Breakfast with Seneca
A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living
I got this book immediately after seeing Tom Morris’s strong recommendation of it in his new book Stoicism for Dummies. It’s FANTASTIC. I can still *vividly* remember reading his Letters from a Stoic nearly 25 years ago (on a boat in the Mediterranean!) not too far from where Seneca wrote the letters 2,000 years ago. This book is now one of my all-time favorite books on Stoicism. It made me fall in love with Seneca. In fact, as you know if you’ve been following along, I’ve often said that Epictetus is my favorite teacher and Aurelius is my favorite leader but... Seneca is a fascinating blend of BOTH of their BEST qualities. I think he’s now my favorite Stoic. The book is PACKED (!) with Big Ideas. We’ll barely scratch the surface of its wisdom before we run out of space/time but I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s get to work!
Big Ideas
- The Stoic= The Progressor.
- A Guiding PurposeWhat’s YOURS?
- Vicious CrowdsVs. Virtuous Friends. (Choose Wisely.)
- Stoic PersistenceHow to Become Invincible.
- Stoic JoyHow to Create Lasting Happiness.
“What I also discovered in Seneca’s writings is that nothing significant has changed in human nature over the last two thousand years, which made everything he had to say contemporary. Vanity, greed, ambition, pursuit of luxury, and runaway consumerism—aspects of Rome’s elite, decadent society that Seneca described in detail—are all still very much with us.
But countering these negative aspects of human behavior, Seneca teaches his readers how to overcome worry and anxiety; how to live a good life under any conditions; how to live with purpose and cultivate excellence; how to contribute to society; and how to overcome grief and all kinds of obstacles that might (and certainly will) cross our paths. ...
Despite the very high level of interest in Stoicism today, no one has written a book explaining Seneca’s teachings for the general reader, even though he’s been called ‘the most compelling and elegant of the Stoic writers.’ I hope this book will fill that void, and provide a bird’s-eye view of his thinking. ...
This book might satisfy the entire curiosity of some readers about Seneca’s philosophy. But for those who wish to continue on to Seneca’s actual writings, or to host their own breakfasts with Seneca, may this guide serve as a helpful companion in that quest.”
~ David Fideler from Breakfast with Seneca
I got this book immediately after seeing Tom Morris’s strong recommendation of it in his new book Stoicism for Dummies. It’s FANTASTIC.
Now... I’ve always loved Seneca.
I can still *vividly* remember reading his Letters from a Stoic nearly 25 years ago (on a boat in the Mediterranean!) not too far from where Seneca wrote the letters 2,000 years ago while on a philosophical quest that included studying Socrates in Athens, Jesus in Jerusalem, Rumi in Turkey, and Aurelius near the Danube in Hungary.
But... Other than that high-level overview and some references to Seneca in all the other books we’ve featured, there’s never been a book ALL about him and his wisdom until this one. I HIGHLY recommend it. (Get a copy here.)
This book is now one of my all-time favorite books on Stoicism. It made me fall in love with Seneca. In fact, as you know if you’ve been following along, I’ve often said that Epictetus is my favorite teacher and Aurelius is my favorite leader but... Seneca is a fascinating blend of BOTH of their BEST qualities. I think he’s now my favorite Stoic.
I just got all his other letters so I can study him more deeply. Much more coming soon. For now, I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas from this GREAT book.
I read the book in basically one sitting. I felt like I was having breakfast with TWO dear friends: Seneca AND David Fideler.
It’s the kind of book I was sad came to end. It felt like a 2.75-hour breakfast I recently had with a new friend (Billy Donovan—the head coach of the Bulls) that came to an end because he had to get going to get to the next city for their next game.
The book is PACKED (!) with Big Ideas. We’ll barely scratch the surface of its wisdom before we run out of space/time but I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s get to work!
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Download PDFI am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may benefit them.
Then there’s another dimension to Seneca’s work: he has one of the best writing styles of all times, and encapsulates his thoughts in pithy, epigrammatic lines like: ‘Our lack of confidence does not result from difficulty; the difficulty comes from lack of confidence.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson loved to read Seneca too, and even imitated his style.
