Our pursuits should be aimed at progress, however little that it’s possible for us to make.
What matters is that you learn how to manage yourself and others, before your industry eats you alive.
The same goes for us. When a bad habit reveals itself, counteract it with a commitment to a contrary virtue. For instance, let’s say you find yourself procrastinating today – don’t dig in and fight it. Get up and take a walk to clear your head and reset instead. If you find yourself saying something negative or nasty, don’t kick yourself. Add something positive and nice to qualify the remark.
Oppose established habits, and use the counterforce of training to get traction and make progress. If you find yourself cutting corners during a workout or on a project, say to yourself: “OK, now I am going to go even further or do even better.
Since habit is such a powerful influence, and we’re used to pursuing our impulses to gain and avoid outside our own choice, we should set a contrary habit against that, and where appearances are really slippery, use the counterforce of our training.” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.12.6.
It’s a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to.
The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather – no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make someone like you.
Seneca’s advice: We don’t need to buck the crowd on every single little thing. We don’t need to be different for the sake of being different – petulant rebellion can be its own kind of defense mechanism. But if we do, on the outside, look the same as everyone else, we better make damn sure that on the inside everything is different. That we are truly who we want to be, how we know deep down it feels right to be.
This moment, the present you’re neglecting – whether it’s an opportunity to do something risky and fun, or the call to do something harrowing but right – is all you have.
Ego tells us that meaning comes from activity, that being the center of attention is the only way to matter.
The great manager and business thinker Peter Drucker says that it’s not enough simply to want to learn. As people progress, they must also understand how they learn and then set up processes to facilitate this continual education. Otherwise, we are dooming ourselves to a sort of self-imposed ignorance.
It doesn’t matter if somebody is from Mexico or Syria or Sri Lanka, or if they’re walking away from the wreckage of a failed business or a successful niche that got stale. It doesn’t matter if every letter of the law was followed, if they were perfect angels – what counts is that they’re doing something. They are controlling what happens to them, not the other way around. They are making a big bet. One that takes real cojones.
To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.
Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? Nope. Then get back to work!
Will you hear the wisdom of the world or drown it out with more noise?
You control what every external event means to you personally.
What matters is the moment – sometimes even less than a moment. Do you do it? Or are you too scared?
When we are young, or when our cause is young, we feel so intensely – passion like our hormones runs strongest in youth – that it seems wrong to take it slow. This is just our impatience. This is our inability to see that burning ourselves out or blowing ourselves up isn’t going to hurry the journey along.
Foresee the worst to perform the best.
Fear does this. It keeps us from our destiny. It holds us back. It freezes us. It gives us a million reasons why. Or why not.