Deep Dive: How to Gamify Stoic Philosophy To Overcome Fear and Develop Radical Gratitude

Most people have heard of Stoicism. Far fewer have met an actual Stoic, someone as calm and self-disciplined as the people who wrote the books. That gap is what set me off ten years ago.

I learn through systems. I track my workouts, my martial arts progress, my habits. So I started asking what it would look like to treat Stoic practice the same way, as something you can measure and gamify rather than just read about. In this one I walk through how I do it, and how it changed my relationship with fear and gratitude.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Back in 2019, I recorded an interview with a fellow teammate at High Existence, Mike Slavin. I was asked by Mike to explore my own views and history with Stoicism, and I go over things like how I use stoic philosophy to overcome social anxiety. I discuss the exercises I developed for reducing intense fear, the right and wrong ways to learn Stoicism, in my opinion, as well as anything else. My favorite technique to live with more gratitude, the key components missing from modern stoicism, my thinking behind, my stoic courses that I'm producing, and a lot more. Even though the interview is a few years old and some of my thinking has become more refined since, it still does contain a lot of the essence of my thinking around Stoicism, wisdom, and living a good life. I regularly get people telling me that they found a lot of value in this one hour and 40 minute interview, and I thought it would be amazing to share with the Stoic Handbook listeners. This is the longest Stoic Handbook podcast that I've uploaded so far. Moving forward with the Stoic Handbook podcast, I'm going to be continuing my short lessons and guided meditations, but I'm also going to start adding in more long-form interviews with myself and other prominent Stoic thinkers and authors. Wherever you are right now, whatever you're doing, I sincerely wish you well and I hope that you enjoy this episode.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Alright. This is the High Existence podcast. I'm Mike Slavin. I'm a contributing creator here at High Existence. And today we have a bit of uh the tables have turned. I'm going to be interviewing John Brooks, who is uh the typical host of the High Existence podcast. And today we're going to talk about all about stoicism and why this sort of ancient blueprint for emotional mastery is still so sorely needed in this day and age. And I'm very excited to dive in on this subject with John. John, welcome. Good to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

It's great to be the one in the seat where I'm getting asked questions for a change.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, how does it how does it feel now that you're you're on the hot seat, I get to drill you with questions?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

I typically really enjoy asking people questions. Um, but uh over the last few years I've actually started to enjoy answering them too, and just sort of seeing what words come out and seeing what kind of ideas are channeled through me. I think questions are an amazing tool.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean we could spend a whole podcast talking about the value of questions and asking, like asking the right ones and ensuring that you know you're you're not limiting yourself by spending time on the wrong kinds of questions, all of that kind of stuff. Um but yeah, I think I think the reason, just to give listeners a little bit of context as to why we're we're digging in here, stoicism has been a part of John's life for for quite some time. And we're preparing, the high existence team is sort of getting ready to unfold a new transformational experience called the Stoic Quest that focuses specifically on Stoicism and making it applicable to the modern world, getting people to use it and uh apply it for the problems and difficulties that they're faced with. So I want to I want to start here, John, just to create a little bit of context because we've seen a bit of uh you know a modern resurgence. Maybe you could, you know, over the last five to ten years, I'm not quite sure when it started, but we're seeing more and more about stoicism and it's sort of gaining more uh traction and and popular consciousness. I wouldn't call it mainstream, but it certainly has a real contingent of followers. I want to ask you uh why you think that is? Why are we seeing this uh sort of resurgence of such an ancient philosophy? And why is Stoicism valuable uh for the times that we live in today?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

So I think that the resurgence of Buddhism came a little bit before the resurgence of Stoicism with people like Alan Watts and other Americans that went to the East, went on meditation retreats, took psychedelics, and brought back the gems of wisdom of these um contemplative practices. And I think if you if you've ever meditated or read a really good spirituality book, you can immediately find that there's truth there. And it it just naturally would not take long for anyone who's searching for wisdom to stumble across stoicism, and thanks to the internet, and I think the internet has played a huge role. Uh if you're interested in improving your life, uh gaining wisdom, handling the chaos of modern times, I think stoicism is the perfect philosophy. Um and it has some sort of qualities that Buddhism does not. So Buddhism can be a little bit off-putting to many people, like um, you know, Buddhist monks, they shave their head, they wear robes, they sit still for like hours on end meditating. Whereas like that might not appeal to everyone. Whereas Stoicism, I think part of the appeal of Stoicism is that you could be a high-functioning entrepreneur. Uh, you could have you could be a public speaker, you could be a teacher, you could be an athlete. And Stoicism, you can can directly apply to your craft and improve it. So if you look at uh the ancient Stoics, you've got Marcus Aurelius, who was arguably the most famous, he was the emperor of Rome. Like he was the most powerful man on the planet, one of the most powerful men to have ever lived. And he was very much a stoic. Whereas he might not have been able to be a Buddhist, because part of strict Buddhism means renouncing material possessions, for example. Um, but being a stoic, you can you can enjoy life, you can have possessions, you can drink wine, you can have relationships, you can have money. But it's more about where that is coming from, how attached you are, what are you using it for, and how is that impacting your character. So if we look at the modern, if we come back to like the modern resurgence of stoicism, the internet played a key role. And as I see it, there are two main sort of stoicism camps. So the first one would be Um popularizers of ancient philosophy. So these would be Alain de Baton. Uh, he wrote a book called Constellations of Philosophy. That's the first book I ever read on Stoicism, where each chapter uses a different philosopher and shows why philosophy can actually help you live more wisely. And Jules Evans, who I interviewed on the High Existence podcast, wrote a book called Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, similar to Alain de Baton's book, bringing back Socratic thought and the Stoics, and showing how these ideas can help us in modern times. So those books were like a re-popularizing ancient philosophy. And then on the other side, you have people like Tim Ferris and Ryan Holliday, who are entrepreneurs, very in touch with the modern flow of life, interested in productivity, efficiency, and bettering themselves, and they approach Stoicism more as a how to handle adversity, how to grow in resilience, and what kind of techniques can you can you apply to not be so affected by the vicissitudes of life. Um and I think that style of stoicism is actually taken to be the most mainstream area of Stoicism now, where stoicism is seen as psychological resilience training, and I think that's a really good entry point to Stoicism, but there's so much more beauty and depth to the philosophy that I want to help to spread and show people.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

I'm curious if you had to sort of localize that sentiment and draw out a piece of the beauty or a piece of um, you know, what is what isn't getting the sort of deserved recognition. What aspect uh specifically around Stoicism do you feel like deserves a little bit more airtime uh than it's currently getting in the existing conversation?

