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New Year's Resolutions for Stoics (Episode 107)
683 Plays11 months ago
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Are New Year’s resolutions Stoic?
Caleb and Michael talk about the Stoic cases for and against the practice. Then they move to what we can learn from the Stoics about setting resolutions well.
(01:41) Against Resolutions
(09:44) The Case For Resolutions
(18:47) Making New Year’s Resolutions Well
(24:14) Getting Concrete
(26:55) Realistic and Ambitious
(33:14) Stoic Principles
(37:25) Michael's Planning
(40:09) Caleb Is Too Impulsive
(45:50) Summary
(49:54) Stoicism Applied
***
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Transcript
Managing Anger and Self-Improvement
00:00:00
Speaker
If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit. Give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you are not angry. I used to be angry every day. Then, every other day. Next, every two. Next, every three days. And if you succeed in passing 30 days, sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving.
Introduction to Stoic New Year's Resolutions
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. And I'm Michael Troble. And today, we're going to be talking about New Year's resolutions. Are they stoic? Are they something one should do? If you're going to do them, how might a stoic approach it? Yeah, looking forward to it.
00:00:48
Speaker
a fun reflection on reflecting, I guess.
Effectiveness of Resolutions
00:00:53
Speaker
Evictetus talks about, you know, the faculty of reason is special because it can reflect on itself. We're going to do some reflecting on, yeah, how do you, what's the best way to plan about your year? How can you do that in a stoic way? Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to be talking about, you know, what's the stoic perspective on New Year's resolutions to begin with? I think you can come up with
00:01:14
Speaker
both arguments for and against. And so we'll lay those out and then we'll move on to, if you're doing New Year's resolutions, how would, what's the stoic approach to that? What's sort of stoic tips or ways to conceptualize doing that well? What does that look like? Is there anything else you wanted to add to that? No, you've got, let's jump into it.
Rituals and Immediate Action
00:01:41
Speaker
Alright, cool, cool. So first, let's start with the argument against New Year's resolutions. So ultimately, you know, what is this process of doing resolutions at the beginning of every year or just before? What have you? It's a ritualized way
00:01:57
Speaker
to reflect on and determine your purposes, your goals, you know, every year. So people, you know, traditionally they sit back and think, I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to start eating better. I'm going to start being kinder, perhaps going to be more courageous. What does that look like? You set up these sorts of goals. You do that beginning of the year and then ideally sketch out some plans about how, how you're going to get there, how you're going to achieve your goals, become the person that you've resolved to be.
00:02:25
Speaker
every new year. And of course, there's all this, maybe at least there's some amount of skepticism about how often the new year's resolutions actually become yearly ordeals as traditionally a spike in many improvement industries, whether it's fitness or mental wellness, what have you, on how people set themselves resolutions and they don't follow through.
00:02:50
Speaker
You know, that's what they are. But I think the argument against doing New Year's resolutions isn't so much that they don't work. It's just that, you know, if you need to change, start now. There's no need to have some ritualized way in the future to decide how you are going to change or to set a goal for yourself.
00:03:14
Speaker
There's that Marcus Aurelius line from meditations 8, 22, you could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow. I think there's that suspicion when you're setting a resolution.
00:03:28
Speaker
in the New Year's, there's that question. If you say, just use a standard simple example, you want to go to the gym more often. Why didn't you set that goal beforehand whenever you realized that was a good thing to do, which presumably is if that's the kind of goal you'd be setting in the New Year's right now. We're recording this midway through December and it's probably going to be out a week or so before New Year's proper.
00:03:54
Speaker
And the argument is if you have this approach where instead of using these ritualized times to reflect on how you're going to transform yourself, if you have an approach where you handle these problems immediately, you're building yourself into someone who's improving that 1% every day. Maybe you don't start going to the gym immediately, but you start figuring out, this is what my plan's going to be. Maybe I'll do some at-home exercise to start. So goal-setting practices,
00:04:21
Speaker
like New Year's resolutions can be a kind of procrastination. You know, you know, you need to improve your physical fitness, your diet, become more courageous, whatever. And you've decided, I'm going to set that as a New Year's resolution, but
00:04:39
Speaker
Isn't that just a way to put off doing those things today, doing whatever you need to do to achieve those goals right now? That's the worry and the argument is instead of setting resolutions, doing these yearly reviews, whatever, become the kind of person who as soon as you notice some way to improve, you take the action to
00:05:08
Speaker
Address that problem, you know, we talked about a stoic approach to procrastination Recently and the thought is just don't procrastinate.
Procrastination vs. Immediate Action
00:05:17
Speaker
Don't set yourself times in the future Where you're going to improve focus on improving now while you still can
00:05:27
Speaker
that obviously I don't think we would be against any sort of goal setting but the idea here is when you say your resolution around some sort of arbitrary time like new year's yeah you might say well at worst it's useless you go to the gym for a bit and then you stop but not even at worst it's useless at worst it's harmful because it is
00:05:49
Speaker
uh, September and you're like, well, I'll start going to the gym in January. So you're actually not even, it's not even the worst that it's ineffective, but at the worst you're procrastinating, delaying, you're creating a kind of mental barrier or hurdle to overcome when instead, you know, jump into it right now and either build the habit right now or start learning about yourself.
