Theme of the Week: Your Standards, Your Responsibility
“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”
- Marcus Aurelius
Brother,
After my cancer diagnosis, for the first time in my life, I became deeply intentional about how I was living and what I was allowing into my life. I looked at almost every area of it and asked myself a simple question: Is this helping me heal, or hurting me?
From that point forward, I began optimizing everything I could control. My eating habits changed, my hydration improved, my cleanliness became stricter, the products and household items I used changed, the way I socialized changed, and my daily structure became far more disciplined. Almost everything shifted. I developed routines and habits that ensured I was doing everything in my power to support my healing, recovery, and health.
There were very few days where I strayed from that routine and very few exceptions to the standards I had set for myself. I was living the way I needed to live for the circumstances I was in, and in many ways, I was living more aligned than I ever had before.
One day, I hope to share all of those changes in greater detail.
What I did not expect, however, was how uncomfortable this shift made some people around me. There were moments where I could feel the disapproval. Moments where I felt judged. At times, it seemed as though the changes I was making for myself created tension in others.
In those moments, I found myself returning to one of the most foundational Stoic principles I had studied for years. The principle found in this week’s quote.
Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.
The deeper meaning behind that idea is simple: you control yourself, and that is it. Other people will behave how they choose to behave. They will have opinions, make judgments, misunderstand your choices, and project their own discomfort onto you.
Part of Stoicism is accepting that reality rather than resisting it. Not fighting it. Not carrying it. Not allowing it to distract you from your own path.
Your business is you.
Your habits, your discipline, your standards, and the way you carry yourself.
Stoicism is not about judging how other people live. It is not a philosophy meant to be projected onto the world or used to control the behaviour of others. It is personal. It is meant to guide your own conduct. One of the hardest lessons within that is accepting that people will still be unreliable, critical, or even foolish at times; and allowing them to be.
You have enough to manage within yourself.
When I feel judgment or discomfort from others, I rise above it. I tolerate it. And I remain at peace because I know how I choose to act, and I know the life I am trying to build. And I only expect that from me, not from anyone else.
Be tolerant with others.
But be strict with yourself.
That is where your power lies.
Stay strong, even when you are not. It’s okay, you are not alone.
With love always,
Michael Argyrides
