Many people, including you, may have stumbled upon stoicism as a way to stop being triggered by things and to eliminate negative emotions.
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’s 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 can therefore 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.
How do you achieve inner peace/be a stoic?
See our post, “How To Be a Stoic.”
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 your self-awareness. Self-awareness involves understanding your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and desires. Self-awareness allows you to discover the extent to which you are and have 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. By studying the lives of other high-achieving individuals and the field of mastery, this feeling seems to result from identifying and pursuing intrinsically motivating goals despite external 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 question: “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.
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 performs best–according to science–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 may feel more fidgety, you may sweat more, and you may also feel your body temperature 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 trigger these symptoms in you. It might sound unbelievable, but you may be using fear/anxiety to help yourself somehow. Having the awareness that you could be using anxiety as a protective tool allows you to embrace the fact that to get rid of your anxiety, you’ll have to uncover the unconscious benefits it gives you.
More social anxiety
Unless you’re perfect, it may be difficult to meet your own or outside social standards 100% of the time. The inability to accept that imperfection, is an often unknown cause of fear and anxiety in social settings.
Feeling like “something is wrong with me”
Things won’t always go your way despite your best efforts. You may have times when you don’t know why you’re unable to fulfill your goals. When things in life don’t make sense or you don’t measure up to personal or external standards, you may knowingly or unknowingly draw the conclusion–which may feel natural–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. Although you may see this way of living as stressful or exhausting, you may struggle to see an alternative way of living since the “I have to hit this standard” mindset has likely produced results for you in the past.
Increased self-doubt
It’s reasonable to want to know the right action to take moment to moment, but when that clarity doesn’t exist, you may become hesitant to make decisions to avoid mistakes. You may fear mistakes because of the known or imagined consequences. You may also knowingly or unknowingly believe that making mistakes means something about you (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. If you feel negative emotions when others do, you likely have a set of beliefs causing that. You can reduce your sensitivity by discarding the beliefs that fuel it.
Fearing Rejection
Fear of rejection often stems from the pain you experience when rejected. Removing the pain diminishes and removes the fear. Doing this work will likely require you to unpack what rejection means to you, which may mean different things in different situations. Rather than fear rejection, you can use your goals to decide what risks you take and expose yourself to.
