The Stoic Way of the Good Life

By Rahul Pandit

Posted on Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Last updated on Friday, 29 May 2026

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0. Introduction

I went on a Stoicism spree last month and read a few books on the subject. Stoicism is a 2,300 year old philosophy that can help you achieve tranquility. What follows are my personal notes from the books. I highly, highly recommend these books. The authors have explained Stoicism in simple language and they have also slightly modified it to make it more relevant to 21st century readers. I can't take any credit for this blog post. All credit goes to the book authors mentioned below.

The books I have read (in order) :

  • A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine
  • Lessons in Stoicism: What Ancient Philosophers Teach Us About How to Live by John Sellars
  • The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual by Ward Farnsworth
  • The Stoic Guide to a Happy Life: 53 Brief Lessons for Living by Massimo Pigliucci
  • Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living by David Fideler

Stoicism flourished first in ancient Greece and then during the Roman empire. Not much survives from the Greek period. But we have a lot of what Roman Stoics wrote down. Three Roman Stoic philosophers, Epictetus (former slave, later started a philosophical school), Seneca (intellectual, statesman, playwright) and Marcus Aurelius (emperor of Rome) are still the most influential today. As you'll see, unlike some other philosophies mulled over in ivory towers, Stoicism is an immensely practical philosophy readily applicable to our daily lives.

Aaron Beck, founder of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), has attributed influence of Stoicism on principles of CBT. Stoicism also employs some psychological techniques like the framing effect that were later validated by modern psychology.

Stoicism isn't set in stone. Greek Stoics came up with Stoicism. But then Roman Stoics modified it as they saw fit. And modern Stoic philosophers, like the authors mentioned above, have done it as well.

Since Stoicism originated over 2,300 years ago, the Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers of that time, expectedly, had some ideas about science and theology that are now outdated but those can be modified/skipped safely without affecting efficacy of Stoic practices and this is what the authors mentioned above do. So, Stoicism is perfectly suitable for atheists.

While reading this post, you'll probably think that you have heard some of the points before. It's because many modern day self-help authors and "gurus" just poorly repackage Stoicism and sell it as their own invention. It's better to learn Stoicism directly.

One more thing, I have included some quotes from non-Stoics (like Epicurus and others) as well because they were very relevant to the subject at hand.

1. Control & Goals

The dichotomy of control: Some things are entirely in your control and some things are not entirely in your control.

Examples of things that are entirely in your control:

  • Your judgments (and opinions and beliefs).
  • Your emotions (desire, aversion, fear, anger, grief, etc).
  • Your values and your character.
  • Your internal goals.
  • Your actions (through impulse to act).

Examples of things that are not entirely in your control:

  • Outcomes of your actions.
  • Being alive, your own body, your health, your material possessions, your relationships, your reputation, your job, your career, your worldly success, your wealth, your fame, your power, your birth place, your ancestry, your genes.
  • Other people, their opinions, their beliefs, their behavior, their actions.
  • The economy, the weather, whether the sun will rise tomorrow, other things, other events, basically everything else that happens in the world.

As you can see, there's very little that is actually within your complete control.

Also notice that "things which are not entirely in your control" include some things that you can influence but the outcomes of which also depend on others.

We should concern ourselves only with things which are totally in our control.

We should not concern ourselves with things which are not totally in our control. They are not worth worrying about.

Every time you face a challenging task or situation, make a habit to reflect on it and write down a list of aspects of the task or situation that are under your control, as well as a list of those that are not under your control. Then, use the lists to guide your attention, time, and efforts on elements of the first list: aspects of the task or situation that are under your control. Remind yourself that elements you've assigned to the second list are not up to you.

Unhappiness arises due to the misclassification, thinking we have control over something when we don't.

Rather than fight against externals which are out of your control, you should work on what you can control and accept what is outside of your control.

Entirely in your control: your actions. Not entirely in your control: outcomes of your actions.

Things don't always turn out the way we might have hoped or intended. Sometimes that's because we have not acted as well as we could, but equally often it's due to other factors out of our control. The world is a complex ecosystem with too many variables. Therefore don't tie your happiness to achieving the outcome, but make your goal doing the best you can.

Examples: Archer vs wind (you can and should focus and aim at the target and take the best shot, as best as you can. and although hitting the target is the goal, you should keep in mind that once the arrow leaves your bow, its course may be altered due to a sudden gust of wind or some obstruction could come in the way or the target itself could move), applying for a job, trying to publish a novel, trying to start a business, etc.

Relevant here: "Karm karo lekin fal ki chinta mat karo" (Do your duty, don't worry about the result).

The goals we consciously set for ourselves can have a dramatic impact on our subsequent emotional state. If you set an external goal, you'll be anxious along the way, worrying about all the things you don't have complete control over. And, if you fail to achieve the external goal, you will feel miserable. But if you set the corresponding internal goal, your tranquility won't be affected even if you failed to achieve the external goal as long as you achieved the corresponding internal goal. Also, focusing just on the internal goal will increase your probability of achieving your external goal since you'll be calm and you'll focus only on things you have complete control over and therefore do a better job.

Example: external goal of winning a tennis match vs internal goal of doing the best you can in the match.

The world (or the universe or Stoic Nature or Stoic God or Stoic Fate or Stoic Fortune) can be thought of as a complex ecosystem governed by scientific laws (of cause-and-effect and others), but with too many variables, many of which are outside of our control, so it's impossible to predict exactly what will happen. But remember that you and your actions are some of the said variables in the world that can influence the outcomes of some events.

If you have decided that to do a certain thing is right, do it without fear, even though others may disapprove. Their opinion is not up to you. But if something is not right, then simply don't do it, regardless of what others want you to do. Their opinion is none of your concern.

In general, if you wish people to be different from what they are, you are a fool. By contrast, if you do not want your desires to be thwarted, then train yourself to desire only things that are up to you, that is, your own judgments, opinions, and values. And nothing else. If you do desire something that is not up to you, then you make yourself a slave to other people or to circumstances.

It is entirely possible for someone banished to a desolate island to be happier than someone living a life of luxury. It is true that our government and our society determine, to a considerable extent, our external circumstances, but our internal circumstances (how happy we are) are determined by the philosophy we follow. Your happiness should depend on things which are in your control. If your happiness depends on your external circumstances, it will be extremely vulnerable to forces out of your control.

Stoicism doesn't mean inaction and being passive. It tells you to not concern yourself about things not entirely in your control such as externals and to accept what happens so that you won't be annoyed/frustrated/angered/scared by them, that is, you won't lose your tranquility over them. But you should still take action if those things are unjust. And, if you maintain tranquility while doing it, you'll probably do a better job of it.

Who, then, is the invincible human being? One who can be disconcerted by nothing that lies outside the sphere of choice. - Epictetus

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. - Epictetus

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking. - Marcus Aurelius

Although we don't have much control over what happens to us, we do have control over how it affects us. - Zeno

Also read: 2. External, 4. Virtue, 6. Desire, 20. Fatalism, 22. Perspectives

2. External, Indifferent & Middle

Anything that is outside of you or outside of your control or not up to you is an external.

For examples of externals, go to Control & Goals section right now & read "Examples of things that are not entirely in your control".

Externals are value-neutral, or middle, because they are not good or bad by themselves. How you use externals depends on your character, and that determines whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. Externals themselves have no real value.

Externals are indifferent which means that they make no difference (they are irrelevant) when it comes to living a good, virtuous life.

Don't get attached to externals. By definition externals are out of your control. So don't let your happiness depend on getting them (or avoiding them). If you do get them, you'll suffer in the process (you'll be anxious) and if you don't get them, you'll be miserable.

If you think you have control over externals, when the plain fact is that you don't, then frustration and disappointment are almost guaranteed.

Consider externals in this way: All we have is "on loan" from Stoic Nature or Stoic Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission, indeed, without even advance notice.

Dependence or attachment to externals is a type of slavery. You are a slave to whoever holds or controls the externals.

Attachment to an external causes your tranquility to depend on it. But an external, if held without attachment, is unobjectionable.

Of course, you would rather be wealthy than poor, healthy than ill, reputable than infamous. The Stoics call these externals that we would rather have if we can get them as "preferred indifferents". As in, we would like to have them but they are still indifferents (they're irrelevant when it comes to living a virtuous life). We should enjoy them if we have them but we should keep in mind that since they are, after all, externals, they are out of our control and therefore we should not cling to them or feel entitled to them.

Preferred indifferent: Having it is pleasing but not having it is not a threat to your tranquility. Examples: wealth, good health, reputation, power, status, etc.

Non-preferred indifferent: Not having it is pleasing but having it is not a threat to your tranquility. Examples: poverty, ill-health, infamy, calamity, etc.

One way to test whether you're attached to an external, or just have a preference about it, is to consider how well you'll handle its loss.

Use externals (like wealth, power, etc.) to exercise your virtues.

Detachment from externals can be viewed as a kind of moderation (aka temperance) in one's relationship to externals.

Detachment from externals is a technique for preserving one's equilibrium, achieving tranquility and seeing the world accurately.

Negative visualization helps keep detachment to externals. While enjoying the externals we have, we should periodically stop to reflect on the possibility that this enjoyment will come to an end. Either the external will go away or our own death will end it.

Pursuing externals in the belief that their possession will bring happiness is a mistake. Pursuing externals by compromising your integrity (damaging your virtuous character, which is the only good), is an even bigger mistake.

How can Stoics, with all their detachment, find the motivation to fight hard for things? A good Stoic, while regarding any particular thing or event with detachment, may have a strong commitment to ideals that allow it to nevertheless be treated as urgent. This mindset of "commitment plus detachment" is one way to think about the balance that the Stoics wish to achieve. Examples: Best doctors, surgeons and lawyers.

Do not congratulate yourself for things that don't really belong to you. Do you have a nice car? The merit goes to the engineers who conceived it. Do you have a nice house? The merit goes to the architects who designed it. If you say "look what a beautiful car or house I have," you are taking credit for an incidental, and certainly not for something that makes you a better human being. What is actually yours, then? The proper use, through your considerate judgment, of what life loans to you. You have a nice car or a house. Fine. What are you going to do with it that is helpful to the human cosmopolis? Those and only those are the sorts of things that make you a good human being, and of which you should be proud.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - Shakespeare, Hamlet

"Is health good, and disease evil?" No, you can do better than that. "What then?" To use health well is good, to use it badly is evil. - Epictetus

Material things are indifferent, but how we use them is not indifferent. - Epictetus

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. - Marcus Aurelius

Every good and evil lies in perception. - Epicurus

Also read: 1. Control & Goals, 3. Judgment, 6. Desire, 22. Perspectives, 7. Wealth, Pleasure & Luxury, 18. Negative Visualization, 21. Like What You Have

3. Judgment

External (event/person/thing/etc.) [Out of our control] -> Involuntary first movement [Out of our control] -> Judgment [In our control] -> Reaction [Can get out of our control once created]

Stoics say that much of the suffering in your life (like negative emotions) is simply due to the mistaken way you look at the world. You can change the way you think about things that happen to you and thereby achieve tranquility.

