Take Pride In Who You Are

Stoicism and personal identity

Oct 16, 2024

Welcome to The Stoa Letter, the newsletter on Stoic theory and practice.

🏛️ Theory

By expanding your sense of self you make yourself a larger target for the world. You leave more space for things outside of your control to frustrate you.

If your identity becomes tied up with your business, relationships, or status – when those aren’t going well, you aren’t doing well either.

Of course, if those things are going great, then you may take credit for that even if these things are not directly up to you.

I suppose that’s why so many decide to bet and tie up their own well-being with things outside of themselves.

But for Stoics, this attitude doesn’t make sense. Epictetus makes fun of a man who boasts about his horse:

If a horse were to say in its pride, ‘I’m beautiful,’ that would be bearable; but when you exclaim in your pride, ‘I have a beautiful horse,’ you should be clear in your mind that you’re priding yourself on a good quality that belongs to a horse. What is your own, then? The use of impressions.

Handbook 6

We all have seen people like this. It is one thing to admire the beauty and power of a horse - it’s another to think that the beauty of a horse, house, car, or body reflects on who you ultimately are. The first is legitimate, the second is a mistake.

What the Stoics care about is how you think. Because that is ultimately what is up to you while the external world is subject to the whims of fortune. Some great people get bad hands, others have great luck. What happens in the external world is evidence of character – for example, most achievements result from hard work and discipline – we shouldn’t deny that. But that is not the whole story.

What really matters is how we make decisions. We'd rather be the person who does their best, than the person who gets lucky. Don't forget that.

Fundamentally, who we are is how we think. Other identities whether they are athlete, entrepreneur, parent, citizen, artist, or any other are the roles we take in life. We should excel in each while recognizing they are not who we ultimately are.

This can be a difficult view for people to internalize. Many don’t go all the way here with the Stoics. But there is a central lesson here that is captured by Epictetus’s anecdote about the man and his horse: don’t take credit for what is not up to you but take pride in who you are.

🎯 Action

Think of one place where you’re investing your wellbeing in externals that are not up to you – and do that a little less.

🔗 Links

📖 Epictetus finishes Handbook 6 with:

So when you’re in harmony with nature through the right use of impressions, you should then be proud of yourself; for then you’ll be taking pride in some good of your own.

🧘‍♀️ One minute meditation from Brittany Polat You have enough

🔰 Stoicism 101: Thinking Like A Stoic.