The Power of Mind
The Stoics on using reason to overcome emotion
Our mind is a powerful thing. The Stoics believed that in order to live a good life, we needed to embrace the power of our mind and use reason and rationality to detach from the overpowering of emotions. This did not mean to have a “stiff upper lip,” rather, it meant to learn how to control ourselves in situations through reason so that powerful emotions could not overtake us.
Below are three Stoic tactics to living a good life.
The Power of Thoughts
“Your ability to control your thoughts — treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions — false to your nature and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.”
-Marcus Aurelius
Reason, our commanding faculty, is essential to our lives and our happiness. Without it, we would be on autopilot, pulled this way or that by our base instincts and constantly shifting emotions.
Reason is there to help us form appropriate judgments of the world. To the Stoics, this meant not attaching our worth to externals that would not lead to virtue or by focusing on things outside our control.
Jumping to Improper Judgment
“What we hate to hear, we readily believe, and we grow angry before we use our judgment.”
-Seneca
How often do we allow our emotions to carry us away? In writing on the subject of anger to his brother, Seneca advises just how quickly we allow ourselves to be overtaken by emotions. Seneca likens the emotion of anger to that of a collapsing building — once it starts, there is no stopping it, it must run its course before it can cease, and by the time it does, the destruction has been made.
But like Marcus advised, we have the power to influence these thoughts. Before anger grabs hold of us, if we have used reason to train our judgments, to allow a proper judgment to intercede as the emotion arises, we have a chance to stop it in its tracks.
As the angel investor Naval Ravikant once summarized:
“What you feel tells you nothing about the facts — it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts.”
Learn to Think, Not React
“In every undertaking, examine its antecedents and their consequences, and only then proceed to the act itself. If you don’t do that, you will start enthusiastically, because you have not thought about any of the next stages; then, when difficulties appear, you will give up and be put to shame.”
-Epictetus
Thinking through our actions ahead of time, reflecting on the actions we’ve taken throughout the day, both good and bad, this is how we learn to better engage our rational brain with our emotional one. It is through these reflections that we begin to see clarity for why we acted a certain way.
By reflecting like this, we can begin to see patterns within our own actions. Once we can bring these to light, we can better learn their triggers and smooth those areas out with reason. This is what the Stoics believed we had the power to do.
“Whenever we are frustrated, or troubled, or pained, let us never hold anyone responsible except ourselves, meaning our own opinions.”