Lessons from Stoicism
What are the main lessons which you took from stoicism and found them useful on a daily basis?
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“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” - Marcus, of course.
I love reading Stoicism and have taken away many lessons, but this is one I reflect on every time I encounter a setback (e.g., I just struck out on a gig I was extremely interested in). Oh well, now I have more time and energy to focus elsewhere. It was a great opportunity for me to practice, and while that process was going on, I got in touch with someone on another role that I’m even more interested in. And if that doesn’t work out, so what? I’ll be even better for it, and there will be another.
you the man hugh, I had a feeling we had similar mindsets
I'm convinced the teachings of stoicism is a huge part of what got me through making the equivalent of $34k a year (2022 dollars), depression, feeling lost, a victim mindset, working through constant rejection in building my practice, and more to where I am today
2 main lessons, one is the aurelius quote "you have power over mind, not outside events, realize this and you will find strength" and viktor frankl (I consider him a stoic) speaking about how when in auschwitz and elsewhere they can take everything from you except your attitude. they can try to break it, but ultimately you have control over that.
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response, in our response lies our growth and our freedom." I think that's the quote from Frankl. It's a great way to think because, in a way, it makes you stronger than the people around you who try to bring you down or the things you can't control.
Not to take over the thread but I'll drop two more of my favorites (first is Marcus, second is Epictetus):
and
I combine these two in my routine. Every (weekday) morning the alarm on my phone goes off at 5am, and the text just says "How long are you going to wait?" Means get the fuck up and out of bed to do what you're supposed to do.
Love both of them, some of my favourite too. Another one from Epictetus: The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going
Damn, that's a good one.
His second set of 12 more rules is also very good. I have both on audiobooks and like to listen to them time to time. A lot are pretty dense but I like the way JBP speaks and re-listening helps drive home the points and helps my mind wander as I listen to them.
Stoicism is great, i think Tim ferris described it as the ideal operating system for thriving in high-stress environments. If you like a great overview of stoicism you should read the practicing stoic by Farmsworth. Apart from the 3 most famous works on stoicism, Meditations, Seneca's letters, Epictetus'discourses.
I try to read some notes I find useful everyday.
Some examples:
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
If you seek to avoid all disruptions to tranquility other people, external events, stress you will never be successful. Your problems will follow you wherever you run and hide. But if you seek to avoid the harmful and disruptive judgments that cause those problems, then you will be stable and steady wherever you happen to be
We suffer more in imagination than in reality,
The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are.
No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don't have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.
Receive without pride, let go without attachment.
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
How does it help…to make troubles heavier by bemoaning them.
Life, if well lived, is long enough
damn - good shit. Last quote hit hard
Great list. Re: "Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens." I find it helpful to write these items out on a list -- on one side are the items you can control (work habits, diet, exercise, how you treat people etc.) and on the other side what you can't control (other people's moods, the weather etc.). It helps me focus on the things I can control.
It's been a very long time since my philosphy courses so I've forgotten a lot and may misremember what Stoicism is about, but what resonated with me was the simple idea to not bother with things that are out of your control.
The way I see this also means that you should focus aggresively on what you can control. I feel like I see so many people who are like "passengers" in their life and don't take the actions needed to be truly happy. My goal in life is to be as far away from that as possible.
or people concern their lives with things out of control, and even worse - when they dont impact them at all.
- War in Ukraine
- COVID
- Climate Change
etc.
There are people who live with legitimate anxiety because of things that literally have no impact on them. When you focus only on what you control you develop full agency in your life
Completely agree with you, that's the type of examples I had in mind.
Politics or how you vote is potentially another add.
This is totally right. Basically don't concern or create a fuss internally about things you can't control and focus on creating your environment via things which are actually within your grasp. The belief and acceptance that whatever you do will be the majority factor in how whatever outcome plays out is the way it is but that even when you do things the right way, sometimes life just doesn't have what you wanted in the cards. And that's okay. Adapt and thrive, not survive.
This too shall pass.
Also (while I don't think it's from the stoic school of thought, this lesson changed my life): "How you do anything is how you do everything".
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
-Marcus Aurelius
Just took a class called “Philosophy on the Way of Life” was super cool to learn about the philosophers such as Epictetus, Marcus Arelius and Stoicism. About to write my final paper on how Stoicism benefitted Marcus while in a position of power.
Amazing, did learning about stoicism improved your life? If yes, how?
We actually did a stoicism “experiment” where we lived life as a stoic for 3 days. I didn’t fully live upto the assignment but afterwards I realized changes in my life. One being worrying about only the things you can control and not getting upset when something goes wrong that you cannot control. My class registration wouldn’t let me log in because my councilor gave my the wrong pin. I didn’t worry about it because I couldn’t do anything in the moment other than email him. So I went to the gym and relieved my frustrations. Second being I enjoy having order within my life with reflecting and journaling. I started journaling last week about my goals and what my ideal life would look like. Hoping to strive to subconsciously pick choices that would help me achieve that goal. Third being I went to Therapy through the school for free to try to better myself. Having a self view of my thoughts and vision is very difficult and doesn’t allow for much questioning of self. Went today and it was eye opening the things that I learned and heard from her. She urged me to seek pleasure through doing things outside of academics/work and picture my life (second point). Overall very influential class, I subconsciously picked up these behaviors while barely paying attention to most readings and has prompted me to pay attention more.
