How to Control the Uncontrollable

10 Game Changing Ideas to Help You Think Like a Stoic and Build a Resilient Life

Ben Aldridge

• Publisher: Trigger Publishing
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781801290593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

A practical exploration of how we can use the principals of Stoicism as a modern day 'operating system' to help enhance mental resilience to enable us to better cope with life's ups and downs.

PART 1

BEN’S GUIDE TO STOICISM

Welcome to my guide to Stoicism. This section of the book is an overview of the philosophy and will give you a basic understanding of what Stoicism is and where it came from. It will set you up perfectly for the main chunk of the book – the 10 game-changing principles and the practical bits that follow.

Think of this as a mini-introduction to the philosophy. It’s not super-duper detailed, but will provide a solid grounding in these ideas and a base for taking everything further as you progress through these pages. A quick note – I have included a Stoic Cheat Sheet at the end of the book that summarizes the key themes and terms I mention. This is a great place to visit to recap any of the technical content.

1

WHAT’S ALL THIS STOICISM BUSINESS, ANYWAY?

So, let’s start at the beginning: what is Stoicism?

Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that has one main purpose – to help people live better lives. The philosophy has lots of great ideas within it but its number one goal is for us to learn how to live “the good life”. Ultimately, to flourish as human beings. To be happy. To be able to handle what comes our way. To be ready to surf the wave of life.

The Stoics had a word they would use for this mindset – eudaimonia. No, it’s not a new genre of European Techno music, it’s a word that essentially means happiness. Sort of. It’s hard to translate – maybe think of it as something similar to equanimity. Finding balance. Cultivating wellbeing. Being able to spin the plates and keep things ticking along despite the challenges that life throws at us. Eudaimonia can be seen as the foundation of the philosophy. Everything that you read about can be traced back to this idea. All roads lead to happiness/balance/tranquillity (in a way).

The Stoics have many suggestions on how to achieve this mindset and live a better life. However, they mainly encourage us to do this by cultivating a good and virtuous character. That may sound a bit lofty and grand but the idea of “virtue” is integral to Stoicism. The Stoics believed that your character was everything and the most important aspect of who you are. To live virtuously means to live by an ethical code that the Stoics spent time thinking about. Ethics were extremely important to them. This is a big part of the philosophy and how we conduct ourselves is a reflection of how philosophical we are. Whatever challenges we face in life, there is a philosophical way to deal with things and an unphilosophical way to deal with them – the moral high ground or the low path through questionable morality. Helping a frail elder across the road or stealing their groceries while laughing like a maniac.

Developing a virtuous character sounds pretty intense but it’s essentially a process of self-reflection. The Stoics looked at how they were living their lives and asked themselves if they were being the best version of themselves in that moment. As for a lot of things in Stoicism, this concept also has a name: aretê. It essentially means being the best possible version of yourself in every instance. Of course, that’s impossible and things will go wrong (we’re only human, after all) but the point is that this is an ongoing process and we should keep trying to be the best we can possibly be. It’s basically good judgement – just be a decent person (and try to be a decent person all the time).

The Stoics believed that if you can build a good character, you can become happy and balanced. Or, if you’re being fancy, if you live a life of virtue and aretê, you can achieve eudaimonia.

I like the fact that Stoicism puts the responsibility for happiness into our hands. We can create our own happiness – it’s not dependent on external things. We are responsible for this. No one else. This personal responsibility has similarities to Buddhism. In Buddhism, happiness comes from within and the Stoics believed the same thing. It’s internal. Not external. It’s not about Lamborghinis and auto-flushing gold toilets; it’s about how you feel inside. It’s all about your perception of the world.

So, how do we build a good character? And what exactly is living a virtuous existence? Well, the Stoics were guided by something called “The Cardinal Virtues”. These are regarded as the benchmark for becoming a “good” human being.

