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Welcome! I started this Relationship series because most people, myself included, tend to compartmentalize instead of integrating what we’ve learned in Stoicism. For example, I may be courageous enough to cut up a person and fix whatever is wrong with them but sometimes when it comes to relationships and handling the delicacies that require an unholy amount of courage- I find myself shying away, which in hindsight, leads to more trouble than I’d have let on. Relationships are one of the hardest places to practice love, good judgement, kindness, patience, duty, and self-discipline. And if it’s relevant to you, that’s why last time we talked about Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person & When Does an Affair Begin?. Let’s get into today’s lesson.

Why We Spot Red Flags Poorly

The horse was too large to fit through the gates of Troy.

That detail is seldom noticeable when the story is retold. Virgil tells us that it didn’t occur to the Trojans that they had to tear open part of their wall to bring the horse inside. Funny enough, after ten years of keeping the Greeks out, they took up their tools and opened the city themselves.

They had already been warned. Laocoön threw a spear into the horse, and the blow produced a hollow sound. Cassandra was shouting herself hoarse about what that cavity contained. As the Trojans pulled the horse through the opening, it stopped four times. And four times the armor of the men hidden in its belly clanged. Four times.

The Trojans heard all of this. And they proceeded to cover the horse with flowers, drag it into the city, celebrate and go to bed.

Troy fell that night- in Virgil’s phrase, “buried in sleep and wine.”

We usually remember the story as proof of Greek cunning. Virgil also gives us a story about Trojan cooperation. The Greeks built the horse and left it on the beach. The Trojans opened their walls, dismissed their witnesses and carried the danger into the city without violence or coercion.

Something similar happens in relationships.

Most of us see the first…

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Welcome! I started this Relationship series because most people, myself included, tend to compartmentalize instead of integrating what we’ve learned in Stoicism. For example, I may be courageous enough to cut up a person and fix whatever is wrong with them but sometimes when it comes to relationships and handling the delicacies that require an unholy amount of courage- I find myself shying away, which in hindsight, leads to more trouble than I’d have let on. Relationships are one of the hardest places to practice love, good judgement, kindness, patience, duty, and self-discipline. And if it’s relevant to you, that’s why last time we talked about Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person & When Does an Affair Begin?. Let’s get into today’s lesson.

Three Questions to Ask Before You Leave or Stay in a Relationship

On 25 April 1854, Effie Gray left the London house she had shared with John Ruskin for six years. She told the household she was traveling north to visit her family. But somewhere along the railway line, she handed her father a parcel to send back.

Inside were her wedding ring, her keys, and the account books she had kept as Ruskin’s wife. Effie sent everything back before anyone could persuade her to return.

Ruskin was one of the most famous art critics in England. Effie had spent six years hosting his dinners, travelling with him, sitting for his friends’ portraits, and writing letters home in which she tried to make sense of her life. Their marriage had never been consummated. Yes, for a whole six years, they had never had…

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Welcome! The Stoics were deeply concerned with how we live with other people. Relationships are one of the hardest places to practice love, good judgement, kindness, patience, duty, and self-discipline. That’s why last time we talked about Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person & When Does an Affair Begin?. Today’s essay looks at lying in love, though its deeper concern is the psychology behind it. It asks why we do that, what it costs the people we love, how Stoic philosophy can help us before fear turns into betrayal, and how understanding this can help us move on or become better partners.

Why We Lie to the People We Love

On a September afternoon in 1860, Charles Dickens carried a heap of letters into the field behind his house at Gad’s Hill and set them on fire. Twenty years of correspondence went into flames. Letters from Thackeray, Tennyson, Carlyle, Wilkie Collins- proof of a life lived at the center of the English literati- burned in an hour. His children watched without knowing what they were seeing. They roasted onions in the ashes and made a small game out of the remains of their father’s hidden life.

Dickens later wrote as though the fire had given him relief. He wished, more or less, that…

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Welcome! The Stoics were deeply concerned with how we live with other people. Relationships are one of the hardest places to practice love, good judgement, kindness, patience, duty, and self-discipline. That’s why last time we talked about Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. Today’s essay looks at adultery as how we evolve to receive the person in front of us, how we handle resentment, how we honor the roles we’ve committed to, and how ordinary evenings either protect love or prepare its ruin.

When Does an Affair Begin?

Affairs, like malignancies, begin in…

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Welcome! The Stoics were deeply concerned with how we live with other people. Relationships are one of the hardest places to practice love, good judgement, kindness, patience, duty, and self-discipline. That’s why last time we talked about Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. Today’s essay asks whether we can still practice this philosophy when we argue or fight with our loved ones and how to repair the bond before one bad argument turns into estrangement.

How to Fight Without Losing Each Other

In late June 1940, while France had surrendered and Britain prepared for a possible invasion, Clementine Churchill wrote her husband a letter she knew could hurt him.

Someone close to Winston had told her that his manner had become rough. His staff were growing afraid to bring him ideas. They still admired him, though some had begun to resent him. Clementine wrote down what she had heard, read it over, and tore the letter up.

Four days later, she tried again.

The second letter still told the truth. She warned Winston that rudeness would get him worse work from the people he needed most, and that she could barely bear the thought of those who served him admiring his courage while ceasing to love him. Yet the letter carried something the first draft may have lacked- the sense that she was beside him. She wanted him to succeed. She wanted the people around him to remain loyal. She wanted the man she loved to see what pressure was making of him. And at the bottom, she drew the little cat she often added to her affectionate letters.

