9 Stoic Habits To Change Your Life

[00:00:00]Most of us aren't satisfied with who we are. Most of us know we're leaving something on the table. And we know it because we see what other people are capable of. At the same time, sometimes we we let ourselves off the hook by saying, "Oh, it's easier for them. They have better genetics and better upbringing. They had a head start." But the truth is that virtue is not different than any other skill. You don't have it or not have it. You do it or you don't do it. And you get better at it the more you do it. This is the fundamental insight of Aristotle, that excellence is not innate. It is a habit.

[00:00:36]Epictetus says something similar. He says, "We tell ourselves what we want to be and then we do what we have to do."

[00:00:44]And that's what we're going to talk about in today's Daily Stoic video, foundational Stoic habits to help you be that person.

[00:00:53]>> [music] >> And that brings us to where we have to start. The Stoics would say that procrastination, which we all do, which we are all inclined to do, [music] is not just inefficient, it's not just wasteful. It's entitled and arrogant.

[00:01:07][music] When we tell ourselves, "I'll do it tomorrow," as Marcus Aurelius says, "We could be good right now, but instead we tell ourselves I'm going to do it tomorrow." But that presumes you have tomorrow. [music] That presumes you have next year. That presumes you can do it when the kids are older. That presumes the opportunity [music] will still be there in the future. That is arrogant and that is entitled.

[00:01:28]>> [music] >> And it's, by the way, something that all foolish people have in common. Seneca says, "What fools are always doing is [music] telling themselves they're going to start later." And he says, "This is the biggest waste of life. It snatches away the present moment." He says, "It denies us the present by promising [music] the future." And nothing can promise you a second chance at this thing later.

[00:01:49]It's in front of you. It's possible now.

[00:01:51]If you're going to do it, you should do it now. There's all these things that we want to do. There's all these things that it's possible for [music] us to do, but they're not going to be quick and they're not going to be easy. So, if we want to do them, if we want to get them done, now [music] is the time. Not later, but now, because we don't know how much longer we have.

[00:02:11]>> [music] >> One of the reasons we procrastinate, one of the reasons we don't make changes, one of the reasons we don't do what needs to [music] be done, is that we make it bigger than it needs to be, right? We think about transformation, we think about dramatic gestures. When in reality, most of the change, most of the things we need to do, [music] pretty small, right? James Clear talks about atomic habits, and he doesn't mean explosive habits. What he means is like the smallest possible thing you can do.

[00:02:38]The little things that make [music] an enormous difference. Zeno, 2,500 years ago, talked about the same thing. He said, "Well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small >> [music] >> thing." And there's a million examples of this. James Clear talks about like the cycling team in Atomic Habits that focuses on these 1% changes. [music] They've done analysis where like if you improve your business by 10% in just a a handful of areas, cumulatively, that can lead to an enormous increase in sales.

[00:03:07]These little things add up, right? That that sounds like a basic idea, and it is basic, but so many people ignore the basics. Marcus Aurelius in in Meditations would talk about how we change our life action by action. No one can stop you from doing that [music] next right thing. And you're not going to stop yourself from doing that next right thing if you make it small enough.

[00:03:28]Like as a writer, you don't think about writing a whole book. You don't do it in one day. You sit down and you go, "What's my page count for the day?"

[00:03:34]Right? "What's the little thing that I have to do today? What's the positive contribution that [music] I make today?"

[00:03:38]Seneca would talk about this as well, but he says, "All you got to do is find one thing a day." That the path to wisdom is paved by doing one thing per day. So, if you're procrastinating because you're thinking about these big big things you have to do, the first step should be small.

[00:03:56]That thing that causes us to procrastinate, sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's entitlement. On the other side, sometimes it's perfectionism.

[00:04:04]Churchill said that perfectionism could also be spelled paralysis, right? We have these extremely high standards we make up in our heads, we compare where we are, which is in progress, against completed things, polished things, right? Published things. And then we despair, right? We go, "I'm never going to get from here to there." But this is one of the reasons we we think about these small steps, and then we also should give ourselves permission to be imperfect. Marcus Aurelius talks in in Meditations about celebrating behaving like a human being, which is to say not perfect, which is to say flawed. Like, I don't just think, "Hey, what's my contribution to my writing today?" I try to dramatically lower the stakes, right?

