Living A Stoic Life

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog!! I have had the most HECTIC week (like basically every other week for the past two years). I am currently stuck on deciding with universities and I have a couple open days coming up which is at the cost of lacrosse matches so I do feel very upset I can't play. Talking about lacrosse, things are going so well and I really had a good time at training this week so I can't wait to get back to competing again! School has been tiring but I've tried to stay on top of my work and do most of it the day I get it, generally it's been manageable I guess. This week's post is going to be something I really like talking and writing about in both philosophy and psychology (as you can guess by the title, it's stoicism). I have written a bit about stoicism and it's influence on CBT so if you want to check that out, click here.

What is Stoicism?

Stoicism is a very old philosophical school of thought from the Hellenistic times. This school of philosophy began when Zeno of Cyprus (a rich merchant) had lost all of his belongings due to a shipwreck. He began reading a lot of philosophy, starting with Socrates and then eventually, he developed his own philosophy. Nowadays, stoics could be considered as people who remain calm under pressure and avoids extreme emotions, however, the original philosophy is much more than that. The ancient philosophy states that every single action has a cause and an effect, while we may not always have the power to change this, we do have the power to control how we approach things. Stoics will try to pursue self improvement through four cardinal values: wisdom, temperance, justice and courage. It is not considered a self centred philosophy, but, it has the belief that if we are able to find self-control and virtue, we are able to bring a positive change within others. While stoicism has faded away as a formal school of philosophy, it has influenced and will continue to influence many people for a long time.

A firm belief in stoicism is that we should do things for ourselves and for self improvement, nothing else. The reason they believed so much in self development is because attaching any external value to things gives us false hope as secondary attachments almost always lead to disappointment. We then end up trying to fill up the emptiness through external value such as buying a car. Stoicism teaches us that placing all our happiness in external forces is useless, because, external forces can always fail (eg. a car breaking down).

Once we are able to become the best person we can be, we can slowly change the world and make everything around us the best it can be. Doing so much work on yourself can lead to a really meditative state of mind and many even say that you can gain inner peace through mastering stoic practices.

Stoics used to philosophise together in public areas so that everyone could have the chance to listen and have access to the school of thought. It explains why Marcus Aurelius (an emperor) and Epictetus (a slave) were both very influential in stoicism, despite their social roles. The stoics really tried their best to fight against inequality, and as a result, created the word 'cosmopolitan'. This literally means 'citizen of the world' which is something that all stoics believed we were, no matter who we are in life. 

In a world full of unexpected events, our emotions get in the way of things. We don't really get sad because bad things happen, we get sad because unexpected bad things happen. I watched a YouTube video that explained this quite well. They gave the example of rain and said that the rain is something good for the world, it nourishes plants and keeps animals/humans alive. However, when we are faced with a dark thunderstorm and don't have an umbrella, it's not a good experience. Why don't we sit and cry whenever it rains? The reason we don't do that is because we know that the weather is beyond our control, therefore, we expect the rain. Stoicism has a similar teaching.

Stoicism teaches us that everything bad that can happen, will happen. If you picture the worst outcome and become content with the knowledge that it could happen, then you will never feel disappointment. Again, reiterating the basis of stoicism, it's the idea that we don't have any control over what happens to us but rather how we react in response to what happens, so, wasting energy over dwelling over things we can't control (like the weather) is, quite frankly, pointless.

The dichotomy of control is one of the main principles of stoic philosophy and this is what I've generally been talking about in this post. The idea that regardless of what we want, we don't have control over the majority of the thing that happen to us, but, we do have all the control over how we react to those things. Stoics teach us to determine our value from the things we can control, not what we can't.

When researching about Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (just for general interest) I came across this concept called 'voluntary discomfort'. This is pretty self-explanatory but it is basically when you put yourself through uncomfortable situations. For example, the stoics often slept on the floor or ate a restricted diet as a reminder that any basic thing around you could be taken away from you. It sounds crazy and while I'm not asking any of you guys to sleep on the floor every night, I just find this way of thinking really intriguing. 

It is currently 11pm, I am shattered from dance and lacrosse today, so, I have to end this post here before I start talking nonsense. I hope you enjoyed this week's post!! I'm really struggling to maintain this blog with my four free periods unevenly spread over a two week timetable but I am trying my best to keep up so bear with me if I might upload a bit late or skip a week! Anyways, I hope you all have a great day and week ahead, love you guys <33