You Make Your Own Good Fortune

Two years ago, the world lost a great scholar and Stoic philosopher, Peter Lawler. Peter, a longtime writer for National Review and political science professor at Berry College, was the kind of person interested in those seemingly archaic notions of honor and virtue and duty (you can read the interview Peter did with us just a few weeks before his untimely death). He also, according to his friends, was the kind of person who lived those ideals.We live in a time of vulgarity and corruption and oversharing and selfishness. Some embrace these traits openly, others pay lip service to virtue while leading wicked private lives, others contribute to the decline and fall of goodness by trying to tear down everything that isn’t perfect or pure.It would be wonderful if you could take a moment today—whether you’re a man or a woman—to meditate on this thought from Peter’s final essay, which was published on the eve of his death:“Now’s the time to praise manliness, but only in the context of showing the road from anger, meaninglessness, and despair to a world once again full of ladies and gentlemen—people who know who they are and what they’re supposed to do as beings born to know, love, and die, and designed for more than merely biological existence.”That’s the best way that we can honor Peter’s life—through goodness and fulfilling our potential. Thank you, Peter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

23 Touko 20192min

We tell ourselves that if we just get paid more or get promoted, we’ll stop being so miserable at work. Or we dream for months in advance about some vacation to paradise, only to find, once we arrive, that the hotel was not quite as glamorous as the photographs on the website implied. Maybe we do get that promotion or that raise and it does alleviate some old problems—then suddenly there are new ones like jealous co-workers or additional responsibility.Our rosy expectations set us up to be disappointed. Our expectation that the modern world will not have any problems is why the so called “first world problems” are so vexing. Isn’t everything supposed to be awesome considering all that we’ve accomplished? People tend to think only about how amazing things are going to be...only to find that reality is more complicated. It is this gap—between what we told ourselves things were going to be like and how they actually are—that is the source of so much unhappiness and misery in people’s lives. It’s the reason that so many of us walk around frustrated rather than grateful and relieved.Naturally, a problem like that is something the Stoics zeroed in on resolving. Because the source of it isn’t the outside world, it’s our thoughts about the world that are the issue.“Whenever you are about to start on some activity, remind yourself what the activity is like,” was Epictetus’s advice. “If you go out to bathe, picture what happens at a bathhouse—the people who splash you or jostle you or talk rudely or steal your things. In this way you will be more prepared to start the activity, by telling yourself at the outset, ‘I want to bathe, and I also want to keep my will in harmony with nature.’ Make this your practice in every activity.”Basically, premeditatio malorum.Think about how things really might be in advance. Don’t tell yourself how you want them to be. Don’t lie to yourself as a form of motivation. Be honest. Be clear. Be realistic.If they end up being better than you expect (as things often can be), then wonderful. Enjoy the treat you’ve set up for yourself. If they end up being anything else? Well, you’re prepared now, aren’t you?Better to be pleasantly surprised than unpleasantly surprised. Better to be realistic than delusional.That’s the idea. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

22 Touko 20193min

A few years ago a study by Brad Bushman at Ohio State University found a link between low blood sugar and arguments between spouses. It pretty much confirms the experiences of anyone who has ever been in a relationship and found themselves fighting right around lunch or dinner time for no good reason. The colloquial term for this? Being hangry. And it can ruin relationships, friendships, and generally make you a jerk. The funny thing is that even the Stoics knew this and warned against it. As Seneca wrote:“Hunger and thirst must be avoided...they grate on and inflame the mind. It’s an old saying that quarrels are sought by the weary’ just as much, too, by the hungry and the thirsty, and by every man who yearns for anything.” So conquering your temper and being kind and respectful and fair is not simply a matter of your mind. How you treat your body affects how your mind operates (another study shows that judges are more merciful after lunch). We know this regardless of what the studies show. When we feel good, it’s easier to be good. When we are rested, it’s easier to be patient. Your tone will be softer when your stomach isn’t growling, and you’ll make better decisions when your energy levels are better. This means that we have to take good care of ourselves. We have to eat right. We have to keep to a smart schedule. We have to know our physical limits. All of which, of course, requires the use of our mind now...so that our body isn’t at odds with it later.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

