Marcus Aurelius thought a lot about thinking.

“Our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts,” he wrote. So naturally, he tried to be thoughtful about what he thought and how he thought. “Get used to winnowing your thoughts,” he said, “so that when someone asked you what you were thinking, you could answer straightforwardly.”

This is a good test for us today as we run around busy and preoccupied by our thoughts. If someone asked us, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What are you thinking about?”—would we have a good answer?

One of the things I am doing at the beginning of this year is meditating on a handful of ideas—most from the Stoics—that will hopefully make me better. Things that will hopefully dye my life a good color.

Here are some of them…

[1] Doing less, better. One of the challenges of the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge was to pick a mantra. I picked, “do less,” an idea that comes from Marcus Aurelius. “If you seek tranquility,” he said, “do less.” And then he follows the note to himself with some clarification. Not nothing, less. Do only what’s essential. “Which brings a double satisfaction,” he writes, “to do less, better.”

[2] Being fast now and later. I had Olympic mountain biker Kate Courtney on the podcast while I was working on Discipline is Destiny and she told me a piece of advice she had gotten from her coach when she was pushing herself too hard in practice. “Do you want to be fast now,” they asked, “or later?” Meaning, do you want to win this workout or win the race?

[3] Being a good steward of Stoicism. Next to my desk, I have a notecard tapped to the wall that says, “Am I being a good steward of Stoicism?” Writing books is a business. My bookstore, The Painted Porch, is a business. Daily Stoic is a business. But I always try to ask myself not if I am making good business decisions, but if I am being a good steward of Stoicism, of the philosophy that’s given so much to me. Am I being honest and ethical and fair and reasonable and moderate—I try to think about all those things.

[4] Not always having an opinion. It’s possible, Marcus Aurelius said, to not have an opinion. You don’t have to turn this into something, he reminds himself. You don’t have to let this upset you. You don’t have to think something about everything.

[5] One small win per day is a lot. One of the best pieces of advice from Seneca was actually pretty simple. “Each day,” he told Lucilius, you should, “acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well.” One gain per day. That’s it.

[6] Paying my taxes. Not just from the government. Seneca wrote to Lucilius, “All the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.” Annoying people are a tax on being outside your house. Delays are a tax on travel. Haters are a tax on having a YouTube channel. There’s a tax on money too–and the more successful I have been, the more I’ve had to pay. There’s a tax on everything in life. You can whine. Or you can pay them gladly.

[7] The garbage time. There’s no such thing as ‘quality’ time. Time is time. In fact, as Jerry Seinfeld said, garbage time—eating cereal together late at night, laying around on the couch — is actually the best time. Forget chasing HUGE experiences. It can all be wonderful, if you so choose.

[8] Having a crowded table. It’s helpful to sit and really think about what success looks like. When you flash way forward into the future, what is it? You’re not going to think about how much money you made, how great a business you built, how many books or albums or companies you sold…if you’re alone, if your kids won’t answer your call, if your friends won’t have anything to do with you. Success, at the end of your life, is a crowded table—family and friends that want to be around you.

[9] The mundane is beautiful. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius marvels at “nature’s inadvertence.” A baker, he writes, makes the dough, kneads it and then puts it in the oven. Then Nature takes over. “The way loaves of bread split open,” Marcus writes, “the ridges are just byproducts of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.” It’s a beautiful observation about such a banal part of daily life, something only a poet could see. It’s also just a beautiful way to move through life. Notice the soft paw prints on the dusty trunk of a car. Marvel at the steam wafting from the vents on a New York City morning, the sound of a pen gliding across a notecard, and the floor filled with a child’s toys, arranged in the chaos of exhausted enjoyment. Find the beauty in the mundane.

[10] Patience. Seneca wrote, “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” And Robert Greene said, “practice patience. Wait a day before taking action on the pressing problem.” And Joyce Carol Oates had a simple rule, “I almost never publish immediately.” Every first draft is placed in a drawer where it sits, sometimes for a year or more. When three of my all-time favorite thinkers converge, I know I’ve found an important thing to think about.

[11] Alive time of dead time? Speaking of Robert, a few years ago, Robert gave me a piece of advice I think about just about every day. At a time when I was stuck in a job I wanted out of, Robert told me there are two types of time: alive time and dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are in control, when you make every second count, when you are learning and improving and growing. So I decided I would make the absolute most of every moment while I was stuck in that job. It became an incredibly productive period of reading and researching and filling boxes of notecards that helped me write The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy.

