The Central Challenge Given By The Stoics

The Stoics believed that our thoughts create our experience of the world, not our circumstances. They posited that taking full responsibility for our minds allows us to experience the world we desire. The mind itself is simply running the programs given to it through our development. This means the programs can be changed, the code rewritten. But, this must be intentional.

Thus, the root of the challenge is to learn what stories we create based on our experiences and the origin of those stories. For example, when a person pulls in front of you in traffic, closer than you would have expected, you will correlate the meaning of the experience back to your previous experiences. When we discover the original story, we can then choose to rewrite the meaning. The stoics taught that it is in the meaning we give to events that we create our experiences.

This can be freeing when we accept that we were the ones that originally accepted the meaning in the first place. When you go through an experience, choose the meaning that supports you living your best life. When you find yourself slipping into upset or depression, step back from the experience and choose a better story. In the end, our emotional experience of life is dependent upon our chosen stories. Choose wisely!