Stoicism for a Better Life – Weekly exercise (September 13, 2020)

Hello there, 

For this week’s exercise, I wanted to remind everyone that we are not born with all the knowledge, answers and virtue. We learn it. Therefore, what we know can always be built upon, improved and flat our replaced. Let us look at Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations VIII 16:

“Remember that to change your mind and to follow someone’s correction are consistent with the freewill. For the action is yours alone – fulfill its purpose in keeping with your impulse and judgment, and yes, with your intelligence.”  

I’m going to keep this one short and simple. Everything you know and live by is wrong. Or rather…can be wrong. Given that we are not born as perfect sages, we know we are flawed in the way we are. And if this journey of self improvement is a lifelong journey, and we don’t know exactly how it will unfold and what we will learn and build upon, we must remain open minded to the fact that everything we know and hold dear to our hearts, no matter how strongly we feel about it, may be wrong.

Changing ones point of view is not weakness. It is not being a hypocrite. It is not a sign of weakness. In fact, it is the most blatant sign of strength. It shows growth and maturity and development and self improvement. So as a practical exercise this week, challenge your dogmas…especially the ones you hold with firm conviction. Challenge even what this philosophy is teaching you. How many Stoics were there in the history of the 100 billion human beings? Did the Stoics get it right or did some of the others? Does the information make sense to you now, in your current reality?

Take the time to rethink some of your most highly held principles and you may be surprised where you may find room for improvement. And worst case, you will reconfirm, logically and rationally, that the principles you hold firm are in fact the best that you can think of in the here and now (i.e. you will confirm you are being the best you, with the best possible moral code and living the best life you can).

I would be very interested to hear about examples of growth where you improved upon an idea you have always lived with. Reach out to me on Twitter, Reddit or Patreon and tell me about it.

Anderson Silver

(Author of “Your User’s Manual” and “Vol 2: Your Duality Within”)