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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. So again back with a stoic lesson and today I'm gonna read an excerpt from one of Donald's earlier books and it talks about a guy called James Bond Stockdale. So according to James Stockdale, the English philosopher Alfred North Whited once said that if Plato were to return to life today, he would first ask to be introduced not to an academic but to boxing champion Stockdale. If the stoic flaws for Epictetus were alive in modern times, the first person you would want to be introduced to would be probably Stockdale himself. So here's his story and some lessons from it, and this is from Stockton himself.
Speaker 1:09/09/1965, I flew at 500 knots right into a flak trap at treetop level in a little A four airplane. The cockpit was not even three feet apart which I couldn't steer, after it was on fire its control system shot out. After the ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little North Vietnamese village right ahead. And so help me. I whispered to myself, five years down there in captivity at least, I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.
Speaker 1:Okay. So at the outbreak of The US so I'm reading your comments just to be clear. So this is Donald's work, and read his book. It's amazing. At the outbreak of The US involvement in the Vietnam war, James Stockdale was captured by a mob of 15 villagers who beat him to within an inch of his life, snapping his leg and leaving him permanently crippled.
Speaker 1:The irony no loss on Stockdale was that he had lost the use of his left leg just like the crippled slave Epictetus whose ancient handbook, the Discourses of Stoic philosophy, he had previously devoured after studying philosophy as a master's student at Stanford University. So Stockton was taken to prisoner by the North Vietnamese and incarcerated in Hanoi, whereas the highest ranking US naval officer, the only wing commander to survive an ejection over enemy territory, he has seen charge of a community of captured soldiers which at its largest numbered in excess 400 men. Okay. So Stockdale said he never actually saw Vietnamese prison of war camp as portrayed in the movies. He was imprisoned in an old French colonial dungeon which formed part of the large communist prison called Haulo or the Hanoi Hilton, described as part psychiatric clinic, part reform school.
Speaker 1:So the Americans kept alongside Vietnamese criminals were subject to a constant program of attempted psychological reprogramming by professional torturers and prison officers. During that time as prisoner of war for seven and a half years, guys, seven and a half years, Stockdale spent four years in isolation, two years in leg irons, and was tortured 15 times in a manner taking the ropes not unlike crucifixion. That is insane. And we wonder, oh, I'm a bit hungry today. Oh, I'm not feeling too energy.
Speaker 1:I'm not feeling 100% today. Come on. We can do better than that. We can at least try from Stockdale now himself. And if I were asked what are the benefits of a stoic life?
Speaker 1:I would probably say it is an ancient and honorable package of advice on how to stay out of the clutches of those who are trying to get you on the hook, trying to give you a feeling of obligation, trying to get moral leverage on you to force you to bend to their will. Because I first reaped its benefits in an extortionist prison of torture, I could go on and say it's a formula for maintaining self respect and dignity in defiance of those who would break your spirit for their own end. Man, how powerful is this? Like this is look, we're not this guy, okay? Most of us read it, we probably would crumble way quicker.
Speaker 1:I mean seven years of torture, know, extreme, this guy's got a mind of granite. But it shows what the human mind is capable of, it shows how far it can go and even Viktor Frankl when he was in Auschwitz you know, he showed how far it can go. There's a lot of stories. There's another one, Edith Eiger, she was also concentration camp in World War two. She's come up and say similar things.
Speaker 1:So there's more inside you. Come on. There is more inside you. There's more power inside you than you think. You can cope with a lot more than you think.
Speaker 1:You just have to, like, you have to first of all believe in that, but you also have to have this kind of view that you can control your own attitude and from that things will be okay. Nothing else out worrying about things outside your control is just gonna make you anxiety, anxious, it's gonna make you stressed, and it's gonna make you worse. So Stockton wasn't thinking, oh my god, hope they don't do that, because it was outside his control. He could only think of his own attitude, and he put this to the test. He put it to the test.
Speaker 1:You know, so Viktor Frankl, like, you know, Man Search for Meaning, an amazing book, they both came to similar conclusions, you know. They were coping with extreme circumstances, And Stockdale drew upon his stoic philosophy of Epictetus a lot. He basically learned it by heart. So Epictetus has got the discourses, which is a long section, like long lectures, and there's also the handbook, which is the short version. He said it was a secret weapon during captivity.
Speaker 1:Again, this is Stockdale in his biography. I'm not the only prisoner who discovered that so called practical academic exercises on how to do things were useless in that fix. The classics have a way of saving you the trouble of prolonged experiences. You don't have to go out and buy pop psychology self help books. When you read the classics in the humanities you become aware that the big ideas have been around a long time despite the fact they've often served up today in the modern psychological explanations of human action as novel and scientific.
