Are you aware of how your perspective influences how you see reality? Today I want to talk about how the Stoics teach us that our perspective shapes our reality.
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
— Anias Nin
Perception and Reality
Our reality is not an objective construct; it is a subjective experience shaped by our individual perceptions. These perceptions are the lens through which we view the world, influenced by our beliefs, past experiences, and emotional states. This lens filters every experience, interaction, and decision we make, often without our conscious awareness. Our perceptions profoundly shape our reality, molding our experiences, choices, and interactions with the world. Stoicism holds that our perceptions—how we see the world—play a critical role in our emotional and psychological state.
The Plank
“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
— Shakespeare (Hamlet)
The other day I stumbled on a perfect example of how our perceptions can impact us in a very literal way. There’s an interesting bunch of videos on YouTube about Richie’s Plank Experience. What this is, is a simple VR game where you take an elevator to the 15th floor of a virtual building. Once the elevator opens, you step out onto a plank that is about 12 inches wide, which is about 30 centimeters for those not in the US. The goal of the game is pretty simple. You walk out to the end of the plank and eat some virtual donuts. Then you can either jump off and fall to the ground, or turn around and go back to the elevator.
There are several videos of this on YouTube, but the one that I watched, took place on the streets of London where they asked passersby to try the game. What was fascinating was that even though people knew they were safe on a street in the middle of London, they still felt the same fear as if they were actually on a plank 15 stories high. Each person talked about how scary it was, how their hearts were racing, and one person even had his legs shaking with fear. There was one person though, who was able to override this fear better than the others, and was even skipping across the plank.
I found this so fascinating. Even though they rationally knew it was just a game, most of them couldn’t get their bodies to relax. They still felt like they were in danger. In a very literal sense, they put on a new lens that changed their perception of the world, and their unconscious and their bodies reacted to these perceptions.
Influencing Opinions
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
— Henry David Thoreau
Our opinions are a direct outcome of our perceptions. For instance, two individuals can witness the same event and have entirely different interpretations based on their personal biases and past experiences. For example, in politics, where perceptions are heavily influenced by ideology, this leads to divergent opinions on the same issues. A conservative might view a tax increase as a burden on economic freedom, while a liberal might see it as a necessary step towards social equity. Here, their political ideologies, acting as a perceptual lens, shape their opinions of the same policy proposal.
Shaping Choices
Our choices, from the mundane to the life-changing, are also deeply influenced by our perceptions. Consider the decision to change careers. To someone with a growth mindset—a belief in the potential for personal development and improvement—a career change is an opportunity for advancement and learning. To someone with a fixed mindset, the same decision might seem fraught with risk and uncertainty, and as a sign of failure in their current path. The Stoics would argue that by shifting our perception to see the opportunity in the challenge, we can make choices that align with our true values and aspirations.
Interactions with the World
"Mankind are born for the sake of each other. So either teach or tolerate."
— Marcus Aurelius
How we interact with the world and others is a reflection of our internal perceptions. For example, if we perceive the world as hostile and uncaring, we may approach others with suspicion and reserve, potentially leading to isolation and loneliness. Conversely, viewing the world as a place of opportunity and kindness can lead us to form meaningful connections and engage with life more fully. Marcus Aurelius, another Stoic philosopher, emphasized the importance of perceiving the interconnectedness of all things and acting in harmony with this understanding for the betterment of oneself and society.
The Placebo Effect
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality."
— Seneca
Our minds are powerful things and our perceptions of something can have real impacts in surprising ways. For example, the placebo effect is a powerful demonstration of how perception can alter our physical reality. Patients given a placebo, a treatment with no therapeutic effect, often experience an improvement in their condition simply because they believe they are receiving a real treatment. In many studies, patients were given were sugar pills and found relief from their symptoms. This phenomenon illustrates the capacity of the mind, guided by perception, to influence the body.
Social Media and Perception
Social media platforms are modern examples of how perceptions can be manipulated and, in turn, shape reality. Algorithms curate content that aligns with our existing beliefs and perceptions, reinforcing our worldviews and often creating echo chambers. This can intensify political polarization, as users are rarely exposed to opposing viewpoints, leading to a more divided reality based on perceived differences rather than actual ones. Because social media is also only selected slices of life, we only see what others are willing to share, which are usually just the highlights. We get a distorted view of who other people are, and what their lives are really like. Because of this, we make judgments about them based on very limited information.
Awareness of Perceptions
"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them."
—Epictetus
So why do we want to be aware of the perceptions that we have about the world around us?
Because those perceptions can either be the wind our sails that propel us forward to accomplish the things we set out to do, or they can be the millstone that keeps us not only stuck where we are, but often are the very thing that sink our ship even before it gets out of the harbor. The Stoics teach us that our perceptions are one of the only things that we have control over, and therefore can have the largest impact on our wellbeing and happiness.
By developing the awareness of the perceptions we have, we are able to recognize our own limiting believes and biases, and learn to see when they are holding us back. We can also choose to change our perceptions into something that keeps us open to possibilities, seeing the world in a more positive light, and let slights, insults, and frustrations slide off of us like water off a duck.
Stoic Mindfulness
"You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."
— Marcus Aurelius
How do we get better at managing our perceptions so they help us navigate the world in a happier and more productive way?
