PhilosoBits Biweekly #056 - Choose Your Inputs | March 16, 2025

Choose Your Inputs

There is no shortage of people who will endeavor to make you into a version of yourself most advantageous to their aims. Accordingly, our daily work must be that of fitting our own mold, the one we've crafted with diligent intent. 

Philosopher playwright Seneca presents us with a lofty reflection when he expresses that a human's "ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he was born." While our specific sense of purpose can evolve, an enriched life is living each day in a manner suited to one's intent—most optimally, one's own intent.

Existence balances the self being both separate from and related to others. Some of our best qualities are refined and displayed because of what's been encouraged by others. This differs, however, from being wholly guided by others’ inputs.

From the books we read and the insights we find, to the well-placed individuals a few stages ahead of us in a position to open doors, life soon becomes the continuous act of both selecting influences and selecting our response to them. What we're tasked with in the midst of this is knowing the difference between that which is unlocking more of who we aim to be, and that which, despite its cunning allure, lacks the substance we seek. 

You must have an acute understanding of what your own edification looks like, and of what might be externally influenced, but is useful and character building. You have to understand what it is you're looking for and what you're willing to find (and how willing you are to be shaped by what's found).

Choose your inputs; choose your life.

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PhilosoBits Biweekly #055 - Let Your Aim Be The Outcome | March 2, 2025

Let Your Aim Be The Outcome

Often more motivating than an object or state of being itself is the validation presented by it. Authors Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp expound upon this concept effectively in book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, with "Commitment 11" positing that all human wants stem from a desire for approval, control, or security. 

If we follow the Stoic guidance to lay all things bare to see them as they truly are, our desires included, what we'll find is a list of ways we've outsourced our contentment, consciously or subconsciously behaving in manners that put others as the dictators of our peace.

It's for this reason that the full commitment articulated in Commitment 11 in the work of Dethmer, Chapman, and Klemp is to that of "being the source of my security, control and approval." We become the solution by realizing that we are the solution.

Amidst our efforts toward productive striving, it's useful to differentiate between desires and goals. A goal is aimed for, set in a manner in which the aspirer recognizes the active role she plays in attaining it, and the practical steps required of her. 

Though pulsating, a desire can be vague and may or may not be accompanied by a will to sustain it once realized; it is a craving that one often wants satisfied immediately. Akin to a wish, a desire tends to be something we want granted; contrarily, a goal is consciously pursued. This is why we commonly find metaphorical usages of arrows across Stoic texts—their direction is influenced by the archer's aim. 

It's with this analogy in mind that we transition our focus from outcomes themselves, to becoming the person to whom certain outcomes are most likely to correspond.

In the now renowned behavior book Atomic Habits, author James Clear emphasizes that "every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. As the votes build up, so does the evidence of your identity.” In the actions, our aims are displayed.

Aim well.

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PhilosoBits Biweekly #054 - A Setback Is A Thrust Forward | February 16, 2025

A Setback Is A Thrust Forward

What may be most powerfully unlocked by Stoicism is the ability to reframe one's experiences, taking one from a diminished state to that of utterly determined. We find playwright and philosopher Seneca articulating one's potential for triumph in Letter XCI of Letters From A Stoic with the following: “A setback has often cleared the way for greater prosperity. Many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted heights.” 

Seneca then goes onto describe the tendency for citizens of a town struck by tragedy to rebuild something even more beautiful, more striking, more compelling than that which was torn down.

And this is the attitude we're to take toward any perceived setback: one that sees it as a thrust forward toward that which you are now uniquely capable. It is only now, in this precise state, that you are able to rise to and above whatever task or opportunity is presented. 

Merriam-Webster defines resilience as "the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress.” The Stoics advise that we are not only entirely capable of recovering (resilience aided by training and preparation), but of outdoing—of pursuing an improved position compared to what preceded any disruption.

Resilience wasn’t meant to be the peak state of the human being, but the default one. In other words, resilience is a matter of living in a constant state of knowing that life will happen, and consciously adopting the tools that will enable one to rise above it. It’s knowing when to say to yourself, quite practically, I didn’t come this far to give up, and having come this far means that I can get better.

Get up, and get better.

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PhilosoBits Biweekly #053 - What Is Your Aim? | February 2, 2025

What Is Your Aim?

In Andy Weir’s novel-turned-film The Martian, audiences bear witness to the main character completely defying the odds of surviving alone on Mars by way of feats that plenty would be hard pressed to achieve on earth (building a self-sustaining garden, rationing out meals so as to minimally sustain oneself for an unforeseen period of time, and so on), all while employing a level of science and engineering genius that far surpasses average intelligence. 

