The Little Book of Stoicism

Chapter 1

The Promise of Stoic Philosophy

No tree becomes deep-rooted and sturdy unless strong winds blow against it. This shaking and pulling is what makes the tree tighten its grip and plant its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those grown in a sunny valley. “Why then,” asks Seneca, “do you wonder that good men are shaken in order that they may grow strong?” Just like for the trees, heavy rain and strong winds are to the advantage of good people, it’s how they may grow calm, disciplined, humble, and strong.

Just like the tree must tighten its grip not to fall down with every breeze, we must strengthen our position if we don’t want to be swept off our feet by every trifle. This is what Stoic philosophy is here for—it will make you stronger and let the same rain and wind appear lighter and keep you on your feet at all times. In other words, it will prepare you to deal more effectively with whatever stormy weather life throws at you.

From wrestling philosophers to emotional wolves, this first chapter covers all you need to know about the promise of Stoic philosophy, or why you should get into Stoicism.

Warning: This book will contain some scary words like eudaimonia, areté, or virtue. Their unknown looks will make you want to turn the page, so brace yourself and stand strong. Despite the resistance, it will pay off to hang in there and you might even add them to your everyday vocabulary. And hey, this wouldn’t be ancient philosophy without at least some scary words.

Practice the Art of Living: Become a Warrior-Philosopher

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus

How to live a good life? This classic philosophic question stands at the origin of the primary concern of Stoic philosophy: How to live one’s life, or “the art of living.” Stoic teacher Epictetus compared philosophy to artisans: As wood is to the carpenter, and bronze to the sculptor, so are our own lives the proper material in the art of living. Philosophy is not reserved for wise old men, it’s an essential craft for everybody who wants to learn how to live (and die) well. Every life situation presents a blank canvas or a block of marble that we can sculpt and train on, so that over a lifetime we can master our craft. That’s basically what Stoicism does, it teaches us how to excel in life, it prepares us to face adversity calmly, and simply helps us sculpt and enjoy a good life.

What makes someone good at living? According to Epictetus, it’s neither wealth, nor high-office, nor being a commander. There must be something else. Just like someone who wants to be good at handwriting must practice and know a lot about handwriting, or someone who wants to be good in music must study music, someone who wants to be good at living, therefore, must have good knowledge of how to live. Makes sense, right? Seneca, another important Stoic philosopher we’ll get to know in Chapter 2, said that “[the philosopher] is the one who knows the fundamental thing: how to live.”

A “philosopher” literally translates from the Greek into a “lover of wisdom,” someone who loves to learn how to live, someone who wants to attain practical wisdom concerning how to actually live their life. As Epictetus told us before, if we want to become good at living, we must attain knowledge on how to live. This might surprise you, but philosophy is really a matter of practice, learning how to sculpt our lives. Thinking and philosophizing about the blank block of marble won’t teach us how to skillfully use chisel and mallet. The Stoics were particularly concerned with applying philosophy to everyday life. They saw themselves as veritable warriors of the mind and thought the primary reason to study philosophy was to put it into practice.

This is a great comparison made by author Donald Robertson in his book The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. He said that in ancient times, the ideal philosopher was a veritable warrior of the mind, but in modern times, “the philosopher has become something more bookish, not a warrior, but a mere librarian of the mind.” Think of the old grey philosopher teacher. So we want to be warriors and what matters most is not our ability to recite Stoic principles, but to actually live them out in the real world. As Epictetus asked his students, “If you didn’t learn these things in order to demonstrate them in practice, what did you learn them for?” He continued that they (his students) were not hungry and courageous enough to go out in the real world and demonstrate the theory in practice, “Which is why I would like to escape to Rome to see my favorite wrestler in action, he, at least, puts policy into practice.”

True philosophy is a matter of little theory and a lot of practice, like wrestling in the ancient and surfing in the modern world. Remember, in surfing, we get to practice in the water after a quick theory part on the beach. Heavy waves are better teachers than heavy school books. And Stoicism demands exactly that, to go out there in the real world and vigorously apply what we’ve learned in the classroom. Our lives offer the perfect training ground for daily practice with its uncountable green waves and blank marble blocks.

This practical “art of living” dimension of Stoicism holds two main promises: First, it teaches how to live a happy and smoothly flowing life, and second, it teaches you how to stay emotionally resilient to retain that happy and smoothly flowing life even in the face of adversity. Let’s dive into the first promise and tackle the first of the scary words: eudaimonia.

