Dear Siblings: How to Add a Little Stoicism in Your Life and Control Your Emotions
The dude on the left is Zeno of Citium, from the times of Ancient Greece. He’s known as the founder of stoicism, and without getting too philosophical here, it’s simply a straight-forward school of thought that embraces the “don’t let emotions rule over you” attitude. To be honest, there isn’t much room to get too philosophical on this subject because it wasn’t meant to be complicated and debatable. Making it one reason why I’m an enthusiast of Stoicism. Another reason is because I believe the world needs more of it.
The current defect of humans
People far too often allow uncontrollable events, control their lives. Events which yes, may be damaging and critical to some, but change so rapidly that, in a few months or even weeks, will become completely irrelevant. We are of course living in a highly connected world, where people’s empathy can easily expand. But it’s expanding too far and too thin. As a result, the individual doesn’t take into account the things that ACTUALLY matter because they’re too focused on some “trendy” problem that either A) will be solved in the near future or B) won’t be solved soon, but give it time and it certainly will be.
With too much to care about, along with emotionally un-disciplined responses, an influx of people are continually trying to solve non-pressing issues in a poor and time-consuming manner.
“Life is long if you know how to use it. But one man is gripped by insatiable greed, another by a laborious dedication to useless tasks” -Seneca
For example: the issue of global warming. I’m not saying this isn’t a non-pressing issue, but environmental activists seem to be too caught up in the denials of those who don’t believe in global warming. Activists’ attention is not being used productively, just wasted on trying to change the minds of stubborn people (of which we are all guilty). In turn, deniers are completely wasting their time, energy, and thoughts. If you don’t believe it exists…then why even turn your attention towards it?
I understand that an issue like global warming is extremely pressing to everyone around the world, and mass attention/anxiety must be created to develop the much needed solutions. But it’s 2018. We have electric cars, mass production of alternative energy, and governmental policies geared toward solving the problem. It’s important to understand which problems take time to solve, which takes direct action to solve, and which takes a little of both. The number one problem with emotionally-prone people is they have no patience and demand change over night. Their thin skin lets every little incident pass through.
How stoicism can help
Being a stoic doesn’t necessarily make you a bad ass, or some stone-cold “i feel nothing” type. A stoic is someone who is in control of their emotions. Meaning, they’re self-disciplined enough to acknowledge their automatic impulses to outside events. Then, going a step forward, a stoic logically responds to the situation at hand. Stoics have the ability to manually step outside the box, the box of emotions.
“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed” -Peter Drucker
When you train yourself to be more and more in control of your emotions, key characteristics begin to develop that will undoubtedly reshape your life. Self-discipline, time management, courage and confidence, preparedness, and most importantly: indifference to the stuff you can’t control, all come to light. All of which every human needs.
I want you, while you’re still young, to build these characteristics early on so that you’ll have a dominate lead on life compared to others your age. I highly recommend reading this article to learn about exercises you can do in order to implement stoicism in your life and better develop the above characteristics. Also, there’s a book sitting on the shelf in Nolan’s room titled “On the Shortness of Life” by Seneca, another ancient practitioner and leader of stoicism (please, please, please read it. It’s only around 100 pages long).
Some quotes I've come across and saved. Think about them:
- You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing everything with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.
- If you can’t control what’s happening to you, control the way you respond.
- A hungry people neither listens to reason nor is mollified by fair treatment or swayed by any appeals. -Seneca
Also, just google “Zeno quotes”. Pretty amazing.
