Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, gave us the phrase “growth mindset.” The idea beneath it is much older than her research. In her work, a growth mindset is the belief that your abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, good strategies, and help from others.
People with a fixed mindset see talent as something you either have or don’t, so they tend to avoid challenges that might expose their limits.
Seeking out hard problems and treating failure as feedback were daily habits for the Stoics long before anyone ran a study on them. Marcus Aurelius may be the best example we have, partly because he never expected anyone to read what he wrote.
He was the emperor of Rome. Between the work of running an empire, he wrote private notes to himself in Greek, which became the book we now call Meditations.
Read them closely, and a pattern shows up. He keeps scolding himself for spending energy in the wrong places, and five of those warnings match how people who keep improving with a growth mindset think.
1. Arguing with Reality or Complaining About Obstacles
Something goes wrong. A person with a growth mindset might stay annoyed for a minute, then start asking what the problem can teach them. Complaining is tempting because it feels like doing something. It changes nothing, though, and the deadline still slipped, and the client still walked.
Marcus treated obstacles as fuel. In his words, “The mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid… and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.”
That line comes from Book 5, section 20, of George Long’s 1862 translation. Marcus was writing about difficult people who blocked his plans, though the idea works just as well for bad luck. Sometimes the detour beats the original plan. A losing trade exposes a flaw in your rules, and a tough boss teaches patience, whether you signed up for that lesson or not.
2. Worrying About Other People’s Opinions
Few habits drain more energy than wondering what other people think of you. You rehearse conversations that never happen and reread emails, hunting for hidden judgment.
The Stoics split the world into two piles: things you control and things you don’t. Other people’s opinions land squarely in the second pile, so Marcus Aurelius counted worrying about them as a waste of effort.
He found the whole habit a little absurd. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.” (Meditations 12.4, George Long translation)
He ran an empire and still caught himself doing this. The rest of us are in good company. People who grow hold themselves to a standard they set. Applause is nice when it shows up, but they don’t plan their week around getting it.
3. Debating What You Should Do Instead of Acting
Overthinking likes to dress up as preparation. You read one more book and sketch one more plan until the week is gone. Aurelius studied philosophy from the time he was a boy. He still lost patience with talk that never turned into behavior, including his own.
His advice to himself was blunt. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.” You’ll find that in Book 10, section 16. It reads like a note scribbled after a long evening of thinking in circles.
Skill comes from reps. A trader who backtests forever without placing a real trade order often learns less than someone who trades small for a month and keeps an honest trading journal.
4. Fixating on Non-Essential Distractions
Busy and productive aren’t the same thing. Plenty of people finish the day exhausted without moving a single important project forward. Phones, inboxes, and meetings that could have been a two-line message all fight for the same limited attention. Marcus had no phone, but he had a court full of people who wanted something from him.
He kept coming back to one test. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “For the greatest part of what we say and do being unnecessary, if a man takes this away, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness.”
He followed that by telling himself to ask on every occasion, “Is this one of the unnecessary things?” Both lines come from Meditations 4.24.
Try asking it about tomorrow’s calendar. You’ll probably find at least one commitment you agreed to out of habit and could drop without anyone noticing.
5. Judging and Meddling in the Affairs of Others
Gossip feels good for a few minutes. Picking apart a coworker’s mistake makes your own look smaller, at least until you’re alone with them again. None of it makes you better at anything. The hour spent cataloging someone else’s flaws is an hour you didn’t spend fixing yours.
Marcus Aurelius wrote, “How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure.” This is Meditations 4.18. Notice that it frames it as trouble avoided. Anyone dragged into office drama knows how much that is.
The people who improve fastest aim that critical eye at themselves. They go looking for their own blind spots and bad habits, which is uncomfortable and usually worth it.
Why Marcus Aurelius Still Matters for Personal Growth
He wrote much of this while dealing with war on the Danube frontier and a plague moving through the empire. Most entries barely mention either one.
He kept pulling his attention back to his own thoughts and choices instead. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind.” (Meditations 5.16)
Dweck’s research put a modern label on that idea. Marcus was already practicing it in his private journal almost two thousand years earlier.
Conclusion
Each of these five habits feels harmless in the moment. Ten minutes of complaining here and an afternoon of worrying about a comment there, and a year slips by with little to show for it.
Marcus Aurelius didn’t think outside events were the real problem. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now.” That passage is Meditations 8.47.
Pick the habit on this list that costs you the most time and holds you back from having a growth mindset, and start there this week.