Month: December 2022

Categories
Coffee Break

225 – Be Yourself

225 - Be Yourself cover
Be Yourself
What mask do you wear?

How much of our lives do we spend living in way to please other people? How much unhappiness do we feel in our lives because we’re not being ourselves? Today I want to talk about why it can be really hard to live authentically.

And this, too, affords no small occasion for anxieties – if you are bent on assuming a pose and never reveal yourself to anyone frankly, in the fashion of many who live a false life that is all made up for show; for it is torturous to be constantly watching oneself and be fearful of being caught out of our usual role. And we are never free from concern if we think that every time anyone looks at us he is always taking our measure; for many things happen that strip off our pretense against our will, and, though all this attention to self is successful, yet the life of those who live under a mask cannot be happy and without anxiety. But how much pleasure there is in simplicity that is pure, in itself unadorned, and veils no part of its character! Yet even such a life as this does run some risk of scorn, if everything lies open to everybody; for there are those who disdain whatever has become too familiar. But neither does virtue run any risk of being despised when she is brought close to the eyes, and it is better to be scorned by reason of simplicity than tortured by perpetual pretense.

― Seneca

Growing up, I was constantly adjusting and perfecting the persona that I showed to other people. Because I was expected to be a good little mormon boy – we used the term Peter Priesthood – I was constantly making sure that I never really revealed my true thoughts and feelings about a lot of things, depending on the company I was in. I learned how to espouse the “correct” views so that I was able to fit in to the culture I was in. It was only when I spent time with my theater friends outside of church or school that I felt like I was able to be more of my true self.

The biggest problem with this was that I always felt like a fraud. I disagreed with the church on a lot of issues, but because I had been raised to believe that church doctrine was the word of god and it’s leaders were infallible, I felt like there was something wrong with me rather than the teachings. The church’s views on topics ranging from sexuality to science to the treatment of women were thing that just never fit with my own opinions and ideas. Because I was so immersed in the culture, I got pretty good at saying all the right things at the right time.

This was also an issue at home where often I had to hide my true feelings and ideas in order to keep the peace with my father. Learning to navigate his explosive moods to stay safe from his wrath also felt like a tamping down of my own self. It’s taken many years, decades even, to learn how to stand up for my own opinions. Often times I wasn’t even sure what I felt or thought about things or what I really wanted as a person because I had spent so many decades hiding my wants and needs in order to fit in with others and remain a member of the church.

Over time, what this did to me, and what it does to others, is it gives you the message that who you are as a person is not acceptable. Because we all want to fit in, we bury that true self because that self is not okay. We end up miserable because deep down we know that we’re faking it to get along. We’re lying to ourselves and to everyone around us, and that takes a toll on our mental health. We often feel resentful of those around us because we feel like they are the reason that we can’t relax and just be ourselves, when in reality, it’s prison of our own making.

The life of those who live under a mask cannot be happy and without anxiety.

— Seneca

We spend much of our time doing things or acting in a way to fit in with those around you, and this feels disingenuous and fake and not who we really want to be. This is what happens when we are well socialized. We all are trained by our culture of how to fit in and what things are acceptable and what things gain you approval of others. Breaking this kind of thinking and behavior is really hard for most people because from birth we are trained to seek approval. And for most of us, this pretense we’re taught to keep up feels fake, but we’re not sure how to be otherwise.

Recognizing this feeling is where the work starts. Once you start to look around and see what is really going, you have choices. Do you just go with the flow or are you honest with yourself and others about who you really are and what you really want? Do you tell people no when you don’t want to do something? Do you go along with the crowd so as not to offend others? Do you step up and be that person that you want to be regardless of who others want you to be?

These are not easy choices. It feels like so much at stake for stepping up and owning your life. But there is even more at stake if you don’t, mainly, living a life that you won’t regret when it comes to a close.

So how to we break out of this pattern? How do we take off this mask?

