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Wherever a person can live, there one can also live well;
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Do now what nature demands of you. Get right to it if that's in your power. Don't wait for the perfect timing.
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Don't tell yourself anything more than what the initial impressions report.
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We don't abandon our pursuits because we dispair of ever perfecting them.
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When the problem arose for us whether habit or theory was better for getting virtue - Musonius thought habit to be more effective.
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How can people prove their words to be their own - by putting into practice what they've been preaching.
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You've endured countless troubles - it's enough already!
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Inwardly, we ought to be different in every respect, but our outward appearance should blend in with the crowd.
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"I'll never be ashamed to quote a bad writer with good saying." - Seneca
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If you start something and right away feel yourself getting lazy and irritated, first ask yourself: Why am I doing this? If it really is a necessity, ask yourself: Whats behind my reluctance? Fear? Spite? Fatigue?
Don't forge ahead hoping that someone will relieve you or someone will explain you why what you're doing matters. Don't be the person who says yes with their mouth but no with their actions. Quality is much better than quantity.
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No one does wrong on purpose.
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I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent - no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you. - Seneca
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"You can bind up my leg, but not even Zeus has the power to break my freedom of choice." - Epictetus
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"Consider who you are. Above all, a human being, carrying no greater power than your own reasoned choice, which oversees all other things, and is free from any other master." - Epictetus
Your hidden power is your ability to use reason and make choices, however limited or small. Think about the areas of your life where you are under duress or weighted down by obligation. What are the choices available to you, day after day? Are you taking advantage? Are you finding the positives?
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"No one is crushed by fortune, unless they are first deceived by her... those who aren't pompous in good times, don't have their bubbles burst with change. Against either circumstance, the stable person keeps their rational soul invincible, for it's precisely in the good times they prove their strength against adversity." - Seneca
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"There is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominant." - Seneca
"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." - Roosevelt
The stoics knew fear was to be feared because of the miseries it creates. A tough situation isn't helped by terror - it only makes things harder. That's why we must resist it and reject it, if we wish to turn this situation around.
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"Here's a lesson to test your mind's mettle: take part of a week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, and ask yourself if this is really the worst that you feared. It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead, for when fortune is kind the soul can build defenses against her ravages. So it is that soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight and exhausting themselves under no attack so that when it comes they won't grow tired." - Seneca
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Try praying differently, and see what happens: instead of a 'way to get rid of him,' try asking for 'a way to not crave his demise.'
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"Being unexpected adds to the weight of a disaster, and being a surprise has never failed to increase a person's pain. For that reason, nothing should ever be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent out in advance to all things and we shouldn't just consider the normal course of things, but what could actually happen. For is there anything in life that Fortune won't knock off its high horse if it pleases her?" - Seneca
We must prepare in our minds for the possibility of extreme reversals of fate. The next time you make a charity donation, consider that one day you may need charity yourself.
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Robert Caro has written that "power doesn't corrupt, it reveals." In some ways, prosperity - financial and personal - is the same way.
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"Doesn't the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn't your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?" - Marcus Aurelius
Seneca writes that, "we mortals are lighted and extinguished." Whether the wick of your lamp is being lit for the first time, after a long period of darkness, or even right before the proverbial big sleep, it makes no difference.
Here is where you are right now, and it's as good a place as any to let virtue shine and continue to shine for as long as you exist.
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"But the wise person can lose nothing. Such a person has everything stored up for themselves because they invest well" - Seneca
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"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." - Marcus Aurelius
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"That which isn't good for the hive, isn't good for the bee. That which doesn't harm the community can't harm the individual." - Marcus Aurelius
Just because something is bad for you doesn't mean it's bad for everyone. Just because something is good for you definitely doesn't mean it's good for everyone.
A good stoic understands that proper impulses, and the right actions that arise from them, naturally carry the good of the whole, which is the wise person's only good. Conversely, good and wise actions by the whole are what's good for the individual.
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"Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue." - Zeno
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"The person who does wrong, does wrong to themselves - making themselves evil" - Marcus Aurelius
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"Yes getting your wish would have been so nice. But isn't that exactly why pleasure trips us up? Instead, see if these things might be even nicer - a great soul, freedom and honesty, kindness, saintliness." - Marcus Aurelius
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We go through our days responding and reacting, but it's better to really pause and ask: Is this the kind of thing the person I would like to be should do?
The work of living is to set standards and then not compromise them. When you're brushing your teeth, choosing your friends, losing your temper, instructing your child, or walking your dog - all of these are opportunities.