I’ve rarely handled anger that well. I’ve sent messages while still enraged, convinced that if I’m not fast enough I’m being weak. By morning, the complaint was often valid, but several words had become hard to defend. Then the argument had two subjects- what had hurt me, and what I had said while trying to explain it.

Most of us know how to begin an argument. We know how to collect evidence, interpret tone, remember previous offenses, and build a case. But patching things up asks for…

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Welcome! The Stoics used negative visualization to prepare for life’s changes and appreciate what they still had. This essay explains how to practice it without turning preparation into anxiety.

The Stoic Art of Negative Visualization

One evening in AD 65, Lugdunum caught fire. By morning, one of the richest cities in Roman Gaul had almost disappeared into ashes and dust.

Seneca heard the news through his friend Liberalis, who loved the city and was devastated by its destruction. What struck Seneca was...

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Welcome! Stoicism teaches us to pursue excellence and a good life without mistaking wealth, status, or recognition for personal worth. This essay explores how luck influences success, why people are larger than their titles, and how to choose ambitions that genuinely belong to you.

A Kinder Philosophy of Success

There’s a question you’ll hear within minutes of entering almost any adult gathering- “What do you do?”

I ask it too. It gives a conversation somewhere to begin. Yet I know how much weirdness can gather around the answer. Tell people you’re a doctor and you can sometimes feel their attention change. In hospitals, a few words- consultant, resident, intern- can alter the way people behave around you.

I’ve felt the same reflex working in me. An impressive profession can hold my interest longer. An ordinary one may leave me searching for the next subject- suddenly mind-blocked. The judgment happens so quickly that it can pass for perception- intelligent, ambitious, important, useful, successful. We draw a large conclusion from one small piece of information and proceed as though we’ve understood someone.

Our culture encourages this. We’ve inherited a view of success that treats life as a fair contest, with rewards distributed according to effort and ability. The successful person deserves admiration. The struggling person becomes suspect. Somewhere along the way, we replaced the old language of fortune with the certainty and irremediability of failure.

The Stoics offer a more accurate view of how life works, and a more humane way to judge the way we live through it. They ask us to work seriously, choose our ambitions carefully, and remember how much of every outcome remains beyond any person’s control.

On Fortune

In 522, Boethius reached a height few Romans could imagine. He had served as consul. Both of his sons were appointed consuls in the same year. He was wealthy, educated, well connected, and respected by the most powerful people in Italy.

Within a few years, he was imprisoned on charges of treason and awaiting execution.

He wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in his cell. At the centre of the book stands the wheel of Fortune, forever raising one person and lowering another. The image would have made immediate sense to the ancient world. Fortune could give wealth, office, reputation, health, and security. She could also collect them without explanation.

We still live beneath that wheel, though we prefer more flattering explanations for whatever it gives us.

Effort matters enormously. Talent matters. Discipline, courage, education, sound judgment, and patience can alter the course of a life. They operate beside forces we never chose- birthplace, parents, health, timing, temperament, economic conditions, useful encounters, political stability, and the private decisions of people with power over an opportunity.

A person can work hard and meet the wrong year. Another can possess moderate ability and enter a field at the perfect moment. One manuscript reaches the editor who understands it. Another of equal worth sits unread. A business can be sound and still meet a war, a pandemic, a regulatory change, or a partner’s betrayal. Outcomes emerge from us meeting circumstance.

Epictetus begins his Handbook with the sentence upon which the rest of his philosophy rests- “Some things are in our control and others not.” Our judgments, choices, desires, and actions belong to us. Property, reputation, public office, and other people’s responses lie beyond our jurisdiction.

Success usually combines both categories. You choose the work and the care you bring to it. The world decides how useful you are to them, how generously it rewards you, and how long it allows you to keep the reward.

Cicero explained the Stoic position through the image of an archer. The archer must study the target, compose his body, draw well, and release with skill. Once the arrow leaves his hand, wind and movement influence the result. His excellence lies in the quality of the shot. A hit remains desirable, though it can never become a complete measure of the archer.

This distinction protects ambition from becoming self-punishment. You can pursue the promotion, publication, income, election, or growing business with your full ability. You can also refuse to turn the result into a final judgment of your worth.

It changes how you see other people as well. You give them more grace. Someone else’s failure may contain mistakes, poor discipline, or neglected opportunities. It may also contain illness, grief, bad advice, family obligations, a mistimed risk, or a door that remained closed. You rarely know the proportions.

A kinder philosophy of success begins here. Hold yourself responsible for your conduct. Treat the final score with greater humility. And do the same for others.

A Person Is Larger Than a Profession

Franz Kafka spent his working days at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute in Prague. He investigated workplace injuries, assessed claims, and wrote reports on industrial safety. A person meeting him at a formal dinner might have heard his answer to our first question and moved on- insurance official, competent, respectable, perhaps a little dull.

At night, Kafka wrote stories that would help define the anxiety of modern life.

His profession was real. It paid his bills and occupied much of his time. It still revealed very little about the part of him that history remembers.

Seneca warned against this form of judgment in a letter about the true source of human worth. Imagine a man with a large income, a beautiful home, extensive land, and an impressive household, he told Lucilius. “None of these things is in the man himself; they are all on the outside.” Seneca asked his friend to praise what fortune could neither give nor take- the quality of the person’s mind and character. Elsewhere, Epictetus tells us that when a person owns a strong and fast horse, you don’t praise him for his horse’s ability- you admire the horse’s character.

