3 things to start training yourself today

Daily Stoic, 27 Jan 2022

“There are three areas in which the person who would be wise and good must be trained. The first has to do with desires and aversions—that a person may never miss the mark in desires nor fall into what repels them. The second has to do with impulses to act and not to act—and more broadly, with duty—that a person may act deliberately for good reasons and not carelessly. The third has to do with freedom from deception and composure and the whole area of judgment, the assent our mind gives to its perceptions. Of these areas, the chief and most urgent is the first which has to do with the passions, for strong emotions arise only when we fail in our desires and aversions.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.2.1–3a”

• Reflect on what we desire and what we deflect to have. This enable us to understand what’s good and what’s bad for us.

• Check our impulses in doing something. Ask ourselves :

Are we doing things for the right reasons?

Have we thought about things carefully before acting on it?

Are we doing things because we believe we have to do something (for the sake of and cross a checklist)

• Set our intent in each thing that we decide to start doing : Start with WHY

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Entry on 27 Jan, a few weeks away from the wedding

I could relate today’s prompt to my wedding.

Wedding, for centuries, has been a sacred and glorious ritual for humankind. Sacred for me means it has to be a closed ritual and meaningful to both the bride and bridegroom. An arrangement that does not have to make you drown in debts afterward.

Before we both started the wedding plan, both of us, my partner and I, asked ourselves, “Is it necessary for us to have this and that?”. We value sustainability and doing something that’s not intentional is never on our list.

We list down each other’s requirements on what kind of ceremony do we want to have.

Things we avoid doing are to proceed to do something that one of us won’t be happy about, spend more than we could, stress over the drama that we can’t control, invite a random list of people just because, choosing to please the impression of others over the experience of what we are comfortable to do for the sacred event.

What we’ve learned from the wedding planning so far is that things aren’t as complicated as how we’ve witnessed in others. And this is the choice we’ve made for ourselves. I hope it stays as it is till the wedding day 😂