Daily Stoic Entry #30: Am I Content To Be Clueless About Things That Don’t Matter?

January 30th 2022

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

Morning Reflection:

Probably not enough. I do make a few distinctions where I should put energy and where I shouldn’t. Sometimes it is difficult to park those things, especially when it pertains to the matters of the mind. I’m trying to be content to care less about future imagined problems. Because a) imagined problems often don’t come to pass it just makes you suffer needlessly, b) you don’t have control over these matters anyway so why worry about it in the first place?

Evening Reflection:

Today, a little later in the day, I had a lot of trouble applying this principle about my ex, it’s been four months and any news still hurts me deeply. I feel stuck and can’t seem to move on. It is a visceral reaction I can feel emotionally and physically in all the wrong ways. Why does it matter? I shouldn’t care about anything she’s doing but the reaction is real. Most likely because I’m unhappy about several things in my life. If I was in a better place I probably would care less. I need to improve my self-esteem, love of self, loneliness, depression, take a pick. And then out of nowhere you connect with someone cute later in the evening on a dating app. I don’t get it sometimes. This shit is so complicated. I wish it was simpler for me. Perhaps that’s the secret in this content to be clueless principle. The more items you can put in the clueless column the simpler your life becomes. Less burdened by irrelevant matters.

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