This month’s post is about stoicism.

I feel like the topic has been popping up more and more often in casual conversations and have consistently noticed that a primary takeaway seems to be an emphasis on avoiding emotions.

I disagree – allow me to elaborate.

Stoicism certainly is about being rational, but it’s not so simple as eliminating emotions from rationale.

So, in this post, I’ll describe what stoicism is and is not, and describe what a few benefits of practicing stoicism are.

What Is Stoicism?

In fifteen words:

Stoicism is a philosophy focused on rational and realistic alignment with natural and universal realities.

The first word I want to focus on is philosophy. Philosophy, as I’ve come to enjoy simplifying it thanks to CrashCourse on YouTube, is a two-step process through which all things (not necessarily all at once, mind you) are first “Attempted to be understood” and then “Critically evaluated.” 

Stoicism is not a religion and does not inherently deal with any sort of god, but it is concerned with divinity in the form of Providence or Fate – essences of the universe dealing with the way things have been, are, and will be. Stoicism is also concerned with living a good life and provides some guidelines as to what that looks like.

Stoicism is not inherently spiritual, but it is concerned with the individual’s obligation to use their intellect to perform whatever duty they ought to perform in their communities. 

Stoicism is a philosophy that aims to balance humanity’s place in the natural world.

There are four primary virtues of concern in stoicism: wisdom, courage, temperament, and justice.

Wisdom involves discerning what is worth doing and what is not worth doing.

In other words, wisdom involves recognizing what is within our control and what is not.

Any individual is unable to control the fact that they will become thirsty if they do not drink enough water.

That same individual may be able to control whether or not they acquire and consume water to quench thirst at a given time.

Thirst is a natural consequence of bodily processes, and by recognizing this feature of nature, we are able to understand that thirst happens.

The nature of more complicated things may not be so straightforward and may require deeper attempts to understand and more effort to critically evaluate.

Courage involves going the step beyond wisdom – knowing – and actually doing what ought to be done and not doing what ought not be done.

If wisdom is recognizing what is within our control and what is not, courage is doing (or not doing) what is within your control when you ought (or ought not) to do it and not concerning yourself about things that are not within your control.

Lying is generally an opportunity to be unfair – an opportunity to gain an undeserved advantage – and is fully in an individual’s control. Wisdom would recognize that lying is in an individual’s control, while demonstrating courage would result in intentionally not lying despite recognizing a clear advantage.

Temperament is a step beyond courage and, simply put, involves responding rather than reacting.

Someone might be running late to an important event because of a traffic accident. Wisdom recognizes that the accident was likely not within the control of that someone. Courage recognizes this as well as that there is no cause for frustration. Accidents have happened in the past and will likely continue to happen. Rather than lashing out at nothing in particular, demonstrating Temperament involves accepting the impending delay, or simply considering available options – rescheduling, simply informing relevant parties, canceling –  whatever the best or set of realistic options might be.

Finally, Justice involves equality and fairness.

Maybe you’re King Solomon and are faced with mediating an argument between two mothers arguing over who should be a child’s mother…

Maybe you’ve had the opportunity to sit on a court martial or undertake jury duty and 

Maybe a certain quantity of work needs to get completed amongst your team.

Your team has multiple people on it with varying levels of training and experience. Each also has their own additional professional obligations and personal obligations – is there a most appropriate way to mete out the workload in a fair way?

Besides attempting to evaluate equality and fairness at the personal level, stoicism tries to do that wherever and whenever it can.

These four virtues work together, then, to align our human behavior with nature and the universe in a somewhat balanced way by encouraging us to persistently evaluate ourselves and our decisions against what is (reality)  and what ought to be (fairness) in a deliberate way.

Some Benefits of Practicing Stoicism

Practicing stoicism will lead to significantly reduced stress.

Life is full of chaotic events. Try as hard as you may, there are only so many things within your control. Accepting that some (most) things are beyond your control is easy enough, but also recognizing that most things are beyond your control and are therefore not worth spending significant time fretting about is an entirely different concept.

Late to your best friend’s wedding? Perhaps an undesirable result of unexpected traffic conditions, poor weather, vehicular complications, physiological circumstances, alien invasion, the onset of international conflict – whatever it may be.

While a rational individual might think ‘Oh, I could have planned my route better to avoid traffic, or left sooner or encouraged my best friend to delay or accelerate the wedding to avoid this particular weather, or ensured that my vehicle’s maintenance was up to date, or avoided eating that particular combination of foods, or influenced the series of events such that aliens never found our world, or done something to prevent global war…’ while there might have been elements within your control that might have led you to prudently attend your best friend’s wedding, the simple bulk of this paragraph scratches the outermost layer of the surface of how deeply we are out of control of so much in our own lives.

And that’s not only okay, it’s important to accept.

Practicing stoicism also supports the continuous development of an open perspective.

Recognizing that there is a gray “I can influence someone or something” area between the black and white “I can or I cannot control something” forces the stoic practitioner to exercise their rational processing. Doing so properly involves exploration and evaluation of assumptions.

Assumptions, simply put, are ideas believed to be true that inform an assertion or behavior.

For example, if one observes the light outside their window as dark, they might assume that it is nighttime. In reality, there may simply be a great deal of dark cloud cover in the middle of the day or some other reason for the low light level.

You might have assumed that the window that this hypothetical one is observing light through is in a house, but they might actually-hypothetically be in a car.

In more complicated circumstances, you might assume the behavior of a person reflects some quality they embody rather than some circumstance they may be experiencing. Practicing stoicism improves when you do not allow your first assumptions to shape your decisions.

Practicing stoicism promotes clearer relationships.

Following the above idea, you can avoid a lot of pain wondering at the behavior of others – wondering why they did or did not do certain things – by simply considering what you can actually observe and pairing those observations with your understanding of others’ goals.

Keep in mind that wisdom involves recognizing what is and what is not worth doing – a subset of that concept is recognizing what is and what is not within your control. While we have the power to influence the behavior of others, none of us can perfectly control others.

By observing others, weighing your experiences with them (conversations, understanding their goals), and evaluating your options when interacting with them, you can eliminate much of the ambiguity of your relationships. “Alex is truly reliable.” “Blake is dependable with x and y, but not so much z.” “Charlie is prone to small lies.”

No more “why is so-and-so always so sketchy!?” but more “I know that so-and-so is frequently sketchy, so I’ll just proactively do such-else.”

Practicing stoicism supports the establishment and enforcement of stronger boundaries.

Finally, by recognizing the reality of others’ behaviors and embracing the idea that you can control and influence your own interactions to varying extents, you can draw clearer red lines about yourself. “Dana is regularly late to events; I can either stop inviting them out or tell them that if they are late, I’ll be departing for / canceling our event unilaterally…”

You can leave some margin for grace, but overall, you are better able to identify when someone is not simply being slightly inconvenient – they’re violating your trust or generosity.

Throughout any of these ideas, you never need to be a jerk – but being forthcoming or firm is not being a jerk, either.

What do you think?

I’m sure you’ve come across the topic of stoicism if you’ve run into this post.

Do you agree that stoicism is being misrepresented in the mainstream?

Maybe you think it’s good that it is being shared widely even if it’s a bit off base…

Is the record straight or does it need some resetting?