When you’re tired, you stop. When you’re not feeling it, you put it off until tomorrow. When it’s hard, you make an excuse. You listen to that little voice inside you that lets you off the hook, that gives you a break, that gives you more time.

But when that same voice says, “Hey, maybe you’ve had enough to drink,” or “Hey, aren’t we feeling pretty full?” or “Haven’t we achieved the things we wanted, shouldn’t we be happy?”–suddenly you don’t listen to that voice.

It’s funny which of the voices of temperance–one of the most essential of the Stoics virtues–we listen to. It’s funny what limits we respect. Marcus Aurelius noted this in his famous passage in Meditations about getting up early in the morning (check out our reading of that here, with nearly 2M views on YouTube). The voice in Marcus’ head tries to make a case for the importance of sleep. Yes, sleep is important, he says, but nature sets limits on that too–you can’t just spend the day in bed, pretending it’s self-care! The same goes for us when we try to cut the workout short, when we want to get away with not practicing, when we say something is too much work. Yes, it’s good to make sure we don’t overdo things…but don’t weaponize that against yourself.

Each of us faces these choices daily. Which limits will we respect? Which kind of temperance are we going to follow? Respect the ones that make you better. Push past the ones that try to hold you back from growing, from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.