what other people spread and say, sure, but we can all say, “Not through me.” And better yet, we can put out good and helpful and essential stuff ourselves.

I’m focusing on the things that don’t change. In his 1997 letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos said, “We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term.” For companies—as is the case for individuals—there are always pressures to be narrow in our focus and vision. Bezos, unlike most business leaders, refused to play that game. “Rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions,” Bezos said, the real value lies in thinking decades ahead. His maxim for business opportunities is just as relevant for navigating uncertainty in life: “Focus on the things that don’t change.” A lot of people will spend the next four years fixated on trends, fads, and momentary crises. I’m focused on what will still matter in five, ten, fifty years. Character. Discipline. Patience. The value of hard work. These are constants—no matter who’s in office, no matter what’s happening in the headlines. That’s why I structure my life and work around things that stand the test of time. In my writing, I try to study and share wisdom that has endured for thousands of years. In my business, I invest in ideas that create lasting value. In my personal life, I prioritize family, health, and relationships over fleeting distractions. The world will always be chaotic. There will always be noise. The only way to stay grounded is to focus on what actually lasts.

I’m treating people well. I don’t control the cruelty in the world. I don’t control how others act, how unfair or thoughtless or selfish they can be. But I do control how I run my team. How I show up for my family. How I treat strangers. The world will always have its share of rudeness, dishonesty, and indifference. That doesn’t mean I have to contribute to it. Kindness, patience, fairness—these are always within my control.

I’m prioritizing stillness. The next four years are going to be noisy. Chaotic. Overwhelming. If I want to navigate them well, I need to be able to think clearly—not reactively, not emotionally, but with perspective and intention. This requires stillness. Randall Stutman has been a coach to some of Wall Street’s biggest CEOs for decades. His clients have included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. His consulting and advising agency, CRA, has worked with thousands of executives at hundreds of hedge funds and banks. These are people whose entire livelihood depends on them being perpetually ready to respond to the daily, hourly, sometimes even minute-by-minute volatility. Stutman surprised me when he told me that he often asks these very busy executives how they recharge, given the all-consuming nature of their work. The best, he found, have at least one hobby that gives them peace—things like sailing, long-distance cycling, listening quietly to classical music, scuba diving, riding motorcycles, and fly fishing. There is a surprising commonality between all the hobbies: an absence of voices. In a noisy world, a couple of hours without chatter, without other people in our ear, where we can simply think (or not think), is essential. I can’t control the chaos of the world, but I can control whether I get sucked into it. If I want to be steady, clear-headed, and effective over the next four years, I need time to step back. To think. To reset. That’s why I’m making stillness a priority. (Lots of other great bits of wisdom in my conversation with Randall Stutman, ​which you can listen to here​.)

I’m contributing to my community. America’s communities have been hollowed out. Big box stores replaced small businesses. Digital replaced physical. So much of modern success is subtractive—extracting, optimizing, squeezing more for less. I’m trying to do the opposite. In 2021, my wife and I bought ​Tracy’s Drive-In Grocery​, a little place that’s been in business in our small, rural town since 1940. We also opened ​The Painted Porch​, a small-town bookstore down the street. Neither of these are the most rational business decisions—it’s risky, expensive, and deeply local. But what’s the point of success if you only spend it trying to be more successful? We like these things because they matter. Because they are real.

I’m not always having an opinion. It’s possible, Marcus Aurelius said, to not have an opinion. ​You don’t have to turn this into something​, he reminds himself. You don’t have to let this upset you. You don’t have to think something about everything. Do you need to have an opinion about the scandal of the moment–is it changing anything? Do you need to have an opinion about the way your kid does their hair? So what if this person likes music that sounds weird to you? So what if that person is a vegetarian? “These things are not asking to be judged by you,” ​Marcus writes​. “Leave them alone.” Especially because these opinions often make us miserable! “It’s not things that upset us,” Epictetus says, “it’s our opinions about things.” The fewer opinions you have, especially about other people and things outside your control, the happier you will be. The nicer you’ll be to be around, too. Of course, this is not to say that we shouldn’t have any opinions at all, but that we should save our judgments for what matters—right and wrong, justice and injustice, what is moral and what is not. If we spend our energy forming opinions about every trivial annoyance, we’ll have none left for the things that actually matter.

I’m picking up the half-dead crow. I’m helping the starfish. In Milan Kundera’s ​The Unbearable Lightness of Being​, Tereza, the sensitive, compassionate female protagonist, tells her husband: “It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground than to send petitions to a president.” Of course, politics matter. But so do the small, easily overlooked acts of kindness. The Jains of India wouldn’t make pilgrimages during the rainy season for fear of trampling new grass—a simple, beautiful reminder that even the smallest choices ripple outward. Gandhi’s nonviolence grew from this reverence for life. The Stoics, too, sought to expand the definition of who we owe justice and kindness to. There’s the famous story of the boy and the starfish. Thousands are stranded on the beach, dying. The boy starts throwing them back, one by one. A bystander scoffs, “You’ll never make a difference.” The boy tosses another: “It matters to this one.” We tend to think in grand solutions, sweeping reforms—ignoring the power of small, immediate acts. But no change is possible without that first step, that first act of care. That’s why I’m focusing on what’s right in front of me. The people I can help. The burdens I can ease. The kindnesses I can extend. One of the ways we do that for ​Daily Stoic​ is through a partnership with Feeding America (​which you can donate to here​) and GiveDirectly (​donate here​).

I’m refusing to become cynical. In ​Courage is Calling​, I quote General Mattis who said cynicism is cowardice. It takes courage to care. Only the brave believe, especially when everyone else is full of doubt. Losers have always gotten together in little groups and talked about winners. The hopeless have always mocked the hopeful.

I’m looking for the helpers. There’s a quote from Mr. Rogers I love: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” We decide what we look for in life. If you focus on chaos, dysfunction, and selfishness, that’s all you’ll see. But if you look for the people who step up, you’ll find them everywhere. The firefighters battling wildfires in California. The doctors and nurses working through exhaustion. The neighbor who quietly steps in to help. Their presence restores your faith in humanity. Not that I’m sitting on the sidelines, watching. The point of looking for the helpers isn’t to take comfort in their existence—it’s to look for ways to follow in their footsteps, however we can.

I’m grabbing the sturdy handle. Every event has two handles, Epictetus said: “one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other—that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.” This applies to everything. When bad news comes, do I grab the handle of despair or the handle of action? When I’m slighted, do I grab the handle of grievance or the handle of grace? When things feel uncertain, do I grab the handle of fear or the handle of preparation? I don’t get to choose what happens. But I do get to choose how I respond. And if I want to carry the weight of whatever comes next, I have to grab the handle that’s strong enough to hold.

I’m focusing on my expertise. Every morning, ​the Daily Stoic email​ goes out to over one million people around the world. That’s where I can make a difference. Not in random comment sections or text threads, drowning in endless, useless debates about everything wrong in the world. I can have an impact in my work, sharing ideas that help people navigate uncertainty and live better lives. Our work—whatever it is—has the power to shape the world far more than our opinions do. So I focus on that, doing it well for as long as I can.

I’m not letting the sonsofbitches turn me into a sonuvabitch. This might be the hardest task in the world right now—to not let assholes turn you into an asshole. To not let cruelty harden you, to not let stupidity make you bitter, to not let outrage pull you down to its level. “The best revenge,” Marcus Aurelius wrote in ​Meditations​, “is to not be like that.” I am disappointed by some of the things people I know are saying and doing; I am more focused on making sure I don’t follow suit.

I’m doing difficult things. The Stoics kept themselves in fighting shape, they liked to say, not for appearance’s sake, but because they understood life itself was a kind of battle. They knew that when we feel awful, we act awfully. A person disgusted with themselves has less patience for others. A person who easily loses their breath more easily loses their temper or their courage or their self-control. During COVID, I got in good shape by running, biking, and walking at least a couple thousand miles. Lately, I’ve been running or swimming in the morning. I’ve been biking more than I used to ​because of an ankle injury​. I’ve been doing more weight training, too. I try every day to keep my practice because, as the Jews say of the Sabbath, it keeps me. Regardless of the time, place, or distance, it’s never a bad idea to find out what your body is capable of. I like the way legendary coach Phil Jackson practices this with his players: “Once I had the Bulls practice in silence; on another occasion I made them scrimmage with the lights out. Not because I want to make their lives miserable but because I want to prepare them for the inevitable chaos that occurs the minute they step onto a basketball court.”

I’m choosing to be philosophical. Not just in the sense that I’m reading philosophy—though I am—but in how I’m thinking. I’m taking the long view. Have there been bad leaders before? Have there been moments of chaos? Have people felt like the world was unraveling? Of course. This is what living through history looks like. The 1960s were filled with war, assassinations, and unrest. Have you read Bryan Burrough’s ​Days of Rage​? In 1968, there was a flu epidemic…and TWO THOUSAND terrorist bombings in the United States! The Great Depression left millions in despair. It wasn’t fun to live through Watergate, the Six-Day War, the 1973 oil embargo, or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody wanted to experience the Reformation, the Cultural Revolution, or one of the countless civil wars of the past. It was scary. It was weird. It was confusing. That’s what history is. It’s only the passage of time that turns down the volume on these moments, reducing them to a neat passage in a book. The fall of Rome must have felt like the end of the world. And yet, people endured. We don’t get to choose whether we live in normal times or not. We only get to choose how we respond. The Stoics remind us that history is cyclical—chaos is the rule, not the exception. But they also remind us that through reason, courage, and discipline, we can rise above it. So I focus on what I can control. I do my work. I refuse to be broken by things beyond my power.

Here���s How I���m Preparing For The Next Four Years

I can���t predict the future, but I feel pretty confident in predicting that the next four years are going to be crazy.

For political reasons, sure, but we don���t need to agree about that. I know I am right because you can���t find a four-year period in history that wasn���t filled with chaos, upheaval, and uncertainty. Never forget, Seneca reminds us, Fortune has a habit of behaving exactly as she pleases. Why would the next four years be an exception to this rule? There is no normal in this life���except disruption, change, and surprise.

And yet, I do think these next four years are going to be particularly challenging. We���re five weeks into the year and there have already been horrendous wildfires, intense political fighting, earthquakes, wars dragging on, a terrorist attack. My kids have already been sick. And 2025 is yet young!

Need I remind you what happened from 2020-2024? Or 2016-2020? Or 1940-1944? How about the first four years of Marcus Aurelius��� reign, which saw a brutal war with Parthia, a devastating plague that killed millions, and one of the worst floods in Rome���s history, leaving the city in famine?

The question, then, is not how we can avoid these challenges but how we can prepare for them.

Does that mean I am building a bomb shelter? Stockpiling supplies? Fleeing to a foreign country?

No, I���m not doing anything quite so severe. But I am future-proofing myself. Not with panic, paranoia, or an escape plan, but with a handful of ideas and practices���many from the Stoics���that have carried people through uncertain and turbulent times throughout history���

I���m focusing on what I can control. Epictetus described this as our ���chief task in life.��� We have to get real clear about what���s up to us and what isn���t. What Putin does? Inflation? Tariffs? My mother���s health? The weather? Not up to me. My attitude? My emotions? My wants? My desire? My focus? My response to these things? That is up to me. Who I am is up to me. So that���s what I am focusing on.

