Carly Henline

Philosophy 1000
Jane Drexler
March 7, 2021
Live Philosophy

My first Stoic Exercise I decided to work on is evening meditation. With this exercise,

you are supposed to look back at your day and focus on what you did badly, what you did well,

and how could you differently. It was a rough day that day. I have started a new job, and I do not

know much yet. Most of the day I sit and watch another girl as she tries to train me. She is only a

temporary employee; therefore, I will need to learn more from others as well. I feel as if I have

learned a lot, but I know that there is much more. At another point in the day, I was heading back

to work after my lunch. I made a quick left turn and almost got myself in an accident.

Thankfully, I was safe, as was the other driver, but I could have been more patient. This would

ensure that we both would have been a little safer. This exercise is not meant to make you feel

inadequate, instead it is trying to help you learn. As you make similar mistakes throughout your

life, you come to realize that it is okay, and you can find other ways to fix it. From this exercise,

I learned a few things. I need to be a more patient driver, and to try my best to learn everything

that I possibly can from this new job.

In my opinion, the purpose of adding a reserve clause is to help us to learn how to have

patience with ourselves. We get very busy in our day to day lives, and it is easy to get upset if we

are not able to accomplish everything that we had set out to do. By adding this clause to our daily

tasks it will help us to learn that we are not required to do everything. We just need to try our

best to do so. The example I had, was with a cabinet install we had done in my home. We

recently moved into a new home, and the house needed an upgrade. My family’s original
intention was to get the whole job done in one day. Sadly, this was not possible. It upset my

parents, but since I had gone into it with this outlook it made it easier to accept. This helped me

to take time to make sure things were done correctly the first time, instead of worrying about

having to go back to redo previous mistakes.

The idea of a morning meditation is meant to help you focus on how you want to react

throughout the day. It is meant to help you look to things that could happen to you throughout

the coming day. When I did this meditation, I thought about all of the things I wanted to do, and

what kind of person I wanted to be for this day. My family was installing some cabinets this day,

and it required all my siblings help because the cabinets were quite heavy. I wanted to be willing

to help with anything that was needed. I gave myself a mindset of being happy to be there and

trying to help others be optimistic about it as well. Hanging these cabinets was a hard task to

complete. Everyone was getting frustrated because the cabinets did not want to stay level. Since I

started the day out this way, I was able to try and help my family feel less flustered by the large

amount of work that still needed to be done.

Overall, I found these exercises to be quite useful. I would love to continue adding this to

my daily routine and seeing how it will impact my daily life. In the few days I had put these into

practice, I had noticed a change. I hope that they would continue to do the same going forward. I

had a few reasons for why I choose these 3 as the exercises I wanted to do. I felt that they had the

most potential to influence me to change my outlook of life. I most enjoyed the adding a reserve

clause, because it helped me to focus on the fact that I do not have to be perfect I just need to try.

This is certainly something I will carry with me and use often when I am struggling with future

issues.