After hearing author Ryan Holiday on a podcast, I was intrigued with his knowledge of Stoicism and just how the philosophy aligned with my core values. After purchasing The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living and Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius I decided to document my journey. Here I will share my anecdote while learning and reflecting on Stoicism and how I plan to apply it to my life.
“Here's a lesson to test your mind's mettle: take part of a week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantly in shabby clothes, and ask yourself if this is really the worst that you feared. It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead, for when Fortune is kind the soul can build defenses against her ravages. So it is that soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight and exhausting themselves under no attack so that when it comes they won't grow tired.”
- Seneca, Moral Letters, 18.5-6
“But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate.”
- Seneca, Moral Letters, 13.12b
“No one is crushed by Fortune, unless they are first deceived by her … those who aren't pompous in good times, don't have their bubbles burst with change. Against either circumstance, the stable person keeps their rational soul invincible, for it's precisely in the good times they prove their strength against adversity.”
- Seneca, On Consolation To Helvia, 5.4b, 5b-6
“Consider who you are. Above all, a human being, carrying no greater power than your own reasoned choice, which oversees all other things, and is free from any other master.”
- Epictetus, Discourses, 2.10.1
“You can bind up my leg, but not even Zeus has the power to break my freedom of choice.”
- Epictetus, Discourses, 1.1.23
“Remember, then, if you deem what is by nature slavish to be free, and what is not your own to be yours, you will be shackled and miserable, blaming both gods and other people. But if you deem as your own only what is yours, and what belongs to others as truly not yours, then no one will ever be able to coerce or to stop you, you will find no one to blame or accuse, you will do nothing against your will, you will have no enemy, no one will harm you, because no harm can affect you.”
- Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.3