We live in a world full of stress and anxiety. We set huge goals for ourselves and hope we make it big.
We try our best .We succeed sometimes but sometimes we fail.

The issue is that we have never been taught about how to deal with either of them – success or failure.

So, a natural response is
Success = elation
Failure = depression

This needs to be changed because :

1. Elation after success leads to over confidence then leading to less hard work and then failure.
2. Depression after failure leads to  self doubt again leading to failure.

Hence there is a need to break this cycle.

Hindu scriptures beautifully say that we should keep working without thinking of the result.

This is the ideal scenario.It is the ultimate productivity lifehack.
If you can follow this , your issues are more or less sorted and you will be a balanced individual.

But along these lines a far fetched idea is , what if we had no feelings?
It would make life so easy. No negative thinking , no attachments , no care in the world.

You might say that such people are psychopathic like the protagonist of the television series Dexter.

I agree with you. If we had no feelings that would make us psychopaths.

We would be unable to understand and interact with the world around us. Our only company would be a dangerous mind which would make things even more disturbing.

So it is healthy to have feelings but it is very unhealthy to suppress them.
Suppressing emotions only makes us more hurt leading to passive aggressive tendencies.

So the best way is to channel feelings instead of suppressing them or not having them altogether.

This is where “Stoicism” comes in.
Stoicism is an ancient Roman Greece philosophy which has suddenly become popular among new age entrepreneurs and professionals because it teaches how one can remain immune to misfortune.

“Immune to misfortune”.
Sounds too good to be true , isn’t it?
Well the followers of Stoicism , the Stoics , believed that if one is virtuous ,
one will be happy.

The word “stoic” commonly refers to someone indifferent to pain, pleasure, grief, or joy.

Stoicism is something that needs a huge description which is beyond the scope of this blogpost.

Hence I will share a few quotes from Stoics such as Seneca , Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

These quotes will provide an essence of what I wish to convey.

 

Read them casually.
Maybe one of them might interest you. And maybe if you follow it , it might change your life a bit in the positive direction.

SENECA

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” 

 

 “He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.” 

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” 

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.” 

^ You can literally say this to add humour to a conversation 😛

 

EPICTETUS 

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ” 

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” 

“To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun.
To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.” 

 

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. ” 

MARCUS AURELIUS

 “A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away.
There are briars in the road. Turn aside from them.
This is enough.
Do not add, “And why were such things made in the world?”

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

 “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.”

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