Self Love Ends Here

Accountability Doesn't Mean Self-Flagellation

Self-love has to end somewhere, right?

Only if we insist on a very limited definition of self-love.

I suspect Marcus Aurelius was right to instruct himself to, “be tolerant with others and strict with yourself¹.”

I consider being strict with myself to be one of the greatest forms of self-love. It's only when I consistently adhere to my values that I thrive.  

My natural inclination is to let myself off the hook far too easily when I stray from what I’ve decided is important. Often, my mind blanks and pretends nothing untoward is going on until it's too late to change course. It’s easy to avoid thinking about my vices and mistakes this way — I simply don’t think at all.   

I used to be obese and used Stoicism to help me lose weight and maintain that weight loss. I’ve also discussed using a certain kind of journaling to externalize philosophical or spiritual ideas and feed them back to myself using a 2nd or 3rd person perspective.

After reading these articles, a reader asked for tips about holding themself accountable without straying out of self-love and into beating themselves up vis-à-vis poor food choices.

I replied that I wasn’t sure where self-love slides into lack of accountability, nor when accountability becomes the vice of beating yourself up. But that they probably do.

Those prone to negative self-talk don’t need to externalize a mean-spirited moral paragon to beat them up. But externalizing some version of a hard-nosed advocate for you and your ideals is powerful, and it doesn’t have to look like self-flagellation.

Here’s how I approach the subject. 

The Increasingly Noisy Teacher:

I can polish off a serving of food that more than meets my nutritional and caloric needs without feeling satiated. I can address this with the strategies mentioned in my article, but sometimes I’m in a rush or distracted and I don’t use those techniques. 

Almost without conscious thought, I’ll line up for a second serving even though I’m not even sure I’m still hungry. The food is on my plate before I’ve made a decision to eat more, or even considered whether I should eat more. 

It’s at this point that I have a last chance to turn off autopilot and take back control before it's too late. 

I’ve tried many things over the years. But being harsh is often the most effective strategy. Harshness is obnoxious enough to get my attention, so it’s useful.  

I start by imagining a mental mentor figure, which is usually an amalgamation of philosophers I’ve enjoyed reading and an imagined better version of myself.  

This is an old trick the Stoics have been using for more than a thousand years.  “Let everything you do be done as if watched by someone,” Seneca wrote. “Solitude encourages every fault in us.²”

And what does this externalized figure say to reach me on the precipice of a mistake? 

Usually, he starts by gently suggesting I consider how my current actions line up with my values. This rarely works. The voice isn’t discordant enough to break through the trance.

So what’s the escalation?

I turn to Socrates, Epictetus, and Crates for examples of teachers ratcheting things up when their students aren’t swayed by gentle logic.  

• Socrates is never mean-spirited in his philosophical discussions, even when his interlocutors get testy. But when someone is purposefully being obtuse, he sometimes turns to biting sarcasm to drive home how ridiculous and disingenuous they’re being. 

• Epictetus is crotchety and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He’d be canceled if he was teaching at a public university today. Yet he was often right to roast the pompous youths and misguided rich tourists who came to see him. Epictetus demonstrates that bluntly pointing out stupidity can get through to someone if they’re genuinely trying to improve.

• Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was taught by the Cynic Crates. Zeno was ashamed to eat low-class lentils in public, so Crates insisted he carry a bowl of lentil soup around the agora, which was unusual. When Zeno tried to hide the bowl under his cloak, Crates broke it with his staff, sending the soup flowing down Zeno’s legs. Now even more embarrassed, Zeno fled. “Why run away, my little Phoenician?”, Crates called after him. “Nothing terrible has befallen you!” Crates resorts to embarrassment to point out that there’s nothing to be embarrassed about at all. 

  

In the about-to-overeat situation mentioned above, my externalized teacher, who has a keen understanding of what buttons to push to get my attention, usually relies on sarcasm and mockery to reach me. After all, he’s a personification of an idea, but he’s also me, and so knows my weaknesses and what I can take. 

The mockery I might project, in the tone of an adult talking to a small child, is something along the lines of “Oh, does your little tongue want to taste more yummy food? Isn’t that so cute.”

It's biting enough to get my attention, and usually sufficient for me to turn off autopilot and abort the second helping of food. The externalized guru has made his point. I’m acting like a little child with no moderation, more interested in experiencing pleasure than doing what I believe is right. 

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying food. But at some point you’ve had enough. If you can’t even think clearly enough to consider if you’ve reached that point, a bit of mockery isn’t a bad way to snap you back to reality.  

Striking the Balance

Virtue demands that we use the right tool for the job. 

Three of the Stoic virtues are dikaiosunê (justice), sôphrosunê (moderation/discipline), and phronêsis (wisdom). Any attempt at teaching or self-improvement must be triangulated by these virtues. 

So your imagined externalized teacher, or an actual philosopher engaged in teaching, wouldn’t be harsher than is helpful. Harshness is a tool to use when the normal vehicles of teaching aren’t working, and someone is trying to give themselves a free pass. If someone is already overly critical of themselves, it’s not just, wise, or moderate to hand out more of the same. They already know they’re failing.

A good teacher scales back the message to the minimum effective dose of hard-nosed reality to get the job done. Sometimes, the job calls for soft words and encouragement in the face of failure. The simple fact that you’re paying enough attention to be angry/sad about your failing might deserve praise.

The Stoic philosopher Hecaton of Rhodes said, “Do you ask what progress I have made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.³”

This suggests the process of bringing our thoughts, words, and deeds in line with virtue is a form of self-love. Part of this is holding yourself accountable, sure. But another is threading the needle between calling yourself on your BS and encouraging yourself when you’re floundering. Virtue demands a correctly powered teaching method.  

I think it’s great that we can exercise virtue even in how we talk to ourselves after we’ve failed to live virtuously!

This is no less an important step on the path of eudaimonia than whatever big-picture thing we consider of great importance. Sometimes w’re going to fail. How we deal with that failure is as much a test of virtue as the test we think we’ve failed.

1. Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations,” 5.33.

2. Seneca, “Letters on Ethics”, Letter 25)

3. As quoted by Seneca in “Letters on Ethics”, letter six.