Promise #1: Eudaimonia

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

Imagine the best version of yourself. Look inside, do you see and know who that highest version of you is, the one who acts right in all situations, the one who makes no mistakes and seems unbeatable? If you’re anything like me and have been trying to improve yourself, then you probably know this ideal version of yourself. Well, in Greek, this best version would be the inner daimon, an inner spirit or divine spark. For the Stoics and all other schools of ancient philosophy, the ultimate goal of life was eudaimonia, to become good (eu) with your inner daimon. (Not to be confused with demon, which is a bad spirit.)

The Stoics believed that nature wants us to become that highest version of ourselves. This is why the inner daimon (or divine spark) has been planted within all of us like a seed, so that we have it in our natural potential to become that highest version of ourselves. In other words, it’s our nature to complete what’s been started with that divine seed and bring our human potential to life. To become good with our inner daimon, to live in harmony with our ideal self is, therefore, to get as close as possible to that high potential self.

We should close the gap between who we’re capable of being (our ideal self) and who we actually are in that moment. How can we do that? The Stoics had a word for that too: areté. In short, areté directly translates as “virtue” or “excellence,” but it has a profounder meaning—something like “expressing the highest version of yourself in every moment.” We’ll dive deeper into that in Chapter 3, but you can already see that Stoicism deals with your moment-to-moment actions and with living as close as possible to your ideal self.

The Stoics’ overarching goal was eudaimonia; to be good with your inner daimon, to live in harmony with your ideal self, to express your highest version of yourself in every moment. But what does that mean exactly? The most common translation of the Greek word eudaimonia is happiness. The translations “flourishing” or “thriving,” however, capture the original meaning better because they indicate a form of continuing action—you can only be good with your daimon when your moment-to-moment actions are in harmony with your ideal self. You flourish at living well, and only as a consequence you’ll feel happy.

Eudaimonia refers more to the overall quality of someone’s life rather than a temporary mood such as happiness. It’s a condition in which a person is thriving and living optimally well and supremely happy. As Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, puts it, “happiness is a smoothly flowing life.” This entails that your life generally flows smoothly. Let’s conclude that eudaimonia is a happy and smoothly flowing life that comes from thriving at bringing our moment-to-moment actions into harmony with our highest self.

This promise of eudaimonia entails that we’re armed with all we need to deal with whatever challenge we’re facing in life. How else can we stay happy even when life gets tough? Because life is pretty easy when things are going well, it only gets arduous when things seem to turn against us, when we’re facing difficulties and struggles. This brings us to the second promise of Stoicism: Philosophy trains us to be able to take on every obstacle in life with the right mindset so that life keeps on going smoothly.

Promise #2: Emotional Resilience

“To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.” – Seneca

“But what is philosophy?” asks Epictetus. “Doesn’t it mean making preparation to meet the things that come upon us?” Yes, he says, philosophy prepares us to endure whatever happens. “Otherwise, it would be like the boxer leaving the ring because he took some punches.” We could actually leave the ring without any consequences, but what if we’d abandon the pursuit of wisdom? “So, what should each of us say to every trial we face? This is what I’ve trained for, this is my discipline!” Hey, a boxer who gets punched in the face won’t leave the ring, it’s what he prepared for, it’s his discipline. And the same is true for philosophers; just because life slaps, kicks, spits, and knocks us out doesn’t mean we should give up and leave, it means we should get back up and keep on getting better. Such is life—it’s like our boxing ring, punches and kicks are what we’ve signed up for, this is our discipline.

“Unharmed prosperity cannot endure a single blow,” says Seneca, but a man who has gone through countless misfortunes “acquires a skin calloused by suffering.” This man fights to the ground and carries on the fight even on his knees. He will never give up. The Stoics loved wrestling metaphors, so Marcus Aurelius similarly says, “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.” We need to be prepared for sudden attacks. Nobody will ever tackle a dancer. The dancer will never get choked by adversity like a wrestler. So, as warrior-philosophers, we know that life will be challenging. Actually, we should even be rubbing our hands together and be looking forward to take some punches, knowing they will make us stronger and grow our skin thicker.

This is why we should want to engage and train in this fight they call life. Because we want to be strong, we want to live happy and smoothly flowing lives. We want to handle ourselves and our actions when life gets tough. We want to be a tower of strength, unshakable even at the peak of a rage attack. When others panic, we want to stay cool, well-considered, and be able to be the best we can be.

