Epictetus, A Sage Of Antiquity
With this simple but precise sentence, Epictetus of Phrygia, a Stoic philosopher of the first century AD, planted the roots of contemporary contemporary psychology.
Epictetus was born in 55 in Hierapolis of Phrygia and he arrived in Rome as a slave of Epaphroditus who gave him an education until his exile in Nicopolis in 93, where he founded a prestigious school to which he went. fully devoted.
Despite having been a slave and having received many severe blows for most of his life, Epictetus was a happy person.
His philosophy was based on knowing very clearly what was controllable and what was not, thereby modifying what was likely to change and accepting what was not. In this way, he prevented himself from torment and unhappiness.
Epictetus accepted that his circumstances were not directly controllable and that they could not be changed, unlike his mind.
In this regard, he had all the power. Therefore, he decided that things were going to affect him only if he allowed them to have an influence on him.
In other words, having positive or negative emotions would not depend on external facts, but on one’s inner being, on one’s thoughts about those facts.
Generally, people who have negative and dysfunctional emotional states like depression, anxiety, anger or guilt tend to believe that they are caused by circumstances or situations that have happened in their life.
However, what really causes our emotional states is our way of interpreting the world, our attitude, our own beliefs and thoughts.
Indeed, the same situation arouses different emotions in each person. Logically, if the situation was responsible for these emotions, all people would have to react in the same way and it is shown that it is not so.
Therefore, there must be some filter that determines my emotional situation.
Imagine that you are standing on the bus, clinging to the support bar and suddenly receiving a blow from behind.
You get angry and you are furious, because an ill-bred person did not pay attention to you, so you turn around to tell him his four truths, but all of a sudden you realize that this no one is blind.
At this point, the feelings of anger and rage are changed to feelings of compassion and pity for the poor blind man who did not intend to push you.
The stimulus that supposedly caused your anger is still the shot, but now that you know he’s blind, you don’t tell yourself he’s a rude, but a poor man.
As we can see, thought always precedes emotion and the good news is that we can control it!
If, for example, I am depressed because others criticize me, ultimately the ultimate responsible for this depression is me, because I believe all these criticisms and make them my own.
If I changed my thoughts on these criticisms and gave them their due weight, my emotional state would be very different.
It might be unpleasant, but I wouldn’t be depressed about other people’s ideas of me.
If my thoughts couldn’t intervene, I would have to feel depressed, unless I get others to change their opinion of me, something that is nearly impossible.
In fact, human beings have the wonderful ability to be happy under almost any circumstance.
If you have the means to survive, you already have everything to be happy, but it is necessary to internalize these ideas in depth.
If Epictetus was happy to be a slave because of his way of facing life, we can also be happy in circumstances that have nothing to do with slavery.
Do you complain a lot? Do you demand too much from the world, from others and from yourself? Do you feel anxiety trying to control the uncontrollable?
Stop opening the door to suffering, stop complaining about what’s going on outside.
Try to fix it if you can and if not, let it go. Change the way you see things and things will change.
