BONUS | 3 Practices to Improve Your Life In a Week

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

So I start each day with several practices as part of a morning routine, okay? One of the things I do at the end is a journaling practice where I answer three questions, right? Which I'll I'll share in just a moment. But going back to what I said about happiness before, and this kind of deep, what I call core happiness as opposed to junk happiness, the happiness that I think we're all

really looking for, not the happiness that we might think we're looking for. Those three ingredients that I mentioned, alignment, contentment, and control. I think they're all important. They're all equally important to me. But that control one I think is really, really important, particularly in the world in which we live today. When I say control, I'm talking about a sense of control. I'm not talking about controlling the external world, which is fundamentally in so many ways uncontrollable.

And a lot of people I think get really uh frustrated and disempowered by the state of the world, politics, the news headlines, you know, whatever it might be. And I understand that, but there are ways around that. And giving yourself a sense of control each day through your actions is a very powerful way to ground yourself and insulate you. And we know from the scientific research. People who have a strong sense of control over their lives. They're happier, they're healthier, they're better.

social relationships. They earn more money. There's there's a very strong relationship. So I have been teaching my patients for years about little five, ten, fifteen minute rituals. That they can do each morning that helps to ground them. And even when I'm in America now, I'm traveling on this book tour. I've been in LA for 10 days, I'm in Austin for a couple of days.

I bring a few things with me like my my coffee pot on my cafetiere. So I make coffee in the hotel room and in the five minutes that it brews, I do a little strength workout in my pajamas. It's something I do at home. And it sounds simple and it sounds a bit unnecessary, but it actually is very helpful for me because it It's a grounding practice that helps me feel, Oh, I've got a sense of control over my day. Right.

So those three questions that I ask myself each day, I think really speak to your point, which is this idea that that justice, virtue, being the person you want to be is an action. Yeah. Right. So I start off With my coffee, And the first question is, what is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? Okay, really simple question. You know, there's a lot of science on gratitude in terms of what it can do and you know, humans have this negativity bias that's kept us alive for many, many years.

But the truth is that we take in nine bits of negative information for every one bit of positive information. So I say to a lot of my patients that you do have a morning routine Even if you think you don't, the question is are you intentional about it? Right? If you wake up and in bed you scroll the news and Twitter and your work emails.

You're entitled to do that, but it's gonna have a consequence. If you infuse your brain with negativity first thing in the morning, is it any wonder that half an hour later you're a bit negative about the world, you're a bit reactive with your children or your partner? Sure. Right? I'm not saying that's the only thing, but if you put that input in first thing, of course the output 30 minutes later, one hour later, is gonna be hugely dependent on what you put in. So instead, if you

let's say start off with this practice of gratitude. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? It changes the focus and it's so simple. I can never say I don't have time to write that down. And I I really challenge anyone, and I'm sure your audience, Ryan,

Are already familiar with journaling and I'm sure much of your audience already are doing a journaling practice, right? But hopefully these three questions might give them a bit. So the first question is what is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? The second question is What is the most important thing I have to do today? Which I love. It's probably my favorite question. The third question is. which quality

Do I want to showcase to the world today? And I tell you, those three questions are are so simple, but they really change your relationship with your day and your relationship with yourself. Right. So that second question, what is the most important thing I have to do today? It's incredibly powerful because what I would see with patients and I've experienced myself is that these days,

we often only do the important things when everything else is done. Mm-hmm. But our to do sucked out all the energy and Yeah, but our to do lists are never done. Yeah. Right. And I've been heavily influenced by these regrets of the dying over the past few years. And I had a beautiful conversation with Bronny Ware, the Palace of Care Nurse.

On my podcast maybe three years ago and she wrote the book The Five Regrets of the Dying. And, you know, she basically said, At the end of people's lives, they all say the same things. I wish I'd worked less. I wish I spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So for me, it's like, okay.

That's what people say at the end of their lives, commonly. I've also, with my clinical experience, seen many, many patients. who kept thinking they could push through, work through evenings, work through weekends, And for many years I would kind of see a lot of autoimmune disease and in over ninety five percent of cases, when you do a a detailed history of their lives

you would see within the six months leading up to the diagnosis, heavy, heavy stress. I'm not saying it was the only cause, but a huge contributor to the onset of symptoms. And so I think well what is it about us as humans that We have to get six. before we start addressing the reality of life, or we have to wait till our deathbed to affect the reality of life. So for me, that question

It's a very simple way of focusing my attention on what is the most important thing I have to do today in a world where there are infinite things that we feel we have to do. And I think you may already know this, Ryan, given sort of all the research you've done over the years, but I learned from Greg McEwen a few years ago that when the the word priority came into the English language in the fifteen hundreds, that it was only a singular word.

Like it didn't exist in its core reform. And so I think many of us are drowning in our to-do list. And that question just cuts through all the noise that goes, What is the most important thing I have to do today? So in the week before I left for America,'cause I knew I was gonna be away for two weeks, which is quite a long time for me to be away from my wife and for two weeks. It's yeah, it

It's the longest I've been away from them in a long, long time. Okay. So I remember on the Monday of that week when I was answering that morning question. It was a work deadline, right? So that's what I put down. I wrote down, I've got to get this dead this blog back to Penguin that they need for the book, right? That doesn't mean that my relationship with my wife wasn't important that day, or my kids, or my other work. No. But the focus that day was.

That's the most important thing I have to get done. On the Tuesday in the morning, again, this takes minutes to do, it was, you know what, my wife is away at the weekend. I'm gonna be away for two weeks. I must make sure when the children are in bed that I spent some quality time with my wife. On the Wednesday, I remember clearly because I was working from home that day, And I s I thought to myself, and this is what I commonly put down on working from home days.

I put down at four PM when the children walk through the door from school, the most important thing I have to do today is make sure my laptop is shut and my phone's in a different room so I can be fully present with what they have to tell me. Right. So it's a very simple question that just helps me focus each day on

Actually, you know what? That's the most important thing. That's the most important thing. And I would challenge Ryan, your audience, and say, listen, if there's nothing else you take from this conversation but just answer that one question each day, And you then act. on what you write down, it is inconceivable to me that your life will not feel different in seven days.

There are always things for most of us that we haven't done. Yeah. Right. So your brain is hardwired. So at the end of the day, oh God, I didn't get that done. I didn't get that done. I didn't get that done. Okay. Okay. You need to do something. You need to take action each day in some way to to sort of insulate yourself against that. There are always gonna be things that you don't do. Yeah. But you identify the one thing, you do it.

And it means you start to change your relationship with yourself because you start to feel like, yeah, I'm a winner, like I'm winning each day. That third question, which quality do I want to showcase to the world today? What I love about that is.

We often think that the way we are is the way we have to remain. And it's simply not. Most of what we do each day is just repetition. We're repeating our past behaviors, our past thought patterns, and we can change that. With intentionality. So for me in the morning, if I spend a minute going, what quality do I want to showcase to the world today? Okay, like today when I wrote it in my journal, it was Compassion.

I want to show the world today the quality of compassion. That means I'm just that little bit more likely when I come across maybe an email that I don't like from my team or someone who pulls in front of me if I'm driving or whatever it might be. Yes I could react, but the fact that I've said this morning I wanna show the world the quality of compassion, it makes it a little bit more likely that I'm not gonna react.

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say Appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years. It it's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything, I just wanted to say thank you.