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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight and wisdom every day life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women.

For more you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

Beware the little things. It can be easy to make an excuse. Oh, it's just a bad habit. Oh, it doesn't matter.

It's also easy to think that you've got this life thing handled because you've survived some big adversity in your time.

In truth, we are all vulnerable to our habits to unexpected weaknesses. Great things can kill a man, but if they don't, he is stronger and better for them.

John Steinbeck once wrote,

a man is destroyed by the duck nibblings of nagging, small bills, telephones, athletes, foot, ragweed, the common cold and boredom. All of these are the negatives, the tiny frustrations and no one is stronger for them.

From the Greeks, we get the reminder of the Achilles heel, a great and powerful man undone by his only weak point. From Xeno, we are reminded that small steps are cumulatively no small thing.

And the same goes for the list of ailments and entrapies that Steinbeck mentioned. Cicero was undone in the end by a simple act of indecision. Marcus was troubled by a stomach ailment and Xeno saw the end coming when he broke his finger.

We must beware the little things. We are not invincible. We should not take our health, wealth or strength or granted. We should be aware of our weak points. We should beware of tiny frustrations,

unless they come together and cease to be so small, design your life and your defenses accordingly.

And look, we have this Daily Stoke Habits Challenge and it's six weeks of habit formation and positive habits are important.

But one of the whole weeks is about breaking bad habits. And I do think that bad habits add up and they exact a pretty profound toll on us.

I'm always thinking about what I need to cut from my life, what's holding me back, what's contributing to unhappiness. And so I do think you'll like this challenge.

You can check it out at dailystoke.com slash habits. And of course you can get it for free. If you sign up for Daily Stoke Life, you get a whole bunch of awesome stuff including a cloth bound book that's not for sale anywhere of my best meditations.

You get some interviews, you get quarterly chats with me, you get a bunch of great stuff. So check that out dailystoke.com slash habits.

Hey, it's Ryan. As you know, these are really short episodes. I think it's about packing as much as possible in every punch.

And we've been trying our hand at TikTok doing these short 60 second inspired clips. I'm Ryan underscore holiday. And Daily Stoke is daily underscore Stoke.

Check it out for some quick, stillic hits every single day. Follow us on TikTok.

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