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What are the Stoic Principles?
Ten Ideas to Practice in Daily Life
What are the principles of Stoicism, which can help you live with more control, serenity, and depth? Here is a selection of 10 key principles of Stoicism, which seem to me to be particularly useful to live better, more intensely, and humanly.
- Accept what is beyond your control
- Act with the right intention
- Meditate on death
- Live here and now
- Play the roles assigned by Nature
- Be useful to others
- Anticipate difficulties
- Think for yourself
- Contemplate Nature
- Love your fate
1. Accept what is beyond your control
I’ve never been hindered in the exercice of my will, or constrained to do anything against my will. And how could that be possible ? I have submitted my impulses to God. It is his will that I should have a fever? That is my will too. […] It is his will that I should get something? This is what I want too. He doesn’t want that? Nor do I.
Epictetus, Discourses 4.-1 (89)
There are things that are completely up to us, others that are not completely up to us. What depends on us are the desires, the judgments, that is to say, the thoughts that go through our mind and of which we are aware. What does not depend on us is everything else: the weather, getting sick, how others react, our reputation, etc.
This distinction made by Epictetus should lead us to focus our attention on what we think and what we do, i.e. on our intentions and our efforts. Everything else is the result of a form of natural will, of the law of cause and effect, of things over which we have no absolute control. Our mind must be aligned with this reality of things, which is independent of our will. This allows us to live serenely and without frustration.
2. Act with the right intention
When people sit by the bedsides of their sick friends, we honour their motives. But when people do this for the purpose of attaining a legacy, they are like vultures waiting for carrion. The same act may be either…
