On starting early, the Stoics imply what you say: it definitely plays to your advantage—the faults are not yet so deeply entrenched to the point that they're i

On starting early, the Stoics imply what you say: it definitely plays to your advantage—the faults are not yet so deeply entrenched to the point that they're irreparable. Agree on "no sudden consolation": Let's take Cicero himself, with all his treatises about how to bravely face death or pain, or how "the wise man is never unhappy", et al. When his daughter died unexpectedly, he was absolutely inconsolable (a normal reaction for any of us). His immediate response to suffering was to read: "At your house I read everything that anyone has ever written on the alleviation of sorrow," he wrote to a friend some three weeks after Tullia (his daughter) died, "but my grief defeats every consolation".