With people across the world trying to find a way to switch off from their hectic, technological lives Royal Holloway is calling for individuals to live like a Stoic for a week.
On October 1, 2018, Royal Holloway will be starting its annual Stoic Week and are asking people in the UK and beyond to join in and find their inner peace.
The idea behind the week is to give people an opportunity to see whether Stoic philosophy can help them lead a better life.
In order to achieve this, a free online course with step by step exercises and audio meditations has been created and anyone wishing to take part can sign up here.
Participants will be provided with wellbeing questionnaires before and after the seven days, so they can measure their progress.
Stoic Week consists of seven chapters, one for each day of the week.
It gives people the opportunity to join thousands of other participants around the world as they learn to apply Stoic concepts and techniques in their daily lives.
The week uses the teachings of the three well-known philosophers, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus.
Five top tips on being Stoic
- Acknowledge that you can’t control much of what goes on in your life
- See that your emotions are the product of how you think about the world
- Accept that bad things are bound to happen to you from time to time, just as they do to everyone else
- See yourself as part of a larger whole, not an isolated individual; part of the human race, part of Nature
- Think of everything you have as not your own, but simply on loan, that one day will be taken back
John Sellars, a founding member of Stoicism Today project, and Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, said: "The Roman Stoics argue that much of our unhappiness is of our own making and the product of how we look at things, rather than the things themselves.
"In particular, they suggest we need to understand what we can and cannot control, and become accepting of those things that just cannot be changed.
The project which people can be part of in October will help them start to learn how to have Stoicism in their everyday lives and to start feeling happier about situations which may have historically held them back."
Last year, more than 7,000 took part in the online course during Stoic Week and on September 29th, a special event called Stoicon will be happening in London, and will be attended by people from around the world.
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