Tranquility (aka ataraxia) is a state marked by the absence of negative emotions such as anger, grief, anxiety, and fear, and the presence of positive emotions, in particular, joy and peace of mind.

Here's how we experience the world through our judgments:

  • In response to some external, we will initially experience some involuntary first movements (aka physical impulses or automatic emotional reactions or proto-emotions), like blushing or being startled after hearing a loud noise or feeling dizzy at heights or feeling rage or wanting to harm the perpetrator right after some wrongdoing. They're out of your control but as long as you don't act on them, you are still in control. These involuntary first movements last a short time.

  • Then you interpret the external and make a judgment (or form an opinion or a belief) about it.

  • Then you react to that judgment. The reaction can be an emotion (like grief, anger, desire, pleasure, fear, etc.) or it can be an impulse to act, to do something. Some reactions like anger, fear and desire are self-fueling and can get out of your control once created.

As you can see, we don't react to externals directly but to our judgments about them. But the judgments are in our control. We can change our judgments, which will, in turn, change our reactions.

We cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose how to react to it.

Proof that we react to our judgments about an event and not to the event itself:

  • Imagine what happened to you happened to somebody else, how would they react? Surely, it's possible that they will react differently from you.
  • Imagine what happened to somebody else, happened to you, how would you react? Surely, it's possible that you will react differently from them.
  • Compare your reaction to an event with your reaction to the same event under different circumstances.
  • Look at the different ways that you and others react to the same events in different circumstances, at different times and in different places.

This proves that our reactions aren't inevitable after all, they are in our control and they depend on our judgments.

Judgments also produce our opinions, beliefs, habits, conventions, likes, dislikes, attitudes, etc.

We often make judgments so swiftly that we don't even notice that we are doing anything.

A lot of the judgments that we make are mistaken or irrational but since our judgments are in our control, we can change them using reason and Stoic principles in ways that will help us detach from externals, live a virtuous life, and maintain tranquility. It's not easy, but it's the only way.

Relevant here: Cognitive Distancing technique in CBT.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them. - Epictetus

If any external thing causes you distress, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to eliminate now. - Marcus Aurelius

Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been. - Marcus Aurelius

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. - Epictetus

You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone. - Marcus Aurelius

You become what you give your attention to... If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. - Epictetus

Also read: 6. Desire

4. Virtue

Only virtue or an excellent virtuous character is good. And only its opposite, vice or a vicious character, is bad.

Everything else is value-neutral or middle which means it is neither good nor bad.

Everything else is also indifferent, that is, it makes no difference (it is irrelevant) when it comes to living a good, virtuous life.

Character includes things like: to practice virtues, goodness, integrity, sincerity, dignity, industriousness, sobriety, be considerate, be frank, be temperate in manner & speech, to carry ourselves with authority, to curb arrogance, to rise above pleasures and pains, to stop lusting after popularity, to control our temper, to stop grumbling, etc.

Four cardinal Stoic virtues are practical wisdom, justice, courage and moderation (aka temperance or self-discipline).

  • Practical wisdom is the knowledge of what is truly good for us, as well as what is truly bad for us.
  • Courage is the propensity to act morally in the face of danger, or in situations where one would rather stay put and not expose oneself to criticism or retaliation.
  • Justice means acting in a way that is fair toward other people, treating them as you would want to be treated by them, and always respecting their dignity as human beings.
  • Moderation is the inclination to do things in right measure, neither too little nor too much.

The four virtues are highly interdependent, because they are all aspects of a more fundamental virtue, which can simply be referred to as wisdom (in the broad sense). One cannot, for instance, be courageous and yet unjust. If you brave a dangerous or uncomfortable situation for the wrong reason, you are not being morally courageous, you are just engaging in braggadocio, or worse.

Good human beings live according to human nature. They are rational, reasonable and social.

No one chooses to be vicious. They pursue what they think is good, even if their idea of what's good is hopelessly distorted.

Central idea of Stoicism: the pursuit of virtue.

Virtue is the natural result of an accurate use of reason. Reason sets humanity apart from animals; so purpose of human life must be found there. Reason should cause us to accurately see our individual insignificance, & from this we might infer our corresponding place in the world, which is to function faithfully as parts of a whole.

Virtue is the only source of true eudaimonia, sometimes translated as happiness or fulfillment, but means something closer to well-being or the good life. Virtue is sufficient to produce eudaimonia on all occasions & is necessary for it. Virtue gives rise to it as a side effect & brings about pleasure & joy (aka tranquility aka ataraxia) as well.

So, in short, virtue produces eudaimonia (good life) and ataraxia (tranquility) as byproducts.

The primary mission of the Stoics is to be helpful to others & serve the greater good. Stoics do it because it is the right & natural way to live. And doing it in that spirit, as it turns out, makes them happy.

Stoic belief about relationship between virtue & happiness contains a psychological insight: Some states of mind are difficult to acquire directly; they come about only as byproducts of effort applied in other directions. Many have found that happiness is this way. Efforts to acquire it by direct pursuit don't work well; happiness has to be found while looking for something else. The something else consists primarily of a dedication to reason & a commitment to others: to service, to justice, to helping in the ways one can. They also may be found a dependable path to happiness, or a more reliable one than any other.

One should embrace virtue for its own sake & that doing so is necessary to get the good side-effects of it.

The Stoics view living virtuously as living by sound reasoning & judgment. Sound reasoning & judgment will in turn produce some specific qualities, or virtues, that the Stoic seeks.

Other prized virtues:

  • Honesty: Not just speaking the truth, but living without hiding anything.
  • Consistency: True consistency would mean always thinking the same thing is right & never deviating from it. It also would mean acting & thinking the same way in all settings: in public, at home, & alone, never phony; for phoniness may be described not only as dishonesty but as a form of inconsistency. Be authentic.
  • Love, kindness, compassion.

The Stoic regards human lives as interdependent, & finds in this a source of duty, affection, & solace. This interdependence has significance for how we live & spend our time.

The Stoics understand themselves to have a duty of service to others, including a duty to participate in public life. We should help others on whatever scale is available, large or small.

Note that Stoicism calls for compassion and for help to those who need it, but the Stoic does not favor feeling sorry for other people & making their sadness one's own, that is, becoming despondent because others are despondent. Good Stoics will do all that would be done by anyone who feels pity for others, but they will not feel the pity themselves. Pity is considered a form of distress that serves no purpose & impairs good judgment. Same applies to feeling anger and grief (and other negative emotions) on behalf of other people.

Virtue is the only good, or at least there is no good without virtue. - Seneca

Virtue is nothing else than right reason. - Seneca

Here is the result of wisdom: a constant and unvarying kind of joy. The mind of the wise man is like the heavens beyond the moon: the sky up there is always clear... This joy is produced only by a consciousness of the virtues. - Seneca

5. Emotion

Emotions are some of the reactions that are the product of our judgments.

Negative emotions are states of inner upheaval that involve attachment to externals or that threaten the priority of reason.

You can't eliminate all negative emotions but you can take steps to minimize them. Some emotions, like grief after a loss, are inevitable. Stoics aim to not make them worse by talking to ourselves unhelpfully and by taking our cues from convention (how others encourage us to think). This allows quick recovery.

You can minimize having negative emotions by trying to nip them in the bud at the judgment stage. This way you don't have to deny or suppress them.

Negative emotions interfere with the Stoic goals. For example, someone who is furiously angry is probably not making clear judgments and probably an ill-advised attachment is the root of it.

Sometimes physical impulses (like tears, trembling, lust, etc.) begin on their own. As long as reason is able to talk them down, you're still in control.

Stoic response is a response of a veteran, someone who has experienced negative emotions thousands of times. It's not an uncaring or unfeeling attitude like it is often portrayed.

Some emotions like fear, anger and desire are self-fueling. They tend to grow once they get going, so be skeptical about indulging in negative emotions even moderately.

The "No end to it" argument: If you are ever going to get upset about X, you should realize that X is everywhere. So, you might as well be upset all the time. Or, be sensible and stop ever getting upset about X at all. Here, X can be insults, annoyances, what other people think, anger because of wrongdoing or annoyance, grief, etc.

Take away your opinion about it, and "I have been harmed" is taken away. Take away "I have been harmed," and the harm is taken away. - Marcus Aurelius

Also read: 3. Judgment, 1. Control & Goals, 2. External, 24. Miscellaneous

6. Desire

Treat desires as reactions you can change and objects of desires as externals.

Attachment to externals is a trap.

Getting the object of our desire doesn't produce the satisfaction and happiness that we seek, and even if it does, it doesn't last for long. Eventually, it makes us want more.

New desires appear when old ones are spent. We have a desire for desire itself, and for the illusion that fulfilling a desire will bring us to an end point. But that end point never comes. This means that no matter how hard we work to satisfy our desires, we will be no closer to satisfaction than if we had fulfilled none of them. We will, in other words, remain dissatisfied.

Natural desires (aka needs): Finite, genuinely helpful, can be fully satisfied, can recur, but what satisfied yesterday can satisfy today. Examples: Hunger, intellectual stimulation, thirst, roof over our head, desire to be warm when cold, desire to be dry when wet, things necessary for our survival, etc.

Unnatural or artificial desires (aka wants): Bottomless, fulfillment isn't as satisfying as we imagined, newer/bigger/better/different objects of them must be sought, no natural stopping point. Examples: wealth, fame, power, status, some hobbies (like collectors), etc.

Once you go beyond needs & go far with wants, it is very hard to stop. Slowly even these artificial desires start to feel like natural ones.

When we find ourselves wanting something, we should pause to ask whether the desire is natural or unnatural, and if it is unnatural, we should think twice about trying to satisfy it.

The pursuit of the object of desire is more pleasing than the possession of it.

Relevant here: Dopamine Rush. Anticipation of a variable reward (ping of a phone notification) will release a little bit of dopamine and not the actual reward (the content of the notification) itself. We are addicted to the anticipation of the variable reward, not to the reward. Dopamine is tied to the trigger, not to the reward.

Thousandaires look up to millionaires, millionaires look up to multi-millionaires, multi-millionaires look up to billionaires, billionaires look up to multi-billionaires and multi-billionaires look up to ultra-rich dictators. There is never enough.

Relevant here: Rajat Gupta, CEO of McKinsey who later went to prison for insider trading.

Objects of your desires (externals) look amazing when they are far away, but possession and familiarity with them tend to produce indifference or disgust, and therefore soon enough new desires emerge. Familiarity breeds contempt. Examples: How one treats a brand new phone or laptop or some gadget versus the when it's a few months old, people who buy a new phone every year when there's nothing wrong with their old phone.

