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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good 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 DailyStoke.com.

Tell yourself, this is all worth it. Even if you're not a college basketball fan, you may have heard about the incredible upset in 2018 when University of Virginia was defeated by UMBC.

It was the first time in 80 years of the NCAA that a number 16 seed beat a number one seed. Virginia had been the favorite to win the entire tournament and then an underdog came and surprised everyone, pulling off one of the great wins in sports history.

The Virginia lost ruined millions of brackets and quite possibly one man's career. As one local Virginia newspaper put it, Virginia head coach Tony Bennett will be remembered in years perhaps decades to come.

For being the first number one seed to lose to a number 16 seed, that stain, the article continued, does not easily, if ever, wash away.

Maybe you've experienced a loss or a setback like that in your life. Maybe it's the worry about that kind of failure that keeps you up at night. God, we say, I hope that never happens to me.

That'd be understandable, but it's not how Bennett saw it. He decided to accept it to take the hit because it's all you can do.

As he explained in a press conference after the game, that's life. We talk about it all the time. If you play this game and you step into the arena, this stuff can happen.

And all those who compete take that on. And so we'll accept it. That's the first part. The Stoics knew you had to acquiesce to misfortune to the reality of life.

If you play the game, sometimes you'll lose. Sometimes you'll lose big. What matters is what you do next.

As Marcus Aurelius wrote, perhaps after one of his failures, if you accept the obstacle and work with what you're given, an alternative will present itself, another piece of what you're trying to assemble.

The second part is beyond acceptance. It's a more faulty, a love of fate. It's deciding to love what happened to realize it was meant for you because it's leading you somewhere.

It's teaching you something. It's preparing you for something if you let it. And that's what Coach Bennett did explaining in a recent speech, all of the ridicule, all of the criticism, all the humility, all the things that happened at that moment, it was crystal clear that it was worth it.

If you learn to use failure, suffering, adversity, right, will buy you a ticket to a place you couldn't have gone any other way. Acceptance, a more faulty, that's the recipe, that's the right way to use adversity, it's life.

It's buying us a ticket to a place we couldn't have gone any other way. But now that we're here, let us get the most out of it, accept it, love it, use it. It'll take you somewhere. Great.

Hey everyone, there's just a few more days to sign up for our 2020 New Year, New Year Daily Stoke Challenge. I asked people like, look, what would you give to be the best person you know, you're capable of being, what would you do to get rid of some of your bad habits, replace them with new positive habits.

Well, that's why we made this challenge. We want to work on ourselves every day, day to day, delight in our own improvement, as Epictita said. And this challenge is going to help you do it. And it's going to help me do it because I'm going to be doing it there alongside you.

You can check it out at dailystoke.com slash challenge. But on January 1, it closes and no one else can do it because that's when it starts. And hopefully that's when the new you begins as well.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.

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