When You Come To The Crossroads… | Ask Ds
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the founding of Stoicism was a choice. Zeno hears the legend Hercules, a story about a young man who came to a crossroads one day in Greece, where the great hero had to choose between virtue and vice, the easy way and the hard way. It was inspired by this very story that Zeno rebuilt the wreckage of his life and founded the school of Stoicism.
So we’ll leave you today by putting a challenge in front of you. For the last four years, we have been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge—a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. These aren’t pie-in-the-sky, theoretical discussions but clear, immediate exercises and methods you can begin right now to spark the reinvention you’ve been trying for. We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works.
From these challenges, you will:
✓ Learn to stop procrastinating and avoiding the change you truly desire
✓ Build new habits that form a strong foundation for change
✓ Abandon the harmful habits that are dragging you down
✓ Strengthen your character, becoming a more virtuous version of yourself
And above all: You will find out just how much you are capable of.
Every morning, the email arrives in your inbox, and it presents you with a choice. You can do the harder thing, you can do the challenge. Or you can follow the drift of least resistance—you can open the email and leave it at that. Or worse…you can ignore this call right now and not sign up at all. Which way will you go?
In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks stoics and answers questions for 60 students at The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known metonymically as West Point or simply as Army. West Point is a United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a fort, since it sits on strategic high ground overlooking the Hudson River 50 miles (80 km) north of New York City. It is the oldest of the five American service academies and educates cadets for commissioning into the United States Army.
The 2024 New Year New You Challenge officially begins on Monday, January 1st. Stop delaying. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW! Let’s go.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. |
| 0:14.0 | Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, |
| 0:17.0 | but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. |
| 0:20.0 | We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come |
| 0:26.7 | from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. |
| 0:33.6 | Some of them are from interactions I have on the street |
| 0:36.4 | when there happened to be someone there recording. |
| 0:39.0 | But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you. |
| 0:43.0 | When you come to the crossroads, each day life presents us with these small crossroads, |
| 0:57.0 | moments where we must decide how to approach tasks and what actions to take. |
| 1:02.0 | Often these choices boil down to a selection between the |
| 1:04.9 | challenging path and the easier one. Should you make that difficult phone call or |
| 1:09.2 | opt for the convenience of an email? Should you apologize and take responsibility or hope it goes unnoticed? |
| 1:15.1 | Will you rise early or give in to the temptation of the snooze button? |
| 1:19.2 | Do you choose to read a few pages of a book or mindlessly scroll through social media. Is it time for an overdue |
| 1:25.0 | oil change or do you procrastinate once more? These competing options are what stoicism is for. When faced with these small crossroads, a stoic knows precisely |
| 1:35.6 | which direction to take towards the choice that challenges them more. Stoicism aims to guide |
| 1:41.2 | us away from the path of least resistance. |
| 1:44.7 | Marcus Realis wrote in meditations about holding the reins in his non-dominant hand |
| 1:48.8 | as both an exercise to practice and a metaphor for doing the difficult thing. |
| 1:53.7 | Seneca would say that he actually pitied people who had never experienced challenges. |
| 1:58.6 | You have passed through life without an opponent, he said. |
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