Happiness is a choice: 3 stoic principles I use to be happy
I’ve been following a lot Stoic principles over the last few months and I can genuinely say that I have a more positive outlook on life and on how I perceive the events that happen to me. I believe that happiness is a choice and not an automatic thing. Happiness, just like other emotions, is under our control. Here are some of the principles that I’ve learned and use everyday to find happiness. Note: I write these ideas as a guide not a guru. A guru gives off the impression of “look at me, I have all the answers,” as opposed to a guide that says “look, I don’t have all the answers, but here are some things I’ve come across; let’s explore them together”. Keep that in mind as you read along. Let’s dive in!
1. The Happiness Equation
I recently listened to a deep-dive podcast with Ali Abdaal and Mo Gawdat. In the podcast, Mo Gawdat, the former chief business owner of Google X, describes how he lost his 21-year-old son during a routine appendectomy in 2014. He hugged his son before he went into the operating theatre and then four hours later was told by the doctors that his son is no more. Initially he was sad, but instead of being angry at the operating theatre staff or at God that his son was taken away from him so soon, he thought about how blessed and happy he was to have had the opportunity to spend 21 wonderful years with his son.
In his book Solve for Happy, Mo talks about how he found happiness after his son’s early death. After many days, this is how he defined happiness:
Happiness = Reality - Expectations
It seems simple, right? The better that reality is compared to our expectations, the happier we are. The lower our expectations, the more likely we are to be happy. Unfortunately, we have no control over reality and the things events that happen to us. Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher, writes in Meditations that one of the major principles of Stoicism is that we have no control over the events that happen to us but we have full control over how we react to these events; our emotions. In other words, it is not the events that make us happy, sad or angry etc. but rather how we perceive them that makes them happy.
Here’s what I mean: Say you are going to watch a movie with your friends and you guys are really hyped to watch the movie [high expectation]. You go into the cinema, watch the movie and it turns out that the movie actually sucks [low reality]. You leave the cinema feeling sad and that you wasted your money. However, if you go in thinking “I’m gonna watch this movie with my friends and just be grateful to share this experience with my friends [low expectation],” you are more likely to enjoy the movie or if the movie actually sucked you can shrug your shoulders and say “well, at least I got to spend time with my friends”. The movie itself is the same; you have no control over whether the movie was really good or bad. But your perception of the movie is what determines whether you enjoyed the movie or not, which is under your control. I always do this when I hang out with my friends and I almost always end up enjoying the experience or even the movie in the end.
This isn’t to say that you should have low expectations for yourself or to look down on others. That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s a way to reframe your mind to appreciate the simple things and that anything extra is a bonus.
Bottom line: Lower your expectations towards events so that you are more likely to be positively surprised in the end.
2. Premeditatio malorum, AKA “premeditation of evils”
This is a negative visualization exercise the Stoics came up with that I use every morning to help me be happy; think about the possible problems and troubles that I may face throughout the rest of the day. I know, those previous two sentences sound weird but there’s a rationale behind it. The Stoics believed that it is foolish to go about life thinking that no problems will ever come your way. Even though we can’t control the events that happen to us we can still control how we respond to them and plan accordingly. This applies to all the things that happen in our lives; the good and bad. For example, I can’t control whether my colleague calls in sick and we are short-staffed. Neither can I control the kind of cases I get when I’m oncall at the hospital. There are two options I can take with either example. I could default to complaining that my life sucks, how I’m unlucky/cursed/the universe hates me etc. Or I can accept the situation for what it is (or what it may be) and think of how I would deal with each of these situations by preparing beforehand so I know how to handle the majority of things that come my way. In the first example, before going into work, I can think about the bare minimum I would need to do to cover both my area and colleague’s to ensure things run smoothly. In the second example of being oncall, I can think of algorithms or a general sequence of steps to follow depending on the type of case, such as “If I get a “scary” case like a head injury case for CT, first exclude bleeding then exclude fracture and then check for everything else more thoroughly,” so that I can apply them if the need arises. If I don’t get any scary cases that night then that’s great. But if I do get a scary case [high reality], I’m not caught unaware [low expectation] because I’ve thought about the worst case scenario and have a plan for it.
Bottom line: Premeditatio malorum so that you when things go wrong (and they will go wrong, that’s just life), you know how to react accordingly, since you made a plan in your most sanest moment; when you were calm.
3. Memento mori AKA “remember death”, and amor fati AKA love your fate
Another negative visualization technique the Stoics came up with. Memento mori; remember you will die. Every second that ticks by is another second that you can never get back and one second closer to death. Everyday you wake up you don’t know whether it will be your last day on Earth. Morbid? Yes. Effective? Also yes. The point to remember is that your time is precious because it is limited and you ought to live the best and most fulfilling life you can. The time you have to spend with your loved ones is limited. The time you have to explore your interests and reach your goals is limited. You don’t have time to waste doing things that are not important to you. Whenever I feel lazy I remember “memento mori”. Every morning I wake up and whenever I reach for my phone, I see this on my lock screen, staring me right in the face:
Swahili translation: “my time will come”. Also, Majora’s Mask with the moon falling was also inspiration for this.
I see this message every. Single. TIME I use my phone. Seeing this message lights a fire under my butt to get a move on and not waste my life away. This is a stark reminder to myself that my time is limited and to not take things for granted. There’s no need to spend time arguing with your loved ones over something trivial or complaining that the chips from that fast-food restaurant were too salty. The Stoics talk about amor fati, loving your fate. The good and the bad of life; to enjoy every moment of it. To be happy to be alive to experience the bad things in life too, not just the good things. The sucky parts of life help define who we are. It’s amazing how death puts everything in perspective. On my deathbed, I would thinking “ damn, I wish I had just one more day to be alive to complain about how salty those chips were; I wish to relive that sucky experience again instead of dying right now”.
The bottom line: Enjoy the experience of living, the good and the sucky parts, be grateful for who you have, what you have and to keep everything in perspective because remember – our time is limited and memento mori.
