5 Exercises From Stoicism To Improve Your Life | Massimo Piggliuci | Modern Wisdom Podcast 170

Massimo Piggliuci is a Professor of Philosophy at City College and an author. Despite being 2500 years old, Stoicism has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. I wanted to find out why this ancient philosophy has found root in the modern world. Expect to learn what the underpinnings of stoicism are, how the foundational principles used by stoics made them resilient to setbacks, 5 exercises & thought experiments to help you improve your life, how to focus your attention where it is needed and much more... Sponsor: Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (enter promo code MODERNWISDOM for 85% off and 3 Months Free) Extra Stuff: Buy How To Be A Stoic - https://amzn.to/3fGh7TL Buy Live Like A Stoic - https://amzn.to/2WqLrKb Follow Massimo on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mpigliucci Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #stoicism #seneca #Epictetus - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Epictetus says, "Some things are up to you and other things are not up to you." And then he lists some, the things that are up to you, and then he lists the things that are not up to you. And then he says, "You should be concerning yourself with the first one and not the second one." Which is pretty sound advice. If something, if there's nothing you can do about something, you might as well ignore it. Because what are you gonna do about it?

• 0:23Chris Williamson?

  It seems like Stoicism is kind of similar to the hot new girl in school. You know, that everyone's interested in, she's just arrived here. And everyone's thinking, "Ooh, she's, I want a bit of her." Everyone else seems to be interested in her. So what is it about Stoicism that's giving us this resurgence in the modern era? I'm not seeing waves of books being written about a resurgence of Confucianism or Taoism. You know, what is it about Stoicism that's, that's made it the hot new girl?

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's an interesting question. Well, of course, as far as hot new girls go, Stoicism is about 24 centuries old.

• 1:04Chris Williamson?

  She's aging well.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  She's aging definitely very well. I also want to make a point, actually a comment on your observation that, you know, why Stoicism and a lot of other philosophies? I've, I've seen, especially since this Covid, um, bruhaha started and this, this all mess has started. I have seen a lot of articles on other philosophies, including Buddhism, Taoism, uh, uh, Confucianism, uh, and if we go to the Western philosophies, also Epicureanism. But you're, you're right, those are the exceptions. The overwhelming majority of things that I see are, is about Stoicism. I think it's for two reasons, and I think there are actually two different reasons,

• 1:48Speaker 00

  depending on whether we're talking about other Eastern, sorry, other Western philosophies or Eastern philosophies.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  Eastern philosophies are just not very western friendly. That's one way to put it. Meaning that unless you grow up in, and vice versa, of course, western philosophies are not eastern friendly. Meaning that if you grow up with a certain, you know, language, background, culture, et cetera, et cetera. It is less likely that something, that a philosophy that comes from a very different language and background is going to speak to you. Like for instance, when I, before I got into Stoicism, I was actually exploring a number of possible philosophies of life and I, of course, checked out Buddhism. Because, which is reasonably well, you know, known in practice even in the, in the West, although the Western version is significantly different from the original one.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  And it just didn't speak to me. I mean, I recognized, intellectually, I recognized the, what they're talking, I know what they're talking about, I I appreciate their ethics, et cetera, et cetera, but the language, the examples, the, the way of, you know, the writings is just, it didn't click. And then I read Epictetus and I said, holy cow, how did I never hear about this guy before? I mean, this guy clicked immediately. And as I said, I suspect it's the same the other way around, if you go west toward east. Of course, with plenty of exceptions. I mean, How to Be a Stoic, the first book that I wrote about Stoicism, has been published in Japan and Korea and China. So it's not like, there are no, there's no audience, but it certainly is a fraction compared to Confucianism or Buddhism and so on and so forth.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  So I think that's part of the explanation in terms of western readings that you might have in country. Now, the interesting thing is, well, why not Epicureanism or, you know, there's a little bit more about existentialism.

• 3:35Chris Williamson?

  Cynicism or whatever.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, cynicism, well cynicism is pretty tough to practice for one thing.

• 3:40Chris Williamson?

  Living out of a pot and, and, and just sort of, you and a couple of rags on the side of the road, yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Right. It, it doesn't cost a lot of money for, to, to practice cynicism. That's, you know, that's the upside. So there is one book that came out recently on Epicureanism. This was before the pandemics by a colleague of mine, Catherine Wilson, actually here at City University of New York. You know, in a book that I co-edited recently called "How to Live a Good Life," there is a chapter on Epicureanism. But yes, there's certainly the exception. Most of what you hear about is Stoicism. I think it's for a couple of important reasons. It's not just by chance. First of all, because Stoicism particularly speaks to, although one can use it no matter what the situation, no matter what the personal, you know, conditions, it definitely speaks

• 4:32Speaker 00

  to difficult times. It was born in difficult times. It was born during the Hellenistic period between the death of Alexander the Great and the beginning of the Roman Empire. That was a major time of turmoil in the Mediterranean area. Things were big changes that nobody seemed saw coming and people felt like they didn't have control over what the hell was going on there. So that's the environment in which Stoicism was forged and it still speaks today to that kind of stuff. And, you know, we are living in that kind of situation, obviously, particularly with the COVID pandemic. But even before, I mean, Stoicism has seen a resurgence over the last 20 years or so.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  And even before, and why? Well, you know, think about it. Over the last century, we went through two world wars, not one, all right? We are looking at the possibility of global climate collapse. We are still threatened constantly by nuclear annihilation. So it's like, you know, there's been a lot of stuff going on that sort of makes these times pretty similar to the ones during the Hellenistic period. So that's one reason. The other reason is because unlike a lot of other philosophies... Including epicureanism, Aristotelanism and so on and forth. Stoicism actually comes with a lot of practical advice. Practical access, actually access, actual exercises you can do in, you know, day to day,

• 6:01Speaker 00

  week to, by week. Aristotle's Ethics, for instance, the Nico McKeon Ethics is the book, where the major book where Aristotle put forth his ethics. It's very interesting from a sort of theoretical perspective. But Aristotle wasn't interested in living that as a philosopher of life. And so he didn't give any particular, you know, actual ground rules or, you know, what do you, okay, what am I going to do about this? Epicurus got a little closer, but even he was not that interested, for one thing, in proselytizing. He wasn't really writing that much about, you know, how to put this into practice. It was kind of general advice. One of the things that distinguishes Stoicism is the fact that there is a lot of emphasis on the practice. I mean, if you don't practice, you're not doing anything. And Stoics are very clear about this.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Epictetus says several times in the discourses to his students, like, you know, if you guys are here just for the theory, you're wasting your time and mine.

• 6:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's, um, it's interesting to see some of the surface level information that I come across online on the internet about different philosophies, both ancient and and modern. And you're right, some of them appear to be just thought experiments from an armchair. And then others appear to be thinking tools to be weaponized, almost.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, so let me give you an example. So I have a close colleague and friend who is an existential, existentialist philosopher. And existentialism actually has been, you might have seen coming, you know, popping up, especially now, for instance, in the middle of the pandemics. One of the bestselling books is Camus' The Plague, not surprisingly, right?

• 7:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Although I have actually read recently, just like a couple of days ago, that people are running out, you know, presses are running out of copies of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and Seneca's writings. Yeah, that's, that's amazing, that's really amazing.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Now, the problem is, you read the existentialists, and yes, as a general framework, that sounds, that's, that's interesting. There, there are some things to really think about and, and sort of, that might be helpful in practice. But it's not like existentialists actually laid out a coherent philosophy of life to follow. In fact, they kind of, on purpose, refused to do so. Most of them actually rejected even the, the label existential, including Camus. So, and, and most of them wrote novels, not philosophical treatises. Right? So you do get, and get what they're getting at, you get the idea, um, but it's, you know, you get to the end of the novel and you say, okay, now what? Uh, how do I,

• 8:46Speaker 00

  how do I, how do I go existential here? Do I just start, you know, drinking a lot of coffee and, and smoking a lot of cigarettes? Uh, or is there something else to it? And, you know, I'm of course teasing to some extent. Uh, you might want to talk to my friend Sky Clear about it. She, she might have different ideas. But nevertheless, you know, that was one of the things that, um, that I found not particularly appealing, you know, where, in a philosophy of life, where if I can understand the point sort of at an abstract level, but then I immediately wonder, okay, and now what am I supposed to do about it? Uh, then, then, then seem to be, that seems to be an issue.

• 9:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's the, um, the very fancy app that you've just downloaded onto your phone that looks great and sounds wonderful in principle. And for some people it might work, but for you, you just, you open it up and you're like, I don't understand how any of this happens. So what I want to try and do, I'd love to get you back on and talk about the history of Stoicism, how it came about. And as the listeners will know, I went to Athens for my birthday and I stood in the Stoa Poikle, which is where Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Cytiem.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:57Chris Williamson?

  Yes. See, I've been doing my research, Massimo.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Apparently.

• 10:01Chris Williamson?

  Doing my research, ready for you. Flew all the way to Athens on my birthday, ready for this podcast.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  That's an expensive bit of research, but yeah, sure.

• 10:09Chris Williamson?

