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Stoicism, Coaching, and Leadership
4 Plays1 month ago
Erick Cloward. is an executive coach, based in Amsterdam, who helps leaders build more resilient teams and make better decisions. He is a former tech CTO and software developer. Erick started the Stoic Coffee Break podcast in 2018, to provide people with practical advice on applying Stoicism to their lives –- it now has more than 9 million downloads. He has his first book coming out on 4th February, from Adams Media, titled Stoicism 101: From Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus to the Role of Reason and Amor Fati, an Essential Primer on Stoic Philosophy.
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Transcript
Introduction to Eric Claude
00:00:01
Donald Robertson
Hello, and welcome to Stoicism, Philosophy is a Way of Life. My name is Donald Robertson, and today's guest is Eric Claude. Eric is an executive coach based in Amsterdam who helps leaders build more resilient teams and make better decisions. He is a former tech CTO and software developer.
Success of Stoic Coffee Break Podcast
00:00:18
Donald Robertson
Eric started the Stoic Coffee Break podcast in 2018 to provide people with practical advice in applying Stoicism to their lives. It now has more than 9 million downloads.
00:00:29
Donald Robertson
He has his first book coming out on the 4th of February from Adam's Media titled Stoicism 101 From Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus to the Role of Reason and Amor Fati, an Essential Primer on Stoic Philosophy. That's in my top 10 longest titles of books on stoicism. I've got one that's got quite a long title as well, so you're in good company.
00:00:54
Erick
Nice. Yeah. i I didn't come up with the subtitle. they ah That was the publisher. like
Eric's Journey to Stoicism
00:01:00
Erick
I got the book and then saw the subtitle and i went, oh, OK.
00:01:00
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:01:04
Erick
I guess that's the subtitle on the book.
00:01:08
Donald Robertson
Well, I wanted to ask, I usually ask people um how they first became interested in this subject to a little bit of background. Like, how did you get into stuff? So let's go back a bit in time before the book.
00:01:19
Erick
Yes.
00:01:20
Donald Robertson
Like, how does it or how did it all begin?
00:01:21
Erick
Yeah, before the book.
00:01:24
Erick
So throughout my life, I've always been kind of what somebody once called a seeker, meaning I always was interested in psychology, um habits, i just human potential in that. But I always felt like I was kind of under living my potential for a long time. And Any time that I heard philosophy when I was in high school or college, I thought, oh, that's too, that's too out of my league. I'm not smart enough for that. Even though I, I was a pretty good student. I was actually pretty smart, but my own self confidence in understanding the higher concepts didn't seem like it would, it would fit. And, uh, so like I had a so ah philosophy one-on-one class when I was in college and I barely remember anything from it. I mean, honestly, I, even though I thought it was, inch I remember thinking it was interesting. I remember my teacher.
00:02:13
Erick
but I barely remember it. And so about nine years ago, I was listening to one of Tim Ferriss's podcasts, and he mentioned William Irvine's book, ah the art of yeah The Guide to the Good Life, The Art of Stoic Joy. And he said, this book changed my life. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. I mean, I know Tim reads a lot, but that book changing his life. Okay, and and I love the paradox of stoic joy because I didn't know stoicism was a philosophy.
00:02:43
Erick
I had only knew the term stoic. And so I was like, stoic joy, that's that's interesting. So I got the book, read through it, got a few things from it, but it didn't it didn't quite click.
00:02:55
Erick
And I thought, you know what, I should have gotten more out of this.
00:02:57
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm.
00:02:58
Erick
And so I got the audio book and I would listen to it on the way to and from work. And on the second listen, I had so many of those light bulb moments of like, oh, okay, that makes sense.
00:03:06
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:03:09
Erick
I never thought of, I never thought of that or i never and you I never had that kind of perspective on how we think about emotions and how emotions are created.
Podcast Milestones and Growth
00:03:20
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm.
00:03:20
Erick
And it just, it honestly, it truly did change my life. um Then later that year I picked up Ryan Holiday's i hi journal, Daily Journal, I think, um right around the new year of 2018.
00:03:37
Erick
after reading the book and then reading a little bit on on stoicism. So I picked that one up and started journaling on that. And one of my New Year's resolutions was to start a podcast.
00:03:49
Erick
So I tried making a podcast or two in the past. I wanted to do one on soundtracks because I also like writing music and I love film scores. And so I kind of wanted to do like, here's this new film score and let's talk about the music and why it's so important.
00:03:49
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:04:04
Erick
But never really got that launched because I was so hypercritical. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to start a podcast this year. What's my podcast going to be on? And at the time stoicism was just really on my mind because of Ryan's journal and because of the reading I was doing.
00:04:20
Erick
And so on January 4th of 2018, I did my first episode. I used Anchor, which was an app that you can just record it right on your phone. And even though as a musician, the listening to my voice and editing it felt so overwhelming and created so much anxiety that I didn't and want to use my actual expensive equipment, even though I had thousands of dollars of audio equipment.
00:04:45
Erick
and Yeah, so I just talked about what I was learning just every day. And my ex-partner made me make a promise that I would do at least 100 episodes before I quit because she's like, when things get hard, you tend to quit on things. So you have to make that promise to me.
00:05:01
Erick
So I did 137 days in a row. So I did one every single day and they were fairly short.
00:05:06
Donald Robertson
well
00:05:07
Erick
And then after 137 days, it it had gotten to the point where they were probably about between five and eight minutes long and I was making notes and I was kind of sketching out episodes. Um, I decided to turn it into a weekly one so I could really dig into it.
Simplifying Stoic Concepts
00:05:21
Erick
And also so like I could have my evenings back because I was spending a lot of time on the podcast. And yeah, and it just kind of took off from there. I remember when I hit 5,000 downloads, I was like, holy crap, people are actually listening to what I have to say.
00:05:36
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:05:36
Erick
This is, this is wild.
00:05:39
Donald Robertson
Through a party. And now you're at brilliance.
00:05:42
Erick
Yeah, it was, it was pretty wild. Then I hit 10,000 and then pretty soon I reached the point where I hit 100,000 and, um, It was just something that I had never expected. I thought, I'll just create this and it'll be a practice for when I want to make my real podcast, I'll know how to do it. And then this became my real podcast.
00:06:04
Donald Robertson
So what do you think is the secret of your success in terms of like the... Because that's ah that's a lot of downloads. There are loads of stoicism podcasts out there, um but not many that the reach that many people.
Misconceptions about Stoicism
00:06:17
Donald Robertson
What do you think it was about the episodes that helped them to reach such a big audience?
00:06:24
Erick
I think that over time I kind of developed a fairly strong voice on being able to clarify stoic principles in a way that people understood.
00:06:29
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:06:34
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:06:35
Erick
So I worked in tech for 25 years. And one of the things I was really good at was taking the technical things and explaining them to non-technical people.
00:06:46
Erick
And oftentimes I would be at trade shows, you know, demoing our software, talking about it. And then I'd hand people my card and they would look at it and be like, wait, you're the CTO, you're the tech guy, but but I thought you were on the sales team because you're you're so conversational and you yeah actually can explain these things in a way I understand. And i was I was like, well, thank you. And so I think a lot of it comes from
00:07:12
Erick
I just have a curious mind and and working on these episodes was a way really for me to work out understanding these things. So it was almost like I was journaling about these things in a way so that I could make sense of it. And a lot of the episodes, I'd probably say about 80% of them, maybe 70% are actual problems that I was facing in my life and figuring out how I could apply stoicism to actually change those things.
00:07:38
Erick
And so I think that was a big part of it. And that goes along with the the other part that I think is really big is that I'm pretty open and honest about it. Like I talk about a lot of the shit that I'm dealing with in my life and how I actually apply stoicism.
Personal Growth Through Stoicism
00:07:55
Erick
So it's not just, here's this highfalutin concept, let me talk about it, but here's something I was struggling with and here's how I use stoicism to help me work through some of these things.
00:08:06
Erick
And I think people relate to that.
00:08:08
Erick
um And it's also my beautiful and charming voice, so.
00:08:08
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:08:15
Donald Robertson
So, well, then I've got a job for you, Eric. In that case, like you've, you sound eminently qualified for the next question, which is
00:08:26
Erick
Okay.
00:08:28
Donald Robertson
What do people get wrong about stoicism? So if you're go if you're going to kind of explain in layman's terms i what stoicism is and what it isn't, how would you what do you think are the most common misconceptions that need to be addressed?
00:08:43
Erick
Yeah, I think honestly the biggest one is and unfortunately the way that The English language has come about in that we have stoic as now a term for somebody who doesn't show emotions, who suppresses their emotions or you know finds a way to not feel emotions at all.
00:09:03
Erick
And stoicism is not about that whatsoever because obviously you can tell I'm but i'm a fairly animated person. I'm not not the person who just sits in the corner and you know doesn't talk to people.
00:09:11
Donald Robertson
Bye.
