Seneca 75;13
“The second class is composed of those who have laid aside both the greatest ills of the mind and its passions, but yet are not in assured possession of immunity. For they can still slip back into their former state.”
I. The Danger of Doing Well
There is a real danger in doing well. You start to believe you have overcome the person you used to be. You work hard, put in the hours, things start going your way and eventually you start to get comfortable. You look at what you have accomplished, think you can relax a little and you can. But I think there is a very thin line between allowing yourself to enjoy what you have worked for and becoming complacent because of it.
I started to see that in myself this year. The beginning of my year was phenomenal. I worked hard, things went my way, and I was crushing it. I had built enough of a lead that I started to relax. I chilled out a little, spent more time doing other things, and waited for the next opportunity to come. Meanwhile, the guys who had been grinding the entire year kept grinding and eventually, some of them started catching up.
There is part of me that looks at that and thinks I should have kept my foot on the gas. That I should have kept the momentum. I had an opportunity in front of me and instead of taking full advantage of it, I got a little lazy. But there is another part of me that looks at what I did with that time. I spent it with my wife, family and friends. I wrote and I lived a little.
Most of the guys I am competing against aren’t living the same life I am. A lot of them aren’t married. They aren’t spending hours writing. For some of them, life is mostly work during the week and relaxing on the weekends. So I have been torn about it. Would being number one right now be worth giving up the time I spent with my wife, my family and my friends? I don’t think it would.
But I also don’t want to use that as an excuse, because the truth is, I did get a little lazy.
II. It Starts Small
I think that is what makes this quote so interesting to me. Falling back into your former self doesn’t happen all at once. It starts with complacency. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to become the person you spent years trying to escape. You just start allowing little things back into your life.
It starts slow like a sin, you skip something once, then twice and then a habit is forming. You tell yourself you have earned it, ‘’what i am doing is enough”. You start relying on what you did yesterday instead of what you are doing today. Soon what started as a small amount of complacency becomes a habit. That is what makes a little success dangerous. When you are struggling, you know you have to get fierce. When things are going well, you get comfortable and start to think you do not have to be fierce.
The strange thing about complacency is that you usually don’t see the consequences when it begins. Nothing really changes at first. Your career doesn’t collapse because you had a lazy week. Your body doesn’t fall apart because you skipped the gym. Your discipline doesn’t disappear because you decided to take it easy for a few days. Everything looks the same, so you assume everything is the same. Meditation on oneself and an outside look in, that is what is needed on the regular.
That is where I think the first signs are.
The standard starts moving slightly. Something that used to be unacceptable becomes understandable. Then understandable becomes normal and eventually you look around and realize you have drifted much farther than you ever intended to go.
III. The Gym
I have seen this happen in another part of my life. When I moved I became completely focused on work. I wanted to make the move work so badly that almost everything else became less of a priority. I worked constantly because I felt like I had to and in a lot of ways I probably did. I had made a decision and needed to prove to myself that I could make it work.
But one of the things I neglected was my body.
I stopped putting the same effort into the gym that I should have. Missing some time in the gym doesn’t suddenly make you unhealthy. You still look basically the same and you still feel basically the same. So it becomes easy to tell yourself that you’ll get back to it eventually. It hit me when I went back and felt the pain that comes from being complacent for so long.
Then another week passes. Then another month. Eventually, a year and a half has gone by and something that used to be part of who you were isn’t anymore.
Looking back I should have spent more time in the gym over that year and a half. Work was important, especially when I first moved, but I allowed one priority to completely replace another. I don’t think I noticed it happening because there was never one moment where I could point and say, “This is where I stopped taking care of myself.” It happened slowly.
That is the dangerous part. The consequences of complacency usually don’t show up on your first decision. They show up later. If missing the gym once immediately destroyed your health, you would never miss it. If taking your foot off the gas for one week immediately destroyed your career, you wouldn’t do it. But life usually gives you time between the decision and the consequence, and that time can deceive you into believing the decision doesn’t matter.
IV. Not Going Back
I think that is what Seneca is warning about. You can make enormous progress and still not be immune from becoming your former self. Making progress doesn’t guarantee that you will stay there. The habits and discipline that pulled you out of your former state still matter after you have escaped it.
At the same time, I don’t think the answer is to grind every second of your life. I don’t regret spending time with my wife and I don’t regret spending time with my family or friends. I definitely don’t regret writing. Those things are part of the reason I work in the first place. I don’t want a life where I win at work and neglect everything else around me.
There is a difference between rest and complacency though. Rest is a pause we take. You know why you’re doing it, and when it is finished you resume. Complacency is different. Complacency starts convincing you that because you have already done enough, you don’t need to keep becoming better.
I think I crossed that line this year. Not enough to destroy the momentum I had and not enough that I can’t recover. But enough that I noticed it. Noticing it, taking responsibility for it, and taking action is the important part, because the first sign of becoming your former self isn’t some massive failure. It is that slight bit of complacency. It is knowing you should go to the gym and deciding tomorrow is good enough. It is knowing you could work harder and telling yourself you’ve already earned the right not to. It is letting the standards that built your life slowly become optional.
I worked hard at the beginning of this year. I enjoyed some of what that work gave me. I spent time with people who matter to me, and I don’t regret that. But somewhere in there, I also got a little too comfortable.
Sin works the same way.