You Can Be Happier
What I learned from the Stoic Challenge on cultivating more joy in my life
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. — Marcus Aurelius —
I’ve long been interested in the philosophy of the Stoics.
However, I need to preface this by saying that though I’ve long been interested I’ve yet to delve deeply into the written works of the Stoics and this article is written from the perspective of something at the start of this journey.
As I continue on this journey I’d love to hear more from those who have studied Stoicism.
Though I had read a few books by modern Stoics I’d failed to really understand something very key to the philosophy of the Stoics, which is that their goal was to cultivate more joyful lives.
Lives that were peaceful and filled with love.
Like many, I had long thought that the Stoics were well, stoic, which is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as, “a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining.”
Key in that definition is the phrase “without showing their feelings”.
However, in his excellent book The Stoic Challenge, philosophy professor William B. Irvine challenges that narrative, maintaining that though we might think of stoics as:
Emotionless beings whose primary goal was to stand there and grimly take whatever life threw at them, but this was not the case. Their goal wasn’t to banish emotion but to minimize the number of negative emotions — such as feeling of frustration, anger, grief and envy — that they experienced. They had nothing against the experience of positiveemotions — including delight and even joy (Irvine, 2022: 17).
Irvine explains that the primary goal of Stoics was to experience tranquility and thus they avoided experiencing negative emotions while cultivating positive emotions. According to Irvine, Seneca argued that wise people welcome adversity as a training exercise and might even “take delight in it” (Ibid).
The Stoics didn’t only see opportunities in challenges that naturally happened, they actually sought them out. And not only to make them tougher or more resilient but to make their lives more joyful.
And the primary way they did this was by not allowing negative emotions when encountering a challenge.
Think about that.
The Stoics didn’t just not react when they became angry or frustrated. They didn’t get angry or frustrated in the first place.
Imagine how much freedom you would have if you didn’t react negatively to all the little challenges that arise every day.
This book and the lessons within it, have game changers for me. When I face a challenges in my daily life, I try to think about how the Stoics might approach them and what the stoic challenge is.
What can I learn from this?
How can this make me a better leader, a happier person?
I’ve started doing an audit at the end of the day to see what lessons I can learn and how I could do better tomorrow. But also to celebrate what went well today.
After I read The Stoic Challenge, I delved into William B. Irvine’s blog and then I ordered his earlier book on Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy in which he writes of the stoics:
The Stoics, as we have seen, thought tranquility was worth pursuing, and the tranquility they sought, it will be remembered, is a psychological state in which we experience few negative emotions, such as anxiety, grief, and fear, but an abundance of positive emotions, especially joy. The Stoics did not argue that tranquility was valuable; rather, they assumed that in the lives of most people its value would at some point become apparent (Irvine, 2009:226).
How did the Stoics cultivate positive emotions? In his blog post on What Stoicism Isn’t, Irvine writes:
When we read about the Stoics or read their works, what we encounter are individuals who can best be described as cheerful. They were very good at finding life’s sources of delight and savoring them to the fullest. They had friends and spouses. They were loved and in turn requited the love they received (Irvine, 2014).
The Stoics seemed to have had an innate gratitude practice. They were practising what psychologist Rick Hanson calls “taking in the good”: focusing their reticular activating systems on what was going well by literally basking in it.
I’ve been doing this for a few years ago and it’s enhanced my life immeasurably. Each day I also jot down a few things that I’m grateful for. This helps me see how much is going right in my life.
Since I began reading more about the Stoics — and I’m still very early in this journey — I’ve become noticeably calmer and happier. I worry less about things that might be deemed challenging in my daily life.
Instead, I try to see them as opportunities to learn and grow and ultimately, to cultivate more joy in my life. It’s a work in progress definitely, but then so am I.
This article contains excerpts from two blogs in which I recount how the Stoic challenge has made me a better leader. You can find them here.