THE CARDINAL VIRTUES

Now, the Stoics didn’t just pluck these virtues out of thin air. Plato, the Greek philosopher, established them and the Stoics thought they were spot on. They decided to live with these ideas at the forefront of their minds and make them a fundamental part of their philosophy.

When the Stoics talk about “virtues”, there are four that they consider to be the most important. These are the qualities of character that the Stoics believed we should strive to bring into our lives. They are:

1. Wisdom
2. Justice
3. Fortitude
4. Temperance

WISDOM

Wisdom (sometimes referred to as “Prudence” by the Stoics) is the ability to understand the world around us and make sound decisions in life based on this understanding. It’s also the ability to know what we can and can’t control in life (we’ll talk more on this later).

Stoic wisdom is:

1. The ability to make wise and sensible decisions.
2. Knowing that complaining about the weather isn’t going to change it.
3. Understanding that the best course of action for a lot of problems we face in life can be found within philosophy.

According to the Stoics, attaining “wisdom” will allow us to handle whatever life throws at us. The Stoics believed that philosophy was the greatest source of this wisdom so therefore it made sense to invest time in studying it. This was certainly true for me – when I was in a particularly dark place in my life, I found philosophy incredibly helpful. (Philosophy actually means “a love of wisdom”, so it ties in with this cardinal virtue.)

JUSTICE

Justice as a virtue is essentially being a fair and decent human being. Pretty straightforward, right? It’s the ability to be kind to others, irrespective of how annoying they are. It’s also synonymous with our personal responsibility to work toward a better humanity. Justice is:

1. When someone is rude to us, we don’t freak out and start shouting at the top of our voices at them.
2. We are kind to people and fair in how we deal with them.
3. We aspire to make the world a better place for our existence.

This is all about equality and fairness – something as relevant in today’s world as it was 2,000 years ago. The Stoics spoke about how, although we are individuals, we are part of humanity at large and that our actions have an impact on everyone, but I’ll come back to that in the principles section.

FORTITUDE

Fortitude is the ability to endure hardships and handle adversity effectively. It’s the strength of character that allows us to face our fears, deal with life’s curveballs and live courageously. In fact, sometimes the word “courage” is used instead of fortitude for this virtue. The word “resilience” also fits perfectly here. Fortitude can be seen as:

1. The ability to handle setbacks and rise up to the challenges in front of us.
2. Dealing with discomfort gracefully (without complaining every five seconds).
3. The courage to stand up for what we believe in even if that will be difficult to do.

This is a virtue exemplified by grit, endurance and resilience. I’ll often think about someone battling arctic conditions on some epic polar trek when I think about this virtue. In reality, it doesn’t have to be that extreme – you don’t have to travel to one of the poles to experience it. Simply enduring a long queue, handling discomfort or stepping outside of our comfort zones can be just as effective.

TEMPERANCE

Temperance is essentially self-control. It could also be interpreted as discipline and the ability to stick with difficult things and situations. This one is quite self-explanatory. Temperance is:

1. Being able to say no.
2. Being able to cultivate discipline and commit to our goals.
3. Being able to not order pizza for the third day in a row.

This virtue is intertwined with our emotions and how we manage them. Think of it as the ability to stay in control of our minds, irrespective of what happens to us. We’ll be looking at managing strong emotions later in the book, so your temperance will be put into practice at that point.

The thing about The Cardinal Virtues is that they come from Greek words that are a little tricky to translate. They aren’t straightforward conversions and some of the subtleties can get lost in translation. This is an area that scholars often debate over but as long as you get the gist of the virtues in this section, I’m happy.

The Stoics believe that by using these virtues as guiding ethical principles, we will achieve eudaimonia (happiness/tranquillity/balance/flourishing/wellbeing). These are the characteristics that make you a good person, and they will help you to live a better life. I’d suggest trying to hold them in your mind as you work through this book. Think about how the Stoics felt it was important to have a decent character. And refer as often as you can to these four cardinal virtues for guidance.

