Learn To Live With Yourself: Respect Existence or Expect Resistance

I prompted ChatGPT to become my personal coach, and Marcus Aurelius criticized me for equating gratitude with not achieving my goals.

“Do not let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

The above quote is from my coach Marcus Aurelius. Yes, THE Marcus Aurelius. I have been training GPT4 to be my personal development coach in the embodiment of Marcus Aurelius. I also equipped him with a few 21st-century management tools to give more context to his stoic philosophy.

Marcus has taught me that Buddhism and Stoicism have a lot in common. They both treat suffering as a central part of life, responsibility as the choice to manage suffering, and work as the way of learning to live with suffering. Perhaps most admirable is that Buddhism and Stoic practice always begin from the point of deliberate calmness.

This idea of arriving and departing from the point of deliberate calmness is meditation. While I don’t necessarily agree with the sentiment of staying calm (because who in this world can keep calm all the time), I do enjoy the idea of striving to arrive and depart from points of deliberate calmness.

How Do You Design Deliberate Calmness as a Point of Arrival and Departure?

With Marcus, I have been working through setting up new goals and reviewing older ones. In my research, I found an old notebook from 2018. This was a year of disruptive change wherein I moved between three countries, got a new job, and learned to live on my own after a long relationship came to a sudden end.

It was a year I really wanted to calm down. However, everything just seemed to keep being added on top. I felt as if I was not the right person to get my own life “get back on track” (I put it in quotations because every time life is on track, you can be damn sure it will be derailed again).

However, what I realized after reviewing my notebook was that the way I described myself was inadequate in my present, and because of that, I needed to change. To do this, I made goals I wanted to pursue with the idea that I would arrive at a future self that is much better equipped at his present.

The dirty secret to my past self naivete was not that he made unattainable goals (I have accomplished the most important ones that he set) but that he expected someone else to arrive as a result of the accomplishments.

Today I am more of what my past self described as inadequate. I am more of what he considered wrong. In his defense, I tried to be someone else and worked really hard on that. The result was that I became even more miserable and further away from being calm.

Respect Existence or Expect Resistance

I am convinced that, in time, we become more of who we are. Yes, you can become more conscientious and disciplined about what you do, but who you are remains the same. You only have this life to manage and understand who you are. Please don’t waste it trying to be someone different.

“I regret I didn’t commit to being more of what I am and not that which others wished I could be” – The Primary Regret of the Dying.

Looking to the Buddhists and the Stoics for wisdom, both agree that we are not promised tomorrow. When asked, the Buddha said his biggest sadness about humanity is that you believe you have time when in fact, you are never promised any.

Recall Marcus’ words: “Do not let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

The reason you have of yourself today is the deepest it will be in this moment. So make use of it. Honestly, look how far you have come, what you have gone through, the chapters of your life.

It has not been an easy feat to make it to this point. If it has been easy, you have been very unlucky; hardship will come. Being grateful is not to force yourself to be happy; it is to recognize within your own reason that you are doing your best.

So my question to you is: “Do you at this moment not carry within you enough reason to allow yourself to be grateful?”

May each day make you wiser, more humbled, and more excited for tomorrow to arrive.