00:09:13
Erick
um And I think that was my biggest draw to stoicism was he was like, hey, You're going to have emotions. You got to learn how to deal with them in a proper way. And I think that for me was one of the biggest draws of stoicism. And the other big thing that that stoicism I think helps people to understand is that your emotions are caused by your thinking.
00:09:37
Erick
And whereas most people feel like their emotions are so things that just happen, a circumstance happens, I get an emotion, I react, and then I get these certain results.
00:09:48
Erick
And it's kind of like they're on autopilot. So I think that's probably one of the biggest things that people get wrong in stoicism.
00:09:57
Erick
Yeah, I would say that's that's the most
00:09:58
Donald Robertson
Yeah, I agree.
00:10:01
Donald Robertson
No one ever accuses Socrates of being like a robot. Have you noticed that?
00:10:07
Erick
Yeah.
00:10:08
Erick
Yeah.
00:10:08
Donald Robertson
No one's ever accused him of being like Mr.
00:10:11
Donald Robertson
Spock from Star Trek. Like for some strange reason, but Dargene is lacious. says that the Stoics got their idea of apotheia, like from Socrates.
00:10:27
Donald Robertson
um But no one sees him that way. And actually, when I first began to write about Stoicism, I wanted to write about some of the historical figures like Marcus Aurelius, because I thought it helped to address some of the misconceptions if we look at real examples of actual historical Stoics. So not many people really would look at Marcus Aurelius and imagine that he's like a robotic guy.
00:10:51
Donald Robertson
Do you know what I mean?
00:10:51
Erick
Yeah.
Stoicism in Modern Life
00:10:52
Donald Robertson
Even Seneca as well, he just doesn't come across somehow as a an emotional character.
00:10:55
Erick
Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:00
Donald Robertson
Or Epictetus. Epictetus comes across as quite passionate in some ways. He's like an Old Testament prophet or something.
00:11:03
Erick
yeah
00:11:05
Donald Robertson
He's not like a robot.
00:11:06
Erick
Yeah, to me, Epictetus, a lot of his stuff has that very dry humor about things.
00:11:11
Erick
You know, it's like, you know, I can't escape death, but I can escape the fear of it. I mean, where else am I going to go? You know, I mean, things like that that he said, it just this little sardonic humor that he had.
00:11:12
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:11:23
Erick
And Seneca, to me, comes across as very warm. I mean, he talks very warmly to Lucilius and he talks about his wife in a very kind and compassionate way. And it's always there's always a warmth that comes across with Seneca, especially.
00:11:36
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:11:36
Erick
And I think people people miss that.
00:11:40
Donald Robertson
In Plato's Apology Socrates, when he's addressing the fact that, I think he's talking about the fact his wife and children aren't in court and he's talking about how he's not going to cry and beg for mercy and beg for his life in court.
00:11:55
Donald Robertson
and he But he says at one point, but I want you to understand that I'm and not a man of stone. I i don't i don't have a a heart of stone. I'm a flesh and blood human being. why And we find this phrase occurring in the Stoics as well. Cicero uses it, Epictetus uses it. My following Socrates and the Apology, they all refer to this idea that Stoicism likewise isn't about having a heart of stone or being like a statue as Epictetus puts it you know the Stoics have natural affection for Storgia for example they're meant to be compassionate
00:12:39
Donald Robertson
and have you know so at one point Marcus Aurelius in the beginning of the meditations describes one of he describes the stoic ideal by referring to one of his teachers he says the stoic ideal is to be free from the unruly or irrational passions and yet full of love or philistorgia and that's a neat way of putting it not many people think of stoicism as being a philosophy of love but he basically says that it is
00:13:00
Erick
Yeah.
00:13:09
Erick
Yeah. And I think what people have in a hard time understanding, and as I worked on my book, i kind of working through that, the Stoics often talk, you know, they talk about making sure you that you aren't a slave to your passions.
00:13:25
Erick
And I think, you know, I had an episode a couple of weeks ago where I was talking about how to get over heartbreak and, you know, how do you, how do you let go of a relationship? And ah so I talked about ideas on stoic love. And one of the things that, that I i kind of brought up because I think it's very stoic, even if I couldn't find any direct references on it is the idea of loving without attachment. And that is that you allow the other person to be exactly who they are.
00:13:53
Erick
and that you don't have any attachment to their behavior, you only show up as how you're going to show up and you be the kind of person you want to be and allow the other person to be exactly who they're going to be.
00:14:04
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:14:05
Erick
And that for me was really important. i The other thing kind of going along with passions is I think a lot of people confuse attraction with love and They think, oh, I feel this passion, this attraction to this person. I must be in love with them. And it's like, no, attraction is not love. Love is a choice. Love is something that you choose. And that's, and even Mark Australia talks about that, you know, oh when he talks about loving the people that you are, who are around you and love them with all your heart, you know, they signifying that it's a choice to love other people. And I think, again, understanding that all your emotions, every emotion that you have,
00:14:45
Erick
ah besides a fear response from something you know or something like that is a choice. It's a way of thinking about things. But we kind of get stuck with this idea again that emotions aren't choices.
00:14:57
Erick
They just happen to us and we have no control over them.
00:14:58
Donald Robertson
Mhm. Mhm.
00:15:00
Erick
And so we can just react the way that however we want. But the stoics, you punk kind of put that big step in there of like, wait, don't confuse how you feel about something, meaning your sensations, the impressions that you feel with the emotion.
00:15:15
Donald Robertson
Mm
00:15:15
Erick
because your impressions you have are your brain turns it into something, then you have an emotion. So the like nervousness and excitement are the same emotion, just one has a positive spin, the other one has a negative spin, but it's the same feeling, but they, I'm sorry, that yeah, they have the same feeling, but they have different emotions.
00:15:33
Erick
And I really appreciate, you you know, the Stoics rationality to be able to look at some of those things.
00:15:36
Donald Robertson
hmm.
00:15:41
Donald Robertson
Well, then we'll come to your book in a moment. But as a prelude to that, I wanted to just ask you, why should anyone care about stoicism?
00:15:52
Donald Robertson
You said a little bit about what it is and what it isn't, and some of the things you've covered in your podcast. But why do you think stoicism is important today? Isn't it just ancient history?
00:16:04
Erick
I think the reason why I find it so important today is that there are so many chaotic things happening in the world. I mean, the world has always been fairly chaotic, but over the last 70 years, within ah basically since the end of World War II, the world has been much, much less chaotic than it has been for you know many centuries. We haven't had a massive war.
00:16:30
Erick
It's taken out you know tens of millions of lives like World War II did and one World War I did. But we're reaching a place where life just seems incredibly chaotic. there're i mean Depression rates among young people and even older people are are going up fairly dramatically.
00:16:49
Erick
deaths by deaths of despair is often what they call it from drug overdoses, alcohol overdose, you know, alcohol poisoning and suicide are going up in a very dramatic way and So I think people, a lot of people are just kind of losing hope and stoicism is, it's a it's a bedrock, it's an anchor.
Introducing "Stoicism 101"
00:17:09
Erick
And the other thing that I like about stoicism is that it has so many of the principles that we find in today's great religions, but without all the rules, without all the dogma, without all the mysticism that needs to go on top of that. They're just core principles about how to be a good person,
00:17:26
Erick
about how to withstand the trials of life and be resilient. And I think that's something that everybody could be could use a bit more of.
00:17:37
Donald Robertson
So what's your book about? What's stoicism 101 about? ah For example, who's it who iss it meant for, first and foremost? What sort of readers are you aiming at?
00:17:47
Erick
Yeah, so basically it's um in a sense it's 60 essays about different topics of stoicism and so rather than being you know one big long complete you know, building and building and building. I mean, it kind of does that. i I ordered the book in a way so that if you're new to stoicism, you can read about, you know, at the beginning to get a feel for some of the most important points like the dichotomy of control, ah virtue is the sole good, had some but biographical points about
00:18:19
Erick
you know, Seneca and Epictetus and Zeno and Marcus Aurelius. But really it's, and then it's taking those ideas, the later chapters are really about taking those ideas and figuring out how you can apply them in different areas of your life and how you can shift your perspective on things.
00:18:34
Erick
so i You know, I actually got a copy of it the other day, so I was pretty excited about that. You know, some of the other chapters include, you know, stoicism in the workplace and leadership, ah stoicism in relationships.
00:18:45
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:18:47
Erick
ah
00:18:48
Erick
stoicism in your body and the importance of physical care. Obviously, we talk about the main things like apathia, the logos, okiyokas and amorafati, which I think are all very important stoic concepts.
00:18:48
Donald Robertson
Huh.
00:19:02
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. i And actually he mentioned leadership, which kind of leads on to something else that I wanted to ask you about in particular, because I know you also do executive coaching. I wondered what aspects of stoicism you see as being most pertinent in that regard?
Stoicism in Leadership
00:19:22
Donald Robertson
What does stoicism tell us about leadership? And how does it come into play in the coaching that you do?
00:19:29
Erick
Yeah, I think a big part of that is, especially in leadership, is the dichotomy of control. I think at the first and foremost foundation of that. A lot of people, when they get into leadership positions, assume that now now that they're in charge that they run the show. And stoicism is very much about understanding that you can't control other people.