I���m reading old books, not watching the news. If you want to understand current events, don���t rely on breaking news. Find a book about a similar event in the past. Read history. Read psychology. Read biographies. Go for information that has a long half-life, not something that���s going to be contradicted in the next week. As I said, 2025 will be crazy and weird and tough. But probably not any more than the year 1925. Or the year 25 AD. That means there are lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of history that can help us with what lies ahead���because it will rhyme with what lies behind us. Whether we���re navigating personal trials, global upheavals, or moments of inspiration, books remain one of the most reliable tools to help us prepare for what���s to come. They challenge us, ground us, and offer us the wisdom of centuries. I put together a list of books for my Reading List Newsletter (���sign up here for my monthly book recommendations���) that might be helpful for you to read this upcoming year. Books like ���Address Unknown���, ���It Can���t Happen Here���, ���Man���s Search For Meaning���, ���Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot������ all books that I will certainly be returning to this year. ���Check out the full list here���.

I���m reminding myself what my job is. Things don���t always go the way we want. There will always be uncertainty, upheaval, unfairness. So when the dust settles���after a crisis, a setback, a disappointment���you might find yourself glued to the news, caught in endless speculation, wondering: What happens next? What if it gets worse? You���re not wrong to ask these questions. But you���d be mistaken to think that any of it changes what���s expected of you. The Stoics understood this. No matter what happens���good times or bad, fair or unfair, order or chaos���our job remains the same. It doesn���t matter who is in charge, what obstacles appear, or how much the world changes. Your job is still your job. Your obligation is still your obligation. ���Whatever anyone does or says, for my part I���m bound to the good,��� Marcus Aurelius wrote. ���An emerald or gold or purple might always proclaim: ���Whatever anyone does or says, I must be what I am and show my true colors.������ Helvidius Priscus understood this. When Emperor Vespasian warned him to stop speaking out, he refused. ���It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the Senate,��� he said, ���but so long as I am, I must say what I think right.��� Vespasian warned him again: ���If you do, I shall put you to death.��� Helvidius answered simply, ���You will do your part, and I will do mine.��� Our job���today, tomorrow, always���is to be good, to be wise, to stand up for what���s right, to resist what is wrong. The stakes may change. The consequences may change. The duty does not.

I���m trying to raise my kids well. One of my favorite things to do each day is sit down and write the ���Daily Dad email���. It���s one piece of wisdom���drawn from history, science, literature, and other ordinary parents���that goes out to about 100,000 parents around the world. But really, I���m writing it for myself. I���m reading, researching, and collecting the best ideas because I want to be a better parent. I want to be more patient. I want to set a good example. I want to give my kids the wisdom and resilience they���ll need to navigate the world. Raising kids is the most important thing I���ll ever do. So I study it the way I study philosophy, history, or business���because I want to do it well. If you want to have a multi-generational impact, if you want to make the future better���raise your kids right.

I���m keeping a journal. The Stoics lived through turbulent, chaotic times���through Nero and Domitian and Claudius yet they remained clear-headed and principled. How? The answer is, as it is for most things, hard work. The Stoics worked hard to maintain their perspective, to shake off the misinformation and the noise, to find the truth, to maintain control over the greatest empire���themselves. ���To see what is in front of one���s nose needs a constant struggle,��� Orwell wrote of living through totalitarianism and authoritarianism. One thing that helps toward it,��� he said, ���is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one���s opinions about important events.��� If you don���t examine your own mind, who will? If you���re not dumping your frustrations out on the page, who are you dumping them on instead? If you���re not using your journal to gain self-awareness, to cut through noise and illusion, how will you ever see what���s right in front of you? You have to do this. Every day. (���Here���s a video on how I journal using Stoic practices.���)

I���m using my platform to support what I think is important. I have a platform, and I want to use it well. That means amplifying ideas, voices, and causes that matter���not just whatever gets the most clicks. Plenty of podcasters will put anyone on their show, no matter how ridiculous or toxic, just because controversy drives views and downloads. I���m not interested in that. I���m not giving a megaphone to trolls, conspiracy theorists, or bad actors���no matter how much engagement it might generate. My goal isn���t just to get attention���there are things I value a lot more than money. We don���t control what other people spread and say, sure, but we can all say, ���Not through me.��� And better yet, we can put out good and helpful and essential stuff ourselves.

I���m focusing on the things that don���t change. In his 1997 letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos said, ���We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term.��� For companies���as is the case for individuals���there are always pressures to be narrow in our focus and vision. Bezos, unlike most business leaders, refused to play that game. ���Rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions,��� Bezos said, the real value lies in thinking decades ahead. His maxim for business opportunities is just as relevant for navigating uncertainty in life: ���Focus on the things that don���t change.��� A lot of people will spend the next four years fixated on trends, fads, and momentary crises. I���m focused on what will still matter in five, ten, fifty years. Character. Discipline. Patience. The value of hard work. These are constants���no matter who���s in office, no matter what���s happening in the headlines. That���s why I structure my life and work around things that stand the test of time. In my writing, I try to study and share wisdom that has endured for thousands of years. In my business, I invest in ideas that create lasting value. In my personal life, I prioritize family, health, and relationships over fleeting distractions. The world will always be chaotic. There will always be noise. The only way to stay grounded is to focus on what actually lasts.

I���m treating people well. I don���t control the cruelty in the world. I don���t control how others act, how unfair or thoughtless or selfish they can be. But I do control how I run my team. How I show up for my family. How I treat strangers. The world will always have its share of rudeness, dishonesty, and indifference. That doesn���t mean I have to contribute to it. Kindness, patience, fairness���these are always within my control.

I���m prioritizing stillness. The next four years are going to be noisy. Chaotic. Overwhelming. If I want to navigate them well, I need to be able to think clearly���not reactively, not emotionally, but with perspective and intention. This requires stillness. Randall Stutman has been a coach to some of Wall Street���s biggest CEOs for decades. His clients have included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. His consulting and advising agency, CRA, has worked with thousands of executives at hundreds of hedge funds and banks. These are people whose entire livelihood depends on them being perpetually ready to respond to the daily, hourly, sometimes even minute-by-minute volatility. Stutman surprised me when he told me that he often asks these very busy executives how they recharge, given the all-consuming nature of their work. The best, he found, have at least one hobby that gives them peace���things like sailing, long-distance cycling, listening quietly to classical music, scuba diving, riding motorcycles, and fly fishing. There is a surprising commonality between all the hobbies: an absence of voices. In a noisy world, a couple of hours without chatter, without other people in our ear, where we can simply think (or not think), is essential. I can���t control the chaos of the world, but I can control whether I get sucked into it. If I want to be steady, clear-headed, and effective over the next four years, I need time to step back. To think. To reset. That���s why I���m making stillness a priority. (Lots of other great bits of wisdom in my conversation with Randall Stutman, ���which you can listen to here���.)

I���m contributing to my community. America���s communities have been hollowed out. Big box stores replaced small businesses. Digital replaced physical. So much of modern success is subtractive���extracting, optimizing, squeezing more for less. I���m trying to do the opposite. In 2021, my wife and I bought ���Tracy���s Drive-In Grocery���, a little place that���s been in business in our small, rural town since 1940. We also opened ���The Painted Porch���, a small-town bookstore down the street. Neither of these are the most rational business decisions���it���s risky, expensive, and deeply local. But what���s the point of success if you only spend it trying to be more successful? We like these things because they matter. Because they are real.

I���m not always having an opinion. It���s possible, Marcus Aurelius said, to not have an opinion. ���You don���t have to turn this into something���, he reminds himself. You don���t have to let this upset you. You don���t have to think something about everything. Do you need to have an opinion about the scandal of the moment���is it changing anything? Do you need to have an opinion about the way your kid does their hair? So what if this person likes music that sounds weird to you? So what if that person is a vegetarian? ���These things are not asking to be judged by you,��� ���Marcus writes���. ���Leave them alone.��� Especially because these opinions often make us miserable! ���It���s not things that upset us,��� Epictetus says, ���it���s our opinions about things.��� The fewer opinions you have, especially about other people and things outside your control, the happier you will be. The nicer you���ll be to be around, too. Of course, this is not to say that we shouldn���t have any opinions at all, but that we should save our judgments for what matters���right and wrong, justice and injustice, what is moral and what is not. If we spend our energy forming opinions about every trivial annoyance, we���ll have none left for the things that actually matter.

I���m picking up the half-dead crow. I���m helping the starfish. In Milan Kundera���s ���The Unbearable Lightness of Being���, Tereza, the sensitive, compassionate female protagonist, tells her husband: ���It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground than to send petitions to a president.��� Of course, politics matter. But so do the small, easily overlooked acts of kindness. The Jains of India wouldn���t make pilgrimages during the rainy season for fear of trampling new grass���a simple, beautiful reminder that even the smallest choices ripple outward. Gandhi���s nonviolence grew from this reverence for life. The Stoics, too, sought to expand the definition of who we owe justice and kindness to. There���s the famous story of the boy and the starfish. Thousands are stranded on the beach, dying. The boy starts throwing them back, one by one. A bystander scoffs, ���You���ll never make a difference.��� The boy tosses another: ���It matters to this one.��� We tend to think in grand solutions, sweeping reforms���ignoring the power of small, immediate acts. But no change is possible without that first step, that first act of care. That���s why I���m focusing on what���s right in front of me. The people I can help. The burdens I can ease. The kindnesses I can extend. One of the ways we do that for ���Daily Stoic��� is through a partnership with Feeding America (���which you can donate to here���) and GiveDirectly (���donate here���).

I���m refusing to become cynical. In ���Courage is Calling���, I quote General Mattis who said cynicism is cowardice. It takes courage to care. Only the brave believe, especially when everyone else is full of doubt. Losers have always gotten together in little groups and talked about winners. The hopeless have always mocked the hopeful.

I���m looking for the helpers. There���s a quote from Mr. Rogers I love: ���When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ���Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.������ We decide what we look for in life. If you focus on chaos, dysfunction, and selfishness, that���s all you���ll see. But if you look for the people who step up, you���ll find them everywhere. The firefighters battling wildfires in California. The doctors and nurses working through exhaustion. The neighbor who quietly steps in to help. Their presence restores your faith in humanity. Not that I���m sitting on the sidelines, watching. The point of looking for the helpers isn���t to take comfort in their existence���it���s to look for ways to follow in their footsteps, however we can.

I���m grabbing the sturdy handle. Every event has two handles, Epictetus said: ���one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can���t. If your brother does you wrong, don���t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other���that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.��� This applies to everything. When bad news comes, do I grab the handle of despair or the handle of action? When I���m slighted, do I grab the handle of grievance or the handle of grace? When things feel uncertain, do I grab the handle of fear or the handle of preparation? I don���t get to choose what happens. But I do get to choose how I respond. And if I want to carry the weight of whatever comes next, I have to grab the handle that���s strong enough to hold.

