How Stoicism affects my day…

I have been reading, writing, and thinking about Stoicism for years. One aspect of my daily practice is to read a Stoic quote and spend some time writing about how I think that quote will impact my day. I have years worth of these writings saved in the Notes app. I thought it might be interesting to start a new project here on my blog; sharing my thoughts with you, my audience, when “the spirit moves me.” That means I will post my thoughts at least once per week, no more than 5 times per week. Here is today’s quote and my thoughts.

Stoic Quote of the Day: "Tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind." -Marcus Aurelius

What hits me first here is that in order to achieve a “good ordering of the mind” we need to lean into the fact that the only control we have over what happens to us daily is our response to “it.”

This quote intersected my life earlier today while out running errands. A car cut me off in traffic. We’ve all been there before. Instead of yelling at my windshield (which is my go to response) I said, “Wow, I hope everything is ok with that person.”

Based on my first impressions and experiences with where this quote has already intersected my life today, I plan on trying to create more compassionate responses for future “car cutting off occurances.”