136 Stoic Psychological Techniques

believe, that we will stop experiencing emotion. We will

instead fi nd ourselves experiencing fewer negative
emotions. We will also fi nd that we are spending less time
than we used to wishing things could be different and more
time enjoying things as they are. We will fi nd, more
generally, that we are experiencing a degree of tranquility
that our life previously lacked. We might also discover,
perhaps to our amazement, that our practice of Stoicism has
made us susceptible to little outbursts of joy: We will, out of
the blue, feel delighted to be the person we are, living the
life we are living, in the universe we happen to inhabit.
For the ultimate proof that we have made progress as
Stoics, though, we will have to wait until we are faced with
death. It is only then, says Seneca, that we will know
whether our
Stoicism has been genuine.9
hen we measure
W our progress as Stoics, we might fi nd
that it is slower than we had hoped or expected. The Stoics,
though, would be the first to admit that people can’t perfect
their Stoicism overnight. Indeed, even if we practice
Stoicism all our life, we are unlikely to perfect it; there will
always be room for improvement. Along these lines, Seneca
tells us that his goal in practicing Stoicism is not to become
a sage; instead, he takes his progress to be adequate as long
as “every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame
my mistakes.”10
The Stoics understood that they would encounter setbacks
in their practice of Stoicism. Thus, Epictetus, after telling his