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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome to a special set of episodes of the

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Speaker 1: Happiest Lab. The now global spread of coronavirus is affecting

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Speaker 1: all of us. This disease has brought a host of medical, economic,

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Speaker 1: and political problems, but it's also given us a ton

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Speaker 1: of uncertainty and anxiety, which are beginning to have an

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Speaker 1: enormous negative impact on our collective while being but whenever

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Speaker 1: I'm confused or fearful, I remember that looking for answers

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Speaker 1: in evidence based science is always the best way to go,

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Speaker 1: and that's where I'm hoping this podcast can help. When

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Speaker 1: we think about the weeks, maybe months ahead, we'd be

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Speaker 1: forgiven for surrendering to despair. Some of us are already

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Speaker 1: losing our jobs or seeing our businesses shuddered for who

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Speaker 1: knows how long. At a time when many people's investments

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Speaker 1: have tanked, we may already be feeling ill or fearing

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Speaker 1: for our own safety or that of vulnerable relatives. Some

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Speaker 1: have even experienced bereavements already as a result of this outbreak,

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Speaker 1: and everyone has seen changes in their daily lives, like

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Speaker 1: not being able to eat at your favorite restaurant or

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Speaker 1: attend your weekly yoga class. I've even had several friends

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Speaker 1: who've had to postpone their weddings. We might feel scared, frustrated,

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Speaker 1: or even really angry about all this, but such emotions

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Speaker 1: are draining. They end up making us feel even worse.

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Speaker 1: A better way to react to all these setbacks might

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Speaker 1: be to see them a little differently, say as challenges

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Speaker 1: to take on and overcome. To look at the trials

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Speaker 1: ahead and confidently say game on. Because as remarkable as

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Speaker 1: that sounds, that's how Bill Irvine has reacted to the

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Speaker 1: current COVID nineteen crisis. Bill is a philosopher at Right

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Speaker 1: State University and one of my resilience heroes. He is

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Speaker 1: someone I've wanted to chat with for a long time,

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Speaker 1: and that's because I absolutely adored his recent book, The

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Speaker 1: Stoic Challenge, A Philosopher's guide to becoming tougher, calmer, and

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Speaker 1: more resilient. In fact, Bill's new book really helped me

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Speaker 1: through a huge setback I experienced recently. About a week

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Speaker 1: before the holidays, I fell on the ice and fractured

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Speaker 1: my kneecap. We're talking lots of pain, tons of canceled plans,

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Speaker 1: and being stuck on my couch, unable to walk for

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Speaker 1: a long time despite being a happiness expert. I was

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Speaker 1: in a very very bad place when I first got injured.

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Speaker 1: But Bill's book and his overall approach made me realize

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Speaker 1: there was another way I could look at things. Rather

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Speaker 1: than being all woe is me, I could take a

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Speaker 1: more ancient approach. The Stoics have been around since Zeno

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Speaker 1: of Citium in about three hundred BC cobbled together some

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Speaker 1: other schools of philosophy. It's sort of like martial arts

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Speaker 1: teachers who blend other kinds of martial arts to come

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Speaker 1: up with a new kind. He did that with stoicism.

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Speaker 1: When most people colloquially think about the term stoic, I

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Speaker 1: think many people think of people who show no emotions

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Speaker 1: at all, or people who are trying to cut off

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Speaker 1: all their emotions altogether. But that's not exactly who the

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Speaker 1: Stoics were, right. That is the perception though, that the

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Speaker 1: Stoics were anti emotion. The Stoics were anti negative emotion.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to reduce or eliminate the amount of anger

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Speaker 1: or envy that they experienced, but they had nothing against

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Speaker 1: positive emotions, including that most wonderful but innocent of positive emotions,

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Speaker 1: that is feelings of delight, and you can cobble many

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Speaker 1: of them together and then you experience what we call joy.

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Speaker 1: So they had nothing against the positive emotions, but they

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Speaker 1: very skillfully came up with strategies for avoiding experiencing negative

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Speaker 1: emotions that are very easy to learn, very easy to

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Speaker 1: put into practice in your own life. And my experience

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Speaker 1: has been that they're very effective. In judging from the

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Speaker 1: emails I get, they've made a substantial difference in the

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Speaker 1: lives of many people. So one Stoic piece of wisdom

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Speaker 1: that's made a huge difference in my life is this

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Speaker 1: idea that we have more control of our emotional reactions

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Speaker 1: than we think. My first entry point too stoicism with Epictetus.

