Stoic Mantras and Aphorisms for Self-Mastery
Stoic Mantras are powerful tools which have been used for thousands of years to master the mind.
“Let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely.”
— Marcus Aurelius
This quote is about having firm principles which can be stated as mantras or aphorisms.
A mantra is a short word that can be repeated in the mind.
The aim is to create a desired mental state.
3 Powerful Stoic Mantras
Memento Mori
Translated from Latin this means ‘Remember that you have to die’.
It is a bedrock in the stoic ethos to confront your mortality.
Stoics believed in living in accordance with nature and hence did not see death as being evil.
To them, death was a natural part of life.
When you make a habit of saying ‘Memento Mori’, you practice a form of Premeditatio Malorum (negative visualization).
This saying helps you put things into a greater context.
According to Nature
In Letter 5 of Seneca’s Moral letters to Lucilius, Seneca reveals a powerful stoic axiom.
“Our motto, as you know, is ‘Live according to Nature’”.
Living according to nature simply reminds the stoic to follow the cardinal virtues, which will ultimately lead to living a life of Eudaimonia.
When you live according to nature, you don’t oppose anything which is natural.
You learn to find the hidden benefit of every adverse situation.
You focus on mastering your inner world instead of trying to battle reality.
Endure and Renounce or Bear and Forbear
This was one of Epictetus’ famous slogans which encouraged stoics to endure hardships whilst renouncing destructive mental patterns.
The reality is you will face adversity in life despite your best efforts to avoid it.
Sometimes you have no other option but to endure the hardship.
To make the situation better for yourself, you can renounce ‘value judgements’ by practicing phantasia kataleptike.
Mantras from the Seal Teams
One of my favourite examples is by Jocko Willink.
Jocko is a former Navy Seals commander who led Seal Team Three during the battle of Ramadi.
During his 20-year career in the Navy, he used the mantra ‘Good’ to recontextualize adverse circumstances.
If something bad happened, he would simply say ‘Good’.
This helped orient his mind to look for hidden opportunities in the situation.
Watch this video with over 10 million views to better understand how he uses the mantra.
Mantras tend to be short and powerful.
Don’t underestimate them.
Aphorisms
Aphorisms are like mantras but in the form of phrases.
An aphorism much like a mental model helps you simplify complex problems.
You remove the distractions and look at the core of the issue.
Aphorisms are built from fractal patterns which you uncover with time.
They become a form of universal truth.
Marcus continues with the quote and shares some of his aphorisms.
“For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.”
Let me translate.
When you are bothered by someone who has wronged you,
Remember that, at a deep level, every person is connected (A stoic concept called ‘Sympatheia’).
We need each other for survival and to make life meaningful.
Every person is doing the best they can with the tools they have
No one is doing something wrong by choice.
What you consider ‘wrong’ makes sense to them due to the configuration of their minds.
And finally, in time, we will all return to dust, and the trivial issue which currently bothers you won’t matter.
Developing Your Own Principles
High performers develop their own principles which help them make sense of the world.
These principles can be based on your own personal experience.
They can come from books and mentors.
What’s important is your ability to integrate them into your life.
The mind is forgetful, and we often have to learn the same painful lesson several times until we finally ‘get it’.
Mantras and aphorisms help you graduate faster.
Write down your principles and develop short sayings to help you remember them.
Let’s say you’re a public speaker.
You notice your tendency to become hyper-self-conscious during your speeches.
Whenever you speak, it seems like you are talking too fast.
You feel like your pauses are too long.
Everything seems off in your mind.
But when you finish your speech, people congratulate you on how great it was.
Upon watching the replay you don’t notice any of the tendencies which plagued your mind.
Perhaps the same thing has happened a few times now.
It becomes prudent to develop a mantra or aphorism which you can repeat to yourself during your next speech.
You might say,
“Charisma” to remind yourself you are charismatic despite what your mind says.
Or you could say,
“It’s better than it seems.”
My Sayings
Over several years of creating content, I have noticed an interesting pattern.
The people who hate (the trolls) are always people who are not creating content.
I don’t recall a single instance of a prolific content creator taking time out of their day to leave a hateful comment.
It’s always anonymous consumers.
This observation is consistent with other creators I have talked to.
Next time you are on a review site like Amazon or Google, click on the profile of people giving 1-star reviews.
You will notice that often they make a career out of spreading negativity.
Most of the reviews they give will be 1-star reviews.
These people like to complain and can’t be helped.
Through noticing this pattern, I developed a saying based on this powerful quote by Theodore Roosevelt.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Whenever I see a hate comment, I simply say to myself:
“Not in the arena.”
And as Marcus Aurelius explained, it ‘cleanses my soul completely’ and I can be ‘quiet at last’.
It’s time for you to develop your own principles and sayings.
Look at your life and find the areas which have bothered you.
Find the solutions you have used to surmount challenges.
Then create mantras and aphorisms around them.
These will serve as references that, when said, polarize your mind towards a desired direction.
The more your consciously practice your mantra the quicker it will be programmed in to the subconscious mind.
Don’t sleep on this tip.
If it worked for a Roman Emperor 2,000 years ago,
It works for Navy Seals,
It can work for YOU.
Do this and you will be one step closer to living and dying well.