This sounds obvious until we watch ourselves meet someone.

We ask about work and infer intelligence. We hear where they live and infer income. We learn where they studied and infer ability. We see how they dress and infer taste, discipline, or seriousness. Every visible fact invites a conclusion. The story soon hardens into a verdict.

The Stoics kept returning to this error because Roman society was saturated with rank. A person’s clothes, ancestry, office, servants, and place at dinner announced his standing. Seneca lived near the centre of that world. He had wealth, political influence, famous friends, and access to the imperial court. He understood status from the inside and saw how easily externals could impersonate personal worth.

His advice was this- examine each thing for what it is rather than accepting what society calls it. A title is a form of work. Wealth is purchasing power. Fame means that many people know your name. None of these facts can tell you whether a person is honest, generous, dependable, wise, or good company during a difficult year.

Musonius Rufus pushed the argument further. He asked why people willingly suffer for money and recognition while resisting the effort required to reduce their need for either. A person could spend years pursuing notoriety, he observed, or train himself to stop thirsting for it. The second task offered a form of freedom that public recognition could never guarantee.

Musonius knew what it meant to lose social standing. He was banished from Rome more than once. During one exile he was sent to Gyaros, a barren island with little water and a grim reputation. Students still travelled there to hear him teach. His value survived the loss of place, comfort, and official approval because it resided in what he knew and how he lived.

Most people carry some hidden country within them. The cashier may be caring for an ill parent. The driver may know more about patience than the executive in the back seat. The colleague with a modest title may possess rare courage. Someone whose career stalled may have spent the decisive years of professional advancement keeping a family alive.

You discover these things through better questions. Ask what someone has been enjoying lately. Ask what they’re trying to learn, what has occupied their mind, how they came to live where they live, or what they hope to make of the next few years. Their work still matters. As my mentor says, there’s no purpose greater than another. It’ll take its proper size within a much larger life.

On Gatsby’s Tragedy

There is a scene in The Great Gatsby that exposes the emotional life beneath status better than most philosophy books.

Gatsby takes Daisy through his mansion and begins pulling expensive shirts from his wardrobe. He throws them onto a table in piles- shirts in coral, lavender, apple-green, and pale orange. Daisy lowers her face into them and begins to cry.

The scene seems absurd until you understand what Gatsby has built. The house, car, parties, clothes, and cultivated manner form one long message to Daisy- I’ve become worthy of you. You may choose me now.

Gatsby has spent years converting longing into property.

We often speak about status as though it grows from greed alone. Much of it begins in vulnerability. We want to be respected, desired, remembered, welcomed, and taken seriously. When we doubt that our ordinary selves can secure these things, we search for visible proof of worth.

One person buys the car. Another pursues the prestigious degree. A third needs the impressive address, influential friends, awards, followers, or an income that can be mentioned casually. Don’t get me wrong- petrol heads love their cars, some people love their careers to pursue pHDs in them and others leverage where they live and their awards to negotiate for a greater good- what I’m against is people doing these things because it means something to others.

Writers have their own versions too. I know how easily a subscriber count can become a judgment on the quality of a day. The number rises and the work feels significant. It stalls and the same work begins to feel depressing.

The number contains useful information. It can show whether writing is reaching people and whether a business is growing. Trouble begins when a measurement of distribution becomes a measurement of the person producing it.

Marcus Aurelius occupied the highest office in his world. He had armies, palaces, statues, ceremonies, and the formal obedience of millions. In his private notebook, he repeatedly reminded himself how little fame could offer. The people who praise you will die, he wrote, followed by the people who remember them. He called fame a worthless thing and returned his attention to governing his own actions.

These reminders came from an emperor who knew the pleasure of approval. He also knew its instability. Crowds had loved and hated previous emperors with equal conviction. History had already reduced powerful men to names, fragments, and disputed stories.

Marcus responded by choosing another standard- Was the action just? Was it useful to the community? Did he act with self-command? Did he fulfil the work before him as well as he could?

This gives us a better way to handle status. You may enjoy a good house, a beautiful car, professional recognition, or a growing audience. The Stoics called many of these things “preferred indifferents.” They are worth choosing when they serve life well. But they carry no moral credit on their own.

Musonius looked at the grand Roman houses of his time—the gothic columns, imported stone, decorated rooms, and expensive finishes—and asked how much human need could have been relieved with the money spent on display. He directed attention towards use. Wealth gained dignity when it fed, educated, sheltered, or supported people.

The question for the owner becomes simple- What does this possession allow you to do? A home can provide safety and hospitality. Money can purchase time, health care, education, independence, and help for others. A car can make work and family life easier. Recognition can bring worthy ideas to more people.

Status keeps turning possessions into esteem. Utility returns them to their proper role.

This perspective can also soften envy. When someone’s display provokes you, begin with your own reaction. What has the object awakened? Which desire feels threatened? Which comparison has started? You may discover that the stranger’s car says less about him than your response says about what you currently fear or want.

The same compassion should extend inward. The wish to be admired is deeply human. You can acknowledge it without letting it govern your life. You can ask what the status symbol has been hired to provide- love, respect, safety, belonging- and seek that need through more reliable means.

On Your True Ambition

Ambition consumes years before it produces results. This makes the selection of an ambition one of the most important decisions a person can make.

