Stoic. Whenever we hear that word, we immediately think of an unfeeling person with a stiff upper lip. We picture someone who has no fun in life, raining on everyone’s parade. In truth however, stoicism is nothing like this. In fact, adapting the stoic mindset can be tremendously powerful on our athletic performance. In this article, I’ll show you how approaching your athletics like a stoic can do just that.
What is stoicism?
Stoicism is a philosophy that originated in ancient Greece after the time of Socrates. From there, it eventually found its way to the Roman Empire, where many people would argue it reached the height of its popularity. Three of stoicism’s most popular practitioners are:
- Epictetus – a slave in ancient Rome
- Seneca – a Roman statesman
- Marcus Aurelius – one of the best emperors Rome had
People will readily assume that since it originated thousands of years ago, and saw its prominence during that time as well, it isn’t relevant to life in today’s world. You know what happens when you assume, though. Stoicism is indeed relevant to today’s world. Here are some of the basic ideas of stoicism.
Two Basic Stoic Ideas
For the purpose of this article, we’ll only discuss two main stoic ideas:
- The internal v the external. We can divide life, circumstances, etc, into two main camps: things that are under our control, and things that aren’t. Because some things are outside of our control, we shouldn’t worry about them. Why should we? We can’t impact it at all. Doing so only creates unneeded stress on us. More importantly, it takes our time and energy away from the things that we do have control over. By focusing only on the things under our control, we can drastically increase our abilities and skills.
- See things as they truly are. We routinely misunderstand things due to our destructive emotions or our own biases. Self-control and discipline is the answer. By clearing our mind and seeing things as they truly are, we can maintain peace of mind and react appropriately to situations.
How does stoicism help me with my athletics?
Stoic principles can be applied to athletics in thousands of ways. Since the possibilities are endless, I’ll only discuss a few here. These common examples will help you understand how to adapt the principles to other situations as they occur.
Example 1: How to Handle Criticism:
We are routinely bombarded with criticism all the time in athletics. It’s important for us to see the criticism as it truly is. Generally speaking, there are two types of it. By analyzing the criticism itself, and the source of it, we can come to two conclusion about it, and how to respond to it.
- Helpful criticism. This criticism usually comes from coaches, mentors, etc, and is designed to help you reach a new level of athletic performance. When we analyze it, we can see that there is no malicious intent from the person who is criticizing us. However, when we hear this criticism we immediately feel it as a threat. We become resentful. It’s important that we don’t let our emotions get the best of us, and we can try to use this criticism to help our athletic performance.
- Malicious criticism. This criticism usually comes from people who are jealous, envious, etc, but it can come from anyone. After analyzing this criticism, we can see its whole intent is to tear us down, not build us up. Don’t become angry with the person, just ignore them. After all, this is something that is outside of our control, and should not be payed attention to.
Example 2: How to Handle Failure and Setbacks:
Losing is a fact of sports and of life itself. Although we’d like to always win, we won’t. When we fail at something, the first thing we do is get our emotions involved in the failure. We feel bad. We can end up being mad at ourselves, the opponent, coaches, anyone. This is tremendously bad for athletes, because it makes it incredibly hard for us to do what we need to: analyze why we lost, make the necessary corrections, and then focus on the next competition.
It is important that we don’t repress our emotions, that is just as bad as reacting emotionally to setbacks. We need to focus on understanding why we feel the way we do, then move on.
Example 3: Awards and Accolades:
Everyone likes to be rewarded. We like to have people tell us how well we played. We love to receive rewards for performance. However, when we don’t receive these awards and accolades, we can feel cheated, angry, jealous, envious, etc. As an athlete, you must understand: the only control you have over awards and accolades is your performance. By worrying about getting recognition, you’re taking valuable time away from improving yourself. When you do that, the awards don’t mean much anyway: you know how well you performed with or without others telling you.
Implement these stoic principles into your athletics. By learning how to see things as they truly are and focusing on the things you can control, your athletic performance will skyrocket.
Further Reading:
A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine – This is a good introductory book to stoicism.
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca – This is my favorite book on stoicism. This is a collection of letters Seneca wrote. They are extremely readable. I’ve read this three times this year alone.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius – This a collection of writings Roman emperor Aurelius wrote to himself. It’s another well known book on stoicism. I like it, but I prefer Seneca to Aurelius.
Ryan Holiday.net – Ryan is one of my favorite writers on the internet, and he routinely writes about stoicism. Check out his archives for some good posts.
