This evening I came across a blog post about stoicism. The blog post boiled stoicism down to one sentence that a 5 year old child could understand. It came down to this - you cannot control what happens to you, you can only control how you respond.
Over the past few months, I've been starting a larger writing project and one of the two core questions I'm exploring is how to be a good man. As a result, I've necessarily been thinking about my own philosophy. Here's where I'm at:
Discovering how to be a good person (i.e., having good intentions and acting upon them) happens over time. The keys to getting 1% better every day are reflection and discipline, so focus on those two things instead of trying to be perfect.
I obviously have a lot of intellectual lifting to do here, but this is what my philosophy comes down to.
If you enjoyed this post, you'll probably like my new book - Character By Choice: Letters on Goodness, Courage, and Becoming Better on Purpose. For more details, visit https://www.neiltambe.com/CharacterByChoice.