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Modern Self Help: The Good, The Bad (Episode 139)
814 Plays4 months ago
Michael and Caleb discuss the differences between modern self help and Stoicism – where self help is useful, where it isn’t, and recommend their favorite self help books.
(04:07) Defining Self Help
(11:31) Where Self Help Goes Wrong
(28:09) The Good in Self Help
(45:02) Best Self Help Books
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Transcript
The Role of Stoicism and Self-Help
00:00:00
Speaker
And also I think the practical one, you know is this the right way to apply stoicism or is stoicism helping me see what's most important in this situation? So I think we're trying to balance those things and self-help risks, a kind of shallowness, you know lack of conviction, a failure to fundamentally transform. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week we'll share two conversations, one between the two of us, and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Monteverros. And I'm Michael Trombley.
The Rise of Self-Help as Modern Philosophy
00:00:44
Speaker
And today we're going to be talking about modern self-help and how it's different from philosophy and then looking at some of the advantages or disadvantages of self-help and its ah application to life. Yeah, I wanted to talk about this because I think self-help is such a i mean Such an interesting genre and has a really interesting place in but contemporary society. Ancient philosophy it is not mainstream anymore. it's this is ah Obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you're interested in ancient philosophy and philosophy more in general. But it's I would not say stoicism is as popular
00:01:28
Speaker
or as well known as it would have been in Rome or ancient Greece. and Back then, ancient philosophy, it it had this important cultural niche, which it was about deep introspection into how to live and to how to be a better person. it's As we always talk about here, it was both about education, so theory and transformation, so that practice actually changing what you do and what you think. Today, I think self-help fills that niche. Self-help is what the non-philosopher, someone who who is not turning to either philosophy or religion, but that person does with what somebody looking for self-development and self and-improvement turns to. um And that's these are the authors, the thinkers, the writers who are sharing ideas about how to live, actually taking a stance. And if you know if you want your life to be better, do this instead of this.
00:02:18
Speaker
So it's almost this replacement of ancient philosophy or replacing that function.
Self-Help vs. Philosophy: Definitions and Differences
00:02:24
Speaker
Another thing though is that self-help has a bad reputation in some circles. like It's something that I know gets made fun of. um I always thought it was a bit strange to make fun of. I'm not the kind of person who who would um criticize somebody who is pursuing self-improvement. I always thought that was very admirable, but at the same time, there's possibly something to those criticisms and that there might be something that self-help gets wrong or something that self-help in its worst forms it distorts about self-improvement or maybe focuses on the wrong things.
00:02:55
Speaker
So I thought this would be an interesting topic for us to explore, self-help versus philosophy, how they're different, um what one does better than the other. And so today, talk a bit about that, the difference between self-help and philosophy, then what's bad about self-help or maybe some of its criticisms or things I think it does worse than philosophy, and then what's good about self-help or some of the things it does better than philosophy. I think it's an interesting question, it's an important question. And of course, I think it's connected to stoicism because a lot of people see stoicism as self-help. Sometimes it's explicitly marketed as a way to improve yourself, whereas others, I think, really push against that characterization and want to say, look,
00:03:41
Speaker
Of course, it has some of those practical aspects that self-help does, but it's a philosophy of life. It's more than self-help. And in the best sense, you know it's it's closer to a full worldview that you know guides one's actions in a real really fundamental way. And so, of course, there's I think there's that tension, and that tension gives rise to some of these questions. but well let's Let's jump into that. so I want to talk about what is self-help and how is it different than philosophy and that will draw some of that out because I think you're exactly right. Some people are happy to think of stoicism as self-help and some people are more resistant to it. and so i think Why is that the case? so i Like any good philosopher, I just sat down and thought about it. I came up with these two definitions for self-help.
00:04:30
Speaker
um So the first is one is a broad definition and one's a narrow definition. In the broad definition, I think that self-help is any kind of book or or medium that's aimed at self-directed improvement of oneself, focusing primarily on psychological development. So, um
Accessibility and Criticism of Self-Help
00:04:48
Speaker
you know, the Stoics might say something like character or virtue, Today we might say something like, you know, your psychology, your mental health, your work ethic, your attitude, your behavior. So focused on that psychological development. um It's self-directed. You don't have an instructor or coach. You're reading this material, engaging with it on your own pace, and developing yourself. So that's the broad definition. But by that definition, stoicism is self-help. Marcus's meditations was self-help when he was writing it, and it's self-help when we read it.
