This content distills Stoic philosophy, primarily from Marcus Aurelius, into practical, often blunt, advice for navigating life's challenges by focusing on internal control, rational thought, and virtuous action, rather than external validation or outcomes.
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The Stoics didn't dance around the
truth. In fact, Marcus really hated
people who said, "Let me be honest with
you." He said, "No, I it should be
written on your forehead that what you
say is what you mean. If it's not true,
don't say it." But conversely, I think
also if it is true, you have to say it.
And sometimes those truths can be hard
to hear. Sometimes those truths make us
uncomfortable. Nobody said the truth
would be easy, but that doesn't make it
any less essential. So, here are some
hard-hitting, brutally honest reminders
from Marcus Aurelius. The people you
meet are going to suck. This is the
harsh truth that Marcus Aurelius opens
meditations with. says they're going to
be jealous and annoying and difficult
and stupid. They're going to be all
these things. We know they're going to
be these things. We have to go into the
day with our eyes wide open. That's the
harsh truth part of it. But the
uplifting part, the happy part of it is
the second part. He says, "But they
can't implicate you in ugliness." And he
says, "More importantly, remember that
you're made to work together. that life
is incomplete without those kinds of
people and that we're related and that
where we share an affinity and a bond
for each other. We can't be surprised by
it. We can't let it suck us down and we
can't let it change us for the negative.
We still have to be good. We still have
to do our job. We still have to play our
part. You think you're a good person,
but you're hurting people. Marcus
reminds himself in meditations. He says
remember you can commit an injustice by
doing nothing also. And you know there's
the things that we turn away from the
things we don't want to think about. The
things that we say are someone else's
problems. The things we say we can't do
anything about. And those are injustices
that we are allowing to be perpetrated.
We're complicit in that unless we try to
do something about them. Most of what
you do is totally inessential. Marcus
really says that that's a question we
have to ask ourselves in everything we
do. We have to ask ourselves is this
essential because so much of it is
trivial, so much of it is unnecessary.
So much of it is inefficient. When you
eliminate the inessential, what you get
is the double benefit of doing the
essential things better. So, you want to
constantly be eliminating, constantly
pairing things down, constantly asking
yourselves, do I really need to be doing
this? Is it important? Is it going to
move the needle? Why am I doing it? How
could I do it better? You eliminate the
inessential. And you do the essential
better. Whenever you're anxious,
whenever you're worried, whenever you're
stressed out, whenever you're doubting,
you know what you're doing. you're
extrapolating. And the ancient stoics
would say that extrapolation is the
enemy. Marcus really tried to remind
himself when his kids got sick. He said,
"My kid is sick. I don't need to tell
myself they're going to die from it." He
says, "You can't let your life be
crushed by your imagination as a whole.
You can't picture every bad thing that
could possibly happen. You have to stick
with what's in front of you. You have to
stick with what is in your control." The
anxiety is not being caused by the
external thing. The Stoics would say the
anxiety is within us. We are the common
variable between all the things that
worry us, between all the things that
upset us, between all the things that
convince us the world is ending. We are
the common variable. We are bringing
ourselves, our opinions. We are
projecting our feelings onto objective
events. So stop doing that. Stop
extrapolating. Focus on what's in front
of you. Stick with idea and action and
utterance. The Stoics say that is plenty
to keep you busy. It's not unfortunate
that this happened to you. Mark writes
this to himself in meditations. He says
it's fortunate that this happened to
you. He says cuz I've remained unharmed
by it. He was saying that, you know, his
character hadn't been affected. But I
think more importantly, he's saying,
"Now I get to do something with it."
That's what the obstacle is, the way
memes. Now I get to do something with
it. It's good that it happened to me
instead of someone else cuz I'm the one
that's uniquely suited, uniquely trained
to do something with it. You are
impotent. Your anger is impotent. Marx
in meditations, he quotes a line from a
lost play by the playwright Uripides.
And the line says, "And why should you
feel anger at the world as if the world
would notice? Nobody cares. It doesn't
matter. It doesn't mean anything." Your
anger, your resentment, your grievance.
You are shouting into an enormous void.
You are yelling at an inanimate object.
You are mad at the weather. You are mad
at forces that are so enormous, that are
utterly immoral, completely indifferent
to you and your existence. So, you might
as well let it go. The best revenge is
to not be like that, the Stokes would
say. And if you think about it, yes,
people can hurt you. But when you look
at those people, who they are, why they
do what they do, it doesn't actually
feel like they're getting away with
anything. They're their own worst enemy.
