Carrots, Not Sticks

As a Stoic, you know it’s not appropriate for you to aim your desires toward indifferent things such as money, social status, or even good health or good relationships. These external things may be worth working toward as preferred indifferents, but they are not goods in themselves. To the untrained mind, such “goods” seem to be an unmixed blessing. But Stoics realize that the only true good is virtue: a virtuous disposition of the soul, and the acts of selecting and desiring virtue. Even if life gives you nothing but lemons, you can still be happy drinking your virtuous lemonade.

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