What I Learned Yesterday #6

As promised in previous post it will be more about stoicism. One of the most famous stoics is Marcus Aurelius, he wrote a book “Meditations” in which he put his thoughts on stoicism. And if you have Kindle – it is free.

So here I will bring few principles of this philosophy I found in YouTube videos. Didn’t read the book yet, but when I do, I will create my own summary. Let’s begin:

1. Live every day as if it were your last – and no, it doesn’t mean you have to go mad and do stupid things, brake the law or something like that. No! It means that today you have to bring value to this world, because when you die it will continue to live and you don’t want to leave it with something undone or unsaid.
2. Food is the best test of self-control – eat to live, do not live to eat.
3. Failure is natural, regret is foolish – expect failure, so it won’t hit you by surprise; everything that happens to you is an opportunity to practice a virtue; know the things you can control and admit what you can’t.
4. Focus on small things – small wins really matter; there is no big success without huge amount of small wins, that in today’s world people tend not to see.
5. Throw away vanity – the best description of this is done by one of the ancient stoics – Epictetus. He said: “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

There are much more interesting concepts, so I will leave all the resources I used to bring some light in my head on this philosophy:

• Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations on amazon.es
• Tim Ferriss on how to apply stoic philosophy to your life
• Stoicism – Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Animated Book Review
• PHILOSOPHY – The Stoics
• Stoicism in 6 minutes