Go Out And Do This Today | A Strong Soul Is Better Than Good Luck

We all know someone who constantly puts stuff off. Who loves to plan improvements for their health, their finances, their work, their friendships, their relationships. Plan after plan after plan. There is seemingly no end to them.We know these people because we are these people.Every one of us wants to improve, wants to be better, have better habits, live better, think better. But we can’t seem to actually do it. Time passes, the plans don’t come to pass, and then, as The Talking Heads famously sung, there we are same as it ever was.Our problem is that what we really want isn’t improvement, it’s reinvention. It’s wholesale change. That’s why this coming moment, January 1st, is so powerfully important. It’s 2019. It’s a new year. And it’s an opportunity for a new you...if you want it.To that end, the great Stoic, Epictetus, has the perfect question for us: "How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?"What is it going to take for you to get impatient with yourself? To get started living the life you want in the mind and body you deserve. Not preparing to live it. Not planning how that life could or should look. Actually living it. Right now. This year.Stop waiting for ‘next year,’ take control now.We created the 14-Day Stoic Challenge to do just that — to help you create a better life, and a new you in 2019.The 14-Day Stoic Challenge is a set of 14 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. 14 challenges designed to set up potentially life-changing habits for 2019 to make it your best year yet.Some people are going to hire a personal trainer in January. You have the chance to get step-by-step instruction and encouragement from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus.In this challenge, each day you’ll be inspired to create a habit that will help you:✓ Stop Procrastinating✓ Learn New Skills✓ Abandon Harmful Habits✓ Be More Generous✓ Develop Immunity To Distractions✓ Strengthen Your Character ✓ Become the Best Version of Yourself....These won’t be pie-in-the-sky, theoretical discussions but clear, immediate exercises and methods you can begin right now to spark the reinvention you’ve been looking for but have not had the language to express.We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works. We’ll give you strategies for maintaining this way of living not just for this coming year, but for your whole life.What is getting rid of one bad habit worth? What would you give to add a new positive way of thinking or acting into your daily routine? What would you give to be a positive person? And how great would it be to become a part of a community—part of a tribe—of people just like you, struggling and growing and making that satisfying progress towards the kind of personal reinvention that produces the kind of human beings they never knew they could one day be?Well, here’s your chance.[Sign Up Now]What are the risks or the downsides of NOT taking See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

18 Dec 20184min

Ok, you’ve been doing your reading and your journaling. You’re trying to be conscious of your thoughts and your actions. In short, you’re putting in the work. The question is, how do you know if it’s working? The journey to becoming a “sage” is one that takes a lifetime. No one hands you a certificate. Wisdom accumulates and builds on itself until one day, well, there you are. If that feels a little too inexact, we empathize, but such is life.Still, there has to be something we can look for to see whether we are making progress. Whether we are getting better as opposed to simply feeling better (or more dangerously, feeling self-satisfied?)According to Epictetus, these are signs that someone is making progress:-criticizing nobody-praising nobody-blaming nobody-accusing nobody-saying nothing about themselves to indicate being someone or knowing something-when frustrated or impeded, they blame themselves-if complimented, they laugh-if criticized, they ignore-relaxed in motivation-banishing harmful desire-they watch themselves as though they were an enemy plotting an attackIf you’re really doing the work, you will see yourself improve in these areas. Not all the time and certainly not in all of them all at once. But you will blame others less, ignore criticism more readily (and ignore leveling it at others). You will be humbler and desire less. You will take responsibility. You will examine yourself. That’s progress. The question for you today is: Are you making any?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