00:05:21
Speaker
Most philosophies, the ethical components of them, as long as they're aimed at actual transformation, actual development, those would be self-help. That's the broad definition. I think that's the most inclusive one. But then I think there's this also this narrow definition, which would be more relevant for our purposes, and that's a contemporary genre of media aimed at self-improvement. I typically think of this as starting with carnegie or Carnegie's you know How to Win Friends and Influence People. That's it from 1936. um
00:05:53
Speaker
and As a contemporary genre, I think of other famous ones like Atomic Habits, The Subtle Art of Not Giving, ah Fuck by Mark Manson, 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, ah The Secret by Rhonda Brine, The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. So we think of this this contemporary genre of self-improvement, and it's it's it's different from philosophy and it's different from um religion because it's not grounded in this historical context. It's a contemporary movement. It's a contemporary way of looking at self-development, which is, I would say, also these kinds of
00:06:38
Speaker
narrower scopes, narrower topics than philosophy or religion tackle. I would say that what a what a philosophy has is a philosophy is typically embedded in a larger system, even an ethical philosophy. So you look at something like stoicism, it has ah yeah it talks about ethics, but it also talks about ah logic, metaphysics, physics, the nature of the world, political philosophy. It's a broader system about understanding the entirety of the world of which ethics is a piece. I would say religion does the same thing and then self-help carves out a piece of self-improvement and I would say focuses exclusively on that. So something like Atomic Habits is a good example. We're going to focus just on habit development and that's a relatively
00:07:28
Speaker
Modern phenomenon I'm sure examples like that existed in ancient time as well, but it's it's it's a it's a um Modern phenomenon in terms of its popularity. Yeah, I think that's a fine definition. I suppose that No, we're gonna be talking using the narrow definition talking about contemporary self help um and what distinguishes that from something like a stoicism, Buddhism, is those philosophies are about improving the whole self or, you know, about how how you ought to live in a fundamental sense. Whereas many of these self-help books, they take, as you said, a narrower slice on a given area of life, whether it's relationships, habits, feeling better, becoming richer, what have you and say, you know, this is how you can help yourself achieve those goals.
00:08:24
Speaker
And
Philosophy's Depth vs. Self-Help's Flexibility
00:08:26
Speaker
they're more liberal in the sense that I think they're less opinionated when it comes to someone's worldview. You know, you could read atomic habits and be a Christian, a Confucian, an atheist, what have you, and you don't need to sign on to any deeper picture about you know the nature of yourself or the world. Which, of course, if you're interacting with stoic works as well, you don't necessarily need to do that. There's plenty of practical wisdom, but there's not that any sense of a ah framework ah or any sense of a life philosophy behind some of these self-help type works. Though perhaps there are some exceptions, you know, some, yeah Jordan Peterson's work is maybe a little bit in between where, you know, he does have some philosophical views rooted in young Christianity and so on, ah that in 12 Rules for Life are not at the forefront, but are
00:09:21
Speaker
don't exactly fit into um into the yeah to the definition, as as we stated. It's almost like ah ah gateway a drug, if you will, to his philosophy. It comes in without those presuppositions, but if you learn dive more into his thinking, then slide into his harder stuff. and Perhaps some modern Stoic works take the same strategy, you know making things broadly appealing and then explaining more and more, detailing more and more about the practice. And ah you find out suddenly, oh, i I've become a Stoic through allt all this ah interaction with Stoic thought.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. um but i think that I think that is like the the broad like the difference between self-help and philosophy at its core is that kind of systematic commitment, which is to say, if you're doing philosophy, you're committing to a broader system. These systems will conflict with one another. So you can't be a Buddhist and a skeptic. You can't be um You can't be a stoic and an Aristotelian. these systems conflictly You can't be a utilitarian and a deontologist. They have deep commitments about the way the world is that conflict with one another. Even though they they direct your life and they tell you how to live, ah they have these deep systemic commitments. Whereas the
00:10:36
Speaker
The word that keeps coming to mind is piecemeal. I don't know if that's the right word, but it's like the, as you said, the kind of the self help carves off a specific topic and it doesn't require those commitments. So it's kind of easier to get down. And I think, as you said, the, the best part about the best parts of stoicism. is that, you know, something like the dichotomy of control, that's something that is almost self-helpy, right? And that it's something that you can almost incorporate into any worldview. What other people have called kind of shallow stoicism is maybe the self-help version of stoicism, something that you can incorporat incorporate into any worldview. And then when you get into a deeper stoic view, you know, like the the idea that virtue is the only good.