  It was painful, obviously. Um, I'd love to get you back on to do that, but what I really want to do today, especially given the fact that we're a period of turmoil, people are pivoting within their life, there's a lot of uncertainty, people require more robustness, more resilience, all that sort of stuff. I want to, I want to really try and get into the nuts and bolts of what are the principles that underpin Stoicism that people need to understand to give them the foundational knowledge? And then let's talk about some of these exercises. Let's talk about how people can take these principles of Stoicism and apply them so that hopefully tomorrow, if they come up against a difficult situation, they might be able to use it a little bit. And then that domain of competence hopefully will grow and grow and grow.

• 10:52Chris Williamson?

  And then maybe we finish off with some, uh, some cool book recommendations, certainly some of which will be, will be yours and then some other reading people want to get stuck into it.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  Where do we start? Stoicism 101, where do we begin?

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Well, let's, let's start with a couple of the basic principles that are immediately applicable to, you know, people's lives. So there are two of them that I think we, we could start with. One is the, uh, the four cardinal virtues. So the Stoics, um, recognized four fundamental virtues, meaning character traits, meaning things that you need to work on in order to become a better human being. And the notion was that, is that you use these four as kind of a, almost as a compass to navigate your life, a mortal compass to navigate your life. Basically everything you do, you should be asking yourself, okay, how does that square against the four cardinal virtues? So it's kind of a checklist, right?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Okay, check, check one, check two, check three, check four. So the four cardinal virtues are practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. Practical wisdom is the one that I'm going to spend a couple of minutes on because it's the one that usually people have trouble understanding and also it's the one that really doesn't roll off your tongue. Practical wisdom is like, whatever. Um, the, the Greek term is actually phronesis. And, um, essentially this is the knowledge of what is truly good for you and, and what is truly bad for you. Now, we grew up with certain ideas about what is good for us and what is not good for us, right? Those ideas come from society at large, from our parents, from our friends and so on and so forth.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  So, for instance, a good number of Westerners would think that what is good for you is, you know, um, a good job, you know, a good career, a certain amount of money, health, you know, a good relationship, some friends, you know, that sort of stuff.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  For the Stoics, that's not quite the case. All of those things are preferred, meaning that if you have them, that's great, uh, but really they're not what is truly good for you. The only thing that is truly good for you is good judgment, is arriving at a good judgment about situations. Um, why is that? Well, because all of those other things that I just mentioned, you may gain or lose at any time in your life, right? You might gain a new relationship and it's great, and then you lose it. Or you might make money and then you lose it, and you might get a job and then you get fired. You know, that's all that sort of stuff. It's not really under your control. It's stuff that happens. And sure, you can work on it, you can make it more likely to happen, for sure.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Um, but ultimately, it doesn't really depend on you. And in fact, the value of all those other things really depends on how you behave with, in, in respect to those things. So, for instance, having money, it's not an unqualified good. It is good if you use the money well. But if you don't, if you use your money to, you know, corrupt politicians so that you have your own way and write your own laws, for instance, that's not good. Then, then money is not a good thing. Um, so in other words, the notion is that the, that the fundamental thing that is good for you is good judgment. Because good judgment is what allows you to use everything else in the best possible way.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Similarly, or as you say, conversely, the only really bad thing that for you is bad judgment. Okay, so it's the opposite of it. Why? Well, because bad judgment is gonna make you squander your money. You know, lose your relationships, lose your friends, lose your job, and so on and so forth. So judgment is really the only thing that according to the Stoics that is important, that is crucial. And so the first cardinal virtue, practical wisdom, basically reminds you constantly that the only thing you need to work on is your judgment. Or constantly improve it. So whatever makes you, makes, refines your judgment, makes you better, better, it's good. And whatever makes it worse, it's bad. That's the first virtue.

• 15:03Chris Williamson?

  Got it.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Second, courage. Courage is not, you know, necessarily physical courage, or the courage to rush into battle or anything like that. It's moral courage. So it's courage to do the right thing.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  That's related to the third cardinal virtue, which is justice. What is the right thing to do as far as other people are concerned? That, that comes down to justice. You need to, to treat people justly, fairly, as you would like to be treated, essentially. Notice the difference between the first and the third virtue. First virtue, practical wisdom, is about what is good for you. The third one, justice, is about what is good for other people, in terms of how you behave toward other people.

• 15:44Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna guess those, those two come into conflict quite a lot.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Well, that's one of the things that you have to, you know, to, to, to handle, learn to handle. And then the fourth virtue is temperance. Temperance is often understood as doing as little as possible, but that's not quite right. Temperance means doing things in the right measure, neither too much nor too little. So let me give you a specific example. Where we can see all the four virtues working simultaneously. Because that's the notion that anything important that you're going to do, you should ask yourself, well, is this practically wise? Is it courageous? Is it just? And is it temperate? And if the answer is no to any of those things, then don't do it.

• 16:25Chris Williamson?

  Oh, God, my decision making is going to take a little bit of time. If I like, what do I want for breakfast tomorrow? Oh, God, are these?

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:32Chris Williamson?

  Are these Coco Pops?

• 16:34Speaker 00

  That actually applies even to things like breakfast.

• 16:37Chris Williamson?

  But I love breakfast.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  I know, I, I, I, actually, I don't have breakfast. I usually have just the fruit, but and coffee, of course.

• 16:45Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Definitely coffee.

• 16:47Chris Williamson?

  Coffee is, coffee meets all of the four criteria.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:50Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Thank you. It's, it's essentially, I think, coffee to a stoic would probably be divine.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's, it's, it really got, comes pretty close. Now, so let's say that you are at work and a coworker is being harassed by your, by your boss. And then the question is, well, should you intervene or not? So should you, should you take the, the, the side of your coworker and basically tell your boss, hey, you know, slow down here?

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Well, let's apply the four virtues. The first one is, as I said, practical wisdom. Well, practical wisdom, I put it in terms, I present it in terms of judgment. But another way to present it is in terms of improving your character. Because judgment and character goes, go well to, you know, go hand in hand essentially. If you have a better and better judgment, that means your character is improving and becoming a better person. And vice versa, if you have bad judgment, your character is going down the drain. So if you think of in terms of character, well, is it good for your character? Of course it is, because you're doing the right thing by your coworker. That is good for your character, that improves your character. If you decide not to do the right thing, that undermines your own character. That undermines your, you know, it makes you slightly less.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Less good person, right? So think of it that way. Is it, is this thing making me a better person or a less good person? Well, clearly intervening makes you a better person. So the first term is a yes. Or is it courageous? It is, because we're talking about your boss. So your boss could, could not take, might not take it well and you might retaliate and you might lose your job or at least get on the wrong side of the boss. So, yes, it does take courage. Uh, what about justice? Is it the just thing to do with, as far as your coworker is concerned? Yes, obviously, because if you were in, in, in the coworker's situation, you would want somebody to step in and help you out, right?

• 18:50Speaker 00

  So it's, you're treating him. Three for three so far. Yeah, three for three. Now, what about temperance? Well, so temperance tells you that you wanna do things in the right measure. So that means you don't wanna just mumble under your breath about something so that your boss doesn't actually hear it. Cause that's not enough. You haven't done anything at that point, right? You appeased your conscience, but you haven't done anything. By the same token, however, you also don't wanna rush to your boss and punch him on the nose because that seems like a little bit of an overreaction given the situation, right? Yep, yep. So temperance tells you that probably the right thing to do is to politely and but firmly say something on the lines of, hey, you know, let's talk about this situation.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  You know, there, there's different sides to the story, blah, blah, whatever this thing is. So all the four virtues concur. Seneca says at one point that the, the, the, the four virtues are like a concert of different instruments and they have to play in unison. There has to be no discordant note there. So all of the, all of the four in this case will tell you, yes, do it, go ahead. Now, more often than not, um, the virtues will, at least one of the virtues will say, nah, no, that's not a good thing to do. And therefore you wanna refrain. In fact, Stoics tend to refrain a lot from things. It's like, um, you know, the famous commercial, you know, just, just do it. And yeah, it's, it's kinda the opposite. Just, just wait.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Stop and think about it. Yeah, just wait. Slow down and then think about it. Because as it turns out, um, so, so, uh, Socrates, who was a, uh, the major inspiration for the Stoics. He used to say that he had a daemon on his shoulder. A daemon is a demon. And essentially, you can think of it as an externalized version of your conscience. And he was asked, so how does your daemon advises you to do things or not to do things? And Socrates said, most of the times, just as a single word, no.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Don't do it.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Because if you think about it, a lot of things, we get in trouble simply because we do. We rush into doing things that upon thinking about it is like, nah, that was not a good idea. That was not a, that was not a good thing.

• 21:14Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that the hesitancy or the measuredness of not brashly committing to actions? Is that why? Because to be stoic actually has taken on a meaning of its own, right? When you say to people in the modern world, that guy over there, he's quite stoic with, you know, it kind of means someone who's stiff upper lip. Us Brits would probably be, you know, a fairly good example. Stiff upper lip and he's fairly sort of resilient, maybe a little bit surly as well. You know, he's in the corner, kind of scowling, scowling at everyone.

• 21:55Chris Williamson?

  Is that why? Is that why?

