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/thatguy425 7d ago

What average person are you talking about? The  average person in worldwide doesn’t have much. The average American has plenty of comfort when compared to the rest of the world. I just don’t know who you’re talking about.

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u/Arijan101 7d ago

The average citizen of the world.

Or is this post somehow limited to the U.S. reddittors ?

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u/thatguy425 7d ago

That’s why I’m asking. Then most of us Redditors are doing just fine.

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u/Arijan101 7d ago

Great, then you can get busy hustling so that you can own 10 rental properties by the age of 30.

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u/thatguy425 7d ago

That sounds like a lot of work, I’ll stick with less rentals and more comfort.

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u/Arijan101 7d ago

That's the spirit.😏