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Speaker 1: So talk to us about this idea of Epictetis about

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Speaker 1: the things we can control and the things we can't control. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Epictetis said, you know, there are things in your life

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Speaker 1: that you can control and things that you can't. And

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Speaker 1: if you spend your time worrying about the things you

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Speaker 1: can control, it's a waste of your time and a

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Speaker 1: waste of your life. You're going to be anxious and

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Speaker 1: not be able to do anything to resolve the anxiety.

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Speaker 1: So what you have to do is focus on the

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Speaker 1: things you can control, and that includes your character. For example,

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Speaker 1: so developed your character, but to a considerable extent, it

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Speaker 1: also includes your emotions. We humans are unfortunate in that

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Speaker 1: we have divided minds. We have this higher rational brain function,

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Speaker 1: but on the way to developing it, we didn't lose

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Speaker 1: the old inner brain, the old primitive brain, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of the anger comes from that old portion of

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Speaker 1: the brain, and then the higher portion of the brain

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Speaker 1: is left to try to deal with it. So am I,

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Speaker 1: as a practicing stoic capable of getting angry? Yes, I am.

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Speaker 1: Just watch me stub my toes sometime and I might

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Speaker 1: utter something that my mother would not have appreciated me uttering.

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Speaker 1: But what I've discovered is that there's that reflexive anger.

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Speaker 1: But other than that, your attitude toward whatever negative thing

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Speaker 1: happened can have a profound impact on whether anger arises

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Speaker 1: in you. When something bad happens to you, you have

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Speaker 1: about five seconds in which to decide how you're going

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Speaker 1: to frame it, and not only will you not get angry,

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Speaker 1: but you might also find yourself laughing in response to it.

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Speaker 1: So that was an important Stoic insight is that through

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Speaker 1: this process of framing, we actually have considerable control over

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Speaker 1: our emotions. And the Stoics seem to have had profound

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Speaker 1: psychological insights, like I say, in the third century BC,

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Speaker 1: and there are ways in which we're only catching up

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Speaker 1: to them in modern psychology in the last few decades.

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Speaker 1: So walk me through the epiphany that you had in

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Speaker 1: your own life about exerting this type of control on

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Speaker 1: your own emotions. Yeah. So I went to see a doctor,

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Speaker 1: and I knew this doctor had a habit of being

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Speaker 1: slow to see patients. So I brought along reading material,

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Speaker 1: and I happened to bring along Seneca. He's a Roman

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Speaker 1: Stoic philosopher lived in the first century a D. I

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Speaker 1: brought along his essay on anger. I kept looking at

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Speaker 1: the clock, and the doctor was by the end an

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Speaker 1: hour late, and I realized I couldn't get mad. I

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Speaker 1: couldn't get angry. I wanted to be angry, and I

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Speaker 1: know I should be angry, and I knew I had

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Speaker 1: every right to be angry, but I just couldn't bring

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Speaker 1: myself to do it because the higher reasoning portion of

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Speaker 1: my brain was fully engaged, and that portion of the

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Speaker 1: brain was saying, you know what, if you get angry,

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Speaker 1: you're just taking a bad situation and making it worse.

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Speaker 1: You'd be the biggest fool on the planet if you

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Speaker 1: got angry. At this point, that was an interesting insight

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Speaker 1: because I would have sworn now, if somebody does something

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Speaker 1: wrong to you get angry, that's just how things work.

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Speaker 1: But it doesn't need to be that case. And you know,

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Speaker 1: there is this whole device of putting things into a frame,

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Speaker 1: and the frame has a huge impact on your emotional

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Speaker 1: response and you In the book, you talk about a

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Speaker 1: couple of different kinds of frames. The typical frame that

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Speaker 1: we often go through is either the angry frame or

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Speaker 1: I think you know these days with COVID it can

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Speaker 1: be a kind of woe is me sort of frame.

