What To Do When You're Not Making Progress

Life never stops

Welcome to The Stoa Letter, the newsletter on Stoic theory and practice.

🏛️ Theory

Year after year we can improve.

Whether it’s increasing in bravery, courage, or moral fortitude. There are periods of our lives when we realize absolute transformation.

I’ve spoken with many people experiencing the rush of personal change. It’s energizing. 

But there comes a time when the progress slows. In fact, it can seem like you aren’t making progress at all – or are even beginning to go backward.  Both of these situations are worth thinking through.

Epictetus has a line:

It takes very little to spoil and upset everything: just some slight deviation from reason.

 Discourses 4.3

Unfortunately, we all miss the mark.

Our lives are not a straightforward march towards becoming sages. Every day is full of steps forward, steps back, and moments of minimal movement.

One of the key questions to address when it feels like we’re not making progress is: have we been knocked off the path or are we just finding it more difficult?

In many domains, it’s easier to go from beginner to intermediate than move from intermediate to advanced. If you don’t know the fundamentals of a craft, adding those to your repertoire will set you apart from most practitioners. But if you want to go beyond that – it gets harder. The further up you go, the air gets thinner.

So we shouldn’t immediately treat the sensation that we aren’t making progress as correct. Sometimes our journey slows as the terrain changes from firm ground to uneven sand. The problems life gives us become more difficult and progress becomes more demanding over time. Success becomes that much more meaningful too. 

It is difficulties that reveal what men amount to; and so, whenever you’re struck by a difficulty, remember that God, like a trainer in the Gymnasium, has matched you against a tough opponent.

  Epictetus, Discourses 1.24

What about the other possibility, when you’re truly moving backward? Of course, these cases are diverse and there is much to say here.

In my experience, one of the best questions to ask here is: can you use regret and remorse to move forward? Some people save their failures and use them as motivation – perhaps keeping a folder of everytime they experienced rejection. This can be motivating. But don’t forget that it’s more important to look up than down. 

In the end, the past is no longer up to you. What is in your power is how you respond now. While you can, get back on the path.

Just do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.

  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.2

🎯 Action

Just make some progress today, no matter how little.

🔗 Links

🖋️ A poem from Peit Hein:

The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain

And simple to express:

Err

and err

and err again,

but less

and less

and less

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