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How Stoicism Addresses Anxiety with Tim Lebon (Episode 17)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
How does Stoicism actually make a psychological difference?
In conversation Caleb Ontiveros speaks with the author, researcher and psychologist, Tim Lebon on that very question.
Tim shares how Stoicism has made a concrete difference to his life and how it has transformed the lives of others. He then discusses how Stoicism works and how it can help you shape you into a more resilient person.
We end with a discussion on the future of Stoicism.
(1:15) What is Stoicism?
(5:00) How has Stoicism made a difference to Tim?
(10:00) How has it made a difference to others?
(20:00) How Stoicism works
(36:00) The future of Stoicism
***
Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Jay's Journey and Stoicism
00:00:00
Speaker
Jay was a former county lines drug dealer organizing young people to sell drugs in the suburbs of London and surrounding towns. He completed the stoic course and became a practicing stoic. Upon release he went on
00:00:15
Speaker
to work in full-time crime prevention at Charlton Athletic Football Club. Since then Jay has spoken to over a thousand young people in his community in London, teaching them some stoic principles to help them avoid the drug selling lifestyle that became his downfall.
Podcast and Hosts Overview
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe 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.
00:00:48
Speaker
In this conversation I speak with the author, researcher, and psychologist Tim Laban. We cover how stoicism has made a concrete difference to his life, and how it has made a difference to the lives of others.
00:01:03
Speaker
Tim shares a number of stories, and we end by discussing an optimistic picture of the future of Stoicism. Here is Tim Le Bon.
Interview with Tim Le Bon on Modern Stoicism
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa. My name is Caleb Monteverros, and today I have the privilege of speaking with therapist, author, researcher Tim Le Bon.
00:01:24
Speaker
He's known for directing research at the modern stoicism organization and written a number of books. His most recent is 365 ways to be more stoic. Thanks for joining. Caleb, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again. It's good to have you back. So a broad question we like to ask is how would you describe stoicism these days?
00:01:50
Speaker
So what it isn't is the stiff upper lip. It's not about sucking it up. It's not about being isolated or passive. That is lowercase stoicism. But more interestingly is what it is. And again, I'd probably want to draw a little bit of a distinction between ancient stoicism, which I think, well, it was a whole philosophy, wasn't it? Including ideas about physics,
00:02:15
Speaker
ecology, you know, the world at large, ethics, just about everything, and modern stoicism.
00:02:23
Speaker
There isn't general agreement amongst modern stoics about exactly what it is, but my take on modern stoicism is that it's focusing mainly on the ethics and drawing on psychological insights of the more, of the ancient stoics like Seneca had some, his essay angle is absolutely brilliant. For instance, Epictetus, they teach CBT therapists, Epictetus in the very first week, you know, CBT 101 kind of thing. So, so.
00:02:52
Speaker
some of the psychological insights are so brilliant that ethics is really helpful but less of an emphasis on some of the physics and worldview in my opinion. So again that's not necessarily a particularly helpful answer because you want to know what your listeners want to know. Yeah but what is it about the ethics and the psychology?
Core Pillars of Modern Stoicism
00:03:13
Speaker
So if I could dive into that a little bit then I guess I'm coming to see it more and more as there being three pillars modern stylicism and those would be
00:03:22
Speaker
Number one, the dichotomy of control, the idea there are some things under your direct control, some things not under your direct control, and you're better off focusing on those things directly under your control. That's number one. Number two is the idea of character, the importance of character, and related to that being the best version of you. I think it's quite a nice way of putting it, developing the virtues
00:03:46
Speaker
the cardinal virtues wisdom courage self-control and justice and bearing in mind that those four virtues need to be thought of very broadly so justice includes compassion for example so that's the second pillar you've got control
00:04:04
Speaker
And you've got a whole idea of character and developing virtues. And I think connected with that would be the idea that's the most important thing you need to do in life, that the virtues are more important than anything else. And the third idea could be called stomach mindfulness and therapy. I mean, that's what I'm, I think it's helpful to call it that because it's kind of applying those things in the moment. What is going on right now in, and what are my interpretations of it?
00:04:34
Speaker
And what should I do about those interpretations? Are they wise? Are they helpful? Or should I kind of ignore them? Or should I challenge them with more rational and helpful ways of looking at things? So those three things individually are all really valuable. Put them together and I think you get a magic brew of Stoicism. Very good. And how has Stoicism made a concrete difference in your life?
Stoicism in Personal Crisis
00:05:03
Speaker
So I think there are two answers to that. So will you allow me two answers? Of course. One is very much in the vein of the Socratic vein of, you know, we've got one life to live. What do we want to do with it? And that idea of the examined life, taking a step back.
00:05:19
Speaker
thinking about who you are, what your strengths are, what your possibility impact in the world could be, what will give you purpose and meaning in life. So when I was in my late twenties, I kind of had an early midlife crisis. I used to work in IT in my twenties and I decided that much as I enjoyed it, I wanted to do something different that took me back to the philosophy that I studied as an undergraduate and postgraduate.
