The goal of stoicism is what we call, emotional mastery. Marcus Aurelius said,
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it — and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
To practice Stoicism and thus, emotional mastery, you must become masterful at accepting things. This means that you are able to accept (aka be ok with) undesirable things happening or potentially happening to you.
Being ok or at peace with things you dislike, want to avoid, or hate, does not mean you will be complacent and not want to change or improve things. You can have internal peace while also having a desire to change your circumstances or influence the world. This is the end state you want to achieve.
Real life example:
One of our clients feared looking uncomfortable around others. This fear, along with the fear of being anxious around others, made it difficult for him to socialize. After understanding the root cause of anxiety and the principles shared in this article, he realized that he had to accept the possibility of being uncomfortable and anxious around others.
Client Example 2:
Our client used to have panic attacks that were connected to a fear of death. They shared,
“I always had the anxiety of dying, and I got rid of it when I always told myself when I had a panic attack, its ok that it’s happening then I just accept maybe I will die now, maybe not.”
It took them a while to realize this was their path to freedom.
“From my experience with my panic attacks, it took time time unitl it really clicked and it worked.”
Some Stoics call acceptance being neutral about things. This is sometimes easier said than done. When you do the opposite and view certain possibilities and outcomes as unacceptable, you unknowingly create anxiety triggers.
Emotional mastery
Emotional mastery is the act of finding the psychological root cause of one’s emotions and changing one’s way of thinking so that a trigger(1) no longer triggers one in the future. Developing emotional mastery/intelligence enables you to learn from your emotions. It may be difficult to believe, but you may knowingly or unknowingly use emotions as a means to help yourself. For example, some people use anxiety as a reminder to be on guard when dealing with a certain individual.
The more proficient emotional mastery skills you have, the more capable you are of understanding and eliminating the root cause(s) of your negative emotions.
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- Trigger = a stimuli that when encountered we experience a negative emotion.
