There’s nothing like a global pandemic to obliterate your habits. 

When you’re locked in your house, working from home, when your routine is disrupted, when everything that’s happening in the world seems to be negative, it’s easy to say screw it. Or, it’s easy to tell yourself—as I wrote about recently—that you’ll get back on track when things go back to normal.

It’s understandable. It’s widespread. We’ve all made compromises in the last year—we’ve had to. The problem is the promises we’ve made to rationalize those decisions, to keep them going even though we know they aren’t serving us well. 

I’ll start eating salads for lunch when I’m back at the office. I’ll stop snacking when the kids are back on a schedule. I’ll get back to working out when I can safely go to the gym. I’ll get off social media when there is less news to follow—then, I’ll start reading books again. 

The Stoics—who survived their own plagues and exiles and moments of crisis—knew that this was no way to live. How much longer are you going to wait, Epictetus would ask? You could be good today, Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, but instead you choose tomorrow. 

Now is now. Now is the time to live well, to bring arete (excellence and virtue) into our lives. To make it a habit. We all want better habits—and if we want to be better people, we’ll have to have better habits. And as we start a new year, there’s never a better time. 

Think Small

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.” Just one thing. One nugget. This is the way to improvement: Incremental, consistent, humble, persistent work. Your business, your book, your career, your body—it doesn’t matter—you build them with little things, day after day.  Epictetus called it fueling the habit bonfire. The filmmaker, entrepreneur, author, former governor of California, professional bodybuilder, and father of five Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a similar prescription for people trying to stay strong and sane during this pandemic: “Just as long as you do something every day, that is the important thing.” Whether it’s from Seneca or Epictetus or Arnold, good advice is good advice and truth is truth. One thing a day adds up. One step at a time is all it takes. You just gotta do it. And the sooner you start, the better you’ll feel… and be. 

Think Long-Term

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about something he calls “The Plateau of Latent Potential.”  This plateau can be likened to bamboo, which spends its first five years building extensive root systems underground before exploding 90 feet into the air within six weeks. Or to an ice cube, which will only begin to melt once the surrounding temperature hits 32 degrees (or the resulting water that only boils at 212 degrees). Just because it sometimes takes longer than we’d like to see the results of our efforts doesn’t mean that our efforts are going to waste. In fact, most of the important work—the build up—won’t seem like it’s amounting to anything, but of course it is. Plutarch tells the story of Lampis, a wealthy ship-owner who was asked how he accumulated his fortune. “The greater part came quite easily,” Lampis supposedly answered, “but the first, smaller part took time and effort.” Any goal we have will take time and effort to accomplish, and beginning it will most likely be harder than finishing. But we have to keep going, because habits and hard work compound. Remember always that greatness takes time. Most importantly, remember what Zeno said: that greatness “is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.”

Develop the Muscle

As part of one of the Daily Stoic challenges, I quit chewing gum. Gum is probably the least bad habit you could possibly have. But I wanted to flex the muscle; I wanted to prove that I could quit something just for the sake of quitting it. And every time I see gum, or I think about wanting to have gum but don’t give in—that helps reinforce for me that I’m the kind of person that can decide to stop doing things that I don’t want to do anymore. So if you want to become a person that can do something hard like giving up alcohol, start by doing something easy like giving up gum. The logic applies to good habits. If you want to become a person that writes books, for instance, start by becoming a person that writes in a journal for 15 minutes every morning. As Epictetus said, “Capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running… therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it.” There is nothing more powerful than a good habit, nothing that holds us back quite like a bad habit. We are what we do. What we do determines who we can be. So if we want to be happy, if we want to be successful, if we want to be great, we have to develop the capability, we have to develop the day-to-day habits that allow this to ensue.

Use Good Habits to Drive Out Bad Habits

When a dog is barking loudly because someone is at the door, the worst thing you can do is yell. To the dog, it’s like you’re barking too! When a dog is running away, it’s not helpful to chase it—again, now it’s like you’re both running. A better option in both scenarios is to give the dog something else to do. Tell it to sit. Tell it to go to its bed or kennel. Run in the other direction. Break the pattern, interrupt the negative impulse. The same goes for us. As Epictetus said, “Since habit is such a powerful influence, and we’re used to pursuing our impulses to gain and avoid outside our own choice, we should set a contrary habit against that, and where appearances are really slippery, use the counterforce of our training.” When a bad habit reveals itself, counteract it with a commitment to a contrary virtue. For instance, let’s say you find yourself procrastinating today—don’t dig in and fight it. Get up and take a walk to clear your head and reset instead. If you find yourself cutting corners during a workout or on a project, say to yourself: “OK, now I am going to go even further or do even better.”

