Too little
Approval as instruction
Tell me which side makes you like it.
Each reaction takes control of the next choice.
Equanimity
The cushion cannot face everybody’s taste at once.
Inner steadiness amid changing circumstances.
A cat settles into a sunny patch while two visitors disagree about its looks. The patch remains comfortable. That small imagined scene offers a useful question: how much should passing approval rearrange your life? Equanimity allows praise and disappointment to matter without making either the whole measure of you. You can consider a criticism, enjoy a compliment and still leave your cushion the way you like it.
Equanimity gives room for an opinion without a verdict on yourself
One guest loves the striped cover you made for a cushion. Another prefers the plain reverse. You turn it over, then back, until the cushion has had more exercise than anyone in the room. Eventually you leave it as you like it and return to the conversation. The guests have different tastes. That is information about the cushion, and about them; it is not an election on whether you deserve a place in the room.
Finding the balance in Equanimity
An illustrative everyday situation
Leave a handmade cushion in place after two guests express different tastes, without repeatedly rearranging it to secure agreement.
A fitting response
Listening with steadiness
You prefer the plain side. I enjoy the stripes.
A difference can remain a difference.
Pursued too far
Armoured indifference
Nobody’s opinion matters to me.
Refusing every response blocks useful understanding along with dependence.
A preference can be heard without becoming a command.
When the situation changes
Feedback about an actual shared need is different from taste. If the cushion blocks someone’s seat or causes discomfort, moving it can be considerate rather than approval-seeking.
What Equanimity makes possible
You may enjoy praise without needing it to continue, and hear disappointment without instantly rebuilding yourself. Equanimity does not promise immunity to rejection. It makes room to decide what a particular response deserves.
Equanimity in ordinary life
A quiet message
An ordinary message receives a brief reply. Allow that small piece of evidence to remain small before turning it into a complete story about the relationship.
A changed favourite
A group chooses another person’s suggestion this week. You can feel disappointed while helping the chosen plan work, or explain a practical objection if one remains.
Nearby virtues, different work
Composure
Composure helps after the immediate sting; Equanimity concerns how much authority that sting has over your wider judgment.
Self-Respect
Self-Respect protects your dignity and needs. Equanimity helps you keep those in view when reactions change.
Equanimity and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Calculated aloofness
Acting uninterested to make others pursue you can imitate Equanimity. Genuine steadiness does not require managing their attention.
Counterfeit: Dismissal
Calling every criticism irrelevant can look self-possessed. Equanimity leaves you free to learn from a particular criticism.
How to cultivate Equanimity
Separate the response you received from the story you are adding.
Ask whether it concerns taste, a practical need or a real mistake.
Choose a response that fits that smaller question.
Try it today
Consider a mild difference of preference. State what the other person prefers and what you prefer, without ranking either person’s worth. No difficult rejection needs to be revisited.
With room to be yourself
Let changing approval pass without changing your worth.
Questions worth returning to
Which part of this feedback actually concerns my choice?
Can I enjoy approval without asking it to settle everything?
Keep the practice proportionate
Rejection and uncertainty can hurt. Steadiness does not require denying hurt, accepting mistreatment or withdrawing from supportive relationships.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
that therefore which is praised, is not thereby made either better or worse.
Marcus separates an object’s qualities from the praise it receives. A cushion does not need to change with every guest’s preference.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own;
Emerson names two easy forms of dependence on circumstance before proposing independence within company. The challenge here is to hear a preference while retaining judgment.
Can anything be so pliable, so wavering, as the mind of a man whose attitude depends not only on another's feeling and wish, but on his very looks and nods?
Laelius criticizes the flatterer’s changing attitude. The image clarifies how continually reading approval can displace your own considered response.
I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one.
Lamb owns a fondness for old china without claiming a universal ranking of tastes. The cushion can remain a matter of preference rather than public approval.
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
Henry David Thoreau · Walden · Economy · English original, 1854 · excerpt
Thoreau shifts attention from public judgment to the account we keep of ourselves. The page asks whether a guest’s passing response has become a harsher private verdict.
Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.
Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Chapter XVII; Jane speaking · English original, 1813 · excerpt
Jane resists ridicule while discussing Darcy and Wickham. Her view still needs evidence; the useful distinction is between reconsidering reasons and changing one’s mind merely to avoid laughter.
I must still be an emerald, and I must keep my colour.
Marcus imagines a gemstone retaining its character despite what people say. Here the metaphor supports a proportionate response to taste, not stubbornness in the face of new evidence.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the twelve-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. A playful image can prompt a serious choice.