From the very beginning, make it your practice to say to every harsh impression, “you are an impression and not at all what you appear to be.” Next, examine and test it by the rules you possess, the first and greatest of which is this—whether it belongs to the things in our control or not in our control, and if the latter, be prepared to respond, “It is nothing to me.”
—Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.5
In an overly quantified world of policies and processes, some are swinging back in the other direction. Bold leaders will “trust their gut.” A spiritual guru will say that it’s important to “let your body guide you.” A friend trying to help us with a difficult decision might ask, “What feels right here?”
These approaches to decision making contradict voluminous case studies in which people’s instincts have led them right into trouble. Our senses are wrong all the time! As animals subjected to the slow force of evolution, we have developed all sorts of heuristics, biases, and emotional responses that might have worked well on the savannah but are totally counterproductive in today’s world.
Part of Stoicism is cultivating the awareness that allows you to step back and analyze your own sense, question their accuracy, and proceed only with the positive and constructive ones. Sure, it’s tempting to throw discipline and order to the wind and go with what feels right—but if our many youthful regrets are any indication, what feels right right now doesn’t always stand up well over time. Hold your senses suspect. Again, trust, but always verify.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
When it comes to money, where we feel our clear interest, we have an entire art where the tester uses many means to discover the worth … just as we give great attention to judging things that might steer us badly. But when it comes to our own ruling principle, we yawn and doze off, accepting any appearance that flashes by without counting the cost.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 1.20.8;11
When coins were much more rudimentary, people had to spend a lot of time testing them to confirm the currency they’d just received was genuine. The Greek word dokimazein means “to assay” or check the quality of a mineral ore. Merchants were often skilled enough that they could test coinage by throwing it against a hard surface and listen to the note it rang. Even today, though, if someone were to hand you a hundred-dollar bill, you might rub it between your fingers or hold it up to the light, just to confirm it wasn’t a fake.
All this for an imaginary currency, an invention of society. The point of this metaphor is to highlight how much effort we put into making sure money is real, whereas we accept potentially life-changing thoughts or assumptions without so much as a question. One ironic assumption along these lies: that having a lot of money makes you wealthy. Or that because a lot of people believe something, it must be true.
Really, we should be testing these notions as vigilantly as a money changer. For, as Epictetus reminds us, “the first and greatest task of the philosopher is to test and separate appearances, and to act on nothing that is untested.”
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings—arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 3.14.8
How often do we begin some project certain we know exactly how it will go? How often do we meet people and think we know exactly who and what they are? And how often are these assumptions proved to be completely and utterly wrong?
This is why we must fight our biases and preconceptions: because they are a liability. Ask yourself: What haven’t I considered? Why is this thing the way it is? Am I part of the problem here or the solution? Could I be wrong here? Be doubly careful to honor what you do not know, and then set that against the knowledge you actually have.
Remember, if there is one core teaching at the heart of this philosophy, it’s that we’re not as smart and as wise as we’d like to think we are. If we ever do want to become wise, it comes from the questioning and from humility—not, as many would like to think, from certainty, mistrust, and arrogance.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don’t know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me … and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. For we are made for cooperation.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1
You can be certain as clockwork that at some point today you’re going to interact with someone who seems like a jerk (as we all have been). The question is: Are you going to be ready for it?
This exercise calls to mind a joke from the eighteenth-century writer and witticist Nicolas Chamfort, who remarked that if you “swallow a toad every morning,” you’ll be fortified against anything else disgusting that might happen the rest of the day. Might it not be better to understand up front—right when you wake up—that other people often behave in selfish or ignorant ways (the toad) than it is to nibble it is to nibble it throughout the day?
But there is a second part to this, just as there is a second half of Marcus‘s quote: “No one can implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relative or hate him.” The point of this preparation is not to write off everyone in advance. It’s that, maybe, because you’ve prepared for it, you’ll be able to act with patience, forgiveness, and understanding.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
First off, don’t let the force of the impression carry you away. Say to it, ‘”hold up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from—let me put you to the test”…
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.24
One of the wonders of your mind is the quickness with which it can comprehend and categorize things. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Blink, we are constantly making split-second decisions based on years of experience and knowledge as well as using the same skill to confirm prejudices, stereotypes, and assumptions. Clearly, the former thinking is a source of strength, whereas the latter is a great weakness.
We lose very little by taking a beat to consider our own thoughts. Is this really so bad? What do I really know about this person? Why do I have such strong feelings here? Is anxiety really adding much to the situation? What’s so special about _____?
By asking these questions—by putting our impressions to the test as Epictetus recommends—we’re less likely to be carried away by them or make a move on a mistaken or biased one. We’re still free to use our instincts, but we should always, as the Russian proverb says, “trust, but verify.”
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Make sure you’re not made ‘Emperor,’ avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you, so keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, god-fearing, gracious, affectionate, and strong for your proper work. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wished to make you. Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.30
It is difficult even to conceive of what life must have been like for Marcus Aurelius—he wasn’t born emperor, nor did he obtain the position deliberately. It was simply thrust upon him. Nevertheless, he was suddenly the richest man in the world, head of the most powerful army on earth, ruling over the largest empire in history, considered a god among men.
It’s no wonder he wrote little messages like this one to remind himself not to spin off the planet. Without them, he might have lost his sense of what was important—falling prey to the lies from all the people who needed things from him. And here we are, whatever we happen to be doing, at risk of spinning off ourselves.
When we experience success, we must make sure that it doesn’t change us—that we continue to maintain our character despite the temptation not to. Reason must lead the way no matter what good fortune comes along.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Circumstances are what deceive us—you must be discerning in them. We embrace evil before good. We desire the opposite of what we once desired. Our prayers are at war with our prayers, our plans with our plans.
—Seneca, Moral Letters, 45.6
A woman says she wants to meet a nice guy and get married—yet she spends all her time around jerks. A man says that he wishes he could find a great job, but he hasn’t actually bothered to do the looking. Business executives try to pursue two different strategies at the same time—straddling it’s called—and they are shocked when they succeed at neither.
All of these people, just as is often true for us too, are deceived and divided. One hand is working against the other. As Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, “There is something of a civil war going on within all of our lives,” a war inside each individual between the good parts of their soul and the bad.
The Stoics say that that war is usually a result of our conflicting desires, our screwed-up judgments or biased thoughts. We don’t stop and ask: OK, what do I really want? What am I actually after here? If we did, we’d notice the contradictory and inconsistent wishes that we have. And then we’d stop working against ourselves.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Drama, combat, terror, numbness, and subservience—every day these things wipe out your scared principles, whenever your mind entertains them uncritically or lets them slip in.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.9
How much harder is it to do the right thing when you’re surrounded by people with low standards? How much harder is it to be positive and empathetic inside the negativity bubble of television chatter? How much harder is it to focus on your own issues when you’re distracted with other people’s drama and conflict?
We’ll inevitably be exposed to these influences at some point, no matter how much we try to avoid them. But when we are, there is nothing that says we have to allow those influences to penetrate our minds. We have the ability to put our guard up and decide what we actually allow in. Uninvited guests might arrive at your home, but you don’t have to ask them to stay for dinner. You don’t have to let them into your mind.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
