Mindset - Stoicism

If you’ve heard of stoicism, you might believe it is an appearance. Most people think being stoic means you keep a good poker face or strong body language during a challenge.

That is not correct.

In the year 300, the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno defined stoicism by saying, “virtue, wisdom, and harmony come from being indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and pleasure and pain.”

Or said another way, stoicism is the ability to be cool, calm, and collected regardless of life’s ups and downs.

Being stoic is not about looking unbothered or pretending to be unbothered. It's about learning to truly be unbothered by whatever challenges life throws at you.

Learning to become stoic is a multi-step process that you’ll learn during Stoicism Month. For now, I’ll talk about the first of the steps: Realize that anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else’s screw-up.

A driver cuts you off in rush-hour traffic. You get upset. Now instead of just being stuck in traffic, you’re stuck in traffic, and you’re upset, and you’ve surrendered control of your happiness to the other driver. None of that helps you. It only hurts you.

A politician enacts a new policy you don’t like. You get angry. Now there’s a policy you don’t like and you’re unhappy, and you’ve given that politician the ability to control your emotions with their actions. That doesn’t help. If you want to go protest, form opposing legislation, or take action, cool, do it – but there’s a reason you need to be angry to do any of that, so why allow someone else to dictate your emotional state?

You're running around trying to get your kids out the door to school when you stub your toe on a Lego that was left out? You get frustrated and upset and yell at the kids for not putting their toys away like you asked them to. Why? Your kids didn’t do what you wanted them to do. Ok, so fix it. Take away a reward, institute a punishment, or explain to them what they did wrong. But you can do those things while still being perfectly calm and collected. None of these actions requires you to lose your cool. So, don’t allow a 6-year-old and a Lego to have control over your mood and emotional state.

When you get worked up by a situation, you’re punishing yourself for someone else’s screw-up. That. Is. Nuts. When your kid doesn’t do their homework, do you give yourself a time out? When someone robs a bank, does the police officer put themselves in jail? When a basketball player commits a flagrant foul, does the referee eject himself from the game? Of course not. When someone else screws up, you’re supposed to punish them, not you. So, stop getting upset as a result of other people’s actions.

When you feel yourself getting bothered by someone or something, practice pausing and remembering that anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else’s screw-up.

Other people and events cannot make us stressed or unhappy. Only we can make ourselves this way when we choose to become bothered by these things.

Remember the words of Viktor Frankl, “between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” to start your journey of becoming a stoic, practice responding to situations by pausing and choosing your response rather than immediately, and carelessly reacting. You'll notice your happiness and peace start to hang around for more of the day.