You Slipped Up. Here’s How To Get Back On Track
It was a long winter.
You got sick. You lapsed on a resolution. You slipped up. You’re tired, distracted, out of sorts.
So you’re going to write off the rest of 2026?
That’s crazy.
In one of my favorite passages in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes, “When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help.”
I think that word “unavoidably” is key. Slipping up, getting knocked off course, falling off the wagon—it happens.
And that’s what I want to talk about in today’s email: some rules for a reset. Here—already a couple of months into 2026—is the perfect time. For getting back to first principles, to the things that you said you were going to do, to the person that you know you want to be.
(And by the way, I’m getting together with thousands of Stoics from around the world to do a reset as part of The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge on March 20. It’s a set of 10 daily, actionable challenges designed to help you clean up your life and spring forward without the weight of bad habits and vices. You can learn more and sign up here. I hope to see you there!)
Focus on what you can control. You’re rattled by what’s going on in the world. The economy. The news. The possibility of AI taking your job. Whatever outrage is dominating the social media feeds this week. In short, you’re spending enormous amounts of time and energy on things you cannot control. Revert to what Epictetus described as our “chief task in life”—getting real clear about what’s up to us and what isn’t. Our actions, our thoughts, our feelings—these are up to us. Other people, the weather, external events, these are not. But here’s the thing: our responses to other people, the weather, external events are in our control. To reset your life, the best place to start is with making this distinction and then choosing to focus on the things that are in your control. If only because it concentrates your resources in the places where they matter.
Wake up early. No one likes getting up early in the winter. Because it’s cold. It’s dark. That’s the famous passage from Meditations: he knows he has to get out of bed, but so desperately wants to remain under the warm covers. “Is this what I was created for?” he asks himself. “To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” No, it’s not what we were created for. We were made to be up and “doing things and experiencing them.” So we must reclaim the morning hours, the most productive hours in the day. Hemingway would talk about how he’d get up early because early, there was, “no one to disturb you.” Toni Morrison found she was just more confident in the morning, before the day had exacted its toll and the mind was fresh. Like most of us, she realized she was just “not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.” Who can be? After a day of banal conversations, frustrations, mistakes, and exhaustion. If you want to get back on track, if you want to start executing at a higher level, then you have to get in the habit of waking up early.
Protect the best part of your day. Waking up early is critical, but even more so is what we do in those early hours. Waking up early just to get straight into scrolling social media, checking email, watching the news—this is not a reset. You’ve handed the best part of your day to other people’s emergencies, other people’s opinions, other people’s agendas. The novelist Philipp Meyer (whose book The Son is an incredible read) told me on the Daily Stoic podcast, “You have to be very careful about to what (and to whom) you’re giving the best part of your day.” Well-intentioned plans fall apart as the day progresses. Our willpower evaporates. The world makes its demands. So it’s key that we prioritize the important things and that we habitualize doing them early. Personally, I fiercely protect my mornings—family first, then writing. My assistant knows not to schedule anything before mid-morning because early calls and meetings don’t just take time—they sap the energy needed for the essential work. I want to give my best self to my most important things. Everything else can come after.
Do less, better. Your calendar is filled up. Your inbox is flooded. Your to-do list is overflowing. You’re doing too much. When I talked to the great Matthew McConaughey on the Daily Stoic podcast, he told me the story about a moment a few years ago when he realized he was doing too much. “I had five proverbial campfires on my desk,” he said. He had a production company, a music label, a foundation, his acting career, and his family. “What I did was I got rid of two of the campfires.” He called his lawyer and shut down the production company and the music label. “I was left with the three things that were most important to me. And those three campfires turned into bonfires…I had been making C’s in five things, but when I concentrated on three things, I started making A’s.” A reset requires concentration. It requires elimination, Seneca said: “He who is everywhere is nowhere.” Remember: Everything you say yes to means saying no to something else. And conversely, everything you say no to means saying yes to something else. When you say no, when you cut out the inessential, the Stoics say, it allows you to double down on what is truly essential.
Just make a little progress every day. For a long time, my writing habit was all-or-nothing—either I wrote a lot of words or I didn’t. Over time, I’ve lowered the stakes: now the question is simply, “Did I make a positive contribution to my writing today?” Sometimes that means writing, sometimes editing, adding, deleting. Sometimes I’m home and it’s in my office, sometimes I’m on the road and it’s on a plane or in a hotel room. Sometimes it’s a big contribution, sometimes it’s a little contribution. “Well-being is realized by small steps,” Zeno would say looking back on his life, “but is truly no small thing.” Focus on that—just making a little progress each day.
Focus on process, not goals. When most people think about resetting their life, they think about setting a goal—lose 20 pounds, read 30 books, write a book. But goals are just finish lines—they’re about achieving something specific, often external, and usually out of your control. A better approach is to focus on the process: the daily work and the practices that will move you forward, regardless of the outcome. As I wrote about recently, I don’t have goals. When I write, I don’t focus on finishing books—that would be overwhelming. Instead, I focus on my notecard system and writing for a couple hours every day. The books emerge from that process naturally, over time. Any time you want to reset things in your life, instead of fixating on specific outcomes, focus on the process that will guide you. The results will take care of themselves.
