5 Tips From Seneca And Follow Through With New Year Resolutions
Tags: Philosophy, New Year Resolution

Seneca was a roman emperor Stoic philosopher and adviser to the emperor Nero. The following practices are from Moral Letters to Lucilius. This is a book that is packed with letters sent to his young friend Lucius teaching him how to live a good life in short. So if you are into that I think you will love these practical ideas.

HABITS

Throughout all of his books, Seneca is brutal against bad habits he says to use the strength of your heart to resist bad habits and, if you fail — to pluck out your heart. Research has shown that if you want to stop a bad habit, making bright lines and avoiding ambiguity is the way to go. For example, when someone has a new year resolution, and they want to cut down their alcohol intake. Instead of saying I will drink moderately, it is best to be clear and say I am going to allow myself one drink.

Purpose

The supreme good the meaning of why you are put here on the earth. Robert Green call it your life task, your definitive major purpose. Seneca makes it clear if you do not know what your overall goal in your life is, It will be very hard to arrange the things in your life like relationships, how to eat, sleep and exercise. Ask yourself: how does my day look like if you want to optimize in order to fulfill your purpose.

Virtue

Man is unique in this good living with virtue, which means living at your highest potential moment to moment. Virtue can also be explained as excellence. For example, a virtuous person is not anxiously biting their teeth, trying to fine-tune all the world’s problems. The ideal virtuous person is not dogmatic or ideologically driven. That means being able to integrate the best ideas from big thinkers and live accordingly. Virtue is the state that makes a human being good and makes him perform his function well.

Philosophy

Reading philosophy makes your life better and here to inspire you and to self-reflect. They make you more effective because they have utility to you. Reading of philosophy is not for idle, semantic tail chasing. On a very pragmatic deeply soothing comforting. These insights of those who are not of today, not of this week not of this month, they are for much broader periods or timeless it alleviates some of the manufactory emergence and urgency and of every possible input from the media. We are not evolved to process all the breaking news. You want to focus on timeless and old questions of old answers they are found by the old thinkers because they were fitting in politics from another time.

Just like the cloud that can stop the sunrays from hitting the earth. What it can not do is stop the operations of the sun itself.

Obstacles

Depending on your philosophical work, reading and reflecting, trying out new ways of living. See what works and what does not. Seneca has a beautiful image of how obstacles can not stop us from doing what we have chosen to do. Just like the cloud that can stop the rays from the sun from hitting the earth. What it can not do is stop the operations of the sun itself. Obstacles can hinder us from doing what we decided is important to us. We might feel very tired when we wake up, we will see it as data and prioritize more sleep the next day. but we will still do the things we need to do.