Weight on the bar
It's not very much weight on the bar. But, still. It's weight on the bar. When ego tells you "Just quit. This is beneath you." Don't listen.
Stoicism
Discomfort
When you experience discomfort, your natural response will be to ask "How can I stop this most quickly?" Instead, challenge yourself. "What would it take for me to reach my limit of this? Am I already at it? Can I go five minutes without showing a sign of weakness? Five minutes after that?"
Good Things In Bad Times
There is a strange irony of difficult times like the current moment, when everyone expects everyone else to be tense and short-tempered. The podcasts, newsletters, and smartphone notifications say the world is coming apart at the seams. People expect bad things to happen. The result is that the slightest moment of friendliness has a magnified effect. A smiling nod, holding the door for someone, a kind word of thanks to a stranger. It's so unexpected that people are warmly surprised by it. It's … (Continued)
Natural Endings
Meditations 6.1 Nature is pliable, obedient. And the logos that governs it has no reason to do evil. It knows no evil, does none, and causes harm to nothing. It dictates all beginnings and all endings. So long as the ending is natural, it cannot be evil. It is simply the symmetric ending to a beginning set in motion years ago.
Voluntary Hardship
You must choose your own forms of hardship, or they will be chosen for you by fortune. Suffering through workouts or being surprised by injury and frailty. Budgeting your money or being blindsided by unexpected events. Controlling the food you eat or being weakened and sickened by the lack of discipline. You get to choose all of these. You get to choose what form of exercise to do, or what to spend your budgeted money on. The only choice you do not have is "No Hardship."
The Present Alone
This moment right now is not so bad. If you're sitting somewhere, reading this, wherever you are, whenever you are, it's not so bad around you. Sure, somewhere in the world there are people facing very tough challenges. But they are less worried about their predicament than you are right now. When you are in the midst of the battle, you don't have time to worry. You just do what you have with the resources on hand. Right now, on the other hand, you are probably idle. You have time to sit, a … (Continued)
Seneca on Living Nobly
Seneca, Letter 22: Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.