Make amends. This is actually one of the challenges in the upcoming Spring Forward: to apologize or make amends with someone. Years ago, there was someone I got into a big fight with over one of my books. I eventually emailed them, saying, “Hey, here’s what I’ve been carrying, and I wish I’d done it differently. I feel bad about the consequences for you. I’m sorry.” I’d love to say we became friends afterward, but they didn’t accept my apology—instead, they hurled more anger at me. It was obvious they still carried a lot of resentment, but making amends is also a gift you give yourself. I said what I needed to say, so I’m no longer ruminating or carrying it around. I owned my role in it. I tried to be who I want to be. If they aren’t there yet, that’s okay—I did what I could. As Marcus Aurelius said, the best revenge is not being like the person who wronged you. Maybe they’ll never see your side, but at least you won’t turn into them. We can’t change the past, but we can take responsibility: acknowledge our mistakes, own the pain we caused, learn from it, practice empathy, and try to repair it. This is a kind of deep clean for your life, allowing you to start fresh and move forward without the weight of that emotional clutter.
Discard anxiety. You’re anxious about politics. About flying. About the state of the world. About your kids. The one thing all causes of anxiety have in common? US! The airport is not making you anxious. You are making yourself anxious in the airport! Marcus Aurelius talks about this in Meditations. “Today I escaped from anxiety,” he says. “Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.” It’s a little frustrating, but it’s also freeing. Because it means you can stop it! You can choose to discard it.
Find a scene. You’re hanging out with the same people you’ve always hung out with. The same circle, the same conversations, the same comfortable group that never quite challenges you or pushes you or expects anything different from you. And then you wonder why you keep ending up in the same place. “Tell me who you consort with,” Goethe said, “and I will tell you who you are.” You need to find a scene that challenges you, inspires you, exposes you to new ideas, holds you accountable, and pushes you beyond your limits. The Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus introduced the common mess hall and required that all citizens eat together. It was harder to eat more than your fair share, more than your healthy share, when you were surrounded by your comrades in battle.
Quit your vices. There’s a story I tell in Discipline is Destiny about the physicist Richard Feynman feeling a sudden midday pull to have a drink. On the spot, Feynman gave up drinking right then and there. Nothing, he felt, should have that kind of power over him. Ask yourself: What has control over me? Is it caffeine, social media, Netflix, junk food—something more serious? I once heard addiction described as losing the freedom to abstain. Where have you lost the freedom to say no to? And how can you reclaim your power by refusing to feed that habit? If you want a happier, more fulfilling life, decide which vices you’re no longer willing to let rule you.
Do hard things. Making a life change, adopting new habits, doing anything challenging requires courage. As I write about in Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave, we can’t just hope to be brave when it counts. Courage has to be cultivated. To do the big things that scare you, start with smaller things—start with developing the ability to push yourself to do stuff you’re reluctant to do. To be able to endure the cold reception of a bold idea, start with enduring a cold shower. To be able to step forward when the stakes are high, regularly do that when the stakes are low. To be able to embrace the discomfort of a major life change, accustom yourself to minor discomforts. We treat the body rigorously, Seneca said, so that it may not be disobedient to the mind. We push ourselves in little ways so the big ways stop seeming quite so big, quite so out of character.
Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. Whenever I speak to military groups, I like to share one of my favorite lines from Meditations: “Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?” I love how Marcus Aurelius delivers that line—with a shrug. So what? There’s no shame in needing help. Whether it’s therapy, asking for advice, or hiring someone to support you, seeking help is often the key to breakthroughs, growth, and success. Tim Ferriss has a great question that ties into this: What would this look like if it were easy? Often, the answer involves creating support systems or finding the right kind of help. Resetting your life isn’t something you have to do alone.
Get back up when you fall. It’s wonderfully fitting that in both the Zen tradition and the Bible, we have a version of the proverb about falling down seven times and getting up eight. Marcus Aurelius said it was inevitable to be jarred by circumstances, but the key was to get back the rhythm as quickly as possible, to come back to yourself, rather than giving in.
Be kind to yourself. The Stoic philosopher Cleanthes was once walking through the streets of Athens when he came across a man berating himself for some failure. Seeing how upset he was, Cleanthes—normally one to mind his own business—could not help himself but to stop and say kindly, “Remember, you’re not talking to a bad man.” Often, the desire for a reset comes packaged with self-contempt, with some judgment of the version of us who got off track. But this isn’t about beating yourself up. After a lifetime of study of Stoicism, this is how Seneca came to judge his own growth: “What progress have I made?” he wrote. “I have begun to be a friend to myself.” Be kind to yourself. Celebrate your decision to make a change, to get back on track, to make yourself better. That’s what friends do.
Go the f*ck to sleep. All the other habits and practices listed here become irrelevant if you don’t have the energy and clarity to do them. We have to follow the advice of a book I love to read to my kids: Go the F*ck to Sleep! In the military, they speak of sleep discipline—meaning it’s something you have to be good at, you have to be conscious of, something you can’t let slip. We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person knows this and guards it carefully. A smart person knows that getting their 7-8 hours of sleep every night does not negatively affect their output, it contributes crucially to their best work.
Remember you are going to die. Shakespeare said that every third thought should be of our grave. Perhaps that’s too much. One thought per day is plenty. The point isn’t to be morbid, but to remember that you are mortal. How much time do we waste on things that don’t matter? And why? Because we think we can afford it! Memento Mori. You will die. Live while you can. Live your life as if you have died and come back and all of this is extra. I keep a coin in my pocket to remind me of this and touch it at least once a day. Death doesn’t make life pointless but rather purposeful. And fortunately, we don’t have to nearly die to tap into this.
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Those are some things I come back to whenever I need a reset.
If you’re ready to take your own efforts to the next level, I’d love for you to join me in the Spring Forward Challenge from Daily Stoic.
It’s packed with powerful exercises rooted in the best Stoic insights and strategies, and thousands of people around the world will be participating.
Sign up at dailystoic.com/spring—we start on March 20th. I hope to see you there, ready to clear out the clutter and make room for what truly matters.