00:19:51
Erick
you can ask other people, you can work with other people, you can try to convince other people to come over to your side and and do the things you're gonna do, but you don't have control over them. um I think it's probably one of the first and foremost things. And for anybody who's worked with a micromanager, and that's that's huge. But a lot of people, you know they try to micromanage things because they're trying to control something that they can't control.
00:20:17
Erick
The next big thing is in decision making, understanding the things that are outside of your control and i being able to plan for those things using you know stoic ideas of premeditatio malora, meaning the premeditation of evils, that by sitting down and thinking of everything that could possibly go wrong, you know, as much as your but as much as you possibly can. Then when those things happen, you have at the very least considered the possibility that they might happen. Because if we just go along and think, you know, oh, I've got this plan. We're just going to follow this plan. And that's it. And you're not comparing and you're not preparing for contingencies. I think you're going to make a huge mistake. And I've worked on plenty of software projects where that was the case. And suddenly we had something come up.
00:21:04
Erick
and just kind of threw the whole thing off track. And then we ended up being a month or two behind because we didn't think, okay, what would happen in this situation? We didn't plan for those contingencies. And then, but if you plan for those, then it allows you to be more resilient because again, you have at least some idea or some options about things that ah you can do in those situations. But also you can recognize, oh, this is something that's outside of my control, rather than getting stressed about it,
00:21:32
Erick
I'm going to focus on the few things that I can do in this situation because oftentimes we, you know, we try again, trying to control things outside of our control. Oftentimes those are the things that stress us out the most and by just learning how to have that acceptance of this is beyond, you know, this is above my pay grade and and I'll do the things that I can do down here. Then you actually make some, some progress on it rather than sitting in that worry and that stress.
00:22:03
Donald Robertson
I guess there's lots of different ways you can, I mean, there's a great deal of stuff in Stoicism that would be relevant to leadership and executive coaching. You could also say, I mean, for example, Marcus Aurelius' meditations is very popular with people in and leadership positions because of his position as Roman emperor. You could look at it in a sense as a kind of manual for applying Stoicism to being in a leadership position.
00:22:31
Erick
yeah Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think for example, you know, where he talks about, you know, there's that famous quote where I actually have it in this episode I was working on today, where he says, you know, begin each day telling yourself, today I shall meet with the, you know, meat but today i showmi today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill will and selfishness, all of them due to the offender's ignorance of what is good or evil.
00:22:57
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:22:57
Erick
And if you can approach business relationships the same way that you're gonna deal with people who are a pain in the ass, whether they be employees, whether they be your own boss, whether they be you know customers or vendors that you have to deal with. And most people, when they're acting in a way that feels confrontational or frustrating, it's simply because they're trying to do what they think is best for themselves. And they're trying to do it in the way that they think it's gonna actually get them what they want.
00:23:25
Erick
And if you can recognize that, it allows you to have a little bit of objectivity and to be able to step back from that. You go, huh, that's interesting. I wonder why this person thinks that acting this way will get them what they want. Okay, but what what is it that they want? You're able to question that a little bit deeper rather than being reactive at their behavior.
00:23:45
Erick
you know, if somebody says something that you find offensive rather than being, you know, getting back up in their face and turning it into a shouting match, you can step back and just recognize this is just their opinion. This is just their way of doing things and handle things with a much more even temper and have a much more productive way of dealing with things.
00:24:04
Donald Robertson
I think there's also, I thought about this, leadership's not really my area, but you know it's something that I've kind of got involved with a couple of times for various so corporate events and things like that. um And clients I've been coaching have asked me about it.
00:24:19
Donald Robertson
I thought about it from a few different ways. I thought about, at one point, did the Stoics write anything that's really explicitly about leadership? And they do in a couple of ways. One of them is that sometimes they write about kingship, for example, and what it means to be a good ruler.
00:24:35
Donald Robertson
And you you might draw some analogies between their attempts to teach someone how to be a good ruler or a good king and the sort of qualities that would be relevant today to somebody who's a CEO or in a leadership position of any kind. There's an essay or a lecture by Mysonius Rufus about kingship, for example, where he, if I remember rightly, he really emphasizes it. He frames it in terms of the four cardinal virtues.
00:25:04
Donald Robertson
And I know that that's ah an idea that appeals to a lot of people. It's a simple set of pegs to hang some concepts on. We also have dialogues where Socrates is talking about what it means to be a good ruler. and you know Sometimes he emphasizes things like temperance or self-discipline as being important. I wonder, do you think that the cardinal virtues and stoicism are you know relevant to coaching people in leadership positions?
00:25:30
Erick
Yes, absolutely. um And that's one of the things that in my book, I emphasize that quite a bit in in almost every aspect of it because, you know, again, the Stoics saw the four virtues as the soul good. Like the only way that you can have a good life is by living those.
00:25:47
Erick
you know Whether you're wealthy, whether you're successful, whether you're famous, none of those things lead to a good life. i mean and We see that all the time with people who are incredibly wealthy, who are incredibly famous, who are incredibly handsome or beautiful, and they're still miserable.
00:26:01
Erick
that by practicing those for four virtues in the way that you treat other people, in the things that you do, for always looking for the greater good with everything that you do, then you know that's what you know that's what's going to allow people to or bring people to your side because When they see that you have that type of virtue, that they can trust you, that you have that integrity, that you treat everybody fairly, that you practice wisdom and that you actually learn from your mistakes and you take your life experience and your education and meld them together to try to make the best decisions possible. And that you're courageous when you step up and you make the right choices
00:26:44
Erick
And you do the right thing no matter what even if the market saying oh that's not gonna succeed or you shouldn't be doing that you know but then they're also highly ethical meaning they do their best to not break laws in fact that's not even a consideration.
00:26:54
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm.
00:26:58
Erick
in any circumstance. like you know If there are ways to do shortcuts that are unethical or illegal, they don't even consider those things as an option.
00:27:04
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm.
00:27:07
Erick
so you don't you run into you don't have to You don't have problems with you know corporate corruption anymore. and Corporate corruption isn't just one person. It usually ends up starting to create a culture around that.
00:27:20
Erick
when When one small thing is allowed, then another small thing is allowed. And then pretty soon it gets stretched a little bit more. And people people bend those rules when they see that there's some allowance to do so.
00:27:26
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:27:30
Erick
And it creates a ah a culture of of corruption. But if the leader doesn't even allow those things and those things would never be considered, then you don't even, you know, your chances of a of of something like Enron or Wells Fargo or those types of things don't happen.
00:27:45
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:27:48
Donald Robertson
Hmm.
00:27:51
Donald Robertson
I wonder, Socrates' whose position and the position, at least of some of the stoics, is that all the virtues are one and you can't really have one without having the other ones that are kind of complementary. But also Socrates particularly emphasizes temperance in relation to leadership.
00:28:02
Erick
Yeah.
00:28:08
Donald Robertson
And I think one reason for that, seems to me, is that you could have a leader who's a little bit foolish, and a little bit unjust and a little bit cowardly. But at least if you know where you stand with them, then you can take account of that. But if someone likes temperance and self-discipline, it means that they're vulnerable to corruption.
00:28:34
Donald Robertson
And it could be that they're really wise and really just and really courageous until they're put into a position of power. And then because they lack temperance, they're rapidly corrupted. And that, I think, potentially makes them more dangerous because we might make this mistake of trusting them.
00:28:50
Donald Robertson
and thinking that we know where we stand with them until they're put in a position of power and they're corrupted by it. And then suddenly they start doing the opposite of what we expected them to do. So we need to know where we stand with people. I think consistency is key in leadership in that regard. you know and It's often the case that we think someone's going to be a good leader, and then they turn out to be a terrible leader. And why is that? I think it's partly because a once you're in power corrupts,
00:29:20
Erick
Yeah.
00:29:21
Donald Robertson
And the remedy for that would be temperance.
00:29:24
Erick
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the reasons why Cato was so well respected is because you his his temperance and his unbending, you know, dedication to those principles was, you know, was renowned.
00:29:39
Erick
And he so everybody trusted him because when he gave his word, that was it. You knew that if if Cato said something, then he absolutely meant it.
00:29:49
Erick
And it was That was it. There wasn't any like, Oh, well, maybe he meant this. Maybe he meant that it doesn't mean this way. It's just like, you know, or, or he says that. And then, you know, behind the scenes, something would happen. It's like, no, when Cato gave his word, that was it.
00:29:50
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:30:07
Donald Robertson
and Unfortunately, I think people are sometimes attracted to intemperate characters, especially in the field of politics. So when we look at it from that point of view, we might think, I don't know, like, you know, some of the the leading politicians of today don't really score that highly when we mark them, i give them marks out of 10 on the score sheet of the cardinal virtues.
00:30:14
Erick
Oh yeah.