Possession also leads to neglect. You may have noticed how kids force their parents to buy some toy but after their parents buy it for them, kids play with it only a couple of times and then ignore it. Adults also do it with their possessions. How many books have you bought that you just had to have but haven't even read yet? How many clothes do you have in your cupboard that you have worn only a couple of times?

People hate the things they have and overvalue things they don't have.

Relevant here: Nostalgia. Nostalgia is a desire for the things in the past.

We can manage desires either by fulfilling them or by removing them. The latter is more effective in producing satisfaction and tranquility.

Not wanting something is just as good as having it. One thing they both have in common: freedom from worry.

We wrongly compare what we have to our expectations or to the holdings of others. This produces envy. Envy is a state of temporary madness. Envy can make us unhappy on the spot. Envy also makes us desire things we otherwise wouldn't want at all. Examples: how people crave fancy new gadgets, iphones, luxury watches, etc.

And how much do we acquire simply because our neighbors have acquired such things, or because most men possess them! - Seneca

Because of hedonic adaptation or hedonic treadmill we stop appreciating what we already have, and we start seeking new objects of desire.

People buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like.

We always imagine others have it better than us or have less problems than us, but that may not be the case in reality. The grass is always greener on the other side.

It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united. - Epictetus

Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor flee from anything that depends on others: otherwise he must be a slave. - Epictetus

Freedom is attained not by satisfying desires but by removing them. - Epictetus

No one can have whatever he wants. What he can do is not want what he doesn't have, and cheerfully enjoy what comes his way. - Seneca

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. - Seneca

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. - Epicurus

Remedies for desire:

  1. Examine your desires (judgments) about the external. (Also read: 3. Judgment)

  2. See objects of desires (externals) accurately. (Also read: 2. External, 22. Perspectives)

  3. Comparisons with less fortunate people and people from the past.

  4. Negative visualization. (Also read: 18. Negative Visualization)

  5. Like what you already have and your current situation. (Also read: 21. Like What You Have)

  6. Gratitude.

  7. Accept what is outside of your control.

Also read: 3. Judgment, 2. External, 22. Perspectives, 7. Wealth, Pleasure & Luxury, 20. Fatalism

7. Wealth, Pleasure & Luxury

Wealth, pleasures and luxuries are externals and detachment from externals should be maintained.

Wealth, pleasures and luxuries are also indifferent. They are irrelevant to living a good, virtuous life.

Wealth is also a middle, it is neither good nor bad by itself. We, using our character and values, decide whether to use it to do good deeds or bad.

Consequences of greed and being attached to wealth:

  • Wealth, being an object of desire, fails to satisfy us for long after possession.
  • After possession, we worry about how to keep it, we desire more of it and feel pain when it is lost.
  • We also gradually value all sorts of things more highly than they are worth.

Wealth is a "great corrupter" that drives individuals into low behavior and causes social ruin. Just look around you: adulterated food, polluted air, roads filled with potholes and littered with trash. All this because the perpetrators and their protectors in power don't care about people. They only care about money.

Greed and not knowing when to quit, or not quitting while one's ahead, have ruined a lot of people. Example: traders in stock market, gamblers.

The acquisition of riches has been, for many men, not an end of troubles but a change of them. - Epicurus

Not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself is.

If you seek tranquility, learn to be happy with less.

One path to acceptance is to imagine the position one would be in once a desire is fulfilled, and to ask whether the wished-for state might be attained more directly.

Relevant here: Read the story about the fisherman & the businessman.

We overrate wealth, pleasures and luxuries and underrate the cost of trying to gain them and maintain them.

When you are about to indulge in a pleasure, delay it. Then think about how you would have enjoyed the pleasure and then would have regretted it for having done so. Now, compare this with how pleased you'll be if you don't indulge in the pleasure at all knowing you have conquered the desire and kept your ways virtuous.

Relevant here: Delayed gratification

Stoicism requires a high degree of self-control. Many desires that people pursue (desire for fame, luxury, wealth) are deemed worthless if we are seeking tranquility. And we are told to extinguish those desires.

Moderation (aka temperance, one of the core virtues in Stoicism) does not mean less pleasure, it means actual and lasting pleasure, a way to enjoy something without spoiling it, without the costs and regrets that come with excess.

Practice moderation in daily living as well. Philosophy calls for plain living but not penance. We can be both plain and neat at the same time.

Pleasures are costlier than they seem, they don't last long but always extract a price, and pleasures are always followed by loss or pain. Examples: hangover after drinking (short term fun, long term organ damage), etc.

One would not regret bypassing a pleasure, but we can't say the same for the opposite.

Pleasures should be viewed as trivial and minor things and not as a point of living.

Relevant here: Live to eat vs. eat to live.

Pleasures should also be viewed with wariness, because they often end up causing trouble down the road.

If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures. - Musonius Rufus

We should take satisfaction from fulfillment of natural desires (aka needs). This should also be done in moderation. Examples: Getting nutritious meals but not fast food, getting good quality clothes but not designer clothes, getting a good quality watch but not luxury brand ones, etc.

Pleasures recommended by Stoics: Understanding, wisdom, seeing the world in an accurate way, benevolence, anything where your mind is exercised, a little drinking, singing, dancing, sports, recreation, a little rest, etc.

Stoics value highly their ability to enjoy ordinary life, and indeed, their ability to find sources of delight even when living in primitive conditions. There is a danger that if we are exposed to a luxurious lifestyle, we will lose our ability to take delight in simple things.

People who achieve luxurious lifestyles are rarely satisfied: Experiencing luxury only whets their appetite for even more luxury. This is because the desire for luxuries is an unnatural desire and it can't be fully satisfied.

People take pride in their inability to enjoy anything but "the best." By undermining their ability to enjoy simple, easily obtainable things these individuals have seriously impaired their ability to enjoy life.

Luxury uses her wit to promote vices: First she makes us want things that are inessential, then she makes us want things that are injurious. Before long, the mind becomes slave to the body's whims and pleasures.

If we forgo luxurious living, we will find that our needs are easily met, for life's necessities are cheap and easily obtainable. Those who crave luxury typically have to spend considerable time, energy and money to attain it; those who eschew luxury can devote the same resources to other, more worthwhile undertakings.

We should remember that one person's being richer than another does not mean that the first person is better than the other.

It is perfectly acceptable for a Stoic to acquire wealth, as long as he does not harm others to obtain it. You can enjoy wealth, pleasures, luxuries and other externals as long as you maintain detachment from them, don't cling to them and don't feel entitled to them. The idea is that it is possible to enjoy something and at the same time be indifferent to it.

I shall despise riches alike when I have them and when I have them not, being neither cast down if they shall lie elsewhere, nor puffed up if they shall glitter around me. - Seneca

We must also keep in mind that unless we are careful, enjoyment of our wealth can undermine our character and our capacity to enjoy life. We should, for this reason, steer clear of a luxurious lifestyle.

Use wealth and other externals (like fame, power, etc.) to practice your virtues.

What decides whether a sum of money is good? The money is not going to tell you; it must be the faculty that makes use of such impressions - reason. - Epictetus

It is better to die of hunger with distress and fear gone than to live upset in the midst of plenty. - Epictetus

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. - Epictetus

How to manage pleasures:

  1. Moderation to enhance pleasures.

  2. Like what you already have and your current situation. (Also read: 21. Like What You Have)

  3. Gratitude.

  4. Self-denial. (Also read: 19. Self-Denial)

  5. Negative visualization. (Also read: 18. Negative Visualization)

  6. Delayed gratification.

  7. Accept what is outside of your control and work with what you have. (Also read: 1. Control & Goals)

  8. Don't half-ass things.

  9. Check if the satisfaction can be achieved more directly (without fulfilling the desire).

Also read: 6. Desire, 2. External, 21. Like What You Have, 16. Valuations, 20. Fatalism

8. Dealing With Other People

We should prepare for our dealings with other people before we have to deal with them. We should form a certain character and pattern for ourselves when we are alone. Then, when we associate with other people, we should remain true to who we are.

We should avoid befriending people whose values have been corrupted, for fear that their values will contaminate ours.

When we do socialize, we should be circumspect in our conversation, keep silent when others are gossiping and not gossip ourselves. We can also subtly attempt to divert the talk to something appropriate.

You don't want to be irritable? Don't be inquisitive. People who try to find out what has been said about them, who dig up malicious gossip even if it happened in private, are only upsetting themselves. Our interpretations can make things appear to be insults when some should be put aside, others laughed at, others forgiven. - Seneca

When we interact with an annoying person, we should keep in mind that there are doubtless people who find us to be annoying. When we find ourselves irritated by someone's shortcomings, we should pause to reflect on our own shortcomings. Doing this will help us become more forgiving and empathetic to this individual's faults and therefore become more tolerant of him. And since we're reflecting on our shortcomings we should also try to improve ourselves.

When dealing with an annoying person, it also helps to keep in mind that our annoyance at what he does will almost invariably be more detrimental to us than whatever it is he is doing. In other words, by letting ourselves become annoyed, we only make things worse.

We can also lessen the negative impact other people have on our life by controlling our thoughts about them. We should not waste time speculating about what others are doing, saying, thinking, or scheming.

Nor should we allow our mind to be filled with sensual imaginings, jealousies, envies, suspicions, or any other sentiments about other people that we would blush to admit.

A good Stoic will not think about what other people are thinking except when he must do so in order to serve the public interest.

It will be easier for us to deal with impudent people if we keep in mind that the world cannot exist without such individuals. People do not choose to have the faults they do. Consequently, there is a sense in which the people who annoy us cannot help doing so. It is therefore inevitable that some people will be annoying; indeed, to expect otherwise is foolish. You can call this "social fatalism" if you want.

When you run up against someone else's shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don't ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members. - Marcus Aurelius

When men behave inhumanely, we should not feel toward them as they feel toward others. If we detect anger and hatred within us and wish to seek revenge, one of the best forms of revenge on another person is to refuse to be like him and thereby refuse to compromise our character.

We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others.

We have a duty of care to all other human beings, to be social, and as we develop our rationality we shall come to see ourselves as members of a single, global community of all humankind.

Hierocles said that we are each at the center of a series of expanding circles of concern, starting with ourselves, then containing our immediate family, then our local community and eventually ending with the largest circle that embraces all humankind. The modern idea of cosmopolitanism, then, has its origins with the Stoics.

Do as Socrates did, never replying to the question of where he was from with, "I am Athenian," or "I am from Corinth," but always, "I am a citizen of the world." - Epictetus

If we want to live a good life, we need to be good human beings. That means embracing our nature as rational and social beings. But it also means living up to the various roles that we find ourselves in and accepting the responsibilities that come with them.

