A transcript of author Phil Van Treuren discussing the common misconception that Stoicism is related to “the law of attraction,” “magical thinking” or “manifesting”
Stoicism is not “magical thinking.” This is not a Stoic dog . . . this is a stupid dog.
A Stoic would get the hell out of the room and figure out how to help put out the fire so nobody else gets hurt.
Stoicism doesn’t teach us to pretend that challenges don’t exist. It doesn’t teach us to embrace our own obnoxious behavior and double down on being mean to other people and that kind of thing. It doesn’t teach us to fool ourselves into being happy.
Stoics really want to see the world and themselves as it truly is . . . as reality truly is, and make our judgments based on reality, not the way we wish things would be.
Stoicism has nothing to do with whatever “manifestation” or the “law of attraction” is. I’m not quite sure what that is . . . I see some people refer to “manifesting” online sometimes, I haven’t really looked at it. I think it has something to do with “whatever you think about enough will come true.” But that has nothing to do with Stoicism.
Stoicism doesn’t teach that our thoughts have the capacity to change reality at all. But it does teach us that we can frame situations that we’re in however we want. We can frame any situation as an opportunity or as a tragedy.
And we can find opportunity in everything we face in life.
