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Setbacks / 40m
Stoicism for Your First Failure
How to Stop Letting One Failure Define You and Become Stronger After a Setback
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Setbacks / 40m
How to Stop Letting One Failure Define You and Become Stronger After a Setback
Your first serious failure can feel different from every setback that came before it.
A job ends. A presentation collapses. You make a mistake in public. Suddenly the achievement, confidence, and identity you built around being “the capable one” seem much less certain.
The dangerous thought is not simply:
It is:
Stoicism for Your First Failure applies the ideas of Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Musonius Rufus, and Cleanthes to failure, embarrassment, self-doubt, career setbacks, perfectionism, and beginning again.
The audiobook opens with a young professional being let go after six months and realizing that his first major failure feels less like an event than a verdict on who he is.
You’ll discover:
The goal is not to pretend the failure did not matter. It is to make sure one event does not become your identity.
We'll email you the first chapter of Stoicism for Your First Failure after you confirm your address.
It is a Friday, a little after four in the afternoon. You have been asked to step into the small meeting room, the one with the glass wall that everyone can see through. There is a person from human resources there, and your manager, and a glass of water nobody has touched. The conversation takes eleven minutes. The words are polite. It has been decided. It is not the right fit. They wish you every success. Then you walk back to your desk, and you can feel the whole office not looking at you. On the train home, your phone buzzes. It is a notification from a professional networking app, cheerfully inviting your contacts to congratulate you on six months in your new role. Six months ago you posted that you were thrilled to announce it. Two hundred people liked it. Your mother shared it. Your uncle commented with three clapping hands. You sit there and you think, very clearly, a thought you have never had before. I am not who I thought I was. If you have spent your life doing well, your first real failure does not feel like an event. It feels like a verdict. Like someone has finally found you out. It is not a verdict. That is what this book is about. This book is part of a series called Ancient Advice for Modern Problems. And a first big failure, played out in front of your parents, your friends and a few hundred professional contacts, feels like a very modern problem. But failing in public is ancient, and the philosophers called the Stoics knew it from the inside.
A Practical Guide to Unfairness, Bitterness, Envy, Acceptance, and Knowing When to Fight Back
A Practical Guide to Handling No, Letting Go of Approval, and Trying Again
A Practical Guide to Hardship, Meaning, Resentment, and the Strength to Begin Again
Stoic Lessons for Handling No, Rejection, Failure, and the Fear of Not Being Chosen