You Can’t Help But Leave a Piece | Ask Daily Stoic

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. You can't help but leave a peace. It was just a long meeting, it was a lazy period. You got distracted, you were waiting for something better. You did it because you didn't know how to say no.

Ah. The excuses we make for doing things we have no business doing. As Seneca points out, we aren't paying for these excuses with the most precious resource we have, our time. Look back at those periods, those obligations you unthinkingly said yes to, and what do you see trailing behind you? It's your life.

Remember, whatever it is, however long or short it is, we are giving up something we can never get back. You can never ever leave, as the song lyrics go, without leaving a piece of youth, and not just our youth, but our children's youth, and just as easily our golden years or any period of our brief existence. And this is why we have to be wise enough to know what's worth doing and what isn't, Why we have to be confident enough to say no, courageous enough to change course when necessary, honest enough to stop pretending the thing we're doing isn't costing us anything. Because every day we are spending time.

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