Facilitating workshops on negotiation techniques I have seen hundreds of time how nervous and stressed were those who did not prepare thoroughly.  As a student I was very calm if I was prepared for an exam – which in fact was seldom the case.

Life’s top ten “stressors”

• Death of spouse
• Divorce
• Marital separation; marital reconciliation
• Death of close family member
• Changing residences
• Personal injury or illness
• Marriage
• Loss of job
• Change in financial state
• Prison

need not stress us at all if we are adequately prepared .

Who can prepare us for these events? Our schools do not do this at all, our families very seldom.  Two philosophical schools, both about 2300 years old, were created just for furnishing the appropriate tools with which they prepared their adepts to face life’s top and bottom “stressors” and yet stay stress-free.

I mean the Stoics and the Epicureans. Their goals and followers were rather different but the tools and methods they used were rather similar – and most of them are just as valid today as they were 2300 years ago.