00:06:11
Speaker
and learn about maybe failing right now and then learning from that failure and building momentum and knowledge from practicing immediately where you're creating another reason to delay when no functional reason exists. There's no practical reason to wait until January. That makes sense to me. I think it's a good reminder to what matters is action, so act not these resolutions to act, not these commitments to make a commitment to act.
00:06:40
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, another way to illustrate this argument is, you know, I think it's fundamentally a kind of skepticism about the setting up some abstract system about how you're going to improve and then putting too much stock in that where what really matters, as you just said, is whether you start acting, whether you start changing how you think, what decisions you make, and
Motivation Beyond Systems
00:07:02
Speaker
so on.
00:07:02
Speaker
So, another illustration of that is there's this concept of failing with abandon and the idea is you set yourself some goal, you want to start going to bed earlier and you notice you've passed that time, you want to go to bed, you're watching a TV show and there's always that temptation to think,
00:07:20
Speaker
missed my goal, now I'm just going to continue binging on that TV show I'm watching. Instead of thinking, like I had set this goal for a purpose, there's a sense in which it really is some abstract thing that has no reality in it. And as soon as I realize I've missed it, then I should, you know, if I think it's something I should be doing, I should, you know, shut my laptop, go to bed, whatever. But instead, it's almost like this binary thing. You miss it or you don't. And if you miss it, then
00:07:50
Speaker
you know, all everything is permitted, as it were, to make a reference to our existentialism conversation. Yeah, to quote Dostoevsky, if you stay out past midnight, now everything is permitted. If you cheat on your diet, everything is permitted. Yeah, so the picture here is if you put a stock in a system
00:08:11
Speaker
If you psychologically are relying on some sort of system or rule set or commitment as a crutch for action, when that system starts to fall apart, your ability to motivate your action will fall apart. Whereas when you're motivated by a strong belief or a conviction or not even motivated by it, but you keep your eyes on that, you have that be the goal, not adherence to
00:08:38
Speaker
I made a New Year's resolution, rather, you know, I want this kind of life for myself. And if you make that the thing that guides action, then that still applies, even if you've broken your rule, even if you cheated on your diet, even if you didn't go to the gym on Tuesday, that still applies on Wednesday. And so we should be careful about committing too much to these kind of systems, I guess.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Or for some reason, we tend to forget that there was a reason we decided to go to the gym on Tuesday, and that reason is still there. So that's the argument against things like New Year's resolutions. So the thought is, you know, you're sort of
00:09:19
Speaker
misframing how you're thinking about reflection, and there are some serious risks with putting too much stock in ritualized reflection, in particular, this risk of becoming someone who procrastinates, ignores the fact that, you know, what you have control over, what you do right now, and that's where you want to limit your focus and always be improving in the present.
Reflection and Habitual Nature
00:09:45
Speaker
So, but I think you can also, let's take the other side and think about how would a stoic argue for, or someone who is influenced by stoicism, like how can you make this argument for doing New Year's resolutions? It starts with just sort of a factual recognition that we're habitual creatures. We like to do things in particular. Order, of course, we have our own rituals around our house, work, and so on, and get into these automatic flows. And something like a
00:10:16
Speaker
structured reminder to review, reflect on our life is useful. Otherwise, we're just going to continue pushing that ball up the hill without thinking about what we're perhaps at the worst case, sleepwalking through life without pausing to stop. This is asking, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? And so on.
00:10:39
Speaker
And I think you can tie that to the stoic practice of evening reflections or morning routines. Seneca has this advice in his letters that one should do an evening review. At the end of every day, determine what's happened, what you did well, and then reflect on what are those moments where you acted with vice and how can you purge that from your life? How can you improve?
00:11:05
Speaker
And in his letter, he talks about just when my wife goes to bed, that's sort of like a trigger for him to spend a few moments writing on how his life went for that day and where he's going to change in the future. And there is a sense in which
00:11:23
Speaker
If you're really motivated by the previous argument we talked about, you might say, why do an evening review at all? Just circumscribe yourself to the present. Always be focusing on where you can improve in that very moment and only step back if that's what is required by whatever circumstance you're in.
00:11:40
Speaker
And perhaps that does work for some people, but having this structured way to step back and reflect on who you were during the day provides, I think, a really useful exercise for people.
Structured Reflection
00:11:54
Speaker
And there's a sense in which doing New Year's resolutions well is just the same activity at a larger timeframe, thinking about
00:12:04
Speaker
what happened over the past year, what you did well, and what are those things you want to improve and taking time to seriously think through what those are can be just as an evening review is a useful thing to do. So can a doing New Year's resolutions be useful and indeed at their best a transformer?
