A Kinder Philosophy of Success
On luck, status, and choosing a life with goals that belongs to you.
A quick update before we begin- I’m in the final stages of editing The Stoic Manual: Meditations on the Art of Living, a collection of 150 Stoic meditations on living well. It’ll be released soon and included free for all Annual and Lifetime members.
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,