Leo Tolstoy learned this after reaching the summit of literary success. By his early fifties, he had written War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He had fame, property, a family, social standing, and the admiration of readers across Europe. He also entered a spiritual crisis so severe that he removed a rope from his room because he feared what he might do with it.

His achievements had answered the public questions. But they couldn’t answer- What made life worth continuing?

Tolstoy’s crisis exposed an eternal problem. You can be diligent, capable, and successful while moving towards a life you never consciously selected. Family expectation, peer comparison, fashion, fear, and algorithms can code ambitions into your mind. Repetition makes them feel personal.

Cicero presented a related Stoic idea through one of the school’s famous paradoxes- only the wise person is rich. He asked what we mean when we call someone wealthy. A person who always wants more remains dependent on whatever he still lacks. The truly rich person has enough and can recognize it.

This was a psychological definition of wealth. It measured the distance between possession and desire.

A person earning modestly can have serious financial needs. Stoicism never requires us to romanticize deprivation. Cicero’s question still reaches people at every income- what amount, achievement, or possession will permit you to say enough? Without an answer, every success creates the conditions for another deficiency.

Musonius made the same point in sterner terms. He described the person who can want for nothing in every circumstance as the only genuinely wealthy person. His aim was freedom from permanent dependence on acquisition.

The discipline begins with an audit of your wants.

Write down what you’re currently pursuing- the income, house, promotion, body, relationship, audience, qualification, lifestyle, or reputation. Then examine each desire.

Where did it begin?

What do you expect it to provide?

What will it require from your health, time, relationships, and character?

Would you still want it if nobody could see that you had achieved it?

What would count as enough?

Some ambitions will survive these questions. They express genuine ability, duty, curiosity, love, or purpose. They deserve serious work.

Other ambitions may belong to an earlier version of you, an anxious parent, a competitive friend group, or a culture that earns money by keeping you dissatisfied. Releasing them gives your limited life back to you.

Epictetus offered a useful warning here. Anyone who seeks freedom of character alongside unlimited wealth, rank, and power may lose the former while chasing the latter. External success asks for time and compromise. The price may be reasonable. You should know it before paying.

The Stoics pursued demanding lives. Marcus governed an empire. Seneca wrote, invested, advised rulers, and served in public office. Cicero built a legal and political career through immense effort. Their philosophy asked ambition to answer to character. Achievement had to remain subordinate to justice, wisdom, courage, and self-command.

This is where a kinder philosophy of success finally leads. It releases us from worshipping winners and condemning everyone who fell behind. It also gives us a demanding personal standard. Fortune may influence your results. Your choices still shape the person who meets them.

At the next gathering, someone will ask what you do. Give them the answer. Your work forms a real part of your life.

Remember how much remains outside that answer- what you love, what you’ve endured, the people who depend on you, the standards you keep when nobody praises you for keeping them, and the things you’re trying to become.

Then ask the other person something that gives them ample room to show who they are.

The wheel will continue to turn. Titles will change. Numbers will rise and fall. The useful question is whether the life beneath them has become one you recognize and enjoy as your own.

Other cool paintings I found,

How to be a man. This question came to me through small annoying insistences available to any self-aware person.

I heard my naive impatience in a conversation and disliked the sound of it. I noticed how easily I could be gracious with strangers and ungenerous with people who had more access to me. I could speak about humility in the morning and pride in my vanity by afternoon. I could admire discipline in public, then assemble cute excuses around comfort, pleasure, anger, and procrastination.

What kind of man am I?

The ancient world asked this question with more seriousness than we do. For them it was about honor and respect- sometimes a matter of life and death (see: bushido). Its best writers refused to reduce a man to dominance, style, conquest, money, coldness, sexual appetite, or aura. They cared about the...

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Welcome! The Stoics were deeply concerned with how we live with other people. Relationships are one of the hardest places to practice love, good judgement, kindness, patience, duty, and self-discipline. That’s why last time we talked about Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. Today’s essay asks whether we can still practice this philosophy with someone who knows your weaknesses, interrupts your plans, disappoints you, needs you, misunderstands you, and still shares a life with you.

The Three Requirements of a Good Relationship

During one of my early days in theatre, I watched a senior surgeon stop a trainee who was pulling too hard on a piece of tissue. It was not a debridement. There was no sudden bleeding or cause for alarm, only a hand using more force than the tissue could bear.

“Easy,” he said. “It’s a person.”

The sentence stayed with me because it brought to light something beginners can forget when they’re concentrating on the operation. Tissue begins to look like mere material- something to grasp, move, expose, divide, and repair. Experience teaches you to remember that it’s living. It bruises. It tears. It may never even recover from what your hands do carelessly.

There were two other lessons repeated until they became instinctual. You must expose enough to see what you’re doing. And before you divide anything, you must know exactly what it is. Many disasters in theatre begin with a surgeon acting decisively on a mistaken idea of what lies beneath the surface.

The longer I’ve lived with other people, the more these rules have become useful outside the operating theatre. A good relationship asks for much the same discipline- where we show…

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Sometime in the second century, Aulus Gellius was travelling across the Ionian Sea from Cassiopa to Brundisium when the ship entered a violent storm.

Water poured into the vessel. The passengers worked the pumps through the night. At dawn the sky grew darker, the wind intensified and strange cloud formations appeared above them. Gellius believed the ship might sink.

