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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. It's Wednesday, which means it's the hump day of the first week of the challenge. Very different day for many of you, to be honest. Some of you will be feeling awesome. Some of you will be feeling like, oh my god.
Speaker 1:It's already Wednesday. I've done nothing. Some of you be like meh I'm doing some bits. Just remember that something is better than nothing of course. Perfect perfectionism doesn't exist, so being perfect doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:I saw a comment in the group about just doing a twenty minute workout and realizing that they were such a perfectionist that they thought they'd have to do it all. So because they couldn't do it all, there's no point starting. Right? It's one of the biggest barriers. We've got to get over that.
Speaker 1:But today, wanna share some book notes I've got from the book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. So this is just kind of like Stoicism's an ancient philosophy, it's very practical. Donald Robertson is a psychotherapist, bestselling author, a CBT therapist. He's trained a lot of therapists as well so he's written his book with a lot of research on how the ancients used to use essentially modern day therapy but without you know the full on therapy sessions the kind of self therapy right. So I'm gonna go through some notes and maybe explain some stuff and then maybe it will help trigger some thoughts about you.
Speaker 1:Let's start with anxiety and depression equal the wrong values is what he's saying in one part. It's like a lot of our anxiety comes from potentially putting a lot of value in other people's opinions of us, external events, how things go as opposed to what's in our control. Depression's a more complicated thing, but essentially, you know, it's the same thing. Like, I'm really shit. My life sucks right now.
Speaker 1:I hate this so much. And you value maybe your life on maybe money or being lean and shredded, and actually that's not where the value should be in life. And maybe you've got the wrong values there. You know? Those are important things.
Speaker 1:And he mentions that emotions are determined by our beliefs. Could you feel a certain emotion if you didn't have a word for it is a question to ask yourself. Don't know the answer to this, it's a very complicated question, But could you I suppose you take away the word of of of, envy and maybe you still feel the envy but there's no label to explain it. But our emotions typically come from our words about a situation. So you feel something and then the words come in which is thought and then we explain it in our head and then that cracks on into an emotion, so feel into an emotion, right?
Speaker 1:So the Stoics believed that virtue is a living a virtuous life, so wisdom, a life of courage, a life of moderation, and a life of doing the right thing, that's its own reward. There is nothing after that that needs to be done. Like if I were to see someone on the street struggling with their shopping and the bag fell on the floor, I'd go and pick her up and help them and then cross the street. I wouldn't post on social media, I wouldn't ask them to thank me, I wouldn't ask for money, nothing. The goodness is doing the deed.
Speaker 1:Right? Same with self control. If I'm having self control with my eating in a buffet or at a festival or whatever that is the reward. The reward isn't will I get leaner from self control? Will I have this and that?
Speaker 1:No, the reward is the self control itself. Right, so this is what you need to do and if you can do this you're gonna get a sense of fulfillment, you're gonna get a sense of achievement, and it's all within your power. All of this is within your power. Remember that, it's always in your power, these things. Nothing outside the power is even thought about.
Speaker 1:Well, it is thought about but not pursued, right? So to live a rational life, we need to look at this way. Am I being moderate right now? Yeah, that's just under what? Brilliant.
Speaker 1:You know? Am I being wise right now? Thinking things, yes, that's it, brilliant. I've done the wise and I thought things through, a, b, is this influenced by my conditioning? Is this am I angry right now, all that type of stuff, right?
Speaker 1:So the virtue essentially, excellence of character, that is the reward. For you to be the best type of person you can be, that's enough. You don't need the titles, the fame, the money, the prestige, then you're not doing it for his own good, you're doing it for a gain that's outside of your control. Does that make sense? Does it make sense?
Speaker 1:Okay, so the appearance of wisdom therefore become more important to many Romans than wisdom itself. Same as today people would prefer to look rich, to look like readers and prefer to be healthy. Okay? Is this you? Are you going to gym once a week taking a selfie thinking I'm in a class, I'm I'm awesome, I'm share about?