The Stoics offer a remedy to the potential distortions caused by our perceptions: the practice of mindfulness and the discipline of questioning our automatic interpretations of events. By becoming aware of how our perceptions shape our reality and actively challenging them, we can align our perceptions more closely with objective reality, or at least a more constructive subjective reality.
When something happens to us, we have what the Stoic call an “impression”, meaning, we observe what happens to us. We take these impressions and make a judgement about it, and that judgment leads us to take some action, usually driven by some emotion. But the Stoics recommend that we take a moment and try to see these impressions at their most basic level.
Did someone say something you thought was offensive? If we break this down to its most basic elements, what really happened was that someone made some sounds with their mouth, we interpreted what they said by thinking about those sounds, and we made a judgment about what those sounds meant. Recognizing your own judgments about what the other person said gives you the space to choose what you want to do about it. This is what Marcus Aurelius mean when he said, “Choose not to be harmed and you won’t be.”
Now this doesn’t mean that you don’t have any feelings surrounding the things that happen to you. If you partner breaks up with you, it hurts, and it’s okay to feel hurt. There is nothing wrong with feeling those uncomfortable or negative emotions. It’s okay to grieve the loss of the relationship and to feel the loss of the future that you thought you would have. What’s important is that you are aware of those feelings and your perceptions, so that even if you feel the hurt, you make choices not from the hurt, but from your rationality, principles, and values. Rather than lashing out from of hurt or spite, you can act with honor and compassion and make the situation easier on both parties. As Seneca said, “The consequences of anger are often far worse than the thing that caused the anger.”
Higher View
Another way to shift our perspective is to take what the Stoics call “the higher view”. What this means is that the more we can zoom out from our current perspective and look at situation from a much higher view. For example, if you can imagine viewing your current situation from 30,000 feet. Think about how small you look. Think about all the other people in your neighborhood, your city, and even the world and all the things they are working on and struggling with at the same moment. It gives you a perspective on how small you are and how small the things you are worried about are. But it also gives a perspective on the interconnectedness of us all.
This is actually a documented phenomenon called the “overview effect”. Astronauts who spend time in space often talk about how their whole perspective on life shifts when they see the Earth, the “pale blue dot” as Carl Sagan, a prominent physicist would call it. This literal change in perspective, changes how they view the rest of the world. Seeing the Earth and its thin layer of atmosphere, they see how fragile, tiny, and almost insignificant our planet seems in the vastness of space. They often gain a feeling of connectedness with the rest of humanity, a sense of compassion for all inhabits of the world, and a great sadness at the conflicts and struggles that plague us as a species.
Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant who spent several days in space, saw the planet through the context of her profession. She wrote, “It felt unifying, but it also made me think of healthcare disparities in a different way. How can someone born on that side of the globe have a completely different prognosis from someone born over here? I could see the nations all at once, and it felt more unfair than ever, the ugliness that existed within all of that beauty.”
Conclusion
Our perceptions are not merely passive windows to the world but active constructors of our reality. They shape our opinions, influence our choices, and dictate how we interact with the world. Stoicism teaches us the importance of examining and, when necessary, adjusting our perceptions to live a more fulfilling and less disturbed life. By understanding the power of perception, we can begin to see not just the world as it appears to be, but as it could be, through a lens of compassion, reason, and openness to change.
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.
Erick: Hello friends. My name is Erick Cloward and welcome to the Stoic Coffee Break. The Stoic Coffee Break is a weekly podcast where I take aspects of Stoicism and do my best to break them down to the most important points. Share my thoughts and my experiences, both my successes and my failures, and hope that you can learn something from them all within the space of Coffee Break.
This week's episode is an interview with Ori Halevy. Now, Ori is a comedian here in Berlin, where I'm staying at the moment, and last week and a few weeks ago, when I was having a really rough day, I decided to go out for some comedy and caught his show and really enjoyed it. We talked for a bit afterwards and just, he's a really smart guy, very philosophical and a lot of fun.
So I thought it would be fun to sit down and chat with him about life, philosophy, humor, and anything else that came to our minds. So this was done in a coffee shop in Berlin. Unfortunately, it's a little bit noisy and we did have some audio issues, but we did our best to clean this up and hope it sounds good.
You can also watch a video of this on YouTube, on my YouTube channel at Stoic Coffee. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I enjoyed chatting with Ori. Hello everybody. Welcome to the Stoic Coffee Break podcast. This is another live interview that I'm doing here. We're in Berlin.
We're at a nice little coffee shop. We've got our coffee going on here. So, coffee and tea. Cheers. So, this was a Nugetti. A Nugetti? Yeah, basically it's a mocha.
Ori: I like how they invent stupid names for things. Like if it's mocha, it's 3 euros, but if it's a Nugetti, it's 4. 70.
Erick: Exactly. So I'm like, eh, it's all good.
So today I'm with, go ahead and introduce yourself since I always butcher your name.
Ori: My name is Ori Halevy. I'm a comedian in Berlin, in English. Which is a weird choice. Yeah, what else? What should I say about myself?
Erick: Just talk about what you do. You obviously have the comedy show.
Ori: Yeah, I have Epic Comedy Berlin.
That's our comedy brand. We run a bunch of different shows around town. We have I don't know if people know this, but in Berlin there is actually the biggest English comedy scene in Europe. Yeah, we have I like to say we have comedians here from all over the world that couldn't make it in their country.
So they came here. But really it is a very, like, it's amazing seeing people tour everywhere. They're, some of them become a little famous online and stuff like that. And we, so there's a lot of, a bunch of different open mics. We just work with the most experienced comedians that are touring our local.
And we have different formats. So we have like a showcase on Friday at a place called Zosh. It's a very cool jazz club. But then we also have a Monday show which is actually philosophy versus comedy where my partner in crime, Brendan Hickey, he's he's got a master's in philosophy so he brings a real philosophical idea and then we kind of make fun of it.
It's a lot of fun. Check it out, Wise Fools. And and then we have some, so essentially how we built the Knights is just a different ways of working out. So we have a show called Darkest Thoughts where the audience can write us their darkest thoughts and then we have to improvise comedy on it. And we have an open mic called saying the wrong thing.
So we're always kind of like testing the waters of different ideas from philosophical to topical to all that kind of stuff. And that's what I do. Nice. I'm also a writer. I write for TV and movies.
Erick: Excellent. Yeah, I went to the the Wise Fools the other night.
Ori: Oh, yeah. Brendan told me about that. Yeah.
Yeah. What did you think?
Erick: Yeah, it was pretty funny. So, he, he appreciated the fact that he had a, what he called, you know, he's like, oh, so you're the professional. And I'm like, well, I, I like to think so. I've been doing this for seven years, six years now. Wow. So, I think I've learned a little bit about stoicism, where I can speak intelligently about it.
I'm also writing a book on stoicism right now. We're in the negotiation phase. I'm writing some writing samples for them to see if they like it and so far so good So I'm hoping to get a contract.
Ori: Was that the Romans?
Erick: Yes, the Romans. The Romans were like, let's
see if you're ready. It's a big publisher in America.
Like one of the biggest. But it's a small imprint from them and they have a very specific focus on things. And I'm not sure if I'm contractually allowed to say anything yet, but Don't say it. But hopefully it'll come through. And if not, I've got ideas for a whole number of books. And this has also really helped me to kind of hone my writing style a little bit.
For, and theirs is what they call an academic light is the tone of it. So it's, it's academic, but it's supposed to be very approachable. And so, cause at first I had some, I had some funny little quips and stuff in there and they're like, yeah, that's a little too loose for what we want. We need a little bit more academic light.
I'm like, okay, that, that's actually more of what I do anyway in my podcast.
Ori: So it's like academic but palatable.
Erick: Yes. It's not like it's super dry. A while back I was reading you know, to kind of, when, when I first got approached about writing this book, I wanted to make sure that I understood some of the deeper parts of the history of the philosophy and so on, the differences between Stoicism versus some of the Socratic ethnic virtues that came afterwards, like from Aristotle and Plato and stuff like that.
So I was reading a fairly dense academic paper on it, and it was, it was only 18 pages long. Holy crap, it was so hard to read, because it was very Very lawyer esque, in a way, I guess would be the best way to describe it. So philosophers, true, you know, academic philosophers have a way of talking about things.
And they use words that are like, whoosh.
Ori: That's what I feel like. I feel like the whole I don't know if that was, because sometimes they say that the philosophers of the time were kind of comedians. You know, I'm not saying they were trying to make people laugh necessarily, but they were trying to talk to the masses, like, not all of them.
But so there was the academic side, and then there was the more approachable side, I guess. And I think that's gotten lost. I mean, even on me, like, I'm not, I'm not a scholar. You know, I'm I have my own thoughts about things. But then I do feel a lot of this stuff is not approachable at all. And if you try to read it, you know, You're like, what the fuck are you talking, can you just tell me what you're talking, what do you mean?
And then and then when I, like, that's one of the reasons I like the show me and Bender are doing is because he has the master. So he brings it up, and then I'm the stupid, and me and another guy, we're kind of the stupid guys that, that deal with it. But at the same time, I have had these thoughts.
And, and it's, and it's refreshing, and it's interesting where somebody says, Well, someone has actually thought this through, and this is the structure they've created. And I think that's not approachable. Like, even Stoicism itself I don't think most people know what it is.
Erick: Yeah. You know, like And for me, I found, luckily, that Stoicism was the most approachable, even from reading, you know, things that were directly attributed to Epictetus because he never wrote anything down himself, but one of his students wrote it down and said, I tried to write it down as verbatim as absolutely possible.
That's where we get the endocrinia and what was the other one he did? Discourses. From him or from one of his students whereas Seneca we have the direct writings Like he actually sat down and wrote down his stuff and then meditations from Marcus Aurelius But in reading all of them, that's the one I know.
Yeah, and those are pretty approachable So they they did a pretty good job.
Ori: Yeah, but not for today. I feel like
Erick: Yeah, a lot of it is, though, the language that's been handed down over time. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the Bible. You know, you read it and it was written, you know, the King James Version is the most popular English version one.
In, in, in Austria and in most German speaking countries, it's the Luther Bible. It's the one that Martin Luther translated. So we're talking about things that were translated into Old English back in the 1600s. And that's what's, or earlier, and that's what's being used in modern day religions. So, yeah, it makes it a bit less approachable because people aren't going, you know, hey.
