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A Guide to the Good Life

A Guide to the Good Life

by Parker · 236 things on NewTwos

Keep my head in the boat even when I’m not rowing
What do you want out of life?
Dont confuse that with what you want in your life
What is the most valuable thing you can pursue?
What is your grand goal in living?
A grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life
If you lack an effective strategy for attaining your goal, it is unlikely that you will attain it
The second component of a philosophy of life is a strategy for attaining your grand goal in living
This strategy will specify what you must do, as you go about your daily activities, to maximize your chances of gaining the thing in life that you take to be ultimately valuable
If we want to take steps to avoid wasting our wealth, we can easily find experts to help us
We should be unwilling to sacrifice attaining our grand goal to attain other goals
We need to decide which of our goals should take precedence when conflicts arise
Schools of philosophies of life: cynic, Cyrenaic, Epicurean, Skeptic, Stoic
”Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.” - Epicurus
”He who studies with a philosopher should take away with him some one good thing every day: he should daily return home a sounder man, or on the way to become sounder” - Seneca
The stoic philosophy teaches individuals to have a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling
Study stoicism so we can put it into practice
They developed techniques for preventing the onset of negative emotions and for extinguishing then when attempts at prevention failed
The goal of the stoics is not to banish emotion from life but to banish negative emotions
What the stoics seek to discover is how the mind may always pursue a steady and favorable course, may be well disposed toward itself, and may view its conditions with joy
If we live in accordance with Stoic principles, a cheerful disposition and secure joy will automatically follow
It is important for us to fulfill our obligations and to help our fellow humans
We are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless we can overcome our insatiability
One wonderful way to tame our tendency to always want more is to persuade ourselves to want the things we already have
Many of the things we desire are not worth pursuing
Tranquility is a state marked by the absence of negative emotions such as anger, grief, anxiety, and fear, and the presence of positive emotions—in particular, joy
Take care to distinguish between things we can control and things we can’t, so that we will no longer worry and the things we can’t control and will instead focus our attention on the things we can control
It is easy for other people to disturb our tranquility so we should practice Stoic strategies to prevent them from upsetting us
The Cynics advocated an ascetic lifestyle: If you want s good life, you must learn to want next to nothing
The Cyrenaics thought the grand goal in living was the experience of pleasure and therefore advocated taking advantage of every opportunity to experience it
The Stoics taught that people should enjoy the good things life has to offer, including friendship and wealth, but only if they did not cling to these good things. We should periodically interrupt our enjoyment of what life has to offer to spend time contemplating the loss of whatever it is we are enjoying
Becoming a Cynic would entail: “You must utterly put away the will to get, and must will to avoid only what lies within the sphere of your will: you must hear our no anger, wrath, envy, pity: a fair maid, a fair name, favorites, or sweet cakes, must mean nothing to you” - Epictetus
”It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive”
”Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes”
”The gods had given to men the means of living easily, but this had been put out of sight, because we require honeyed cakes, unguents and the like”
The madness of men is that they choose to be miserable when they have it in their power to be content
The problem is that bad men obey their lists as servers obey their masters, and because they cannot control their desires, they can never find contentment
Men’s values have been corrupted
Diogenes believe hunger to be the best appetizer, and because he waiting until he was hungry or thirsty before he ate or drank, he used to partake of a barley cake with greater pleasure than others did of the costliest of Foods, and enjoyed a drink from a stream of water more than others did their Thasian wine
”Be prepared for every fortune”
The stoics enjoyed whatever “good things” happened to be available, but as they did so, they prepared themselves to give up the things in question
Man’s distinguishing feature is his rationality
Logic is the study of the proper use of reasoning
Stoic ethics is not concerned with moral right and wrong but with having a “good spirit”, that is, with living a good, happy life or with what is sometimes called moral wisdom
Stoicism is not so much an ethic as it is a paradoxical recipe for happiness
For the stoics, a persons virtue depends on her excellence as s human being—on how well she performs the function for which human beings were designed
We are designed to live in accordance with nature
To discover for what function people were designed, we need only examine ourselves. We will discover we have certain instincts, as do all animals. We experience hunger; this is nature’s way of getting us to nourish ourselves. We also experience lust; this is nature’s way of getting us to reproduce. But we differ from other animals in on important respect: We have the ability to reason. From this we can conclude that we were designed to be reasonable
Sinxe nature intended us to be social creatures, we have duties to our fellow men. We should honor our parents, be agreeable to our friends and be concerned with the interests of our countrymen
A Stoic sage is free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report. He never feels grief, since he realizes that grief is an irrational contraction of the soul. He doesn’t let anything stop him from doing his duties. Although he drinks wine, he doesn’t do so in order to get drunk
The sage is a target for them to aim at, even though they will probably fail to hit it
Someone who is not tranquil might find it difficult to do what his reason tells him to do: His emotions will triumph over his intellect
This person might therefore become confused about what things are really good, consequently might fail to pursue them, and might, as a result, failed to attain virtue
The pursuit of virtue results in a degree o tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue
Your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living
It is difficulties that show what men are. Consequently, when a difficulty befalls, remember that God, has matched you with a rugged young man
God does not make a spoiled pet of a good man; he tests him, hardens him, and fits him fit his own service
The adversities we experience count as mere training and those things which we all shudder and tremble at are for the good of the persons themselves to whom they come
We must live in accordance with nature
“Begin each day telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders ignorance of what is good and evil” - Marcus Aurelius
“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing” - Marcus Aurelius
If we think about bad things, we will lessen their impact on us when, despite our efforts at prevention, they happen
“He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand”
We should keep in mind that all things everywhere are perishable
If we fail to recognize this and instead go around assuming that we will always be able to enjoy the things we value, we will likely find ourselves subject to considerable distress when the things we value are taken from us
We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires
Misfortunf weighs most heavily on those who expect nothing but good fortune
The problem is once we fulfill s desire for something, we adapt to its presence in our life and as a result stop desiring it. We then end up just as dissatisfied as we were before fulfilling the desire
One key to happiness is to forestall the adaptation process: we need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted the things we worked so hard to get
Tge easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have
Spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value
Negative visualization
Remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission —indeed, without even advance notice
We should love all of our dear ones..., but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long
Live each day as if it is your last
We should live as if this very moment were our last
Appreciate how wonderful it is that we are alive and have the opportunity to fill this day with activity
Theur goal is not to change our activities but to change our state of mind as we carry out those activities
They don’t want us to stop thinking about or planning for tomorrow; instead they want us, as we think about and plan for tomorrow, to remember to appreciate today
We should think about how we would feel if we lost our material possessions; how we would feel if we lost our abilities; and how we would feel if we lost our freedom
Negative visualization is a wonderful way to regain our appreciation of life and with it our capacity for joy
Enjoy what we have without clinging to it
All things human are short lived and perishable
The things we treasure are like the leaves on a tree, ready to drop when a breeze blows
The flux and change of the world around us are not an accident but an essential part of our universe
Look for all benefit and harm to come from yourself
Give up the rewards the external world has to offer in order to gain tranquility, freedom, and calm
”It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united.” - Epictetus
A better strategy for getting what you want is to make your goal to want only those things that are easy to obtain—and ideally to want only those things that you can be certain of obtaining
While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves—more precisely, by changing our desires
If you refuse to enter contests that you are capable of losing, you will never lose a contest
”Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.” - Epictetus
We are behaving foolishly if we spend time worrying about things that are not up to us
We have complete control over our opinions, impulses, desires, and adversions
The key to having a good life is to value things that are genuinely valuable and to be indifferent to things that lack value
We are the only ones who can stop ourselves from attaining goodness and integrity
It is wasted time and energy to spend any time and energy on things we have no control at all over since we will have no effect on the outcome
Set internal goals rather than external
Their goal was not to change the world, but to do their best to bring about certain changes
Do what you can
We are merely actors in a play written by someone else—the Fates
We cannot choose our role in this play, but we must play our role to the best of our ability
Rather than wanting events to conform to our desires, make our desires conform to events
Want events to happen as they do happen
We must learn to adapt ourselves to the environment into which fate has placed us and do our best to love the people with whom fare has surrounded us
We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens is for the best
Be fatalistic with respect to the past, to keep firmly in mind that the past cannot be changed
We sometimes should think about the past to learn lessons that can help us in our efforts to shape the future
We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment
We should periodically practice poverty
We should content ourselves with the scabtiesr and cheapest fare and with coarse and rough dress
We can live perfectly well without some of our things, but we won’t know which they are if we don’t try living without them
We should periodically cause ourselves to experience discomfort that we could easily have avoided
Voluntary discomfort
Make a point of passing up an opportunity to drink wine—no because we fear becoming an alcoholic but so we can learn self-control
If we lack self-control, we are likely to be distracted by the various pleasures life has to offer, and in this distracted state we are unlikely to attain the goals of our philosophy of life
Sometimes choose not to do things that would make you feel good
There is a fine line between enjoying a meal and lapsing into gluttony
Whereas the ordinary person embraces pleasure, the sage enchains it; whereas the ordinary person thinks pleasure is the highest good, the sage doesn’t think it is even a good; and whereas the ordinary person does everything for the sake of pleasure, the sage does nothing
Say no to ice cream to practice refusing something you would enjoy
The more you exercise your muscles the stronger you will get, and the more you exercise your will, the stronger it will get
By strengthening your courage and self-control, you will be able to do things that others dread doing, and will be able to refrain from doing things that others cannot resist doing
Chastity comes with time to spare, lechery had never a dull moment
Consciously abstaining from pleasure can itself be pleasant
You will be pleased and will praise yourself for not eating it
A strict diet is not cheerful, yet it is the highest kind of pleasure to be able to derive pleasure from this sort of food
Periodically meditate on the events of daily living, how we responded to these events, and how we should have responded to them in accordance with Stoic principles
Before bed, ask yourself, “What ailment of yours have you cured today? What failing have you resisted? Where can you show improvement?”
