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April 19 - May 7, 2024
You can sum up Stoicism with one simple idea: you need to accept full control of and take total responsibility for your thoughts and actions.
Stoicism teaches that happiness comes from accepting each moment as it comes,
Stoicism states that an individual shouldn’t allow themselves to be driven by either fear or a thirst for pleasure, but instead should seek to understand the world in which we live, find and fulfil your place in nature, and work in harmony with others, dealing with them in a fair and just manner.
A stoic in the dictionary sense of the word is someone who is able to endure difficulties without complaint, and this is just one of the many benefits of following this philosophy.
Epictetus says, “Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.”
The Stoics sought freedom from being ruled by their passions by using logic and reason.
logos or divine reason
Although we have an innate instinct to react to something that hurts us, the Stoic approach is to strive to remain indifferent to external forces and maintain happiness, regardless of life’s ups and downs.
To quote Epictetus, how long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?
Our biggest lessons come through overcoming life’s challenges and, as Seneca says, “I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent— no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”
Seneca discusses this in great depth in his work, On Providence. He states that it is “not what you endure, but how you endure [which] is important.”
To use Seneca’s words to illustrate this point, “No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it… the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.”
things are only labelled positive or negative because of our perception.
In fact, according to Seneca, “God hardens, reviews, and disciplines those whom he approves, whom he loves.”
Hebrew 12:6 - For the LORD discipline those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child (NLT)
Fast on a regular basis.
It has been quite sometime since I fasted intentionally
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca
The only thing you can control is your reaction to situations. The more you can free yourself from the erroneous belief that situations are inherently negative or positive, and instead view them as simply obstacles for you to navigate in the most effective way, the more you can grow as a person, develop resilience and move in harmony with the ebbs and flows of life.
Perception is how you interpret and react to what happens around and to you.
Whatever happens to you, you take action by default.
When you ‘will’ something to happen, you are following your true path and going with the natural flow of things.
You have fallen into the trap of being driven by desire rather than virtue.
So, if nothing lasts forever, what’s really important? This moment right now.
The world can go crazy around you, but if you have an inward focus and strive to do the right thing, you will navigate the storm.
Living in the moment involves maintaining an active focus on the present, sitting with your thoughts as they arise, letting them be as they will rather than inviting or repelling them.
You need to let go of the outcome and simply enjoy the process.
When your attention is solely on what is happening right now, it’s impossible to worry about the past or future. This is how you can transform the mundane into a meditative experience.
‘Plato’s view,’ this exercise involves stepping away from our lives and viewing it from a broader perspective.
Stoics termed ‘sympatheia.’ This is where you see yourself as having a mutual co-dependence with all of humanity.
When you see yourself as a tiny speck in the eternity of the cosmos, everything is trivial. Nothing is important. Yet at the same time, everything we do matters, because we are all contributing to something far greater than ourselves.
Constantly reminding yourself that life is short so you should make the most of whatever time you have left should be a motivation to be your very best self all the time.
Instead, it should drive you towards making the most of every single day.
One of the most important aspects of living a Stoic life is recognising what you can and cannot change.
As Epictetus noted, it isn’t any particular event which upsets us, but our judgement about that event.
All you have to do is ask yourself, what would my best self do? in any given situation.
Strive to make good choices about the things that are under your control. Let go of any emotional attachment or response to the things you can’t control.
confine yourself solely to goals that are linked to your own efforts and ability.
If you connect your goals to your effort and mindset (the things you can control), you have a much greater chance of getting to where you need to be – but you don’t attach any emotion to that destination, recognising that it’s the journey that matters, and the journey is where you learn and grow.
When you set a goal attached to effort rather than outcome, progress is inevitable. While you might not end up where you intend to be, you’ll find your life changes in so many positive ways, it really doesn’t matter whether you get to where you wanted to go.
goals are focused on effort rather than targets.
Let us balance life's account every day…
As a Stoic, when you journal, you should consider what happened that day and what lessons you learned. You should also be thinking about the next day and how you can prepare for it.
‘premeditatio malorum.’ Literally translated this means ‘the pre-meditation of evils’ and involves visualising everything that could go wrong or losing everything that is important to you.
formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.
Essentially, amor fati is the attitude that regardless of what comes your way, every experience is to be welcomed and accepted, regardless of whether it appears to be positive or negative.
So just like fuel for a fire, those tough times are fuel for your personal growth.
“I accept today as it is, not as I would like it to be.”
look for the opportunity in the obstacle.
While we can’t know what would have happened if we had done something different, we can trust that the path we’re on is the right one for us and the problems we have are meant to teach us something valuable.
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.” - Seneca
Seneca states that we waste time because we don’t value it in the way we do our money or things.