Get the BookThe Progressor = The Stoic
“Progressor is a translation of the ancient Greek term for a student of Stoicism, a prokoptōn, or ‘one who makes progress.’ Since none of the Stoic philosophers claimed to be perfect sages but tried to make progress each and every day through the use of self-reflection and various exercises, all of the Stoic philosophers were progressors.
In the end, to make progress as a human being, you must first realize that you are imperfect (or have reason to improve) and, second, have a desire to improve. It’s no coincidence that one of Seneca’s most frequently used words in his letters is ‘progress,’ or making progress toward wisdom. And as he concluded, ‘most of progress consists in the desire to make progress.’ For without that desire, progress itself is impossible.
Strangely, one question the Stoics, as a school, never explored in depth is, What causes someone to become a progressor in the first place? While the precise answer to this would vary from person to person, obviously some kind of ‘wake-up call,’ as we say today, is generally needed. It could be a personal crisis, a personal loss, repeated failures, or just a slowly growing realization that life is too precious to waste on the false goods that the world is constantly trying to sell us. Alternately, the wake-up call could be a persistent feeling of unhappiness or depression—because a person’s real, inner needs are not being met by his or her current beliefs or lifestyle.”
The book begins with a quick look at Seneca’s (fascinating!) life then we take a quick look at fourteen different practical themes—from “Value Your Time: Don’t Postpone Living” and “How to Overcome Worry and Anxiety” to “The Problem with Anger” and “How to Tame Adversity.”
The passage above is from the very first chapter on “The Lost Art of Friendship” in which David walks us through Seneca’s commitment to being a noble part of his community WHILE being a good friend.
The “letters” from which David gleans all the wisdom for this book are LITERALLY letters Seneca wrote to his dear friends. They are the embodiment of the virtues he encourages us to practice.
I pulled this Big Idea out because I just LOVE the fact that, in ancient times, the students of Stoicism were called a prokoptōn—which literally means “progressor” or “one who makes progress.”
Think about that for a moment...
And, know this...
All the great sages we admire today—Seneca and Epictetus and Aurelius—DIDN’T consider themselves SAGES. They considered themselves STUDENTS.
Progressors.
And...
THAT’s what made them so great.
They actually PRACTICED their philosophy.
With one goal in mind: To make a little more progress TODAY.
That, as George Leonard would agree, is the mark of the true MASTER.
So... With that wisdom in mind, here’s to diligently, patiently, and persistently aggregating and compounding our incremental +1 improvements, my dear fellow Heroic prokoptōn.
Day 1. All in. LET’S GO.
P.S. Regarding the importance of knowing we NEED to change *and* the even more important desire to WANT to change, two things come to mind.
First: Seneca once said: “The worse a person is the less he feels it.”
Second: The need for the “wake-up call” is why we lean in to the “Quick Trip to Hell” exercise in our first Coach module. Remember: WAKE UP! THIS ISN’T A DRESS REHEARSAL!
A Guiding Purpose
“Similarly, as an archer has a target, we should have an overall goal in life. As he notes in a memorable line, ‘When someone doesn’t know what port he’s sailing for, no wind is favorable.’ In other words, without a destination, people’s lives are ruled by chance.
Fortunately, he claims, a compass does exist to guide us safely. And that guide is not a religion, a revealed scripture, or anything external, but our own power of clear thinking: ‘Whenever you want to know what to seek or avoid, look to your Highest Good, the aim of your entire life,’ because whatever we should do should be in harmony with that.’
While the idea that ‘a person should live according to their Highest Good’ might sound a bit strange to our modern ears, it made perfect sense to the Roman Stoics. They also knew exactly what that Highest Good was for them: it was always striving to live in a way that is honorable and rational, with excellence of character, by aligning your life with the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.’”
Those are the final words from the fifth chapter-theme: “Wherever You Go, There You Are” in which David playfully uses the title of a Jon Kabat-Zinn book to make the point that we can’t run away from ourselves.
