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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.
Hello, you stoic legends listening to this podcast. So it's day two of the twenty one day lock in. And, yeah, you are on it. Great if you're not on it, but, you will gain some knowledge from this. Happy days.
Speaker 1:So today's topic, is a is a simple question, and I've really enjoyed going back through my notes on stoicism, Epictetus, and the philosophers. There's a few tools you can use that you can highlight stuff on Kindle and you can connect notes and similar stuff. So it's been, helpful for me as well to get into a, you know, lock day day one, lock in day one. So it's quite powerful to to start fresh and not not start fresh as in nothing beforehand has been useful, but just another going into things with it with more experience with a slightly different view, more maturity, maybe it can do a lot for you, right? So it's been nice for me as well.
Speaker 1:But here's the first question today. What's in your control? Okay. And simple simple answer is Epictetus says, one of the most important things is some things are up to us and some things are not. And that's one of the most important things you can do in your life to understand or to be happy.
Speaker 1:Some things are up to us and some things are not. That's it. It's one of the most powerful mental filters you can carry with you throughout the day. So you need to think about it. How much time do we spend worrying about things we can't change or obsessing over outcomes we can't predict?
Speaker 1:This cough. See? Can't control that, so I need to let it go. There'll be days where your weight fluctuates. You cannot control this.
Speaker 1:It is not something you can control. You can influence perhaps, but it's not something you can direct control, so why worry about it? There's days where someone brings donuts into the office or orders food in. Okay? You can't control that.
Speaker 1:And you smell it, you have a whiff, and you go, oh my god. Maybe I'll have a donut. There's days where you're tired or days where you're gonna be bloated. And again, we don't some things we know trigger bloating, some things we don't know. It's just sometimes you're bloated or you're stressed out.
Speaker 1:You didn't plan for these things. You didn't want it, but here it is. But you can't control that. Okay? But what can you control?
Speaker 1:That is the main question. What actually from those things can you control? You can control your choices and you can control your attitude towards things. That pretty much is it. Maybe you can control your perspective.
Speaker 1:It lines in with attitude, and your next step is something you can control on. Okay? So this stoic philosopher Epictetus two thousand odd years ago, influenced modern day cognitive behavioral therapy. He says in the, discourses, he says freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.
Speaker 1:Okay? He went in on his point so much to these people. If you can understand what's actually in your control and what's not, you have done the most important thing each day. And when you realize how little you can control and then you just have the rest, you become free. Okay?
Speaker 1:You're not shaken by weight on the scales. You're not shaken by someone bringing food into the office. You're not shaken by something comes into your life that stresses you out. You can't do anything about it. It's like, listen, this work tasks will be done by tonight.
Speaker 1:And it's like, ah, okay. But then you can decide how you react to that. So you have to focus inward. And this is the key part, right? And then Epictetus, you know, maybe less than a hundred years later, Marcus Aurelius would say in his journal to himself, and he would write this to himself.
Speaker 1:And you've got to remember now, he is the most powerful man in the world writing to help himself. And he says he writes in his little journal, You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you'll find strength. Now imagine running an empire with so many things going on that you can't control. But imagine there's two people.
Speaker 1:There's one person that thinks everything has to be fixed and everything that's going chaotic, they have to try and fix and it's in their control, but they can't control it so they go crazy. And then you got someone like Marcus Aureus who realizes there's so many variables here, I can only control this present moment, my attitude towards the next step. That's all I can do. And if I back myself day to day, things should work out. And that's how we approached it.
Speaker 1:And he was one of the emperors during the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, you know, one of the good times. Then it all went downhill when his son came to be. So it's important. Is this within my control? Ask yourself today, Is this within my control?
Speaker 1:If it is, you can do something about it. If it's not, let it go. It's quite simple. Another stoic legend, Seneca, wrote down a very famous quote, and he said, We suffer more in imagination than in reality. And isn't that true?
Speaker 1:So how often do you create stories in your mind, worst case scenarios, overthinking, shame spirals, drains your energy, causes you to do a fight or flight. And we know this is a The fight or flight response is like a Hail Mary from the body. It's like, holy hell, we are getting ready to battle and this is going to be life and death. We're to put everything behind this. That's kind of what's happening.
Speaker 1:You're using a lot of energy to do it and you must reclaim that energy back once settled down. So imagine putting that system to use on things that don't actually matter or things you can't control. It's a bit silly to do it. You only want to activate this when it really needs to be activated, you know? And in Robert Sapolsky's famous book, Why Zebras Don't Get Else's, because there's scenarios where a zebra or a zebra, whatever you whatever you say, gets attacked by lions and they get a stress response on, they escape, and then ten minutes later, they've escaped and they're around the corner eating grass like nothing's ever happened.
Speaker 1:Like, hey, you just got attacked by a lion like, are you alright? No problem, brother. I'm eating grass now. Flight to flight worked for them to save my life and I've let it go. Imagine they ruminating over it all the time.
Speaker 1:They would just be in constant fight or flight. They wouldn't survive. They would just wear themselves out and be dead. Okay? So let's make sure we look at that.
