Speaker 1: Pushkin. We all have bad days. Our laptops die, our
Speaker 1: relationships fail, our bosses let us go. I'll freely admit
Speaker 1: that I sometimes get weighed down by it all, that
Speaker 1: all those bad events can make me feel like I'm
Speaker 1: a long way from my goal of being happier. And
Speaker 1: that's when I try to think of James Stockdale and
Speaker 1: a particularly bad day in his military career. It was
Speaker 1: September ninth, nineteen sixty five. James was flying his jet
Speaker 1: low over North Vietnam. Stockdale was hit by Enemy five
Speaker 1: and had to reject. As he parachuted down to earth,
Speaker 1: he recognized that he was enjoying probably his final seconds
Speaker 1: of freedom and that the next five years minimum would
Speaker 1: be hell. He was looking at beatings, torture, and a
Speaker 1: long imprisonment. But as enemy soldiers on the ground took
Speaker 1: shots at the pilot, ripping his parachute, Stockdale gave himself
Speaker 1: a bit of a pep talk. He whispered, I'm entering
Speaker 1: the world of Epictetus. Epictetus was born into slavery two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. His Roman master permitted him to study
Speaker 1: an ancient philosophy called Stoicism. Eventually, Epictetus gained his freedom
Speaker 1: and became one of the most important stoic philosophers in history.
Speaker 1: His ideas about how to live a happier life have
Speaker 1: continued helping people long after his death. In fact, his
Speaker 1: lessons on how to deal with challenges and how to
Speaker 1: put setbacks into perspective helped James Stockdale survive more than
Speaker 1: seven years as a prisoner of war. They've also helped
Speaker 1: me through some difficult times and more than two thousand
Speaker 1: years later. I bet they'll help you too, So welcome
Speaker 1: to Happiness Lessons of the Ancients with me, Doctor Larry Santos. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is Bill Irvine, testing professor of philosophy at Right
Speaker 1: State University. Yes, I'm recording his latest book, The Stoic Challenge,
Speaker 1: is probably my book of the year. It's just curious.
Speaker 1: But it was a great time to launch a book
Speaker 1: on dealing with setbacks because we had COVID come along,
Speaker 1: which was for a lot of people a major setback.
Speaker 1: I talked to Bill for one of our bonus episodes
Speaker 1: on the coronavirus, but we were only able to scratch
Speaker 1: the surface of what stoicism can really teach us today.
Speaker 1: So I invited Bill back to school us on Stoicism
Speaker 1: in general and on my favorite Stoic of all, Epictetus.
Speaker 1: So Stoicism was cobbled together from other philosophies that existed
Speaker 1: in three hundred BC by Zeno of Sidium. This was
Speaker 1: in Athens, it got to Rome in the first century BC.
Speaker 1: There are the four greatest Roman Stoics, and those would
Speaker 1: be Seneca, Musonius, Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Seneca, besides
Speaker 1: being a Stoic philosopher, he was also an investment banker,
Speaker 1: a playwright, counselor to an emperor. People get this idea
Speaker 1: that Stoics were just interested in preserving comme at all costs,
Speaker 1: but when you look at actual Stoic history, you realize
Speaker 1: that a lot of them were very busy individuals where
Speaker 1: there was that external success going on, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: the key thing to them. After Seneca was Musonius Rufus.
Speaker 1: Musonius had his own school. That was what you did.
Speaker 1: There were no colleges, so you couldn't get a job
Speaker 1: teaching in a college. So what you did is you
Speaker 1: started a school. For you to have a successful school,
Speaker 1: you needed to have an intellectual product that would draw
Speaker 1: students someplace where they would get the skills they would
Speaker 1: need in life, skills like how to be a success
Speaker 1: in politics, how to be a success in law, but
Speaker 1: how to have a good life was also a component.
Speaker 1: One of the students was Epictetus. We don't know a
Speaker 1: lot about Epictetus. He was born in about fifty CE
Speaker 1: and started out life as a slave. You know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't out laboring in the fields, but he was acquiring
Speaker 1: basic skills of writing. Remember, they didn't have xerox machines,
Speaker 1: they didn't have typewriters. And apparently at one point he
Speaker 1: got a beating severe enough to make him a lame slave.
