To me, it is a balance of both.
Life is definitely what happens to you. That alone is strikingly important, as much of it is not stuff you have any control over. You are quite literally a victim of most of life.
However, how you react to what you can control is also critical in dealing with it, in that you can identify things you can very much directly affect in some way.
Stoicism includes the ability and skills to tell the difference between the two, coping with the former as best as possible (to retain your mental health), and actively strategizing on how to deal with the latter as effectively as possible in order to minimize any negative outcome or maximize positive outcomes.
There’s a way to hear that saying that’s dumb as fucking bricks, and there’s a way that’s profound and healing and beautiful and constitutes a surprisingly large portion of everything you need in life. Sometimes it flicks back and forth moment to moment in the same brain.
I do not believe the kind of mentality that you can make anything out of any situation with your mindset or things like that, for example that idea that if you are just super positive and hard working life will just give you sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes you are dealt a very bad hand and you can’t win the game. It’s more like the quote “what doesn’t kill you makes you wish it did” However, the quote in post from OP doesn’t imply that you can just wield any circumstance your way. It just says that you only have control over how you react to it, which is true. Example: I got laid off at my job last week. I felt upset and very sad. My instinct reaction is to go retreat in my shell and not do any of my responsibilities because I feel depressed, sad and angry. But that will only give me more shit in the future. Instead I went to my other job, met friends, and tried to find some silver lining and make the best of it.
Yes this quote can be used in a toxic positivity kind of mindset but it’s also almost always in your best interest to make the best out of your situation, even if it’s shitty.
Quite the opposite. I’ve diagnosed CPTSD, and the only way out of hell, is changing your own perspective. Trying to accept, reframe.
It’s pain. It’s slow. It’s hard. It’s the only way.
EDIT: To anyone in need: I understand seeking professional help is hard. It took me over 20 years. I learned a lot from “Complex PTSD”: by Pete Walker. If you prefer listening instead, I like the “Recovering from reality” podcast.
Thanks for the recommendation. A previous partner of mine had CPTSD and I’ve always wished I understood it more.
Thanks for the recommendations
Paying it forward :) Good luck, and be kind to yourself!
I don’t know. That kind of advice is usually given by somebody who’s been through it and is on the other side.
It’s like many of the survivors of Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general said that overall the experience gave them a lot more than it took from them.
Of course, we’re only looking at the survivors and not the people who died, but it does kind of say that yes even if things are incredibly bad, if you survive them they can get better.
It’s like many of the survivors of Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general said that overall the experience gave them a lot more than it took from them.
This seems a bit of a stretch. But your general point stands.
Check out the book “man’s search for meaning”. It’s basically exactly what you are talking about written by a psychiatrist that was a prisoner in Auschwitz
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
I haven’t read that book since high school. Probably about time to read it again.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Nah they’ll take that too through years of k9 indoctrination and brainwash television
I see a similar issue in designing systems that must stay operational. Designing for a single fault is pretty simple, but designing for 2 or more faults becomes difficult and expensive, fast.
Power supply for instance. You can get a 2nd power supply in case your 1st goes out. You can get a UPS in case your power goes out, you can get a 2nd ups in case your first goes out, you can get your own generator and generator maintenance service plans in case of a multi hour outage. At this point you’re still under $50k
You can design, zoning/permit, and build your own fuel reserves. You can have a separate grid interconnect agreement built. You can build a power plant with railway interconnects for for fuel delivery.
Not unpopular, just simply not true.
Yeah, the phrase is terrible how it is commonly used, just like people who screwed up ‘pulling up by the bootstraps’ to mean try really hard or say ‘?money is the root of all evil’ instead of ‘the love of money…’
Yes, people can be overwhelmed by bad luck, but people can also be dismissive of good luck and both types of people can end up miserable. Life is both things that happen to you AND how you react.
This isn’t an unpopular opinion…
Self help books are a joke and have been for like, 30 years now?
Everyone knows they don’t work, but the dumbest 1% is still a lot of potential buyers on highly marked up products like books.
I think that’s a pretty closed off view of self help. Especially since earlier generations, particularly men, were sold the whole “men don’t cry” and “put up or shut up”. Essentially gaslit entire generations believing that forcing down emotions and emotional introspection out of their lives was the right thing to do. So it filled a market gap. Especially ones written by professionals, specifically in mental health or philosophy.
I’ve also seen (and personally received) testimonials on their effects. Shit people have literally read their way out of a smoking addiction (Alan Carr for my dart munching friends). That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of trash out there cashing in. Just the “everyone knows they don’t work” line irked me into replying.
have been for like, 30 years now?
The genre is much older than this. The market is huge (something like 10-15 billion $USD) with about 50k different self help titles being published every year. Obviously no bookstore is going to stock 50k different self help titles (except maybe Amazon). But much of this market is served by special interest bookstores, like religious bookstores attached to churches or whatever. And those have existed forever!
I’m old enough to remember the 1980s and the parenting advice books that told my parents to beat me with a wooden spoon – that they purchased from their church. It biases me against the genre somewhat ;)
Self help books tend to be part of a radicalization pipeline, where the authors are considered “experts” because they have a published book. Once you’re in the pipeline, like youtube conspiracy videos, eventually you’ll end up buying into antivaxx and other woo.
Capitalist copium sold to peasants lol
A concept that predates free market (or your “Capitalism” pejorative) is “capitalistic copium” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean, other than some “I’m 14 and deep bullshit”).
I suggest you read
somea LOT of history, because clearly you don’t know quite a bit.Ohh look somebody read marcus Aurelius 🤡
Also, capitalism is a system of ownership. Free market is a system of exchange.
If you are going to talk with this much bravado, at least fucking learn the nomenclature, boy.