00:30:32
Erick
Yeah, unfortunately, because, you know, again, it gets back into what we talked about before the sophists and people are people have things that they want, they have other agendas, and somebody who's going to speak to that and flatter them and manipulate them ah are going to attract those kind of people.
Anger Management with Stoicism
00:30:51
Erick
And You know, I hate to say that easily manipulated, but we see with a lot of politicians and this happens quite often. ah They speak in very kind of general ambiguous language, which allows it to be open for interpretation. And so people will say, oh, well, he's my guy or she's my gal because they said this. And and while it was very open ended, they will interpret it in the way that suits them and to make it mean what they want it to mean.
00:31:20
Erick
um If you ever study, i I'm a big Darren Brown fan, and he talks about that ability to have open language like that to where things can be interpreted in all kinds of different ways, and it's an easy manipulation to have tactic.
00:31:34
Erick
And the sophists were fabulous at that.
00:31:36
Donald Robertson
Yeah, I've met Darren Brown. I met him years and years ago, actually. like He's really into stoicism. I mean, you've you've probably you've read his book Happy.
00:31:43
Erick
Yeah.
00:31:46
Donald Robertson
I don't recommend all that many, but but actually, yeah of all of the self-help books and stuff that I've read, It's an odd book in a way, and I don't think its account of stoicism is completely accurate, but I still thought it was beautifully written and quite insightful and reflective. I thought it was a better discussion of stoicism in many ways, despite its flaws. I thought it was a more interesting discussion of stoicism than many of the ones I've read in other books. Now, you mentioned
00:32:21
Donald Robertson
earlier that one of the things that's appealing you think about your podcast is that you're quite open and you talk about your personal experiences and maybe challenges that you've faced so that it's more relatable to the people that you're talking about. My pet subject at the moment and actually from you know throughout my life, in a sense, has been anger. It's increasingly become important to me. um And I think about the reasons for that. I think that but it had a kind of hiatus. There was a time when I wasn't all that interested in anger. As I grow older, I become more interested in it. And I think in part because when I was a young guy, as I get older, I become more aware of the difference between who I am now and who I used to be.
00:33:03
Donald Robertson
I was incredibly angry ah when I was a teenager. There were in my early 20s, there were probably reasons for that. But I was very angry. And you know the poet William Blake said, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. And he also said, if the fool would persist in his folly, he would succeed in becoming wise. Now, I don't know if that's good advice, but I think that's what happened to some extent in my case. I was so angry.
00:33:31
Donald Robertson
that I reached a point where I thought, this can't go on. and I need to change. And so i it forced me to start doing something about it. And it was one of the reasons that I became interested in stoicism. And stoicism really helped me to challenge the anger that I had very, very deeply. So I notice on your website, you've got a little personal bio. If you don't mind, I'm just going to read what you said. I don't normally do this, but I think it would be of interest to the listeners and it would be a good springboard to the next part of our discussion. You said, as someone that often has a short fuse,
00:34:07
Donald Robertson
I found stoicism made sense in a way that I could use my reason to calm my brain down rather than given to my usual rash impulses that often led to deep apologies the next day or ended friendships altogether. Stoicism offered a way that used my logical nature to help temper my passionate nature. I can still choose to be angry because at times anger can be a very useful emotion. I can choose to be sad because sometimes I want to feel sad but as a stoic I'm in charge of my emotions not the other way around. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
00:34:42
Donald Robertson
what I call the problem of anger. And so you know some people might question if anger always is a problem.
00:34:46
Erick
Yeah,
00:34:48
Donald Robertson
So how do you see anger? like what How did stoicism benefit you? and And one of the things I'd like to really dig into is like what aspects of stoicism do you think are most relevant in this regard?
00:35:01
Erick
yeah so in order to kind of dig into that a little bit deeper, I kind of have to go back quite a ways. i And my childhood growing up was ah fairly chaotic in a lot of ways because my dad was randomly angry. So he would be fine for a good portion of the time and then just explode. And so there was this constant always looking out to test what kind of mood dad was in. It was kind of like living with a drunk, but there was no bottle cause he didn't drink alcohol. Um,
00:35:37
Erick
So unfortunately, because of that and because I grew up Mormon and so Mormon, you're supposed to be always nice and happy. And, you know, we used to joke around when the REM song came out that it was about Utah, you know, everybody trying to be putting on the happy face about things. And so I was very angry with my father, but I wasn't allowed to express that anger in any way. One, because it's not a good Mormon thing to do. And two, because ah I was scared of my dad in many ways because he was ah Even though he was shorter than me, he was very powerful. He was very strong. He grew up on a farm, you know had thick corded forearms like Popeye forearms, and when that anger would get out of control, you know i I remember a couple of times when I was a little kid you know running out of the house trying to get away from my dad.
00:36:27
Erick
and so Because of that, there was I think there was a lot of repressed anger. There was a lot of like, I'm not allowed to be angry about things. And then it would just build up and pop off all the time. Well, not all the time, but just at times when it wouldn't be very helpful. Um, and I'd be angry about things that were, were fairly minimal. And I didn't understand why I was so angry about a lot of these things. Uh, it was part of the reason why my first marriage ended and definitely a reason why my last relationship of nine years ended.
00:36:59
Erick
because there was just all this anger down there that I didn't understand how to deal with it in a rational way. um
00:37:07
Erick
And through taking the aspects of stoicism and that idea of using rationality to examine your thinking, to really practice that self-reflection, to dig deep and and to try to look at situations rationally, even if it's after the fact, even if you exploded at somebody, and then but you know at least being willing to sit down and figure out what was it that I was really so angry about?
00:37:30
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Uh-huh.
00:37:34
Erick
What was the thing that that What was the real reason? Because oftentimes, like I said, I'd be angry about something that seems so minor and, you know, be yelling and screaming about it. But then, you know, looking back on it later, it's like, what did that have to do with anything?
00:37:48
Erick
um But that rationality with stoicism really helped me to understand that just because I feel something doesn't mean that that's an emotion. But the way that I'm thinking about the situation is the thing that actually generates that emotion, which caused that anger.
00:38:05
Erick
um But stoicism helped me to become much more mindful about the thoughts that I was thinking and those emotions I was feeling. And really what it came down to was that if my partner or my ex-wife were frustrated with me or annoyed or angry about something that they had every right to be, then what, because of all that trauma growing up, what was happening was that I would have that reaction of ah that ah basically that little kid of saying, oh my God, they don't love me anymore.
00:38:40
Erick
And so it was really driven by fear than it was anything to truly be angry about. I was scared that if they were upset with me, they didn't love me. And so I had to try and control the situation. And part of that control, if I couldn't convince them, was to get angry with them and kind of try to, like my dad did, and try and beat them into submission in a way. I mean, I didn't beat anybody, but verbally.
00:38:40
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:39:05
Erick
and so recognize But that ability to, sit down and rationally look at your emotions, examine them objectively, and to take that beat and to try to develop that self-awareness that Socrates was so big on has been probably the biggest thing from Stoicism. It isn't just one thing, but the ability to, again, rationally examine my own psyche and practice self-awareness and get to know myself in a much deeper way, I think that's been the biggest part of stoicism. And I feel like because of that,
00:39:43
Erick
I've been able to be much more accepting about the world. I think a more fatty was a huge, huge thing because I think again, I was trying to control things that were outside of my control and getting angry about things, you know, getting, getting cut off in traffic, you know, that I can't control the other person.
00:39:56
Donald Robertson
right
00:40:00
Erick
I can't control what happened. I just accepted back off and arrived safely to work.
00:40:04
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:40:07
Donald Robertson
It's interesting you mentioned control. like what try trying to control things that you don't control and the anger giving you a sense of control sometimes. Psychologists sometimes refer to anger as being accompanied by an illusion of control. So like when we feel things are out of control and we're struggling with certain aspects of a situation, there's something about anger that temporarily makes people feel more in control um than they than they normally are. And that can be a kind of almost a relief in a way. It alleviates some of the anxiety of a situation if you have this kind of false sense of control. But the paradox is, if you look at it from the outside, obviously, it's very interesting to compare the inside perspective from the outside perspective, what it's like to be enraged and what it's like to be observing somebody who's enraged. Angry people do not look like they're in control of the situation normally, but they often
00:41:04
Donald Robertson
report that they temporarily feel. And also afterwards, you mentioned with the feeling of regret that people often have when they're angry, when they look back in a situation afterwards, and you know, when they've come down, they're no longer angry.
00:41:20
Donald Robertson
People often think, I wasn't in control of what happened in that situation, retrospectively. So it's it's like a weird temporary illusion.
00:41:27
Erick
Yeah.
00:41:30
Donald Robertson
So and i if you don't mind, why dig a little bit deeper into what you said, because People often contrast anger with reason, right? So when we're more angry, we're not thinking rationally. And one of the remedies for anger is to think things through more rationally.
00:41:50
Donald Robertson
um
00:41:52
Donald Robertson
What do you think is the difference? between rational thinking and angry thinking. What's different about the perspective of an angry person? and So you mentioned how late reasoning with yourself is a kind of remedy for anger. what was What's the opposite of that? like What's going wrong why in your mind when you're angry? ah What thinking errors do you experience when you're angry, for example?