Each of us inhabits a number of different social roles. Some of these roles come to us from Nature. For example, being a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, etc. Then there are other, slightly different, roles connected to social positions or jobs that we may have. For example, being a neighbor, a friend, an employee, an employer, a colleague, a citizen, etc. If we want to live a good life, we need to be good human beings. That means embracing our nature as rational and social beings. But it also means living up to the various roles that we find ourselves in and accepting the responsibilities that come with them.

Consider carefully what projects you engage in and whether you are suitable for them, and by the same token be sure not to neglect some other projects for which you are, in fact, well suited.

When you go to any kind of public gathering, remember to maintain your dignity, and strive to never make yourself disagreeable to others.

Suppose you set out to meet someone. Before setting out for the meeting, imagine that you will actually not find them there, or that they will refuse to see you, or that they will treat you rudely. Despite these possibilities, if it is important that you go, then go, and never say "it wasn't worth it," because that's the talk of people who still think that externals are important.

There are some people that it's good to spend time with: people with good habits, people following the same path as you, people who understand and value what you are trying to do.

Associate with people who are likely to improve you. - Seneca

Always wisely consider the trade-offs and balance your own needs with the needs of others, and the society and the humanity, in general.

Remember that your goal should be to arrive at the best possible judgments about people and their behavior, and that will not happen if you rush into it without sufficient information and deliberation. You simply do not know enough about other people, and why they do what they do, to arrive at secure judgments about them. Most of the times, simply abstaining from judgment will actually be the better course.

In Rome, committed Stoics were prepared to face up to tyrants rather than compromise their principles. In so doing they embodied the virtues of courage and justice. Far from counseling political passivity, Stoicism encourages us to live up to the very highest standards of political action. Example: Seneca, Thrasea Paetus, Helvidius Priscus, Paconius Agrippinus, Barea Soranus, Rubellius Plautus, Musonius Rufus.

Adapt yourself to the circumstances you have drawn; and the men among whom your lot has fallen, love them, and truly. - Marcus Aurelius

Is a little oil spilled, is a little wine stolen? Say "this is the price of equanimity, this is the price of peace of mind" - for nothing comes free. - Epictetus

Also read: 1. Control & Goals, 9. What Other People Think, 16. Valuations, 12. Anger, 11. Insult & Criticism, 4. Virtue, 10. Fame

9. What Other People Think

What other people think is outside of your control.

Have contempt for conformity, for the opinion of the majority, for the habit of looking to others when thinking about what to prefer and how to act.

A large part of what people say, think and do is a product of convention. Getting in line with what others expect causes them to think well of us and deviating from it is looked down upon and is punished by them.

Desire for praise is the reason for conformity, much of human behavior and imbecility in general.

Convention is irrelevant and is a source of errors, misjudgments and peer pressure. We must resist it.

We practice things that will win praise; we should practice not needing it.

Many people willingly exchange health, tranquility and sometimes life itself for reputation and glory, the most useless and worthless things. Examples: politicians, athletes, people on social media, etc.

Everyone wants the good opinion of those they define as their circle or audience.

When the orator knows that he has written a good speech, that he has it committed to memory, and that he will deliver it well, why is he still nervous? Because he is not satisfied with this. What else does he want? He wants to be praised by the audience. About oratory he has been instructed; about praise and blame he has not been instructed. For when did anyone tell him the meaning of those things, what they truly involve, what praise is worth seeking and what blame is worth avoiding? And when did he practice the use of these principles? - Epictetus

The people whose opinion you so badly crave are dumb, ignorant and despicable. So why care about what they think?

Opinion of other people means nothing in itself.

Everyone thinks "Log kya kahenge?" (What will people say?) before doing anything.

Why do we worry more about what others think than about what we think? Worrying about what others think distracts us from our own thoughts and from all else that we should really be doing, things that actually matter. Try to substitute a greater respect for one's own opinions. Speak the truth to yourself instead of repeating what everyone else says.

Be authentic.

No longer be concerned with what the world says about you, but with how you talk to yourself. - Montaigne

When you want to be praised sincerely, why be indebted to someone else for it? Praise yourself... After this, ask whether, the things you said about yourself are true or false. If they are true, you are praised in front of a great witness, yourself. If they are false, no one is a witness to your being made a fool of. - Seneca

Value things for what they are rather than for their popularity.

Everything that is beautiful in any way is beautiful in itself, and its beauty is self-contained. Praise is not part of it; nothing is made better or worse by being praised. - Marcus Aurelius

Mass popularity should be viewed with suspicion because it rarely indicates quality or integrity in whoever obtains it. Examples: Popular movies and artists are often mediocre.

Once you start to worry about what other people think or say, where does it stop? You have made yourself vulnerable to any and all.

Whatever you do (good or bad), people will talk. That's what they do. But it won't last long because they'll be dead soon.

Do not waste the time you have left thinking about others unless it serves some good and useful purpose, for it takes you away from other work. Thinking about what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what someone else is saying, and what another is thinking or planning, and all things of that sort, causes you to wander away from the observance of your own governing principles. - Marcus Aurelius

Why do you take pleasure in praise from those you cannot praise yourself? - Seneca

Also read: 8. Dealing With Other People, 11. Insult & Criticism, 12. Anger, 10. Fame

10. Fame

The price of fame (whether it involves world renown or merely the admiration of our neighbors) is sufficiently high that it far outweighs any benefits fame can confer on us, if your goal is freedom and tranquility.

Stoics value their freedom, and they are therefore reluctant to do anything that will give others power over them. But if we seek social status, we give other people power over us: We have to do things calculated to make them admire us, and we have to refrain from doing things that will trigger their disfavor. If we make it our goal to please others, we will no longer be free to please ourselves. We will have enslaved ourselves.

If we wish to retain our freedom we must be careful, while dealing with other people, to be indifferent to what they think of us. We should be consistent in our indifference; we should be as dismissive of their approval as we are of their disapproval.

Realize that in order to win the admiration of other people, we will have to adopt their values. More precisely, we will have to live a life that is successful according to their notion of success. (If we are living what they take to be an unsuccessful life, they will have no reason to admire us.) Consequently, before we try to win the admiration of these other people, we should stop to ask whether their notion of success is compatible with ours. More important, we should stop to ask whether these people, by pursuing whatever it is they value, are gaining the tranquility we seek. If they aren't, we should be more than willing to forgo their admiration.

Fame is the accumulated opinions of people whose views are worth nothing.

Fame is useless and can't last long anyway.

Soon you will die and forget everything and soon everything will have forgotten you. - Marcus Aurelius

Relevant here: "15 minutes of fame".

Desire for immortal fame is futile and pointless. It is foolish to want to be remembered after we die. For one thing, since we are dead, we will not be able to enjoy our fame. For another, we are foolish to think that future generations will praise us, without even having met us, when we find it so difficult to praise our contemporaries, even though we meet them routinely. Instead of thinking about future fame we would do well to concern ourselves with our present situation; we should make the best of today.

The glow that comes from being famous might trigger in one a desire for even more fame, and the obvious way to accomplish this is by saying things and living in a manner calculated to keep and gain the admiration of other people. To do this one will probably have to betray Stoic principles. Therefore we should not bask in any fame that comes our way. At the same time, we should not hesitate to use this fame as a tool in the performance of our social duty.

Another way to overcome our obsession with winning the admiration of other people is to go out of our way to do things likely to trigger their disdain.

What could be more absurd than to suppose the same ignorant and common people you despise, when taken one by one, are of any greater consequence when taken together? - Cicero

You have not been invited to someone's dinner party? You did not give the host the price he charges for the dinner. He sells it for praise, he sells it for personal attention... So don't you have anything in place of the dinner? Certainly you do: not to have praised the fellow you did not want to praise, and not to have put up with the people at his door. - Epictetus

I have never wished to satisfy the crowd; for what I know, they do not approve, and what they approve, I do not know. - Epicurus

I pass over celebrity and popular fame, built by the consensus of knaves and fools. - Cicero

Also read: 9. What Other People Think

11. Insult & Criticism

People tend to be extremely sensitive to insults. We have an irrational dread of other people's insults and criticisms.

Insults include not just verbal abuse, such as calling someone a name, but also "insults by omission", such as slighting or snubbing someone, and physical insults, such as slapping someone. In some instances, a mere glance can be construed as an insult. Insults usually give rise to anger, embarrassment and humiliation.

What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about these things. - Epictetus

Success of an insult requires favorable judgment from the victim that the insult matters. This judgment can be dropped.

If somebody criticizes me, that is their concern. My concern is not doing anything worthy of criticism.

Relevant here: The proverb "The elephant keeps walking as the dogs keep barking".

Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control. - Epictetus

If someone tried to take control of your body and make you a slave, you would fight for freedom. Yet how easily you hand over your mind to anyone who insults you. When you dwell on their words and let them dominate your thoughts, you make them your master. - Epictetus

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. - Mark Twain

Remedies for insults and criticism :

  1. Since insults are opinions of other people, and those are externals and therefore out of our control, we should regard them with indifference. We should not care about them and should not worry about them.

  2. Remove the judgment that harm is done through the insult and the harm and the sting goes away.

  3. We should welcome contempt if it is earned by saying or doing the right thing. We should regard their contempt with contempt in this case.

  4. Consider the source of an insult. We can belittle or treat with contempt the person who is insulting us. If I respect the source & value his opinions, then his critical remarks shouldn't upset me. But if I detest the source of an insult; then I should feel relieved: If he disapproves of what I am doing, then what I am doing is the right thing to do. If I say anything at all in response to his insults, the most appropriate comment would be, "I'm relieved that you feel that way about me."

  5. No response. You can ignore the insulter. The critic is not worth taking revenge upon. Why care about their insult if you wouldn't care about their advice? Basically choose your battles wisely. This is appropriate behavior for someone who wants to be magnanimous. We are robbing the insulter of the pleasure of having upset us, and he is likely to be upset as a result. By being ignored, he will be humiliated. If the insulter is encouraged by our non-response, we can feign sternness and/or anger.

  6. Time spent worrying about the insult is better spent on things that actually matter.

  7. Pause and analyze the insult. If the criticism is just, you should show humility and:

    • accept it and change if such a change is possible or
    • accept it and be done.

  8. If the insult is unjust, then the critic is mistaken and deserves our sympathy. He might be saying something bad about us not because he wants to hurt our feelings but because he sincerely believes what he is saying, he means well or he might be reporting how things seem to him or at least says what seemed right and best to his limited capacities. And, if we want to, we can calmly let the critic know they're mistaken in a polite way.

  9. Try to understand what thoughts caused another to offer an insult, and be generous in interpreting them and in responding. Maybe you and your adversary are not so different.

  10. Those who insult us can best be described as overgrown children. Such people deserve our pity, not our anger. One possible response can be, "Well, believe whatever makes you feel happy!"

