daily-stoic

Find A Good Outlet For Your Passions

From https://dailystoic.com/, this is not my content.

Although today we consider “passion” to be a good thing—as in find your passion—to the Stoics, the passions were something to be wary of. Desire, rivalry, excitement, infatuation, anger. These were powerful forces that, if left unchecked, were likely to hurt the person who had turned themselves over to them (and likely to hurt innocent bystanders too).

There’s No Tomorrow

We’ve all had that friend: the one who is perpetually planning. They have elaborate plans for their health, their finances, their work, their friendships, their relationships. Plan after plan after plan. And yet, time passes, and nothing changes.

Epictetus posed the best retort to the “diet starts tomorrow” issue: "How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?"

Get impatient with yourself. Figure out why you aren’t changing and then change. Get started living—not preparing to live—the life you want.

You Don’t Have The Luxury

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn has written about how our denial of impermanence is what makes anger and resentment possible. We think we have unlimited time, and therefore the luxury of being mad at someone, or furthering some feud. “If we spend twenty four hours being angry at our beloved,” he wrote, “it is because we are ignorant of impermanence.”