When Stoicism Doesn't Work

Managing frustration and defeat

Oct 15, 2024

Welcome to The Stoa Letter, the newsletter on Stoic theory and practice.

🏛️ Theory

With Stoicism, you can build equanimity by accepting what isn’t under your control and develop agency by taking responsibility for what is.

A key Stoic strategy involves putting your initial impressions to the test. Epictetus describes it well:

So make a practice at once of saying to every strong impression: ‘An impression is all you are, not the source of the impression.’ Then test and assess it with your criteria, but one primarily: ask, ‘Is this something that is, or is not, in my control?’

Handbook 1

This strategy works best when you immediately divide what is up to you and what is not – and then energetically turn to the matter at hand.

But that isn’t what always happens.

Sometimes the pain of things outside of our control remains and continues to drag us down.

Other times, we just can’t remember what is up to us and what isn’t. Too often we ruminate on what is not in our power.

So what do you do when this technique doesn't work?

There isn’t a single answer.

But one answer that I’ve experimented with – that’s backed up by acceptance commitment therapy – involves questioning our expectation that a technique should work. What’s behind that idea? By focusing on what is up to us we will remove pain and frustration. That’s the natural answer.

But this isn’t the point of Stoicism. After all, Stoicism is about accepting reality and the reality is that pain and frustration are unavoidable. It's what we do next that matters. Life is going to keep on asking questions of us. What matters is doing our best to respond.

There’s a lesson here for interacting with our own thoughts and other people too.

When things aren’t working, perhaps that’s ok. We’ve all been there before and we’ll be there again. Simply do your best to accept what’s not your own and return your attention to what’s up to you. Again and again.

🎯 Action

Pause and remind yourself of Epictetus’s rule:

Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, "You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be. And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our own control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

Handbook 1

🔗 Links

🖋️ The Road to Wisdom by Piet Hein:

The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain

And simple to express:

Err

and err

and err again,

but less

and less

and less.

🏛️ We’ve recently extended our course on Acceptance – meditations grounded in acceptance commitment therapy – in the Stoa app.

✉️ Let us know if there are any lessons or techniques of Stoicism you find difficult to apply. We’re always thinking of new resources we can put together to help people