Speaker 1: So he was spent his life lame. Finally succeeded in
Speaker 1: getting his freedom and used it to start his own
Speaker 1: philosophy school. What made him special he came up with
Speaker 1: a lot of catchy sayings that became what was known
Speaker 1: as the Handbook or in Caridian. And it's this short
Speaker 1: little thing. You can read it in an hour, and
Speaker 1: then you can spend the next decade pondering its contents.
Speaker 1: Still as some continued to rumble along until the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: when as far as I can tell it went into
Speaker 1: a decline. I mean, so I was a college student
Speaker 1: starting in nineteen seventy philosophy major and was not exposed
Speaker 1: to Stoicism because we weren't exposed to philosophies of life,
Speaker 1: because that didn't really matter. And the beautiful thing is,
Speaker 1: right now we're in the midst of a Stoic renaissance.
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of the backstory on Stoicism, and
Speaker 1: that's the kind of the place that Epictetis has in
Speaker 1: that story. One of the like maybe twentieth century adopters
Speaker 1: of Stoicism is Admiral James Stockdale, And you know, when
Speaker 1: his plane was shot down, he self reports saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, he knew that he was going to be
Speaker 1: stuck there for five years at least, and he was
Speaker 1: entering the world of Epictetus. So was the quote that
Speaker 1: he had. Yeah, Now this was the Vietnam War. So
Speaker 1: he became a prisoner, not at all a very pleasant existence,
Speaker 1: you know, not enough to eat, cruelty, being beaten, and
Speaker 1: for him it would have been a complete turnaround, you know,
Speaker 1: just one hundred and eighty return in the course of
Speaker 1: his life, because he went from being an airplane pilot.
Speaker 1: Presumably I must have been a college graduate, went from
Speaker 1: this life of being a star in some sense, a
Speaker 1: rock star, and now suddenly you're the low man on
Speaker 1: the totem poll, and then you wake up and then
Speaker 1: the question is what will I find to eat today?
Speaker 1: And will I live till tomorrow? So he was an
Speaker 1: early adopter of stoicism. But you know, think how fortunate
Speaker 1: he was to have been exposed to it before being
Speaker 1: shot down, because it gave him a way of dealing
Speaker 1: with the things he was about to experience. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is a line from Epictetus. It isn't what happens
Speaker 1: to us that has the effect. It's how we frame
Speaker 1: what happens to us. It's how we interpret what happens
Speaker 1: to us. And so we may not have a lot
Speaker 1: of power over what happens to us, but we have
Speaker 1: considerable power over what we do with what happens to it,
Speaker 1: with the psychological frame we put it in. And that
Speaker 1: was one of the fantastic things about Epictetis is that
Speaker 1: he was kind of incredibly practical. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons that Stockdale brought up Epictetis
Speaker 1: in particular and not just Stoics in general, which it
Speaker 1: seems like he'd read, which is the Epictetis was really
Speaker 1: trying to give us almost like early self help it
Speaker 1: but it's you know, I think the handbook almost sounds
Speaker 1: like a self help book in some ways. But one
Speaker 1: of the things I noticed in the discourses is he
Speaker 1: talks about this idea that turning to stoicism is sort
Speaker 1: of like going to the hospital, and like what a
Speaker 1: stoics job, a stoic philosopher's job is is to kind
Speaker 1: of be like a doctor in a hospital. And he
Speaker 1: notes that like students ought not to walk out in
Speaker 1: pleasure but in pain, right, And I think this is
Speaker 1: sort of kind of coming to terms with the Stoic
Speaker 1: philosophy and what it means. It's like, you kin'd have
Speaker 1: to accept that there are certain things that you can't control.
Speaker 1: And so the Stoic view is that you can achieve
Speaker 1: harmony in life, you can achieve happiness, but it kind
Speaker 1: of takes a little bit of work. Yeah, So a
Speaker 1: Stoicism had several different aspects. So if you're a Stoic philosopher,
Speaker 1: you're interested in science, you might be interested in logic,
Speaker 1: because you know your students are going to have to
Speaker 1: learn how to reason if they want to be lawyers,
Speaker 1: if they want to be a politicians. But beside that,
Speaker 1: you're interested in a philosophy of life, and most people
Speaker 1: lack that. They just go from day to day, or
Speaker 1: they look around at the goals other people are forming
Speaker 1: and assume that the other people have done their homework.
Speaker 1: Usually they have and they've just been copying their neighbors.