Build A Routine  

It’s strange to us that successful people, who are more or less their own boss and are clearly so talented, seem prisoners to the regimentation of their routines. Think about Jocko Willink waking up at 4:30 a.m. every morning. Isn’t the whole point of greatness that you’re freed from trivial rules and regulations? That you can do whatever you want? Ah, but the greats know that complete freedom is a nightmare. They know that order is a prerequisite of excellence. They know that in an unpredictable world, a good routine is a safe haven of certainty. They know that when you routinize, disturbances give you less trouble… because they’re boxed out—by the order and clarity you built. Well, it’s when things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it’s falling apart—this is when we need routine more than ever. Follow the kind of routine that Marcus Aurelius followed every day (like I detail in this video) or the practice that Seneca followed with his evening journaling. Get up early. Be deliberate. Exercise. Set up and stick to a diet. Create limits and order. Clean your house. Attack problems or projects that have piled up. Eisenhower famously said that freedom was properly defined as the opportunity for self-discipline, and so it is with disorder—it’s an opportunity to create order. 

Use Incentives

Around the time I wanted to become someone who spends less time on their phone, I was invited to a challenge on the habit-building app SPAR!, which is basically the most addictive and rewarding app I’ve ever downloaded, to not touch my phone for at least 10 minutes after I woke up. I’d been sleeping with it in the other room for years, but I still usually grabbed it first thing in the morning. The challenge came with a powerful incentive — each time I failed, I’d have to pay $10. At first you do the daily deed just so you don’t lose money. But the real draw was that it meant I could focus on being present with my son in my first waking moments. Soon, I started challenging myself to stretch 10 minutes into 30, then 45, then an hour. Now some mornings, if I am writing, I might not touch my phone until lunch. On those days, I’m happier and more productive.

Put Up Reminders

I’m not sure where I stole the idea from, but I’m a big proponent of printing out good advice and putting it right in front of your desk, or wherever you work everyday. So you cannot run from the advice, so you see it enough times that it becomes imprinted in your mind. The first quote I ever did this with was an admonishment from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I was 19 years old and it was exactly what I needed to be told—it was how I reminded myself to get off my ass, to stop being lazy, and to work hard. Now, over my desk I have a picture of Oliver Sacks. In the background he has a sign that reads “NO!” that helped remind him (and now me) to use that powerful word. If you walk into the locker room of any professional sports franchise or elite D-1 level program, you’ll see the walls are tattooed with precepts and reminders (The Pittsburgh Pirates even have “It’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgement about things” in their clubhouse in Florida. Iowa football has “Ego Is the Enemy” in their weightroom.”) On the Daily Stoic podcast, I asked 2x NBA champion and 6x All-Star (and fan of Stoicism) Pau Gasol about the role these precepts play in sports:

Athletes appreciate pointers and directions. Quotes kind of hit home, as far as there’s a message, like “Pound the rock.” As far as resilience, you just keep pounding the rock. That was a big one for the spurs. Just keep pounding the rock. If you hit it a thousand times or two thousand times, you might not see a crack, but it’s that next hit, that next pound where the rock will crack. You just got to keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. So pound the rock. It’s something that a lot of other coaches have acquired and then shared in their locker rooms.

Reminders are powerful. They make you better. They give you something to rest on—a kind of backstop to prevent backsliding.

Choose Your Surroundings Wisely

Who we are surrounded by influences more than any other factor, who we will become. Goethe once said “Tell me who you spend time with and I will tell you who you are.” As Seneca wrote, “Even Socrates, Cato, and Laelius might have been shaken in their moral strength by a crowd that was unlike them; so true it is that none of us, no matter how much he cultivates his abilities, can withstand [the influence of their surroundings.]” We seem to understand that a young kid who spends time with kids who don’t want to go anywhere in life probably isn’t going to go anywhere in life, either. What we understand less is that an adult who spends time with other adults who tolerate crappy jobs, or unhappy lifestyles is going to find themselves making similar choices. Same goes for what you read, what you watch, what you think about. Your life comes to resemble its environment (Ben Hardy calls this the proximity effect). So choose your surroundings wisely.

