326 - The View from 30,000 Feet
Tenets of Stoicism
Stoicism was founded in Greece by Zeno of Cypress and was a Hellenistic philosophy that advocated for the transcendence of one’s passions to accurately assess oneself and the world. According to the Stoics, emotions and pleasure-seeking caused disruptions in the soul and that stoic enlightenment amounted to achieving complete disinterest in and indifference to pain, joy, love, hope, fear, etc.
In essence, Stoics believed that when you pulled back from looking at yourself in first person to a more “birds-eye-view” of third person and beyond, you could start to see your own interconnectedness to the people and things around you. Instead of getting caught up in your personal problems, you could be more objective about your situations and concerns.
Caveats
Stoicism ignores eastern philosophy and has a very privileged, white presentation. Many psychological studies are highly gendered and try to “prove” a correlation between gender, wellness, and stoicism, but also seem to rely more on the colloquial use of the term rather than what the Ancient Greeks and Romans defined it as.
Originally, the Greeks believed Zeus predetermined everything about our lives and in the whole universe.
Some say that Stoicism is just telling us we can’t do anything about the things that happen and that we just need to learn to accept things without emotional unrest, while others think that it’s impossible for humans to separate emotions from rational thinking at that it’s unrealistic and unhealthy to try to do so.
One of the main tenets of Stoicism is “Focus on the things you can control, ignore the rest.” But a big argument against Stoic teachings is that humans should care about some external events that are happening.
Tools of Stoicism
Consider checking out books on the subject if Stoicism intrigues you, or consider going straight to one of the earliest sources, “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius.
Journaling in the morning and evening is a key component in order to prepare for the day ahead and reflect on the day that has passed.
Learn to take a step back from an annoyance or a problem. Next time something challenging happens in your relationship, try doing the following:
Take 10 seconds to breathe and calm your mind and body. If you find you’re still in the same emotional state, take 10-15 minutes away from your partner.
Take time to reflect on the bigger picture.
Go even further away from the present moment. What has been happening recently that may be weighing heavily on their mind?
What is the current state of the world and how has that affected both of your moods and wellbeing?
Think about your whole life, biases, triggers, and values that you have because of everything you’ve been through.
Now think about your partner and use what you know of them to reflect on their life, experiences, biases, triggers, and values.
Circle back and realize these emotions and intense feelings represent only a moment in time for each of you. Try to go back to your partner with these thoughts in mind and hopefully with some compassion and sympathy for them and what they are going through.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're taking a dive into Stoicism and how its principles can be applied to relationships and daily life. Put your philosophy hat on people, because it's about to get all Marcus Aurelius up in here. There you go. That's the reaction we needed. Today, we're going to be talking about some common issues that people face in relationships, and how applying some principles from Stoicism, like stepping back from those problems and looking at them from a bird's eye view, can help us to tackle these issues more objectively.
Then we're also going to go into some caveats and things to consider about Stoicism, because we love to give you a fair and balanced view on topics. That's what we're going to do.
Dedeker: Isn't the fair and balanced view the motto of Fox News?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Good. Thanks for connecting us. Thanks for making that link for Multiamory.
Emily: I simply just wanted to twist it on its head and be like Multiamory is going to take this and run with it in a better direction.
Jase: Gosh, cool.
Dedeker: I like that.
Emily: There we go.
Dedeker: As long as we're not trying to brand Multiamory the Fox News of the future, please.
Emily: No, no. It's funny because my grandmother used to always be like, "Fox News, it's so fair and balanced." I'm like, "They just say that they are but they're not. I promise".
Dedeker: Some context, right now the three of us are doing an anti-racism training, actually, and it's called Theory of Enchantment. We really enjoy it. Look it up if you're into that. Something that's interesting is that it talks a lot about Stoicism and the basic tenets of Stoicism. Maybe some of you out there have heard of Stoicism. It is hot right now. Maybe you have one of the many books or journals that help you practice it. Maybe you've heard some criticism of Stoicism or some bad things about Stoicism. We're going to be diving into that today.
