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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.

You'll have to beat me first. There is a famous moment in the history of Sparta when they were threatened with invasion by Philip, King of Macedon.

Philip, whose son was Alexander the Great, demanded the submission of the Spartans. It would be much better to submit to him now, he said,

if I conquer your city, I will destroy you all. The Spartans replied to this was just one word, if. They were not the kind of people who gave up easily, even in the face of incredible odds, because they believed in their own capabilities.

If they had even one percent chance of persevering, they were willing to take it. They were not going to lay down their arms without a fight. You were going to have to come and take them.

While the Spartans had little time or interest in philosophy, we should see the Stoics as their heirs to this tradition of tenacity and determination.

Kato's impassioned resistance against Caesar was a man giving nearly everything he had to a cause most people thought was lost, and he very nearly won.

George Washington and the Stoic founding fathers of America fought a similar cause against the greatest army in the world and did win. James Stockdale looked at his captors at that prison camp in Vietnam and said, if.

He said, you're going to have to beat me and as close as they came at times, they never managed to do so. Stoicism is not resignation. It is in fact a philosophy that shines brightest when the outlook is darkest.

It makes that distinction between what is not in our control and what is in our control for a reason, so we can focus 100% of our energy on what's in our control, even if the odds of success or low, even when everyone else thinks the smarter move is submission.

If it's humanly possible, Marcus Aurelia said, know that you can do it. If there's a 1% chance, that means there's a chance. It means you can do it. So do it.

Hey everyone, since the Daily Stoic came out more than three years ago and since this email has become one of the biggest newsletters in all of philosophy, we've gotten a lot of requests for a Daily Stoic desk calendar.

One of those tarot way calendars, you can have the quote on your desk, you don't have to carry the book with you to the office every day or if you want to have it on your bathroom counter or kitchen counter somewhere in your house.

And so we finally made one. And now in the Daily Stoic store is the Daily Stoic 2020 calendar. It lines up perfectly with the book. It has the same original translations of Marcus Aurelia's Seneca epictetus that we did for the book.

Our store is the only place you can get this awesome calendar. So check it out at daily stoic.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 Wondering Plus in Apple podcasts.

The 10% happier podcast hosted by me, Dan Harris has one overarching message. Happiness is a skill. The mind is trainable. So why not get involved with this?

I used to be a fidgety skeptical news anchor, but after having a panic attack on national television, which was pretty inconvenient, I decided to change my life. I went on a whole trip to learn everything I could about the human brain, human mind, human psyche.

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