Lessons From Stoics That I Live By

The Stoics have given us a lot of lessons to help improve our lives, but one that doesn’t get as much credit as it should is by Epictetus.

Epictetus often taught to others. “Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.” (Enchiridion, Chapter 33.)

The most important part of life too many people do wrong is speaking. Literally speaking.

We need to understand that speaking more will never help us. Ever. Because we’ve all been in situations where we think that saying more will help us, but it never does. If you look back on your life, the worst mistakes have been from you saying more than you should have.

And one of my favourite stories from time that explains this perfectly is from the last king of France before their monarch fell. King Louis XVI.

He’d frequently speak at the wrong times, often contradicting himself, he’d confuse those around him and push them away from him. During the time period leading up to the French Revolution, Louis’s public declarations had half-hearted promises, and inconsistent speeches. Even though his intention was meant to pacify the French people it only inflamed the revolutionary more. Because they’re all thinking “what is this idiot saying.”

It’s an interesting story if you wanna look into the whole thing but the essentials that you can get from this is that when you speak more, it gives more room for contradicting yourself which lowers how others perceive you. This is why so many people loose deals. lose relationshops, or lose debates, they can’t shut up.

Speaking more also makes you seem more weak, one of the greatest tricks for sales is whenever you ask someone if they wanna buy, if you say the first word after that, the odds of them buying drop by half, because now you sound unconfident and even scared that you’re gonna lose the deal. So let the other person say more and react to you.

Equally challenging and rewarding to speaking less is doing everything with full confidence.

Seneca has an amazing quote about this: "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, but because we do not dare that they are difficult." (Letters to Lucilius, 13.1)

When you start something, or go into a situation (even if you’re unconfident) pretending like you’re the #1 best, or have done it before actually makes you perform better. You can fake confidence. And when you do, it changes your odds of achieving whatever it is significantly. Someone who believes in himself will always do better than someone who doesn’t believe in himself.

If you’re scared to launch a new business, you need to just act like you’ve got it, you need to start viewing yourself as someone who has achieved the thing you want to achieve. If you can see it in your head, you can have it for yourself.

And although it’s hard to commit or even start, it’s much harder to be able to do the tasks that need to be done when you don’t feel like it.

Marcus Aurelius is probably the best stoic to look at when it comes to this, a W quote of his is: “Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored.” (Meditations, 6.2)

All that matters is doing the right work, regardless of how you feel. It just needs to be the only focus. Right now you’re learning by reading this, that’s a good thing. After this you either need to get to work, or keep learning, but it needs to be something that progresses you.

I think this is honestly why so many people are held back in life— they don’t do the work when they need too. They instead chose comfort. And something that really helped me with this is my PP system. (Purpose over pleasure.) When you do anything it normally falls into one of two categories, either you do it to get closer to your true purpose and goals in life or you do it to feel nice in the moment.

And when you chose pleasure, yes you 100% feel better, in the moment. You have no stress or worries because you’re relaxed feeding yourself quick dopamine. You take yourself away from the realities of your life, be it you need to make more money, finish an important task, workout, etc by taking this route however.

And by not doing whatever the most important task is in that moment, it causes you to snowball into it becoming a bigger and bigger problem as time goes. So you need to also prioritize the long term and your purpose. You don’t even need a purpose or goal to know that you shouldn’t succumb to brain rot activities.

I wanna finish this off with one of my favourite sayings and belief by Epictetus: “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”

Don’t focus on what you don’t have control over, focus only on what you can control.

I’ve said this to everyone I’ve worked with and taught since forever. And it’s so logical when you think about it. Why should you spend any energy or time even thinking about something out of your control? You shouldn’t and yet we do it so often and it’s because of our emotions. So often we think “why couldn’t they have just not done that” or “Why did they say that to me?” It doesn't matter, you cant change what happened or what someone else does.

What you can however control is how you react. If you get a flat tire, being sad or wishing it didn’t happen will not fix the situation. The only thing that can fix it is being logical and putting on your spare.

We need to start taking a step back from the first response we give any situation that arises and give it a logical look. Because whenever something happens your first 0 second response is emotional and when you stop and think for even 0.5 seconds some of your logic kicks in and that instantly helps the situation even though nothing has happened. You’ve only changed how you view what’s happened, which instantly betters whatever it is that we’re going through in the moment.

And when you can think like this you will perform better, and get better results from work, relationships and random things that come up in life.

So to recap everything:

• Keep silent for the most part

• Enter with confidence

• Do the work, nothing else matters

• Focus only on what you can control

These have all been very important lessons from the stoics that help me be able to make the best decisions I can, as well as get the best outcomes from every situation.

Thank you reading and enjoy the rest of your day:)

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