Speaker 1: The Stoics, though, were very careful to add that on
Speaker 1: as a component in their philosophy, and they didn't just
Speaker 1: talk about grand theories and principles and everything else. The
Speaker 1: question was is their practical advice that they had to offer.
Speaker 1: It should have takeaways. There should be lectures that people
Speaker 1: can come to and then go away from thinking hard,
Speaker 1: not about oh, some wonderful principle, but about woe. The
Speaker 1: way I'm living my life. I seem to be making
Speaker 1: some basic mistakes because I kind of want to dig
Speaker 1: into some of the Epictetus insights. Specifically, one of the
Speaker 1: ideas that comes out is this Greek term. I'm going
Speaker 1: to mess up the Greek term, but it's this term epihenum,
Speaker 1: something that in our power. It's great. It's great to me,
Speaker 1: great to you too. But this is this idea of
Speaker 1: things that are sort of up to us, right, And
Speaker 1: that classically is how Epictetus started his book, Give me
Speaker 1: a sense of how the Handbook starts. And this huge
Speaker 1: insight that Epictetius brought to people in English, what I
Speaker 1: call it, and a lot of people do this too,
Speaker 1: They call it the dichotomy of control. So a dichotomy
Speaker 1: is an either or, it's one or the other, and
Speaker 1: the dichotomy of control is, well, there are some things
Speaker 1: you can control and there are some things you can't control.
Speaker 1: And if you spend your day thinking about, anxious about,
Speaker 1: dwelling upon the things you can't control, you are the
Speaker 1: biggest fool on the planet. How come because you can't
Speaker 1: control it, You're wasting your time, You're wasting your energy,
Speaker 1: You're causing yourself. You know, when you get up in
Speaker 1: the morning, you should realize that today a number of
Speaker 1: things are going to happen that simply go against me.
Speaker 1: And if I expect to get up and go through
Speaker 1: today without anything bad happening, I'm a fool and I
Speaker 1: have a choice. I can't control that, but I do
Speaker 1: have control over something else, and it is my response
Speaker 1: to those things that happen. You can control your goals.
Speaker 1: Can you control whether you achieve those goals? No? No,
Speaker 1: But you can control what the goals are. You can
Speaker 1: control your values. What do you value in life? Do
Speaker 1: you value fame and fortune? Do you value tranquility? That's
Speaker 1: completely in your control. And the Stoic insight was, if
Speaker 1: you want to have a good life, number one, you
Speaker 1: need to focus your attention on things you can control.
Speaker 1: Number two is when it comes to choosing your values.
Speaker 1: When it comes to choosing your goals, you want to
Speaker 1: choose values that are going to lead me in the
Speaker 1: right direction, and its goals that I'm going to be
Speaker 1: able to achieve. I know so many people, and I
Speaker 1: used to be one of them, and I still am,
Speaker 1: to some extent one of them. But I know this
Speaker 1: one person I've known for a long time, and he
Speaker 1: routinely says to me, if only I made X thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per year, then finally I would be happy. And
Speaker 1: then I'll encounter him a few years later and I'll say,
Speaker 1: how's that X thing going for you? He says, if
Speaker 1: only I had Why? So, this is this hedonic treadmill
Speaker 1: that we're on. Don't get yourself on the hedonic treadmill
Speaker 1: because you will never be satisfied. You will always want more.
Speaker 1: But back to the dichotomy of control. So there's things
Speaker 1: you can control things you can't control. But I have
Speaker 1: fiddled with it, and so I've come up with what
Speaker 1: I call the trichotomy of control. When you say there
Speaker 1: are things you can control and things you can't control,
Speaker 1: the phrase the things you can't control is actually ambiguous
Speaker 1: because there's two different sorts of things you can't control.
