A New Year is a New Opportunity

<p>We are what our choices make us. Do we walk the fifteen minutes to work, or do we take an Uber? Hit the snooze button, or get up early? Do we have the difficult conversation, or hide from it? Is good enough <em>really </em>good enough? </p><p>Will you resolve to be better this year? Or just stay the same?</p><p>It’s your choice. And what you choose is who you are. </p><p>The Stoics believed that a beautiful life was the result of beautiful decisions. They also believed that the only way to freedom, to strength, to wisdom, was through continual effort.</p><p> “Progress is not achieved by luck or accident,” Epictetus said, “but by working on yourself daily.” </p><p>The question for you today, then—and really, for this upcoming year as well—comes down to one word: <em>When? </em></p><p>To quote Epictetus again: How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best of and for yourself?</p><p>Because life is short. The time is now. And gains are cumulative. </p><p>The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see results, the further you’ll end up going. </p><p>For the last two years, we have been doing what we call “challenges” and, on January 1st, we’re starting again with a new challenge for the new year—and for a new you. We’re calling it the <a href='https://dailystoic.com/challenge'><em>Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge</em></a>, and it’s designed to help you do exactly what Epictetus was talking about, and what we have spent so much time talking about in these emails: <em>Take action on becoming the person you know you’re capable of being. </em></p><p>It would be easy to let December bleed into January, to let 2020 meander and stultify just as you did with 2019. But that’s not what Stoicism is about. That’s not what <em>you</em> want to be about. Instead, we must seize the moment. We must seek out challenges. </p><p>That’s why we created this 21-day Stoic challenge: to do just that—to help you create a better life, and reshape a new <em>you </em>here at the start of a new decade that is set to reshape the