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think it is. And so, you know, that's a stereotype and I think it's an inaccurate stereotype. But like many stereotypes, they do have.

• 22:06Chris Williamson?

  A kernel of truth.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Exactly, it's a kernel of truth. In fact, the two things that are stereotypical about the Stoics are the ones that you just mentioned. And then the other one is that we go around suppressing our emotions, right? Which are related, like stiff upper lip and then suppression of emotions. Well. The reason people say that, got that impression about the Stoics is because the Stoics are in fact in the business of enduring things. Endurance is a Stoic value. If there is nothing you can do about something, then what are you complaining? What's the point of complaining? You're just gonna feel worse. You're just gonna make things worse because not only you cannot actually address the specific problem, but now you're also making it worse in your own mind by, as a modern cognitive behavioral therapist would put it,

• 22:52Speaker 00

  by catastrophizing it, by making it into this gigantic thing that you say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening." It's like, what do you mean you can't believe it? It is happening, it's a fact. So, in what sense can you not possibly believe it, right?

• 23:08Speaker 00

  So that's one thing. And then the thing, the bit about the emotions is, it is true that the Stoics, the Stoics don't want to suppress emotions partly because it's a hopeless thing. You simply cannot suppress emotions.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  What we want to do is to train ourselves to move as far as possible from what we consider disruptive emotions, such as anger, fear, hatred, things like that, and to mindfully cultivate what we consider positive emotions. And these include love and joy and a sense of justice, you know, a sense of the right thing to do, you know, that sort of stuff. So, if you turn those two tendencies, those two attitudes into a stereotype, then you get the stiff upper lip with no emotion kind of stuff. But I wanted to go back to the practice. So I mentioned earlier on that there is a second

• 24:04Speaker 00

  important bit of Stoic theory that has immediate practical application. And that is the so-called dichotomy of control.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  This is in modern terms, you don't find it in the ancient Stoic texts. And it's an unfortunate term. It was introduced by William Irvine in one of his early books on Stoicism a few years ago. And as much as I like Bill, I think he actually did a disservice there. Because people get immediately the wrong idea when you hear the term dichotomy of control. So, the basic notion is, goes back to Epictetus, right at the beginning of the Encarnidion, of the manual that his student Arian wrote based on his notes. Epictetus says...

• 24:48Speaker 00

  Some things are up to you and other things are not up to you. And then he lists some, the things that are up to you and then he lists the things that are not up to you. And then he says, you should be concerning yourself with the first one and not the second one. Which is pretty sound advice. If something, if there's nothing you can do about something, you might as well ignore it. Because what are you gonna do about it?

• 25:08Chris Williamson?

  Can you remember any of the things that he says?

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 25:11Chris Williamson?

  Can you give us a couple from the, from the list?

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Yes. Let's go through both lists, because those are, really tell you a lot both about Stoic practice and Stoic, Stoic.

• 25:20Chris Williamson?

  And this is, this is 2,500 years old, 2,600 years old?

• 25:26Speaker 00

  It's about 200, 2400, 24 centuries, so 20, 2,400 years, the philosophy. Epictetus was more recent, he was, he wrote at the end of the, sorry, he was active at the end of the first century, beginning of the second century.

• 25:39Chris Williamson?

  Oh, practically modern.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, practically modern.

• 25:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, cool. So he's just finished, he just finished it up, emailed it over.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  It was just yesterday, that's right.

• 25:46Chris Williamson?

  Cool.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Okay, so, some things are up to us and other things are not up to us. What kinds of things? Epictetus actually makes a list and he says, okay, the only things that are up to you are the following. Judgments, you know, explicit judgments, endorsed values and decisions to act or not to act. That's pretty much it.

• 26:11Chris Williamson?

  Oh my god.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:13Chris Williamson?

  That's not a big list.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  It's a, it's a pretty short list.

• 26:15Chris Williamson?

  Okay, okay.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  Well, that makes it easy to practice, if you think about it.

• 26:19Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Because you only have to, those four things to, to, to concern yourself about. So, what does he mean? So, explicit judgments, meaning the kinds of judgment that you actually endorse, you arrive at by reflection. So, like, you know, it's good for me to have coffee in the morning. That's an explicit judgment. That's not, it's not something you do automatically or instinctively. You just say, yeah, this is a good thing for me. That's an explicit judgment. Endorsed values.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  For instance, sexism is bad. That's an endorsed value. Okay, that's, that's, that's you telling yourselves like, no, you know what? I might have inadvertently engaged in behaviors that may come across as sexist, but I actually think on reflection that sexism is a bad thing. I think that women ought to be treated as men. That's an endorsed value as opposed to an implicit value. Because implicit values, they're more difficult to control. You may be doing certain things, behaving a certain way that you don't actually realize. But the explicitly endorsed values, those are the ones that you obviously tell yourself, yeah, this is a good thing to do or not a good thing to do. And then third, decisions to act or not to act. So for instance, it's like, I don't know, 2:30 in the afternoon here in New York.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  The sun coming in my window, it's getting warm. So, you know, I feel like a beer, but I'm not going to act on it.

• 27:41Chris Williamson?

  Do it. We're all friends here.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Well, but I'm not going to do it. For one thing, for one thing, because I don't actually have a beer. And therefore I would have to go downstairs, we'll have to stop and then resume. That's not going to happen. Also, I don't know, I think I'd rather keep my mind straight while I'm talking to you. And then I have a beer later on, right? Actual glass of wine, to be specific. That is a decision to act or not to act. I made an explicit decision. Again, the emphasis here is on explicit. Because sometimes we react instinctively to situations. You know, somebody throws a ball at you and you catch it without even thinking about it. That's not an explicit decision to act or not to act. Great. So in other terms, in other words, Epitaph says that the only things that are completely

• 28:29Speaker 00

  up to you are the things that you decide to do or not to do, or to endorse or not to endorse. Right? It's a power of reflection. They're up to you in the specific sense that the buck stops with you. Right? If you say, hey, I think that sexism is actually a good thing, you know, because I don't know, these women can't think, I don't, I don't, I don't buy it. And somebody says, what the hell are you talking about? Well, you are responsible for what you're talking about because this is your opinion. You, you, you can't say, oh, well, but somebody told me or, or I read somewhere. Well, what it doesn't matter what somebody told you or what you read. The thing is, this is an endorsed opinion by you. The buck stops with you, you're responsible for it. Now, the second part, what is not up to you.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Right? So Epitetus lists a few things and let me, let me give you a short list. Your body, your reputation, your wealth and your relations. In other words, everything else.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  Now, what does he mean as when he says it's not up to me? Those things are not up to you. Consider, since we're in the middle of a pandemic, consider your body, meaning your health. Right? Well, of course I can do, and Epitetus knew perfectly well that of course you can do things to safeguard your health. Right? You can eat a good diet, you know, you can go to the gym and exercise regularly. You can go to the doctors to practice some preventive medicine, all of those things. Or in the case of a pandemic, you know, you can go out very little, you can wear gloves and a mask. You can disinfect your, your hands when you come back home. All of those things are obviously things that you can do.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  But ultimately, despite all those things, you may be unlucky and the virus is going to get you. There's not, there's no guarantee that that's not going to happen. You can do everything exactly right and then the virus is going to strike you because he's a son of a bitch. Okay? So that means that health, although you can influence your health, ultimately the buck doesn't stop with you, it stops to external, with external events, external factors. Right? And the same exact thing goes for all the other things that I mentioned, like your reputation. Sure, I'm sure you're a good guy and you're a nice guy and everything. But you know, all it takes is a smear campaign against you on social media and you're done. And you have no, no, no way to stop that sort of stuff.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  Um, your, your job, your career. Obviously, the best way to have your a good career is to put, you know, the the right amount of work into it, to do it seriously, et cetera, et cetera. Sure, but then the economy goes down the drain and you lose your job. Right? So that's another external factor. Again, all of those things that are not up to you, then that doesn't mean you can't do anything about them. That's that's where that's why the term dichotomy of control is a little bit funny. Because people say, well, I can't control them, but I can influence them. Yes, you can, but the buck doesn't stop with you. It there's always going to be some external factor that is not under your control. That might completely ruin your your plans. So.

• 31:39Chris Williamson?

  What would you have called it if it wasn't dichotomy of control? Have you considered how you would have termed it?

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't have a good good alternative. Part of the reason I was stuck with the dichotomy of control is because it's catchy and I nobody's come up with a particular.

• 31:54Chris Williamson?

  Better alternative. Yeah, exactly.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  But notice that Epitetus doesn't call it anything. It does. It doesn't give it a name.

• 32:00Chris Williamson?

  It's it's one of those. It's one of those things before gravity, gravity didn't have a name, but everyone knew what gravity was.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Exactly. So we're stuck with it. That's fine. But so long as we understand what what it what it is that we're talking about.

