gm lions and fellow passengers of planet Earth! As many of you out there I sometimes find myself getting into an anxious state. I don't believe I've ever experienced an "anxiety attack" as some people describe it, but I have been caught in a wave of negative thoughts of "what if"...
What if... I lose all my clients
What if... A.I. takes over my job
What if... robbers break into my business
What if, What if, What if...
It wasn't till I realized this about myself that I started to find ways of doing something about it. You know, like an alcoholic recognizing that he has a drinking problem. The best solution I've found, as it often happens, is to refer to the wisdom of the ancient stoics and embrace the unpredictability of the future and things that are not within my control.
Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions — in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing.
When I see someone in a state of anxiety, I say, ‘What is it that he wants?’ For unless he wanted something that was not within his power, how could he still be anxious?’
-- Epictetus, from The Enchiridion
Trying to control things I can't control or even just thinking about them is a waste of time and all they do is generate fear and anxiety.
If we just focus on minding our own actions, thoughts and attitudes, anything outside of that will no longer be our concern and thus we won't have to worry about them or anticipated them with fear and anxiety. They'll come and go like a rainy day and we will be able to keep our inner peace despite them.
Easy, right?
Well, yes. But like many things in life, it requires routine and repetition.
In the words of Aristotle,
We are what we repeatedly do. We become what we repeatedly study and focus on
So it's important that we practice these thoughts day in and day out as they become more and more second nature to us. We must remind ourselves that our worries about the future exist only in our minds.d
I think I have some ideas of how I can apply these stoic principles to business, but for now, writing these thoughts on this lovely Sunday morning have put me in a beautiful state of mind. I think I'll go enjoy my Sunday with my loved ones now.
All images in this post were created using @peakd 's image generation function with the Ideogram v2 model and later edited in Canva. All words are my own unless quoted and credits given. This post in the #thoughfuldailypost community is accompanied by at least 3 thoughtful comments on posts from other members of the ThoughfulDailyPost community.
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Hello my friend, I have been a Stoic for about 40 years, I can tell you that it is an art, a way of living, it does not represent ignoring things, but on the contrary, understanding that each thing has its space and its moment.
Please try to distract yourself when those panic attacks attack you, practice combat breathing (it is an instant meditation, it is very easy, you breathe through your nose mentally counting to 10 and slowly, then you retain the air in your lungs counting to 10 and then exhale all that air through your mouth, SLOWLY, counting to 10). Repeat combat breathing 4 or 5 times (or until you feel calmer) and I promise you will feel better.
It's almost magical, it's instant, and it's FREE!
I send you a big hug, and I wish a prosperous 2025 for you and yours, I appreciate you very much! ❤️
Thank you for your wonderful (and free) advice. I've been paying more attention to stoic philosophers lately and even though I've been journaling on and off for a long time, I'm doing that more often now too. I also enjoy the work of Ryan Holiday from The Daily Stoic. He summarizes concepts of Marcus Aurelius and other stoic philosophers and shares them in small, easy to understand podcast episodes.
I'll go take a look, thank you for the information, and I must tell you that of course I love the movie "gladiator" and I'm a big Seneca enthusiast 😀
"Know that when you are a friend to yourself, you are also a friend to everyone."
<< Seneca >>
Like the mindset of the Stoics too, Alex. Actually I signed up for a Stoic New Year Challenge by Ryan Holliday who is great in translating these ancient thoughts into the modern age and make them applicable. In case you are interested I posted about it two days ago. Will start 1st January.
And Yes, I know these anxieties myself. Stoic wisdom can help here indeed. Though they won’t go away but I can deal with it a bit better.
Greetings and Hope you had a great sunday!
Thomas
I love Ryan Holiday! I'm subscribed to The Daily Stoic podcast which is full of thoughts and interpretations of the great works of Marcus Aurelius and other stoic philosophers. Yes! I'll check your post, I'd love to participate!
Thank you!
You are Welcome! 🤝🏻
And yes I am subscribed to the Daily Stöic podcast too. A lot of Inspiration!
This is very true. However, it is also true that failing to do what we can, in fact, actually do to mitigate hazards leaves us vulnerable to threats we cannot control. When camping in bear country, failing to keep a clean camp will attract bears. When living in a country in which corrupt bureaucrats are censoring forthright speech, promoting fake news, and imposing tyrannical harms like debanking, travel restrictions, and the other mechanisms of social credit used to control people by technocrats, it is necessary to take action to secure yourself from these hazards that you cannot control. Just as we cannot control hungry bears, but can control the delicious smells coming from our camps, we cannot control globalists, tyrannical governments, or corrupt media, but we can take actions to protect ourselves from those hazards.
Kissinger famously pointed out that controlling food enabled controlling people, controlling oil enabled controlling governments, and controlling money enabled controlling the world. This is because each of these groups is dependent on centralized production of these goods and services, and that enables them to be controlled by those controlling those things, because they are necessities. It is dependence on centralized production that creates susceptibility to control by those controlling centralized production.
This enables us to take action to reduce our vulnerability to such control. We are not helpless against these threats we cannot control, because we can act to reduce our dependence on centralization. When it comes to food, we do not have to be utterly dependent on global corporations like Walmart or Kroger for our food. There are other sources, such as local farmers, who often have farmer's markets or can be approached individually, growing our own with backyard gardens and new technology such as aquaponics that radically empowers people to completely be independent from external sources of food, and hunting and foraging. When it comes to oil (energy) there also are sources we can use that prevent being dependent on centralized production, such as heating with firewood that we can purchase locally or harvest ourselves, the new technologies that enable solar panels to be printed on recycled PET from beverage containers with graphene inks on ordinary inkjet printers, and a great variety of mechanisms that have been developed such as wood gas, microhydro, wind, and geothermal. Further storing household energy has last year changed forever when ordinary concrete with added carbon black was shown to create a supercapacitor that could store electricity just like batteries at a fraction of the cost and extremely simply. Finally, as we are all familiar with cryptocurrency, we are all aware that the idea behind it is to be able to transact with money that cannot be controlled.
It is important that we don't just say 'Well, I can't control the sun, so I can only suffer the night', because we have the ability to make light. We can't control many things, but we can mitigate their effects, and even completely replace supplies and sources of necessities that we cannot control by supplying those things in other ways, including supplying them ourselves. Modern technology is too often viewed as some kind of enemy because our enemies use it, but they use it because the most advanced tech is the most productive, and that is exactly why we should use it ourselves to free us from dependence on our enemies.
That is how to have peace of mind when confronted with hazards we cannot control, because we do control our susceptibility to those hazards.
Thanks!
Yes, taking action and minding the things you can control is the way. Shrugging and saying 'Well, I can't control the sun, so I can only suffer the night' is a bit like giving up on life, isn't it? I think the point I was trying to get across is to take action when action needs to be taken, but not to spend hours/days drowning in fear and anxiety.
We should
Thank you for commenting my friend.
I think practicing stoicism should be easier in Latin America than in the US :) You know, the Mañana World where everyone takes everything easy... I hope that you can find a way to deal with your emotions and thoughts. As someone with a couple of different forms of OCD, I know how intrusive thoughts can be ;)
Happy New Year from Czechia to Guatemala my friend!
@tipu curate 8
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/70) Liquid rewards.
Mañana wey! haha
Yes, I'm finding ways of getting better and battling anxiety. It takes practice, but I remind myself daily to take in the wisdom of the ancient stoics.
I recognize this as well. What if what if.. and I’m an overthinker. I look for the solutions for now and focus my attention on something else, like finding an adapter in a household 😉
It's good to be prepared, but not to drown in worry. I've learned to recognize this fairly recently and helps me identify moments where I'm overthinking and bring myself back to a state of focus... like finding an adapter 😄
I agree with you. I read that someone just stole from Luka Doncic. So no one is completely safe from this. Also some people say that russia will attack Lithuania as well. I can't do anything about either of these things so I just hope for the best and focus on making art.
This is the way! Although it's sometimes easier said than done. You can, however, take certain precautions and protect your business with an alarm, cameras and other security measures. Take action and have a response plan, but we can't live in a state of paranoia.
We too often forget that we have walls and door locks to keep our selves and our property secure. We are able to mitigate our susceptibility to hazards we cannot control, and this enables us to take reasonable action - not to worry about things we cannot control - but to control what is our responsibility and ability to control. You point out modern technological tools that increase our security over just having walls and door locks, and very often modern technology can greatly increase the benefits we can attain with it, because the most advanced technology is the most productive technology.
Just as we would never dream of sleeping on the street and leaving piles of our money next to us when we have the ability to sleep in a home with locked doors, we should similarly take actions available to us, particularly considering the most productive ways the most advanced tech makes possible.
I don't know if we forget we have walls and door locks. I absolutely make sure all doors and windows are locked before closing down my business for the day. This is step 1. After step 1 is complete, I try to add more layers of security: alarm, camera, fireproof safe, security company and direct relationship with the local police.
I should say that we forget we had to invent and adopt these technologies to mitigate hazards we cannot control. Walls and door locks didn't just spring up around us. They are technologies we are responsible to implement that mitigate hazards we cannot control, and are exemplary of what we must do to mitigate all hazards we cannot control, regardless of what that hazard may be. We can't control hazards, but we can mitigate our susceptibility to them, and when we have we can then have peace of mind and accept what may come because we have responsibly done what we can do to live in a hazardous world.
What the human mind can do, this software will never be able to do
#hive #posh