I’ve been fascinated by Stoicism for a while now and it really seems to resonate with me. Since I started reading about it, there were a few approaches I had naturally taken up and some that have been invaluable to my life. I see it as a practice rather than something you learn. You’ve got to constantly remind yourself of this way of thinking because it is so difficult to change our ways.

Greg Mckeown wrote Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less to help us declutter our lives and focus on what’s important. It’s about figuring out what really is important to us and helps us understand that we do a lot of things to keep up appearances. Time is finite and only good things can come from focusing on what we really need to do rather than feel obliged to do.

The basic idea of Stoicism is that our emotions arise from false judgements and we can actually control the way we react to things.