On Renewing Positive Habits
A chance post from Mark Zuckerberg's time machine inspired me to rekindle a habit from six years ago that helped me navigate one of the busiest years of my life and is worth going back to.
Dear Friends,
At the beginning of 2018, Ryan Holiday's “The Daily Stoic” was my companion for the first post of the year. Each day has a short passage from a classic text and a page of exposition about the themes of the passage.
I was in my second term as Chair of the Libertarian National Committee, in a campaign for Mayor of Phoenix in a special election prompted by the previous Mayor running for Congress, and working six days a week as Vice President and General Counsel of Consolidated Auto Sales and Family Loan Company. Valerie was pregnant with our fourth child, Zane, the two older ones were in school, and Ava was our baby.
In the subsequent years, much has changed. Some changes were tragic, others joyful. Some changes were expected, others shocking. Some changes were large, and others small.
A small change was that at some point I stopped the daily practice of reading a piece of wisdom and taking the time to reflect and write down my own thoughts on how it was relevant to what I was experiencing.
A new year is an opportunity to change. Large resolutions often fail, but small habits adopted consistently can lead to results beyond our own understanding of our potential.
In 2024 the first change I am going to make is to start reading the Daily Stoic again the first thing every morning and taking the time to record my thoughts.
What habits are you starting (or restarting) as we enter 2024?
Happy New Year!
Yours truly,
Nick
P.S. If you want to see my original Facebook post from New Year’s Day 2018, it’s publicly available.