Marcus Aurelius's Number 1 Tip for Living a Happy Life
Life is short, and we have only so much time and energy.
However, we spend most of this time thinking about things that have happened or are yet to happen. We suffer in our imagination.
Our lives are filled with anxiety, hope, fear, ambition, greed & envy. The human mind can lead us astray, ushering us onto a path unrecognisable from what we wanted for ourselves.
We all want to be happy, healthy and wealthy (whatever that term means to you), but today, it feels like the path to lasting happiness is impossible to see-hazed over by fog and covered with brambles, we can’t seem to find our feet.
But the art of living a purposeful life hasn’t changed for thousands of years. Our world is ever-changing at a rate that is only increasing. Trying to keep up is exhausting and futile. There is, however, one simple, almost too simple, trick to counter this:
“If you seek tranquillity, do less.”
- Marcus Aurelius
Let’s break this beautiful quote down into three parts:
Learn to Value What You Already Have
Become Indifferent to Circumstance
Cease to Hope, and You Will Cease to Fear
Read time: 9 minutes
Learn to Value What You Already Have
Desire is a sultry mistress. How many times have you wanted something only to regret it in retrospect? How many arguments have you had over something deemed important only to realise how childish that assumption was? How many times have you lost something, realising only through time the true value of it?
It’s all too easy to undervalue what we already have, what’s familiar and safe to us, and to overvalue what we don’t have, what we desire, hope for and fear.
One consistency amongst older people is what they value as they near the end of their lives. It’s never materialistic. It’s relationships, certain periods of their lives, family, friends, and memories.
Seeing other people around you excel when you’re standing still can create emotions of envy and resentment. It’s only human nature. But what you don’t realise is that somebody else is above them. This reminds me of Seneca’s quote: “When you look at all the people out in front of you, think of all the ones behind you.”
There are always people better off than you, but invert this, and the same is true. There are always people worse off than you, too.
It’s easy to want more, but what you have already is enough. You have to realise this. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a better future for yourself or your family, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of your sanity.
There’s a simple exercise for helping you better value what you currently have that works almost instantly. It just requires being slightly uncomfortable for a few minutes.
The Stoics are famous (wrongly) for not caring much. The philosophy has been infiltrated by bros supposedly indifferent to feelings. Their mantra, ‘If somebody disrespects you, cut that person out of your life, with no remorse, then do 15 press-ups, do an ice bath, trade and be ultra-successful,’ is far removed from what the great Stoics practised, lived and taught.
This misconstrued hardiness is better directed in the opposite direction, though. If somebody you care about disrespects you (upsets you for normal people), walk away and deliberately think about how you would feel if that person were dead (careful here; if you don’t like the person, it could become a fantasy). Suppose you love or care for this person, though, visualise their death, their funeral and your life without them. Picture yourself speaking at their funeral. What would you say?
This seems extreme, but you only need to do this once you begin to understand the power of this exercise.
Some people struggle to do this because of the emotion it can bring up, but by practising this, you will almost always see things for what they are. What’s important (valuable), and what’s not.
Therefore, to seek tranquillity, desire less. Be content with what you have, and yes, have ambition, but be indifferent to its success. When work feels like play to you, you’re already winning. When you understand the true value of what you already have, what more is there to gain?
Become Indifferent to Circumstance
You’ll never run out of things to worry about or want to change. The world will never run out of external problems for you to lose sleep over, chat about with friends or get vexed at online.
As far as we know, people have been searching for a Utopian solution to this since humans could put pen to paper. We haven’t found it, and I doubt we ever will. There simply can’t be a world in which it’s great for everybody all the time. Every day, there are winners and losers. This is what nature intended.
Armed with this dour assessment of the world, why would you even bother getting out of bed in the morning?
The internet is great for a whole host of things (including reading this newsletter), but along with social media, it can and often does create a skewed version of reality. It’s easy to hop on X, spend 30 minutes on there, argue with a few d*ckheads, see death, destruction, war, sexism, crudeness, rudeness and a host of other behaviours most people wouldn’t dare dream of acting like in real life.
Our personas online aren’t a true reflection of the person we are in real life. It’s a facade bordering on a con. So why do we get so upset when we come across these external triggers?
We all, at any moment, can determine how we act to something that is happening to us or others. A comment made to us, politics, a rude driver.