It sucks to be them. So, the Stoics say
you give up on revenge. You give up on
getting even because you already won.
You are already better by not being that
person. The best revenge, Marcus really
says, is to not be like that. You are
weak if you lose your temper. Stoicism
was a masculine philosophy, but Marcus
really pointed out how sort of pathetic
it is that we get overwhelmed by our
emotions and we lash out at people. Men
sometimes judge other men for crying.
But it's strange that we don't judge
each other for losing our temper which
actually does hurt people which is of
less purpose. So when you feel that sort
of rage or anger coming on this the sto
say get control of yourself get command
of yourself. Say is this who I want to
be. Is this what being a mature adult
is? And the answer is almost certainly
no. You're not going to be remembered.
You're not that important. Mark
realized. He says, "Run down the list.
All the people that came before him." He
says, "What would happen to all these
famous names? These names that used to
sound so familiar. You know what they
are now? They're they're like what a
Taylor Swift talks about. Who's who?
Who's that? We all disappear. We all
recede into memory. We are all
forgotten." A very relevant reminder
from the Stoics in these crazy times.
You don't have to let this upset you.
You don't have to turn this into
something. They're not talking about
disengaging from the world. They're just
saying you don't have to let your
feelings get hurt all the time. You
don't have to let everything make you
anxious or worried. You don't have to
extrapolate this out to what it could
possibly mean. You don't have to follow
every news story. You don't have to let
this upset you. Marcus really says you
don't have to turn this into something.
You can just let it be. You can accept
the information. You can focus on what's
in your control.
You can focus on what you need to do.
You don't have to turn this into
something. Your problem is that you want
the third thing. Marcus really says,
"Okay, you did something good for
someone. They received that benefit.
That's awesome. Transaction concluded.
You don't need the third thing,
recognition, gratitude, appreciation.
You don't need the world to throw you a
parade. You don't need acknowledgement.
And you didn't even do anything special.
You did your job, which is to do good,
to be good, to help people, to be kind.
You did the right thing. That's enough.
The obstacle is not the problem. You're
the problem. Your opinions about it are
the problem. Your orientation towards it
is the problem. The Stoics say the
obstacle is the way, right? The
impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
What do they mean by that? Marcus Ree is
saying that there's something you get to
do because of this, right? There's
things that you can do now that you
couldn't do before. There's an
opportunity for you to act with courage
or discipline or justice or wisdom.
There's something you can do now that
you couldn't ordinarily do. We can't let
a crisis go to waste. We have to use
this thing in front of us. Yeah, it
seems like an obstacle, but now there's
something we get to do because of it if
we do it. Part of the reason your life
sucks is cuz your thoughts suck. Marcus
really says that our life is dyed by the
color of our thoughts. So if we see only
negative, if we only see the worst in
people, if we only see what's
impossible, if we only see how we've
screwed up, that's going to color our
perception of reality. Your life is dyed
by the color of your thought. If your
life is negative, if you're it's full of
grievances, well, of course, the world
is going to look that way to you. Even
though he was the emperor of Rome, even
though it was 2,000 years ago, Marcus
Aurelius still wanted the approval of
other people. We all do. We want to be
liked. We want to be respected. We want
to be admired. But this leads us astray
because these people, they don't know
what they're talking about. And that's
one of the things that Markx really says
in meditations. He says, "You have to
look at who they really are. these
people whose approval you long for. He
says think about what their mind is
really like. He says when you can delve
into this, when you can see who they
are, it loses its power over you. You
realize these are not people whose
respect you need. These are not people
whose approval you need to crave. You
just need to do what you know is right.
You need to focus on what's in your
control and you leave the rest to
everyone else. A person can change but
people don't change. You can change but
the world abideth forever. It is
undefeated. It is exactly the same as it
ever was and ever will be. This is what
we see in Mark Serillus's
meditations. His complaints about
humanity are the exact same complaints
we have today. People complain. People
are dishonest. People are jealous.
People are lazy. People are loud. People
are people. We've been waiting on the
world to change for a very long time.
And it doesn't. This is why Marxist
reminds himself, don't go around
expecting Plato's republic. That's not
where you live. That's not how things
work. This isn't about being cynical,
but in deciding not to be naive. We are
setting ourselves up actually to be less
cynical. This isn't to say that you
shouldn't try. This isn't to say that we
can't make a difference. No, that's
actually the whole point. Most of all,
we can't take this personally. Most of
all, we shouldn't set ourselves up for
disappointment or disillusionment.