00:05:44
Speaker
but also I was becoming increasingly interested in psychology. So I studied psychology, started counselling, started to be a therapist. And so in my own life, using that combination of psychology and philosophy,
00:06:01
Speaker
but then helping others by becoming a therapist and coach, helping others to draw on psychology and philosophy to help their lives. So that's the big, you know, a really big kind of life change where I think the Stoic, Socratic,
00:06:16
Speaker
idea of taking a step back and thinking about what you want to do with your life made a massive impact. The second example which I think was more directly stoic would be a bit more to do with I don't know if I had a mental health disorder but I was certainly prone to worrying.
00:06:33
Speaker
So I think in terms of my genetics, quite a lot of anxiety in my, you know, in my family, you know, my mother was a very anxious lady. And I think I got a lot of that from her. And I have this memory. You know, sometimes we have childhood memories and we can't, we don't know the context at all.
00:06:53
Speaker
And I have this weird memory of being, I don't know, under 10, certainly a very young boy. And having this thought, I am always worrying about something. That was the thought I had when I was, I don't know, eight or nine. I'm always worrying about something. And I, goodness knows what I had to worry about at that age. You know, an essay that I'd handed in or what I was going to do in a maths test or
00:07:17
Speaker
I don't know. But anyway, I'm sure, I'm certain that I used to be a warrior and that went on into my team's adolescence as well.
00:07:25
Speaker
And what has, and I don't think I am a warrior anymore, not particularly. I mean, sometimes I'll worry a little bit, but then I'll pull myself out of it and deal with it more constructively. And there's in CBT, we call this the worry tree. And of course CBT was inspired by stoicism. And in my book written about something called the stoic worry tree, which brings it back to stoicism. And it's very simple.
00:07:51
Speaker
If ever listeners might want to try this, first of all, you notice that you're getting caught up in worrying. That's kind of that little bit of mindfulness. You know, I'm getting on the worry train. I'm just starting to, I've been thinking about this for 30 seconds and it's not really getting anywhere except more what ifs. So you notice that's the first step. Second step is you ask yourself, this thing I'm concerned about,
00:08:15
Speaker
what's under my control, what aspects of it are under my control, and what aspects of it aren't under my control. And generally there'll be a bit of a mixture of things. And then there's a very specific kind of algorithm you apply because for those things under your control, the aspects under your control, you think what virtue do I need? What virtues probably do I need to help me deal with this well?
00:08:43
Speaker
And then those aspects not under your direct control, well, we need to not pay too much attention to them except for, you know, cause the aspects that are under our control, we've already dealt with by.
00:08:56
Speaker
by applying the virtues to them. So the other parts, the uncertainty in life and uncertainty that we don't know the outcome. We don't know how other people react. We need to let that go really. We need to not pay too much attention to it. And if saying a stoic mantra can help us, you know, one of the things that the stoics have said, if we can say something like, you know, learn to be indifference to things that are indifferent or learn not to care about the things that are under our control, then all the better.
00:09:26
Speaker
you know, most of the things that happened are problems of my imagination rather than reality. These kind of things or paraphrases of things that the Stoics have said might help us to let go of the things not under our control. So I'm definitely much less of a warrior than I used to be and I would thank the Stoics and the Stoic Worry Tree for that.
00:09:51
Speaker
Very good. Yes, we suffer much more in imagination than in reality as the line goes. That is great. Well, well remembered. Yeah, it's always a good mantra.
00:10:03
Speaker
And you've, so throughout working with the modern stoicism organization and being a therapist yourself, you've seen stoicism make a difference to a number of other people's lives. So I wonder if there are any stories that listeners might find useful to hear that you could share with us now.
Stoicism's Practical Application through Client Stories
00:10:23
Speaker
yeah so so there's one that yeah there's probably two examples i'd like to give one is a client and the other is from a different population to do with the prison service so i'll quote this is entry 216 from 365 ways and i'll just adapt it a little bit so so so it makes sense in this context so it's called serenity prayer wisdom
00:10:47
Speaker
And of course, the Serenity prayer is, I think it's an adaptation of the dichotomy of control, whether it was explicitly recognized as such or not, or it's a kind of a combination of the stoic dichotomy of control and the stoic emphasis on the virtues. So I see the Serenity prayer as being a wonderful way of putting stoicism.
00:11:06
Speaker
And of course it goes, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So Ravi, it's not his actual name, but to protect his identity, had been depressed for years. And actually he was on a CBT course I was helping to run. And to be honest, come about week three, he wasn't finding it that helpful. And we know that because, you know, we asked them to do scores to say what their scores are for depression and anxiety.
00:11:35
Speaker
So I think it was by week three, he had pretty high scores and he wasn't, you know, it was happy that he was still coming, but he didn't seem to be that helped that much. And that was the week that we mentioned the Serenity Prayer.
