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The Daily Stoic
Here Are Signs You’re Making Progress
Ep. 86
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Ok, you’ve been doing your reading and your journaling. You’re trying to be conscious of your thoughts and your actions. In short, you’re putting in the work.
The question is, how do you know if it’s working? The journey to becoming a “sage” is one that takes a lifetime. No one hands you a certificate. Wisdom accumulates and builds on itself until one day, well, there you are. If that feels a little too inexact, we empathize, but such is life.
Still, there has to be something we can look for to see whether we are making progress. Whether we are getting better as opposed to simply feeling better (or more dangerously, feeling self-satisfied?)
According to Epictetus, these are signs that someone is making progress:
-criticizing nobody
-praising nobody
-blaming nobody
-accusing nobody
-saying nothing about themselves to indicate being someone or knowing something
-when frustrated or impeded, they blame themselves
-if complimented, they laugh
-if criticized, they ignore
-relaxed in motivation
-banishing harmful desire
-they watch themselves as though they were an enemy plotting an attack
If you’re really doing the work, you will see yourself improve in these areas. Not all the time and certainly not in all of them all at once. But you will blame others less, ignore criticism more readily (and ignore leveling it at others). You will be humbler and desire less. You will take responsibility. You will examine yourself.
That’s progress.
The question for you today is: Are you making any?
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