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A Guide to The Good Life Summary. If you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life. Tranquility is a state marked by the absence of negative emotions such as anger, grief, anxiety, and fear, and the presence of positive emotions—in particular, joy.
A Guide to the Good Life (2009) tackles these pivotal questions, guiding the reader through the ancient Stoic philosophy of life and offering advice on how to practice it in a modern world. Focused on the goals of virtue and tranquility, this book shows us how to find joy in our lives.
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I've recently been reading (and re-reading) William Irvine's book: A Guide to the Good Life. This book easily and simply lays out the principles of Stoic philosophy and so I thought I'd summarise them, both to help myself as a reminder of Stoic principles and to help those who are perhaps struggling to understand what the core tennets of ...
In this guide, we’ll discuss the benefits of Stoicism and walk you through a set of Stoic techniques that promise happiness through such counterintuitive methods as imagining losing everything you love or deliberately exposing yourself to discomfort.
- Own the morning. “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work – as a human being…I’m going to do what I was born for…Or is this what I was created for?
- Only focus on what’s in your control. “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control…” — Epictetus.
- Don’t suffer imagined troubles. “We suffer more from imagination than from reality.” — Seneca. What are you worried about right now? Your job? Your family?
- Treat success and failure the same. “To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference.” — Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius had an interesting metaphor.
In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a brief history of Stoicism, an overview of its philosophical tenets, and a step-by-step guide to Stoic techniques designed to help you live well—which means being happier, calmer, and more fulfilled.
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To allow you to get the most out of it I've written a summary of the main points from A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine. While the book isn't perfect, it still remains one of the most accessible, non-academic introductions to Stoic philosophy.
