I’m glad I happened across this article in time.
The secret to happiness is simple: live like a Stoic for a week
We don’t control what happens to us, we can’t control what the people around us say or do, and we can’t even fully control our own bodies, which get damaged and sick and ultimately die without regard for our preferences. The only thing that we really control is how we think about things.
It’s an invitation to learn a little about this ancient philosophy.
Modern Stoicism: Stoic Week 2018
On October 1, 2018, the seventh annual Stoic Week takes place and Modern Stoicism are inviting people in the UK and from around the rest of the world to participate and learn how to live like a Stoic for a week. The idea behind the week is to give people an opportunity to see whether Stoic philosophy can help them live a more fulfilling life today.
I’ve mentioned Stoicism here before: I was getting wound up by my damned phone and displaying some decidedly un-Stoic attitudes towards it, before remembering a book I had just finished and had obviously not taken on board. A re-read is due, I guess.
Some other introductions.
And then there’s this one, from the School of Life. A little harder to get, I think.
Another great introduction to Stoicism comes from Maria Popova‘s philosophy and literature blog Brain Pickings.
A Stoic’s key to peace of mind: Seneca on the antidote to anxiety
With an eye to the self-defeating and wearying human habit of bracing ourselves for imaginary disaster, Seneca counsels his young friend: “What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come. Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.”
That blog is such a rabbit warren, I could get lost down there all day.
An antidote to the Age of Anxiety: Alan Watts on happiness and how to live with presence
Wisdom on overcoming the greatest human frustration from the pioneer of Eastern philosophy in the West.How Not To Worry: Timeless 1934 Advice on Controlling Anxiety and Mastering Life
“We must gain victory, not by assaulting the walls, but by accepting them.”100 Days of Overthinking: An Illustrated Diary of Mental Meanderings
A visual serenade to presence and a lamentation of how we continually eject ourselves from it.Peanuts and the quiet pain of childhood: how Charles Schulz made an art of difficult emotions
“Readers recognized themselves in “poor moon-faced, unloved, misunderstood” Charlie Brown — in his dignity in the face of whole seasons of doomed baseball games, his endurance and stoicism in the face of insults. He … reminded people, as no other cartoon character had, of what it was to be vulnerable, to be small and alone in the universe, to be human — both little and big at the same time.”
Miscellaneous Details 