• 32:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Now, the the practical bit of advice therefore here, and this is really crucial. I mean, I apply. I've been practicing stars now for like five and a half years or so, pure tech. And the dichotomy of control has become second nature to me. I'll give you an example in just just a second. But it's become second nature. So now when something happens, the first thing, the very first thought that occurs to me is, okay, what can I do here? And what is not under my control? What is it that I can? Where where's my action? What's actionable and what is not actionable here? That's basically what it comes down to to. Now, um. When Epitetus says you should focus on the first and and then um take the rest as it comes. Okay, develop an attitude of equanimity toward the outcomes.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  For instance. Let's say you're going out for a job interview. Okay. Which these days a lot of people are gonna have to do once this whole stuff is over. Well, it comes natural to us to focus on the outcome. I want the job. That's what I'm worried about. That's what I focus on. But that, according to P. T. Lewis, is exactly the wrong thing to focus on because actually getting the job is not up to you. It's up to your boss, to whoever is interviewing you, right? Whoever is on the other side. It depends on your competition. It depends on a bunch of things. It depends on random factors, like maybe the guy you're interviewing, you got off the wrong foot of the bed this morning and he's in a bad mood, you know, whatever it is. What is up to you?

• 33:44Speaker 00

  What is up to you is to prepare for the interview, to put together the best resume you can, to take the interview seriously, to dress appropriately, to address people in the way that you're expected to, all that sort of stuff, to focus and not get distracted by other things during the interview. All of those things are up to you. But the notion is that you focus on the things that are up to you and then you say to yourself, "Okay, but this is life." And I know that sometimes in life, you know, I'm an adult. I know sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This may be the time that I'm gonna lose and it's okay. I'm okay with that because it's not my fault. If I'd done everything that I could up to this point, then I don't have myself to blame for anything.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  It's the circumstances. And guess what? If I don't get the job today, there will be another interview tomorrow or next week or next month, so on and so forth. So the notion is, another way to think about this is that the notion is to internalize your goals. We tend to externalize goals. We tend to go after outcomes. Right? Oh, I wanna get married. I want her to say yes. I want this job. I want to make money. I want... All of these are outcomes. And none of them are up to us. Only our efforts are up to us. So if you refocus internally instead of externally, and the advantage is, first of all, as you know, there is a pretty tight correlation between the two.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  The more you actually do a good job internally, the more likely you are to actually, in fact, succeed externally. You know, the two are not unrelated. But you also gain peace of mind. Because you get into any situation from the start by saying to yourself, okay, hopefully it'll go my way, but it might not, and I'm okay with that.

• 35:32Chris Williamson?

  Can

• 35:32Speaker 00

  It's really powerful.

• 35:34Chris Williamson?

  Can taking a philosophy like that lead people to apathy?

• 35:41Speaker 00

  It's funny you mention the word apathy, because one of the goals of Stoic practice is what the ancients refer to as apateia, which is a Greek word that in fact is the root of apathy, the word, the English word apathy. But no, that's, the meaning is different. Apateia was not apathy as we understand it today.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  The, the root, the answer is in the root. So apateia is made of two words. E, a, the first, a, and pateia. E means without.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Okay, and pateia means negative emotions. So to be apathetic for a Stoic doesn't mean that you don't give a crap about things. It means that you're not disturbed by negative emotions. You don't have anxiety. You don't have fear. You don't have

• 36:30Chris Williamson?

  I much prefer, I much prefer the Athenian definition of the word.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:36Chris Williamson?

  We need, there's no, um,

• 36:40Chris Williamson?

  there's no modern equivalent.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  No.

• 36:42Chris Williamson?

  Of that term. Resilience, isn't it? Robustness, isn't it?

• 36:46Speaker 00

  No.

• 36:46Chris Williamson?

  We need, uh, we need to make a word for that. I think that's really cool.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, but now, let me go back to answer your question. So, no, the notion is not to, you know, not give a damn or be laid back and all that sort of stuff. The notion is simply to make what I would think is an adult consideration, choice, and say, look,

• 37:09Speaker 00

  I'm gonna do my best. So I'm not gonna be apathetic in the sense, in the modern sense of the word. I'm gonna do my best. But I have to accept that things are not gonna, I'm not a child anymore. I have to accept that things sometimes are not gonna work my, my way. And if that happens, I'm not gonna act like a child. I'm not gonna throw a tantrum. I'm not gonna get upset. I'm gonna say, alright, next round. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do better next, next time around.

• 37:34Chris Williamson?

  On the hopeful side, you've mentioned there about how you don't get the job, but you are hopeful or you are almost certain. I'll get it, I'll get the next one. What's the virtue of hope or the virtue of positivity toward oncoming events?

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a good question. The Stoics are not into what we would today call positive psychology, like, oh yeah, things are gonna go well. Because you have no guarantee that things are gonna go well. That's, that's in fact

• 38:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you've got to have this, you've got to have both edges of the sword, right?

• 38:06Speaker 00

  Right. But what you do have is you reason about the human predicament, predicament. You're, you're capable of reasoning about things and you know that luck, who the Stoics actually personified as a, as a deity, right, as a, as a goddess.

• 38:21Chris Williamson?

  Fortuna.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Fortuna, right. And you know, by that Fortuna, by her own nature, sometimes, you know, throws things at a random. So sometimes you will go your way, sometimes you won't go your way. And the notion that Seneca particularly is, puts forth in several of his writings is that the way to come to terms, to, to approach the situation is to have Fortuna come to terms with you. You don't control Fortuna. Fortuna does whatever the hell she wants, right? But you make her come to terms with you because you are prepared ahead of time, mind, in a mindful fashion and say, alright, I know that this is gonna have a 50 50 chance. But if it's not gonna work this time,

• 39:07Speaker 00

  then by virtue of that 50 50 chance, that means the next time I'm gonna have also a 50 50 chance. And one of these days I'm gonna get it. So it's not really optimism as much as a realistic understanding of what the situation is.

• 39:18Chris Williamson?

  Um, you may be familiar with this, but Alain de Botton from the School of Life, he has a wonderful bit. I've seen him give the same talk twice now on his, his book in emotional education. And you may be able to pad out this story that I'm about to tell a little, but I think he said that in ancient Athens, the people that were homeless, that were the beggars on the street, that were potentially sort of diseased and stuff like that, they were referred to as unfortunates. I think that that was the etymology of it, right?

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Yes, that's right.

• 39:52Chris Williamson?

  What was the Greek word?

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, unfortunate, uh, fortunate, I think it's because.

• 39:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so they were referred to as unfortunates. Um, and he rolls the clock forward and we get ourselves into the 21st century. What's the equivalent, the people that are listening, I'm going to give you a couple of seconds. What's the equivalent of an unfortunate in today's vernacular? It's a loser. That's what they call the people that don't, that it's a loser. And what happened, what Alan argues, and I, I think I believe, I agree with, is that, um, in a meritocracy, which is what we say that we have now, equal chance, equal ability, all that stuff. Uh, no, equal ability, equal opportunity, shall I say.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Be fondly.

• 40:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a, in a meritocracy, if the people who succeed are worthy of their successes, that also means that the people who fail are worthy of their failures. And that shift from the unfortunate to the loser, I think is a real, a, a, a very easy way to see why society may be less empathetic toward the people who don't have the, the haves and the have nots.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it is an incredibly unfortunate shift. Because I think that the ancient Greeks in general, and the Stoics in particular, were right about this, that it is a matter of fortune. Now, uh, meaning not that, um, that, that the outcome has nothing to do with your, with your efforts. Of course it does, no question about it. And there are some people who are responsible for their own downfall because they do make bad decisions. You know, that this is a fact of human life, but those people are include very rich people or very powerful people. I mean, the history is bleated with, you know, powerful and rich people who make really stupid or really bad decisions.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  And then, you know, and that's their downfall. So it's not a question of abdicating responsibility. It's a, it's rather a question to understand that, that external events will hit people, even the best people, even the people that make the, the best effort, they will be hit because fortune doesn't care. Fortune is kind of, you know, it's a, it's a random, it's a random thing.

• 42:11Chris Williamson?

  Fortune can be a bit of a bitch sometimes, can't she?

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Well, you know, but she can also be very good.

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  So I was, for instance, I was reading, so I, I just, um, I'm just about to launch a Zoom-based book club.

• 42:25Chris Williamson?

  Oh, how cool.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:27Chris Williamson?

  Where can people find out more about that if they're interested?

• 42:30Speaker 00

  Uh, go to my meetup site, uh, which is the Storanova. So go to meetup.com and, and search for Storanova.

