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From skills-for-humanity
Applies the Stoic dichotomy of control framework to help users work through worry, adversity, and things outside their control. Useful when anxious about outcomes, others' opinions, or circumstances beyond influence.
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/skills-for-humanity:s4h-mindset-stoicThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
The Stoics identified what they considered the root of most human suffering: treating things outside our control as if they were inside our control, and treating our responses to events as if they were determined by the events themselves. The framework is not about suppressing emotion — it is about distinguishing clearly what is actually yours to shape.
Routes to the right mindset tool based on your situation — stoic, growth, positive, reframe, or flow. Use when stuck in thought loops, treating failure personally, or wanting to flourish.
Applies Socratic questioning and Stoic principles to examine life decisions and assumptions with poetic depth. Useful when facing a difficult choice or seeking wisdom.
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The Stoics identified what they considered the root of most human suffering: treating things outside our control as if they were inside our control, and treating our responses to events as if they were determined by the events themselves. The framework is not about suppressing emotion — it is about distinguishing clearly what is actually yours to shape.
Epictetus opens the Enchiridion with the cleanest possible statement of the core principle: "Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions."
This is not a consolation prize. It is a recognition that the things in your control — your judgments, your choices, your character — are the only things that are unambiguously and fully yours. Everything else can be taken.
Step 1: Identify the Situation State clearly what is causing distress, worry, or friction. Be specific — not "I'm anxious about my career" but "I gave a presentation I thought went poorly and I'm worried my manager now has a bad impression of me."
Framing check: Confirm the specific situation before continuing. State what you've identified — the actual source of distress and its core tension — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:
Step 2: Apply the Dichotomy of Control Divide the situation into two columns:
In my control (eph' hēmin):
Not in my control (ouk eph' hēmin):
This is not a trick — many things we feel should be in our control (our reputation, how we are perceived, whether we succeed) genuinely are not. The question is not whether we want them but whether we govern them.
Step 3: Identify Which Stoic Practice Applies
Before narrowing: Show all four practices to the user with a one-sentence description of how each fits the situation. Use AskUserQuestion:
Negative Visualization (Premeditatio Malorum): When you are fearful about something that might go wrong. Deliberately imagine the worst outcome in full detail. Not to wallow — but to discover that you can bear it, and to reduce the power fear has over present action. Seneca: "Let us prepare our minds as if we had come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing." The Stoics found that imagining the loss of something (a relationship, a job, health) produces gratitude for what you currently have and reduces the grip of anxiety about losing it.
Amor Fati — Love of Fate: When you are resisting something that has already happened or is happening. Not acceptance as resignation — but affirmation. Marcus Aurelius: "You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." Nietzsche later named this most sharply: "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity." The practice: do not say "this is what I must endure" but "this is what I choose to embrace as my life."
Memento Mori — Awareness of Mortality: When you are caught in trivialities, disproportionate distress, or procrastination. The Stoics practiced daily reflection on death — not as morbidity but as clarification. Marcus Aurelius: "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think." When the awareness of finitude is present, petty concerns lose their grip and the question of how to spend the remaining time becomes sharp.
The View from Above: When a situation feels overwhelming, personal, or catastrophically important. Zoom out to cosmic scale — literally. Marcus Aurelius practiced visualizing himself from above: his city as a point on a map, the map as a point in the empire, the empire as a blip in history, history as a moment in geological time. From that vantage, the specific situation reduces to its actual scale. This is not a reason not to care — it is a recalibration of proportion.
Step 4: Apply the Practice Work through the chosen practice explicitly. Negative visualization: describe the worst case in specific terms and examine whether you could bear it. Amor fati: restate your relationship to what has already happened using affirmation rather than resistance. Memento mori: apply the finitude frame — what changes about this situation when death is held in mind? View from above: walk the zoom-out explicitly — from the immediate situation to year, to decade, to century.
Step 5: Articulate the Stoic Reframe State what you now hold differently. Not a generic "I feel better about it" — a specific shift in how you are relating to what was causing distress. What have you released? What remains genuinely yours?
Before proceeding, use the AskUserQuestion tool:
[The specific situation, stated plainly]
In my control:
Not in my control:
What this reveals: [One sentence on what the division surfaces — what was being treated as controllable that isn't, and what the person actually has full ownership of]
[Name of practice]
[Full application of the practice to the specific situation — not a description of the practice, but the practice run on this case]
[What the person now holds differently. Specific — not "I feel better" but a concrete shift in relationship to the situation.]
[One or two sentences in the voice of the tradition — what the Stoics would say about this specific situation, grounded where useful in a primary-source quote]
This is not a bypass for legitimate negative emotion. The Stoics were not emotionless — they experienced what they called eupatheia (good emotions): joy rather than pleasure, caution rather than fear, wishing rather than desire. The goal is not to eliminate feeling but to base it on accurate assessment of what is actually happening and what is actually yours.
Nearest neighbors: mindset-reframe (for restructuring specific thought distortions, rather than applying a philosophical framework), mindset-positive (for building flourishing rather than finding equanimity). Use Stoic when the work is about relationship to what's outside your control. Use reframe when the distortion is about evidence and interpretation. Use positive when what's missing is flourishing rather than equanimity.
After delivering this output, use AskUserQuestion to offer the next move:
/s4h-decision-premortem-analysis — Apply stoic premeditation formally to the plan/s4h-decision-reversibility-analysis — Assess reversibility with stoic detachment/s4h-emotional-resistance-diagnosis — Diagnose resistance the stoic framing can address