Epictetus was a Greek/Roman philosopher of the Hellenistic period. He managed to overcome
huge obstacles in developing from a crippled Roman slave to become one of the most popular
and sought after philosophers of his time. He was one of the most influential teachers
of the later years of the school of Stoicism, and considered by some to be the greatest
of the Stoics. As many people are considering how they are going to improve their life in
the New Year, what habits they are going to change, how they are going to make their life
better in general, we bring you 10 lessons from Epictetus’s discourses that will help
you in keeping your new year’s resolutions.
1. Keep your resolutions simple Epictetus says “Practice yourself, for heaven's
sake in little things, and then proceed to greater”.
Epictetus advises us to keep our resolutions simple and realistic. Often when the year
is ending, many of us find ourselves gathering up our willpower for a brand new set of New
Year’s resolutions. We aim for an overhaul of our entire lifestyle, and this is simply
a recipe for disappointment and guilt. Here is a crazy statistic from a research study:
If you focus on only establishing one habit for 30 days, your likelihood of continuing
that habit 1 year later is 80%. But if you add a second habit to that 30 day period your
1 year success rate drops to 35%. Simply adding one more thing means you're probably going
to fail at both. Hence the best approach is to focus clearly on one of your most important
goals. The best way to choose your resolution is by asking yourself what will have the greatest
impact on your happiness, health and fulfilment. For example, giving up smoking will obviously
improve your health, but it will also give you a sense of pride and will make you happy.
The idea here is not to aim too high and ignore reality. Remember, there will always be more
opportunities to start on the next phase, or concentrate on other things, so set realistic
goals. Once you figure out what your resolution is, it’s time now to build a practical plan
of action to help you accomplish your goal. You should just not commit to your goals but
commit to all the little actions you will take along the way in the pursuit of those
goals. You can start with forming an effective plan of action that is comprised of a deadline
for accomplishing your goal. It must also be built on the foundation of mini-milestones
that break your goal down into manageable chunks.
Mini-milestones will ensure that you’re working toward your desired outcome in small
pieces and time blocks.
2. Routine is everything In the words of Epictetus “ If you want
to do something, make a habit of it” The Stoics were big on habits and routines.
It appears that Marcus Aurelius had a morning ritual which was a sort of preparation for
the day. Seneca had a ritual of reflecting on each day’s end. The truth is even after
having a solid resolution and a practical plan, 95% of us fail to achieve our goals.
We fail because we fail to be consistent. Let's assume that your resolution is to run
a marathon and you have trained hard for the first seven days. On 8th day, you get that
voice in your head telling you “you know what I have been doing pretty great and I
can afford to take a day off” and indeed you actually a day off. This first justification
means that the next day you will feel more compelled to do it again and you will become
more and more lazy eventually you quit. Your new resolutions will only shape up if you
make them your habit by being consistent. Hal Elrod in his book, The Miracle Morning,
tells us that we need to be consistent for the first 30 days to develop this new routine.
We need to divide the 30-day time frame into three ten-day phases. Each of these phases
presents a different set of emotional challenges and mental roadblocks to sticking with the
new habit. Again assuming your goal of running a marathon, The first 10 days of running will
both physically painful and mentally challenging. Every single day, you will fight a constant
battle in your head with the voice of mediocrity, telling you it is okay to quit. Do what’s
right, not what’s easy. Days 11-20 will be slightly less painful. You may not like
it, but you will not hate it either. You will start forming that habit of running everyday
and it will no longer be a scary thing and in fact you will feel normal to wake up and
to run. Days 21-30 you will start enjoying. You will no longer battle with negative thoughts
and you will realise that the new habit of waking up and running has been formed. Follow
this 30 days cycle with all of your resolutions and your chances of giving up on them will
really come down.
3. Replace bad habits According to Epictetus “To make anything
a habit, do it; to not make it a habit, do not do it; to unmake a habit, do something
else in place of it”.
Bad habits are the habits that interrupt your life and prevent you from accomplishing your
goals. They don’t only waste your time and energy but have a negative effect on your
health — both mentally and physically. Most of your bad habits are caused by two things
- Stress and boredom. Everything from smoking to overspending on a shopping spree to drinking
every weekend to wasting time on the internet can be a simple response to stress and boredom.
According to Epictetus, sickness grows in mind. But it doesn't have to be that way.
In this new year, you can teach yourself new and healthy ways to deal with stress and boredom,
which you can then substitute in place of your bad habits. It is important to remember
that whatever the habits you have right now — weather good or bad, they are in your
life for a reason. In some way, these habits must provide a benefit to you, even if they
are bad for you in other ways. When you stay in a relationship that is bad for you, a bad
habit like smoking becomes a simple way to cope with stress. Because bad habits provide
some type of benefit in your life, it's very difficult to simply eliminate them. Which
is why you need to replace a bad habit with a new habit that provides a similar benefit.