MY STOIC LION

Before we move on, I want to share with you a quick way to easily remember The Cardinal Virtues.

Picture a lion reading a book while taking a sip of water. Now picture the lion getting up, putting on a judge’s wig and entering a court room. Have you got that image in your mind? OK great! It’s a little bizarre, I know. But strange and powerful images can be wonderful mnemonic devices (quick tricks to memorize stuff).

The lion represents the fortitude virtue. That’s easy to remember – lions are strong, brave and fearless animals. The book represents wisdom – that’s also pretty obvious as books are the ultimate source of wisdom. The water is a little more abstract but will hopefully make sense. It represents temperance – imagine that the Lion has cut out all caffeine and now only drinks water. Nothing else. This lion is unbelievably self-disciplined with what it puts into its body. Thus, the water representing self-control or temperance. Are you still with me? Finally, the judge’s wig and courtroom represent justice – but you probably guessed that one.

This might seem a little abstract, but when you first come across the four virtues, it’s easy to forget them. Using a simple trick like this can help to keep them in your mind until you don’t have to use the mnemonic anymore. It’s quick and effective but feel free to alter this if you’re not comfortable with wig-wearing, self-disciplined lions.

HOW TO CONTROL THE UNCONTROLLABLE

The Stoics’ take on control is something that has truly helped me in life – so much so, that I based the name of this book on it.

The Stoics believed that we have little control over external events (basically, much of the stuff that happens to us). Life is uncertain and we can’t control outcomes. However, they did believe that we could control our response to those external events. So, by focusing on our reaction to the uncontrollable, we bring some semblance of control into the equation.

So, can we actually control the uncontrollable? If so, how?

Well, we can’t directly control the uncontrollable. Think about the weather – we can’t make it rain (even if we do a rain dance and shake a stick at the sky). We also can’t make the rain stop (as much as we might will it to) … However, we can use an umbrella. And we can water our plants with a hosepipe when there is no rain. We can respond to the uncontrollable by taking action. It’s about what we choose to do when facing events outside of our control.

With the title of this book, I’m not saying we can actually control uncontrollable events. But … we can control what we do next. This is how we control the uncontrollable. It’s essentially a management strategy. It’s about remembering our umbrellas, responding to the chaos of life with a rational approach, and bringing solutions to problems by focusing on the next steps.

I’ll pass the baton on to the Stoic philosopher Epictetus – he states it succinctly:

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

Epictetus

By choosing to focus on our response to what happens to us, we bring power back into our hands. That awful thing might have taken place, but we can pick where we go from here and how we deal with it. This is very much a mindset thing. And it’s a wonderful way to deal with setbacks and hardships.

This theme weaves its way through the philosophy and is such a huge part of Stoicism. In my first book, I referred to this concept as Stoicism’s “Golden Rule”. And I’m going to stand by this. It’s how I visualize this idea in my mind. You’ll encounter “The Stoic Golden Rule” throughout this book, but if we’re being technical about it, there is actually another name for this idea – “The Dichotomy of Control”. This expression wasn’t used by the ancients and is relatively new. But it’s frequently used by Modern Stoics so it’s worth knowing.

The reason it’s called The Dichotomy of Control is because there are two components of control. We have a clear split – things that we can do something about (our response) and things that we can’t (pretty much everything else). Knowing the difference is important for a Stoic.

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, had a great metaphor for all of this. Imagine a dog tied to the back of a cart with a leash. The dog can’t control where the cart goes so has two options … It can either choose to go in the direction the cart takes it and trot along behind it, or the dog can resist, in which case, it will get dragged.

The dog represents us and the cart represents life. We have a choice – to go with the fl...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Ben’s Guide to Stoicism
• Part 2: The Stoic Principles
• Part 3: Putting Stoicism into Practice
• Final Thoughts
• How to Build a Stoic Library
• The Stoic Cheat Sheet
• Acknowledgements
• Come and Say Hi
• About Us