If You Want To Be Great, This Is All You Have To Do | Can Ryan Pass This Stoic Quiz?

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. If you want to be great, do this. At the start of the year we said we are going to go to the gym more, we're going to eat better, we're going to be more present at home, we're going to read more, we're going to waste less time, we're going to finally get serious about the thing we keep saying matters. Then life got in the way. We missed a day here, another there, we had a bad week which became two, the routine slipped, the momentum disappeared, and before long we weren't just off track, we'd given up.

And so we haven't been who we want to be. How do we fix it? Epictetus reminds us how. He says every habit and ability is confirmed and strengthened by the relevant actions. The ability to walk by walking, the ability to run by running.

If you want to be a good reader, read. If you want to be a good writer, write. If you wish to do something, make it habitual. Habits are not built or rebuilt by guilt. They are not restored by grand declarations or perfect plans.

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