I've always had mixed feelings about Stoicism, specifically Meditations. Yes, the philosophy is great and the values are laudable, but I find once you take it in the context it was written it's a little less impressive. Marcus Aurelius was one of the most powerful people to have ever lived. It's kind of easy for him to preach that one should let go of things they cannot control and focus inwards, because he is experiencing essentially zero physical hardship by the standards of his time, and his trials and tribulations are related to making wise decisions, to figuring out who is flattering and who is giving honest advice, etc etc.
For the average person, who the winds of fate buffet far worse, this might not be the ideal philosophy. Yes, you should worry about the weather (which is out of your control), because that impacts your harvest. Taking the rain as it comes means starving. For Marcus Aurelius, the rain can be accepted and thus appreciated, because he's not out tilling the fields and he's never known a day of privation in his life (again, relative to his society).
Epictetus was a slave and he developed the same philosophy.
He was born a slave. Whatever Arrian wrote down occurred well after his freedom had been granted. It's also worth noting that slavery in the ancient world did not always have the same implications as it would in the antebellum South; slaves could be exceptionally well educated and hold a considerable degree of power in their own right. Freedmen were a powerful class of person in the Principate.
And Marcus Aurelius didn't "develop" Stoicism, any less than your typical mouth breathing evangelical "developed" Christianity; he adopted it as a way of life, and his Meditations are universally considered one of the better written extant works on Stoicism.
In other words, when I say "I've always had mixed feelings about Stoicism, specifically Meditations" you're meant to read that while I find parts of Stoicism objectionable, my primary criticism is of Meditations and the context of its authorship. You know... exactly what I said.
So you're rather uninformed comeback was useless even before breaking down all the ways it is additionally useless.
I don’t think you should discount the writings and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius just because he was the high-class of his time. His outlook and writings still are worth a lot.
plus, a lot of it is about how you mentally react. If you are rich, strong, and powerful- life doesn’t just get easy. There are still struggles with making wise decisions that the Stoic philosophy can help a lot with. It may even apply more to something like banking. People say “how can you complain when you get paid so much and can afford a lifestyle out of reach for so many Americans?” when there are legitimate and serious issues in the profession. Studying Stoicism may help someone more who deals with the whims of an anal and tedious VP than with other professions because so much of banking is mental.
Who said to discount it? I merely believe that we should be contextualizing things we read, and not blindly following. You know... thinking. It's not something most people on these forums are good at, most of the people on this thread seem to like the idea of liking a philosophy rather than actually examining it critically, but.... not gonna change a shallow idiot, I guess.
Meditations is a wonderful book, and Stoicism is a great philosophy, but swallowing it hook, line and sinker without actually thinking about it, or thinking about it's author, implies that a reader is more interested in the appearance, rather than the reality, of philosophy.
I am not saying it has no value. And perhaps it is applicable to banking, or parts - Stoicism as a whole is pretty anathema to bankers and banking, which has little appeal or utility to a person except for material gain. Again, I am only pointing out that understanding where an author is coming from is imperative to understanding what they're talking about. Of course Marcus Aurelius doesn't care about fame, or power, or reputation - all of his extant writings were put on paper once he had already achieved the supreme position in the Roman state, so there was no more power and little greater fame for him to win. Does that mean he's wrong to not prioritize those things? That's up to the reader, but it's not different than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos telling someone on welfare that money isn't everything. It may be true, but it's also insanely condescending and ignorant of a meaningful difference in personal circumstance
But you really shouldn't worry about the weather if you can't control it. Here, worry is different than preparing for. Yes, if there are things you can do to adjust your harvest so that you don't starve, then of course do that. But don't just think dreadful thoughts on your head all day about a potential bad harvest because that helps nobody. That's what Stoicism means by not worrying.
It's hard to see the difference. Worrying about my harvest is what motivates me to take steps to protect them. Thinking about better ways to mitigate weather events is what leads to technological progress. For millenia, humans viewed lightning strikes as evidence of divine will, or something unlucky but unavoidable, the kind of things a Stoic would tell you not to worry about.
And then someone came along and thought that perhaps lightning conducted electricity (or, as it turns out, was electricity) and that if so, lightning strikes could be minimized by setting up a rod and grounding it. Had Ben Franklin been a Stoic, we might still be worrying every night that we might be incinerated in our beds.
Thoughts create feelings. The world does not create your feelings. This is also the main lesson of CBT, which is essentially a scientific application of this ancient Hellenistic philosophy.
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." - Epictetus
There are so many to choose from but this has always resonated with me. It is a great reminder to stay hungry and humble as you go through life.
Is this from his Discourses? I'm waiting to get that from the library.
Really like Seneca's Letters from a Stoic. Commenting now to remember to edit later.
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