00:11:50
Speaker
and didn't say anything at the time, but a week later, he came in and he did his scores and they were down to the subclinical range. And so we said to him, Ravi, this is brilliant. I'm so glad that you're feeling better. What's happened?
00:12:07
Speaker
And he said, well, it was that Serenity thing you talked about. And he'd actually done a drawing, which was amazing. And I don't know if people can imagine this as I speak. So imagine that there's a boggy field on the left-hand side with kind of rain clouds above. So not very nice place to be.
00:12:32
Speaker
and that's on the left of the picture on the right of the picture it's kind of like a green field and the sunshine so that's much nicer so you've got left hand side not very nice right hand side much nicer and then between them was a giant wall
00:12:49
Speaker
So he said, what's that? And he said, well, I'm not going to go into details, but my past has been pretty horrible. And that's the left hand side of this picture. And the problem is, that's where I've been in my head.
00:13:03
Speaker
That's where I've been living. Even though that's all gone, I've been dwelling on it. And what was that word you used, you said? A ruminating. Yeah, ruminating. That's what we call it. So it made me realize that I've been ruminating all this time. And so what I've decided to do is to construct this wall and live on the other side. I don't need to. I've got a choice.
00:13:32
Speaker
I don't need to let this past drag me down. I can choose to go to live in the present and the future. And that was great. But then I noticed that there was a small gap in the wall, which is interesting. And I thought, okay, is that deliberate? And he said, yeah, no, that is deliberate because that's to remind me that if I ever find myself back in the past, I can choose to return to the present.
00:13:55
Speaker
And I loved that. I kind of remember that myself because we all find ourselves sometimes going back to the past, dwelling on stuff that either we've done or other people have done. And getting into this kind of, it can either be angry, can't it? You know, why did that person do that to me? Or it can get into self-pity, you know, why was my life like this? Or self-recrimination, why was I such an idiot? And none of that is helpful.
00:14:24
Speaker
And in fact, when researchers have looked at some of the things that are most associated with depression, then this kind of negative rumination is featured strongly. And also with anger, it features very strongly.
00:14:38
Speaker
So that's one striking example of stoicism reached the parts that standard CBT couldn't reach in that case. But there have been lots of therapy clients who've been helped by, I think particularly the dichotomy of control and really separating out, in Ravi's case, it was the past from the future. But a lot of other people, it applies to their relationships with other people.
00:15:03
Speaker
and they realize that they're trying to control other people by various techniques like ordering them about, being angry with them, threatening them, but actually you can't control other people.
00:15:21
Speaker
It's better to give up the attempt to directly control them. And when I do some coaching work with people with problems with relating to other people, whether it's intimate relationships or other relationships, what is really helpful there is a focus on the virtues. The virtue of justice would there include trying to put yourself in their shoes. What is it like from their perspective? How do they see the world rather than just trying to impose our own world?
00:15:50
Speaker
view on them. And indeed the other virtues would be relevant as well. So just self-control, don't act on, don't say that, that mean thing you feel like saying, wisdom, how to be tactful and diplomatic, get your point of view across and courage to sometimes say, give the feedback that needs to be said, if that's the right thing to do. So, so the dichotomy of control and the virtues I think are really helpful to a lot of clients
Transformation and Mentorship through Stoicism
00:16:18
Speaker
and patients.
00:16:18
Speaker
I wanted to talk a little bit about Jay and Andy, who were kind enough to give two of the entries. So in the book 365 ways, it's organized into topics and within each topic, it kind of builds up gradually. But we've also got asked modern Stoics to give their own Stoic success stories. And really interestingly, we got one from
00:16:42
Speaker
Andy Small, who teaches stoicism as part of his work as a prison officer or his work in prisons, and one from someone who benefited from his work. His name is Jay, Jay Adam, who's now become a mentor in the community where he draws on stoicism to help people. So Andy said, my team and I have been teaching stoicism at HMP Hunter Coombe, that's in England, for the last five years.
00:17:11
Speaker
hundreds of prisoners have been on our programs with some great successes. Jay was a former county lines drug dealer organizing young people to sell drugs in the suburbs of London and surrounding towns. He completed the stoic course and became a practicing stoic. Upon release he went on
00:17:31
Speaker
to work in full-time Crown Prevention at Charlton Athletic Football Club. Since then Jay has spoken to over a thousand young people in his community in London, teaching them some stoic principles to help them avoid the drug selling lifestyle that became his downfall.
00:17:47
Speaker
Jay continues to be a practicing Stoic, a practicing Muslim and a better father than he has ever been. So that's Andy's side of the story and clearly as you hear that you can almost hear Andy's pride, the purpose it's given him and the sense of meaning that all this work that Andy has put into developing this program and you get someone like Jay who comes out of it exactly as you want.
00:18:16
Speaker
Now, you know, you read that or you might read that and think, okay, that's Andy's version of it. That's true. And that was my first response. And then I had the pleasure of hearing Jay talk at a stoic event. I think it was an Aurelius Foundation event because they're both both Andy and Jay are also very involved in the Aurelius Foundation, which is doing great work in this area.