And bringing it full circle, I’m excited to announce that Robert and I are hosting an evening of conversation and philosophy on Power, Seduction, Ego and Destiny on March 10th and 11th.

Tickets are on sale now at ryanholiday.net/tour. If you are in or can make it to San Francisco or Seattle, I would love to see you any and all of you there!

I’m not saying everyone should start a podcast. In fact, I have said the opposite many times. There are way too many of them out there…and most are not good.

I’m just saying that having a podcast is pretty magical because you get (for free) something that no amount of money in the world could buy: Access to some of the smartest and most interesting people in the world. ‘Picking someone’s brain’ is really a form of picking their pocket and yet with a podcast, you get to do that and usually the person says “Thank you so much for the opportunity” at the end.

It’s pretty magical!

Over the last several years, I’ve had the chance to spend more than a few hundred hours interviewing people for the Daily Stoic podcast (which you can subscribe to here and here). And with over 100 million downloads of Daily Stoic’s episodes so far, the people I’ve gotten access to have been beyond my dreams. I am certainly better, smarter and wiser for the privilege.

In today’s email, I wanted to share some of the absolute best things that I’ve learned in that time.

— Les Snead, the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams, told me that inside the Rams organization they talk about having “panic rules.” What do you do when everything gets mixed up, when the coverage is confusing, when the play breaks down and there’s havoc on the field? How do you respond when the play clock is running down and the play call hasn’t come in yet because the headsets aren’t working? “When there’s chaos and your brain is panicking,” Snead said, “go to your panic rules. Slow down and go to your panic rules.” This isn’t just an on-field thing. For the chaos of life, we all need panic rules. Otherwise, you’re liable to make panicked decisions. You’re liable to do something emotional, something short term, something that violates your principles and hurts your cause.

— The Olympic mountain biker Kate Courtney told me a piece of advice she received from her coach when she was pushing herself too hard in practice. “Do you want to be fast now,” her coach asked, “or later?” Meaning, do you want to win this workout or win the race? In Discipline is Destiny, when I say that self-discipline saves us, part of what it saves us from is ourselves. When we are committed, when we are driven, self-discipline isn’t always about getting up and getting to work. It’s easier to workout than to skip a workout, easier to write than relax. The problem with that is that if you want to last, you have to be able to rest.

— Here’s another from Les Snead where he told me his strategy for ignoring the constant criticism from Monday morning quarterbacks and living room GMs. “I intentionally practice Stoicism enough to know, ‘Okay, this comment or this tweet or this simple take shouldn’t disrupt or even ruffle my emotions.’” Les said. When you know what you’re doing, he explained, you have to let your competence double as armor against criticism and complaints. It’s not that he’s egotistical—it’s that he knows his decisions were well thought out by him and his team.

— Matthew McConaughey told me he shut down his production company and his music label because “I was making B’s in five things. I want to make A’s in three things.” Those three things: his family, his foundation, his acting career. Marcus Aurelius would say that doing less “brings a double satisfaction.” You figure out what’s really essential and you do those things better.

— Along the same lines, Maya Smart told me about how she had to start saying “No” so she could say “Yes” to writing her first book (which you can pick up at the Painted Porch Bookshop). “I had to start setting boundaries,” she said “Steven Pressfield writes about this idea that you do this shadow work. For me, it was volunteering…So I started resigning from boards and telling people, ‘I’m no longer able to do this thing that I used to do because I’m focused on this book.’”

— Speaking of Pressfield, the distinction between amateur and professional is an essential piece of advice I have gotten, first from Steven’s writings and then by getting to talk to him over the years (here, here, and here). There are professional habits and amateur ones. Which are you practicing? Is this a pro or an amateur move? Ask yourself that. Constantly.

— Somewhat related, the NASCAR driver and student of Stoicism, Brad Keselowski, talked about what distinguishes a professional in his field (and it applies to most fields). “If the conditions were always perfect, the average 12-year-old could do my job,” Brad said. “The problem is that those days are very seldom.” Can you still show up and perform when the conditions aren’t perfect? That’s the question.

