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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Good morning everybody. So Monday week two of the Christmas challenge for a lot of you. And for those that are not on the Christmas challenge this podcast will still come in handy because this week is my favorite stoicism week. Some of you would have heard about Stoicism if you've been, with Turtle for a few years. Some of you would have heard about Marcus Aurelius, the famous Stoic emperor or the philosopher king.
Speaker 1:You might have heard of other philosophers like Seneca or Epictetus, or you might not have heard of it at all, you might confuse Stoicism with the lowercase Stoicism which is the stiff upper lip which is not the same as the Stoicism of a capital S which is the philosophical school of Stoicism that flourished in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Donald Robertson, who has done a lot of work with us at Turtle, he is a leading expert in psychotherapy and stoicism, has written a really really good article about how to actually use stoicism. So think of stoicism as your philosophy of life, your personal philosophy or your personal operating system or your guide to day to day guide to day to day living. Why is it important to have a guide of day to day living based off things that have been hardened over history and based on things that have actually helped? Well, if we're confronting things without a guide, we tend to panic or we tend to don't know what to do.
Speaker 1:So the first thing we do is when something hits us, something called an impression or you're hit with a thought, with a flood of emotion, is we don't know how to handle it, we panic and our reflexes or our reactive responses aren't great for us in today's world. We tend to overreact, we tend to catastrophize, and those things lead to more negative thoughts, more turbulent emotions, and that's not making life easy for us to live healthier, happier lives. Because if you're walking around day to day and you're going on your phone and you're seeing all these different stimuli hitting you left, right, center, and they're always knocking you off balance, How were you meant to have a cool, calm head day to day, which is what you need? How does it happen? Stoicism comes in here and is like, okay.
Speaker 1:What is the things you can control and what's the things you can't control. Now, Donald here, three simple techniques in daily life of stoicism that I'm gonna read out for you. And I'm gonna read the introduction as well so you get a gist of what this is about and what stoicism week is gonna be about for you. So stoicism has experienced a surge popularity over recent years especially during the pandemic. It can provide people with a philosophy of life that holds the promise of greater emotional resilience.
Speaker 1:Today the original Greek philosophy is known mainly through works of three famous Stoics from the Roman Imperial period. Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. It's also been popularized by modern authors such as Ryan Holiday and Massimo Paglucci. I'm the author of several books to compare stoic advice to techniques used in modern cognitive behavioral therapy. Some of you might have done this.
Speaker 1:So my focus is on how we can all benefit by applying stoicism in the modern world. Right? There is already a huge amount of stoic self help advice available on the internet but I still find many people are unclear about how the philosophy is meant to be lived. It's partly because stoicism is quite a complex philosophy with a lot of literature that can make it confusing for people looking for a place to start applying it in daily life. So let's keep things as simple and practical as possible in order to answer the common question, how do I actually put stoicism into practice in daily life?
Speaker 1:Are you ready? Number one, the the dichotomy of control. Epictetus was the most influential Roman story teacher. He never wrote anything but his thoughts were transcribed in four volumes of Discourses by his disciple student, Ariam, who also published a short summary of his key teachings called the I can't even say the word. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And oh my god. It's blocked. Encridion. Why can't I say that when I'm reading it? That's weird, and then what a block.
Speaker 1:Or stoic handbook. Should we just go with that? The stoic handbook. The discourse is open with a talk called on the things up to us and not up to us. Okay?
Speaker 1:So the discourses or his lectures, so think of it as like going to university, you see epic teachers as your teacher. The first lesson is on the things up to us and not up to us. The very first sentence of the handbook emphasizes the same distinction. Some things are up to us and other things are not. Simple.
Speaker 1:Right? In other words, we can see this was a starting point of Epictetus' teaching of stoicism. It's also where we should begin if we want to apply stoicism today. Epictetus didn't use this term, but people today like to call this a dichotomy of control. Okay?
Speaker 1:It might seem like this is just a bland truism. Some things are obviously under our direct control and other things are not. That's like saying some things are big and other things are small. However, human nature predisposes us to blur this distinction. For example, as a cognitive therapist I specialised in treating anxiety disorders.
Speaker 1:People who suffer from severe psychological problems typically struggle too hard, on the one hand, to control involuntary aspects of their emotion, such as trying to conceal or suppress their shaking hands and other physiological symptoms of anxiety. They'd be better to accept these sensations and stop trying to fight against them. On the other hand, they tend to neglect aspects of their emotion that are actually voluntary such as the amount of time they spend consciously ruminating and worrying about future events. So in the discourses, what then is to be done to make the best of what is in our power and take the rest naturally happens. This basic stoic teaching appears to have inspired the serenity prayer made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous and other forms of the 12 step program.
Speaker 1:God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Simply reminding ourselves of this basic distinction and drawing a clear line between our actions and the events that befall us can help many people to cope better with stressful situations. You can do this simply by asking yourself, what's directly under my control in this situation and what isn't? Why you think about this? What is actually in your control and what's not?
