Stoicism

Stoicism is where I get the one thing religion gives believers for free: permission to stop carrying outcomes I don’t control. A believer says “trust in God’s plan.” A Stoic sorts everything into what’s up to me and what isn’t, and spends effort only on the first pile. Same relief, no God required.

AI-augmented, roughly 50% AI

I love AI, and I use it on posts like this one partly to get better at using it. The percent is a rough guess: after rounds of prompting, rewriting and editing, it's very hard to say which words came from whom.

The three ideas I borrow

  • Dichotomy of control: my actions, effort and judgments are mine; outcomes, other people and the weather are not. My version: maximize influence, don’t pretend to control. This is the acceptance leg of spiritual health.
  • Amor fati: love your fate. Not tolerate what happened, want it, because it’s the material you get to work with.
  • Memento mori: remember you will die. A deadline sorts priorities faster than any framework, which is why I wrote my eulogy and keep notes on dying.

Where to start

Arthur Brooks and Ryan Holiday on four practical ways to live like a Stoic:

Going deeper

  • ACT is the clinical cousin of the dichotomy of control: accept what you can’t change, commit to what you value.
  • Not a Stoic, but the same question: a cool render of Aristotle’s What makes a good life.