> In your book, you also write about the importance of following your own values — and that Stoicism is a personal choice.
> therapists today are increasingly encouraging clients to identify their true inner values and do things that serve those more fully. The big problem here is that most people don’t know what those values are.
It's important to remember that the Stoics did not encourage us to follow our own individual, personal values, or to look for them as some sort of "inner truth." Rather, they thought that value was objective, and that we should give up our existing values in favor of the correct ones (the ones in accordance with nature).
> It’s something they identify with at a deeper kind of more spiritual level, almost like a substitute for religion.
Well, it effectively was a religion, based on a fairly developed system of theology.
What do horrendous about it? Adopting the stoic approach to tempering your impulses, accepting that which is beyond your control, and seeking happiness from within doesn’t sound horrendous to me at all. There’s plenty of wisdom in Stoicism for people to benefit from.
I love to read the historical stoics. But there is the good old traditional Stoicism and this new "self-help" stoicism trend that isn't the same at all.
It's not horrible, but it's not Stoicism either. The notion of eudaimonia (which is what you talk about) is found throughout the schools of thought of the Western classical world, and similar notions pop up all over the place in ancient philosophy, even in such places as India or China. Calling that "Stoicism" just leads to pointless misconceptions.
> The notion of eudaimonia (which is what you talk about)
That's not what's being talked about. Eudaimonia refers to the benefits of living virtuously, a core part of Stoicism, but not the part that's directly being discussed in this article. The ideas discussed in this article are about self-control, disconnecting your emotional well-being from things that are beyond your control, and seeking happiness from within. Those are quintessential Stoic principles. A lot of the modern pop-stoicism also delves into the benefits of virtue, maintaining the connection to eudaimonia and Socrates' question, albeit in a slightly round about way. The only Stoic principle that's usually left out of these discussions is pantheism.
> similar notions pop up all over the place in ancient philosophy
You're right, they do. That doesn't make them any less Stoic though. Perhaps if this was a Chinese message board, we'd all be talking about Buddhism instead. The two philosophies do have a lot in common.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, but there is an unfortunate abundant of rhetoric that flows like this: "we should improve something somewhat" that gets derailed with "no, you should become stoic instead".
> therapists today are increasingly encouraging clients to identify their true inner values and do things that serve those more fully. The big problem here is that most people don’t know what those values are.
It's important to remember that the Stoics did not encourage us to follow our own individual, personal values, or to look for them as some sort of "inner truth." Rather, they thought that value was objective, and that we should give up our existing values in favor of the correct ones (the ones in accordance with nature).
> It’s something they identify with at a deeper kind of more spiritual level, almost like a substitute for religion.
Well, it effectively was a religion, based on a fairly developed system of theology.