Speaker 1:You know, you take this time sometimes, day to day, things happen. If you have more time, sit down and draw two columns on a piece of paper. Mark one not up to me and the other up to me. Complete the not up to me column first, listing those aspects of causing you stress that are not completely under your control. When you've listed the aspects that you worry about most, worry about or that strike you as most important, complete the second column up to me, listing the aspects that are completely under your control.
Speaker 1:It's the distinction between what you do and what merely happens to you. So Epictetus makes it clear in the remainder of the passage that in a nutshell, the only things truly up to us are our own actions. What he means here are our voluntary actions, and he's including the things we choose to say to others or to ourselves. Our voluntary thoughts under the heading. Our own voluntary thoughts and actions are up to us and everything else is at least in part not up to us.
Speaker 1:It's this distinction between what you do and merely what happens to you. The Stoics practiced a form of mindfulness called in Greek, which consists in continually observing our own thoughts and actions. This means learning to pay more attention, not just in stressful situations but throughout the rest of your life. You can begin by observing whenever possible the distinction between what you are actively doing and what you are passively experiencing. This is a most fundamental stoic psychological strategy for developing emotional resilience.
Speaker 1:The next strategy is slightly more advanced and provides the foundation of modern cognitive psychotherapy. The third strategy though takes us beyond self help and psychotherapy into the realm of ethics, and we'll see stoicism is not just a therapy, but a whole philosophy of life set on moral values. It's just in short, the only thing up to you is your own voluntary actions, which, Epictetus say, your own voluntary thought. There's you get 99,000 thoughts that are not voluntary. But your response to the thoughts, which is another thought, is up to you.
Speaker 1:You know? And when you realize that the only thing up to you is this tiny tiny percentage of what you thought was maybe controlled by you, the only thing you really have control of is a tiny little, tiny little bit. That's it. And if you focus on that tiny little bit instead of the 99 of the things that are not under your control, you can crack on with your with your day in a better way. So let's relate this to health and fitness.
Speaker 1:What is under your control? Under my control today is to have the attitude that I get to go for my walks, I get to work out as opposed to I to. I decide this. I decide my attitude today is I get to do it versus I have to. Because I get to, I'm gonna appreciate it.
Speaker 1:And I'm gonna put a smile on my face, and I'm gonna say, do you know what? Maybe I don't love working out. Maybe I'll never be someone who loves working out like some people. But I'm gonna give this a go with a smile on this because I get to do this today. There's millions of people in the world that don't get to do this.
Speaker 1:And that's the art studio I wanna bring into today. That's up to you. Now, is it up to you to complete the workout fully? Actually, no. Because you could start the workout and you could have an accident and you could fall over, you injure yourself, you can't complete the workout.
Speaker 1:But the important thing is that you we've voluntarily decided to have that attitude to go and do that thing. And then go in and do any action if something doesn't block you is awesome. You go for a walk, whatever. Some people get injured and they want to go for a walk, they want to do this, but they can't. So they try and focus on, well, I wish I could, but you can't.
Speaker 1:So focus on what you can do. I'm working one to one with a few people who are injured, who have got injuries. It's like, look, what can you do? I would love to work out two more steps, okay, but you can't. But you wanna you wanna put this will into something?
Speaker 1:Let's do your physio. Let's make sure you're having you're drinking enough water. Let's make sure your macros are on track. Let's focus on what you can do. And then that takes the stress away because you're doing stuff that actually is possible.
Speaker 1:In terms of macros, you know, have the attitude that you get to have an analysis or an awareness of what you put in your body. It's an amazing thing to have this analysis and be like wow, I know exactly how many protein and carbs and fat and calories and salt all the stuff on my body? That's cool. That's very cool. How about we voluntary put the very cool attitude into play today?
Speaker 1:As opposed to, oh my god, I can't even track him. Well, you know, if that's the attitude that everything is heavy, then everything will be heavy. Cognitive Distancing Ancient stoic philosophy was the original philosophical inspiration for cognitive behavioural therapy the leading form of modern evidence based otherapy. Cognitive therapies are based on cognitive models of emotion which hold feelings such as anger, fear and sadness are actually based upon underlying beliefs. For instance, someone who is afraid will typically believe that something catastrophic is about to happen and that they won't be able to cope when it does.
Speaker 1:They might be mistaken about this in a number of ways such as overestimating the probability or severity of the threat or underestimating their ability to deal with it. Most people assume that their feelings are separate from their thoughts. However, countless research studies have shown that when people change their relevant beliefs, their emotions tend to change as a result. Thoughts interact and emotion. Thoughts can create the emotions even though it happens so fast so you don't think it's possible.
Speaker 1:Also emotions can kick in like this. But sometimes we think, well, this is so fast, I can't do anything about it. Maybe there is there is space you can. When the originators of CBT were looking for a way to explain this to clients, they remembered another famous quote from the near start of Epictetus' Hamburg, It is not events that upset us, but rather our opinions about them. We can tell this doctrine was fundamental to stoicism of Epictetus he frequently talked to his students about it.