00:11:11
Speaker
These these that is something that you know is not reconcilable with ah other ways of living um And so that's the kind of deeper system commitment and so I wanted to talk about so that's a descriptive account But like okay, what does self-help do better than ancient philosophy? And what does it do worse than ancient philosophy is there? You know should you be careful with self-help or is it okay to? um You know really love these books and really really enjoy them um So I'm gonna start off with what self-help does worse than ancient philosophy in my opinion obviously ah in broad strokes here first I think that self-help does not always have a strong focus on practice um In that and I might say practice. I mean deep transformative practice
00:11:57
Speaker
I think self-help risks giving people the false impression that they're learning something um and then the sense that they're that they're improving when really they're just maybe gathering a set of concepts or gathering a set of ideas but not actually putting in the work for transformation. And i so I think about this quote from Epictetus all the time. I think about it in terms of stoicism. This is not a criticism that just comes against self-help. I think self-help is just particularly vulnerable to it. But this is Epictetus. Here, he's criticizing other stoics. And he says, so this discourse is 1.4. And he says, suppose I should say to a wrestler, show me your muscle. And he should answer to me, show see my dumbbells. Your dumbbells are your own affair. I want to see the effect of them.
00:12:44
Speaker
ah Take the treaties on choice and see how thoroughly I have pursued it or perused it. I'm not asking about this, O Slave, but how you act in choosing and refusing, how you manage your desires and aversions, your intentions and purposes, how you meet events, whether you're in harmony with nature's laws or opposed to them. If in harmony, give me evidence of that and I will say you're progressing. If the contrary, you may go your own way and not only comment on your books, but write some like them for yourself. And what good will it do? So this idea, I mean, to to break that down simple, it's that it's this classic idea of, um, abictetus wants to see your muscles and you show them your weights. And when when we're stoics and we're interested in transformation, we want to see the things that we can do. We want to see the progress that we've had. We don't want to see or put on a pedestal the tools of those progress, of that progress.
00:13:35
Speaker
And that's the example of the treatise on choice. That's a student saying, look, I've read some Chrysippus. I've really memorized it. And he's like, I don't care. Show me whether or not you have desires for the right or wrong kinds of things. And basically, I think that self-help, you run into that risk. you know that That's the stereotype of somebody having a shelf full of self-improvement books, but not really having improved all that much. And I think that's because self-help can be almost trivial in a sense. And I don't mean trivial in terms of not being relevant, but ah yeah, just shallow surface level. And it's the, it's that first step before the hard work, but it doesn't actually require the hard work or involve that commitment to the hard work. Not always. It's almost like a starting point. And so it runs that risk.
00:14:21
Speaker
Well, it's always easy to consume and feel like one is doing work to improve oneself in some way when it comes to self-help. I think that's probably true. And there's also that risk when you're engaging with stoic content or the stoic works as well. So I suppose that that's one thought, but I think sort the deeper or the challenge you're getting at by saying that there's not that strong focus on practice from self-help is highlighting that for ancient philosophers, philosophy involved what Pierre Hadeau called a conversion, and he's talking about
00:15:04
Speaker
becoming a different person when you practice it, and not practice in the sense of you know ordinary pra practical daily action, but that action that's grounded in ah fundamental character change. And that's, um I think that's a significant challenge to self help in a way where if you're coming to it to solve particular problems, perhaps what's needed are questions around so some more fundamental aspects of, you know, whatever you're facing. And that's what philosophy pushes you, pushes you to question. It's not ah always easy, you know, sometimes practicing philosophy, it's like going to the hospital, as Epictetus says, it doesn't always feel good.
00:15:49
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking of that exact metaphor. I mean i have one from a quote from Seneca here. It's letter It's letters on ethics. Consider too that the mind prefers to amuse itself rather than restore its health, making philosophy into entertainment when it's really a cure. um the you know The same kind of metaphor. We don't want to take our medicine.
Challenges of Self-Help Without Philosophical Context
00:16:10
Speaker
but We'd rather go to a ah movie and think about interesting ideas than do the tough part. I think that's i think that's it. we we we especially when you're selling a book, you're selling a product, there's a tendency to try to make it as ah palatable and pleasant as possible, um which is not always what people need. I think of this metaphor we use in Brazilian jitsu coaching or not really a metaphor, just a description, which is that you need a coach to help you do the things you wouldn't to do on your own, right? If you do it on your own, you wouldn't need a coach.
00:16:47
Speaker
So often the times the goal of the coach is to make you do things that make you quite uncomfortable. And so I guess there's two different levels there. I'm talking about this as kind of and being uncomfortable and finding things difficult and being pushed, which self help always doesn't doesn't always do. And then the point you were raising too was about, you know, sometimes if you just float around on that shallow level, you're not actually going to see the results you want when the results need to start from a more deep transformation. That was another point um you were making, which I think is a good one, which is sometimes missed. You know, if you're talking about the nature of habits, for example, you're sometimes missing that deep um that deep transformative aspect. Absolutely. Yeah, that's all put. um the other The other thing, at ill there's also the fact that systems are are reinforcing.
