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Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that helps to provide clarity and prepare your mind for challenges ahead. Stoic ideas can help you reduce the difficulties and struggles of daily life.
The “Daily Stoic” by Ryan Holiday shares 366 Daily Stoic Meditation that will help you prepare your mind for daily challenges. Here are the 10 key ideas, which I found useful.
Please note that this is my personal takeaway from this book and by no means it is a replacement for the original book. There are still tons of useful information you can get from the book itself.
Self-awareness of yourself and others around you will guide you to do better judgments and take better actions
In life, you have to be switched on and be aware of yourself. You have to leave your ego on the side and do honest self-reflection. Take a good look at your shortcomings and your strengths. Genuine and frank self-assessment is crucial. It can be daunting and frustrating to highlight your weaknesses, but without awareness of your abilities, you can not improve your life.
As well as being aware of your strength and weakness, you will have to be aware of the others around you. You could have people who encourage you to become better or you could have people who constantly criticize your actions without any valuable feedback.
Once you know how to react to your thoughts, you can improve your focus
Maintaining focus is our biggest challenge. The distractions will always be there and lurking to find a moment to get us away from the task at hand. But we can control this by clarifying our thoughts and choosing what actions to take.
According to Marcus Aurelius, if we treat the task at hand as it were our last, we can find ways to eliminate external distractions. We have to accept the fact that there will always be something out of our control. But one thing we can control is our reaction to the thoughts that appear in our minds.
Every day, you need to remind yourself what you can and cannot control. Then remind yourself that your most reliable ability is to make choices. You can choose your reactions and you can choose your actions. You can’t have control over every distraction, but you can control your reactions to those distractions.
Don’t let your emotions take control of your actions
Emotions are capable of inducing us to actions, but we can avoid emotions ruling us. Just because you see a plate full of muffins, you don’t need to give in to your emotional impulses to eat it. You cannot control the emotions that tempt you to grab one or two muffins, but you can control your actions by getting influenced by your emotions.
Instead of giving way to pressure, frustration and anger, repress your ego and take time to examine and evaluate your thoughts. Only react when you are in total control. Just because you feel angry and frustrated, that doesn’t mean you have to shout and scream.
This is not an easy task to achieve. Especially when we are surrounded by lots of temptations to induce us to unbeneficial actions. But in time, with practice and patience, you can improve how you react to your emotions and you will start feeling proud and happy about yourself.
Adding interpretation to what you think can disappoint you
We are not as intelligent as we think. Knowing this can help us improve ourselves. It will help us to identify the flaws in our thinking as well. We can try to avoid adding interpretation to what we observe. According to 17th-century samurai swordsman and philosopher Musashi, a person can look at something with an observing eye or a perceiving eye. The observing eye sees things for what they truly are. But perceiving the eye adds its own spin and prejudice to things that can cause trouble.
Tackle life with one decision at a time
The multitude of choices we face every day can be overwhelming. You need to make your life as easy as possible and set clear goals. Then focus on the process that will take you to that goal. Always keep in mind that the best day to take action is today. You can improve your life when you do things step by step. You need to begin, then persist till you achieve your goal.
Adaptable and self-sufficient minds can find ways to solve problems
Success doesn’t only come from good planning. You need to be able to adapt and find ways to deal with problems. This way, you will be flexible and resilient when things don’t turn out the way you expect them to turnout.
When you have a flexible outlook, you will be mentally prepared for any setback and see them as opportunities. But there is one crucial thing you have to keep in mind if you want a flexible outlook to work for you. You need to be prepared to let go if you see something isn’t working.
There are no perfect conditions to start or take actions
If you are waiting for a perfect time or perfect environment to start something, then you are just lying to yourself. The fact is it makes no difference where you are, you just need to get down to it and press on. There is always something that can be done that would serve you well towards achieving your goals. It doesn’t matter how big or how small it is.
Just because we won’t get the desired results, that shouldn’t prevent us from trying. If we keep aiming for and expecting perfection, we will get frustrated with the results and give up. To be able to change the world around us, we first need to accept it as it is.
You have to do the right things
As long as you do the right thing, the rest don’t matter. Virtue is the combination of justice, honesty, discipline, and courage. Virtuousness should be our main purpose to aspire. Acting virtuously will cut through all of life’s confusions. It will help you to do the right thing.
Get the things done no matter what the circumstances are
Instead of looking for excuses not to do the right thing, we should find reasons to do what needs to be done. We should look for reasons to pursue our goals. You can achieve this by focusing on the result. Having an end goal in mind will prevent you from getting sidetracked.
A perfect set of conditions to achieve your goals do not exist. No matter where you are, what your circumstances are, you just need to get down to it and press on. You need to accept imperfection. Aiming for perfection can result in huge disappointment and it will lead to unhappiness.
Only rely on yourself to become resilient
Misfortune is an opportunity to become stronger. According to Seneca, “Someone who has never known difficulty is unlucky; It shows he’s never been tested, so he won’t know his true potential.” Only you can control your mind and by doing so you will be resilient.
Final Say
The principles of stoicm is a framework to guide you to make better choices that will serve you and others well. It encourages you to believe in your own abilities through determination and self-motivation. It helps you to take control of your life by accepting the things that are out of your control.