SPEAKER_01 9:55

So there are two things mainly that I think that uh I'm missing. The first one is an emphasis on joy. Um, stoicism is definitely about building in resilience and you know reducing anxiety. That's very important. That's a that is a component of joy. But the Stoics, especially Seneca, they talked a lot about this boundless joy that they experienced from Stoicism, where they just felt incredibly engaged with life and sort of like an overflowing happiness, a presence. When I read Seneca's writing, when he talks about this type of joy, I think of I think of like a happy Buddha, you know, that kind of like serenity, that tranquility that's not pleasure, it's it's like a deep peace, um, like a childlike curiosity, um, a kind of like a feeling of being above it all and looking down on the the play of life um with a sense of ease. And we've all felt this at at different times in our life. Sometimes you're just walking down the street and everything just flows. You're not doing anything special, you don't have tons of money in your bank account, maybe the sun is just shining on you, and you just feel at peace. You feel like life is good, and you just want to smile for no reason. Well, we can tap into that with stoicism, and that doesn't get talked about a lot, that kind of like the the kind of stoic enlightenment. And then the other side is the stoic worldview. So there's a lot of talk about the spiritual exercises of stoicism, you know, like the different journaling techniques, the different meditations. But all of that is secondary to the stoic worldview, the stoic perspective. In fact, I think these techniques are actually just the keys that unlock the stoic perspective, the stoic worldview. And when I started reading actually Donald Robertson, who's um another person that we've interviewed on the podcast, he's an amazing stoicism writer, I started to really see the stoic worldview from his work, and and I'll give you an example. So the Stoics, when when the when the Stoics became Stoics, it wasn't just like, oh, I'm gonna read some Stoicism and I'm gonna try and reduce my anxiety. It wasn't like that. When you became a Stoic, you actually started dressing differently. You were identified as a Stoic. You went through a kind of conversion, if you will. And when you went through such conversion, the whole relationship you have with life, with everything, with your relationships, with with desire, with setbacks, with adversity, it fundamentally changed. Um sort of like an awakening experience. So, for example, the Stoics did not view the external world in terms of good and bad, they only viewed their character, how they acted, how they thought, how they conducted themselves as being good or bad. The external world to a Stoic was indifferent. Um, this is not to be confused with like if someone gets treated badly, of course, that person treated someone badly, so they were acting from a bad place, because they were acting from like their character was not good, right? So that was a bad act, it was a it was not virtuous. However, if something has already happened, say that I tipped a glass of water over your head, that's done. Okay? That's already done. You're already wet. So how do you act now? What's the most wise way you can act? And that is what stoicism is all about. Those tiny actions. So it's about much more than just you know, you do this technique, you journal this way. Stoicism should be about how you orient yourself to the world. And you by practicing stoicism, you should basically get a new pair of glasses from which to view everything.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Hmm. Yeah, I'm glad that you bring up this piece around the experience of joy, because I think when people hear the word stoicism, if they haven't been exposed to uh any any you know, pieces of the philosophy and they're just hearing the word, I feel like our though our modern use of the word stoic implies this lack of feeling. And it might get someone to then believe that, oh, this philosophy is about sort of calcifying yourself and becoming numb to the world. And what I'm hearing you communicate is that that's not the case at all. If anything, it might support in sensitizing us to experiences of emotion that we can't access right now because of the certain emotional tendencies that we've developed that keep us from going to those places. Because I see some kind of connection between both of those things that you shared, the access uh to joy and also that sort of indifference to the external. Because if I think about what it would be like for people to uh live in a world where they aren't constantly being haunted by the anxieties of what might happen in the future. Because we we have this imagination, this incredibly powerful uh you know capacity that can be used for the sort of worst of purposes, imagining all the potential calamity that might descend upon us at some future day. I mean, it's limitless the amount of bad things we can envision. And so to begin to build the confidence and the assurance and the mental models and emotional wherewithal to be able to navigate and deal with whatever it is that arises, not even from this place of, oh, here's another bad thing I need to deal with, but from this, not necessarily ambivalence, but uh almost maybe, maybe the word is um it's not quite ambivalence. I'm trying to find the word, but you're not you're not greeting it from this place of not caring, but you're almost feel in touch with the privilege of being able to engage with life at all. So whatever it is that's happening, whatever it is that's unfolding, is like, okay, well, this is this is what is here for me to deal with. How do I use this to sculpt my character? How do I use this to proceed forth and uh you know endeavor to be continue to become you know more of uh a sort of complete version of myself? So those are some of the things that that I'm hearing as as you're describing these to sort of uh reconfigure how people might tend to relate to that word or what they they might think at sort of first impression.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah, um I want to share. There's a I was listening to Jordan Peterson's uh Maps of Meaning lectures, and he shared a dream that he had. He had a dream, and in this dream, God put him in a battle with a demon, uh a very scary demon. And he was terrified, and he set out to fight him, and he beat the demon and he said to God, Why did you put me in this battle with this demon? And God said, Because I knew you would win. And that is a very stoic perspective. Um the Stoics uh see themselves as characters in God's play. Not that they were religious in the sort of Christian sense, but um you can think of God as just a cosmos if you like, but or just the unfolding of nature, the mysterious. Uh they uh saw themselves as sort of like heroes or kind of mythological beings in this big drama, and num and everything that happens to you is a chance to show what you're made of. So any kind of setback or adversity if you practice Stoicism well, you you you will change your relationship to that, where it's actually not only is it indifferent, it's actually you you might actually get excited by it a little bit because you get to practice virtue now. And uh the Stoics were so wise they they they they realized that you can't practice virtue, you can't practice having good character unless you're put under pressure. And I think that's something that anyone who who's interested in self-development will know that it feels really good to get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. And one of the reasons why it feels so good is because you get to see what qualities you have. You don't get to see those qualities if you're not under pressure. If life is extremely comfortable and easy, you don't really get to see the best side of yourself. Um so Stoics realized that and they welcomed any kind of adversity. Um and the Stoics were also very they were they weren't so much like rational in the kind of new atheist sense. I would say that they were very reasonable. And they they they were reasonable in sort of like the wise, sage-like sense. And if you read a Epictetus' writings or Seneca, you'll often find that you're hit by a sort of calm feeling. Just a few paragraphs can really just calm you down. Um and because I I believe because they just they understood emotions, they were masters of psychology, and they know that we feel anxiety and we feel fear and we feel stress. They weren't saying that you know if you practice stoicism well, you won't feel those. They just had like a no-nonsense approach, like, okay, you're an you're anxious. What now? Okay, yeah, you're afraid. Like, what now? What are you gonna do about it? They were masters at finding opportunity in adversity. Um, and that's why if you read the work of Epitetus, he talks about how you might get exiled. For example, I love this example. And what he would do if he was exiled, for example, if he was punished by by by the court and told to go and live on a remote, desolate island, he would go around that island and try and find someone who is there by choice. Not there because they were exiled. And then he would go, well, if this person's there by choice, they want to be here, then why would I resist it? Maybe resisting it is actually like an unwise perspective. Huh. Maybe I can want to be here through choice too. Maybe that would be the wise thing to do, seeing as I'm here anyway. And uh I I love that about the Stoics, they're extreme optimists, but also very realistic.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Yeah, that's an important distinction, like maintaining the optimism while still having your feet on the ground. Because I think there's definitely a breed of self-help or uh positive thinking that sort of disconnects people from reality, might be spiritual bypassing uh and that kind of stuff, where it's oh, the good the good thing is going to happen. I'm just trusting that the good thing will happen and this will all make sense then. And what I'm hearing from you is the more stoic orientation would be something like, well, how do I know this isn't the good thing? This could be the good thing right here. You know, it's already here waiting for me. I'm not just biding my time waiting for the good thing to show up. I'm I'm questioning my assessment of this thing being uh bad to begin with. And I think having that, those kinds of orientations, I mean, we all face hardship in our life, and you're speaking so eloquently about the value of pressure and to be inside of a pressurized situation, to be in the face of hardship and not uh be subsumed by the fact that that is where we are and that's what we're involved in, and that frees us to. Actually, attend to the circumstances and sort of use them in a way or become rather than being blinded by our own our own victim narratives around, oh, it's poor me, I'm stuck here in this place. We can really confront those places, those hard places. And in doing so and acting with that virtue, I think that's where like the key to tranquility starts to form, because you can look into your history and say, well, I've been through some shit and it's been hard, but I've also maintained myself. I've had my composure and I've made my way through those difficult situations. So whatever shows up, like I'm I'm ready, willing, and able to deal with it. And that is, I think, a skill that we definitely need for this sort of age of tremendous uncertainty. But I want to, I kind of want to shift gears a little bit because we're talking, we're diving into the history and talking about its sort of relevance today, but I really want to make this personal and drive it into your experience of life and how Stoicism has impacted you directly. So I'm curious what it is about Stoicism that has, you know, directly transformed your life? What kinds of sort of capabilities has it given you access to? And if you have a story in there that's really uh that really sort of encapsulates this so that the listener can better understand how this has shaped you and affected you, I think that would be wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Well, I've for as long as I can remember, I've always loved comic books and superhero movies and magic as well, and just that kind of um the kind of I'm I'm I love encountering human beings that have done miraculous things. Um I was I as a child I would always buy like the Guinness World Records book and find these incredible humans who had done these incredible feats. And a part of me just always wanted to believe that human beings can be so much more than than we than the ordinary stereotype that we think of when we think of just the average person. Um and I carried this belief around with me, and I I kind of was hoping that I could I could turn myself into someone like that one day. And when I stumbled across the Stoics, I was like, this is it. This is it. These are people who through the power of their mind, through the power of systems, have turned themselves into emotional superheroes, you know. If you if you if you read any any of the life stories of the famous Stoics like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus Are there really any better superpowers than to remain calm and composed under extreme stress, to remain content in the worst of conditions, to have unshakable confidence when everything is crumbling around you, um, to have complete mastery over your desires. Like to me that is that's more impressive than flying. Like that's because being human is difficult, and reading about these people was super impressive. And I mean if you look at someone like Wim Hof, the Iceman, you know, why are people impressed by Wim Hof? Um, it's not that people are really impressed by the fact that his body can withstand the ice, it's more about people are impressed by the fact that he can emotionally handle the ice for two hours, the fact that he can actually have the courage to go under the water and swim with his with his breath held in in freezing conditions. That's the impressive part because we can't do that. Um but the reason wh why we can't do it is because we're too afraid. That's one of the reasons. Because I've never tried it, you know, and I don't think I would. But yet he did it when he didn't have a method. So there's something amazing about that, and I first stumbled upon stoicism properly in Alan de Batan's Constellations of Philosophy. I might have been about 20, 21 years old, and at this point I had I'd had a university degree, I studied filmmaking, um, and I was in quite a miserable place, I would say. I I was in university for a few years, always good at what I did, always good at being creative and making films, but I'd had a relationship that lasted about two years, that went from being really, really good to me feeling very miserable and unhappy, and um my self-esteem and everything went down. I had braces, I was living with a group of friends in my university house that I that I just felt um they were they were quite strong personalities, and I felt like I couldn't speak up, I felt a little bit oppressed, um, and then I went I withdrew a bit, and I was just kind of in this miserable place, and my confidence was low. I didn't want to go out into the world and and make friends, I wanted to shy away from everything, I didn't want to get a job. Um, I became a bit of a recluse, quite neurotic. Um, but there was like a little voice inside me that was like don't give up. You know, don't give up, keep keep learning. You know, you have something special to offer to other people. You have some sort of gift. Keep learning, keep studying, keep pushing forward no matter what. And so I just kept reading and I thought I'm gonna try and do things that no one in my position would do. And one of those things was I'm gonna really study psychology and philosophy uh to the best of my ability, remembering that I'm from a small town in in Wales, where you know, like it's very uncommon for people to just have hundreds of books on psychology and philosophy on their bookshelves, you know. It's quite a small town, um, and that kind of behavior, not so much now as people as as people are kind of becoming more open-minded, but about 10 years ago, this this would have been kind of mocked. And and there were people in my life that were like, you know, what do you think that reading is gonna give you? Um, you know, why don't you become an electrician? Why don't you actually get a degree? You're not an expert, you don't have any qualifications. And this actually gave me more fuel to keep going. And as I said, I stumbled upon consolations of philosophy, and I found that the ideas in there made me feel so good, you know. Um, and and a lot of them I was already practicing, and that's one of the points I want to bring up about stoicism in general. Many people listening to this might already be practicing stoicism without even knowing it. Some people are just naturally more aligned to the stoic way, and the reason why is because some people are just more wise than others, and stoicism is a philosophy about wisdom. So, for example, if you're not super hang up on making tons of money or becoming famous, then you're practicing stoicism. That's a stoic perspective. And so you might read the Stoics as I did and kind of go, Wow, I really resonate with these people, these ideas, these people. They feel like people I could be friends with. I would love these individuals to mentor me. Um, so I started reading more about Stoicism. I found out Tim Ferris was a big fan of Seneca. I bought letters uh from a stoic or letters to a stoic by Seneca, and I started devouring this information. And around this time I was waiting for jaw surgery because I had a slight underbite, and they told me the the braces and the jaw surgery would take two years, and it ended up taking almost five years. So I was for five years had to practice endurance and patience. And every month I would go into the dentist and they'd tighten up the braces, and I'd really hurt, and I'd have to go into the pain to try and kind of cope with it. And every time I'd go in, they'd say, Oh, it's coming now, won't be long, won't be long, won't be long. And this process dragged out for almost five years, as I said. And this only made my self-esteem worse because I was in my early 20s, I'd go out to a bar, and um maybe I would talk to a girl and things would go fine, then I'd laugh, and then she might comment on my braces, and then I'd I'd feel all insecure instead of laughing about it or like being okay with it. I I kind of would kind of tense up and I'd be uncomfortable. Um, and it just was so painful for me at that time because I didn't have the the the emotional coping skills that I have now, like that, and and stoicism and my study of philosophy and psychology um has been integral to me building the confidence that I have now. But more than that, it's going out into the world and practicing what I've learned, and that is very much aligned with stoicism. So stoicism is practical wisdom, it's not just about reading. You have to you have to do what they prescribe, and this is something that we do in the Stoic Quest as well. I set it up so that every day you have a challenge, every week you have a specific one-off weekly challenge to do, because reading is not enough. You have to act. So through my study of stoicism, I started going out, even though I had braces, even though it was insecure, and interacting with strangers and learning how to cope with that and building my confidence one brick at a time. And many times I would go out and interact with people and I and I would go home miserable and unhappy and feeling worse, but I never gave up. I kept following that North Star and I felt this power grow within me. Eventually the time came for me to have my surgery. I went in to meet my surgeon and uh he said, just so you know, bear in mind I've I was waiting for almost five years, but he said, just so you know, you don't have to have this surgery. And I'm like, well, okay. And he said, the other thing you should know is that the effect of this surgery on your body will be equivalent to you being thrown through the front windscreen of a car in an accident. You should know that. Because he was a he d he did all kinds of jaw operations, right? So he if you did go through the front windscreen of a of a car, you'd go to this guy. You know, he would reconfigure you. And you know, that terrified me, if I'm honest. But it's pretty scary design.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

