25 Stoic Principles for Joy and Happiness
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Unlock the Power of Stoicism: A Path to Joy and Tranquility in Modern Life
In today’s post, we provide 25 Stoic actions and ideas that can enable us to discover a more joyous life and to experience less negative emotions in our day-to-day. These principles come from William B. Irvine’s acclaimed book, ‘A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy’, a must-read for modern Stoicism practitioners.
The author ultimately attempts to create a Stoic guidebook for twentieth century individuals. He adopts the role of philosophical detective to determine what modern individuals must do if they wish to adopt a philosophy of life advocated by the Roman Stoics two thousand years ago.
The Stoics identified insatiable desires and worrying about uncontrollable factors as key triggers for unhappiness and stress. Stoicism offers practical techniques to eliminate anxiety and dissatisfaction from daily life. In their pursuit of tranquility (more on this below), Stoics aims to reduce negative emotions so that we can experience a more joyous life.
Some critics argue Stoicism could encourage complacency, but evidence from historical figures like Marcus Aurelius shows otherwise. Does embracing Stoic contentment make one unambitious in today’s fast-paced world? On the contrary, past Stoics were overachievers, as observed through the lives of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, or Seneca. Stoics did not only advise to be satisfied with the present, but also to strive to become a better person–to become virtuous in the ancient sense of the word: Stoics had a strong sense of social duty to their fellow humans and often participated in government. Paradoxically, although Stoics did not seek success from the outset, they nevertheless gained it as a byproduct of implementing their fascinating philosophy of life.
25 Practical Stoic Strategies for a Meaningful and Joyful Life
1. Define Your Grand Life Goal for a Purposeful Existence
The first component of a philosophy of life is to set your grand goal in living. The second component is to implement a strategy to achieve it. If you lack a grand goal in living you don’t have a coherent philosophy of life. And without a philosophy of life there is a big risk that you may mislive, looking back on your life full of regret.
2. Embrace Joy by Eliminating Negative Emotions, Not All Emotions
The goal of the Stoics was not to banish emotions from life but to banish negative emotions. It is a common misconception to mix the modern definition of the term stoic (“one who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain”) with the ancient Stoics (uppercase). These men and women were cheerful and optimistic about life and fully capable of enjoying its pleasures, without becoming attached to them.
3. Practice Gratitude to Overcome Insatiability
We are unlikely to have a good life full of meaning unless we overcome our insatiability. A good strategy to to pursue is to practice gratitude and to convince ourselves to want the things we already have.
4. Pursue Tranquility and Virtue, Not Fame and Fortune
Fame and fortune are not worth pursuing if our goal is to live a good life. Stoics instead advise to pursue “tranquility” and the attainment of “virtue”. Tranquility is a state marked by the presence of joy and the absence of anger, grief, anxiety, and fear, while attaining Stoic virtue can be understood as aiming for human excellence, and is often broken down as pursuing justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom.
5. Enjoy Life's Good Things Without Attachment
Stoics enjoyed whatever “good things” were available to them, but at the same time practiced non-attachment to those things and experiences. They advised that we must stand ready to give up the good things without regret if our circumstances should change. It was the Cynics, not the Stoics, who advocated asceticism, which is likely a non-starter philosophy of life for most 21st century individuals.
6. Live in Accordance with Nature and Social Duty
For the Stoics, living virtuously means aligning with nature’s principles and embracing our role in society. Since nature intended us to be social creatures, we have duties to our fellow men. This sense of social duty led Stoics to be active players in politics.
7. Practice Negative Visualization to Prevent Hedonic Adaptation
Engage in 'negative visualization' regularly to combat insatiability and reduce the impact of hedonic adaptation on your happiness. Misfortune weights most heavily on those who expect nothing but good fortune. We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking the things we worked so hard to get for granted. Engaging in negative visualization means actively imagining losing the things we have, including not only possessions, but also our close relationships. We will then truly appreciate what we have and be less likely to form desires for other things.
Seneca committing suicide with his foot in a bath. Coloured engraving by B. Ravenet after R. Earlom after Luca Giordano. Retrieved from Wikipedia.
8. Reflect on Mortality to Increase Life Appreciation
Take time to reflect on your mortality regularly, a Stoic practice that deepens gratitude and appreciation for life. This is an extension of the negative visualization: as we go about our day, we should pause and reflect on the fact that we won’t live forever and that this day could be our last. This reminder will make us appreciate how wonderful it is to be alive and will increase our enjoyment of life.