The best way to find a substitute for your bad habit is to have a plan ahead of time
for how you respond when you face the stress or boredom that prompts your bad habit. For
example try breathing exercises whenever you have an urge to smoke or write one sentence
for work whenever you feel like procrastinating on social media. The idea is to replace a
bad habit with a new habit that provides a similar benefit. If you simply cut out bad
habits without replacing them, then you'll have certain needs that will be unmet and
it's going to be hard to stick to a routine for very long.
4. Don’t Share your resolutions with everyone As we learn from Epictetus “Let silence
be your goal for the most part; say only what is necessary, and be brief about it”.
Whenever we pick our resolution, we proudly proclaim to anyone who would listen. We are
in love with sharing our goals, our ideas, our new habits with the world. However, some
recent research suggests that making a public statement of your goals may not be such a
good idea. Imagine again that your resolution is to train for a marathon. You’re optimistic
and genuinely serious about making a go of it, so you tell all of your friends and family,
so that they can support you. What these studies show is that as soon as we tell someone, we
feel an instant sense of relief, as though we had already accomplished that goal that
we set out to achieve. This is what is known as ‘social reality’ – simply having
your goal acknowledged makes it a part of your identity and results in a rush of feel-good
reward hormones. Unfortunately this satisfaction then tricks your brain into thinking that
the job is already done – and then you feel less motivated to actually go out and really
achieve the goal. It’s like it has already happened! As you tell your friends about running
a marathon, your friends will start to think of you as someone who already run a marathon.
In that way, you will achieve the satisfaction of completing the marathon and it is less
likely that you will train hard for it. Another reason not to tell people your goals is that
they can then end up judging your actions, which may end up being unhelpful in the long
run. Tell someone you want to run a marathon for instance and you can find that they end
up giving you looks every time you don’t train or relax. This can actually remove your
determination to stick to a training regime as nobody likes being controlled and our natural
tendency is to do the opposite of what we feel pressured into doing. If you wish to
share your resolutions, then share them with an accountability partner, you mentor or anyone
who is ready to help you with your goal, but not with everyone else.
5. Give no excuses Epictetus says “There were two vices much
blacker and more serious than the rest: lack of persistence and lack of self-control … persist
and resist”
With every new year, we all gear up and prepare our new resolutions list. Unfortunately, with
these new resolutions, come new excuses. When you decide on following a new diet or on learning
a new skill, it all starts off well with lots of enthusiasm, but along the way, you start
making rationalizations that revolve around people or events that are supposedly keeping
us from taking action towards our goals. These rationalizations are nothing but excuses,
the reasons we create to defend our behaviour, to postpone taking action or simply as a means
of neglecting responsibility. Some of the most common excuses are - “I just can’t
find the time to do it”; “I dont’ don’t know where to start”; or “It’s too expensive”
or “maybe I’ll do it later”. These excuses are so common that we don’t even realize
we’re using them as weapons against our goals. When you make excuses, or victimize
yourself, you relinquish control and absolve yourself of personal responsibility. And without
a sense of ownership, meaningful progress becomes an impossible task. To be persistent,
think of your resolution like a rent agreement. Once you sign your rent agreement, you are
required to pay an amount to your landlord and if you fail, you are thrown out. There
are no excuses here. You are always under constant pressure to honour the agreement
and you work hard for the money. Your New Year’s resolution is like a rent agreement
that you need to honour without making excuses.
6. Don’t wait for other people’s validation In the words of Epictetus “Never depend
on the admiration of others. There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from
an external source. It is not to be found in your personal associations, nor can it
be found in the regard of other people” The whole idea of validation is to get a ‘Go
Ahead’ sign from others, the concept of validation is primarily about getting others
to tell you that you’re on the right path. Unfortunately, not everyone in your life is
encouraging, they may either intentionally dissuade you or not understand your goals,
and hence, dissuade you from following through on them. Often, our resolutions don’t fit
too well with others simply because they have different perspectives on a similar situation.
Let’s take for example, one of your resolutions for the new year is to work on building your
own business, but when you go and discuss it with a friend, they might try to put you
off by saying ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to do it? Why don’t you just stick
with your job, at least you’ll get a fixed income.’. First, we need to understand why
they’re discouraging you from starting your own business, to see whether they have any
genuine contribution to make or if they’re dissuading you because of their own fear or
lack of confidence. If its lack of confidence than these people are ‘Naysayers’. Naysayers
will say ‘Nay’ or “No” as we say nowadays, to every single thing you say. They barely
ever have meaningful contributions that actually make sense, but they will still try to sabotage
your resolutions by giving you their input anyway. Another example that we can all relate
to, would be our new year’s resolution to eat more healthily. While most of us try really
hard to stick through this resolution, naysayers will try to get you to break your resolution
by saying, ‘Just eat a slice of pizza, common, the odd slice now and again won’t do anyone
any harm. We all know that the odd slice now and again will definitely hurt your resolutions
in the long run. The whole point here is that, you need to follow your resolutions without
needing others to accept them, after all, they are YOUR resolutions for a reason. According
to Stoic philosophy, one must not pay attention to what others think of them. What others
think of you or your goals is not in your control. But what is in your control is your
character, that is, how you will reach your goals. Hence it is best to focus on what you’re
doing and not what other people are saying. So surround yourself with other positive people
and don't wait for others to give you a thumbs up!