Speaker 1: One of them is things that you have absolutely no
Speaker 1: control over, and that would be like whether the sunrise
Speaker 1: is tomorrow. I have absolutely no control over that. But
Speaker 1: there are also things you can't control in the sense
Speaker 1: that you don't have complete control over them, but you
Speaker 1: have partial control over them. What would that be, Well,
Speaker 1: my weight, for instance, Can I suddenly wish that I
Speaker 1: became one hundred and sixty pounds? Nope? Can I try
Speaker 1: to do that? Yep? Do I have some control over that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because every day I sit down and eat, and I
Speaker 1: have control over what I do eat and what I
Speaker 1: don't eat. It's this third intermediate category. It's things I
Speaker 1: have some but not complete control over, So I would
Speaker 1: argue that that's where as a practicing Stoic you should
Speaker 1: be spending most of your time. And I think one
Speaker 1: way that focusing on what you can control is really
Speaker 1: powerful is it means that if you get that right,
Speaker 1: you're never really a victim, right Like, you can't be
Speaker 1: a victim of your circumstances if you're really tracking the
Speaker 1: things that just don't matter to you right right. The
Speaker 1: notion of being a victim, by the way, that touches
Speaker 1: on a second stoic theme, and that is framing. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you do have a say whether bad things happen to you.
Speaker 1: If you never check the gas gage in your car,
Speaker 1: bad things are going to happen, and you're to blame
Speaker 1: and shame on you. But there are other things where
Speaker 1: a bad thing happens that you couldn't have foreseen, but
Speaker 1: you do have control over the frame you put around it.
Speaker 1: You've got a very interesting choice of whether you're going
Speaker 1: to play the role of victim or play the role
Speaker 1: of target. And it's a huge psychological difference because if
Speaker 1: you choose to play the role of victim, then you're
Speaker 1: going to feel sorry for yourself. You're going to be
Speaker 1: asking for people's sympathy, You're going to be probably depressed.
Speaker 1: If you play the role of target, then you can
Speaker 1: rise to that challenge. As a result of doing that,
Speaker 1: you can gain character and you can change the world.
Speaker 1: That difference between feeling like a victim versus feeling like
Speaker 1: a target was an important distinction for James Stockdale. When
Speaker 1: Stockdale came crashing down to Earth, he badly injured his
Speaker 1: leg and was left lame, just like his hero Epictetus.
Speaker 1: But throughout all the pain and cruelty, Stockdale decided that
Speaker 1: he was game for the challenge and he was ready
Speaker 1: to take it on. After the break, we'll look at
Speaker 1: the path that Epictetus has laid out to help us
Speaker 1: all gain control even in the worst of times, the happiness, laugh,
Speaker 1: or turn in a moment when trying to take control
Speaker 1: of our own lives, Epictetus suggested adopting a state of
Speaker 1: mind that he called apathea. We need to become less
Speaker 1: bothered by the powerful emotions that often cloud our judgment.
Speaker 1: Apathea sounds a lot like our modern word apathy, but
Speaker 1: that's actually a miss perception of stoicism that it's about
Speaker 1: turning off our emotions and not caring what's going on
Speaker 1: around us. So I asked Bill to explain how apathea
Speaker 1: really works. The Stoics weren't anti emotion, they were anti
Speaker 1: negative emotion. They embraced positive emotions, they embraced feelings of delight,
Speaker 1: they embraced joy. Those are all positive emotions. But they thought,
Speaker 1: what makes us miserable is the negative emotions we experienced,
Speaker 1: like anger, like regret, like feelings of insecurity. They realized
Speaker 1: that we are essentially at war with ourselves. And I
Speaker 1: use the roommate analogy. So suppose the only place you
Speaker 1: could live was an apartment and you realize that moving in,
Speaker 1: you had two apartment mates. One was this utterly reflexive
Speaker 1: guy who was either panicking or reacting in dramatic ways
Speaker 1: to whatever the circumstances were. The other one was just
Speaker 1: an emotional basket case. You know, whatever happened, you'd be saying,
Speaker 1: this is the worst thing ever, or this is the
Speaker 1: best thing ever. And then there was rational you, okay,
Speaker 1: And the problem is you couldn't escape them, you couldn't
Speaker 1: leave them. You had to deal with them. How do
Speaker 1: you accomplish that and here's where stoic insight comes. You
Speaker 1: manipulate them, you use your brain power. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can simply try, as an act of self control to
Speaker 1: ignore what they're doing, ignore what they're saying. Good luck
Speaker 1: with that, because self control requires considerable energy on your part.
Speaker 1: If you've ever tried to do meditation, you realize one
Speaker 1: of the very first things you learn is how difficult
Speaker 1: it is to just quiet your mind. Sit there for
Speaker 1: five minutes in a common environment and don't have thoughts,
Speaker 1: and within thirty seconds outside, maybe before that, you'll realize, Oops,
Speaker 1: a thought just came into my mind, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are crazy ideas. Because of that, we find
Speaker 1: ourselves living not in the present moment, and you know
Speaker 1: that's kind of been the ideal is live in them now.