Practicing Stoicism helps us develop the tools to deal as effectively as humanly possible with whatever kicks and punches life throws at us. No matter what happens in our lives—we’re ready for anything—we’re prepared to take hooks and side-kicks, never give up, and make the best of it. This is the promise of Stoic philosophy. Yet, right now, if you get punched in the face, what’s going to happen? You get emotional. Like everybody else, you either angrily fight back, or more likely, you start crying. The Stoics identified strong emotions as our ultimate weakness; especially when we let them dictate our behavior. They’re toxic to eudaimonia and they’re at the root of all human suffering. Unfortunately, according to the Stoics, most of us are enslaved to passions—strong negative emotions such as irrational fear, grief, or anger. This is why so many of us are miserable, we’re far away from being a tower of strength, we’re far away from being at good terms with our ideal self. Our passions cause us to act far beneath of what we’re capable of.

If we want to be able to act like our ideal self, say the Stoics, we need to keep our emotions in check, we need to tame them so they won’t get in the way of the good life. No, thank you, I can’t afford to panic right now.

Tame Restricting Emotions (

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Unemotional)

The promise of Stoic philosophy consists of both the supremely happy life (eudaimonia) and the preparation (ready for anything) to deal effectively with whatever life throws at us. Yet, we can only deal well with life’s challenges when we’re emotionally resilient and don’t let our emotions jerk us around.

This is why we need to make progress toward taming and overcoming disturbing desires and emotions, so that, as Seneca puts it, the glitter of gold doesn’t dazzle our eyes more than the flash of a sword, and that we can easily wave aside what other people crave and fear. This overcoming of one’s emotions is sometimes called the Stoic “therapy of the passions” and might be the reason why Epictetus said: “The philosopher’s school is a doctor’s clinic.”

Now, if we imagine a doctor’s clinic to have a couch in it, then, with some cliché, we get a psychotherapist’s room. Back in Epictetus’ days, when you had problems with your mind or soul, you wouldn’t see a shrink but a philosopher instead—they were the preferred doctors of the mind. The Stoics were great observers of the human mind and actually had many important psychological insights. They realized, for example, that what makes insults hurtful isn’t their content, but our interpretation of those insults. They had a proper understanding of our mind and developed psychological techniques to prevent and deal with negative emotions (most techniques will be covered in the second part of this book).

Although Stoicism is a philosophy, it has a significant psychological component to it. Many of its beliefs, such as the goal to thrive as human beings, go hand in hand with modern research in Positive Psychology; this is something I find highly intriguing about Stoicism. It’s beyond the scope of this book to look at the science behind the Stoic ideas, but if you happen to read a book on Positive Psychology, you’ll see the consonance (Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage is a fantastic start.)

Just as there are ailments to the body, there are ailments to the mind; and the Stoics were well aware of that. They said it’s impossible to flourish in life while being tormented by irrational emotions. Therefore, we need apatheia—the ability to overcome these interfering emotions. That’s where the word “apathy” comes from, and it’s a main reason for the classic misunderstanding that the Stoics were somehow unemotional or seeking to suppress their feelings. The other reason for that misunderstanding comes from the lowercase word stoic which means to “suck it up” or having a “stiff upper lip” and has absolutely nothing to do with the uppercase Stoicism this book is all about. Let’s clear out this “Stoics are emotionless” misunderstanding right now.

Stoicism has nothing to do with suppressing or hiding one’s emotions or being emotionless. Rather, it’s about acknowledging our emotions, reflecting on what causes them, and learning to redirect them for our own good. In other words, it’s more about unslaving ourselves from negative emotions, more like taming rather than getting rid of them.

Imagine strong emotions to be like your inner wolf—immensely powerful when let loose and able to pull you wherever it wants to. Emotions activate an action tendency—when you feel angry, for example, you have the tendency to clench your fists, shout, and throw stuff. Basically, when the inner wolf is angry, we let it take over, and then we blindly follow the action tendency and act out. What the Stoics found, however, is that we don’t need to follow that tendency. We can train ourselves to act calmly despite feeling angry, act courageously despite feeling anxious, and going east despite the wolf pulling west.

