Mind the Beginner

This blogpost is part five in a series of five exploring the Stoic psychological tactics that can be used to rediscover joy in your life.

A lot can be said about meditation and there are countless ways to practice it. None of them are wrong or inferior. They are however all different save one aspect: meditation is undivided attention. On the whole meditations is a way to gain insight in what it is you’re meditating on.

This being said, how did the Stoics implement meditation. Seneca advises us to periodically meditate on the events in our daily lives, how we responded to them and how we -in accordance with Stoic principles- should have responded in stead.

It’s very simple actually, before you go to sleep lay there for a moment (or kneel beside your bed if you prefer) and think about how your day as. This type of meditation is completely unlike the meditation of a Zen Buddhist. Where a Zen Buddhist sits still for extended periods of time trying to think of just one thing, calming his mind and focusing on his breath or a koan a Stoic will be all over the place with his mind. Focusing on all the events of the day and reliving them. Total chaos if you ask a Zen Buddhist, functional if you ask a Stoic.

Level Up

Epictetus takes Seneca’s bedtime-meditation to another level. He suggests that in daily life we should “simultaneously play the roles of participant and spectator” living the moment and scrutinizing it while doing so.

Marcus shares this idea and advises us to examine every thing we do, determine what our motives are for doing it and and evaluate the value of what we are trying to accomplish with this action. “We should continually ask whether we are being governed by our reason or something else. And when we determine that we are not governed by our reason, we should ask what it is that governs us. Is it the soul of a child? A tyrant? A dumb ox? A wild beast? We should likewise be careful observers of the actions of other people.” After all, we aren’t the only ones who make mistakes, if someone else makes a mistake we can learn from it. The same goes for success.

The bedtime-meditation can also be used to review all the tactics. Did we engage in negative visualisation lately? When was the last time we practiced self-denial? Were we trying to control something that was completely our of our control? And how about our goals, are they internalized? Take some time to look at everything.

Changes in daily life

After practicing these tactics for a few months your relationship with other people will have changed. It has to after all, you’re thinking differently about yourself and about life. Has your social circle noticed any changes about you? Be aware here. Perhaps you get insulted sometimes and manage to shrug it off. But also shrug off the praise. Epictetus shares with us his thoughts on the admiration of other people, it’s a negative barometer of our progress as Stoics: “If people think you amount to something, distrust yourself.”

Signs of progress as a stoic (according to Epictetus)

• We stop blaming others
• We stop censuring others
• We stop praising others
• We stop boasting about ourselves
• We stop boasting about how much we know
• We blame ourselves, not external circumstances, when our desires are thwarted
• Because we have a degree of mastery over our desires, we find we have fewer of them than we did before.
• Our “impulses towards everything are diminished”
• Quite significantly, is we have made progress as a Stoic, we will come to regard ourselves not as a friend whose every desire must be satisfied but “as an enemy lying in wait”

How can you tell if someone is a Stoic

A Stoic, although capable of spouting Stoic principles and telling stories will not resort to this for “Those who know… don’t speak. Those who don’t know… speak.” It’s because of this that Stoics will not get noticed a lot especially if they choose not to write a series in Stoic psychological tactics on their blog and thus boast about it. I’ve yet much to learn…

Measuring progress

Seneca took his daily practice to be adequate as long as “every day I reduce the number of my vises, and blame my mistakes.”

Marcus offers us with a great piece of advice I’d like to close this series with. One I think applies to practicing Stoicism but also in all other ventures in life: Continue to practice Stoicism “even when success looks hopeless”.

These five tactics combine to form a philosophy of life and as such, if you practice them they will change your life. I hope you enjoyed reading this series as much as I enjoyed writing it. If there is anything else on this subject you’d like to know please do contact me and I’ll do my best to answer all your questions.

The posts in the Stoic psychological tactics series:

1. Negative Visualisation

2. The Dichotomy of control

3. Fatalism

4. Self-Denial

5. Meditation

This blogpost is part four in a series of five exploring the Stoic psychological tactics that can be used to rediscover joy in your life.