Hand Yourself Over to a Script

In 2018, we did our first Daily Stoic Challenge, full of different challenges and activities based on Stoic philosophy. It was an awesome experience. Even I, the person who created the challenge, got a lot out of it. Why? I think it was the process of handing myself over to a script. It’s the reason personal trainers are so effective. You just show up at the gym and they tell you what to do, and it’s never the same thing as the last time. Deciding what we want to do, determining our own habits, and making the right choices is exhausting. Handing the wheel over to someone else is a way to narrow our focus and put everything into the commitment. That’s why Whole30 is so popular. You buy a book and follow a regimen, and then you know what you’re doing for the next month.

To kick off 2021, we’re doing another Daily Stoic Challenge. The idea is that you ought to start the New Year right—with 21 great days to create momentum for the rest of the year. If you want to have better habits this year, find a challenge you can participate in. Just try one: it doesn’t matter what it’s about or who else is doing it.

Keep Going Back to It

The path to self-improvement is rocky, and slipping and tripping is inevitable. You’ll forget to do the push-ups, you’ll cheat on your diet, you’ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of Twitter, or you’ll complain and have to switch the bracelet from one wrist to another. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I’ve always been fond of this advice from Oprah: If you catch yourself eating an Oreo, don’t beat yourself up; just try to stop before you eat the whole sleeve. Don’t turn a slip into a catastrophic fall. And a couple of centuries before her, Marcus Aurelius said something similar:

When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.

In other words, when you mess up, come back to the habits you’ve been working on. Come back to the ideas here in this post. Don’t quit just because you’re not perfect.

—

No one is saying you have to magically transform yourself in 2021, but if you’re not making progress toward the person you want to be, what are you doing? And, more important, when are you planning to do it?

As Epictetus famously said 2,000 years ago: “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” He’s really asking, how much longer are you going to wait until you demand the best of yourself? How much longer are you going to wait to start forming the habits that you know would be responsible for getting you to where you want to go?

With that, I’ll leave you with Epictetus once more. It’s the perfect passage to recite as we set out to begin a new year, hopefully, as better people:

From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer…

There’s only 24 hours left to sign up to join me in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. 

New Year, New You is a set of 21 actionable challenges—presented one per day—built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Each challenge is specifically designed to help you:

• Stop procrastinating on your dreams

• Learn new skills

• Quit harmful vices

• Make amends

• Learn from past mistakes

• Have more hope for the new year

• And much much more…

21 challenges designed to set up potentially life-changing habits for 2021 and beyond.

There are over 30,000 words of exclusive content that I don’t post anywhere else. Each day also has an audio companion from me, weekly group Zoom calls, a Slack channel for accountability, and a lot more. 

It’s one of my favorite things I do each year and really enjoy interacting with everyone in the challenge. Click here to learn more.

We are doing a 2021 New Year New You Challenge. Please join us!

Man. What a year. 

There’s not much you can say about 2020 that doesn’t include some curse words, but I will say this: It provided plenty of time for reading. It provided plenty of things that needed to be read about—from leadership to pandemics to civil rights to elections—this was one of those years that sends you to… well, I would say “the bookstore,” but that was hard, too.

Anyway, I read a lot. As I’m sure you did too. 

Every year, I try to narrow down all the books I have recommended and read for this email list to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. (You can check out the best of lists I did in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.)

My reading list is now ~250,000 people, which means I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you—you can’t go wrong with any of these.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

There is something surreal about reading a book published 15 years ago about an event 100 years ago that just happens to nail exactly what’s happening in this moment (his book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America is also good and equally timeless.) Barry’s haunting book covers in definitive, gripping detail the Spanish flu: a global pandemic which staggered nations and cities and the brightest medical minds of the time. “It’s only the influenza,” confident officials repeated. “It’ll be over soon,” they reassured. And then the President of the United States caught it… (I’m talking about Woodrow Wilson, of course). Because the more things change, the more they stay the time. Because history is the same song happening on repeat. Anyway, reading this book at the beginning of the pandemic was not only educational, but it has helped shape my family and businesses’ responses to the crisis. Barry writes of the relief people felt when the Spanish flu seemed to be winding down. They thought it was over, but actually only the first wave was done. “For the virus had not disappeared. It had only gone underground, like a forest fire left burning in the roots, swarming and mutating, adapting, honing itself, watching and waiting, waiting to burst into flame.” You cannot relax yet. You cannot drop your shield, as the Spartans would say. You must continue to protect the line. The health of your neighbors depends on it. And I joked in February that I was deliberately not going to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy this book because of the pandemic. In truth, I got it down from my shelf and sat on my bedside table while I worked up the courage to read it again. My feelings were well-founded, because on the night I finished, all I could do was walk quietly into my son’s room and sob while he slept. The Road is just one of the most beautiful and profound depictions of struggle and sacrifice and love ever put down on the page. Worth reading again!