I���m focusing on my expertise. Every morning, ���the Daily Stoic email��� goes out to over one million people around the world. That���s where I can make a difference. Not in random comment sections or text threads, drowning in endless, useless debates about everything wrong in the world. I can have an impact in my work, sharing ideas that help people navigate uncertainty and live better lives. Our work���whatever it is���has the power to shape the world far more than our opinions do. So I focus on that, doing it well for as long as I can.

I���m not letting the sonsofbitches turn me into a sonuvabitch. This might be the hardest task in the world right now���to not let assholes turn you into an asshole. To not let cruelty harden you, to not let stupidity make you bitter, to not let outrage pull you down to its level. ���The best revenge,��� Marcus Aurelius wrote in ���Meditations���, ���is to not be like that.��� I am disappointed by some of the things people I know are saying and doing; I am more focused on making sure I don���t follow suit.

I���m doing difficult things. The Stoics kept themselves in fighting shape, they liked to say, not for appearance���s sake, but because they understood life itself was a kind of battle. They knew that when we feel awful, we act awfully. A person disgusted with themselves has less patience for others. A person who easily loses their breath more easily loses their temper or their courage or their self-control. During COVID, I got in good shape by running, biking, and walking at least a couple thousand miles. Lately, I���ve been running or swimming in the morning. I���ve been biking more than I used to ���because of an ankle injury���. I���ve been doing more weight training, too. I try every day to keep my practice because, as the Jews say of the Sabbath, it keeps me. Regardless of the time, place, or distance, it���s never a bad idea to find out what your body is capable of. I like the way legendary coach Phil Jackson practices this with his players: ���Once I had the Bulls practice in silence; on another occasion I made them scrimmage with the lights out. Not because I want to make their lives miserable but because I want to prepare them for the inevitable chaos that occurs the minute they step onto a basketball court.���

I���m choosing to be philosophical. Not just in the sense that I���m reading philosophy���though I am���but in how I���m thinking. I���m taking the long view. Have there been bad leaders before? Have there been moments of chaos? Have people felt like the world was unraveling? Of course. This is what living through history looks like. The 1960s were filled with war, assassinations, and unrest. Have you read Bryan Burrough���s ���Days of Rage���? In 1968, there was a flu epidemic���and TWO THOUSAND terrorist bombings in the United States! The Great Depression left millions in despair. It wasn���t fun to live through Watergate, the Six-Day War, the 1973 oil embargo, or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody wanted to experience the Reformation, the Cultural Revolution, or one of the countless civil wars of the past. It was scary. It was weird. It was confusing. That���s what history is. It���s only the passage of time that turns down the volume on these moments, reducing them to a neat passage in a book. The fall of Rome must have felt like the end of the world. And yet, people endured. We don���t get to choose whether we live in normal times or not. We only get to choose how we respond. The Stoics remind us that history is cyclical���chaos is the rule, not the exception. But they also remind us that through reason, courage, and discipline, we can rise above it. So I focus on what I can control. I do my work. I refuse to be broken by things beyond my power.

If You Only Read A Few Books In 2025, Read These

I can���t predict the future, so I don���t know what the year will bring, but I feel pretty confident in predicting that 2025 will be challenging.

First of all, because what year hasn���t brought challenges? Never forget, Seneca reminds us, Fortune has a habit of behaving exactly as she pleases. Why would 2025 be an exception to this rule? There is no normal in this life���except disruption, change and surprise.

Second, because it already is challenging. We���re three weeks into the year and there have already been fires and wars, political dysfunction, attacks and earthquakes. My kids have already been sick. And we���re just getting started.

The question, then, is not how we can avoid these challenges but how we can prepare for them. One of my favorite quotes, inscribed across the back of ���my bookstore���, comes from Walter Mosley: ���I���m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I���m saying it helps.���

2025 will be crazy and weird and tough. But probably not any more than the year 1925. Or the year 25 AD. That means there are lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of history that can help us with what lies ahead���because it will rhyme with what lies behind us. Whether we���re navigating personal trials, global upheavals, or moments of inspiration, books remain one of the most reliable tools to help us prepare for what���s to come. They challenge us, ground us, and offer us the wisdom of centuries.

With that in mind, here are some books���some timeless, some timely���that I recommend for 2025. Each one offers something unique to help you grow, reflect, and thrive. ���You can also get this collection at my bookstore, The Painted Porch���.

���Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout��� by Cal Newport
As we head into 2025, the pressure to do more, to be constantly busy, to fill every moment with productivity and progress feels more intense than ever. In ���Slow Productivity���, Cal Newport, one of my favorite writers and thinkers, rethinks what productivity can and should mean, making a strong case for the power of doing less but doing it better. It���s funny, people think I work a lot, but I don���t. I���m much closer to Cal���s outline in ���this book���. I take my kids to school every day. I get home well before dinner every night. I take a lot of walks (���here���s Cal and I talking about the power of walks for idea generation���). I just do this steadily and consistently. When Cal came on the podcast (���watch here���), we talked about this idea of Festina lente���make haste slowly���that is my philosophy for the most part.

������The Choice: Embrace the Possible��� by Dr. Edith Eva Eger
Dr. Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she���s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger���s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we���re going to be inside of them, what we���re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes ���Frankl���, who she later studied under, ���Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ��� to choose one���s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one���s own way.��� It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering but to find meaning in it. I���ve had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger twice (���here��� and ���here���) and the joy and energy of this woman, this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is just incredible.

���Montaigne��� by Stefan Zweig
We did a video right after the election��� about what a Stoic should be thinking about in times like these. It might be of use to you. Me? I picked up my copy of Zweig���s little book on Montaigne, which has been of solace and strength since I read it back in 2016. There are two kinds of biographies: Long ones which tell you every fact about the person���s life, and short ones which capture the person���s essence and the lessons of their life. This biography is a brilliant, urgent and important example of the latter. It is what I ���would call a moral biography������that is, a book that teaches you how to live through the story of another person. If you���ve been struggling with the onslaught of negative news and political turmoil, read this book. It���s the biography of a man who retreated from the chaos of 16th-century France to study himself, written by a man fleeing the chaos of 20th-century Europe. When I say it���s timely, I mean that it���s hard to be a thinking person and not see alarming warning signs about today���s world while reading this book. Yet it also gives us a solution: Turn inward. Master yourself. This book helped me get through 2024, no question. ���Plutarch���s Lives��� is another one I���d add to the moral biography genre, which I used to help me write ���Right Thing, Right Now���.

���The Years of Lyndon Johnson��� by Robert A. Caro
As much as I love those short, moral biographies, there is nothing I love more than door-stopper biographies. You know those magisterial, epic books that seem like they couldn���t possibly be worth reading, but somehow you���re riveted on every page? If you want to try one of those this year, start with Robert Caro. Just these four books alone could tie you up for the whole year, and that alone would be well spent. It���s unquestionable to me that Caro is one of the greatest biographers to ever live. His intricate, complicated, sprawling investigation into Lyndon Johnson will change how you see power, ambition, politics, personality and justice. If there is one line that sums up the whole series it���s this: It���s that power doesn���t only corrupt. That���s too simple. What power does is reveal.

���A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts��� by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy said that his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, ���A Calendar of Wisdom���. Before he wrote it, he dreamed of creating a book composed of ���a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people��� Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal.��� As he wrote to his assistant, ���I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers��� They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.��� As you can imagine, I am a big fan of daily devotionals. Check out ���dailystoic.com��� and ���dailydad.com��� for the free daily email versions I do.

���Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It��� by Richard Reeves
I���ve got two young boys (thus the ���Daily Dad email���), so I���ve been following Richard Reeves’s work for some time. This book could so easily have been culture war fodder, but thankfully, he is so much above and beyond that. The gains society has made for women���especially in America���have been utterly unprecedented. But men are struggling, or rather, young boys are struggling. How do we help them? How do we show them a better path? How do we teach them to fulfill their potential and contribute their unique contribution to society? Given my work with Stoicism, I think we���ve gone too far in describing masculinity as ���toxic��� (���check out a recent video I did about Stoic lessons on masculinity���) but I would say there are many toxic examples (and thinkers) out there who are misleading young men (���which I talk about in this video���). If you���re a parent or a teacher or a policy maker, you have to read this book. ���Check out my conversation with Richard Reeves here���.

���Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything��� by Julia Baird
So when I was in Australia, I sat down with Julia to talk about her new book, ���Bright Shining���, which is all about the idea of grace (���watch that episode here���). We are wicked people living amongst wicked people, Seneca said, that���s why we need to be patient with each other, why we need to forgive each other. I would say this is especially true coming out of the pandemic and the recent election.

���The Children��� by David Halberstam
I was deeply moved, in some cases to tears, by David Halberstam���s ���The Children���, when I first read it in 2022. It tells the story of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of the young activists who played pivotal roles in the struggle for racial equality and grew up to lead the movement. It���s an incredibly powerful book about youth and social change���and how it comes from brave young people. I haven���t stopped thinking about it since I first read it. Trust me, ���pick it up this year.���

���Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63���, ���Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65���, and ���At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68��� by Taylor Branch
Another long biography series���I was blown away by Taylor Branch���s epic three-part biography on Martin Luther King Jr. when I first read it back in 2020���it was truly life-changing for me. I was once again profoundly impacted by this series as I picked it back up to do research for ���Right Thing, Right Now���. This trilogy does a phenomenal job of revealing the ways that an individual person really can have an impact on the collective. It���s a masterpiece of a series, made even better by the fact that Branch began the series when his son was born, and finished it with the help of that same son years later (���read more about that here���).

���Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes��� by Morgan Housel
Too often, we give way too much attention to what is shiny and new or urgent and timely instead of focusing on what truly matters���the things that are perennial and enduring. Morgan (���who I had a great conversation with Morgan on the podcast���) put together a great book of anecdotes and musings on the constants of human nature and history. In a world that seems to change faster every year, ���this book��� reminds us of the things that stay the same���and why they matter. If you loved Morgan���s ���The Psychology of Money���, this book is a natural next step. It���s not just about what we know���it���s about what we understand about ourselves, our behavior, and the world we live in. ���This is a book to read���, reflect on, and revisit.

������The 48 Laws of Power��� by Robert Greene
Speaking of things that never change���there are some awful people and awful movements on the march around the world. This feels new, but of course, it���s not���these people have always existed. The problem is they are just not well understood. Worse, good people are not often armed with the tools (or the cunning) to defeat or to effectuate change. If you want to live life on your terms, climb as high as you know you���re capable, and avoid being controlled by others���you need to read ���this book���. You���ll leave not just with actionable lessons, but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it and be able to defend against it. If you don���t want to read it because you think it���s ���immoral,��� well then you definitely need to read it, ���as I explain in this video���.

������It Can���t Happen Here��� by Sinclair Lewis
One of my reading rules is: If you want to understand current events, don���t rely on breaking news. Find a book about a similar event in the past. It���s also true that fiction helps us understand the human heart and the events of history more than nonfiction can. ���This book��� will make you so uncomfortable you���ll probably pick it up and put it down several times. One of America���s most famous writers wrote a bestselling novel in 1935 about an appalling populist demagogue who won the presidency of the United States. Life imitates art. Change the dates, places and names and it���s no longer fiction, it���s real. If you don���t read the book, at least please read about it. Because you need to know. It can happen here.

���Address Unknown��� by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
This is another timely book to pick up this year. It���s a short but important read about a series of letters between two business partners (one Jewish, one not) during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One is slowly corrupted by the events happening around him, his heart closing to the people and ideas he once believed in. It���s a heartbreaking but eye-opening look at the banality of fascism. People don���t just suddenly become evil or awful. It���s a process, a slide, even a response to incentives. It can happen to anyone. We should all be careful! I first read ���Address Unknown��� years ago, but I was reminded of it again when I read ���84, Charing Cross Road��� by Helene Hanff last summer which is about a New York TV writer and a British bookseller exchanging letters in the aftermath of WWII. Read ���Address Unknown��� and then follow it up with ���84, Charing Cross Road���.

������The Expanding Circle��� by Peter Singer
Even though Stoicism is a ruggedly individual philosophy, at the core of it is this idea of ���the circles of concern.��� Our first concern, the Stoics said, is ourselves. Then our family, our community, our country, our world, all living things. The work of philosophy is to draw these concerns inward���to learn to care about as many people as possible, to do as much good as possible. I dedicated an entire chapter in my book ���Right Thing, Right Now��� to this idea, titled ���Expand The Circle��� (���you can listen to an excerpt of that chapter here!���). So when I had ���Peter Singer on the podcast��� and mentioned this book, he said he only chanced on a similar metaphor, not knowing its Stoic origins. ���The Expanding Circle��� is a great book about expanding our focus on the welfare of family and friends to include, ultimately, all of humanity���animals, the environment, all of it.

���Atomic Habits��� by James Clear
A perennial favorite because it works. It���s when things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it���s falling apart, that we most need to develop good habits. I think about James Clear���s concept of atomic habits on a regular basis. To me, this is a sign of a ���great book������that even just thinking about the title has an impact on you. I love the double meaning of the word atomic���not just meaning explosive habits, but also focusing on the smallest possible size of habit, the tiniest step you can take to start the chain reaction that can in fact lead to explosive results.

���Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan: With an Extensive Introduction and Notes by Alexander Bennett��� by Inaz�� Nitobe
I can���t remember which subscriber emailed me about this book, but I really liked it. Written in 1905, ���Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan��� was the first book written for a Western audience about the code of conduct that governed the lives of Japan���s ruling class. It gets to ���the soul of Japan��� by answering the question of why certain ideas and customs prevail. It was a huge sensation in the U.S. when it came out. I believe Theodore Roosevelt read it. It���s a lovely peon to the virtues of an ancient tradition and deserves to be read up there with ���The Book of Five Rings��� and ���Zen in the Art of Archery��� (two other favorites of mine). Fictionally, there is also ���Rules for a Knight���, which is another great read.

���How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World��� by Donald Robertson
I remain as ever a big fan of Donald Robertson. His biography of Marcus Aurelius is one of the best books I���ve read and I loved his other book on Marcus Aurelius, ���How to Think Like a Roman Emperor���. There���s a hilarious quote by Macaulay that I used in the Wisdom book (just finishing it): ���The more I read about Socrates the less I wonder that they poisoned him.��� Because while the dialogs are fun to read now, they weren���t fun for the people he was making a fool of. Socrates considered himself the ���gadfly��� of Athens. People hate flies! ���When Donald came on The Daily Stoic Podcast���, this was one of the things I wanted to ask him about���that for all Socrates��� wisdom, he seemed to lack social intelligence. Emily Wilson talks about this in her book ���The Death of Socrates��� quite a bit (a good companion to Donald���s book). Fascinating book about a guy who, like Cicero, I can���t decide if I like.

������Meditations��� by Marcus Aurelius
This will always be my ultimate book recommendation. No matter who you are, where you live, how old you are, or how many times you���ve already read Marcus Aurelius��� ���Meditations���, it���s time for you to read it. I���m a champion of the ���Gregory Hays translation���, but if you are re-reading it, I���ve found that a new translation of a book you���ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle���or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. So if you haven���t read ���Robin Walterfield���s edition, check that one out���. There���s a reason this book has endured for almost twenty centuries (���here are some lessons��� from me having read ���Meditations��� more than 100 times). If you haven���t read Marcus Aurelius or if you have���you should ���read this book��� and then read it again.

This Habit Is Making You Miserable (And Driving You Insane)

Stop watching cable news, it���s bad for you.

Stop filtering the world through social media, it���s a cesspool.

Turn off those breaking news alerts on your phone���none of them are as important as you think.

But isn���t it my responsibility to be an informed citizen?

Absolutely.

The problem is, we���ve fooled ourselves into thinking that endless news consumption is how you stay ���informed���.

About 15 years ago, I made an abrupt turn in my life. Souring on the marketing world, I wrote ���Trust Me, I���m Lying���, a book about media manipulation. Although a lot has changed since it came out in 2012 (and a lot has changed ���since the updated edition in 2017���), it���s alarming how relevant the book continues to be. It was, if anything, ahead of its time. Today, we are awash not just with fake news but with too much news, period. Too much information. Too much noise.

I had a few aims with that book but one of my hopes was that when people saw how the sausage was made, they would eat a lot less sausage (and certainly less factory-farmed sausage).

Yet here we are���across the political spectrum���consuming way too much of it. No wonder we���re miserable! No wonder we���re overwhelmed. No wonder we���re easier to manipulate than ever.

In some countries, like Finland, they teach kids media literacy and how to spot propaganda (largely due to their border with Russia). But the rest of the world? We���re just not equipped for the environment we are in.

And that���s my argument today: If you want to make a positive difference in the world���or simply maintain your sanity���you need to step back. You need to learn how to be more philosophical���which means being more discerning about what you let into your mind and learning how to see the big picture, calmly and with perspective.

As I said, being informed is essential. The problem is that breaking news isn���t about informing you. It���s about grabbing and holding your attention���news that is, by definition, not the complete story. It is almost certainly going to be changed as events unfold. George S. Trow observed this decades ago: ���Notice that the news is written in such a way that all these ���dramatic��� ravelings and unravelings are reported in detail���but should the thing finally come together, the news will just stop.��� Today, it doesn���t stop���it keeps going and going with endless updates, speculation, and hot takes to keep you in the 24/7/365 cycle.

And social media? It���s even worse. The constant stream of opinions and outrage���how can you possibly have time to think and reflect when your brain is being buzzed by attention-seekers trying to outdo each other?

When you watch sports shows during the day, it���s easy to laugh at the manufactured drama. It���s easy to see that Stephen A. Smith or Skip Bayless are masters at finding things to be upset about, finding things to make you upset about, spinning storylines about who���s overrated, whose game is in decline, and whose job is in jeopardy. It���s all nonsense���not because it���s about sports, but because it’s just meaningless noise: opinions about past events or speculations about future ones, masquerading as meaningful discussion. As if having those opinions is anything but a form of mental masturbation.

Cable news and social media follow the same playbook as the sports media cycle. They just hide the ball better.

And all this isn���t even touching on the bad actors who exploit the incentives of this system (which is what ���Trust Me I���m Lying��� really explores). The media strategist behind Donald Trump, for example, has been very clear about how they ���flood the zone with shit��� to distract and disorient people. Foreign powers use similar methods: They don���t suppress information so much as they overwhelm people with contradictory and divisive information, propping up fringe viewpoints to turn people against each other. People like Tucker Carlson tell their audience one thing and then in private, say the complete opposite (���as confirmed by multiple lawsuits���). They are not informed experts. They are not your friends. They are con artists, provocateurs and profiteers who are preying on you.

This is not an environment conducive to understanding, to say the least. Some people���s media habits remind me of that line from The Simpsons: ���Not only am I not learning, I’m forgetting stuff I used to know!”

There is almost nothing on the news or social media that is not intentionally designed to agitate and outrage. It���s there to distract you. To consume your attention. That there are teams of designers, behavioral scientists, and engineers paid gobsmacking amounts of money to keep you watching and scrolling���posting and waiting for replies.

The same goes for every other publisher or platform. Television doesn���t want you to get up and take action, they want you to sit through the commercial break. A news outlet doesn���t want you to be so outraged by an article that you do something, no, they want you to stay and click another article at the bottom���or one of those scammy AI-written Taboola ads at the bottom (which again, ���I wrote about 11 years ago��� and still exist!).

Stop falling for it.

When I���m not feeling great physically���tired, irritable, sluggish���usually it���s because I���m eating poorly. In the same way, when I feel mentally scattered and distracted���I know it���s time to clean up my information diet.

���If you wish to improve,��� Epictetus once said, ���be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.���

One of the most powerful things we can do as human beings in our hyperconnected, 24/7 digital media world is to turn our attention to things that last, to get out of the hellscape of noise and go to truth. It���s a transgressive act, I think, to pick up a book these days���better yet, an old book. If you wish to understand the present moment, you���ll gain more clarity by studying the past than you will from following the breathless news cycle. Put distance between you and the attention merchants. Read philosophy. Read history. Read biographies. Study psychology. Study the patterns of humanity.

During the pandemic, I learned more from reading John M. Barry���s ���The Great Influenza��� (about a pandemic 100 years earlier) than I did from any daily news briefing. My understanding of the demagogues of this moment has been shaped not just by my reading of history but also by fiction���I strongly recommend ���All The King���s Men��� and ���It Can���t Happen Here���. Want to understand America and the EU right now? Read Mike Duncan���s ���The Storm Before The Storm��� about Rome and the hundred years of political dysfunction that preceded Julius Caesar. Want to understand what happened in the days after the 2020 election? Read ���Sallust on conspiracies���. Want to understand how the system is supposed to work? Read Jeffrey Rosen and Tom Ricks’s books on the philosophical influences on the founders (���The Pursuit of Happiness��� and ���First Principles���).

I have not just read these things, but I���ve reached out to the authors (when possible) and interviewed them. I didn���t do this so much for the audience as I did for my own understanding���I wanted to hear from actual experts, not professional opinion-havers. (Here���s me talking to media experts like ���Ren��e DiResta��� and ���Jonathan Haidt���. Historians like ���Adam Hochschild,��� ���John M. Barry���, ���Barry Strauss���, ���Thomas Ricks��� and ���Josiah Osgood������. Here���s my talking to a ���former Democratic congressman���, ���a Republican Senator���. Here���s me talking to ���Democratic and Republican Mayors���. Here���s me talking to ���a former Republican communications operative.)

What I���m always trying to do is ground my sense of what���s happening in reality. I’m trying to get perspective. I���m trying to get context. I don���t always get it right���I sometimes get caught up in the ���current thing��� or get anxious or worked up about stuff that doesn���t matter���but I���ll tell you what: I don���t wake up every day miserable. I have also avoided, unlike many people I know, ���getting sucked into the mob���.

This is exactly what one of the early Stoics said was the job of the philosopher. We���re supposed to think for ourselves. We���re supposed to be above the fray.

So I���m not saying you need to disconnect completely. What I���m saying is you can���t possibly hope to keep your bearings about you these days if your understanding of the world is primarily dependent on the news of the day. No, you need to be rooted in something deeper than the so-called ���first draft of history��� or the ticker tape of what the sociologist E. Robert Kelly once called the ���specious present.��� Ask yourself: Is this thing that I���m consuming likely to still be relevant, still important, in a day? Or in five days, or in a week or in a year or five years?

Then ask yourself: Am I consuming or contributing? Because too often we conflate these things. The time spent scrolling or reacting on social media could be spent engaging with your community, voting, attending a city council meeting, teaching your children, making ethical decisions in your own business, or simply having a meaningful conversation.

If we could break free from this loop, not only could we get some meaningful work done, but we might be able to connect with each other in ways that are productive instead of divisive.

There is a tradeoff here: by choosing deliberate ignorance of the nonsense and chatter, we gain the ability to prioritize and see with clarity. It���s a swap���generalized outrage for the capacity to focus on what truly matters. Whether you see the next four years as the beginning of real positive change or the beginning of the end���one thing is certain: you will be able to think about it all more objectively if you followed the breathless news cycle less.

Meanwhile, Trump���a news and social media addict if there ever was one���is charged not with campaigning for president anymore but with being president. That���s going to require ignoring the talking heads���the ones that hate him and the ones that love him���or the apps on his phone and focusing on doing one of the toughest jobs on the planet. Social media will only be a source of aggravation and distraction for them and for us. Catering to the people who sell our attention for money will not only deprive us of any potential common ground, it will actually make us less accountable to each other.

Of course, this isn���t just about politics or presidents. You can replace ���Trump administration��� with whatever you care about and leaders of all types. The point remains: there is plenty of important work to do in this world and plenty to be vigilant about.

But let���s stop pretending that the ceaseless news feed is anything other than what it is: addiction and manipulation masquerading as a social good. Then we wonder why we���re left sapped of reason and willpower and perspective.

Stay informed.

But do it differently:

Pick up a book.

Be a philosopher.

This Is What I Learned From One of My Heroes��

When I lived in New Orleans, I used to get my haircut by this guy named Pat in the French Quarter. I remember looking around the Monteleone Barber Shop, which had two conspicuously empty chairs, and asking why Pat never had anyone else working in the shop with him.

���I used to,��� he said, ���but the other barbers kept speaking badly about the President so I let them go.��� Ordinarily, I would have just left it at that���this was the Deep South and politics are always risky���but I had to know.

���What president?��� I asked.

���Jimmy Carter,��� he said like I should have known.

I remember thinking, ���lol what?��� Had he really been holding onto this grudge for thirty years? And who white knights for Jimmy Carter?

But that curious exchange sent me down a rabbit hole. Over the years, I read a chunk of the books Carter wrote (I would not have guessed he wrote 30+ books). I also read several big biographies on Carter and became genuinely fascinated by a man that I���m not sure I���d heard a single good thing about growing up.

But because of Pat, slowly but surely, Jimmy Carter became one of my heroes. In fact, I���d argue he is the hero of my book Right Thing, Right Now, and largely the inspiration for the title. He appears in Discipline is Destiny and some of my favorite stories in The Daily Dad (like this one). And back in April, it was one of the honors of my life to give a speech about Carter at the U.S. Naval Academy, which Carter graduated from in 1946 right across from the recently named Carter Hall. (You can watch the speech here or at the link below and check out the others in my four virtues series here and here and here).

Well, less than two weeks ago, Jimmy Carter died at age 100. 100! The longest-living president in American history. That doesn���t tell us anything, though. Seneca���s line was that it���s not how long you live but how well you live that matters. He was pointing out that many people live to be old but have little to show for it.��

What I wanted to talk about today is some of the things that Jimmy Carter has to show for the century he spent on this planet.

The reviews of his presidency are unfairly mixed���this was a man whose term was without wars, without corruption, first addressed climate change, mandated the seatbelt in cars, returned the Panama Canal to its rightful owners, a historic peace deal for the Middle East.

As he summed up his own time in office: ���We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.���

Pretty good.

But his time as an ex-president is unquestioned. After he left office, Carter founded The Carter Center to promote global health, democracy, and human rights, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. In particular, Carter was relentless in his efforts to eradicate Guinea worm disease. At a 2015 press conference, Carter famously said, ���I’d like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do.��� When he started working on the problem, the disease afflicted more than 3.6 million people a year in 21 countries. As of the latest report at the end of 2022, there are just 13 cases in 4 countries.

Beyond wiping out diseases, he���s acted as an international mediator in North Korea, Haiti, and other nations. He was an active volunteer, focusing particularly on housing for the poor���still personally building houses into his 90s. He wrote numerous books on various subjects, from policy to his personal life and even poetry. He enjoyed a 77-year marriage to his beloved Rosalynn, ���the foundation for my entire enjoyment of life,��� Carter once said. Together, they had four children and 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.��

In short, it was a life of service and a life of virtue. Not virtue in the pious, judgmental sense, but in the Stoic sense���active in public life, active in the world, equal parts compassionate and muscular, he was a man deserving to command because he commanded himself first. And so, here are some of the very best lessons from the great Jimmy Carter on how to live a good and honorable life:

Hang in there. In the 1930s and 40s, the African Americans who entered the Naval Academy left because of appalling racism. Wesley Brown was on the brink of leaving when Carter, who was two years ahead, popped by his dorm room and said, ���Hang in there.��� Because Carter grew up in a small, rural, segregated town in Georgia, he was expected to be racist. And so, one classmate recalled, ���he was treated as if he was a traitor.��� Still, Carter would often put his arm around Brown and let him know he was there for him. Brown would hang in there and become the first African American graduate of the Naval Academy in 1949.

Make time every day for study and reflection. Even when he was president, Carter blocked out an hour in the mornings for reading, thinking, and prayer.

The best lessons are learned by example. Carter���s reading habit began as a child. Growing up, reading was done as a family. Each evening, his mother sat down for dinner with a book. The children were encouraged to follow suit. It wasn���t considered rude, Jimmy would later reflect, because reading at the table was simply a Carter Family habit. What a beautiful scene that must have been, even if it was a little untraditional: each of their faces buried in a book, each of them learning, entertaining themselves, widening their horizons. Carter carried this tradition on with his own family even as they moved into The White House in 1977.

Always do your best. In an interview with Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, Carter proudly said he was ranked 59th in a class of 840 at the Naval Academy. Instead of being impressed, Rickover asked, ���Did you always do your best?��� Carter answered honestly that he did not always do his best. After a long pause, Rickover asked, ���Why not?��� and then walked out of the room. Carter would never forget this question. This question became the lodestar of Carter���s life.

Do it now. In 1970, Jimmy Carter won a surprise victory for governor of Georgia. During his inauguration in 1971, he announced: ���I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.��� The crowd was stunned. He had just run a conservative campaign in a conservative state, did he really have to make that statement right then? ���It���s impossible for me to delay something that I see needs to be done,��� Carter later explained. He always said that he never wanted to do anything to hurt his country���that���s why he made that bold declaration the moment he became governor. This is a lesson for all of us. There are so many things that we want to do in life, but we delay because it will be too hard, too controversial, too time-consuming. The danger in the delay, Carter understood, is that we don���t say we won���t do it, we say we���ll get to it later. And then we never do. No one knows how much time we have. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that we���ll never get around to it. So stop delaying. Do what needs to be done. Do it now.

Seriously, do it now. Six years after that stunning speech in Georgia, Carter was elected president of the United States. On his very first day in office, just hours after his inauguration parade, he held a meeting���literally his first appointment���with a disabled army veteran named Max Cleland to discuss yet another stunning announcement. After asking Cleland to head the Veterans Administration, Carter instructed him to begin working on a blanket pardon for everyone who had evaded serving in Vietnam. He believed the time for forgiveness and understanding had come. Cleland, who supported the idea, warned the president that it would be unpopular in the Senate and might be worth delaying, perhaps until his second term. ���I don���t care if all 100 of them are against me,��� Carter replied. ���It���s the right thing to do.���

Be generous. During the Depression, wanderers and hobos would often stop at Carter’s childhood home in Georgia, which was not far from the railroad tracks. Carter���s mother would always fix them something to eat. Later, Jimmy Carter would learn that the community of homeless people during the Depression had a series of symbols to communicate which houses were decent and kind and which were heartless and cruel and to be avoided. The idea of this mark���of earning it from those in need���stayed with him all his life. It���s why, even into his nineties, he donated his time and money to help others and built houses for those who could not afford their own.

Use your powers for good. The Carter family met a woman named Mary Prince when they moved into the Georgia governor���s mansion in 1971. She had been assigned to their staff as part of a work program for incarcerated inmates. Carter���s wife, Rosalynn, quickly became convinced of Prince���s innocence and was appalled at the details of her conviction���Prince, a black woman, had been convinced by her lawyer to plead guilty to manslaughter. The lawyer then had her plead to murder, for which she received a life sentence. The Carters asked that Prince be assigned to nanny their young daughter, Amy, and eventually secured her parole and a full pardon. She came to live with them in The White House. After his presidency, Carter bought her a house down the street from the Carters��� in Plains, Georgia. They remained close friends for the rest of their lives. Carter would dedicate a book called Our Endangered Values to her in 2006.

Don���t be all about business. As he was setting up his administration in The White House, Carter told the ambitious staff, ���We are going to be here a long time, and all of you will be more valuable to me and the country with rest and a stable home life.���

You have only one life to live. Make the most of it. Carter said that���s what drove him: ���I feel I have one life to live. I feel like God wants me to do the best I can with it. And that���s quite often my major prayer. Let me live my life so that it will be meaningful.���

Run a tight ship. Everybody thinks Jimmy Carter was a bad president because he was too nice or too idealistic, that he should have waited until reelection to do some of the things he did. Turns out the real reason he struggled (and why he wasn���t re-elected) was that he tried to get away with not having a Chief of Staff (read Chris Whipple���s book The Gatekeepers). He was a good man, but he had trouble managing all the demands on his time and attention. This is an important lesson, I think: At the end of the day, it comes down to how well-organized you are and how tight a ship you run.

Don���t talk about it. Be about it. Jimmy Carter, once evaluating his relationship with his faith, asked himself: ���If I was tried for being a Christian, would I be convicted?��� It���s sort of a breathtaking question���imagine suddenly taking your word for it wasn���t enough. Imagine you were actually being investigated. What would the record show? This is such an important question to ask yourself not just of faith, but as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, as an employee, as a boss. Are you as committed as you say you are? Would the evidence be compelling? Or would it turn out that you talked a good game, but didn���t actually walk it? In the end, it doesn���t matter what you say. It matters who you are.

Age is no barrier. When Jimmy Carter���s mother was 68 years old, she saw an ad on television for the Peace Corps that said ���Age is no barrier.��� So she joined. Almost 70 years old, she went to India and taught nutrition and family planning! Is it any wonder then, that Jimmy Carter’s post-presidential years were so productive and service-oriented? Even at age 96, he built houses for Habitat for Humanity, wrote books and taught Sunday school. Carter knew that age was no barrier���especially when it comes to doing the right thing.

