Yes, it’s difficult right now. From the moment you turn on the television to the moment you mind-numbingly scroll through social media there’s just one common thing — suffering and negativity. This pandemic is one of the worst in history claiming more than 8,00,000 lives across the world and leaving 40 million Americans unemployed. With the new reality of masks and virtual meetings, there is little to no real interpersonal interaction thereby negatively affecting the mental and emotional health.
Being an extrovert it’s especially hard for me to not be able to go out and meet people thanks to social distancing. In these dire times, the only thing that’s helping me a lot is having a philosophy of life. I was (at times still am) insecure about certain aspects of my life. And, this insecurity started a burning desire to improve and to look out for a solution that would help me better handle my insecurities and low-self esteem issues. Miraculously, I came across a podcast by the renowned author and entrepreneur Tim Ferris about how he practices stoicism in his day to day life.
And that led me to dig deep into stoic philosophy. I started by reading many blogs and then eventually picked up an amazing book — Guide to the good life by William B Irvine (highly recommended if you’re new to stoicism and philosophy in general). Stoicism resonated with me and was the exact thing that I was desperately looking for in my journey of self-improvement.
Having a philosophy of life is important as it can be a guiding light when handling difficult situations and experiencing intense emotions such as anger, pain, guilt and regret. More so ever, in this pandemic having a philosophy of life would help in developing gratitude, redesigning your goals and acquiring a new lens through which you see the world.
Now, the obvious question — what is Stoicism?
Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy of life that particularly focuses on virtue and living in accordance to nature.
Living in accordance to Nature essentially means ‘to live a virtuous life because that is what you have been designed to do. The capacity to do so exists in you, but you ultimately have the choice to express it or not.’
Many have a false perception that being a stoic means being “emotionless” but it’s rather the opposite. Stoicism tells you to be indifferent towards things that are not in your control and acknowledge things that are in your complete control — your emotions and choices. Being indifferent to all the noise and trivial things in our lives is a super-power and a crucial step for self-mastery.
Now, that we have an idea about stoicism let’s dive into some of the core stoic principles:
Loci of Control
According to stoics, all things can be categorized into 3 categories:
- Things that are not in your complete control. Such as weather, your circumstances, ending of Game of thrones 😝 and etc
- Things that are in your partial control. Like, being in your best behaviour when meeting someone who’s not particularly fond of you.
- Things that are in your complete control, which is everything you say and do.
For instance, when someone speaks ill of you or hurts you then it’s in YOUR COMPLETE CONTROL on how YOU react to it. In the same way, this pandemic is something that isn’t in your complete control. The only thing that’s in your control is YOU. How you react to the negative news, how you process all the whirlpool of emotions that’s left unacknowledged, how you deal with all the stress and toxicity in the personal and professional workspace, it’s all in your complete control. Worrying and contemplating over things that aren’t in your control not only makes you miserable but also eats up your time and energy that could have been used to improve yourself for the better.
Doing work to the best of your ability
To explain this, Let’s take the example from the book — A Guide to the Good Life, Imagine you’re in the college football team and have an upcoming match this week. What would be your goal for the match? Take a moment to think about it. Unless you hold a grudge against your team the most likely goal is going to be to win the match, right?
Wrong.
That’s where everyone messes up. Winning the match isn’t in your complete control. It depends on a lot of external factors from having a severe leg pain out of nowhere while playing the match to the poor performance of a team member. Therefore, setting the right goals is extremely important and plays a key role in how you handle uncertainties and failure. Especially, you need to be careful while setting internal goals rather than external ones.
Thus, the goal should rather be to not win the match (something that’s external and you have no complete control over) but to play to the best of your ability (something internal, and in your complete control). By adopting this mindset, you would spare yourself with all the frustrations or disappointments. Even if you lose the match it doesn’t matter because winning wasn’t the goal in the first place. As long as you know that you played to the best of your ability in that particular moment you won’t end up feeling like a failure and would find areas where you could have done better.
This simple change in perspective and goal-setting could be a key to unlock your potential and put away the fear of failure. From personal relationship goals to professional productivity/life goals the only thing that matters is doing it to the best of your ability.
Memento Mori
In this high-paced instant gratification era, we tend to forget to take a moment and be mindful of the ultimate end. Let me remind you of the ultimate end to everything — Death. Death is inevitable. From the greatest of the great to the most miserable, everybody experiences it. And, it doesn’t matter how rich, popular, ugly, good looking you were in your time on earth. Everybody goes down in the end.
Surprisingly, being mindful of death and the impermanence of life has a multitude of benefits:
- Helps us avoid all the trivial things in life and enhances our ability to better prioritize.
- Helps us foster gratitude from the moment we wake up
- Enhances our ability to make “mindful and sound decisions”
- Gives us clarity when it comes to cutting off negative and toxic people from our lives.
This quarantine time can be better utilized to internalize the concept of impermanence. A simple technique that I use when I feel lost in the negativity is to look at myself through an observer’s point of view. This helps me broaden my perspective and ultimately question myself — “Will this be fruitful to me in the end?” or “Does it hold any significance down the line?”. And, the answers pretty much make it clear. Anything that doesn’t bring value is to be discarded and left uncared for. Every second wasted on them is futile.
We need to keep firmly in mind that everything we value and the people we love will someday be lost to us. If nothing else, our own death will deprive us of them. More generally, we should keep in mind that any human activity that cannot be carried on indefinitely must have a final occurrence — William B. Irvine
Memento Mori signifies the inevitability of death. A reminder that we’re all passengers in this journey called life. And, with each passing phase of our lives we’re coming closer to the destination. In the fullness of time, it’s going to be your turn to end the journey.
In whatever you do, remember your last days — SIRACH 7:36
Negative visualization
Negative visualization is one of the most important tool-kit that great stoics like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus have used to practice gratitude and to be prepared subconsciously to experience pain beforehand. It’s one of the most counter-intuitive advice that you could have ever come across. In a culture where everyone preaches about being positivity, negative visualization advices the polar opposite.
Simply put, negative visualization is the practice of visualizing a scenario with every possible thing that could go wrong. Living all the what if’s and uncertainties beforehand rather than being shocked and surprised when they happen in reality. Sounds absurd right?
Surprisingly, it’s not.
Let me explain you why.
Negative visualization helps in reflecting and being aware of the obstacles that could hinder your path. By visualizing the scenario and living it in the imaginations we get a sense of clarity of what all could go wrong. This practice would also help us figure out how to handle and better respond to the incoming adversities. Epictetus summed it up pretty well —
“When you are going to perform an act, remind yourself what kind of things the act may involve. When going to the swimming pool, reflect on what may happen at the pool: some will splash the water, some will push against one another, others will abuse one another, and others will steal. Thusly you have mentally prepared yourself to undertake the act, and you can say to yourself: I now intend to bathe, and am prepared to maintain my will in a virtuous manner, having warned myself of what may occur.” — Epictetus
Although, there’s more to stoicism than the above-mentioned points. But, for an intro, these points would help you get a gist of stoic philosophy. If you’re curious, here’s a mini task for you that I want you to do the moment you’re done reading this article — Try researching about the phrase “Amor Fati” in stoic context. It would help you understand the fatalistic point of view in stoicism. Once you’re done, take some time to internalize it to your life and current circumstances.
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