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September 14 - October 19, 2021
Nevertheless, once I started working as a psychotherapist, it became evident to me that most of my clients who suffered from anxiety or depression benefited from the realization that their distress was due to their underlying values.
If your fundamental worldview, by contrast, assumes that your status in the eyes of others is of negligible importance, then it follows that you should be beyond the reach of social anxiety.
Anyone, I reasoned, who could adopt a healthier and more rational set of core values, with greater indifference toward the things most of us worry about in life, should be able to become much more emotionally resilient.
“cognitive theory of emotion,” which holds that our emotions are mainly determined by our beliefs. Anxiety largely consists of the belief, for example, that “something bad is going to happen,”
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be; just be one.
As death is among the most certain things in life, to a man of wisdom it should be among the least feared.
The true goal of life for Stoics isn’t to acquire as many external advantages as possible but to use whatever befalls us wisely, whether it be sickness or health, wealth or poverty, friends or enemies. The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to “need” countless things, but he uses them all badly.
He first taught himself to endure physical discomfort and overcome unhealthy habits. He learned to tolerate other people’s criticisms and to avoid being easily swayed by fine words or flattery. Mastering our passions in this way is the first stage of training in Stoicism.
He believed that true strength consisted of one’s ability to show kindness, not violence or aggression.
In other words, a certain amount of anxiety is natural. Indeed, the hearts of even the most experienced sailors might leap into their mouths when their ship looks like it’s about to be overturned. Bravery would consist in carrying on regardless and dealing with the situation rationally.
The Stoic likewise tells himself that although the situation may appear frightening, the truly important thing in life is how he chooses to respond.
What matters, in other words, isn’t what we feel but how we respond to those feelings.
If you stick with the facts and don’t unnecessarily extrapolate from them, you will put paid to many anxieties in life.
Decatastrophizing involves reevaluating the probability and severity of something bad happening and framing it in more realistic terms.
The more clearly formulated your coping plan is and the more confident you are about putting it into practice, the less anxious you will tend to feel.
• Writing down your thoughts concisely when they occur and viewing them on paper • Writing them on a whiteboard and looking at them “over there”—literally from a distance • Prefixing them with a phrase like “Right now, I notice that I am thinking…” • Referring to them in the third person, for example, “Donald is thinking…,” as if you’re studying the thoughts and beliefs of someone else • Evaluating in a detached manner the pros and cons of holding a certain opinion • Using a counter or a tally to monitor with detached curiosity the frequency of certain thoughts • Shifting perspective
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The Stoics view only their own actions as good or bad, virtuous or vicious, and therefore classify all external things as indifferent, because they’re not entirely “up to us” in this sense.
Writing down your ideas about what makes another person admirable, mulling them over, and revising them gives you an opportunity to process them.
deeply reflecting on our values each day and attempting to describe them concisely, we can develop a clearer sense of direction in life. You might do this by posing questions to yourself such as: • What’s ultimately the most important thing in life to you? • What do you really want your life to stand for or represent? • What do you want to be remembered for after you’re dead? • What sort of person do you most want to be in life? • What sort of character do you want to have? • What would you want written on your tombstone?
Another useful values clarification technique for students of Stoicism involves making two short lists in side-by-side columns headed “Desired” and “Admired”: 1. Desired. The things you most desire for yourself in life 2. Admired. The qualities you find most praiseworthy and admirable in other people
Reflecting upon and clarifying your core values can help combat depression and other emotional problems, especially once you make a consistent effort to live more in accord with your truest values each day.
the Stoics taught Marcus that we all seek a deeper and more lasting sense of fulfillment. They taught him that this could only be obtained by realizing our inner potential and living in accord with our core values, not being led astray by superficial feelings.
His labors embodied their belief that it’s more rewarding to face hardship voluntarily and cultivate strength of character than to take the easy option by embracing comfortable living and idleness.
