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January 30 - February 5, 2024
“It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.” – Marcus Aurelius
While Stoicism places an emphasis on self-discipline and improvement, an inevitable side effect of that process is that it empowers you to achieve your potential, enabling you to live your best life.
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 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.
“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. They weren’t looking to eliminate their emotions so much as transcend them by developing clarity of thought and inner peace. They looked to achieve a high degree of self-control, self-awareness and self-discipline.
“If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.” – Epictetus
“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place,
Stoicism gives you resilience in difficult times
Because you never know what might happen, Stoicism contains an important lesson on not relying on anything that is subject to change.
every day, we make a choice as to how we react and respond to things. It is the only real power we have.
“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
social divides appear arbitrary and unnecessary.
Stoicism helps us appreciate and embrace all the different ways of being without attaching superiority or inferiority to any of them.
you are the only thing which you can ever have complete control over. If you attempt to dictate how things should be, you risk disappointment when you fail.
that it is important to focus only on what’s essential
It’s easy to be philosophical when things are going well. It’s when times get tough that we face a challenge in continuing to practise what we’ve been taught.
Stoicism’s most important guiding principles, including why you should actively experience tough times, how you can transform obstacles into opportunities, how you can harness the power of journaling to improve your outlook, how to prepare for the worst, how the Stoics approached mindfulness and why your lack of control is a good thing.
“You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”- Epicurus
our culture of celebrity worship and emphasis on living the perfect life on social media means that many of us fall into the trap of believing self-promotion is more important than self-improvement.
When instant gratification takes too long,
instant gratification takes too long???
one of the biggest issues we have to deal with arises from our urge to want more than we already have.
In a highly consumerist, materialistic culture, it can be very hard to ignore the pressure to conform and buy the latest
resilience in the face of adversity.
conclusion that difficult times were inevitable, so it was important to be able to develop coping mechanisms for when they came.
“not what you endure, but how you endure
things are only labelled positive or negative because of our perception.
Misfortune is therefore essential
being. It is an important tool to build our virtue and helps us become better people.
bad things happen to good people because it helps them become even better.
seek out misfortune.
You need to actively live a misfortunate life so you do not fear it.
Rather than anticipating what if, actively embrace misfortune. Create it for yourself, so if the worst ever happens, it’s nothing new and doesn’t destroy your life.
when we feel anxious or worried, this is usually more to do with a fear of the unknown than any actual experience.
So when you literally confront your fears, not only do you release their hold over you, you can also come up with ways to deal with them. Even if you’ve hit rock bottom, life is unlikely to stay there for the rest of your life. Almost everything we experience will pass.
One of the more insidious effects of being in constant contact with the world at large is that we have very little time that is ours alone.
The true misfortune lies in the erroneous belief that superficial things are important.
Summary Actively seeking out misfortune will help you prepare for when things get tough. Take cold showers. Keep your home at an uncomfortable temperature Eat a restricted diet. Fast regularly. Step outside your comfort zone. Do volunteer work. Do your own DIY or gardening. Limit your cash spending.
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca
If you look at it from the right perspective, every negative experience provides you with an opportunity for growth, or a teachable moment. As such, it should be welcomed and appreciated for the lessons it contains rather than feared.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what happens. 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, action and will.
Make a list of the worst experiences of your life.
Action Whatever happens to you, you take action by default. Even if you do nothing, this is still a form of action, so it is important you make the right choice moving forward.
you have always taken action in your life, the real question is whether you have always taken the right action.
take consciously directed action, which is driven by purpose in order to get you to where you need to be.
The right action involves having the bravery to act in your best interests from a long-term perspective,
When you’re in the flow, it’s impossible to maintain it as soon as you become aware of it. And it’s difficult to achieve intentionally
goal that will challenge you but is achievable.
When you get into the flow, you lose all awareness of your surroundings and your world becomes nothing but yourself and your activity.
