So This is the New Year? | Make 2026 Your Best Year With These 6 Simple Stoic Rules

Welcome to the daily stoic podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com. So this is the new year? You heard people celebrating. You saw the ball drop. The calendar turned over. How many days led up to this? Well, at least three hundred and sixty five, but you could say that thousands of them, centuries of days, led us to this bright shining moment of the future, 2026. Here it is in all its underwhelming glory. That's a death cap for Cutie's song called the new year. Maybe the New Year doesn't feel any different because we're not any different. We got up at the same time, ate the same breakfast, went straight to our phones, were annoyed by the same things, had the same attitude, resigned ourselves to the same world. We are already repeating old patterns, going into the new year like those weary gladiators in the coliseum that Marcus Aurelius talked about, determined to keep on living the lives we've been living even though we're bedraggled and degraded, torn half to pieces, he said, covered in blood and gore, and still pleading to be held over till tomorrow, to be bitten and clawed again. Come on. Why? Why not try something new? Why not really get after it this year? What about if instead of fighting against the current, we fought instead to be the person that philosophy tried to make us? And that's what thousands of stoics all over the world are doing right now kicking off the new year. We started on January 1 with the twenty twenty six daily stoic new year, new you challenge. It's twenty one days of stoic inspired challenges to help you practice this philosophy to become that person that philosophy wants you to be. And it's not too late to sign up. I'd love to see you in there. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/challenge. I'm already loving the challenge. I think you'll love it too. I will see you in there. So on Monday, I had a talk. I was flying to Florida for a a talk, but I took the kids to school. I worked at the office, and then I picked them up from school. We went to Whole Foods, did our weekly grocery shopping as, the boys and I do every week, and then I drove. We met at a parking lot near the airport. I handed my wife the kids and all the groceries, and then I flew to Florida, flew home, and then, when I got back the next …