3 Things Of Ancient Stoicism That Help You to Get Better Quality of life

It’s still relevant until today

“Dig Within. Within is the wellspring of Good, and it always ready to bubble up if you just dig.” — Marcus Aurelius

The sentence above describes the main philosophy of Stoicism. This roman philosophy gives one the best advice I’ve ever heard in my entire life, however the subtle meaning of this ancient philosophy still not popular.

what’s the subtle meaning of stoicism? Eudaimonia.

Eudaimonia comes from Greek origin languages which means on good terms (eu) with your inner daimon, your highest self. It’s all about thriving and being happy in life.

If you’re normal human finding happiness might be your main purpose of life.

According to stoicism, happiness is when you don’t have any negative emotions. meanwhile, living in a borderless world feeling negative emotion can come to you easily. For instance, being jealous of other people’s success or achievement is common today. After watching people on social media showing off their possessions we often feel like not as lucky as them and start to compare what we have to them.

This sort of feeling perceives difficulties in developing happiness as a result of negative emotions remain to yourself.

So, how can we achieve eudaimonia?

Live with Areté

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting carefree happiness.’ — Seneca

Greek word areté has the closest meaning with “virtue” or “excellence”.

According to Brian Johnson, the philosopher behind the website optimize.me translates arete into “Expressing the highest version of yourself moment to moment to moment.”

In every moment of your life visualize a higher line indicating what you are capable of and the lower line what you’re doing. The method of live with areté is by close the gap between what you’re capable of with what you’re actually doing.

Stretch your imagination about how the best version of you’d react to certain events and try your best to do the same as him. Practicing live with areté and actualizing the best version of yourself, That’s mean being on good terms with your inner daimon, that’s when you achieve the happy and smoothly flowing life called eudaimonia.

Which is why we are not allowed to feel jealous of other people’s achievement and compare yourself to others. The only person you are allowed to compare is your own selves.

Focus on What You Control: Accept Whatever Happens and Make the Best of It.

“What is it then to be properly educated? It is learning to apply our natural preconceptions to the right things according to Nature, and beyond that to separate the things that lie within our power from those that don’t.” — Epicttetus

If you do stock investing, sometimes we have the temptations to check the stock price every day or even worse every hour. After seeing the stock price has plunged eventually we’d start to feel anxious or depressed as if you had decided the worst decision in your entire life. Checking stock almost every time is a perfect example of focusing on a thing you cannot control.

Or in other cases, when the exam has about to come you feel agitated and anxious thinking how hard the test is going to be. Instead of focusing on what you control such as study as hard as you can, we’re worried how difficult the test will be.

Nowadays, we often feel more tortured in our own imagination rather than reality. Stoicism teaches us to focus on what you can control and recommend us to separate things between what is in our power and what is not. That’s something we should always have at hand, thus we’re ready whatever life throws at us.

Take Responsibility: Get Good from Yourself

“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.” — Epictetus

If you ever wondered why you live a horrible life, feeling like the world against you eventually, you start to blame yourself for having a hard life.

Despite destiny is something you cannot change, your response towards external events is something that you can control. Don’t forget the previous point, focus on what you control.

Every external event that happens in this world is indifferent. Things not meant to be good or bad it depends on how you react to them makes them good or bad.

Therefore from now on, you’re able to practice voluntary judgment and choose positive responses in whatever conditions of external circumstances will annoy you. One of the methods is to give your mind time to thinking before responding impulsively.

These three things are only a few of Stoicism philosophy. Even though stoicism, is a guide for living in ancient roman but its value of life still relevant in the moment. Through learning and practicing this value of life I am sure that we can get a better quality of life.

Be happy