Can Self-Discipline Be Trained? | Mortal Questions

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Welcome back to Dying Every Day. This is Mortal Questions.

I want to try something new here on Dying Every Day. I’m calling it Mortal Questions.

The idea is pretty simple. There are certain questions that seem to follow us through life—questions about happiness and suffering, work and love, ambition and regret, attention and death, and so on. Some have occupied philosophers for thousands of years. Others show up on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon when something goes wrong, and we suddenly realize we have no idea what to do.

And often, they’re the same questions.

Every so often, I want to take one of them and spend some time thinking it through. Sometimes the questions come from listeners. I’ve set up an email address—askamortal@dyingeveryday.com—where you can send whatever you’ve been wrestling with (you can remain anonymous or not). [...]