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In the city of Cyprus. In
the year three hundred BC. A very

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wealthy merchant named Zenón lived. While
traveling from Phoenicia to Piraeus, his ship

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sank along with all its cargo due
to that one event, an event that

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was completely out of Zeno' s
control or anyone else' s control.

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This very rich man suddenly became poor
in an instant. Imagine that you are

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eno how you would react if your
whole life' s work faded away by

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the mere force of nature. What
would be the right reaction. You'

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d be angry, you' d
be sad, you' d feel like

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life had cheated on you. For
most of us, these would all be

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normal reactions, but not for Zeno. The father of stoicism, a small

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change lasts an eternity and a small
rethinking of your mentality can trigger bigger and

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more shocking changes later. The core
of stoicism is the very definition of acceptance

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and indifference. After reading the works
of Socrates and other great philosophers, they

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were created and taught stoicism according to
Zen. Although we do not have much

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control over what happens to us,
if we have control over how it affects

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us and we must use this control
for great effect, instead of crying over

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the spilled milk or, in this
case, the drowned goods. Senón focused

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on maintaining composure in the face of
the situation, remaining calm and neutral despite

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his predicament. Nowadays people inadvertently see
the Stoics as people who cannot be broken,

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people who do not usually fall into
emotional extremes, going through things like

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anger attacks or episodes of anxiety.
But the original idea behind stoicism was much

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more than that. Instead of being
just a way of describing people who are

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insensitive, stoicism was a way of
seeing, describing and understanding the world.

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It was a way of life and
that way of life has lasted for centuries.

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Stoic philosophy can be applied to situations
today in the same way it was

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applied thousands of years ago, and
its benefits are just as shocking. Stoicism

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allows us to process these negative emotions
from negative experiences and turn them into thoughts

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that give us a unique perspective on
the world. The perspective is everything,

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and each person in the world has
different experiences and therefore different perspectives on things.

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Since the Stoics met, discussed and
taught philosophy in a public place,

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their general philosophy was widely known.
They believed that stoic principles could greatly benefit

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anyone and everyone, so it made
no sense for them to hide that knowledge

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behind the four walls of a school
or the courtyards of the palace. As

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a result, everyone, from slaves
to emperors, could learn and become stoic,

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and so they did. Some of
the most notable Stoics in the world.

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Sennn even flee to epictate, whose
name means acquired, as he was

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once a Seneca slave, who was
a well- known statesman and Marcus Aurelius,

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a Roman emperor and one of the
most powerful men ever existed. The

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early Stoics practiced what they preached,
avoiding all forms of segregation and leading the

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fight against inequality. They even invented
the cosmopolitan word, which literally means citizen

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of the world when people hear that
word. Now we think of cities like

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New York, Toronto, Dubai and
London, because of how diverse they are.

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This was the kind of unity and
camaraderie that the Stoics preached at the

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time of the foundation of stoicism.
Women are not allowed to study philosophy,

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but the Stoics did not agree with
that at all. Musonio Rufo, the

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epictet master once said not only men
possess the desire and natural inclination towards virtue,

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but also women. Women are pleased
no less than men with noble and

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righteous acts and reject the opposite of
such actions, being so because it is

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appropriate for men to seek and examine
how they can live well, that is,

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practice philosophy, but not women.
Even at a time when it was

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not popular, women were allowed to
learn freely about stoicism and become stoic.

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So why so many people adopt stoicism
as a way of life In a world

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full of twists, unexpected events,
our emotions can understand how to stand in

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the way of things. Actually,
don' t we get sad because bad

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things happen to us? We get
sad because bad things happen to us?

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Unexpected. Rain is a good thing. It helps water our plants, provides

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water for livestock and keeps the temperature
cool and humid. But the truth is,

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when that dark cloud catches you out
of homes without umbrellas, it'

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s never a good experience. Then
why don' t we start crying once

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it starts raining. It is because, although the situation is bad, we

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have learned to wait. Rain is
something that is inevitable. We can'

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t control the weather. Even if
it stinks, the rain passes and the

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light returns. Stoicism will enter us
that in the same way we should expect

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that all the bad that can happen
will happen. Imagine the worst result and

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feel happy knowing it could happen.
One of the stoic exercises is known as

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voluntary comfort, an exercise aimed at
increasing feelings of gratitude, sleeping on the

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floor of your kitchen, taking cold
showers when you normally take hot ones,

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eating only potatoes for a few days, things like that. This exercise helps

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you understand that no matter how hard
it gets, you will survive and,

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potentially, thrive if your mindset is
right. By being able to endure these

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uncomfortable situations, we indirectly prepare our
minds for future misfortunes. With the present

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state of the world, where announcements
are constantly imposed on us, we are

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made to believe that if we do
not have the latest, we do not

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look a certain way or we do
not earn a certain amount of money.

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We' ll never be happy.
This message is more important now that we

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never enter the world without knowing much
about anything. We grow up learning things

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at home, at school, and
watching the world for ourselves. The problem

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is that many times the three sources
of knowledge teach us in different ways.

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The question is we need to internalize
all this knowledge. If we do,

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we might be setting unrealistic expectations for
our lives, leaving us finally disappointed and

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dissatisfied. In the end. That' s not a way to live.