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Speaker 1: But we can take more positive frames. You talk about

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Speaker 1: comedic frames, or even my favorite frame that you talk

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Speaker 1: about is this future storytelling frame. So walk through the

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Speaker 1: future storytelling frame for our listeners. You are right now

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Speaker 1: experiencing a number of obstacles that you've never had to

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Speaker 1: experience before in your life, and the question is how

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Speaker 1: do you respond to them. One thing I like to

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Speaker 1: do is use the comedic frame when possible, when something unexpected,

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Speaker 1: when something negative happens, try to tell a joke about it.

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Speaker 1: Try to turn it into a joke. It's very, very

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Speaker 1: difficult to get angry when you're laughing. And my own

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Speaker 1: experience is you get good at it, You get good

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Speaker 1: at finding the comic element of what happens. The other

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Speaker 1: frame is this storytelling frame. So another thing you can

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Speaker 1: do is you go about your days, is imagine yourself

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Speaker 1: in the future if you survive this particular pandemic, as

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Speaker 1: you probably will, very high chance that you will, but

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Speaker 1: there will come a time in your life when you're

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Speaker 1: going to be telling somebody else about what it was like.

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Speaker 1: That could be a grandchild, could be somebody else. And

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Speaker 1: so right now you can think in terms of the

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Speaker 1: story you're going to be telling in the future about this. Now.

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Speaker 1: For this to be effective, you can't just make stuff up.

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Speaker 1: It can't be a fiction story. It has to be

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Speaker 1: a non fiction story. So you live your life so

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Speaker 1: that your story told truthfully, makes you instead of somebody

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Speaker 1: who simply was miserable and frustrated, into somebody who kind

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Speaker 1: of cleverly addressed the challenges, smiled their way through those challenges,

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Speaker 1: found workarounds for those challenges. It not only makes for

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Speaker 1: a great story in the future, but it makes today

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Speaker 1: so much more acceptable because it's a frame and you're

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Speaker 1: going to be thinking, Okay, I've got a challenge in

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Speaker 1: front of me, how am I going to respond to it.

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Speaker 1: That said, the Stoics were not big fans of going

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Speaker 1: around and boasting about how well you handled situations, so

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Speaker 1: you don't want to take away that aspect of it.

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Speaker 1: But it's a device, a mental device. Act as if

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Speaker 1: you were someday going to tell the truthful story of

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Speaker 1: how handled the pandemic and do your best in your

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Speaker 1: daily actions to make it a really great story. I

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Speaker 1: love exactly that advice. But actually, my favorite frame that

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Speaker 1: you talk about is the idea of the Stoic challenge frame.

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Speaker 1: If they talk to me about what the Stoic challenge

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Speaker 1: is and how we can embrace it. Okay, So life

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Speaker 1: presents you with setbacks. Your listeners will have experienced many

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Speaker 1: very interesting, unusual, unexpected setbacks in recent days. The interesting

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Speaker 1: question is when set back, how do you handle it?

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Speaker 1: I think if you think about most of the setbacks

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Speaker 1: you've experienced in your life, if they've done you harm.

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Speaker 1: The biggest harm they've done you is emotional harm. You've

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Speaker 1: gotten angry in response to setbacks. You've gotten frustrated in

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Speaker 1: response to setbacks. So it isn't being setback itself that

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Speaker 1: hurts you. It's your response to the setback. Suppose a

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Speaker 1: pipe in your house springs a leak. It isn't the bursting,

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Speaker 1: It isn't the pipe breaking that's the problem. The problem

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Speaker 1: is all the water going where you don't want it.

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Speaker 1: That's the real damage. And the same is true if

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Speaker 1: you experience a setback and allow your emotions to flood

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Speaker 1: your life. So the trick is, I imagine that there

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Speaker 1: are these stoic gods. Now I don't actually believe in them,

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Speaker 1: but they're a very useful psychological device. So they spend

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Speaker 1: their time trying to think of ways, trying to think

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Speaker 1: of setbacks that they can expose you too, and it's

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Speaker 1: like a game between you and them. You have a

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Speaker 1: different frame of mind because then when you're set back,

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Speaker 1: you think in terms of oh, it's a test. They're

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Speaker 1: testing me again, and let's see how I respond to

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Speaker 1: that test. But here's the thing. If you're going to

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Speaker 1: use that strategy, you have to act quick because otherwise,

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Speaker 1: once your emotions are aroused, they're very difficult to tamp

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Speaker 1: back down. So as soon as you realize you've been

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Speaker 1: set back, you think of it as a test of you,

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Speaker 1: of your character, of your ingenuity by the stoic gods

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Speaker 1: who actually have your best interests in mind in testing you.