  11. Humor. By laughing off an insult, we are implying that we don't take the insulter and his insults seriously. This will irritate the insulter. Self-deprecating humor can also be effective. If someone criticizes us for a fault, we can respond with something like "Oh, yes, but that's because you don't know me well, otherwise you would have much worse to say about me!" If the insulter is encouraged by our humor, we can feign sternness and/or anger.

  12. If you receive an insult that is wrongful, you may consider it to have been directed at someone else, the person you were thought to be. Consider it a case of mistaken identity, if you will.

  13. In any case, you both will be dead soon anyway.

Also read: 12. Anger, 9. What Other People Think

12. Anger

Anger is a state of "brief insanity" and the damage done by anger is enormous.

It's hard to stop anger once it takes over your mind.

Being annoyed is normal, but being so angry that you need to say or do something in revenge is not.

Mistaken judgment that "I have been harmed/injured by someone/something" gives rise to the emotion of anger. If you remove the judgment, the feeling of injury/harm goes away and so does the anger. So at the judgment stage, pause and reflect on the external before deciding on the judgment.

If you get easily provoked (annoyed/angered/insulted) by what someone else says or does, that means you are not in control of your emotions but someone else is.

It feels bad to suppress your anger and it feels good to vent it. But you will probably regret having done so later.

Even if you think your anger is righteous, it still has to depend on other beliefs that are mistaken, such as:

  • Something terrible has happened,
  • An injury has occurred,
  • It shouldn't have happened to me,
  • The subject of anger is worth getting angry about,
  • I should be avenged.

We should keep in mind that many of the things that anger us generally don't do us any real harm; they are instead mere annoyances. By allowing ourselves to get angry over little things, we take what might have been a barely noticeable disruption of our day and transform it into a tranquility-shattering state of agitation.

Our anger invariably lasts longer than the damage done to us. - Seneca

Not getting angry and upset about some wrongdoing is a totally separate thing from getting or delivering justice. The former is done to maintain tranquility and clarity about the situation while the latter should be pursued in full. Besides, if you achieve tranquility, then achieving justice will be comparatively easier. You will be able to think clearly.

The Stoics see honor in fighting to the death for a good cause.

There are individuals who, when they wrong us, are incapable of changing their behavior in response to our measured, rational entreaties. When dealing with this sort of shallow individual, we can feign sternness and/or anger.

Remedies for anger:

  1. Recognize it as an opinion and let it go.

  2. Use humor. Make light of the cause of anger. Self-deprecating humor disarms an opponent and makes the user of it a less appealing target of attack (like an insult). One who manages to be amused by an attack rises above it, and diminishes the attacker. Also, by choosing to think of the bad things that happen to us as being funny rather than outrageous, an incident that might have angered us can instead become a source of amusement.

  3. A preventive technique: Observe the unrest in other people's minds when they get mad or angry at the smallest, most trivial things. These things deserve a laugh. Compare your peace of mind with the turbulence in theirs.

  4. You might do something while angry that you'll regret later. So, count to 100 before doing anything in anger. Basically wait before acting when angry, till the anger dissipates.

  5. Avoid situations where anger is likely to be aroused or at least avoid seeking it out. Avoid social media. Don't participate in gossip. Nothing good can come from knowing what other people are saying or thinking about you.

  6. We are sometimes quick to anger. We should be slow to construe what others say as offensive or hostile, learn to distrust suspicious instincts, and should not jump to conclusions about their motivations. Also, we need to keep in mind that just because things don't turn out the way we want them to, it doesn't follow that someone has done us an injustice.

  7. Be charitable. Don't take offense at minor things. Don't assume the worst automatically. Without ample evidence, assume that maybe the other person is ignorant or having a bad day, etc.

  8. If you want to be angry, you'll be angry all the time, because you'll find reasons everywhere you look. The world is filled with annoyances, big and small. So be sensible and stop getting angry about them.

  9. Contemplate the impermanence of the world around us. If we do this we will realize that many of the things we think are important in fact aren't, at least not in the grand scheme of things. Life is too short to spend it in a state of anger.

  10. When angry we should force ourselves to relax our face, soften our voice, and slow our pace of walking. If we do this, our internal state will soon come to resemble our external state, and our anger will have dissipated.

  11. What if we find ourselves lashing out at whoever angered us? We should apologize. Doing this can almost instantly repair the social damage our outburst might have caused. It can also benefit us personally: The act of apologizing, besides having a calming effect on us, can prevent us from subsequently obsessing over the thing that made us angry. It can help us become a better person: By admitting our mistakes, we lessen the chance that we will make them again in the future.

  12. We should remind ourselves that our behavior also angers other people.

    We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us, we must agree to go easy on one another. - Seneca

Also read: 11. Insult & Criticism, 9. What Other People Think, 5. Emotion, 8. Dealing With Other People

13. Grief

Grief hits people hard because we don't anticipate it. Even though we see and hear it in the news and social media, we don't contemplate how we might respond in similar circumstances.

Grief after a loss is natural and unavoidable. But extended grief, when we feed it and urge it on with our thoughts or because of convention (how others encourage us to think or how we get influenced by what's happening around us), creates problems. Therefore, we should take steps to minimize the amount of grief we experience.

Time will heal all wounds, sure. But still a sensible person shouldn't wait for long. He should get tired of grief sooner rather than later. Don't distract yourself from grief or wait till it wears off on its own. Grieve for a bit, then reckon with it, then use reason to end it.

In the case of everything that delights you, or is useful or deeply loved, remember to tell yourself what kind of thing it is. If you are fond of a ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only a ceramic cup; then if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are mortal, and thus you will not be distraught if they die. - Epictetus

Grief-prevention strategies:

  1. Negative visualization. Use both normal (prospective) negative visualization and retrospective negative visualization. They will help you appreciate the people and other externals in your life when you have them.

  2. Reason is our best weapon against grief. Would the dead be pleased to see you grieve? No. The dead would want you to be happy. They wouldn't want you to suffer. And if the dead wanted you to suffer, then they aren't worthy of tears. Would the grief help the dead? No. The dead aren't capable of grief and that's a good thing and we should be happy for them. Would they even know you are grieving? No. So, the best way to honor their memory is to leave off grieving and get on with life.

  3. Grief doesn't help anybody, neither the living nor the dead. So, don't prolong what is useless.

  4. Find solace to grief in good memories.

  5. Take care not to "catch" the grief of others. We should sympathize with the grief-stricken and should display signs of grief to comfort them without allowing ourselves to experience grief.

Also read: 1. Control & Goals

14. Fear & Anxiety

If you're dealing with things outside of your control, nothing will not help you, least of all, worrying about it. So, you should only focus on things you have control over.

If something will be bad in the future when it arrives later, then why suffer right now? In effect, why suffer twice?

There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We often suffer more in imagination than in reality. - Seneca

Since the future is uncertain and unpredictable, we don't know how exactly any future event will go down. There are too many variables in the world. So why worry? It certainly won't help the situation. And the thing you are worrying about may not even happen. So all that worrying will have been for nothing.

Fear also spoils the enjoyment of the present. What is here in the present is probably more tolerable and needs our attention.

Fear also makes us worse off by causing us to think and do foolish and cowardly things. Example: Fear causes people to take money out of the stock market at the bottom, taking a loss, when they should be doing the opposite.

Fears are opinions about what is to come. Those opinions can be reduced to certain beliefs that the fearful person believes. Like:

  • A certain thing is going to happen,
  • It is going to be terrible,
  • It is worth getting upset about right now.

All these propositions are mistaken.

Fearful things are externals, and therefore must be examined directly and their realism tested severely.

Remain hopeful. Adjust your standard of proof until it dissolves fear. Ask for more and more evidence. Fix the game in your favor. You really should because fear doesn't fight fair either.

Ask a question to yourself: Will it help? As in, will agonizing over something that may or may not happen in the future help you in any way? Obviously not.

Get rid of fear of failure:

  1. Setting internal goals is a great strategy to counter fear of failure while undertaking endeavors that might fail. Also, you have to be honest to yourself and you should keep improving yourself.

  2. To overcome your fear of failure, you also need to work at becoming indifferent to what others think of you. Remember that their opinions are out of your control anyway.

Suppose your fears do end up being realized. Maybe they won't be so bad after all, if looked at realistically, or their ultimate consequences may be harder to judge than they seem. You just don't know it yet. Rest assured, you're capable and you will deal with them when the time comes.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. - Marcus Aurelius

Also read: 1. Control & Goals, 16. Valuations, 3. Judgment, 5. Emotion, 15. Adversity

15. Adversity

Since all externals are middle (neither good nor bad by themselves), you can say that nothing bad ever really happens to anyone.

Focus on things you can control (your judgments, goals and actions) and treat externals as indifferent and with detachment.

Make sure you prepare beforehand by employing negative visualizations, self-denial, emergency preparation, etc. If you do it, you won't be shocked and won't panic when an adversity eventually happens.

Just keep in mind that even when we think things are really tough, it is always possible for them to get still worse. When it rains, it pours.

Relevant here: Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

No one wants adversity, that's natural. But sometimes adversity is unavoidable.

Don't complain about adversities because it is pointless to complain about things that are inherent to human existence. It is simply illogical to think, about some misfortune, 'I didn't think it would happen to me,' especially when one knows that it could happen and one has seen it happen to many others.

Adversities that come with life should be accepted by considering their potential in advance, before they happen to anyone in particular. They are after all potential hazards faced by anyone.

Adversity is an essential element in the formation of worthy people and worthy achievements. No pain, no gain.

Adversity is an external that we misjudge, and a resource that might be put to use.

We view externals like adversity initially in terms of our immediate wishes and convenience. Stepping away from them allows adversity to be seen accurately: often less monstrous than it looks when it first comes, as sometimes producing important benefits later on. This may be because the process of recovery produces a result that surpasses whatever existed before, or it may be because the later events lead sometimes accidentally to a new and better result in some way that was hard to foresee.

When a setback comes, interpret it as constructively as possible. See adversity as a test of your ingenuity and resilience. See it as a challenge to overcome, a game to play, a puzzle to solve, a chance to prove yourself, or to learn something, or to build anew. The value of any of these responses may be greater than the cost of the adversity. Setbacks show what we are really capable of doing.

Relevant here: Watch The Effects of Exercise lecture video by UCTV.

Relevant Here: Having a growth mindset.

Relevant here: Framing effect in modern psychology.

Small adversities prepare us for larger ones.

Nobody can predict the future, there are too many variables in the word, things don't remain the same, they can and do change and you'll learn a lot in the meantime. So be calm and be slow to assume that any adversity will be for the worse in the long run. Don't prematurely make any judgments about an adversity.

Any preferred indifferents that you have, think: "I know that it is temporary and will someday go away" or "I only have it temporarily."

Remember, you will be able to handle what comes your way; you will figure it out. Trust yourself. You'll be pleasantly surprised about your abilities. And those abilities will improve with time and practice.

See adversity as an opportunity to practice virtues.

