Daily Stoic

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one." — Marcus Aurelius

Ignore these kind of people.

7 lessons from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

5 Stoic lessons on time management.

It feels like you have time. You’re young. You’re healthy. The future is bright. But it will not always feel this way. Because those things will not always be true. Seneca knew this. This is why he wrote his famous essay On The Shortness Of Life. This is why he admonished his friend Lucilius to be intentional, to protect his time and to keep death always in mind. “It’s not that life is short,” he writes, “it’s that we waste a lot of it.” We watch our money. We protect our property. Yet we fritter away the most valuable of our resources, the most finite of them—the one thing we can never get back, that they aren’t making us any more of. The time that passes, Seneca writes, belongs to death. It is gone forever, never to return. Once a dawn happens, it is gone to you forever. Once a day ends, it’s done for you for all time. Act accordingly. Protect your calendar accordingly. Say “No” accordingly. Do it now…before it’s too late.

Today, let this be the answer.

Can you do it with a broken heart?

Look, some people are going to love you. Some people are going to hate you. Some people are going to ignore you. Some people are going to wish that you were dead. Some people will cycle through all these feelings about you, maybe even on the same day. That’s just a reality of life. Marcus Aurelius knew this. He knew that no matter how good a job he did as emperor, there’s no way he was going to please everybody. That’s the nature of leadership. It’s also the nature of being a human being. You’re going to make mistakes. Your style, your point of view won’t be for everyone. Can you accept this? Can you come to terms with it? Or are you going to let it drive you crazy? The reason we have to practice, have to have an internal code, a sense of principles, is that this is far more consistent than other people. Virtue doesn’t change. It doesn’t take things personally. It doesn’t have biases. Listen to it. Not to the crowd. Not the people who change their opinion on a dime. Don’t worry about pleasing them. Hold true to what is true, and in the end, it will matter far more than what others think of you.

Today, when you find yourself getting anxious, ask yourself: Why are my insides twisted into knots? Am I in control here or is my anxiety?

"Many are harmed by fear itself, and many may have come to their fate while dreading fate." — Seneca