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, so there's almost this kind of eristo argument of what do you even need to plan for just to do what's right in every situation as it comes along. And then this this counter even while we're flawed people, we get into habits, we get into ruts, we get into patterns of thinking and acting, and it can be really helpful to reflect
00:12:47
Speaker
in a scheduled manner to get a bump ourselves out of that. We do that for the stoics recommend that in the evening, Seneca does it, you know, you have Marcus realizes meditations is a kind of a journal is active reflection. Why don't we, we can do that on a large scale kind of an annual scale as well.
00:13:04
Speaker
I'm not big on, I don't personally have New Year's resolutions. I'm interested if that's something you do, Caleb. But I can see, you know, you can have kind of, I guess like anything else, you could have kind of crappy ones and good ones, bad ones and good ones. And I think the bad one would be that procrastination. That's, well, it's September. I really want to get in shape, but I'm going to wait until January. And now you're just kind of portraying something that you value, that you want to do earlier. You're just procrastinating.
00:13:30
Speaker
And it's actually harming you. But then a good one, I almost think of somebody who did a New Year's resolution the year before, right? And they said these kind of annual plans and it's a time for kind of macro reflection. Did I hit my goals? If I didn't hit my goals on an annual time scale, you know, what about my pattern? What about my behavior? My patterns caused me to fail. These annual goals was like two
00:13:51
Speaker
overly optimistic or too aggressive. Um, did I find myself, I was able to not do the actions consistently. Like I wasn't able to work out consistently, even though I was still getting to the gym, did I just drop them because I set too strong of a target and that like is intimidating. So I did the thing you said where it's like, well, if I can't do it, I'm not going to do it at all. I think a kind of annual reflection is really valuable, but maybe an annual reflection is best.
00:14:17
Speaker
Almost like the evening one, what's good about an evening reflection is that it's consistent, right? Not just, let's have an evening reflection when you had a bad day, but you get that kind of day-to-day feedback. And so if you see pulling New Year's resolution, pulled it out to a larger time scale, I feel like there'd be a value if you did that annually and you got, okay, well, looking at the goals I did last year, did I set them, did I achieve them or not? And that to me seems, yeah, immensely useful for the reasons you mentioned already.
Core Values and Incremental Improvements
00:14:43
Speaker
You can think of this as a fractal exercise where for each day you reflect for about 10 minutes or so. What happened? What went well? What can I improve? And then for each month or every quarter, you spend a little bit longer reflecting. And then for every year, that's another period of reflection for what the next year of your life may hold.
00:15:07
Speaker
And I think another crucial point about that is it is something that's sort of built into your life as a system and you're, it's a larger project than merely thinking about, you know, what are some of my, what are some things I want to do next year? What are some things I want to do tomorrow? And said, it includes that sort of evaluation, you know, what happened, what I do well, what can I do better? And I think to get the most
00:15:37
Speaker
mileage out of it, there's some amount of, you know, you're practicing what Bertrand Russell says is, you know, it's always a good thing to put a question mark next to several of your assumptions now and again. Or it says, you know, see if you're missing something at that larger scale when you're working on the day-to-day.
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, we talk in stoicism a lot. There's this idea of Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. And in stoicism, there's this idea of questioning your impressions, questioning your beliefs, examining those. But practically, that's an incredibly hard thing to do across multiple beliefs, right? We need to kind of hang on to some core assumptions. You know, maybe that's like,
00:16:20
Speaker
I like my job and I'm going to work hard at it or socially I'm happy with the kind of my friendships or my romantic relationships and they're in the position I want to be on. And if those are in place, then you could work on something else. You can work on your hobbies or you can work on a different aspect of your life if some of the other ones are in stasis. So you talk about putting a question mark next to beliefs.
00:16:44
Speaker
That's not something you could do all at the same time, but if you do that in a kind of maybe once a year, say, okay, is this the kind of life I want to live? Is this the role I want to take on? Am I progressing the way I want to progress? You can put a question mark next to those things in a real kind of reflective state that is sustainable in, I guess, an intense burst, but an inconsistent burst, like a, I guess, an annual burst.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's all put. So I think with those in mind, if you want to come up with a synthesis, with all these points in mind, if you want to come up with a synthesis of the for and against doing New Year's resolutions, my sense is that maybe the sage doesn't make New Year's resolutions. And to that extent, the argument against doing so is a successful one.
00:17:36
Speaker
But if you move to the position of a progressor, someone who's not perfect, they're making those incremental steps like we are towards improving their character, then
00:17:52
Speaker
such practicing resolutions at the larger scale can be a useful thing to do.
Purpose and Core Values
00:17:59
Speaker
So long as you keep in mind some of these warnings about not using it as a tool for procrastination, not using it as some sort of abstract system that somehow shields you from
00:18:13
Speaker
making that concrete change, whatever concrete change you need to make in your own life. So I think that's basically where one could land with, I think, these pro and con type arguments. And I think once we get chatting about, you know, suppose you're doing New Year's resolutions, how do you do it well, that position will become even more plausible.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. So, I mean, let's jump to that. What would a stoic approach to New Year's resolutions look like?