You can't reason your way out of physical pain. Something like it won't go away by changing how we think about it. But our reactions are still strongly affected by our judgments about it. So, if there is physical pain, don't add negative judgments to it to make it worse.

Adaptation helps a lot in making peace with adversities that simply can't be helped. Most things that bother us when they arrive become more tolerable with time as we get accustomed to them.

Think about all the past adversities and challenges you have overcome in your own life to take inspiration from them. Similarly, learn about how other people have dealt with adversities in their life. Take inspiration from them as well.

Both death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty - all these things happen equally to good men and bad, being neither noble nor shameful. Therefore they are neither good nor evil. - Marcus Aurelius

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. - Marcus Aurelius

Disaster is virtue's opportunity. - Seneca

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them. - Montaigne

Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right. - Marcus Aurelius

How does it help... to make troubles heavier by bemoaning them? - Seneca

How to deal with adversities:

  1. Look at your own adversity from another's point of view. (Also read: 22. Perspectives)

  2. Prepare beforehand using emergency preparation and other techniques given below. Emergency preparation includes routine maintenance, routine checkup, physical exercise, mental stimulation, data backup, digital security and privacy precautions, financial investment, emergency fund, insurance, etc.

  3. Negative visualization. Think about potential adversities that could impact you and then let those thoughts go. This will mentally prepare you for those adversities were they to happen. (Also read: 18. Negative Visualization)

  4. Self-denial. Voluntary discomfort prepares you beforehand to deal with some adversities. (Also read: 19. Self-Denial)

  5. Understand how acceptance of an adversity and adaptation to it can help with its management. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

  6. Since adversities are externals and externals are not in your control, Accept what happens, focus on what you can control and work with what you have.

  7. Be fatalistic with respect to the past and the immediate present moment.

  8. Projective visualization. Imagine what happened to you, happened to somebody else instead. Imagine how casually you would dismiss it. Would you think it is worth throwing a hissy fit then?

Also read: 6. Desire, 1. Control & Goals, 22. Perspectives, 20. Fatalism

16. Valuations

We undervalue what we have and crave what we don't have. Similarly we neglect the present but crave the future (or worry about it) and dwell on the past. Satisfaction can be found by paying attention to the present.

We are unconscious of the value of time. We give it away lightly & waste it with less alarm than we waste money, though time is more valuable than money in the end.

The past is already gone and the future is uncertain. Live in the present and participate fully in it.

The present is always more tolerable than what we think about the past and about the future.

The present is the only place where actual living occurs. By spending our thoughts on the past or the future we fail to attend what is happening right now, and so fail to live.

For a good many people, the goal is success in some form or other, whether that be wealth and fame, respect and honors, or promotion and high office. Yet Stoics note that, more often than not, people who attain such things are far from satisfied, for with success comes a whole host of demands and pressures. Having gained everything they ever wanted, there's one thing they now lack: time, time for themselves, for peace and quiet, leisure and retirement.

It is all too easy to live in a perpetual state of distraction, never fully attending to what it is that we should be doing, what we really want to be doing, or even the sheer experience of being alive.

Our time is not unlimited. A good part of whatever time we shall have is gone already. Not only that, we have no idea how much is left to come. Today could, in fact, be your last day. Or you might have weeks, months, a couple of years - the truth is that none of us know.

If we knew that we had just one year left, we could at least plan and organize our remaining time accordingly, making sure no moment is wasted. But without that sense of urgency, it becomes all too easy to waste it all.

Don't procrastinate.

Seneca recommends philosophy as the finest and most worthy activity, by which he means thinking, learning, reading history and literature, reflecting on the past and the present.

Epictetus likens life to the Olympic games: the contest is upon us, you cannot defer any longer, and everything depends on what you do right now, on this single day.

Be fatalistic about the past and the immediate present moment, since they can't be changed and are therefore out of your control. Similarly, don't worry about what's going to happen in the future since it's not totally in your control because there are too many variables in the world.

Since future is only partially in our control, we should plan for the future, set internal goals about it and act on them. But once done, we should not waste energy on worrying about the future.

We should take lessons from the past but shouldn't dwell on negative memories. Similarly we should take joy from the positive memories of the past but shouldn't dwell on them either (nostalgia).

We should be careful about what we spend our time on since it is so limited. Inattention to time leads to waste of it. We spend hours on social media and other trivial things for no benefit to our minds or our bodies. We shouldn't waste our time on useless activities/things/people. Time should be treated like money. And we should put it to good use.

Cost-benefit analysis of all externals should be done (intangible costs and benefits). Always keep tranquility and freedom as factors in your mind and think: When you lose some external, what do you gain? When you gain some external, what do you lose?

We overvalue money and undervalue time. We overrate material goods and the approval of others, but undervalue the gains we get by forgoing them. When something bad seems to happen it often has quiet compensations, and on the other hand, exciting opportunities tend to be costlier than they first seem once their consequences, visible and not, have all been noticed and weighed.

Relevant here: The metaphors "deal with the devil" and "Faustian bargain".

Before resenting or envying others, one should consider the prices that they paid for what they have. This applies to all choices people make. Some examples: Politicians, elected officials, bureaucrats, doctors, lawyers, bankers, thugs, robbers, salesmen, marketing execs, etc.

If you envy others for their wealth, honor and privilege, remember that they had to give up their freedom and probably mental and physical health too and had to flatter, endure insults and injury from despicable people.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. There is always a cost to things that usually seem free.

If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else. - Seneca

A candid assessment of one's own faults and foolishness is paramount in Stoicism. A confession of weakness is the way to wisdom. If you don't know you have faults, you can't correct them. So always be on the lookout for any flaws in yourself and fix them.

But this self-examination always encounters a big problem: our love of self. We habitually overrate ourselves and overlook or excuse our own shortcomings. Self-knowledge is unbearably painful, so we look the other way.

Don't put yourself on a pedestal.

Sometimes, we see in others precisely those things that we find most uncomfortable in ourselves. In a word, we engage in projection.

We all make mistakes; sometimes the same ones, sometimes different ones. So be kind to others.

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy. - Seneca

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. - Seneca

Life is long if you know how to use it. - Seneca

The present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments. - Epicurus

When you see someone often wearing the robe of office, or someone whose name is famous in the Forum, do not be envious; those things are bought at the cost of one's life. - Seneca

Whenever you see another man holding office, set against this the fact that you have no need to hold office. If someone else is wealthy, see what you have instead. For if you have nothing instead, you are miserable; while if in place of wealth you have no need of wealth, know that you possess something more than he does, and much greater in value. - Epictetus

I have good manners, he has a governorship; he has the rank of general, I have self-respect. - Epictetus

This is why I lost my lamp: because a thief was better than I am at staying awake. But he bought the lamp at a high price. In return he became a thief, he became untrustworthy, he became an animal. This seemed to him a good bargain! - Epictetus

Also read: 22. Perspectives, 20. Fatalism

17. Death

Death is treated as an external since its arrival is out of our control.

Death is simply physical decay and no physical process is intrinsically good or bad.

You can die at any moment, anything might kill you any time. Your life does not belong to you, it could be taken away at any moment, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Nothing lasts forever. Everything perishes and everyone dies.

Dying might be painful for a little while, but death itself appears to be a painless state, similar to the state we were in before we were born.

Death, like aging, is a continuous process. We die a little bit everyday as time passes.

Death is just one of the phases we go through, just like being a baby, then being a teenager, then being a young adult, then being a middle aged person, then being an old person, then being dead and then being ashes or being food for insects. This cycle of matter being transformed continues forever.

You didn't exist before you were born, same as how you won't exist after you die.

A lot of people are irritating. At least death will free you from all the stupid people.

Death can be an honorable way out, if chosen courageously or if life is truly intolerable and one has exhausted all other options. This decision is not to be taken lightly and without much reflection.

Living long is not an accomplishment, but living well (with excellent virtuous character) is.

Relevant here: Lifespan versus healthspan. Watch The Effects of Exercise lecture video by UCTV.

Death is a great equalizer. We are born unequal but we all die equal. This might encourage magnanimity in life.

Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. - Marcus Aurelius

Think about death often. it helps toward virtue.

Life is short and what little we have is uncertain. Whatever you're doing, be mindful of death.

Get used to death, it's much better than to unnecessarily fear it.

Reflect on death as a cause for urgency in living. If you were to die this very moment, would you think the life you have lived was worth it? Spend each day as if it were your last. Live well and postpone nothing.

Don't procrastinate and don't half-ass things.

It is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of death or pain. - Epictetus

I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later. - Epictetus

Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. - Epicurus

The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can. - Seneca

Also read: 13. Grief, 18. Negative Visualization

18. Negative Visualization

Reflecting on adversities that might happen along with those that must at some point happen can help to lessen the blow if or when they do strike us. It can reduce the shock and help to make us better prepared to cope.

In normal, prospective negative visualization, we imagine losing something we currently possess. We should do this, spend time imagining that we have lost the externals (people/things/abilities/facilities/etc.) we have, regularly. Doing this will make us appreciate them more than we otherwise would.

Relevant here: Anchoring effect.

Living as if each day were our last is an extension of the negative visualization technique: As we go about our day, we should periodically pause to reflect on the fact that we will not live forever and therefore that this day could be our last. It will make us appreciate how wonderful it is that we are alive and have the opportunity to fill this day with activity. This in turn will make it less likely that we will squander our days.

Retrospective negative visualization: We can imagine never having had something that we have lost. And we can replace our feelings of regret at having lost something with feelings of thanks for once having had it.

Relevant here: Gratitude.

We can also practice negative visualization by paying attention to the bad things that happen to other people and reflecting on the fact that these things might instead have happened to us. Social media and news give us plenty of opportunities in this regard.

We can also practice negative visualization by doing historical research to see how our ancestors lived. And compare our situation to theirs.

To practice negative visualization is to contemplate change and the impermanence of the world around us.

He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand. - Seneca

We need to reflect upon every possibility and to fortify ourselves against whatever hardships may come about. Run through them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. - Seneca

Relevant here:Pre-mortem

Why practice negative visualization:

  • To take steps to prevent adversities from happening.
  • To prepare ourselves for changes and adversities when they happen.
  • To lessen impact of changes and adversities on us when they happen.
  • To counter hedonic adaptation.
  • In other words, to like and appreciate what we already have and what delights us and our situation and our life.
  • Helps in detachment from externals.
  • To experience joy.
  • To prevent taking the world for granted.

Also read: 22. Perspectives, 2. External, 21. Like What You Have, 17. Death

19. Self-Denial

Self-Denial is also known as voluntary discomfort.

We should sometimes live as if bad things had happened and we should periodically cause ourselves to experience discomfort that we could easily have avoided.

If all we know is comfort, we might be traumatized when we are forced to experience pain or discomfort and we will be anxious and might dread even the possibility of pain or discomfort in the future.