9. Focus Only on What You Can Control
A crucial Stoic principle is focusing only on what you can control, reducing anxiety and increasing inner peace. In life there are 1) things we can control, 2) things we cannot control, and 3) things over which we have only partial control. We should go about our day performing a triage where we arrange elements of life into these three categories. We will focus on items from the first category, while items from the second category we should brush –it is a waste of time and energy worrying about things over which we have no agency. For items over which we have only partial control, we should be careful about setting internal goals (e.g., playing our best tennis match) rather than external goals or expected outcomes (e.g., winning the match).
10. Adopt a Fatalistic Attitude Towards the Past and Present
Preserving tranquility involves adopting a Stoic fatalistic attitude toward the past and the present, focusing instead on what lies ahead. We should keep firmly in mind that the past cannot be changed. It is a waste of time and energy to ponder on how the past could have been different. Furthermore, if we spend our day wishing for the present to be different, we will display constant reactiveness and become deeply dissatisfied with life. Instead, we must choose to not react to how the present unfolds in this very moment, but practice gratitude instead with what life is already offering us. We should focus our actions on the immediate future.
11. Practice Self-Denial to Strengthen Against Future Misfortunes
Stoics recommend practicing 'self-denial' to manage the dangers of excessive pleasure and cultivate inner resilience. This does not mean they inflicted discomforts to punish themselves, but rather to increase their enjoyment of life. By periodically practicing self-denial, including “practicing poverty”, they hardened themselves against future misfortunes, and became confident they could withstand major setbacks when these did eventually arrive. With this mindset, the prospects of future discomforts did not induce any anxiety in the present and they were more fully able to enjoy the present moment. Finally, undertaking these small, voluntary acts of discomfort–for example, periodically allowing themselves to go hungry, thirsty, cold, or to practice poverty–allowed them to fully appreciate what they already had.
12. Avoid Pursuing Intense Pleasures to Prevent Being Controlled by Them
In addition to self-denial, Stoics advise periodically passing up pleasures to prevent being controlled by desire. Seneca warned that pursuing pleasure was like pursuing a wild beast: “on being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces”. In other words, intense pleasures, when “captured”, can become our captors. The problem is the more pleasures a man captures, the more masters he will have to serve.
13. Regularly Reflect on Your Daily Actions Through a Stoic Lens
Regularly reflect on daily events and assess if your actions align with core Stoic principles like wisdom and courage. As we go about our day, we can simultaneously play the role of actor and Stoic observer. Are we practicing some of the techniques advocated by the Stoics? For instance, do we engage in negative visualization or take time to distinguish the things we can control over the ones we cannot? Are we dwelling on events from the past or wishing for the present to be different instead of focusing our efforts on the immediate future? Have we consciously practiced small acts of self-denial to strengthen ourselves against future misfortunes?
14. Avoid the Company of People with Unwholesome Desires
Distance yourself from those with unhealthy desires, as this can disrupt your tranquility and lead to the adoption of similar negative behaviors. If you cannot avoid annoying people, how can we deal with them? When irritated by someones shortcomings, Stoics advise to pause and reflect on your own shortcomings. This will make you become more empathetic to this individual’s faults and therefore more tolerant of him.
15. Practice Social Fatalism to Build Empathy and Tolerance
Adopt 'social fatalism' in your relationships, recognizing that most people don’t choose their flaws, helping you foster empathy and tolerance. Try to practice operating on the assumption that flawed people are fated to behave in this way and that it is therefore pointless to wish they could become less annoying.
Marcus Aurelius has been described by ancient and modern writers as embodying the philosopher king ideal. Glyptothek München. Retrieved from Wikipedia.
16. Learn to Defuse Insults for Emotional Resilience
Stoics offer various methods to neutralize the impact of insults, which often disrupt personal tranquility and emotional balance. First, pause to consider if what the insulter said was true. If it was, then there is little reason to be upset. Second, consider how well-informed the insulter is. Rather than getting angry, consider calmly setting him straight. Third, consider the source of the insult: if it is from someone we value, then his or her critical remark shouldn’t upset us. If we don’t respect the insulter, we should even feel relieved: we should only worry if he approved of what I am doing.
17. Use Humor or Silence to Diminish the Impact of Insults
Stoics provide practical guidance on how to handle insults, using humor or silence to disarm and maintain inner peace. First, we can try humor. By laughing off the insult, we disarm the insulter by implicitly stating we don’t take him seriously. Second, we can try no response at all: a non-response can be disconcerting to the insulter–he or she will not only wonder whether or not we understood the insult, but also we are robbing him of the pleasure of upsetting us. Over time, though, a clear sign of progress in our practice of Stoicism is that we will become increasingly indifferent to other people’s opinions.
