The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient Hardcover – September 3, 2019

Lord knows, in the age of Covid and global upheaval, we can use a stabilizing philosophy of life.Concise, accessible and excellent introduction to Stoicism is a philosophy of life and as a practice. William Irvine is a philosophy professor at Wayne State University but does not write like an academician. His book is concise, highly readable by a layperson, down to earth and offers practical insights about applying Stoicism to everyday life. As Irvine argues, stoicism is not a religion and is compatible with Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or atheism.Irvine opens the book with a vignette about a business trip nightmare at O’Hare (or is it O’Hell?) Airport, and experience to which probably any traveler can likely relate. Section I of the book addresses dealing with life’s challenges, section II addresses the psychology of setbacks. Section III discusses taking stoic tests and section IV offers practical advice on living a stoic life.This is the second book I have read by Prof. Irvine and I would heartily and enthusiastically as well recommend his earlier book, “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.” The phrase “stoic joy” may read like an oxymoron, but Prof. Irvine punctures the myth that Stoics are grim individuals who show no emotion and are joyless. To the contrary, he explains how Stoicism can minimize negative thoughts and emotions by focusing on those things in one’s life that are within one’s orbit of control and various other mental tricks to deal with life’s inevitable adversities.“The Stoic Challenge” is one of the best books I have read in the past five years and is concise enough that you can likely finish it in three or four sittings. Get a copy, apply the advice, and see if you aren’t happier!

I’ve been a casual student of the Stoic philosophy for about the past 20 years. Over the past 5 or so, I’ve become more convinced that the Stoic approach to life is the most desirable. I felt that reading William Irvine’s The Stock Challenge would be a good exercise and would add to my knowledge.In my opinion, this book is not designed to be your introduction to Stoicism. Rather it is a good reminder of some of the finer points of Stoicism and ways to incorporate those ideas into your daily life.The book is a quick and easy read. Well written and interesting. Mr. Irvine uses the teachings of Seneca as his primary source but also relies on lessons from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. He also mentions a few lesser known Stoics.The main lessons of this book are a couple of exercises or thought processes which will help you better deal with the setbacks and challenges of everyday life.If you would like to reduce the anxiety, fear, anger and regret in your life, adopting the teachings of the Stoics is one of the more effective ways to accomplish this goal. In my opinion, our capitalistic society has conditioned us to accept a life filled with negative emotions. The Stoics aim is not to achieve material wealth, although some did, but to live a better life.Lots of good lessons in the book and a couple of original stories/examples of Stoicism in action. Well worth reading.

When we face a setback, we should treat it as a test of our resilience and resourcefulness. Thus, we can grade or performance by taking into account: First, how you conduct your search for a workaround. Second, your emotional response to the setback, namely, our first priority must be to prevent ourselves from being flooded by negative emotion.In order to attain this objective, the author explains some psycological effects and different tools such as:• Framing Effect:How we mentally characterize a situation has a profound impact on how we respond to it emotionaly. By thinking setbacks as test of our character, we can alter our emotional response to them, and develop our ability to stay calm. The goal is to minimize the number of negative emotions(anger, grief and envy).There are 6 types of frames:-The competing obligations frame: To avoid experiencing negative emotions by framing a setback as a consequence of competing obligations.-The incompetence frame: By framing an incident as incompetence rather than malice, the emotion you subsequently experience might be pity rather than anget.-The storytelling frame: We can feel grateful by focusing our attention on what we must do to bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.-The comedic frame: If you can bring yourself to laugh at the things that make most people cry, you have a powerful weapon to use against life adversities.-The game frame: By framing a setback as a component of game, we can dramatically reduce its emotional impact.-The stoic test frame: By interpreting setbacks as interesting challenges, we can feel satisfaction from dealing with them.• Anchoring Effect:By thinking about things could be worse, we sink in our conscious mind. The mere presence of this anchor affects how we subsequentely feel about our current situation. Therefore, it can help us better appreciate our lives.• Negative VisualizationInstead of comparing our current situation to the superior situations we routinely found ourselves dreaming of, we compare it to the inferior situations we imagineand thereupon conclude that things weren't so bad.• Toughness TrainingWhile negative visualization involves "thinking" about how things cpuld be worsr, Toughness training involves "causing" things to worse.• Stoic AdventuresPeriodically going out of our way to do things that made us uncomfortable. In other words, exposure to discomfort in a systematic fashion to reduce the total amount of discomfot we experience in daily life.• Prospective RetrospectiveTo make a pause in your daily routine, to reflect on the likelihood that at some point in thr future, you will wish you could travel back in time to tjis very moment.