This tactic takes the negative visualisation a step further. Not only do we contemplate what the worst thing is that can happen, we act as if it really has. Fake anything from oversleeping to a total blackout or a breakdown of your car. You might want to act as if you have only a few dollars left this month to spend on food and have to make due with the mere basics of bread and water.

The seemingly strange

A while ago author Neil Strauss (Emergency) did just that. For three full days he shut off all power and water in his home. He did this to see if all his preparations for such events were in order and to practice his skills in a real environment but still with some control. He could after all get the water and power back if things really went wrong.

But why in -insert your deity’s name here- name would you want to do that when you have all the comfort you need and see no use in turning off the air conditioning in the middle of a hot summer. We work hard to obtain all kinds of comforts we believe we need to survive but the truth is we can life perfectly without a lot of these comforts but we don’t know what they are until we go without them for a while.

Again (just like running) this is a form of self torture. A form that will help us in more ways that one. First off it will show us that we can easily do without most things we believe we need to survive and secondly it prepares us for the event that things do really go wrong. (Or WTSHTF as Neil puts it in the most extreme of situations.)

Instead of standing there dumbfounded when our car won’t start we know where the nearest bus-stop is and waste no time in executing the alternative. No more Internet? We pick up that book we have planning to read. No stress, no discomfort, only a change of plan but not one we can’t handle. It won’t jeopardise our joy in life.

Voluntary discomfort or self-inflicted discomfort

The Stoics didn’t inflicting discomfort on themselves, they didn’t do something they didn’t want to. They chose to do this and so it was voluntary, a huge difference. In modern days however, why would you want to do without all the comforts that are so easily accessible. (TV, Internet, hot water or even running water for that matter)

There are three advantages of practicing voluntary discomfort:

• Hardening yourself
• By living through minor discomforts regularly you’ll grow more confident that you can cope with major discomforts as well. Such a major future event will no longer be a source of anxiety.
• It helps us appreciate what we have and stops us from taking things for granted.

Even though we do our best we can’t ban discomfort out of our lives completely. Discomfort is something we sometimes just don’t have control over and it would be a waste of time (and thus productivity) by concerning ourselves with this discomfort. We’ll just have to live with it and in getting used to some discomfort it no longer affects s that much. Very cold temperatures don’t bother the Inuit that much, they’re used to it.

Getting back control

From time to time try and abstain from harmless pleasures. Don’t drink that cold beer on a warm sunny day. It’s not because you might become an alcoholic. It’s because you can practice self control. The easiest things at first (don’t eat that cookie) and the things that you find harder later until you are no longer a slave to pleasure anymore and can turn down anything offered to us.

Make sure you regularly prove you can abstain from pleasure by actually saying no to the pleasure. This is the difference between those why say they can (Know any smokers who claim they can stop at any time but just don’t because they don’t feel like it right now?) and those who truely are their own master and not a slave to pleasure.

As the Stoics went about their daily lives they subjected themselves to discomfort and abstained from things that would provide comfort from time to time. It was perfectly okay to enjoy yourself and to experience all the comforts the world has to offer but there is a fine line between a good meal and gluttony.

The posts in the Stoic psychological tactics series:

1. Negative Visualisation

2. The Dichotomy of control

3. Fatalism

4. Self-Denial

5. Meditation

This blogpost is part three in a series of five exploring the Stoic psychological tactics that can be used to rediscover joy in your life.

Let go of the past and the present. That’s what fatalism is here. In certain religions and in the Roman Empire it’s accepted that we as individuals and we as a society have a predestined path to walk. In other words fate or as Seneca puts it “it’s a great consolidation that it is together with the universe we are swept along”. The Stoics believed firmly in the Fates and that we are all nothing more than actors in a play that has already been written. Things simply put, are just as they are and “happen as they do happen”. According to Marcus, a good man will welcome “every experience that the looms of fate may weave for him”.

