{"id":2097,"date":"2023-05-17T06:54:15","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T13:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/?p=2097"},"modified":"2023-05-17T06:54:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T13:54:16","slug":"actively-forming-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/the-daily-stoic\/05\/17\/actively-forming-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Actively Forming Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Show me someone sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I’d like to see a Stoic. But since you can’t show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way… Show me!”<\/p>EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES<\/em>, 2.19.24-25a, 28<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is no such thing as a fully-realized Stoic. None of us have fully ‘arrived’. In fact, “one never arrives” when studying stoicism, says author Ryan Holiday. That’s because philosophy is a process \u2014 it’s not an end goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re always working to improve ourselves, but we can’t expect to ever attain perfection, because that’s just an ideal. In the same way that life is never perfect<\/a>, we understand that we ourselves are never going to be perfect either. But that doesn’t stop us from striving for that ideal as best we can!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Epictetus stated in today’s quote, there is nobody who is “perfectly formed”. But we are always “actively forming [ourselves]”<\/strong>, always working toward self-improvement. And that’s what really matters, anyway \u2014 that we understand our work is never done, that we <\/em>are never done, and we’ve always got room for growth<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rather than aiming for perfection, instead aim to be always growing and actively forming yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1014,111,98,165,109,200,65,117,132,4,84],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2100,"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions\/2100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meditationsbybilly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}