Among the passengers was a respected Stoic philosopher whom Gellius had known in Athens. Gellius turned to watch him. Here was a chance to see whether philosophy worked when death seemed near.

The philosopher had gone pale. His face showed fear.

After the sea settled, a wealthy passenger approached and mocked him. How could a Stoic, who claimed that fear came from judgment, appear as frightened as everyone else?

The philosopher eventually opened the fifth book of Epictetus’s Discourses and showed Gellius the answer. He explained that...

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Welcome! The Stoics were deeply concerned with how we live with other people. Marriage is one of the hardest places to practice judgement, patience, duty, and self-discipline. This essay explores what Stoic philosophy can teach us about how we’ll love an imperfect person than the versions of them we created in our minds, become disenchanted and decide what we owe them as both they and we continue to change.

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

The greatest chronicler of marriage in world literature died after leaving his own.

In the autumn of 1910, Leo Tolstoy, eighty-two years old and among the most famous men alive, slipped out of his house before dawn and…

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At 6:47 one morning, I came home from the hospital with the taste of stale coffee still in my mouth and a small rule waiting for me- before I touched my phone, I had to write for forty-five minutes.

I had kept the rule for eleven days. That morning I was still in scrubs, too tired to shower, and the document I had been working on was open on my desk. I told myself I’d answer one message while the kettle boiled, then begin.

I sat on the edge of the bed and opened WhatsApp. There was a link in the message, then another beneath it, and when I next looked at the time, forty minutes had passed. The water in the kettle had gone cold. And I closed the laptop without writing a sentence.

The next morning, I checked the phone again. By the weekend, my notebook was buried beneath hospital papers and receipts, and the routine already felt like something I used to do.

What bothered me was how little it had taken. One tired exception became a precedent. The second decision came more easily. By the third, it was already unconscious.

Epictetus would have recognized the sequence immediately. He’d have paid little attention to the promise I had made eleven days earlier. Promises exist in the mind; our habits are built through acts.

Every time I reached for the phone, I strengthened that movement. Every time I abandoned the writing, I made abandonment more familiar. The old routine returned because I had begun feeding it again.

I had to get to the bottom of it.

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Further reading,

what a habit actually is

Epictetus had been born into slavery and later became one of the most influential teachers in the Roman world. By the time he opened his school in Nicopolis, young men were travelling there to study philosophy under him.

They learned how to define courage, temperance and freedom. They could discuss human nature, argue about logic and repeat the doctrines of the Stoics. But then a servant made a mistake, someone insulted them, or an attractive person walked past, and their education didn’t translate.

Epictetus saw the problem. His students had learned the ideas of philosophy while their daily conduct still repeated old habits.

In one lecture, he asked them to consider how every capacity grows. Walking makes sustained walking easier. Running develops the runner. Reading strengthens the ability to read attentively. The same process governs character. Each angry response makes anger easier. Each act of restraint makes restraint easier to call upon. Each hesitation teaches you to hesitate again.

“Do not feed the angry habit,” he warned. “Don’t add fuel to the fire.”

The image explains more than most elaborate systems of habit formation. A fire responds to what fuels it. It has no interest in the promises you made in January, the kind of person you intend to become, or the guilt you felt after yesterday’s failure. It grows through what you give it.

You may sincerely wish to become patient while spending every day feeding irritation. You may dream of becoming a writer while teaching yourself to escape whenever writing becomes difficult. You may want a disciplined life while repeatedly treating discomfort as a reason to stop.

The wish matters less than the repeated act.

The ancient philosophers called the result hexis- a settled disposition. An individual act begins to harden into a tendency. The tendency becomes easier to express. Eventually it feels natural, though much of what we call natural is conduct practiced so often that we’ve forgotten learning it.

Cicero described the process as choice becoming a fixed habit. At first, you perform the act. After enough repetition, the act begins to express the kind of person you’ve become. That’s why Aristotle said excellence is a habit.

This usually happens without notice. You procrastinate on the work once. You reach for the phone during a difficult paragraph. You complain after one inconvenience. You snack beyond fullness on one tiring evening. Nothing seems to change, so the act feels insignificant.

The result appears later, when you find yourself doing the same thing with less resistance.

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Further reading,

Benjamin Franklin against imperfection

Benjamin Franklin once decided that he would achieve moral perfection.

He drew up a list of thirteen virtues, including temperance, order, resolution, industry and humility. He made a small book with a page for each virtue and columns for the days of the week. Whenever he failed, he placed a mark in the appropriate square.

His plan was methodical. He would concentrate on one virtue each week while continuing to observe the others. After thirteen weeks, he could begin the cycle again. Four complete cycles each year, he thought, might gradually remove his faults.

The experiment immediately exposed the distance between admiring a virtue and possessing it.

Order caused him the most trouble. His papers refused to remain where they belonged. Business interrupted his schedule. Visitors arrived unexpectedly. He had imagined that a rational plan would bring his conduct into line. Instead, his life became ever stressful.

Franklin compared himself to a man who asked a blacksmith to polish an axe until its entire surface shone. The work at the grindstone became exhausting. When the smith pointed out that the axe remained speckled, the man finally replied, “I think I like a speckled axe best.”

Franklin understood this temptation. After failing often enough, we begin defending the fault. We declare ourselves naturally disorganized, naturally impatient or simply incapable of consistency. The explanation saves us from the discomfort of continuing to work on it.

