Stop Turning Challenges Into Catastrophes

When you begin to type “Marcus Lattimore” into Google, the first suggestion is “injury”. On October 27th, 2012, on live television, running back at University of South Carolina Marcus Lattimore suffered a horrific on field knee injury that he would never fully recover from. Lattimore was one of those once in a lifetime talents, but in one play, the football career Lattimore had built his entire identity around all but disappearedSeneca often said that the growth of anything great is a long process, but its undoing can be rapid, even instant. For Lattimore, it was instant. Such a devastating injury could have sent him down a spiral of rage, anger, sadness, and grief. It could have been the last we heard of Marcus Lattimore. But it wasn’t. Instead, he went back to school to earn the degree he promised his mom he'd get. He started a foundation to help athletes who have trouble paying for treatment and rehabilitation for major injuries. And most recently, he returned to his alma mater as the director of player development, mentoring student-athletes for life after football. Lattimore hasn’t spiraled. He’s thrived. And his impact now quieter but far more powerful than it would have been in the NFL. In our interview with Marcus for DailyStoic.com, Marcus said he wouldn’t change what he went through:The more I detached from the situation and gained a higher perspective, the more I realized how much I had grown up and started looking at the positives. Without my knee exploding on television I would've never fully grasped the positive impact I had on people which influenced starting a non-profit. I would have never known who was really there for me. If you want to know your true friends go through adversity. I would have never started reading and I wouldn't have the self-awareness I have today which I consider my most prized possession.In every situation, that which seems to be the end of our path can actually be showing us the start of it. Think back today in your own life, we all have those tough setbacks that turned out to be a great breakthrough. The worst things can become some of the best things. Like Lattimore, it may just take some detachment and perspective to see this, it may be painful and it may come slowly, but it can be worth it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

15 Apr 20193min

The funny thing about egotistical people is that—despite any power or wealth they might have—they are really easy to manipulate. All you have to do is tell them what they want to hear; make everything seem like it was their idea; play to their vanity and their delusions. The same goes for liars—who are usually quite easy to lie to. There’s even an old saying: You can’t con an honest man. Liars and cheats are always looking for shortcuts and tricks, no matter how implausible or unbelievable they are. And the paranoid? As Seneca wrote, empty fears create real things to be afraid of. The paranoid leader often, unintentionally, encourages the enemies that end up taking them down. All of which is to say that ego and deceit and paranoia are objectively bad strategies. They make you miserable...and they actually imperil the success that people think they help enable. We must steer clear of them like a ship must avoid a rocky shore. If we don’t, we will be dragged in by the current and torn to pieces on the rocks. Look at Seneca’s experiences with Nero. Here was a man driven insane by his own ego and dishonesty and paranoia. He was emperor...but not for long. Centuries later, his name stands as a permanent indictment of how power corrupts (certainly he was an example, for someone like Marcus, of how not to be). Look at Donald Trump today. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with his policies or not—it’s hard to argue that these personality traits have served him well. He’s surrounded by a “team of vipers” who are constantly undermining him and stabbing each other in the back. His fears (and cries) of a “witch hunt” have only caused more investigations. His ego allowed him to be manipulated by partisans with extreme agendas that have little appeal to the vast majority of voters. How long it will go on, we cannot say, but it’s clear every second it continues is less and less fun for him.And so it will be for you, too, if you indulge in these dangerous traits. We must sweep ego away. We must cultivate a habit of honesty and fairness in our speech and our habits. We must cooperate with others rather than protect our interests with paranoid possessiveness. In short, we must be good people. It’s the best strategy. It’s the only way to live and lead.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

