The exercise for the third week on a Stoic workbook, Live Like A Stoic: 52 Exercises for Cultivating A Good Life, is quite interesting. This week, we will write advices to ourselves on our own problems.
What I find more interesting in this exercise is that we will use the second or third person form. So, instead of writing, ‘I am afraid’, one could write ‘you are afraid’ or John is afraid. In other words, it is like writing letters to ourselves. And I kinda love writing letters.
One of the many Stoic practices is to look into our own situation objectively. And to learn how to give ourselves an advice the way we give others.
A friend of mine was diagnosed with an illness. This diagnosis has changed the way he lives his life. For somebody who is healthy like myself, it is easy to say: that is life. The sooner he accepts his new situation the better his life will be.
But I wonder, if I got the diagnosis myself, will I also be able to say c’est la vie with equanimity? of perhaps, like my friend, I will say: why me?
On Being Stoic 