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Speaker 1: And then the goal is to find a work around

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Speaker 1: for that setback and stay calm and collected as you do.

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Speaker 1: I super love this stoic challenge, you know. I first

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Speaker 1: read your book when I just fractured my patella and

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Speaker 1: I was just in a really, really awful place about it,

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Speaker 1: just really woe is me kind of frame. And your

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Speaker 1: book was fantastic for a couple of reasons. I mean,

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Speaker 1: one was it just gave me a completely new frame

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Speaker 1: that I didn't have before. But the second was that

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Speaker 1: I love this idea that if the stoic gods are

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Speaker 1: giving you something truly awful, it's in some sense because

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Speaker 1: they trust you, Like, you know, they think you're a

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Speaker 1: kind of an elite athlete and they want to give

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Speaker 1: you the best challenger possible. So it's kind of like

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Speaker 1: you get a little pride of like, you know, the

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Speaker 1: stoae gods didn't just give me a little sprained ankle, No,

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Speaker 1: I broke my kneecap, Like that's what they think I'm

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Speaker 1: capable of. So I kind of just love this idea

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Speaker 1: that harder challenges are in some ways like a compliment

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Speaker 1: in some weird sense. Yeah, the stoic odds they're trying

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Speaker 1: to prepare you for even more difficult challenges that lie ahead.

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Speaker 1: The ultimate challenge, of course, is our own death, and

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Speaker 1: there's going to be any number of challenges. We encounter

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Speaker 1: any number of setbacks before that. So if you want

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Speaker 1: to have a good life, you have to learn how

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Speaker 1: to handle those setbacks well and handle them with a

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Speaker 1: great deal of grace. If you're being tested, it's like

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Speaker 1: you have this coach. You can use a kind of

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Speaker 1: an athletic analogy. It's like you have this coach who

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Speaker 1: feels that you're up to pitch in the big game.

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Speaker 1: You're good enough to do that, and it's going to

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Speaker 1: be difficult, You're going to feel challenged, and there's going

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Speaker 1: to be setbacks, but that you're capable of doing it.

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Speaker 1: Whereas in the book, I also describe what I call setups,

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Speaker 1: and those are those periods in your life when everything

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Speaker 1: is just going your way. And I've learned from experience

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Speaker 1: that when one of those periods hit, that's when you've

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Speaker 1: got to be careful because it's actually, once again, if

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Speaker 1: you take this line of thinking, it's actually the Stoics

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Speaker 1: at work. What they're doing is fattening you up, because

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Speaker 1: then they are going to test you. Periods without setbacks

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Speaker 1: should make you a little bit nervous. I expect a

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Speaker 1: certain number of setbacks. I reach this strange stage where

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Speaker 1: when one comes, I prick up a little bit, thinking, well,

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Speaker 1: this is an uninteresting setback to work on. Bill's as

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Speaker 1: much at the mercy of the Stoic gods as any

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Speaker 1: of us. Of course, he admitted to me that he

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Speaker 1: likes to play the stock market and had been lulled

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Speaker 1: into believing that share prices would keep rising, only for

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Speaker 1: this pandemic to decimate his pension fund and teach him

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Speaker 1: a lesson. Boy, I fell for this one never again. Though.

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Speaker 1: Stoicism relies on learning these lessons, both from our own

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Speaker 1: life and from the experiences of others, and we'll turn

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Speaker 1: to exactly those lessons when the happiness lab returns in

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Speaker 1: a moment When I first broke my knee last December,

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Speaker 1: I was pretty much confined to the couch. Lots of

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Speaker 1: things I'd been looking forward to got canceled, including spending

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Speaker 1: Christmas with my family. Everyday activities became nearly impossible, and

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Speaker 1: the doctors couldn't even tell me when I would heal.

