r/GetMotivated • u/hardwireddiscipline • 7d ago

DISCUSSION Rules to Stop Wasting Life [Discussion]

Most of us aren’t really living, we’re just wasting time.
We tell ourselves we’ll start tomorrow.
We drown in comfort.
We numb ourselves with noise.

The Stoics warned us about this. They weren’t just philosophers, they were people fighting against the same weaknesses we face today. Seneca put it brutally: “It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”

Lately I’ve been asking myself: how much of my time is really lived, and how much is just wasted?
The 4 Stoic rules that keep coming back to me are:

  1. Remember you’re dying (Memento Mori)
  2. Choose pain over comfort
  3. Stop lying to yourself
  4. Do the work in silence

For me, comfort as a slow poison is the hardest truth. It’s so easy to slip into scrolling, eating, or procrastinating and call it “rest.” But it’s not rest. It’s wasting life.

What about you? Which of these rules feels most urgent in today’s world, and why?

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u/ClimateCare7676 7d ago

Not to be that person, but Seneca belonged to the top class of the slave owning society. And Marcus Aurelius came from a super privileged family and ended up an emperor. Stoicism might have its benefits as an ancient alternative to basically therapy, but I don't know if we can say that wealthy ancient Roman elites had the same weaknesses an overworked depressed modern day worker is. 

To exist the zone of comfort you first need to be there in the first place, and if you have no comfort, the approach of choosing pain and thinking of death sounds like something that will make you even more apathetic rather than motivated and encouraged to do better. 

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u/hardwireddiscipline 7d ago

Yeah true, most Stoics had privilege. But not all, Epictetus was literally born a slave. What sticks with me is they still wrestled with the same stuff we do, like procrastination, comfort, even just getting out of bed. I don’t read them as perfect examples, more like people trying to fight the same battles we’re in.