I have read before about Stoicism and from the author but somehow I needed a refresh and this book helped me.
The books is a kind of a how-to for Stoicism in XXI century. It is divided in three parts:
- Perception: See the world how it is, imperfect. Focus in the present, dont obsess in the future. Don’t make it personal.
- Action: Get your discipline, practice persistence, iterate, repeat. Failure is part of the game.
- Will: build you core values, they are inside you, they support you, that’s what you can control. Anticipate (think negatively), Amor fati (love everything that happens), mortatility.
While I was reading the book, I was thinking about my current problems / issues at work and personal life. I felt a bit weird because depending on how I interpreted some points in the book, I thought I was doing the wrong thing regarding changing jobs. But then I realised, this was just a battle, another stage in the path, another boulder in the way. Sometimes you can climb the boulder, after a lot of hard work. But sometimes, you fail, miserably. So learn from it and move on. And actually that happened yesterday climbing, I managed a hard route after several weeks working on it (and I was shocked that It wasn’t that difficult) but then I failed in another one that I was always scared to try (because it was beyond my level a.k.a comfort-zone…) I made some good progress, but not enough to complete and it was going to removed too.
So at the end, it is seeing the world as it is, imperfect. Not taking it too seriously, that was my mistake at work (again).
So let’s see how it goes the next chapter. But I see clearly that I should try to review this book or similar a bit more often to refresh myself and keep up to date my internal citadel.