THE STOIC PEACE FORMULA

2 IDEAS FROM ME

• Protecting your inner peace is an essential life strategy. Peace preserves your capacity to think clearly, protects your agency, improves relationships, prevents unnecessary suffering, makes you harder to manipulate, protects your physical wellbeing, and actualizes your highest values for meaningful joy.

• The following Stoic Peace Formula protects your inner peace by shifting your focus from controlling circumstances to governing your response to them.

  • Focus on what is within your control vs. what is not.

  • Focus your response on the actual event rather than your story about it.

  • Acknowledge other’s emotions without adopting them.

  • Govern your first impulse rather than be governed by it.

  • Pre-meditate adversity and your response aligned with your true nature and highest values.

  • Make your values the standard filter for all decisions.

  • Practice voluntary discomfort to learn that you can be safe even when uncomfortable.

  • Zoom out on emotional events to realize how small they are in context of an entire life.

  • Practice negative visualization then return to reality to cultivate gratitude and peace

2 QUOTES FROM SAGES

• “If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.”—Marcus Aurelius

• “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”—Reinhold Nieburhr

1 QUESTION FOR YOU TO EXPLORE

• What is one atomic habit that you could implement today that would protect your inner peace?

Namaste,

Duane Nelson