Massimo Pigliucci

What did I do wrong?

What did I do right?

And what could I do better the next time that something like that happens?

It has very good empirical backing from modern science.

It really does work.

It is a kind of self-analysis.

Now, there is a limitation in doing self-analysis, which is, as especially modern psychologists have demonstrated, you know, human beings are very good at rationalizing.

So you can write down things and then you can make up all sorts of excuses about why you did certain things or you didn't do other things.

But the Stoics were aware of that, which is why they said, well, you need to do the self-analysis, you need to do the self-examination, but you also need some help.

And there are two major sources of help for the Stoics.

One is to imagine a role model.

So imagine that you're actually talking to somebody.

If you notice, the meditation is written in the second person.

It's not I did this, but you did this.

As if Marcus were writing to a friend or to somebody else who was listening and he was giving advice to that person.

Even though he was talking about himself.

And again, that is very good.

I was just reading an article the other day in psychological literature.

There's pretty good evidence that this technique helps achieving emotional detachment to some extent from your own actions and therefore engaging more analytically, more critically with what you've done.

And the other external help is talking to a friend, literally talking to a friend, right?