Stoic Serenity: Why Embracing the Uncontrollable Leads to Inner Peace
A fundamental lesson of Stoicism to reflect on.
Stoicism is a philosophy designed to make us more resilient, happier, virtuous, and wiser. Practising Stoicism will help us become better humans, parents, and professionals.
Stoicism holds that the key to a good, happy life is cultivating an excellent mental state, which the Stoics identified with virtue and being rational. Moreover, the ideal life is in harmony with Nature, of which we are all part and an attitude of calm indifference towards external events.
A foundational principle is that some things are within our control and some are not and that much of our unhappiness is caused by thinking that we can control things that we can’t.
We can not control what happens to us, we do not control what the people around us say or do, and we can’t even fully control our bodies, which get damaged and sick and ultimately die without regard for our preferences. So the only thing we influence is how we think about things, the judgements we make and how we act.
