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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day 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 dailystod.com.

You can't give up. Every year we make resolutions. We're going to be better people. We're going to try new things. We're going to get in better shape. We're going to read more. We're going to be more organized. We're going to spend more time with our families. We're going to be more patient.

We're going to be less stressed. We're going to be happier. Going to make a difference. And then life happens. We get busy. We get tired. We get sick. We have a bad day. We slip on and then completely abandoned our resolutions.

And around this time of year we wonder, should we even bother trying again?

And this is what the great Samuel Johnson must have been wondering near the end of the year, 1775, with 1776 on the horizon Johnson wrote in his diary, when I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment which have year after year been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious,

italeness, casual, interruption or morbid infirmity, when I find that so much of my life has stolen away unprofitably, and that I can describe by retrospections scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again?

I try, he says, because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal. Reformation is necessary and despair is criminal. That's why we have to keep trying. No one is perfect. We all have bad days. It's okay to feel a little discouraged, but to give up to not even try that is criminal.

Disgraceful, Marcus, it really is, would say for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong. All of us have fallen short in the last year and the years before that we broke our resolutions, we made the same mistakes again and again, we were all jared unavoidably by circumstances, as Marcus said, but now it's time to pick ourselves up and try again. We have to keep going.

We can not give up because the alternative is unthinkable. A new year is fast approaching and it's that time of year where some people will try again and some people won't. Which will it be? Who will you be?

Well, for those of you ready for a change, we are back again now with our fifth year, the Daily Stoke New Year New Year Challenge.

This one here for 2023 is a set of 21 actionable challenges. One per day built around the best and most timeless wisdom in Stoke Philosophy. Our goal is to help you make this year your best year yet.

And the 2023 New Year New Year Challenge is all new guided by thousands of responses and reactions to previous challenges. Lessons I learned doing the challenges myself. It's awesome. I think you're going to love it. You're going to learn new skills. You're going to become more disciplined strength and relationships, break destructive thought patterns, get clarity about what is and isn't essential and start making progress towards the life you want to live.

Tons of stuff, 21 challenges, almost a books with a content, three alive Q&As with me Ryan Holliday, a printable 21 day calendar, daily illustrations, a tractor project, a group discord channel and a bunch of other stuff.

I can't wait for you to join us. You can reserve your spot right now in the 2023 Daily Stoke New Year New Year New Year Challenge at daily stoic.com slash challenge. Can't wait to see it in there. Let's do this daily stoic.com slash challenge. And remember if you join daily stoic life, daily stoic life.com, you get this challenge and all the challenges for the next year, totally for free.

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.