I have been blogging about UX design very often. If you would have been following my blog then you would have realised that all my plans are geared towards learning UX design. While this describes some part of me but there is another side that I have not shared. Some tough questions:

How will you deal with people who are always trying to show that I am superior to you? People who want to show that I am the authority and you have to work under me. People who want to create absurd rules to control you.

These kind of people are everywhere, they exist in our families, friend network and workplaces.

One of my struggles areas and my personal failures are due to deal with such kind of people. I took the path of anger and it resulted in a bigger problem. One of the preparations I wanted to do is to be mentally strong and tackle these kinds of people well. I can’t afford to make the same mistakes again.

While I don’t have answers to deal with this however I found a Philosophy that is making a difference for me. That’s Stoicism. A brief about Stoicism:

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BC. Stoicism is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world. According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to eudaimonia (happiness) for humans is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or fear of pain, by using one’s mind to understand the world and to do one’s part in nature’s plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly.

This sounds great but is this actionable system that I can trust upon? For me, I have no option other than trying it. The reason why I chose to read Stoicism is that it’s actionable. Sitting at home, reading books will not help in preparing to meet the world outside. The world outside is a hostile place, we can not change the world but we can change ourselves.

Here is how I started studying Stoicism

1. Started reading letters from”Tao of Seneca” you can get a free copy of this book from here: https://tim.blog/2017/07/06/tao-of-seneca/. For me, this book is hard to read because it’s in Latin.
2. Watched videos of letter translation on Youtube.

3. Unhappy with the above two I started reading about Stoicism and what people are talking about on Reddit www.reddit.com/r/stoicism

4. I read reviews of this book: “The Daily Stoic” and I was impressed.

All I have to do is read one meditation per day and think about it. I take every meditation as a mental exercise. For e.g. First page quotes:

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” -Epictetus

This is a mental exercise that one can do for days and days, and it helps. If we look at ourselves how easily we are affected by things which are not in our control. We are so much concerned about watching the news, religious wars that we don’t have a sense of peace. The fact of the matter is all these things are not in our control. This is a very simple exercise and it brings so much attention to ourselves.

I have started trusting this book and will keep applying these practices in everyday life. By the way I was hesitant to share this post because I always thought my blog is going to be about UX Design and focused. But I was wrong, overall development is a bigger picture.