Stoicism and life's adversities

There is nothing more powerful and effective as a habit. Our repetition, routine, rituals and daily actions become our habits and eventually define our success and happiness.

Our habits make us survive, thrive and live ahead, even during hard times. Each repeated action we do becomes a habit, as we add fuel to the fire. The more we do it, the more it is reinforced.

• Some of the most successful and happy people are early risers. Waking up early could be the best productivity hack of your life. One does the best work in the morning when the day has just started. There are no distractions, no phones or doorbells ringing and no commotion at home.

• Studies show that early risers experience better emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

Although eating food is pleasurable, digesting it is our main purpose. We should eat to live rather than live to eat.

To practice this principle, one can eat plain foods without sauces or try intermittent fasting.

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

At the very root of Stoicism there is a very simple, though not easy, way of living: Take obstacles in your life and turn them into your advantage, control what you can and accept what you can’t.

“In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.”  -  Epictetus:

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.”

“Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”

“Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.”

Buddha taught that there is suffering in this world, it is inevitable, and the root cause of suffering is mainly the desires we feel.

We want something, always, and feel miserable when we don't get it.

Stoicism teaches us to live in accordance with nature and to accept that suffering will manifest in different ways in our lives.

Outside forces don’t make us feel things, our perceptions of them do. It’s easy to think otherwise, but doing so harms us and undermines our self-discipline.

The next time you run into an obstacle and feel resistance, don’t look at what’s around you. Instead, look within.

Whatever you do, there are individuals that you can learn from. If you can’t talk to them, you can study their story, works, techniques, successes, and failures, and discover patterns of success you can apply to your life.

Be careful not to turn it into an exercise of comparison and expect your progress to be the same as theirs. Their teachings and principles are supposed to help you grow, learn, and create. 

Chaos is the natural state of the universe. There are more ways things can go wrong than ways things can go right. But chaos is a potential threat and that’s why we like orderly and ordering things.

Understand that there will always be problems in your life. Don’t expect to solve every problem or to always do the right thing. Simply do the best in your power, but don’t try so hard that you create more problems than solve.

Meditation is a place to view consciousness in its entirety, to see problems as they arise, and to watch them pass. Through it, is easier to see that all those who do bad things, small or big, are like ourselves except in different stages of development.

Knowing that and that we all need to minimize problems, achieve our desires and cooperate makes it easier to accept and deal with things as they come.

The central message of Stoicism is that we do not control life and our situations, but we control how we respond to those circumstances.

The thinking of the Stoics related to anger management, the endurance of hardships, fear of death, and handling of success or failure, is extremely relevant in today's world.

Though earlier people misread stoicism as a philosophy based on austerity and lack of emotion, now there is a resurgence in the real thinking of stoicism, which was overlooked all these years.

Stoicism is finding resonance in today's complex world, and its philosophies seem to be understood in the intended sense.

“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”

The Stoics viewed an insult from a trusted friend or mentor as something that would benefit them, a real occasion for self-improvement that should be received with gratitude.

You should pay extra attention to the input of the people you respect, because they have some important insights about you. An insult from someone you respect is an insult informed by experience, and it should be careful considered, even if it’s painful.

There is nothing wrong with achieving monetary success; however, you should never compromise your principles in its pursuit. 

You are only as strong as the people around you.

You can control whom you interact with, so build a strong personal and professional coalition: hire people with positive energy and create a circle of friends from different backgrounds for engaging conversations.