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Speaker 1: I was bummed, to say the least. But Bill's book

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Speaker 1: provided me with some fantastic examples of human resilience during

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Speaker 1: a time when I needed them most. His book let

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Speaker 1: me compare my predicament with those who'd overcome far worse

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Speaker 1: accidents and illnesses. Some of them are interesting. Ones are

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Speaker 1: cases like Jean Dominique Baubee, who was a French publisher

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Speaker 1: editor of a magazine, and he had a stroke in

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Speaker 1: his lower brainstem that left him completely immobile. Two exceptions,

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Speaker 1: he could blink one eye and he could slowly turn

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Speaker 1: his head, and other than that he was powerless. Now

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Speaker 1: his brain was above the brain stem, so his brain

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Speaker 1: was unaffected. He could still think like usual. It's just

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Speaker 1: that he couldn't do all of these things that he

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Speaker 1: used to be able to do. What's amazing about him

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Speaker 1: is he coped. He coped quite well in fact, he

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Speaker 1: wrote a book. How did he do that, you might wonder, Well,

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Speaker 1: he did it by blinking. By blinking the one eye

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Speaker 1: he had opened. The other eye they had to sow

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Speaker 1: shut because otherwise it would dry out and also write,

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Speaker 1: and bad things would happen. So he communicated with the

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Speaker 1: world with the one eye that he had that wasn't

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Speaker 1: sown shut through a system he developed with some transcribers.

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Speaker 1: They would say the alphabet until they came to the

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Speaker 1: letter he wanted. He would blink and they would write

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Speaker 1: it down. I have friends and neighbors who tell me

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Speaker 1: about the current pandemic as being this major setback, and

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Speaker 1: that gets me started, because you know what I want

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Speaker 1: to tell them is are you kidding? This is nothing?

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Speaker 1: This is nothing to how bad a setback can be,

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Speaker 1: And this is nothing compared to past pandemics that the

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Speaker 1: world has experienced. We regard it as a major setback

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Speaker 1: only because we're so incredibly pampered. We're living the dream

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Speaker 1: world of our great great grandparents. They would be astonished

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Speaker 1: what you have indoor plumbing, what you have drinkable water,

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Speaker 1: what you have air conditioning. And I haven't even gotten

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Speaker 1: to the internet yet, right, it's a miracle. In my pocket,

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Speaker 1: in my cell phone, I have more computing power than

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Speaker 1: the University of Michigan had on its entire campus when

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Speaker 1: I set foot there in nineteen seventy. That's just incredible.

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Speaker 1: But we take it all for granted. Part of the

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Speaker 1: stoic advice is learning how not to take your life

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Speaker 1: for granted, so you can truly appreciate that life, so

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Speaker 1: you can savor the little things that populate that life

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Speaker 1: and truly savor friendships and have a fuller life as

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Speaker 1: a result. But this is the power of this stoic technique,

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Speaker 1: which is known as negative visualization. So I want to

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Speaker 1: give me a definition of negative visualization and kind of

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Speaker 1: just walk through how these examples work. Okay, to practice

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Speaker 1: negative visualization, what you do as you go about your day,

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Speaker 1: pause in what you're doing, and you think about what

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Speaker 1: your life would be like if you lost something that

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Speaker 1: you value. So, for instance, you know, a loved one

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Speaker 1: could pass away, you could lose your job, you could

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Speaker 1: lose your cell phone. You can go through a whole

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Speaker 1: bunch of possible setbacks. You don't dwell on these things,

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Speaker 1: because that'll be a recipe for a miserable existence. What

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Speaker 1: you do is you allow yourself to have a flickering

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Speaker 1: thought about these sorts of things, and then you go

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Speaker 1: about your business again. Now, if you imagine, for that

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Speaker 1: flickering moment the death of a spouse, watch what happens

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Speaker 1: the next time you encounter that spouse. You will be

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Speaker 1: likely this is the case. There are probably some exceptions.