Take care of yourself. A young Jimmy Carter was pulled aside by his father one day: ���There is something I want you to promise me,��� his father said, ���I don���t want you to smoke a cigarette until you are twenty-one years old.��� This was the late 1930s when something like 40% of the population smoked (Carter���s dad himself was hopelessly hooked). ���I won���t,��� Jimmy promised. In his lifetime, Carter smoked only one cigarette, at age twenty-one while in the Naval Academy. He hated it and never did again. Tragically, his siblings and mother picked up his father���s smoking habit and each died of cancer in one form or another. Jimmy, as we know, lived to be 100. Take care of yourself. It allows you to do more good.��

Get comfortable pissing people off. A Democratic congressman once said of Carter: ���If that son of a bitch asks me to do the right thing one more time, I���m going to kick his ass.��� No matter what you do, someone is going to be unhappy about it. This is a simple fact of life. But you can���t let it stop you.

Don���t cheat the gift. As a young man, Jimmy Carter heard the Parable of the Talents, which tells the story of three servants who are given money from their master to protect while he is away. When the master returns, he asks each servant what they did with the money. The first invested the money, the second put it in a bank, and the third buried it in fear of the responsibility. ���I gather from this episode,��� Carter says of the parable, ���that we should use to the fullest degree whatever talents or opportunities we have been given, preferably for the benefit of others.��� To whom much is given, the lesson from the parable goes, much is expected. Do your best. Become what you can be. You owe the world that much.

Be loyal. One campaign reporter once remarked that of all the presidents he covered in the 20th century, Jimmy Carter was the only president that he can say with absolute certainty was faithful to his wife. Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, were together for 77 years, which is the longest-running marriage in the history of American Presidents.

Be tough on yourself, understanding of others. Jimmy Carter held his life to a high standard, but he was also honest with himself about his flaws and made sure never to boast. The famous ���scandal��� where Carter admitted to having ���lust in his heart,��� was Carter trying to say that he didn���t judge people who did have affairs because he himself was not without sin. ���The guy who is loyal to their wife ought not be condescending or proud because of his relative degree of sinfulness,��� he once said in an interview. Strict with yourself, Marcus Aurelius would say, and tolerant of others.

——–

On the one hand, I was sad to hear of Carter���s passing. On the other, I wasn���t that sad. Because no one could say that he was taken from us too soon. Not because he was given plenty of time on this planet, but because of what he did with that time. This man certainly lived.

I thought about this a few months ago when I went back to that barber shop while I was in New Orleans on business.

Pat didn���t remember me and I wasn���t sure if I remembered the conversation right, so I sort of danced around it. But I found a way to bring it up.

�����Who doesn���t like Jimmy Carter?��� he said, when I asked him again about the other barbers. ���He���s one of the most decent men who ever lived.�����

Agreed!

The Secret To Better Habits In 2025

Here we are…at the halfway point of the 2020s. The first half seems like it was both yesterday and forever ago, doesn’t it?

Tempus fugit. 

That’s what the ancients said. Time flies. 

But as time passes, as the world changes, how many of us just stay the same? Incredible, unbelievable events have transpired, but I would not say I have transformed myself in any incredible or unbelievable way. 

We go on being the way we always were, not unlike, as Marcus Aurelius noted, those gladiators at the game “torn half to pieces, covered in blood and gore, and still pleading to be held over till tomorrow…to be bitten and clawed again.”

While there is nothing magical about the new year or nothing special about being halfway through a decade, there can be something powerful in these artificial constructs, in deciding to mark a turning point. There’s power in rituals, in moments that encourage us to pause, reflect, and reset. Even the Stoics embraced this. Seneca is said to have begun each year with a plunge into the icy Tiber River, a bracing ritual to wash away the old and prepare for the new.

Here are some habits, some best practices, some things I am going to ask of myself in 2025 (many of which were inspired by The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, which starts on January 1st). It’s a big part of my year each year—kicking things off with something that challenges me—and I hope you’ll join us on January 1st. Sign up here and learn more about the challenge in the P.S.

Do The Essential Things First

This is where it all starts: with how you spend the best part of your day. The novelist Philipp Meyer​ (whose book ​​The Son​​ is an incredible read) told me on the Daily Stoic podcast, “You have to be very careful about to what (and to whom) you’re giving the best part of your day.” This wisdom echoes across the habits of many productive people.

Well-intentioned plans fall apart as the day progresses. Our willpower evaporates. The world makes its demands. So it’s key that we prioritize the important things and that we habitualize doing them early. It doesn’t have to be perfect or grand. It just has to come first.

Personally, I fiercely protect my mornings—family first, then writing. My assistant knows not to schedule anything before mid-morning because early calls and meetings don’t just take time—they sap the energy needed for the essential work. I want to give my best self to my most important things. Everything else can come after.

Think Small

The writer James Clear talks about the idea of “atomic habits” (and has a really good book with the same title–it was actually the first book someone bought from The Painted Porch). An atomic habit is a small habit that makes an enormous difference in your life. He tells the story of how the British cycling team transformed themselves by focusing on 1% improvements in every area—tiny adjustments that, over time, added up to extraordinary results. It’s a simple but powerful concept: repetitive actions accumulate.

“Well-being is realized by small steps,” Zeno would say looking back on his life, “but is truly no small thing.” The key is to start small. Thinking big might feel inspiring, but it’s also overwhelming. Thinking small, on the other hand, is easier—and easier is what gets you started.

If you want to read more this year, don’t aim to finish 50 books. Commit to reading one page per day. Struggling with fitness? Don’t promise yourself a marathon—start with a walk around the block. If your eating habits need work, don’t overhaul your diet overnight—just choose one healthier option today.

The point isn’t about how small the change is; it’s about the momentum it creates. Once you start, you can build. As George Washington’s favorite proverb goes, “Many mickles make a muckle.” Small steps add up to something significant.

Focus On Process, Not Goals

Most people start the year with goals—lose 20 pounds, write a book, learn a language. But goals are just finish lines—they’re about achieving something specific, often external, and usually out of your control. A better approach is to focus on the process: the daily work and the practices that will move you forward, regardless of the outcome. As I wrote about recently, I don’t have goals. When I write, I don’t focus on finishing books—that would be overwhelming. Instead, I focus on my notecard system and writing for a couple hours every day. The books emerge from that process naturally, over time. This year, instead of fixating on specific outcomes, focus on the process that will guide you. The results will take care of themselves.

Create or Remove Friction 

Make bad habits more difficult to do. Want to spend less time on social media? Log out after each use, delete the apps, or set screen time limits. I don’t keep social media apps on my phone—they’re on my wife’s phone instead. If I really want to check Instagram or TikTok, I have to ask her first. That extra step is just enough to make me think twice, and because of it, I spend way less time scrolling.

For good habits, make them as easy as possible. In our home, mornings go smoother when the kids’ clothes are picked out the night before, sometimes for the whole week. Packing lunches the night before means we can get out the door with less stress. When I get to my desk in the morning, the three journals I write in are sitting right there. If I want to skip the habit, I have to pick them up and move them aside. So most mornings I don’t move them, and I write in them. 

You can apply this to anything. Want to eat healthier? Don’t keep junk food in the house. Trying to shop online less? Remove saved credit card information from your browser—it adds just enough hassle to curb impulsive purchases. Want to drink more water? Keep a reusable water bottle with you at all times.

Make bad habits harder and good habits easier.

Do Something Good 

With so much happening in the world—so much chaos, so much uncertainty—I’ve found myself trying to focus on one simple thing: doing good for others. It’s the old Boy Scout motto: “Do a Good Turn Daily.” Some good turns are big—saving a life, protecting the environment, helping someone in crisis. But good turns can also be small: a kind word, holding a door open, mowing a neighbor’s lawn, or calling 911 when something seems off. Scouts are taught that it’s these little acts, done bravely and consistently, that make the world worth living in. Marcus Aurelius spoke of moving from one unselfish action to another—“only there,” he said, can we find “delight and stillness.” At Daily Stoic, we try to live this out every year by teaming up with Feeding America. This year, we raised over $230,000 (donate here—we could use your help in getting to our goal of $300,000). The truth is, it doesn’t take much to make a difference. A small act, done consistently, compounds—just like a good habit. Whether it’s holding open a door or holding up a family, the impact is real. As you head into this year, get in the habit of asking yourself: What good turn can I do today?

Do Less, Better

Matthew McConaughey told me he shut down his production company and his music label because “I was making B’s in five things. I want to make A’s in three things.” Those three things: his family, his foundation, his acting career (you can listen to our conversation here). Along the same lines, Maya Smart told me she had to start saying “No” so she could say “Yes” to writing her first book (which you can pick up at the Painted Porch Bookshop). “I had to start setting boundaries,” she said “Steven Pressfield writes about this idea that you do this shadow work. For me, it was volunteering…So I started resigning from boards and telling people, ‘I’m no longer able to do this thing that I used to do because I’m focused on this book.’” Marcus Aurelius would say that doing less “brings a double satisfaction.” You get to do less and you get to do those things better. As we enter 2025, consider what you might need to say “no” to in order to say “yes” to what matters most.

Set Boundaries

In a world of social media, instant gratification, and oversharing, setting boundaries is a lost art. You know, minding your own business, keeping your private life private, not letting people drag you down into the muck, not getting entangled in other people’s dysfunctions (or entangling them in yours), being strong enough to communicate what you like and dislike. Boundaries are about drawing some lines around yourself–healthy borders between what you’ll accept and what you won’t, what you’ll do and what you won’t. Without them, we leave ourselves open to being drained by the demands, chaos, and drama of others. There’s a term for people who not only lack boundaries, but suck others dry with their neediness, their selfishness, their dysfunction, and their drama: energy vampires. This year, don’t be an energy vampire and don’t put up with energy vampires. Be strong enough to keep them at arm’s distance even if they’re beautiful, even if they’re talented, even if they’re family or old friends, even if their helplessness calls to the most empathetic part of yourself. Set boundaries this year. And stick to them.

Don’t Do It All Yourself

Whenever I speak to military groups, I like to share one of my favorite lines from Meditations:

“Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?”

I love how Marcus Aurelius delivers that line—with a shrug. So what? There’s no shame in needing help. Whether it’s therapy, asking for advice, or hiring someone to support you, seeking help is often the key to breakthroughs, growth, and success.

Tim Ferriss has a great question that ties into this: What would this look like if it were easy? Often, the answer involves creating support systems or finding the right kind of help. Building habits, achieving goals, or even just making progress isn’t something you have to do alone.

In 2018, we ran the first Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It was packed with activities and exercises inspired by Stoic philosophy. Even I, the person who designed the challenge, found it transformative. Why? Because being part of a group, all working together, created a sense of accountability and momentum. Knowing others were pushing themselves alongside me made it easier to show up, stay committed, and go further than I might have on my own.

As we kick off 2025, we’re doing another Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge—a 21-day program to build momentum for the rest of the year. If you’re looking to improve your habits, consider finding a similar challenge. It doesn’t matter what it’s about or who’s doing it with you; what matters is having a structure and a community to support you.

