The Most Important Ritual You Can Practice This Year

Why did Marcus Aurelius spend those precious hours in his tent, writing by the lamplight, even on the nights and mornings he strained under the burdens of his war-time duties? It wasn’t for our benefit. No, he never expected Meditations would see an audience. He was writing for himself, to himself, as a way to practice the principles of the philosophy we are still following today. He was journaling as a means of self-improvement as much as he was of self-expression. As Tim Ferriss has said of his daily journaling habit, “I don’t journal to ‘be productive.’ I don’t do it to find great ideas, or to put down prose I can later publish. The pages aren’t intended for anyone but me...I’m trying to figure things out...I’m just caging my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day.”It’s been exactly one year since we released The Daily Stoic Journal--our attempt to create a modern, accessible (and beautiful) medium through which to practice Stoicism. Epictetus said that everyday we should keep our philosophical aphorisms and exercises at hand, that we should “write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.”That was the idea behind The Daily Stoic Journal. O…