Do you mean “don’t be whiny and don’t be an a-hole?”
Yeah, I’m down with that.
Ryan Holiday wrote some books based in stoic principles for people in business but then it sort of got out of hand.
If you’re studying stoicism hoping to become a millionaire/billionaire you are not actually a stoic.
Several years ago I was introduced to CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and because of my personality I ran down the rabbit hole and found out it was based on Stoicism and started realizing that I was already a Stoic in my thinking but not in practice. Started learning more and applying it.
My personal philosophy for as long as I can remember is that you ALWAYS have a choice - at least in how you react to a situation. You have to give up the notion that you have control over other people and events and are only responsible for your own behavior and reactions. I had no idea this was Stoicism until I saw Ryan Holiday on The Daily Show a few months ago. That led me down a rabbit hole that had me listen to his "Lives of the Stoics". I'm not interested in his other self-help/business/marketing books, but I now have some Seneca and Marcus Aurelius in my to-read pile. It was kind of cool to know there was some 2,000-year-old wisdom out there backing up something I came to on my own.
More relatable:
"His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."
Being stoic and the philosophy of Stoicism are two different things. You should actually read the info in the link. I liken it more to Buddhism than anything else. Thinking about situations and really examining why you feel what you feel about them, and then learning ways of accepting your circumstances—that’s an incredibly healthy way to process things if you ask me.
I’ve found (at least here in rural Texas) that when one reaches middle age, one either digs in hard to the Christian Evangelical way of life or embraces Stoicism in all its glory. I’m a Stoic. I just found out about Stoicism last year, actually, and was happy to have a name to put with how I’d been living.
I grew up fairly deep in the Catholic Church. I wondered how my kids would act without the same prescriptive and overbearing moral framework.
Turns out lots of people are just good because it’s the right thing to do, they never needed the threat of eternal damnation to be decent people. Go figure.
It seems I am stoic about 96.4% of the time since about age 14 when it became obvious other people were hell bent on luring me out. I got bullied quite a bit and just didn’t see the point. When the bullies realized I was no fun they moved on.
Didn’t know about stoicism until I saw that Elizabeth Holmes had Meditations on her reading list. No offense to Marcus Aurelius, obviously.
I was definitely raised with Stoicism. Of note I think people are talking about two different things here. The practice of Stoicism (Marcus Aurelius, et al) vs being stoic, which really is unrelated to Stoicism
I've probably become stoic. Much of that is down to my work and health issues over the years.
No I wasn't like this year's ago.
Stoicsm is more likely as we age. And as the time we have left gets less. We value that time more.
Or at least we should.
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