17 Dec 20182min

Think of all the people throughout history who were wrongly condemned and criticized by the mob. From the Civil Rights Activists to Galileo to ordinary people whose lifestyles were hypocritically condemned as perverted or a violation of God’s law. Think of Jesus himself, condemned and nailed to a cross for no good reason. In a sense, this is a rather dark reality to accept. But it is a fact. Society has always stupidly attacked what it doesn’t understand and what it fears. So what should we do about that as individuals? Live according to the crowd, even if we know that’s wrong?Of course not, at least according to Marcus Aurelius. No, we must live as we were meant to live. We must live in truth. Let them kill us if they don’t understand it, he said. Imagine that. Indeed, many Christians were persecuted by Marcus’s regime, and ultimately by his sign off. Just as Epictetus himself had been exiled from Rome for his philosophy. Just as how Stoicism would later be suppressed by the Christians. Just as great minds and regular people have been attacked and criticized by ignorant, obnoxious other people. But we can’t let any of that stop us. We have to do what we have to do. We have to be who we are. We have to follow the truth as we see it. Because if we don’t, what good is this life we’ve been given anyway?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

14 Dec 20182min

There is a common complaint drifting through the culture these days: Why did you have to bring politics into things? Can’t she or he just sing/dance/dribble/write/paint? I was a fan until you said ___________. First off, how fragile are your views that you can’t handle someone articulating different ones? Second, how fragile is your support that you only like people who agree with you? And third, what makes you think you get to tell other people what they can and can’t say or think?None of those stances are Stoic. In fact, they are the opposite of Stoicism. The fundamental distinction between the Stoics and other schools of their time (like the Epicureans) was that the Stoics believed a philosopher was obligated to participate in politics. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Cato—each of them spent the balance of their adult lives, and had their most profound impact, in politics. To be apolitical is to be unphilosophical. Of course, each person should be thoughtful, inclusive, and civil in all their discussions, particularly ones about government and social issues. We should not needlessly seek out argument or contention. We should be ready to change our minds (in fact, that’s why we should talk politics). But the idea that we should take whole topics off the table so as not to offend? C’mon now. Our job as citizens is to participate in the polis. To cast our votes. To contribute to the common good. To take stands when we feel they matter. This will occasionally bother snowflakes on either end of the political spectrum, but that’s to be expected. What it cannot be is accepted, as the way we will engage with ideas, with each other, with the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

13 Dec 20182min

So we’ve begun to get serious about our training, both physical and philosophical. Before, we never read, and now we do. Before, we were lazy and slothful, and now we’re regularly going to the gym. Before, we would eat everything we felt like eating—too much of it usually—and now we’ve got a diet and we’re sticking to it. This is great. We’ve conquered that vice. Now there is a new danger. That this virtue becomes a new vice—the vice of pride, of superiority, of obnoxious self-satisfaction. You know the type...because, well, they won’t let you not know how great they’re doing, how they can’t believe they used to eat that, what a rush it was to finish that marathon, or just how transformative all these mind-blowing books have been. Ugh.Apparently, these folks existed two thousand years ago, too. As Epictetus warned his students:“When you have accustomed your body to a frugal regime, don’t put on airs about it, and if you only drink water, don’t broadcast the fact all the time. And if you ever want to go in for endurance training, do it for yourself and not for the world to see.” This is good, timeless advice. Progress is wonderful. Self-improvement is a worthy endeavor. But that’s sort of the point. It should be done for its own sake—not for the congratulations or the recognition. Are you really running that marathon for the medal? Don’t let your progress become pride. Otherwise you have just traded one set of vices for a new one. And the worse part is that because of your new healthy lifestyle, the rest of us risk having to endure it for your many remaining years. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

