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Can someone explain to me in laymen's terms what stoicism means in this context? I've googled it and have a general idea, but am curious what it means to everyo

Can someone explain to me in laymen's terms what stoicism means in this context? I've googled it and have a general idea, but am curious what it means to everyone here, and why it and mindfulness seem to be having a minor fad/resurgence recently.

brians 11y ago
You can learn to be better. You can practice being the person you want to be, and so more reliably be that person even when it's hard. Some things you can control. Some you can't. Your response to the things you can't control is one of the things you can control.
ashark 11y ago
I don't know much about the whole mindfulness thing, but the fundamental insight of stoicism (as explained by Aurelius, anyway) seems to me to be that the majority of negative emotions and unhappiness the typical person feels or experiences are self-inflicted, which means one may learn, through knowledge that these are under one's control and practice avoiding them, not to feel them. I can't speak for everyone, but this was a major breakthrough in my development as a person. Once you think of it in those terms and treat negativity as a considered choice, you may find it astonishing how many little ill thoughts and such clutter one's day, in addition to larger, obvious things like brooding uselessly over a situation or event that one does not like but cannot, at the time of the brooding, meaningfully change. YMMV. Maybe that's obvious to some people from the beginning, or maybe some people naturally come to understand that as they grow older. I know that I feel fortunate to have encountered Stoicism, by way of a high school English teacher who taught Salinger's Franny and Zooey, when I did.
rrss1122 11y ago
I'm not on board with the other reply to this comment, but to me stoicism means the ability to handle stress better, staying calm through it rather than getting overwhelmed. Mindfulness helps with this by giving you awareness of your thoughts and giving you the ability to choose whether to act on them.

brians 11y ago

You can learn to be better. You can practice being the person you want to be, and so more reliably be that person even when it's hard. Some things you can control. Some you can't. Your response to the things you can't control is one of the things you can control.

ashark 11y ago

I don't know much about the whole mindfulness thing, but the fundamental insight of stoicism (as explained by Aurelius, anyway) seems to me to be that the majority of negative emotions and unhappiness the typical person feels or experiences are self-inflicted, which means one may learn, through knowledge that these are under one's control and practice avoiding them, not to feel them. I can't speak for everyone, but this was a major breakthrough in my development as a person. Once you think of it in those terms and treat negativity as a considered choice, you may find it astonishing how many little ill thoughts and such clutter one's day, in addition to larger, obvious things like brooding uselessly over a situation or event that one does not like but cannot, at the time of the brooding, meaningfully change. YMMV. Maybe that's obvious to some people from the beginning, or maybe some people naturally come to understand that as they grow older. I know that I feel fortunate to have encountered Stoicism, by way of a high school English teacher who taught Salinger's Franny and Zooey, when I did.

rrss1122 11y ago

I'm not on board with the other reply to this comment, but to me stoicism means the ability to handle stress better, staying calm through it rather than getting overwhelmed. Mindfulness helps with this by giving you awareness of your thoughts and giving you the ability to choose whether to act on them.