Emily: I was really excited to learn more about it from our Theory of Enchantment course. I went right out and bought a couple of books and a journal, and stuff. Something that really resonated with me about it is this idea of the bird's eye view, which is taking a step back from the minutia, and getting into the weeds in your problems, and instead, taking a step back away from that, and really looking at things from a broader perspective.
When I think about being a host on this podcast, there's so many things that I've learned from talking about relationships every single week. That idea of not getting so caught up in your anger and your emotion in that moment and instead, taking a second, has been a really big lesson for me. This resonated with me because it felt similar to that.
With that in mind, I wanted to explore more of that because I feel like taking a step back allows you to have a little bit more empathy and understanding for the people, that maybe you're in a tiff with or that you have deep-seated emotional anger about, or something like that. I was excited to delve into this today. Hopefully, you all out there can learn a little something too.
Dedeker: Let's start out by just talking about what's the problem. One of the problems.
Emily: That we're trying to fix here. It's so many.
Dedeker: The one singular problem that we're trying to fix on this podcast. Well, let me tell you. We do have to say it is easy to get into the weeds in a relationship, it's easy to get caught up in little annoyances. It's easy to get fixated on something that a person says. It's easy to stay in patterns of emotional distress over an issue that seems to never get resolved. It's also safe to say that as human beings, most of us, I think, are pretty self-focused.
One could argue that we're pretty full of ourselves. By full of ourselves, that doesn't necessarily mean that we think that we're great all the time. I think it just means that we're very self-focused. That's just how our brains work, even if we're not necessarily super positive about who we are. To be self-focused isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just means that we tend to cast ourselves as the hero of our personal story and other people are the side characters, or potentially the villains, the opposite side that we may argue with, or direct our frustration and anger towards or have anxiety over for years.
I think all of us have something like this in our life, we all have our, "Villains", which may not necessarily be like you declare a mortal enemy or things like that.
Emily: The ex-boyfriends or whatever.
Dedeker: Yes, the ex-boyfriend. It could be one of your parents. It could be a family member. It could be a different political party. It could be a political figure. It could be people that you think embody a particular concept that you disagree with. We all have this concept of the good versus evil, and the us who are good versus the bad.
Jase: Then when you think about that in a relationship, if you end up in a situation where you're casting your partner as the villain, which I think a lot of our media and ways we talk about relationships, actually pushes us in this direction of the person you always complain about, or they're the source of your grievances, your problems. We're encouraged to do this, but it's actually incredibly destructive, and should not set you up for a successful relationship.
Emily: I've definitely had those relationships where I always have a little teeny bit of anxiety every time I'm around them, and instead of working together as a team, we intended to be on the defensive at all times. It's always like, "Okay, what's going to happen when they enter the room? Or what's going to occur if they'd say something or if I say something that sets them off, or whatever?" But that both mutually, we're just at odds. That, I think, is one of the more destructive things that can happen in a relationship, but it does tend to happen a lot.
Jase: Now, it is worth keeping in mind that sometimes that ongoing anxiety or that internal voice that's causing strife could be telling you something really important. Maybe this is your mind pointing out to you some a red flag, or a warning sign of something potentially serious, that maybe you should just leave this relationship. Just be aware that that might also be the case. This isn't like, "Oh, everything is solved as soon as you look at it from a different perspective".
Emily: There are little annoyances, sometimes or just deep-seated things that, "I am pissed because my partner said this thing or did this thing and I still think about it years later. I still get upset about it years later", things like that. In those moments, I think that it's fair to perhaps look at that with some objectivity, and especially when you're in the middle of an argument, or it's an argument that happens over and over again and you get really caught up in the weed, and really defensive and angry. You're butting heads and there's no way out of that.
I think in those moments doing some of the things that we're going to talk about in this episode, taking a step back, can really allow you to look at the thing with more objectivity. The question is, with all that, though, how the heck are we going to do that? Maybe that's where Stoicism is going to come in a bit. Let's talk about the philosophy of Stoicism a little bit, how it can help us tackle some of the problems that we often face in relationships.