18. Engage in Negative Visualization to Strengthen Relationships
The Stoic method for preventing grief involves practicing negative visualization, preparing emotionally for potential losses. By contemplating the deaths of those we love, we will live our relationships more fully. When someone close dies, we won’t experience regret about the things we should have done for them. In addition, we should try to imagine never having had the thing we lost in the first place–we can thereby substitute the feelings of regret for feelings of gratitude for having had the chance to experience the time we had with the person we love.
19. Use Humor to Manage Anger and Avoid Overreaction
Leverage humor to diffuse anger and view frustrating events through a light-hearted, Stoic lens. In many cases we let ourselves be overwhelmed by relatively minor incidences. Typically, our anger lasts longer than the damage that was done to us by said events. Stoics encourage us to choose to think of the bad thing that happened to us as something funny rather than outrageous–we are hopeless actors in someone else’s absurdist play. Another Stoic technique is to reflect on the impermanence of things; the event in question is not only completely trivial in the big scheme of things, but even in our own lives it is something that we will never remember in a few weeks, months, or years time.
20. Stop Chasing Fame or Social Status for True Happiness
Avoid the pursuit of fame or social status, as Stoics advise focusing on personal virtue over external validation. Stoics argue that people are unhappy because they are confused about what is valuable–one of those things being fame. People fail to realize that fame–whether worldwide or just the admiration of neighbours and colleagues–comes at a steep price. We should be reluctant to do anything that will give others power over our own freedom. By always trying to please others, we lose agency over our life. Ignoring what others think of us is consistent with the Stoic theme of not concerning ourselves with things we cannot control.
21. Reject Others' Values When Seeking Admiration
Realize that winning others’ admiration often requires adopting their values, which may not align with your own Stoic principles. We should ask ourselves whether their notion of success is compatible with ours and whether, by pursuing whatever it is they value, they are gaining the tranquility and virtue that Stoics seek.
22. Avoid Pursuing Wealth as an End Goal
Stoics caution against centering life around wealth accumulation, recommending a focus on simplicity and contentment instead. Again, the pursuit of material wealth is ultimately tied to winning the admiration of others. If fame is not worth pursuing, then the pursuit of wealth in itself is not an appropriate goal either. Stoics also warn towards the exposure to a luxurious lifestyle, even when we can afford it, since we will loose our ability to delight in the simple things of life. Those who shun luxury can devote more time and energy to worthwhile undertakings.
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” Epictetus. Image from Wikimedia
23. Ironically, Stoicism Can Lead to Financial Success
While Stoics don’t actively seek wealth, they often accumulate it through disciplined living and effective resource management. Stoics will make themselves useful to fellow humans, and, given their self-discipline, will likely be very effective at it. Therefore, the practice of Stoicism can be financially rewarding. Ironically, as a result of not being interested in a luxurious lifestyle, a practicing Stoic will likely be a proficient saver and thereby become wealthier than those individuals whose primary goal is wealth accumulation.
24. Adopt a Philosophy of Life to Conquer the Fear of Death
Adopting a clear life philosophy, such as Stoicism, can foster acceptance of death by focusing on what truly matters. Some of us fear death because of the prospect of what comes after, but many more are disturbed by the thought that they may have mislived their life without attaining the things in life that are truly valuable. They fear looking back on their lives with regret. Someone with a coherent philosophy of life will know what is worth aiming for, and therefore will not feel cheated when it is their turn to pass on.
25. Simplify Decision-Making by Aligning Actions with Your Philosophy
Embracing Stoicism simplifies daily decision-making by aligning choices with its core virtues of wisdom, courage, and tranquility: we should simply choose the option offered which aligns best with the goals set by your philosophy of life. Stoicism pursues the attainment of tranquility and the pursuit of Stoic virtue. By experiencing fewer negative emotions, such as anger, grief, disappointment, and anxiety, we will increase our chances of experiencing positive emotions and delight in the world around us. By aligning our actions with the four Stoic virtues of justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom, we will not only attain tranquility, but also live in according to our social nature by serving others.
Enjoyed this post? Don’t miss the Dalai Lama’s 50 insights for leading a meaningful life or the incredible similarities existing between Buddhism and Stoicism principles.