It think the first step is to accept yourself for exactly who you are. This is not an easy thing. When you’ve been brought up with all the subtle messages that the person you are is not acceptable, it’s really hard to believe that you are okay. But I will tell you something, you are okay. Do you know how I know that? Because you are here in the planet to be exactly who you are. No one else is just like you, so your job is to be the best you that you can be. Accept all the messy, weird, and quirky bits of you, just like you do with your friends.

Second, spend time with people that accept and encourage you to be yourself. If people don’t like you for being yourself, then they are not your people and that’s okay. Why try to fit in with others that don’t like you? Be around those that you can be honest with. That you can tell your truth to without being shamed or belittled.

Another step that I have found comes from one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman. In a commencement speech at the University of Philadelphia, he said, the most important thing we can do in life is to “Make good art.” Why art? Art has always been a way for people to explore facets about themselves. Writing, drawing, sculpting, singing, writing music, whatever it is that you can do, just do it. You can find what makes you unique. And don’t worry if it’s good or not. It’s not about impressing anyone else, it’s just about exploring and making things that are all about you.

What it really comes down to is learning to listen to yourself, knowing what you want, and making choices that suit you best rather than make others happy. You may lose friends and even family if you take that path, but you might just find yourself.

Hello friends! Thank you for listening. Stop by the website at stoic.coffee where you can sign up for our newsletter, and buy some great looking shirts and hoodies at the Stoic Coffee Shop.

Want to help support this podcast? Become a patron on patreon!

Like the theme song? You can find it here from my alter ego. 🙂

Lastly if you know of someone that would benefit from or appreciate this podcast, please share it. Word of mouth is the best way to help this podcast grow. Thanks again for listening.

Categories
Acceptance

224 – To You or For You?

224 - To You or For You? cover
To You or For You?
To You or For You?

It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it.

— Seneca

Do you think that life just happens to you? That you are simply a pawn in the game of life? Because there are so many things that we don’t have control over in our lives, it can be easy to fall into this kind of mental trap. The problem is that when adopt this kind of thinking, then we have placed an unhelpful filter through which we view everything that happens in our lives.

While there is plenty of debate within the stoic community as to whether or not stoics are fatalists, meaning they believe that life happens as fate determines, I honestly don’t worry too much about it. If we are simply following out the plan of life that is predetermined for us, then there is really nothing we can do about it. If we aren’t and we actually do have freewill, then we should keep doing our best to live the best life we can.

With that said, it can be easy to fall into the trap of feeling like life just happens to us, and that we have little to no control over anything. And if this is the case, and we have little to no control over out lives, then adjusting our outlook to be of the mind that everything that happens actually happens “for us” and not just “to us” can certainly make the trip much more enjoyable.

So let’s take a look at each of these perspectives.

When we believe that life happens “to us” then there is very little that we can do about it. Everything is just going to happen and we just have to endure it. We feel like victims because we have no control over all these things happening to us. We wish things would happen the way we want them to, and when things don’t go the way that we want we complain about it. We blame our failures on someone or something outside of ourselves. We are simply at the whim of all these external forces.

When we believe that life happens “for us”, the same things may happen, but how we respond to them and how we let them impact us is quite different. We are no longer a victim of circumstance. We look at everything with an eye as to what we can learn from this situation. We find ways to become stronger from what happens to us. We are curious about what is happening, and how we might even be able to enjoy things, even if they are challenging or uncomfortable. There is also no one to “blame” for anything because even if something sucks, if we approach it as something that life is supposed to bring our way, that it really is something for us to learn from.

An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.

– Epictetus

When we hit setbacks, we don’t look around for someone to blame for it, we recognize that the setback is there for us to learn. Maybe it’s to teach us persistence. Maybe it’s a sign for us to change course. Maybe we missed something along the way and the setback is time for us to evaluate other opportunities.