As with any topic that we talk about on this show, there are things about Stoicism that maybe you will love. There are some things that you're like, "Yes, no way. That is not anything that I'm interested in", and that's totally fine. As the philosopher, Carrie Jenkins talked about having a potluck for your relationships, and we can also have a potluck for the tools in our relationship toolbox.
Take what you like, leave the rest but we do hope that you find some value in this. We're going to talk about some Stoic terminologies to think about as we go through this episode. First, what the heck is Stoicism?
Jase: Stoicism was founded in Greece by Zeno of Cyprus, around 334 to 262 BCE. That's a long time ago.
Emily: What about, "A really long time ago"?
Jase: Stoicism was a Hellenistic philosophy that advocated for transcending the passions in order to accurately assess oneself in the world. The name comes from stoa, which is the word for a Greek porch. That's where Zeno would do his teaching so Stoicism came from. So it's Porchism is what we're talking about.
Emily: Porchism, I like that.
Jase: Something also that's interesting, you'll notice through this episode, is that there are a surprising number of similarities to Buddhism, and other things that we've talked about on this show more from a Buddhist perspective. What's interesting is actually, both of these philosophies emerged totally separately, in different parts of the world, but within a hundred-ish years of each other.
It is really interesting that something was in the air at that time, that helped this to come out. According to the Stoics, emotions, and pleasure-seeking cause disruptions in the soul, and Stoic enlightenment amounted to achieving complete disinterest and indifference to things like pain, but also joy or love, hope, fear, any emotion.
Emily: Unlike the passions that we spoke of earlier, they're just essentially forms of suffering. They use that same word that's also in Buddhism, the suffering. Those are things like distress, fear, lust, and also, delight. Distress and delight are passions that are rooted in the present, and then less than fear are emotions rooted in the future. You can have things that you're potentially distressed about currently, and those things that you're distressed about future-wise.
Dedeker: Conceptually, Stoicism did migrate from Greece to Rome, and most of the remaining primary historical texts that we have are from the Roman Stoic philosophers, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius played by Richard Harris in the film Gladiator.
Emily: Yes, geez. That's awesome.
Dedeker: I'm sorry because of that film, whenever anyone mentions Marcus Aurelius, I can only see Richard Harris, but that's fine. That's not a bad association.
Emily: That's not a bad thing.
Dedeker: This also leads us to another big foundational concept, which is the concept of sympathy. On the surface, this translates to sympathy. However, the Stoic use of the term refers to specifically understanding the interconnectedness of all things throughout the universe. Is also defined as affinity to parts of the organic whole, or mutual interdependence, which again, mimics a lot of Eastern Buddhist philosophy in having this sense of interconnectedness to all beings.
Jase: Then they also had this concept of good, evil, and indifference. Essentially, their thinking was that rationality, being rational, and reason -they're all into reason, you do know how those Greeks were- that leads to virtue and that was seen as good. Then corruption of reason, so just bad reason, leaves device, which they saw as evil, and then everything else was just, meh, those are the indifference where everything else besides that. It's like it's either reason it's good, not good reason, it's bad.
This is from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "The virtuous person is not passionless in the sense of being unfeeling like a statue. Rather, he mindfully distinguishes what makes a difference to his happiness, virtue advice, from what does not. This firm and consistent understanding keeps the ups and downs of his life from spinning into the psychic disturbances or pathologies, the Stoics understood passions to be".
I think that's a worthwhile distinction there that for them passions doesn't just mean the feelings, but maybe it could be more obsessive feelings or when your feelings take over control from you, or something like that.
Emily: Like limerence that we talked in our limerence episode. There you go.
Dedeker: Yes, like the dark side of the force of feelings.
Emily: Exactly. I want to just talk briefly about emotions versus rationality. Martha Nussbaum, who's a Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, basically highlighted that the Stoics did not make a strong conceptual distinction between emotions and rationality. They're just like all part of basic cognition. You can evaluate external events, and that evaluation is influenced by your emotional response.