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah, so the first is, if you're thinking about New Year's resolutions, first matter is choosing your purpose. What are you resolving to do? And for the Stoics, for other Greco-Roman philosophers,
00:19:07
Speaker
The ultimate goal of human life is happiness and that for the Stoics is just living the virtuous life. It's being an excellent person. And that's a central point because
00:19:23
Speaker
You're not so much thinking about starting with a laundry list of specific things you'd like to do, improving physical fitness, some goals at work, some amount of social success perhaps. Instead, you're beginning with that question, you know, who am I? Who do I want to become? And that fundamental shift has got to be what I think
00:19:53
Speaker
everyone should ask themselves or at least remind themselves of when they're doing this process. Yes, it's almost like Aristotelian, right? Like going one level up instead of like, I want to exercise more. Let me just exercise because it's a simple example.
00:20:14
Speaker
That's already one level down. That's a way of becoming something. And you need to really take a step back and clarify, well, what kind of person do you want to be? Is that a physical goal? Is that a discipline goal? Is that your conception of what a good life looks like that's informing that? And then once you have that idea of the kind of person you want to be, then you can fill out the contents of what actions achieve that. But it's going a step higher than most people do for the New Year's resolutions.
00:20:45
Speaker
Everybody's always acting with a goal in mind. They always have an idea, but for a lot of people it's undefined or it's not clarified what they want to be. And the risk with that is that
00:20:56
Speaker
A, I think is that you're getting these values from somebody else, from an external source. Like, oh, I want to be what society tells me I should be. Like, oh, I want to exercise because I want people to think I'm attractive or in shape, but that's not something you actually care about or you don't care about getting those judgments from the kind of people that you don't know, for example.
00:21:19
Speaker
Or so there's, there's, there's this risk of, you know, you getting, you, you picking those up subconsciously that don't really align with your values. And then there's this other risk of. I guess a kind of, a kind of vagueness really. And if it's vague, you're not always going to pick the best way to achieve it. Um, so you might vaguely want to improve, but unless that's clarified with a specific, a specific target, you might pick something that's ineffective for getting there.
Concrete Virtues in Daily Life
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think you can also see that even so take the stoic virtue of becoming more courageous. In a sense, that's still too vague. What does that mean in your life? That is the kind of thing that needs to be made more concrete, I think. What does the courage look like in the day to day? What's motivating that suggestion that one should be more courageous, specific?
00:22:15
Speaker
moments in the past year, or does that fit into what excellence in your roles would look like as being courageous, knowing what to avoid, what to face head on.
00:22:32
Speaker
And so I suppose, you know, you have these questions of how do you choose these, or choose, discover, what do you think about these philosophical values at the broadest level? That's these, for the Stoics, focus on virtue, living in accordance with nature, and then defining those for your particular circumstance.
00:22:54
Speaker
And that's where I think when it pays off to be precise, to the degree that you can.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, like I'm thinking, it may be exercise is temperance, right? It's this ability to demonstrate self-control. But as you said, there's a lot of ways to have self-control. There's a lot of ways to dedicate your willpower. And we're being vague here. We're encouraging not to be vague and then being vague, but that's because the particulars are going to come from your own life, right? And you don't want to be courageous in the way that movies or
00:23:35
Speaker
You know, books tell you to be courageous, not necessarily. You want to be a courageous in the ways that fit to the context of your own life or maybe the kind of self-control you need. Maybe, maybe it is exercise, but maybe it's, it's not. And, and you need to look at your own kind of strengths and weaknesses and your own room for improvement and what's affecting you and, and focus on those in particular.
00:23:56
Speaker
You know, maybe it's maybe it's anger, for example. That's that's that's a type of self control that you can that's a self control target that you can set for yourself. That's probably going to be more effective than. You know, doing doing a boot camp, depending on the kind of person you want to become. Yeah, yeah. One way that the Stoics I think helped us help me get more concrete on
00:24:26
Speaker
what the virtues look like in everyday life is the idea of role ethics. So you can think about what are my roles at the broadest level. We have these roles of being a human, a rational creature who is social, who needs to live with others, but getting much more specific and thinking about my role as a neighbor,
00:24:45
Speaker
as a husband, as a father, or mother, what have you. And then just going through that list of social relationships you haven't defined yourself in, thinking about what sorts of personal characteristics you have that you're especially suited for specific roles or not.
00:25:05
Speaker
We had a past episode on that episode 57. I think that's one way to get more precise on the virtues is to think about what are the roles I find myself in and then what does excellence look like in those roles? What are the virtues that matter for me right now that I can embody even more?
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah. So maybe getting in particular for those listening, uh, I guess there's, there's something like a Tilo. So there's something at like a very high level of what kind of person you want to be. Maybe that's some sort of single statement, a single kind of mission or idea for yourself. Um, I want to be this kind of person. And then you can write down or list the kind of roles you take on your job.
00:25:52
Speaker
your relationship, so I'm a son, a brother, a boyfriend, a coworker, a training partner, and then I can reflect on what it means to do well in those, what I think good versions of those look like, and maybe some particular steps I can take to move closer towards those. And that's a way of getting particular with your actions that fit your context.
00:26:21
Speaker
in a stoic way, which is to say, how do I become better at my roles, as you said, the ones that I've already filled? And then maybe there's another question of, are there any of these that I want to drop? Any roles I want to drop? And then are there any roles I want to take up maybe? Yeah, yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker
So I always find that useful. There's that general point about thinking carefully about your telos, your purpose, and then sketching that out. So that's our first point. The second one is when you're setting goals, targets, always being realistic and ambitious,
00:27:02
Speaker
There's that hepatitis line. If you would write, write, you know, be direct.
Building Self-Trust
00:27:08
Speaker
If you are trying to improve your, uh, I don't know if you want to start your own business.
00:27:18
Speaker
better to take concrete steps towards making something and selling it than taking a course or something of that sort. Of course, perhaps a course might be useful. We don't want to completely rule that out. But in general, you know, this idea of if you have a goal, get as close to
00:27:37
Speaker
doing what people who are already there or people who are already excellent in whatever field that happens to be gets close to doing what they're doing as you can or doing what they did when they were in your situation. So I think there's that point. Go ahead. It's like any sort of course is like any sort of education. It's a guide for action. It's not a replacement for action. That's it.
00:28:01
Speaker
And I think that ties into another thought which is, of course, you can't get to, you know, if I'm thinking about starting a new business, I can't get to that stage where you have a successful business.
00:28:19
Speaker
in a very short period of time when all it needs to be ambitious, but also be realistic. And I think that's important because it's a matter of building self-trust. You know, you want that thought that you don't make yourself hostage to external goals. Something you talk about a lot, Michael, a useful example you've given before is people who
00:28:44
Speaker
tie themselves to some goal when they join a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym. I want to be this belt by a specific point in time. I want to compete at this level in a few months. In a sense, I think that can be a useful thing to do, but there's a way to do that where you're setting yourself up for failure, especially if you don't really understand what those goals entail.
00:29:08
Speaker
So instead thinking about setting targets that are the sorts of things one can achieve. And you have like a sense of how you will achieve it. And by doing so, you know, you're building that self trust. You're becoming the person who does what they set out to do, which is excellent. Yeah.
00:29:32
Speaker
I think there's like that building self-trust is such a difficult thing. I mean, we've talked about this before. Knowing that you're the kind of person that can follow through on something is so empowering. I think I see this is something I struggle with too. I ended up in these kinds of situations where it's like, well,
00:29:52
Speaker
Often what stops an action or decision or commitment, you know, you talked about starting a company, going towards building something that you could sell. Often what stops this is a lack of self-trust, right? And I think that if somebody told me, look, if you did this, if you followed this system for a year, you would have a terrible, it would be a very hard year, let's say, but I can guarantee you'd have success at the end.
00:30:15
Speaker
You know, how many choices would I make differently? My life would probably look quite a bit different, to be honest. I would probably make a lot more commitments, take a lot more, because it wouldn't be risk, I guess. It would just be sacrifice.
00:30:28
Speaker
But when you lack self-trust, there becomes a lot more risk because it becomes, well, what happens if I make this sacrifice, I don't follow through and then I have the sacrifice without the reward. And A, if that situation happens, it's just a really upsetting situation. You just, you just did get risk.
00:30:47
Speaker
But B, it often stops you before you can even start. Cause you don't know, I don't know if I'm the kind of person that can follow through. And because I don't know that I'm not going to take on the risk of the sacrifice at the start. So I feel like, I feel like that's if you can, if you have that and you're able to get over that Hill, something I'm still working on. It's such a, it's such a motivating factor. You say, no, I know I can do this. I know I can take this on and stick to it. And then it really reframes, uh, the risk and the sacrifice that it entails.
00:31:17
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I suppose another point clarification here is when you're thinking about establishing that self-trust, you know, what are you trusting on the stoic picture? It's that you'll make specific decisions that you'll manage your judgments. Well, you'll manage your impressions. Well, it's not
00:31:39
Speaker
tying your conception of yourself. So the outcomes as much as it is knowing truly that you've done your best in whatever you've set out to do and showing that in the decisions you've made in that track record.
00:31:56
Speaker
Well, realizing that, of course, you know, even the best, even the best players sometimes lose, even the people who do their best sometimes don't succeed. And that's an outcome of the fact that we don't completely control the external world. The external world is not our own. What's our own? Our judgments and decisions, how we use our attention.
Stoic Principles for Resolutions
00:32:17
Speaker
So I think there's that central point as well.
00:32:20
Speaker
I think that's great. I think the thing in stoicism is that there's still outcomes. The outcomes are just your character, right? So you don't want to do all this work and then be the kind of person that can't navigate impressions well and be the kind of person that can't follow through on what you commit to. Be the kind of person that maybe set a goal that doesn't suit your telos to begin with. So you find yourself at odds with what you've set for yourself. There is just the kind of
00:32:49
Speaker
I don't know if it's the discovering that that is the painful part or setting yourself up for failure, but there is still endeavors that go well. And poorly, even when we are for better, for worse, even when we set the goal as an internal goal, because there's endeavors that support internal development and then I don't know, fall apart or don't, don't, uh, don't facilitate internal development.
00:33:14
Speaker
All right, right. Awesome. All right. So the other point, I think point that's essential for setting New Year's resolutions well is keeping start principles in mind.
00:33:29
Speaker
And I think some of the principles that are essential when it comes to thinking about New Year's resolutions, of course, realization that we are mortal, life is short, and I think that should always grant some amount of gratitude. That should always help us be more grateful for what we have, what we can experience, and also, in a sense, cause some amount of urgency.
00:33:51
Speaker
You know, our life is short. We cannot set off everything that we'd like to do to tomorrow because eventually there will be no such thing. That's one key story principle. Another essential story principle here is the thought that we play a role in a bigger story. That's a view from above. You can tie this role ethics as well. You know, we're one human in a set of millions that happen to live in our city, an even larger number that happen to live
00:34:21
Speaker
in one's nation and an even larger number on the earth and then of course you can keep in the perspective of deep time in mind as well and I think that can help one focus on what's truly important in the situation while letting the trivial fall away.
00:34:39
Speaker
And then another principle here that I think is crucial is the thought that it's stoic value theory. Indifference, they're neither good or bad in and of themselves. What matters is how we use them. I think that goes back to thinking about setting New Year's resolutions. What are you going to resolve to do?
00:35:00
Speaker
And are some of these goals something that supports what's ultimately good, building an excellent character, or are they perhaps, as indeed many are, just the result of over-valuing indifference perhaps?
00:35:19
Speaker
And I think those are three that come to mind. What's your reaction on those three? Or do you think there are other principles, people? Yeah, I mean, I think a different point is really important because
00:35:33
Speaker
What we don't want to say is we don't want to say, look, you can't make plans about indifference. I think often when you make a year plan, it might be something like, well, I'm going to get promoted at work or I'm going to build my business from this size to this size, or I'm going to, you know, get better at guitar. Like often we make our, our plans around indifference and I think that's fine. I think it just connects back to that point we're making earlier about your telos, right?
00:35:58
Speaker
You set a goal that has to do with your character. What kind of person are you going to be? And then you make a plan around indifference that service that goal or motivate that goal. And the same thing with your role.
00:36:11
Speaker
The role isn't, I'm going to make this much money at work. That's not how you fulfill your role as a coworker. It's more, I'm going to be the kind of person that approaches business in this kind of way or approaches my work life in this kind of way. And I'm going to be the most loved brother or family member. It is, I'm going to be the kind of person that acts as a brother in these kind of ways, for example.
00:36:38
Speaker
And then, then after that, then you can get these, you can get into the indifference, but the indifferent goals are always servicing that higher goal, right? All these servicing that delos of that character goal. So, you know, because I think there's a tension here, right? We talked a lot about particularity, but then if you go in and you say, my goal is to be a better person, but as vague as you can get, right? I mean, not as vague as you could get. It's a still a target, but it's a vague target.
00:37:01
Speaker
So it's like, how do you build particularity into that? Well, you, you, you go a couple of layers deeper, but it's everything always kind of pyramids up to that end to that top point, right?
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah, you always have that connection from those day by day actions to that larger picture of who you ultimately are, who you want to be. So how do these points fit in with how you think about planning?
Memento Mori and Intentional Living
00:37:31
Speaker
I know you mentioned you don't do New Year's resolutions, so how do they show up for you?
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, I would say in terms of my personal goal setting, I mean, I really, really try not to set in different goals as the end goal. I mean, that's just being back to the point. That's, that's when you really, you know, you really get frustrated. And that's also when you talk about, again, we talked about this all or nothing mentality, right? If your mentality, if your mentality is like, I'm going to eat a certain way. That's a claim about indifference.
00:38:03
Speaker
And then once you don't do that, well, I've already, I've already lost. I have no, I have no more reason to stick to this goal. If it's, and that's why people fall apart. But if your goal is I'm going to be, I'm going to demonstrate self-control. This is something that I have trouble with self-control with. This is where I'm going to build that self-control.
00:38:23
Speaker
If you make a mistake, you haven't failed your goal yet. Your goal is still the exact same. You still have another opportunity to reach that goal. So I think that's really, really important to human mind is that the, the different techniques and strategies and those particular, those are ways of achieving that, that bigger goal, whether that's stoic virtue, one of your roles or your overall telos. I think that's really important. The other part with life is short is just for me, a kind of.
00:38:51
Speaker
It's a motivation for living intentionally, especially now that I'm out of school. When I was in school, there was kind of always a next goal, next goal, next goal. There was this kind of seasonality to life. And now that I'm working full time, I can really see how the years can kind of, they can go by quickly.
