It’s Good That You’re Having Trouble | On Handling Haters

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. It's good that you're having trouble. It's happened to all of us. Somebody recommended a book and we started it, but we got discouraged. We finished it and still have no idea what we read.

Maybe this was your exact reaction to one of the Stoics, to Epictetus or to Seneca. Is there something wrong with you? What happened? What happened is exactly what's supposed to happen. Nobody said books would be easy, nobody said that getting wiser, better, or stronger would be accomplished without hard work.

In fact, the Stoics specifically said the opposite. Instead of feeling down on ourselves for struggling with something, we should be proud, because it means we were reaching, it means we were pushing ourselves. Just as we get stronger by lifting heavier things than we're used to, the way to get wiser is to read books that are above our level and keep at it. If you accomplish something good with hard work, Musonius Rufus tells us, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures. And we know this through our study of Stoicism.

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