— I talked to one of my favorite writers, Rich Cohen, about the many lessons he learned from his father (who is the subject of Rich’s latest, The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator), including: “One of my father’s big things is that the key to success is to care, but not that much. To remain detached. To look at this situation you’re so worried about and say, ‘it’s merely a blip on the radar screen of eternity.’”

— After a billionaire-backed lawsuit put him $200 million in debt (which you can read about in my book Conspiracy), AJ Daulerio was finally driven into drug and alcohol recovery. He told me about how critical it’s been for him to have “emergency routines” that he can rely on when, to borrow Marcus Aurelius’s phrase, he is “jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances.” Whether it’s waking up to bad news, getting hit with a sudden craving, or being sent into a downward spiral by some painful memory flooding back—he has routines that bring him back to center and keep him from giving back all the progress he has made. He gets to a recovery meeting. He picks up his journal. He spends a few minutes meditating. He calls someone else and helps them. As with Les Snead’s panic rules, what you choose doesn’t matter as much as that you choose.

— Another from McConaughey. He told me he’s known in Hollywood as “a quick no and a long yes.” What a great expression! Before he says yes to doing a movie, he sleeps on it for ten days to two weeks in the frame of mind that he’s not going to do it. If he sleeps well, he doesn’t do it. If the thought that he has to do it wakes him up at night, he does it.

— I told Dr. Edith Eger I felt guilty about someone I had lost touch with and only recently reconnected with. She cut me off and told me she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. “I give you a sentence,” she said, “One sentence—if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” That’s the end of that, she said. “Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.”

— When I talked to Dr. Sue Johnson, she talked about how when couples or people fight, they’re not really fighting, they’re just doing a dance, usually a dance about attachment. The dance is the problem—you go this way, I go that way, you reach out, I pull away, I reach out, you pull away—not the couple, not either one of the people. This externalization has been very helpful.

— George Raveling told me that he sees reading as a moral imperative. “People died,” he said, speaking of slaves, soldiers and civil rights activists, “so I could have the ability to read.” He also pointed out that there’s a reason people have fought so hard over the centuries to keep books from certain groups of people. I’ve always thought reading was important, but I never thought about it like that. If you’re not reading, if books aren’t playing a major role in your life, you are betraying that legacy.

— Tim Ferriss advised stripping these three words out of your vocabulary: it’s not fair. Because they are impotent and meaningless. Because they don’t do anything but make you upset.

— “Sometimes,” the professional baseball player Ryan Lavarnway told me, “you just have to say, ‘good swing, bad aim.’” Sometimes you put a great swing on a pitch but hit the ball right to a fielder. Great effort, bad result. So it goes in life. Try to think less about results. Just try to make contact with the ball, just try to give your best. If you do, that’s a win, regardless of whether it’s a home run or an out.

— I asked Matt Quinn, the frontman of indie rock band Mt. Joy, about Mt. Joy’s rise and how the band has navigated success. “It’s helpful to tether to controlling what you can control,” he said. “That’s the thing we think about all the time. We’ve put in a lot of hard work. And if we just keep doing that—if we just keep getting better and practicing our instruments and doing the controllable things—then the outcome will at least not be a failure. I believe that for us. That’s really kind of been our motto.”

— When I interviewed Dr. Lisa Barrett for the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, she had a great question to ask whenever you have an emotional reaction to something that happens, “Is this the only story?” Is this the only interpretation that fits here? No? What are my other options? What are some other stories I could make up about what happened here?

— James Clear, author of the wonderful bestseller Atomic Habits, told me he carves out “two sacred hours” in the morning to do his writing. “I fit it in,” he said, “before everybody else’s agenda creeps into my agenda.”

— Ron Lieber—the longtime “Your Money” columnist for The New York Times and author of The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money (one of my all-time favorite titles)—told me a story about a time his three-year-old daughter asked, “Daddy, why don’t we have a summer house?” He said that she clearly had been pondering the question for some time, that she clearly had an interest in where her family stood in relation to other families, and that she clearly had a hunch that her family could have a summer house but made a decision to not have a summer house. It struck Lieber in that moment: how you spend money is a signal of what you value. “Our choices, not just our words, but our choices have meaning. They are modeling something. They model a certain form of trade-off.”

— Randall Stutman, leadership coach to some of Wall Street’s biggest CEOs, told me his teenage kids taught him an important lesson about power. You gotta figure out how to get people to think it’s their idea to do what you want them to do. “You gotta give up power to keep power,” he said. “You gotta give up power to maintain power.” One of the interesting things about power is that the harder you try to hold on to power, the less of it you actually have.