It is, yeah. Yeah, he didn't sugarcoat that one at all.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

No, no, he wanted me to know what I was getting myself in for. And I think that was actually quite clever of him in a way, because if he had said to me that, you know, oh, it'll be fine, you can handle it. And then I went through it and it was really difficult, then maybe I would have broke. And in Stoicism, there is actually a practice called pre-meditation of adversity, which we can go into more in depth in a little bit. But the idea is that you practice contemplating the difficulties that lie ahead. So, in a way, my surgeon gave me the opportunity to practice the difficulties that lie ahead, and I prepared for it, and I psychologically geared myself up for it, and I started studying more about stoicism, studying more about mindfulness, and got ready for this surgery. And I had it. Uh, I was out of the hospital very quickly, swollen, unable to eat solid foods, unable to walk up the stairs on my own, but ready for the next chapter. And I was actually, I remember that the night before the surgery, I was all on my own in the hospital, and the book that I was reading was Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. And Victor Frankel, he's created a type of psychotherapy called logotherapy, and that was greatly inspired by Stoicism. He survived concentration camp in Auschwitz by trying to find the meaning in the suffering. So, um, so yeah, that was that was it. Uh really helped me with my surgery and recovery from it. I had a very, very fast recovery. And I remember actually going in a week later, and the dentist said, Have you had a low point yet? Because everyone has a low point after the surgery. And I said, No, I feel great. And then I went back two weeks later and they said, Have you had that low point yet? Because everyone has this really depressed low point after this kind of surgery. I said, No, I feel really, really good actually. I feel great. And they're like, huh, okay. What's what's going on with this guy? This is strange. And it's because I was able to find the meaning in the suffering, the opportunity that it brought me.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Hmm. And if, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you used the specific principle of negative visualization before you went into this experience such that you know felt adequately prepared. I mean, this is something that you dive into in the Stoic Quest: how people can use negative visualization as sort of like a counterpoint to all this positive thinking talk to help them when they encounter hardship. Uh, so so what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 36:47