You can also use reason to analyze those external elements, which is what we're going to talk about a bit, reason/just looking at it from a bird's eye view. Then those subsequent emotional responses would presumably disappear. This is theorizing what would happen if you were able to just be rational about everything. You can be rational about your emotions, you can be rational about all the stuff that happens to you.
Jase: That's such an interesting distinction to make. It is really interesting when you get into studying things from the ancient world, like philosophy and writings, and stuff like older religious writings. Is understanding that there are some fundamental ways that we think about thinking, the ways that we think about our brains and how they work, that we take for granted. Is just like, this is just a universal truth about it. Like, this whole separation between your rational brain and your emotional brain or something that, like you pointed out, Em, didn't make that distinction. Passion-
Emily: It all exists together.
Jase: - runs away, but emotions, and rationality, we're all one thing. Actually, there's a lot of science to back up that their view is actually the more accurate one than our current modern-day view of those two things being separate. Anyway, I just find stuff like that really fascinating to realize that you could take the words they've said and apply it to modern-day, and it sounds like, "Well, that's bullshit", but they didn't think of it the same way at the fundamental level.
Emily: I guess on the flip side of that, something that the books that I'm reading talk about a lot, is that you can take many of the quotes that the Stoics said and apply it to life today. They had similar anxieties and similar things going on back then. The same thing is happening now, thousands of years later, which is cool. It shows that this moment in time isn't that different than what they were going through back then.
Just a quick side note. This person who we're talking about, Martha Nussbaum, wrote a book called Therapy of Desire. She had an interesting chapter that explains why the Stoics were the first philosophical school that allowed women to study using, precisely, this rational/analytical method to deconstruct gender prejudices. It's pretty cool and surprising, but I love that. We're going to move into this view from above concept of Stoicism. I'm going to hit you with a quote by Marcus Aurelius.
Jase: There it is. We're here.
Dedeker: Feature Richard Harris.
Emily: Richard Harris. This is what he said, "Think of substance in its entirety, of which you have the smallest of shares; and of time in its entirety, of which a brief and momentary span has span has been assigned to you; and of the works of destiny, and how very small your part is in them".
Dedeker: In essence, the Stoics believed that if you zoomed way out, if you pulled back from yourself in the first person, and pulled back to the third person, and then even beyond and you just keep zooming out, out, out, you start to see your own interconnectedness to people and things around you. Instead of getting caught up in the weeds of all your own personal problems, you start to get a sense of perspective, and you can see your situation and your concerns with maybe a little bit more objectivity.
Jase: Then ideally, the ability to do this, and to zoom out and to see how interconnected you are with everyone else, to see the small amount of space, and the brief amount of time that you get to occupy in this world and in this universe, that that would actually lead to having more compassion for the people around you, and that we can move away from this very self-centered way of worrying about our own problems and more to having an understanding, and a kindness for the lives and decisions and actions of other people too.
Dedeker: I guess that's been the very brief 101 survey of Stoicism.
Emily: Pre-101.
Jase: Maybe a one-hundred level
Dedeker: The 100 Stoicism for non-major class. Of course, when you talk about caveats, I think, on the one hand, there are caveats around just like with any life philosophy, of course, there's going to be situations where maybe it doesn't seem like it applies perfectly, or where we can quite rightfully critique it. With Stoicism, in particular, just setting aside even critiquing the content, I think for me, definitely, I associate modern-day Stoicism with just like tech bros, honestly.
