Your User's Manual: A Guide for Purpose and an Anxiety Free Life in the 21st Century (Stoicism for a Better Life Book 1)

by Anderson Silver

A small mental exercise you can do is to imagine you knew for sure you were going to die at the end of the month. How many things you currently worry about just became unimportant in this scenario? So why would changing this expiration date to 1 year, 10 years or 100 years change what is important?

Whatever happens, happens. Whatever happened, happened – and you have no recourse, no options to change that, no other reality to go to where it happened differently.

Be like the pillar, and let the emotions go as they come. The day you can ignore all emotions without it affecting you or changing your behaviour or thoughts in any way is the day you have reached nirvana, a peace infinitely more gratifying than happiness. You get upset when things do not go your way. So just go the way things are, then everything is your way.

“Man is affected, not by events, but by the views he takes of them.”

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him,

Discipline of judgment – Things are as you see them, so make sure you see them rationally and objectively. Things do not affect you. Your judgment of things affect you.

Discipline of action –

When “bad” things happen, they are not actually bad. They just are. There is no fair, unfair, good, or bad because this would imply the existence of another reality where things happened differently, and that you can go to that reality. There is just the one reality, this one, and you cannot change it, so just go the way things are.