Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
If you wanted to change how you view your life to be happier, what should you focus
on first?
For the Stoics, the answer is simple: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.
Stoicism is a philosophical school of thought that says a wise person is unperturbed.
They free themselves from their passions and accept their fate.
And a wise person is the only one able to experience true happiness.
But, leaving philosophy to one side, let's look at how you can, in practice, cultivate
courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom to experience a daily increase in happiness levels.
Cultivating courage is the best way to learn what you are truly capable of.
The first thing you need to understand is: courage doesn't mean the absence of fear.
If you walk alone on a dangerous street, late at night, wearing a gold watch, you're not
brave.
You're reckless.
Fear is important to protect you from danger and avoid behaviours that could put your life
at risk.
The problem is that excessive fear can stop you from doing things that could improve your
quality of life.
For example, imagine someone who spends years stuck in a job they hate out of fear of not
being able to find another job.
The advice is to cultivate the courage to act despite fear.
One of the most famous stoics is Seneca.
He said that no one will know what they are capable of if they spend their whole lives
without a great opponent.
This doesn't mean facing dangers or tackling problems that you aren't yet capable of solving.
Remember what we talked about in episode 116 of the Hello!
Seiiti Arata series [https://arata.se/hello116]: instead of getting out of your comfort zone,
think about expanding it.
To find the ideal balance between risks and challenges that you can face, you need to
cultivate the second virtue of stoicism: temperance.
Temperance is the balance you are looking for to have a happier life.
Temperance means balance and self-control.
But this is a difficult virtue to find, since we live in an age that values engagement.
And one of the things that generates the most engagement is extremism, exactly the opposite
of temperance.
Aristotle called temperance the golden mean.
He gave us an example that helps us understand the importance of temperance: think of a straight
line that represents courage.
If a person is at the extreme negative point of that line, that person is cowardly paralyzed
by fear.
But if a person is at the opposite extreme of that line, they are reckless and act without
thinking of the dangers.
The golden mean is in the middle of that line, with the balanced dose of courage to act despite
fear, but measuring the consequences of what is done.
This is the virtue of temperance that you want to cultivate to increase your happiness:
avoid excesses.
Do the right thing, at the right time, in the right amount.
Imagine what your life would be like if you balanced how much you eat, how much you spend,
how much you exercise.
Imagine if you could find the ideal point between work and leisure, between study and
practice, between time with family and time for yourself.
If you look closely, temperance is related to justice.
And justice is the next skill the Stoics say you should cultivate.
Justice is the source of all virtues.
And it boils down to just one action: doing the right thing.
If we could sum up stoicism in a few words, we'd say: do the right thing.
Justice is the most important skill to improve your quality of life, because justice is the
source of all other virtues.
Justice starts in your personal life and expands to your public attitudes, necessarily in that
order.
First, you have to do your part.
You have to be fair to your co-workers, to your family, to yourself.
Being fair is giving everyone what is theirs.
This includes you going after the things you deserve.
This means not taking advantage of others and not accepting advantages that you don't
deserve.
But it also means being fair enough to understand when you give your best, when you do what
is within your power, when you do the right thing.
Once you're doing your part, it's also important to think of justice as a whole.
You can engage in a cause you believe in, be it to change the street you live in or
the country you live in.
A stoic person sees the world clearly, but also sees clearly what the world can become.
And, if they have the courage and will, they can help the world become that better place.
But, in order not to go out campaigning for wrong causes, it is ideal that they have wisdom.
Wisdom is the skill that makes you always improve.
We agree that justice is doing the right thing.
But now, how do we know what is the right thing to do?
We also agree that temperance is necessary for a balanced life.
But how do we know what the balance point is?
And about courage...
how do we know if we are being brave, cowardly or reckless?
All these answers can only be reached with the fourth virtue of the stoics: wisdom.
To acquire wisdom, you need to study and learn.
You need to put into practice what you have studied and learned to make mistakes and successes.
You need experience from mistakes and successes to keep improving.
Everyone acquires experience over time.
You can let life take you, learning randomly from experiences.
Or you can take the reins of your knowledge and start studying more, practising more,
succeeding more from today.
You can create routines to have more books in your life, more courses, more practical
activities.
The amount of information we have available today is infinite.
This information can be used to watch funny videos on the internet or to learn new things
and acquire wisdom.
But the ideal is to find a balance point between learning and distraction.
Wisdom makes you have the right answers to the questions that limit your life and happiness.
Or, at least, it makes you reflect on the right questions to find the answers you are
looking for.
The goal here is very practical.
You don't want to acquire information just for the sake of acquiring it.
The idea is not to memorise a mathematical formula or a historical date.
Wisdom means acquiring useful information for your current challenges.
Information that will help you lead a happier life.
It is no coincidence that the motto of Arata Academy is your continued improvement.
We believe that only with study and practice can you enter a cycle of continuous improvement
that will take you to the levels of happiness you deserve.
And that will be easier to achieve if you cultivate from today the virtues of courage,
temperance, justice and wisdom.
The four virtues of Stoicism can bring about a real revolution for your quality of life.
Our tip is that you start cultivating each one of them with intent from today.
Courage, temperance, justice and wisdom are qualities that have been tested for centuries
and are still being used by great minds to achieve a happier life.
For those of you who are interested in increasing your own levels of happiness, I invite you
to check out the Happiness course from Arata Academy, by visiting the address https://arata.se/happiness