Emily: It came about again, because of Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday, talking about it for entrepreneurs. So, yes,
Dedeker: Yes, it's like new resurgence. But I think we saw that with like Buddhism, mindfulness, and meditation as well. There's this new resurgence mostly driven by privileged white people, often divorced from any other roots, ignoring any other similarities to Eastern philosophy, this very white, very Western focused emphasis, putting Stoicism up on this pedestal, which I think is really interesting,
We've commented on previous episodes, with what we've seen with meditation, is that as soon as we're able to take a philosophy or a practice and packages it as, "This is going to make you more productive", or, "This is going to make you more money", or, "This is going to de-stress you so that you can keep going to work", anything that takes a much grander life philosophy or practice and packages it into this very, I think, transactional sense, like we saw with the tech bros and Stoicism of like, "This is what's going to make you win at life and taking your companies of Y Combinator", or whatever it is that. Then it gets, in my opinion, a little bit, misused, perhaps, and sometimes even weaponized and diluted.
There's these associations, I think, of Stoicism being this very tech bro thing. But again, this population of people, they're not the only ones who have ownership of the entire philosophy of Stoicism. We're going to get into more specific studies in the bonus episodes, specifically about the negative effects of Stoicism and what they found. It's really interesting that a lot of the psychological studies on, "Stoicism", are pretty gendered and are setting out to try to demonstrate correlations between Stoicism gender, wellness, things like that.
Of course, sometimes we get a little bogged down in semantics, because certain studies refer to, "Stoicism", not necessarily as the philosophy but more as what we think of as colloquial Stoicism as in this idea of unify of pain or intense emotions or hardship, I'm just going to not care about it and I'm not going to display any of my emotions or any of my distress. Which is, as I think many people could surmise maybe an unhealthier version of applying Stoicism into one's life. We're going to cover some of the main criticisms of Stoicism as a philosophy.
Emily: Back in ancient Greek times, Stoicism was a little bit different than how it's thought of now, because now, or at least when the Romans were around, they didn't really believe in your life is pre-determined by someone like Zeus, for example. The old ancient Greek philosophy was okay, you essentially have your life pre-determined by Zeus and so whatever happens, Zeus already basically decided on it for you. Then when it got over to the Roman side of things, they were like, "Nah, man", and they decided that that was not going to be a thing anymore. It became non-predetermined. You essentially had things that you could control in your life, and then there were many things that you could not control, but it wasn't necessarily pre-determined by a figure in the sky, for example.
Jase: It's interesting, and just reminds me about the way of a lot of religions go as well, and I'm sure this applies to philosophy where, to a certain extent, there's the core idea or tenet of the religion or the philosophy, but they also lived within a society that had certain beliefs. Some people say this about Buddhism, the fact that reincarnation and Buddhism go together. Some people argue had nothing to do with actually what Siddartha was coming to teach, he just already lived in a society that believed in reincarnation. That wasn't part of his thing, that's just what they already had, and that Buddhism was other parts of it.
Anyway, reminds me of that, that the predeterminism was maybe just part of their culture at the time and didn't come along with Stoicism, it already existed. I think along with that, though, that predeterminism idea is that some people will argue that Stoicism is essentially just telling us that we can't do anything, and so we just need to learn to accept hardship and challenges and not do anything and just stop complaining. That's where it can get challenging, especially when it's coming from people with a lot of privilege, being like, "Yes, just like toughen up, be Stoic".
Also, our modern-day usage of Stoic, I think fits this of just like take it and don't do anything to change your situation. Others argue that it's impossible for humans to separate emotions from rational thinking. Funny enough, so did the original philosophers who came up with this. Some people argue that that's unrealistic and unhealthy to try to do. I would agree with that, and we can talk about that in more nuance as we go on. We have talked about this on the show before when we've discussed cognitive biases and anger, and how our families of origin and our past mold our perceptions. Then we've also talked about feelings don't equal facts, and that it's possible to bring in some rational thought to it as well.
I do think it's worth keeping that in mind, that's a valid criticism of if a modern-day person takes these things and thinks it means don't make any decisions based on emotion, it should all be logic, that's just not possible. Actually, in studies of people who have damaged the parts of their brain that cause certain emotional reactions, they actually find instead of becoming better decision-makers, they become almost incapable of making any decisions at all. It's like our emotions are intrinsically tied to our ability to make decisions as humans,so caveat there, we're not saying you should try to get rid of that.
