The Top 10 Most Popular Passages From The Daily Stoic

Ryan Holiday (0:00)

Welcome to The Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

Ten years later, this is new again.

It seems unbelievable, but it's true. Ten years ago today, we published a book called The Daily Stoic. And the idea was simple, three hundred and sixty-six short meditations, one for every day of the year, including leap years, that was designed to teach you about Stoicism and to help you actually practice it. Now, I obviously could not have imagined where the book would go. If I had it, it would have been not just egotistical, but basically insane to predict any of this.

Something like three million copies have been sold now. It's been translated into 40 languages. And I've heard from athletes and soldiers and CEOs, parents, heads of state, students, stay-at-home parents, and everyone in between. People keep it on their nightstand, they carry it in their bags, they listen to it on their commute, they give it to friends, come back to the same pages over and over and over and over again.

Which is why I'm excited to be able to say that 10 years later, we are releasing it again. Not with a new cover slapped on it or commemorative foreword in front of what is effectively the same text, but no, we went back through it page by page and made the book better.

That might seem like a strange thing to do on a book that sold so well, but I think it would be stranger if it didn't. Because the whole point of Stoicism is that you're supposed to keep progressing, keep examining yourself, keep practicing, keep getting a little bit better, keep learning as Seneca wrote to the end of your life.

I'm not the same person that I was when I wrote this book 10 years ago. I'm not the same person I was last year. When The Daily Stoic came out, I was 29, newly married, about to become a father. I've learned a little bit in the time since. Raising two boys, opening a bookstore, building businesses, losing mentors, succeeding at some things, failing at many others, living through a pandemic, writing a couple more books, thousands and thousands of these emails and podcasts, spending another 10 years reading Marcus and Seneca and Epitetus and The Other Stoic. So when Steve and I decided to go back through The Daily Stoic, we asked ourselves this question. If we were making the book today, knowing what we know now, how would we make it better?

That's what we did. We revisited the texts. We added something like 60 new translations, give or take, including a bunch of Stoics who weren't in the first edition. We brought in Stoic ideas and concepts, so we wish we'd included the first time. We improved the stories and the meditations. We added illustrations and some bonus chapters. We revised entries where, you know, another decades of studying and practicing gave me a better sense of how to actually say what I was trying to say. And I think The Daily Stoic, like basically anything in the Stoic genre is meant to be read once. It's supposed to be something you are reading, not something you're done with. Because maybe a passage that you barely noticed five years ago might be exactly what you need today. Something you underlined at 25 could mean something different to you at 35 The words might be the same, but you aren't. I know I'm not. And so that's what the new 10 year anniversary edition of The Daily Stoic is. It's out in the world. And I'm excited to bring it to you. You know, it's been a crazy ride doing this book. And I feel so grateful to all of you who've made it possible. Listen to this podcast or subscribe to the email or read the book. Like I just wouldn't have predicted any of this 10 years ago. I have no idea what the next 10 years will bring. I think Stoicism will still be relevant. You know, we have 2400 years, give or take, of it standing the test of time. I think that's gonna continue. I've changed a lot. The Stoic words, I think, still rang true. I wanted to present in an even better form in this new edition. You've had The Daily Stoic on your bedside. If you've marked it up, you dog eared your copies. You've carried it from apartment to apartment. I wanted to make something that was worth another decade. So that's what the Leather edition is about. It's signed, numbered. There's gold foil end pages. It's a special creme paper. There's a cool ribbon in there. By the way, if you want to sign page from the manuscript of this new edition, I'll send you that too. You can grab all that at dailystoic.com/ds10. Let me get into a little special episode we have for you this weekend. Enjoy.