So, one of the things about Stoicism is like a lot of the ideas in Stoicism are actually have actually become kind of cliches because remember, Stoicism is like thousands of years old and it's been diluted, and a lot of the ideas and principles have been turned into maxims that have then been spread and become diluted, and now and now we kind of like say them to each other in times of crisis, um, but they don't have much meaning. So, for example, if I say to you, if something's going on with you, Mike, that's difficult, I'll just I could say to you, hey, don't worry about that, just focus on what you can control. Okay, and that that's a very stoic idea, but but it's not really gonna have that much impact for you. You're just gonna go, yeah, you're right, and then go back to the the issue that you have. Um, and another stoic idea is you know, I goes back to if you were exiled, um, you know, could you find people that actually would would like to be on that island that you were exiled to? Uh, in the case of my surgery, what I was thinking is, you know, when something bad happens to you and someone goes, Well, it could be so much worse. And you kind of go, Yeah, but you know, pain is relative, I don't want to be thinking about that. Well, when you actually practice stoicism, you take these what are now cliche ideas, but you actually take them to heart and you really try to embody them. So I was afraid of my surgery, and I was wondering how can I get rid of this fear? How can I almost be thankful for it? How can I feel gratitude for it? And I was thinking about it, and it came to me that one of the the reasons one of the ways I could become thankful for this is by imagining how worse things could be how how worse things could be, and they could always be worse. And we know this, but we don't actually go into that. You know, we do we always know whatever happens to us in life, we always know things could be worse, but we don't actually spend the time examining that idea or contemplating it. And if you think about it, you know, this idea of practicing gratitude is very popular now. Positive psychologists have shown that practicing gratitude is really good for us. Well, if you look at the basis of gratitude, you'll actually find the inverse of gratitude, which is to appreciate something, you need to also be aware of not having it. Okay, so there's actually like a little bit of negativity inside the gratitude. It's like I have clean water, why am I grateful for that? Because I might live in a country where I don't have clean water. Okay. So I found um an individual, an amazing woman, uh, who had been in a car accident, 18 years old, I think she was, or in her early twenties, full of potential, about to embark on an incredible life. And one night she was hit by a drunk driver and her car set on fire, and she was burned, stuck to the car seat, screaming and burned, terribly burned. She lost her nose, lips, ears, um her all of her eyelids burned off, her hair burned off. And I think at the time of this podcast, she's had about 120 different surgeries. Her father takes full-time care of her, and she is so happy and full of love and forgiveness and still finds joy in life. And I just watched her and I used her as sort of my kind of role model, as sort of like someone that I could look up to for inspiration. And I really imagined myself going through that difficulty and meditated on it. And when I did that, suddenly my jaw surgery seemed so much smaller in comparison, and that actually gave me a lot of strength. And uh it actually this this is um this technique is kind of like a mix of stoic practices. There's a bit of negative visualization where you're imagining something really difficult happening to you. But another stoic exercise is called a view from above, when you kind of zoom out of your own little neurotic world and you look at things from above with perspective, and that's also what I did with my surgery. I zoomed out and was like, okay, you know, I know this is really significant to you, but are you aware of the suffering that actually exists? I would actually see my surgery as a gift, as something that I would look forward to like Christmas Day, if the alternative was getting burned in a car. And um, that is actually um kind of like a perspective that any of us can tap into at any time with whatever's going on in our lives if we actually spend the time doing it.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yeah, I love I love what you're inviting around this conversation of gratitude and the sort of counterintuitive perspective of there being the seed of negativity inside of appreciation. And I think about uh most of the things that we ought to appreciate, we don't, because it's a sort of like uh signal blindness. We uh we see the anomalies, we see the changes, we see the novelty in our environment. But a lot of the things that many of us, many of the people listening to this, uh have the things we've always had, whether it was running water or a roof over our heads, or you know, people around us who are you know treating us kindly more or less and not you know seeking to damage us in any you know intense way? Uh many of the people listening to this have a few of those and and a lot more going for them in their in their experience, in their environment right now. Wherever you're sitting, you're either listening to this on a phone or you're listening to this on your on your laptop, and life is probably pretty good. But have you taken the time to account for that in the inventory of how how much worse it could be? And using that not to sort of catastrophize and you know cast a spell of fear on yourself, but to uh engage the the deserved sense of appreciation that wow, yeah, this there is a lot, a lot of good going on. I find it so easy for people to get caught up in the sort of minutiae of their uh their grievances, you know, whatever little things are happening that are ticking them off. And all of those things seem to just uh get swallowed up by a massive amount of gratitude if we can just sit with and really attune to and pay attention to uh all of the blessings that we have in our life. Count your blessings. That's another one of those sort of cliches that feels apt uh within within this discussion. So, yeah, I invite that. Anyone who's listening, please just take some time to provoke some of that gratitude. It's easy to sort of be in this steady state of being jaded about our experience and what it is that we. Have. So I invite that. And I want to shift gears a little bit because you you touched on something that I think is important. You know, we've had this resurgence of Stoicism, and we're seeing more people wanting to learn about it. And clearly, this goes far beyond just understanding the history of Stoicism. This goes beyond buying books. So I want to ask you specifically about the Stoic quest. Why should someone do the Stoic quest versus just go and buy some books or begin to learn and read about Stoicism? What is it within the Stoic Quest that supports someone in actually becoming a Stoic?

SPEAKER_01 45:21

That's a great question. I'm going to answer that in a second. I just want to quickly follow up with something about your point on gratitude. Little exercise that I do. You can, of course, contemplate all of the things that you have that you appreciate that you might not have. And that's a really good way to practice gratitude. But personally, I actually like to make a little bit of a fun game out of gratitude. And I try to find little almost insignificant things in my environment that make my life so much better. And then I just get excited about it and I might even talk to people about it. And one of those might be, you know, like on a car, you have these like fobs that you can unlock your car from a distance. Like, how cool is that? That's so cool. Like you can open your car from a distance and lock it from a distance. Like that didn't exist before, you know. That's something to get excited about. Someone actually invented that. Um, and I have a baby, an eight-month-old baby, and there are so many things like that, you know, the different way that the bottles are created and dummies are created, and the way that the there's little buttons on the outfits that make it easy to pop them into place. Like someone made these buttons on these outfits, that's so cool. It makes these outfits so much easier to use for a baby, and it's really fun just to get excited about these little things. So I'd encourage anyone listening to this to try and notice the things that make your life better that no one ever talks about, and then bring it up with a friend. Like, go go talk to someone, be like, hey, isn't it cool how like tins last for years? Like, imagine if they didn't. Imagine if they just lasted for a few days, but they don't, they last for years. Tinned food. That's so cool. Um I love that.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

I love how that trains someone's attention to begin to look for those those hidden gems, you know, in a given moment. I often find myself encountering that that sort of gratitude and things that fade into the background, like the tree that's in front of my house, you know, just it's it's for its aesthetic value. It's like, wow, that tree is beautiful. I mean, it's just like any other tree. I mean, when when you're sitting at and looking at it from this jaded place, but when you really open yourself to it, like, wow, that tree is great. It has I get shade from from the tree. I can sit out there when it's nice out, you know, it's there's all of these, all these little sort of pieces to pick up on. I love that. That's a great exercise.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

