"Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand—write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.” — Epictetus
Happy new year! 2023 caught me before I expected… Having a two-year-old boy changes the time magnitude, I guess. I hope all of you were doing great and took quality time with your beloved ones.
Following Stoicism is a constantly improving skill, you should track how you are doing.
Marcus Aurelius kept a private journal that became his most notable book: Meditaciones. He visualized his day, imagining unpleasant situations like talking with “officious, ungrateful, abusive, treacherous, malicious, and selfish” people. He was practising premeditatio malorum which consists of thinking about bad things that could happen in order to be prepared if they actually happen.
Seneca didn’t practise journaling but he recommends reviewing the day at night, trying to discover moments when one didn’t behave with virtuosity. This way one can try to identify behaviour patterns, keep them in mind and not falling again into the same mistakes.
Anyway, keeping a physical journal has been demonstrated to have a positive improvement in mental calm and Stoicism revolves around the concept of Ataraxy, which is a state of serene calmness. That’s the goal of all this.
Although I don’t write in the morning, I usually take a few minutes in front of the mirror to evaluate the coming day. Actually, this is an exercise I copied from Steve Jobs even before I started on all of this Stoicism thing. I ask myself if I like my life as it is right now. If the answer is “no” for several days I know I must change something.
At night, when my family has fallen asleep, I review my day and write down impressions and thoughts about situations or interactions with other peers. After a general review, I imitate Seneca focusing on what I did wrong, what I did right and what I could improve from a Stoic point of view.
It takes some effort to start this habit but once you get used to it, you rapidly start to see some benefits. In my case, I feel less mental stress if I move my thoughts away from my head to the paper. It also brings me some clarity while examining my thoughts as I can inspect them more objectively using the view from above technique. And the best benefit of all is it helps me to be more present, thinking about my behaviour and if I’m behaving according to Nature or not.
Don’t get upset because you don’t know what to write, just write whatever you are thinking about anything that happened during the day and keep flowing with that. As days pass you will improve your writing skills. It’s a matter of time.