Stoicism: The Optimal Mindset
Picture this: You walk into your high school math class at 7:30 a.m. on a Monday morning. You don’t like the fact that it’s Monday let alone 7:30 a.m. And you definitely don’t want to be in math class on a Monday at 7:30 a.m. Now, your teacher hands back your last test. Let’s assume you didn’t do too well. As a result, your sitting at your desk freaking out about this bad grade. And, your reaction is understandable because you do have a right to be upset. But, you can’t go back and fix what already happened. So, it’s not the fact that you failed the math test that that’s going effect your life. It’s your own opinions and responses to that failure that will.
Now, I’m assuming we all like to be in control to some extent. Imagine how great it would be if we could control the outcome of everything. Our lives would be seemingly “perfect”. And, you wouldn’t ever have to fail a math test. Unfortunately, that’s now how life goes. But, lucky for you, there is one thing that you have complete control over.
How often do you think about your mind? YOU control your choices. You can either wake up and use your failure as motivation to start working on those quadratic equations, or you can spend the rest of class too busy worried about the bad test grade, thinking you’ll never understand this foreign language made up of numbers, learning nothing. Which will benefit you more? The answer is obvious, but it’s not often the one that people choose. That’s where stoicism comes in.
Now, you’re probably wondering “what is that fancy word and what does it have to do with me?”
Well, stoicism essentially just means that we should decide what events mean to us (judgments) and how we react to those events (actions).
In the math class scenario, you could choose what that test grade meant to you. If tests are used as motivation to work harder, imagine how much better future tests will go. Just because you lost a battle, doesn’t mean you have to lose the war. And that war is the thing we call life. Just because you failed a test, doesn’t mean you’ll fail the class. And even if you do fail the class, that doesn’t mean you’re failing at life. That’s because the way we control our minds plays an astonishing role in the way that our lives go.
Amor fati is a Latin phrase that means “love your fate”.
And what does it mean to love your fate?
The answer is simple: you won’t like everything that happens throughout your life. BUT, everything that happens can be viewed as necessary. Learn to love it, to embrace it, and force yourself to deal with it. Apply a stotic mindset so that no matter what happens, good or bad, you say to yourself “I’m going to do better, I’m going to improve, because I can control that”. One lost battle should never stop us from taking control of our own lives, and if it does, that’s pathetic.
So I’m saying this in the nicest way possible: DON’T BE PATHETIC.
We ruin our lives by feeling sorry for ourselves and dwelling on things that we can’t change. Instead, live like this: whenever you feel the impulse to complain or react in a negative way, know that you and only you have the ability to fix a situation. If you push yourself to use failure as fuel in your priorities, then you will succeed. Life is a long journey and going through it without trained minds is what will really defeat us in the end.
And I’ll leave you with this quote from the man who summed up the purpose of stoicism perfectly:
Feel Free to Contact Me:
