Stoicism and Mindset
While working through my morning journaling, I have begun rereading the Stoicism box set since I completed it in the third week of January. I have just finished rereading my first week of journaling from 2025. I am reading both parts, the Daily Stoic companion book, and then my work on the topic for the day. My goal is to see what I thought about the subject at the time and evaluate whether I worked on it throughout the year. Did I incorporate it into everyday life, or is it something I can revisit this year? There is always room for improvement, somewhere a tweak or change can be made. Did I get what it meant? While I had read a lot about Stoicism up to the start of the set, I had never made a conscious effort to incorporate it into my everyday life by studying the philosophy.
What I did know when I began it was that I agreed with much of it after reading a couple of books, starting with 101 of Stoicism. I aligned personally with the morals and values of the ancient Greek Philosophers and emperors.
What did I learn in week one? I was tired of fake people, false friends, and had placed myself in hermit mode because of the ugliness in a world full of bullies, mobbers, and fake friends. I was tired of being used by people when it benefited them, manipulated, and then lied about when they did not get their way.
What do you do in a world full of ugliness? Remove yourself, learn how to recognize and deal with them. Learn how to identify what made you vulnerable, so you can avoid becoming prey to their ill intent. Remember that when people live in glass houses that shine and glitter in the sun, spread fallacies, and throw stones, there is a 360-degree effect. That stone may hurt you, even break you, but guess what, you can put those pieces back together. And when built on a solid foundation, strengthened by knowledge and wisdom, the comeback is powerful. And that loose stone, guess what it continues to circulate on its 365-degree course and will shatter that glass house built on lies and a foundation mired in a sink hole similar to tar pits swallowing the perpetrators that threw them in harm. No evil or malicious deed goes unchecked. God, Karma, whatever you believe in, the universe will bring it back.
The short and sweet of it, no matter how bad it is, once you make a conscious decision to change and begin to work in earnest, that is when the magic starts to happen. It all begins with one minor change, and then the next will show up and be easier, and so on and so on. No matter what, as Marcus Aurelius wrote, "Disgraceful, for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong," and "The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way." I love both of these because they are amazingly accurate when you get your mindset right, redirect your purpose, and find your way. Lastly, by Epictetus, "The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it." Have you ever noticed that when someone is about to become or do something great, the devil attacks even harder? Switch that mindset and make all adversity your golden ticket.