00:17:40
Speaker
So the Stoics talk about Stoic philosophy as a complex system that when you become a good person, everything kind of locks into place. There's no longer any sort of temptation or ignorance or issue that can kind of knock down what you've built. you they They use this metaphor of kind of solidification. Right? So it's you know the virtuous person, the person who's just almost virtuous, they've got everything, but they're not considered a good person until that solidifies, until it locks into place and your quality of character gains that rigidity. And what provides that rigidity in Stoicism is the idea is this mutual interconnectedness of all the arguments, whether you agree with them or not, the Stoics thought they did. And what that means is that, you know, you can ask a Stoic any sort of why question,
00:18:31
Speaker
And there's an answer to that, right? Well, you know ah you should focus on the things you can control and the things you shouldn't control. ours And don't focus on the things you shouldn't control. Why? Well, because the things that you control are your character. They're the things that are up to you. And they're the things that matter. Why are those things that matter? Well, you have some sort of teleological argument. Everything kind of is is reinforcing there. And so what you risk with shallow stoicism is not just, or or any such thing learned shallowly, is not just that you don't know as much of it. It's not just if you just learned the dichotomy of control, you only have one-tenth the value of stoicism or the one-fiftieth the value of stoicism. It's that you can't actually make use of it properly.
00:19:12
Speaker
without the deeper parts that reinforce it and hold it in place, when push comes to shove and a real crisis occurs, you're going to give up the dichotomy of control. And I think that real risk occurs with self-help as well, which is to say, if if you're not learning it as part of a deeper system, It's fine and good when things are going well, um but when push comes to shove, you're likely to give up what you've learned. um You're likely to question it or not really understand why it's worth the commitment unless it's, unless it fits into this kind of broader belief system and commitment base. All that's to say that just, it's, it's, it's not going to connect that same idea of deep transformation. That's what you're lacking. That's part of the reason why it's lacking that deep transformation aspect.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess the thought is that often what you'll find in self-help is a system of rules or heuristics, you rules of thumb. And those can be useful until they're not, until they break. And then there's that question, yeah how you decide between different rules of thumb. Maybe you've got some other resources to help you do that. But in the case of at least some self-help, you're just falling down to your own personal ethics might be something that many self-help type books say. They'll just encourage you to live according to your values or something like that, which is important. But there's that always that question, you what are your ethics grounded in? What's ultimately
00:20:49
Speaker
determine your decisions. And here we're talking about ethics in the in the broad sort of ancient sense about ah you know guiding who one should be, not merely how you treat other people, but you know really that art of good decision making. And you know Stoics, I can add some details to that. Some of these other life philosophies we've mentioned can add some detail to that. But there's there's a perb but I think if one spends too much time in self-help, he might have less of an ability to make good decisions when certain heuristics aren't working or maybe not realize that ah certain heuristics aren't aren't working. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it just gives you, I think that's right. It gives you a set of skills for a certain set of contexts and not a way to kind of improvise when those heuristics aren't working. Another thing is just that that i mean it's a pretty common criticism. And I think a lot of these, now that I'm talking to them more, just come down to that idea of deep transformation, which is to say,
00:21:46
Speaker
you know if if you are If you're set in the but wrong direction, you don't have your life on the in the right track and you you get good at habits, for example, habit formation. That's important, but now you know that's not necessarily going to correct the larger issues and it might actually magnify or provide feedback into problems you have. right If you have you know an unhealthy relationship with work and then you get really good at forming habits to make you work harder, you know you're not exactly... You're more adding fuel to the fire than you're solving the problem. And so that problem, I think, needs to be kind of foundational.
Ancient Philosophy vs. Modern Self-Help
00:22:20
Speaker
and Obviously, it can come both directions. You can you can start with the habits that to to do foundational transformation, but I think it has to come down to foundational transformation at some point. And Caleb here, you have some other you have some other things you wrote about how what ancient philosophy does better than self-help.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, so some other ways that I wrote down in which ancient philosophy is better is that often self-help is not connected to a training program and it doesn't have a sense of levels to it. And we've mentioned a few different works like Atomic Habits, I don't think has this problem, but I think some works, especially ones that might simplify other therapies or something of this sort, sometimes run the risk of not communicating that there are
00:23:21
Speaker
levels to practice and evaluating you know where you're at. can be really useful. And yeah if you go back to that sports analogy, martial arts analogy, you might teach a technique in some way if someone's at a beginner level, teach in another way if they're at an advanced level, and most importantly, have a training program that guides people along those levels. And at their best, that's something the ancient philosophies have, whereas many self-help
00:23:54
Speaker
type books of the therapeutic nature of the entrepreneurial nature don't really have that or they're promising you know that black belt level, that pro level to people who are white belts, amateurs too fast without giving the training program the support ah that people need. Yeah, this is a good point. um it's it's it's It is advertised for beginners, often advertised for beginners, and because it's not like a not like a sports that you can practice for years, it's not like ah you know a university curriculum where you come back and you have 101, 201, 301, it's you trying to contain the entire topic.