Complaining about the fates

As I said the Roman Stoics like all Romans took it for granted that they had a fate and that they could not escape that fate. For the Romans life was a written play or a fixed race, the plot or outcome was already known to the Gods. (Or to the three Fates to be more precise: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos)

Now it might seem a bit strange that the Stoics believe in the dichotomy of control and at the same time advocate fatalism. After all, if the future was set in stone already we wouldn’t have control over anything in life now would we.

This is where things get a bit confusing. Although the Stoics believed in the Fates they didn’t practice fatalism with regards to the future. No, they only practiced it with regards to the past and the present. The future was left open until it became the present. They didn’t just sit round moping and complaining that everything was already decided. If things were already decided, complaining wouldn’t do them any good now would it.

Combined fatalism and burning your finger

What the Stoics did do however was combine fatalism with the dichotomy of control. This very instant and everything before it that we know as the past can not be changed anymore. We have no control over the past or the present and thus we should not concern ourselves with it. The fact that the past can’t be changed is widely accepted. But why can’t we change the present? This is again a bit of a mind game. As soon as we act on the present the present is the past.

Stick your finger in a flame and your body will react to it by pulling back your finger even before it hurts. But how long did the neurons take to tell your muscles to contract because of the flame? More than enough time to make the finger in the flame a matter of the past.

We didn’t change the fact that our finger was in the flame, but with some control over things to come (a blister if we don’t cool our finger under running water) we do have some control over the future. It is of course possible to affect what will happen ten years from now, or a week, an hour or even half a second. But as soon as it’s the present it’s our of our hands.

The paradox of ambition

You see, the past and present can never be changed, so why worry about them any longer, they will only make us uncomfortable and distressed all over again without doing us any good. We can learn from the past, but that’s about all it’s good for.

In this regard and combining this tactic with the first two I described you might think the Stoics were very unambitious, being happy with every experience the Looms of Fate weave for them. The truth couldn’t be more different. Seneca was (among other things) a political adviser, investor and play writer. Marcus Aurelius was (aside from a stoic philosopher) the Roman Emperor. You couldn’t get more ambitious than that back in those days. If anything these guys were highly ambitious and achieved great things in their lifetime.

A nice paradox is unfolding itself in front of our eyes it seems. Accepting that the future is already written and being happy and content with the simplest of things. The Stoics believed in living accordance with nature. Humans are by nature a social species and it’s for the best of society that everyone take part and did their social duty. If by fate Marcus found himself the Roman Emperor there is nothing there that prohibited him from enjoying that, the looms of Fate made him Emperor and it was his social duty to perform that task as best as he could. He kept in mind however that all things were temporary and that one day he would no longer be the Emperor, or be alive for that matter.

Stoic Riches

Note also that the Stoics were financially comfortable and that Seneca and Marcus in particular had riches beyond their dreams. That would seem strange if they didn’t care for such things and didn’t concern themselves with what we today can call consumerism. (Getting the latest gizmo’s just because..) Although they did have an income, they hardly spent it and certainly not on those trivial things. It’s through “living below your means” (As is being taught by hundreds of financial blogs and books) that they amassed wealth. Although they didn’t crave wealth it was because of their philosophy that they did achieve this.

Be happy about whatever comes on your path and enjoy it while it’s there, it will be in the past tomorrow. Don’t worry about it however, you can’t change it anyway.

De posts in the Stoic psychological tactics series:

1. Negative Visualisation

2. The Dichotomy of control

3. Fatalism

4. Self-Denial

5. Meditation

This blogpost is part one of a series of five exploring the Stoic psychological tactics that can be used to rediscover joy in your life.

Some of you might have already heard of the stoics or perhaps even read some of the things they have written. Most well known of the Roman Stoics are Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Musonius Rufus and Epictetus. What set these people apart from others was their ability to take joy in the simplest of things and at the same time the willingness to give everything up on a moments notice without grief. This was what first got me interested in the stoics, how can it be that they handled negative emotions so well and were able to give everything up so easily. Some of them even gave their lives in this manner.

