Premeditate

Beliefs about events do. Bad feelings are caused by irrational beliefs, so if you’re feeling negative emotions, focus on the belief you hold about what happens. 

For stoics there is no good or bad, there’s only perception. And you control perception. 

Ignore the rest. We worry about things that we have no control over. But worrying never fixed anything. 

The stoics are saying that if you focus your energy on what you can change, you’re going to be a lot more productive and effective. 

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 idea is to identify challenges and points of failure so you can develop a plan to prevent them ahead of time.

Imagine the most important goal or project you are working on right now. Then fast forward 6 months and assume the project or goal has failed. Tell the story of how it happened and ask yourself, “What could cause this to go horribly wrong?”

Applying inversion to productivity you could ask, “What if I wanted to decrease my focus? How do I end up distracted?” 

The answer to these question may help you discover interruptions you can eliminate to free up more time and energy each day.

Avoiding mistakes is an under-appreciated way to improve.

In most jobs, you can enjoy some degree of success simply by being proactive and reliable—even if you are not particularly smart, fast, or talented in a given area. Sometimes it is more important to consider why people fail in life than why they succeed.

Failure Premortem/ Kill the company: one of the applications of inversion, in which you imagine the most important goal or project you are working on right now, then fast forward six months and assume the project or goal has failed.

Tell the story of how it happened. What went wrong? What mistakes did you make? How did it fail? 

It cannot be acquired by pleasurable experiences but only by identifying and realizing our own potential, moral and creative, in our specific environments, with our particular family, friends and colleagues, and helping others to do so. 

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.

Today, one of the most common destructive thought patterns is all-or-nothing thinking. In other words, perfectionism. ❗️ 

Pragmatism — as opposed to perfectionism — does not share the same paralyzing hang-ups; it takes what it can get. Our pursuits should be aimed at progress, no matter how much it’s possible for us to make.  🔗

“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.

“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.”