00:24:39
Speaker
it It gives the impression of retraing reaching the end of the topic, but it has, by its nature, just had to do it in the way that it's the most accessible to beginners, which is not the end of the topic, typically. Yeah, yeah I think so. and it But and often, sometimes it does promise that that end ah too, too fast, I think. So that's one concern. I think another concern with some self-help is that It's just not good advice sometimes. So if you think about a lot, of I think a lot of entrepreneurial type self-help is almost too meta. You know, they'll teach you how to be rich and the author is rich. They are wealthy, but they become wealthy by teaching other people how to be wealthy. And it's sort of this meta train, which is I think somewhat strange. You know, is that the, and do you expect the person
00:25:37
Speaker
with that kind of profile to give the best entrepreneurial advice. I'm not so sure. So that's you know that's one kind of example. We mentioned the secret earlier. Many people pillory the secret because they find it ah not useful, just the kind of just a kind of woo. Whereas some of these other ancient ah philosophies, especially as we as we updated them for the modern age or sort of integrated some of the learnings from modern psychology and so on, ah have so withstood the test of time. Yeah, Nassim Taleb has this idea that the longer something has been around and is still read or engaged with, the more likely it is to be around in the future.
00:26:26
Speaker
which is to say that any book that it came out five years ago and is still read is less likely to be still read in 100 years or in five years than the Stoics. It's just that it's a way of saying that the things that have Things that we still engage with have stood the test of time, which is to say there was a lot of bad philosophy coming out in ancient Greece. There was a lot of silly schools and thinkers and bad writers. And we have Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca and these people because they were the very best and their thinking has proven useful over generations. So it's almost this, you know, I talked about the start of self-help.
00:27:06
Speaker
It could be earlier than this, but at least um how to um how to win friends and influence people in the 1930s. And it's like you're almost more likely to find something of value from older books like that that are still talked about, whereas then going to your local store and and seeing the the modern bookshelf where some of these might just be bad, right some of these might just be forgotten, where you're not going to run that risk. If you read ah if you read a 2,000-year-old philosopher that somebody still talks about, you might not agree. You might not even enjoy it, but there's going to be something important in that and something worth learning about. Yeah, they're Lindy as Nassim Taleb says. And he talks about a restaurant called Lindy or something like this that he's confident will continue to exist because it's already existed for decades as opposed to some other fancy looking restaurant that opened up across the street.
00:28:01
Speaker
And I think i'm how to win How to Win Friends and Influence People is a good example of that because that's a yeah a solid book that's lasted for a long time. Cool. Let's switch gears. That fell that felt negative. I felt bad for... Yeah, yeah. That was some good stuff. Yeah, let's talk about what we can take from self-help. Yeah, not only what can you take from me, but what I actually think it does better than philosophy. um The first thing I think self-help does better than philosophy is just that it's success accessible. There's this really kind of stereotypical self-help writing that I've noticed now, which is like anecdote, idea, maybe closing anecdote.
00:28:42
Speaker
And it started, it it gets on my nerves sometime when I open up a book and I go, well, here's a story. And every single time the chapter starts off with a story. But the reason, the reason it's done like that is because it works. It's accessible. It helps um give an emotional connection to abstract ideas and it helps, um, the really kind of like case studies, right? It helps break down these abstract ideas and that writing style works. it It's successful because it it hooks people. And if you hook people, um, you know you're going to help people, you're going to reach people. I remember myself, when I first was deciding if I wanted to switch into philosophy, I i said i wouldn't couldnt necessarily call it a self-help book, but I read a popular philosophy book. And it was really, really helpful for me to to think, well, this is something that I really enjoy and think is really interesting. It'd be worth digging into that deeper level. It'd be worth digging into that transformative level.
00:29:39
Speaker
but you've got to kind of be cautious about your time and you've got to be cautious about where you spend your energy and so accessibility is a good thing to hook people and prove that these ideas are worth their time and I think it just does it just just almost always does that better than philosophy. I think maybe stoicism is the exception and I think stoicism is quite famous because it is a good hook because there is an appeal, an immediate appeal to sitting down and reading Marcus Aurelius, but you don't get that sitting down and reading Aristotle.
Ryan Holiday and Stoicism's Accessibility
00:30:08
Speaker
You don't get that in the same way reading most of Plato, I would say. And so that accessibility is just it's just going to help people because it's going to be read.