What's significant about this story (beyond its core compelling plot of survival on a not-completely-inhabitable planet), is its depiction of the human spirit—of determined resilience in the face of bleakness. When a certain end result is an absolute and utter necessity, the depth of capability is revealed.

The hyperbolic nature of survival scenarios needn't diminish the broader revelation they often serve to illuminate: the undeniable role played by necessity in everything we do.  

Similar to the degrees to which we pursue excellence, action, both in specificity and intensity, corresponds to perceived necessity. One need only compare the hobbyist and the professional to see this. The professional guitarist’s livelihood depends on his dedication to practicing, improving, and securing gigs. 

The hobbyist knows no such pressure; a pursuit fueled by nothing other than his own autotelic interest in honing the craft, nothing overtly critical to his livelihood is risked by him taking a weekend off. What this example demonstrates is why we don't do many of the things we say we'd like to: The stakes are not high enough to impel consistency in the absence of external pressures, and the alternative is often easier and immediately gratifying.

Marcus Aurelius illuminates the antidote to inconsistency when he implores that one "must never act without a definite aim.” Our aim can be as simple as the enrichment derived from the act, the mental or physical health we know it may enable, or so on. When our intention is unclear, our commitment is unsteady.

A clearly defined, personally-compelling intent enables consistency of action. Define and act accordingly.

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PhilosoBits Biweekly #052 - This Is Where You're Going | January 19, 2025

This Is Where You're Going

Trajectory, as author James Clear notably puts forth in his now-seminal work Atomic Habits, is the greatest indicator of where one's actions are leading. "You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory," Clear states, "than with your current results." If you were to do only and exactly what your present daily routine presents, where are you most likely to land?

Stoic texts propose similar considerations. Book VIII of Meditations finds Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius illuminating our nature-endowed ability to anticipate the future by way of conscious intention, offering an analogous arrow as a reference point. "An arrow moves in one way, the mind in another," he begins. "And yet the mind, when it takes good care and concentrates on the question in hand, is no less direct in its flight and sure in hitting its mark."

Our daily practices could be seen as that of taking aim (an archer drawing back his bow, narrowing his vision on the target ahead), the intended destination (our preferred realities) being the target. Our task, as Aurelius iterates, is to concentrate on the question in hand—any matter of most consequence to our present and perpetual thriving.

When we say we can't predict the future, what we likely mean is to say that we can't precisely predict whatever it is that others will do in that future, the external factors that may arise and impact, or disrupt, and so on.

What we can predict, however, with the aid of honest introspection, is our likely placement in that future—our position. Clear Thinking author Shane Parrish stresses that "ordinary moments determine your position, and your position determines your options." 

If you want to know where you're going, look no further at whatever it is that you're doing right now, across the spheres of your life; act or iterate accordingly.

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PhilosoBits Biweekly #051 - Recover Your Grip | December 21, 2024

Recover Your Grip

Daunting about the pursuit of the philosophically-informed life is the notion that one ought to be one-hundred-percent unshakable, unagitated, unfazed, one hundred percent of the time. Fortunate for the fallible human, this is not what philosophy demands. 

The "instructress of our hands," as referred to by playwright and philosopher Seneca, impresses upon and aids us with recoverability. Our task in the enriched thinking life is to be wholly and totally recoverable. While our quality of life is largely influenced by what happens, our ability to recover from and utilize what happens is what shapes how we experience our lives.

In the manner of the Stoics, we can make this concrete. This very ability to recover is informed by our habits across the core realms of our lives: the practical, the emotional, and the psychological. 

We become practically recoverable through proactive and conscientious choices around the physical and the financial, enabling the ability to physiologically or fiscally recover from related misfortunes. You build resources and you build strength while you're able as a gift you give to a version of you that isn't.

We become emotionally recoverable by consciously cultivating a sense of perspective, regularly employing the Stoic "view from above" technique where one zooms out to pull all of time into view, allowing for a more accurate weighting of certain matters in isolation. 

We become psychologically recoverable through actualization, that of spending the majority of our output-focused time at the edge of our capability such that we can see evidence of our demonstrated potential, and so too, that which may be ahead even still.

Make no mistake: The ability to recover, to not "lose" more time than necessary in the wake of the unexpected, is enhanced by our daily practices. “If you feel that you are falling away and losing your hold," Marcus Aurelius offers in Book X of Meditations, "then withdraw undismayed into some corner where you can recover your grip.”

And so, how recoverable are you? May we stride ever toward the levels we seek.

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