“Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t be harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.” — Marcus Aurelius
Habits are an ancient art. Much of what Greek and Roman Stoics taught some 2,000 years ago, modern-day science now confirms. Marcus Aurelius’s view on how to handle negativity is no exception.
The primary concern of Stoicism is differentiating between what we can and can’t control, and then acting only on what we can influence. Often, this means doing inner work rather than trying to bend the world to our will — and it’s especially important when dealing with adversity.
After three decades of researching both happiness and depression, UPenn psychology professor Martin Seligman wrote a book called Learned Optimism. Its main message is this: How you react to a negative event determines almost entirely how much it will affect you.
That’s similar to what Marcus said: You can’t choose what happens, but you can choose what you feel. That includes everything that happens to you and how you feel about it. Emotions are a choice.
For many of us, this idea sounds new and unfamiliar, maybe even hard to believe — but it’s true. And there’s no better archetype than the optimist to show us how to make the most of it.