• 42:37Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  And you'll find it. Or actually, search, actually even better, search for, uh, uh, Philosophy Book Club and you'll find it. It's even easier because it's not just about Stoicism. But the first book that we're reading, uh, the first meeting is scheduled for, uh, May 11th. Is The Consolation of Philosophy by Boasius, not to be confused with The Consolations of Philosophy, plural, by de Botton, right? And Boasius was a, uh, one of the last Romans, basically. He was living and read at the end of the Roman Empire. He was a philosopher. He was also an advisor to the king and he was doing very well for most of his life. His sons were doing well. His family was doing well, blah, blah, blah. And then at some point he was doing so well that some envious people started putting rumors about him.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  And one of these rumors arrived to the king's ear and as a result, he was accused of treason and condemned to death. Right? And he was executed, in fact. Now, when he was in prison in Rome, uh, he wrote the book, The Consolation of Philosophy. And he imagines in this book that lady philosophy comes in and basically tries to cheer him up, right? And, and the, one of the first things that lady, so it's a dialogue between him and lady philosophy. Some of it, some of it is poetry and some of it is prose. It's just really a wonderful book. And lady philosophy, one of the first things that she does, like, so you forgot, you, you're upset about Fortuna, right? You think that Fortuna treated you unfairly.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  And, and, and he says, yeah, of course it treated me unfairly. I mean, here I am, you know, condemned to death. I'm about to be beheaded. Like, what the hell? And then philosophy says, but, so you forget all of the other good stuff that Fortuna gave you. Right? So for most of your life, you were much more lucky than most people in this, in this country. Your sons are still doing very well. Your wife is still doing very well. Your family fortune is untouched. You're doing much better, even condemned, being condemned to death than most people around you. So it's like,

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Did you not know that Fortuna works this way? That sometimes he gives and sometimes he takes? Somehow you got convinced that you among mortals were the only one that was only gonna get and never gonna, you know, be taken from? It's like, come on! It's like she's chining him for essentially behaving like a child. Forgetting his philosophical training and expecting the impossible. Expecting that Santa Claus keeps coming and coming and coming. It's like, no, sometimes it's just cold.

• 45:04Chris Williamson?

  I love it.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  And you have to deal with it.

• 45:06Chris Williamson?

  So, let's get some exercises. Let's get some ways that people can apply some of the stuff we've spoken about and then some other principles as well. So you've already touched on one of them, which is when something happens, when anything happens, try and work out whether it is or is not within your control, right?

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Yes, that's right. In fact, with my friend and colleague Gregory Lopez, we have written a whole book of Stoic exercises. It's called A Handbook for New Stoics. I think in the UK, the title is Living Like a Stoic or something like that. I don't know for what reason they changed the title. It's confusing. But anyway, we actually put together an entire curriculum with 52 different exercises that people can sample and see what works for them and what doesn't work for them.

• 45:53Chris Williamson?

  Why don't you give us your favorite five? Can you give us your top five?

• 45:58Speaker 00

  Something like that, yeah, something like that. So, one of them is the one that we've been talking about, and the dichotomy of control exercises can actually be done in the following way. Let's say that you are about to do something, the outcome of which is in doubt, such as the job interview that I was talking about before. Well, the way you do the exercise is that in the days before the actual event or the night before, whatever it's convenient for you, whenever you think it works for you, you literally sit down and write down, you put a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, and you get two columns: things under my control, things not under my control. And then you start breaking down the situation and listing to yourself the kind of stuff that is up to you and the kind of stuff that is not up to you.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  And then the notion being that then on the next several days, you use, before the interview, you use that list to remind yourself, you go back to it, and remind yourself to focus on the first column and... And prepare yourself about the second call. So that's one exercise. Another one of my favorite exercises is the, uh, uh, sometimes it's referred to as the evening meditation. Sometimes it's referred to as, uh, philosophical journaling.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Because you can do it as a, as an actual journal, as writing, writing in a journal. That's the way I do it, but it doesn't have to be a, a journal. This is an exercise that comes, comes from several Stoics. In fact, uh, Epictetus mentions explicitly this, this approach in the Encarnidian. And Seneca does it at the end of On Anger. And you can read the entire meditations of Marcus Aurelius essentially as a journaling exercise. Because it was, it was his own philosophical diary. That's what it was. Now, the idea here is not to write the meditations, because not, we're not, uh, every, not everybody's, is Marcus Aurelius. And, you know, we're not that good, uh, writers. And this is certainly not for publication. But the notion is, um, I tend to do it, I try to do it every night. But you can do it at least several times a week.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  It only takes a few minutes. You sit down, take a moment before you go to bed. Don't do it in bed, otherwise you fall asleep. Before you go to bed, take a moment where it's quiet and you can concentrate for a few minutes. And write down, uh, some thoughts about the major things that happened during the day. Or even a single major thing that happened during the day. It doesn't have to be comprehensive.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  And about that thing, ask yourself three questions. Number one, what did I do wrong? Number two, what did I do right? Number three, what could I do different, uh, differently if this similar situation arises again? But what's the point? The first question, um, what did I do wrong? The notion is not to, you know, beat yourself up and say, ah, I should have done this, I should have. Because the past is another one of those things that's not up to you. It's outside of your control. You can't change it. You can't go back and, and redo the thing, right? No matter how many times you actually rerun the thing in your, uh, what happened in your mind, you cannot change it. In fact, the Stoics would say that's a waste of emotional energy.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Because you're only gonna feel bad about it and that's it. Instead, however, what you do want to do is to learn from your mistakes. So you want to have, you want to write down, it's like, okay, this is what I did wrong. Because you want to pay attention to it. And then Seneca says, immediately forgive yourself. You have the power to forgive yourself. So write it down and then say, okay, that's done. Out. I learned my lesson. I hope not to do it again. That's it. Second, what did I do right? Well, part of the reason for doing that is because pat yourself on the back. If you do something right, great, you know, this is progress. You're making, you're going in the right direction. But also because now you have two points of reference. What you did wrong, what you did right.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  And the notion is that day by day, you want to move as far away from the first one. And as close as possible to the second one. So you want to do fewer and fewer wrong things and more and more right things, right? And so if you keep it in mind as two posts, essentially two reference points, that's helpful. The third thing is, you know, what could I have done better?

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Why engage in the hypothetical? Because, you know, we all like to think of our lives as extremely varied and unpredictable and all sorts of interesting things is going to happen. But usually that's not the case. We kind of live the same life every day, you know, you get up, you go to work.

• 50:26Chris Williamson?

  Especially during lockdown, we live the exact same life every day during lockdown, yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Especially now, but even outside, right? So you go to work, you see the same people, you do the same kind of things. Then you get back home, you see the same people, you do the same kind of things. And you go out during the weekend, then you see friends, those are the same people and do the same kind of things. Of course, there is variation. Of course, sometimes you do something truly novel. But mostly, we tend to be a routine kind of people, you know, we do the same thing over and over. Which means that it pays off to pay attention. When you actually did something wrong, because you're going to start saying, okay, well, this one didn't work out very well, but I know this kind of situation is going to happen again. Or something very similar is going to happen again. So let me think ahead. The next time that something like this happens, what, what am I going to do?

• 51:14Speaker 00

  And so I can give a small example of how this works. This is a trivial thing. This is the thing that happened years ago. I was walking down in, you know, Lower Manhattan. I was with a friend and I was obviously not looking very carefully where I was going. So this other woman who was also not looking where she was going, so bumps into me and she had a large Starbucks coffee thingy and it's went all over the place. Now, nothing terrible happened. We're both surprised and we both said, you know, sorry. And then, but we both then kept moving, right? And then I thought about it later and I said, you know, I think that was mostly my fault. I was paying less attention than she was.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  So it would have been nice to actually offer her to pay for the coffee. That's, it's a small thing. It's like a couple of, well, it's Starbucks, so it's more than a couple bucks. But anyway, um, it's not that much and it would have been a nice gesture to do. The moment was passed. Who knows where that woman was. So that's done. But that kind of situation can happen again. You can bump into people. And if the next time you're prepared and you say, you know, something like that happens again, next time, this is what's going, what, what's going to happen. This is what I'm going to do. Then you're prepared and Seneca tells you over and over, a prepared mind feels better with situations than an unprepared mind. So that's the point of the exercise.

• 52:37Chris Williamson?

  The, um, preparing for things by using existing experiences. I've been discussing this an awful, awful lot recently. And, um, the analogy that I always use is if I told you, Massimo, that you were going to fall into some quicksand a week from now, right now, at seven, three minutes to eight P M. on a Wednesday night or whatever it is. Um, and I said, you've got a week to prepare. And you spent the next week, you go online, research strategies to get out of quicksand. What's the most efficient way? You might even dress, dress slightly differently, ready for the quicksand. And then you'd be counting down on you. The difference between that and me just pushing you into some quicksand now and saying, good luck. The difference is

• 53:22Speaker 00

  It's huge.

• 53:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, absolutely, because we really, really struggle to make rational decisions when we're in the moment. And the listeners will be familiar, Michael Malice said to any of his fans who are struggling, he's also living in Brooklyn in New York. And he said to any of his fans on his show, he's got these hundreds of thousands of listeners, anyone who's suffering with depression or suicidal ideation, when you're in your best mind, write yourself a letter, write a letter to you when you are in the depths of feeling down and feeling depressed and tell yourself what you're gonna do. Tell yourself to ring a friend, tell yourself to go for a walk, tell yourself to get a glass of water and do the things that make you feel good. Because that person then is you at your best, at your most rational, with all of your faculties intact.

• 54:06Chris Williamson?