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. Or as I wrote about in this piece about leadership during the plague in ancient Rome: when things break down, good leaders have to stand up. After Goodwin, I picked up Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History by Andrew Roberts, who I find to be funny, insightful and quite good at capturing the essence of unique historical figures. I also recommend Roberts’ biographies of Churchill and Napoleon (you can listen to my interview with Roberts here). As I said, now is the time to get perspective and to learn from the past.

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch

I’ve raved about some of my favorite epic biographies before: Robert Caro’s LBJ, William Manchester’s Churchill, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Well, add another to the list. Taylor Branch’s definitive series on Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement has not only been riveting, eye-opening and humbling, it’s been the perfect vehicle to help me understand what’s happening in the world right now. I finished Parting the Waters and immediately picked up Volume II, Pillar of Fire. I’ve come to believe that one of the best ways to become an informed citizen in the present is not to watch the news, but to read history. The actor Hugh Jackman said in an interview a few months ago that he’s been getting his news by keeping his eye on the big picture—going through the Ken Burns catalog and reading books like Meditations. “That’s the way you should understand events and humanity,” he said, “with that sort of 30,000-foot view.” If you want to understand what’s happening in the United States right now as it pertains to race, get off Twitter and read these books. On that note, I re-read Invisible Man, first published in 1952, in light of the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. There are many “anti-racist” reading lists floating around, but how many of the books on those lists will still be readable in 70 years? Do yourself a favor and read this. It’s not going anywhere because it is timeless—and sadly, very timely. I also learned so much from Edward Ball’s Life of a Klansman (and when I interviewed him) and just as much from Albion W. Tourgee’s A Fool’s Errand (Albion was one of the legal advisors in Plessy v. Ferguson). Strongly recommend one or both of these books to anyone who wants to become better informed instead of more partisan. My study of this history has been ongoing, but I feel I have learned far more these books than I have from the trendy white fragility books going around. Also if you’re interested, here’s a step I have taken in regards to Confederate monuments (that is: literal white supremacy monuments, as you’ll learn in these books and some of my interviews on the topic) in my town. 

More…

I really can’t leave it at just three books. I loved Cecil Woodham Smith’s books, Florence Nightingale and The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade. I loved Julian Jackson’s biography of de Gaulle and McCullough’s biography of Truman. I loved even more Wright Thompson’s The Cost of These Dreams. The best thing I read about writing was Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel. The best two bits of philosophy I read were Plutarch’s How to Be a Leader and Carlin Barton’s Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones (an expensive primer on the Stoics, really—but very good). As far as kid’s books goes, we read The Scarecrow together many times. Every night we read A Poem for Every Night of the Year (edited by Esiri Allie). We’ve also done several tours through the stories in Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin. Finally, I spent a lot of time with Marcus Aurelius during the pandemic… because he himself lived through one. The big thing I took away, which pertains to so much of what’s in these books: “You can commit injustice by doing nothing. “Be free of passion but full of love.” “No, it’s not unfortunate that this happened, it’s fortunate that it happened to me.”

Of course, I also put out a book this year, Lives of the Stoics, which debuted at #1. I also released a box set of The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy and Stillness Is the Key. You can get them anywhere books are sold OR we have signed, personalized editions in the Daily Stoic store. They make great gifts!

But most importantly, I hope you join me in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. 

New Year, New You is a set of 21 actionable challenges—presented one per day—built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Each challenge is specifically designed to help you:

• Stop procrastinating on your dreams

• Learn new skills

• Quit harmful vices

• Make amends

• Learn from past mistakes

• Have more hope for the new year

• And much much more…

21 challenges designed to set up potentially life-changing habits for 2021 and beyond.

There are over 30,000 words of exclusive content that I don’t post anywhere else. Each day also has an audio companion from me, weekly group Zoom calls, a Slack channel for accountability, and a lot more. It’s one of my favorite things I do each year and really enjoy interacting with everyone in the challenge. Click here to learn more.