He shares that wisdom in the context of quoting Seneca talking about how frequently people travel to try to escape their life’s problems only to find that... alas, they brought THEMSELVES (and therefore their problems!) with them.
Oops.
Fun story: In the introduction to the book, David mentions the fact that Ralph Waldo Emerson, apparently, was a huge fan of Seneca as well and that he “even imitated his style.”
Here’s a wonderful little proof of Ralph Waldo stealing like an artist from Seneca.
In around the year 65 CE, in one of his letters, Seneca said: “You must change the mind, not the location,” because “your faults will travel with you wherever you go.”
Around the year 1865 CE, in his essay on Self-Reliance, Emerson channeled Seneca as he said: “Travelling is a fool’s paradise. ... At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
Hah. Yep. Wherever you go, there you are.
(Check out those Notes on Kabat-Zinn’s wisdom too, btw.)
Now, the point of this wisdom though isn’t to make fun of people who think that traveling will cure them of their issues.
It’s to shine a bright light on the fact that it WON’T cure them of their issues while shining that bright light on what WILL...
We must have a “guiding purpose.”
We must “look to our Highest Good, the aim of your entire life.”
What is that?
Well...
I repeat David’s wisdom: “They also knew exactly what that Highest Good was for them: it was always striving to live in a way that is honorable and rational, with excellence of character, by aligning your life with the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.’”
In a word, they knew that the ultimate game was simple...
To live with Areté.
Vicious Crowds vs. Virtuous Friends
“Using a metaphor from medicine, Seneca explains that we can become ‘infected’ with the bad qualities of others. In a plague, he noted, we can catch a disease by merely being ‘breathed on,’ so we must choose our friends with great care, based on the health of their character. ‘Make an effort to take on the least infected,’ he wrote, because ‘it’s the beginning of disease to expose healthy things to sickness.’
Significantly, this isn’t something Seneca only mentions once. As he writes in another work, ‘We pick up bad habits from those around us, and just as some diseases are spread through physical contact, the mind also transmits its ills to those nearby.’ For example, a greedy person can transmit his infected character to his neighbors. Fortunately, though, ‘It’s the same thing with virtues, but in reverse.’ So while people with flawed characters can transmit their bad habits to us, people with good characters, who befriend us, can make us better human beings.”
That’s from chapter-theme #9: “Vicious Crowds and the Ties That Bind.”
David walks us through the ancient Stoic wisdom that has been verified by modern science and is best summed up by Jim Rohn’s adage that we are the average of the five people with whom we spend the most time.
Now... To be clear, later in the same chapter, David talks about the commitment Stoics have to seeing themselves as part of a broader, universal “family” and that deliberately finding ways to serve authentically while embodying the virtue of love is a hallmark of the Stoic practitioner.
And... We need to be very mindful about the people with whom we spend the most time.
Epictetus echoed this wisdom.
In Discourses he tells us: “It is inevitable if you enter into relations with people on a regular basis, either for conversation, dining or simple friendship, that you will grow to be like them, unless you can get them to emulate you. Place an extinguished piece of coal next to a live one, and either it will cause the other one to die out, or the live one will make it reignite. Since a lot is at stake, you should be careful about fraternizing with non-philosophers in these contexts; remember that if you consort with someone covered in dirt you can hardly avoid getting a little grimy yourself.”
The Buddha also echoes this wisdom.
In The Dhammapada, he tells us: “If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone. There is no companionship with the immature.” And: “Avoid the company of the immature if you want joy.”
So you know...
This is one of the reasons we created the social component to Heroic. It’s still in its nascent form as I type this, but it’s incredibly inspiring to see thousands of people coming together and supporting one another in showing up as our best selves. I’m fired up to help bring these connections OFFLINE and help create 1,000+ Heroic local communities in 100+ countries around the world.
Stoic Persistence: Becoming Invincible
“Endurance, for the Stoicism was an essential human quality. Seneca wrote that ‘even after a poor harvest, one should seed again often, what was lost to poor soil due to continued barrenness has been made good by one year’s fertility.’ Similarly, ‘After a shipwreck, sailors try the sea again. … If we wrestle forced to give up everything that causes trouble, life itself would stop moving forward.’
