This can be swiftly taught in very few words: virtue is the only good; there is no certain good without virtue; and virtue resides in our nobler part, which is the rational one. And what can this virtue be? True and steadfast judgment. For from this will arise every mental impulse, and by it every appearance that spurs our impulses will be rendered clear.
—Seneca, Moral Letters, 71.32
Think about someone you know who has character of granite. Why are they so dependable, trustworthy, excellent? Why do they have a sterling reputation?
You might see a pattern: consistency. They are honest not only when it’s convenient. They are not only there for you when it counts. The qualities that make them admirable come through in every action (“arise with every mental impulse”).
Why do we revere people like Theodore Roosevelt, for example? It isn’t because he was brave once, or courageous once, or tough once. It’s because those qualities are shot through every one of the stories about him. When he was young and weak, he became a boxer. When he was younger and frail, he went to a gym in his home, every day, for hours on end. When he was shattered by the loss of his wife and mother on the same day, he went to The Badlands and herded cattle. And on and on.
You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that—your impulses—reflect the actions you’ve taken. Choose wisely.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Philosophy isn’t a parlor trick or made for show. It’s not concerned with words, but with facts. It’s not employed for some pleasure before the day is spent, or to relieve the uneasiness of our leisure. It shapes and builds up the soul, it gives order to life, guides action, shows what should and shouldn’t be done—it sits at the rudder steering our course as we vacillate in uncertainties. Without it, no one can live without fear or free from care. Countless things happen every hour that require advice, and such advice is to be sought out in philosophy.
—Seneca, Moral Letters, 16.3
There is a story about Cato the Elder, whose great-grandson Cato the Younger became a towering figure in Roman life. One day Cato witnessed a fine oration from Carneades, a Skeptic philosopher, who waxed poetically on the importance of justice. Yet the next day Cato found Carneades arguing passionately about the problems with justice—that it was merely a device invented by society to create order. Cato was aghast at this kind of “philosopher,” who treated such a precious topic like a debate where one would argue both sides of an issue purely for show. What on earth was the point?
And so he lobbied the Senate to have Carneades sent back to Athens, where he could no longer corrupt the Roman youth with his rhetorical tricks. To a Stoic, the idea of idly discussing some issue—of believing or arguing two contradictory ideas—is an absurd waste of time, energy, and belief. As Seneca said, philosophy is not a fun trick. It’s for use—for life.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
You’ve endured countless troubles—all from not letting your ruling reason do the work it was made for—enough already!
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.26
How many things you fear have actually come to pass? How many times has anxiety driven you to behave in a way you later regret? How many times have you let jealousy or frustration or greed lead you down a bad road?
Letting our reason rule the day might seem like more work, but it saves quite a bit of trouble. As Ben Franklin‘s proverb put it! “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Your brain was designed to do this work. It was meant to separate what is important from what is senseless, to keep things in perspective, to only become troubled by that which is worth becoming troubled about. You only need to put it to use.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Many words have been spoken by Plato, Zeno, Chrysippus, Posidonius, and by a whole host of equally excellent Stoics. I’ll tell you how people can prove their words to be their own—by putting into practice what they’ve been preaching.
—Seneca, Moral Letters, 108.35; 38
One of the criticisms of Stoicism by modern translators and teachers is the amount of repetition. Marcus Aurelius, for example, has been dismissed by academics as not being original because his writing resembles that of others, earlier Stoics. This criticism misses the point.
Even before Marcus’s time, Seneca was well aware that there was a lot of borrowing and overlap among the philosophers. That’s because real philosophers weren’t concerned with authorship, only what worked. More important, they believed that what was said mattered less than what was done.
And this is as true now as it was then. You’re welcome to take all of the words of the great philosophers and use them to your own liking (they’re dead; they don’t mind). Feel free to tweak and edit and improve as you like. Adapt them to the real conditions of the real world. The way to prove that you truly understand what you speak and write, that you truly are original, is to put them into practice. Speak them with your actions more than anything else.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
When the problem arose for us whether habit or theory was better for getting virtue—if by theory is meant what teaches us correct conduct, and by habit we mean being accustomed to act according to this theory—Musonius thought habit to be more effective.
—Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 5.17.31-32, 5.19.1-2
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
There is no time to chop logic over whether our theories are correct. We’re dealing with the real world here. What matters is how you’re going to deal with this situation right in front of you and whether you’re going to be able to move past it and onto the next one. That’s not saying that anything goes—but we can’t forget that although theories are clean and simple, situations rarely are.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
We don’t abandon our pursuits because we despair of ever perfecting them.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2.37b
Psychologists speak of cognitive distortions—exaggerated thinking patterns that have a destructive impact on the life of the patient. One of the most common is known as all-or-nothing thinking (also referred to as splitting). Examples of this include thoughts like:
If you’re not with me, you’re against me.
So-and-so is all good/bad.
Because this wasn’t a complete success, it is a total failure.
This sort of extreme thinking is associated with depression and frustration. How could it not be? Perfectionism rarely begets perfection—only disappointment.
Pragmatism has no such hang-ups. It’ll take what it can get. That’s what Epictetus is reminding us. We’re never going to be perfect—if there is even such a thing. We’re human, after all. Our pursuits should be aimed at progress, however little that it’s possible for us to make.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Don’t tell yourself anything more than what the initial impressions report. It’s been reported to you that someone is speaking badly about you. This is the report—the report wasn’t that you’ve been harmed. I see that my son is sick—but not that his life is at risk. So always stay within your first impressions, and don’t add to them in your head—this way nothing can happen to you.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.49
At first, this can seem like the opposite of everything you’ve been taught. Don’t we cultivate our minds and critical thinking skills precisely so we don’t simply accept things at face value? Yes, most of the time. But sometimes this approach can be counterproductive.
What a philosopher also has is the ability, as Nietzsche put it, “to stop courageously, at the surface” and see things in plain, objective form. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, Stoics were “superficial,” he said, “out of profundity.” Today, while other people are getting carried away, that’s what you’re going to practice. A kind of straightforward pragmatism—seeing things as their initial impressions make them.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Do now what nature demands of you. Get right to it if that’s in your power. Don’t look around to see if people will know about it. Don’t await the perfection of Plato’s Republic, but he satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome as a small thing.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.29.(4)
Have you ever heard the expression “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough?” The idea is not the settle or compromise your standards, but rather not to become trapped by idealism.
The community organizer Saul Alinsky opens his book Rules for Radicals with a pragmatic but inspiring articulation of that idea:
“As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be—it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.”
There is plenty that you could do right now, today, that would make the world a better place. There are plenty of small steps that, were you to take them, would help move things forward. Don’t excuse yourself from doing them because the conditions aren’t right or because a better opportunity might come along soon. Do what you can, now. And when you’ve done it, keep it in perspective, don’t overblow the results. Shun both ego and excuse, before and after.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
