7 Stoic Habits That Will Mentally Toughen You Up

Better to Do One’s Own Duty Poorly Than to Do Another’s Perfectly -BG 3.35

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Listen, I'm not going to make you any promises about enlightenment at noon or informing you how these habits will make you the Dalai Lama with a sixpack.

These seven habits, taken from the ancient Stoics and the Bhagavad Gita, might make you stronger mentally, simple as that.

1. Let Things Go and Only Care About Your Actions

You are privileged to do your assigned task but not to enjoy the fruit of your work.

Do the thing. That is all. Just do the thing.

Do it. Write the article. Make the call. Attend the workout. Hit publish. Do whatever it is.

And then just walk away.

If you're reloading the stats page or had an investment in someone like a seal cheering person over your Substack post.… you've already lost.

Craving for outcomes is how disappointment is born in your mind.

It's cute the way we pretend to be interested only in the ending. As if we're not secretly building a shrine to it in our heads.

Just get it done.

Let the results stand on their own.

2. Do What's Right, Not What's Easy

It is better to fail in one's own duty than to succeed in the duty of another.

But most people don’t want that kind of failure; they want borrowed paths with guaranteed outcomes.

People say they like doing hard things until it gets hard. Then they turn to cheesy quotes and blame their choices like a bad review.

We all know what is right. The problem is, doing the right thing is often messy and not easy. And people don’t like messiness.

So do your work. Yours. Not your boss’s. Not your cousin’s. Not the fake life an influencer shows online.

If you win at the wrong thing, it’s not real success. It’s a lie.

And there’s already too much of that in the world.

3. Keep Your Wits About You No Matter What Happens

Equal pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, treat alike.

Life's gonna feed you gourmet food someday, and flaming garbage burritos the next.

And when it’s your turn, just keep eating as if it's all the same thing.

• Freaking out rarely fixes things.

• Getting too high on wins makes crashes hurt more.

• Being calm isn't being cold.

• You can care and still not combust.

I am not saying you need to meditate on a mountain and become Gandhi 2.0.

Just stop overreacting every time something doesn't go as planned.

4. Consider Your Choices Every Day

Self-reflection and self-inquiry are the fundamental yogic disciplines.

If you can't challenge your decisions without rationalizing, then you're not growing. You're merely going around the same circle with a brighter light.

Because if you always defend your choices instead of asking, “Was this the right thing?” then you never see your mistakes. You stay in the same place, just with nicer words or a better look.

Ask yourself:

• Did I act like a good human today?

• Did I cheat the system and complete the difficult thing I knew I had to do?

• Did I make some passive-aggressive remark and say it's "just a joke"?

Five minutes of honest reflection beats five hours of performative journaling. Just sayin.

5. Train Your Body, Mind, and Speech with Discipline

Austerity is control of the body, mind, and words, performed with determination and devotion.

Discipline doesn’t mean waking up at 5 a.m. and drinking lemon water. You can do that if you want, but if that’s already your routine, you should close this post.

In my opinion, Discipline is training.

All of it.

• Body — Move it. Eat something that wasn't dispensed from a vending machine. Walk without scrolling. Stretch. Don't die gasping after two flights of stairs.

• Mind — Read. Think. Don't just inhale hot takes from strangers and pass that off as education, and learn how to make your own opinion without watching a YouTube video or X post.

• Speech — This means not snapping at people when you are hungry/anrgy, not swearing

6. Keep Your Ego in Check and Stay Humble

Those who are free from pride and delusion, who have overcome the evil of attachment…. they attain the eternal goal.

Ego is not just acting better than others. Ego is when you think things like, “I should be doing better,” or “Why don’t they see how great I am?”

The thing about humility is that it's subtle.

It doesn't need a standing ovation. It doesn't need a motivational meme. It just exists, gets the job done, and doesn't subtweet its colleagues.

If ego is being a pain, do this: imagine a 13.8 billion year old universe and remind yourself that your thought regarding Taylor Swift's new beau is not likely to tilt the Earth off its axis.

You’re small. If you realize that, then you have the freedom to keep creating without turning it into a Cringe LinkedIn humblebrag.

7. Stay consistent in your work, but not obsessed with reward.

Do your work with a firm but unbiased heart, neither elated nor discouraged by success or failure.

This is the religious equivalent of "just keep swimming."

Because sometimes you go in there, you do your best, and life offers you… crickets, Nothing, Just you and your Google Doc back together again like exes who didn't exactly break up on good terms.

Effort, not obsession. That's our move.

Because the results are misleading. One day you're a genius. The next, a hack. Algorithms change. Humans get distracted. Timing is a coin toss. But effort is yours, and you can iterate on that.

Just keep writing. Keep coming back. Keep attempting.

Let the rest of it do what it will.

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