Speaker 1:You know, do you have to take a picture every time you do a workout, every time you do a walk, every time you eat well? If that's the case, then are you doing it for you or are doing it for other people? If you're always going out with your friends and you have to take photos, who are you doing it for? You know, there's a balance between it. Of course you want photos of your friends and stuff, memories, but there's a step too far where it becomes actually in like a problem.
Speaker 1:Right? So look at this, look at yourself and let me know the answer. Let's have a look here, okay Decatastrophizing on the other hand has been described as going from what if to so what. So what if such and such happens it's not the end of the world I can deal with it. Acropinus was truly a master decatastrophiser, he would reframe every hardship as an opportunity to cope by exercising wisdom and strength of character.
Speaker 1:How can I turn this challenge in front of me into an opportunity, you ask yourself? How can I turn this thing? What if like, oh what if that happens, what if that happens? Alright so what if it does happen? Like what if this weekend Scott I just eat everything and drink and get wrecked?
Speaker 1:Right so what? Learn from it, journal it, what happened leading up to it, how do you feel in between, what do you feel on Sunday, journal it all, so what, now I'll do that, next time I might be more armed, next time I'll go with tools and a plan, like a battle, know, basically a weekend out as a battle, information, right. I'm gonna go out, people are gonna ask me to drink a lot, then they're gonna give me shots, people are gonna do other stuff, people are gonna do this and that, people are ask me to stay out till 3AM, like that, right. You know, if you foresee it all happening, you can have a plan for it all, you know, a lot of people do this, you know if you want to control what you're drinking and you don't want to drink alcohol anymore you go and get the rounds, you have the water or the the diet coke, they won't know, they won't have a clue, they don't care, they're wrecked at that point, Okay, so anytime like I do you don't want to kind of get them miffed that you're not drinking or whatever which happens a lot in The UK you just go and get the drinks and they won't even ask.
Speaker 1:As long as it looks like a drink put a lemon in it happy days. Right, So here's the main thing about stoicism. You can start training yourself in the stoic practice of objective representation right now by writing down a description of an upset and a problematic event in plain language. Phrase things as accurately as possible and view them from a more philosophical perspective with studied indifference. It's not things that upset us but our judgment about things.
Speaker 1:He recommended explaining this to clients using the analogy of colored glasses. We could look at the world through a positive rose tinted glasses or sad blue ones and just assume that we see how things are. The stoics taught Marcus that anger is nothing but temporary madness and that is consequences are often in repair irreparable in a case of a slave's eye. Out on open water, their boat was caught in a fresh this is a story. Out on open water, their boat was caught in a storm, which lasted almost the whole night.
Speaker 1:The passengers feared for their lives as they struggled to man the pumps and keep themselves from drowning in the shipwreck. Gallius noticed that the great stoic teacher had turned as white as a sheet and shared the same anxious expression as the rest of the passengers. However, the philosopher alone remained silent instead of crying out in terror at his predicament. Once the sea and sky calmed, as they were approaching the destination, Gallius gently inquired to the stoic as why he looked almost as fearful as the others did during the storm. He could see that Gallius was sincere and courteously answered that the founders of Stoicism taught how people face anxious dangers naturally and inevitably experience a short lived stage of fear.
Speaker 1:He then reached into his satchel and produced the fifth book of Epictetus's Discourses. Today only the first four books of the Discourses survive although Marcus appears to have read The Lost Discourses of Epictetus. So that's a case of like even when you think you've mastered nutrition and training and mindset, you think you've got to a certain stage, you will feel fear, you will get angry, all this type of stuff will happen no matter how much self development or self awareness you do. It's about not catastrophizing those things, it's like okay something bad's happened. Do I have to now go and mourn about it for two hours?
Speaker 1:Like, example, you have a rough weekend on Monday. Do you wanna keep mourning about the weekend, boring people to death? Oh, I can't believe we ate so much. I don't we don't care. Crack on today.
Speaker 1:What are you doing today? Stop catastrophizing stuff that really doesn't matter. Like, well, let's show up today. That's gone now. Do know I mean?