Speaker 1:And then when we come to the modern day philosophers, essentially Jim Rohn, he says it this way. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you are in charge of. And he says also, you can't change the wind, but you can change the direction of the sail. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:So the wind is blowing, maybe not the best way, but you got a sail. For you to go to the right destination, you don't ask the wind to change. It's out of your control. But you can change the the sail. And you can change the sail different degrees, and you can get to where you wanna go.
Speaker 1:He's got a lot about this, and he's like, how can you blame everything you have? How can you blame the seasons, the planet, everything external? You know, there's it's there. That's it's all you've got to play with. And you you you gotta look at what you're in charge of, which is just your next move and your attitude towards that move.
Speaker 1:A lot of it a lot of these people have got similar ideas that's crept through the ages. And you go back to the fifteen hundreds and the French philosopher called Montaigne, he wrote down, my life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened, you know? Come on. That's a banger. We invent fears, worry about them, blah blah blah blah blah, paralyzed by them.
Speaker 1:Made them up. Obsessed over a scale won't make it budge, know? Wishing someone didn't bring food to you when you smelled in a sense that we set off your senses. The stoics would call us, you know, your impressions. So basically what happens is he says Epictetus goes, it's obvious what happens.
Speaker 1:We've got impressions, which is your sight, touch, smell, hearing. The other one? Maybe I missed one. But you know what I mean. These ways we sense things in our surroundings.
Speaker 1:And of course, if you walk past a bakery sorry, guys. You walk past a bakery and the whiff of fresh bread comes and hits you hits you it hits you as an impression. That's what the stoic appetizers say. You've got you You've been hit by this impression. You can't control it, the smell of the bread.
Speaker 1:And you shouldn't try and fight the impressions because they're uncontrollable. But what you can do is the second part of it, is the reaction to the impression, and that's why he focused his attention, right? So he's not saying to the bakery, like, Why have you pushed the smell of bread in my nose? Now I want to eat bread, it's your fault. He's going, I understand what's happened here.
Speaker 1:I've been hit with a impression through my sense of smell. It's activated the memory of fresh bread that I love. And if you do love bread, obviously. And the image of me having a nice baguette with butter and chicken right now is nice and I want pleasure. And it's gonna give me pleasure.
Speaker 1:That's really the steps that happened. If you can see the steps happen in plain sight in the moment, you say, I see what's happened there, but I decide nobody. Yeah. My desire has been born for the bread from the smell, but I'm deciding to choose another path. You know, you you you decide to choose.
Speaker 1:You decide to respond and not react, you know? Reacting is like animals. Humans have got the capacity to respond. And again, it's in like an epic Titus quote. He says, it's not what happens to you.
Speaker 1:It's how you react to it that matters. That's in your control. And even Viktor Frankl, I'm making you so many quotes tonight. Jay, look at these quotes coming at you. He basically survived a concentration camp, Viktor Frankl.
Speaker 1:So you really gotta listen to what this guy has to say. He's been through hell, And he says this. He said, listen, he's been in a concentration camp, guys. Like, he's seen people die. He has been starved to nearly death.
Speaker 1:For him to come out and say, this is this is it. We gotta take it seriously. He says, between stimulus and response so the stimulus is the smell of the fresh bread and response, which is maybe to eat the bread or decide to eat the bread, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. So you get stimulated, impressions, whatever the word is.
Speaker 1:The Stoics said this. They're trying to say the same thing. You get hit by something, you go, oh, and then you go, oh, hold on a second. If I can delay that response time ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, and I can respond with the type of person I wanna be, my values come in, the character I wanna be comes in, that's where the power is. Okay?
Speaker 1:You can't stop the first part. It's a tiny space, but that's the transformation part. So what's in your control right now? Tomorrow's no. Yesterday's no.
Speaker 1:If it didn't go well or whatever, things aren't perfect for real. Right now is all. So you can decide right now to cancel a shut up, Scott. Off the podcast and go for a walk. I'm gonna track my food right now.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna get it done. Let's go. I'm gonna get this work task done. Let's go. It's up to you to do it right now.
Speaker 1:Okay? And I think that's enough for you to go off with today to really seize the moment today. The power is your attitude today, right now. Not even later tonight, that's gonna come. Right now, attitude, action, response.
Speaker 1:Don't let yourself be controlled by your impressions because they're powerful. The sense of smell is so powerful. It creates a desire. Especially if smell nice food. Wow.
Speaker 1:To stop yourself wanting to eat whatever that is sometimes is difficult. But it's because we just let it take over as opposed to sit back and understand what's happened. So today I want you all to be responders and take a step back and deep deep breaths. All of these people are trying to say the same thing. And this has been thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 1:Okay? There's obviously something here that is working for these people and that's been passed on. And then we've to take it seriously, especially cognitive behavioral therapy has got a lot of evidence behind it. So it's all come full circle like, this is it actually works. So get going today.
Speaker 1:Enjoy your day, and I'll see you tonight if you're on the challenge for the live q and a with PhD Paul Arimma. Have a good day, guys.