Thanks for reading these 20 lessons from the hundreds I’ve learned on the Daily Stoic podcast. Remember you can find the full archive at DailyStoic.com/podcast and subscribe to upcoming episodes here and here.

It’d be wonderful if a new year magically marked a new beginning. But 2022, like all years, reminded us that the same things keep happening, that world events continue on in their own unpredictable way and that in the end, we control very little but our own actions and opinions.

One of my favorite quotes—enough that I have it inscribed on the wall across the back of my bookstore—comes from the novelist Walter Mosley. “I’m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world,” he said. “I’m saying it helps.”

2023 stands before us promising nothing but the same difficulties and opportunities that last year and every year before it promised. Maybe even new and worse ones. What are you going to do about it? Will you be ready for it? Can you handle it?

Books are an investment in yourself—investments that come in many forms: novels, nonfiction, how-to, poetry, classics, biographies. They help you think more clearly, be kinder, see the bigger picture, and improve at the things that matter to you. Books are a tradition that stretches back thousands of years and stretches forward to today, where people are still publishing distillations of countless hours of hard thinking on hard topics. Why wouldn’t you avail yourself of this wisdom?

With that in mind, here are 12 books—some new, some old—that will help you meet the goals that matter for 2023, that will help you live better and be better.

​Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be by Steven Pressfield

Before I start any book project, I take a few hours and re-read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, maybe the greatest book ever written on the creative process. Well, on this book I just started, I changed it up a little because I got an early copy of Pressfield’s new book, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. I love the title so much because it’s the perfect advice for nearly every difficult thing. If you want to get in shape, put your ass in the gym. If you want to have a great relationship with your kids, get your ass down on the floor where they’re playing. If you want to write a book, put your ass in the chair. Even when you’re tired. Even when you don’t want to. Even when you don’t see the point. That’s what it’s about. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to show up. (In a word, he’s also talking about discipline). I was very glad to have him out to interview about the book too, (which you can listen to here).

​Range by David Epstein

David was one of my few author friends who did not discourage me from opening a bookstore. He was consistent in encouraging me to extend my range! I loved this book when it came out, and have often told people I think it’s a parenting book in disguise. It opens with the contrasting careers of Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, one a specialist from an early age, the other a generalist (who seemed to have a much more pleasant childhood and life), but both became great. I have always seen myself as a multi-hyphenate and believe my books have benefited from the experiences, interests, and occupations I’ve had. Having range also makes you more resilient in a recession. Those who are relying exclusively on one industry or company or job are the most vulnerable. I recommend pairing this book with Robert Greene’s Mastery… both are classics in my eyes.

​Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

For this piece last year, I recommended this new annotated edition by Robin Waterfield. I’m a champion of the Gregory Hays translation but reading a new translation of a book you’ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle…or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. Marcus, like Heraclitus, believed we never step in the same river twice. More recently, I had a similar experience. Since my 16-year-old (nearly) completely marked-up copy was starting to get a little worse for wear, I created a premium edition designed to stand the test of time, just like the content inside. That’s the amazing thing about reading Marcus—whichever translation you go with—year after year, he feels both incredibly timely and incredibly timeless. There’s a reason this book has endured now for almost twenty centuries (here are some lessons from me having read Meditations more than 100 times). If you haven’t read Marcus Aurelius or if you have…you should read this book and then read it again.

​The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

​I told Dr. Edith Eger I felt guilty about someone I had lost touch with and only recently reconnected with. She cut me off and told me she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. “I give you a sentence,” she said, “One sentence—if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” That’s the end of that, she said. “Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.” Dr. Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she’s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger’s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we’re going to be inside of them, what we’re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes Frankl, who she later studied under, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering, but to find meaning in it. She went on to become a psychologist and survives to this day, still seeing patients and helping people overcome trauma. I’ve had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger twice (here and here) and the joy and energy of this woman, this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is just incredible.