Franklin never achieved the moral perfection he had planned. He believed the attempt still made him better and happier than he’d have been without it. His little book showed him the repetitive faults, which circumstances drew them out and where further effort was needed.

Epictetus recommended a similar practice for anger. Count the days, he told his students. First you were angry every day. Then you managed one day without it. Later, two days passed, then three. When you reached thirty days, you could offer thanks to the gods because the old disposition was losing strength.

The main idea he wanted you to remember is that one instance of anger doesn’t restore it to its former strength. Progress survives imperfection because dispositions change through accumulation.

But once failure becomes our identity, further failure begins to feel inevitable.

Further reading,

Anthony Trollope on the bare minimum

Anthony Trollope wrote forty-seven novels, several volumes of short stories, travel books and biographies while working for the British Post Office.

He did much of the work before breakfast.

Every morning at 5:30, a servant brought him coffee. Trollope placed a watch on his desk and began writing. He expected himself to produce 250 words every fifteen minutes. He counted the words as he went and continued for several hours before leaving for his ordinary employment.

When he finished a novel before his writing time had ended, he took out a fresh sheet and began the next one.

There was no need to decide each morning whether he felt inspired. Once the coffee came and the watch was well on the table- the next 250 words were due.

This is where many habits fail. We build them around distant outcomes. Write a book. Become fit. Control your temper. Read more. Save money. The ambition is so large that each day’s contribution feels too small to matter.

Trollope reduced a literary career to a unit he could complete before breakfast.

The Stoics approached character in the same way. They rarely spoke as though a single courageous decision would make someone courageous forever. Courage was today’s act in the presence of today’s fear. Temperance was today’s limit placed on today’s appetite. Discipline was the next duty begun while the body preferred comfort.

Marcus Aurelius faced this argument each morning.

Despite ruling an empire, commanding armies and carrying responsibilities few people could imagine, he still had to persuade himself to leave his bed. In the Meditations, he records the body’s case for remaining under the blankets. The bed is warm. Rest is pleasant. More sleep feels deserved.

His answer was that he was rising to perform the work of a human being. Plants, birds, ants, spiders and bees were already doing their part in the world. He also had work that belonged to him.

Most of us wait for a grand feeling about duty. He told himself he needed to place his feet on the floor ASAP.

The beginning of a habit should be concrete enough to perform before our lazy minds have a chance to negotiate. Sit at the desk when the coffee is ready. Walk after lunch. Read two pages before switching off the lamp. Write one paragraph before opening WhatsApp.

The size of the action may seem beneath the scale of your ambition. But that’s its advantage. A small beginning gives the mind lesser resistance.

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Further reading,

Maya Angelou on our environment

Maya Angelou rarely wrote at home.

In every town where she lived, she rented a hotel room and kept it for months. She left home early in the morning and reached the room around six-thirty. She asked the staff to remove the pictures and decorations from the walls. She didn’t sleep in the bed. She brought writing materials, a Bible, a dictionary, a thesaurus and a bottle of sherry.

The room had one purpose.

At home, there were possessions, domestic responsibilities and people who might need her. In the hotel, the range of possible actions narrowed. She arrived to work, and the room made that intention harder to forget.

Our surroundings are full of instructions we barely notice.

The phone beside the bed asks to be checked before we’ve fully awakened. The food on the counter asks to be eaten. The open browser invites another tab. The chair facing the television makes one evening resemble the fun evening before it. The shoes hidden in a cupboard make exercise require one more decision.

We often treat these details as irrelevant. Epictetus bids us to put them as part of training.

When a temptation was strong and the desired disposition remained weak, he advised his students to create distance. Leave the situation. Avoid company that strengthens the fault. Give the impulse time to pass. Stop placing yourself where the old response receives constant encouragement.

There is no virtue in making every good decision unnecessarily difficult.

Someone who wants to read can leave the book on the pillow and charge the phone in another room. Someone who wants to eat differently can decide what enters the fridge before they’re hungry. Someone trying to drink less can stop arranging evenings around places where drinking is the default activity.

The surroundings are already influencing your behavior. Angelou understood this well enough to pay for an empty room.

Further reading,

Haruki Murakami on breaking a habit by building another life

When Haruki Murakami became a full-time novelist, he was smoking around sixty cigarettes a day. His fingers had turned yellow. For years he and his wife had run a jazz club, working late into the night while he wrote whenever he could find the time.

Selling the club changed the structure of his life.

They moved to a rural area and began waking early and going to bed earlier. Murakami spent long hours writing at a desk, so he took up running to keep his body active. As the distances grew, smoking became harder to reconcile with the kind of runner he wanted to become. He quit.

The running supported the writing. The earlier nights supported the mornings. The move separated him from the life of the club. Several changes began reinforcing one another.

Murakami built a daily life in which smoking had less room to survive.

This is one of the strongest ways to break a habit. Give the old behavior fewer cues to appear, then place another response where it used to live.

Epictetus told his students to set a contrary habit against the old one. When insulted, practice restraint at the exact moment anger expects you to speak your mind. When desire becomes insistent, delay your response. When comfort tells you to abandon the work, remain with it a little longer.

The trigger becomes the place where the new the new habit begins.

Musonius Rufus, Epictetus’s teacher, applied the same principle through voluntary hardship. He recommended simple food, plain clothing, exposure to heat and cold, hard beds and occasional hunger or thirst. These exercises trained the student to experience discomfort without immediately obeying it.