00:18:37
Speaker
and yeah and Jay's the real thing and this is this was Jay's entry in the book he says and this is in very much in his own language. Having been involved in criminal behavior as a young man I had certain traits hardwired into my thought process and worldview which got me in a lot of trouble. Stoicism helped me shape my purpose and attain a clear understanding of what I can and cannot control.
00:19:02
Speaker
I used my time in prison as an opportunity to really work on myself. With stoicism as my foundation, I practiced resisting the behaviours and thinking that led me to prison and I became more resilient.
00:19:19
Speaker
I now mentor and work with young people to help them realise their full potential. I also provide them with state principles they can apply in their day-to-day lives so they are less likely to make the same mistakes I did.
00:19:35
Speaker
Very good. That's powerful. And two concrete examples about how stoicism can make a difference that are quite distinct from each other. I think it's always good to hear stories like that since when we talk about philosophy, we start with ideas that can be abstract or heuristics that are not always made concrete and something like a story, especially a real life story can bring them to life and show them how they matter to people. Exactly.
00:20:05
Speaker
Hi everyone, this is Michael Trumbly. Thanks for listening to Stolo Conversations. We're a new podcast. We're getting started. We're building episode by episode.
Podcast Growth and Listener Support
00:20:16
Speaker
So I wanted to just give a quick shout out and say that any like, review, or referral that you can provide really goes a long way to helping the show. Thanks again for listening.
00:20:27
Speaker
So I know you've thought a lot about the mechanisms by which stoicism makes a difference. And part of that is stoicism's connection to cognitive behavioral therapy and its model of human psychology. I wonder if you could say a little bit about what your ideas are about how stoicism can help on the psychological side and how that actually works.
00:20:54
Speaker
I think that's a really good question because we can look at, we can say that CBT was invented when Erranti Beck and Albert Ellis read some passages in, particularly in Epictetus and then developed CBT. We can say that and that would be true. I think it's really interesting to go deeper though and to think about
00:21:20
Speaker
Okay, if someone is a stoic, what difference is it going to make psychologically? What are the processes? And I think that
00:21:30
Speaker
There's kind of several processes, some of which we've mentioned already. So stoic mindfulness, I think, is the foundation for it. What's stoic mindfulness? Well, it's mindfulness, but particularly mindfulness of the situation you're in and the judgments you're making.
00:21:52
Speaker
So the idea is that whenever we're experiencing something, we have certain first impressions of things. I think, you know, that it's usually translated as impressions. So I like to think of it as first impressions. You have first impressions of any situation, any person, and sometimes you can just go with whatever your first impressions are. And sometimes that's helpful.
00:22:15
Speaker
But as human beings, we also have possibly the unique ability amongst animals anyway to take a step back, notice what we're thinking and choose what to do with it. So that's what I understand by stoic mindfulness, which is a skill that we probably need to develop. So.
00:22:38
Speaker
I think Seneca, as I was saying earlier about the Stoics being brilliant psychologists, and Seneca on anger I think writes about this particularly clearly, that there's a difference between our first impressions and indeed the first movements as they're sometimes called or impulses towards certain behaviours.
00:22:58
Speaker
and then I start agreeing, ascending to those first impressions and then acting out on those impulses. So that's the first process, the first distinct process, I think. Stoic mindfulness, the ability to notice these first impressions and impulses and then deciding, well, having that choice point, some psychologists call a choice point as to what you do.
00:23:26
Speaker
And that leads us to the second main psychological process, which I think is a more behavioral one, but it's also a kind of personality one because it's developing the virtues. And that's often something that new Stoics ask, you know, so they come along to a Stoic conference or they take part in the Stoic week that we run at Modern Stoicism usually every October or November, you know, they'll say, okay,
00:23:55
Speaker
You're saying about developing the virtues. What are the virtues? Well, that's quite an easy one to answer. But then they say, how can I develop them?
00:24:04
Speaker
And that is a really interesting question. How do you develop wisdom, courage, self-control, and justice? And I think part of the answer that the Stoics gave was you just make a decision, you know, at Marcus Aurelius, just do the right thing, kind of thing. Another way to do it would be to pick a role model, act like they would, or imagine that they're watching you.
00:24:30
Speaker
the Stokes recommend those as ways to develop a virtue.