00:42:19
Erick
Yeah, I think the biggest thing, you know, there was a quote that I have no idea who to attribute it to, but it said, and um anger is just fear in action. And so that, that response is again, is a way of trying to get in control of things like that.
00:42:39
Erick
But yeah, when you're, when you're angry about something, you, it's like you feel mentally stupider. You feel like, you know, you, you, I think, I think they've shown that physiologically that parts of your brain do shut down because you're either in a fight or flight situation.
00:42:54
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:42:55
Erick
Even if there is no real danger to yourself, like you're arguing with your spouse, I mean, and unless your spouse is somebody who's violent or anything like that, there's no real physical danger. um But yeah, it definitely clouds things, and it does but it does give that sense of some type of control.
00:43:12
Erick
And yeah, I mean i know that there are so many times afterwards where i i mean where I said plenty of things that were either untrue or you know hi trying to badger somebody into my side of thinking about things in a certain way.
00:43:13
Donald Robertson
You know.
00:43:31
Erick
and
00:43:34
Erick
that, you know, we're just kind of ridiculous. And I think back on that now, and some of that was driven by fear that, you know, if this person disagrees with me or doesn't accept my opinion, then they're somehow telling me that I'm wrong. And I don't want to be wrong because that means that, you know, i rather than just being wrong, that means that I'm a bad person. You know, if they don't accept to my point of view, then then they're disapproving of me. That must means I must be bad.
00:44:00
Erick
You know, which when you recognize you can't control other people's opinions, whether that's your partner, whether that's your children, your parents, anybody.
00:44:04
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:44:08
Erick
And so by accepting that and allowing other people just to have their opinions and be okay with that has brought a lot of peace in my life because if I'm in a discussion and somebody disagrees with me and now I'm just like, hmm, interesting.
00:44:22
Erick
I don't know why they have that opinion. We might have a discussion on that because I'm not tied to their opinion to mean one thing or the other. It's just I can accept it as their opinion. And so I don't try to change it anymore. I try to ask them about it. I try to understand it, maybe convince them.
00:44:38
Erick
But if they don't like my opinion, they don't agree with it, that's okay. It has no reflection on my goodness or badness. Whereas before, when I was so wrapped up in all my own emotions, my own anger, if I if i felt that rejection from somebody, then I felt like it was a reflection of me and that I was somehow not a good person because of that.
00:45:01
Erick
And I think stoicism allowed me to actually see that in a way that I hadn't been able to to recognize before. So that going into those situations, you know, I can just keep an easy touch on things because I'm not invested in having to have somebody else's approval about my thoughts and my opinions because I know that those are mine and they have theirs.
00:45:25
Donald Robertson
Now you mentioned there's something else I wanted to ask you about in the quote that I read from your website. You said at one point that sometimes you could still choose to be angry. And at times anger could be a useful emotion. Do you believe that there are healthy and unhealthy forms of anger? And if so, what's the difference between them?
00:45:46
Erick
I think if you recognize anger in certain, ah you know, life or death situations, I think can be incredibly important. But if you allow that anger to override everything,
00:45:59
Erick
then then that's gonna get you into trouble. So it's about recognizing that anger and taking that energy and redirecting it into bravery as opposed to letting it turn into just all outrage.
00:46:13
Erick
Because I think being brave in ah in a war zone or if if somebody's gonna harm your kids or harm you, you know having that anger but being able to turn it again into bravery, it's that same energy.
00:46:23
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:46:26
Erick
and using it properly you know in those situations is part of what's you know kept us alive as human beings, is that when we feel that fear, are we gonna step and be up and be brave? Are we gonna run away? Or are we gonna rage about something?
00:46:41
Erick
and I think bravery is is that ability to be able to take that same kind of fear and anxiety and focus it in a more positive aspect.
00:46:48
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:46:49
Erick
Just like the that anxious feeling that you have going out on stage, you know you can either be terrified, you have to go out on stage and sing in front of a thousand people, or you can be excited about it. It's the same feeling, same sensation.
00:47:02
Erick
Just one has a positive spin and the other one has a negative spin. I think that bravery and rage or you know can also be that same type of thing.
00:47:18
Donald Robertson
One of the reasons I think for looking closely at the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger, or questioning even you know if there is such a thing as healthy anger, is that if you ask people, in my experience, if you ask people what the benefits of anger are, they'll usually say something along the lines of it kind of gives you more motivation.
00:47:41
Donald Robertson
to address injustices, for example, or to exhibit courage in the face of danger, allows you to be more persistent or more forceful in facing adversity or injustice. um But the costs, the downside of anger that you mentioned earlier is it can ah potentially close our judgment and affects our decision making, our ability to reason.
00:48:06
Erick
Yeah.
00:48:08
Donald Robertson
Now, my concern is that these two things don't combine well. the If I'm more forceful and more persistent, but stupid, or worse at making decisions, that that seems like a bad combination, potentially.
00:48:12
Erick
Yeah.
00:48:24
Donald Robertson
Is there a way that we can avoid that problem? Can we channel and anger? Can we get, is it possible to get the benefits of anger without incurring those cognitive costs? I'll give you an example.
00:48:35
Donald Robertson
ah You mentioned courage. There's research on anger that shows that when people when people are anxious, it's probably more obvious that they tend to overestimate risk, right?
00:48:46
Donald Robertson
So anxious people catastrophise, like they they think everything's dangerous, you they see threats everywhere.
00:48:50
Erick
Yeah.
00:48:53
Donald Robertson
Angry people do the opposite um and they tend to underestimate risk. which in itself doesn't seem like a big deal, but people who have more energy, more adrenaline and more persistence and more force and underestimate risk, um often expose themselves to more danger.
00:48:59
Erick
yeah
00:49:13
Donald Robertson
And also other people around them are exposed to more danger. So you could say in extreme cases, angry people get themselves killed and they get people around them killed as well. If they're not careful, like in a conflict situation, like in the military or something, if somebody's being,
00:49:27
Erick
Yeah.
00:49:28
Donald Robertson
using anger to make them more courageous, it could be actually it's just making them more reckless if they're not careful because of the a cognitive cost, the underestimating risk. Is there a way round that, do you think? you know can we ah Can we channel anger in a positive direction without it clouding our judgment?
00:49:51
Erick
You know, not that I've not in my own experience. I know that most of the times that I've been angry, pretty much all the times I've been angry, I can't think of one where I was thinking more clearly.
00:50:04
Erick
I, I can't say there are times when I got angry about something and use that energy to protect somebody, protect myself.
00:50:16
Erick
And so the outcome was positive. But I wouldn't say that I was very much in control and the risks were a little bit higher. Whereas if I've been able to be a bit more calm and collected about something, ah but with but using that same adrenaline and that force, but again, pointing it towards bravery rather than rage,
00:50:36
Erick
um probably would have been a safer bet.
00:50:40
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:50:41
Erick
But at the moment you know in the moment, sometimes rage is what needed what was needed to scare the other person to get them to back off. so you know But it's it's like they say in a fight, be more worried about the calm person than the one who's all bluster and infuriating.
00:50:57
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:51:02
Donald Robertson
Well, that leads me on to another, but these are hard questions. you know I don't think there's a definitive answer to them.
00:51:06
Erick
Yeah.
00:51:09
Donald Robertson
They're questions that trouble me and and intrigue me. and And they come from ancient philosophy, but they're relevant to modern psychology and therapy and our daily lives. The ancient Stoics defined anger primarily in terms of the desire for revenge.
00:51:27
Donald Robertson
And so did Aristotle and other ancient philosophers. So they saw anger as the belief that someone else has done something that they ought not to have done. So they've acted unjustly.
00:51:36
Erick
Yeah.
00:51:40
Donald Robertson
You've done something. You shouldn't have. You said something you shouldn't have. And also, therefore, you deserve to be punished. I i should take revenge against you. i should I should punch you in the nose because you you said something you shouldn't have said. You acted in a way that you shouldn't have acted. So and I should teach you a lesson, buddy, is the ah you know stereotypical thinking. So the Stoics had this cognitive model of psychopathology way ahead of their time.
00:52:08
Donald Robertson
where they would kind of try to interpret our emotions by looking at the the underlying attitudes and beliefs. And I wonder, for example, you mentioned be wary of the calm person in the fight. So one of the things I think that that goes wrong when someone's angry in a fight is there's When people get very angry, I give you an example, actually, from ancient history. When ancient people would fight, um often not that many people would die because they would often rush at the enemy. In ancient kind tribal warfare, they'd run at the enemy and scream, like the height and the Highland charge in Scotland. you know and And they try and look scary.
00:53:01
Donald Robertson
and they'd slash at them with sharp-edged weapons like swords, for example, that would kind of cause superficial wounds. They'd keep the other person at a distance, but they kind of wanted to frighten them and hurt them, right?