[00:04:46]There's a writing rule, it's like, just a couple crappy pages a day. And by giving yourself permission to be crappy, but forcing yourself to produce, you're reducing that resistance, you're reducing that intimidation, you're reducing that desire to procrastinate because the task is manageable and not intimidating. And often times, by the way, quantity is a way to get to quality. When we're not being so intentional, what the Buddhists would call willful will, like expecting things or needing them to be a certain way, we actually make it easier to do things well. So, remember, as Hemingway said, "The first draft of everything is shit."

[00:05:21]I I I have that on my wall as a reminder. My job is to show up, my job is to make progress, my job is to make a contribution, my job is to make shitty first drafts, because that is the only way to get to a publishable finished manuscript. And what is true for books is also true for changing and growing and becoming the person that you want to be.

[00:05:46]One of the ways to do more is by doing less. Less stuff, less distractions, less screen time, less commitments.

[00:05:54]Right? We do less so we can do more.

[00:05:57]I was talking to Matthew McConaughey once and he was telling me about this moment in his career where he felt like he was doing all this stuff. And he says he was making B's in five things and he said that he made the decision instead to make A's in three things. And that meant some painful elimination. That meant canceling some stuff. That meant detangling some stuff. But those three things are really important. It was his family, his career, and his charitable foundation. Those were the three things that mattered. And Marcus Aurelius says that we have to ask ourselves as as Matthew McConaughey did, is what I'm doing essential? Like is it important?

[00:06:31]Is it really moving the needle? Is it what I'm supposed to be doing? And he says because most of what we do and say and think is not essential. But when we eliminate those inessential things, Marcus Aurelius says we get the double benefit, the double satisfaction of doing those essential things [music] better. So if you want to do more, do less.

[00:06:51]We just did this long road trip recently and trying to prevent my kids' brains [music] rotting in the car, we listened to two audiobooks from 11 Reader including the Odyssey cuz my kids love the Odyssey. The cool thing about 11 Reader is it's not just audiobooks, not just like they're professionally produced stuff, but you can take [music] any text and get professional grade audio read back to you. It turns PDFs, it turns docs, it turns web [music] pages, it turns articles into something you actually want to listen to. It's as far from Siri or Alexa as you can get.

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[00:07:52]>> [music] >> It's easy to miss cuz it's a piece of ancient literature cuz it's a story maybe cuz you were taught about it in school, but the Odyssey actually contains one of the first and best observations about behavioral psychology that we have. Odysseus has to sail [music] past the sirens and he knows he's not going to be able to resist them. So, what does he do? He does what psychologists today call a commitment device. He plugs his men's ears with beeswax and then he lashes himself to the mast. He's able to hear the sirens, what he wants to experience, but fundamentally what Odysseus understands [music] is that who he is at this moment of temptation, when his willpower is being tested, is not who he wants to be.

[00:08:37]He wants to make his decision before that happens. He wants to defer to the sober Odysseus rather than the seduced Odysseus. So, the commitment device takes over for him. Like, look, it would be wonderful if we always made the right decision, if we didn't write checks that we'd have trouble cashing later, but that's what commitment devices are for.

[00:08:58]Because the world is filled with temptations [music] and distractions and forces tugging us towards the rock, we need things that keep us constrained, that prevent us from doing what our weaker self [music] is inclined to do.

[00:09:10]I'll give you one. I don't have social media on my phone. It's on my wife's phone, which makes it harder for me to get to. So, what makes Odysseus different from all the other sailors that go past [music] the sirens? It isn't that he had more willpower or discipline. He knew that he didn't. What he did was make his decision before >> [music] >> he got there. He understood that in the moment with those beautiful voices calling him, he'd be just as weak as everyone [music] else. So, he came up with a way to protect himself from himself. And look, there's a million examples of commitment devices. There's non-refundable purchases. There's signing up for a marathon and announcing it. There's accountability partners.

[00:09:50]There's making [music] bets with your friends, bricking your phone, or putting on a website blocker. I heard a great one. You order a big entree at a restaurant and you tell the waiter as you're ordering it to box up half of it to take home, right? So, you're not making the decision in the moment when you're tempted. You're making the decision beforehand to keep yourself honest, to keep yourself on the right track, to keep yourself from crashing into [music] those rocks. And that's what Odysseus was doing thousands of years ago.

[00:10:18]>> [music] >> You look at people who are in great shape, people who [music] are active, people who push themselves physically, and you go, "Oh, I want to be a person like that. That's who I want to be."

[00:10:31]But, they weren't born that way. They became that way, right? That's the whole point that Aristotle is making. A person who plays music wasn't born musical.

[00:10:40]They learned an instrument and they practice that instrument. So, if you want to be a physically active person, there's no other way to do that than start being physically active. [music] Get off the couch, go for a walk, go for a run. You have to do it. And this is the tension. This is the battle. Seneca talks about how we treat the body rigorously. He says, "So, that it's not disobedient to [music] the mind." We are building the muscle of doing the thing that we don't want to do. This is why I think cold plunges are great. Not not because they have any magical health benefits. May Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. But, it's good to do things that are hard while you're doing them, but you feel good about it after. You want to build that meta muscle that says, "I do hard things. I don't let my reluctance decide. I don't take the easy road." So, you take the stairs. So, you do another set at the gym. So you walk an extra mile. So you jump in the cold water. So you sign up for that race or that competition or that challenge [music] and then you do it. And you don't just do it once. Like in a way doing the marathon is easier, one time thing, than the day-to-day-ness doing it every day. Being the person [music] who gets up when it's cold, who gets up when it's wet, who gets up when they're tired, not because it's fun then in the moment, but because that's what the person they want to be would do.

[00:12:07]>> [music] >> If you're trying to grow, if you're trying to get better, if you're struggling with difficult things, at some point inevitably you're going to hit a wall. You're going to run into trouble. That's inevitable. The question is what do you do when you get to that point? Do you just push and push and push? Do you quit? Or I think there's another option here, which is do you ask [music] for help? There's this great kids book I love. It's called The Boy, the Fox, the Horse, and the Wall.

[00:12:33]There's this scene and I think about it all the time. I try to talk to my kids about it. And in the scene in the book that the the character says, you know, asking for help isn't giving up. It's refusing to give up. Is there a better way to do this? What am I doing wrong?

[00:12:45]What did you do when you hit a point like this? These are all really important questions, right? Even just asking for encouragement or support is really important. Whenever I talk to military groups I I tell them one of my favorite quotes in Meditations is about Marcus Aurelius saying that like soldiers we're trying to storm a wall.

[00:13:03]If we fall and have to ask a comrade for help, have to have to ask them to pull us up. He says, "So what?" I love the shrug there of the so what. It's not only not a big deal, I would say, to ask for help. Like when people ask you for help you're like, "Ugh, screw this guy."

[00:13:16]Or you're like, "Oh, thank you. I I Thanks for the opportunity." You You feel flattered by it, right? So not only is it not an imposition the way we sometimes think it is. It's not shameful, but to refuse to ask for help, to just lay there while the other people are still storming the wall, which you could actually say is a dereliction of duty. So, in your desire to change, in your journey to become the person [music] that you want to become, you're going to have to be brave enough to ask for help. You're going to have to be disciplined, committed enough to understand that there are going to be moments where it's really hard, and sometimes the solution is not working harder, but finding a smarter way, right? Those breakthroughs, those gains, those efficiencies, that's what mentors are for. That's what coaches are for.

[00:13:57]That's what your fellow human beings and family members are for, to help you get through that moment. And so, you have to be willing to ask for help. And there's nothing un-Stoic or weak about doing that.

[00:14:10]>> [music] >> And I I I do think it's worth double-clicking there on the struggles, the hitting the wall, the running into trouble. Because the path to self-improvement is going to be slippery, it's going to be jagged, it's not always a positive arc. There there may even be deep valleys, right? As they say on on every project, at some point you run into the trough of despair.

[00:14:35]We're going to fall short. We're going to screw up. We're going to be jarred unavoidably by circumstances, which is something Marcus Aurelius says in Meditations. The key to growth is how quickly you come back to it. Do you use the fact that you made a mistake, that you screwed up, that you drifted? Do you say, "Ah, what the hell, it doesn't matter"? Do you use that to rationalize even more bad behavior, or is it a wake-up call for you? Does it reinvigorate you? If you beat yourself up, that's energy you're not spending getting back on track. Like, we're all going to have bad days. No one is perfect. No one bats a hundred. We can't change that, and and it's unavoidable, and it's delusional to think otherwise, right? That's where that perfectionism [music] gets us in trouble. So, we can't go back and fix what happened, but we can move forward. We can be better here and now.

[00:15:18]We can get back on track. We can practice those habits now. "It's disgraceful," Marcus Aurelius says, "for us to give up on ourselves when we've still got capacity within us." He says, "The soul can't give up while the body is still going strong." We've got a lot of life left in us. Hopefully, we'll be lucky enough to get not just today and tomorrow, but many days after. And so, the question is, how quickly are we going to get back on track? How quickly are we going to get back in touch? How quickly are we going to return to those principles that we know are important, that we know that matter. So, yeah, we've been jarred. We've been knocked off. But, the key is picking ourselves back up and getting ourselves back on track.

[00:16:02]It is interesting how when we think about self-improvement, most of the goals that we have, most of the things we're trying to work on, are relatively superficial, if not vain. We think about getting in [music] better shape. We think about eating better. We think about getting up earlier so we can accomplish more. We're We're trying to perfect our craft, less so like who we are as a human being. And I don't mean this judgmentally, cuz we all do it. In fact, Marcus Aurelius did this. He talks in Meditations how strange it is that our inclination is to to be a better wrestler, right? But, not a better friend. He says, "You're You're practicing to get better at this hobby, but you're not getting better at forgiving faults, at being a better citizen, at being a better human being."

[00:16:43]And so, when we think about like who do we want to be in doing that [music] work, this shouldn't just be about being more productive, being more [music] successful, being in better shape. All the virtues follow this same trajectory, right? It just as if you want to be in better physical shape, you should exercise. If you want to be a person who's more generous, who's more supportive, who's more honest, who's more involved in their community, again, it's pretty straightforward how you do that. Start tipping better. Start helping other people more. Start speaking your mind. Volunteer, get involved. It's never going to magically happen. You're not going to be selected for those things. If you want to be them, if that's a trait that you want people to see in you, you have to do that thing, right? My my friend Austin Kleon talks about the noun or the verb.

[00:17:36]Do the verb. But let's just make sure that that verb is including more community-minded, [music] more character-based things that we're directing it at the personal and not just the professional.

[00:17:52]>> [music] >> This guy behind me, Marcus Aurelius, he wasn't born Marcus Aurelius. He became Marcus Aurelius one day at a time, one habit at a time, one change at a time, which is, by the way, how we all become great. There's all these things that we want to do. There's these [music] changes we want to make. There's these habits we want to start. There are these habits we want to break. There are these things we know that we're capable of.

[00:18:20]The problem isn't knowing what we want to do. It's knowing how to do it. It's how to make that a conscious habit.

[00:18:27]Well, that's what the Daily Stoic Habits for Success, Habits for Happiness course is all about. It is a six-week challenge [music] built around the best Stoic practices to help you build better habits one day at a time. It's challenges six days a week that push you to be better, that get outside your comfort zone. The point is, you don't have to figure out where to start. We're going to take care of that for you. You don't have to rely just on raw willpower. There's no radical, magical transformation. It's one habit at a time. [music] It's not passive stuff for you to read once and forget.

[00:18:58]It's going to require showing up every day. There's no way around that. It's a challenge, right? And you're going to have to show up and meet [music] that challenge. But if you do that, you will become better. I have become better from doing it over the years. Six weeks of daily challenges, better habits, and you can join us at dailystoic.com/habits.