21 Touko 20192min

On this day in 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Her solo exploits are well known. Less so is that Earhart had already made the same flight less than five years prior. Unable to make a living as a female pilot, Earhart was working a job as a social worker. Then one day the phone rang. On the other end of the line was a pretty offensive offer: She could be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, but she wouldn’t actually fly the plane and she wouldn’t get paid anything. Guess what she said to the offer? She said yes. Because that’s what people who defy the odds do. That’s how people who become great at things—whether it’s flying or blowing through gender stereotypes—do. They start. Anywhere. Anyhow. They don’t care if the conditions are perfect or if they’re being slighted. They swallow their pride. They do whatever it takes. Because they know that once they get started, if they can just get some momentum, they can make it work. And they can prove the people who doubted them wrong, as Earhart certainly did. “A podium and a prison is each a place, one high and the other low,” Epictetus said. “But in either place your freedom of choice can be maintained if you so wish." On the road to where we are going or where we want to be, we have to do things that we’d rather not do. Often when we are just starting out, our first jobs “introduce us to the broom,” as Andrew Carnegie famously put it. There’s nothing shameful about sweeping. It’s just another opportunity to excel—and to learn. Seize the opportunity. All of them. Any of them.Prove the doubters wrong. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

20 Touko 20192min

Robert Caro is getting old and people are getting worried. He’s now 83 and each day that passes makes it increasingly unlikely that he’ll ever finish his epic (and must-read) series on Lyndon Johnson. He’s only made it up the the beginning of the Vietnam War...and there is so much material left to tackle. It’s understandable that fans and publishers are subtly trying to nudge him to hurry and finish. With so little time left, they want him to get as much onto the page as possible. You might think that reminding him of his mortality is a feature of the Stoic practice—an important memento mori, but, in fact, it’s missing the point. As Caro recently told a reporter for the New York Times: “People want to make me think about that, but it is a mistake to think about it, because it would make me rush. It’s probably the understatement of all time, but I have not rushed these books. They’ve taken the amount of time that’s necessary to show what I wanted to show. What would be the point of the books if I didn’t do them properly? I’m trying very hard to keep the standard of this book up to whatever standard I had in the other ones.”This is exactly right. When Marcus Aurelius spoke of his own impending and inevitable death, it wasn’t to remind himself to squeeze in as much crap as possible--it wasn’t about picking up the pace. It was to remind himself of what was important, of the standard to which he needed to hold himself. He said, “Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life.” That is: Do it right. Not do it as quickly as possible so you can say it’s complete. Yes, it’s true, we will die. It could be tomorrow, or it could be fifty years from now. Which is why this very moment is so important. And why we can’t let anyone rush us through it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

17 Touko 20192min

Think about the last time that someone made you upset. What did they say? What did they do? Now think back: How did you react? What did you say? What did you feel?Now think about the situation another way: If, when that provocation came, you had given yourself space to pause, could you have controlled your reaction? Could you have stayed sober and calm in the face of their hysterics and yelling? Could you have kept your head about you?Marcus Aurelius said, “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Viktor Frankl talked about how between stimulus and response, we have space, and in that space, we determine not just our response, but who we are. What we’re doing here is trying to train ourselves to do that. All this reading, this writing, this stepping back and reflecting on our patterns of behavior--it’s for a purpose. It’s to improve that default response. So that while others give themselves over to their emotions, we can keep any destructive emotions in check. As they freak out, we can calm down. That’s the whole point of Stoicism: to restore the power over your mind to the only person who ought to have it—you.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

