Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

For more, visitdailystoic.com. Every day can be a Thanksgiving.

There's something wonderful about being together.

Family, traveling in from near and far, good people enjoying good food,

taking a break from the busyness of the world, reflecting on all the things

you're grateful for, remembering and making new memories. That's what Thanksgiving, which we're

celebrating here in the U.S. today, is all about. We all have so much to be thankful for.

But the Stoics urge us to take this practice even a little bit further.

Can you work to be grateful for the less obvious things? For the travel delays and the annoying

people at the store? For the kid who wakes up with a cold? For the oven that doesn't work well?

For the obstacles at work? For the political dysfunction, for the back pain, for the dirty dishes

and the passive aggressive mother-in-law. The Stoics saw gratitude as a kind of medicine,

that saying thank you for every experience was the key to good mental health. Convince yourself

that everything is a gift from the gods, Marcus

Eurelius said, that things are good and always will be. The emphasis there was on everything,

and its quote takes on a special meaning when you realize how much pain and heartbreak and struggle

that life inflicted on Marcus Aurelius, it wasn't natural to see

it all as a gift, yet to work for it. Stoicism is not just enjoying special days like Thanksgiving,

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