I see your question about what makes the stoic quest different from, you know, if someone was like, I want to practice stoicism, I'm gonna go to a bookstore and buy a book on stoicism. Well, I actually tried that myself. So I was like, I want to really, when I get into something, I try to go really deep into it, and I tried to go, I really tried to push things and try to, you know, like become good at stuff. So when I started studying Stoicism, I was like, okay, this is it. I'm gonna become a stoic, I'm gonna really practice Stoicism, I'm gonna read a lot of Stoic books. And what I found is that there actually aren't many, if any, actual blueprints that take you on a step-by-step process for actually becoming a stoic. You you know, like you can read introductory books on Stoicism that are really good, and at the end of the book, you might practice some things, forget other things, know some good perspectives, but you are nothing like Seneca. You are nothing like Marcus Aurelius. You don't know how to get to that level. And it's kind of like, you know, it's like reading a book on martial arts. It's like, yeah, okay, you might be able to defend yourself a little bit more. You know, if someone comes and attacks you, maybe you remember this image of like, okay, take their legs and take them to the floor. But really, you do need an instructor, you do need a mentor, you do need peers, um, you need a plan, a training plan. Um, stoicism should be practiced, it's a skill. Um, so I I always found myself asking, like, well, why aren't there actual any courses that can teach me how to become a stoic? It's such a beautiful philosophy, and there are so many components to it. And and the idea of stoicism, we call it um a psychological operating system. So, stoicism is a psychotechnology in the same way that being literate, literacy is a psychotechnology. It's like you take literacy right now for granted, but that doesn't come naturally to you, being literate. You had to learn that. It took you a while, it took you a long time to learn to be literate. And now everything that you perceive in the world is influenced by the fact that you're literate, the fact that you can now add to your vocabulary quite easily by noting down words, you can read signs, you can read stuff in the environment, you can think like a literate person. Well, you did that, you had to train to do that. And so Stoicism is a psycho technology just like that that we needed to train in to become proficient at. And the ancient Stoics did this. Uh, they they were like universities essentially, where you'd go and you would train to become a Stoic. Marcus Aurelius was going to Stoic training uh lectures like late late in life. He always considered himself a kind of a student of Stoicism, a kind of a beginner's mind. And he saw the value as well. Even Marcus, the great Roman Emperor, the great author of the meditations, one of the most famous books on Stoicism ever written. Even after he wrote this book, he would still go and and uh and learn more about Stoicism. So I wanted to kind of bring that back with the Stoic quest, this idea of a kind of um an obstacle course for the mind, where we combine modern technology, so we have an online community, we can connect to anyone in the world if we have an internet connection. I wanted to bring this kind of like university-like um feeling, except instead of studying accounting, we're studying wisdom, and we're all in this together, we're going out into the world, we're practicing overcoming our fears, anxieties, uh, we have social challenges, discomfort challenges, journaling challenges, there's so much packed into it, and the Stoic Quest, the idea of it is that each week we learn a new skill that builds on the week that came previous. And I don't think that any book could compare to that kind of experience. It's equivalent to, if you want to use the analogy of martial arts, is equivalent to taking someone on a three-month intense martial arts training camp where you live, breathe, and eat martial arts with other people versus reading two books on karate. You know, it's like you you can't compare those two things. Um they're different. One is an experience and the other is the other is um listening to a very wise person talking about life. Um and there's definite value in that. And I've books have changed my life. Um but what I'm finding as I'm getting older is that now actually so much of the ways I learn are not actually from books. Um I'm much more interested in embodied knowledge. So practicing Brazilian jujitsu. You know, you you don't I don't read books on jiu-jitsu. I I move my body and try to get that idea into my system. Um, and any kind of skill-based study, uh, you need to do that. So that's what we've tried to do with the Stoic Quest. We've tried to uh give people a step-by-step training program that actually changes the way they perceive the world and changes the way they interact with other people and how they deal with all kinds of emotions.

SPEAKER_00 53:51

Hmm. And as I'm listening to you talk, I'm realizing there's this risk of someone could pick up a few books and read, you know, meditations or, you know, let's say meditations, they read it and they find a few kernels of wisdom and insight that are valuable to some degree or another, but it doesn't really rock their world. And so, you know, for the the solution that they're looking for, you know, someone could be exposed to stoicism and think, well, it's nice, but it's really not going to do uh all that it it promises. Like, what is the hype really about here, you know? And and so there's that risk of people being exposed to it, but not really getting the depth of the impact because the the way they're absorbing the information, like it's just all main, it's all remaining within concept. It's not driving down into I am out in the world practicing this, I'm doing it with other people who are on this ride with me. And it could turn people off from diving deeper into stoicism. Now, with that said, I think that you know, these there's sort of two different categories. And certainly if if you go through the stoic quest, but also want to read and want to dive deeper and hear the words of wisdom from these classics, of course, that that helps supplement it. Um, but I think the notion or the idea that someone can become a practicing stoic purely from reading alone is as about as big as uh sort of farces come. It's like reading, reading can only take you so far, and then it's about integrating that wisdom, integrating the lessons and beginning to embody and display that out in the world, getting the feedback from your environment to see how it's working and refine the ideas. And through that process, you actually begin to understand what the words meant. When we first read them, we're reading them from a certain frame of reference. But as we apply them, I think we gain better access to that worldview that you were describing before. We get to actually see it for what it is and not what we think it is. And so that's it's a super, super important point. And for those, uh for those of you who haven't heard much about the stoic quest, basically, depending on when you're listening to this, you could go on hideexistence.com right now and you'll see uh a little banner on the side where you can you can click and and get yourself on the early access list. It's not uh available just yet, but if you put your name down, uh you'll get an email when when sort of things are opening up. But one of the things that I love that you did, John, was you created uh these these sort of stoic sound journeys, sort of flipping the idea of uh uh meditation and giving people these audio tracks that they can listen to that that inspire and invigorate. And it's almost like a coach, you know, cheering in your ear before you're about to go out and like you know, run the big play uh for the game. You know, you have this sort of uh burst of wisdom that can arise through this sound journey that you take people on, calling back forth this wisdom that you might have uh really excavated and explored more deeply inside of a masterclass session. And now you have this access point where you get that wisdom sort of uh you know, at your fingertips, you can call it back and evoke that sort of same sensation. So I think that's a really important piece that that I love that you put the time and attention in creating those experiences for people.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Thank you. Yeah, I'm really happy with the sound journeys. One of the the so Buddhism and Stoicism have a lot of overlap, but as I see it, uh like you have with consciousness, you have consciousness and you have the contents of consciousness. The Buddhists focus a lot on consciousness itself, like the actual experience of of right now. Uh, and they they're they're very good at systematically understanding consciousness, the mind. The Stoics were more interested in the contents of consciousness. So I don't know if people listening to this realize, but cognitive behavioral therapy was inspired by Stoicism, um, and that's one of the most uh useful therapies that we have now for anxiety and depression. And it deals a lot with challenging your thought patterns, changing your perspectives. How can you harness the power of thought to feel better and to act better? And with uh Buddhist meditation, you could just simply have a prompt that asks you to watch your mind, follow the breath, where you just examine consciousness. With a stoic meditation, you want to actually leverage the contents of consciousness. That means using visualization and emotion. So that's what I tried to do with the sound journeys is to take you on a kind of an emotional journey so that you don't just sort of um you don't just think about the ideas that I give you, you feel them. And we all know that you know, if you go look in the mirror and just say like every day I'm gonna be better in every way, or you give yourself some sort of limp affirmation, it's not gonna do much. Real change comes from emotion, you need to feel something. You know, like my my father smoked for like 20 years. One day he he felt a heart palpitation and he quit, and he hasn't smoked since. He felt that fear, and that's what made him quit. So that's that's the kind of thing that I want to have people experience in the Stoic Quest. I want people to feel something. This is not just about knowledge, change can't come without feeling, and also like that's one of the reasons why psychedelics and mystical experiences can be trans so transformational, because it's so entwined with deep feeling. It's not just an idea that you might get from a book.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:05

Absolutely. I'm curious, someone who's who's sitting at home listening to this, they're your you know, average high existence reader, probably not, you know, run-of-the-mill, you know, just mainstream, uh Joe from down the street, but you know, they're interested in exploring sort of esoteric concepts and and things that are counterintuitive or and all of that stuff. But what is, you know, if you had to get really specific, applying Stoicism to their life, what would it do for them? What would change after having you know really began to embody this philosophy where they're they are a living, breathing stoic, what now, what now opens up? What's different? What experiences will they have more of? What experiences will they have less of? Let's really laser in on how the experience transforms.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

