You Must Give Them This Gift

12/22/23 • 29 min

Theodore Roosevelt lived an incredible life. He was an author. A naturalist. A rancher. A police chief. A cowboy. A hunter. A governor. A soldier. A president. An explorer. A philanthropist. And that’s probably not even close to an exhaustive list. His life was full of activity. It was full of adventure. It was marked by triumph and adversity to overcome.
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You’re Made Not Born

There is a beautiful passage in The Velveteen Rabbit where the young rabbit asks one of the seasoned old toys in the playroom whether ‘becoming real’—the process of being changed by the love of a child—is something that has to do with how a toy is made. Is it about having certain parts, he asked? Does it require a certain makeup?

"Real isn't how you are made," says the toy horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

So yes, it’s a choice, but an unusual type of choice. It’s the decision, as we’ve talked about, to accept this process. To open yourself up to it. To let it change you.

We choose to have kids, and they choose to give us their love, to really love us. We play with them, we connect with them, we open ourselves to them and they to us. And then this process changes, transforms both of us in the most wonderful and magical of ways.

For those ready to accept the process, to open yourself up to it, we created the 2024 New Year New You Challenge. It’s a set of 21 actionable challenges—presented one per day—built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Our goal is to help you and your family make 2024 your best year yet.
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You Must Give Them This Gift

It’s worth telling your kids the story of Theodore Roosevelt to inspire them for the same reason that Theodore Roosevelt’s parents made sure he knew about the fascinating and inspiring lives of history. As one biographer observed, “the story of Theodore Roosevelt is the story of a small boy who read about great men and decided he wanted to be like them.”
So we’ll leave you today by putting a challenge in front of you. For the last four years, we have been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge—a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. These aren’t pie-in-the-sky, theoretical discussions but clear, immediate exercises and methods you can begin right now to spark the reinvention you’ve been trying for. We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works.

From these challenges, you will:

✓ Learn to stop procrastinating and avoiding the change you truly desire

✓ Build new habits that form a strong foundation for change

✓ Abandon the harmful habits that are dragging you down

✓ Strengthen your character, becoming a more virtuous version of yourself

And above all: You will find out just how much you are capable of.

Every morning, the email arrives in your inbox, and it presents you with a choice. You can do the harder thing, you can do the challenge. Or you can follow the drift of least resistance—you can open the email and leave it at that. Or worse...you can ignore this call right now and not sign up at all. Which way will you go?

The 2024 New Year New You Challenge officially begins on Monday, January 1st. Stop delaying. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW! Let’s go.

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