Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming
destructive emotions and these are the following ideas or rather more clarification on the point.
Its principal focus was how to live a virtuous life, to maximize happiness and reduce negative
Emotions
The power of judgment.
“You take things you don’t control and define them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and so of course when ‘bad’ things happen, or the ‘good’ ones don’t, you blame the gods and feel hatred for the people responsible or those you decide to make responsible.” – Marcus Aurelius.
If we, for example, avoid poverty, we will not only spend our lives avoiding it. But if fate decides we become poor, we become absolutely miserable. The problem is that both wealth and poverty aren’t up to us, therefore judging one as good and the other as bad will make us chase the one that’s good and avoid the other. This means that we live our lives in fear and worry and be miserable when the things that we adverse overcome us and what we crave don’t. Reminding yourself that everything you ever pursue, you do not control, the outcome will help you have peace of mind in times of worry.
“Much of our bad behavior stems from trying to apply those criteria. If we limited ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to our own actions, we’d have to challenge God, or to treat other people as enemies.”-
Marcus Aurelius.
The power of indifference.
Categorized into two:
-Not in our control
-In our control
Most things are not up to us. Think of external things like our friends, partners, the economy, things that politicians say or the deterioration of our bodies. Yes, we can influence these matters, but the economy can still fall, and our intimate partners can still cheat or die. At the end of the day, there is nothing we can do to exclude misfortune. Matters in our control are opinions which are our own actions. In other words, the position we take towards the world around us. Someone who is severely ill doesn’t have much control over the disease. We can use different healing techniques. I hope that the patient recovers but the results are not up to us. Nevertheless, the patient can decide which position he takes in the situation. Stoics see emotions as not emotions itself that decide our moods but the position we take towards that emotion. You can see them as sensations that come and go like waves in the ocean.
The power of radical acceptance.
Imagine that someone stabs you with a knife. You can either ignore it or accept the fact that it has already happened. The only thing that will lead to healing is acceptance that the brutality took place. We cannot change things for the better when we don’t acknowledge them. We cannot put a bandage on a wound if we deny its existence in the first place and if we live life ignorantly based on lies, we might change a false reality.
Stanley