ysabetwordsmith | Stoic Exercises

Stoic exercises develop fortitude and perseverance in the face of hardships.

My personal favorite is staying out in the rain. For practice, most people want a light rain, warm to moderate. Harder or colder rain is for experts, because the risk of getting sick from it runs higher. I'm also fond of the Renaissance faire observation: "You can only get so wet." That is, if you have to work all day somewhere you can't wear a raincoat, you are going to get 100% wet, and there is no point trying to avoid it. Once you are soaked, you can't get any wetter no matter what happens. It can all be fixed at the end of the day with a towel and a change of clothes.

It's important to understand how your body reacts to stress, which things you can endure easily, which you can if you push, and which you really need to avoid because they'll flatten you. Knowing your limits helps you make prudent choices and avoid problems. It also reduces the tendency to panic under stress, and keeping your cool is a vital life skill, because panic can kill you. No problem is so bad that panic can't make it a lot worse.

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Oh hey, this is a thing.

I grew up with it from hippie parents and Depression Era grandparents. You don't see it much anymore unless you go looking. I stumbled across a crummy example and that inspired me to search out a better example because I figured my readers would appreciate it.

Everyone needs problem-solving skills for clay problems and distress tolerance skills for rock problems. Plus discernment to know which is which, thus what toolkit to use.

I think most of my development and use of this particular tool-set was born of y'know ... growing up the way I did. I didn't realize it was an actual thing. I certainly never saw it modeled anywhere that I can recall. But I was always one to stand in the rain or sleep in the snow (so long as my ears were protected) and so on. And I definitely have plenty of practice walking myself through worst-case scenarios, lol.

Those experiences helped me weather the other shit. So I hope your link helps other people. Good tools to have.

I hope so too.

Some people need coping skills every day. But everyone needs them some days. I find that people who have an easy life most of the time have difficulty coping when it's not easy. But there are ways to develop those skills without screwing up your life.

This reminds me of the day my friends and I went to Tintage on our last trip. It rained so hard. We definitely could not get wetter. But by the time we got back to the car, we were mostly dry. And then we got soaked again at Glastonbury...but I got to see the Chalice Well, so it was all good.

Does it still count as stoic exercise if you complain the whole time?

Because for all that I gripe ferociously about being rained on, I almost never bother carrying an umbrella... or checking the weather forecast before wearing a hoodless coat. :P

It counts as fortitude, in that inimical conditions don't stop you. But it's not stoicism, which is all about unflappability in the face of hassles.

Heh. :D

"Keep calm and carry on."

Stoic Exercises

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