That Mystery Floating Alongside

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  “The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side. But even then I could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired head. Howev...

In Your Self-Interest

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"Therefore, explain why a wise person shouldn’t get drunk—not with words, but by the facts of its ugliness and offensiveness. It’s most easy to prove that so-called pleasures when they go beyond proper measure, are but punishments." (Seneca, Moral Letters, 83.27)

Is there a less effective technique to persuading people to do something than haranguing them? Is there anything that turns people off more than abstract notions? That’s why the Stoics don’t say, “Stop doing this, it’s a sin.” Instead they say, “Don’t do this because it will make you miserable.” They don’t say, “Pleasure isn’t pleasurable.” They say, “Endless pleasure becomes its own form of punishment.” Their methods of persuasion hew the line in The 48 Laws of Power: “Appeal to People’s Self-Interest Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude.”

If you find yourself trying to persuade someone to change or do something differently, remember what an effective lever self-interest is. It’s not that this or that is bad, it’s that it is in their best interest to do it a different way. And show them—don’t moralize.

And what happens when you apply this way of thinking to your own behavior?

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

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