I hope I haven’t been away for too long!  Even though you are a hypothetical baby my absence might have caused you to get hungry for another lesson! What I’m trying to do here is to help you navigate this convoluted world.  I’m trying to teach you things that I did not know while I was growing up. I learned these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons in one convenient place: Here.

Here’s a couple mini-lessons. First of all, if someone wants you to offer some good advice but you can’t think of anything, just offer them some of the wisdom of the Stoics of ancient Rome. Your audience won’t even know that these writings are ancient. Here’s another cool thing: Even though this is “philosophy,” it is practical advice to help you in your daily life. This is the opposite of academic philosophy.

Check this out. One of the key tenets of the Stoics is essentially the Serenity Prayer. Epictetus writes:

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.

— Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5

Compare to the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

Here is another Stoic version of this same idea:

“Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.”

— Epictetus, Discourses , 1.18.21

Why is this lesson so valuable? Because human animals screw this up so often! They need to hear this advice over and over, because we are wired to obsess and fret over things we cannot change. But here’s a caveat: you shouldn’t make excuses when you could change something but you are too lazy to put in the effort. You need to be honest with yourself about what you can change.  Then get to work on something you can handle. Don’t waste your life away by fretting and obsessing. Many things have changed over the past 2,000 years, but the wisdom of the Stoics is as relevant as ever.

Here’s my favorite Stoic quote:

“The Obstacle Is the Way.”

Marcus Aurelius

Is it possible to fit more wisdom into such a short quote? All of us need to go to the fear. Always and often. When you engage with something scary, one of two things will happen. First, it might be really terrible, but then you’ll then know what you are dealing with. That might allow you to adjust your expectations. Or maybe you’ll regroup and think of a new way to deal with the problem. Second, upon engaging with a scary thing, you might find out that it is not as scary as you thought. Both of these possibilities are clearly better than trembling ad nauseam at a distance.

Again, don’t these ideas seem modern?  Here are many more Stoic quotes for you. 

If you want yet more Stoic wisdom, Ryan Holliday offers lessons of the Stoics every day on The Daily Stoic. I’ll end this lesson with a close paraphrase of one of Holliday’s recent podcast episodes featuring the teachings of Seneca. These are Seneca’s Tips for Mastering Yourself:

Push yourself physically so you can be better mentally. Seneca said we should treat the body rigorously so it’s not disobedient to the mind. That’s why we should seek out challenges. That’s why we should go do hard things. Don’t live an easy, soft life.

Late in life, Seneca was exiled by another emperor and repeatedly he was tried. What did he do in these trying circumstances? He focused on how he could respond. He made good out of a tough situation. The Stoics practice negative visualization. Seneca warns us that the unexpected blow lands most heavily. Part of the reason he thrived in commotion is that he worked hard to anticipate adversity. We need to always focus on how we are going to respond when things don’t go as anticipated.

Seneca noted that we don’t choose your parents, but we do get to choose whose child we want to be. The Stoic approach was to decide whose descendants you want to be. Whose footsteps you’re going to follow? You can also change your friends. With whom are you going to surround yourself? Who are you going to choose to be the biggest influences in your life? Who are the role models that you choose to be inspired by? You become like the people you spend time with, so carefully choose the things and people who will influence you.

The purpose of philosophy is to make us better people, to scrub off our flaws. We sign up for learning and study and self-improvement, but not with the aim of making ourselves seem better than others. It’s to make us better masters of ourselves, not to be condescending, or patronizing or controlling other people. Working hard to be excellent is called self-discipline for a reason. It’s discipline over ourselves.

Being excellent at something requires concentration and it requires us to make some difficult choices. A person who is everywhere is nowhere. If we want to be great at whatever it is we are doing, it requires focusing on everything we say yes to. It means saying no to everything else. This works in reverse too. When we say no to some things, this enables us to say yes to that which is truly essential.

Seneca said that the body must be treated rigorously, so that it is not disobedient to the mind. This is the idea of training.  Who is in charge? The little voice in your head telling you to quit or the willpower to be a finisher? If we want to get to a point where things that are difficult for us become easy, we need to train physically, mentally, spiritually. When we do this, we are prepared for adversity.

Seneca is an interesting philosopher because he’s not an academic. He’s a playwright and a Roman senator. He wrote a letter to a friend, advising him how he should think about death. Most of us mistakenly think of death as something in the future, but Death is happening right now. The time you have already lived is owned by death. Instead of thinking that you would be lucky to live to be elderly, consider this: If you are 50, you started dying 50 years ago. We are dying every day, so we need to excel at managing this precious resource of time. We fritter away our time, even though we carefully guard our property and money. This is despite the fact that we can always buy more property. We can always earn more money. We need to focus on the non-replenishable resource of time.

Seneca says “Happy is he who makes others better.” A Stoic is not just a role model, but an inspiration. A Stoic is someone who makes others better by their example, by the work that they do, and by the good they do for their community. Epictetus said, “Don’t talk about your philosophy. Embody it.”  We make others better by being our best selves and this also make us happy.

Seneca said, Look! You don’t need to go to school! You don’t need to be a genius. You don’t need a tutor. You only need to find one thing every day that makes you better: a story, a quote, an idea!