16 Touko 20192min

Bertrand Russell was no fan of the Stoics. He thought they were cold, hated riches and passion. He thought Seneca and Marcus were hypocrites. But then again he himself was a rather big hypocrite—having had his share of affairs and embarrassing scandals.Nevertheless, there is a passage from Russell that captures an important Stoic theme: the reduction of our own ego so that we might see where we fit in the larger whole of humanity:Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.It should not surprise us that the Stoics were fascinated by the wonders of the universe. Marcus Aurelius himself was particularly fond of using the same river analogy as Bertrand. One of Seneca’s lesser known, but equally passionate, works is titled Natural Questions and it is a multi-volume set on biology and natural phenomenon. As he writes, “I am not unaware, Lucilius, excellent man, of how great is the enterprise whose foundations I am laying in my old age, now that I have decided to traverse the world, to seek out its causes and secrets, and to present them for others to learn about.”We can be sure that Seneca wasn’t writing this book for money or for fame. He was writing it for the same reason that Marcus was constantly looking out at nature and up to the stars—because it was humbling. Because it was a way to attain the philosophical view that is quite difficult when your nose is in other people’s business or too focused on the concerns of the day.The idea of sympatheia—which we think is so important we actually made a medallion of it—is the idea that we are all part of a larger whole. It’s simultaneously a reminder of our greatness and our smallness, our insignificance and our essentialness. Everything about today’s culture is at odds with that understanding. Social media. Me-first self-help. Hero worship. The normalization of toxic ego.You have to fight that. And you fight it by looking to nature, by zooming out your view so it is unable to focus on the tiny, trivial matters before you, by subsuming yourself into something larger, something greater.The Stoics did it. Bertrand Russell would have been better if he did it more often. And so would all of us.We think that every leader and citizen should think deeply about this idea of sympatheia. We were made for each other and to serve a common good, as Marcus put it. That’s why we made our Sympatheia challenge coin, which can serve as a practical, tangible reminder of the causes and the larger whole we are all members of. You can check it out in the See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

15 Touko 20193min

There’s plenty written about people pushing through failure, pulling themselves out of the depths of despair, rising above against all odds. There are countless inspiring stories of the struggling artist, living in debt and obscurity for years—a lifetime even—eventually garnering the recognition and commercial success they long believed they deserved. There’s less written about dealing with the pressures of immediate success. We rarely hear about how the artist—the musician whose debut album goes platinum or the author whose debut book is an instant bestseller—deals with the pressures, internal and external, of avoiding the dreaded “One Hit Wonder” label.Mark Manson’s debut book The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck was an international sensation which sold more than 8 million copies. His second book Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope releases today. In our interview with Mark for DailyStoic.com, we asked how he approached following up the massive success of Subtle Art: I had to own up to the fact that...at the ripe old age of 32, it's extremely likely that, commercially speaking, my career had peaked...That is hard to swallow. So, when I sat down to write this book, it was really rough...This is going to sound cliche, but ultimately what "saved" me and kept me sane was remembering why I write: I write to sort out the ideas and issues that trouble me and try to do it in a way that can teach and help others...So, that was the starting point. Learning to regain some hope for myself—and for me, that was zeroing in on one goal: just write a better book. And I believe I did. Since making that commitment, it's been liberating. I don't feel anxious about this book release. It might bomb. It might sell really well. Fans might love it. They might hate it. But I truly believe it is a better book: it's smarter, deeper, more mature, better-written than Subtle Art was. So, regardless of the worldly result, I will always be proud of it. And ultimately, that's what matters.The Stoics talk about detaching from results and outcomes. “Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole,” Marcus Aurelius said. “Stick with the situation at hand.” The less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards—when doing the right thing—is what fills us with pride and self-­respect, when the effort is enough, we are liberated. Let that be your mindset today. Focus only on what’s immediately in front of you. No strain, no struggle, no worry. Just one simple movement after another with just one goal: your best effort.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

14 Touko 20193min