Benefits of voluntary discomfort:

  • We harden ourselves against misfortunes that might befall us in the future.
  • A person will grow confident that he can withstand major discomforts as well, so the prospect of experiencing such discomforts at some future time will not, at present, be a source of anxiety for him.
  • It helps us appreciate what we already have.

We should also periodically forgo opportunities to experience pleasure, so we can learn self-control. If you can't resist pleasures, you'll be a slave to them.

It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs. - Seneca

Also read: 21. Like What You Have

20. Fatalism

Feeling regret is a waste of our time and energy.

You can't change the past and the immediate present moment (the current moment). They're out of your control. So adapt fatalistic attitude when it comes to the past and the immediate present moment.

Learn lessons from the past so that you won't make the same mistakes in the future but don't dwell on them.

Accept whatever happens and work with what you have got.

But don't be fatalistic about the future since the future is partially in your control (at least some aspects of the future are, but not all). The outcomes of some of your actions have the capacity to change the future. So, do prepare for the future.

Remember that there are too many variables in the world and most of them are not in your control. But your actions do indeed count and they can influence the world. That's why focus on what is in your control and internalize your goals. Your should always do the best you can.

Fatalism with respect to the past and the immediate present moment will :

  • Help to not wallow in misery over the past.
  • Help us focus on the present moment.
  • Help to work on our future.
  • Help gain satisfaction with our life as it is and make it more tolerable.

Also read: 1. Control & Goals, 16. Valuations, 1. Control & Goals

21. Like What You Have

Like what you already have and your current situation.

The easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.

We should like what externals we have but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever or that we may keep them for long.

If what you seek is satisfaction then to be able to be satisfied with little is a blessing.

Negative visualization and self-denial help a lot to like what you have and your current situation.

Also read: 2. External, 18. Negative Visualization, 19. Self-Denial, 22. Perspectives

22. Perspectives: Strategies To See Externals Accurately

We think of ourselves and the time we are alive and the space we occupy as very important but this is inaccurate. We do this because we have a default point view of looking out from inside that we use all the time and don't realize how puny and brief our allotments are.

Realizing how insignificant we are compared to the enormity of space and time can be good for morale. It's also an affront to the ego. It makes the case for living well in the present, for no other purpose survives. It also suggests value of viewing oneself as a part of a whole. It also helps reduce the fear of death.

Realize that the world, at large, doesn't care about you and doesn't owe you anything. the world works neither for you nor against you. It just goes on regardless of you. You don't matter.

We should treat each other well and with good humor, for the things that distract us aren't worth worrying about.

Relevant here: Perspective-taking

Use these strategies to change your judgments about externals and to view them accurately:

  • Consider infinite space compared to our use of space. Consider the vastness of the universe compared to the places we live at, places we can go to and places we can observe. The universe is so big that even the Earth itself, let alone you, is merely a dot compared to it.

  • Consider infinite time compared to our scale of time. The human lifespan of 80-100 years seems long, but consider the amount of time that has passed before you were born and will pass after you die. Also consider that dinosaurs ruled the earth for millions of years but now just a few fossils survive. This will help you see how insignificant even the whole human race is. We live for an instant.

  • Point of view from way up in the space. Imagine looking at humanity from an airplane. You'll see so many gatherings, wars, funerals, births and disputes happening between people. Think about the people who lived the same life thousands of years before you were born (nothing survives of their life now), live it now and will live thousands of years after you are long gone. We realize how short and insignificant and repetitive human life is, and how pathetic the externals we are attached to are.

  • Point of view of someone else. Look at yourself and your situation from the point of view of somebody else. Establishing an external point of view, and personifying it, is a way to see what you are doing more objectively and hold yourself to higher standards.

  • Point of view of less fortunate people or people thousands of years in the past. Look at yourself and your situation from the point of view of people who have been in the same boat, from the point of view of people who are less fortunate than yourself in various respects and from the point of view of people who lived thousands of years in the past. Compare your situation to theirs and you will realize how fortunate you are and many of your problems are insignificant.

  • Projective visualization. Imagine what happened to you, happened to somebody else instead. Imagine how casually you would dismiss it. Would you think it is worth having a meltdown over then? This will signify the relative insignificance of the bad things that happen to you and will therefore prevent them from disrupting your tranquility. Example: Someone's favorite mug breaks, and they become really upset. Naturally, you say, "Do not get distressed, it was just a mug, and it is in the nature of mugs to break." When your favorite mug also breaks, remember those words and repeat them to yourself.

  • Consider constant change and impermanence of the world. Nothing lasts forever, in other words, everything perishes eventually. If we fail to recognize this and instead go around assuming that we will always be able to enjoy the things we have, we will likely find ourselves subject to considerable distress when those things are taken from us. We all (including us, our friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, everybody around us) are vulnerable. Whatever externals we have (life, money, health, material possessions, security, etc.) can be taken away at any moment by forces beyond our control. You, your possessions, your friends, your family, your house, your enemies, everything around you, everyone around you, your city, your country, even the earth itself will soon cease to exist. By contemplating the constant change and impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. We will no longer sleepwalk through our life. Also note that the forces of destruction usually work much faster than the forces of creation. Example: A building can be demolished in a few seconds but constructing it would have taken years.

  • Consider death. (Read 17. Death section right now)

  • Consider repetitions in human behavior and history. Consider how repetitious human life and events in history are. Everything that happens is something you have already seen before, somewhere else. There are patterns to human behavior which keep repeating.

    Relevant here: Proverbs like "What's old is new again" and "There is nothing new under the sun".

  • Take a literal view of an external that seems impressive/exciting/appealing/scary or break it down into parts that one can see more clearly than the whole. We should pause to think about the physical nature of seemingly desirable things before passing judgment on them: a fine meal is merely the dead body of a chicken or a fish, wine is just a dribble of grapes, marble is only a stone in the earth, gold and silver are only sediments. Equally, the expensive gadget or executive car is just a lump of metal and plastic. Whatever value these things might seem to have is value that we attribute to them with our judgments, and not anything inherent in the things themselves. Also, impressions like these are the ones that penetrate to the heart of things themselves and let us see what they really are. We should do the same in all areas of life, and, whenever things appear too highly valued, we should lay them bare in our minds, perceive their cheapness, and strip off the prestige they have traditionally been assigned. What are we but an insignificant and mortal collection of bones & meat. Yesterday, a blob of mucus, tomorrow a heap of ashes.

  • Don't add anything to an external. Add nothing when an external presents itself. We are quick to add labels, assign meaning to externals, and then react to it. So, slow down your thinking and control your imagination. Make any additions with care. The assignments of value or meaning that we attach to things are usually half-conscious, borrowed from convention, false or unhelpful. They nevertheless determine how we feel, what we think and what we do next. Some external events happen (someone dies, some accident happens, some deal is lost, etc.). The degree to which those events are horrible, or unbearable, is up to each individual's judgment. Some judge one way, others another way.

    "I have a headache." Do not add "Alas!" "I have an earache." Do not add "Alas!" I'm not saying that you cannot groan, but don't groan inside. - Epictetus

    "His ship is lost." What has happened? His ship is lost. "He has been led off to prison." What has happened? He has been led off to prison. The notion that he fares badly, each man adds on his own. - Epictetus

    Relevant here: Catastrophizing

  • Don't put an external (which includes other people) on a pedestal.

    None of those who have been raised to a lofty height by riches and honors is really great. Why then does he seem great? Because you are measuring the pedestal along with the man. This is the error under which we labor, and how we are deceived; we value no man by what he is, but add the trappings in which he is adorned. - Seneca

Also read: 3. Judgment, 2. External, 6. Desire, 18. Negative Visualization, 17. Death, 15. Adversity

23. Stoic Exercises

What matters most is not our ability to spout Stoic principles but our ability to live in accordance with them.

Use following exercises to reinforce Stoic ideas, psychologically reframe situations, contemplate your place in the world, reduce negative emotions and achieve tranquility.

Use stress, anxiety or other similar signal from your mind as a cue to perform Stoic exercises.

  1. Morning reflection: Prepare for the coming day, contemplate upcoming challenges and prepare to handle them.

    Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness, all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. - Marcus Aurelius

  2. Evening reflection: Reflect on what you did well, what you didn't and how you can do better tomorrow.

  3. Pre-social preparation: Before entering social environments, spend time alone forming a certain character standard for yourself and then act according to your character and be authentic when you deal with other people. (Also read: 8. Dealing With Other People)

  4. Internal observer. We should become self-aware. We should create within ourselves a Stoic observer who watches us and comments on our attempts to practice Stoicism. We should examine each thing we do, determine our motives for doing it, and consider the value of whatever it was we were trying to accomplish. We should continually ask whether we are being governed by our reason or by something else. We should remain focused every moment prepared for whatever might happen next.

  5. Observe others. We should likewise be careful observers of the actions of other people. We can, after all, learn from their behavior, their mistakes and their successes.

  6. Remember the dichotomy of control. Some things are up to us, and some things are not. Every time you face a challenging task or situation, reflect on it and create following two lists: a list of aspects of the task or situation that are under your control, as well as a list of those that are not under your control. Focus only on elements of the first list. And always remember, your character is in your hands. (Also read: 1. Control & Goals, 4. Virtue)

  7. Internalize goals. When considering doing something in which success depends on external things and therefore failure is an option (which are most things we do), internalize your goals. This reduces anxiety and preserves tranquility. (Also read: 1. Control & Goals)

  8. Remember the role of judgment. Things in themselves do not upset us. It's our judgments, or opinions about things, that create suffering. (Also read: 3. Judgment)

  9. Pause before judgment. Weigh your impressions with care. Don't take things at face value and make hasty judgments. Don't jump to conclusions. Do not trust the first thing that comes in your mind. Take a step back and carefully weigh the evidence before forming an opinion. If you lack enough firm evidence, suspend making a judgment entirely. (Also read: 3. Judgment, 8. Dealing With Other People, 11. Insult & Criticism, 12. Anger, 14. Fear & Anxiety, 15. Adversity)

  10. Amor fati. The Stoic reserve clause. When you start a project, go on a trip, or make a plan, say to yourself, "Stoic Fate willing." Keep in mind that, despite your best intentions, something beyond your control might interfere with your plans. (Also read: 20. Fatalism)

  11. No dwelling on the past since it is out of your control. Instead, focus your attention on living in the present and preparing (not worrying) for the future. (Also read: 20. Fatalism)

  12. Contemplation of the sage. Imagine that a wise person like Socrates is watching over your actions. If facing a difficult situation, ask yourself how the wise person would respond to it. Ask: "What would Socrates do?"