00:30:18
Speaker
And it's better, even if self-help is worse than philosophy, in my opinion, for self-transformation, better you read something that's an 8 out of 10 than not read something that's a 10 out of 10. And that's that's just that's great. I think that if that that genre has really nailed how to get people thinking about self-improvement. I'm thinking about some of these examples, whether it's James Clear or Malcolm Gladwell, about what clear ah writing looks like, how to express ah complex complex ideas ah well in a clear manner. I think, at its best, it does that well, perhaps better than philosophy. and then
00:30:59
Speaker
Going back to that training program point, I think sometimes people stumble across a book like The Meditations because that's something that Marcus Aurelius wrote it to himself as an advanced practitioner at stoicism so even though of Stoicism, so even though there are lines that many people ah that anyone can take away and many people regardless of their experience with stoicism can be influenced in a positive direction by that book. Others encounter meditations, find it confusing. you know They don't don't get a good sense so of what it is. Yeah, it's a good way. and and As we're talking about this, I'm thinking you know i'm thinking about somebody like Ryan Holliday and his writing
00:31:42
Speaker
I'm trying to see it think if if these ideas can apply and I almost think that Ryan Holiday is like the self-help of stoicism and maybe that's a bit i just think like and so he's accessible, does a great job of communicating these ideas simply with clear writing. gets it um mostly right, at least like most of it quite quite accurate, but then lacks a kind of systematic approach or lacks sometimes references to other parts of the theory. And that's why you get kind of criticism from a philosophy perspective. But in terms of a self-help perspective, it's doing quite good self-help, even if it's not necessarily doing philosophy.
00:32:22
Speaker
ah He sometimes gets criticism from more philosophically inclined people because it's not philosophy, even though it's talking about philosophy, it's just quite good self-help grounded in philosophy, but not philosophy itself. that sound Does that sound right to you? Yeah, I would think of his work as the closest thing we have to stoic self-help. That makes sense to me. i think it also um so Something he's really good at is telling stories in a way that's grounded in history, at least you know popular versions of history, history as moral stories, you know that sort of following the tradition of Plutarch or other ancient biographers.
00:33:08
Speaker
And you can see that sometimes even when he'll talk to on his podcast, he'll talk to academics and it's clear that he has a better sense of Marcus's own life than someone at a prestigious Ivy school, which I think is cool and nothing to nothing to sneeze at. And it's because of his interest in telling stories well that he also i think understands you know the lives of many of these ah stoic figures. And but we talked about in our conversation, I think on on the obstacle is the way or maybe a later book. We did the lives of stoics. Oh, the lives of stoics. Yeah. I think we talked a little bit about how his career started more as the, you know, you have that obstacle is the way type book, which it takes a single stoic idea and not a particularly
00:34:06
Speaker
It's a powerful one, but not one that I would say is philosophically foundational and applies it in a self-help way. And that can sort of serve as a gateway to deeper Stoic ideas, which we now see him writing on writing on the Stoic virtues. So I think you can see that development in his career as well, which which is cool.
Balancing Philosophy and Self-Help
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah, and well, I mean, yeah so you mentioned it as a gateway to these other ideas, and that's the other thing I wanted to say that I think Self Help does better than philosophy, is it acts as a gateway. I think of maybe this buffet metaphor, which is to say, if you go to a buffet, it's if you know you want a steak, or I don't know, you know you want good seafood, a buffet is not the place to get it. But if you don't know what you want, then maybe one of those Vegas worldwide buffets is the place, oh, wow, turns out I actually kind of like seafood. Oh, wow, this was an interesting,
00:35:01
Speaker
dish, maybe I'll go to a nicer Chinese restaurant next time and and dig into it. So it lets you dip your toes in lots of different ways of thinking because I think a downside to philosophy is hi insec being doctrinal, incentivizes getting into camps. you Even myself, I'm in the stoic camp and maybe I break out of that by looking at other ancient philosophers or other philosophies as a way of life. But it takes a long time to understand the system. And so you really kind of double down in one of these systems. Academic philosophy is the same way because you you have to specialize in something. So you become, well, i'm ah um I study Nietzsche or I study Kierkegaard. And so it incentivizes doubling down.