Fortunately, we don’t need to pretend the wolf isn’t there, or even kill it (which isn’t even possible). The Stoics want us to tame and learn to understand that wolf. Instead of letting it dictate our actions when it’s angry, anxious, or hungry, we act calmly despite the anger. It can snarl and howl as much as it wants, we don’t fear it and act as we choose to. The wolf doesn’t have a say in our decisions any longer despite feeling the action tendency.

The goal isn’t to eliminate all emotions, the goal is to not get overwhelmed by them despite their immense power. We feel the emotional wolf, but we keep on our path despite it pulling in another direction. “Okay, the wolf wants to freak out, but what would it help?” we say to ourselves. We rise above our emotions, we can hear it snarl, but we know we neither need to listen nor follow along.

The Stoics weren’t unemotional people with hearts of stone. They acknowledged that desires and emotions are part of nature, but we have it within our power to rise above them and not get (too) disturbed by them. “No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love for human beings.” says Seneca. “The goal which it assigns to us is to be useful, to help others, and to take care, not only of ourselves, but of everyone.” The Stoics do care for their loved ones and fellow citizens; they just tame their emotions so they won’t get irrationally overwhelmed by them. As Seneca puts it, there’s nothing impressive about “putting up with that which one doesn’t feel.” Stoic author Donald Robertson explains it well: “A brave man isn’t someone who doesn’t experience any trace of fear whatsoever but someone who acts courageously despite feeling anxiety.”

The Stoics want us to conquer our passions by becoming stronger than them and not by eliminating them. We will always feel the emerging emotional wolf, but we can train ourselves to recognize our tendency toward following along, and then deliberately choose whether to follow along or not. Stoicism will help us get less plagued by negative emotions and, at the same time, experience more positive emotions such as joy or tranquility. It’s important to notice, however, that for the Stoics, these positive emotions are more like an added bonus than a motive by themselves. Let’s look closer at tranquility as a by-product of practicing Stoicism.

Practice Stoicism and Become more Tranquil as a By-Product

It may come as a surprise, but Stoicism is a rather joyful philosophy of life. When you read the Stoics, you find cheerful and optimistic people fully enjoying what life has to offer. They weren’t unemotional, they just recognized that strong emotions were their weakness and stood in their way to live as they’re capable of.

Remember, the ultimate goal of life is eudaimonia—the happy and smoothly flowing life that comes from thriving at expressing your ideal version moment to moment to moment. And if you’re enslaved to your emotional wolf, then you panic and follow your action tendencies that are way beneath of what you’re capable of. That’s why the Stoics want us to minimize the effects that strong emotions have on our lives, they want us to tame that wolf so that we can stay at the steering wheel at all times instead of letting the wolf take over whenever it wants to. Only then can we express our highest version and lastly live a happy and smoothly flowing life.

So when we’re not enslaved to our emotions, we can express the highest version of ourselves in every moment. When we do that, there’s simply no room for regret, fear, or insecurity. What results from this is a really helpful side effect—tranquility. In today’s hectic world, it’s what so many of us seek, to be able to stay calm, feel confident and secure, even in the midst of chaos. If we practice Stoicism, this is exactly what we get as a by-product. It’s a by-product because it’s not what the Stoics sought in the first place. They didn’t seek tranquility, they sought eudaimonia, and tranquility came as an added (and welcomed) bonus. So it wouldn’t really be consistent with Stoicism to practice it for tranquility’s sake.

What’s tranquility anyway? Seneca talks about the power of euthymia in his classic letters. He tells us that euthymia, which gets translated as tranquility, is all about knowing your path and walking that path. It’s the feeling we get when we truly and utterly trust ourselves. You’re confident that what you’re doing is right, and you don’t need to listen left and right for what others have to say. You don’t need to second guess and compare yourself to others all the time. You trust in what you’re doing because you’re trying your best, and you’re living accordingly to your values and know it’s all you can do.

It’s the calm confidence you feel when you’re living your authentic self in integrity with your highest values. You get that peace of mind, says Seneca, because you have an unchanging standard you live by, not like the rest of mankind who “continually ebb and flow in their decisions, floating in a condition where they alternately reject things and seek them.”

Stoicism will give you many anchors to hold yourself onto, so you can find your path and walk it assured. This will cause you to gain an inner tranquility, a calm confidence at all times, even when life gets tough and shows its meanest kicks and punches. Because you know why you do what you do. You have this inner security that you’re doing the right thing and, come what may, you’re steadfast like that tower of strength, and nothing can root you out.