If you need help, so what? Hire a coach or trainer. Lean on your team. Join a group. Ask someone who knows more than you. It’s not a weakness to seek help—it’s a strength. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself that we’re all comrades on this mission. Don’t let pride hold you back from getting the support you need to succeed.

Escape The Most Expensive Habit

I don’t gamble. I don’t spend recklessly. But I do have an expensive habit: anxiety. It’s cost me hours of sleep, moments with my family, and opportunities I let pass because I was too caught up in my fears. It’s the vacation I didn’t enjoy, the dinner I spoiled, the car ride I spent stressing instead of being present. Seneca said, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Anxiety drags us into a future that doesn’t exist, forcing us to live out worst-case scenarios that rarely happen. And yet, the time and energy anxiety steals are gone forever. The good news? If anxiety comes from within us, we can choose to let it go. Marcus Aurelius put it simply: “Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me.” ​I carry a small reminder with me​—a medallion engraved with Epictetus’ phrase, ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin (“What is up to us, what is not up to us”). On the back is a quote from Seneca: “He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.” These phrases are anchors. They remind me that anxiety doesn’t change the outcome—it only punishes me before anything has even happened. It’s not easy to break free, but we can practice—by staying in the present moment, letting go of what we can’t control, and reminding ourselves that anxiety is an expensive habit. Don’t let it cost you anymore of your life.

Say No To Say Yes

It’s a pretty weird thing to collect. But they help me every single day. 

It started a few years ago when Dr. Jonathan Fader, an elite sports psychologist, gave me a picture of Oliver Sacks, who is in his office speaking on the phone, and behind him is a large sign that just says, “NO!” I added to this motif with a small memo signed by Harry S. Truman, shortly after he became president. His secretary wrote an inner-office memo to ask if they should start saying no to these sorts of requests with all the demands he had on his schedule. “The proper answer underlined, HST”, he wrote back. Surrounded by physical reminders makes it impossible to avoid considering each opportunity and each ask carefully. 

In tech, there’s a term called “feature creep”—when too many ideas or requests dilute the core of a product, leaving it ineffective and unremarkable. The same thing happens in life. Trying to please everyone makes sure you’ll achieve nothing. Borrow E. B. White’s elegant response when asked to join a prestigious commission: “I must decline, for secret reasons.” Or take inspiration from Sandra Day O’Connor—one of her clerks once said with reverence, “Sandra is the only woman I know who doesn’t say sorry. Women would say, ‘Sorry. I can’t do that.’ She would just say, ‘No.’” No, Sandra liked to point out, is a complete sentence. Say no. Own it. Be polite when you can, but own it. Don’t say maybe. Don’t give a bunch of reasons (which invite an argument). Don’t push it until later. Say NO. Understand: Everything you say “YES” to in this life means saying “NO” to something else. 

Go The F*ck To Sleep

Earlier we talked about things sapping our energy and making it increasingly more difficult to make good choices throughout the day. Related to that: All the other habits and practices listed here become irrelevant if you don’t have the energy and clarity to do them. What you plan to do tomorrow is irrelevant…if you didn’t get enough sleep tonight. If you’re burned out, if you’re exhausted, if all you want to do is veg out on the couch. 

We think we can get away with pulling an all-nighter here and there. We think we can substitute stimulants for sleep. Nonsense. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards their sleep carefully. The greats protect their sleep because their best work depends on it. The clearer they can think and the better their mental and physical state, the better they perform. In other words, the more sleep, the better. Follow the advice of a book I love to read to my kids: Go the F*ck to Sleep! Morning routines are great, but a bedtime routine is important, too. Being disciplined about wrapping up and winding down is essential. 

Don’t Lose The Rhythm More Than You Can Help

The path to self-improvement is slippery, and falling is inevitable. You’ll sleep in and not be able to read that page, you’ll cheat on your diet, you’ll say “yes” and take on too much, or you’ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of social media. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You’re only a bad person if you give up. 

​I told Dr. Edith Eger I felt guilty about how I had lost touch with someone and only recently reconnected with them. She cut me off and told me she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. “I give you a sentence,” she said, “One sentence—if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” That’s the end of that, she said. “Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.”

No one is perfect. We all have bad days. We can’t change that. When we mess up, we can’t go back and fix it. But we can move forward. We can be better here and now. We have to. “Disgraceful,” Marcus Aurelius would say, “for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.”

All of us have fallen short in the last year…and the years before that. We broke our resolutions. We lost touch with people we care about. We made the same mistakes again and again. We were “jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,” as Marcus said. But now it’s time to pick ourselves up and try again. It’s time, Marcus continues, to “revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.”

In other words, when you mess up, come back to the habits you’ve been working on. Come back to the ideas here in this post. Don’t quit just because you’re not perfect. No one is saying you have to magically transform yourself in 2025, but if you’re not making progress toward the person you want to be, what are you doing? And, more importantly, when are you planning to do it?

I’ll leave you with Epictetus, who spoke so eloquently about feeding the right habit bonfire. It’s the perfect passage to recite as we set out to begin a new year, hopefully, as better people.

“From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember…The true man is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material.”

For more life-changing habits to implement in 2025, check out this video on The Daily Stoic Youtube channel: How To Reinvent Your Life In 2025 (8 Stoic Practices You’ll Actually Use).

As I said above, I’m starting 2025 with The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It’s 21 days of challenges—presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy—designed to turn you into Olympic-class material. Sign up here before it starts on January 1st.

Each day you’ll get an email from us with instructions for the day’s challenge. These will all be exercises and routines you can begin right away to spark personal reinvention. We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works. We’ll give you strategies for maintaining this way of living, not just for this challenge or for this coming year, but for your whole life.

This challenge is my favorite way to start the New Year. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW!

This is My Most Expensive Habit

I manage my finances pretty well. I don���t gamble, I don���t spend recklessly, and I don���t indulge in luxuries I can���t afford.

But I do have an expensive habit. And you probably have it, too.

Anxiety.

It���s cost me so much.

A lot of misery, a lot of frustration, countless hours of sleep. It’s caused me to miss out on a lot of things that are important to me.

It���s not flashy, it���s not thrilling, and it doesn���t even provide the fleeting pleasures that other vices might. And yet, anxiety is a vice. A habit. A relentless one that eats away at your time, your relationships, and your moments of joy.

How many family dinners have I ruined by letting my mind wander to what could go wrong? How many minutes of vacations have I missed out on because I was preoccupied, lost in spirals about things that hadn���t happened? How many opportunities have I passed up because I was too caught up in my own fears? How much sleep did I waste, lying awake at night, worrying about what might or might not happen?

It doesn���t just steal moments. It adds costs. You leave hours earlier for the airport than you need to, only to sit at the gate. You ruminate on the past or the future at the expense of the project you could be working on. You spend weeks dreading news that you know you could have actually been preparing for, instead of just thinking about.

What does anxiety really give us in return? Nothing but exhaustion and the tiniest sliver of relief when the thing you feared doesn���t happen. And even that relief is fleeting because another worry is always waiting to take its place.

Seneca tells us we suffer more in imagination than in reality. Anxiety turns the hypothetical into the actual. It drags us into a future that doesn���t yet exist and forces us to live out every worst-case scenario in vivid detail. The cost isn���t just mental. It���s physical. It���s emotional. It���s relational.

Take a moment to think about what anxiety has stolen from you.

The car ride that could have been fun, but you spent stressed because you thought you���d be late. The arguments it got you into, the relationships it strained. The way it hijacks your thoughts, like a runaway train, speeding further and further away from the present moment.

And for what?

How often does the thing you were worried about actually happen? Sure, occasionally there are issues that come up. Occasionally, you miss the connection or the package arrives late. But far more often, the imagined disaster dissolves into nothing. Meanwhile, the moments anxiety robbed you of are gone forever.

The Stoics understood this all too well. Anxiety feeds on itself. It���s like the ouroboros���a snake devouring its own tail.

Worry leads to more worry, until the cycle becomes self-sustaining. Marcus Aurelius, in ���Meditations���, put it succinctly: ���Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions���not outside.���

Work. Your kids. Politics. Flying. These things aren���t the source of your anxiety. You are. They���re just places. Just people. Just things happening in the world. We���re the ones getting upset about them. Certainly, the airport isn���t thinking about us!

The good news? If we���re the problem then we can also be the solution.

���I carry a small reminder with me������a medallion engraved with Epictetus��� phrase, ta eph���hemin, ta ouk eph���hemin (���What is up to us, what is not up to us���). On the back is a quote from Seneca: ���He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.��� These phrases are anchors. They remind me that anxiety doesn���t change the outcome���it only punishes me before anything has even happened.

But even with reminders, breaking free from anxiety is not easy. It traps you in a tunnel where emotions blur your thinking, and every exit seems further away than it really is. You start to feel like a prisoner of your own mind, held hostage by thoughts you can���t control.

Yet, there are tools to escape.

The Stoics offered timeless strategies: stay in the present moment, detach from the illusion of control, and gain perspective. Epictetus reminds us, ���It���s not events that upset us but our opinions about them.��� Anxiety thrives on those opinions. Letting go of them can be transformative.

Anxiety is expensive���not just in terms of the mental toll, but in the way it costs us our lives. Every minute spent consumed by worry is a minute lost.

Maybe we can���t get rid of it entirely, but like our finances, we can be more efficient. We can budget. We can eliminate unnecessary expenses and get rid of obvious waste.

Anxiety may never disappear entirely. But with practice, you can begin to discard it, as Marcus did. You can remind yourself that it���s within you, not outside. And slowly, you can reclaim the moments it���s stolen.

It���s not easy, but I���m working on it. Every day, I try to get a little better. And I hope you will, too.

The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2024

Another year and what do I have to show for it? A big stack of books read and ruminated on is not a bad answer. I know some people assiduously track how many books they read, but I do not (Do you count books you made halfway through? Re-reads? Books you read to your kids? Favorites you took off the shelf to find a favorite passage?) because I don���t think it���s a contest. Epictetus was right when he said it���s not that you read but what you read. So I do track my favorites. And boy, there were some books I loved this year. Books that I got a ton out of. Books that in some cases, have already changed my life.

Here, at the end of the year, I try to narrow down all the books I read and recommended ���in this email list��� to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I���d read that year, I���d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. You can check out the best of lists from ���2023���, ���2022���, ���2021���, ���2020���, ���2019���, ���2018���, ���2017���, ���2016���, ���2015���, ���2014���, ���2013���, ���2012��� and ���2011������ I can���t believe it���s been 14 years of these roundups!

My reading list is now ~315,000 people and between that and meeting folks who come into my bookstore every day, I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you���you can���t go wrong with any of these.

���Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall��� by Helena Merriman and ���Night of the Grizzlies��� by Jack Olsen It���s almost a problem how many amazing books my wife recommended to me this year. It���s not a problem that the books were good, it���s that I sat on them for too long. I���m pretty sure she didn���t even recommend ���Tunnel 29��� to me this year. What an idiot I am for taking my time getting around to reading this because it���s incredible. Like, so good that I sometimes had trouble reading more than a few pages at a time���I would have to get up and walk around or just snack on something to calm down. It���s the story of a German graduate student who escapes into West Berlin���and then despite having no family or loved ones on the other side, spends thousands of hours���at great risk to himself���digging a 442-foot tunnel back to East Berlin to help others escape. So much good Cold War history here, but more than that, just a riveting story. I love narrative nonfiction, as you know, but this one is written by a TV journalist so it has a very unique feel to it. I don���t think I���ve read anything like it before. Just LOVED it. I���m sorry, Samantha, you were right. I should have listened.

