In a way, I have been exposed to some of the stoic philosophy by some blog posts and podcasts but after listening to William Irving in a few podcasts I decided to dig a little bit deeper and read his book A Guide to the Good Life.

Let’s see a bit more about the book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.

This post is part of the series Learnings from books where my goal is to share what I learned from the book that I read. It is a mixture of review and summary with a bit of my opinion and point of view. But, as reviews, these learnings can say more about me than the book itself, so I trust that you the smart reader will take it with a grain of salt.

Learnings from A Guide to the Good Life

The book contains nice content which for me was not so now as I already exposed a bit via the podcasts. But I found the reading of the book too difficult sometimes. The author play too many if-then scenarios or “a reader will point out this or that” which made it a less interesting read for me. Close to the last chapters, I found myself not interested anymore and just skipping some pages looking for good content.

As the stoic seeks tranquillity, I was losing mine at the end of the book already. But nevertheless, the book contains some good learnings, here are the 4 most important learnings from the book.

we need a philosophy of life

The book from the start defends the idea of having a philosophy of life. The idea is that a philosophy of life will help you make decisions easily that go according to your goals. If you don’t have one, it is hard to know if what you are doing is in according with your goals or if you are misliving it.

Also, having a philosophy of life, makes you think of what is really important for you and what is not. Because if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve in life, how do you know if you are achieving it or not?

avoid hedonic adaptation

Hedonic adaptation is a phenomenon in which we get accustomed to things we have and we start seeking new things. It is like a luxury becomes a need and we start looking for another luxury. This insatiable desire tends to make us unhappy as “rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.”

While it’s good to seek better things, if we are not aware and have a limit, we run the risk of never being satisfied and always looking. If you are content with what you have, it is a lot easier to be happier than if you are not.

be fatalistic about the past, not the future

We cannot change the past, but we can work to change our future. Because of that, we only should be fatalistic about the past, and not the future.

negative visualization

When we practice negative visualization, we are completing the bad things that can happen to us. The benefit is that when we do that, we tend to give more value to the things that we have because we know we can lose them and we have a glimpse of how we would feel when we do lose them. It a way it prepares us to be more emotionally resilient and also helps us appreciate more of what we have.

Favorite quotes

These are my 5 favorite quotes from the book.

  • “There are things over which we have complete control, things over which we have no control at all, and things over which we have some but not complete control.”
  • “When contemplating whether to criticize someone, he should consider not only whether the criticism is valid but also whether the person can stand to be criticized”
  • “More generally, when we find ourselves irritated by someone’s shortcomings, we should pause to reflect on our own shortcomings.”
  • “Of the kinds of humor we might use in response to an insult, self-deprecating humor can be particularly effective.”
  • “Someone with a coherent philosophy of life will know what in life is worth attaining, and because this person has spent time trying to attain the thing in life he believed to be worth attaining, he has probably attained it, to the extent that it was possible for him to do so.”

Other resources

This section is extra and here I compliment the post with content from other sources that resonate with the book.

These are what I learned from the book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy written by William B. Irvine. A special thanks to Vancouver Public Library (VPL) for allowing free access to the book.

Cheers.