Remember that it’s not only the desire for wealth and position that debases and subjugates us, but also the desire for peace, leisure, travel, and learning. It doesn’t matter what the external thing is, the value we place on it subjugates us to another … where our heart is set, there our impediment lies.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.1-2; 15
Surely, Epictetus isn’t saying that peace, leisure, travel, and learning are bad, is he? Thankfully, no. But ceaseless, ardent desire—if not bad in and of itself—is fraught with potential complications. What we desire makes us vulnerable. Whether it’s an opportunity to travel the world or to be the president or for five minutes of peace and quiet, when we pine for something, when we hope against hope, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Because fate can always intervene and then we’ll likely lose our self-control in response.
As Diogenes, the famous Cynic, once said, “It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” To want nothing makes one invincible—because nothing lies outside your control. This doesn’t just go for not wanting the easy-to-criticize things like wealth or fame—the kinds of folly that we see illustrated in some of our most classic plays and fables. That green light that Gatsby strove for can represent seemingly good things too, like love or a noble cause. But it can wreck someone all the same.
When it comes to your goals and the things you strive for, ask yourself: Am I in control of them or they in control of me?
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Robbers, perverts, killers, and tyrants—gather for your inspection their so-called pleasures!
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.34
It’s never great to judge other people, but it’s worth taking a second to investigate how a life dedicated to indulging every whim actually works out. The writer Anne Lamott jokes in Bird by Bird, “Ever wonder what God thinks of money? Just look at the people he gives it to.” The same goes for pleasure. Look at the dictator and his harem filled with plotting, manipulative mistresses. Look how quickly the partying of a young starlet turns to drug addiction and a stalled career.
Ask yourself: Is that really worth it? Is it really that pleasurable?
Consider that when you crave something or contemplate indulging in a “harmless” vice.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don’t stop it. It hasn’t yet come? Don’t burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, a spouse, toward position, with wealth—one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods.
—Epictetus, Enchiridion, 15
The next time you see something you want, remember Epictetus‘s metaphor of life’s banquet. As you find yourself getting excited, ready to do anything and everything to get it—the equivalent of reaching across the table and grabbing a dish out of someone’s hands—just remind yourself: that’s bad manners and unnecessary. Then wait patiently for your turn.
This metaphor has other interpretations too. For instance, we might reflect that we’re lucky to have been invited to such a wonderful feast (gratitude). Or that we should take our time and savor the taste of what’s on offer (enjoying the present moment) but that to stuff ourselves sick with food and drink serves no one, least of all our health (gluttony is a deadly sin, after all). That at the end of the meal, it’s rude not to help the host clean up and do the dishes (selflessness). And finally, that next time, it’s our turn to host and treat others just as we had been treated (charity).
Enjoy the meal!
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
This is the true athlete—the person in rigorous training against false impressions. Remain firm, you who suffer, don’t be kidnapped by your impressions! The struggle is great, the task divine—to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.27-28
Epictetus also used the metaphor of a storm, saying that our impressions are not unlike extreme weather that can catch us and whirl us about. When we get worked up or passionate about an issue, we can relate.
But let’s think about the role of the weather in modern times. Today, we have forecasters and experts who can fairly accurately predict storm patterns. Today, we’re defenseless against a hurricane only if we refuse to prepare or heed the warnings.
If we don’t have a plan, if we never learned how to put up the storm windows, we will be at the mercy of these external—and internal—elements. We’re still puny human beings compared with one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds, but we have the advantage of being able to prepare—being able to struggle against them in a new way.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 3.24.17
I’ll be happy when I graduate, we tell ourselves. I’ll be happy when I get this promotion, when this diet pays off, when I have the money that my parents never had. Conditional happiness is what psychologists call this kind of thinking. Like the horizon, you can walk for miles and miles and never reach it. You won’t even get any closer.
Eagerly anticipating some future event, passionately imagining something you desire, looking forward to some happy scenario—as pleasurable as these activities might seem, they ruin your chance at happiness here and now. Locate that yearning for more, better, someday and see it for what it is: the enemy of your contentment. Choose it or your happiness. As Epictetus says, the two are not compatible.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
If someone asks you how to write your name, would you bark out each letter? And if they get angry, would you then return the anger? Wouldn’t you rather gently spell out each letter for them? So then, remember in life that your duties are the sum of individual acts. Pay attention to each of these as you do your duty … just methodically complete your task.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.26
Here’s a common scenario. You’re working with a frustrating coworker or a difficult boss. They ask you to do something and, because you dislike the messenger, you immediately object. There’s this problem or that one, or their request is obnoxious and rude. So you tell them, “No, I’m not going to do it.” Then they retaliate by not doing something that you had previously asked of them. And so the conflict escalates.
Meanwhile, if you could step back and see it objectively, you’d probably see that not everything they’re asking for is unreasonable. In fact, some of it is pretty easy to do or is, at least, agreeable. And if you did it, it might make the rest of the tasks a bit more tolerable too. Pretty soon, you’ve done the entire thing.
Life (and our job) is difficult enough. Let’s not make it harder by getting emotional about insignificant matters or digging in for battles we don’t actually care about. Let’s not let emotion get in the way of kathekon, the simple, appropriate actions on the path to virtue.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Clear your mind and get a hold on yourself and, as when awakened from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream upsetting you, wake up and see that what’s there is just like those dreams.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.31
The author Raymond Chandler was describing most of us when he wrote in a letter to his publisher, “I never looked back, although I had many uneasy periods looking forward.” Thomas Jefferson once joked in a letter to John Adams, “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!” And Seneca would put it best: “There is nothing so certain in our fears that’s not yet more certain in the fact that most of what we dread comes to nothing.”
Many of the things that upset us, the Stoics believed, are a product of the imagination, not reality. Like dreams, they are vivid and realistic at the time but preposterous once we come out of it. In a dream, we never stop to think and say: “Does this make any sense?” No, we go along with it. The same goes with our flights of anger or fear or other extreme emotions.
Getting upset is like continuing the dream while you’re awake. The thing that provoked you wasn’t real—but your reaction was. And so from the fake comes real consequences. Which is why you need to wake up right now instead of creating a nightmare.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
For to be wise is only one thing—to fix our attention on our intelligence, which guides all things everywhere.
—Heraclitus, Quoted In Diogenes Laertius, Lives Of The Eminent Philosophers, 9.1
Why did I do that? you’ve probably asked yourself. We all have. How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking?
You weren’t. That’s the problem. Within that head of yours is all the reason and intelligence you need. It’s making sure that it’s deferred to and utilized that’s the tough part. It’s making sure that your mind is in charge, not your emotions, not your immediate physical sensations, not your surging hormones.
Fix your attention on your intelligence. Let it do its thing.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
