Stoicism is one of the helping to heal ourselves philosophy. Since modern times have begun, we lost ourselves. After losing ourselves, we started to find a way to happy life. But never enough of what we have, we want more and more. Another side, we attribute the meaning of happiness to them but we’re in the wrong way, we don’t need anything, we have to accept it and then love ourselves first.
Life is a long journey, I can’t say “life is beautiful” but worth to live still. All in all, we have been born and have a chance to write our story. Many noticers started already research how they can feel happy in their whole life.
I can be cruel about reasons why we feel bad, sad, and depressive but I won’t do this instead I’ll talk about how can we heal because however, we think that don’t know the reasons, we definitely know but we don’t know how we can figure out it 🙂 Before reading this article, I would like to you feel relaxed and honest. I promise you’ll find your answers here!
We’re not new questioning to a good life, philosophers already have tried to achieve their possible best lives, and one of them is stoicism. Let’s look at what is stoicism first then talk about why stoicism is good to adapt our life and as a final, discuss how we can carry it out in our lives. If you feel a bit relaxed and decided to figure something out in your life, let’s start to talk about the philosophy of stoicism. If you decide to learn more about stoicism in daily life, you can check here https://www.amazon.com.tr/Daily-Stoic-Meditations-Wisdom-Perseverance/dp/0735211736
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What’s Stoicism?
The intent of increasing life satisfaction comes from the whole of human history. Especially in the Hellenistic period, many questions started to relate with turning to the individual like how we can be a happy and virtuous person in this life.
During the Hellenistic period, many philosophical schools taught being happy and virtuous people to students. One of them was stoicism which came from ancient times to modern times, unlike other schools. Stoicism school found by Zeno of Citium who lost all wealth and came to Athena.
When he was full of pain, was thinking about life. He never thought about philosophy but after reading Xenophon’s -who is a student of Sokrates- book, he started to learn the doctrines of Sokrates and was captivated a lot. This impression caused him to dedicate himself to learning philosophy. After he started to take many lessons to form many philosophers. He was familiar with Cynics but not fitting with them and after all lessons, he was ready to found his own school.
Stoicism is based on how we will reach a happy and virtuous life, quit thinking the situations that we cannot control, and live a whole life with nature. The main belief of stoicism is that the happiness of a person depends on the person because our life is made up of our reactions. Stoicism is built on 3 foundations. Physics, logic, and ethics. Therefore, it is possible for Zeno of Citium that we can reach a happy and virtuous life. First of all, it advises us to accept what is as it is (sounds like fatalism), to reach the truth in the light of our minds, and to live according to what is valuable to us.
Let’s look at 4 strong stoic thoughts for adapting our lives from Zeno of Citium, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus.
1. Happiness is a good flow of life- Zeno of Citium
Resisting things in life that we cannot change causes us to waste our energy and become unhappy. Putting too much meaning on things that we cannot change brings with it a disappointment. I think this is my favorite quote by Zeno of Citium. Our happiness depends on how compatible we’re with the workings of life.
When we think about our modern lives, I see that we have a lot of problems. Every day when I get on the bus when I walk on the street when I shop at the market… Every type of person I see is on a quest, thinking that the life they live shouldn’t be like this. At this point, this statement of Zeno of Citium actually shows us the biggest mistake we have made in our lives. We spread every bad thing that happened to our all lives.
This mistake we do is one of the biggest obstacles to achieving happiness. To control this, we must let go of the things we can’t change and focus on what we can do.
Another important thing we forgot in modern times is to put our intentions and what we want to do in the background. This blocks our flow with life because what flows is what we have to do, not us. Therefore, when something goes wrong in this flow, our reactions are in victim mode.
At this point, what Stoicism can teach us is to add things that will make us happy in the long run, and to leave what we can’t control and direct our energy to ourselves.
2. You have power over your mind- not outside events. Realize this, and you’ll find strength- Marcus Aurelius
Every event we live in is actually the judgment we give to it. Without them, the things we would live would have passed, but with the meanings, we ascribe to them and the accusations coming out of our brains, bad scenarios, traumas, and fear, they are now the worst things ever we lived. At this point, Aurelius said it very well (well said!) If we can convince our brains that something is really out of our control, we will save ourselves from being a convict. For achieving this level, we have to repeat million times to ourselves.
3. He who is brave is free- Seneca
Being brave isn’t meaning don’t scare of anything and doing everything, brave means not letting our fears be bigger than us at the right time. We’re saying that we’re free people, and freedom is soo important but why are we in prison inside of ourselves? Why are we thinking stereotypes we created in our minds when we lived something? Many things we did in a day show us that we’re not free at all but we can change it. We need to quit stereotypes, stop to care other people’s thoughts about us, don’t let our fears for shaping our steps, and more things that restrict us.
4. First say to yourself what would you be, and then do what you have to do- Epictetus
When did the last time you asked yourself what you would be? A long time ago or two minutes ago… This is a question we have to ask ourselves to live what we wanted. And the other side we need to put it into words in our minds for understanding that this can happen.
Last few days, I have had many ideas in my mind. They were soo mess, incomprehensible, and unreality, they were just lounging around in my mind. I couldn’t feel that these are my ideas, they sound more like someone’s words but they weren’t. At this point, Epictetus is saying that first, you should say to yourself what would you be for this and maybe more reason I didn’t notice. But for me, it means we need to say what we want in our lives, what we want to do, and what we’re thinking because then all of them turn into real to take an action. That’s why we shouldn’t close our ears to what we’re saying.
And here are 4 reasons why we should try Stoicism, but we must never forget that stoicism is not good for everything, it is impossible because we are in different times. My teammate said that he was reading stoicism by comparing it with his life, trying to understand at which points in his life he could use stoic thoughts. He was right, we should think about what we need, but we should not copy-paste it into our lives without understanding. Then let’s start thinking about our life from today, don’t be afraid, it will be nice 🙂 And for achieving the happiness, here is one more post here https://themozinity.com/3103-2/
