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3 Stoic Tactics for Dealing with Anxiety
The maps that ancient philosophers have given me to better navigate my mind
I’m a very anxious person. Just about everyone in my life can confirm that I worry. A lot. About everything. What I hate most about my anxiety, though, isn’t the harm that it causes or the time that it wastes.
What I hate most about my anxiety is how inconsistent it is.
The inconsistency proves its unhelpfulness. If the world is really a scary place, then I should always be fearful. If it’s not a scary place, why do I go through intermittent bouts of horrible worry about everything?
Exactly.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” — Marcus Aurelius
My anxiety isn’t based on truth and comes and goes based on triggers of circumstance, environment, and what I ate for breakfast that morning.
One of the reasons the stoic philosophers stick out to me so much and influence my life is their prudent teachings on anxiety. From Zeno to Socrates, they almost all have something to say about fear, worry…
