Compliments are not mandates
If you are pleased with yourself, beware lest you be puffed up.
Praise can feel good. That’s fine. You’re allowed to enjoy it.
The trouble begins when praise becomes influential over our choosing; when we start formulating our choices such that they aim toward whatever outcomes earned the approval of others last time.
Seneca warns against this. Not because praise is bad, but because isn’t a worthy measure of Virtue.
Crowds are fickle. One day they applaud you, the next they boo. If our sense of appropriate choosing is influenced by the appeasement of a crowed, we’ll spend our lives choosing for others rather than ourselves.
It’s not required that we reject praise, or deny it’s utility as measure of things over than Virtue. The only thing Stoicism requires of us on this front is not to be lead around by the nose by a desire for our choices to be popular.
Stay hungry. Stay wise. Eat brekkie.
🧠 Interested in a daily Stoic practice app for accountability? Try mine: Stoic Way