00:24:35
Speaker
Another one would be kind of by habituation, just by practicing it. The more you practice it, you know, talks about going without anger for 30 days in a row, you know, and to set yourself these kinds of challenges. But I'm really interested as well in the synthesis between those ancient Stoic ideas and modern ideas from neuroscience and psychology, because there's a lot
00:25:02
Speaker
been written about how to develop each of the virtues. So the positive psychologists led by Martin Seligman and colleagues put a lot of research effort into the virtues. It's become one of the things that psychologists research and they're interested and they come up with ways to increase
00:25:21
Speaker
our ability to be virtuous and they talk about character strengths which are related to virtues they're kind of so you can divide each of the virtues into more specific character strengths so
00:25:35
Speaker
So, but to come back to your question, the first one is kind of cognitive, which is, well, there's stoic mindfulness, there's developing the virtues, which as I've said, I think we can add to the stoics ideas with some more psychology ones. And the third thing is not just being mindful of our interpretations,
00:25:56
Speaker
but then our thoughts and you can go two ways in that so the more mind in kind of modern psychology there's the mindfulness people which would include acceptance and commitment therapy act which is a very popular third wave CBT therapy and they kind of say I'm probably oversimplifying it slightly but they kind of say ignore
00:26:19
Speaker
the thoughts ignore the unhelpful thoughts or diffuse them make fun of them say them in a silly voice you're not really challenging them but you're learning not to be taken in by them so that's a kind of more mindfulness approach which works well some people and then the more standard cbt approach is to come up with
00:26:40
Speaker
more helpful interpretations. So, for example, if your train was late, you might start off by catastrophizing, it's a disaster, and then you might take a step back, maybe take a breath and say, you know what, it's just time.
00:26:59
Speaker
Nothing terrible is gonna happen. It's being convenient. In fact, I can message the person who I'm meeting and they'll probably be quite understanding they might even be stuck in the same holdup, so So in fact that little example
00:27:14
Speaker
kind of encapsulates all three of those ideas, really. You're noticing that you're starting to get to get worked up. That's stark mindfulness. You're noticing your unhelpful thinking patterns, catastrophizing in this case, maybe jumping to conclusions, maybe overvaluing certain things like getting somewhere quickly. And then you're acting with virtue, wisdom. What do I need to do about it? Justice, telling the other person you're going to be late.
00:27:40
Speaker
And that's why I say that stoicism is a kind of magic brew because each of these three things really make sense on their own and put them together. You pivot between them really in situations and something quite magical happens. The other thing that I want to suggest in terms of psychological processes is probably something about taking stock of your life as a whole
00:28:08
Speaker
Because maybe that isn't really covered by any of those three processes. There's this idea of values clarification. I'd use clarification, yeah. And it kind of went like I was talking about in my early midlife crisis, or maybe it happened to Jay when he was in prison. And actually he said when he gave a talk about it that the thing that really got me in this talk about stoicism was one word, and that word was purpose.
00:28:35
Speaker
And he said, he went back to his cell and he thought, what is my purpose in life? What is it all about? So I think things like values clarification, thinking about the purpose or meaning of one's life is a kind of a separate process from that, from like this kind of the more moment to moment thing. And then probably another process is just development of these things.
00:28:57
Speaker
you know how do you develop these skills and so I think a mindfulness practice can help and there's all kinds of other but specifically stoic ideas like and again listeners may well be familiar with many of these but the idea of a I mean it's often presented as a something you do in the morning and often it's presented as a pre-meditation of adversity but I mean what I found is probably more helpful for people I call it a preview of the day
00:29:26
Speaker
So not just looking for adversities, but also looking for to, you know, like if you've got an elderly neighbor and you haven't seen them for a couple of days, well, that's an opportunity to knock on their door and ask how they are, for instance, or a colleague at work who you've noticed a bit down in the dumps. That's an opportunity to, to have a friendly word with them. So various ways to, to become more stoic.
00:29:51
Speaker
would include that kind of morning preview, an evening review, when you ask what have I done well, what have I done not quite so well, what have I admitted to do and to do it in a very self-compassionate way, what can I do better and
00:30:07
Speaker
My own favorite thing to do in the daytime is just to reframe things as a stoic test if it's something difficult and a stoic opportunity if it's something more positive like the examples I gave. So I think that's a separate kind of process, this kind of development of ourselves from, you know, we're all works in progress, none of us
00:30:32
Speaker
I'm certainly not. A stoic sages. But this idea that we want to become better versions of ourselves, and by investing in a bit of our time to be more stoic, we can become better versions of ourselves. Right. Excellent. So we have, as far as I can recall, we had about five ideas. We had the dichotomy of control that's focusing on what is up to you, your decisions, and considered judgments. And then we have virtue.
00:31:00
Speaker
building out these character strengths. Of course, you can focus on the four cardinal virtues of stoicism, justice, self-control, courage, and wisdom, but you can also break those down into others or add additional virtues to that list.
00:31:19
Speaker
And then we have stoic approaches for managing challenges. And on one hand, there's the acceptance approach. That's the acceptance commitment therapy approach, the diffusion approach, which says sometimes when you dispute with thoughts, you end up ruminating on them. So it's better to accept them and accept them in a willing way. And behind that is a thought that
00:31:45
Speaker
What is bad about these feelings isn't the feelings themselves, but how they harm your life plan, how they keep you in your head and not in your life is one of the powerful phrases from that school, if you will.