00:53:16
Donald Robertson
um And so it's maybe not the most effective way to actually eliminate an enemy. The Romans trained their soldiers to fight in a more calculated and self-disciplined way where they would stab people instead of slashing at them and they'd remain information, for example, So in your analogy, like the Romans would be calmer than the so-called barbarians they were sometimes fighting against.
00:53:42
Donald Robertson
So roman the Romans wouldn't just hurt you or frighten you, they'd kill you. They'd leave a pile of corpses behind them because they'd run you through with their swords rather just kind of slashing at you and screaming and stuff.
00:53:46
Erick
Yeah.
00:53:55
Donald Robertson
And so I think that when someone's overtaken by anger and the desire for revenge, sometimes they kind of might attack an old person or try to defend themselves in quite an inefficient way. You know, for example, someone's coming at you with a ah knife, you know, perhaps what you should do in some situations is try to disarm them. But that's not going to be at the forefront of the mind of an angry person.
00:54:18
Donald Robertson
you know An angry person is probably going to just be throwing haymaker car punches at the other guy while the other guy is stabbing him. right It takes a perhaps more self-awareness and a little bit more of a tactical mind in order to exhibit more self-discipline, perhaps disarm somebody who's using a weapon against you. That, I think, is how I understand in part the risks of anger.
00:54:46
Donald Robertson
like that even and Because people often say well anger can be useful if you're being attacked. But i quite I would question that. I don't know if anger is necessarily the best way to respond to someone attacking you.
00:54:57
Erick
Yeah, I would tend to agree with that just in my my limited experience. I haven't been in too many fights or anything like that. I did wrestle and when I was in high school and um yeah and the thing was is that if you wanted if you really wanted to you know, if you could egg your opponent on, then get them to make ah make a bad decision.
00:55:20
Donald Robertson
yeah yeah
00:55:21
Erick
You often came out ahead like that. I know in martial arts, they often talk about the mental discipline is is just as, if not more important than the physical discipline.
00:55:32
Erick
And that the true masters are the ones who are just very calm and they control the situation because they're controlling themselves. And so other people when they, you know, when you're When you're coming at somebody angry, yeah, you're not in control of your body.
00:55:33
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:55:46
Erick
You're not in control of yourself.
00:55:48
Erick
um Yeah, you drop your guard a lot. Yeah.
00:55:48
Donald Robertson
You drop your guard often when you're enraged and so expose yourself to more danger potentially.
00:55:55
Donald Robertson
The other thing that you do, and this kind of relates to when when we talk about anger, it always reminds me of a meme about coffee that says coffee, drink coffee, do stupid things faster and with more energy.
00:56:08
Donald Robertson
So when people say that anger gives you strength and motivates you and makes you more forceful in what you do, it kind of reminds me of this meme about coffee, right? Because the stoics of anger is temporary insanity.
00:56:18
Donald Robertson
It clouds your judgment. But it allows you to do insane things faster and with more energy.
00:56:20
Erick
yeah
00:56:23
Donald Robertson
So, hey, that's great. Wouldn't that be useful?
00:56:25
Erick
yep
00:56:27
Donald Robertson
Um but one of the risks of that energy like that sort of adrenaline rush or the like the caffeine rush that we get from anger a is the you know apart from all the other problems that you might exhaust yourself.
00:56:43
Donald Robertson
For instance, in boxing, one reason I think for goading an opponent would be that they would throw too many punches and tire themselves out earlier in the fight.
00:56:46
Erick
Yeah. Yep.
00:56:54
Donald Robertson
I think that's what happens between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali and the Rumble in the jungle. my Muhammad Ali thought, this guy's huge. He's a monster. star you know i can't I can't beat him.
00:57:05
Donald Robertson
But if he loses his temper, and I managed to provoke him and I keep my cool then I can beat him. So Muhammad Ali taunted George Foreman and he lost his temper and Ali ended up winning the fight and I think it's partly because George Foreman threw too many punches too early in the in the match and tired himself out prematurely.
00:57:17
Erick
Yeah.
00:57:24
Donald Robertson
Right so this is part but that's directly related to the idea that it's the energy boost, it's the caffeine, it's the adrenaline of of anger that's useful but that might actually be one of the the risks.
00:57:24
Erick
Yeah.
00:57:40
Erick
Yeah, I can definitely agree with that.
00:57:42
Donald Robertson
Once that energy is spent
00:57:42
Erick
And yeah, and well, and you also you don't have nearly as much control. So you're going to you're going to overshoot punches. You're going to do other things like that. We're talking just in a physical sense.
00:57:54
Erick
but in you know in an emotional sense of you know arguing with with a partner. i mean I remember my last partner actually recorded some of our arguments without me knowing.
00:58:02
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:58:04
Erick
Then she played them back to me later and I listened. I'm like, God, some of the things I said were so stupid and so irrational.
00:58:09
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm.
00:58:11
Erick
and i I think back then I'm like, how could I yeah It was almost embarrassing because I would just hammer a point and hammer a point and hammer a point. And then because, not because I knew I was right, but because I wanted her to agree with me, even though looking looking back on it then, you know later when I was much more calm and relaxed and going, wow, I sound like such an idiot.
00:58:37
Erick
you know, I was arguing over something that was so dumb or I was taking something that she said and twisting it around and and doing all sorts of things that my rational mind would never do, you know, because I know better than that if I was looking at it objectively, but I couldn't at the time because I was so heated up that my cognitive abilities probably were cut in half at that point.
00:58:55
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:58:58
Donald Robertson
One of my favorite metaphors is, in Plato's Gorgias, or gorgous Socrates says a lot of weird things. Socrates is known for saying a lot of weird things. And paradoxical things. Everyone likes a good paradox.
00:59:13
Donald Robertson
And he said um to his interlocutors, the guys he's talking to, they they're really in favour of strongmen like Putin today, I guess, as admired by many people, rather politically for their supposed strength.
00:59:27
Erick
and
00:59:31
Donald Robertson
In the ancient world, it was just the same. So these guys are like admired political tyrants or dictators because they perceive strength, right? um And Socrates said that tyrants ah he didn't think are actually powerful. And in fact, he said they're among the least powerful people and in society. And as interlocutors thought this was crazy, like they thought you're just talking nonsense. How can you possibly stand there and say that you don't think a tyrant who could command armies, who could have you beheaded with a click of the fingers, who can make his own laws up,
01:00:07
Donald Robertson
and commands enormous wealth. They could kill anyone he pleases. How can you say that he's not powerful? And Socrates says, well, because unless he's also exercising wisdom,
01:00:19
Donald Robertson
It's not true power at all because he doesn't actually understand what he should be trying to achieve. And so he never achieves what would be in his own best interest, so the best interest of society. And I call that powerlessness. He says, let me to explain it to you this way. Suppose I told you that someone had a razor-sharp sword and he could use it to kill anyone that he pleases. ah You could compare this to the strength, the energy, the adrenaline that comes from anger.
01:00:49
Donald Robertson
um It makes it very powerful, right?
01:00:49
Erick
Mmhmm.
01:00:52
Donald Robertson
In a sense, he could just kill it. He could kill anywhere in any unarmed man around him. He could kill with this razor-sharp sword. But Socrates said, but what if he's blindfolded?
01:01:02
Donald Robertson
He can't see what he's doing. He's got no idea like who he's stabbing, whether it's friend or foe. Would you still describe that man as powerful, even though he's armed and everyone else is unarmed? Or wouldn't you describe him as powerless because he's got no idea whether if what he's doing is good or bad?
01:01:23
Donald Robertson
He doesn't know, it's fits friend or foe that he's hurting. He's powerless and he said the tyrant is like a blindfolded swordsman. ah He commands huge armies and he can have anyone executed, but he doesn't really understand what he's doing because he lacks wisdom. the And I think this is a great analogy also for anger. why The angry person is like a blindfolded swordsman. He's got all this adrenaline.
01:01:47
Donald Robertson
Pumping on the blood coursing through his veins, like he's got can maybe a temperate, like the Hulk or something. Like rage gives us this kind of vist of strength, perhaps. But we don't have a clue what we're doing.
01:01:55
Erick
know
01:01:57
Donald Robertson
my So it's like we have a very dangerous weapon, like, you know, and this fire in our belly. But we're blind and our judgment is clouded by temporary insanity.
01:02:11
Erick
Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah, I can definitely see that. It is definitely a loss of wisdom, for sure. and And I can say that from my own experience of having been in plenty of arguments, unfortunately. And and it's taken a lot of work to to kind of get to the root cause of a lot of that. And that's what I explained earlier. And unfortunately, there're there's a regard with that. And it's one of those things where I didn't let that regret stop me from trying to improve.
01:02:11
Donald Robertson
That's how I understand anger.
01:02:42
Erick
I looked at it as, okay, yeah, I did a lot of dumb things. I yelled at a lot of people. I heard a lot of people that I genuinely cared about because I wasn't in charge of my own anger. i was you know That temporary insanity.