Musonius had earned the right to speak about hardship. The emperor Nero exiled him to Gyaros, a barren island used as a place of punishment. Students still travelled there to hear him teach. Ancient accounts even credit him with helping discover a spring on the island. Philosophy had to survive outside the lecture hall or it had achieved little

His exercises were meant to prepare a person before greater difficulties arrived. Someone who always gave in to comfort would be governed by discomfort. Someone who had practiced small acts of endurance would have another response available- options equals freedom.

The same principle applies to ordinary habits.

Leave the phone untouched for ten minutes after waking. Finish the page before checking the message. Sit with the craving for five minutes before deciding what to do. End the meal while some appetite remains. Take the stairs when the lift would be easier.

The purpose is to learn that an urge can appear and it’s not a dictatorial directive.

A bad habit usually serves a purpose, even when its consequences are costly. Scrolling may help you avoid a difficult thought. A drink may mark the end of a demanding day. Anger may produce a brief sense of power. Procrastination may protect you from discovering that your best effort has limits.

Removing the behaviour leaves the need behind.

The replacement should answer some part of that need. A walk can create a boundary after work. Calling someone can answer loneliness. A shower and a meal can replace the ritual of pouring a drink. Writing one rough paragraph can help you approach the fear beneath procrastination.

Murakami’s running worked because it became part of his identity, his health and the structure of his work. The new life made the old habit increasingly expensive.

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seneca’s post-mortem

Seneca ended each day by questioning it.

He borrowed the practice from the philosopher Sextius, who asked himself before sleep- What fault have you corrected today? Which failing have you resisted? In what respect are you better?

After Seneca’s wife had gone to sleep and the room had become still, he reviewed his words and actions. He concealed nothing from himself. When he found a fault, he addressed it directly- you argued too aggressively; next time, avoid that dispute. You spoke harshly; remember that people can be corrected without humiliation.

Remember, this was an examination, not a prosecution. Stoics don’t believe in self-flagellation.

Most failed habits remain vague. You tell yourself that you lacked discipline, wasted the day or behaved badly. These judgements offer little information. They turn a specific event into a general attack on your character.

Seneca’s method asks for details.

What happened before the behaviour? Where were you? What were you feeling? Which excuse did you accept? What made the useful action difficult to begin? What could be changed before the same situation returns?

“I’m lazy” explains almost nothing.

“I opened my phone when the paragraph became difficult” identifies the moment of escape.

“I eat badly” offers no useful correction.

“I arrive home hungry, with nothing prepared, and order the first meal I see” reveals where the next decision should be made.

“I have a terrible temper” makes anger sound like a permanent possession.

“I respond before the other person has finished speaking” gives you an action to interrupt.

A useful review ends with an adjustment. Tomorrow the phone begins in another room. The meal is prepared earlier. The first response to provocation is delayed. The running clothes are placed beside the door.

Seneca used the day that had passed to improve the conditions of the next one.

returning after failure

No routine survives life untouched.

Franklin’s pages accumulated marks. Trollope had mornings when the work came slowly. Maya Angelou sometimes left the hotel with pages she would later discard. Murakami still had days when he didn’t want to run. Marcus Aurelius repeatedly reminded himself of principles he had already failed to follow.

The need for repetition proves that understanding doesn’t permanently settle the struggle.

Marcus’s answer was to return. When he fell short of his principles, he told himself to go back to them without disgust. Philosophy remained available like a therapeutic remedy that could be applied again whenever it was needed.

This changes the meaning of a lapse.

You missed the morning. The next morning is still there for you.

You lost your temper. The next irritation becomes another opportunity to respond differently.

You spent the evening doing what you had promised to stop doing. The conditions of tomorrow evening can be changed before it begins.

The most important habit may be the act of returning before failure has time to become a new pattern.

Epictetus will ask you one last question- which disposition will your next act strengthen?

The fire is continuously being fed.

You decide which one.

What is the highest good- the thing we’re supposed to be aiming for in this life? And the one making everything in it better?

Marcus Aurelius, ruler of the Roman world, once set himself that test. In his private notebook, he asked whether there was anything in human life better than justice, truthfulness, self-control, and courage. If he found it, he would turn toward it and enjoy it with his whole being. He considered praise, power, wealth and pleasure, and he found...

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We go to a party to enjoy the narrow moment, forget the tough job we have tomorrow, distract ourselves from past sorrows.

Seneca said,

“The mind must be given relaxation. It will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced…so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind.”

Having an agenda for the party matters. For example to have fun.

It gives us a direction to follow, helps us feel excited and confident in ourselves when we make progress, and imbibes our actions with a magnetic impetus and meaning whenever the cold, dark, blurry night gets tough.

Even the Stoics agreed.

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.” — Seneca

However, hyper-intention on an objective, the fixated state …

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For a long time, I had a number in my head.

It was a monthly revenue target for my work. Once I reached it, I thought, I’d feel secure. I’d stop checking how other people were doing. I’d finally relax into what I had built instead of treating every good month as a jolt that I now needed a better one.

Then I reached it.

For a few days, the number felt as significant as I had imagined. I kept returning to it. Years of work seemed to have hardened into proof that I was moving in the right direction.

But within weeks, I was making fresh projections.

The target that had occupied my mind for so long had become the starting point for another one. Sure, it had improved my life in ways I could have never imagined. But it had failed at making me feel content.

