Stoicism: The Art of Happiness: How the Stoic Philosophy Works, Living a Good Life, Finding Calm and Managing your Emotions in a Turbulent World excerpt
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Chapter one. How the stoic philosophy works. What is stoicism? Stoicism is simply a wisdom. Philosophy, in other words, is a philosophy that teaches you how to live life well, every human being desires to live a life of happiness and stoicism seeks to increase your happiness. Stoicism is a philosophy that you can live by. In fact, still, a schism is the only philosophy that, from its inception addressed all humans. The stoic philosophy saw all genders, races and social classes as being equal to one another. This also explains why stoicism has managed to survive for more than 2300 years. It is acceptable by people of all colors, classes and cultures. It has evolved together with humanity. Stoicism holds the most practical and relevant rules for all sorts of artists, writers and entrepreneurs. Their attention is always on two specific things. How to live a happy, fulfilling and wonderful life and how to turn yourself into a better person. The main goal is finding inner peace by realizing we have only a short time to live, being aware of impulses, having self control, overcome adversity, these air meditative practices that will help us live with nature, and not against it. We have to understand obstacles we face and never run away. We must turn them into fuel for our fires. According to stoic philosophy, there is nothing that can be considered good or bad. Everything is down to our perception and judgement. The only good thing that exists is virtue, and this is the highest ideal everyone should pursue. Stoics believed that evil does not exist in nature, but it is human behavior that causes harm, people who cause harm black virtue and have refused to live according to nature. For Stoics, the highest ideal is to achieve a noble character. This has nothing to do with well through status. It is only achievable if you live according to nature and pursue virtue and everything that you dio. The unique charm and value of stoicism that make it so important and easy to practice even nowadays is its accessibility and its applicability. One of the main goals of stoicism was liberation from suffering and endurance. When faced with life's highs and lows, the origins of stoicism, the history of stoicism goes back to 301 be seen and starts with a man called Xeno about 2300 years ago in the Greek capital of Athens. Xeno, of Cyprus, was a merchant who survived a shipwreck but lost everything he gained throughout his life. Probably at this point, most of us would give up and blame the circumstances, but not Zino. He turned these events into a new start in his life. By searching and studying, he developed a unique approach to life, which became the foundation of the stoicism and its teachings. Xeno studied philosophy under the cynics for a number of years before moving on to become a student at Plato's Academy. After that, he decided to start his own school within the central market in Athens. Xeno used to stand on the porch and talk to any person who happened to be passing by. He gave lectures regarding principles of personal ethics. Soon he began educating others. In fact, it was here where stoicism got a tame. Unlike other philosophers of his time, Xena was much more open and taught in public. Over a period of time, he managed to draw a crowd of men who would regularly stand with him and talk about philosophy for the next 500 years, stoicism was transformed from a philosophy adopted by a bunch of idle men into the foremost philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome. During the Renaissance, its popularity soared again. This more people search for deeper answers on how to live life. The three stoic disciplines desire the first of the three stoic disciplines is that of desire. At the time that Xena was working out the shape of his philosophy, there were several traditions that addressed the issue of human desire and the consequences that produced some of these traditions. Encouraged a reckless, abandoned, primal urges stating that life is to be enjoyed to the fullest, regardless of the consequences. In contrast, other traditions sought to virtually purged the human spirit of any and all primal desires, choosing instead to live a life of austerity and aestheticism, thus avoiding all consequences of desire completely. Xena recognize that well, such extreme measures might help a person avoid a certain level of suffering. They did not offer any meaningful peace or contentment. Allowing oneself to indulge in vice without guilt might remove shame and regret, but it would not provide last enjoy in life, alternatively depriving oneself of pleasure. Although an effective way of preventing guilt and shame was no way to find happiness of any kind. Therefore, a solution somewhere between the two extremes needed to be found. The discipline of desire was the stoic answer to this dilemma.