It is a Lonely Thing | Sweat the Small Stuff

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. It is a lonely thing. Many people knew they knew they were flirting with danger, they knew he had designs, they knew that these were compromises that violated Rome's traditions, they knew that he

would never be satisfied.

They didn't do anything, it didn't say anything or try to stop it, because they weren't sure how it was going to go down. This is the story of the rise of Caesar, it's the story of Octavian, his successor, it's the story of Rome's Emperor's competent and cruel alike. It is not the story of Cato, who stood up against it, it is not the story of Thracia

and Hellvideous, who stood against Neuro. It is not the story of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the translator of Epictetus, who is radicalized in the 1850s by the enforcement of the fugitive slave act, seeing clearly the lengths the slave powers would go to. These were lonely positions, they were not at first successful positions either, but

that's not what a stoic thinks about, they think about what is right, they don't ask what is this safe, they say that's wrong, and they say this loudly and repeatedly, even

“if it's unpopular, even if they are threatened for it, because that's what courage”

and justice, two of the most essential stoic virtues, demand of us.

That's also the theme of right thing right now, which is my third book in the stoic virtue series, which is all about how we do this, how we take those lonely stands, why we take those lonely stands, what sustains us when we take them, and I think there are obviously some connections to where we are historically, politically, culturally right now. You can grab right thing right now, as well as courage is going on, or the whole virtue

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Sweat the small stuff. Today's quote comes to us from Zeno. Actually, we don't get this directly from Zeno, but it's passed along to us by a Diogenes Leartis. He says, "Well, being is realized by small steps, but it is truly no small thing." The famous biographer Diogenes Leartis attributes this quote to Zeno, but admits that it might also have been said by Socrates, meaning that it might be

“a quote of a quote of a quote, but does it really matter? Truth is truth. In this case, the truth is”

when we all know well, that little things add up. Someone is a good person, not because they say they are, but because they take good actions. One does not magically get one's act together. It is a matter of many individual choices. It's a matter of getting up at the right time, making your bed, resisting shortcuts, investing in yourself, doing your work, and make no mistake. While the individual

themselves out in front of you today. Do you know which are the right way and which are the

easy way? Choose the right way and watch as these little things add up towards transformation. I did a piece about this not long ago, and it's sort of the basis of the habit challenge that we do for daily still because well, but George Washington's favorite saying was "many mickles make a muckle", the idea that things add up, that things are cumulative. Marks really says that we assemble our life action by action, and he says the benefit of doing it this way is that when you sort of shrink it

down to these individual actions, it's very unlikely that someone will get in your way. When Nick Saben talked about the process, if your goal is to win a national championship, and that's all you're focused on. There's so many things that can go wrong between you and that goal that determine

“whether you have this successor failure, you want to make it, it's so all or nothing, I guess, right?”

But if you focus instead on like, I'm going to kill it at practice today. I am going to throw the hell out of this ball. I am really going to listen to my coach to this podcast episode right now. I'm going to do this thing in front of me. However small it is, I'm going to do it extraordinarily well. That really can't be interfered with, and that cumulative impact has the big difference, something can get in the way of you striking it rich in some, you know, scheme or genius play or

breakthrough invention or whatever you think is going to make it your fortune. But very little can

get in the way of you methodically consistently saving and investing, you know, with a long-term target in mind, right? And that compounding effect is what the stoics are talking about. I think

“the other thing that's important to note here, I've always said that I think epiphanies are overrated.”

If they exist at all, right, this idea of like this big breakthrough moment, the Zen Buddhist talk of Satorai, the idea of like the moment that enlightenment appears, I don't think that that's

it. And I think what Zenoh is saying is you don't just get there on this singular breakthrough,

you get to that real well being that smooth flow of life that the stoics are talking about, you get to enlightenment slowly and surely in these small steps. And although each individual as action is small, the actual place you arrive, the enlightenment that you get to, that's the big thing. Most of the big conclusions or big principles or big ideas that I now base my life around didn't strike me like lightning. It was a slow unveiling, a slow reveal. That's how I got there.

“And I think that's how you'll get there too today. So focus on the little things you can do right,”

focus on habits, focus on accumulating, focus on systems, focus on breakthroughs. And I think you'll get what you want to go.