00:32:01
Speaker
Or we have on the other side that you can think of as a traditional stoic, traditional cognitive behavioral therapy approach, which is thinking through these any negative initial sensations or feelings and the thoughts they give rise to and questioning, stepping back and questioning whether they are true or not. And often we can note that they're the result of some cognitive distortion or negative thinking pattern that's not so useful.
00:32:24
Speaker
And then of course, on the fourth side, we have the values that's thinking through who do I want to be thinking about models of your behavior and asking this question, you know, what is my purpose? And one useful aspect of socialism for me is this idea that, well, we know we are rational social beings, so our purpose must flow from that facts. So we are beings who should pursue knowledge and beings who should live well with others and live well with the roles we've acquired in society.
00:32:54
Speaker
Finally, we had the list of techniques you mentioned, which we yourself and at Stoa have tried to systematize and put into different programs for people to apply. And of course, others pick up these techniques from the ancient Stoics themselves and put them into their own life as well. Extremely well put, Caleb.
00:33:14
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, is there anything else you'd like to add to that list? Well, I guess what I would say is, you know, when I was asked to write the book 365 ways to be more stoic, what I really wanted to do was to provide something that would help with that development, because of course there are lots of books out there to read, but what I wanted to, the sort of book that I could use myself, or I mean, it's not meant specifically for people that already know a lot of stoicism,
00:33:42
Speaker
So, you know, if I think of my, you know, that my younger self that didn't know so much about studying the sort of book I could pick up and work on these things. So, so, you know, that's could it's intended to be part of someone's day, daily stomach practice to work on a particular area and read as quote or read a success story, or do a particular exercise and then put it into their practice in their daily life in the day.
00:34:09
Speaker
So you're learning about an idea and then you're putting it into practice and then you're reflecting on it, which is sometimes called the learning cycle. That's how we learn, I think, isn't it? Not just by, I think it's a bit of a problem sometimes with reading stuff that we, in fact, I was talking to a new client today and he'd got hold of a really good self-help book. It's a CBT self-help book. And I said to him, how did you get on with it? He said, oh yeah, I read about the first half. And then when it came to the exercises,
00:34:37
Speaker
I stopped doing it. And I said, why did you do that? And he said, Oh, well, you know, I dunno, it seemed like too much hard work. And of course, that's why he was coming for therapy because, you know, he knew some of the theory, but he hadn't put it into practice. So, and that's something that the Stoics knew very well. You know, they wrote a lot, didn't they, about how, you know, don't just read Chrysippus. They don't just read, you know, don't just read all the theory. You got to put it into practice for it to be beneficial.
00:35:08
Speaker
Right. Marcus Aurelius has the line, that's something to the effect of stop distracting yourself, throw away your books. And I think that's a warning that for many books, other forms of media, they can turn into projects of consumption that might distract from making important decisions or working on these skills that we need to develop. Exactly. Practice Stoicism with Stoa.
00:35:36
Speaker
Stoic combines the ancient philosophy of stoicism with meditation in a practical meditation app. It includes hundreds of hours of exercises, lessons, and conversations to help you live a happier life. Find it available for a free download in the Play Store and App Store.
00:35:53
Speaker
You thought a lot about the future of Stoicism and how the aspect of the social movements, the social science, and of course the ancient philosophy sort of come together and might change over the next few decades. I wonder if you could say something about that.
Future of Stoicism Compared to Mindfulness
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think actually it's potentially a very exciting future and the way I see stoicism is perhaps similar to where mindfulness was maybe 30 years ago.
00:36:24
Speaker
when people like or maybe 40 years ago maybe people like Jon Kabat-Zinn were just you know people thought he was crazy you know talking about mindfulness and people gave him patience from I think acute chronic pain acute and chronic pain clinics because they didn't know what to do with them so you know well let's give him to Jon Kabat-Zinn to see if he can help and and they found out that it could help
00:36:48
Speaker
and so slowly and gradually the mindfulness movement, which was of course based largely on Buddhist principles and practice, but stripped of some of the perhaps what we might think of as more esoteric or religious or metaphysical aspects, stripping away a lot of those to make them
00:37:09
Speaker
more acceptable to the general population and because maybe you don't need them. So that's one analogy that I see with modern stoicism, this kind of bringing it down to the more essential parts and the parts that are going to be more generally acceptable. And the second analogy is that what did they do? Well, they tried it out, they did research, they did kind of
00:37:33
Speaker
research on a small scale to start with and then built it up more researchers got interested they started doing randomized controls trials and they started to get money to do more research and where are we now in 2023
00:37:48
Speaker
well we're getting you know in the latest nice guidelines in the UK you know they used to say that mindfulness was just good for relapse for depression and now in the latest version they said oh it's actually useful for people with moderate.
00:38:04
Speaker
depression as well. So not saying mindfulness is kind of good for everything but that's an example where it has gone from being something that was probably you know considered as something a little bit new agey or not scientific to something that is very much in the main street.