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Speaker 1: You will feel in yourself a rush of appreciation of

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Speaker 1: the continued existence of that being in your life. My

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Speaker 1: wife knows I've been negative visualizing because out of the

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Speaker 1: blue in the middle of the afternoon, and I might

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Speaker 1: walk up to her and give her a hug and

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Speaker 1: say thanks for existing, because I've just gone through that

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Speaker 1: mental process myself and come to realize how much I

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Speaker 1: value her existence in my life, and the realization that

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Speaker 1: it will someday come to an end, because unfortunately one

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Speaker 1: of us will have to pass away, hopefully in the

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Speaker 1: distant future. My job. Same thing. Just before I started

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Speaker 1: this interview, I got a call from a family member

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Speaker 1: who informed me that she had just lost her job.

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Speaker 1: There are a bunch of other people that same boat.

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Speaker 1: I still have mine. I'm a very very lucky individual.

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Speaker 1: So negative visualization think about how things could be worse,

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Speaker 1: because then things will seem better than they did before.

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Speaker 1: And I think that even in a time where things

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Speaker 1: are bad, there are almost always negative visualizations that are worse.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you came up with a few before, like

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Speaker 1: we could be living through the pandemic without plumbing, We

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Speaker 1: could be living to the pandemic without Netflix, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's so many things to be grateful for. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: we take our lives mostly utterly for granted, which is

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Speaker 1: unfortunate because we live remarkable lives. I know a lot

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Speaker 1: of people who are just complainers. Whatever happens, they find

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Speaker 1: the dark side of it, they find the bad side

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Speaker 1: of it, They imagine how things could be better. They're

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Speaker 1: miserable people, and I feel sad about that because it's

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Speaker 1: self inflicted. Life is tough, but life is beautiful at

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Speaker 1: the same time. And you can emphasize the beautiful a component,

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Speaker 1: or you can emphasize the part that you don't like.

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Speaker 1: The choice is yours. So in some sense, we could

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Speaker 1: see this challenging time with COVID nineteen is in some

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Speaker 1: sense a gift, right, Like you're not all of us

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Speaker 1: are doing our stoic training on a daily basis. And

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Speaker 1: the universe. The stoic gods have made it such that

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Speaker 1: we all have to do that. We all have to

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Speaker 1: live off what's in our pantry. We can't go to

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Speaker 1: our favorite restaurant or gym. We get you know, a

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Speaker 1: certain set of months where we're forced to do what's

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Speaker 1: going to make us feel happier in the long run.

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Speaker 1: You know what. It's negative visualization, that's imagining that you've

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Speaker 1: lost something that you value. Well, okay, left and right,

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Speaker 1: people are losing things that they value, so they don't

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Speaker 1: have to imagine it. It's actually happening. When the pandemic

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Speaker 1: is over, is it someday? Surely will be, and they

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Speaker 1: go back to their favorite restaurant, assuming that it still exists.

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Speaker 1: They will have this rush, this blissful rush of it's

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Speaker 1: still here. I can still do this. One bright side

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Speaker 1: of the pandemic is people will come out of it.

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Speaker 1: Those who survive it again, and there's no guarantee, but

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Speaker 1: most people will will come out much more appreciative. They'll

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Speaker 1: realize how good they had it, and they'll love life.

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Speaker 1: They'll save her life in a way and the way

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Speaker 1: they previously probably didn't. And then the interesting challenge is

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Speaker 1: give them enough time living the old life, and once again,

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Speaker 1: they'll take it for granted unless they do the Stoic practice,

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Speaker 1: unless they use the techniques that the Stoics teach in

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Speaker 1: order to make sure that they are keeping that attitude

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Speaker 1: toward life. Yeah. I'm experiencing this myself right now. My

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Speaker 1: mom who lives in Massachusetts, I'm in Connecticut. She's getting

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Speaker 1: up there, but she also has COPD and so she's

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Speaker 1: in a really dangerous category where she to get the virus.

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Speaker 1: And so my consistent negative visualization is like, what if

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Speaker 1: something happens to her? What if something happens to her?

