Happy summary

Philosophers often got a bum rap in the ancient world. That was sometimes down to the fact that many of them were natural-born trouble-makers and contrarians. 

Mostly, however, it was because they were seen as hopelessly impractical. As a famous Greek joke had it, they were the kind of folks who could become so distracted gazing up at the stars that they fell down wells. 

That’s wide of the mark when it comes to the Stoics, a school of Greek and Roman thinkers whose philosophy was squarely rooted in everyday life. Theory, they believed, should concern itself with the here and now. The most important question of all? How to lead a happy life. 

Different Stoics came up with different answers over the centuries, but they all agreed on one thing: the happiest among us are those who have learned to stop worrying about the things they can’t control. 

That insight, Derren Brown argues, remains every bit as relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago. The trick is knowing how to apply it to your life, which is what we’ll be exploring in these blinks. 

Along the way, you’ll learn

• why you can’t buy your way to happiness;
• how to keep a lid on your temper; and
• why Twitter and Facebook make us miserable. 

Stoicism wasn’t restricted to the Greek world. One of the most famous Stoics was the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who ruled between 161 and 180 CE. It was a turbulent period. Rome was at war with both the Parthian empire in today’s Middle East and the Germanic tribes of northern Europe. Unable to find peace in the outer world, Aurelius turned to Stoicism to cultivate inner tranquility. 

The cornerstone of Aurelius’ Stoicism was a theory of human emotions. According to the philosophical emperor, emotions are anything but permanent and are constantly changing in reaction to external events. 

Our experience confirms that idea. Let’s say your close friend has been ghosting you for a couple of weeks. You feel hurt, confused and angry. It isn’t fair. But now imagine she calls you and apologizes, explaining that she hasn’t been in touch because she was dealing with a family emergency. Suddenly, your resentment evaporates – all you feel now is sympathy. 

Emotions can turn on a dime. And here’s where things get interesting. As Stoics are quick to point out, the cause of those sudden turnarounds aren’t objective facts “out there” in the world but the subjective stories we tell ourselves about our experiences. Put differently, what really stung was your interpretation of your friend’s behavior. 

And that brings us to Marcus Aurelius’ second point about emotions. External events and other people don’t control our emotional reactions – we do. That’s why a rude waiter can completely ruin one diner’s evening while his neighbor across the table is happily savoring each forkful of the delicious meal they have been served. What really matters is our response to situations. 

Let’s take another example. Say your partner forgets your birthday. That’s far from ideal, but it can happen. So why does it hurt so badly? Well, because it’s the easiest thing in the world to insert this act into a long narrative which weaves together all the times they’ve disappointed you. 

That, Stoics argue, is futile. You can’t change the past, and dwelling on it makes you miserable. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In the next blink, we’ll find out how you can start taking responsibility for your thoughts and actions. 

There’s no getting around it: life is unpredictable. Like a ship on the high seas, we’re rocked by the winds and waves of fortune. Accepting that is hard, and plenty of folks can’t. They become obsessed with the idea of exercising control over every last detail of their lives as well as those around them. Stoics might sympathize with that urge but they ultimately reject it. 

Why? Well, letting go of the things you can’t control is a central tenet of Stoicism. Take it from the first-century Greek philosopher Epictetus. As he saw it, there are only two things we can control – our thoughts and our actions. Everything else is out of our hands. We can’t change our fate or influence what other people say and do. 

That’s not a counsel of despair, however. In fact, Epictetus’s point of view leads to a conclusion that’s as simple as it is actionable. 

Here’s how it works. Next time you find yourself confronted with a problem, ask yourself into which category it falls. If it concerns your thoughts and actions, you can try to change it; if it concerns anything else, accept that it’s beyond your control and move on. 

Let’s imagine that your colleague has just been promoted. You feel like you’ve been unfairly passed over. Chances are, you’re jealous, critical of your company’s decision-making and ready to throw in the towel. Stoicism tells you that the real cause of your anger isn’t the promotion itself but your reaction. If you’re feeling miserable, it’s because you’ve allowed your thoughts to run wild. 

And that’s exactly what you need to abandon. Accepting things as they are might sound like a simple hack, but it’s truly liberating. If you want to know how it feels, think back to your teenage self and remember how you felt waking up on Saturday and realizing you had two glorious, school-free days ahead of you! 

We’ve just seen that working yourself up into a rage about your colleague’s promotion is rather pointless. We also said that you can control your actions. So it surely follows that your best bet is to focus on getting your promotion, right? 

Well, yes and no. Let’s break that down, starting with the negative. 

In most situations, we only have limited control over outcomes. Working hard, delivering quality work and making sure your superiors know how much effort and time you’re putting into projects will boost your chances of climbing the career ladder, but they won’t make it a certainty. Ultimately, the decision isn’t yours to make. Your boss’s preferences, who the other candidates are and luck all play their part. 

That doesn’t mean you should call it quits and not even bother trying. The point here is that it’s counterproductive to spend your time worrying about things you can’t control. Think of it this way:  Excessive ambition can rub people the wrong way. Fawning over your boss and constantly dropping hints about your suitability for a more senior position can backfire and come across as self-interested badgering.

That brings us to the “yes” part. The best way of thinking about where you should be focusing your attention is to take a leaf out of American actor Bryan Cranston’s book. As he put it in his speech at the 2012 Academy Awards, the only part of an audition actors can control is their performance. If you give it your all, create a strong character and deliver your lines as convincingly as you can, you can be rightly proud of your work even if you fail to land the part. 

And that pretty much hits the Stoical nail on the head: the only outcome in your hands is how well you play your part.

Anxiety takes many forms, but one common trait is a hyperactive search for “deeper” meaning. Sometimes, that boils down to a desire to unmask other people’s hidden flaws. That’s usually a self-defense mechanism: if you can claim to discern people’s true motives, it’s much easier to draw negative conclusions and avoid them. 

Stoicism rejects this obsession with uncovering the true essence of things and people. Instead, Stoics stick to first impressions. As far as Stoics are concerned, these aren’t shallow; they’re objective truths. 

Think of a man asking his lover whether she ever feels attracted to other men. Before answering, she pauses before telling him that, no, she doesn’t. An anxious cast of mind would interpret that pause as a sign that she’s lying and attempting to avoid a confrontation. 

But what happens if he sticks to first impressions? Well, the exchange appears in a completely different light. He has asked a direct question, and she has given a direct answer. There’s no reason to doubt her honesty, either – after all, her pause could just as easily indicate thoughtfulness as a desire to deceive. Perhaps all she wanted to do was take a moment to consider how she was going to answer a difficult question. 

This approach is designed to preserve your peace of mind, and it goes hand-in-hand with a technique called prosoché, which means “paying attention” in Greek. Think of it as a kind of self-awareness that wards off any troubling thoughts that could disturb your inner tranquility. 

The most important thing to understand about prosoché is that it emphasizes tenacity rather than perfection. You can see how that plays out by imagining someone trying to quit smoking. 

Say he’s given up for two weeks but has recently had a wobble and smoked a couple of cigarettes. If he is focused on achieving the perfect – giving up for good – he might well feel like he has failed and take up the habit again. If he practices prosoché, however, he will understand that perfection can be the enemy of the good. And knowing that, he can preserve his peace of mind. Relapses happen and quitting is notoriously difficult. One moment of weakness doesn’t make him a failure. The key is to accept that he made a mistake, move on and try again.

The ancient world was an angry place. Greek and Roman rulers were thin-skinned and prone to terrible outbursts. Take Alexander the Great’s successor, King Lysimachus. When his friend Telesphorus made a rude remark about his wife, the king had him tortured, disfigured and paraded through town in a cage. 

Stoics who prized coolness and reason were appalled. As they saw it, anger impedes communication and makes us thoughtless and brutish. Worst of all, it destroys the things for which we care most. While our societies aren’t quite as bloodthirsty as those once ruled by quick-tempered tyrants, anger still has the same effect. 

The author, for example, recalls a former colleague in the television business losing his head after being criticized for his lazy project management. He huffed and puffed, raged and roared, and finally accused the person who had complained of being lazy himself. Everyone, he shouted, had been saying so behind his back. It was an outright lie, and everyone in the office knew it. 

Put bluntly, the author’s workmate had made a spectacle of himself and undermined his goal. In the end, no one bothered questioning whether the claims about his work ethic were true or not – they were all too busy laughing about his outburst! 

It’s hardly surprising, then, that rage is so often followed by remorse and regret. Anger drives us to burn our bridges. When the red mist finally clears, we find ourselves cut off from our colleagues, friends, families and partners. As the Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher Seneca put it in the first century, angry people destroy what they hold dearest and weep over the losses they have inflicted upon themselves. 

This suggests that it’s a good idea to get a handle on your rage. Easier said than done, right? Well, in the next blink, we’ll explore some tips and tricks which will help you keep a lid on your temper.

Head over to YouTube or Reddit and you’ll find hundreds of videos of members of the public losing their cool in car parks, supermarkets and fast-food outlets. You might even have seen some of the most notorious examples of the genre, like the footage of an enraged driver leaping onto the hood of a neighboring car and smashing the windshield. You don’t have to be a philosopher to see that this isn’t exactly helpful. 

The lesson? Well, first off, don’t be that guy. Here’s how: 

When you feel like you’re about to explode, take a deep breath, count to ten and wait for your anger to dissipate before reacting. This is basic impulse control, and it’s amazing how effectively it defuses tricky conflictual situations. 

Better yet, take the advice of the first-century Greek Stoic Plutarch and let people finish making their point rather than jumping into the argument with guns blazing. Resisting the urge to cut short your counterpart and training yourself to listen to the argument they’re making doesn’t just give you a chance to think about what you’re going to say – it also might help you see their point of view!

Finally, it’s worth trying to understand the cause of your anger. Scratch the surface and you’ll often as not find other emotions like fear at the heart of an enraged outburst. 

Fear usually comes in one of two forms: fear of rejection and fear of being overwhelmed. If you’re the kind of person who dreads being abandoned and takes comfort in going with the crowd, it’s likely that you get angry when you’re feeling isolated. If you’re more of a lone wolf, on the other hand, you probably tend to lose your temper when other people’s presence becomes overpowering.

In practice, that plays out in different ways depending on your personality type. If you cherish you-time, you’ll find yourself getting irritable when your partner tries to twist your arm into attending a social event. Social butterflies, by contrast, will find their blood pressure spiking when their partner doesn’t invite them to an outing. Either way, identifying the true cause of your reaction will help you keep your temper in check.

By now you should have a good idea of how to keep your temper in check. But here’s the thing: prevention is better than a cure. In this blink, we’ll be wrapping things up by looking at how to stop anger surfacing in the first place. 

Let’s start by talking about curiosity. As the old proverb has it, “curiosity killed the cat.” Sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted leads to trouble. Sometimes that leads to conflict with people. Stoics, however, point out that curiosity about the lives of others also disturbs your inner peace. 

Take it from Seneca. He claimed that seeking out spiteful gossip means that you’re guaranteed to learn something that makes you angry. Plutarch took a similar view and advised would-be Stoics that attempting to discover what their wives say about them when they’re not around only leads to strife. The same goes for what your kids get up to in their own time. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. 

But let’s bring things back to the present. Ancient philosophers had it relatively easy. As long as they minded their own business, it was pretty straightforward to avoid sources of annoyance. In our age, things are different. Thanks to social-media platforms, we’re constantly being bombarded with ideas that infuriate us. 

Interacting with strangers online isn’t the same as talking to someone in person. Online, folks tend to say things that they would never dream of saying at a dinner party or in a bar. Contrarians and controversialists thrive in the modern media ecosystem. 

That triggers a huge amount of unnecessary conflict. In real life, your aunt might keep her opinions about, say, the privatization of state infrastructure to herself. Give her access to Facebook or Twitter, however, and she’ll happily give you her two cents – and then some. 

The Stoics’ answer? Accept that you probably won’t end up changing their mind and hit that mute button! 

And there you have it – a recipe for peace of mind. All it takes is an occasional reminder that you can’t control what your husband is thinking, how your family votes, or who your boss is going to promote. If it’s not in your hands, you don’t need to worry about it. Best of all, that frees up valuable headspace for concentrating on the things you really can control – your thoughts, feelings and actions.