Negative visualization

Any thoughtfull person will at times think about the bad things that can happen to him. The main reason being to prevent them from happening. But no matter how hard we try to prevent these things from happening there are plenty of bad things that will happen to us. We will get sick from time to time and we most certainly will loose things that are dear to us. The Stoics solved this by negative visualization. Thinking of the bad things that might just happen and thus “He rob present ills of their power who have has perceived their coming beforehand”. Also, misfortune has the biggest impact on those who “expect nothing but good fortune”. Both the Stoics and Buddhists agree on this and state the “all things are perishable”. If we don’t keep this in mind and think the things dear to us will always be there we will suffer considerable distress when it’s gone.

So now we have two reasons for negative visualization:

• To foresee bad things that might happen and prevent them from happening
• To realize that the things we hold dear won’t last forever

Hedonic adaptation

And then there is a third reason, a reason all to familiar to modern consumers. The psychologists Loewestein an Frederick studied what they called Hedonic adaptation. it’s the initial rush of excitement when we finally get something we always wanted followed by a form of depression where we take what we once coveted for granted. Be it a book, a dress, a car, a job or a life partner. (And one for the digital nomads: your passport) Upon reaching the goal we had set we keep looking for bigger things and seem never to be happy with what we have.

How do we break this cycle? This is where the negative visualization has it’s biggest impact. We should try and stop this cycle and in part even reverse it. To illustrate what I mean: how happy are with the computer you are reading this on? How happy were you the first day you used it? There is a difference isn’t there? Where did this difference come from and why are you no longer as happy now as you were back then?

Hedonic adaptation has the power to rob us from all the joy we have in life. In stead of delighting in life’s joys we take everything for granted and lose interest.
To someone who is constantly adapting the glass is half empty.
To a stoic, not only is the glass half full, he also has a glas (it could get stolen or broken) and to top things of it’s a glass and not even a ceramic pot. It doesn’t give a peculiar taste to the liquid inside and you can even enjoy the color of the liquid! What a wondrous thing this glass is that we take for granted.

Going back to the computer, how would you feel about not having it anymore? Perhaps you need to send it in for repairs and you get an inferior model on loan for the time being.

Stoic toolbox

Negative visualization is the single most powerful tool in the stoic toolbox. In the simplest form it’s spending time visualizing loosing the things you value most. In modern times think along the lines of loosing your job, having your car stolen or the death of a loved one.

Why would you want to do this? Seems very depressing doesn’t it. Actually this is a great source of joy believe it or not. Think that your car gets stolen every night and when you wake up and it’s still there you’re thankful that you still have it.

The stoics advise us to live every day like it is our last. This doesn’t mean spending all your money like there is no tomorrow and doing whatever you want regardless of the consequences it has on tomorrow. This is simply an extension of this negative visualisation technique. We should periodically contemplate the fact that we will not live forever and that this day might just be our last. Such thinking will not convert us to Hedonism but will make us appreciate how wonderful it is that we are alive and have the opportunity to fill this day with activity. This will in turn make it less likely that we will squander our days. After all, if this was your last day, would you procrastinate while waiting for the end to come?

Stoic zen and lossing a loved one

Don’t stop planning for tomorrow but keep in mind to appreciate today as well, or as Zen Buddhists would say: live in this moment.
One day in our lives will be the last day, one of our cups of coffee will be the last we ever drink and one kiss we give to our loved one will be the last we ever give them.
How often is it that people become depressed when one of their parents dies thinking along the lines of “I should have told them I loved them more often” or “We should have gone on that fishing trip when we still could.” If you still have your parents and have things you want to do, go do them now! You never know what tomorrow will bring after all.
It sounds depressing perhaps but give it a try. You’ll appreciate everything so much more and will receive joy from the simplest of things. After all, it might just be the last time you can do this, so make it count. Don’t get depressed about it, be thankful that the things we hold dear our in our lives, be thankful that you have a computer to read this post, after all, you’re computer might get stolen tonight.

Negative visualization will stop you from sleepwalking through life.

The posts in the Stoic psychological tactics series:

1. Negative Visualisation

2. The Dichotomy of control

3. Fatalism

4. Self-denial

5. Meditation

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