Let’s take an example that can show the difference between these two perspectives. Let’s say that you had to have a difficult conversation with someone, and you knew that things could get heated. If you were to approach this with a “to me” attitude, you would be frustrated with this person that they are getting angry with you or not listening to your point of view. You might be defensive with them because of all the things they were doing to you. You might even avoid the conversation in the first place.

But if you were to approach them with an “for me” attitude, you would see it as an opportunity. You might see this as a chance for you to practice listening to this person and to hear their concerns. You would see it as an opportunity to craft a solution that suits both of you. You would be more likely to approach it with compassion rather than defensiveness. It would also make it less likely for you to avoid the situation in first place.

So why do we feel like most things happen to us rather than for us? It think there are a number of reasons. First is that quite naturally we don’t have much control over many of the things that life sends our way. I mean the fact that we don’t control where we were born, the color of our skin, or the family that we belong to, we recognize that some of the core parts of our life are just chance. Because we have little control over some of the key aspect of our life, it’s natural to apply this to other areas of our lives.

I think another big reason is that humans are great at taking the path of least resistance and it’s easier to blame what happens on things outside of ourselves. Taking ownership of our lives is a lot of work. It’s something that we all talk about, but to actually step up and so is not something most of us are good at. We’re not really taught to accept responsibility, we’re taught not to fail. I mean think about in school. If you mess up a test or class project, you’re punished for it. You get bad grades and you get in trouble with your parents. We don’t look at those things as signals that you are not understanding something or pointing to areas that you need to work on. And so we do our best to avoid having that failure on us, so we look to find someone or something to blame.

I do want to point out though that this is not the same as the platitude that “everything happens for a reason”. I find this is very popular in religious circles and it always rubbed me wrong because to me it always implied that you were either being rewarded or punished by god for being a good or bad person. People don’t get cancer for a good reason. People don’t get abused by their parents for a reason. That’s just not how life works. Life just happens, and sometimes it sucks and can be pretty damaging, and it’s so much easier to just blame everything that is wrong on something outside of ourselves.

I like to think of “for me” is a much more neutral perspective. Life puts these things out there for me, and I can decide what I want to do with them. I can learn from them, and grow stronger. I can ignore them, and try to find ways avoid them. But if we really want to be in control of our lives, we need to look at challenges not as something that is in our way, but more like an obstacle course that we choose to test ourselves and something that we can improve our skills in overcoming. When we can recognize that life and it’s many challenges are here for us, the better we can get about just facing things head on with curiosity and compassion.

Hello friends! Thank you for listening. Stop by the website at stoic.coffee where you can sign up for our newsletter, and buy some great looking shirts and hoodies at the Stoic Coffee Shop.

Want to help support this podcast? Become a patron on patreon!

Like the theme song? You can find it here from my alter ego. 🙂

Lastly if you know of someone that would benefit from or appreciate this podcast, please share it. Word of mouth is the best way to help this podcast grow. Thanks again for listening.

Categories
Coffee Break

223 – Changing Others

223 - Changing Others cover
Changing Others
Epictetus

Living on this planet with other people can be very challenging at times. If you’re like me, sometimes you have a strong difference of opinion with someone, and you end up in an argument and spend a lot of time and energy trying to change the other persons mind. We see this play out on social media as well where people spend a lot of time and energy trying to debate other people to get them to change. Watching this behavior in myself and others, makes me ask the question:

Why do we spend so much time trying to change other people or expecting that other people will change for us?

We know that we cannot change others, but there’s a part of us that wants the world to change for us. Our brain looks for threats and danger outside of ourselves in order to keep us safe. When we’re uncomfortable, it’s challenging to just sit with those things that are uncomfortable so we look for a cause outside of ourselves. Maybe we don’t like what someone else said, or we disagree with their opinion. We think that if the other person would behave or think differently, then we would be happier. Rather than spending our time and energy looking inside and finding what we control in the situation, we try to change what we think is the cause.

