5 Stoic Principles For A Better Life
Stoicism has received a resurgence in popularity in the last few decades and for good reason. Unlike some other schools of thought and philosophy, stoicism is made to be practical and easily applied to real life situations for all people in all circumstances.
So in todays blog post I am going to cover some of my favourite stoic principles that will hopefully change your life as well; and give some practical ideas of how these principles can be applied to our lives right now…
1. Determine the limits of your control
The most important task in life and one of the cores of stoicism is summarised by Epictetus when he said that: ”To identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. ” This was taken from the discourses of Epictetus II.5, I highly recommend you read it for yourself.
Epictetus goes even further and elaborates on his first statement giving us some examples of things that fall within our control and things that don’t. He states that: “There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.”
Some people argue that this should be updated for modern times and include a third aspect: things I can influence to some degree but not completely control.
Many also realise that the stoics probably already took this factor into account. For example one of the things we have complete control over the goals we set for ourselves, our aims. Yet we have no control of the outcome of that goal itself. For example we cannot say that we will win a cycling competition, but we can influence how hard we train and that on the day of the competition we perform our best. Therefore the stoics would not set goals that are out of their control, their goal would be to do the best they can; and not make their goal to win.
Therefore by not setting a goal outside what we can control we will spare ourselves the sorrow of failing to complete our goals. Setting goals this way will thus also not disturb the tranquility of our mind (This was quoted from: Irvine, from his book: A Guide to the Good Life)
This may sound like an incredibly simple part of stoic philosophy but often the simple things are the most overlooked and have the biggest impacts on our lives. The thing is we can easily understand the concept and discern what is in our control from what is outside our control, so what of it? When we take time to discern what is in and what is out of our control everyday, we become much more free, as what we can control, we focus more on and what we cannot control we realise there is no use in giving it a single thought. This then reduces our stress and anxiety immensely, helping us to steer away from anger and toward tranquility; and not waste our lives on the things that don’t matter and are outside of our control. We become free mentally and become more emotionally resilient once we are able to disassociate based on what is inside our control what what is not.
2. Meditate on your mortality:
Memento Mori or when you translate it into English roughly means: “Remember you must die”. This is to remind us of our mortality and how fragile our lives are. This is not to be morbid or come to the conclusion that all of life is meaningless, because why bother to do anything worthwhile if I may die tomorrow? On the contrary this is meant to inspire us to live today as best we can full of life and purpose, making every moment count. This idea of meditating on our mortality has been practiced in many cultures throughout history and can be found, in art, literature, philosophy and more.
As Seneca stated: “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”
When we live life through this perspective holding our mortality at the forefront of our thoughts, all mundane problems and fears of life will slowly fade away. Do you really think you will feel self conscious when walking around the shopping mall and feel people staring at you when you know that you will die tomorrow? You will gain a deep confidence in yourself derived from your resolve to live this day, this little window of life you have to it’s fullest. All things in life that are not essential will feel much less important and you will start to only focus on the things that are really essential to your life; because why purchase with your life things that are not important. Once you start living as though today is your last, you will fear less and live more.
3. Amor Fati: Treat every challenge as an opportunity:
Amor Fati means: “A love of fate”. Let’s look at a practical example of how this works. Say for instance you are in your car driving to work, maybe your already little late because your gate got stuck and you had to fix that before you could leave, you are already starting to feel agitated and frustrated that things are not working as they should. You turn into the next road and are met with a massive traffic jam, you’re now even later to work than before, and nothing seems to be moving. Right now you feel like walking to work may have been faster than this… As you sit there and your blood starts to boil, thinking of what you are going to say when you get to the office, and apologise to your seniors for the unexpected problems that occurred. You get even more frustrated. You’re now at the point where if we cracked an egg on your face it would start to boil like in the looney toons.
Instead of being angry, frustrated and stressed over the situation, you can embrace what is happening to you in that moment and find peace instead. Think to yourself that this is my fate for the day, I cannot change those events that took place, and they were meant to happen today; I cannot change that. All that I can change is how I respond to these events that have happened. From that perspective of, these things are not happening to you, they are just apart of the nature of the world; you can be at peace and resilient to what happens to you.
