The Philosophy of Stoicism: Part 2

Introduction

On 10 December 1940, a very big explosion happened in West Orange, New Jersey. Immediately 8 fire vehicles rushed to the site. This fire happened due to a chemical explosion in the 10 Factory building of Thomas Alva Edison. Initially, Edison tried very hard to douse the fire and was running from here and there. But when he realized that there is no benefit of running as fire already gutted his whole factory then he started watching the scene. He also called his son, wife, and other family members to the burning site. He told them that it is a very rare event and they will not see such fire again.
The next day he accepted the interview with New York Times and told the reporter that he is ready to build everything again. Edison was 67 years old at that time and this story is a perfect example of stoicism. Here he implemented the fourth core value of stoicism. Stoicism is a philosophy of ancient Athens scholars but it is a pearl of timeless wisdom. Many great personalities used this philosophy to achieve great successes in their lives. In our last article, we explored 3 of the 10 most important core values of stoicism. Let’s explore other values today:

10 core values of stoicism

4. Develop an Internal Locus: We must understand that everything is not in our control and many times things can go out of control. Yes, situations are not in our hands but we can control our reactions. Every time whenever our internet connection becomes slow then we become angry. Here we can focus on reading good books or do any other pending work. By implementing this value, we can become happy despite challenging situations.
5. Don’t outsource happiness: Many people give their emotional remote control to others. Whenever someone appreciates them then they become joyful and if someone criticizes them then they come very sadly. Actually, we must be happy that we got this life and appreciate life’s challenges.
6. Toss away ego and vanity: We can observe that successful people used to read more books and do not leave any opportunity to learn new things. Epictetus observed that his students believed that they have enough knowledge and started becoming egotistical. Epictetus was not the only teacher who faced the issue of ego among his students. Many of us become proud of our current knowledge and stop learning new things. We must understand that even most brilliant minds used to read extensively and we must also continue this habit without ego and vanity.
7. Manage your anger: Anger destroys more careers as compared to incompetence. Many times people react to the situation and got stuck in unnecessary arguments. Here we can use the 5-second rule which says that just count 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 before giving a reaction to any adverse situation. Like whenever our boss scream over us then we can count till 5 before giving any answer. This 5-second rule gives us some time to think about a proper response.

8. Handle difficult situations: We must accept that difficult situations will definitely come in our life. We must also accept these challenges as opportunities because these situations give us an avenue to prove our capability. There are only 2 things that can happen after our decision, first, if our decision is correct then we will be successful otherwise we will improve our decision-making capability.
9. Guard your time: Time is our greatest asset and still we used to spend this scarce resource without giving a second thought. There are two kinds of time wasters in this world. The first type of people is procrastinating humans who are just sitting around and thinking about big goals and do not take any action to accomplish those goals. The second type of people is those who are easily available. They think that they are helping others but it is their shortsightedness. They must understand that if they want to achieve big goals then they cannot be available every time.
10. Stay focused in every situation: many people lose their focus when they got multiple works. Here we must implement the ABC technique where we have to group our work. "A" Group contains the most important works, "B" group contains less important works and "C" group will have the least important works. By implementing the ABC technique we can easily stay focused in every situation.

Summary

Stoicism is an ancient philosophy but as we have read, its learnings are still very relevant. We hope that you will definitely implement key learnings from stoicism. As you implement key learnings into your life, you will see that you are becoming more calm, composed, and free from anxiety.