Stoicism and mental toughness in FPL

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The heritage of stoicism tracks back to ancient Greece.

Stoicism is a fantastic framework for handling high stress environments and events, and it can be used as a versatile tool for training yourself to be less reactive.

In stoicism it's important to differentiate between the things you can control and the things you can't control, and really only focusing your energy on the former.

Why is it good to be less reactive in FPL? Let me give you two examples of mistakes I made last season..

Example 1: It was gameweek 25 and I had triple-captained Leroy Sané for the upcoming double gameweek. But suddenly he falls out of favour with Guardiola and doesn't start the first game of the gameweek. Then in the second game he is clearly not in the right mindset to play...

... good football and Pep subs him in the 59th minute. So having him as triple captain gave me a total of 3 captain points -- a waste! I transfer him out in blind rage because of dissappointment, not even stopping to consider my options.

Thankfully it was a fine transfer in hindsight but making transfers when in rage is not how I see a good manager playing the game. Decisions should come from a calm and collected place and be informed, preferably after checking out press conferences and team news.

Example 2: Very early in the season, I rashly decided to take a -8 to reshuffle my team after a poor start. Instead of looking at the players I had and properly evaluating them I just switched them out for players that had scored.

I ended up bringing in Mkhitaryan and Pedro for Moura and King; it was a very reactive play that ended up being quite costly. Moura and King went on to score over 45 points over the next 3 gameweeks while my substitutes produced a meagre 11.

The -8 deficit from this move was also huge in and of itself and I don't recommend anyone taking a hit like that without very good reason. This was one of my best lessons from last season.

So these were two examples of being too reactive. In the first example I was acting from a state of tilt and in the second example I was operating from a state of unpatience with my players that I probably should have put more trust in.

One of the most known stoics Seneca said: "You suffer more in imagination than in reality".

To connect this to FPL, If you make a bad transfer, don't punish yourself by being sad! The damage is already done and you can't travel back in time to fix it.

This frustration can lead to you doing something stupid like I did or even worse, it might stay as a bad feeling during the week. It can start affecting your life or season in a stressful way.

Another risk is that you hold a grudge towards this player and start seeing him as a troll and you won't trust him even though he is a great player and other people will benefit from not having seeing him as their troll.

There's this story about one of the great thinkers of stoicism whose name was Cato, this was over two thousand years ago in ancient Rome. When he went to the Senate he would sometimes wear a funny looking tunic just so he would be ridiculed by other people.

He did this and other things like it so he would train himself to only be ashamed of those things that were worth being ashamed of… It reminded him that he can't control other people's opinions. He trained himself to systematically be less prone to overreact to criticism.

So how can we connect this to FPL? One thing I worried about during my first season of playing was what people would think of me if I didn't end up in the top 5k of managers. My mindset was to not lose versus the rest and it made me play overly safe transfers.

While being top 5k naturally is a great achievement I think I could have learned even more -- and most importantly enjoyed the game more -- if I had had a different mindset. Remember that it's your team so make the transfers you feel like doing...

...don't conform to the expectation of others' just because.

By doing this you will also have an easier time evaluating why you made that decision, instead of blaming someone else for giving you bad advice on a transfer move.

A quote that sums up the concept of stoicism is:
"You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose." -- Lou Holtz

I think this resonates with how not to consider yourself as a god when a transfer works out or think that you are bad just because it went wrong. This quote can also be changed to "It's never as good as people say it is, and it's never as bad as people say it is".

This should be kept in mind during the ups and downs of the FPL game, because when something goes wrong one week you're really just one good week away from catching up.

People who hear about this way of looking at life might get afraid that even though their dips are not as low in terms of emotional reactions, that maybe their highs aren't gonna be that high anymore. That you won't have these peaks of joy that you experience as a normal person.

To that fear it is important to remember that you are a thinking person who can pick and choose the elements that you like. So use the elements that you think might be useful and then test them.

So to summarize

Train yourself to be less reactive by focusing on the things that you can control. Paradoxically, by accepting there are things out of your control you may end up with better control of the game.

This could also help you decrease the stress that might come from negative outcomes in FPL, making the game more enjoyable overall as well.

Some accounts I think might appreciate the post @FPLGOAT7 @Ghost_Lad_1 @DhillonAjit @FPL__Raptor @FPL_Watchman @Fpl_Walter @Oldirish007