So, a lot of it is because the translated language is also very outdated.
Ori: I grew up in Israel and we had, like, we had, like, a class on the Bible. And it's also antiquated Hebrew, you know. And, like, we get it, like, more, I guess, than the translated stuff. But it's still kind of, it's like being a kid and listening to Shakespeare.
It's a weird It's not the language you're talking. It makes it not approachable. Like, I haven't, I gotta admit, I haven't re, like, I haven't re read the Bible, because in class they made it seem so boring. Yeah. That you just don't wanna, you just don't wanna approach it, you know? And I feel like philosophy is like, I saw this this video once of of a guy and he was saying that we've lost a major part of our relief source when, because when we were in tribes, there was the shaman, right?
And the shaman was the thinker, so that guy, he'll figure out the spiritual stuff. And I don't need to think about it at all. He's going to tell me what the gods are thinking today and that's it, I'm not arguing with that at all. If I have any trauma, any problem, I'll just go to heaven. And then it grew into like the bigger religions.
And now, we're in this age where we all think, well not all, but a lot of us are like, either don't believe in religion, or have stepped away from it somewhat, or are complete atheists. And then we have this gaping hole. And a lot, and some people are looking for philosophy, but I don't think philosophy is, I mean now, yeah, you're doing this podcast, there's some people talking about it, et cetera, et cetera.
But I feel like there's so many things that, where we're lost. And we could, if we had this like easily approachable thing, then, then I would just be like, oh, okay, I'm, I'm, you know, this is a fear I had or a thought I had and I didn't really think it through, but somebody's already done that. And it's, I think it's also probably stems from some sort of I don't want to, I don't want anybody to tell me what to do.
Because if you're already not believing in religion, you're like, I don't want, you know. So, you're stepping away from ideas that are already thought through sometimes. But, I just feel like philosophy is like a, it's like a pop culture idea. But not a lot of people really interact with it.
Erick: Yeah, and I fall into that category as well.
So, I took a philosophy class when I was in college, in my twenties. And it went through some of the major philosophies, and it . Even though I was very big into psychology, you know, I'd read like The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck and other things like that, because I grew up very, very Mormon, which was a very strict religion.
You were a Mormon? Yeah. Oh my god. That's why I speak German is I went on my mission to Austria. Wow,
Ori: Mormon. You stepped away from Mormonism. I did. Wow, that's a good choice.
Erick: Yes, it has been a really good choice for me. Wow, how long ago was that? About 20 years. 20 years.
Ori: Wow, 20 years not a Mormon. Yeah. And have you seen Book of Mormon?
Erick: I've heard it. I've listened to the musical I used, I started out as a musical theater major in college, so I love musicals. Oh, okay. And so I listened to it. I haven't seen it yet. That's, oh, you should see it. It's just, yeah, it's, when it came to Portland, I, for whatever reason, I didn't go so, but yeah, it's one, I want to see it.
So many of the songs in there, I just laugh my ass off because I'm just like, I could totally relate to 'em because you know, it's about missionaries and all the things in there. I'm just like, oh my God, this is hilarious. Having been in theater. Like the one where the guy is singing about shove it down, like he's gay and he doesn't want to do something.
I was just thinking about that. It was just like, man, I knew, I knew so many kids who were. And some of them didn't, obviously didn't come out.
Ori: In the, in the theater thing? Or were there Mormons that studied with you? Yeah. Wow.
Erick: Yeah, and one of them is he's actually incredibly successful. He didn't come out until later on.
But we all kind of knew. But nobody cared in my high school. We were all, I came from a fairly affluent high school. And, we really didn't care one because he was just an amazing guy. And everybody just adored him. He was just a great person. And so even though most of us had an inkling that he probably was, It was like, we don't want to know.
We didn't ask. Don't ask, don't tell. Because if it did come out, we knew that it would, it would cause problems. Sure. So nobody wanted anybody, nobody really wanted to know because . We, one, we didn't care. And two, it would just cause more trouble than it, it was worth. Sure. Yeah. And so when, when we finally did come out, I sent him a note, this was, you know, years later and I just said, Hey, just wanna let you know.
I'm so glad. Was a physical note. No, no. I, I sent him an an email and I just said, Hey, just wanna let you know, you know, found out about it. You finally coming at it and I'm, and I just wanna say. I love you and support you and I want you to find your happiness and I hope that you find somebody who's worthy of you.
That's cool. And he was just like, thank you so much for your support. That's awesome. And I'm like, you've always been a great person. This doesn't change my opinion of you one iota because you are who you are. Yeah. And he's incredibly successful in the musical theater world. Yeah. And yeah, so I love watching his career rise up, and he's a pretty amazing person.
But, you know, for me it was just always, that was one of the main reasons.
Ori: Becoming more and more gay as it goes along. Starting from Mormonism and becoming the gayest person on the planet.
Erick: So, yeah, but what was, I think a lot of it though was because that was one of the things that, that I, I disliked the church's stand on.
Because, Thank you. , he didn't choose to be this way. Sure. He want, I mean, he would love to be your normal straight person, but he's not. Yeah. And I know that he's not making a choice to be gay like a lot of people think he can. I'm like, no.