12 Dec 20182min

“Man’s inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.”It is a verse from the poet Robert Burns. It was a favorite of Ulysses S. Grant as well as Winston Churchill, two men who witnessed the absolute worst of what people can do to each other. The line itself may have been borrowed from a similar observation by a 17th century German philosopher, who remarked that “more inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature’s causes.” It also echoes some of the darker observations from Marcus Aurelius, who wrote most of his Meditations while at the front with the Roman army, where he regularly saw decapitated and desiccated bodies.Our ability and tendency to forget that we are all brothers and sisters is partly what allows this inhumanity to happen. Marcus said he was a citizen of the world...yet he saw huge swaths of the population of that world as barbarians simply because they were different than him. He saw the Christians, with their very different beliefs, as something dangerous and unnatural. In a way, he forgot his own teachings, even as he was writing them down on a nightly basis as reminders and cautions to himself.“The universe made rational creatures for the sake of each other, with an eye toward mutual benefit based on true value and never for harm,” he wrote.In another spot, “Human beings have been made for the sake of one another. Teach them or endure them.”And another still, “Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe. For in a sense, all things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other—for one thing follows after another according to their tension of movement, their sympathetic stirrings, and the unity of all substance.”The Stoic concept of sympatheia, that we are all connected and unified and made for one another, should never be far from our minds (in fact, you can carry a reminder of it in your pocket if you like). We should be humane to each other because we are all human, all part of the same larger body. We spring from the same soil and will each return to it alike one day. When we forget this, it not only hurts other people—makes countless millions mourn—but it hurts us as well.Be good to each other today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

11 Dec 20183min

Most of us don’t think of ourselves as irrational. We don’t think we’re reactive creatures. We presume that we’re in control of our emotions, not the other way around. Other people are irrational of course, but what we feel is what reality is. Robert Greene’s latest book The Laws Of Human Nature begins from the premise that humans, by the way we’re wired, are irrational beings. The part of our brain that processes reason, cognition, and thought is separate from the part that processes emotion. He says that while we think we’re naturally rational, we’re not. We become rational. It’s an effort.As Robert said in his interview with us about the book,We descended from chimpanzees. It’s the fact that we tend to react to what’s immediately in front of our face, like a cow or a dog or anything. We bark and that’s who we are. And we tend to always want things to be easier to take the path of least resistance. We all have that lower part of our nature and it’s a lot stronger, but at the same time, there’s a higher self that we’re straining to become. And maybe I’m being optimistic, but I’m saying that everybody has that desire to reach the higher self.  There is a strong element of Stoicism in this. Although Marcus and Epictetus and Seneca spoke of living in accordance with nature, they knew how unnaturally this came to most people. They knew how much work it was to get to that higher self, to transcend our baser instincts and emotions. Epictetus said we must put every impression to the test, to say to it, “hold on a moment, let me see who you are and what you represent.” To stop and put it to the test takes an effort. Socrates, who the Stoics considered as the rational ideal, said one must always begin from the premise of ignorance because what you presume to know is often quite wrong. To presume you know is acting from emotion, not reason. To presume that what you feel like doing in the moment is obviously the right thing, is taking the easy way out, it’s taking the path of least resistance, it’s leaping over the space between stimulus and response.  The key then is to work towards that higher self, to become rational. Through journaling. Through discussion. Through challenges and courses and other exercises. Through reading books like Robert’s and other books on psychology and philosophy that help you understand what’s really going on inside your brain. Through taking the time to put every impression and impulse to the test—to not let that monkey part of the self be in control.It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

10 Dec 20183min

Da Vinci painted his brilliant fresco, The Last Supper, and how did they respond? They nagged at him for taking too long. Then, after he finished, they cut a giant hole in the bottom for a door. Marcus slaved away on his private Meditations, a work of incredible vulnerability and emotional exposure, that he almost certainly would not have wanted anyone to see. And what did we do? We not only published it, but we had the nerve to move the writing around in an indecipherable order. Seneca and Epictetus? They were the unconsenting victims of fake dialogs--with St Paul and Hadrian, respectively--that sought to capitalize on their names to make political or religious points. That’s just what we do to genius. We disrespect it. We manipulate it. We mistreat it. And that’s the preferential treatment that genius gets. The vast majority of ordinary people from ancient times? We promptly forgot about them after they died...except the occasions where we dug them up and displayed their bones for educational purposes...and profit.The point is: The dead don’t get no respect. Which is why anyone overly concerned with their legacy is wasting their time. Same goes for anyone who values posthumous fame. It ain’t coming. In fact, the opposite is probably more likely. Focus on the here and now. Focus on living well, on doing good, and not giving two cares for what happens later. Because you’ll be gone...and soon enough, so will everyone else. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

7 Dec 20182min