Big idea 1 

People are not disturbed by things that happen, but by their opinion of these things. 

Epictetus Enchiridion, 5 

We are unhappy because we misunderstand the cause of our unhappiness. As a result, we manipulate the wrong things, which often results in even more unhappiness. It is like believing the gas pedal in your car is the brake pedal. By pressing what you think is the brake, you are actually speeding up. 

The way we think things are 

The ancient Stoics were philosophers of happiness. We are unhappy, they said, because our thinking was flawed. Life is not designed to be a struggle. Once we correct our errors in thinking and judge everything correctly, all our problems will disappear. We need to bring our thinking in line with who we are and how the world is. 

Let us start with little things that cause us to be unhappy. Your favorite cup breaks and you are upset. Someone is texting while crossing the street and bumps into you and you are angry – ‘why can’t they look at where they’re going?’ We believe that external things such as the cup breaking and the person who doesn’t look where he is going caused us to be unhappy. 

When we assume that external things cause our unhappiness, it means that we believe we are helpless and we mechanically react to external things like a robot. Is this really true? Are we really helpless? After all, not everyone is unhappy when a cup breaks or when someone bumps into them. Some people are distressed by these things and others shrug them off and go about their lives as if nothing happened. So, the external events by themselves do not make anyone unhappy. 

The results you get are solely based on the cause – your opinion. You are the master of your opinion. It has nothing to do with others. 

We will not blame our servant, neighbor, spouse or children as the cause of anything bad that happens to us. 

Epictetus, Discourses 1.11.36-37 

The way things really are 

The cause of our unhappiness is the way we think about things: what happens in our life and how other people behave. We are not upset by the cup breaking. We implicitly think that the cup “shouldn’t break.” It is this judgment that makes us upset. We are not angry at someone bumping into us. We are angry because we think that a person should look where she’s going. It is this judgement that causes us grief. We are not worried because of the traffic jam. We are upset because we think that we will be late and this will cause us problems. It is these judgements that cause us to worry. In the next issue, we will see how this works. 

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This series is based on HOW TO BE A STOIC WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW, a 10-week training course that is currently being developed by The Stoic Gym.

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