Ori: It's just that to me is is that's always like I've, I've I've said like the, the, one of the reasons like Jews support I mean not, you know, secular Jews at least.
The reason why I support gays is because they're the front line at this point. Like, if they go against the gays, we're next. So, we'll support that movement as much as we can. But yeah, I mean, you can see it. Like, it's, it's this idea, which is counter to philosophy in a way, I guess. Or, it's just picking one and, like, saying it.
This idea of, like, there's a certain way to live your life, and if you don't do that, then you're dead. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Erick: Yeah. You know, and yeah, so back to yeah, so back to the whole kind of approachable philosophy thing. Like I said, when I was in college, I took the class and it didn't, it didn't ever really click for me.
It's like, okay, that's kind of cool. It just seemed like it was something that was gonna be way over my head. And so I think that maybe I approached it in a way, like, oh, this is just gonna be way too, too heady for me. I'm not smart enough to understand that. And so when I stumbled into stoicism, because I didn't even know it was a philosophy, I just knew the term stoic, you know, like most people do, like somebody's stoic and they're non emotional.
And Tim Ferriss mentioned on his podcast, he said, there's this book that changed my life. And he, Tim reads a ton. I don't know if you follow his podcast, but he's an interesting guy. But he was just like, this book changed my life. And I was like, okay, if Tim reads that many books, and this is one where he says, this is one of the best books out there and it changed my life.
Okay. Maybe I should give it a read. And the title of it was A Guide to the Good Life, The Art of Stoic J oy. And I thought stoic joy that, okay. There's a little bit of a paradox there, at least in my mind. Okay. That sounds interesting. I got to read this and order the book, read it through the first time.
And there were plenty of moments of like, Oh, Oh, that's pretty good. But I'm like, it didn't really sink in. And so I got the audio book. And then when I was going to and from work every day, I would listen to it for about 20 minutes. And I kept having these lightbulb moments like, Oh my God, Oh, just like, Oh my God.
Okay, that I did, then I've been looking at the world like this and it's really more like this. Or if I look at it like this, things are a lot clearer and make a lot more sense. And so for me, stoicism is such an approachable philosophy because its whole goal is how to live a good life. So while the con and the, when you break down a lot of the concepts, they feel counterintuitive, but they are understandable.
And the principles themselves are fairly simple in many ways, but just like most things, even if it's simple, it doesn't mean it's easy. So it's a simple idea, but like, you know, what do you control? What you can't control, where you can control the way that you think about things, your perspective, your thoughts, so on and the choices you make and the actions you take.
That's it. And you're like, okay, what exactly does that mean? So when you really dig into that, Then you recognize you have to let go of everything else, because you're not in control of that, like you're not even in control of your own body. You get cancer, your knee hurts, whatever, you can control what you do about it, but you can't control your body in the way that you would want to.
You would want to say like, I never want to get cancer, I always want to have a six pack or anything like that. What you can control are the choices you make, like if you eat too many hamburgers, you're going to put on some fat, if you drink too much whiskey, you're going to ruin your liver, those kind of things.
Ori: I just have a joke where I was talking about looking at things from other people's perspective, and I just slowly go, like, from people who are, like, against you. And it just makes your life easier. And then I said, well if you have cancer, look at it from the cancer perspective, you know? He's just like, hey, I'm level four!
And all his friends are like, you're killing it! You know? Like I feel comedy a lot of the times is is that. Like it takes, it takes the approach of like, here are not only dangerous thoughts, but here is a way to like, make them flexible, you know? And and I feel like it helps just deal with life. Like so it's similar in that way because I feel like for me, the problem with, with what, with, with this idea of like accepting that you have no control or letting go is it's not, as you said, it's not a simple thing.
So there has to be some sort of workout, you know, and the workout of the brain, I find other than meditation, stuff like that, it's, it's, it's very hard to do, but I find it to be a very good thing to do on stage. Once I can get into that area, which is, by the way, I feel like a lot of the times Not that people get triggered very much in my, in my shows, but when they get triggered, I feel like a lot of times it's because you're crossing that border in their brain where from control to what they can't control and they're trying to control it.
But it's not even they're trying to control you, they're trying to control their thought, but you just said it out loud and now you can't do that because, oh, my God. So but, but to me if I go on stage and I go here are all the things I can't control and I play with them, I play with the idea of, you know, of, of death and disease and and and how fucked up my brain is and how I don't have control.
And this recent bit I did was like I asked people if they live in the moment. Most people don't, don't say, say nothing like they're not living in the moment. And and I told him, yeah, you're thinking about your videos and your phone right now. But I was saying, like, I have a weird contradiction in my brain where so there's the real world and there's the imaginary world.
And I go like for example, I love doing stand up comedy. So I really appreciate each one of you that is here. But at the same time, I'm heavily disappointed that I am because I was supposed to be in an arena right now with people sucking my dick for autographs, you know, but, but at the same time, this is great.
This is amazing. So just this constant. It's so, it's so weird, and I feel like a lot of things play into it, like this whole manifestation thing, for example. What's your, what's your, what's your stance on manifestation?