  Whereas you, when you're feeling depressed, when you're feeling down, that's you in quicksand. And it's very difficult to strategize whilst you're also executing.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Exactly. And there's a lot of evidence from modern psychology, by the way, that this thing actually does work. Some of your listeners might be familiar with Daniel Kahneman's bestselling book, Thinking Fast or Slow. Now, Kahneman's research clearly shows that we have these two metaphorical systems, they're not actually anatomical systems, but these are metaphorical systems in the brain. One that is for very quick thinking in the moment, the reaction, you know, you're actually not even, not even, not thinking in the sense of, you know, sort of reflecting on things. It's just immediate. It's like ta, on the snap, that's the fast one. And then we have these slower, you know, more deliberate, more, you know, cognitive

• 54:57Speaker 00

  approach to things. And the idea is, of Stoicism is as much as it is possible, as much as it is feasible, switch from system one to system two, slow down. Sometimes it's not possible, right? I mean, if somebody's gonna run out, run after you, and you know, with a gun, and never happened before, and it probably will never happen again, you're gonna do whatever system one says, right? If it is duck, you duck, if it is scream, you scream, whatever it is, that's, you have to rely on your instincts and good luck to you, right? But if you can, and in a lot of situations, we don't, we don't, we don't actually live in war zones.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  We don't live in, in a, in a, in the savanna where the lion can be coming at any, at any minute. We tend to live in fairly structured societies where things happen at a slow, slower pace. So we do have the time to slow down and engage system two and say, okay, what is the best thing to do? By the way, even about the, the, the thing that I just said, which is that, uh, you know, some situations, you just can't avoid engaging system one. Epictetus obviously did not know about system one or system two, but he had a pretty good idea that sometimes we react in the moment and sometimes we actually have the ability to think, right? One of the reasons he kept telling his students that they had to practice

• 56:23Speaker 00

  ahead of time, regularly, every day, right? That remind, be mindful, you know, do these exercises regularly. It's precisely because he wanted to make their decision making automatic. Right? So when I said, for instance, if you remember a few minutes ago, I said that the economy of control is now automatic for me. Right? So initially, when I started, started studying Stoicism, I had to remind myself and slow down and say, wait a minute, what is under your control? What is not under your control? All right, let me make the list, right? I actually had to go and make the list. But after you start doing it on a regular basis, then it becomes automatic. I don't need a list anymore. It's immediately when a situation comes up, it has shifted from system two to system one.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  It's that, it's an experience that feels a lot like learning to drive a car. So if, I don't know if you remember, but when you start driving a car, uh, even though I live in the United States, I actually learned in Italy, so I had a Schickstift, you know, this kind of stuff. An actual, a real car, you know.

• 57:20Chris Williamson?

  Proper car, yes.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, a proper car. And, um, you know, when you start learning, it's like, oh my gosh, I have to do all these things to think about it. It's, it's the clutch and then it's the brake and then it's the, it's steering wheel. And I have to look at the, at the people outside and listen to the car is giving me, it's like, whoa. All of that takes a lot of slow deliberate thinking and that means you're not a good driver. Initially, right? Because precisely because.

• 57:45Chris Williamson?

  Very labored, isn't it? Yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Right. But then you start doing it and the more you do, the more become automatic. And so now you can, you know, can you can gingerly shift.

• 57:55Chris Williamson?

  Do it while you're singing, singing to the music on the radio and thinking about the other stuff. Yeah. Isn't it, isn't it interesting that you, you are deprogramming system one? You're creating what Corey Allen would refer to as the mindfulness gap, which is why I love it's that it's that break in between stimulus and response. So you're deprogram, deprogramming system one, then allowing system two to come in, then reprogramming system two and habitizing it or systematizing it sufficiently frequently to then reintegrate the upgraded version of system one. And the beauty of that, um, I'm reading a lot of evolutionary psychology at the moment, a lot of Robert Wright and other stuff. And, um.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  Oh, he's a good friend. Yeah.

• 58:40Chris Williamson?

  He's phenomenal, man. He's that guy, that guy, the moral animal. Everyone that's listening is like, oh God, shut up about fucking moral animal. But, um, until everyone's read it, until everyone's read it, I'm going to keep talking about it. So go do it. And, uh, yeah, because we are energy conservation machines, you know, our evolutionary heritage is to, is to expend as little energy as possible. This is the, literally the double edged sword of habits, right? It's the fact that, that you want to automate as much as you can, but unfortunately that means that you embed bad habits as easily as good habits. And sometimes even easier. So you've got the, you've got the initial cost, right?

• 59:16Chris Williamson?

  To pay at the very start. Um, but it's inspiring to hear that someone like you has been able to, um, take something which sounds awfully labored. Right. It's driving the car. It's, I gotta get in and use the left hand and depress the clutch and then use it a little bit and find the biting point and all that stuff. And then now you've managed to instill this, you've instantiated it to the point where, as you say, it is that. And, and mercifully for me, um, I've seen an equivalent happen with my mindfulness practice. So I've been doing, um, a particular practice from Shinzen Young, uh, which has a focus on rest. And what happens is when you.

• 59:58Chris Williamson?

  Realise that you've become lost in thought, you label the thought as either see, hear or feel. So visual imagery, auditory noise within the head or somatic sensation. Label it as that and then let it go and return to whatever it is that you're doing. And upon having sat on the cushion, doing that, that one area of that one practice within this one school. Probably maybe 150 hours now, not much more, so not a huge amount of time, certainly not by meditation terms, but not, not, not nothing. And that's been maybe a year, year and a half. And now I find myself doing stuff, I'll be walking down the street and I'll, I'll realise, I'll be like, you're thinking about work later on, just enjoy the walk.

• 1:00:40Chris Williamson?

  Focus on rest and you just label it and let it go and it's, um. There's a degree of satisfaction that again, we don't think we actually have a word for. But there is a degree of satisfaction to do with reprogramming your own mind.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:56Chris Williamson?

  To be able to do that and it is, there is, there's not many, there's not many greater feelings than that, I don't think, than, than transcending your own nature.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  You're right. And this is something that, that several traditions have hit on. The Buddhists have invented techniques to do precisely these kinds of things to, to, to be more mindful and then automating, automating that, that mindfulness. The Stoics, Aristotle, Aristotle kept saying that the way to improve your character is by practice. It's just the same way in which you get to Carnegie Hall, practice, practice, practice.

• 1:01:28Chris Williamson?

  I want to, sorry, I know you're going to keep going. That quote about, um. Exa, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act but a habit. What was that Aristotle?

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  I, I believe it is Aristotle. I believe it is in the Nicomachean Ethics, but I need to check that.

• 1:01:45Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Cause I've seen equal number of blog posts discrediting it and saying it's someone else as saying that it was him.

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

  No, it's, I, I'm pretty sure it is Aristotle, but it may not be the exact quote.

• 1:01:58Chris Williamson?

  That's fine. That's fine. I've got it. I've got it from the equivalent of the horse's mouth. So I'm, I'm happy. You know what I mean? I'm happy.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  So, so let me give you an example of what, what I'm talking about.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  As you know, we're on lockdown here. Um, with my wife, we are gonna reach day forty this coming Friday.

• 1:02:18Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's, it's gonna, yeah, it's interesting situation. Okay. Now, a couple of weeks ago, um, in the middle of this thing, um, we, we opened the refrigerator and the refrigerator is not working anymore. It's like, hmm, not a good thing in the middle of a.

• 1:02:35Chris Williamson?

  It's bad timing, right?

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  It's bad timing. For one thing, because of course that literally means you cannot store, you know, reasonable quantity of, of food. Um, and also, our building, um, has a policy against delivery of furniture for security reasons during this period. While, while in lockdown, new furniture, new appliances cannot be delivered. End of story. Okay, so now normally, and by normally, I mean, you know, like several years ago, I would have gotten upset and I would say, oh, god damn it, it's like, you know, this thing is like, not only we got a pandemic, but now we, we can't eat. It's like, oh, what are we gonna do? Blah, blah, blah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  Instead, the very first thing, and we looked at each other, because my, my wife also is pretty aware, um, of historic principles. So we look at each other and say, okay, what's actionable here? Well, it's under our control. Well, the first thing is to redo the shopping list, moving away from stuff that, uh, needs a refrigeration to, you know, dry foods like pasta, uh, canned foods like beans and things like that. Number one, that was the first, the very first thing. Number two, let's call the landlady and see what she says. She might have some ideas. This may have happened before, you know, for all I know. So we call and she says, well, um,

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  I'm going to replace your refrigerator, but I can't do it now for the reasons that I just explained, you know, it can't be delivered, appliances can't be delivered. But she said, I checked with the building and it turns out that small refrigerators, like, you know, dorm kind level refrigerators can be delivered. So I just ordered one for you and it's gonna come the next couple of days. That was it. Problem solved. I mean, I still have the small refrigerator here because I think it's still not working. And so now we switch to a diet of, you know, that includes some fresh food and then a lot of dry stuff and everything. And there was no getting upsetting upset. There was no, you know, any, no emotional response whatsoever. It's like, we just look at each other and say, okay, so let's, this is an interesting challenge. Let's see what we can do about it.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  That's another trick, by the way, that the Stoics deployed, and it turns out it's confirmed by modern psychology. It's called the framing effect. So the framing effect in psychology consists in the phenomenon that if you present the same exact information to people, but in two different ways, they will react differently depending on how the information is presented. For instance, you go to the doctor because you're worried about something and the doctor says, all right, you got a 90% chances of making it through this. Or he says, all right, you got a 10% chances of dying of this.

