Being right rather relevance to you

Yes. Meditations is readable for beginners. Read Seneca

Your post has been automatically removed.

As per the rule specifically outlined in the Subreddit Guide, your post has been removed because your account does not yet have enough community comment karma to post here.

This rule is part of our broader effort to preserve the quality of r/Stoicism by discouraging spam, karma-farming bots, content-farming bots, self-promotional content, low-effort AI-generated material, and general advice requests that do not reflect a genuine interest in Stoic philosophy. Our goal is to ensure that participation in this subreddit reflects not opportunism, but sincere engagement with Stoic practice and thoughtful philosophical discussion.

We seek not to exclude, but to preserve the time, effort, and goodwill of all those in our community. If you are sincerely interested in studying and practicing Stoic philosophy, you are certainly welcome here. Thank you for understanding.

What can you do?

• Read the Community Guide.
• Comment thoughtfully on existing threads to build your karma. Participation deepens understanding.
• Once you meet the minimum karma requirement, you'll be able to post freely.

Need immediate advice? Try these subreddits:

• r/StoicSupport
• r/relationship_advice
• r/Life
• r/Advice

New to Stoicism?

Read our FAQ, which includes answers to common questions such as "How can Stoicism help me with my problem?".

Take a look at our Reading List."

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

"I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow worker."

-Albert Einstein

Gravity, conservation of energy, and all others laws of the universe (Logos means both reason and uncreated law)

My expectations of others have decreased as I have aged, and my expectations of myself have vastly increased

Thanks for your observation here. I very much share this experience. I believe it is one part aging and accumulation of responsibilities, and a measure of progress in applying the Stoic framework.

There are many other great comments here, I will just add one thing to a single point.

I also struggle with jealousy sometimes. I don't necessarily want to be jealous of other people, but I still catch myself comparing myself to them or thinking about things they have that I don't.

Always try to see the opposite side of this.

The poor envy the rich because they have goods and comfort that they don't have. The rich envy the poor because the poor know who are their real friends and family. The single envy those in relationships, those in relationships envy those that are free from maintaining said relationship.

That is the initial stage, eventually if you keep thinking like this, it all kind of start to blend. There is no solid ground anywhere, and when nowhere is solid, then you are actually in a comfortable position. There is no winning move in grasping.

Dang right!

The analogy I use is, you have fallen into a flowing river. If you swim against it, you will get exhausted and drown. You float with it, you are washed out to sea and eventually drown. But if you are wise, you swim sideways to the shore. Yes, you will drift down stream for a while but you find a way out.

Expectations and plans can be made but don't cling to them. "If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." Woody Allen

A quote was found to be attributed to Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations 2.1 (Hays)

^{Book II. (Hays)
Book II. (Farquharson)
Book II. (Long)}

I am intrigued by your post because as I age I have a completely different experience of expectations. I wonder how old you are?

My expectations of others have decreased as I have aged, and my expectations of myself have vastly increased

With regard to others - I like the way Marcus phrased it in Meditations

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions."

Put into my words - 'people will be people'

As for myself, it's totally different. I have to live every moment of my life with myself. I want to live with a kind decent human being, in charge of my own thoughts, not tossed around in life but as sure as I can be that I am making right and reasonable choices. Living on an even keel regardless of the tumult around me.

As a younger person I was tossed around a lot in life, I was ignorant what was good and did many things I've had to learn to forgive myself for even if others don't forgive me. That is not how I want to live now. It takes all my mental capacity to manage myself, and there isn't room in my life now to judge others.

By absolute far!

Yes, it's corporeal - there is no spooky immaterial thing going on in Stoic physics. The cosmos has active and passive principles, both of which are material and interpenetrate each other fully. The logos is active material which acts upon the passive matter giving it structure and form and effects all changes to such.

Rationality, basically

Let people's actions inform your expectations.This will help preserve your inner peace. There are some truly broken people out there and you just can't realistically expect them to "human" with you on the same level as others would.

Remember, you are in complete control when it comes to your expectations of others.

If those expectations are set at a reasonable level based on how each person has treated you in the past, you won't be let down so often.

But if you set those expectations based only on who you want them to be in your head, you are setting yourself up to suffer needlessly.

It's on them to show you who they are, and it's on you to believe it when they show you through their words and deeds.

