Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic.

Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics,

something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice,

temperance, and wisdom.

And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics.

We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the

challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more

space when things have slowed down be sure to take some

time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for

what the week ahead may bring.

Why they do this.

They come from all over the world.

They have little in common and for some reason instead of beginning the new year by making vague resolutions, they begin by taking on a set of actionable challenges.

Some of the challenges are physical, some are mentally challenging, some spur them to practically investigate and overcome internal

adversities. Others make them take on external adversity out in the real world.

Some of the challenges are completed in a single day and others over the course of the year.

But in each and every case, these challenges present a choice between, as we've said,

doing the less difficult thing or the more difficult thing. These people choose the

tougher sparring partner as Epictetus say. But why would they do this

to themselves? Well it's because they know that what Seneca said is true that the only people

to pity are those who haven't experienced difficulty because they don't know

what they're capable of. What I'm talking about is the thousands of stoics over the

...