The top 5 stoic exercises and practices
what is stoicism?
Top 5 Stoic exercises
1. Practice misfortune
we thrive outside our comfort zone, yet we don't spend much time there. practising misfortune is a way of showing resilience gratitude and how adaptive our body actually is! you could do exercises like this 1 week per month were you sleep on the floor or wear your worst clothes, anything that you might take for granted remove from your life for a short while to understand how grateful you should be for it2. Train perception
the stoics had a exercise called turning an obstacle upside down, what they meant was basically to see things from a different angle, turning obstacles into opportunities, or what i like to call stepping stones.This will teach you fortitude which is one of my favourites, i've even got the word as the background of my phone. so this is kind of like learned optimism, imagine someone pulled out in front of your car, instead of shouting and getting frustrated imagine the person in the car needed to get to hospital, you would learn patience and the person in the car would get to the hospital quicker! its a win win.
3. The view from above
probably one of the most popular stoic exercises, so what is it? the view from above is to realise how small you are in comparison to the world and in turn how small your problems are. so how do you practice the view from above otherwise known as Plato's view, well you would imagine yourself from a birds eye view, putting yourself in perspective with the world around you, taking in the people environments and attitudes, you might not like the coffee you're drinking right now but someone in a third world country is drinking dirty water.
4. Memento mori
Memento mori is the reminder of one's own mortality. is although this may seem a bit morbid the reason for this is that it gets our ass into gear, it shows us that we only have a limited time to achieve our goals. Steve jobs practised this so he would be productive every second of the day! by doing this you eliminate procrastination as a part of your life
5. the power of control
this is realising what we are and what we are not in control of. you've just gone outside and it starts to rain, no amount of shouting will change the weather because you are not in control. think how much time you spend complaining and what you could be doing instead, i think this exercise links to all the others as we have to adapt to all these situation.
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