Reddit reviews Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

I do think Virtue is the highest good, and living with virtue in accordance with your nature is everything you should strive for. But the Stoics are pretty clear in their writings that the intended consequence of living Stoically is to reach a sense of fulfillment, flourishing, or however you want to translate "Eudaimonia" through living with virtue. So if you're unhappy and anxious, then you're not using all the Stoic tools available to you to overcome this. And that's fine! That's not an admonishment of you or your Stoic skillset - there has never been and never will be a Stoic Sage, it's natural for us to trip and tumble on this journey! What's important is that we get back up and keep working towards our ideal. If you read Meditations and Seneca's Letters, you know they both make references to the study of this philosophy being like wrestlers and boxers who get up over and over again no matter how many times they've been punched and kicked and defeated - and that's us now, against our opponent, Fortune. So don't despair that your life hasn't suddenly improved on Stoicism, your entire life is your Stoic journey - and small steps are still progress.

First you should always remember that "ruin and recovery come from within." You are so powerful in regards to yourself / your mind, and you just have to remember that at every turn - I have the power to change, I have the power to appropriately judge this impression, I have the power to set my goals appropriately!

And that last part (about setting goals appropriately) is essentially why I felt the need to comment, because if you feel your dreams are crumbling around you, then you're not setting your goals according to Stoic principles, and if you're not setting your goals appropriately, then you're not applying the Stoic Fork appropriately.

You should break down every situation into its individual parts, then separate them between things you can control and things you cannot. Let's take a job interview as an example: You want them to like you, you want the interview to go well, you want to get the job. None of those are entirely up to you! So switch them around, look at them differently. Set your goals thusly: "I will try my best, if nothing stops me, to be a likable person in this interview. I will do my best, as long as nothing prevents me, to give compelling answers to their questions and give the best interview I can." And the last part of the goal: getting the job? ENTIRELY out of your control if you think about it - they will be making that decision, not you, so why are you concerned with something outside your sphere of control? You should be focused only on things you can control. These two techniques are called goal internalization and the reserve clause.

On top of that, are you spending time on morning and evening meditations? I'm not talking about mindfulness meditation (although I do love it), I'm talking about the meditations recommended by the Stoics.
In the morning, visualize how your day will go, how you will interact with disagreeable people, how you will react to common disturbances in your life (traffic, horrible boss, lazy coworkers, etc.), and perhaps even bigger disturbances if you have time. Then end that meditation with applying the Stoic Fork "these things are not in my control, only my impressions and my (re)actions are in my control."
In the evening, review your day and ask yourself "What did I do well today? Where did I falter? Where could I have done better and how?" A lot of people say journaling this helps, I'm sure it does. I just do it all in my mind though right as I wake up and just as I'm falling asleep - it takes 5-10 minutes each time, and it's easy. I think it will vastly improve your situation.

And I don't think you should "let go of [your] hopes" - that's not what Stoicism tells you to do. Yes, you should control your desires and set appropriate goals for life, but you are allowed to prefer things in life. The key is not to let your happiness or fulfillment hinge solely on those things. For example, while it's natural that you should desire good health, you shouldn't let the loss of your health defeat you if it ever does happen. Health and many other things are preferred indifferents.

I'd also highly recommend reading Epictetus' Discourses - you will probably get a lot out of it.
What translation of Seneca's Letters did you read? I highly recommend this one, it's super easy to read and flows so smoothly. Perhaps if you were reading the older translations, some of it didn't come across so well - I certainly struggle through the older translations myself. That book is expensive, but perhaps your local library would have it...or it is possible to find it online...

Most importantly, and I know you know this, although if you're anything like me you also forget about it sometimes - reading a book isn't going to help you. Studying it and practicing what it teaches will. Since I started Stoicism, I've actually been compiling all my favorite quotes and explanations into a book for myself, because it helps me keep it all straight. You need to think of Stoicism like seriously religious people think about their religions - you can't just read the bible or qur'an or Torah once and call yourself a follower - it's about reading them, studying, finding analyses of them, studying them in depth, seeing what other scholars are saying about it, and then actually practicing it. And the Stoics knew this, it's why they recommend using maxims so heavily - having these short little phrases that stick in the brain so you can think of them right away and remind yourself "I need to be practicing this...I can do better..." So next time you read any Stoic literature, write down some short phrases that are easy to remember and recall, and memorize them, study them, get the true meaning behind them, and I think this will help Stoicism become a more ingrained way of life for you!

Apart from the wikisource translations, the only full translation of Seneca's letters is the University of Chicago Press Translation by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Ethics-Lucilius-Complete-Annaeus/dp/022626517X).

The book can be expensive but it is worth it, the most modern translation I believe. I'd highly recommend it.

I have read through two different versions of Seneca's Letters. The first version I read was Letters from a Stoic. I thought that it was decent, even though it only contains a selection of Seneca's Letters. It got me interested enough in Seneca to seek out more of his work.

I then read through the Loeb editions of Seneca's moral essays, and while I did enjoy them for the most part, I found the translation to be a little dry, perhaps old fashioned, for my tastes, and I ended up returning them. I also cannot read Latin, so having Latin on the reverse side of the page was of little benefit to me besides the coolness factor.

Note that Seneca's works are for the most part divided into 3 sections, his Letters (Epistles), his Essays (Dialogues), and his Tragedies. This confused me for a while as I was not sure what I would be getting with certain books.

I second version of Seneca's Letters that I read through was Letters on Ethics and in my opinion the translation is excellent. To quote the book itself "the translations are designed to be faithful to the Latin while reading idiomatically in English". The footnotes are also extensive and insightful. This is however, potentially one of the most expensive versions of Seneca's letters you will find out there, so you might want to try and find it at a book store first and read through it. Amazon's "Look Inside" does let you read through a large portion of the Introduction as well as the first few letters, so you could try to use that to gauge your interest.

That being said, Seneca is currently my favorite of the 3 Roman Stoics to read, however I do enjoy reading from all 3 Roman Stoic authors for different reasons.