Erick: I don't buy into the whole secret thing. What I buy into is that if you are putting your intention out there, and you are focusing on that thing, and you are actually taking action towards that thing, that thing will happen, in one way or another.
But just to go I want to manifest, you know, a new Mercedes Benz. Yeah. And you just sit there and wait for it to come. It's not going to happen. Yeah. But if you go, I want to manifest a Mercedes Benz, and every chance I get, I'm going to do something that's going to move me towards that goal. Yeah. Then, yeah.
Sorry about all the noise. So we, this was the
Ori: Berlin. Yes, Berlin. There's no place in Berlin with no noise. They build the buildings in a way where like, the cold can't come in, but your neighbors talking or having German sex, just no problem at all.
Erick: Yeah. So, I apologize for the noise. I'm going to reduce it as much as I can on the sound, but it makes it more lively.
But yeah.
Ori: But I agree with you. I think that the what's funny to me about Manifesta, so I agree with the idea that, I think Manifestation in general, the idea of like, Seeing a specific future and then trying to get to it that that works. But then there's so much emphasis on this stuff I've seen lately on if you don't have the thing that you want You're not manifesting well enough and I just thought I thought it's like it's a combination of Motivation and procrastination so you're spending all of this energy to go nowhere and this people telling you well you have to do that better
Erick: It reminded me I saw somebody who asked me one time, you know, they're like well But, you know, if you just manifest hard enough, I'm like, well, that's not, I mean, I said, but the way that they talk about it, you're just not doing it good enough.
That's exactly like religion. I mean, that's what I tried. I tried to live all the Mormon things exactly the way I was supposed to, and I was still unhappy.
Ori: Were you like really thinking about that every day?
Erick: And I was, I tried so hard and I was miserable and I just, I, it never worked for me at all of this stuff.
And I'm like, and what was the answer? You just don't have enough faith. Your faith just isn't strong enough. I'm like, my faith is damn strong. I went, I went to Austria for two years and try talking to those people about Jesus Christ. I mean, I'm sitting here talking to people who've been Catholic for ever about, they should join our version of Jesus's church and tell them that their church is wrong.
That takes, that's a lot of hard work. And so I'm like, I'm trying, I'm really trying to do this thing. And so for me, once, what really did it for me was I, after trying so hard and feeling like I was a big failure with this my ex wife left the church and was just like, I'm not going anymore. It doesn't work for me.
And she had joined the church later in life. And then after a few months, she was, you know, she's like, you can go if you want, don't care. But I'm like, I went a couple of times. I'm like, you know, I'd rather be out cycling. I'm an avid cyclist. And so I've got riding on Sundays. And then a few months later, she gave me a book.
It was called Leaving the Saints by this gal named Martha, Martha Beck. She's a big time life coach now. Her father was the chief apologist for the church for 50 years. And he had a PhD, and so he was the master of, like, twisting things around. And so, she wrote a book about her journey of leaving the church.
And I learned a lot about the church's dirty laundry and stuff that they had covered up for a long time. That was documented, was legit, like it was fully researched, fully vetted, so She's like, this is the real deal, I've done all the research on this, and the church even acknowledges these things. And there was enough things in there where I recognized that Joseph Smith was a con man and a pedophile.
And made up the whole thing, and I went, Okay, this was all bullshit. I can leave and I physically felt lighter like I remember I was reading the book and I read that and I was I read some stuff on there and I was just like, I put the book down and I just stood up and I was like, I can leave in good conscience because I tried and it's all bullshit and I felt like this.
You know, there's, I described, you know, there's big statues on Easter Island, you know, the big long nose guys. I felt like I had one of those on my shoulders and I just shaked it off. And I had to look around because I physically felt lighter. Like I was floating off the ground. I'm like, okay, I'm not, I'm not floating.
Okay. It just feels like I'm floating. It was just this giant relief. And I was like, okay,
Ori: well, that's a good lesson on letting go. I guess. Yeah. Do you manage to do that then if you have fears and anxieties or do you work on that also every day?
Erick: I work on a lot. One of the things that I'm working on now is adjusting my career path to work with CTOs and CEOs on developing better leadership through stoic principles You know, adjust your thinking, making decisions in uncertainty, building good teams, building a good culture within a company.
Because if you, if you can do that, then you can be much more successful. Your team will be happier. You will be happier. And it makes your work environment so much more fun to be in and having an example, like something that very simply put a lot of it is a lot of people think that if you're the manager, you're the boss.
That you have to control everything. And that's the worst way to work. And every team that I've been on where the manager came in and was like, Hey, by the way, my job is to serve you. My job is to be here to get everything out of the way so that you can do your job. I hired you because you're smart enough and I will let you do your job.
I'm not going to interfere because I'm too busy doing other things. And I need you to step up and do your job because that's what I hired you for. So a lot of autonomy, clear communication, clear setting of expectations or negotiation of expectations. Just things like that.
Ori: That's kind of like how my parents raised me, by the way.
Yeah. They were like, we trust you, don't do please just, you know, if you stay out late, call us, da da da da da. And it was a sneaky trick. Because at the end of the day, you rebel less. You're like, well, I have all these freedoms, so I guess I should be a little, you know, responsible.
Erick: Yeah, and most people, you give them, you know, as they say, you give them the rope to hang themselves.