7. Reward yourself As Epictetus puts so succinctly “I pat myself
on the head”
Reinforcing yourself and giving yourself rewards is at the centre of making a behaviour more
regular. When you begin rewarding yourself for your actions, you are reinforcing yourself
to continue doing what you’re doing, helping you get closer to your resolutions’ goal.
The best way to keep yourself motivated is by setting up milestones and corresponding
rewards for those milestones. You could even make the rewards more and more ‘rewarding’
with every major milestone you cross, make sure you keep a list of the rewards handy
so you can keep yourself motivated throughout the process of following up on your resolution.
Let’s take an example, if your resolution is to save up a bit of extra money, your milestone
in this case could be a successful month of a well-planned budgeting. Once you’ve achieved
this milestone, give yourself a small but meaningful reward, it could be drinking your
favourite vine or eating a box of your favourite chocolates. Your rewards might not be a material
or a tangible thing, it could be anything that you really care about. The idea is to
give yourself more reasons to follow up on your resolutions by conferring attractive
rewards on yourself. However, you must keep in mind that your rewards should not hinder
your progress, for example, don’t reward yourself for your weight loss by binge eating
on junk food as a reward. Make sure to do your best and pack in some great rewards to
get you to reach your goal!
8. Review your day To quote Epictetus “Never allow sleep to
close your eyelids, after you went to bed, Until you have examined all your actions of
the day by your reason. One of the best ways to keep a track of your
progress is to scrutinize yourself and find your weak spots. Be brutally honest and use
this time to connect with your subconscious. Practicing evening retrospections on a consistent
basis will allow you to become more self-aware through every step of your day because you
will be actively gathering information to formulate and articulate constructive answers
to these questions: What did I do well today?
Where were my discipline and self-control tested, where did I do good?
What did I do bad, why did this occur? and furthermore, how can I improve?
The key to getting your basic steps right is to keep assessing your actions regularly,
making sure they lead you to your new year’s resolution. Keeping a tab on your progress
not only helps you in staying more focused, but also allows you to identify probable problems
that might be roadblocks on your path to successfully fulfilling your resolution.
9. Never Ever Ever give up According to Epictetus “If you are once
defeated, and say you will get the victory another time, and then the same thing over
again, and then the same thing over again, you can be sure that you will at last be reduced
to so weak and wretched a condition” When we fall short of doing what we are expected
to do, we give up. For example, if your resolution is to lose weight and you skip on exercising,
you will tell yourself you will be regular from next Monday. And then the next Monday
comes you will say “I will be regular from the first of next month” and then next month
you will end up saying that you will start doing it from next year, but then it never
happen and you will give up. You need to understand that even if you fail once for example if
you didn’t exercise when you know you should have, this doesn’t define your character.
Your ability to keep going is what moulds you into a disciplined and strong person.
A bad day doesn’t have to become a bad week, a bad week doesn’t have to become a bad
year but if you give up on the things that matter most to you, you will likely establish
a pattern of giving up on anything when things don’t go the way you hoped. You will not
learn the importance of persistence — and anything worthwhile requires persistence.
So never ever give up. The moment you wake up, remember that the new day is a new life
and move forward by opening your eyes and focusing on what’s in front of you, which
is your own life itself.
10. Always keep evolving
In our final piece of wisdom from Epictetus, we learn “First say to yourself what you
would be; and then do what you have to do”.
The theory of evolution, which we believe is the fundamental theory of life implies
that everything in the universe is still evolving; and hence it is imperfect which is why there
is always a big room for improvement. With this in mind, life must be ever changing and
ever dynamic - a journey towards improvement. If you are consistent with your approach to
your resolutions, there will be a time when you will have your goals achieved.At this
point take a break and say “I did it!” Even if that just means going out to a nice
dinner. But as per the stoic philosophy, you shouldn’t get carried away with your success.
You should always look for ways to evolve your ambitions. You don’t have to wait for
the next year to try some new resolution, and gain new experiences so that you have
new things to work towards. Life will always provide you with the opportunity to find a
new purpose and all it takes is going out there and doing everything that improves you
as a person.
We at Philosophies for Life wish you a very happy new year to you and all your family.
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