Speaker 1:Marcus Aurelius, who was greatly influenced by Epictetus, also mentions the same idea many times, applying it in a variety of different ways. As you've already seen, Epictetus says we should focus more on our own voluntary thoughts and actions. Building upon that, we are now asked to realise that our thoughts shape our emotions more than we normally realise, so we should pay close attention whenever possible to the interaction between our thoughts, actions and feelings, especially the way that our underlying value judgments or beliefs about what is important affects our emotions. What if you've been looking at the world through catastrophic lenses? R and T Beck, one of the pioneers of cognitive therapy used the following analogy: Imagine that you have a pair of coloured glasses, rose tinted spectacles or for our purposes perhaps gloomy dark blue ones.
Speaker 1:Suppose you've been wearing them so long that you don't even realise anymore and just assume the whole world looks gloomy and blue, as if that's just the colour things are in reality. One day though you take the glasses off and look at them instead of looking through them. You now realize that the lenses were blue, not the world. You've separated the blueness of the lens from the external events you were looking at through them. What if you've been looking at the world through catastrophic lenses?
Speaker 1:Noticing this means separating or distancing your thoughts from the external events to which they refer. Early cognitive therapists believed it was important for clients to realise how their thoughts and beliefs were influencing their feelings. That meant they could potentially view the same events in alternative ways and experience different emotions. This separation of our thoughts from external events is called cognitive distancing. Cognitive distancing was initially thought of as a necessary precursor of cognitive disputation, the process of questioning our own beliefs by examining the evidence for and against them and so on.
Speaker 1:However the next generation of cognitive behavioural therapists discovered that if it could help people if they did not go on to dispute their underlying beliefs, gaining cognitive distance tends to dilute the intensity of our emotions and it also increases our cognitive flexibility, our ability to view things from different perspectives, which usually leads to better problem solving and better coping in general. We don't need to disprove our unhealthy beliefs, in other words, as long as we're able to loosen the grip they have on our minds. The Stoics already knew this though, over two thousand years ago. Simply bearing in mind Epictetus' famous maxim that it's not things that upset us, but rather our opinions about them, can be enough to help us create distance between our thoughts and the external events to which they refer. Marcus Aurelius also refers to the separation of thoughts and events in this many times.
Speaker 1:Epictetus also mentions a related technique similar to ones found in modern psychotherapy. Straight away then practice saying to every troubling appearance you are just an impression or thought and not at all what you claim to represent. In other words we should address our upsetting thoughts in the second person as though we're talking to them and not telling ourselves that they are just thoughts or impressions, not to be confused with external events. For instance, if you lose your job and feel as if something has happened to you, you might say you are just the thought, something catastrophic has happened and not the event itself. In modern therapy, we often ask clients to practice saying I notice right now that I'm having the thought, something catastrophic has happened.
Speaker 1:Of course, you would substitute whatever thoughts are troubling you at the time. This was ongoing practice for ancient Stoics indeed being always mindful of our thoughts in this way and noticing how they influence our emotions can help us to gain more cognitive flexibility. Particularly if you sometimes feel overwhelmed by your emotions, it's a good idea to train yourself to identify the thoughts involved and to practice viewing them as if they were someone else's thoughts, so taking yourself away. So I'll stop now for today because the podcast has gone on for a bit. But I want you to do that today in in simple format.
Speaker 1:When things happen, when is distance yourself from it, replay it as if, you know, like he says there, and having this thought, this thought has popped into the brain. Okay? This thought is coming in that you go on the scales in the morning, your weight has gone up. Oh, I've just had a thought that my weight has gone up, which means I put fat on, which means this plan's not working. Okay.
Speaker 1:That thought's popped into the head. Okay. You see it forever. But the glasses analogy is brilliant because you can put on different glasses at will. I can put on right now my optimistic glasses.
Speaker 1:I can put on my pessimistic glasses. I can put on my depressive glasses. I can put on my super happy glasses. And I want you to do that today. It's like when you look at situations today and you look at your macros, you look at your your your training, you look at the things you're doing day to day, put on different lenses and see how different it makes you feel.
Speaker 1:Because if you can truly see that, you can see that maybe you have had those dark blue glasses on for a while and it's time to take them off. It's time to put something else on and see if you can look through things with a different lens. Or no lens at all is the ultimate way, you just look at things as they are. Facts, you can look at the fact without anything in between. But, again, that's about being mindful and understanding what's going on.
Speaker 1:So hopefully, that's helpful. Maybe maybe it's a lot to take in in one go, but we will be going over this on Thursday. On Wednesday, we'll also be talking about it. There'll be a video or a short passage to read, about stoicism and how we're gonna apply it to daily life because I think it's a very, very important skill. And we're gonna yeah.
Speaker 1:We're gonna just discuss it more. So hopefully, that's helpful. Remember, it's not things that disturb us. It's our own opinions about them. And think about what is in your control and what's not in your control, And just focus on what is in your control today, which is essentially your attitude towards things.
Speaker 1:And have that control today where you have a good attitude towards things and you put some energy and oomph behind yourself and you go and smash the day. That's what you should be doing. Right now, get your one big thing down and go and smash it. No more delay. No more thinking this and that.
Speaker 1:And you'll have a much better day, friend. Speak soon.