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7 Stoic Habits You Can Start Today (Episode 178)
663 Plays7 days ago
Living like a Stoic is about getting the little things right. In this episode, Michael Tremblay discusses 7 Stoic habits you can start today to build a more thoughtful, resilient, and Stoic you.
(01:25) Thinking Well
(14:24) Living Philosophically
(17:58) Preparing for Adversity
(30:15) Summary
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoic Habits
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi everyone, welcome to Stoic Conversations. My name is Michael Tremblay and today I'm going to be talking about seven stoic habits. And what I mean by habits are little changes you can make to your behavior or your actions that can help you and let you live a bit more of a stoic life.
00:00:20
Speaker
And I really wanted to focus on things that were... Dividable, chunkable, break-offable from Stoic theory. Because a lot of times when we're learning about Stoicism, there's so much going on.
00:00:31
Speaker
There's such a complete holistic system there that it can be hard to know where to start. And so these are things that, you know, hey I want to put something in practice in my life, make a little bit of a difference.
00:00:43
Speaker
Here are some suggestions about how to do that according to Stoicism. So seven ways to live a bit more Stoic is what I'll be talking about today.
Categories of Stoic Habits
00:00:53
Speaker
I'm going to break these off into three categories.
00:00:55
Speaker
First is about thinking well. So habits for thinking, um for improving your thinking, and improving how you reflect about the world. The second category is living mindfully. So who habits for being more philosophical in your approach to life. And the third category is preparing for adversity. So really ways to...
00:01:17
Speaker
um help you handle better the next stressful situation, the next crisis in your own life.
Prosoké: Attention and Awareness
00:01:26
Speaker
And so starting with that, we're going start with thinking well.
00:01:30
Speaker
And so the first habit for thinking well is what the Stoics call prosoké, which is really paying attention. they They have this sign, if you're in Greece, it'll say prosoké when you're stepping out of the subway, for example, and the trains are moving and you've got to watch your step.
00:01:53
Speaker
If you think about that in I'm i mean i'm in the United States right now. And so you have a sign of like, watch out or pay attention. That's prosoke. And that's what the Stoics want us to do really at any moment in our life. I'd say if there's any, if there's any habit that's most important Stoicism, it's this one, which is just paying attention to how you're thinking, what you're thinking about really the contents of your mind.
00:02:22
Speaker
So ah quote here from Epictetus, this is from Epictetus' handbook, ah book four, part 12, where Epictetus warns about the dangers of not paying attention.
00:02:34
Speaker
Epictetus says, when you have remitted your attention for a short time, do not imagine this, that you'll recover it when you choose. But let this thought be present to you, that in consequence of the fault committed today, your affairs must be in worse condition for all that follows.
00:02:52
Speaker
And so Epictetus' point here is that if if we don't have this habit of paying attention, if we make little mistakes in how we think or how we we we react, someone insults us and we take that personally. you know There's an advertisement or something you see on the media that's, oh, you should really care about how you look or you should really care about buying this new product, this new thing.
00:03:16
Speaker
If we're not paying attention and we allow those ideas to enter into our mind really unquestioned or unreflectively, then they kind of, they fester, they get stronger, they become a part of us, right? We integrate them into who we are.
00:03:32
Speaker
So paying attention is really, prosok is really about noticing, in Stoic terms, the impressions you experience, noticing your thoughts, noticing the world around you, paying attention to it.
00:03:46
Speaker
And it's the first step is just just flagging these things.
Skepticism and Reflection
00:03:50
Speaker
Marcus Aurelius says a lot that the the world is opinion-based. And really what he means by this is not that there's no objective truth, but just that um our internal world is really nothing more than ah series of impressions we have that we choose to form into beliefs. We choose to make them things we believe.
00:04:12
Speaker
So another way of putting that is
00:04:16
Speaker
you know if someone If someone insults me, at first that's just the thing I've experienced. That's just an impression. But if I choose to take it as true, I choose to assent to it, endorse it, then it becomes part of my life. Then I feel I've been hurt, I've been harmed, and it's something i I carry with me.