12 Apr 20193min

At the core of legal theory is this idea that there are essentially two forms of liberty—positive and negative. Positive liberty is the freedom to do something, such as the freedom of speech or the freedom of worship. Negative liberty is freedom from something, which is a little more complicated. For instance, in the United States, the Third Amendment to the Constitution stipulates that the government cannot quarter troops in the home of any private individual. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. As FDR famously pointed out, freedom from want and fear are just as important as speech and worship.The complicated part of all this, of course, is where somebody else’s freedom to do something intersects with somebody else’s desire to be free from it.You get to speak your mind...but that may offend or hurt someone else. You should be able to do whatever you want on your own property...but walking around naked blaring music makes it hard for your neighbors to do the same. You should be able to make your own medical decisions for your family...but the decision not to vaccinate affects everyone they meet.The specifics of these issues are the proper realm of politicians and lawyers and not really what we talk about here. Where it does intersect with Stoicism is in that tricky and timeless question from Epictetus: What is up to us and what is not up to us?In a world of snowflakes and outrage porn, it’s easy to get pulled off track and to focus on stopping other people from saying hurtful or offensive things rather than to measure what we say and manage how we respond. We want to get up in other people’s business, when really, at the end of the day, all we control is our own.Which is ridiculous because there is so much to focus on in our own lives. What kind of person are we going to be? What are we going to do with our freedoms? Are our decisions negatively impacting other people? Are we really as free as we like to think we are?And here’s the counterintuitive thing about all of this: Marcus Aurelius talked over and over again about the best way to influence and inspire other people. It was not with force, but by example. If you want to be free from the tyranny of other people’s opinions and bad behavior, feel free to set a better example.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

11 Apr 20193min

It was the great Athenian leader, Pericles, who said that there was nothing wrong with poverty. It could be caused by so many things—a business failure, the sudden loss of a family’s breadwinner, theft, even just plain old back luck. Like the Stoics, he knew that Fortune could swoop in, and, in the blink of an eye, undo years of hard work and careful planning. But Pericles would not have said, as religious leaders and populist demagogues have tried to argue for thousands of years, that there was anything special or holy about poverty. While it wasn’t necessarily someone’s fault they were poor, and so they shouldn’t be judged for it, Pericles said, there was “real shame...in not taking steps to escape it.” This too matches with the Stoic attitude, both about poverty and any fate Fortune might throw at us. Stuff is going to happen. We are going to experience setbacks. Some of us are going to experience major setbacks--in terms of where we are born, what our parents were like, how other people see members of our race or gender--and none of that is fair or says anything about who we are as people. How could it? We didn’t have anything to do with it happening.But how we respond to those situations--be it poverty or disability or a bad upbringing--hell, that we respond at all, well, that says everything about who we are. Are there big systemic problems too? That will require coordination and political action? Absolutely. But in the meantime, we can start taking our individual steps right now, right this morning, big or small. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

9 Apr 20192min

Few people have studied the life and writings of Seneca as deeply as James Romm has. Romm is the author of a great biography of Seneca, Dying Every Day, a translation of Seneca’s various thoughts on death, How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life, and his newest work, How To Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management, presenting one of Seneca’s most timely essays, On Anger.Each of us should take a minute to think back, even in just the past week, to the times we’ve been angry or short-tempered and think, "Has this ever served me well?" The answer very very rarely yes. Anger, as Seneca says, always makes things worse: “No plague has cost the human race more dear.” But it’s a hard emotion to combat. It’s natural, often almost instinctual. In our interview with Romm, we wanted some real practical tips about managing our anger, so we asked what he thought was Seneca’s best piece of advice:My own favorite is summed up in the quote: "Do you want to be less angry? Be less aware." Anger often starts from noticing too many subtleties of the way others interact with us. In many cases, we'd do better not to notice the slights and microaggressions that can drive us nuts if we let them. One can will oneself to ignore such things—a practice many long-married couples will instantly recognize!Today, when you feel that anger start to boil up—someone cuts you off in traffic, your computer glitches when you just can’t afford it to, the waitress messes up your order despite very careful instructions—stop, step back, and ask yourself, what if I didn’t pay any attention to that? What if I hadn’t noticed? Would I still be bothered? Would I need to be this angry? It brings to mind what Marcus said, “You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you.”Because you don’t have to be aware of it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

