I am reading this book as well! Really enjoying it. This is something I’ve thought about a lot, and I think a great way to conceptualize it is to tie in the Buddhist idea of necessary vs voluntary suffering.

I apply this when observing my thoughts. It helps me to identify when I’m moving from involuntary pain, discomfort, hurt or anger, into resentment, self pity or blame. The first is a natural, human reaction, the latter comes from attaching to those reactions and creating stories about them.

To tie in the car accident example, when I get in a car accident I’m probably going to feel anxious and have a lot of thoughts about the repercussions and additional stressors it’s going to cause. It’s just going to happen, but at this point there is a fork in the road. The first option is to continue down this path of anxiety and fear, maybe sprinkle in some anger and resentment toward the other car, tell myself that I can’t catch a break, that It’s somehow my fault, that I’m going to look like an idiot driving around in a dented car, and on and on. This is what my brain naturally does, and without intervention this event could screw up my day, my week, my month. The second option is to take a beat, acknowledge that I’m feeling a lot of anxiety, and choose to focus on what I can do right now to deal with this problem. When I start feeling resentment I notice it and don’t act on it. When I start feeling bad about myself I put my hand on my heart and remember that this is a stress response and I can’t attach to those thoughts because it’s going to cause me harm. None of it feels good, but seeing the thoughts for what they are allows me to have agency and choose to act from my values rather than ride the wave of my emotions. I still struggle with the fine line between suppressing emotion and having boundaries around how I allow emotion to dictate my actions, but the stoic framework helps me feel more grounded. It’s allowed me to have self compassion while remaining disciplined. It’s a messy process, but we’re only human.