00:04:37
Speaker
So... um this is This is the first strategy is just to notice. you know If you want to develop about one stoic habit, it is just noticing what you're thinking, noticing the kind of messages or impressions you're receiving, your first impressions of situations, just kind of clocking those.
00:04:58
Speaker
Clocking those as opinion, not necessarily truths, but things you you believe on a first impression. And so that's habit habit one I think when you're first starting this, just take some time to do it really mindfully and and attentively.
00:05:14
Speaker
It becomes a bit of a sotic second nature after practicing for a while, but when to start, really just if you can carve out an hour, carve out even 10 minutes to just try to do this and you'll begin to notice more and more of the impressions you're receiving.
00:05:29
Speaker
So that's prosaque. The second habit is what I'm calling skepticism. So if Pro is okay is about you know what what are my impressions, then skepticism is this habit of interrogating these impressions.
00:05:44
Speaker
Are these impressions true? So the first one is just flagging them. you know the The impressions are coming up on your radar. And then the second habit, skepticism, is, well, what is this thing?
00:05:58
Speaker
do I believe it? is it true? it something I want to act on? Or is it, you know, is it someone lying to me? Is it someone trying to persuade me in a way that I don't think is true?
00:06:09
Speaker
and think about this a lot in terms of social media or advertisements where people are constantly presenting you messages. And Step one is to just recognize, well, I'm actually just, this is just a message. Somebody's trying to communicate something. It's not true or false. It's just ah it's just ah something I'm receiving.
00:06:26
Speaker
And then step two is the question it. To say, well, is it is it true? Is it false? That's that habit of skepticism. um A line from Epictetus here in his discourses, and book two, chapter 18, he says, in the first place, be not hurried away by the rapidity of the appearance, but say appearances, wait for me a little.
00:06:48
Speaker
Let me see who you are and what you're about. Let me put you to the test. And that's really what the habit of skepticism is, is You don't jump from impression to belief.
00:07:00
Speaker
um You interrogate it And notice that Epictetus is also... emphasizing to not be rapid. So it's it's not skeptical in the way that I mean it. It's not skeptical to reject everything as false. It's not stoic to say, well, I don't agree with any of this. I don't believe in in any of the things that I'm being told.
00:07:25
Speaker
I'm just going to shut out every impression I receive. The skeptic strategy is to stop. Stop. You pause and you say, well, is it actually true or not?
00:07:36
Speaker
Is that thing the person's telling me true or not? Is that impression I had true or not? um you know if if if if um I yeah was using the example of an insult before, and I love Epictetus' discussions of insults sometimes where he would be, um one of his students would say, Epictetus, this person's insulting you. And he says, oh, well,
Daily Reflections and Learning
00:07:56
Speaker
they must have not known me very well Otherwise, they would have ah mentioned the other things that are bad about me.
00:08:02
Speaker
And part of the joke about that is is not letting yourself take it too seriously when you get insulted. But the other part of Epictetus' ah is joke there is, well, there's some truth to it, right? We all have problems. And if somebody's saying something bad about us, maybe the thing they're saying is true.
00:08:20
Speaker
um And in which case, what is the insult but just a description of fact? and So that's some of the ways that you can you can handle skepticism. It's really slowing down, interrogating the impression, trying to decide if it's true or not.
00:08:35
Speaker
Then the third habit for living well, so after you notice your impressions, you practicing prosoké, then you're practicing skepticism. You're actually interrogating the impressions, deciding are they true or not. The third habit to develop is one of reflection.
00:08:49
Speaker
This is when you intervene on your impressions with Stoic principles. It's when you introduce Stoic philosophy to help you decide if something's true or not. So a non-Stoic could be mindful and they could be skeptical.
00:09:02
Speaker
They could even be reflective, but they're not being reflective with Stoic theory. That's what separates the Stoic apart is the Stoic uses Stoic theory to determine the truth of the situation or not.
00:09:16
Speaker
So for example, you know if you're insulted and your first impression is that's a bad thing, well, the stoic you once you bring in Stoic theory, Stoicism says, well, Stoicism says, that's not up to me.
00:09:28
Speaker
Those are just the words of another person. If they're true, ah then I should probably accept that about myself. If they're saying, well, you're you're a selfish person or um you're not a very nice person or you're you're particularly bad at this sport or you're short or you're a bit weird looking.