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Speaker 1: And what it's done is it's caused me to reach

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Speaker 1: out to her more often. I know the next time

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Speaker 1: I see her, once this is all over, it's going

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00:23:12,516 --> 00:23:15,076
Speaker 1: to be, you know, an endless hug. But I finally

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Speaker 1: get to give her a U hug. But that that

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Speaker 1: kind of reconnection, that kind of savoring, I guess it's

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Speaker 1: not to be taken for granted, you know. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: another throwing in another Stoic meditation here, it's the last time.

401
00:23:28,236 --> 00:23:31,556
Speaker 1: Call it the last time meditation. For everything you do

402
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Speaker 1: in life, there will be a last time you do it.

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00:23:34,236 --> 00:23:36,996
Speaker 1: There's already a bunch of things that you've already done

404
00:23:37,076 --> 00:23:39,756
Speaker 1: for the last time. Probably when's the last time you

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00:23:39,876 --> 00:23:43,836
Speaker 1: dialed a rotary telephone, when's the last time you played

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00:23:43,836 --> 00:23:48,796
Speaker 1: hop scotch. There will be a last time for absolutely everything.

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Speaker 1: So one of the things that the pandemic does is

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Speaker 1: makes you think about last times. We were talking about

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Speaker 1: being cut off from your favorite restaurant, and one of

410
00:24:01,356 --> 00:24:04,196
Speaker 1: the thoughts that people are having is, you know what,

411
00:24:04,876 --> 00:24:07,796
Speaker 1: that last time I went to my favorite restaurant might

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Speaker 1: be the last time ever. And it's a meditation. When

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00:24:11,916 --> 00:24:15,436
Speaker 1: you see friends, when you see loved ones, this voice

414
00:24:15,476 --> 00:24:17,796
Speaker 1: in the back of your mind and you don't want

415
00:24:17,796 --> 00:24:19,516
Speaker 1: to make a big deal out of this, but you

416
00:24:19,516 --> 00:24:21,516
Speaker 1: can do it privately. A voice in the back of

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Speaker 1: your mind should say, you know what, it's conceivable that

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Speaker 1: this is the last time. So I'm going to make

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Speaker 1: the most out of this encounter with this person, because

420
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Speaker 1: you never know. The life throws curveballs. The interesting thing

421
00:24:34,356 --> 00:24:36,756
Speaker 1: is I find when I do that, then the next

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00:24:36,796 --> 00:24:40,996
Speaker 1: time I encounter that same person, it is like this

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00:24:41,196 --> 00:24:45,876
Speaker 1: emotional rush of they're still here, they still exist, you know,

424
00:24:45,916 --> 00:24:50,716
Speaker 1: I still get to enjoy this relationship. So stoicism. You know,

425
00:24:50,756 --> 00:24:55,796
Speaker 1: instead of stoics being these a grim, determined individuals, stoicism

426
00:24:56,116 --> 00:24:59,956
Speaker 1: can actually put spice in your life. It can give

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00:24:59,956 --> 00:25:03,636
Speaker 1: a kind of an intensity to your living that, in

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Speaker 1: the case of most people, simply is lacking. And I

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Speaker 1: think if you learn that lesson, a pandemic can actually

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Speaker 1: be one of the great teachers of your life. You know,

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Speaker 1: it could even be that by the time you're old

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Speaker 1: and wise, you might look back and you might thank

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Speaker 1: your lucky stars then you are around for that pandemic.

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Speaker 1: I know that sounds crazy now, but give it some

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Speaker 1: time and those thoughts could change. And so, dear podcast listeners,

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Speaker 1: I hope you're all ready to face this crisis with

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Speaker 1: your game faces on. Remember this is your opportunity to

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Speaker 1: show your stoic stuff, to write your own setback story

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Speaker 1: in a way that future you will be proud of.

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Speaker 1: After talking to Bill, I'm more confident than I'm up

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Speaker 1: for that challenge, and I hope you are too. And

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Speaker 1: I also hope that you'll be back for the next

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Speaker 1: special episode of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos.

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Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is a Pushkin podcast. It's co written

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Speaker 1: and produced by Ryan Dilley and mastered by Evan Beola.

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Speaker 1: Our original music is written by Zachary Silver. Special thanks

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Speaker 1: to Ben David, Heather Fame, Carl mcgliori, Julia Barton, Neil LaBelle,

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Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and the rest of the Pushkin Crew