All You Need To Know to Find Calm With Stoicism – in 2 Minutes
Achieve Stoic calm in 2 minutes
Ancient Stoics found calm on the battlefield, in the Senate, and at home. It didn’t matter where they were, tranquility was always available.
External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47
Today, modern Stoics may find themselves in different situations, but the same equanimity is available to them.
Here are four steps to achieve the same calm.
1️⃣ Pause
In the grip of things, all you need to do is pause a second. As it was said:
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Anonymous
You’ve stopped before. You can do it again. No matter how inflamed your passions are, just fight for that second of silence.
2️⃣ Focus on what you can control
You control your attention. External and internal stresses will always arise. But you can decide where to focus your attention in the same way you choose where to rest your gaze.
Pay vigilant attention to what is up to you: your decisions and judgments. Everything else can be accepted for what it is.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer
3️⃣ Reframe Your Experience
Now that you’ve paused and are focused on what is up to you: reframe. This ability makes all the difference.
We suffer more in imagination than reality.
Seneca, Moral Letters 13
If you can see your life as a meaningful story then you can weather any storm. The knowledge that your life serves a purpose serves as an anchor deep within you.
Here are some you can use:
The Hero's Journey: Your experience is a trial of character. You are being tested by the Gods.
The Virtuous Path: Your role is to be virtuous, no matter what happens.
The Thinker: your purpose is to pursue knowledge and live according to Nature.
The Optimist: your experience of nervousness, is really excitement.
Learn more about how to live a meaningful life here.
Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.6
4️⃣ Be Excellent
According to the Stoics, your role is to be an excellent person.
This means living according to nature – pursuing the good, true, and beautiful. Nothing else.
Negative feelings may persist. That’s ok. They’re only bad if you let them warp your choices.
Character is fate.
Heraclitus, Fragments
🧘♂️ Meditate on what you can control now: