Today is the LAST day to sign up to join me in The 2026 Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It’s one of my favorite things I do each year, and I really enjoy interacting with everyone in the challenge. Learn more below—would love to have you join us!
A lot happened in 2025. I don’t just mean in the world, although obviously it did. I mean in my life.
But I think that, years from now, I probably won’t remember most of it.
The news stories will recede into the background. I’ll forget exactly if this was the year that I put a book out or where it landed on the bestseller list.
All those things—the concerns, the anxieties, the thrills, the benchmarks—will blur together the way they do every other year. What do I really remember about 2015 or 2022?
On the Daily Stoic podcast, Jesse Itzler told me about this concept of the Misogi. Borrowed from an ancient Japanese purification ritual, the modern Misogi is about committing to one epic, year-defining challenge—something so significant, so hard, so memorable, that decades later, when you think back, you’ll instantly remember: that was the year I ___________________.
When I look back on 2025, I’m going to think, that was the year I ran the original marathon in Greece. By myself. In the middle of July.
I’ll remember the training, running in as many different environments and conditions as possible to prepare for the heat, hills, and distance I’d face in Greece. The long runs up switchbacks in Palm Springs, along California’s Santa Ana River, on mountain trails in Utah (where I was warned to look out for a very protective mother moose and her two calves), around Lady Bird Lake in Austin, and through the eerie elephant graveyard of the burned-out forest of Bastrop State Park. I’ll remember running in 105-degree heat. Running on steep inclines. Running before dawn, at altitude, on cement, gravel, and sand. I’ll remember training at the Acropolis, in Ithaca, and up Mount Olympus.
And, of course, I’ll remember everything about July 13, 2025. Standing at the starting point of the original Marathon route at 6:51 a.m. Being the only one out there running the course. Running on sidewalks, shoulders of busy roads, past shopping centers and autobody shops, alongside freeways, and through underpasses.
I’ll remember, three and a half miles in, passing a giant mound surrounded by trees—the burial mound of the 192 Athenians who died at Marathon, to whom we owe basically all of Western civilization.
Mostly what I’ll remember though is that I set out to do a hard thing and then I did it. I’ll forever remember that when I ran into a complete wall—both my mind and body begging to quit—I held on, I didn’t quit, I gutted it out, I finished. (Videos here and here about the full experience of training for and running the original marathon and what it taught me).
As we’ve said before, doing hard things is good for you. Challenging yourself is good for you. Because life is hard and life is challenging.
Among other Misogi challenges, Jesse has run 100-mile races, completed Ultramans, biked across America, and hiked 44 miles rim-to-rim-to-rim across the Grand Canyon. I actually don’t think the challenge needs to be physical. Quitting drinking might be what you remember about 2012. Or reading the Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson is a pretty good Misogi. Learning a language or repairing a relationship could be a hard thing that defines your year.
I’ll give a minor one that already stands out to me from 2025: One of the early challenges of the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge was to quit a bad habit. I found that I was checking/using Reddit too much. It wasn’t good for my productivity. It wasn’t good for my mental health. So I decided I would quit for the New Year. It took some habit reformation, but I did it. And it sort of snuck up on me yesterday that I hadn’t used the site in a year!
Considering that I remember vividly that December 2011 was the year I quit drinking soda, I’m guessing this will be another date that sticks with me. In fact, I was just proudly telling my kids about this the other day, that I had made a decision fifteen years ago to stop something and I had held to it ever since. I was telling them that it taught me that I was in charge of my habits and not the other way around and that even if there weren’t any health benefits to cutting that out of my diet, just learning how to do it would have been valuable enough.
I love this idea of the Misogi because it’s about taking control of your life and the experiences that will, in the end, define it. It’s about being able to one day look back and remember all that you did, rather than all that was done to you.
This is really the idea with the New Year, New You Challenge. Some of the challenges are physical. Some are mental. Some spur you to investigate and overcome internal adversities, others have you take on external ones. Some of the challenges are completed in a single day and others over the course of the year. But in each and every case, the challenges present an opportunity to prove who is in charge. To do the harder thing. To take on the challenge. To not follow the drift of least resistance. To get in the habit of choosing the more difficult option.
Seneca talked about how the only people he pitied were those who hadn’t been through adversity or experienced difficulty. “You have passed through life without an opponent,” he said. “No one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”
It’s important that you do hard things. That you seek out challenges and opponents. That every year—starting with 2026—you do something really, really hard.
Something year-defining.
Something you’ll be proud of.
Something you’ll remember.
Something that will make your life better.
Something that will make YOU better.
That’s what Stoicism is—physical and mental challenges we subject ourselves to so that when life tests us, we can say as Epictetus said we need to be able to say: “This is what I trained for.”
This is why every year since 2018, I’ve started the year with The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It’s 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges, weekly live calls with me, and a private community of people—CEOs, writers, artists, parents, professors, students, founders, athletes—from around the world, all doing hard things together.
Today is the LAST DAY to sign up to join us in the 2026 Challenge.
We create a new challenge every year and to meet the unique demands of 2026, this year’s challenge is 21 days of challenges built on the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. It’s over 20,000 words of exclusive content that I don’t post anywhere else. Get all the details here—would love to have you join us.
The 2026 Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge starts TOMORROW. Learn more and sign up NOW at dailystoic.com/challenge!