8 Apr 20192min

Each of has been blessed by Fortune. We’re alive right now, instead of 50 or 500 years ago. We were born free, and not into slavery. We’re reading this email on a computer in our office or on our cellphones, because we’re not laying in a hospital in a permanent vegetative state. Some of us are even luckier than all that. You might currently have the career you’ve dreamed of. Or you’re married to a wonderful spouse. Or you’re a world-famous expert or a billionaire. Great.Just remember what Seneca said:“No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him.” The opposite of good luck is bad luck. What has been given randomly, can be taken away randomly. Indeed, it happens all the time. Look at Seneca: Born healthy. Born rich. Born talented. He achieved so much...and then his pupil turned out to be deranged and he lost all of it, including his life. What goes up, must come down. If not today, then tomorrow or the day after. The point of telling you that is not to prompt anxiety or worry. It’s just a reminder. Take nothing for granted. Don’t waste a moment feeling like you don’t have enough or comparing yourself to other people. Avoid the temptation to conflate your self-worth with your net-worth or your identity with your place in society. Because all of this is temporary. All of this is dependent on Fortune. And Fortune is as fickle and as cruel as she is generous.  P.S. Get all our Daily Stoic medallions in one bundle and save $57! The full collection includes our popular Memento Mori medallion, Amor Fati medallion, Summum Bonum medallion, and 4 others. Learn more here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

5 Apr 20192min

When we look at the lives of a great man like Marcus Aurelius or a great woman like the Catholic activist Dorothy Day, it’s easy to be intimidated. They seemed to always know what to do and seemed to always do it regardless of the stakes. It’s easy to be discouraged when you hold their examples up as inspiration—it seems impossible to live up to their standards (and easy to forget, of course, that they didn’t always live up to their own standards).The same is true for Stoicism as a whole. The philosophy is so aspirational, so idealistic that, given the flaws we each carry, the idea of even coming close to approaching the life of a sage feels ridiculous. But what if that was the wrong way to think about it?What if instead of trying to be some unassailable force of moral good in the world, each of us just tried to be a little bit better whenever we saw an opportunity? What kind of cumulative difference would that end up making?An example: Anyone who has bought one of the coins in our Daily Stoic Store over the last couple years might remember that they came wrapped in a thin plastic sleeve. A few months ago it occurred to us that this was producing a lot of unnecessary plastic in the world for not a lot of benefit—so we asked the mint to stop shipping them that way. Was this some transformational improvement to the world? Was it some shockingly selfless sacrifice? Of course not. But it was an improvement in our operations that reduced our ecological impact a tiny bit. We got better where we could.Everyone has opportunities to do this. Opportunities to put their phone down and really listen to someone who needs to be heard. Opportunities to contribute some spare change to a worthy cause. Opportunities to let their employees go home early from work. Opportunities to pass on an unnecessary cross country flight or to pick up some trash or to hold the door open for someone.These are little actions. They won’t make you a sage or a saint. But they will make a littleimprovement to the world and to yourself. And if we all did them—and if we all did them more often—they would add up to real transformation.P.S. For more ways to keep Stoic principles in mind as you navigate your day, check out the Daily Stoic Store. It features our popular Summum Bonum medallion, Amor Fati pendant, Marcus Aurelius print, and more!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

4 Apr 20192min

The point of memento mori is not to make you sad. It’s not to make you anxious about how few days you may have left. On the contrary, it’s supposed to free you. It’s supposed to inspire you. It’s supposed to give you that empowered, grateful, selfless, bonus-round attitude best captured by Martin Luther King Jr., who said these words on April 3rd, 1968, just hours before he would suddenly and fatally meet an assassin's bullet in Memphis outside his room at the Lorraine Motel:“Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land.”Obviously a strong faith in a higher power was part of what allowed King to feel so secure in his purpose and confident about an afterlife. But that’s not the only way to get there. A person who is simply grateful for every day they have experienced, who is measured and disciplined in their actions—never cutting corners or wasting time—and who has done their best with what they’ve been given, has been to their own kind of mountaintop. Dr. King’s selfless, tireless servant leadership was also what allowed him to be confident and content, deservedly so, even if there was no reward in heaven for it. “When a man has said, ‘I have lived!’,” Seneca wrote, then “every morning he arises is a bonus.” The same goes for the one who has striven to make the world a better place, who has worked to win the Civil War raging within themselves (the war, as Dr. King said, between good and evil), and the person who has helped their fellow human beings. It is an unmistakable tragedy that Martin Luther King was taken from us early (he’d be 90 years old this year, as would Anne Frank coincidentally). But it would have been even more of tragedy had he not lived every minute of the four decades he was given. Just as it would be a tragedy if you were to waste any more of your years. Get working. Make your way to the mountaintop while you still have the time and the energy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

3 Apr 20193min