The problem is that we misidentify the cause of our distress. We think the cause is someone or something else, but really it comes down to the story that we’re telling ourself. It’s the meaning that we give to what the other person said or did. We take their actions and words and interpret them to suit the narrative that going on in our minds. We spin what they other person says in a negative or positive light depending out our opinion of them.

One of the main reasons that we may try to change other people is that we want others to think like us. Human beings are very social animals and fitting in with others is very important. It’s part of what helps our survival. If there are more people who think like us, then we feel like our worldview is correct, and we feel safer. We feel like we’re part of how the world is supposed to be. When others disagree with us, we may feel like our worldview is under threat, which causes us to feel uncomfortable or even hostile. When it comes to an opinion that we hold very strongly, we may unconsciously feel fear when something comes along and challenges our beliefs. We don’t like the tension and so we try to change the other persons opinion.

I also think as humans we’re all a little lazy, or more to the point, our brains are lazy tries to be efficient. Taking time to figure out where we might be wrong or to figure out the the things we can control takes time and cognitive energy. It also takes energy to actually control the things we can. If we can get someone else to do the work, then we don’t have to. The problem with expecting others to do this kind of work, and to change for us, is that it makes others resentful, and the changes that we need to make don’t happen. Also, in the long run it means a lot more work for us if we expect others to change for us, we have to somehow convince all those other people to change to fit our worldview.

When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.

— Epictetus

So how do we work with this? How can we get better about recognizing and staying in a place where we don’t need to change other people in order for us to feel happy?

I think the first thing we need to do is ask ourselves why it is important that we change this other person? What do we get if they change their mind? What happens if they don’t? What are you making it mean if this person has a different opinion? What’s the story you’re telling yourself?

I think a lot of this behavior comes from insecurity. When we are insecure, we need others to agree with us in order for us to feel okay with ourselves. Our ego needs that validation in order for us to feel okay.

When we are comfortable with ourselves, we don’t need others to agree with us. Just as we wouldn’t argue with someone over whether 1 + 1 = 2, if we are really secure with ourselves, we would not feel threatened over someone disagreeing with us.

Don’t argue with people nor insist on showing them truth. Maybe it is you who needs to change your mind. Even if you are right you only incur resentment by trying to correct others.

—The Ancient Sage (@theAncientSage)

We also need to consider the fact that we might be the one who is wrong. Just because you think something and have an opinion about something does not mean that you are correct and the other person is not. When we take the time to really consider someone else’s opinion, we may find some problems with the opinion that we are holding. We would just realize that we had bad information and could adjust accordingly.

Lastly, we need to recognize that when we expect others to change for us, we give our power away because we are basing our comfort or happiness upon someone else changing for us. When we expect others to change for us, we are placing ourselves in the role of a victim. We’re unhappy and won’t feel happy until someone else changes and does what we want them to. Not a good way to to find equanimity.

Learning to let go of our ego and of our need to have other people think like we do can reduce a lot of stress in our lives. When we can listen to and be curious about other peoples opinions without taking it to mean that we’re wrong if we don’t agree with them. We can expand our worldview while at the same time preserve our equanimity.

Hello friends! Thank you for listening. Stop by the website at stoic.coffee where you can sign up for our newsletter, and buy some great looking shirts and hoodies at the Stoic Coffee Shop.

Want to help support this podcast? Become a patron on patreon!

Like the theme song? You can find it here from my alter ego. 🙂

Lastly if you know of someone that would benefit from or appreciate this podcast, please share it. Word of mouth is the best way to help this podcast grow. Thanks again for listening.

Categories
Control

222 – Power Over Your Mind

222 - Power Over Your Mind cover
Photographer: 919039361464473

The stoics are pretty clear that we control very little on our lives, but we do control the one thing that will make the biggest impact on our lives – our own minds.

