The Stoics Honors World Studies Mrs. Steinke

The Stoics  Who were the Stoics?  The founder of Stoicism was Zeno of Citium, who lived and taught in Athens in around 300 BC.

The Stoics  He and his students taught and discussed philosophy under the Stoa Poikile, or ‘painted colonnade’ in the Athenian market-place.

The Stoics  Stoicism became very popular among the Roman ruling class, and most of the surviving Stoic books were written by Roman Stoics, particularly Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

The Stoics  What did the Stoics believe?  Stoicism originally emerged at quite a volatile period in Greek history, when Athenian city-states were being conquered by foreign empires. It developed as a way of staying sane amid all that chaos.

The Stoics  An important part of the therapy of Stoicism was to remind yourself at all times of what you can control and what you can’t. We can’t control geopolitics, we can’t control the weather, we can’t control the economy, we can’t control other people, we can’t even control our own bodies, not entirely anyway.

The Stoics  The world is beyond our control. It’s a rough and unpredictable environment that is constantly changing.

The Stoics  The only thing we can really control are our own thoughts and beliefs. If we remind ourselves of that, and focus our energy and attention on our own beliefs and opinions, then we can learn to cope wisely with whatever the world throws at us.

The Stoics  Let’s meet Brigadier-General Rhonda Cornum, who was captured in the first Iraq war after her helicopter was shot down.

The Stoics  She was injured, shot, sexually assaulted and then imprisoned. She found herself in a situation where she had minimal control. But instead of being traumatized by it, she focused on what she could control: her beliefs

The Stoics  She refused to give her captors power over that. It was the one area left where she was still free. She got through the situation by focusing on the things she could control and tolerating the things she couldn’t.

The Stoics 

The Stoics  The Serenity Prayer  "God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference."

The Stoics  The Stoics basically broke their whole ideals into about 8 beliefs. Let’s work with them now.