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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes illustrated with stories from history,

current events and literature to help you be better at what you do.

And at the beginning of the week we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week,

something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing.

So let's get into it.

It works if you work it.

It's felt like things have been a little off lately. You've been irritable. You've been stressed. You've been easily rattled by external events.

You've been focusing on things outside your control. You've been a little caught up in projects at work and getting ahead and getting what you want.

You haven't been the role model you aspire to be at home.

What's the source of all this? Well, why don't we look at our habits?

We haven't been journaling. That copy of meditations has been gathering dust on the bedside table.

Who knows when it was last cracked? Forget reading philosophy.

You've been glued to your phone, mainlining, outrage porn and partisanship and breaking news.

Of course, we still agree with all the stoke ideas in theory, but in practice, well, in practice, we have been drifting and neglecting what is supposed to be a practice.

Of course, we're falling short. In sobriety circles, they have a great saying, it works if you work it.

Meaning that the steps and the exercises are not magic, but they are tried and true. If you follow them, they'll bear fruit.

This is how it goes with stoicism, too. It is revelatory at first, but beyond that, its real power exists only in whether you're applying day to day,

recommitting to the ideas day to day. That's what Marcus was doing in meditations, by the way,

admonishing himself and reminding himself of what he had first been told as a child, but was still trying to work well into old age.

Seneca II was lingering on the Master thinker, Xeno and Clientes and Cricypus, trying to get something new from them each day.

If you want to do better, if you want to feel better, well, the solution is simple. Start doing the work.

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