The Stoics believed that nothing external can harm a wise person who possesses virtue, as long as his or her virtue stays intact. …
To illustrate persistence, Seneca uses the example of someone at the Olympic Games who wears out an opponent through sheer patience. (The Latin word patient means ‘endurance.’) Similarly, in terms of mental endurance, the wise person, through long training, acquires the patience to wear out, or simply ignore, any attack on his character. Epictetus also uses an analogy from an athletic competition. He explains that even if you should falter in an athletic match, no one can prevent you from standing up again and resuming the fight. Even if you should fail at that particular match, you can continue to train and enter the contest again. Then, if you should finally win the victory, it would be as though you had never given up. Sometimes, just being able to keep making progress is a huge victory in itself.
Stoics, like everyone else, will experience adversity and misfortune. What makes Stoics invincible is that they don’t give up. Stoics will make the best of whatever circumstances are at hand, even amid failure, disaster, or financial difficulties. If knocked to the ground, Stoics will stand up, brush themselves off, keep training, and keep moving forward.”
That’s from a chapter called “How to Be Authentic and Contribute to Society,” sub-section: “Stoic Persistence: ‘Becoming Invincible.’”
Yes, of course, when I read that I thought of my new tattoo: ANTIFRAGILE CONFIDENCE.
I also thought of another genius quip from Seneca.
He once said that “Disaster is virtue’s opportunity.” Getting knocked around? PERFECT. That’s a wonderful opportunity to PRACTICE YOUR PHILOSOPHY.
I also thought of Yogananda.
He told us: “Even failure should act as a stimulant to your will power, and to your material and spiritual growth. Weed out the causes of failure, and with double vigor launch what you wish to accomplish. The season of failure is the best time for sowing seeds of success.”
Remember our formula for Forging Antifragile Confidence...
The WORSE we feel, the MORE COMMITTED we are to our protocol.
Disaster? It’s virtue’s opportunity.
Here’s to your Heroic endurance.
Stoic Joy and Lasting Happiness
“For the Stoics and other Greek philosophers, true happiness, eudaimonia, differed from our modern idea of happiness significantly. For modern people, happiness is a temporary feeling, a mood, or a passing emotional state. For the Greeks, though, eudaimonia was a lasting excellence of character—‘an enduring, continuous, and relatively stable state of mind.’ That major difference between modern and ancient views helps to explain why ancient philosophers took happiness so seriously.
For Seneca, ‘Only an excellent mind develops real tranquility.’ The result of having an excellent character, which arises from virtue, is ‘steadiness of joy.’ As Seneca writes to Lucile’s, ‘If a wise person is never lacking in real joy, you have a good reason to desire wisdom. But this joy only springs from awareness of the virtues. To experience this joy, you’ll need courage, justice, and moderation.’
We all have the seeds of these virtues (and other virtues) within us, but in order for them to fully flower, they need cultivation. Like a garden, our character requires tending. …
By developing a steady character based on sound judgments, a remarkable transformation of the personality takes place, which results in lasting joy. …
Seneca tells us that the most advanced Stoic will sometimes experience small disturbances. Like everyone else, a fully developed Stoic sage will share normal human feelings, instinctual responses, and will be startled by unexpected events. But those disturbances will be temporary, just like clouds floating across the face of the sun. Thanks to the Stoic’s steadiness of character, he or she will quickly ‘return home,’ to a state of inner harmony, joy, and tranquility.”
Those are the final words of the book.
Seneca says: “Joy is your goal, but you’re wandering off course! You think you’ll arrive there among riches and official accolades. That is to say, you seek joy surrounded by anxieties! You chase after these things as if they’ll bring happiness and pleasure when, in fact, they are sources of pain.”
Want the lasting joy of eudaimonia? Live with excellence... Also known as... Areté.
When? As always... Moment to moment to moment. All day, every day. Especially... TODAY.
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