Now I want to do good - that's an excuse. But I will do good in this particular instance, right now. Set a standard; hold fast to it. That's all there is.
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"Leave the past behind, let the grand design take care of the future, and instead only rightly guide the present to révérence and justice. Révérence so that you'll love what you've been allotted, for nature brought you both to each other. Justice so that you'll speak the truth freely and without evasion, and so that you'll act only as the law and value of things require." - Marcus Aurelius
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"Hecato says, 'I can teach you a love potion made without any drugs, herbs or special spell - if you would be loved, love." - Seneca
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"Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging." - Marcus Aurelius
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The best and the greatest number of authors have asserted that philosophy consists of three parts: the moral, the natural, and the rational.
These three parts - have one aim. As different as they are, they have the same purpose: to help you live a good life ruled by reason. Not in the future, but right now.
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"But I haven't at any time been hindered in my will, nor forced against it. And how is this possible? I have bound up my choice to act with the will of God. God wills that I be sick, such is my will. He wills that I should choose something, so do I. He will that I reach for something, or something be given to me-I wish for the same. What God doesn't will, I do not wish for." - Epictetus
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"Just as we commonly hear people say the doctor prescribed some particular exercises, or ice baths, we should in the same way say that nature prescribed someone to be diseased, or disabled, or suffer any impairment. Incase of the doctor, something is ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny" - Marcus
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"If the breaking day sees someone proud, the ending day sees them brought low.
No one should put too much trust in triumph, No one should give up hope of trails improving.
God mixes one with the other and stops fortune from resting, spinning every fate around.
No one has has so much divine favor that they could guarantee themselves tomorrow.
God keeps our lives hurtling on, spinning in a whirlwind"-Seneca
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"Don't trust in your reputation, or position, but in the strength that is yours - namely, your judgements about the things that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and powerful." - Seneca
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"When you are distressed by an external thing, it's not the thing that troubles you, but only your judgment of it" - Aurelius
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"Don't allow yourself to be heard any longer griping about public life, not even with your own ears!" - Marcus Aurelius
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"He was sent to prison. But the observation 'he has suffered evil', is an addition coming from you" - Epictetus
Acceptance isn't passive. It's the first step in an active process toward self-improvement.
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"Meditate often on the swiftness with which all that exists and is coming into being is swept and carried away. For substance is like river's unending flow, its activities continually changing and causes infinitely shifting so that almost nothing stands still." - Marcus Aurelius
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Whatever our case is today, let's align our minds along these four critical habits:
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"We are like pellets of incense falling on the altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference."-Marcus Aurelius
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"If someone is slipping up, kindly correct them and point out what they missed. But if you can't, blame yourself-or no one." - Marcus
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"Don't lament this and don't get agitated." - Marcus Aurelius
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"Let each thing you do, say or intend be like that if a dying person." - Marcus Aurelius
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"Don't behave as if you're destined to live forever. What's fated hangs over you. As long as you live and while you can, become good now." - Marcus Aurelius
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"It's better to conquer grief than to deceive it." - Seneca
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"As Cicero says, we hate gladiators if they are quick to save their lives by any means; we favor them if they show contempt for their lives." - Seneca
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"An old man has no other evidence besides age to prove that he has lived a long life" - Seneca
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"You are afraid of dying. But, come now, how is this life of yours anything but death?" - Seneca
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"You know what wine and liqueur tastes like. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand bottles pass through your bladder." Senca
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"To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden" - Seneca
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"All you need are these: certainty of judgement in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way." - Marcus Aurelius
Perception, Action, Will. Those three sum up the critical disciplines of Stoicism.
That's all we need to do.
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"By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop." - Robert Greene
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Let's get into the tasks:
This is what the mind is here to do. We must make sure that it does - and see everything else as pollution or a corruption.
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"If a person seeks what is controlled by others, he will be agitated, fearful, and unstable." - Epictetus
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"You shouldn't give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don't care at all" - Marcus Aurelius
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We're all complicated people. We have multiple sides to ourselves - conflicting wants to be desires, and fears. The outside world is no less confusing and contradictory. If we're not careful, all these forces - pushing and pulling - will eventually tear us apart.
We have a choice: to stand with the philosopher and focus strenuously on the inside of the or to behave like a leader of a mob, becoming whatever the crowd needs at a given moment.
If we do not focus on our internal integration - on self-awareness - we risk external disintegration.
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"Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are." - Goethe
"If I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you." - Goethe
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"You are not your body and hairstyle, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be." - Epictetus
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