Cultural Survival Skills

Recommendations for a Wonderful New Year!

The aging process presents many new frustrations, disabilities and sadness’s. All are challenges to the self-control of anxiety, depression, fear, anger, aggression and our ability to avoid the damaging excesses that will accelerate our decline (alcohol, drugs, gluttony, and other forms of habitual self-indulgences.

This is true for the young and the old.

I believe that the wisdom’s contained within the pro-social religions of this world, in conjunction with the secular philosophy of Stoicism, if learned and put into daily practice, can bring the great rewards of personal growth throughout ones life-time, even during our inevitable journey of eventual decline and demise.

No matter your religion, or lack of it; the philosophy of Stoicism, designed and professed about 300 years before the birth of Christ, can help you to achieve a life-time of reasonable happiness and emotional stability.

I recommend that you Google information about Stoicism and learn its main features. Features that foreshadowed the development and scientific validation of Cognitive Behavior Therapy….by around 2320 years.

It is important to note that what we think most about is likely to be integrated into our beliefs, thoughts and actions.

Therefore people of faith have normally benefited from the reading of daily devotions.

I will recommend in addition to religious devotions, or singularly if you are not religious, that you consider purchasing and reading The Daily Stoic: 336 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living (2016), by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman.

This book also features new translations of Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius; philosophers practicing and teaching effective psychotherapy in ancient Greece and Rome.

Best wishes to you for a wonderful New Year, 2020!

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 1/5/20

Tags: Anger, Anxiety, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Damaging Excesses, depression, Epictetus, fear, Jesus Christ, Marcus Aurelius, Recommendations for a Wonderful New Year!, religion, Ryan Holiday, Seneca, Stephen Hanselman, Stoicism, The Daily Stoic, V. Thomas Mawhinney Ph.D., VTM

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