Stoicism Flashcards
What are your 3 mental superpowers to always remember?
- Amor Fati. Love your fate. Wish that things happen as they actually happen. Then your life will go well.
- Nothing external can harm you. Nothing is intrinsically good or bad. It is only your judgments that give external events a good or bad value.
- How would the Stoic sage act? If you think they would act differently to how you are acting, then you know you can move closer to what is right + virtuous.
Regarding consumption, where does happiness lie?
In desiring little and being happy with very little. The most ambitious is the most anxious and insecure.
Minimise your desires to the bare minimum and ask yourself: is this the state I feared?
What mindset will guarantee satisfaction in life?
Low expectations. You must always have low expectations.
This way, you’re either satisfied or delighted with how things turn out
What has your back and ensure everything will be ok?
Fate. Your fate is pre ordained. Everything is happening to you for a reason. Love this fate and trust it will be ok in the end
What do we react to?
Our thoughts and judgments about things.
Not to things themselves.
This is an issue. We must seek to become conscious of these judgments, find the irrationality in them and choose them more carefully
What is money’s relationship to ones satisfaction and expectations?
No amount of money can satisfy someone.
The amount that will bring happiness is relative to their expectations, which grow as you get richer.
Keep expectations low, be satisfied with little.
How can you tell if you are overly attached to something?
How well would you handle losing that thing? If you wouldn’t handle it well, you have become too attached.
How should you respond to criticism?
If you are criticised justly, accept it and change.
If unjustly, the critics are misguided and entitled to compassion. They said what they could with their limited capacities.
What is a key source of much of our imbecility?
Conformity to majority opinion and the crowd.
Learn to think + act independently and learn a noble contempt for the consequences that follow
How should we look upon others faults?
Realise that what they have done is no worse than you have done on another day.
We overlook our own faults and find them too easily in others
Why should you not envy other people’s wealth, status and honour?
Because if we had to do the same things they had to do to get those things, we wouldn’t want it.
They had to give up their liberty to get these things; flatter others, work like a dog, act without virtue, lose relationships.
What is the best remedy to anger?
A good sense of humour. Laugh at yourself whenever you’re angry.
Above all, what is the key to flourishing and satisfaction in life?
Virtue. Doing good for others. Because by the time death comes (which could be tomorrow) what else matters?
Mental model to guarantee satisfaction?
Learn to love life exactly the way it happens.
Do not wish for things to go as you please, rather, wish for things to happen exactly as they do.
Why? Because the Universe has ordained that this was always going to happen. You have no control over what happens so you might as well enjoy it.
Remember: Parable of the dog and cart.
You are making a contract with yourself to be unhappy if…
If you desire something. Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.
Then, as soon as you get that thing, you adjust and hanker for more. It’s a never ending treadmill
How can you prevent yourself from being swept emotionally along with the tides of life + lacking control?
Detach yourself from externals. This is the key.
As long as you associate external things with positive and negative, you will be emotional and out of control.
But if you focus only on the things you can control + ignore externals entirely, then you are always in control and can find peace of mind.
What is the power of framing? And how should you frame event that happened in your life?
You cannot control the event that happened to you. Things just happened. What you can control is the way you perceive those events and therefore how you respond to them.
For example, if your boss doesn’t give you a promotion, you might frame that situation as malice from your boss. This is an unhelpful and likely wrong frame. A much more helpful and more accurate frame would be that your boss had decisions to make and multiple obligations to uphold. To give you a promotion would mean giving five other people nothing. The difference in framing changes our response to the situation.
What is prospective retrospection?
The act of looking back fondly on the present moment. For example, telling a story about what you’re doing right now as if you are looking back at it with fond memories.
What is the storytelling frame?
This technique assumes that one day (figuratively) we will write our autobiography and include the challenges and setbacks that we faced along the way. We will also include how we overcame those setbacks and how they shaped the person we ended up becoming.
Use this frame when faced with setbacks, to consider your response and consider how you reflect on it one day.
What is a good way to reflect on your actions at the end of the day and improve going forward?
Use the storytelling frame to reflect on your actions that day and to assess whether you would be telling a good story in your autobiography given your actions today. And if not, how can you improve going forward so that you can be more proud of your actions?
What is the comedic frame?
Any setback or difficulty you facing life try and look at it through a comedic lens. How would Larry David look at this setback?
What is prosoche? And why is it important?
It is the practice of focusing your attention on the present moment + the things within your control.
Constantly being watchful of your thoughts and actions, so that they are aligned with virtue.
How can you put the practice of prosoche into action?
