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Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. 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,

everyday life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystile.com.

It's about the promises you make to yourself. It's a famous story. It appears in all the great biographies of Theodore Roosevelt. Two of my favorites are The rise of Theodore Roosevelt by

Edmund Morris and Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. It appears in Discipline's Destiny and the obstacle is the

way. A young asthmatic teddy, smart but frail, is approached by his father who tells him that

although the boy has brains, he hasn't got the body, hasn't got the strength to make good on his

intellectual gifts. I'll make my body, Roosevelt said in response, and proceeded to lift weights, hike

mountains, ride horses, wrestle, box, swim laps, and even learn judo.

But there's another perspective on this story that we often glide over, for it was Teddy's

sister, Corrine, who witnessed the exchange between father and son.

What struck her about it years later,

she said, was that this was her brother's first important promise to himself. Watching him work out

in the gym and on the porch of their brownstone, she was watching him fulfill that promise,

keeping it to himself. And that's what the virtue of discipline is about. Self-discipline is

about the promises you keep with yourself and not just the physical ones. It's about doing what you

say and not doing what you say you won't. The decision to wake up early, the decision not to

reach for the ball, the decision to show up on time, the decision to

push yourself a little further, even though your body aches, the decision not to procrastinate,

the decision to do your best. We all make promises to ourselves, set goals, set standards,

...