How to Extract Positivity from Negative Minded People — the Stoic Way
What if a King showed you the whole process
Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome, allowed writers to criticize him. In year 161, it was rare. But the question is: why did he do that?
He knew something that others did not. I wish to share his method here.
Marcus Aurelius was an adopted son who was named future Emperor at the age of seventeen. Other than being the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome, he was a stoic philosopher. Meditations is his most famous book.
When I assign my own meanings to problems I face in my life, I often feel more relaxed. I look at the negative and try to define it in a way that helps me understand my experience.
Marcus Aurelius said, “begin every morning by saying, I shall meet with the troublemakers, the ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, unsocial, envious,” and then told himself that “all these things happen to them because they do not know what is good and evil.”
The Stoics accepted the world as it is. They believed in self-improvement by using the mind over matter thinking. “The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts,” he said.
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain…
