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January 24 - March 17, 2025
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” – Marcus Aurelius “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
it’s about living a supremely happy and smoothly flowing life.
This is really about being your best version in the here and now.
“To get upset by things is to wrongly assume that they will last, [and] to resent change is to wrongly assume that you have a choice in the matter.”
“Seek not for events to happen as you wish but rather wish for
events to happen as they do and your life wil...
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focus on what you control, take the rest as it happens, and try to make the best out of it. It’s what you do with a given situation that matters, and the way you go about doing it. The outcome, on the other hand, is beyond your control and doesn’t matter much.
External events are not what matters, but what you choose to do with them.
That’s why Epictetus advises to always have two rules ready at mind: (1) there is nothing good or bad unless we choose to make it so, and (2) we shouldn’t try to lead events but follow them. Resistance is futile, take things as they come, and make the best of what’s in your power.
What happens to us is nature’s treatment to become better people. Those things happen for us, not against us, even if it doesn’t seem so.
What stands in the way becomes the way. Just another chance to practice being the best you can be.
The primary cause of fear, says Seneca, is that “instead of adapting ourselves to present circumstances we send out thoughts too far ahead.” It’s a projection to the future about something we don’t control that causes a dangerous amount of worry.
