You Need To Quit These 14 Habits In 2025 (From The Stoics)

• At the beginning of a new year, we reflect on our goals and habits.
• Stoic philosophy emphasizes the elimination of the non-essential.
• We have the power to control our opinions and responses.
• The essence of stoicism is mastering oneself and letting go of regrets.
• Focusing on what we can control is key to personal growth.

At the beginning of a new year, we look at all the things we want to start doing this year：habits we want to build, practices we want to start, routines we want to develop. This is great! A new year is a chance for a new you—new things that you can start doing.

But stoic philosophy is also a philosophy of elimination. Seneca started each year by plunging into the freezing Tiber River. This was a way of washing himself clean. He thought it was like a metaphorical cleansing.

Mark Sere says that the essential question in all things, but especially at the end of the year, is to ask yourself: "Is what I'm doing essential?" He says because so much of what we do is inessential or, worse, destructive and harmful.

So here, looking at a new year, let's ask ourselves: What habits, what practices, what routines are we going to let expire at the end of 2024? With their elimination, who will we allow ourselves to become in 2025?

That's what stoic philosophy is: looking at ourselves in the mirror and asking which parts of myself should I keep, which parts should I continue to develop, and which parts do I need to stop.

So here at the end of a new year, let's think about what habits, practices, and routines we're going to stop, we’re going to eliminate, so there can be a better and new you in 2025.

Nobody likes getting up early. Not even Marcus Aurelius! In Meditations, he talks about trying to get up early, and he has this fantastic conversation with himself. He says, "But it's warmer under the covers!"

And then he asks, “Is that what you were put here to do? To huddle under the blankets and be warm?" He says we're all put here for a purpose—we have a nature, we have a duty, and we have to go and do that.

The morning is the best time to get stuff done. That's why the Stoics tried to get up early. I say tried, because they didn't always do it, and it wasn't always easy. They didn’t always like it, but they tried to do it anyway.

Marcus Aurelius had a lot to complain about. A lot goes wrong. He doesn't meet with the good fortune he deserves. He's betrayed, misled; people lie to him, and people try to take things from him. Yet, nowhere in Meditations, his private diary that no one is going to read, do we see him complain about any of this.

He doesn't complain about being unappreciated, abused, or the stress he experiences. He doesn’t do any of it because, as he says in Meditations, we should never be overheard complaining—not even to ourselves.

People don't seem to understand this one really important thing: You have a superpower. You have the power, as Marcus Aurelius says, to have no opinion.

He says, “Remember, events and things are not asking to be judged by you.” You don't have to have an opinion about it. You can see it as it is. You can think nothing of it. You don't have to label it, categorize it, or say it’s fair or unfair, positive or negative. Just accept it as it is.

The Stoics try to see the world objectively. They try not to insert opinions or judgments on top of things, because this is the path to peace and the path to wisdom.

Being agnostic in this way allows you to do what you need to do rather than wasting time labeling, judging, and having opinions about things that are not up to you.

You can't learn that which you think you already know. That's Epictetus! He was sent the best and the brightest students from all over the Roman Empire. But he understood that conceit was the enemy.

The problem with being a know-it-all is that it's true: It’s impossible for you to know anything more if you come to learning from a place of humility. If you understand that you know very little, then it becomes impossible for you to learn much more.

Focus on what you don’t know. Focus on how much there is left to learn. Always stay a student. That’s how you get better, smarter, and wiser!

The essence of stoic philosophy is being in command of yourself. Seneca says, "No one is fit to rule who is not first master of themselves."

The reason we’re not masters of ourselves is that we give that power over to someone or something else: drugs, alcohol, codependency.

To the Stoics, it was about being in control of yourself—not your urges, not your desires. Seneca defines poverty not as having too little but as wanting more.

We battle our addictions, we try to get clean, and we practice discipline so we can be fit to be good parents, leaders, and bosses. If we’re not in command of ourselves, if something else is ruling our life, that is not a good place to be.

You have to stop doing less than your best!

There’s a great story about Jimmy Carter. He was being interviewed because he wanted to get a job as a naval officer. After he talked about his grades, tests, and what he learned, the interviewer asked him, "Did you always do your best?"

Carter had to answer him honestly. He said, "No, I guess I didn't always do my best." The man then looked at him and asked, "Why not?" He left the room, and that question haunted Carter for the rest of his life.

Why didn't he always do his best? As you look back on your own life, on last year and the years before, why didn't you always give your best?

This year, we have to do our best at whatever we’re doing! We have to give everything that we have. That is one of the things that we control.

We don’t control whether we succeed, we don’t control whether we win, or whether we get recognized for what we do—but we do control whether we do our best, whether we give everything we have.

As the great Steve Prefontaine said, "Giving less than your best is to cheat the gift." Not just the gift of your talents, but also the gift of the time in front of you—the life you’ve been given.

