To be a Stoic

Stoicism has entered and touched my life and thoughts occasionally a few times over the last 10 years. I remember a direct report mentioning my philosophy is like stoic philosophy. It also pops up in some books like Sophie’s world. Also we keep using the term stoic to represent someone who is emotionless. As I dealt with the challenges of 2021,  the idea of understanding stoicism kept impinging on my thoughts. So this year I read a couple of books around stoicism

Books

The books that I ended up reading were How to be a stoic by Massimo Pigliucci and How to think like a roman emperor by Donald J Roberston. The first one introduces the principles of stoicism in easy to understand way and the second one talks about how Marcus Aurelius, the famous Roman emperor and stoic, used stoicism as a way of life in everything he did.

The Philosophy

I found a lot in these books to think about. The philosophy itself made a lot of sense. It was more a way of life than a codified philosophy demanding a lot from you. When it first came about, it was the middle ground between Cynicism (which believes in giving up all material pleasure and focusing on living a life of virtue) and Hedonism (which believes that pleasure is the greatest virtue in life). Stoicism believes in living a life of virtue but also accepts preferred indifferent (like health and some life basic needs) that make it easier to live a life of virtue but these “preferred indifferent” are not something you run behind. These are secondary but preferred. Between a preference of good health and bad, good health is preferred because it allows you to live a life of virtue.

What can you control and not

I also found out that the founding fathers of CBT and MBCT were also inspired by Stoicism and a lot of what stoicism guides can be found in CBT (cognitive behavior therapy). The idea of focusing on what you can and cannot control is central to the stoic philosophy. The way you go about life is to keep thinking about what are the things within your control and what are not. For those things that you cannot control, you essentially stop worrying or thinking about them. After reading this, I was able to take a pause occasionally on some stressful thought and ask myself – is this really within my control? If not, accept it as it is and move on with life.

Control the inputs not the outputs

The other thing I really connected with was the idea of controlling the inputs and not the outputs. Many times, we are focused on outputs or outcomes. Given how uncertain and complex life is, most of the times we cannot control the outcomes. What we can control are the inputs. So if you want to pass an exam, your goal should not be to pass the exam (because you cannot control the outcome) but instead to focus on the inputs and make them your goals (like studying a fixed number of hours or revising your coursework etc). Similarly at work, instead of trying to get the project done perfectly – we can focus on what inputs are going into a stream of work and set accountability on those.

Cognitive distancing

The last take away for me from stoicism was cognitive distancing. When faced with a stressful situation, we tend to react to it instead of think and act as needed. If we have good role-models, we can ask ourselves – what would X do in this situation? Or if not, you can ask yourself – what would a rational you do in this situation? You will find that the action this 3rd person will take can be very different from what you were about to do. It helps us make better decisions and hence get better outcomes.

Death

One of the other things that has stayed with me was a couple of sentences that meant “if we are so comfortable being limited in space, why are we so afraid of being limited in time?”. And another one around “we were dead for eons before being born. We were fine in those eons, so why do we worry about being dead again”. Accepting death and humanizing it as something that happens to you also seems to be a core part and perhaps it can make you worry less about the world and help you focus more on living.