January 25 Daily Nugget; The Only Prize

As a sort of "Re-Boot" for The Leftover Pieces; Suicide Loss Conversations podcast after taking the last 6 weeks of 2024 "off" I am choosing to 'start over' this way .... please listen weekly to Down the Rabbit Hole episodes dropped at the start of each week and / or listen daily to these readings from The Daily Stoic-- nuggets as I call them -- of wisdom passed along from Ryan Holiday. Stephen Hanselman and the ancient Greek Philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. I hope you will do both. I hope you will consider journaling along with me. I hope it provides some inspiration, even motivation to keep going, to how we do what we do, to why we do what we do in moving forward 'after'...I hope it is a tool that you (like me) might find useful in your life after loss by suicide.

The following is an excerpt directly from the book -- they are not my words and are placed here as a sample to help you journal. The full book must be purchased to follow along all year. I am ONLY doing this in January (on the podcast).

TODAYS READING January 24 - THE ONLY PRIZE
Get your own copy of The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman**

“What’s left to be prized? This, I think—to limit our action or inaction to only what’s in keeping with the needs of our own preparation . . . it’s what the exertions of education and teaching are all about—here is the thing to be prized! If you hold this firmly, you’ll stop trying to get yourself all the other things. . . . If you don’t, you won’t be free, self-sufficient, or liberated from passion, but necessarily full of envy, jealousy, and suspicion for any who have the power to take them, and you’ll plot against those who do have what you prize. . . . But by having some self-respect for your own mind and prizing it, you will please yourself and be in better harmony with your fellow human beings, and more in tune with the gods—praising everything they have set in order and allotted you.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.16.2b–4a

Warren Buffett, whose net worth is approximately $65 billion, lives in the same house he bought in 1958 for $31,500. John Urschel, a lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, makes millions but manages to live on $25,000 a year. San Antonio Spurs star Kawhi Leonard gets around in the 1997 Chevy Tahoe he’s had since he was a teenager, even with a contract worth some $94 million. Why? It’s not because these men are cheap. It’s because the things that matter to them are cheap. Neither Buffett nor Urschel nor Leonard ended up this way by accident. Their lifestyle is the result of prioritiz