Look, it’s a bad use of your creativity. The time you spend imagining what might happen, the conversations you’re making up in your head, the things you think people are thinking about you—it's a bad way to deploy your creativity.

You’re using it to make yourself miserable, imagining terrible scenarios, but notice you’re never imagining things going well, people liking you.

You're putting your imagination to work on your anxiety, self-consciousness, and doubt. It’s just not a good use of it.

The Stoics would say our mind is an incredibly powerful thing. How are you going to deploy it?

Are you going to use it to torture yourself, or are you going to use it to move yourself forward?

You have to quit holding on to stuff. I don’t mean physical possessions, although you should stop hanging onto those too.

The Stoics would say that you have to let go, right? It already happened; it’s done. Grudges and regrets aren’t helping you.

There's a great New Year’s tradition where people write down everything they’re hanging on to that they regret or are mad about, then on New Year’s, they light it on fire and watch it dissolve into smoke.

The Stoics would say that holding on to things, regretting things, or clinging to grudges or pain isn’t serving you, it’s not serving the world, and it’s certainly not going to make you who you’re capable of being this year.

So let's start the new year by letting go of things.

I don't have goals; I have zero goals. I'm not trying to sell a certain number of copies; I’m not trying to write a certain number of books. I’m not trying to beat anyone. I don’t really care about the bestseller list.

I just focus on doing the thing I like doing. Each day, I try my best. I put in my hours, I focus on what I control.

I control my effort, my energy, the brain power that I put into it, and everything else is not really up to me, so I leave that where it is.

My goals are to be the best that I’m capable of being, to realize my potential. That’s what I wake up and do.

Focusing on specific metrics or accomplishments feels limiting; it’s like putting a ceiling on it. My job is to do my best. To do the thing.

Let the chips fall where they may. I don’t need goals as my motivation. That’s not what I focus on.

Rit Satty once said to me, “You don’t owe anyone a response.” His point was that just because an unsolicited email comes in doesn’t mean you have to reply.

Early in my life, I believed in inbox zero, but as I’ve gotten older and more successful, I value other things.

I want to reply, of course, and there are people I get back to quickly—but I’ve had to realize that my preconceived notion of being caught up is actually preventing me from getting caught up on what’s truly important.

Eisenhower has that decision matrix about what’s urgent versus what’s important. Sometimes, things that come in feel urgent but aren’t really important.

As you tackle those, you’re ignoring what’s really important. Don't look for the third thing.

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, “Okay, you did something good; someone benefited from it." That's one and two. The third thing, he says, is asking to be recognized for it—asking to be thanked, paid in return.

He says, “No, you have to stop looking for the third thing.” What do we control?

We control what we do. We don’t control whether people appreciate it, understand it, or whether it’s liked in its own time.

We only control what we do. If you want more resources or happiness this year, one of the things you can do is stop looking for credit, attention, recognition, or compensation in return.

Instead, focus on: Did you do your best? Did you give everything you had? Did you make a positive contribution?

If you did, then you have been paid back. You have been recognized—you did what your nature demanded.

The Stoics would say: You did your job, and that's enough.

Show me who you spend time with, and I will show you who you are.

The great expression holds true. We become like the people we spend the most time with. But I think it's true not just for people but for information.

What does your information diet look like? Who are you spending time with? Who are you giving access to your brain?

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says our soul is dyed by the color of our thoughts. We’re colored, dyed by the inputs and things that we allow access to.

If you spend all your time on social media, following breaking political news or inconsequential things, you’re going to become dyed and changed by that.

But if you spend time with the wisest and smartest people who ever lived, if you immerse yourself in great books and ideas, you can become like that too.

When people find out you’re a runner, they always ask, “Are you training for a marathon?”

The answer is no. I’m training for this right now. Running every day—that’s the marathon.

Running when you don't want to, running when you're tired, running when it’s cold, running when it’s hot, pushing yourself—that's the marathon!

Seneca would say we treat the body rigorously so that it’s not disobedient to the mind. We’re training ourselves; we’re training our muscles.

We're developing the ability to push ourselves. That’s the ultimate race. The competition is with yourself—competing against the desire not to do it.

If you're competing with anyone, it's against all those doing nothing and staying on the couch. Epictetus' great line was to "Run races where winning is up to you."

The race against yourself, the desire not to do it, the impulse to stay on the couch—that’s where we challenge ourselves. That’s the race you’re doing every single day.

According to the Stoic Seneca, all fools in life have one thing in common: they are always getting ready to start. They delay living because they think they have the future.

They say, “I'm not ready," or “I'm going to do it later.” They never say to themselves, “I’m never going to do it.”

No one knows what the future holds. No one knows how much time we have left. Life is happening right now, this second.

In fact, the time that ticks by, the Stoics say, belongs to death. It’s dead; it can never be recovered.

So don’t be a fool; don’t delay: You could be good today!

Marcus Aurelius reminds us, "Instead, you choose tomorrow."