7 Simple Daily Habits That Will Change Your Life (Stoic-Inspired)

Seven things you should do every day according to the ancient Stoics. Number one, you gotta wake up early. The most famous passage in meditations is Marcus Aurelius struggling to get out of bed at dawn. He says, I have to go to work as a human being. He says, I'm not meant to huddle under the covers and stay warm. No, I'm put here to do things, to make things, to be of service to people, to make the world a better place. And you were not meant to huddle under the covers and stay warm either. So get up early and get after it. Number two, you gotta exercise. You have to be active. And now we're not exercising for vanity purposes. We're not building muscles so we can look jacked, right? We are trying to cultivate strength, physical and mental. Seneca said, we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. We are cultivating discipline, right? And many of the Stoics were active. When you think of a philosopher, you don't think of an athlete, but in the ancient world, many of them were. Chrysippus was a runner. Cleanthes was a boxer. Marcus Aurelius was a wrestler. I run and swim and bike. The point is get active, get moving. You need a strong mind in a strong body and that means doing it every day. Number three, if you're not journaling, you are not practicing Stoicism. Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, all the ancient Stoics praised the benefits of journaling, putting it down on the page, working it out on the page. That is to say, instead of on other people, instead of just having it pinging around inside your head, you gotta be reflecting, you gotta be analyzing, you gotta be exploring. You have to be repeating over and over again the lessons from the ancients and the values you are trying to apply in your life. How does Marcus Aurelius become Marcus Aurelius? Through his journal. We see in meditations, Marcus Aurelius fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. He is journaling as an active philosophical practice, which you must do also. That's what meditations is, by the way, the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world. Number four, you have to be reading, not a little bit, but all the time. We must linger on the works of the master thinkers, Seneca said. Over and over again, we have to return to them, right? The Stoics aren't something you have read, they are something you need to be reading all of your life. And in fact, there is no good life without study and reflection and wisdom. You have to read and not just read, but read actively, read strenuously. As Epictetus says, it's not enough to read, you have to read the right things in the right way. Number five, go for a walk. I'm not saying walking will solve all your problems, I'm saying very few of your problems will be made worse for walking. Seneca said, we need to take these wandering outdoor walks. So that the mind can be nourished and refreshed by open air and deep breathing. It calms you down, it gets you out of your head, it gets you out of your room, it gets you outdoors into the world, into the beauty of the natural world. It gets your mind moving, it will make you better. Number six, make time for some deep work and focus and reflection. In Marcus Aurelius' meditations, he says you have to concentrate on this task before you, like a Roman, says do it like it's the last thing you're doing in your life. I would say do it like it's the only thing in your life. Put the phone away, close all the tabs in your browser, don't multitask, lock in and focus for a large uninterrupted block. This is what Marcus Aurelius is doing in meditations. This is what the Stoics were doing in their philosophical classes, right? Stop drifting about, stop wandering and focus. Seven, finally, you have to think about death. Memento mori, you are mortal, you don't have forever. It's not that life is short, Seneca says, it's that we waste a lot of it and we waste a lot of it because we think we have more of it than we actually do. The clock is ticking away. Your time here is evaporating at this very second. Don't fool yourself into thinking you have forever. Don't be good tomorrow, Marcus Aurelius says. Be good today, be good now because it's the only thing you have for certain. Every day, I send out one Stoic-inspired email to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. If you want more Stoic wisdom in your inbox, you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. It's totally free and unsubscribe at any time. We'd love to have you, dailystoic.com slash email.