6 Stoic Ideas to Master Your Mind in the Age of Distraction

3. Cultivate resilience through adversity → My favorite

Neil Shah
5 min readOct 25

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In many aspects, we may find ourselves unable to alter the world or the fundamental aspects of our existence, such as the inevitability of mortality or the behaviors of others.

But does this imply that all hope is lost, and everything remains irreparably damaged? Not at all.

While we may possess limited control in certain areas, we harbor an extraordinary ability in another: the power to reshape our perspectives and thoughts.

We can transform our perceptions, reorient our outlook, and thereby navigate the challenges posed by our ever-distracting world with the help of ideas, learnings, teachings, and philosophies from Stoicism.

Stoicism is so popular in the age of the internet that authors like Ryan Holiday have mastered it and made a career out of his own learning from stoicism.

Stoicism thrived for around four centuries in Ancient Greece and Rome, capturing the interest of people from all walks of life.

Its predominant and eminently practical goal was to instruct individuals on achieving tranquility and courage when confronted with profound anxiety and suffering in simpler terms anxiety and pain which is very common in this age of social media.

Let’s read and learn about these 6 powerful ideas that have changed my life and perspective of thinking. I think they’ll do the same for you

I have tried something different because in order to make these six ideas imprint in the reader’s mind I will try to explain these thoughts with a painting that can be easily remembered.

1. Focus on What You Can Control

Stoicism teaches us to differentiate between what’s within our control and what’s beyond it.

In an era where external factors can easily hijack our attention, the Stoic idea of focusing on our thoughts, actions, and responses is more relevant than ever.

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Neil Shah

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