If you give people autonomy and you say, hey, I need this done by this time and I need the quality to be like this, be just, be wise about your time and I'll let you do, go do your job. And you don't micromanage people, you trust your people and you, You have the integrity to be trustworthy. So a lot of people think that if they have a sucky team is because they have bad team members.
And sometimes that's the case, but usually it's the leader. Interesting. If the leader is not a good leader, the team is going to, you can have great people on the team and it's going to suck and it's going to fall apart. Yeah, I get that. But if you have a great leader, you can have weak people on the team and they usually will rise to the occasion because they trust that person.
They admire that person. They want to please that person, so they want to do good work because they feel like they're part of that team. And I found that when I was on teams that way, we got so much work done. And I enjoyed going to work. Like I was getting, when I was getting divorced, it was really, it was really hard.
I was just in a bad place mentally, which happens during divorce. And I remember that my manager at the time was this really good Really good?
Ori: Sounds like a, sounds like a, just a time that, you know, passes you by.
Erick: So, but my manager at the time was this really great guy. And I wouldn't apply. We got along really well and he was very trusting and he, he earned my respect.
And a lot of it was because he's like, you're a smart guy. I hired you. Get your work done. Communicate with me every day about what's going on. Just, you know, just let me know what's happening and let's just get this stuff done. And because he trusted me and I learned to respect him a lot. And so I actually work was my safe place because home was really hard right then.
And so going into work was like, I can go into work and I don't have to worry about crap. I don't, I don't, because my job was a good job to go into. It was a, it was a good place for me to be. So mentally I could fall apart at work if I needed to. And my boss was just like, I understand you're going through a rough time.
It's all good. Just keep doing what you're doing. If you need to. Take a long lunch and go for a walk, whatever, just, just take care of yourself. And so that made it so that it was, you know, like if your home life sucked and your work sucked, you just feel like life's just a giant pile of shit. So if you have at least one of those, that's, that's a good place to be, then you can deal with the harder things at home.
And so I think that a lot of people miss that. And so, yeah, so a lot of it for me is transitioning into this coaching of helping CEOs and CTOs of how to develop good leadership. Which therefore, when you lead well, then you can lead good teams, which makes the work environment so much better for everybody else.
Everybody's more productive because they're not just trying to put their time in, they're trying to get stuff done because they have the same vision that you have.
Ori: But then sometimes people don't step up. Like I remember when I do like cause I've been writing for TV and stuff for many years and I like show running teams.
That's that's pretty much my attitude. I'm like look you guys are here for your own reasons and you're creative people This is the show. I'm gonna give you the guidelines and we're gonna work on this together Just do your stuff and some people which are talented and you kind of they want to be there but they're just not stepping up and it's that's where I get I don't micromanage ever but that's where I used to get like frustrated because Because then you have to start asking yourself.
What is the motivation if you don't want to fire them? If you don't want to go to the I'm either firing you or I'm gonna me yell at you or don't want to use any of these tools Then that's always like an issue of like, how do you find what motivates that person? How do you also keep the balance because I feel there's always this balance of like What are the things that will either motivate you versus what are the things that will annoy you or make you want to not do?
The thing that you're yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. I feel like
Erick: Yeah, but as a good leader trying to actually understand that rather than just going you're doing a bad job Hmm You know, slapping him on the wrist, that doesn't work out very well. But if you go on to him and say, Hey, you know, you have good talents.
What is it? Why aren't these talents coming out? Why am I missing these talents? If you've been a good leader and they respect you, they'll be like, If they're, if they're worth it and they actually do want to succeed at this thing, they'll, they usually will step up to the plate and they'll be like, Oh, you know what?
You're right. I didn't, I've been slacking because X, Y, and Z. And okay, what can we do to overcome X, Y, and Z? I mean, I had a boss who did that with me. I wasn't, I wasn't really pulling my weight with some of the stuff that I was working on. This was 25 years ago. So I was just getting into my career and I was a junior developer and was just, I was, and I know I was slacking.
I look back on it now and I don't necessarily know why I wasn't pulling my weight as well, but because he was very gentle about it and he just said, you know I'm kind of disappointed that you're not not pulling your weight here because I know you can do that What can I do to help you so you can you can get back up to speed like that?
I was like, oh
and part of it was embarrassment for me. I'm like, yeah, okay, you caught me, but then it was also like And I'm not getting a slap on the wrist. You're just saying, Hey, I'm, I'm disappointed in you and I know you can do better. And I was like, yeah, he really means that. And he's going to support me. Oh, okay. So the next time we had a review three months later, he was just like, I'm so proud of you.
This is, you have done so much good work. In fact, you've, you've exceeded what I was hoping you would be able to get done. So I knew you had this in you. Good job. And I was just like, Hey, thanks. And for me, it really helped. Me too.
Ori: A lot of sick people in Berlin though, , .
Erick: And it really helped me to really up my game as far as that goes.
And so I was much more motivated to come into work and I, I really enjoyed working there. The only reason I left that was 'cause we didn't wanna live in Minnesota anymore.
Ori: You know what I found about what I found weird about German ambulances? It seems to me that they have the, the, the, in anywhere I've been to the world, these are the strongest sirens.
