The Long Way Around
Focusing on the Daily Stoic Meditation for June 23, as outlined by Ryan Holiday in the bestseller 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance and the Art Of Living.
“You could enjoy this very moment all the things you are praying to reach by taking the long way around — if you’d stop depriving yourself of them.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.1
The Stoic Meditation focuses on how the things you deeply desire, such as freedom and happiness, are already in your grasp — all you have to do is just find it, reach it and keep a hold of it.
What Do You Want?
Ask people what they desire and they may mention something about a profession, a happy family, a great deal of money, etc. Perhaps you want a loving family, or perhaps you want to create a successful business.
Ask people what their long term goals are, and most people have some idea, even if it’s vague.
It’s immensely important to know what you want in the future.
Knowing your 5 year, 10 year, 20 year goals is important if you want to make good progress in life.
The issue, however, comes when people spend their time chasing their goals for the future and ignoring what they have in front of them.
The Mindset
Many people have the detrimental mindset that the things they desire, the happiness, freedom and wealth, are in the future.
Many people spend months and years working towards the things that they want, thinking that they have to go the long way around in order to be fully happy.
For example;
- Have you heard someone say “when I have (insert a goal, desire or object) I’ll be happy”?
- Or perhaps, have you heard people say “I’ll be free once I do this..”.
These phrases, and this mindset, is toxic.
Going the long way around, in this respect, simply delays your happiness.
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The issue with this mindset is that you’re actively postponing your happiness for the future.
You’re relaying your happiness to a point in the future, when you have a thing or you’ve achieved a certain goal. You’re delaying the things you want.
It doesn’t need to be this way!
You don’t need to wait until you’ve achieved a certain goal or hit a certain milestone in order to be fully happy and content.
You can achieve happiness, freedom and respect now.
You can get whatever you want now, because it’s in front of you.
It’s Already Yours
Happiness is already yours.
Freedom is already yours.
Prosperity, friendship, respect — it’s all already yours.
It’s true that the big goals you desire, such as having a successful business or building an athletic, healthy body, may not be yours just yet.
The smaller things, however — emotions such as happiness, small daily joys and friendships — are already yours. They’re in front of you!
You don’t have to delay your happiness till a point in the future — focus on the now and you’ll see that there is already so much happiness, so much joy and good fortune, right in front of you.
There is daily joy;
- Perhaps you wake up and the sun is shining, that’s a form of happiness!
- Maybe you get to spend time with your friends, and they bring you happiness.
- Maybe your coworker makes you laugh quite often when things are stressful at work.
There’s small joys that you can find each day if you look for them — you don’t need to delay the things you want to a point in the future, as you can achieve all of that now.
Focus On The Now
Focus on the present moment.
You already have everything you want — the happiness, the luck, the fortune — in your life, you just need to tune into it and take advantage of it!
Spend more time trying to be mindful and trying to focus on the present moment. Through this, you’ll notice that good things truly are all around.