​The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel

This year began with a booming economy, and is ending in recession. Crypto has crashed. The real estate market is not so hot. If you’re looking to navigate the whipsawing, unpredictable nature of the global economy as an individual who hopes to plan (and be secure) for the future, I think this book is a great one. It’s filled with great stories–like the kind I try to tell in my books–that teach big lessons. There’s no better way to learn in my eyes…I had a great conversation with Morgan on the podcast, which you might also like. But speaking of podcasts and financial advice, I have LOVED–like LOVED–Ramit Sethi’s podcast this year which focuses on couples and their financial issues. It’s riveting and super educational. I’ve learned a ton. Here’s my interview with Ramit in that regard.

​The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer

The past few years have proved that many people miss this about the philosophy, but Stoicism isn’t just an individualistic philosophy. It’s a collective philosophy. The Stoics tells us to think not just about how our actions impact other people, but what we owe other people and how we can orient our actions and our lives around that. Peter Singer is pioneer of the “effective altruism” movement and just a wonderful example of someone who has oriented everything he does around other people. Sam Bankman-Fried put EA in the news but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. EA has guided a lot of good—more than most philosophies—to people all over the world.

​Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This is an absolutely incredible book. I think I marked up nearly every page. The book is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, and it is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research… and yet somehow not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even stuff I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now—a timely reminder that leadership matters. Or as the Stoics say: character is fate.

​Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark by Julia Baird

I LOVED Julia Baird’s biography of Queen Victoria and have raved about it many times. When I heard she was writing a follow up, I assumed it would be another biography. I did not expect this powerful, inspiring book about resilience and powering through. Through some dark times, Julia said what sustained her was “yielding a more simple phosphorescence—being luminous at temperatures below incandescence, having stored light for later use, quietly glowing without combusting. Staying alive, remaining upright, even when lashed by doubt.” She’s basically talking about Stoicism…without talking about Stoicism (though she does that too). I found myself marking dozens of pages in this one and just continually smiling throughout. It’s a great little book and, among other things, reminds me why I need to get back into swimming. I had a great conversation with Julia on the podcast, which you can listen to here.

​A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy believed his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, A Calendar of Wisdom. As Tolstoy wrote in his diary, the continual study of one text, reading one page at the start of each day, was critical to personal growth. “Daily study,” Tolstoy wrote in 1884, is “necessary for all people.” So Tolstoy dreamed of creating a book composed of “a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people… Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal.” As he wrote to his assistant, “I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers… They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.” As you can imagine, I am a big fan of daily devotionals. Check out DailyStoic.com and DailyDad.com for the free daily email versions I do.

​Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther

Written in 1949 by the famous journalist John Gunther about the death of his genius son Johnny at 17 from a brain tumor, this book is deeply moving and profound. It’s impossible to not be awed by this young boy who knows he will die too soon and struggles to do it with dignity and purpose. Midway through the book, Johnny writes what he calls the Unbeliever’s Prayer. It’s good enough to be from Epictetus or Montaigne—and he was just 16 when he wrote it. It’s worth reading the book for that alone.

​Buddha by Karen Armstrong

It’s scholarly without being pedantic, inspiring without being mystical. Armstrong is actually a former Catholic nun (who teaches at a college of Judaism), so I loved the diverse and unique perspective of the author. And Armstrong never misses the point of a good biography: to teach the reader how to live through the life of an interesting, complicated but important person.

​Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I always associated Charles Lindbergh with Hawaii because when I was a kid, I visited his grave at the end of the road to Hana in Maui. I was totally surprised to find this book at one of my favorite bookstores, Sundog Books, in one of my favorite places in the world, 30A in Florida. It’s a beautiful philosophical book about rest and relaxation. For each chapter, Lindbergh takes a shell from the beach as the starting point for a meditation on topics like solitude, love, happiness, contentment, and so on. For a 67-year-old book, it feels surprisingly modern–especially, I would think, for women. The only thing I didn’t like about this book is that I didn’t read it when I was writing Stillness is the Key as I almost certainly would have quoted it many times.

As I have published different versions of this piece over the last couple of years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022), I made one final recommendation worth repeating: Pick 3-4 titles that have had a big impact on you in the past and commit to reading them again. Seneca talked about how you need to “linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.”

We never read the same book twice. Because we’ve changed. The perceptions about the book have changed. What we’re going through in this very moment is new and different. So this year, go reread The Great Gatsby. Give The Odyssey another chance. Sit with a few chapters from The 48 Laws of Power. See how these books have stood the test of time and see how you’ve changed since you’ve read them last.

It can be some of the best time you spend with a book this year. Happy reading!