Dedeker: Yes, and I think the seed of this, when you take principles of Stoicism and boil them down and oversimplify them to mean, "Oh, just be rational, don't feel any emotion. Just be logical, don't ever be upset." Then that morphs into some really unhealthy and not good places. For instance, I think there's just a long, long, long lineage of if we paint women as emotional and men as rational, and we naturally think that, "Oh, rational means better decision making and just better thinking and emotional is bad", then there's misogyny.
Or same thing, if we paint non-white people as being more emotional and out of control, and white people or white thinkers as being more rational, but then that also supports that racism and bias. Of course, it's like taking the seat of this very oversimplified thing and not accepting this idea that we can feel both these things at the same time, we can both lean on our rationality and lean on our emotions, that that's when we start to get into some really bad territory.
Emily: Yes, I think that's a challenge sometimes with philosophy in general, it's like these very large concepts that can be extrapolated out in maybe not great ways sometimes, so it is that question of like, "Let's try to take the middle path" as the Buddhists would say. One of the main tenets of Stoicism, one of the very first things that it talks about is to focus on the things that you can control and ignore the rest, but there's this big argument against Stoic teachings that humans really should care about some external events that are happening to them and to other people in the world.
Modern Stoic teachers do argue that the old Stoics didn't want us to just be super indifferent to everything else that was happening in the world but this point, again, just sometimes gets muddied, and it's not necessarily super clear in the Stoic teachings. That's another thing that people have to grapple with, and that might cause them to be like, "Yes, this is BS." Okay, so now that we've gotten the caveat section out of the way, we are going to talk a little bit more about Stoicism, and how you can take some of the teachings and practically apply them to your daily life, into your relationships, but first, we want to take a moment to talk about some ways that you can support our show, if it has brought you some value, and if you want to help us continue to bring it to the masses for free.
Dedeker: We're back. How does this actually applies to your life in a way that's helpful to you and to the people around you, and not just problematic and encouraging us all to tamp down our emotions. Of course, one of the quote-unquote goals of Stoicism, if we can even label it as a goal, is to achieve this almost state of enlightened indifference to the things that are out of our control specifically. To actually get there requires serious examination of yourself, of your coded response patterns, examination of the world at large, which is something that all of us, I hope, at this point are quite comfortable doing, especially if we're not monogamous folk and have had to do a lot of deconstruction of what makes us tick and the messages that we've got and how we want to be different.
This is why, at least for the ancients, philosophy was this way of life for the Stoics, not just an intellectual hypothetical exercise completely detached from reality. Same thing with things like mindfulness and meditation, the ideal state is not we sit on the mat and it's just great to have this little exercise, and then we go back to our normal lives and none of it applies. Ideally, it's something that carries into our regular lives for our own well-being and for the well-being of others.
I have a quote here from John M. Cooper, who is the professor of philosophy at Princeton University. This is from his book Pursuits of Wisdom, "For the Stoics, human happiness consists in living virtuously, and therefore, in living in agreement, both with ourselves in our undivided thoughts about ourselves, our actions, and our way of life, and with Zeus's or nature's own thoughts about our individual actions and our overall way of life." In that sense Stoicism is about coming to a place of wanting what it is that you get, rather than trying to force or impose your desires to bend or shape reality in order to change it to match your desires.
Jase: As we discussed in the caveat section before the break, people often misinterpret the Stoics and assume that it's expecting us to just completely give up our human nature, reject all emotion, don't even have them. Again, this is a quote from Professor Cooper and he says, "But the Stoics hold and argue with considerable plausibility that there is nothing permanent or belonging to human nature itself in any of this. However, widespread it is in the lives of all ordinary people, ourselves included".
"Once one understands how these sorts of feelings and motivations are based on distorted and false value judgments, they reasonably think one should and can come to see them not as enlivening or enriching in a properly human way, a life otherwise thinly rational and even automaton-like, but as serious obstacles to a truly full, specifically human life." That really read like a philosopher's quote, meaning it's super long, and hard to follow, and challenging. Essentially, we're talking about this idea that it's not about getting rid of those things and just living life as this unaffected robot.
