PLAY PODCASTS
Blame Yourself—Or No One
Episode 345

Blame Yourself—Or No One

The Daily Stoic · Daily Stoic

December 17, 20192m 36s

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (pscrb.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

The causes of things are complicated, and rarely do they go how we’d like them to go. So it’s easy to point the finger—at other people, at unfair conditions, at the weather, at the advice we got. If it hadn’t been for _______, I’d have won. Why did so-and-so have to get involved like that? It’s all _______’s fault.

And yet, the causes of things are also quite simple—at least according to the Stoics. Because to them, the fault always lies with us. We’re the one who chose to listen to that advice, they’d say. We’re the one who left the outcome up to chance, who didn’t plan for all the contingencies. We’re the one whose expectations set us up to be disappointed.

Marcus Aurelius’s rule was: Blame yourself—or blame no one. It’s the other side of the idea we were talking about not long ago, that the only place to look for approval is within yourself. The same goes for disapproval and fault-finding. As soon as you try to get it from other people, you’ve compromised your integrity. You’ve handed over your power. 

So either don’t blame anyone...or blame yourself. For whatever happens. For everything that happens. Those are the options.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Topics

daily stoicstoicstoic philosophyryan holidaystoicismphilosophyself-improvement694393