Stoicism is a school of philosophy that hails from ancient Greece in Rome in the early parts of the 3rd century BC. A philosophy that was designed to maximize positive emotions and help individuals to hone their virtues. Stoicism provides a framework for living well. It offers practical strategies to get more of what is valuable. The Stoics provided compelling answers to anxiety, stress, fear, and troubling questions like “What do I want out of life?” and an operating system that dealt with the trials of the human conditions. The core of this philosophy is to live with virtue. The four virtuous of stoic philosophy are:

1- Wisdom - Seeing things for what they are, not what we wish them to be.

2- Courage - acting in the right way despite fear of reservation.

3- Justice - acting reasonably despite the pressure not to.

4- Temperance - acting with discipline and self-control despite the draws of passion and greed.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “you should come across anything better than justice, truth, self-control, courage—it must be an extraordinary thing indeed.” Stoicism focuses more on inner peace and virtue. It believes that it is the only good. Externals such as money, fame, reputation and material things, etc., are neither good nor bad. They are simply indifferent. The goal of Stoicism is to attain inner peace by overcoming adversity, practicing self-control, being conscious of our impulses, and realizing our ephemeral nature.

A restorative practice is realizing what is in our control, what we influence over, and what we do not, a meeting is delayed because of traffic - no amount of yelling and cursing will fix the problem, and no amount of wishing can make you taller or born in a different country, always ask yourself what are the things that you can't control. Another way of practicing is Journaling, which is an essential practice in stoicism, one of the most influential figures in philosophy, Marcus Aurelius of the Roman empire, wrote a series of personal writings that are now turned into a book called Meditation.

The stoic philosopher Seneca proposes practicing misfortune, practicing what you fear, whether a simulation in your mind or real life. The downside is almost always reversible or transient. Emotions like anxiety and fear have their roots in uncertainty and rarely in experience, anyone who has made a big bet on themselves knows how much energy both states can consume, the solution is to do something about that state, make yourself familiar with the things, and the worst-case scenarios that you’re afraid of. Marcus often practiced an exercise referred to as “taking the view from above” or “Plato’s view.” It invites us to take a step back, zoom out and see life from a higher vantage point than our own, this envisions all the millions and millions of people, all the “armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths,” prompts us to take perspective and reminds us how small we are.

It reorients us, and as a Stoic scholar, Pierre Hadot, put it, “The view from above changes our value judgments on things: luxury, power, war…and the worries of everyday life become ridiculous.”. The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would describe his formula for human greatness as Amor fati—a love of fate. “That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it but love it.” Amor Fati in stoicism is the practice of accepting and embracing everything that has happened, is happening, and is yet to happen. It is understanding that the nature of the universe is changing and that without it, we would not exist, we wouldn’t laugh, cry, love, create, or grow. Whether change is good, bad, enjoyment, suffering, or loss, it is essential. Billions of years of constant change, variation, mutation, and development have brought us to where we are right now.