Open your eyes: See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation. - Epictetus

Você deve se submeter à disciplina, comer de acordo, não tocar em doces, treinar debaixo de rigores, numa hora fixa, no calor e no frio, não beber água muito gelada, nem vinho, a não ser quando receber a ordem de fazer isso; você deve se entregar completamente ao seu treinador assim como o faria com o seu médico e depois, quando chega a hora da competição, você deve se arriscar a se machucar e algumas vezes ter a sua mão deslocada, torcer o tornozelo, engolir um bocado de areia, algumas vezes ser fustigado, e junto com isso tudo, ser derrotado. Quando você considerou tudo isto muito bem, então ingresse numa trajetória de atleta, se você ainda o desejar.

"When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance, he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for you will say upon every occasion, "It seemed so to him."
...."

If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: ‘He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned’.