The Daily Stoic: “Stoic Joy”

Posted on August 3, 2019 by admin

For a long time now, I’ve considered joy to be more meaningful than happiness. Joy is something I’ve long considered to be deeper, richer, and more substantial than happiness, cheerfulness, and other similar feelings. There’s something about joy’s ability to last through (and get me through) even the most difficult seasons that puts it in a category of its own. This entry from The Daily Stoic describes that well and reminds me of why joy is so precious and worth pursuing.

“Trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think someone can, in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition? Or swing open the door to poverty, keep pleasures in check, or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful. it’s exactly such a joy that I would wish for you to possess, for it will never run dry once you’ve laid claim to its source.”

–Seneca, Moral Letters, 23.4

We throw around the word “joy” casually. “I’m overjoyed at the news.” “She’s a joy to be around.” “It’s a joyous occasion.” But none of those examples really touches on true joy. They are closer to “cheer” than anything else. Cheer is surface level.

Joy, to Seneca, is a deep state of being. It is what we feel inside us and has little to do with smiles or laughing. So when people say that the Stoics are dour or depressive, they’re really missing the point. Who cares if someone is bubbly when times are good? What kind of accomplishment is that?

But can you be fully content with your life, can you bravely face what life has in store from one day to the next, can you bounce back from every kind of adversity without losing a step, can you be a source of strength and inspiration to others around you? That’s Stoic joy – the joy that comes from purpose, excellence, and duty. It’s a serious thing – far more serious than a smile or a chipper voice.

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Daily Self-Care

Posted on August 2, 2019 by admin

One of my favorite chapters in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is the one that encourages us to Sharpen the Saw. This involves taking it slow for a while, making sure we get plenty of rest, and temporarily backing away from our usual routines to either avoid getting burnt out or to recover from burnout that’s already occurred. While I do a lot of this every so often, I also do it in small ways nearly every day.

For example, I try to drink plenty of water even if I’m not thirsty. Taking decent-sized sips every few minutes keeps me hydrated, makes me feel better, and allows me to act more effectively. I also like to have small snacks when I’m at work to keep hunger at bay or at least take the edge off. Whenever I spend a lot of time around other people, I always make sure to spend plenty of time by myself afterward since I find that draining. And, although I prefer to avoid medicine as much as possible, I will use it occasionally to prevent a headache or uneasy stomach from getting worse and turning into a major problem.

Doing these small acts of self-care can turn a bad day into a good one and a good day into a great one. It’s all about listening to my body and giving it what it needs to function properly and feel good. That can vary from one day to the next. Some days I feel ravenous and others I have hardly any appetite. However I feel on any given day, I try to follow Don Miguel Ruiz’s advice in The Four Agreements and always do my best in everything, including taking care of myself. There’s no reason not to, especially when it often takes so little work to feel so good.

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Reframing Myself

Posted on August 1, 2019 by admin

I felt on edge for a while last night. It started with the caffeine in the sweet tea I had with my dinner and the cookies I had for dessert. That, along with watching a video of people getting angry and fighting with each other, brought up a lot of unpleasant memories and gave me a lot of nervous energy. Fortunately I was able to start feeling much better within a minute by reframing myself using a combination of life hacks that I’ve either learned from other people or discovered for myself.

After I noticed how I was feeling, I remembered a concept that I learned from Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman discusses how we tend to overstate the importance or prevalence of something if we’re focusing heavily on it; he calls this “what you see is all there is”. Since I had just finished watching a lot of violence and hostile emotions, my adrenaline was pumping, I was ready to fight if need be, and I started thinking about potential situations in which I might resort to violence. So at some point, I reminded myself that the events in the video weren’t happening to me, which helped me calm down and avoid mentally projecting myself into those situations (I can’t remember exactly when I did this; it may have even been while I was watching the video). I then recited the words to the Mister Rogers song “What Do You Do With the Mad That You Feel?” Reciting that song out loud always makes me feel better and this occasion was no exception.

Even though I hadn’t done any grounding, breathing exercises, or even changed my position on the couch, I still felt a lot calmer after doing those few things. I then went outside and juggled in the backyard for a while to burn off some energy in a positive manner. Unicycling and doing chinups later on also helped burn off extra energy in addition to taking my mind off the video and giving me something positive to occupy my thoughts. By the time I took a warm shower to relax and feel sleepy (a trick I learned from a sleep expert on one episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast) and finished my usual nighttime routine, I was feeling wonderful. The life hacks I used worked perfectly and allowed me to quickly move past the negative emotions and the nervous energy I felt earlier. This shows that life hacks work incredibly well as long as I remember to use them. I still have difficulty with this at times but it’s getting easier to put them into practice. I hope this has been helpful for you and gives you some ideas for what to do when you feel on edge.