00:39:09
Speaker
And I think it's it's important to live an examined life, as we talked about. And I think one of the great ways to motivate that is a is memento more is an appreciation of the fact of death, both, you know, when you're 80, but also earlier, potentially as well. Right. And so I'm really conscious of being, you know,
00:39:35
Speaker
If I was to get cancer and die is this the kind of would I be in my deathbed being like why I'm happy with the way that I lived or what I feel I have betrayed my real self when I feel like I was too afraid to pursue the things I wanted to pursue and I'm really I've been actively doing that visualization and
00:39:58
Speaker
I think fortunately it doesn't modify my plans too much. I think I have the life I want to live, but it's a, it's a good constant check and motivation to keep that planning up. Right.
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think for me, Memento Mori also brings the importance of focus front and center. I can be somewhat impulsive, just have particular ideas that don't sound terrible for a new app or new business, or I have an idea about some intellectual field I want to read all about, or is that a reminder of? How does this fit in with
00:40:38
Speaker
the rest of what I'm trying to do, my existing life. Is it a momentary interest? Is it the kind of thing that I think I need to be working on, take on as part of the story of my life? Or is this just a normal kind of impulsiveness, a normal curiosity that emerged and then will disappear after a few weeks? And there's, I think, the momentum more is
00:41:08
Speaker
a useful way to clear up to bringing that larger perspective and also that seriousness of, you know, taking on taking on particular
00:41:19
Speaker
particular task. You know, Seneca has always knocking readers who are broad but not deep. They go from task to task. I always feel like he's speaking to people like me when he says, when he's writing like that. But the momentum worries one of those tools to avoid falling into that trap.
00:41:39
Speaker
So can you explain that a little bit more? So is the idea that like the fact that you will die makes it like where your time is short. So you need to go deep. Like how does, how does the, the death part of that, I understand the advice, look, you got to be deep sometimes. Can't just be all breath, but what, how does the death aspect motivate that?
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah, I guess there's the story, you know, I've got some existing set of projects, relationships. And if I take on a new interests, a new project, that's going to put those at risk to some extent, it's going to take my focus off of those projects. And then the question is, like, you know, do I want to live the life where I
00:42:25
Speaker
do that for these interests that have arisen. Do I want that more broad, diverse, changing life?
00:42:36
Speaker
Or is it more important to ensure that I stay deep with whatever projects, relationships I happen to have?
Depth vs. Breadth in Personal Development
00:42:47
Speaker
And I think there's always a balance. And of course, to some extent, I am a generalist. That demands some amount of breadth.
00:42:57
Speaker
But if I think about the sins some people have towards either breath or a kind of narrowness that sometimes comes as people who pursue depth, I'm at risk of living the life that goes too broad, I think, where I might be.
00:43:14
Speaker
unhappy if I if I see that life see it and how it would be realistically as opposed to the Life where one's more deep you can't even take this in the intellectual case just to try making a little bit more concrete There's a kind of reading
00:43:29
Speaker
approach where the one at Seneca critiques where you read a lot of big name philosophers go through their books quickly and you don't have as much retention or mastery over single core ideas as some people who say spend a year just reading the Stoics as opposed to during doing a much larger tour of Western philosophy. And you know, I think that you can expand out from that simple example to other domains and see how the trade-offs are being made.
00:43:59
Speaker
I mean, some great points. I was thinking that this is the squirrel approach to life or intellectual pursuits is distracted by the next shiny thing that comes by. But as you said, there's that kind of elation in the short term, but then you need to kind of take a step back and say, well, if this is all I ever do, what kind of like does that lead to? And is that the one that I want? I think about this in terms of jitsu, in terms of people who are like, only ever blue belts and things.
00:44:28
Speaker
Blue Belt and Jiu Jitsu was the first belt. This was kind of like a two to three years experience, sort of an intermediate level. And if you're only ever a Blue Belt and things, I think you might not realize the depth of learning that can take place past that level.
00:44:45
Speaker
If you're moving on everything, you might think, well, this is what it means to know something, but there's obviously a much deeper level than that. Um, maybe not obviously, but, but there is like, I can speak to that in terms of the things that I do have depth in and, you know, um, 15 plus years experience. And is that that, that, that learning continues. I feel the same way about stoicism. I'm still every conversation we have learning new things about stoicism and.
00:45:13
Speaker
I don't want to say one life is better than the other, but I think your point is that you have a tendency if you don't reflect to move towards one and you have to use that reflection, that planning to pull yourself back towards, well, maybe I'll stay on the same philosophy for a while so I can really get some depth out of it. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's well put.
00:45:39
Speaker
Let's see, is there anything else you want to say on either these general ways of setting New Year's resolutions or specific stoic principles?
Summary and Key Principles
00:45:53
Speaker
I think we hit it at the high level, which is, look, this has to motivate action. It can't be a procrastination or a way of getting around action or a way of placating yourself to say, look how productive I am, but I don't actually change my behavior. It has to motivate action. Okay, which actions? Well, the ones that contribute to these higher level goals, A, around your telos, your final end, your goal of all goals, and then B, your kind of rules that make up your life.
00:46:19
Speaker
And then you need to set realistic, but particular targets around externals. I'm going to do X, you know, X number of times a week. I'm going to work out three times a week for every all year, except when I'm on vacation or something like this.
