I’ve been reading Ryan Holiday since like 2005. He’s on a short list of writers that, even if I don’t expect to like a given work, I give them the benefit of the doubt. His big project a few years ago were works on Stoicism, and this interest in practical philosophy led to a couple of books and even a journal product. I actually use the journal - the prompts help me with the hardest part of journaling, even if my response are monosyllabic somedays.

An invite to the challenge was sent out to the email list in late September and I immediately signed up. There was also a link to sign up for the challenge using the SPAR! app, which I also signed up for. I don’t know if I’ll ever use the app again, but it did factor in my attendance to the daily tasks, and I “won” some money as a result, so it’s worth mentioning. There was a daily email with details about the day’s task, and usually a link to a short audio clip of Ryan talking about the day’s task and what it means to him.

There were 30 individual tasks so I’m not going to belabor all of them. Some really helped or touched on things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. My favorite was calling 3+ people you consider family and letting them know that. That was a good day. Another one that was really useful and enjoyable was a simple role model exercise; the themes that popped off the page of traits that I admired in these folks helped me clarify the things I like about myself, and want to emphasize.

My least favorites were a water only fast day and a cold shower. 20 plus years of Yom Kippur and having been cold wet tired and hungry a lot in my youth and I can tell you they are still not fun when you try them. More over, I’m not a believer in voluntary hardship as some kind of like, crucible out of which you are better.

Mainly, hard things are just hard, and lying to yourself about how they make you better doesn’t really do much good.

If there’s one great thing I got from this it’s a better ability to see things as they are and not as I would wish them to be. The thing I still have the most difficulty with is a concept called amor fati , which loosely translates to “loving one’s fate.” I can accept and even tolerate a great many things, but going further and loving every single thing that happens seems to be stupid to me.

The main thing about a challenge like this is that there’s clear directions. It was a good experience and some of the tasks and ideas are things that I will continue to use now that it’s over.

If you want more information or materials from the challenge, feel free to hit me up.