00:38:22
Speaker
And I think that's a very good thing because more people can benefit from it. And as I say, in the UK, it is being offered now. You can do mindfulness classes in the, on the NHS, which means it's a moment anyway. It's silly. So start charging in the NHS. It's free. So two, two kind of striking resemblances, I think.
00:38:44
Speaker
mindfulness at least two. One is you've got an ancient philosophy be it buddhism or stoicism a kind of a practical philosophy a living philosophy which has got lots of practices which people find helpful which in the ancient versions included quite a large metaphysical element and so the first thing is to draw from it
00:39:03
Speaker
But I think to try and work out what are the most active ingredients, to put it no other way. So what are the most active ingredients? And let's put that in a way that doesn't mean that people have to read the ancient works. And if they want to, they might find reading ancient stokes really helpful. So you can put it in a kind of a way that people will find helpful. That's the first parallel. And the second parallel is a kind of research program.
00:39:32
Speaker
whereby more research is done to show what it is useful for and what it isn't useful for. Because as you can probably, and you and your listeners can probably tell, I'm pretty enthusiastic about stoicism.
00:39:45
Speaker
that doesn't mean it's going to be helpful for everyone. It doesn't mean it's going to be the very best cure for every psychological problem. And as a CBT therapist, if someone comes to me, I will do an assessment. And if they've got, you know, a clinical issue, I will apply CBT as the first kind of thing you do. And you might add some stomach ideas. But so I think it's important to say that, you know, we don't want to, I mean, perhaps that's probably the third parallel, you know, just as with mindfulness,
00:40:11
Speaker
I personally wouldn't want to say anyone that's got a mental health problem just do mindfulness. I'd want to kind of think about how it's helpful, how in what ways it can be helpful. And I mean, I wonder whether this is just a hunch and it may or may not turn out to be correct, but
00:40:33
Speaker
I do wonder whether it might be easier for many people to practice stoicism than mindfulness because mindfulness does take
00:40:44
Speaker
Potentially quite a lot of time and effort and so I just wonder if one did a kind of a I don't know a comparison whether Less people might drop out of stoicism than out of a mindfulness program That's just a hunch and I could be shot down in flames and it might turn out to be the exact opposite But you know try these people might say well, we've got mindfulness. Why bother with stoicism as well and I'm kind of
00:41:11
Speaker
It might sound like I'm setting them up as competitors, but actually I would see that they're both brilliant resources and that, you know, mindfulness has gone, got further at the moment and let Stoicism follow in its tracks and let's see which of those is useful for which kind of problems and for which kind of people. And I think if that happened, that would be great. And, you know, we talked about Stoicism in prisons and how, how
00:41:38
Speaker
programs are being developed there. I'd love to see stoicism being made available in the NHS in some form. And I think if that was to happen, it would probably need to be a bit like that, that Ravi who I talked about, you know, where it's not really a stoic course, but there are just some stoic ideas introduced into managing worry or dealing with the long-term
00:42:02
Speaker
physical health condition because at the moment I don't think the evidence would justify putting on a specifically stoic course for the general population as a kind of alternative to CBT but maybe in a short amount of time that would change maybe as we're
00:42:18
Speaker
So that's the other answer to your question about the future is we're already starting to see researchers interested in stoicism, and we're starting to get articles published in peer-reviewed journals, which are looking at the benefits of stoicism. And one of them, for instance, was by Megan Brown, who's now at London.
00:42:42
Speaker
and she led a team who were looking into how doing stoic exercises could help stop burnout amongst medical students and that had positive results. So it's studies like that that can really find out what stoicism is best at helping people with.
00:43:03
Speaker
I think there's an optimistic future for Stoic philosophy growing, Stoic values being promoted, as well as you say there being more research into figuring out what Stoic techniques are useful. And I certainly wouldn't say either that
00:43:21
Speaker
Stoicism is for everyone. I think there are some things that separate it from cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness that maybe make it more targeted, right? It's a little bit more like if you take on stoicism as a practice, I think a lot of people do that and take on almost an aspect of their identity as a stoic and that's very powerful.
00:43:46
Speaker
But not everyone will want to do that. And the other difference, of course, is that it's more opinionated on what the picture of the good life looks like, right? And the more opinionated that mindfulness of cards, the behavioral therapy of this specific picture of developing virtues. And many people find that useful. Many people can incorporate that into their pre-existing set of values, but
00:44:14
Speaker
I think that's a key difference one wouldn't want to sacrifice when institutionalizing the practice of stoicism. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's, I'm just interested in thinking over what you said about the virtues and, you know, the nature of the good life. And I guess, I mean, I agree with what you said, but suppose I see it as there's two kinds of questions, there were two things that stoicism is saying. So
00:44:44
Speaker
There's the idea that the virtues are good qualities. And I think that is kind of uncontroversial. I mean, you know, when Seligman and colleagues looked at, looked historically at very many societies and religions, they picked actually not four virtues, but six virtues as being pretty universal. And so it's, I want to almost say it would be
00:45:12
Speaker
allowable within, you know, if you say we were doing this in the NHS for one certainly doesn't want to preach to them about how to, you know, in a kind of religious way about what their values should be.
