Daily Stoic Entry #145: What Kind of Selfless Things Will Bring Me Joy?

May 25th, 2022

Follow along with my personal daily stoic journal, unfiltered, unedited (except for some spelling mistakes).

Morning Reflection:

Silence, writing, reading, music, sports, sitting in the sun. Simple and small things that don’t harm anyone and provide value to me are to begin with the first things that come to mind. I do need to work better at solving the distraction problem. that give us this false short-lived joy/entertainment. It’s not truly meaningful but in a sense, it gives us a temporary relief of boredom, so we are happily distracted. But it’s not helpful. Rediscover wonder and joy in harder tasks, this will bring us joy and a sense of purpose once we learn to focus.

Evening Reflection:

How this manifest is different for everybody. I’m not sure I have a good enough answer for myself. One way to find out is to practice doing nothing and meditate. I find it so incredibly difficult to do that. In fact, let’s do it now. I will set a timer for five minutes and come back to this exercise after.
Intentional, being intentional with your time including rest. Managing distraction and attention are key. Allowing yourself to find joy in doing nothing allows you to be neutral and not jump from one thing to the next to distractions to chase that false joy.

Title prompts are taken from The Daily Stoic Journal by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman.