Stoicism

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine

Some highlights:

• Such is the madness of men, [Diogenes] said, that they choose to be miserable when they have it in their power to be content.
• For the Stoics, a person’s virtue . . . depends on her excellence as a human being—on how well she performs the function for which humans were designed. In the same way that a “virtuous” (or excellent) hammer is one that performs well the function for which it was designed—namely, to drive nails—a virtuous individual is one who performs well the function for which humans were designed. To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live.
• By studying logic, they hoped to perform well one of the functions for which we were designed; namely, to behave in a rational manner. And by studying physics, they hoped to gain insight into the purpose for which we were designed.
• The Roman Stoics retained this goal, but we find them also repeatedly advancing a second goal: the attainment of tranquility.
• Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.
• Stoics thought there is nothing wrong with enjoying the good things life has to offer, as long as we are careful in the manner in which we enjoy them. In particular, we must be ready to give up the good things without regret.
• BEGIN EACH DAY by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance....
• the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have
• THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question. They recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value....
• Most of us spend our idle moments thinking about the things we want but don’t have. We would be much better off, Marcus says, to spend this time thinking of all the things we have and reflecting on how much we would miss them if they were not ours.
• After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, he will go on to express his delight in even having a glass....
• Hedonic adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world. Because of adaptation, we take our life and what we have for granted rather than delighting in them. Negative visualization, though, is a powerful antidote to hedonic adaptation. By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.
• While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves—more precisely, by changing our desires.
• when a Stoic concerns himself with things over which he has some but not complete control, such as winning a tennis match, he will be very careful about the goals he sets for himself. In particular, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals.
• If we want our life to go well, Epictetus says, we should, rather than wanting events to conform to our desires, make our desires conform to events
• When the Stoics advocate fatalism, they are, I think, advocating a restricted form of the doctrine. More precisely, they are advising us to be fatalistic with respect to the past, to keep firmly in mind that the past cannot be changed.
• We can either spend this moment wishing it could be different, or we can embrace this moment.
• The Stoics, by way of contrast, welcomed a degree of discomfort in their life.
• Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, “who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.”
• Marcus recommends that when we interact with an annoying person, we keep in mind that there are doubtless people who find us to be annoying.
• ...keep in mind that our annoyance at what he does will almost invariably be more detrimental to us than whatever it is he is doing.
• It is easy these days to find people who will agree that their life would have gone better if they had shown more sexual reserve; it is hard to find people who think their life would have gone better if they had shown less.
• One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true.... 
• One particularly powerful sting-elimination strategy is to consider the source of an insult. If I respect the source, if I value his opinions, then his critical remarks shouldn’t upset me.
• Indeed, a Stoic sage, were one to exist, would probably take the insults of his fellow humans to be like the barking of a dog. When a dog barks, we might make a mental note that the dog in question appears to dislike us, but we would be utter fools to allow ourselves to become upset.
• as Epictetus puts it, “what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about these things.”
• Refusing to respond to an insult is, paradoxically, one of the most effective responses possible.
• ...keep in mind that the things that anger us generally don’t do us any real harm; they are instead mere annoyances.
• Epictetus therefore advises us not to seek social status, since if we make it our goal to please others, we will no longer be free to please ourselves.
• not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself
• ... desire for luxuries is not a natural desire. Natural desires, such as a desire for water when we are thirsty, can be satisfied; unnatural desires cannot.
• According to Seneca, our financial goal should be to acquire “an amount that does not descend to poverty, and yet is not far removed from poverty.”
• [For a Stoic,] happiness depends more on his values than on where he resides.
• More generally, the psychiatrist Sally Satel and the philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers, in a book that challenges certain aspects of modern psychological therapy, write, “Recent findings suggest that reticence and suppression of feelings, far from compromising one’s psychological well-being, can be healthy and adaptive. For many temperaments, an excessive focus on introspection and self-disclosure is depressing.
• Stoics don’t think it is helpful for people to consider themselves victims of society—or victims of anything else, for that matter. If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life; if, however, you refuse to think of yourself as a victim—if you refuse to let your inner self be conquered by your external circumstances—you are likely to have a good life.
• Many of us have been persuaded that happiness is something that someone else, a therapist or a politician, must confer on us. Stoicism rejects this notion.
• Stoics, although they didn’t understand evolution, nevertheless discovered psychological techniques that, if practiced, can help us overcome those aspects of our evolutionary programming that might otherwise disrupt our tranquility.
• WHEN DOING THINGS to cause myself physical and mental discomfort, I view myself—or at any rate, a part of me—as an opponent in a kind of game. This opponent—my “other self,” as it were—is on evolutionary autopilot: He wants nothing more than to be comfortable and to take advantage of whatever opportunities for pleasure present themselves.
• And why is self-discipline worth possessing? Because those who possess it have the ability to determine what they do with their life. Those who lack self-discipline will have the path they take through life determined by someone or something else, and as a result, there is a very real danger that they will mislive.