Day 10 – 30 Days of Positive Life-Enhancing Habits Challenge
If you think that stoicism is something that is emotionless or unempathetic, you’re wrong. One way to get along better in the world and make better choices is to learn more about stoicism and how to apply it to your life. This blog post gets you started but do start reading as much as possible about this philosophy because it will definitely pay off for you over the years.
There is no way for you to learn everything you need to know about this life philosophy from one blog post or article. However, if you’ve never even heard of the idea, just being exposed to this idea and what it really means can help you live a better and more successful life.
Live a Good Life of Virtue and Good Character
First, a stoic believes that living a life of virtue and good character is the answer to living a happy and fulfilled life. To live this type of lifestyle, it takes introspection and an understanding of your own personal values, principles, morals, and willingness to live them.
You Are Responsible for Yourself
Second, a stoic believes it’s within your power to be who you are and who you want to be and that you are fully 100 percent responsible for your own life and how you feel about it, but you cannot control what you cannot control. Therefore, a stoic will focus on controlling what is controllable.
Want Less Experience More
Third, a stoic puts more stock in having experiences and learning new things over having more stuff or buying the most popular thing. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a minimalist, but they don’t just buy things for no reason or status purposes and actively focus on wanting less.
Accepting of Reality
Finally, stoics understand that they will not live forever. They are accepting that they’ll die at some point and live their life with that in mind. For example, if statistics show that walking fast 45 minutes a day extends life, and the stoic can make that happen because they have legs and the time to walk, they’re going to do it without struggling about the why or what-ifs surrounding the stats.
If you’re not sure who you are yet, or how you want people to think of you after you’re gone, take the time to discover who you are and how to become the person you want to be. If you are often considering the legacy you’re going to leave behind, it’s a lot easier to make the right choices when you have an options. Suppose you are fully accepting that you control your own reactions to the things that happen to you and not the other way around. In that case, it becomes a lot easier to make good choices minding your own personal ideals over what other people might think about it right now.
You can learn more about stoicism by reading books about philosophy like:
- Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius https://amzn.to/3jOWFqa
- Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus https://amzn.to/3CrDeKp
- Letters from a Stoic by Seneca https://amzn.to/3GaJ8kg
But you can also join groups about stoicism on Reddit, Facebook, and other social media sites that offer communities. There are also many useful YouTube videos about the philosophy of stoicism that you can get a lot out of. [Find what you like and link to them, perhaps discuss one of the videos in the Facebook Group or Watch it Together in a Zoom Coaching Session]
