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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 dailystoic.com.

Why you must do your own writing. There's something strange you find when you study the early stoics.

Not Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus, but the stoics who influence them. The names you don't hear too much.

Clienthes, Posidonius, Panateus, Aristot and Tipeter, Cricipus.

What you find besides the fact that these were living breathing human beings with all sorts of interesting experiences is that you start to notice just how big a role they played in the shaping of the classic stoic texts we know and love.

For instance, the interesting analogy about how a philosopher should be like a wrestler, a fighter dug in for sudden attacks. The one that Marcus Aurelius famously makes in meditations.

That actually originates from Panateus, a stoic philosopher that Marcus studied. There are illusions to the insights of Aristot and Tipeter and Cricipus and Seneca.

A deep dive into Epictetus not only shows how he was influenced by Zeno, but reveals how many unattributed quotations of Epictetus appear in Marcus Aurelius.

So what is this philosophy then? Just a bunch of people repeating the same old insights? Hardly. Remember, stoicism is a practice, not merely set of principles.

The act of sitting down and journaling, writing and rewriting on the ideas from the earlier stoics is a kind of meditative experience. It's almost like a prayer. It's what transforms an epigram into a mantra and then later into actions when it counts.

And besides, have we not learned from music how powerful and creative the art of remixing can be? It's in this writing and rewriting that each successive generations of stoics was able to come up with new insights and further refine the philosophy, a tradition that continues today with writers all over the world.

Blaise Pascal, whose own writing in some cases is eerily similar in tone and style to Marcus Aurelius' meditations, puts it well when he writes, let no one say that I have said nothing new, the arrangement of the material is new, in playing tennis both players use the same ball, but one plays it better.

Today your job is to sit down and do some writing using this old material, sit down with the Daily Stoic Journal, sit down on Twitter and put some quotes into your own language, riff on the ideas with your kids, write a reminder to yourself on your phone, pick up the ball and play with it. Practice the philosophy.

Hey everyone, we've seen how much you've loved the Daily Stoic challenges and so we released a new product that will help you challenge yourself all year round. It's the Daily Stoic Challenge deck. It's got 30 days of challenges, physical cards, and an awesome box that will test your strength, your willpower and help you become a better you. Each challenge card comes with a great stoic quote in a cool picture. It's a great gift for the holidays or anytime of the year. We know you're going to love it. You can buy the Daily Stoic Challenge deck now.

At DailyStoic.com slash store.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic 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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It started off promising.

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