Speaker 1:So on his release Stockdale became a well known military hero, campaigning as vice presidential candidate, supporting the independent Ross Perot in the US election. He was one of the most highly decorated officers in The US naval history and spent his later years lecturing on the relevance of stoic philosophy to modern military life. A collection of his talks and essays were published in his book, Thoughts on a Philosophical Fighter Pilot in 1995. So, yeah, what a crazy story. What a, like, I mean, talk about putting something to the test.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're putting it to the test day to day, saying no to some Mars bars or at least like refraining from eating three three pieces of cake in the fridge and stuff. I mean, stoicism should help there for sure, but like when it comes to the the reality of some of these things, it works there too. So we come into think, like, know, is this operating system for me? It's very similar to cognitive behavioral therapy, as I've mentioned, distancing yourself from things. One thing they used to do a lot was the view from above, either zooming out into the universe and looking down at earth from afar or just zooming up to a top of the mountain and looking down on the city.
Speaker 1:And one of the astronauts that goes to space, one of the first trips out to space, one of the NASA astronauts said like, can't believe how worried he was about the rigid patterns down there on that like circle blob. Do you know what I mean? You kind of realize it's all so stupid. It's similar to when you're in the middle of an argument with someone. Say it's your friend, you're in the middle of an argument, it's getting heated and you can't see outside of that bubble of argument, you're heated, you're arguing, you are right, they are wrong, la la.
Speaker 1:It isn't until you are able to really get out, not only of you and that person, potentially get out of the entire town or city for a bit, and then you look back when you've got a calm mind and you see it much more clearly and you see it in a far more mature way, well, or you should. So there's something to be said about distancing ourselves physically, which does bring about this profound look. So obviously, distancing yourself into outer space, some of you need to go to space maybe, let me send you out there to get this perspective but you also can do it psychologically, the cognitive version, you can of, the view from the bubble, looking at yourself, taking yourself out of your outer body type of experience, can turn, put yourself out and that works. So the reason I want to mention this story is because it's not to make you think you have to be like this guy, these extreme examples are just examples of how powerful a system can be, it doesn't mean it would work on everyone like this obviously some people's bought, you know what mean, we have to be realistic here, he's one in a million probably in terms of what he can handle psychologically no matter the philosophy but it did help him a lot and it would help you a lot as well.
Speaker 1:So today, by taking inspiration from his story, who went through seven years of torture and living off the words of Epictetus, it's not things that disturb me, it's my opinion about them. The main objective of life is to understand what's in my control and what's not in my control. So let's have a look at those. It's not things that disturb me, it's my opinion about them. Famous phrase kicked off cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 1:It's not the weight on the scales that disturbs me, it's my opinion about the weight on the scale. It's not the tape measuring that disturbs me, it's my opinion about it. It's not my progress that disturbs me. It's my opinion about it. It's always your opinion about the fact because you can look at it in a different way.
Speaker 1:When it comes to fat loss, if you are still freaking out about day to day fluctuations, you need to apply this, you have to apply this you are taking daily weigh ins ideally to take a weekly average weekly averages will compare themselves to each other and if you are a woman listening to this with a menstrual cycle you are likely needing to compare week one of your cycle to another week one of your cycle. Not week one of your cycle to week two of your cycle or week three of your cycle because water fluctuation goes up and down based on your hormonal changes. Okay, so using stoicism for the scales, for the tape, any comment people make, this is where it comes into play and you have to apply it. You have to start applying it. I hope you can apply it today.
Speaker 1:If you can apply this today, it's not things that disturb me, it's my opinion about them. Can take some distance away from this fast reaction. You respond. It's my opinion. Okay?
Speaker 1:And your your main task today is to realize what's in your control and what's not. What's in your control is your voluntary actions Your attitude That's in your control My attitude today is under my control Everything else is not under my control I can influence how good my work is today by having a strong attitude and going out there, but it doesn't mean I'm gonna be able to achieve that, strictly speaking, is something that might happen or whatever. But let's have a good attitude. We're gonna get our steps in. We're gonna track the food we eat as well as we can because we know the tracking brings awareness for change.
Speaker 1:We're gonna try and eat more protein because, hey, we need to hold on to that muscle mass. We don't wanna lose muscle mass, and we wanna make sure most of the weight we lose is fat and not losing muscle. And we're gonna put a smile on our face because, hey, we're not in the seven year prisoner of war camp. Camp. Thank God.
Speaker 1:So you might you're gonna have some difficulties today. You're gonna feel some hunger levels. You're not gonna wanna go for all the steps today. It might rain. You might feel tired.
Speaker 1:You might not feel great all day. Your energy might be low, but hey, come on. Can you pull through and can you act from today, from now until bedtime in the way you want to, to be a person you're proud of? Because ultimately, that is the goal of ancient philosophy, especially stoicism. It's to develop your moral character because your integrity is the only thing you can control in a sense because no one can give you integrity.
Speaker 1:Only you can actually say, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna follow through. Okay? Like, no one can give it to you, it's something you have to do yourself and the more you do it, the more you actually start trusting yourself. So have a good day, bring some of this stoic lessons and energy into your day and I'll speak to you soon.