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William James and Epictetus show that stress comes from how you relate to your thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. A reflective process of questioning a thought's importance and what action it demands can transform anxiety into purpose.
William James and Epictetus show that stress comes from how you relate to your thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. A reflective process of questioning a thought's importance and what action it demands can transform anxiety into purpose.
William James said, "Our greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." It reminds me of my favorite Epictetus, who said, "There are only two things we control: our actions and how we relate to our thoughts." And that's it, isn't it? The things that really bother us, that causes us anxiety, is because we're thinking about it in a certain way, rather than. Believing that our thought is our identity, believing that's who we are, that's what something is. Try to relate to the thought and say to yourself, well, this is just an idea, this is just a thought. What does it actually mean? Do I give it too much importance? How do I relate to it? And what could I do about it? What actions can I take to change the outcomes?