Epictetus wrote about this, saying: “Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.”
We only get disappointed, frustrated, angry, upset etc, when we have a preconceived notion of how things aught to be in our day and our life, but when life deviates form our notions we react with these emotions, where instead we should seek to embrace these deviations. So if we wish things to happen as they do we will spare ourselves the trouble of the disappointment.
It is essentially the stoic mindset you adopt to make the best out of anything that happens to you and turning those problems, obstacles and challenges into training and opportunities.
4. Wealth is in not wanting:
When we think of wealth today we might think of the super successful entrepreneurs and business men, like Elon Musk, Jeff Bazous, Warren Buffet and so on the 1% essentially. Or our minds go to the instagram lifestyle wealthy type of people; those with the fancy cars, yachts, champagne in the sunset and everything else they could every want at their finger tips. However, if we take a look at an interaction from the life of Joseph Heller, we may think differently. Joseph Heller, the man who wrote the novel catch 22, was at a party hosted by a billionaire hedge fund manager on Shelter Island. Kurt Vonnegut a friend of Joseph Heller comments to Heller saying that this wealthy Hedge fund manager has made more money in a single day than Hellers book has over its entire lifespan in sales. To which Heller responds and says, “Yes, but I have something he will never have – ENOUGH.” That is indeed true wealth, to know your own limit in what you need and not having to constantly strive for more for all your life.
As Epictetus says: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” – Epictetus
The stoics believed that your possessions are temporary, as are we. They believed that our opinion about the object/thing and its value to us is what mattered, not the thing itself. Studies have reported that once people reach a certain income level, gaining more money past that point does not greatly change your level of happiness. Essentially, once your basic needs are met and you are able to live relatively comfortable (the success bracket of mallows hierarchy of needs) you will not experience a drastic change in your happiness if your income level grew in the future. In fact, some may say that after a certain point, more money brings more problems with it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against wealth, and nor were the stoics, Marcus Aurelius was the emperor with vast wealth and Seneca was a wealthy man. They knew wealth, but their happiness was not based on their material possessions, it was in what they gave and what they could give to the world that brought them joy.
So by all means become self sufficient, become wealthy, but do not aspire to do so because you believe it will bring you everlasting happiness and solve all your problems. Yes some problems can be solved with money, but others are created by having too much. It is a balance that must be kept and thinking that wealth is the answer to all your problems will lead you down the rabbit hole of greed and destruction, making you angry and bitter till you have it.
Things will not make us happy. We can change the way we live and see wealth by questioning our needs and eliminating unnecessary wants from our lives. The less we want the more free we will become. The less you are in want the more grateful you are for the things you own.
The more we want things the more we have to work to own them, and thus our things eventually own us.
A book I’d recommend about relooking at how we see the things we own is a book called “Goodbye Things”, written by fumio sasaki. It will really change the way you see the things you own and help you to decide what are true needs and what are wants and how to live a more minimalistic and intentional life.
5. It’s okay to ask for help:
If someone is not open to learn, he is unteachable; and an unteachable individual cannot attain wisdom. As he can then only rely on his own knowledge which will not take him very far; therefore to be wise you need to be open to learn from everyone.
We often feel like asking for help is a sign of weakness, showing to others that we lack the ability to do it ourselves; where in fact it is sometimes the strongest thing we can do. We let go go ego and pride and humble ourselves to accept help from others. Again a lot of us may see this as being too easy on ourselves and not demanding more from ourselves; but not realising that in asking for help, we grow, we learn, we become stronger and more resilient.
Stoics do what is required of them, they perform their tasks to the best of their abilities, like it was the last thing they would ever do. Stoics help others and go beyond themselves, but in that they are still strong enough to ask for help when needed. Marcus Aurelius wrote. “Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?”
We are all in this together, learning, growing, doing everything we can to the best of our ability, but when we need a hand, do not be afraid to say so, it takes courage to do so.
I hope you found this blog helpful, if you did please share it with someone else who will find it helpful too. I hope that you got some value out of this blog and that the concepts will help you to lead a better happier and more fulfilled life.
Until next time bye bye friends…
