2022-07-13 Emotional resilience is superpower

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment,” says Marcus Aurelius, in his book, Meditations.

Stoics emphasize the importance of self-control and the acceptance of reality. It stresses the idea that emotions should be controlled because they can get in the way of rational thinking and actions.

Self-control is a crucial part of any Stoic philosophy. The Stoics believed that emotional control was vital to living a happy and successful life. They thought that to be rational; you had to be able to control your emotions.

You had to be able to keep your cool under pressure, even when things seemed desperate or out of your control. They believed that by controlling your emotions, you could better make decisions and take action in the face of adversity. This helped them achieve greater happiness and success in their lives.

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control,” Epictetus said.