Many people, including you, may have stumbled upon stoicism as a solution to control your emotions. You’re probably tired of being triggered by things and want to eliminate your negative emotions. This is essentially what the Stoics, and thus Stoicism strive for:
Zeno of Citium (founder, c. 300 BCE) reportedly described the goal of Stoicism as “living in agreement with nature.”
Chrysippus (a later Stoic) expanded it to mean living in accordance with both universal nature (the rational order of the cosmos) and human nature (our capacity for reason).
Epictetus (1st c. CE) framed Stoicism in practical terms: focusing only on what is within our control and accepting what is not.
Marcus Aurelius (2nd c. CE) described Stoicism as training the mind to align with reason, justice, and the greater whole.
Internal Peace
If you really think about it, what you’re likely after–in studying stoicism–is internal peace. Having internal peace means you’re ok with yourself and with whatever happens to you or the world. Internal peace is the absence of undesirable emotions like fear, anger, and shame that often cause physical discomfort and bodily stress.
It is possible to maintain internal peace amid undesirable experiences. Why? You can dislike something without feeling emotional or bad about what you dislike. Furthermore, internal peace does not mean that you will be complacent about things you want to change. You can have internal peace and maintain a genuine desire–that you act on–to change your circumstances or influence the world. When you are at peace, your body is mostly in a parasympathetic state–a state of ease.
Benefits of Stoicism/Internal Peace
Less anxiety
See link for what a state of less anxiety looks like and how to attain it.
Increased self-esteem
You’ll increase your ability to be ok with yourself regardless of what you have or do. You’ll also improve your ability to step into situations (social and non-social) and be present without falling into a state of introversion or self-consciousness. You’ll worry less about being “awkward” regardless of what others think, be less nervous, and care less about the opinions of others regarding your actions and views.
More self-awareness
It can be difficult to live authentically without a commitment to improving one’s self-awareness. I define self-awareness as an understanding of one’s thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and desires. Self-awareness allows one to discover the extent to which one is and has been living according to personal or outside standards.
Authenticity & more alignment
An aligned person feels like they’re living according to his or her uniqueness and inner desires. From personal experience, studying the lives of other high-achieving individuals, and researching the topic of mastery, this feeling seems to be a result of identifying and pursuing intrinsically motivating goals regardless of outside discouragement. A fortunate byproduct of alignment is high-performance.
Increased emotional intelligence and intuition
Anxiety can feel very much like “gut” or “intuition,” which raises the “How do I know that this isn’t my gut telling me something?” Knowing how to uncover the beliefs driving your anxiety eliminates this concern. If it’s intuition, you’ll know because you know how to unpack your emotions.
More outcome-independence
A similar concept to internal peace, outcome-independence is the separation of how one feels from the outcomes of one’s actions. For example, if you take a chance on something and don’t get the results you want, being outcome independent means you won’t experience negative emotions of sadness, shame, etc, that impact your peace. You may dislike the outcome but disliking something doesn’t mean you have to experience negative emotions.
More objectivity
More calm/Being in a parasympathetic state more often
Being in this state of being tends to improve one’s capability to think and speak, sleep, digest food, and heal because the body appears to optimally perform those functions in a parasympathetic state.
Problems you may experience without internal peace
More anxiety and fear
When attempting to do something or even at rest, your heart may race, you feel more fidgety, you sweat more, and may also feel your body temperature is rising. You may also find it more difficult to think straight or focus on whatever you’re doing at the moment. These symptoms may cause you to avoid situations or people that will invoke these symptoms in you. It might sound unbelievable, but you are likely using fear/anxiety to help yourself somehow. Without this awareness it can be difficult to reduce anxiety which typically involves identifying the unconscious benefits anxiety gives you.
More social anxiety
It’s sensible to want to be liked, respected, non-judged, and have the skills to behave and say the “right” things in social settings. Unless your’e perfrect it may be difficult to always reach your social standard. The inability to accept that imperfection is an often unknown cause of fear and anxiety in social settings. Social anxiety covers all the fears you have or experience in social situations.
Feeling like “something is wrong with me”
Things won’t always go your way despite your best efforts. You may have times when you can’t pinpoint why you’re unable to fulfill your goals. When things in life don’t make sense or you don’t measure up to person standards or external standards, you may knowingly or uknowingly make what seems like a rational conclusion that something is wrong with you.
Having an inferiority-complex
When we you certain things in the world or compare yourself to others you may use what you observe after comparing as evidence that you’re inferior. A potentially interesting thought experiment is to examine what “inferiority” really means to you and why you believe in that concept.
Being a perfectionist/Fearing failure
You may believe there are certain situations where you can’t make a mistake or fall short of a standard you or others have set for yourself. Depending on how long you have felt like this, you might find this way of living stressful or exhausting but may struggle to see an alternative way of living since this “I have to hit this standard” mindset does and has produced results for you in the past.
Increased self-doubt
It’s reasonable to want to know what to do make the right decisions moment to moment but in moments where that clarity doesn’t exist, we may become hesitant to make decisions to avoid mistakes. We may fear mistakes because of the known or imagined consequences or may think mistakes mean something about us (see “something is wrong with me” above).
Compulsively comparing yourself to others while feeling bad from the comparisons
Unless you have proof of the contrary, everyone is unique, so comparing yourself to others is usually an unfair exercise to you and the person you’re comparing yourself to. There’s typically a set of reasons (beliefs) why you compare in a manner that makes you feel negative emotions. It can be difficult to stop what feels like an automatic human process without understanding those reasons and consciously choosing a different way of being.
Being influenced by the emotions of others in a way you dislike (some call this HSP)
Some say this is mainly genetic while others say being sensitive to the emotions of others is valuable. You can choose how you’d like to be. We’ve described how beliefs are at the root cause of negative emotions. Sensitivity to the emotions of others is, therefore partly, if not mostly, a result of our beliefs. This sensitivity can diminish if you discard the beliefs fueling the sensitivity.
Fearing Rejection
Fear of rejection often stems from the pain you experience when rejected. Removing the pain dimishes and removes the fear. Doing this work will likely require you to unpack what rejection means to you, which may differ depending on the situation. Rather than fear rejection, you can use your goals to decide what risks you take and expose yourself to.
