A Browse Through My Bookshelf: How Stoic Virtues Will Empower Your Decisions and Strengthen Your Character

Embracing stoic virtues

I’ve been on a string of marketing books, and I’m taking a break to talk about Virtue.

I touched on this subject briefly when sharing my takeaways from You Are What You Do. In that book, Horowitz talks about the code of bushido and how virtue means acting according to one’s beliefs. In a culture, this is the difference between a mission statement on the wall (beliefs, at least of management) and Virtue of the company’s policies and employee actions demonstrating the mission statement (virtue).

Ryan Holiday has made a significant impact with his modern interpretation of stoic philosophy, sparking a wave of interest. His journey began long before the buzz, with his book The Obstacle is the Way.

In the book, he argued that the way to your best life is to practice the stoic virtues daily and in the face of whatever life throws your way.

Furthermore, it is the combination of these virtues that results in your best life. When advising someone, Wisdom without Temperance can lead to cruelty.

In the spirit of the Stoics, let’s begin with what we can control.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” ~ Viktor Frankl

What if we could identify and widen that space Frankl refers to in his quote?

Not for anyone but ourselves.

What power would we find in the moment?

For me, it’s the power to act or not to act.

How much can my life change if I figure out how to…

Pause…

I can get distracted by the stimulus.

How can I practice stoicism in this singular way—just by hitting pause?

I can be stimulated, but what do I do next?

From theory to action

We are creatures of habit. Willpower isn’t the solution—retraining and creating habit is.

Here is an exercise to try over the next week. Every morning, wake up and hand write out how you would like to act in a situation. This is a way to set yourself up for success when stimulated. For example, this is what I wrote…

“When a stimulus comes, that would be a moment where I would react unconsciously. I will recognize it and pause as it is a teaching moment for me to show love, courage, wisdom, and temperance in my words and actions.”

Write this out from memory on a sheet of paper. That act and the positive self-talk will set up the inner workings to turn moments that would go sideways from fear into acts of heroism that create character.

Let’s do this every day until next Saturday and see what happens. In the next article, I’ll share what the results were for me.

The stoic idea is to embrace adversity and look for it to be the force that forges character. Strong character is vital as an entrepreneur, helping you through all the ups and downs of running a business.

Think of it this way: For some, this may come naturally. They were just born that way. For the rest of us, virtue is created. We choose to divorce ourselves from unconscious responses and have the blessing of designing and building our own character.