My Brief Guide to Stoicism
Stoic philosophy has had a huge influence on my life. Ultimately, the ideas and concepts from the philosophy have inspired me to become a writer. I truly believe that these ideas can be incredibly transformative for anyone who uses them.
I love reading about Stoicism and then trying to apply what I’ve read to my life. In a way, this philosophy can act as your personal “operating system” and help you to navigate the ups and downs you are likely to encounter on a daily bases. The below section should give you a quick introduction to what it’s all about. Enjoy.
What is it?
Stoicism is an Ancient Greek philosophy that focuses on self-control, developing a good character and increasing personal knowledge/wisdom. There’s a lot more to the philosophy than this but this is a good place to start.
When/where?
Stoicism originated in Ancient Greece around 300BC. A man called Zeno started the movement after realising the true importance of self-knowledge, self-improvement and self-discipline. He wanted a philosophy that was practical and could be used daily to deal with life’s challenges.
Who uses it?
Many iconic leaders have employed Stoic philosophy in their approach to life. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Nelson Mandela and Benjamin Franklin are three of the most famous advocates. These days you’ll hear about NFL teams and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs using Stoicism to guide their decisions. It’s a philosophy for everyone and the ideas can be extremely helpful.
Who are the key players/philosophers?
There are many Stoic philosophers and tons of books to read on the subject. However, the three key players (Stoic legends, if you will) are Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus. These guys are a great place to start and if you’re interested, I highly recommend exploring their work.
Aurelius: Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor from 161 – 180AD. He became recognised in the Stoic community for his personal diary “Meditations” which was used as his way to self-evaluate his life in a Stoic light. I highly recommend this short read.
Seneca: Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC - AD65) produced several significant works contributing to Stoicism. The book “Letters from a Stoic” is a great introduction to Seneca’s philosophy and offers advice that’s relevant to our modern world. Seneca eventually became the imperial adviser to the Roman Emperor Nero. This all ended rather dramatically when Seneca was ordered to kill himself. He handled this like a true Stoic and I recommend that you explore his writing.
Epictetus: Epictetus (AD50 – 135) was born a slave but eventually gained his freedom. He later went on to set up a school for philosophy in Greece. Epictetus’ main work to read is “The Enchiridion”. The book acts as a philosophical roadmap/handbook for how to live our lives and has a heavy focus on how we respond to situations.
How can Stoicism help us?
There are many things that Stoicism can teach us about ourselves and the world around us. For now, let’s focus on the most important concept in Stoicism (in my opinion). This idea can be used when you tackle the challenges in your life or the challenges you encounter in this project. Let’s call it the Stoic golden rule. If you only take away one lesson from Stoicism, let it be this.
The Stoic golden rule: The only thing you have control over is how you respond to external events.
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
When something bad/challenging/unpleasant happens, you can choose how you will deal with it. Will you add fuel to the fire and make it worse by complaining and focusing on the negative or will you focus on the solution? Will you choose to remain positive in spite of the perceived problem? Is there a better way for you to handle this? These are the sort of questions that should get you to analyse your reaction and see if it’s helping your current situation or making it worse.
You ALWAYS have a choice. Your mindset and reaction will determine how successfully you handle the challenge in front of you. When you choose to react in a proactive way, you are in control again. However crazy or challenging the situation, you can still have control. This control is in your mind. This is your choice.
It’s not easy and takes practice but makes a huge difference to the way you face obstacles in your life. It really is a life-changing concept.
In reality, it may not seem like such a ground-breaking idea at first, but after inspection, you will notice how empowering this viewpoint can be. You are always in control of your reaction no matter what happens to you. Being in control gives you power. Accepting what you can’t control and what you can is hugely important here. Some real life examples should help to illustrate this point:
Learning a new skill can be difficult, so it’s important to focus on solutions rather than dwelling on how overwhelming it all is. When I first started learning Japanese it seemed like every step presented me with even more difficult things to consider. It felt like there were barriers everywhere and I felt a huge amount of frustration. This only started to change when I accepted it for what it was and began to focus on the solution. I couldn’t change how difficult Japanese was as a language so I had to change my attitude towards that difficulty. When I chose to see this as a challenge and use it as a way to push myself out of my comfort zone, I began to relax around the difficulty and the frustration changed. I had to choose my approach... This mental choice is how I now react to challenges (or at least attempt to). This really is Stoicism in a nutshell.
Another example of Stoicism helping me is when I became injured during my marathon training. When I first ran a marathon I ended up overtraining and injured my knee. This put me out of action for a while and I had to deal with a huge amount of frustration. Luckily, the Stoics came to my rescue (not literally). I ended up leaning into this challenge and focused on what I had control over. As I had successfully injured myself, I had to accept that this was something I now had to work with. Rather than resisting and fighting it with mental anguish, I chose to put all of my energy into rehabilitating my injury. I had to choose not to sulk like a child having a tantrum and focus on what I had control over (my mind and my rehab program). This worked wonders and although I did struggle at times, I managed to handle the injury setback, complete the marathon and learn a valuable lesson about the way one should deal with things outside of our control. Woop!
There’s more on Stoicism in my new book and I’ll give you plenty of ways for you to expand your knowledge on this philosophy. It’s a fascinating subject and something that can help us to deal with (or at least attempt to deal with) the chaos of life.
“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”