His life had something far more satisfying than pleasure: it had purpose.
They had taught the young Marcus that inner calm and happiness are the natural consequences of a life lived well, in accord with genuine wisdom and self-discipline.
The Stoics tended to view joy not as the goal of life, which is wisdom, but as a by-product of it, so they believed that trying to pursue it directly might lead us down the wrong path if it’s sought at the expense of wisdom.
Joy in the Stoic sense is fundamentally active rather than passive; it comes from perceiving the virtuous quality of our own deeds, the things we do, whereas bodily pleasures arise from experiences that happen to us, even if they’re a consequence of actions like eating, drinking, or having sex.
it’s not in feelings but in actions that your supr...
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Marcus therefore wrote that it is a characteristic of the Stoic Sage “to love and welcome all that happens to him and is spun for him as his fate.”
“On pain: if it is unbearable, it carries us off, if it persists, it can be endured.”12 The point is that chronic pain beyond our ability to endure would have killed us, so the fact we’re still standing proves that we’re capable of enduring much worse.
Do away with the judgment, and the notion “I have been harmed” is done away with; do away with that notion, and the harm itself is gone.
As Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
The obstacle standing in the way becomes the way.
The moral is that in times of peace, we should prepare for war if we want to be ready to defend ourselves. The Stoics likewise used moments of leisure to prepare themselves to remain calm in the face of adversity.
says that at times, like many other people, he feels a strong desire to get away from things and retreat to the peace of the countryside, seashore, or mountains.9 However, he tells himself that feeling the need to escape from life’s stresses in this way is a sign of weakness.
He tells himself that resilience comes from his ability to regain his composure wherever he finds himself. This is the “inner citadel” to which he can retreat, even on the frigid battlefields of the northern campaign.
two concise but fundamental Stoic principles:11 1. Everything that we see is changing and will soon be gone, and we should bear in mind how many things have already changed over time, like the waters of streams flowing ceaselessly past—an idea that we can call the contemplation of impermanence. 2. External things cannot touch the soul, but our disturbances all arise from within. Marcus means that things don’t upset us, but our value judgments about them do. However, we can regain our composure by separating our values from external events using the strategy we’ve called cognitive distancing.
Gaining cognitive distance is, in a sense, the most important aspect of Stoic anxiety management. This is what Marcus meant by “life is opinion”: that the quality of our life is determined by our value judgments, because those shape our emotions.
When we deliberately remind ourselves that we project our values onto external events and that how we judge those events is what upsets us, we gain cognitive distance and recover our mental composure.
“If this will seem trivial to me twenty years from now, then why shouldn’t I view it as trivial today instead of worrying about it as if it’s a catastrophe?”
When faced with someone whose behavior appears objectionable, Epictetus therefore advised his students simply to repeat this maxim to themselves: “It seemed right to him.”
Marcus Aurelius will also be forgotten. He always kept that in mind when making decisions. He reminded himself not to worry about how future generations would judge him but to do only what reason commended as the right course of action.
When we remember that nothing lasts forever, it no longer seems worthwhile getting angry with other people.
If someone hates you, Marcus says, that’s their problem. Your only concern is to avoid doing anything to deserve being hated.
Like Cato’s archer, a Stoic should aim at the target (of benefiting others) but be satisfied if he has acted with kindness, and willing to accept both success and failure with equanimity.
Every era of history teaches us the same lesson: nothing lasts forever.
It’s vanity to worry about how history will record your actions.
I must die, but must I die groaning? For it’s not death that upsets us but our judgments about it.
To practice death in advance is to practice freedom and to prepare oneself to let go of life gracefully.
Thanks be to the gods that I was encouraged to make a habit of picturing the whole cosmos thus, and contemplating the immensity of both time and space. I learned to set each particular thing in life against the whole substance of the universe in my mind’s eye and see it as far less than a fig seed, and measure it against the whole of time as nothing more than the turn of a screw.