Okay, so that's a really great question. Um, I want to zoom out a little bit, just to give some perspective on me, um, because earlier we said that reading Stoicism alone might not be enough to have the transformation and the kind of benefits of becoming a stoic. Well I've been working um at High Existence for about five years, um, and during that time, my best friends have been spiritual warriors, Jedi-like people, incredible human beings. I feel like I've been constantly coached and in in return coached back my friends. And uh, for example, I lived in Amsterdam for six months with Martin Schirp, the co-founder of High Existence, and every day we would meet up, and every day I would challenge myself. Every day Martin would give me some feedback, give me like a new perspective, and it was like I was on the stoic quest myself for for the last five years. Every single day, at high as being a uh someone on the High Existence team, I'm always trying to walk the talk. Um, I'm always trying to improve different areas of my life. So going back seven years or so, I had no relationship, um, was quite lonely, didn't have any kind of female friends, very small friend group, felt isolated, low confidence, so shy, never wanted to open up. Like the way that I'm speaking now, like if anyone's listening to this, this is not me, like five years ago at all. Like this is like not me in the slightest. The way that I can just sort of express myself like this so freely. Um opportunities, no no travel, um, just sort of you know, I felt like I had this potential in me, but just it was being stifled.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:05

Sound stagnant.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

Yeah, I was sort of in a rut, I was stagnant. I felt like I, as many people listening to this too, like you have this potential, you have this like gem, this jewel, this fire inside you that you know can can take you places, but because of your patterns, your upbringing, trauma, um, insecurities, you feel stuck. And um, as someone who's I I used to have really bad anxiety, terrified of confrontation, I know what it's like to feel stuck and afraid. And yeah, for the for the last five years I've been going out into the world and slowly, bit by bit, trying to figure out how I can get better, how I can sort of leverage Stoicism to try and improve all aspects of my life. Um, and that's what I've been doing. And on the Stoic quest, I'm gonna I'm gonna share that with you. So that there's so much of what I what I share is is about my own experiences and my own sort of practical tips. As for how can Stoicism benefit you specifically. I think many people, especially introverted, creative types, if you want to generalize, like I'm very creative, I'm an introvert, we can sometimes struggle in the social realm. You know, if we're around people that we're comfortable with, we come alive, you know, we're funny, we can crack jokes, you know, people see us for who we are, we love it. Um but if we're a bit unsure of someone or we meet someone for the first time, we can quite often feel like we're not being ourselves. We can be quiet, we can be withdrawn. Um that's how I used to feel. Well, Stoicism, like so. If you want to look at the how Stoicism is formulated, there are four main areas of Stoicism: self-discipline, courage, justice, and wisdom. And in the area of justice, that includes everything related to one's social life. The Stoics realize that we are social animals, we are hardwired to socialize. If we are to follow our own nature, we will interact with other people, you know, that's part of life. So the Stoics had so many useful ideas on how to handle rejection, insults, slights, um, controlling people, tyrannical people, oppressive people, um and social anxiety, any kind of social issues. The Stoics were very wise, they understood that we struggle with this, um this area of our life, and and so Stoicism can give you this feeling of invincibility where you can go out into the world and you have this perspective that I'm gonna just practice Stoicism in this situation, and whatever happens is great. It feels good. Um, it's how it's meant to be. And I know that sounds almost hard to believe, but with the exercises and the sound journey and the sort of the stoic principles and the way of the way of thinking about the different things that happen, you can totally get there because I got there. Like I can go. Now to any city in the world on my own and make friends and and and have a great time. Like I can do that. That's all was unthinkable for me five years ago. So that was that's been one of the biggest blessings the stoicism has given me, that kind of confidence to express myself and to meet people and to show up and be present. And then on the flip side, another thing that I that I've struggled with is a little bit, I think as do we all, sort of, you know, you know, like these little vices that we have, like procrastinating and eating the wrong food and being a bit lazy, and you know, we have this idea in our mind of the perfect self, and every day we're reminded that we're so far from that because of the little decisions that we make. Well Stoic re learning about Stoicism it's the Stoics are not gonna come along and be like, okay, you read some Stoicism, you you learn this stoic thinking exercise, and suddenly you're gonna have like iron self-discipline. What the Stoics give you is something much better than that, actually. Um it gives you an entire blueprint for working with all kinds of desires and all kinds of aversions. So you actually for the rest of your life will feel like you have a plan. Because for me at least, the the worst feeling about slipping up is this kind of like beating myself up thing, or like feeling like I don't know where to go from here, or feeling like I'm never gonna improve. What you'll actually find is the most disciplined people on earth have cake now and then, you know, or like swear or get angry, and you know, we're all human. So it it it's like it's actually the unwise person who thinks like, I need to get to a place where I'm perfect all the time. Um, Epictetus um he said that someone who practices stoicism properly is not altogether faultless, but they are trying every day to have a few less faults. Trying. And if you are doing that, if you have commitment to the quest, to bettering yourself, um, and that commitment never dies, you will be astounded at what you can achieve in in just a few weeks, just a few months.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:18

Yeah, that the disposition in sort of hoisting up this perfect ideal and and really attempting to uh align with that and match up to that at all times, in all ways, in all places, really makes us fragile because it sort of lacks a certain recognition of our own humanity. And even when we are uh improving in various ways, uh those those strides forward can can very quickly be sort of brushed under the rug because our attention's swept up in examining all the ways in which we're not measuring up. And that depletes our enthusiasm, our motivation, makes us feel like, well, I'm never going to get there, rather than being boosted in in sort of examining the ways in which we are growing, the ways in which we are progressing. And so I love that piece. And another piece that I'll share that that is arising in me is I'm hearing you share about the social landscape and becoming more um sort of composed in your expression and more capable of going out and meeting people and sort of having these relationships. This other dimension of the social landscape uh that I see stoicism really sort of being uh a support for is the sort of uh imagine you know becoming a beacon for the other people in your life. It's not just for meeting new people or reducing your anxiety so you can meet new people. It's the the way that you begin to hold yourself, the sort of resilience that you form and the kind of comfort that that can extend to the others in your world, or the ability to maintain your composure and tranquility under pressure allows you to navigate through really hard emotional scenarios that might be with some of the people that you really care about, helping them get through some really challenging and difficult times, or occupying that boundless joy and that infectious and infectious gratitude that gets other people to awake into how their life is, you know, all that they have to appreciate, all of these things invites this sort of recognition and acknowledgement of a ripple effect. It goes far beyond just you becoming, you know, uh the improvements that we all make as individuals and how those improvements ripple out to improve the world around us. We might be a flower in a plot of land, but somehow our striving towards the sunlight supports others in knowing that they're they're capable of doing that as well. So I think that's just uh an interesting piece to to reflect on and be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:05

