How To Think Like A Stoic, Learn Like A Stoic, Live Like A Stoic

When you were a child, learning new things was fun.

Getting better was exciting.

Each new pursuit was another small step into the big world. By increasing your capabilities you could live more and more at the level of the adults you looked up to.

With a little study and a lot of application, you developed an understanding of how things worked and enjoyed increasing access to common knowledge.

Colours, numbers, letters. Animal sounds, ball games, nursery rhymes.

Like these examples, most of the things you would learn had a clear path to proficiency.

At a low level, you absorbed new stimuli with hunger, heeded new instructions with care, attempted new challenges without reserve, and set the conditions to allow your brain to create new neural pathways that would continue to strengthen through repetition.

At a higher level, you started small, learned a little, tried a little, adjusted your approach based on mistakes, and practised, practised, practised.

It was a simple, repeatable set of steps we all came to recognise as the way to get better at almost anything.