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/thespicemust 6d ago

Id propose Get out of your comfort zone rather than "choose pain"

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u/hardwireddiscipline 5d ago

Getting out of the comfort zone is the doorway. But I think the Stoics pushed it further, because just stepping out is easy to frame as “trying.” Choosing the hard path on purpose is where the edge is built. That’s why “choose pain” hits deeper. It’s not about suffering for no reason, it’s about sharpening ourselves against resistance.