Speaker 1: It's rather things like so and so said something to
Speaker 1: me yesterday. Is he upset with me? Is he angry
Speaker 1: at me? Is he going to do something to make
Speaker 1: me even more upset? And oh, the electrical bill has
Speaker 1: to be paid and it's due this evening. Suppose you
Speaker 1: had a neighbor who every five minutes was showing up
Speaker 1: at your door, banging on the door and saying you
Speaker 1: should be angry. Now there's something you should worry about. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, you would get a restraining order, except it
Speaker 1: isn't a neighbor and you can't go to a court
Speaker 1: of law. It's inside your head. So the Stoics, the
Speaker 1: beautiful thing was they figured out a way not only
Speaker 1: to kind of shut down those thoughts in those emotions,
Speaker 1: but to harness them and use them on their behalf.
Speaker 1: And so in their goal to control negative emotions, is
Speaker 1: this notion that we talk a lot about today in
Speaker 1: modern effect science, which is this idea of emotion regulation,
Speaker 1: this idea that emotions really are in our control and
Speaker 1: that we can take ownership to kind of downregulate the
Speaker 1: negative ones. And one of the ways that modern science
Speaker 1: has figured out that we can downregulate negative emotions has
Speaker 1: to do with our judgments, right, is to realize that
Speaker 1: we're in control of how we experience an emotion. And
Speaker 1: this seems to fit a lot with what Epictetus talked
Speaker 1: about when he talked about these impressions. And so what
Speaker 1: was Epictetus talking about about? When you see something, realize
Speaker 1: that it's an impression that you can control. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: somebody insults us, there are two ways we can respond.
Speaker 1: One is to get angry and upset and maybe a
Speaker 1: seek revenge, and another is to simply shrug it off.
Speaker 1: It's just noise. If you're out on a walk and
Speaker 1: a dog barks at you, you know if you respond
Speaker 1: to that by saying, oh, that dog, let's not approve
Speaker 1: of me. That dog is so mean. Nah, it's just barking. Well,
Speaker 1: you can treat the things other people say in exactly
Speaker 1: the same frame of mind, because some of them are
Speaker 1: not fully rational, coherent people. That's why they're going around
Speaker 1: saying insulting things. When you're insulted, you should just shrug
Speaker 1: it off, or better still, make a joke out of it.
Speaker 1: And you haven't your power to do that. And if
Speaker 1: you make a joke out of it, you not only
Speaker 1: will prevent the insult from hurting you, but it's just
Speaker 1: almost the worst thing you can do to the person
Speaker 1: who insulted you. He wants to hurt you, and if
Speaker 1: you laugh it off, it's proof that he hasn't hurt you.
Speaker 1: So one thing I do in class when we're up
Speaker 1: to this point is I tell the assembled group, and
Speaker 1: it might be thirty people, might be fifty people. I
Speaker 1: say Okay, I want you to come up with the
Speaker 1: worst insult of me that you can think of, and
Speaker 1: then I'm going to do a countdown, and when we
Speaker 1: get to three, I want you all to shout out
Speaker 1: your insult at the same moment. So I do one, two, three,
Speaker 1: and then the room erupts in this giant insult, and
Speaker 1: then I just smile and I say, it's just noise. Now.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm too clever by half, because one of the
Speaker 1: times when I tried this, there's one student who waited
Speaker 1: until the noise had subsided and then said in a
Speaker 1: low voice, old man. And it's interesting because here I
Speaker 1: am a practicing stoic, and yeah, yeah, that does mean
Speaker 1: you're perfect. It means you've you've developed your skills. And
Speaker 1: yet you know, you start thinking, oh that hurt. Also
Speaker 1: that and this really fits nicely with what we're learning
Speaker 1: about these different emotion regulation strategies. I think at first,
Speaker 1: when people think about emotion regulation, they think about what
Speaker 1: you might call like suppression, right, like I just don't
Speaker 1: want to feel this emotion. But what we're learning now
Speaker 1: from the neuroscience is the suppression is really bad. It
Speaker 1: might shut off emotion in the moment. But if you
Speaker 1: look physiologically, you hook somebody up to a skin response,
Speaker 1: you find that that emotion's coming out anyway. Turns out
Speaker 1: a better strategy is exactly what a fictidius was talking about,
Speaker 1: which is what neuroscientists are now calling reappraisal. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: you reappraise that frustrating thing. As a test in one study,