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Instead, we should focus on improving
ourselves, for ourselves. We should do

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things for ourselves and just for that
reason. Attaching any external hope or secondary

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expectations to the actions we take almost
always leads to disappointment. Most of the

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time we end up trying to fill
that void with external things. We spend

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all our money on a fancy car, a house or even started a family.

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Sometimes we do all these things for
their external value and not for their

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internal value. But stoicism teaches us
that if you approach life in this way,

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you place your happiness in the hands
of external forces, forces that can

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always fail cars. They almost always
break down. Natural disasters, raze entire

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cities and Southern divorce cups see more
and more each year. But even free

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things in life have a cost,
the cost of space, both physical and

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mental. As Seneca once wrote,
learning to live with less will create space

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in your life for the things you
really care about. Instead, we must

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place our happiness in our intrinsic value
as humans and in nothing that we have

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or can physically acquire. We must
choose to do our best to keep calm,

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regardless of what life throws at us, because regardless of what we want,

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at the end of the day we
have no control over most of the

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things that happen to us, but
we do have full control over how we

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react to those things. That is
the dichotomy of control, the most important

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principle in philosophy. Stoica, in
the words of epicte, the main task

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in life is simply to identify and
separate matters so that you can tell me

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clearly which are external ones that are
not under my control and which have to

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do with the choices that I really
control. Stoics teach that we must learn

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to separate what we can control from
what we cannot control. We need to

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determine our value not by things that
we cannot control, but by things that

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we can. Striving to achieve goals
is a good feature, but falling apart

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when things don' t go the
way you want is, from the point

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of view of a useless stoic.
Making episodes is good, much easier than

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being a Roman emperor, but it
can still be challenging Sometimes. First you

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must form your idea, which leads
to an eternity then investigate that idea.

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Discard it because it sucks to start
again writing the episode, creating the episode,

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editing it, putting the title and
everything else before pressing it all up

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to the point where you click on
the upload button depends on you. However,

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once you click on the upload button, the power moves to the podcast

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algorithm. Still, many people judge
the success of their podcast channel based on

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how many visitors and subscribers or followers
have metrics that are mostly out of their

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control. Stoics teach that instead,
you must judge the success of your work

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according to the amount of effort you
put in and not the result of your

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external hopes. Trust the process.
Living with less means getting rid of the

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social wives you' ve essentially put
on think of a person who' s

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been working hard on his work for
the past six months. Now he feels

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he deserves a promotion. So he
approaches his boss with his performance report,

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the boss says thank you, doesn' t give him promotion and goes home

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thinking he must be lousy at his
job. He does not consider that the

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boss could simply have woken up angry, that another person might have been better

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qualified at the time, or that
the company was simply losing money and could

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not afford it. He does not
know the reason, but he continues to

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moy do if he simply placed his
value in the quality of the performance report

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he delivered, he would continue to
do what he was doing to win the

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promotion he wanted could have been much
happier. In general, with the right

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perspective, your goal would not have
been diminished, but simply postponed this rethinking

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of your mentality is crucial. A
true stoic does not see his successes based

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on the financial benefit of his companies, but rather he consoles himself with the

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fact that he can live a comfortable
life without all the things that money can

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buy. There are the four main
virtues of stoicism wisdom, courage, temperance

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and justice. Wisdom is the ability
to separate between what is internal and what

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is external, and the ability to
choose our reaction to the things that happen

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to us. As Victor Frankl said, between stimulus and response there is a

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space. In that space is our
power to choose our answer courage two words.

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Persist and resist. Temperance or moderation
is what I just did there.

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Do more with less, say more
with less words. While Jeff Kisses and

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Elon Musk fight at the top of
the phorms list, the Stoics believe that

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the limit of wealth should be simply
having the essentials and then having enough.

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Justice is the most important of all
virtues. It instructs that no one should

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harm another, because we were all
born for one another, to do good,

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to one another and not to ourselves. Nelson Mandela was one of the

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most famous African leaders in the world. While fighting the apparthde he was sentenced

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to life imprisonment, where he remained
for 27 years before finally being released.

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When he was released from prison,
he was elected President of South Africa and

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so many people thought he would brutally
punish all people who had something to do

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with the alien or his imprisonment.
But, of course, he didn'

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t. During his time in prison, Mandela read the works of Marco Aurelio

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and learned many of the fundamental values
of stoicism, all of which he practiced

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throughout his life. Instead of asking
for the head of the guilty, Nelson,

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Mandela urged his people to seek the
opposite, to relax and rebuild suffer

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me that the past was already out
of their control and that all they could

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do was find a way forward and
build a better nation This is the path

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of the Stoic. It' s
a process, like everything else, we

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have to reconfigure the way we think, out the old inside the new to

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solve our problems with happiness. We
must practice self- esteem. By redirecting

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our definition of value to the things
we can control, we can stop obsessing

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about things we cannot control and,
in general, we can lead a much

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happier and satisfying life. Stoicism helps
us navigate through past and present storms into

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calmer and peaceful waters. And if
our ship goes down and we all drown,

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we can find peace in the fact
that we live a good life,

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although not as long as we had
hoped, because remember everything has an end