• 1:05:16Chris Williamson?

  I don't want to be with that doctor.

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  Right. Now, the factual, notice that the factual information is exactly the same. 90% survival rate is exactly the same as 10% death rate. There's no, there's no difference at all. But as you just noticed, people will react differently, right? Depending on where you put it, this one way or the other. Now, the framing effect has been used by Stoics for more than 2,000 years to look at the same situation in a more productive way. Marcus Rietes writes in The Meditation that if we find an obstacle, instead of banging your head against the obstacle and the obstacle is unbreakable, you need to find a new path. The obstacle becomes the way. It becomes a new way of doing things, right?

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  In the case of setbacks, one way to, like the refrigerator issue, one way to react, which comes kind of natural, is as modern cognitive behavioral therapists call it catastrophizing. Oh my gosh, the refrigerator is not working. What am I going to do? This is horrible. This is a catastrophe. This is a problem, blah, blah, blah. Or you can look at the same exact thing and say, That's an interesting challenge. So now I got a problem to solve. Let me, let me see how I score on this challenge. And you start taking notes and saying, okay, so here's how I reacted. And here's what I did. And so on and so forth. You kind of make it into a game, essentially.

• 1:06:36Chris Williamson?

  Was, um, was that a Marcus Aurelius ism about, was it called the equanimity game? Was it about if you fall off a horse, how quickly can you get back on? Was that Marcus Aurelius? Or am I making that up?

• 1:06:47Speaker 00

  I don't remember that in, in Marcus.

• 1:06:49Chris Williamson?

  Oh, definitely. I've definitely just ascribed something to Marcus Aurelius that he has absolutely nothing to do with.

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  I haven't memorized the meditation. So who knows? You could be, you could be right.

• 1:06:59Chris Williamson?

  I'm almost certain I'm probably not correct.

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  But, but you see where, where that goes. So, so it's a, it's exact same situation. Right. But now you choose to apply a different frame. And the frame, new frame that you apply is actually productive as opposed to being, you know, kind of undermining yourself. Now, whenever I say that, people say, oh, but so that means that Stoicism is just a mind trick. And I say, yeah, you know what else is a mind trick? Life.

• 1:07:27Chris Williamson?

  Everything else.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  Everything is a mind trick.

• 1:07:30Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's the, you know, from, from a neuroscience perspective, Sam Harris has this beautiful quote. Where he says, um, in a practical sense, everything that we are seeing is a kind of a dream. Except for the fact that we can control what's happening in this dream. Well, watching it happen, everything manifests in the mind. Right? And you, you only have that. The bottom line, if they, if the Stoics ran the controllable versus uncontrollable even further back. It would be what is inside of here. Right?

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:08:01Chris Williamson?

  Um, we have three more exercises, but my first question is, do you think that Seneca and Daniel Kahneman would have been good friends? Cause I think they'd have been fantastic. You know, like, I can imagine them as a crime fighting duo. You know, like, like going around the streets of Athens at night, just like throwing wisdom at people. Doing loads of cognitive tricks. I think that'd be, I think that'd be great.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  That would, that would have been something to see. All right. So quickly, because I think we're doing pretty, pretty good timing. So let's, the three exercises, three exercises more.

• 1:08:34Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  One of my favorite exercises that I do on an occasional basis, not on a regular basis, is the sunrise meditation. This is found in Marcus Aurelius, there is a bit in the in the Meditations where he says that he actually ascribes this this practice to the Pythagoreans, which means that it predates Stoicism. It goes back to the sixth century B.C. And it's a very simple thing, you just set up your alarm. Make sure that you know, you check the weather forecast, and so you know that it's either sunny or clear or almost clear. You set up your alarm clock for about forty-five minutes before sunrise, depending on how far you have to walk to get there.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  And then reach a location, grab your grab your coffee, and then get to a location where you can see the sunrise or as close to it as possible. Here in New York, it's next to impossible to see the actual sunrise. But you can see the sun low enough, you know, behind some level of buildings on the horizons. Good enough.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  And then you just stay there and wait, sip your coffee and and and focus your attention on the fact that a star is about to come over the horizon, right, literally. Of course, don't do what Donald Trump does, don't look at the sun straight, because that's a bad idea. Just, just, you know, look on the side or get some special glasses if you really want to look at it. But the point is not to look at it, the point is to experience the event. This is obviously a mundane event, it literally happens every day, right? But we never pay attention to it, because very few people take the time to actually, you know, set the alarm, get up early, go to the place and then just stay there for a half an hour, forty-five minutes, or whatever it is, and just think about, reflect about what's happening.

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  Now, why would you want to do that?

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  It's a way to reconnect with a broader with a broader cosmos, with reminding yourself that you're actually part of a gigantic whole.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  Of which, to which you're connected by a unbroken web of cause and effect. You may think that the sun has nothing to do with you, but in fact, literally, the sun is what keeps you alive. Right? If there were no sun, there would be no life on earth. As one of my favorite scientists of all time, Carl Sagan, used to say, we're literally stardust. All of the elements that make up our bodies literally were forged inside a supernova somewhere in the universe, and that's where we come from. So all of this is beautiful and it reconnects you in a sense of, you know, spiritual sense. I don't want to use the word spiritual in any kind of mystical sense. I'm not, you know, I don't, I don't think in those terms.

• 1:11:24Speaker 00

  But it transcends, it's a sense of transcendence. There is very good empirical evidence from modern psychology that a sense of transcendence is one of the best things long term that that might make people happy. People that cultivate a sense of transcendence, of course, in some, in many cases, this is literally believing in a god, right? But that's not the only way to feel transcendence. I don't believe in any particular, you know, in any god, and that to me is a way to, um, to do it.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  Incidentally, you also get a very early start in the morning on the day, so you get a lot of stuff done that day.

• 1:12:00Chris Williamson?

  And you've had a good coffee first thing. Yeah, I love it. I love it. That connection with nature. Big, big way to transcend.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  Connection with. And there are other ways to do it. I mean, if you're in a, uh, you know, when I was in, I, I lived for several years in Tennessee, I would go whitewater canoeing, by instance. So for a whole day, I would be just myself and a friend or two, maybe in the middle of nowhere, surrounded just by water. And that's another way to do it. When I used to live in Italy, in a place, a small town north of Rome, I would actually go outside on purpose on nice evenings and look at the Milky Way, because I could see the Milky Way, just stare at it, right? Now, I can't see the damn Milky Way from New York, so, so that's not an option. Only one thing, if you're doing the sunrise meditation, don't cheat, don't do the sunset. Because the sunset is too easy. It's not the same. It's too easy.

• 1:12:49Chris Williamson?

  There's part of this, uh, how would you say, kind of like a pilgrimage, a small pilgrimage that you need to make, and the, is the, the price that you have to pay is part of the...

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:12:58Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Number four, number four, Massimo, number four.

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  All right, number four, um, well, I have to say...

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  The premeditation of adversity is one of those that those those those stock techniques that I find particularly useful, although there is a couple caveats. So the term in Latin is premeditatio malorum, which literally, well, not literally, which sort of translates to thinking about bad shit happening.

• 1:13:31Chris Williamson?

  Is that malorum like malady type thing?

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. It's like as bad things, you know, malorum as a malady, as a bad thing. So what one is it that you want to do this? Well, whenever you are facing a situation that might not turn out well for you. Okay, like a pandemic, for instance.

• 1:13:50Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Right? So what does the meditation consist of? Well, you take some time to develop a in detail, a scenario, a worst case scenario.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  And you ask yourself, you you actually visualize or otherwise make concrete how you're going to react throughout this unfolding scenario. So what is the worst thing that can happen? Oh, I'm going to end up in the hospital. That's the worst thing that can happen. Worst thing, of course, that can happen is I'm going to die. But for that one, there's nothing you can do about it. So, you know, it's okay, done. But you end up in the hospital, you know, in the emergency unit or something like that. That's the worst thing, the worst case scenario. Right? It's unlikely because for most, we need to remember that for most of us, this is actually an unlikely scenario. But nevertheless, it's possible. So the notion is, once again, you might notice that this is a recurring theme. You want to make yourself prepared for that sort of situation,

• 1:14:47Speaker 00

  even though it's not likely to happen. But if it does happen, it's a tough one. Okay, that's not going to be just enough to say, well, what's under my control? That's going to be a tough one. So the premeditatio malorum means that you very carefully and deliberately work through your the the worst case scenario and the way in which you're going to react to that worst case scenario, bit by bit. Now, there are different ways of doing it. The modern way to do it, a popular modern way to do it, comes from cognitive behavioral therapy. There's again, there is research here that shows that this does work.

