The Cost Of Accepting Counterfeits

When coins were much more rudimentary, people had to spend a lot of time testing them to confirm the currency they’d just received was genuine. The Greek word dokimazein means “to assay” or check the quality of a mineral ore. Merchants were often skilled enough that they could test coinage by throwing it against a hard surface and listen to the note it rang. Even today, though, if someone were to hand you a hundred-dollar bill, you might rub it between your fingers or hold it up to the light, just to confirm it wasn't a fake.

All this for an imaginary currency, an invention of society. The point of this metaphor is to highlight how much effort we put into making sure money is real, whereas we accept potentially life-changing thoughts or assumptions without so much as a question. One ironic assumption along these lines: that having a lot of money makes you wealthy. Or that because a lot of people believe something, it must be true.

Really, we should be testing these notions as vigilantly as a money changer. For, as Epictetus reminds us, “the first and greatest task of the philosopher is to test and separate appearances, and to act on nothing that is untested.”

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Observe Cause and Effect

Through the work of the psychologist Albert Ellis, Stoicism has reached millions of people through what’s known as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). As a form of a therapy, CBT helps patients identify destructive patterns in their thoughts and behavior so they can, over time, direct and influence them in a more positive direction.

Of course, Marcus Aurelius had no formal training in psychology, but his words here are as important as any doctor’s. He’s asking you to become an observer of your own thoughts and the actions those thoughts provoke. Where do they come from? What biases do they contain? Are they constructive or destructive? Do they cause you to make mistakes or engage in behavior you later regret? Look for patterns; find where cause meets effect.

Only when this is done can negative behavior patterns be broken; only then can real life improvements be made.

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Becoming An Expert In What Matters

The things that some people manage to be experts in: fantasy sports, celebrity trivia, derivatives and commodities markets, thirteenth-century hygiene habits of the clergy.

We can get very good at what we’re paid to do, or adept at a hobby we wish we could be paid to do. Yet our own lives, habits, and tendencies might be a mystery to us.

Seneca was writing this important reminder to his father-in-law, who, as it happened, was for a time in charge of Rome’s granary. But then his position was revoked for political purposes. Who really cares, Seneca was saying, now you can focus that energy on your inner life.

At the end of your time on this planet, what expertise is going to be more valuable—your understanding of matters of living and dying, or your knowledge of the ’87 Bears? Which will help your children more—your insight into happiness and meaning, or that you followed breaking political news every day for thirty years?

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Test Your Impressions

In an overly quantified world of policies and processes, some are swinging back in the other direction. Bold leaders will “trust their gut.” A spiritual guru will say that it’s important to “let your body guide you.” A friend trying to help us with a difficult decision might ask, “What feels right here?” These approaches to decision making contradict voluminous case studies in which people’s instincts have led them right into trouble. Our senses are wrong all the time! As animals subjected to the slow force of evolution, we have developed all sorts of heuristics, biases, and emotional responses that might have worked well on the savannah but are totally counterproductive in today’s world.

Part of Stoicism is cultivating the awareness that allows you to step back and analyze your own senses, question their accuracy, and proceed only with the positive and constructive ones. Sure, it’s tempting to throw discipline and order to the wind and go with what feels right—but if our many youthful regrets are any indication, what feels right right now doesn't always stand up well over time. Hold your senses suspect. Again, trust, but always verify.

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Judgments Cause Disturbance

The samurai swordsman Musashi made a distinction between our “perceiving eye” and our “observing eye.” The observing eye sees what is. The perceiving eye sees what things supposedly mean. Which one do you think causes us the most anguish?

An event is inanimate. It’s objective. It simply is what it is. That’s what our observing eye sees.

This will ruin me. How could this have happened? Ugh! It’s so-and-so’s fault. That’s our perceiving eye at work. Bringing disturbance with it and then blaming it on the event.

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If You Want To Learn, Be Humble

If all the Stoics, Epictetus is the closest one to a true teacher. He had a school. He hosted classes. In fact, his wisdom is passed down to us through a student who took really good lecture notes. One of the things that frustrated Epictetus about philosophy students—and has frustrated all college professors since time began—is how students claim to want to be taught but really secretly believe they already know everything.

The reality is that we’re all guilty of thinking we know it all, and we’d all learn more if we could set that attitude aside. As smart or successful as we may be, there is always someone who is smarter, more successful, and wiser than us. Emerson put it well: “Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”

If you want to learn, if you want to improve your life, seeking out teachers, philosophers, and great books is a good start. But this approach will only be effective if you’re humble and ready to let go of opinions you already have.

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Less is More

In most areas of life, the saying “Less is more” stands true. For instance, the writers we admire tend to be masters of economy and brevity. What they leave out is just as important—sometimes more important—than what they leave in. There is a poem by Philip Levine titled “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do.” And from Hamlet, the best of all—the retort from Queen Gertrude after a long, rhetorical speech from Polonius: “More matter with less art,” she tells him. Get to the point!

Imagine the emperor of Rome, with his captive audience and unlimited power, telling himself not to be a person of “too many words and too many deeds.” Let that be a reminder the next time you feel self-indulgent or a little full of yourself, the next time you feel like impressing people.

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