00:46:39
Speaker
But you recognize that those particular goals around externals are just ways of motivating or improving your higher level targets. So, you know, if you get really sick or you get injured and you can't exercise, well, okay, well, I want it to be more self-controlled. Exercise was the way to do that. Now that I'm injured, is there another way to do that besides exercise? I don't say, I don't throw up at the baby with the bathwater or say, well, I didn't achieve my target, so I failed, right?
00:47:06
Speaker
And then these other stoic principles at the end about remembering that life is short, remembering with a role to play in a bigger story, and remembering that indifference are not good or bad. It's just how we make use of them. I think that those things are, I really, I think they're things that you should keep in mind all the time, but they particularly help in terms of planning, especially as we said, the what you plan around those indifference and then why you plan around the shortness of life.
00:47:33
Speaker
Right, right. One quote that I love from Epictetus that's relevant here is his line on habits. If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit. Give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you are not angry.
00:47:53
Speaker
I used to be angry every day, then every other day, next, every two, next, every three days. And if you succeed in passing 30 days, sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving. And I think you can see these different Stoic principles in this quote, right? You have this thought on.
00:48:17
Speaker
thinking about your character, part of your character, of course, managing one's emotions, decreasing anger, in this case, being realistic in what can be accomplished in that project. At first, you just start with not being angry for a single day, then every other day, and so on. And that's one way in which you can build that self-trust, take advantage of succeeding
00:48:44
Speaker
and giving yourself evidence that you are someone who is level-headed, not prone to outbursts of anger. I also like the part here.
00:48:56
Speaker
At first, keep quiet and count the days when you're not angry. There's something to be said there. We didn't really have time to hit on that, but that idea of keep quiet. Epictetus talks about this a lot. You know, if you, if you want to, if you're practicing self-control and you're working out on a hot day and you know, take a sip of water and spit it back out to show how tough you are, but like, don't tell anybody about it. Don't do it in front of anyone. And I think that speaks. We didn't really hit on it, but it speaks to the, you know, not externalizing.
00:49:26
Speaker
your goals. There's often this idea of like, say your goal is for somebody to hold yourself accountable, but then there's this also point we said where it's, well, it can't be procrastination. You can't be doing it for anything else, but to motivate reason. If you write down your goal in your own notebook, only you can see it and it still motivates action. Well, then you, you, you're doing it right. You know, if you, if you make a post on social media, well, maybe it was for the wrong reason, you know,
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe so.
Stoicism Course Announcement
00:49:53
Speaker
Uh, yeah, good point. Cool. Well, one final note we wanted to end on is we are running our next cohorts of stoicism applied, and that's going to get started on January 8th.
00:50:10
Speaker
And we're mentioning it here because the purpose of that course is to refine some emotional change, behavioral change targets with stoicism in mind and thinking about
00:50:28
Speaker
Okay, how can we use the philosophy of stoicism in a practical way to actually achieve that behavior transformation? So I think it fits in well with what we want to be doing.
00:50:44
Speaker
uh in the new year which is thinking about you know what are those changes how can one become more stoic and how can you master some of the essential parts of the theory put it into practice and do that with
00:51:00
Speaker
with others who are serious about engaging in the Stoic projects. So you get some amount of accountability without that pressure to be going public on Instagram or that distraction of going to public with your success, perhaps, that you just mentioned, Michael. So do check that out. Stoicmeditation.com slash course. Anything else you want to add?
00:51:29
Speaker
Well, I mean, we just had a blast last time. Our last cohort was a couple months ago and it was great. It's just the community of like-minded people there to learn about stoicism in a practical way, an applied way, wanting to implement it in their lives in a way that helps them.
00:51:48
Speaker
Caleb, you and I have we've built it in a way where I think what you get out of it is something that we've talked about today, which is you get a you clarify your goal, you clarify some things that you want to improve and then targeted specific ways to improve them. That's really what we have as the capstone project is a
00:52:08
Speaker
a guide to changing and improving behavior based on these stoic principles and the ideas that we hit on over the course of the course. So for anyone listening, you made it to the end of this episode, you're interested in this kind of planning stuff, applying stoicism.
00:52:24
Speaker
I think you'd get a lot of value out of it. I know we, we'd love to see you chat, socialism with you, especially if you've been listening to this show. Um, it'd be great to get to talk with you and brainstorm in person and have you as part of that community. So it's a good time. Really looking forward to it and hope you can join us as well.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:45
Speaker
Yeah, I had a great time. Last cohort, excited to keep on doing this. And then one other note, this course we did drop the price by $100, sort of like a New Year's type special type thing. So do check it out and join us and let's become more stoic together. All right. That's our conversation on New Year's resolutions.
00:53:08
Speaker
Let us know, interested if there are any feedback in, you know, how y'all think about setting new resolutions yourself, of course. So reach out to us anytime. And anything else to add, Michael? No, thanks, Kyle. But as always. Awesome. Till next time. Bye, all.