“It is not the things that happen to us that make us suffer, but what we tell ourselves about these things.
With this simple but sure phrase, Epithet of Frygia, philosopher of the 1st century AD, established the roots of contemporary contemporary psychology. Epitetus was born in 55 years in Hierápolis of Frigia and arrived in Rome as a slave to Ephrodite, who an education until his exile in Nicopolis in 93, where he founded a prestigious school to which he would devote himself entirely.
- Despite being a slave and receiving severe punishments for most of his life.
- Epithetus was a happy person.
- His philosophy was based on being very clear about what he was and what was not controllable to change what was likely to change.
- Accept what was not.
- In this way torment and misfortune were avoided.
Epithetus admitted that his situation was not controllable and could not be changed directly in any way; his mind, however, could, and in that sense he had all the power, so he decided that things would only affect him if he allowed them to influence him, that is, having positive or negative emotions would depend not on external facts, but on your own inner heart, on your thoughts on those facts.
Most people, when they have a negative and dysfunctional emotional state, such as depression, anxiety, anger, guilt . . . you tend to believe that this is caused by the circumstances or situations that have occurred in your life, but that’s not what happens the most. time.
What really causes our emotional states are our ways of interpreting the world, our attitudes, our own beliefs and thoughts, we demonstrate it when we see that the same situation awakens different emotions in each person, logically if the situation was emotionally responsible, we must all react in the same way, and that is not what is happening, so there has to be a filter that determines our emotional situation.
Let’s take an example with this idea. Imagine that you are on the bus, standing holding onto the grab bars and suddenly someone beats you violently, you are angry and angry because you are a bad man who has not paid attention, then you turn around to curse him and suddenly you realize that he is blind.
At that moment, feelings of anger, anger, irritation become feelings of compassion and pity for the blind man who did not intend to pressure him.
The stimulus that supposedly caused your irritation continues to push, but now you know he’s not a tough man, or a rude man without regard or concern, but a person who didn’t mean it?With this in mind, we can conclude that the reason for the irritation was not the blow, but your reaction and your dialogue with yourself, what you told yourself about the individual who pushed you.
As we can see, thought always precedes emotion, and the good news is that we can control it!We’re responsible for this!
We call this good news because otherwise we would have to resign ourselves to being slaves to the extreme, to being puppets without defenses that act according to the situations or ideas of others.
If, for example, I am depressed because others criticize me, the main culprit of this depression I am myself, because I believe in all these criticisms and opinions and make them mine, if I changed my mind about these criticisms and gave them the necessary and just importance, my emotional state would be very different.
It may have been unpleasant, but I wouldn’t be depressed by other people’s ideas, because it’s their ideas, not mine, and I’ll only make them mine if I decide. If not, if my thoughts did not influence me, I would necessarily have to feel depressed, unless I could get others to change their minds about me, which is almost impossible, but also laborious.
In reality, the human being has the wonderful ability to be happy in almost all circumstances and situations, if you have the means to survive, you already have everything to be very good, but these ideas must be internalized in depth, they must become a philosophy of life.
If Epithet was happy to be a slave by the way he sees life, one can also find himself in circumstances that have nothing to do with slavery, maybe you’re complaining a lot?Is it possible that you demand too much from the world, from others and from yourself, are you filling yourself with anxiety trying to control the uncontrollable?
Stop opening the door to suffering, stop complaining about what’s going on outside. Solve what you can and do, or stay there. Change the way you see things and things will change.