We could go through a thousand other thought exercises but we don't need to. The point is: it's tough. Maybe that's not your struggle, maybe you have plenty of your own struggles. But as Marcus reminds us, any harm to the bee harms the hive. And in fact, Marcus Aurelius' and Junius Rusticus' example is a more powerful statement: The persecution of the Christians--which was then a fledgling and misunderstood religion--is a terrible black mark on the Stoics and their philosophy. If you can't celebrate and be accepting of how others live, you can at least strive to not make their lives harder. You can at least leave them alone.
"Take on less. Take on less responsibilities. Instead of doing ten things to one, do one thing to ten. And that's antithetical to my approach 10 years ago when my career was starting to come into focus and the more exploration I did, the more aggressive I was in those pursuits, the greater the return. And now it's the opposite of that. The more focused, the more disciplined I am in my pursuits, the greater the return."
On the Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan Holiday interviewed actor, director and entrepreneur Justin Baldoni. You might have seen Baldoni as Rafael on the award-winning phenomenon Jane the Virgin or his multi-award-winning documentary series My Last Days, the most watched digital documentary series in history. Most recently, Baldoni published his first book, Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity. Along with the new book, Ryan and Justin talk about building emotional intelligence, the importance of and difference between showing emotion and showing vulnerability, and what to remember when you encounter a rude, selfish, terrible person:
"In the Baháʼí Faith, we're taught that we're the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch…My senior yearbook quote was, 'breathe not the sins of others, so long as thou art not thyself a sinner.' We see this in all religions and philosophies…It's the fundamental thing missing from so many of us: empathy and compassion for one another, for what another person is going through or experiencing…We have to start to value compassion over comprehension."
WHAT RYAN HOLIDAY IS READING:
We will fail at times…Such is the nature of sailing in challenging seas, and that is a pretty good lesson for all of us sailing the voyages of our lives, whatever our profession…At our best, we still have the power of "no," of saying, in the simplest terms, that we will not give up the ship—never, never, never—no matter the cost, so long as we have the means to resist.
If you don't know what port you're sailing to, no wind is favorable.
The Stoics talked about how you have to define what success means to you. Before you set out on any endeavor, you have to answer, what would success look like on this? Why am I doing this?
You can't take proper action, Seneca wrote, "unless you have already set before yourself the chief purpose." He used the analogy of a painter wanting to paint a portrait—the painter doesn't start painting a portrait until they decide who they are painting a portrait of.
Before you start a project or take a job or begin a diet, like the likeness the painter wants to paint, get a sense of the outcome you want. Otherwise, Seneca said, "if one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable."
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