Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can’t actually influence is wasted – self-indulgent and self-destructive. So much power – ours, and other people’s – is frittered away in this manner. To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway, that is also a choice – a choice that is up to us.
If the breaking day sees someone proud, The ending day sees them brought low. No one should put too much trust in triumph, No one should give up hope of trials improving. Clotho mixes one with the other and stops Fortune from resting, spinning every fate around. No one has had so much divine favor That they could guarantee themselves tomorrow. God keeps our lives hurtling on, Spinning in a whirlwind.” – SENECA, THYESTES, 613.
Face the symptoms. Cure the disease. Ego makes it so hard – it’s easier to delay, to double down, to deliberately avoid seeing the changes we need to make in our lives. But change begins by hearing the criticism and the words of the people around you. Even if those words are mean spirited, angry, or hurtful. It means weighing them, discarding the ones that don’t matter, and reflecting on the ones that do.
What thrives online is not the writing that reflects anything close to the reality in which you and I live. Nor does it allow for the kind of change that will create the world we wish to live in.
Placed in some situation that seems unchangeable and undeniably negative, we can turn it into a learning experience, a humbling experience, a chance to provide comfort to others.
You know what is a better response to an attack or a slight or something you don’t like? Love. That’s right, love.
What happened yesterday – what happened five minutes ago – is the past. We can reignite and restart whenever we like. Why not do it right now?
We tell ourselves that we’ll get started once the conditions are right, or once we’re sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.
A true student is like a sponge. Absorbing what goes on around him, filtering it, latching on to what he can hold. A student is self-critical and self-motivated, always trying to improve his understanding so that he can move on to the next topic, the next challenge. A real student is also his own teacher and his own critic. There is no room for ego there.
Without virtue and training, Aristotle observed, “it is hard to bear the results of good fortune suitably.
The ways this separation manifests itself negatively are immense: We can’t work with other people if we’ve put up walls. We can’t improve the world if we don’t understand it or ourselves. We can’t take or receive feedback if we are incapable of or uninterested in hearing from outside sources. We can’t recognize opportunities – or create them – if instead of seeing what is in front of us, we live inside our own fantasy.
What is it? Why does it matter? Do I need it? Do I want it? What are the hidden costs? Will I look back from the distant future and be glad I did it? If I never knew about it at all – if the request was lost in the mail, if they hadn’t been able.
A wise man can make use of whatever comes his way, he said, but is in want of nothing. “On the other hand,” he said, “nothing is needed by the fool for he does not understand how to use anything but he is in want of everything.” There is no better definition of a Stoic: to have but not want, to enjoy without needing.
Stoicism as the ideal “personal operating system.
It’s important to connect the so-called temptation with its actual effects. Once you understand that indulging might actually be worse than resisting, the urge begins to lose its appeal. In this way, self-control becomes the real pleasure, and the temptation becomes the regret.
Accept only what is true. 2. Work for the common good. 3. Match our needs and wants with what is in our control. 4. Embrace what nature has in store for us.
Have you taken the time to get clarity about who you are and what you stand for? Or are you too busy chasing unimportant things, mimicking the wrong influences, and following disappointing or unfulfilling or nonexistent paths?
That’s what Seneca is reminding us. As someone who was one of the richest men in Rome, he knew firsthand that money only marginally changes life. It doesn’t solve the problems that people without it seem to think it will. In fact, no material possession will. External things can’t fix internal issues.
Remember: even what we get for free has a cost, if only in what we pay to store it – in our garages and in our minds.
To quote Fight Club again, “We buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.