3 Ancient Methods From a Roman Emperor to Become Truly Confident
A recipe to discover your inner power
Former Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius was a great thinker, and his words light up the lives of many people still.
According to his teachings, there are 3 methods that can help us become truly confident, and these are:
1-Learn to control your mind
2-Understand the concept of injury
3-Memento Mori
1-Learn to control your mind
Before I learned about Stoicism, it was never a thought of mine to think that outside events were separate from my own perceptions. This mindset resulted in me blaming my circumstance on things beyond my control, instead of working on my inner dynamics. So it was never leading me to solve the actual causes, and I was only focusing on outside reflections of what was inside.
But only after learning about Marcus Aurelius’s teachings and shifting my mindset, I started to solve my long-term issues and realized that although outside events had some effects, my mind was the key element in each.
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” ― Marcus Aurelius
This is also essential for self-esteem because most of the time, low confidence comes from issues that didn’t get to be resolved, and the root causes that did not get to be discovered.
So to become truly confident, understanding that your true power relies on your capability to control your mind, and not your ability to control outside events is essential.
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” ― Marcus Aurelius
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
— Marcus Aurelius
2-Understand the concept of injury
Humans are sensitive creatures, and our egos make it hard for us to have thick skin against outside influences. Especially about the subjects that we feel vulnerable about, each word we hear can stain our minds. But Marcus Aurelius’s approach to the concept of injury is thought-provoking, and he states that:
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
Also, another stoic quote by Epictetus supports this idea, and it goes as:
“Stand by a rock and insult it, and what have you accomplished? If someone responds to insult like a rock, what has the abuser gained with his invective?”
Therefore these master thinkers have come to the understanding that feeling insulted is an act of acceptance and unless you embody it, it is not really there.
This is an important teaching for self-confidence because whether these are insults or the words that impose limiting beliefs, to have a guard against them and realize that only through our acceptance they can become powerful, is essential to sustain unshakeable self-respect.
3-Memento Mori
The meaning of the phrase Memento Mori is “Remember that you must die.”.
But you may ask yourself, “Why would I want to think about the end?”.
And it is because the scarcity of our time is what makes everything ten times more valuable.
For most of us, although death is the second most important event after being born, many of us try to keep it out of our minds like it’s the plague amongst our thoughts.
And although this behavior is mostly related to us trying to function through our daily lives, when we forget about death overall, it can lead to regrets later on. This is because, without remembering that your time is too precious to waste due to its’ scarcity, we can become too careless.
On this subject, Marcus Aurelius states that:
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
Also, by understanding that life is too short, we can use this phrase as a wake-up call to increase our self-confidence, and remember to live to the fullest by remembering that we do not have forever.
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Final thoughts
Former Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius has left behind many valuable lessons that thousands of years after his passing, we still learn from him.
According to his teachings, there are 3 methods that can help us build our self-esteem, and these are:
1-Learn to control your mind
2-Understand the concept of injury
3-Memento Mori
Thank you for reading.
-E.K.