Speaker 1:Get on with it. That's what you're gonna have leading up to this weekend. I don't want you having anxiety, but what if they what if it was well, what if you do? Just explain it in simple terms full stop, end of, crack on. Right, that's what you need to be thinking about.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to finish this podcast with essentially the three stages of impressions. I mentioned this briefly yesterday I want to explain a bit more. So an impression could be anything like a sudden sound, building collapsing, a sudden cry of danger, a lot of stuff can trigger it right. So the first stage is the initial impressions, you have an automatic, automatically impose themselves on your mind including thoughts and emerging feelings. These are called proto passions by the stoics.
Speaker 1:So for example the impression the boat is sinking would quite naturally evoke some initial anxiety. Then you've got the second stage, the majority of people like those on the boat would agree with the original impression, go along with it and add more judgments including catastrophizing thinking. In contrast, the stoics like the unnamed philosopher in the story have learned to take a step back from their initial thoughts and feelings and withhold their assent from them. So withhold going towards them agreeing with them. They might do this by saying to themselves, you are just an impression and not all the things you claim to represent, or it is not things that upset us but our judgments about them.
Speaker 1:The boat is sinking, but you might make it ashore. Even if you don't, panicking won't help. Responding calmly and with courage is more important. That's why you'd praise other people for doing it if you face the same situation. Third stage, on the other hand, if you have assented to the impressions, you've agreed with it, oh my god, shit, my life's over, you agree with that, well it's really bad, then you catastrophize and you have a full blown passion which is a full blown emotional spiral, right?
Speaker 1:So when this happens you're then out of control because you are in an angry state, you're in a really flipped out state. You'll do this on weekends or after you've eaten a meal you're not happy with, go and have a pizza or something, go why did I eat it, fucking hate myself, why am I doing it? Scott why am I doing this, why am I such a pig, Why what is wrong with me? Do you know I mean? We've all done it.
Speaker 1:And then that evokes even a more room, a bigger emotional reaction, a full blown passion, a full blown catastrophizing, and what are gonna do when we're stressed? Well, bad news human when you're always stressing yourself out day to day all the time we then turn to high fat, high sugar, high salt foods because we want to escape that feeling and we want to reduce the stress by eating those lovely delicious foods that are going to release some dopamine in our system. So we've to be very careful of turning this response on, this catastrophizing button. It is dangerous for us. Not only is it going to cause you to do behaviours you want to do, the stress response itself which I'll cover in maybe week two or three of the science behind it, is like taking a car and driving it around every corner at maximum speed and screeching the tyres, every single corner when there's no need for it, right?
Speaker 1:So you think every corner is a crazy corner, screech, screech, tires get worn out, the cars get smashed a bit, you hit in the corner, and then you've got to recover, and you've got to then you've lost the tread, you've lost a lot of stuff, you've lost a lot of energy, and you've got recoup that, right? So it's kind of like a all out response to survive if you think of it that way. And if you keep pushing that on guys, right, what happens as well is your, god I've lost a word for it, Your immune system, so your immune system on a on a initial stressor, so for example like something happens and I'm stressed and I to survive, my immune system goes up because I'm in like fight or flight mode, I mean like I need to survive right now. If you turn around all the time your immune system actually drops below baseline by quite a lot, so you find you get ill easier, you know people develop stomach ulcers over time, there's a lot of stuff that happens in this state. So we got to be very we have to take this lesson by the stoics very important.
Speaker 1:It's like they knew about this stress response, whatever you wanna call it, before we even had words for these things, before we understood what was happening biologically. So our goal today is to remain calm and still. No matter what comes at us, even if I do have a Five Guys burger today and my calories are gone, I'm not gonna catastrophize, I'm not gonna go crazy about it. I'm gonna say I had a Five Guys with crisps, with chips, gone over my calorie allowance full stop. Okay?
Speaker 1:That's how we need to deal with it, we need stay still and calm because those are the people that go through life. They're healthier, they're happier, they're more in tune with their emotions and body, they're nicer to be around, the energy is nice and chill, they're open to nice conversation from both sides, ready, you're not always in a state of Do know I mean? We need to be still today. So that's your lesson. I hope you enjoyed this podcast.
Speaker 1:Maybe you didn't. Who knows? We'll talk more about the Stoics and the the CBT and all that stuff, but have a good day, guys. Stay still, and I'll speak to you all soon.