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Layers

Posted on July 31, 2019 by admin

When I became serious about self-improvement, I didn’t know what to expect. It became clear early on that this would be painful much of the time, although regular progress and periods of deep peace more than made up for the difficulties. Still, I think I expected the path to be fairly straightforward and that it would look something like this: notice something in need of work, do the work, and then move onto the next thing. Has it been like that? No. No it hasn’t. It’s like that on occasion but a lot of the journey has involved taking several steps backward, getting stuck in some places for weeks or even months at a time, revisiting pain that I thought I healed long ago, and consistently running into situations that challenge me to relinquish destructive habits in favor of better ones. Overall, my journey has been anything and everything but straightforward.

My mindfulness buddy describes this as working through many different layers. Even after spending a lot of time making progress in a wide range of areas, there is always more that can be done. As I continue to go deeper, I keep finding new layers that contain more things to work on. This continuous discovery gives me ideas for new subjects to discuss or new ways to view subjects I’ve written about before. And every time I think I’m nearly “there”, I come across another layer and realize that the rabbit hole keeps going.

Will there ever be an end to the self-improvement journey? Will I ever run out of layers? I don’t know. Several people who have way more experience with this stuff than I do have said that there are always things to address while we’re alive, so this may very well be a lifelong journey. Even those who appear to have “made it” may still have some struggles I know nothing about since I’m only seeing their successes. Whether I make enough progress to fully self-actualize within my lifetime or end up making regular improvements until I take my last breath, I still plan to do as much learning, growing, and sharing as possible.

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Some Recent Realizations

Posted on July 30, 2019 by admin

I had some startling realizations yesterday at work and on my way to get some food after my shift ended. One of them was that I still do a lot of people pleasing in certain areas of my life. Another realization may have given me some insight into why that’s still a habit for me. If that’s the case, then it has to do with failure. I’m not afraid to fail at some things since much of what I’ve learned (including juggling, dancing, unicycling, and the limited Spanish that I know) has involved a huge amount of repeated failure. However, I don’t like to fail in front of other people. More often than not, I practice things in private until I get good enough that I can do them fairly consistently whether I’m alone or with someone else.

I think this is because I want other people to perceive me as capable, talented, and impressive in many different areas. Even though I know this isn’t the case, I still have the feeling that I’ll be seen as clumsy, uncoordinated, and lackluster if I can’t do something well in public. When I juggle at the park once a month, I tend to only demonstrate patterns that I can already do pretty well; I rarely work on new things or things I haven’t done in years at the park. I also haven’t unicycled around most of the people I see on a regular basis. I practice with my unicycle in my driveway so that my efforts go unseen and I intend to wait until I can control it much better before doing it around those close to me.

I don’t know exactly what to make of these realizations at this point. This is where I’d usually share a lesson I’ve learned or a plan I have to solve a particular problem, but right now I have neither of those. All I know is that I have to be aware of the things that I’m doing before I can do anything about them. So all I intend to do for the foreseeable future is continue observing my behavior and thinking about what makes me act how I do. Maybe this will give me the insight I need to change some old habits, or maybe it’ll just make me more mindful as I go about my day. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.

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The Daily Stoic: “What’s on Your Tombstone?”

Posted on July 29, 2019 by admin

I always enjoy finding places where two or more books I’ve read overlap. This entry from The Daily Stoic fits together nicely with Stephen Covey’s recommendation in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to begin with the end in mind. Both entries deal with imagining the end of your life and thinking of your potential regrets, accomplishments, relationships, etc.; you can then use those “findings” to determine the kind of life you want to live and work toward it one step at a time. This is a powerful exercise that everyone should do, and I’m glad to see it appear in two of the most amazing books I’ve ever opened.

“When you see someone often flashing their rank or position, or someone whose name is often bandied about in public, don’t be envious; such things are bought at the expense of life…. Some die on the first rungs of the ladder of success, others before they can reach the top, and the few that make it to the top of their ambition through a thousand indignities realize at the end it’s only for an inscription on their gravestone.”

–Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, 20

Sometimes our professional commitments can become an end unto themselves. A politician might justify the neglect of his family for his office, or a writer might believe her “genius” excuses antisocial or selfish behavior. Anyone with some perspective can see that, in fact, the politician is really just in love with fame, and the writer enjoys being condescending and feeling superior. Workaholics always make excuses for their selfishness.

While these attitudes can lead to impressive accomplishments, their cost is rarely justified. The ability to work hard and long is admirable. But you are a human being, not a human doing. Seneca points out that we’re not animals. “Is it really so pleasant to die in harness?” he asked. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn put it better: “Work is what horses die of. Everybody should know that.”

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Lighting Candles

Posted on July 28, 2019 by admin
Related image

The quote in that picture serves as an occasional reminder for me to keep my priorities in order. For many years, I spent a lot of time criticizing things that I disliked instead of figuring out how to take action that would make a positive difference. I’ve since changed that and now, with occasional exceptions, I try to include potential solutions to problems that I see in the world whenever I criticize something.

Standing for something rather than standing against something else makes this easier. For example, if I were to merely oppose darkness, that would keep my focus on the very thing I want to eliminate. I may end up creating an identity for myself around opposition to darkness. That could very well cause me to speak out strongly against darkness while doing everything in my power to keep it around in order to preserve my identity; if darkness were eliminated, what would that do to my sense of self and sense of purpose? I’d be much better off by taking an approach based on adding more light and being careful to avoid making that part of my identity. Then my energy would be spent on figuring out how to take positive action to bring about a desired end, which would make it much more likely that I’d accomplish my goal.