00:09:47
Speaker
It's like, well, if these things are facts, about the world, then I should probably accept and confront the facts. And if they're not true, well, then I should, that's just <unk> something somebody's saying, right? There's no reason for that to get under my skin too much.
00:10:06
Speaker
And that's, but that's a stoic idea, right? This idea of ah focusing on what's up to you, living in accordance with nature, living in accordance with the truth of the matter. That's the stoic criteria for determining impressions. So will be entirely different than what ah Buddhist does or,
00:10:21
Speaker
um yeah Christian or an Epicurean or any other way of of living. So that's that third habit though is reflection. And if you're doing that as a Stoic, you're introducing Stoic theory. And i give a really good example of this. i just came upon this quote when preparing for this episode.
00:10:39
Speaker
oh There was a really good example of Marcus Aurelius is doing this. And his meditations are really cool because he is this Stoic in practice. He's putting Stoicism to work. And here he's doing this process of reflection.
00:10:53
Speaker
So this is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Book 12, Chapter 26. And he says, when you're troubled about anything, you've forgotten this. And then he lists off a bunch of stoic theories to remember, to use in his reflection.
00:11:08
Speaker
He says that all things happen according to the universal nature, that a man's wrongful act is nothing to you. That everything which happens always happened so, and will happen so, and now happens so everywhere.
00:11:26
Speaker
How close is the kinship between a man and the whole human race, for it's a community, not of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence.
00:11:36
Speaker
That every man's intelligence is a god, and is an efflux of the deity. of quote. but that his child and his body and his very soul come from the deity that everything is opinion and lastly you have forgotten that every man lives the present time only and loses only this end of quote So that's Marcus really insightfully saying to himself, I'm upset because I've forgotten these truths that Stoicism teaches with these pieces of Stoic theory.
00:12:14
Speaker
um That there's a kinship between all of us, he says. That when a man does something unvirtuous, when someone else acts poorly, that's not a harm to you, that's a harm to them.
00:12:26
Speaker
um That all things happen according to the universal nature. That the world is fated, he mentions. And I love the last one, that we only ever live in the present, and so we only lose this. When things happen to us, we're only we're only ever experiencing that present moment or losing that present moment.
00:12:44
Speaker
And an implication of that is that we exaggerate when we talk about losing something in the future or we work regret something in the past. And so that's that's him practicing that habit of reflection. He's saying, I'm upset because I've forgotten these principles. I need to pull these principles back to my mind and I need to use them to reflect on the impressions and to come to better answers.
00:13:08
Speaker
We keep these on hand as Epictetus uses a metaphor all the time, keeping your theory on hand, but you use the Stoic theory in reflection. um And then those are Marcus's examples, but there's other pieces you can use for reflection. You can use Memento Mori, the dichotomy of control, the obstacle is the way.
00:13:27
Speaker
all of these um All of these stoic lessons, they're interesting to read about, and they're these fun paradigm shifts when you first learn about them. But the habit you want to use is you want to actually pull them in and change the way you think about things. Pull them in and and use them to help when you're deliberating and thinking about ah youth the situations in your life and how you feel about those situations. You want to put them to use, right? Render render them valuable to yourself.
00:13:55
Speaker
So those are the first three habits. You've prosoquet, it's noticing your impressions. Question is, what do I think? You've got skepticism, it's questioning your impressions. Is this true?
00:14:07
Speaker
Is what I think true? Then the third habit is reflection, that's intervening on your impressions with stoic principles. So how might I decide if this is true? What criteria will i use to determine if my impression is true?
00:14:20
Speaker
And those are three habits I think we can all get better at doing. Next, I want to turn to the second category of habit, which I call living mindfully. And this is just a way of making philosophy a larger part of your life. So if the first three were about thinking well in the moment, then this is a habit for thinking more stoically generally, becoming more of a stoic in how you approach all things, not just stressful or challenging situations.
00:14:49
Speaker
And the habit here is one of daily reflections. That is is, you know, see how well you did in terms of thinking well. Did you think well? You need to reflect upon that.
