The goal of stoicism is what we call, emotional mastery. Stoic 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 is to practice being masterful at accepting things. That means you are able to accept (aka be ok with) undesirable things happening to you.
Being ok with, or at peace with things you dislike, want to avoid, or hate does not mean you will not want to change or improve your situation. 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 to transcend his fear of looking uncomfortable, 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 until really clicked and it worked.”
Some Stoics call acceptance being neutral about things. Accepting things is sometimes easier said than done. The opposite, viewing certain possibilities and outcomes as unacceptable, unknowingly creates 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 be unknowingly or knowingly using emotions as a tool to help yourself. For example, some people use anxiety as a reminder to be on guard when dealing with a certain individual.
The more you build your emotional mastery skills, the more capable you are of understanding and eliminating the root cause(s) of your negative emotions.
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- Trigger = a stimulus that, when encountered, we experience a negative emotion.
