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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 everyone, good morning. It's going to be a short podcast today because I want to remind you of some mindset things from the ancient Stoics. A lot of you want mindset support and stuff like that, so it's always going to be a continuous progress of mindset. There's never like an end to it. You're always going to be trying to understand yourself more, learn more about what your core beliefs are and things like that.
Speaker 1:But a key element of stoicism that Epictetus writes in his Discourses is that we shouldn't assign feelings like desire or aversion to things that are out of our control. So he says, For the present, totally suppress desire for if you desire any of the things which are not in your own control, you must necessarily be disappointed. So what he means by this is like if your desire is to lose 10 pounds now, well that's not in your control, is it? The 10 pound loss, because it's impossible to lose it right now, so you're going to be disappointed that it hasn't happened. If your desire is, I wish I was fitter now to do this workout, why is this so hard?
Speaker 1:You're going to feel disappointed because you're not fitter now, it's impossible for something to ripen immediately. A farmer can't plant a seed and wake up the next day and go, let's go, it's ready to rock. No, it's got to go through the season, it's got to go through the work. So what is in your control is the question, and this is a key part of stoicism and which became led on to being, you know, CBT was heavily influenced by stoicism. A lot of you would have come across cognitive behavioural therapy.
Speaker 1:So what is in your control? And I want you to think about for a second, what's actually in your control? And the only thing that really is in your control is voluntary actions or attitude. Losing 10 pounds now isn't in my control, but me deciding that I'm gonna try my best today to be the healthiest I can be, which means I'm gonna try and get my steps in, I'm gonna try and get maybe a workout in, I'm gonna try and track as accurately as I can. I say try because getting your steps in still isn't in your control fully because you might walk out and someone comes and hits you and your legs are gone or you might fall and trip and you can't walk.
Speaker 1:So it's more about the attitude towards behaviours that is in your control and that's it. So you have to remove the goal part of it and focus on the behaviour part of it because that's in your control. And then you won't feel disappointed because you're doing the things that ultimately lead to what you want, but you can't have it now. If you think you can have it now or want it now, you're acting like a child. Give it to me, give it to me now, now, now.
Speaker 1:It's not how it works. I want this now, I want this now, come on. You you might be very logical and rational in your work, might be very logical and rational maybe if you're the parent and trying to do it, but then when it comes to your own body and stuff like that, you're very irrational, very out of control, as if things have to happen immediately or after a week it's like why hasn't everything changed yet? It's like, come on now, you've got to start thinking logically about these things, you've to be rational otherwise your mind is going to run away and your desire for these things now is going to ultimately lead to sadness, disappointment, feeling low. And when you feel low, you might feel guilty and then I might lead to eating or binge eating, you know, it's a vicious cycle, right?
Speaker 1:So make sure that you take that seriously because that's one of the core principles of stoicism. It's like, focus on what I can control. Isn't that freeing though when you think about it? How much freeing is that? Okay, I want to be leaner, I want to be stronger, I want to be better at jujitsu, I want to have more success in business, all this stuff.
Speaker 1:Those are desires, goals, but I don't fixate myself on them because to achieve those things, what I do today matters. So I have to turn up to training even though I might suck today. I have to try and track and be good with my nutrition and training my protein because that's ultimately gonna lead to me having more muscle in the future. I'm gonna have to drink my water. I'm gonna have to be making sure I don't catastrophize things and end up eating later on and guilty.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna have to make sure I try and sleep well because if I don't sleep well, I become more prone to, eating more calories in the evenings because I'm really tired. So, you know, I have to do the things today. That's the only thing in my control of my attitude right now. And that's what I want you to take from this podcast right now, whether you felt bad, you haven't been on track, or whatever it is, it's perfectly normal to have these feelings. It's perfectly normal to have these desires and goals, but they can't dictate you in terms of how you feel now because they're not possible to achieve right now.
Speaker 1:But what's possible to achieve right now is you go out there, you're gonna track your breakfast, you're gonna try and get your steps in, you're gonna try and think about what I'm gonna have for lunch, dinner, you're gonna drink your water, you're gonna feel enthusiastic about this because you have a chance to improve your health day to day. It's a new relief every day and you get a chance every day to do it. You've got to think about that. A lot of people out there, and I use this in my this works for me, might not work for you, there's a lot of people out there who's got chronic health problems, have been in accidents, whatever, and they wish they could just go for a walk. They wish they could even think about trying to improve their muscle mass.
Speaker 1:They wish they could even think about losing some muscle and losing some fat to like maybe look better in clothing. Like they wish they could that's been taken away from them. It's been taken away from them, the force is out of their control. That's all they would wanna do is the small things that we just take, oh, it's taken for granted. So please use this as a springboard for today.
Speaker 1:I don't care if you've had the best week or the worst week, attitude is what you've got in control of and use that attitude for daily action and that's it. Leave the results. The results will handle themselves, promise you. The results are the byproduct of this and that's why one day at a time is powerful. You can only do things one day at a time.
Speaker 1:Plan all you want. You have action today. So go forth and have a good day, and I will speak to you all tomorrow.