I love that, and uh it reminds me a couple of years ago, I think maybe 2016, I was doing a deep dive into Marcus Aurelius' meditations and um like not just reading it, but actually like reading it and trying to embody it. And around this time I was trying to figure out what my life purpose was. I was really doing a lot of deep contemplation on that. And I I remember um I did some some uh some deep contemplation one day, and the words of Marcus Aurelius came to me and he he basically just told me, like, you know, your purpose is to be a good friend and to be a good son and to be a good worker and to be a good father, to be good in those areas. That's your purpose. And you know, like that was just what I needed, and like Mark Surelius would say, like, bees do what bees do, you know, dogs act like dogs, you know, like dogs don't try and be like fish. So you are this type of person. Um, you know, do that well, you know, don't think like too like it's good to have dreams. Now I I I I love having a vision of the future. Like, and we're gonna in the Stoic Quest we talk a lot about the the kind of how deep work can be used as a spiritual exercise. Um, but fundamentally, as you were saying, like becoming this I you don't want to become someone who's a complete jerk, basically, to all of your friends, and is like a bad example of how to be uh bad a bad example of of a of a of a character, um, but then also like not have anxiety, you know. That's if you do that, then you're not practicing stoicism. Fundamentally, you want to be a rock for other people, you want to be that that person that people can come to and be like, hey, I'm struggling with this, can you can you give me some feedback? And I honestly believe that you know, I have full belief that I I am that kind of person, and I do believe that my friends can come to me and I can have great conversations with them and help them through difficult times. Um, I've got an eight-month-old son, and no matter how tired I've been, I've not had one single thought of ill will or anything but love toward him. Um and you know, the this is I've I'm actually proud of myself for these things, and um but it didn't come naturally, you know, that this comes from doing the work and studying stoicism and uh and now I'm actually trying to be what you say, Mike, I'm trying to become a beacon for other people, and uh we can all pass this beautiful philosophy and idea on.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:03

I love it. Well, we've been jamming for for you know just over an hour now. How's it been sitting on that that side of the table?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:15

Uh it's been great. I think that you might replace me. Um bit worried about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:22

Yeah, you've uh a competition for yeah, the the podcast host throne.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:29

Yeah. I really like the flow of the conversation and uh yeah, it's been really good to think out loud like this. I think that's one of the the most fun parts of a conversation is that you don't really know what you're gonna say until you say it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:46

Sure. And we've I mean had a lot of space to collaborate and chat and talk, but I've learned about things you know that I didn't know before in terms of what inspired your your interest in stoicism and and how it's affected you. So, you know, it's amazing to me, even if you spend a lot of time with someone, how there's always these sides and and angles that have yet to be revealed. So appreciated your your willingness to um yeah, just let us in and and tell us about you know very very vividly some of the experiences that you had and and how stoicism has directly impacted your world.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:23

Yeah, it's been great to share. And I think that this is actually uh a really good exercise. See, my mind is always thinking. This is the thing that you've got to realize about me. My mind is always thinking in terms of of like helping other people, coming up with exercises, like it's always in course creation mode. That's why creating a stoic quest was like I I just feel like it's completely in my nature to do that, felt natural to me. And just hearing you say that, I'm already thinking about wow, that could be a really useful exercise to conduct a podcast with some of your closest friends where you just sit down for an hour and ask them questions and record it, and uh, I guarantee you're gonna find out stuff that you never knew about them. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:14

Yeah, it creates a context shift.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:17

Where it's it may be the same. I mean, you're sitting in the same living room that you normally sit in, but the way that you're changing the context by you know recording this conversation and potentially sharing it, it invites a different kind of energy around it. It says, Oh, this is different somehow than our normal sort of hanging out. And it provokes what kinds of questions do I really want to ask this person? You know, and I think that's we have this joke around here calling John the Minister of Inquiry just because he is so uh adept at uh arriving at these really wonderful questions to provoke insight. And I think that is that's connected to that gratitude piece that you you shared earlier, you know, uh where is it that we can come up with these really interesting questions to provoke these wonderful experiences, give us the opportunity to to hear and listen to the people in our life or even strangers uh in ways that they don't normally get a chance to be to be listened to. And those questions sort of serve as revealing sides of the diamond that we haven't you know been able to uh examine um and see through. So yeah. Questions, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:33

Questions on the top on the topic of of questions, like just uh Socrates was actually um, you could argue, the first Stoic and one of the first Stoic heroes, and was cited often by the Stoics that came later. And there's a for any kind of people interested in philosophy, there's a philosopher called Pierre Hadeau, he's a French philosopher, he wrote a lot about Stoicism, he actually formalized the technique view from above, and he said about Socrates that when Socrates asked people a question, there were two intentions going on. One intention in Socrates knew where he wanted the answer to go or that the question to lead, he had an end in goal in mind. Um he was kind of like a composer conducting a symphony, he had uh something that he was aiming for, but the other side of Socrates reveled in the unfolding of the other of the person's answer and went on that journey with them as if he was completely unaware of where it would lead. And that is the art of asking questions, is that we ask questions because we we want to try and take the conversation to a particular destination, but at the same time, it's it's really nice to just relax into the unfolding of whatever comes up. Um, and I love to do that, it's one of my favorite things.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:04

And I feel like that similar, that that orientation can be transposed and applied so similar similarly, more generally, to the experience of life itself. There's this poet by the name of David White who speaks about uh the conversational nature of reality, and it it's this perspective on life as an exchange and this sort of dynamic, uh fluid, sort of back and forth, this dance that is occurring. And um when we allow ourselves to really be engaged in not just forcing our linear conceptions and plans upon the world and being so stern in seeing their realization, um, but to be attentive and attuned to uh and responsive to the sort of dance with life that's occurring around us at all times. That allows for the emergence of surprising new pathways and doorways opening that we we couldn't even imagine. And so that keeps a real sort of fresh and vital uh orientation towards life. It's being uh, you know, it's you still have a direction that you're moving towards. You're not necessarily completely absent atilos. You know, have a North Star, but you may be less attached to the particulars around how that north star unfolds. And then from that place, you can be engaged in the joyous process of watching what emerges uh you know as you as you you know continue forward and continue to grow and learn and and be shaped by life as you're shaping life in turn.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:52

I love that. It just reminds me of uh the stoic idea of that dichotomy of control. Uh that's often seen as like there are things that you can control, things you can't control, but I think it's actually goes, it's actually much closer to what you just described, the dichotomy of control. It's like the one of the fundamental principles in Stoicism. Uh, where Cicero said that a practicing stoic chooses but does not desire. And I think that's a beautiful phrase. So you have that North Star that you choose, but you don't crave to get there in any particular way.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:35

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:36

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:36

Yeah, that's that's such an important distinction. Um, because we want, I think we as human beings, we want this sense of narrative arc, and that's a big way in which we get to experience meaning in life, that we're we're going somewhere, but our attachment to to the way that we have conceived the story at any given time can really inhibit the the positive plot twist that life as a as a co-author is wanting to inscribe on the screenplay of our existence, you know, and so if we're able to allow, like allow ourselves to have like a narrative arc and a trajectory, but also not be so tight-fisted that we try and pull it back whenever somebody or or life itself is trying to, you know, write in some new sort of uh accents and nuance to that kind of story. Um it just creates a lot of friction and sort of gums up the wheels of of what otherwise could be a fluid and sort of experience filled with grace. And there's something in what we're talking about here that is connected to the idea of faith. Um I'm I'm wondering if faith has been a huge part of my life and developing and cultivating this well inside me that is sort of uh attuned to and in touch with uh a sense that I'm I'm almost being guided and held by uh something transcendent that's supporting me and and that's that's that's my life is moving in this this direction, and there is this feel of of benevolence around it. And I say none of this to uh invite uh a particular allegiance to any God that has been articulated inside of any doctrine. It's not really doctrinal, it's it's more of an evidentiary like relationship that I've experienced as I've I've gone about my life and been able to cultivate this faith. I I've seen my way through difficult times and and I feel like that's a big part of cultivating this sort of anchor or stability. I wonder if there's any um anything within Stoicism that that speaks to this sense of faith that I'm trying to describe. Is there anything that uh that you've come across that connects to that idea?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:13