01:02:55
Erick
But stoicism has given me those tools to be able to look back on those things and to really dive deeper into it to where I finally figured out, okay, this is where so much of that anger has been coming from.
01:03:05
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
01:03:06
Erick
And it was really trying to control the other person.
01:03:09
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
01:03:10
Erick
And now that I can just accept that and and work through that, then when people disagree with me now, you know again, I can just be like, okay, I can just let them have their opinion.
01:03:21
Erick
I know that I can't control them. And having that at the forefront of my mind in any conversation that might you know might be disagreeable or might become heated, It's not really even an issue. And I can listen to the other person if they're upset from that more compassionate and that objective way of like, even if I think they're wrong, this is what they're feeling and that's okay. I don't need to make a judgment about it. I can just listen to it and accept it for what it is. And then we can actually have a discussion about that. And that diffuses things so much easier.
01:03:55
Donald Robertson
Do you know who you sound like?
01:03:59
Erick
Hmm.
01:04:01
Donald Robertson
Marcus Aurelius.
01:04:04
Donald Robertson
Because he tells us in the meditations that earlier in life, maybe when he was a young guy or whenever, at some point earlier in his life, he said that he had a short fuse. And he said um he's just grateful that he didn't do anything that he really regretted.
01:04:21
Donald Robertson
looking back on it um because sometimes he had problems controlling his temper and the meditation is full of advice about anger management so it looks like he embraced stoicism in part as a way of controlling his temper And on the other side, the the Roman histories, insofar as they refer to this, they tell us that Marx really was known for being someone who was completely unfazed by provocations. So from those little slender bits of evidence, you know, the picture emerges at least of a guy who as a young man was worried
01:04:56
Donald Robertson
about his short views, threw himself into using stoicism as a form of anger management and then earned a reputation for somebody who had succeeded in controlling his temper and was unfazed.
01:05:06
Erick
Yeah.
01:05:10
Donald Robertson
Even at one point Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor was like a magistrate Look, ah um and he oversaw legal hearings and throughout his career and later in his life Marcus Aurelius was overseeing a court hearing and somebody lunged at him as if they were going to strangle him and we're told he just stood up and adjourned the hearing until the next day, like he was unfazed by it.
01:05:35
Erick
yeah Yeah, I mean, I can tell that I've made progress on it. um It's hard to know in a you know if I've made that in a way in a personal really or a romantic relationship because I'm not dating anyone right now. But as an example of something that before would have, I mean, I would have been raging about for probably days. When I first moved to Amsterdam, I was trying to find an apartment and it's it's very challenging here and met this guy showed me an apartment.
01:06:06
Erick
I paid him some money for it. He was supposed to give me the keys and he disappeared just and changed his phone number. Uh, basically had lived at different addresses.
01:06:17
Erick
So there's no way I could track him down. And he stole 5,500 euros from me.
01:06:21
Erick
And my first thought when he didn't respond to any of my text messages was like, well, I hope something didn't happen to him. And when I got that sinking feeling that he probably just screwed me over, I was just like, well,
01:06:21
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
01:06:35
Erick
Definitely made some bad choices on that. I kind of had a gut feeling that I shouldn't trust this guy, but I really wanted this apartment. Okay, well, you know, I guess I'll file a police report. I'll do what I can do. But, you know, there was some frustration. There was definitely disappointment because I wanted the apartment and he seemed like a nice enough guy. But, you know, I had some people ask me, it's like, oh, aren't you angry about that? And I was like, well,
01:07:02
Erick
Not really. And they're like, why not? I'm like, because if I sit here and I'm angry and I fume about this thing, I'm choosing to put myself in a bad mood for something that I can't change.
01:07:15
Erick
And that's you that would be my choice. And so if my choice is to let it go or to sit and stew in this for days or hours, yeah it's just a waste of energy and time, and I'm gonna feel awful about it.
Balancing Life's Events
01:07:30
Erick
So why would I choose to be in a bad mood? And some people are just kinda like, some of my friends were kinda like, huh, I never really thought of it that way, but I guess that makes sense. But still, aren't you mad?
01:07:41
Erick
I'm like, I'm frustrated.
01:07:43
Erick
I'm annoyed, I'm disappointed. and But I'm not angry about it. It's just, you know, that's his nature. He stole from me. It sucks that I trusted this person and I got taken. It's not the end of the world. And so rather than sitting stewing it and being a bad mood about this thing, I just let it go.
01:07:44
Donald Robertson
yeah
01:08:02
Donald Robertson
Con men exist. yeah there they are Everyone, I think, potentially at some point in their life gets their wallet stolen by a pickpocket in a sub-tourist spot, or they get you know somebody rips them off in business.
01:08:04
Erick
Yep.
01:08:17
Donald Robertson
um I think we're all like, there's a part of us that wants to believe that other people are honest. And that reminds me of that passage Marcus really is where he's reminding himself, like, there are deceitful people out there.
01:08:24
Erick
Yeah.
01:08:28
Donald Robertson
there are There are quite a lot of con men out in the world. You're probably going to encounter some eventually. When things like that happen to me, I think as I get older, I found it harder when I was younger. and And I find it easier as I get older just to reflect on my experience. And ah i I don't think this would necessarily help everybody. But I find myself thinking somebody ripped me off and it cost me a few thousand bucks or whatever, I think.
01:08:56
Donald Robertson
Yeah, but there's been like times in my life where I've been lucky as well and I suddenly made a load of money, you know? So I think it's like on your deathbed or somebody you look back and you think, well, there was, especially if it happened a long time ago, say someone ripped you off and you were a teenager, you think, yeah, that's up that time the guy ripped me off. But then there was another time where I had a kind of windfall.
01:09:16
Donald Robertson
play And I suddenly made a lot of money. you know And then when you when you look at it retrospectively, like a it forms a more of a rounded picture. You think there's good and bad all mixed together in this overall picture.
01:09:31
Donald Robertson
you know It's not like ah only bad things have happened. But when things are recent, we tend to focus on them in isolation. people can feel like it's only just happened.
01:09:40
Erick
Yeah.
01:09:42
Donald Robertson
Of course I'm going to feel like, but we don't have to. We could look at like a picture and see it more in a rounded way alongside positives as well if we chose to do so.
Spinoza's Interest in Stoicism
01:09:54
Donald Robertson
I wanted, to you mentioned being in Amsterdam and I wanted to ask you about, I've been to Amsterdam a couple of times. It's a lovely city.
01:10:05
Donald Robertson
And I went to Spinoza's house. I figured that he must have quite small feet because I went up the stairs. The stairs are tiny.
01:10:16
Donald Robertson
I had to almost go up my tiptoes.
01:10:16
Erick
Well, that's just Amsterdam.
01:10:18
Donald Robertson
Maybe that's just the way the stairs are in Amsterdam. Did he go out on his tiptoes or did he have really small feet? I don't know. But I found out some other interesting things about Spinoza. I could only have discovered by going to his house.
01:10:31
Donald Robertson
They had ah an extensive personal library, and they have a catalogue of all the books that were contained in his library. And he had the Socratic dialogues of Xenophon, he and he had Epictetus, his discourses, and he had Cicero and Seneca. I don't know if he had Marcus Aurelius, but he definitely read and must have been pretty familiar with a bunch of stoic texts. So sometimes I think in history there are authors that are influenced by other authors and they'll be quite transparent about that. And then other times I think there are authors that are influenced by other stuff and they kind of keep it to themselves a little bit. And I think it might have been that Spinoza thought, I'm already in trouble.
01:11:23
Donald Robertson
I don't want to broadcast the fact that I'm into stoicism as well necessarily. I you know i've already been ex-communuted i didn't even know you could be excommunicated from Judaism.
01:11:35
Donald Robertson
But apparently Spinoza was, and curses were placed on him. He was such a heretical figure.
01:11:39
Erick
Hm.
01:11:41
Donald Robertson
But he didn't mention that he was influenced by Stoicism. I think he may have downplayed that to some extent. He definitely studied the the writings of the Stoics. So I wonder like what your thoughts are.
01:11:55
Donald Robertson
Maybe this is a good place to kind up to to end as well today with something a little bit more Dutch. What do you think of Spinoza? And do you see him as as being a kind of kindred spirit to the the Stoics?
01:12:12
Erick
um I can honestly say I don't know much about Spinoza. So I've heard of him more in passing than anything. um Though I have heard some people, um I think it was Robert Deutsch was on, I think that's his name, was on Tim Ferriss's podcast and was very, very complimentary of Spinoza and just talked about some of the things from him.
01:12:36
Erick
And so he was on my list of of people to read. um So I wish that I, yeah, I wish I knew more about him.
01:12:41
Donald Robertson
It's hard to read. Yeah, unfortunately.
01:12:44
Erick
um i I read tons of different books from all over the place, but So my list is way too long. When I moved here, I actually I sold my house in Portland and got rid of almost everything that I owned.
01:12:55
Erick
And I think I probably got rid of of because Powell's is right there, which is one of the largest independent booksellers and use bookstores in the world. I think I usually gave away, you know, four or 500 books that I just got rid of.
