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Comment by rsanek | Hacker News Reader

Rough self-talk from Marcus Aurelius in this passage. Not a big fan of this kind of approach personally. I've found that if I need to do this kind of self-motivation, I should be thinking much higher-level for the causes -- why do I not want to get out of bed? Perhaps I'm not working on the right thing, and need to change careers? Or perhaps I'm not dealing with something emotionally that is preventing me from doing my best work. In my experience, especially if this apathy is persisting over weeks+, it's been something much deeper than "oh I'm lazy and I just need to get up"

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The answer is: Do both.

Often times not having the discipline to get up when you need to is the problem. And the solution is to tough it out.

So while you look for the cause, also work against the symptom.

For instance, quitting alcohol.

You need to quit, as well as try to look for the reason you're escaping into it. Do both.

Yeah, MA is very keen on the separation between brain (what he calls the "directing mind") and body, to the extent that he thinks it's possible for the brain to ignore pain because that's the body's problem, and it's only something that makes the brain feel bad if the brain chooses to feel bad about it. If your philosophical framework looks like that then it's not really conducive to "fix the things in the outside world that make you naturally not feel like getting up", because the axiom is "none of that outside world stuff should be able to affect my brain unless I want it to". I find his writing interesting but this is one of the areas where my foundational beliefs and his are miles apart.

MA was a sage, but as Seneca said we do not have to be a sage. We should instead content ourselves with walking the same path, if at a crawl.

But really, what negative external could be more intractable than the hordes of Germans lining upon the Rhine and Danube? And yet MA rose up each morning to deal with them as seen in that documentary with Russel Crowe

Something similar comes up in Buddhism. The concept that pain is inevitable, but suffering isn't. You will feel pain, because that's part of life, but suffering is you holding on to the pain or trying to prevent/stop it. I think it does "let the world in", but doesn't hold on to it as it's passing through. If that makes any sense.

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