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The Daily Stoic

Decide What to Be and Go Be It | How Would The Stoics Handle Social Media Envy?

The Daily Stoic

Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures

694393, Daily Stoic, Education, Ryan Holiday, Self-improvement, Stoicism, Stoic Philosophy, Philosophy, Stoic, Business, Society & Culture

4.55.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2026

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“First, say to yourself what you would be,” Epictetus says, “and then do what you have to do.”


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

0:07.8

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14.8

Decide what to be and go be it. In a way, it's easier to think about the greats as being made of superior stock.

0:23.6

To think of Cato as coming from a long line of distinguished ancestors. To think of Marcus

0:28.5

Aurelius as being someone who's naturally wise and decent. It lets us off the hook to think of virtue

0:36.4

as something someone is born with, as something all or nothing.

0:41.1

But as we've talked about many times, Aristotle's insight was that this is nonsense.

0:45.9

Virtue is no different than any other skill. You don't have it. You do it. And you get better at it, the more you do it.

0:55.8

If you want to be generous, if you want to be brave, if you want to be honest, if you want to be tough, if you want to be an early riser, it's not

0:59.6

a complicated formula. In fact, by wanting to be those things, you've already taken an important

1:05.0

step. First, say to yourself what you would be, Epictetus tells us, and then do what you have to do.

1:13.4

The second part is harder, but hardly complicated.

1:16.9

You start tipping bigger.

1:18.4

You start doing the stuff that scares you.

1:20.3

You stop dancing around your real opinions.

1:22.8

You push yourself physically.

1:24.6

You set your alarm.

1:26.3

And in doing this, you become what you wish you were.

1:31.4

And that's basically what we built the daily stoic habits for success, habits for happiness

1:35.8

challenge around. It's six weeks of forcing you to be the habits, to do the virtue that you know you're going to want to have and to be.

1:48.3

It's daily actions that compound into long-term habits and results.

1:55.4

There was a study by the University College of London that shows it takes something like 66 days to establish a

...

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