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April 2 - April 21, 2023
in order to feel social anxiety, you have to believe that other people’s negative opinions of you are worth getting upset about, that it’s really bad if they dislike you and really important to win their approval.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be; just be one.
Once we truly accept our own demise as an inescapable fact of life, it makes no more sense for us to wish for immortality than to long for bodies as hard as diamonds or to be able to soar on the wings of a bird.
As long as we can grasp the truth firmly enough that certain misfortunes are inevitable, we no longer feel the need to worry about them. Nor do we yearn for things that we accept are impossible, as long as we can see with crystal clarity that it is futile to do so. As death is among the most certain things in life, to a man of wisdom it should be among the least feared.
No number of bodyguards, as Marcus once said, is enough to shield a ruler who does not possess the goodwill of his subjects.
The Stoics believed that as we mature in wisdom we increasingly identify with our own capacity for reason, but we also begin to identify with others insofar as they’re capable of reason.
Lowercase stoicism is just a personality trait: it’s mental toughness or the ability to endure pain and adversity without complaining. Uppercase Stoicism is a whole school of Greek philosophy.
Stoic philosophy teaches us instead to transform unhealthy emotions into healthy ones. We do so by using reason to challenge the value judgments and other beliefs on which they’re based,
“You are just an impression and not at all the things you claim to represent,”
“It is not things that upset us but our judgments about them.”
the wise man is not made of stone or iron but of flesh and blood.
What matters, in other words, isn’t what we feel but how we respond to those feelings.
Whether we call it cognitive distancing or katharsis, we separate strong value judgments from external events by letting go of excessive attachment to things.
Galen therefore says that if we desire to learn wisdom, we must be ready to listen to anyone we encounter and show gratitude “not to those who flatter us but to those who rebuke us.”14
For Stoics, feelings of pleasure in themselves are neither good nor bad. Rather, whether our state of mind is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, depends on the things we take enjoyment in.
external things, and other people, are not entirely under our control, and one day they will be gone. The wise man is grateful for the gifts life has given him, but he also reminds himself that they are merely on loan—everything changes and nothing lasts forever.
“Pain is neither unendurable nor everlasting, if you keep its limits in mind and do not add to it through your own imagination.”
complaining and chattering too much about our problems just makes them worse, and, more importantly, it harms our character.
To live life fully, you have to get out of your comfort zone, as we say today. Fear of pain makes cowards out of us all and limits our sphere of life.
Struggling against things we can’t control does us more harm than good.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
“Do not let us build a second story to our sorrow by being sorry for our sorrow.”42
if you accept that the outcome couldn’t have been other than it was and wasn’t under your direct control, then you should suffer no harm or frustration.
in times of peace, we should prepare for war if we want to be ready to defend ourselves.
We exist for one another, says Marcus, and if we can’t educate those who oppose us, we have to learn at least to tolerate them.6
If no one ever tested your patience, then you’d lack an opportunity to exhibit virtue in your relationships.
no man does evil knowingly, which also entails that no man does it willingly.
As Socrates pointed out, nobody wants to make mistakes or be deceived; all reasoning creatures inherently desire the truth. So if someone is genuinely mistaken about what is right, you should, if anything, feel sorry for them.
Marcus says. All that really matters in life is whether you’re a good person or a bad person, and that’s down to you alone. Other people can harm your property or even your body, but they can’t harm your character unless you allow them to do so.
Bear in mind, says Marcus, that men will carry on doing the same things anyway, even if they cause you to burst with rage.16
The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.
For if it troubles me not at all that my body only occupies a small portion of space, then why should I be afraid that it only occupies a small span of time?