What can you change about any of those? Nothing!
How can you react? Well, that’s entirely up to you. Let’s give two examples here: one from a guy named Joe and another from a woman named Mary.
Joe, upon hearing this displeasing comment, sets upon the other person the full force of his fury. Vexed but slightly impressed with his obvious superiority and ability to crush his opponent, he goes online to catch a breath.
Upon going on social media, up pops an inflammatory and purposefully incendiary comment about the upcoming American election. He’s proud of his nationality and believes in values such as community, patriotism and democracy, so when he sees a tweet from somebody he doesn’t know that calls into question his beliefs, he feels that, yet again, this is another attack on him. Poor Joe, he’s not having much luck today. The gloves are back on, round 2. Ding, ding, ding!
Exhausted after a day fighting at the office, he hops in his car and heads home, but as we can now guess, this isn’t Joe’s day. A driver cuts him up, and after an initial few toots of the horn both ways, the guy (who was wrong) calls Joe a wanker.
What’s Joe to do? He’s not somebody to be pushed around, but he’s already exhausted from the two bouts of fighting he’s done just today. Not to have a consistency crisis, he gets out of his car, rips open the door and begins to beat the living daylight out of the guy.
Joe had a bad day. He’s been tormented and in constant fight mode. He’s now also in a cell. His wife and kids are at home, confused, angry and annoyed at him for being so childish. Let’s say this isn’t the first time and probably won’t be the last what’s his wife to do? I suspect she’ll leave Joe because he sounds like a man-child loser who’s unable to control his emotions. Poor Joe.
Mary, on the other hand, has her sh*t together. She realises that a rude comment made by a coworker isn’t something she can do anything about. In this instance, she respectfully decides to disengage and walk away feeling sad for the coworker who felt they might have got some sort of satisfaction from trying to be funny or mean.
Hoping online, she too has the same feelings as Joe about values and identity, but then she sees a comment that’s directly opposed to those beliefs.
What’s Mary to do? Nothing. What good would it do to argue with a stranger online about such topics?
Leaving work in her car, somebody cuts her up and calls her a wanker. What a day Mary’s having! She laughs at this pathetic person, turns the song up in the car and heads home on her merry way.
I can you you i’ve been both Joe and Mary. When I left the Marines, I felt I could fight the world and often went about looking to do so. If it wasn’t for my wife, then girlfriend at the time, calling out my bullshit, I’d still be a Joe. Coupled with reading the works of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, I’ve come to realise I’m far less capable of fixing everyone’s problems than I first thought and hoped. It humbled me, but it’s given me peace of mind.
At any moment, you can decide how you respond (or don’t) to something. That’s not to say you become this numb vessel; you just learn to prioritise what’s worth responding to and what isn’t.
Therefore, if you seek tranquillity, react less.
Cease to Hope, and You Will Cease to Fear
Wrapping this up, we’ll finish with two quotes. One from Seneca and the other by Hecato.
“New engrossments take the place of the old, hope leads to new hope, ambition to new ambition. They do not seek an end of their wretchedness, but change the cause.”
- Seneca
If Seneca, way back then, knew the limitless bounds of hope, then why, over two thousand years later, does it still have such a grip on us? It’s perfectly ok to hope for a better world, for better medicine, education and rights. These are worthy pursuits.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition either, after all, how do we expect to get the above without it? But to desire things that don’t benefit the greater community? The fear you possess that you’re somehow missing out on life if you don’t have what others have. Are these actions serving you well?
Therefore, if you seek tranquillity, expect less.
Be happy with what you have because, at any moment, it can be taken away from you.
That day, nobody can avoid it.
“Limiting one's desires actually helps to cure one of fear. “Cease to hope, and you will cease to fear.”
- Hecato
Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).
If you found this article helpful and think it could benefit others, please share it!
📚 The School of Knowledge leverages book wisdom to better understand people, businesses, and ideas by bridging the gap between theory and real-world application. Join my growing community of like-minded people below💡
Thanks for sharing, Karl. A good reminder for us all to be grateful, to be studious, to be kind... And to be stoic :)
Good read Karl!
I’ve recently dealt with many feelings of disappointment. I wanted more, desiring to feel abundance. After much struggle, I realized I was going at it all wrong.
Having more isn’t the only way to abundance. We can also want less.