Instead, understanding that some of these obsessions and things that we really seek after or stress about that were I would argue almost taught to perceive as enlivening our lives or enriching our lives may actually be hurting us more than they're helping us, and that there could be a lot of joy to be had, and less suffering to be had if we're able to let go of some of those and loosen up our attachment to them or our grip on some of these specific types of accomplishments and things. A little bit ironic that entrepreneur cultures grasped this, because that's so much about always wanting, always needing, always striving.
Jase: What do you think that is?
Dedeker: Yes. I found the quote, it was another philosophy professor who was saying that yes, I don't know if this is actually a really good practice of Stoicism because if you were truly incorporating Stoicism, you'd be much more willing to give up the rich lifestyle, the entrepreneur lifestyle to getting more and getting more and growing more and growing more that that's ironic and at odds that maybe what the philosophy is actually really about.
Emily: Something to think about there. They love it, though. I hear it on all of the big entrepreneurial podcasts for sure. Now, finally, we've reached the point where we're going to talk about a couple of actionable tools and again, it's philosophy. It's sometimes a little challenging to know what actionable tools you can take from all of this. If you've been interested or if this has piqued your interest a bit, hearing about Stoicism, then maybe consider reading some of the books on the subject.
I'm reading The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. I also have a cool journal as well that is a companion journal to The Daily Stoic. You also could go straight to one of the earliest sources of Stoicism and check out Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. That's another option. I do want to talk about the journal a bit because it is a big thing in Stoicism that you are, as Ryan Holiday, puts it, preparing for the day ahead, and then reflecting on the day that has passed.
My little companion journal to the daily Stoic is I read my passage from the Stoic philosopher, and it's like one little teaching a day in school. It's for all 365 days, and then you go to the journal, and you write about that passage with a prompt in the morning. Then in the evening, you go back after your day is finished, and you do some reflection and you write a little bit more about it. It's been great. I've really enjoyed doing it. I've done it for a couple of weeks now. It's just a nice way for me to open and close my day and to take some time for myself and create this new habit of stopping for a minute and just having some reflection period. I know I sometimes like shit on journaling exercises on the show or make fun of them.
Dedeker: You don't shit on him directly on the show. For the listeners who can't see, is like maybe there's a little bit of an eye roll perhaps.
Emily: Well, I just never was super into journaling, but we're about to write a book and I've wanted to flex those writing muscles a bit in a different way. This has been a really nice way to just reflect. Think about that. That's something that you could perhaps do.
Jase: I'm always the one who's saying do journal.
Emily: You love it. You’d freaking love it.
Dedeker: Everyone knows, journal and Jase, very pro journaling.
Emily: Yes, love it, for sure.
Jase: If there's one thing people know about Jase, is he loves journaling. Much like taking any ritual or philosophy or something and applying it into your life, it takes some practice. Things like meditation, or yoga, or music therapy, or journaling, or any of these. They take some practice to really start getting implemented into your daily life. When you're in the heat of being upset about something, or being stressed about something, or being worried, or grasping really strongly like, "Oh, if I just had this thing, then I could be happy." When you're caught in the middle of that, learning to step out of it takes practice.
This is an exercise that Emily put together, based on some explanations of the view from above, from orionphilosophy.com, and combined some of those things with other stuff that she's been reading, and I'm going to take you through this little exercise here. Next time, something challenging happens in your relationship, but in the context of relationship it really could be anything, take 10 seconds to breathe and calm your mind and body. If you find that you're still in the same emotional state, go do something away from your partner for 10 to 15 minutes, or away from the stimulus for 10 to 15 minutes, or however long the next part of the exercise takes.
