Ellie McConnell’s Reviews > The Little Book of Stoicism: Timeless Wisdom to Gain Resilience, Confidence, and Calmness > Status Update

“By seeking social status, we give other people power over us. We have to act in a calculated way to make them admire us, and we must refrain from doing things in their disfavor. We enslave ourselves by seeking fame.”

“Good, better, best exercise:
Good: What did I do well today?
Better: How could I improve? What could I do better?
Best: What do I need to do if I want to be the best version of myself?”

“Seneca says if we want our minds to flourish, we must improve by asking questions such as:
What bad habit have you put right today? Which fault did you take a stand against? In what respect are you better?”

“That’s why unawareness is so dangerous: While being unaware, we can’t observe and recognize our first impressions and would mindlessly follow along.”

“Negative emotions come from wanting and
fearing what’s not under our control.”

““The majority of ordinary people lack
fulfillment and peace of mind because their values are confused and internally conflicted. We waste our lives chasing after an illusion of Happiness, based on a mixture of hedonism, materialism and egotism—crazy, self-defeating values absorbed from the foolish world around us.””

“The majority of us are enslaved by these emotions; we too often act according to our emotions instead of our values.”

“The problem with these emotions is not that they exist, but that they overwhelm us so that we end up doing the opposite of what we ought to do. And our rational actions are at the root of our happiness, therefore we can’t live a happy life when we let strong emotional disturbances dictate our actions.”

“The troubled mind comes from judging an event as undesirable or bad, often in the form of complaining. We give an event value by judging it as terrible for example, and forget that the event itself is neither good nor bad; it is empty and carries no meaning at all. We give it the meaning by judging, resenting, and wanting it to be different. This causes the emotional suffering.”

“Stoicism challenges you to change yourself whenever you can’t change the situation. Even if you can’t change the situation, you have the power to change your attitude about it and respond with virtue.”

“Every obstacle becomes an opportunity to practice wisdom, courage, justice, and self-
discipline. The ideal Stoic only wants to respond to whatever happens in harmony with reason and his highest self, and nothing can prevent him from doing that. He only desires what’s within his control, and therefore he remains “free” even in exile or prison.“