  13. Reframe setbacks. Look at an adversity as a test of your resiliency and ingenuity, as a challenge to overcome, a game to play or a puzzle to solve. (Also read: 15. Adversity)

  14. Negative visualization (Premeditation of adversity). Briefly rehearse in your mind any adversities you might face in the future and loss of any externals you have. Then let those thoughts go. By contemplating adversities in advance, you will rob them of power to shock you should they actually arrive and appreciate what you do have. (Also read: 18. Negative Visualization)

  15. Retrospective Negative Visualization. When you suffer a loss, imagine that you had never possessed external in the first place. This will replace regret with gratitude for once having had it.

  16. Comparisons. Compare your situation with less fortunate people and people who lived thousands of years ago. You'll realize how fortunate you are.

  17. Self-denial. Consciously practice acts of voluntary discomfort and forgo pleasures so that you don't take for granted the good things you have in life. (Also read: 19. Self-Denial)

  18. Contemplation of the whole and the infinite space. Realize that you are just a tiny part of the entire universe, but a part of the universe nonetheless. For a moment, expand your mind to encompass the entire cosmos, and experience your connection with the whole.

  19. Contemplation of the infinite time. Contrast a typical human lifespan of 80 to 100 years against the amount of time that has passed before your birth and will pass after your death. Realize how puny our life is compared to the infinite spacetime.

  20. The view from above. Imagine that you are far above the Earth in space and looking down upon it. Then remember how small, in the grand scheme of things, your personal troubles really are.

  21. Contemplation of change. Meditate on how all things in the world are in constant change, and how everything undergoes continual transformation over short or long periods of time.

  22. Contemplation of impermanence. Realize that everything you have is on loan to you. Remember that it is fine to appreciate the gifts of Stoic Fortune while they are on loan to us, but one day we will give them back.

  23. Contemplation of death. Memento mori. Reflect on your own mortality, on the mortality of those you love, and on death as just the final, natural stage of being alive. Be grateful for the time you have lived and for the time you have remaining. Strive to use it wisely and not procrastinate. (Also read: 17. Death)

  24. Live with gratitude. Each day, realize that everything we have is a gift from the universe. At the end of life, look back on your entire life as a gift, with a sense of gratitude.

  25. Live in the present moment. Don't let your mind race ahead and worry about the future, because that is a source of anxiety. Instead, plan for the future rationally, and remember that the present moment is all we have. Should you start to feel anxious, be mindful of that, and return your attention to the present moment. Remember that when future events arrive, you will face them with the same rationality you have today. (Also read: 16. Valuations, 15. Adversity)

  26. Live as if today is your last day. Periodically remind yourself: "This could be my last day." It will help you appreciate your life and it will make sure you don't waste what little time you do have remaining.

  27. Act for the common good. Remind yourself that you are part of the entire human community and that we are all born to help one another. Remember to act for the good of others. (Also read: 4. Virtue)

  28. Philosophical journaling. Create your own personal notebook of Stoic meditations and teachings, the way Marcus Aurelius did, as reminders to yourself. Take central Stoic ideas and rephrase them, expressing them in your own words, or explain in your journal how you could apply them.

  29. Intangible cost-benefit analysis. Evaluate externals by weighing what you lose (such as tranquility or freedom) when you gain them, and what you gain when you lose them.

  30. Don’t add anything to externals. Observe events without adding emotional meaning. Separate facts from emotional narrative.

  31. Break down externals. Strip prestige from alluring or frightening externals by seeing them literally and breaking them down into their parts (e.g., viewing a fine meal as a dead animal carcass, wine as grape dribble, or an executive car as a lump of metal and plastic).

  32. Examine desires rationally. Ask: Is this a need or a want? Is it necessary for my survival? Will satisfying it actually end the desire? (Also read: 6. Desire)

  33. Direct satisfaction check. Before chasing a desire, imagine the state you would be in once it is fulfilled and ask whether that desired state can be achieved immediately without fulfilling the desire. (Also read: 6. Desire)

  34. Pleasure postponement (Delayed Gratification): When you're about to indulge in a pleasure, force a delay; then contrast the hypothetical guilt of indulging in the pleasure with the satisfaction you get by conquering the desire and also reflect on whether the pleasure is worth it. (Also read: 6. Desire)

  35. The "no end to it" argument. When you're upset because of an external, remember that annoyances are everywhere in the world. So, you must either choose to be upset constantly or stop getting upset about it entirely.

  36. Self improvement. Routinely search for your own flaws, bad habits, and psychological projections and make concrete efforts to improve.

  37. Reflect on your faults. When someone else's flaws irritate you, pause to review and reflect on your own shortcomings. You'll realize that you're not perfect either.

  38. Mandatory Pause: Force a pause by counting to 100 before speaking or taking any action when you're hit with a provocation like an insult or some wrongdoing. You need to have your wits about you if you want to act rationally and you can't do that if you're angry. (Also read: 11. Insult & Criticism, 12. Anger)

  39. Projective Visualization. Imagine what happened to you, happened to someone else. Ask: "Would I think this deserves a meltdown now?" This will show the relative insignificance of the event and reduce anger and regret.

  40. Like what you already have. Train yourself to want: your current life, current possessions and current circumstances. This will improve satisfaction with your life and reduce cravings. (Also read: 21. Like What You Have)

  41. Emergency preparation. Prepare beforehand for potential adversities. (Also read: 15. Adversity)

  42. Adaptation training. Practice accepting reality quickly, improvising and working with constraints. You can't afford to break down every time a problem comes in your life. (Also read: 15. Adversity)

Also read: 1. Control & Goals, 22. Perspectives

24. Miscellaneous

--

Stoicism is a philosophy, not a religion. And therefore, unlike religions, Stoicism is open to criticism and you are encouraged to question and/or modify it. Stoic philosophers themselves have done it throughout history and current ones continue to do so now.

Those who advanced these doctrines before us are not our masters but our guides. The truth lies open to all; it has not yet been taken over. Much is left also for those yet to come. - Seneca

I do not bind myself to some particular one of the Stoic masters; I, too, have the right to form an opinion. - Seneca

--

We can use our reasoning ability to conclude that many of the things that our evolutionary programming encourages us to seek, such as social status, agony of insults, and more of anything we already have, may be valuable if our goal is simply to survive and reproduce, but aren't at all valuable, and are rather counterproductive, if our goal is instead to experience tranquility while we are alive.

--

Someone who thinks something is more valuable than tranquility would be foolish to practice Stoicism.

--

Stoic goals are (these are interdependent and in no particular order) :

  • Have excellent, virtuous character.
  • Help others in any way we can.
  • Achieve tranquility.
  • Minimize negative emotions (grief, anger, envy, etc.).
  • Living a good, happy life (to flourish).
  • See the world accurately.
  • Live by reason.
  • Stay detached from externals.

--

What can we do:

  • Maintain detachment to externals and treat them as indifferents.
  • Focus on what you can control.
  • Don't concern yourself with what's outside of your control.
  • Accept what happens.
  • Work with what you have.
  • Prepare as much as you can beforehand (negative visualization, self-denial, emergency preparation, etc.).
  • Be fatalistic about the past and the immediate present moment.
  • Treat others with kindness.
  • Help others.
  • Keep practicing virtues.
  • Forge on without worrying.

--

Adaptation is the tendency to become used to things and to stop noticing them and all that follows from this.

Good cases of adaptation:

  • Adaptation can be helpful when managing adversity.

Bad cases of adaptation:

  • Adaptation can cause one to get used to bad things that ought to be fixed.
  • Getting adapted to erroneous judgments causes us to regard them as natural or inevitable when they aren't.
  • Adaptation can cause one to get used to good things that go unappreciated. Hedonic adaptation or hedonic treadmill corrodes our ability to find pleasure in what we already have, and so drives us on to new desires (mainly unnatural or artificial desires aka wants).

--

There are two main sources of unhappiness and loss of tranquility :

  1. Insatiability of desires
  2. Worrying about things out of our control

To conquer our insatiability of desires:

  • Practice negative visualization
  • Consider impermanence of all things
  • Consider death
  • Like what you already have
  • Practice self-denial

To stop worrying about things beyond our control:

  • Use dichotomy of control with everything
  • Be fatalistic with respect to the past and the immediate present moment

--

Interesting connection:

  • Negative visualization: think of the ways our situation could be worse
  • Fatalism with respect to past & present moment: refuse to think how our situation could be better

--

Stoics were unusually progressive for their time (considering that they lived around 2,000 years ago). They believed that virtue, not gender or any other thing, determined human excellence.

Women have received from the gods the same power of reason as men. - Musonius Rufus

If then men ought to philosophize, women ought to philosophize too. - Musonius Rufus

--

The 3 disciplines of Epictetus:

  1. The discipline of desire (and aversion): We have a tendency to desire (and have aversion to) the wrong things, and this is a major cause of our unhappiness. We desire externals and we're averse to losing them. But by desiring externals, we put our happiness in the whimsical hands of Stoic Fate. It is better to direct our attention to things under our control and to not get attached to externals.

  2. The discipline of action: It is concerned with learning how to properly act in the world, both toward ourselves and toward others. Reflect on your practice of Stoicism and try to improve yourself. Be social and live up to all the roles assigned to you. Help others in any way you can.

  3. The discipline of assent: It is concerned with refining your judgments. Do not trust the first judgment that pops in your mind but pause and reflect on the situation and then decide on the judgment. Implement these steps over and over and you'll get better at your judgment calls. Which in turn will make it easier for you to realign your desires, as well as to properly interact with other people.

--

It's possible for someone to have a bad life despite making a very good living. Suppose, for example, that a person having a high-paying job hates it, or suppose that the job creates conflict within him by requiring him to do things he knows to be wrong.

--

Here are some non-sequiturs : "I am richer than you, therefore I'm better than you." Or, "I am better educated or more knowledgeable than you, therefore I'm better than you." The conclusion simply does not follow from the premise. What does follow? "I am richer than you, therefore I have more money." Or: "I am better educated than you, therefore I can speak better."

But you are neither money nor speech. You are a person capable of making decisions. And it is only by the quality of those decisions that you ought to be judged, or to judge yourself.

Remember that things like wealth are externals. Externals are indifferents which means that they are irrelevant to living a good, virtuous life. And externals are middle or value-neutral, which means that they, by themselves, are neither good nor bad. It's what you do with them, whether you use them for doing good deeds or bad deeds that matters.

--

Some signs of progress in practicing Stoicism:

  • We will experience fewer negative emotions and enjoy tranquility and delight in the world around us.
  • We will experience zest, a feeling of energy and enthusiasm for life.
  • We will spend less time than we used to wishing things could be different and more time enjoying things as they are.
  • We will become increasingly indifferent to other people's opinions of us. We will not go through our life with the goal of gaining their approval or avoiding their disapproval, and because we are indifferent to their opinions, we will feel no sting when they insult us.
  • We will become more virtuous.

--

Here are three stages of wisdom: the unwise person blames other people for what are, in the end, her own judgments about things; the person who is making progress does not blame others, but only herself; the wise person does not blame even herself.



Cover Picture Credit : Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash


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