Don't stay up waiting for the world to
change. It's not going to. If you want
to see change, you have to be change.
You care about yourself more than other
people. You're self-interested, as all
people are by definition. And yet, Mark
points out, we care about other people's
opinions more than our own. We care if
they like what we wear, if they like
what we say, if they think we're good or
bad or whatever. It's insane. Trust your
opinion. Develop your own internal
compass, your own internal sense of
whether you're doing a good job or a bad
job, whether you were successful or not.
You can't outsource it to the crowd.
Remember, the crowd is the mob. The mob
is irrational. You can't let them
determine any of it. It all gets
rendered very insignificant very
quickly. There's a great Roman poet and
he said, you know, in life, Alexander's
ambition was bigger than the world. The
world wasn't big enough to contain him.
And yet, he says, in the end, a coffin
was sufficient. Marxist would say
something very similar about Alexander
the Great. He said, you know, Alexander
the Great and his mule driver, they both
died and the same thing happened to
both. And the same is true for you.
Look, we we change as we go through
life. We take on new roles. We
experience new situations. New things
happen in the world. If you asked me 10
years ago if I could deal with what I'm
dealing with now, I would have said no.
that I'd have all this stuff going on, I
probably would have laughed at you. So,
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of therapy. You're being crazy letting
them determine whether you did a good
job or not, whether you're happy or not,
whether you're a success or not. Mark
says ambition is tying your happiness to
what other people do and say and think.
Sanity he says is tying it to your own
actions. So what part of the process
like when I work on my books the writing
of the book is up to me right? How it
does on the bestseller list what people
think about it what the reviews say that
isn't up to me. So my definition of
success is an internal one. I'm focused
on the parts of it I control. Do I want
other people to like it and care about
it? Sure. I guess it's nice to have, but
it's extra. It's not why I do it.
Because to want that, or worse, to need
it is to be insane and of course
incredibly vulnerable. Being clapped
for, being celebrated, all the things
you think you want, it's worthless. What
is it? Mark says, "Cheering is a
clacking of tongues. Clapping is a
smacking of hands." And by the way,
who's doing the cheering and clapping?
Do these people actually know what
they're talking about? Do they know
what's good and what's not good? No. So
stop trying to chase what the crowd
wants. What the mom wants is not
important. You're never going to escape
change. Life is change. Marcus Rice
reminds us that being born was a change.
Death is a change. Every good thing in
your life came from a change. So did bad
things of course but everything in life
has changed. You cannot escape it. You
can only accept it. You can only embrace
it. You should mind your own business.
Deal with your own problems. Mark
reminds us like we should stop trying to
escape other people's faults. We should
try to escape our own.
It's going to take a lot out of you.
It's going to take more out of you than
you think you have. Mark says in one
passage in meditations, he's trying to
amp himself to get out of bed in the
morning. He goes, "Ah, it's warmer under
the covers here. I like being
comfortable." He says, "You weren't made
to be comfortable. You weren't made to
huddle under the covers and be warm." He
said, "No, people who love what they do,
they wear themselves down doing it." He
said, "There's a limit on the eating and
the sleeping and the fun side. You got
to get out there. You got to do what
your nature demands. And you got to
understand it's going to be hard and
it's going to take a lot out of you.
Marcus Aurelius's prescription for these
crazy times is very simple. He said,
"You can't be careless in your actions.
You can't be confusing in your words.
You can't be imprecise in your thoughts.
And you can't retreat into your own
soul. You can't try to escape what's
happening. You can't be overactive or
busy. You focus on what's in your
control, which is you. You try to keep
an even keel and you say that whatever
is happening, however it goes. What it
ultimately is for me is an opportunity
for me to be my best, to do my best, to
do good. I'm going to embrace the
obstacles. I'm going to embrace the
difficulties. This is going to make me
better. You got to stop wasting time
talking about this stuff, arguing what a
good person is like, what the right
thing is, these complicated virtue
ethics. Mark Stew says, "Waste no more
time arguing what a good person is like.
Just be one. You're going to die."
That's the stoic idea of momento. My
life is very, very short. You could
leave life right now. Let that determine
what you do and say and think. You could
go at any moment and in fact you will go
at some moment and that moment could be
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