5 Ancient Ideas That Can Help You Flourish Today

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It’s strangely comforting to consider that humans from radically different time and space coordinates have worked on unraveling the same mystery: What makes a good life? What’s even more astounding is how much of their wisdom remains applicable today.

Take the Stoics (time: 3rd century BC; place: Ancient Greece).

From their emphasis on cultivating virtue as a path to well-being to their recognition that it’s all about how people respond to events (rather than the events themselves)—echoes of Stoic philosophy continue to reverberate in modern psychology.

“The Stoics were the preeminent psychologists of the Western world,” says Wright State University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy William Irvine. “Centuries later, psychology is realizing how effective their techniques were.”

William Irvine is a 21st-century Stoic philosopher. To avoid the risk of “mis-living” by spending years and decades on autopilot, Irvine suggests consciously adopting a “philosophy for living.” It involves two steps: figuring out what’s worth having and finding a way to get it.

If one were to need guidance in this noble quest, the Stoics offer some answers that may be worth considering. For one, they gave the making of a good life abundant thought; in Irvine’s words, “they did their homework.”

Further, Stoic philosophy has “a low price of admission.” Unlike other traditions that call for lifelong immersion, the Stoics offered simple well-being-boosting practices that could be learned in minutes. For our modern Zeitgeist where solutions can’t come fast enough, what can be more enticing?

Here are Irvine’s picks of five psychological tools from the Stoic toolkit for flourishing.

1. Negative visualization for gratitude

For a few seconds, allow yourself to contemplate how, at this very moment, things could be worse. You could be suffering from a toothache. Your friends could abandon you. Your computer could break, erasing your work. In an instant, the cornerstones for joy and meaning in your life (your health, your relationships, your accomplishments) could go awry in an infinite number of ways.

Dismal as it may sound, the Stoics used negative visualization to kindle profound appreciation for the life that they did have. According to Irvine, this practice has the potential to “transform us into individuals who are delighted to be alive.” After all, “the fact that there are so many bad things that aren’t happening is a cause for celebration in itself.”

2. Framing for reducing negative emotions

Just as frames can impact the way we perceive paintings, the psychological frames we impose around life events can influence our emotional reactions to them. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Next time you encounter a challenge, Irvine suggests experimenting with different frames. For example, was the event due to someone’s malice or mere incompetence? Can you see it with a sense of humor?

Or, consider how you’d deal with the event if you thought of it as yet another peculiar story for your autobiography. This “storytelling frame” as Irvine calls it, helped the Stoics not get swept away by their negative reactions to setbacks. Instead, by dealing with them calmly, effectively, and, if possible, with a dash of levity, they metamorphosed their setbacks into good stories to tell.

3. The "last time" meditation for a boost of life-affirmation

For everything you do—from brushing your teeth to kissing your beloved—there will be a last time that you do it. This fact can be either horribly pessimistic, or it can be a wake-up call to stop sleepwalking through our remaining days. It can infuse the encounters that we take for granted—with ourselves, others, and the world—with presence, connection, and engagement.

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Someday, says Irvine, you might look back at this moment, when you could still rake leaves and laugh with friends, and think, “If only I could live in that dream world!” Realize that you are living in that dream world right now!

Furthermore, as Irvine points out, you could even go out of your way and get one extra time of doing something. “At this very moment, there are X more times you will kiss the person you love. But if, as the result of reading this, you go give them a kiss that you otherwise wouldn’t have given, you will increase this number to X+1. And chances are you will have fun doing it!” he writes.

4. Becoming a connoisseur of everything for cultivating delight

A connoisseur, writes Irvine, is someone who is knowledgeable about things. For example, a connoisseur of art is someone who enjoys and appreciates the subtleties of art and recognizes artists and their oeuvres. A trip to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will be a different (likely richer and more enjoyable) experience for an art connoisseur than for a tourist who just wants a souvenir.

Learning about something changes the way we relate to it and can “dramatically increase our appreciation” of it, says Irvine. Even the sky can be seen anew when we realize that “in our corner of the universe, blue skies are an anomaly… and that to find another blue sky in the Solar System, you would have to travel to Uranus or Neptune.”

Try becoming a connoisseur of as many things as possible—art, music, nature, food, anything. Because by becoming knowledgeable of the world we live in, Irvine writes, we can fully take advantage of our lives and realize that we live in a “garden of delight.”

5. Bedtime meditation for self-awareness

The Stoics, Irvine says, were keen on reflecting on their shortcomings and then taking steps to improve them. They thought of themselves as artists who worked with a material that was far more precious than clay: life itself. Whereas “the sculptor had access to multiple blocks of marble to shape, a Stoic had only one life to transform into something beautiful, namely, the life that he was living.” To help them do that, the Stoics observed their own lives.

Inspired by Seneca’s bedtime ritual of reviewing his day, Irvine suggests taking a few moments at bedtime to think about what went right and wrong during the day. Did you take advantage of opportunities to be kind and curious? Did you allow yourself to get upset over something insignificant? Did you remain calm in the face of setbacks? Did you experience joy and delight?

This practice of “watching yourself live life while living your life” can be profound, says Irvine. “It allows us to stay accountable for our mistakes in our own eyes, to forgive ourselves, to learn and move on. And if we did something that would make Seneca proud, to congratulate ourselves.”

How might the ancient Stoics react if they were to visit us now?

Irvine suggests two possibilities.

First, they’d be horrified by social media.

Second, upon noticing that despite all our advancements and possessions we still aren’t much happier than our ancestors, they’d say, “We told you so!”

Many thanks to William Irvine for his time and insights. He is the author of seven books, including A Guide to the Good Life (2008).

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