00:35:44
Speaker
But there's not really any kind of sense of camps or teams or sides in a self-help world. Everybody is almost kind of agnostic and they're saying, well, I'm going to take a little bit from this. I'm going to take a little bit from that. And it's almost this ideal and ah in a way um where you're open to the best ideas of all the different systems. And I guess the ideal is you would make your own kind of system. And I think there's something pretty beautiful about that. You know, there's there's nothing There's nothing weird about taking some ideas from Malcolm Gladwell um and then taking some ideas from James Clear and putting them together. This would be and encouraged and normalized in the self-help space where I know there's... you know if If you were to take some ideas from Stoicism and combine them with some ideas from Buddhism, people people might do this, um but it would be
00:36:33
Speaker
It would be counterintuitive to a philosophical approach for the same reason we were talking about before, which is that stoicism is supposed to link in. It's supposed to be a mutually agreeable system or mutually reinforcing system. So if you start adding something for Buddhism, you're breaking apart the system, whereas self-help doesn't really have that issue. And that's that's that's kind of nice, especially nice if we're being humble, which is to say, maybe we don't really know which system is the right one to commit to. Maybe we don't really know which side is the right side to pick. So I'm going to stay at that buffet. I'm going to stay with that sampler plate of all these different great ideas. And that's not necessarily a bad place to be. Yeah, I think you know we're all trying to balance our uncertainty with genuine conviction in life philosophy. I think when you know once you get interested in something like Stoicism, Buddhism, maybe even Existentialism, then
00:37:25
Speaker
you You recognize that there are some advantages, as we're talking about in the beginning section, to these foundational worldviews. But yeah know we're all human, we don't know to you know. There is always that specter of skepticism, of uncertainty. both, I think, at the foundational level, you know is is this part of stoicism really correct? And also, I think the practical one, you know is this the right way to apply stoicism or is stoicism helping me see what's most important in this situation? So I think we're trying to balance those things. And if self-help risks a kind of shallowness, you know lack of conviction, a failure to fundamentally transform, on the other side you have
00:38:13
Speaker
ah philosophy that can risk a kind of dogmatism, rigidity, or maybe even just a distraction on these issues of identity. You find yourself in a defensive posture when something comes up instead of recognizing what's important ah in a given situation. Yeah, I think that's bang on. and That could be if ah you know that can just be a good thing, or at least we could use a bit more. you know Maybe the ideal is somebody who who has a philosophical system, they follow. but the idea By the ideal, I'm just about to describe myself.
00:38:48
Speaker
so um You have a philosophical system you who follow while also being open to find accessible exposure to new ideas through so through engaging in self-help books or um just kind of keeping an open mind to to other books in that area. I mean, that that and that connects to the last thing I was going to say is just something that self-help does well. It's just fun. It's fun to read. It's motivational. It connects at an emotional level through the stories you you were just mentioning. Ryan Holiday does a good job of this.
00:39:20
Speaker
and that's that's good for I do not think that's good for sustained long-term transformation. But it's a good way to start a journey. It's a good way to start a change. And the same way you said you teach a move one way to a beginner and you teach a move one way to an advanced person. I think one of the main differences there with a beginner, someone who teaches beginner jitsu classes, try to make things fun. And you worry a bit less if ah you worry a bit less if things are right than if people will keep coming back and people will keep find the idea interesting. There's a quote by an ancient thinker. I think i can't remember exactly who it was, but it said that you know education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire. And I think about that line a lot. And I think self-help does a good job of lighting some fires.
00:40:15
Speaker
and um you know if you eat and One thing that came out in this conversation, Caleb, that I think was interesting is this difference between heuristic and so and a system. If you think of philosophy as a system and self-help as like a set of kind of shallow heuristics, if you come into self-help knowing it's a set of shallow heuristics, or can be at least, risks being that, um And you meet up for where it is and it inspires you to say well It's actually I want to I want to get to know the system behind that Then that's just a total net positive or if you take it It's just a set of heuristics and you understand that's all it is then I also think that's a positive I think the only risk now is actually is a false identification which you mentioned earlier which is to say something promises a system something promises mastery and what it's given you is a set of heuristics some book says you know
00:41:04
Speaker
you're going to learn all you need to know about stoicism from reading this one book and what it's giving you is a set of anecdotes, or right? And that's not the same thing. But um either inspiring you to go deeper or meeting it by what it is, it has a lot of value. Yeah, I think that's a good point. You can also treat it as reminding yourself of what's what's important. I think um even if it's ah a topic you're familiar about, self-help can play that role of you know you're listening to a given book, reading a given book about you know improving how you interact with other people and improving your self-control, whatever it is.
00:41:44
Speaker
that at least is one way to keep that topic front of front of mind. Of course, there are always a different questions about strategy, timing, context that matters. um But I think that's a really good thats point that it has this motivational force that also the the ancient Stoics do. I think in a way, you're almost looking for what's that message that given your level provides the right level of detail and motivational force.
