If You Can't Stand Positive Thinking, Read This.
Positive thinking always sounded like a bunch of hogwash to me.
Just think happy thoughts and boom: happy things happen? What if they don't? Should I try harder?
People been told me I'm a pessimist and I need to "light up" ever since I can remember. For a while, I believed them.
Then I read this book and I became a Stoic.
When people think of Stoics, they think of people who are unflinching in the face of hardness, who stoutly take whatever life throws at them. And this is true: a stoic accept the worst part of life as necessary, even expected.
Part of being a stoic is always asking the question:
"Why is this bad?"
This question opens your mind to the possibility that it is your belief that something should be a certain way or is a certain way that bring you pain. The world...just IS.
But there's another, hidden part of being a stoic. Surprising and uplifting, often missed on a superficial analys. Being a stoic has a certain optimism about it. This is what "real" stoicism is, as it was envisioned in ancient Rome by Seneca and his followers.
Marcus Aurelius, the stoic emperor, wrote in his book, Meditations:
Begin each day by telling yourself : Today I will be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness--all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good and what is evil.
At first, this sound downright dire! How could I have a good day when my first thoughts are about so dark.
Some stoics go even darker, they advice thinking about everything that could go wrong, how you could die, how someone you love could be dead and you're about to find out when looking at the phone, how Pokemon Go is now a religion...
But all this is part of something called "premeditation" and its ultimate goal is actually to have you thinking clearly about how BAD the day could go. It is not rare that you'll find a spring in your step when you realize, the worst thing about this particular early morning, is that it starts so early!
The premeditation can be a powerful tool for you happiness because it forces you to realize that your worries might, one day, come true but maybe not today, maybe not all of them and even if they would, it wouldn't be the catastrophe that you feared. It's counter intuitive but, the premeditation can calm you anxiety about the world and get you closer to acceptance.
A stoic will "premeditate" daily on what could go wrong, feel it and live it, for a few seconds, minutes everyday then go live the actual life. If you want, you can imagine it a negative meditation. In his wonderful book, The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman talks with people who swear to live Stoically. It's a great read but there's a part that really stood out to me: most stoics he meet are not necessarily living a "fortunate" life but have a cheeriness about them that impressed the author. Could the key to happiness be in training your mind to think like a Stoic?
Dr Keith Seddon', a moderator for the Stoic Forum that Burkeman interviews, advises people to try a very simple experiment:
"Try thinking Stoically for the duration of a single trip to the supermarket. Is something out of stock? Are the queues too long? You are not obligated to tolerate the situation, but to become upset, would be, in Stoic terms, an error of judgement. You cannot control the situation, reacting with fury to it is irrational"
How liberating is this?
I try to live by it but I must confess, I fail daily. I get flustered, I get scared, I fear, I obsessed over the "could be" or "might happen" and I am a bad Stoic day in day out.
But there are days when I find myself caught in traffic, stupid drivers doing stupid things, people angry and stressed all around and I feel calm. I love that feeling.
I might even say I feel happy then.
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I really like this, Stoicism has been super valuable in my own life too. It's a far cry from a lot of the positive thinking stuff that's out there, that does nothing more than causes us to run/think in circles.
Curious, have you read 'The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy' by William Irvine? It's a great primer on stoicism, kinda shook my world up a bit when I read it.
Thank you for your comments. I have not, just meditations and some podcasts/youtube videos. I'll put in on my list!!
This is a good point @razvanelulmarin, impressive content. I admire what was mentioned about starting a day, expect interference, disloyalty, ill-will its something worth a practice to condition ourselves that not everything we want, we can have.