During that time, take time to reflect on the bigger picture. Think about what your partner is also going through at this moment. What did their day look like today? Did they seem distracted or in a huff when they got home from work? Then go even further away from the present moment. What has been happening recently in both of your lives? What outside distractions or challenges might be weighing heavily on both of you? Then zoom out even further, what's the current state of the world? How has that affected your mood and your overall well-being? How might it be affecting theirs or other people's?
Then go even further out than that, beyond the state of the world, or what's been happening recently, and think about your whole life, and all the things that have brought you to this exact moment, all the things that you've been through, all the things that you've learned. Think about the biases, and triggers, and values that you have because of everything you've been through. Now think about your partner, and use what you know about them and their history to reflect on their life and their experiences, their biases, their triggers, their values.
Then finally, circle back and realize that these emotions and intense feelings that you were feeling when you started this represent only this tiny moment in time for each of you. Then with this in mind, try to go back to your partner and hopefully with some compassion and some sympathy for them and what they're going through, and hopefully that starts you on that path to finding a more constructive solution together.
Dedeker: I'm glad we're recording this because I want to take that little segment that Jase just whipped out and just have it on repeat for myself when I'm going through stuff.
Jase: A little background music under it.
Dedeker: Exactly, yes. Some nice calming music, especially if I'm getting into a fight with you Jase, specifically it will be nice.
Jase: I don't know if I should be the one to couch you through that.
Emily: Just his voice telling you, "Now step back and think about your partner." Exactly.
Dedeker: "Stop the fuck back and think about your partner in this situation, Dedeker".
Jase: Exactly.
Jase: I'll record like a custom version for you.
Dedeker: Special version for me.
Emily: I love it.
Dedeker: We're going to close out this section with this quote from the ancient Greek Stoic Epictetus. It's quite pithy, "Right from the start. Get into the habit of saying every harsh appearance. 'You are an appearance and not the only way of seeing the thing that appears.' Then examine it and test it by the yardsticks you have." Which is nice. Just a nice little reminder to zoom back and take some perspective.
Jase: Yes, I love that. The idea that just because something appears one way doesn't mean it is that way. I also really like that, "Test it by the yardsticks you have." It's almost acknowledging you can't ever perfectly know any person, or thing, or situation, but just do the best with whatever yardsticks you have.
Dedeker: In conclusion, some things to hold in your heart and remember. First one, our favorite one. Don't weaponize this shit.
Dedeker: Don't do it. Resist the urge to just try to, "Zen your way", or, "Stoic your way" out of every emotion or every challenging feeling. Don't use the principles of Stoicism to clobber your partners if they're having difficult feelings or having a difficult time, just don't do it. The whole point of this is for well-being and compassion and the well-being of others as well. Don't use it as a weapon, please.
Emily: Just like so many things that we talked about on the show like meditation, any of the tools that we give you, it might be another great way to help us get out of our own heads. Instead, point us in this different direction away from our own minutia and our own anger and sadness and frustration, and maybe put us on the path and in the direction of some understanding and compassion and empathy for others. These teachings, they can be applied to yourself personally, they can be applied to your romantic relationships, they can be applied to the relationships that you have with your parents and friends.
We're just trying to get along and get by every single day. The thing that I love about the Stoic teachings also is that it shows us we're not that different from one another. We have similar challenges that we face, we have similar ideas, and hopes, and dreams, and fears, and stuff like that. Ultimately, this teaching can help show us that we're not that different from one another.
Dedeker: With that broader perspective and an open mind, we can cultivate compassion and understanding for others. Either others who are distant from us, like a stranger, or others who are close to us, like a partner or a family member. We can practice letting go and not allowing little things to get us down.
Emily: Yes. We hope that you liked our 100 course on Stoicism, not even one on one, it was just 100. Again, as always, feel free to take what you like and leave the rest because the Stoics would be super cool with it. They're like, whatever, everything's fleeting.
Dedeker: "I'm Marcus Aurelius, played by Richard Harris in the film Gladiator and I say that's true. Take what you want. Leave the rest. It's cool. I promise".
Emily: Richard Harris is in the room. My God. It's amazing.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Back from the dead.