We do this with more than money. It’s with our houses, cars, exam results, job titles, relationships, sex, follower counts and places we’ve always wanted to visit. We imagine the future event so often that it begins to feel like a threshold. Life before it feels undone. Life after we get this and that will feel real nice.

Then you get want you want, and life continues.

You wake up late. The sink needs cleaning. Someone sends an irritating message. You begin wanting something else.

Desire rarely reduces after getting what it asked for.

Epicurus saw the problem more than two thousand years ago. “Nothing is enough,” he wrote,“for the man to whom enough is too little.” That’s the truth. We keep assuming the object we desire is inadequate- the salary was too small, the house wasn’t right, the achievement wasn’t impressive enough. Epicurus asks us to consider- what was the point of wanting and getting if not to enjoy.

why good things become ordinary- meh

Psychologists call it…

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There was a winter in Ohio when I decided I’d become a disciplined man by force.

I set the alarm for 4:30 am and left it across the room, so switching it off meant standing up in the cold. Before bed, I laid my running clothes on the floor in the order I would need them- shirt, shorts, socks, shoes. Basically, evening me would make the decisions before morning me was awake enough to interfere. This whole idea was inspired by how good surgeons prepare for their surgeries to be successful.

The plan worked for 11 days.

On the 12^th, the alarm rang and I stood up to silence it. I was already awake. The clothes were waiting. Nothing had gone wrong. But I still climbed back into my warm blankets.

My first thought, when I woke two hours later, was that the system hadn’t been severe enough. I needed a louder alarm, an earlier bedtime, perhaps some punishment for missing the run. This is how many of us respond when force stops working. We prescribe more force. And a generous amount of guilt. We imagine discipline as one part of the mind dragging the rest of us toward whatever we’ve decided is good, and when we fail, we blame the part that refused to cooperate.

The Stoics approached the problem from another direction.

They treated…

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The first time I watched a patient receive a terminal diagnosis, I was 26 and unsure what I was supposed to do with my face.

My attending explained the findings. The patient listened without interrupting. I expected questions about treatment, time, pain, or whether the results could be wrong. Instead, he asked whether he would still have enough strength to finish a deck he was building for his granddaughter.

I remember the question because it seemed so ordinary. His life had just changed, yet his mind had gone to a piece of unfinished work and the person he was building it for.

For years, I interpreted his response as acceptance. But I’m no longer sure that word is enough. Acceptance can sound passive, as though he had simply stopped resisting. What I saw seemed more active. He had received a life he hadn’t chosen and immediately begun asking what he could still do with it.

The philosophers had a phrase for this stance- amor fati, the love of fate.

It’s commonly explained as accepting what you can’t change. And that definition is useful- just as saying the ocean means water you can’t drink. Jokes aside. Acceptance means acknowledging that something has happened. Amor fati asks a harder question- can you take this event, including the parts you hate, and make it part of a life you’re still willing to inhabit fully?

The Nietzschean Formula

The phrase itself is younger than the philosophy behind it.

Amor fati comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, who used it to describe what he considered one of the highest forms of human strength. His formula for greatness was that a person should want…

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The first time Stoicism clicked for me, I was stuck in traffic late for a meeting, with four percent battery left on my phone.

I had already blamed the traffic, the driver who had cut across lanes without warning, and myself for leaving late. None of this improved the situation. It only gave me something to get anxious and mad at while the cars barely moved.

Then I remembered a question I’d read many times- what, in this situation, is up to me?

The traffic wasn’t. The time I had lost was gone. My phone battery was unlikely to improve. I could still call ahead, apologize without making excuses, and decide whether I wanted to arrive angry as well as late.

That was all. The traffic didn’t suddenly move. I still missed the beginning of the meeting. The exercise simply stopped me from making an unpleasant situation worse.

That ordinary experience explains Stoicism better than most definitions do. It’s a philosophy concerned with judgment, conduct, and the use we make of events. It asks us to take responsibility for our choices while accepting that much of life will remain outside our control.

This essay explains what Stoicism teaches, where it came from, and nine exercises you can begin practicing without having read Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, or Epictetus.

What Stoicism Is

The word ‘stoic’ usually describes someone who…

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The most famous book in Stoic history, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, was never meant to be published. It was an emperor’s private journal written in a military tent to keep his mind from crumbling under the weight of an empire.

For the past year, I’ve had to write my own. My battlefield is medicine. Every day, I face human beings at their worst- frightened, dying, and mischievous. The clinical chaos is crazy, and to keep myself sane, I began writing a pithy list of personal maxims to comport myself. They’ve been my saving grace.

While I initially intended to keep these notes to myself, having them collect dust on my desk drawer feels like a disservice. If they could hold me through the worst days in the clinic, they can he…

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So let me tell you what I’ve been sitting on.

You probably already own the most famous book in Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations for an audience of one- himself. Reminders to steady his mind- his emotions, written at the edge of an empire, meant for his eyes alone. The most quoted Stoic text in history is, technically, a private diary.

I’ve been keeping a diary like that.

For the last year I’ve kept a running set of maxims- short, blunt lines I wrote to keep myself level. I practice medicine, which means my day is wall-to-wall human beings at their most frightened, their most stubborn, their most unreasonable, and the work is- least to say- bit chaotic. These lines are the railing I held onto. I’d have frankly gone under without them.

The plan was to keep them on t…

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