00:15:02
Speaker
One example of a daily reflection can be journaling. You can think of this as Marcus Aurelius' meditations as a journal. People use this practice today, but the Stoics were also doing it. Marcus Aurelius was recording, reflecting on his life, reflecting on his decisions.
00:15:18
Speaker
But I also don't think the habit of daily reflection needs to be that formal. If you find ah sitting down and journaling either um in the morning or at the end of the day, if you find either of those helpful, that's great.
00:15:32
Speaker
But I don't think reflection has to be formalized. Seneca, for example, describes just thinking, just reflecting actively and and giving himself time to think about his day.
00:15:44
Speaker
Does this in On Anger. This is ah book three, section 36. When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that's now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I've done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.
00:16:06
Speaker
So that's an example of a daily reflection from Seneca. It's not clear to me there if that involves journaling, but the but what it does involve is honesty, being candid, passing nothing by, as he says, reflecting honestly about the parts of yourself where you first fell short and then likewise the parts of your day where you did really well and you lived up to your expectations or exceeded them.
00:16:32
Speaker
I think the reflection is really important because ultimately we're engaged in a craft or a skill when we're doing stoicism. We're trying to, like an athlete, turn ourselves into a certain kind of person, a stoic person.
00:16:43
Speaker
And when you do any other the other kind of skill, it's a sport, an art, an instrument, anything like this, you always want to set these kind of benchmarks for yourself or reflect on your progress. And that's a way of telling what's going well and what's going poorly.
00:17:01
Speaker
And that's what the daily reflection is. it's It's an opportunity to be mindful about your Stoic practice. So I think it's a really important habit. There's a phrase by a 19th century Scottish physicist, Lord Kelvin, um and it's often paraphrased as, only what gets measured gets managed.
00:17:19
Speaker
And journaling or your daily reflection, that's your opportunity to measure. And so only what we take the time to reflect upon and take the time to ah evaluate gets attention, gets focused improvement.
00:17:38
Speaker
So make sure you're reflecting upon and you're evaluating. Did I live stoically? Did I live up to the kind of life I want to have? Again, both celebrating the good parts and being honest and accountable for the less than ideal parts.
00:17:52
Speaker
So that's the fourth habit, daily reflection. Next, I want to go into this third category, preparing what I call preparing for adversity. And these will be three habits that all will make you more robust.
00:18:06
Speaker
And I almost think of them as like defensive defensive habits or things that you want to do even when things are going well. So if you think of...
00:18:18
Speaker
the The first group thinking well, that um attention, skepticism, reflection, that's really important in high stress, difficult situations.
00:18:31
Speaker
it's it's important in the day-to-day too, but it will, the biggest issues will come when you don't pay attention in moments that really evoke anger or frustration or, you know, any any sort of extreme emotion, either sadness or even being too excited or elated about the the wrong thing.
00:18:49
Speaker
But I think about these these habits about preparing for adversity as the kind of things you want to be doing all the time to kind of build up that muscle and skill so you're ready to apply it when the stressful situations come. as if they're proactive habits in a way.
00:19:04
Speaker
The first one, it sounds obvious, but I think it's important to call out, is just learning about stoicism, either by writing, reading, talking with people, listening to a podcast like this.
00:19:17
Speaker
You're doing that habit right now, so good job if you're listening to this. you've You've made it 20 minutes in. yourre your' um You're putting in the work today ah to to build that habit.
00:19:29
Speaker
And the reason i think of this as a habit is because i talked about reflection earlier, which is this idea of introducing stoic theory to help you evaluate the impressions you receive. And had that quote from Marcus Aurelius a few minutes ago.
00:19:47
Speaker
But that's not going to be the kind of thing that works if how something something really serious has happened in my life. I'm now going to pull up a passage of Stoicism and read it. maybe it's Maybe that will be helpful. I'm sure many people came to Stoicism because of that reason.
00:20:00
Speaker
But it's not going to be as helpful as if you had been really digesting, really understanding the Stoic theory for years until that moment. And that's why learning about Stoicism, reading, writing, talking about it with friends, it's it's a proactive approach so that you you really understand these arguments, the depth of them, why the Stoics are making them, so that they're much more convincing for you. And they don't feel like band-aids.
00:20:29
Speaker
They don't feel like things you're just reading to you know help the help your suffering or help your pain, but but things you really believe and understand to be true.
00:20:41
Speaker
It's a big difference between evoking the dichotomy of control and just saying, well, I'm just going to not think about that thing that's stressful to me because it's not up to me. And really understanding Epictetus' arguments around why we should focus on what's up to us because we want to be good people. That's what a good life consists in. And that means living well and and doing the well with the cards we're dealt and the decisions we can make.
00:21:06
Speaker
The two different, entirely different kinds of arguments. I have a quote here from Epictetus. This is Epictetus' handbook, ah excuse me, his discourses, book three, chapter 24. And Epictetus says, let these thoughts be ready at hand by night and by day.
00:21:24
Speaker
These you should write, these you should read, about these you should talk to yourself and to others. I love that he provides all the different versions in that quote. you know you Keep these thoughts at hand, these stoic principles he's saying.
00:21:38
Speaker
Write them. Read them. Talk about them with other people. you know Argue about stoicism with other people. Debate stoicism with other people. Talk about them with yourself. Wrestle with these ideas.
00:21:48
Speaker
Confront them in your mind. Pull at them. test them. This is really what Epictetus is saying. And if you do that, then they'll be at hand. They'll be these really kind of sharpened tools for you to employ in stressful situations. And that's that's why it's a proactive habit.
00:22:05
Speaker
If you don't read or study or talk about stoicism or listen to stoicism content like you're doing right now, if you don't do that for months, you're not going to be able to employ its more insightful ideas and stress in the stressful situations that come up.
00:22:21
Speaker
So that's this proactive habit, learning about stoicism.
00:22:26
Speaker
The next proactive habit is negative visualization.
Resilience through Visualization and Discomfort
00:22:30
Speaker
This is one that we've talked about a lot on this podcast. um There's great line from the Meditations, book two, ah part one, where Marcus Aurelius says, begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busy body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
00:22:51
Speaker
And negative visualization, that's a great that's a great example of that from Marcus. It's this strategy of
00:23:00
Speaker
Being explicit about the bad things that could happen or the dis-preferable, more specifically, things that could happen and will happen. The things we would rather not be the case.
00:23:12
Speaker
But being honest about both the ones that we know will come up. We know going to encounter rude, grateful ungrateful, mean people on the day-to-day.
00:23:25
Speaker
Be honest about that. And then but be honest about the possibility of other things going poorly. So one thing that Epictetus does in some of his more intense passages, he talks about preparing for the death of family members, preparing for the death of children as a possibility.
00:23:42
Speaker
um And the function of negative visualization, again, it's not to numb yourself. when When you think of Stoicism, Stoicism really thinks of it like, thinks of living well,
00:23:56
Speaker
like a kind of battle. I think, you know, some, like a pitcher throws a, throws a fastball at you and are you able to to hit it the right way under pressure? And it's still like things, you know, you've got to get to the batting cage and you've got to swing against a bunch of um fastballs coming from just a robot, you know, um um um a machine So to really build that muscle, you got to think about what would I do in that situation? What would it be like?
00:24:26
Speaker
How would it feel? You've got to practice taking those swings. So when the moment comes, you're ready to swing properly, right? Not when the moment comes, you're ready to be numb. It's not that when the moment comes, you're ready to not, uh, not feel pain. And so when the moment comes, you're ready to act properly. Right?
00:24:42
Speaker
I've never played played baseball, so excuse me if any of those metaphors were painful, but you can't just you can't just get on the pitch and then the pitcher throws at you and that's the first time you've swung at a ball like that. It's not going to work.
00:24:56
Speaker
And what I mean by that about swinging well, not just numbing yourself, Epictetus does another example of when he deals with ah with a father who's run away from home because his daughter is very sick and he can't, he's basically having an emotional breakdown because he can't handle seeing his daughter be so sick and maybe dying.
00:25:15
Speaker
And I always return to that when I think of that as a good example of negative visualization is that the point isn't that the father is undisturbed by his sick daughter. It's a terrible thing. In terms of the world of dispreferred indifference, it's one of the most dispreferred things. It's the thing you do not want to happen.
00:25:34
Speaker
But because he hasn't accepted the fact that it could happen, he hasn't visualized it or prepared for it, he's not able to be a good father. He runs away, abandons his daughter when when she's sick.
00:25:47
Speaker
And so that's the function of negative visualization. Not to numb ourselves, but to be able to act well and efficiently and effectively in those stressful moments.
00:25:59
Speaker
um Along the same lines, so that that was the the proactive habit of negative visualization. The last one, the seventh habit, is voluntary discomfort. And so this is a habit we can take on, something you can practice once a week, something you can practice once a day.
00:26:16
Speaker
It's just the habit of doing something that you don't like to do and that you don't want to do. And Seneca describes this. Seneca, obviously, very rich person.
00:26:28
Speaker
very rich, very successful Roman. He describes this practice in his letters to Lachilius, letter 18, section 5. says, words, he's saying,
00:26:40
Speaker
during which will be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare with coarse and rough dress saying to yourself the while is this the condition that i feared so in other words he's saying every couple every so Every once in a while, give yourself a couple days where you eat terrible food,
00:27:00
Speaker
you you know you you you dress poorly, but what I think that means is you dress uncomfortably. Maybe you don't need to necessarily sleep on the floor, but maybe you um You rough it a bit.
00:27:15
Speaker
and think in today's world, we, maybe people do that with camping. I did a hiking trip, um, last year. it was tough. It was, it was really, really physically tough to, uh, do a hard thing and then sleep uncomfortably, um, and then do a hard thing again.
00:27:33
Speaker
And, um, the reason we want to practice voluntary discomfort is not you know, virtue doesn't come through suffering.
00:27:45
Speaker
Stoics aren't arguing anything like that, but the view is that virtuous people are ready for suffering. They're prepared to handle the difficult situations well when they do come. And so every once in a while we we want to again, flex that muscle. We want to prepare ourselves for those kinds of situations by putting ourselves in those kinds situations. And, um,
00:28:06
Speaker
you know Maybe you don't need to practice voluntary discomfort. Maybe you've got a pretty difficult life already. And I don't think if you do, I don't think the Stoics are saying you should make it more difficult. i think that's a bit silly.
00:28:18
Speaker
But i think I think many of us maybe have lives that are uncomfortable in one sense, but comfortable in another. right So if you have ah if you have a successful desk job, your life may be very stressful.
00:28:32
Speaker
You might feel a lot of pressure, but it might be very comfortable physically. You know, you might never have to worry about where your next meal is coming from or, um you know, ever sleep in an uncomfortable situation.
00:28:45
Speaker
um Depending on who you're surrounded by, you maybe never have to worry about physical danger. Um, again, some people do. And I think if you're in those situations you can use those as examples, uh, you use those as practice, excuse me.
00:29:02
Speaker
You don't need to add more went to the, to the fire, but I think it's, it's, it's, the Stoics are just making an important reminder that look, if there's There's all these aspects to to life. There's like the stress you're experiencing.
00:29:15
Speaker
There's the social interactions. There's, um you know, your possessions. Do you have food? Where are you sleeping? There is, um is your life stable or is it chaotic?
00:29:28
Speaker
And if these are generally going pretty well, consider every once in a while, just intentionally throwing a bit of wrench into the things. um Not sabotaging, but just, like you said, go on a camping trip, for example. It doesn't have to be any more or less complex than that so that you can experience what it's like to not have one of the things you have because stoic argument is basically you're not guaranteed to have it. You're not owed it.
00:29:52
Speaker
And there's no way of telling that you'll have this physical comfort um or this stability or these healthy relationships for forever. So you want a little bit of practice um dealing with their opposites.
00:30:07
Speaker
And so that's the habit of voluntary discomfort. You can do that as much or as little as you want, but it's something that you can really easily add into your day.
Recap and Listener Engagement
00:30:15
Speaker
So going back in summary, I tried to cover here seven habits and I call them habits because I think they're the thing that any successful stoic will be practicing regularly. i also think they're things that you can add piecemeal to your life.
00:30:28
Speaker
So I think any of the seven can be added to any kind of life. um And you want to focus on where you're struggling or focus on where you think the habit will make the biggest difference. I covered three habits for thinking well.
00:30:39
Speaker
So there was prosoké, paying attention, noticing what you're thinking, noticing what's going on in your mind. Second habit for thinking well is skepticism.
00:30:50
Speaker
That's then just introducing the question, is what I'm thinking true? Is what's going through my mind ah reflective of the way things are? It's a habit of always holding truth as that standard and then questioning if things are living up to that standard.
00:31:06
Speaker
Third habit of living well is reflection, which is well to to determine if it's true or not. I'm going to introduce Stoic theory. I'm going to test the idea against Stoicism and see if it holds up.
00:31:19
Speaker
And really that's what makes you a Stoic, right? any any um You can reflect using any criteria you want, but what what sets aside a Stoic from a non-Stoic is they're going to reflect using Stoic theory. They're going to use that as the standard of proof.
00:31:35
Speaker
Then there's a habit for living mindfully and that's daily reflections. So setting aside a little bit of time each day to think about how you lived, what you did. Did you live up to stoicism?
00:31:47
Speaker
where there Were there parts of your day you'd want to improve? Parts of your day ah you thought you did a great job and want to continue to strengthen? Then there are three habits that I'd say are proactive habits. They're ones that are designed for preparing for adversity.
00:32:04
Speaker
First is learning about stoicism. Just doing what you're doing now, listening to a podcast, reading a blog, reading a book, watching a video, talking about it with friends. I think discussion is such a helpful tool. it's One thing I love is having those podcasts with Caleb has really made my stoicism better because I've just had the chance to talk about it with another person.
00:32:24
Speaker
And we want to learn about stoicism, again, not so we can recite things, not so we can show off how much we know, but so that when we do the reflection, when we use stoic theory to evaluate the truth of things, we are prepared with a really deep understanding of these things we've been learning about, digesting, and reflecting on for a long time.
00:32:47
Speaker
The next proactive habit is negative visualization. That is imagining things we don't want to happen happening, reflecting that they're either going to happen, like in the case of meeting ungrateful people, or they're potentially going to happen, like in the case of um you know loved ones getting sick or passing situations like this.
00:33:18
Speaker
Negative visualization is not about numbing yourself. It's not about becoming jaded or cynical in the modern sense of cynical. It's about preparing yourself to act well in those moments.
00:33:32
Speaker
And you can't act well in those moments if when you experience them, that's the first time you've thought about it. That's the first time you've encountered it. just yeah Those stressful situations are not the time to practice how you think and feel about these things.
00:33:45
Speaker
And then the last habit is voluntary discomfort. And that's just, that is the habit of putting yourself in difficult situations, especially about the kinds of things in your life that are actually going well.
00:33:57
Speaker
So if you don't experience physical discomfort, getting, going out and, um, So exercising, camping, eating a more minimalistic diet for a certain period of time, yeah giving yourself a chance to experience the things that your life, fortunately, doesn't make you experience that often.
00:34:16
Speaker
um physical we we use the example of a physical discomfort a lot, but it could be any other kind of discomfort. um giving yourself a chance to practice dealing with things that are uncomfortable, again, as a proactive habit so that when they do come up, you're prepared and ah ready to deal with them if they do.
00:34:35
Speaker
And so i guess if if you're wondering about where to start, Really, the the Stoics always recommend, you know, where do you think you need the most help? Where do you think you um need the most course correction?
00:34:53
Speaker
You know, you're the kind of person who thinks really well in the moment, but something unexpected happens and it throws you off. Well, maybe the proactive habits. Or maybe you love to learn about stoicism, but you have trouble applying it in the moment. Well, then look through the habits for thinking well.
00:35:08
Speaker
And then maybe all of those are going well, but you're not really sure maybe how they're fitting together. Well, then think about a daily reflection or a journaling practice. ah so that is those are some So those are seven stoic habits, and I hope that was helpful.
00:35:22
Speaker
And thanks, everyone, for listening.
00:35:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more Stoic.
00:35:47
Speaker
And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientliar.com. And finally, please get in touch with us.
00:35:59
Speaker
Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.