We’ve heard it. 

We’ve said it.

When things go back to normal.

I found myself thinking that this very morning as I took my sons for our morning walk. How much longer is it going to go on like this?

It’s understandable of course. This all feels very strange. A pandemic that has disrupted our lives. Everything seems so polarized. The election is still being contested. This is not how stuff usually is, right?

But of course, that’s not true at all. Any student of history knows that 2020 is hardly abnormal.

A hundred years ago we had a pandemic much worse than this one…in the middle of a world war. We had a great depression after that. There was a pandemic in the ‘50s. In ‘68, not only were there massive civil rights protests and riots, but there was also a flu pandemic that killed some 100,000 people in the U.S. and over a million across the globe. In fact, I defy you to find me a single “normal” decade in American history.

The last two decades have hardly been peaceful and simple. They began with a contested election and legal challenges. They were followed by a terrorist attack that left 3,000 dead. Then we had a financial crisis on par with the Depression. Now here we are, simultaneously facing a pandemic, a nationwide protest movement, and an economic crisis.

The Stoics were fond of quoting Heraclitus: the only constant is change.

It’s true, but the funny thing is that even change seems to rhyme with itself, if not outright repeat.

As the Bible tells us, “The thing that hath been,” we read in one part, “it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun… That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.”

Did Marcus Aurelius read Ecclesiates? Or did he discover for himself that, “Whatever happens has always happened and always will, and is happening at this very moment, everywhere. Just like this.”

“Time is a flat circle,” Rustin Cohle says in the first season of True Detective. “Everything we have done or will do we will do over and over and over again forever.” And so it was that another generation found out about Nietzche’s idea of “eternal recurrence.” Did Nietzsche read Marcus? Did Nic Pizzolatto read Nietzsche? Or Marcus? Or Ecclesiastes? 

Or is this realization just something you can’t help but pick up if you’re paying attention?

It’s interesting to observe that Marcus’s reign was not really that different from the reign of Vespasian. It was filled with people doing the same things: eating, drinking, fighting, dying, worrying, and craving. Can you imagine if, during the crises he faced, he chose to “just wait for things to go back to normal” instead of doing, well, anything?

Everything that happens is normal. There is nothing unusual about any of this. 

Life is life. The only surprise is that we’re surprised. 

Sure, you’d rather not be working from home. You’d love to be traveling freely. Maybe you would like anyone to have been president rather than Donald Trump. But who is to say having or not having these things is “normal?”

They just are.

And you can’t just wait them out. 

Because what you’re waiting to end…is life. It’s now. It’s the present moment. 

One of the reasons to study history is that it gives you perspective. Distance has the effect of sanding down the edges and smoothing the transitions between things. When you read about the Great Influenza, when you immerse yourself in the characters of Shakespeare, when you visit a Civil War battlefield or an ancient castle, you gain a better understanding of how similar the past was to the present. How the more things change, the more they stay the same—how our petty plans and projections have very little impact on the tides of time. There’s nothing to take personally. 

It just is. 

History is violent. History is hard. History is confusing and overwhelming. History didn’t care about the people who had to live through it. History is like this because history is just a recording of life, and life is like that. 

But does that mean we can’t have peace or happiness within this chaos? That because there is no such thing as “normal” we should be anxious and depressed?

On the contrary!

I remember once reading a book about the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann—the adventurer who found the lost city of Troy. In the 1860s, he immigrated to America and worked his way across the country on a variety of jobs. It was incredible to notice that this guy had lived through the Civil War, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and it never even appeared in his diaries or changed his plans. He had found his own personal normal inside the craziness of world events. He’d simply gone on with his life. 

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera writes, “No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler’s time, in Stalin’s time, through all occupations… against the backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.” 

That’s what I came to realize on my walk this morning. Yeah, this time is weird. It’s maybe not what I’d want, if I had a choice. But I don’t have a choice, because this is just life. 

Why should I pine for it to be over or different? What matters is right now. What matters is the quiet hour we had together on that road. What mattered was the sunrise coming up behind us. What matters is that the last eight months have been eight months of being alive—and I chose to live them.

How much longer will it be like this? How much longer until the next change? 

No one can say. Nobody knows anything for certain except that change will eventually come. 

If people could manage to find happiness and purpose and stillness amidst war, under the rule of tyrants, through plagues far worse than this one, what excuse do we have?

None. This is normal.

This is life. 

Accept it and love it.