01:13:09
Erick
I think I still have like 100 at my brother's place.
01:13:12
Erick
And I I've shuttled a few over here and my trips back and forth. um So Spinoza is definitely one of those on my list.
01:13:12
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
01:13:21
Erick
um I haven't.
01:13:21
Donald Robertson
Have you ever been to his house?
01:13:25
Donald Robertson
Why not? You should go. You should go to Spillow's house.
01:13:26
Erick
I will.
01:13:28
Donald Robertson
Is there a stat? There's got to be. there I think I had a photograph taken next to a statue of him actually when I was in Amsterdam. There's got to be a ah sater there's post and There must be streets named after him as well.
01:13:41
Donald Robertson
You should you should go to his house i and check out his his library.
01:13:42
Erick
Okay.
01:13:47
Donald Robertson
um Some people have said Spinoza was more stoic than the Stoics.
01:13:51
Erick
Yeah.
01:13:53
Donald Robertson
But he's, ah yeah, he's not much fun to read. um Unfortunately, he's got a very kind of, he models his stellar writing on textbooks of geometry. Like it's it's it's pretty dry.
01:14:09
Donald Robertson
um But he does have um a bunch of advice about psychotherapy. He saw, like the Stoics, he sees his philosophy um as fundamentally also and not only a philosophy, but also a psychotherapy, a kind of cognitive or rational psychotherapy, just like the Stoics did.
01:14:28
Erick
Yeah.
01:14:29
Donald Robertson
So definitely worth checking out. um Anyway, I wonder,
01:14:31
Erick
Okay.
01:14:35
Donald Robertson
Before we finish, where would you advise people to begin if they want to learn about stoicism and how to apply it to their lives? What do you think? So if somebody said to you, I'm just starting to get interested in this stoicism thing. I heard Tim Ferriss mention it. And it kind of got my interest. What would you suggest that they do next?
01:14:59
Erick
Well, you know, first and foremost, you know, self-promotion here, uh, listen to my podcast.
01:15:04
Erick
That's, that's a big one. Still a coffee break.
01:15:04
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
01:15:06
Donald Robertson
That's allowed.
01:15:07
Erick
Yes. And, uh, by my book stoicism 101, because for me, yes.
01:15:11
Donald Robertson
Available in all good bookshops on, I don't know, a few days, a couple of weeks or something, is it? 4th of February, I believe we say.
01:15:16
Erick
Yeah. Come. Yeah. Fourth of February. So I'm trying to get the, the presales going. So hopefully that'll help boost it in the rankings.
01:15:23
Donald Robertson
ah oh Available for pre-order now, we should say.
01:15:25
Erick
Yeah. Yes.
01:15:27
Erick
But, um,
01:15:27
Donald Robertson
Actually, let me just, have as an author, people should pre-order your book because even if they're like, oh, i'll just wait until it comes out.
01:15:34
Donald Robertson
No, pre-order it because it benefits the author. It means that um you the publisher are more likely to throw more weight behind it and the retailers are more likely to promote the book and order more copies and stuff.
01:15:46
Donald Robertson
So if you're kind of thinking of waiting until it comes out, you can actually do the author a favor by pre-ordering it instead. Also, on Amazon, you potentially get it slightly cheaper by doing that.
01:15:56
Erick
Yeah, so that's I mean, obviously my book stoicism 101, it's meant to be that way. So the the publisher actually contacted me about a year ago, ah just as I got to Amsterdam and asked me if I wanted to write this book.
01:16:12
Erick
because they have Philosophy 101, they have Ethics 101, Religion 101, and so they they wanted Stoicism 101, found my podcast, contacted me on LinkedIn and said, hey, we like your style. We think you have a strong voice and a clear way of explaining these things. Would you be interested interested in writing a book? And I'm like, well, I've been, I actually have, you know, ideas for about five different books. And I'm like, well, this is what we want. And we think you'd fit really well.
01:16:36
Erick
And so it's it's meant to be for those who are just getting into stoicism for the most part, but it also goes fairly deep so that even somebody who has been in stoicism for a while can do that. um Above and beyond that, obviously, you know there's all the greats, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca are all fabulous to read. ah We mentioned William Irvine's book, The Guide to the Good Life, The Art of Stoic Joy, which for me was my introduction. And so it's one that I like to recommend because William is a good writer and he does a really good job of taking it again taking these harder concepts and going this is how to apply in your daily life.
01:17:07
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
01:17:14
Donald Robertson
It was the first modern best seller in Stoicism.
01:17:14
Erick
and
01:17:18
Erick
Yeah, it was just it just really had such a clear way of explaining it. it just I really appreciated that. um I also really enjoyed How to Think Like Socrates. It's a very entertaining book. I love the way that you wrote that. um I appreciate the way that you talk about Socrates. and Like I said, in our Interview on that it's very cinematic and you know i could totally picture it in my head i think i make a great netflix series i mean for me anyway what i don't know if anybody else to be interested in it but i would find something like that interesting.
01:17:51
Erick
um But really just, I think there are a lot of great, I think that almost any book that helps you to really think about things in a very different way. um There's one book that I found that was incredibly stoic, even though it doesn't mention stoicism once in it, and it's all about leadership. It's called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. And it's basically how to run a stoic organization. I mean, I remember reading this and like,
01:18:20
Erick
You know, I read it probably 10 years ago. Somebody gave it to me as a gift. I read the first couple of chapters and I was like, oh, that's interesting, but wasn't really any good headspace to do that. And then again, to bring it back to Tim Ferriss, he interviewed one of the authors on his podcast and I'm like, I know that name and I know that book.
01:18:38
Erick
I think I have it. Went out of my library, pulled it out.
01:18:40
Donald Robertson
Hmm.
01:18:40
Erick
I'm like, okay, now I'm going to read this.
01:18:41
Donald Robertson
Hmm.
01:18:43
Erick
And he was ah Diane Chapman, I think, or Diana Chapman. And I started reading it and I was just like, Oh my gosh, this is incredibly stoic. It's how to, this is really how to be a stoic leader, you know, like, um, and just did a really good job of explaining how to apply all these principles. I mean, a lot of them are like, you know, practicing radical candor, like, you know, allow people to save space, to have their opinions, to be able to say what needs to be said. Uh, another one is, you know, about radical acceptance, you know, accepting,
01:19:17
Erick
you know, a radical responsibility, that's what it was, you know, you, if you're in charge, then you are responsible for these things. You may not be to blame for what goes wrong, but you are responsible for those things. And the more responsibility you take, the more power you have in any situation.
01:19:33
Erick
rather than trying to blame everybody else around you, which the stories are very big on. you know One of my favorite quotes from Epictetus, you know it's like, if you stop blaming other people, your education has begun.
01:19:44
Erick
When you when you you ah take the stop blaming yourself, then you're becoming a little bit wiser. And when you don't blame anyone, then you have basically gained enlightenment.
01:19:54
Donald Robertson
Gee.
01:19:54
Erick
And it took me a long time to understand that. But what I realized, it was the idea that
01:20:00
Donald Robertson
Oh.
01:20:01
Erick
You know, people are the way they are. Events are going to happen the way they are. Just accept that. And rather than worrying about trying to find anybody to blame, figure out how to be responsible for taking it and fixing whatever's going wrong.
01:20:13
Donald Robertson
Well, it's easy for you to say that. But we wouldn't have any internet if that was the case. like Can you imagine what Twitter would be like if nobody blamed anybody for anything?
01:20:21
Erick
We
Social Media Observations
01:20:22
Donald Robertson
wait Like a ghost town?
01:20:23
Erick
might actually get along.
01:20:25
Donald Robertson
Yeah, like tumbleweed. they ah They'd run out of things they'd run out of thanks to say to each other. I think
01:20:31
Erick
Yeah, what's what's fun I find that hilarious. i I go on Twitter and anything that's even just slightly controversial, just exploding all over the place and lots of ad hominem attacks.
01:20:42
Erick
And they're just and yeah I go on threads and I find it's it's a much more inviting atmosphere, which I think is interesting.
01:20:50
Erick
And I don't find that negativity on there.
01:20:50
Donald Robertson
Yeah, I used to think all social media was like that, but I started to realize maybe it happens over time, but like actually none of them are as bad as as Twitter.
01:21:01
Donald Robertson
It seems to me at the the moment.
01:21:02
Erick
Yeah.
01:21:02
Donald Robertson
Maybe YouTube comments are pretty bad, but anyway.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:21:05
Donald Robertson
Anyway, well, I think that's been another fantastic discussion, to be honest. So thanks very much ah for joining me, Eric. um We hope that you, the listener, enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Please share the link with your friends and subscribe to the Stoicism, Philosophy as a Way of Life newsletter and substack for more podcasts and articles and philosophy and psychology and stuff like that. But thanks for listening. And it's goodbye from me, Donald Robertson, and from my guest, Eric Claude.
01:21:34
Erick
and Thanks for listening, everybody.
01:21:35
Donald Robertson
Bye, everyone.