00:42:15
Speaker
Cool. Anything else that about things you like about the self-help genre? Yeah. Well, I think sometimes self-help can be too vague, um too abstract. I think the 12 rules for life sometimes has this. At least some people come away with lessons that are too abstract and don't apply to their ordinary life. But I think at its best, ah it can be specific in a way that is useful for specific areas you want to ah work on, whether that's developing habits by James Clear, or if you think about your working style, you with books like Deep Work by Kel Newport, or Learning Books so by Scott Young on Ultra Learning or How to Get Better at Anything. If those are areas you're focused on,
00:43:09
Speaker
those kinds of books, you know, i high quality books about becoming more productive, becoming better, at your relationships have a kind of specificity that um abstract philosophy does not always have, won't always give you. And sometimes you just need that instruction manual ah instead of more free-form guidance. I think any any life has has a mix of those, right? That mix of explicit instruction um as opposed to more abstract prompts. And one advantage of self-help is many works of self-help, I should say, not all ah do give you that more specific ah guidance.
00:43:57
Speaker
I feel like sometimes stoicism does that, but it's too dated now. you know It's all like, don't cut your beard or like what what roles to have in a marriage from 2,000-year-old Roman, Missonius Rufus or something. um I think stoicism sometimes gives that specificity, but it's not really helpful for us now. But yeah, absolutely. if you if you you know I almost need like a term for this. There's that kind of system of beliefs, that foundational belief system. And if that foundational belief system says, Hey, I want to learn how to get better at like deep work. I want to learn how to get better at habit formation. Then that day. Yeah. Then you can kind of plug in place these, these books as ways of kick-starting or pushing that development.
00:44:41
Speaker
And that's absolutely
Personal Experiences and Recommended Reads
00:44:42
Speaker
right. And there's nothing that's that's a huge benefit in a way that you so reading the Stoics isn't going to teach you. ah and really Any philosopher isn't going to teach you. I agree with that 100%. We should talk wrap up with some self-help that we found useful in our own lives then, I think. So in terms of self-help that we both like, I was thinking about the the books that have impacted me and I think The reason they've impacted me is the stuff that we've talked about over this conversation is I think they've, looking back on these books, so I would say Antifragile by Nassim Taleb and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl are probably the two self-help books that have had the largest impact on me. And when I think about those books, I think about them as containing not
00:45:35
Speaker
deep transformations of who I am as a person, but one, two, three or more really, really true helpful heuristics well explained. So the idea of anti-fragility, we did an episode on this, the the goal of becoming stronger in the face of adversity, that is a helpful heuristic well explained that I feel like I'm able to apply. In terms of Man's Search for Meaning, famous book about the importance of meaning over pleasure and the value that, um you know, the things that you're able to put up with and essentially do if you have a sense of meaning, and the the amount of pain and suffering you can go through if you have that. um I think that's another help facet of the world that I call to mind. And so those books are really influential to me I think because
00:46:27
Speaker
Again, it's like tools in the tool belt, right? And Stoicism, to me, is so much deeper than that, so much more than that, but it's so nice to have these tools, if they're really good tools, either either from other systems or other ways of thinking about the world. And so those are two books that have been really influential to me. Yeah, it's interesting that the two of those are, if you think about philosophy and narrow self-help on a continuum, I think they're closer to the middle in a way, where they both, I think both Nassim Talev and Viktor Frankl have philosophies guideing guiding their thought.
00:47:07
Speaker
and What about you? Some books I want to mention are, we've already mentioned this a handful of times, but I think how to win friends and influence people is a good example of self-help that's lasted the test of time, and also specific advice for you know how to be better at relationships. Nearly all of the heuristics in that book are good ones. There's another book called The Inner Game by Timothy Galway, which is about sports, but I think can apply to learning and performance broadly that I found really useful and is is something I think about quite often. On the entrepreneurial side, I want to mention the book Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters. I think
00:47:54
Speaker
There are also like other, um I think other good self-help books. There's a case to be made that there's a ah deeper philosophy driving that book that is worth thinking through, worth wrestling with. And then a Oddball recommendation perhaps is the book, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, which is modeled as letters between two demons attempting to knock a like former Christian off the path off the path of being a good person.
00:48:37
Speaker
um so of course it's a christian books written by c.s. louis after all but i think it personalizes certain forms of vice in a way that can be useful and c.s. louis was a very adept psychologist i think good at recognizing types of people and ways people go astray. So that can be a useful book to, I think, think through, even if you're even if you're not a Christian, of course, and provide, you know, maybe different ideas, models, tactics, and also challenges to some problems you might be facing.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard good things about the Screwtape letters. I haven't read it, um but maybe that'll be next on my list. I'll add it to the to do the to read pile. Nice. Awesome. Well, if you have any other books do you think in the self-help category that we haven't mentioned, they'd be good ones. If you have other recommendations for us, do let us know at our email. Yeah, we can do a ah book review too. Yeah, totally, totally. Awesome. Thanks, Gil. All right. Thanks, Michael. Thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the app store or play store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more
00:50:08
Speaker
Stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyre.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.