And yet���she���s guilty of it too. Because I have been raving about ���The Tiger��� for close to a decade and she read it���this year. Now is ���Night of the Grizzlies��� (one of my favorites this year) as good as ���The Tiger���? Of course not, because ���The Tiger��� is the greatest man vs animal (or animal vs man) book ever written. What I am saying is that ���this book is also great���. I found it mentioned in another book and tracked down a used copy. I���m glad I did because it’s a riveting story of how two grizzlies killed two women in two different areas of Glacier National Park after never having killed a person in the park���s 57-year existence. The book reminded me a lot of Erik Larson���s ���Dead Wake���, too (and I suppose Walter Lord���s ���A Night To Remember���) where your dread increases as the book goes on, as each warning is ignored, each chance to prevent the tragedy is missed, and each page brings you closer to what you know will be the gruesome, violent, and now unavoidable action. ���This book��� deserves to be much more well-known. It was a lot of work, but we tracked down the publisher and got a bunch of new copies for The Painted Porch���which we have repeatedly sold out this year. Very excited that this amazing book is getting a second life. It deserves it. Also if you want another great story, ���The Revenant��� is not just a good movie but an even better book.

���James: A Novel��� by Percival Everett My wife grabbed this for me at First Lights Books in Austin, TX for my birthday. What a wonderful idea for a novel���to tell ���the story of Huckleberry Finn��� and Jim from Jim���s perspective! That Everett is able to take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That���s a task worthy of Mark Twain. It���s also deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was (���Twelve Years a Slave��� is one of the greatest memoirs ever written). I spent my birthday reading ���James��� and I consider that a great gift. Also, it reminded me of two other books I loved: ���Wicked River��� by Lee Sandlin (an absolutely incredible book about the history of the river) and another book I read and loved this year, ���Life on the Mississippi��� by Rinker Buck (about a guy who recently traveled the river on his own raft, not too dissimilar to the one Huck and Jim were on). And of course, the other book I thought of when I read ���James��� was Wright Thompson���s ���The Barn��� (which I took in on a flight to Brazil and back this year), because ���The Barn��� is about Emmett Till and Emmett Till and Huck Finn were the same age. Both books are the story of America���its hope and its evil, its land and its people, its potential and its horrific past. Wright is one of my favorite writers and thinkers (���here���s his episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast��� about the book) but ���this book��� is an essential contribution to American history. I think everyone needs to read ���James��� and ���The Barn��� this year.

���Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World��� by Irene Vallejo and ���The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper��� by Roland Allen I am in awe of artists who can make something you didn���t think would be interesting, just utterly fascinating. And oh my god, ���Papyrus��� is one of the most impressive examples of that I can recall (the invention and the impact of paper???). Last year, I swooned over Ann Wroe���s ���Pontius Pilate��� for similar reasons���it���s a beautiful and insightful study of ancient thought and how we���ve been shaped by it. I just love when you get to read an author who not only has complete mastery of their subject, but complete mastery of story and language, too. The only downside to this book was how many pages I folded for notes that I now need to transfer to my commonplace book���and that brings me to ���The Notebook���. My British publisher sent me this which I���m glad about because I haven���t heard anyone talking about Roland Allen’s lovely book about one of the most transformative pieces of technology ever invented. We don���t really think of notebooks and journals as a piece of technology, but of course, they are���there were dark days before such wonderful things existed. My life is built around my notebooks. I journal before bed (there���s ���even a Daily Stoic Journal���). I have kept a ������One Line a Day������ journal (my favorite) for the last 8 years. I have been keeping a ���commonplace book��� for even longer���none of my writing would be possible without it. (���I learned this from Robert Greene���). Have you heard the phrase ���keeping a second brain���? That���s what my notebooks are. Anyway, one of the things that struck me in ���this book��� is how late the invention of the notebook was. Of course, people were taking notes in Greece and Rome (ahem, Marcus Aurelius��� ���Meditations���), but the more modern notebook as we understand it today dates to roughly the 1400s in Florence. And who was one of the first great minds to see them for all their potential? Da Vinci! ���Here���s my pod with Roly���, which you might enjoy.

And a few more��� Of course, I couldn���t just pick those few titles. I was blown away by Gary Will���s ���Lincoln at Gettysburg���. I read 3,000 or so pages on Lincoln this year���and many more before that���and this is probably the best. I���ve given something like 30 copies of Brent Underwood���s ���Ghost Town Living��� out to friends at the bookstore this year. And I sent another friend a copy of Cal Newport���s ���Slow Productivity��� (something I���m working to get better at). My in-laws are big Sharon McMahon fans (one of the only ���podcast guests��� they wanted to meet), as a family we all really liked her new book ���The Small and the Mighty���. It���s a book that’s even more important after this election. ���You can listen to my interview with her here���. You can ���also listen to my interview with Julia Baird���, who has two other important books for where the world is right now, ���Phosphorescence��� (about resilience and adversity) and her new one ���Bright Shining��� (about grace, which we could all use more of). Another recommendation my wife raved about was Charles Duhigg���s ���Supercommunicators��� (���our chat here���). I got to work on lacrosse great Paul Rabil���s ���The Way of the Champion���, which I think you���ll like, too (���and here���s our chat���). And lastly, I���ve been hoping for a good biography of Marcus Aurelius for a long time and we finally got one���a great one actually���in Donald Robertson���s book, ���Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor��� (���here���s our chat about that one���). Definitely read.

Kid books: My oldest became madly obsessed with Greek myths this year, mostly ���The Odyssey���. We���ve been reading ���Emily Wilson���s translation of The Odyssey��� together as well as ���this graphic novel���. My Spotify Wrapped tells me that we spent an almost alarming amount of hours listening to the ���Greeking Out podcast���, which I can���t recommend highly enough to parents with elementary school kids. There are also two great books, ���Greeking Out: Epic Retellings of Classic Greek Myths��� and ���Greeking Out Heroes and Olympians���. As a parent of two boys, I got a lot out of Richard Reeves��� ���Of Boys and Men��� (���here���s our chat���). We read Adam Rubin���s ���High Five��� book many times this year, so much so that our copy is starting to fall apart (the kids love reading it because they get to hit it as hard as they can). We had to put down our 16-year-old dachshund last year, so I loved reading Doug Salati���s ���Hot Dog���. It���s a very sweet book. My youngest is just learning to read and I���m proud to say that he read his first book by himself this year! It was ���Bob Books���. We���re very excited. We also loved Jon Klassen���s ���The Rock From The Sky��� and trolled each other around the house with lines from the book after reading it. ���Matthew McConaughey came out to the bookstore��� last week to do a live event and podcast (coming soon), and he signed a bunch of copies of his children���s book ���Just Because���.

This Is What (Stoic) Gratitude Actually Looks Like

Gratitude is one of those things that���s simple���but not easy.

Today is Thanksgiving in America. It���s a day that we���re supposed to center around gratitude. The usual candidates come to mind: family, health, and the food in front of us. And rightly so. These are the cornerstones of a fortunate life, and they deserve recognition and appreciation.

But what about all the other stuff? The obstacles. The frustrations. The wrong turns. The difficult people. The bad days.

Should we be grateful for those too?��

Yes���those especially.

Especially because they are hard to be grateful for.��

Epictetus was born into slavery and he spent the next thirty years in that institution. He wasn���t even given a name���Epictetus just means acquired one. He was tortured. And when he finally found freedom, he was almost immediately exiled by a tyrannical emperor.��

You know in Les Mis where she sings about how the dream she dreamed was so much different than the hell she was living? That was basically Epictetus��� real-life story. Yet what he came away with was not bitterness, but gratitude. The key to life, he said, was not to dream for things to be a certain way, but to dream for them to be the way they were. To be grateful that you had the fate you had. ���Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,��� was how Marcus Aurelius put it, ���that things are good and always will be.���

In the mornings when I sit down to journal, one of the notebooks I write in is a gratitude journal. When I first got it, I would fill the pages with the lineup I mentioned above���my family, my health, my career, the people and things and opportunities in my life that mean a lot to me. But after a time, this came to feel sort of pointless and rather repetitive. I needed a new approach.

What I began to do was try to find ways to express gratitude, not for the things that are easy to be grateful for, but for what is hard. I wanted to practice seeing everything as a gift from the gods, as Marcus Aurelius wrote. Because while it���s easy to count my blessings of the good things in life, it���s much more difficult to see the bad things as gifts, too. But with this practice, I���ve learned to see they can be.

That troublesome client���thank you, it���s helping me develop better boundaries.��

That traffic jam���thank you, it gave me time to call my wife and have a nice, meandering conversation.��

That rejection email���thank you, it forced me to reevaluate and improve my work.

The political realities of our time���thank you, it���s a chance to test myself, to really stick to what I believe in.��

That loss���thank you, for reminding me of what truly matters in life.��

And on and on.

When Epictetus talks about how every situation has two handles, this is what he means. You can decide to grab onto anger or appreciation, fear or fellowship. You can pick up the handle of resentment or of gratitude. You can look at the obstacle or get a little closer and see the opportunity. Which one will you grab?

It���s so easy to miss the fact that Marcus Aurelius could not have been Marcus Aurelius without that unending series of troubles. The difficulties that shaped him, refined him, called greatness out of him. It���s also easy to miss, when we focus on all the bad breaks the guy got, all the tragedies he experienced, that on the whole, Marcus was incredibly lucky. After all, this dude was chosen to be emperor. For next to no reason at all, Hadrian selected a young boy and gifted him unlimited power and wealth and fame. Marcus had a wonderful wife, a stepfather he adored, amazing teachers and he discovered Stoicism, which guided him when he most needed it. For everything that went wrong in his life, for everything that was taken from him, the Gods actually gave him an equal number of gifts.��

As Cicero pointed out, ���You may say that deaf men miss the pleasure of hearing a lyre-player’s songs. Yes, but they also miss the squeaking of a saw being sharpened, the noise a pig makes when its throat is being cut, the roaring thunder of the sea which prevents other people from sleeping.���

See, there���s a positive to every negative!��

In the chaos and dysfunction of the world, I try to notice where I have been gifted in the latter category than where I have been deprived in the former.

Besides, it���s already happened���what���s the use in getting upset?

So, as you gather with family and friends this Thanksgiving, appreciate the obvious gifts���the food, the health, the love in the room. But as the moment fades and life returns to its usual pace, challenge yourself to make gratitude a daily practice.

Not just for what is easy and joyful, but for what is hard.

For what tested you, stretched you, humbled you.

Whatever 2024 has been for you���however difficult, however painful���be grateful for it. Think about what it helped you miss. Think about how it shaped you. Think about how it could have been worse.��

Write this gratitude down. Say it out loud.

Thank you.

Until you believe it.