Andrew Kite - Being Stoic: Unleashing Your Inner Stoic - Learning About the Principles of Stoicism and Applying It to Everyday Life (The Active and Effective Leaders)

Imagine your life were a backpack. It may seem a simple metaphor, but you will find it to be an effective one. Much like with life, we carry this bag around with us wherever we go. Sometimes it feels burdensome, and we shift it from shoulder to shoulder to bear its weight there where we feel strongest. Sometimes we simply pause to catch our breath and throw down the load entirely before attempting to pick it up again. We strap it on more tightly, or sometimes loosen its straps along the way if it digs too deep into our muscles. Along the way, the bag becomes chafed, frayed, stretched, and damaged, and a time calls for us to repair it. Other times, it needs a thorough clean within and without to remove all the dust and grime that it has accumulated. Most times, however, as we stop to rest, we spend a moment to rummage through its contents. We remove things while adding, replacing, and reordering others. We do this until we feel that what we carry around is worth its weight in effort. Then we continue. We move on. We journey to the next destination, the next milestone, the next great place to which our hearts yearn to go...

Life is truly not that different. We shoulder its weight where we feel we have the strength to do so. We stop to take breaks through sleep, leisure, vacation, and sabbaticals, or sometimes just completely cast off our responsibility in the hopes of some restoration. Damage and hurt is inevitable, and will ask of us to slow down to make sure we attend to and fix what feels broken. Life is simply messy, and there is constant maintenance involved in keeping it organized and decluttered. By doing so, we then reflect on what it contains and whether the things that fill our lives really add value to the journey. Eventually, even in life, we move on.

Yet some reach an impasse in that moment of opening their bag. The burden of life may have become heavy of late, and they have been forced to stop and truly consider why. In taking their time, it is likely that they dig through the contents of their bag only to find items that do not belong to them. More strikingly, they discover things that are not truly adding to their happiness. It makes them question whether the load was worth carrying. Was the discomfort in any way justified?

The tempo of modern life has risen significantly, and we are dragged right along to fall in step with whatever load we carry on our backs. Luckily, we are able to endure quite a lot. We have crystallized memories about the many instances in which life has tried and tested us and where we have managed to overcome our struggles with an unquenchable thirst for survival and perseverance. Through it, we inspire awe in others, and some extraordinary individuals even elevate themselves to being experts of lifeself-titled sages who claim to know the secrets by which life can be lived more successfully. They teach us to fall in step with the world, and even to work harder than society does or to be two steps ahead of its next big reveal. So eager are we to follow their advice that we don't even give a thought to our own voice of reason. We are driven to simply take it and risk anything or everything for the sake of success.

Is that what you really want? The backpacks of others are infinitely different from our own. Other people fill theirs with different experiences, different lessons, different people, and different hobbies. Their 'wisdom' is personal, and it is beautiful to see that such actualization was made possible for them. But we cannot fill our own lives with the things that have been fated to shape the life of others. If that is your goal, then perhaps this book is not for you. Alternatively, you may see this as your first step to a new enlightenment.

Within these pages lies knowledge that is not meant to enforce, convert, or sow doubt. It was not discovered by people who were self-assuming, arrogant, decadent, or complacent. It is merely what it is, and teaches simply what it can. The knowledge contained here will teach you that life cannot be lived in fear of suffering, which need not be a punishment within experience, but mainly an experience of perception. It will keep you from the tiresome wrestling match with control and help you develop a new relationship with what lies within your power as opposed to things that do not. This knowledge, contained within an ancient philosophy called Stoicism, will show you one way of living a happy life that is free of moral qualmssimply because virtuous living is already a part of its design.

In the chapters that are to follow, you will be introduced to Stoic philosophy as a guide by which life can be lived resiliently in the face of misfortune. Firstly, we will take you back in time to where these ideas were first contemplated and expanded on by those sages who had deemed much of our misfortune as unnecessary. Secondly, it will share the basic tenets of the Stoic creed that guides you as an individual within a world where the causes of suffering seem unavoidable. We then take a necessary pause and unpack the heavy things that fill our life, those things that cause us burden due to our modern malfunction. In doing so, you will come to ask whether we are totally free or part of a bigger scheme plotted out by an unseen force. The fourth chapter looks at the Stoic view on physics and the world which we are in constant interaction with. Afterwards, we explore how we interact with the natural law, and the morality that guides us in not deviating from the grander design set out to our benefit. In the section that follows, we investigate logicour gateway to judgment, and a means by which we beat back our destructive emotions that are equally made up of our excessive pursuit of pleasure and our stringent relationship with pain. Lastly, you will gather these understandings to form a comprehensive view of the bigger picture itself and what the outcome of a good life affords us.

If your instinct is to turn to the next page, then something within these words has already resonated deep within you. As you were carrying your life-load, you may have suddenly become mindful of just how heavy it is. If so, you already understand a key part to the wisdom you are about to unlock. Stoic teachings require us to be mindful of the moment, aware of when we need to slow down, and attentive to when our next action we take could make us happy. Perhaps this was fortuitous then, part of the grand scheme itself, that you have decided to read these words that were meant to pave you a road to happiness itself.