When contemplating whether to criticize someone, he should consider not only whether the criticism is valid but also whether the person can stand to be criticized
Keep away from low company aka people who make jokes about you
If you are going to publish, you must be willing to tolerate criticism
Bedtime meditation: did something disrupt your tranquility? Did you experience anger? Envy? Lust? Why did the days events upset you? Is there something you could have done to avoid getting upset?
Continually ask if we are being governed by our reason or something else
We can learn from other people’s mistakes and successes
“If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself” - Epictetus
Stop blaming, censuring, and praising others; stop boasting about ourselves and how much we r know; and blame ourselves, not external circumstances, when our desires are thwarted
Our impulses toward everything will be diminished
We will come to regard ourselves as an enemy lying in wait
We will stop having dreams in which we take pleasure in disgraceful things
Our philosophy should consist of actions not words
We should be so inconspicuous that others don’t label us Stoics
Every day, reduce my number of vices and bland my mistakes
If we can do the right thing, Stoically speaking, most of the time, we are doing pretty well for ourselves
Continue to practice Stoicism even when success looks hopeless
“To know how many are jealous of you, count your admirers.” - Seneca
The gods created us for some duty
Our primary function is to be rational
We were designed to live among other people and interact with them in a manner that is mutually adventageous
To fulfill our social duty, we must feel a concern for all mankind
In all I do, I must have as my goal “the service and harmony of all”
”I am bound to do good to my fellow-creature and bear with them.” - Marcus Aurelius
Ideally, a Stoic will be oblivious to the services he does for others, as oblivious as a grapevine is when it yields a cluster of grapes to a vintner. He will not pause to boast about the service he has performed but will move on to perform his next service
Perform with resolute was the duties we humans were created to perform. Nothing else should distract us
We should show true love to the people with whom destiny has surrounded us
The reward for doing one’s duty is a good life
Prepare for our dealings with other people before we have to deal with them
Vices are contagious
Avoid people with vices. Avoid people who are shiny. Who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint
A companion who is always upset and bemoans everything is a foe to tranquility
We should be selective about which social functions we attend unless doing our social duty requires us to attend them
Avoid banquets given by no philosophers
When we find ourselves irritated by someone’s shortcomings, we should pause to reflect on our own shortcomings
By letting ourselves become annoyed, we only make things worse
We can lessen the negative impact other people have on our life by controlling our thoughts about them
Do not waste time speculating about what our neighbors are doing, saying, thinking, or scheming
People do not choose to have the faults they do
A wise man will not have sex outside of marriage and within marriage will have it only for the purpose of begetting children
Pause when insulted to consider whether what the insulted said is true
Pause to consider how well informed the insulter is
When we consider the sources of insults, we will often find that those who insult us can be best described as overgrown children
Such people, rather than deserving our anger, deserve our pity
We will become increasingly indifferent to other people’s opinions of us
Keep in mind that we ourselves are the source of any sting that accompanies the insult
Remember that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgement about them that they are insulting
Another person will not do you harm unless you wish it; you will be harmed st just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed
If we can convince ourselves that a person has done no harm by insulting us, his insult will carry no sting
What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgements about these things
The things that happen to us will help or harm us depending on our values
My values are things over which I have complete control. If something external harms me, it is my own fault: I should have adopted different values
By laughing off an insult, we are implying that we don’t take the insulter and his insults seriously
Instead of reacting to an insult, we should calmly and quietly bear what has happened
We simply don’t have time for the childish behavior of this person
Be thankful that he lived at all
Anger is brief insanity
No plauge has cost the human race more
Being angry is s waste of our precious time
Our anger invariably lasts longer than the damage done to us
What seems vitally important to us will seem unimportant to our grandchildren
People are unhappy because they are confused about what is valuable. They spend their days pursuing things that, rather than making them happy, make them anxious and miserable
You will be much better off if you are indifferent to social status
If we seek social status we give others power over us
If we make it our goal to please others, we will no longer be free to please ourselves
If we want to retain our freedom, we must be indifferent to what people think of us
We must be dismissive of their approval and disproval
To tell someone else that you don’t care what he thinks is quite possibly the worst input you can inflict
Make the best of todsy
Many people want you to fail in your undertaking
“It is better to die of hunger with distress and fear gone than to live upset in the midst of plenty” - Epictetus
Wealth has the power to make people miserable
When someone eats, he should choose food not for pleasure but for nourishment, not to please his palate but to strengthen his body