Boost your mental wellbeing with modern Stoicism: Practical tips and techniques
In a time when hedonic pleasures can be fulfilled with a mere finger swipe, these age-old teachings may be more relevant than ever.
It’s interesting to imagine what the great philosophers of Rome and Greece would think of today’s world of instant gratification and selfies.
What would Seneca think of younger generations in which follower counts and likes are more favoured as metrics of value than societal contribution or good character? Would Marcus Aurelius take advantage of TikTok to spread his meditations on the importance of mastering one’s time?
Two thousand years after the virtues of a good life were taught and advocated by the world’s great philosophers, civilisation might have changed immeasurably, but human nature hasn’t. If we all decided to become modern-day stoics and live religiously by its tenets, would modern-day overwhelming anxiety and dissatisfaction stop being such a widespread issue?
Its contemporary disciples think so.
Every day 300,000 or so modern-day stoics eagerly check their inboxes for the arrival of Ryan Holiday’s latest nugget of philosophical thinking via his email newsletter, The Daily Stoic.
His easily digestible interpretations of teachings from the great stoics – most prominently Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus – has attracted a whole new generation of followers to the millennia-old philosophy, which preaches the benefits of a life dedicated to fostering the virtues of temperance, justice, courage and wisdom.
The 35-year-old has sold millions of books extolling the benefits of Stoicism and how its ancient teachings are still important, if not more so than ever, when it comes to helping us navigate today’s overstimulating, overwhelming world. Holiday’s tomes are now just a fraction of those within this burgeoning genre, as more contemporary stoics digest and reinterpret the historic writings for today’s world.
“People are tired of feeling anxious and fearful of uncertainty,” author Kasey Pierce says. The editor of 365 Ways to be More Stoic: A Day-by-Day Guide to Practical Stoicism says many of the philosophy’s teachings form the basis of modern-day Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
“Life is chock full of uncertainty and people just want to live fulfilling lives despite the fact that there’s only so much within our control,” Pierce says.
It was Holiday’s book, Ego is the Enemy, that sparked Sean Kirkwood’s passion for Stoicism, which he believes is more relevant than ever.
“After reading Ryan’s book I sourced more reading material, along with stoic website content and social media discourse,” Kirkwood says.
In 2021 he co-founded the Australian Stoic Society and shares interpretations and teachings on the subject with its 750 members. Kirkwood says Stoicism is unlike religion or spiritual practices in that rather than abandoning reason for belief, it can be used for “ethical orientation”. “It offers a road map for the mind, provides solace during uncertainty, for events and circumstances that we all experience – both perceived or real,” he says.
One of the biggest misconceptions about this way of thinking, Kirkwood explains, is based on the modern-day definition of the word “stoic”, which implies a lack of feeling.
“There’s a belief that to practise Stoicism is to be unemotional, unattached – a ‘stiff upper lip’ to misfortune, but that isn’t true,” he says.
“As human beings we all feel emotion – both positive and negatives – but Stoicism allows us through the dichotomy of control to be not overwhelmed by these emotions and place emphasis on a more controlled response.”
The Stoic mantra
To witness modern Stoicism in action, attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” is the simple prayer recited by thousands of recovering alcoholics and addicts who attend the 450 or so meetings taking place around Australia each week. Adopted by AA founder Bill W in 1941, the Serenity Prayer has become the mantra for countless people struggling daily with addiction and temptation.
According to Pierce, the chant offers a simple distillation of this ancient philosophy’s teachings.
While the prayer’s origins have been contested, its inspirations can be found in the work of Epictetus, the Ancient Greek philosopher who extols in the stoic manual, Enchiridon (penned by his disciple, Arrian), that “some things are up to us, some things are not”.
“It’s the mindful separation of what we can control versus what we cannot, what we can influence, and what we must gracefully accept,” says Pierce.
“It also endorses the notion that we can choose to feel differently about things and events if we detach ourselves and view them with a higher perspective. We don’t need to be saturated in the sorrow or despair of the moment; we don’t need to stay there.”
Dichotomy of control
You’ve spent weeks planning your child’s sixth birthday party; a jolly affair at the local park with a cameo from her favourite Disney princess – only to result in tears and tantrums when Snow White turns up instead of Elsa from Frozen, and a rainstorm rolls in during pass the parcel.
For the unenlightened majority, the temptation to give Snow White a piece of our mind, throw an internal wobbly and write the day off as a complete disaster would likely win out.
The stoic way, however, would involve relinquishing the need to control and instead directing energy towards more productive actions. Or, in the words of Epictetus: “To identify and separate matters so that I can ask myself: ‘Which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control?’.”
“This practice allows us to be less reactive to circumstances and more capable of functioning during a difficult time period or crisis, we have mentally rehearsed a ‘worst case scenario’,” Kirkwood says.
We live in a world that is constantly changing, and it’s often the things we most want to control – such as the actions and opinions of others, the economy and the weather – that we can’t.
Instead, stoics suggest trying to adopt a flexible mindset, embrace change and identify what you do and don’t have autonomy over. Master this, and you might realise that rainy birthday party wasn’t the disaster you thought it was.
Getting comfortable with discomfort
Seneca, the adviser to Emperor Nero and famous stoic, recommended “practising misfortune” regularly in line with the importance the stoics placed on the virtue of temperance. To regularly exert self-control, the stoics believed, was to master the mind and body.
In Seneca’s time, this involved eating meagre rations of food, ditching the fine fabrics for scratchy peasant garb and probably giving his slaves regular breaks from their wine-pouring duties. Today, temptation is our constant companion. We’re bombarded with it from the moment our alarm goes off until we fall asleep.
So with stimuli at every turn, what’s a modern-day stoic to do?
Enter the dopamine detox. The catchy-sounding practice involves removing activities and items that stimulate the brain’s reward centre. The premise is that by taking breaks from addictive, pleasure-inducing pastimes – watching porn, alcohol consumption, chocolate binges, online gaming and social media – we can reduce our brain’s reliance on external stimuli for that “dopamine high”.
“The more we embrace the uncomfortable and endure delayed gratification, the more discomfort loses its power over us. It builds our resilience,” Pierce says. This doesn’t necessarily make us tougher, she notes, but rather it allows us to “become psychologically flexible to uncomfortable or stressful events that befall us”.
The most valuable resource of all
Seneca passionately believed the most valued resource was not money or power, but time: “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”
With so much information fighting for our attention these days, it’s easy to feel as if time is slipping through our hands. John Maynard Keynes’s forecast in 1930 that we’d all be enjoying 15-hour work weeks showed not only that economic growth doesn’t equate to more leisure time but also that, as humans, we’re not so great at predicting the future. The biggest time thieves, according to Seneca, were procrastination, being busy for busy’s sake and worrying about the future.
“Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested,” he said. “But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realise that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it … Life is long if you know how to use it.”
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