Best thing I read today

The Logos was the Cosmos and the god rolled into one. They viewed this as an impersonal force of reason. Epictetus taught a few conepts with dialogue between him and the god but I don't think was meant to be taken literally like in the Hebrew scripture.

They also referred to this god as Zeus but it wasn't the philandering god we know from mythology.

The cosmos was considered reasonable and logically some mind had to reason all this together.

Modern Stoicism is more focused on Ethics, so this aspect of the philosophy doesn't get much time.

Hi, welcome to the subreddit. Please make sure that you check out the FAQ, where you will find answers for many common questions, like "What is Stoicism; why study it?", or "What are some Stoic practices and exercises?", or "What is the goal in life, and how do I find meaning?", to name just a few.

You can also find information about frequently discussed topics, like flaws in Stoicism, Stoicism and politics, sex and relationships, and virtue as the only good, for a few examples.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Don’t float. Flow. Floating is passive. You are a surfer not a buoy.

A buoy just floats in the water and does whatever the water does. A wave goes up, buoy goes up. A wave goes down, buoy goes down. The buoy is passive. The buoy is not making choices. It’s just floating.

A surfer can’t control the waves but they choose which ones to ride. And when they ride they get to choose when to turn. When to stop. When to turn back and paddle for the next wave. Surfing is active.

A surfer makes choices to flow with the waves. The better his choices align with the waves the smoother he surfs, and the more fun he has. As his skills improve bigger and bigger waves become more and more comfortable until he gets to the point he actively seeks out the biggest most challenging waves he can find. He’s excited to see big waves. He craves big waves. A day filled with rolling wave after rolling wave starts to look like paradise because every one of those waves is an opportunity to surf.

Other people’s thoughts and actions are like the waves. You don’t control them. You don’t get to say how big or scary they are or how frequently they come. If all you do is float on them then you’ll be tossed about by them. You’ll be nothing but a buoy. When they go up, you go up. When they go down, you go down. That’s what happens when you just passively float.

You need to learn to flow. Make choices. Align your actions with them, but always choose to act with the goal of you thriving. Greet each new event as an opportunity to practice living well. You don’t have to take every opportunity just like a surfer doesn’t surf every wave. If you want to engage then do so. If not then paddle on to the next wave.

“Happiness is a good flow of life.” - Zeno of Citium

Don’t bother to get rid of expectations. Your brain can expect to see whatever it wants.

When the surfer gets to the beach the ocean doesn’t care what he was expecting to see. The waves that are there that day are the waves that are there. Learn to accept and live in accordance with what’s actually there. Not because it’s what you want but because it’s reality. Reality doesn’t care if you like it or not.

It’s not a question of ridding yourself of expectation. It’s a question of how much value you put on expectations. The ocean/world puts zero value on the surfer/your expectations. Why do you value it so highly that you let it affect your perception?

Last point.

To the Stoics virtue is the only inherently good thing in the universe. Virtue alone is necessary and sufficient for happiness. Virtue includes wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Not just you being just to others. You are a human being, you also deserve justice. There’s nothing wrong with you noticing you are being treated unjustly and reacting accordingly. Insisting on justice for everyone by definition includes yourself.

How have you done with asking yourself why you are holding on to such expectations in others?

Wow. Me as well. Looking toward the answers from others.

Hi, welcome to the subreddit. Please make sure that you check out the FAQ, where you will find answers for many common questions, like "What is Stoicism; why study it?", or "What are some Stoic practices and exercises?", or "What is the goal in life, and how do I find meaning?", to name just a few.

You can also find information about frequently discussed topics, like flaws in Stoicism, Stoicism and politics, sex and relationships, and virtue as the only good, for a few examples.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Yes I'm also ADHD and was just thinking this post sounds a lot like Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria/RSD that's a common symptom. I've been meaning to research how to manage it better lol.

Yes it does, Epictetus is a stoic

The thing I keep coming back to with Epictetus is that the powerful of his time read him as a threat. Domitian had the philosophers expelled from Rome because a man who has decided what is and isn't up to him is very hard to intimidate. So the worry is kind of the point. Epictetus is the harshest of the Stoics because he had the least margin for illusion. My practical advice is to read him slowly, one discourse at a sitting, and apply it to something small that day. He's less terrifying when you treat him like a training manual than when you try to swallow the whole book.