Well, I love the way that you're approaching faith. Um that's I've also kind of recently kind of changed my view on faith because faith can the word faith can mean to some people like it's like a blind faith, like believing something with insufficient evidence. Like that's but is that really faith? Um Faith, as you say, can be just this sort of this intuitive um feeling of of rightness with the way that your life is unfolding. Um or this little belief that you have that is not that does not come from necessarily a lack of evidence. There's definitely evidence there because you have access to your inner world in a way that nobody else does. Right? But you can't necessarily articulate that or or demonstrate it in a um like a gold standard controlled uh study, right? Like this this feeling that oh yeah, there's something going on, there's something that I'm aspiring to right now. And yes, I can't prove it, but trust me, I know what's going on in here, I know what's in my heart, I have enough evidence, my life is my evidence. Um, and that's like a really beautiful way to think about faith. So with Stoicism, um the Stoics talked a lot about living in accordance with nature, and there are two different types of nature if you think about it. So the first one is human nature, so live in accordance with human nature. Now the Stoics, if you ask the Stoic like, well how do you determine the nature of something? Well, they might turn around and say, Well, you look at how useful it is in relation to the task that it was created to perform. So if you look at a hammer, the the nature of a hammer is the bang nails. Does it do a good job? Is it useful for the task that it was designed to perform? Yes. Okay, well, if you look at human nature, you have to look at, well, what can we do that other animals or species can't? And it doesn't take you long to figure out that we have the ability to reason and to think in abstract ways and um and and and to use language in this way that that it it's not clear that other other animals can do, even close to what we can in that way, in the way that we can envision things and then make them uh come to life. So the Stoics saw reason as something divine, as something mystical. The fact that we can have this conversation and and like what are we actually doing right now? We are making sounds, but my head is not there, my head is off in in in space, like I'm just like the the images that are coming to me. I'm like in this other world. Uh I'm talking to you right now, but we and we're just exchanging sounds. But to me, there's something really mystical that's going on. If that's all we're doing, something is beautiful that's happening. So that's the first. Part of Stoicism, so that just to clarify, the Stoics saw the mystical nature of reason, and they didn't just see reason as just a tool, like a scientific tool. They saw that it's divine and what sets us apart from other animals in this huge way. And then the other component is your own nature. So, okay, we figured out that you're a human being and you should do the things that human beings are designed to do for, to do, and one of that would be using reason. But then Mike also has his own nature, your own life, your own personality, your own desires and aversions. And so the Stoics would encourage you to really get in touch with that and live according to that nature. And if you do that, then I believe you will be living a life that is based on faith. Because the Stoics are not going to come along and be like, you should do this and do this and do this. The Stoics will come along and be like, What do you feel, Mike, that you were put on this earth to do? There are a hundred jobs that you could do. Pick five that you would like to do, and then ask yourself, what do those five jobs have in common? Well, that will show you what is going on within your nature. And of course, Socrates was a big advocate of know thyself. Um get to know your nature and then live in accordance with that. That's something that I I I've been doing. I I realize that I am a creative person. I need to create. If I don't create, I'm going to feel like I'm stagnating, I'm miserable, I'm not living in accordance with my nature, and and being creative no matter what, no matter if I I lost everything good in my life tomorrow that I that I cherish. If I could just remember to live in accordance with my nature, I would have a deep faith that things would once again work out for the best. So that's sort of like a roundabout way to answer, but the Stoics were definitely big proponents of of getting to know who you are, your soul, and um living a life of integrity and using that your values and your unique identity as a as a kind of a guiding force in life.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:24

Hmm. Yeah, beautiful. Very well said. It's yeah, there's so much that I could say. I mean, on one on one hand, it's how weird things are. You know, we're these earth apes, as Jordan Bates loves to say, these like funny monkeys, and we're here like, you know, flapping our our mouths. And it's very, it's very likely that this whole like the whole linguistic capacity was exapted. So it didn't, we didn't like our mouths are here not be not for talking and speaking and like exchanging words. It's for eating, you know, it's for the ingestion of fuel. And it became this crazy instrument. But how how strange that we're able to have this like portal into this connected understanding, this sort of way of uh sharing each other's interiors through these uh, you know, these sounds that it's just it it baffles me that somehow, somewhere along the way, we develop this capacity and it it and it works so seamlessly. Um is one of those things. This is, I feel like what we're doing right now in action is the gratitude exercise. You know, people talk to people every day, all day. And how often are we like, wow, man, we're talking right now? How crazy is that? We're exchanging words, you know, it's it's it's so caught up in the content of what's being exchanged, but just the fact that it's happening is is so uh perplexing and mesmerizing at once, you know, when you really consider how this how this is happening. Um and to move further from from that, the other piece that I felt uh you sort of poking at is this this concept, not even a concept, but a disposition of spontaneity and somehow that being associated with one's nature and a sort of feeling, like connecting to within yourself, not just the idea that you have of yourself, but the fountain of what comes through you, you know, in this conversation. I thought a little bit about the conversation I would ask you in advance, but there's a lot of territory that we've covered that has just been emergent and it's just thrust forth. And the part of part of faith is extending trust to that process, extending trust to the process of what arises in my consciousness, because there's so much that arises that I didn't choose to make arise. It just it just occurs, it happens, and and and we can be, the more I think we're able to engage that and trust that, the more we're capable of finding ourselves in situations and sort of letting this unfettered wisdom uh flow through us rather than it being distorted by this interference pattern of self-consciousness and judgments and all of those kinds of things. So, yeah, that's what, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of gems in what was just shared. Um I'm wondering, I'm feeling like we're we're kind of getting to a place of wrapping up this conversation, but is there anything left over that you you find would be a really valuable thing for the for the listener to hear? Um you know, within the within the stoic worldview, within stoic school of thought, anything that you'd love to leave people with?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:05

Two thoughts. So earlier on we were talking about um finding opportunity in adversity, and that is a skill that a practicing stoic has. And that can sometimes be confused with people who are overly positive, you know, they wear like Pollyanna rose-tinted glasses. And I think that the way that you differentiate a stoic from people who have extreme optimism to the point of kind of it being a bit grating, you know. I think we've all encountered individuals who they don't even allow space for for difficult emotions to come up. Um, and the key difference is that a stoic spends a lot of time in the in the kind of imagined world of suffering. So I've met individuals who are big proponents of the law of attraction, and they refuse to have any kind of negative thoughts come up, you know, because that's going to attract negative in their life. They don't want to even go there. They only want to hear positive things, surround themselves with positive people. Positive, positive, positive. I don't want to hear any feedback, I just want positive stuff. In fact, negative feedback doesn't even exist to me. Don't even bring that to my door. Whereas a stoic would wake up each morning, for example, and imagine all the stuff that could go wrong. You know, and that's where their sense of optimism uh came from is this sense of no matter what happens, I can find opportunity. Not that nothing bad will happen. It's like, yes, bad stuff probably will happen, you know. That's life, you know, and I'm gonna prepare for it in advance so that things don't knock me with the same kind of force. Um, so that's something to remember about Stoics is that they were very aware of the relationship between suffering and joy, and they realize that you need to go into suffering and master it, contemplate it before you can experience joy. You don't push it away. And then the other thing when it comes to handling difficult emotions is you know, a lot of us we think that resilience is you know not getting this spike of adrenaline when our boss shouts at us, or not having our heart beat really fast when we woke up to the girl that we find really attractive, um, or you know, getting 20 rejections from our new novel uh without being phased by it. You know, everyone has their own definition of what it would mean to them to be resilient. However, to a true stoic, resilience is actually freedom. That's what it means. Resilience means freedom, and freedom comes from the deep belief that no matter what happens to you, you will never lose your freedom. No matter what, no matter if you're put in chains, no matter if you lose everything, no matter if you have breakup after breakup, no matter if everything crumbles around you, you can still be free in that situation. Um, because you can practice having virtue, you can practice having a good character, you can practice using the divine, godlike power of reason. Um so that's that's what I want to really touch upon. That the levels that you can get to with stoicism are eventually it's possible to get to a place where it's not even about a little bit of anxiety here or a little bit of fear there, but it's actually about this deep, deep knowing that nothing that the world brings to me can actually harm me. And um that's like I just want to stress that because that is as a to go full circle, that is again like a very that is a real-life superhero when you can do that, and um that's what the Stoic Quest is all about.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:22

Powerful words. Yeah, thanks, John. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for making the time, and I'm looking forward to future chats to to jam on stoicism and uh so much more of this crazy experience called life.