00:45:23
Speaker
But, you know, it's kind of controversial to say that, you know, courage, well, we're creatures who have fears that can sometimes get the better of us and courage is just what you need to do the best thing. We face temptation and desires and self-control is what you need to manage those. We live in communities and so justice and compassion and kindness are what we need.
00:45:48
Speaker
to get on well with other people, and we've got brains and the ability, the capacity to think about things, to reflect on things, to be curious, to be wise even, to be rational, and that's what wisdom is. So I kind of want to kind of
00:46:06
Speaker
say that the idea that cultivating virtues and maybe that's why the positive psychologists call them character strengths because they're aware that virtue sounds a bit preachy you know so the idea that there are strengths there are these qualities that are good for us to develop good for ourselves
00:46:25
Speaker
and good for the community and the world at large so that's something that we haven't really spoken about today but i think that's a really powerful element of stoicism and virtue ethics in general that these are qualities that aren't just good for us they are good for us usually in the long run but they're also good for other people so i'd want to i'd be fairly comfortable
00:46:49
Speaker
put saying that in say if i was giving a course in the nhs so then there could be a debate about it obviously but i think that feels feels an okay thing to do there's this other uh step that of course starix make which is much more controversial
00:47:07
Speaker
which is to say that the virtues, pursuing the virtues, cultivating the virtues is necessary and sufficient for the good life and that actually, you know, we can be happy even if we haven't got these preferred indifference, the things that we normally think of as valuable, like
00:47:28
Speaker
good health, money, status, the good opinion of others. Now that is a very distinctly Stoic view and even plenty of other ancient philosophers who were into virtue ethics like Aristotle wouldn't have gone the whole way
00:47:48
Speaker
with that, they'd have gone most of the way, but not quite the whole way. So I think preaching that as a value system, something that I would be at all comfortable doing in the NHS, because it's, you know, well, first of all, I'm not sure whether many people would necessarily agree with it. But also it does seem like you are saying this is what you should, you know, this is how you should live your life, not just saying that these are qualities that are good for you and good for everyone. So why not?
00:48:13
Speaker
not cultivate them. So I think that's that is the distinction that was kind of hidden in the way I presented it earlier, you know, cultivating the virtues, there's a kind of a
00:48:25
Speaker
The version of it, which is just, hey, these are good qualities. Try and cultivate them in your life. Try and look at issues in terms of the virtues, which I think is pretty uncontroversial. And then there's the view that's all you need to do. If you do that, you're going to be happy. And the other kind of things that we normally think of are good are relegated to kind of like a second division of things that you might, yeah, you might prefer, but they're not going to make the difference between happy life and unhappy life.
00:48:55
Speaker
Right, right. I suppose it's an open question how important this last aspect is to people. Yes. And it's something that I'm very interested in researching. And so I made an initial attempt to do that in the last version of Stomach Week, which I'm still analyzing the results from.
00:49:13
Speaker
Where so i think when we spoke last i spoke about the stoic elevator which is the idea which separates out those two ideas you know one is the idea of cultivating the virtues and the other idea is that virtues are kind of all you need and so.
00:49:29
Speaker
Yeah, so you can obviously ask people what they agree with and then correlate that with how happy they are. And it's a bit of a crude way of doing it, but you can get some initial indication as to whether this kind of more, this stronger version of stoicism, strong in the sense that it's more demanding, whether that actually is correlated with wellbeing or not, but yet to do the analysis on that. And so I think it's a really interesting question.
00:49:57
Speaker
Very good. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add? I think these ideas can make sense to people, but it's a further step to really integrate it in their lives. And that's something also I'm really interested in, you know, how can you do it? And I've written that book 365 ways to be able to try and help people.
00:50:12
Speaker
But there are other ways, I think, like people listening to podcasts like this, like people getting in groups of, you know, like they do in Stoic Week, but also other Stoic groups, you know, in person or via the internet. So you get kind of a group of like-minded people who can mutually support each other.
00:50:32
Speaker
And of course, the other idea is working with a stoic coach to help you do this or going along to a stoic teacher. So there's various paths, various ways, but I think what I'm saying is that there is a definite gap between reading about this stuff and finding it appealing and it making real impact and lasting impact in your life. And that's something that I think is, it's also worth exploring and thinking about.
00:50:56
Speaker
Right. This is a podcast focused on stoic theory and practice, and I think it's important to get both. So it's, of course, consuming lots of theoretical materials, thinking through those theoretical materials, and of course, taking the step to implement any of those insights into practice, whether that's practices given through books, people, creating a social group, using different apps like stoa or working with a teacher. Exactly. Well, thanks so much for coming on again, Tim.
00:51:27
Speaker
It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me.
00:51:47
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.