Do away with the opinion I am harmed, and the harm is cast away too. Do away with being harmed, and harm disappears.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.7
A word can have multiple meanings. One usage can be harsh and another might be completely innocent. The same word can mean a cruel slur or a pile of sticks. In the same way, something said sarcastically differs drastically from something that was pointed and mean.
The interpretation of a remark or a word has an immense amount of power. It’s the difference between a laugh and hurt feelings. The difference between a fight breaking out and two people connecting.
This is why it is so important to control the biases and lenses we bring to our interactions. When you hear or see something, which interpretation do you jump to? What is your default interpretation of someone else’s intentions?
If being upset or hurt is something you’d like to experience less often, then make sure your interpretations of others’ words make that possible. Choose the right inference from someone’s actions or from external events, and it’s a lot more likely that you’ll have the right response.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Pay close attention in conversation to what is being said, and to what follows from any action. In the action, immediately look for the target, in words, listen closely to what’s being signaled.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.4
Through the work of the psychologist Albert Ellis, Stoicism has reached millions of people through what’s known as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). As a form of a therapy, CBT helps patients identify destructive patterns in their thoughts and behavior so they can, over time, direct and influence them in a more positive direction.
Of course, Marcus Aurelius had no formal training in psychology, but his words here are as important as any doctor’s. He’s asking you to become an observer of your own thoughts and the actions those thoughts provoke. Where do they come from? What biases do they contain? Are they constructive or destructive? Do they cause you to make mistakes or engage in behavior you later regret? Look for patterns; find where cause meets effect.
Only when this is done can negative behavior patterns be broken; only then can real life improvements be made.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Nothing will ever befall me that I will receive with gloom or a bad disposition. I will pay my taxes gladly. Now, all the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.
—Seneca, Moral Letters, 96.2
As your income taxes come due, you might be like many people—complaining at what you have to fork over to the government. Forty percent of everything I make goes to these people? And for what?!
First off, taxes go to a lot of programs and services you almost certainly take for granted. Second, you think you’re so special? People have been complaining about their taxes for thousands of years, and now they’re dead. Get over it. Third, this is a good problem to have. Far better than, say, making so little there is nothing left to pay the government or living in an anarchy and having to pay for every basic service in a struggle against nature.
But more important, income taxes are not the only taxes you pay in life. They are just the financial form. Everything we do has a toll attached to it. Waiting around is a tax on traveling. Rumors and gossip are the taxes that come from acquiring a public persona. Disagreements and occasional frustration are taxes placed on even the happiest of relationships. Theft is a tax on abundance and having things that other people want. Stress and problems are tariffs that come attached to success. And on and on and on.
There are many forms of taxes in life. You can argue with them, you can go to great—but ultimately futile—lengths to evade them, or you can simply pay them and enjoy the fruits of what you get to keep.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Believe me, it’s better to produce the balance-sheet of your own life than that of the grain market.
—Seneca, On The Brevity Of Life, 18.3b
The things that some people manage to be experts in: fantasy sports, celebrity trivia, derivatives and commodities markets, thirteenth-century hygiene habits of the clergy.
We can get very good at what we’re paid to do, or adept at a hobby we wish we could be paid to do. Yet our own lives, habits, and tendencies might be a mystery to us.
Seneca was writing this important reminder to his father-in-law, who, as it happened, was for a time in charge of Rome’s granary. But then his position was revoked for political purposes. Who really cares, Seneca was saying, now you can focus that energy on your inner life.
At the end of your time on this planet, what expertise is going to be more valuable—your understanding of matters of living and dying, or your knowledge of the ’87 Bears? Which will help your children more—your insight into happiness and meaning, or that you followed breaking political news every day for thirty years?
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Don’t act grudgingly, selfishly, without due diligence, or to be a contrarian. Don’t overdress your thought in fine language. Don’t be a person of too many words and too many deeds…. Be cheerful, not wanting outside help or the relief others might bring. A person needs to stand on their own, not be propped up.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.5
In most areas of life, the saying “Less is more” stands true. For instance, the writers we admire tend to be masters of economy and brevity. What they leave out is just as important—sometimes more important—than what they leave in. There is a poem by Philip Levine titled “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do.” And from Hamlet, the best of all—the retort from Queen Gertrude after a long, rhetorical speech from Polonius: “More matter with less art,” she tells him. Get to the point!
Imagine the emperor of Rome, with his captive audience and unlimited power, telling himself not to be a person of “too many words and too many deeds.” Let that be a reminder the next time you feel self-indulgent or a little full of yourself, the next time you feel like impressing people.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Atreus: Who would reject the flood of fortune’s gifts? Thyestes: Anyone who has experienced how easily they flow back.
—Seneca, Thyestes, 536
Thyestes is one of Seneca‘s darkest and most disturbing plays. Even two thousand years later it remains a classic of the revenge genre. Without spoiling it, the quote above comes from the scene in which Atreus is attempting to lure his hated brother Thyestes into a cruel trap by offering him tempting and generous gifts. At first, Thyestes declines, to the complete bafflement of his enemy.
We are typically surprised when someone turns down an expensive gift or a position of honor or success. General William T. Sherman emphatically rejected offers to run for president of the United States, saying at one point: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” If his friend Ulysses S. Grant had made such a “Sherman-esque statement” (as such rejections are now known), Grant certainly would have preserved his own legacy from the disastrous turn of events it suffered.
Despite his initial misgivings, Thyestes is ultimately tempted and persuaded to accept “fortune’s gifts,” … which turned out to be a ruse hiding devastating tragedy. Not every opportunity is fraught with danger, but the play was intended to remind us that our attraction toward what is new and shiny can lead us into serious trouble.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.17.1
Of all the Stoics, Epictetus is the closest one to a true teacher. He had a school. He hosted classes. In fact, his wisdom is passed down to us through a student who took really good lecture notes. One of the things that frustrated Epictetus about philosophy students—and has frustrated all college professors since time began—is how students claim to want to be taught but really secretly believe they already know everything.
The reality is that we’re all guilty of thinking we know it all, and we’d all learn more if we could set that attitude aside. As smart or successful as we may be, there is always someone who is smarter, more successful, and wiser than us. Emerson put it well: “Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”
If you want to learn, if you want to improve your life, seeking out teachers, philosophers, and great books is a good start. But this approach will only be effective if you’re humble and ready to let go of opinions you already have.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
It isn’t events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgments about them.
—Epictetus, Enchiridion, 5
The samurai swordsman Musashi made a distinction between our “perceiving eye” and our “observing eye.” The observing eye sees what is. The perceiving eye sees what things supposedly mean. Which one do you think causes us the most anguish?
An event is inanimate. It’s objective. It simply is what it is. That’s what our observing eye sees.
This will ruin me. How could this have happened? Ugh! It’s so-and-so’s fault. That’s our perceiving eye at work. Bring disturbance with it and then blaming it on the event.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