Speaker 1: you get folks to reappraise something bad happening to you
Speaker 1: as like, you know, you think about it how a
Speaker 1: doctor might think about it, or I think about it,
Speaker 1: how you might think about it. If you're designing a game,
Speaker 1: this is just a game in life. And the research
Speaker 1: really shows that people who are high on that ability
Speaker 1: to reappraise naturally, because there's individual difference in this, people
Speaker 1: who are high on that ability to reappraise naturally, they
Speaker 1: tend to experience less depression and they self report that
Speaker 1: their lives are less stressful. The cool thing is if
Speaker 1: you teach people how to reappraise in the laboratory. This
Speaker 1: is some work by James Gross where he shows people
Speaker 1: these really nasty videos like an amputation or Hiroshima victims,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, try to watch this documentary
Speaker 1: in a way, in a very metaway right, like you're
Speaker 1: a doctor watching this or you're a historian kind of
Speaker 1: looking at it from afar, And what he finds is
Speaker 1: that people naturally experience less emotion there, but again not
Speaker 1: in a like suppression way where you're trying to run
Speaker 1: from the emotions. You just take that new frame and
Speaker 1: then everything looks differently. Yeah, the frame makes all the difference.
Speaker 1: One of the things you can do is simply get frustrated.
Speaker 1: I was set back. There's something I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I was prevented from doing it, so I'm upset as
Speaker 1: a result. Or a different way, you can frame it
Speaker 1: as a test by imaginary stoic gods, in which case
Speaker 1: then instead of focusing on the setback, you think about
Speaker 1: how you're going to overcome that setback, and you're going
Speaker 1: to show those stoic gods who's in charge. Ha, you
Speaker 1: cannot defeat me. So it's an interesting way. So we
Speaker 1: aren't just trying to prevent the emotions. We're harnessing them,
Speaker 1: making them work on our behalf. Pay particular attention to anger.
Speaker 1: It's an insidious emotion. An event that happened to you
Speaker 1: years before, can poke itself into your head at three
Speaker 1: in the morning, and then you find that the person
Speaker 1: is long gone, not part of your life, and yet
Speaker 1: you find the anger returning. So one bit of advice
Speaker 1: that I offer based on stoics is doing your best
Speaker 1: to nip them in the bug. And so I describe
Speaker 1: the three second rule, or maybe it's a five second rule,
Speaker 1: you know how I when food falls on the floor,
Speaker 1: and this is an urban myth that turns out but
Speaker 1: if you pick it up within three or five seconds
Speaker 1: that it's going to be fine. But anger works that
Speaker 1: way too. So something happens and then you've got this
Speaker 1: beautiful interval a matter of seconds, but a beautiful interval
Speaker 1: where you get to very quickly frame it. And then
Speaker 1: how you do that. But you've got to be quick
Speaker 1: because once the anger arises, it's going to have a
Speaker 1: life of its own. But then what you do is
Speaker 1: you say, oh, it's a setback. Ah, you stow it. Gods,
Speaker 1: you're shaking your fist at them. They're using this person
Speaker 1: as part of their mechanism to test me, and I
Speaker 1: should throw this in the stoic gods are actually good
Speaker 1: guys and gals, because why are they doing this? To you.
Speaker 1: They're doing it to you to strengthen you. Like a
Speaker 1: good coach, you take it as a compliment that they
Speaker 1: think you're worth the attention, so that it's one of
Speaker 1: these cases where you regard the person just as this fool,
Speaker 1: this cog in this machine that's being used as part
Speaker 1: of the test of you. That gets to the final
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to mention about Epictetus, which is that
Speaker 1: he realized that this was going to be work. You know,
Speaker 1: he realized that this was going to be a path,
Speaker 1: and in that sense he was embodying this wonderful psychological
Speaker 1: principle of a growth mindset. You know, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be a perfect Stoic right now, but you're working
Speaker 1: towards it in this right way. And so talk about
Speaker 1: how Epictetis and the other Stoics kind of embodied this
Speaker 1: idea like, you know, we're not there yet, but we're
Speaker 1: kind of working towards this goal over time. Yes, So
Speaker 1: when life sets you back and I describe these stoic tests,
Speaker 1: how do you pass the Stoic test? First of all,
Speaker 1: the stoics do not stoke. Gods, do not grade you.
