If you feel shame, recognize that no one else can shame you; only you can make yourself feel ashamed. Only you have the power to create your emotions-positive, negative, helpful, or unhelpful. The Stoics Hundreds of years ago, the Greek and Roman Stoics advanced that insight. In his treatise the Enchiridion, Epictetus wrote: Men are disturbed not by the things that happen but by their opinions about those things. In his Epistles, Seneca stated: Everything depends on opinion.
Today we find ourselves living in a world where our lives are virtually shaped by fear. It's been said that we live in a virtual culture of fear where social and economic fearmongering combines with cyber bullying to create an often toxic environment. So threatening is our world that psychiatric epidemiologists estimate that over one third of people will suffer diagnosable fear-related problems during their lifetime, making fear-related disorders the most prevalent of all mental disorders.
Some things are up to us and some are not. Up to us are judgment, inclination, desire, aversion - in short, whatever is our own doing. Not up to us are our bodies, possessions, reputations, public offices - in short, whatever is not our own doing. He then proceeds to tell us that a good life is one in which we focus on the things that are up to us while, at the same time, striving to develop an attitude of acceptance and equanimity for the things that are not up to us.
Our actions may be impeded by [others], but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. Ryan Holiday's bestselling The Obstacle Is the Way brought
In January 1986, NASA engineers knew the Space Shuttle Challenger's O-rings had never been tested in freezing temperatures. They recommended delaying the launch. Managers asked: Could the engineers prove it was unsafe? They couldn't-they could only say the system hadn't been designed for these conditions. Under pressure, the engineers withdrew their recommendation. The next morning, Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven astronauts.
They accept the world the way it actually is, not the way you would want it to be. The problem is, of course, that life sometimes is complicated, that are multiple choices. We have a tendency to want to simplify things and go for something that is stark, that is clear, that is obvious. That's just not the way the world works. And, according to the Stoics, it's much better to try to understand how the world works and then act accordingly.
Seneca, the ancient Stoic philosopher, wrote in Letters to Lucilius that it's not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. The film "Fight Club" delivered the modern remix centuries later when Tyler Durden-played with feral brilliance by Brad Pitt-growled: The things you own end up owning you. One was writing in imperial Rome. The other was railing against the Ikea-ification of the modern soul. Yet both saw the same truth: Desire, when unquestioned, becomes bondage.
The wisdom here isn't about self-deprecation, but rather embracing what Davis et al. (2011) refer to as the "just right view of the self." When we clearly understand both our strengths and weaknesses, we gain a better understanding of the value we bring to our environment as well as where we need additional support. In theory, when we recognize this, neither flattery nor insult should have the power to distort our self-worth.
What might this be? Well, I don't have a complete answer. But I am convinced that the foundation is developing the ability to live with intention. Intention is nothing other than the ability to make free and conscious choices, and when we are able to do this consistently, we become the authors of our own stories, protagonists who co-create the world rather than being determined by it.
The Stoic Seneca (d. 65 CE) is the master of the "consolation," a letter written for the express purpose of comforting someone who has been bereaved. Seneca wrote at least three consolations, to Marcis, to Polybius, and to Helvia. In the Consolation to Helvia, he comforts his own mother Helvia on "losing" him to exile-an unusual case, and literary innovation, of the lamented consoling the lamenter.
Anger is a bad habit that people tend to pick up from their parents. When a child who was raised at Plato's house was returned to his parents and witnessed his father shouting, he said, 'I never saw this at Plato's house.'