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

—Marcus Aurelius

I like to think of this idea in two different ways. First, you have power over your mind, but not power over outside events. This lesson is challenging in so many ways because we want to have some semblance of control over our world. When we embrace this idea, it can be scary because we realize that we have so little control. Accidents, natural disasters, actions of others are all examples of things that we have no control over, yet can change our lives in profound ways.

I think that so much of the stress and anxiety we have in our lives comes from worrying about things that we have little or no control over. When we can learn to let go of what we do not control, we can release a lot of stress in our lives.

A good example of this is when I’ve applied for jobs in the past. Often I’d be really excited about a position, but after my interview I would be so stressed out waiting to hear if I got the job or not. Because I wanted the job so badly I would feel anxious because I had no control over it. There could be other people that were more qualified than I. There could be internal factors at the company that I had no influence over.

As I got older and wiser, I better able to handle waiting to hear back on job. I would do my best in the interview, then simply let go of any expectations, almost as if I had never even applied for the job. If I got the job, I was excited. If not, it wasn’t as big of a deal because I recognized that I did my part, and the rest was out of my hands.

The second way to look at this quote is that you have power over your mind, but outside events do not. Learning to recognize how you let outside events influence you is hard. Part of being a stoic is developing mental discipline so that outside events don’t have an outsized impact on your well being. I know that I often struggle and get spun out when things don't go my way. But the thing is, when we let outside events disrupt our well being, it doesn't change that outside event, and it often makes things worse.

Having a clear idea of what we can and can't control is for me the most fundamental principle of stoicism, and almost every other idea flows from there. This is also one of the easier concepts to understand, but so hard to actually implement. I know that I will spend the rest of my life trying to get a handle on this one principle.

How do you manage to clearly divide what you can and can't control? I think one of the biggest tools is to ask yourself a simple question: Have I taken action on everything that is in my power? Sometimes talking over your options with a friend or writing them down can help clarify what you have control over.

Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.

—James Allen

This is one of my favorite quotes because it encapsulates several simple yet powerful inter-related principles of how to have more control over your mind. Each of these principles help support one another. When we master one, we are strengthened in the others. In a word, we become more anti-fragile – challenges don't weaken us, but actually do the opposite and help use become stronger and more resilient.

When we work to control ourselves, we develop strength of will. This means that when we set out to accomplish something, we are able to direct our minds and our bodies in situations where others slack off or quit. We are better able to ignore distractions. We are better able to ignore others that might try to interfere or keep us from reaching our goals.

When we practice right thinking, we become masters of our minds. We maximize the effect of useful thoughts, and we are aware of and minimize the damage of unhelpful thought patterns. We are better able to cheer ourselves on, and minimize the negative self talk that often derails us even before we get started. The more we master our thinking, the stronger our will.

When we are angry or upset, our mental abilities decline. We are less able to think creatively. Our vision narrows and we miss other options and possibilities. When we stay calm and keep our cool, we retain our power. We are able to think clearer and direct our will. In challenging situations, when others are losing their shit, we are able to not only survive, but thrive.

For me, taking some time each day to meditate helps me to cultivate more discipline over my mind. I get to know how I think and what I think. I learn the ways that I try to self-sabotage because of insecurities and self doubt, and build up defenses against them.

When we take the time to slow down and recognize what we're thinking, we are able to recognize those things that are outside of ourselves, and the impact they have on us. Whether that's the actions of other people or the weather or traffic or any other ousted event, cultivating self-awareness through mindfulness and meditation is the best tool to take control over our minds.

Hello friends! Thank you for listening. Stop by the website at stoic.coffee where you can sign up for our newsletter, and buy some great looking shirts and hoodies at the Stoic Coffee Shop.

Want to help support this podcast? Become a patron on patreon!

Like the theme song? You can find it here from my alter ego. 🙂

Lastly if you know of someone that would benefit from or appreciate this podcast, please share it. Word of mouth is the best way to help this podcast grow. Thanks again for listening.