Speaker 1: You don't get an email saying that was a B plus.
Speaker 1: But here's what you need to work on. So it's
Speaker 1: all self graded. But you graded according to two standards. First,
Speaker 1: did you find a workaround? Doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: perfect work around, but did you find the best work
Speaker 1: around reasonably could? Did you use your cortex to try
Speaker 1: to think through the possibilities and come up with the workaround.
Speaker 1: Second and more important component of the grade, did you
Speaker 1: keep your cool while you did it. That's the most
Speaker 1: important part of the grade because when you think about
Speaker 1: most of life setbacks, it isn't the setback itself that
Speaker 1: causes you the harm. It's your response to the setback.
Speaker 1: It's allowing yourself to get angry, to get up set
Speaker 1: that's what causes the damage. So for the stoics, it
Speaker 1: could look to the entire world that the stoic just
Speaker 1: failed big time in doing something. So, for instance, there
Speaker 1: was a tennis match and that the stoic lost. Ah,
Speaker 1: he lost, and that's failure. But if you ask the stoic,
Speaker 1: the stoic could say, ah, I can see how someone
Speaker 1: on the outside would look at it that way, But
Speaker 1: my goal was not to win this game. My goal
Speaker 1: was to train for this game to the best of
Speaker 1: my ability, come up with the best strategy for playing
Speaker 1: this game. As I could play the game to the
Speaker 1: best of my ability, and I did those things. I
Speaker 1: did not win the game, but it was not a failure.
Speaker 1: Here's the interesting wrinkle on that, and that is if
Speaker 1: you approach life thinking in those terms, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to have external successes because if you did the best
Speaker 1: you could, that's all you can ever do. If you
Speaker 1: did the best you could and routinely do that, you're
Speaker 1: going to get better and better, and so you'll actually
Speaker 1: have not only the internal successes, which is what the
Speaker 1: Stoics were primarily interested in, but the external successes as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though it's an old strategy, it's one that still works.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know again, we started this episode with Stockdale,
Speaker 1: and you know, he had to go through some pretty
Speaker 1: hardcore Stoic god challenges but made it through in part
Speaker 1: because he had this tool. Yep. And you know what,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot that's changed in the last two
Speaker 1: thousand years, but human psychology has changed barely an iota.
Speaker 1: So what would be surprising if something that worked two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago in psychological terms didn't continue to work today.
Speaker 1: I love talking to Bill. He always has a helpful
Speaker 1: way of reminding me the stoic challenge never ends. We're
Speaker 1: constantly being tested, constantly being offered chances to gain wisdom
Speaker 1: and to react with good humor. In fact, you might
Speaker 1: have noticed that my side of the interview sounded a
Speaker 1: bit crappier than usual, and that was because my recorder
Speaker 1: died right in the middle of the interview. But did
Speaker 1: I get angry or frustrated. No, because when you think
Speaker 1: about it, this is a wonderful stoic challenge. Plus we
Speaker 1: had a backup, so we were good. But just to
Speaker 1: complete James Stockdale's story, he was eventually released from captivity
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three. Throughout his entire imprisonment, he was
Speaker 1: guided by his understanding of stoicism. His conduct as a
Speaker 1: prisoner was so virtuous that he was awarded the Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor. Upon his return, Stockdale went on to lecture
Speaker 1: about his life behind bars. He urged other people to
Speaker 1: implement the lessons of Epictetus in their own daily lives. Stoicism,
Speaker 1: Stockdale said, is a noble philosophy that proved more practicable
Speaker 1: than a modern cynic would expect, But there's still one
Speaker 1: more episode in this current season of Happiness Lessons of
Speaker 1: the Ancients, So join me next time when we travel
Speaker 1: way way back in time to meet the Buddha. The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: The show was mastered by Evandiola, and our original music
Speaker 1: was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the entire
Speaker 1: Pushkin crew, including mil LaBelle, Carli Migliori, Heather Fine, Sophie Crane, mckibbon,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
Speaker 1: meet doctor Laurie Santos