- Remember that nothing external can harm you, only your thoughts can harm you.
- You don’t know what other people are going through (their motivations, their life scenario or their beliefs) and so you don’t need to judge them. They’re just another external.
- See the world from the cosmic viewpoint. See how insignificant your life is from this point? Abandon your ego-istic vision of your life.
When you see the whole picture, you see how everything happens for a reason.
What does the cosmic view/perspective actually mean?
It means putting yourself in the place of the universe, both across time and space. Transcend ordinary life at ground level and envision the world from above.
Across the entirety of space (infinite matter ever expanding) and time (billions of years), does your little setback matter?
Will you even care about it in a few months?
Can you see how this setback might actually help you toward your fate?
What is the principle reason that a practicing stoic different to most people?
Most people are moved, depressed, stirred, made anxious, joyous about election results, job promotions, job losses, divorces, floods, breakdowns… they let their lives be run by external events, because they let themselves judge them as bad.
The principle difference is that Stoics see these as beyond their control and not as good or bad. They are indifferent. Therefore they do not concern themselves with these events.
The inner citadel cannot be penetrated by the external events unless we judge them to be bad or good.
What is an adequate / inadequate impression? And how does it relate to the theory of assent?
An adequate impression is an accurate judgment of an external event. E.g., feeling the sun on your face and getting the impression it’s day time.
An inadequate impression is an inaccurate judgment of an external event. E.g., losing your job and getting the impression that your career is over and your life is a mess.
Theory of assent is a human accepting a judgment / impression as correct.
The key is to only assent to adequate impressions.
Does losing your job, being broken up with, losing money, being diagnosed with cancer, losing loved ones or simply not getting your way harm you?
No, the event itself does not harm you.
What harms you is assenting to the value judgement that these things are bad and that they make your life worse.
Once you assent to this value judgement, you create psychological distress.
How should look at external events?
You should simply describe them as they physically happen in the world and not add any value judgement.
E.g., your loved one is diagnosed with cancer. What happened? Some cells changed in someone’s body. That is all? That is all.
Events happen as nature intends. You cannot control them. Accept them as they truly are and do not add any value judgement to them.
What should you remind yourself of when you stumble off the stoic path?
Attention, not perfection
What should you remind yourself of when something bad happens in life? (To do with the discipline of assent)
Assent to the event, not the value judgement
What should you when an event occurs and a judgement has been formed in your mind?
You must:
1 - stop the judgement (do not assent)
2 - strip the judgement (remove the judgement and see it for it is)
3 - see it from a cosmic perspective (replace the bad judgement with a good judgement and praise the event. Everything that happens is good because nature ordains it)
Do not allow wrong judgements to enter your inner citadel.
No event is good or bad. Your thinking and judgements make it good or bad. If you allow these judgements in, your inner citadel will be penetrated and your psychology disturbed.
Why is everything that happens in the world good and therefore not for you to worry about?
Everything happens to Nature’s pre ordained path. Therefore, everything happens for a reason.
So having bad judgments of the world is always mistaken. All events in nature have a greater purpose, even one you don’t understand.
There is no such thing as a bad event.
When faced with setbacks, what should you remind yourself of?
There is no challenge on this planet that someone has failed to overcome.
Every challenge is an opportunity given to you by Nature. It is not a bad thing.
Until we get a grip on our faculties of choice / assent (and assenting to correct judgements), what are we like?
We’re the same as beasts in the field. We just go off random impulses and wrong judgements we have built.
What is the virtue scale?
If you have a tipping scale, you can put as many externals on one side of the scale and it will not budge an inch.
Externals simply cannot weigh in on the virtue you show in your life. This is the only thing moving the needle.
What is the parable of the dog and the cart?
We are all dogs tied to a cart (life) that is trundling along a road.
We do not control where the cart goes.
We do not control the conditions of the road we travel down.
We do not have any power over stopping the cart.
So, we can either be dragged along kicking and screaming.
Or we can go with the cart, smiling and being grateful, even when the road is muddy and the weather is terrible.
It cannot be otherwise. So enjoy it.
What are humans? What are we?
We are not our bodies. We are not our brains. We are nothing external.
We are merely our own volitions, judgments and thoughts.
To attain freedom, you must detach entirely from externals and focus only on your volition.
Why does the Stoic not stop at bear and forbear? Why are they therefore not just grinning and bearing it?
The proper stoic attitude is to love all events that happen in our lives as if we wanted them to happen in the first place.
In this way, we must learn to praise providence and fate for everything that happens in life.
Even the seemingly terrible things.
