Pursue preferred indifferents without requiring them
Prefer health, success, and good relationships — but pursue them as means, not as conditions of your well-being.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Prefer health, success, and good relationships — but pursue them as means, not as conditions of your well-being.
- Why it works: The Stoics distinguished between true goods (virtue) and preferred indifferents (health, wealth, success, reputation) — things worth pursuing that are not genuinely required for a good life. Acting on this distinction means pursuing what is better without requiring it: you seek the good outcome wholeheartedly while genuinely remaining well in the event of its absence. This is a training in the difference between preference and need.
- Evidence: Established clinical or therapeutic practice.
- Avoid: Pretending not to want preferred indifferents in order to avoid the risk of disappointment — which is suppression rather than the Stoic indifference that comes from genuinely not requiring them.
Why it works
The Stoics distinguished between true goods (virtue) and preferred indifferents (health, wealth, success, reputation) — things worth pursuing that are not genuinely required for a good life. Acting on this distinction means pursuing what is better without requiring it: you seek the good outcome wholeheartedly while genuinely remaining well in the event of its absence. This is a training in the difference between preference and need.
How to do it
- 1List the outcomes you are currently pursuing. For each, ask: if this does not materialize, is my well-being genuinely intact?
- 2Identify which outcomes you are treating as conditions of your okayness, rather than preferences.
- 3For each condition-of-okayness, practice the sentence: "I prefer this, and I do not need it."
- 4Notice whether the shift in framing changes the energy of your pursuit — less driven by fear, more by genuine preference.
What the evidence says
Clinical practiceDistinguishing preference from need is the practical application of non-attachment in several contemplative traditions; in cognitive therapy, conflating preferences with necessities ("I must have X") is identified as a common source of distress.
Honest caveat: REBT’s "musturbation" concept is closely related but framed differently; the specifically Stoic "preferred indifferents" distinction is a philosophical elaboration not separately trialed.
- — Ellis, A. (1994), Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, revised edition, Birch Lane Press
Common mistake
Pretending not to want preferred indifferents in order to avoid the risk of disappointment — which is suppression rather than the Stoic indifference that comes from genuinely not requiring them.
IX Coach distinguishes between the outcomes you prefer and the ones you are treating as requirements, and helps you pursue the former with full energy without treating them as the latter.
Practice this with IX Coach →