Marcus Aurelius wasn’t perfect.

He screwed up. A lot.

We know this from Meditations. That’s why it’s filled with admonishments for losing his temper, for being lazy, for temptations, for all sorts of bad habits or destructive thought patterns.

With so many responsibilities competing for his time and attention, he was guilty, as we all have been, of letting his good intentions slide. Despite our better judgment and best intentions, life has a nasty habit of getting in the way and sending us on accidental hiatuses from our (good) habits and resolutions.

What then?

As Marcus writes, to himself, as always,

When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.

The path to self-improvement is rocky, and stumbling is inevitable. You’ll forget to do the push-ups, you’ll cheat on your diet, you’ll get sucked into the rabbit hole of Twitter, or you’ll go weeks without doing your journaling. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. The Stoics would have liked the advice from Oprah: If you catch yourself eating an Oreo, don’t beat yourself up; just try to stop before you eat the whole sleeve. And then try to do better tomorrow.

In other words: it’s ok to stumble, it’s ok to mess up. Just don’t let a stumble turn into a catastrophic fall. Catch yourself and go back to those good habits.