This approach of being proactive rather than reactive also facilitates good communication. If I’m clear about what I want to accomplish, then those with similar intentions can work alongside me and those with different intentions can find something else that resonates better with them. This greatly reduces the chances of misunderstandings or alliances that are based on shared opposition to one thing rather than shared support of something else, which can often be more trouble than they’re worth. Fortunately, these problematic alliances are easy to avoid as there are plenty of candles that we all can light by ourselves every day. And by working together, we can all help fill the world with light, one candle at a time.

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Ask Yourself Why

Posted on July 27, 2019 by admin

Socrates was known for learning how other people saw the world by asking them a lot of questions. In the process, he often got them to recognize flaws and discrepancies in their own thinking. This style has since become known as the Socratic method and is used in some debate groups. Little kids also use the Socratic method (likely without knowing its origin) to learn about their world by repeatedly asking questions to anyone who’ll listen to them.

One of my closest friends introduced me to this technique many years ago by using it in our discussions and debates. This was long before I ever read about it or understood how it worked. All I knew at the time was that he was (and still is) really good at using it to trap me in my own logic and make me see things differently. The fact that he also remained calm and avoided attacking me in favor of focusing on the ideas made his approach incredibly effective and kept our exchanges civil even when we talked about highly sensitive subjects.

Although I haven’t used this much in discussions, I’ve found it to be incredibly useful for learning more about myself. Repeatedly asking myself why makes me think long and hard about a lot of things, such as why I hold certain positions and not others, why I act the way I do, and why I enjoy the hobbies and interests I’ve chosen. If someone else uses the Socratic method on me, I can easily become defensive and avoid examining my thought processes. When I use it on myself, however, I can drop my guard much more easily and take more of an honest look at what I think and why I think the way that I do. If any of this sounds interesting to you, then you’d probably enjoy giving this a try. If you do try it and find out some intriguing things about yourself as a result, I’d love to hear about them.

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Picking up the Pieces

Posted on July 26, 2019 by admin

What happens when someone has built up a lot of bad habits for most of their life? In my case, I was able to get by until a few years ago. That’s when a series of painful events occurred and showed me just how much I needed to change. And I did, but only after spending most of my free time for months after those events feeling sad, angry, and defeated. That was when I first heard the Weird Al song “Skipper Dan” and related strongly to the line “Now my hopes have all vanished and my dreams have all died.” I can enjoy the song now but at that time it was heartbreaking since I felt like I’d be stuck in that rough place for the rest of my life.

Fortunately, I’ve long since moved past that season and my current situation continues to get better all the time. Since I often have to learn things the hard way, I think that that difficult season was necessary. Much of what happened during that time came about because of habits and tendencies I’d practiced for many years. Although I often got into trouble through my actions, I hadn’t yet dug myself deep enough to commit to some major changes. Once I did, it became obvious that much of what I’d done for years had to go and that I needed to do a lot of things way differently.

Although I strongly prefer to make gradual changes, sometimes I need a hard reset. Something that’ll shake me to my core and force me to take a long, hard look at my life. I get the feeling that I’d have gotten into even more trouble later on down the road if I hadn’t heeded that wake-up call and started making changes when I did. So, although that time was incredibly difficult, I’m sure it was downright gentle compared to what would have happened if I’d have continued down that path. Although it can still be difficult to think back to all the pain I felt during that difficult season, I’ll always be grateful for the lessons I learned from it. That experience taught me that sometimes things have to fall apart before they can fall into place. Even when it felt like my life was in pieces, I was still able to pick up those pieces one by one and reassemble them into something new, different, and beautiful.

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“Just for Today”

Posted on July 25, 2019 by admin

I found this set of intentions in a cutout from an old newspaper when I was cleaning my room yesterday. I’ve had it for years but didn’t think much of it until it resurfaced. As I read it, I knew that I had to share it with you. I try to do most of these things every day since they keep me on a good, positive path. When I looked for this online, I couldn’t find the author or this exact version since there are several variations of it. I don’t know who the credit belongs to for this but I certainly didn’t write it. If anyone knows the original author, please let me know and I’ll edit this post so they get the credit. Aside from that, I hope this serves as a helpful reminder and makes your life a little easier.

Just for today – I will live through the next 12 hours and not try to tackle all of life’s problems at once.

Just for today – I will improve my mind. I will learn something useful. I will read something that requires thought and concentration.

Just for today – I will be agreeable. I will look my best, speak in a well-modulated voice, be courteous and considerate.

Just for today – I will not find fault with friend, relative, or colleague. I will not try to change or improve anyone but myself.

Just for today – I will do a good turn and keep it a secret. If anyone finds out, it doesn’t count.

Just for today – I will have a program. I might not follow it exactly, but I will have it. I will save myself from two enemies – hurry and indecision.

Just for today – I will do two things I don’t want to do, just because I need the discipline.

Just for today – I will believe in myself. I will give my best to the world and feel confident that the world will give its best to me.

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