• 1:15:22Speaker 00

  And it's in the same, in the form of a visual meditation. So you close your eyes. And then you, you kind of slowly go through a mental movie, basically, that, that carefully shows you through your mind's eye, what the situation is going, how the situation is going to unfold and how you're going to react. The problem with that, there's two problems with that. Number one, it's easy to slip into an emotional state. What are you doing, that sort of stuff, right? You're supposed to do it in a detached fashion. You're supposed to rationally think about what's happening, not emotionally. So, but the problem is that once you do it in as a, as a visual meditation, a lot of people slip into the, the emotional mode. And that's bad, because then you actually, in, instead of solving, you know, of, of helping yourself,

• 1:16:05Speaker 00

  you actually cause yourself anxiety, and that's not a good thing. So you might want to do it carefully. If you feel, feel it doesn't work for you, then stop doing it. Uh, or doing, uh, doing it under the supervision of a cognitive behavioral therapist, who would actually help you through the, through the stages. However, there is another problem with the, so the, the visualization exercise. Some people, like me, are not good at visualization exercises. If I close my eyes and I start thinking about something, I fall asleep. It's like, it goes off, it's like, nope, sorry, that's not gonna do it. Or I get distracted, I, you know, I go somewhere else with my mind. So I have to constantly sort of bring back, it's like, nah, nah. That becomes like a Zen meditation, so it's too much work. So the way I do it is, is different.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  Uh, you can either write a letter to yourself or to a friend, without actually having to send the letter. You just write it, it's a writing essay. Or you write it as a fictional story, as a short story. As if you were to publish a short story on your blog or something like that. Again, you don't have to publish it, it's just for your own use, right? What's the point there? First of all, the, the simple act of writing instead of thinking about it, already puts some distance between you and the situation. It makes it more detached, especially if you write in the second or third person. So if you imagine that you're writing to a friend or you're writing to somebody else, or you write a story in the third person, you know, as a narrator,

• 1:17:34Speaker 00

  that puts some distance. And this may sound like, oh, you know, like the small thing. There's actually fairly good research that shows that it makes it huge.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me.

• 1:17:53Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 1:18:04Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:18:09Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  Friends, don't write that stuff in first person because first person, you get emotional about it. If you notice, and if you go through the meditations by Marcus Aurelius, he's writing in the second person. He talks to himself in the second person. He never says, I do this, but he always says, you did that. And so he had this notion already way, you know, 2,000 years before modern psychology, that it's a better thing if you actually detach yourself from this kind of stuff. So the premeditation of adversity, I think it's very good because on the one hand, if you do it right, it helps you exercise your fears and your anxieties. Because it becomes a way to externally, you know, objectively look at the situation

• 1:18:58Speaker 00

  instead of worry about the situation. And it also prepares you for that situation. Should that kind of stuff actually happens, you know, then you actually already have a certain scenario worked out in your mind for how you react. So that was exercise number four, I guess.

• 1:19:13Chris Williamson?

  Four, let's finish it off. Big number five.

• 1:19:16Speaker 00

  Number five, at the cost of being of sounding morbid, I'm gonna put the meditation on death as one of my favorite exercises. So here's the way, so, so the Stoics are big on death.

• 1:19:31Chris Williamson?

  Can you be big on death?

• 1:19:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, let me, let me show you how, let me tell you how. So, and in fact, on that, that one is one of those bits where they actually completely agree with the Epicureans.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  Death should not be feared. And the reason it shouldn't be feared is because, as Epicurus says, where death is, you are not, and where you are, she is not. Meaning that you're not going to experience death. That is literally, by definition, the state of lack of consciousness. So you're not gonna, don't worry about it. There's no such thing as a, you know, Epicurus says, don't listen to the priests and the poets who are trying to scare you shitless about what happens after, after the time. That all they want to do is to scare you or to control you. Don't believe it. Don't, don't be afraid, because there's really nothing to be afraid of.

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

  You might want to be concerned about the, before you get there, right? How you get there, but once you get there, there's nothing to worry about. Now, the Stoics had an interesting, positive take on death. Seneca especially. Seneca wrote a book called On the Shortness of Life.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  And the Stoic perspective there is that we ought to live our life

• 1:20:44Speaker 00

  more or less as, as if we didn't know where we're actually gonna be, what was our last day was going to be. That is, as if we had no idea when we're gonna die. Turns out, we don't actually have any idea when we're gonna die, right? We have statistical expectations, obviously. You know, I'm fifty-six, I'm a white, you know, Caucasian male living in New York. So there's, you know, I can look up actual statistics and I can tell you what my expectancy, life expectancy is. But of course, I could go downstairs and do grocery shopping and being hit by a car and that's it. That's the end of my life, there's nothing else to do. So, the point there is, if you are aware of the fact that you actually, if you take seriously, because we all know it, but you don't take it seriously.

• 1:21:27Speaker 00

  If we take seriously the fact that, you know what, this might as well be my last day. Okay, then all sorts of things follow. It's like, so what am I doing here? Uh, what am I, what, how am I spending this day? Uh, watching bad television? That seems like a bad idea. Um, running and, you know, reading a good book? Well, that sounds better. You know, talking to my friends? Yeah, that's pretty good. Uh, watching, you know, uh, uh, uh, you know, I don't know, playing a video game that is gonna make myself mindless? Nah, that's probably not that good. There is an exercise in the book with, with Greg, where we actually ask people, say, look, look, list a number of tasks and ask yourself a number of things you do during a particular day. And, you know, just, just take a day of your life and then write down the kind of things you do.

• 1:22:12Speaker 00

  And ask yourself two things. Number one, is this meaningful to me? And number two, would I be doing this on the last day of my life?

• 1:22:23Speaker 00

  It really puts things in perspective.

• 1:22:25Chris Williamson?

  It's a very, very, very hard question to answer.

• 1:22:29Speaker 00

  Right. And so it turns out that you can make a list of these things. And then, of course, the notion is to act on that list. So if it turns out, for instance, that being on social media is not the kind of thing you would do uh, if you knew that this was the last day of your life, then probably that's the kind of thing you wanna do less.

• 1:22:48Chris Williamson?

  I can see how this would tie in with the Epicureans and their slightly hedonic uh, approach towards, toward pleasure and, and, and.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  Right. They, they put it in hedonic, hedonic, uh, perspective. The Stoic says, basically, this is a way to restructure your priorities. Since your life is short, rather than speaking, certainly finite, short is a, is a valid judgment.

• 1:23:14Chris Williamson?

  It's relative, isn't it?

• 1:23:15Speaker 00

  It's relative, but definitely it's finite. You don't have an infinite amount of time. And so then the question is, what is your, the best use of your time? Given that it is in fact finite. Seneca says, you know, we are very concerned when people ask us for money. We keep track, you know, we give a loan to some people, even friends, but we track the money and we say, you know, we're concerned, you know, am I going to get it back? And then people ask us for our time and we just freely give it as if we had an infinite amount of it, but we don't. Not only we don't have an infinite amount of it, it cannot be repaid. You know, the money can't come back, the time doesn't come back. So anytime that, that, you know, we make a decision, like for instance, let me give you the specific example of the conversation we're having right now.

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  Over the last several weeks, I've got a significantly larger number of requests for interviews and chats and things like that. Right. And I had to start telling myself, okay, there's a limited amount of time during the week you have to do these things. So you need to be picky, you need to look into who the host is.

• 1:24:19Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to take that as a massive compliment, Massimo.

• 1:24:22Speaker 00

  Take it as a compliment because that's the way it was meant.

• 1:24:25Chris Williamson?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  So that's the exercise.

• 1:24:28Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Look, that is five very cool ways to implement Stoicism. Um, I, I got, I got so much more stuff that I want to talk to you about. So I apologize to the other podcasters who are trying to get you on their show. But I am just going to completely monopolize you and I'm going to try and get you back on as soon as I can. It's been amazing. Can you tell us, so you've got a number of different books, one of which is more practical and then another one which. Tell us what, what books you've got people on.

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. Live Like a Stoic in the UK edition is the practical one. It's got these 52 exercises from which people can choose, you know, sample and see how it works for them. Uh, How to Be a Stoic is my earlier book and it's, it's more comprehensive. It includes a Stoic theory, a little bit of history. It also does have exercises, so it has a small number, I think it's about 12 exercises at the end of the book that people can do to start practicing. So those are the two things that I would recommend in terms of my books. There is a new one coming out in September and it's called A Field Guide to the, to a Happy Life, to be Happy Life. And it's basically a rewriting, a 21st century update and rewriting of Epitetus and Cavidian.

• 1:25:46Speaker 00

  The Enchiridion is this classic text of ancient Stoicism which has been rewritten and updated several times. The Christians used it throughout the Middle Ages as a book of spiritual exercises, for instance. And so I decided that as an homage to Epictetus in part, this was time to do a 21st century edition of it. So this is coming out in September.

• 1:26:06Chris Williamson?

  That's amazing. That must have been a very fun project for you to work.

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, definitely, definitely.

• 1:26:14Chris Williamson?

  That's awesome. Well, selfishly, again, I don't want to have to wait until September to get you one, but let's get you back on ready for that book. And then if we can get you one in between, brilliant. Look, links to everything that we have gone through will be in the show notes below, of course, including Massimo's Twitter, which you definitely should go and check out as well. Any questions, comments or feedback, just hassle him online or give me a tweet or do whatever it is that you want. If you're new here, like, share and subscribe as always. But for now, Massimo, it's been so good. Thank you very much.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  It's been a pleasure, man.