This is why we're hearing them. And it seems to me that it's a, it's a combination of wanting to help and show off. You know, and just be like, we gotta get somewhere. But also I'm helping people. Oh my God, look at me. So that's the every time I just like, oh my God, I'm a doctor, , whatever. Anyway, sorry. Yeah, no worries.
I have to comment on it because of course, because you're a comedian and because it interrupted the sound, so I gotta say something. Yeah. Here we go again. Alright.
Erick: There seem to be a lot of those around here, so I dunno if there's,
Ori: That's what I'm saying. They're no, actually, you know what? I think it's actually police, and I'll tell you what, speaking about stoicism, I mean, or, or solutions that are, you know what, what, what I've found that Berlin policemen, policemen do, which I've never seen anywhere. If you do anything out of order that the police has called for so instead of like being very, you know, violent or whatever, getting the guns out, they get ten people on it.
So I, I've seen a drunk guy being kicked out of the bar wanting to come in, surrounded by ten police officers. And the thing is, it just immediately works on your psyche. There is no way that you're misbehaving. It doesn't matter how drunk you are. There is no way you're misbehaving when there's ten police officers around you.
And it solves issues like that. It's amazing. So, every time there's a minor thing, there's like a busload of cops just driving there. And things get solved really easily. Yeah, I'm sure. Also, they're hot, by the way. That's true. That's true. If you see the billboards as well, they're always, they photograph them.
But also, you can just see it. They're hot because that's another psychological trick. That's true. You're, you're, you're going to get less into conflict with people you're attracted to. It's just something they do here.
Erick: Learn America, I guess. Exactly, we don't need to shoot everybody.
Ori: Exactly, just get hot looking people, and a lot of them, that's all you need.
And then the police will get a better reputation.
Erick: Exactly, so.
Ori: But then how is that how is that directly connected to stoicism, would you say, the, what you just said about the leadership role?
Erick: I think a lot of it has to do, I mean, obviously Marcus Aurelius was a fantastic example of leadership about trying to, I mean, he was the most powerful man in the world at that time, and yet he was trying to always improve himself, to be humble.
I mean, he talks about, you know, when you get up in the morning, you're going to deal with people who are greedy, who are selfish, who are ignorant, who are loud, who are, you know, all these things about them. And he's like, and the reason that they're this way is they don't know good from evil, and it's your job to help try and instruct them.
And I was just like, That's a pretty, pretty good statement coming from the emperor who could just say off with your head and they would do it. So he could just be like, yeah, you're annoying me today, you know, go kill this guy. And everybody would be like, okay, you said so, emperor, let's go do this thing.
Ori: Have you ever seen the Tudors, the show, the TV show?
Erick: I watched one or two episodes with my ex partner.
Ori: It's a fantastic, I don't know how it holds up now in terms of the quality of the design and everything. Because it was at the time where, where like, TV dramas were like it was the golden age, but they still didn't have the budget, but I thought was fantastic show and that is the example of the opposite of that leadership.
This guy was so volatile Yeah, and that was what was fascinating about it. It's amazing that I think we don't associate Childish behavior or emotional behavior or all that kind of stuff to leaders, you know, if you look at Trump I guess you can just see it on him But he's the words that is he's saying is I know this is all rooted in very smart strategical No, you're just it's just a big baby.
Yeah, and you just you just want to control everything and it's It's interesting. I get you never look at And it, I think, I think it is hard once you're in a leadership position to not lose yourself in it. Yeah.
Erick: Yeah. Well, like they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Marcus Aurelius is a fantastic example of not letting that happen.
And so I think stoicism, because, because it focuses on there are only four Except all the slavery. Yeah. Yes, there was, yeah, true. There was slavery, wars, and other things going on. Yeah. I mean, there was only so much he could do.
Ori: But, or realize,
Erick: yeah, but there was also, you know, like the Stoics, they talk about the only good is to develop virtue and that's, you know, courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice.
That's it. Like everything else is neither good nor bad. And Aristotle also believed that wealth, beauty, and health were also virtues that you should aspire to. The Stoics, yeah.
Ori: How do you aspire to beauty?
Erick: I don't know. That's what I was kind of wondering. Either you're pretty or you're not. I mean, yes, you can trim your beard a little more, do your hair or whatever, but, you know.
Ori: I'm big coming from him? Yeah.
Erick: But the Stoics broke with that tradition. They just said no. Like, those are indifference. Like, if you are rich and you don't, you know, you need to do all the virtues because then you could be either rich or poor or whatever. And you're still happy. You could be either in good health or bad health and you're still happy.
You could be beautiful or you could be ugly and you're still happy. It doesn't matter. Those things are, it's nice, they're nice to have. It's nice to be rich, it's nice to be healthy, it's nice to be good looking. But it doesn't, in order to live a virtuous life, you don't have to have those things.
Ori: So there's a, there's a bit of Buddhism there as well I think, no?
Like, um, there was this when we were in India, there was, we had this driver, a Buddhist driver. And he took us to this awful, awful place called Spiti Valley, which, if you go to India, unless you like a lot of rocks everywhere, I wouldn't suggest you go. But he drove us this, it was like a, it was like an eight hour drive or something like that.
And horrible, horrible, like we were suffering the whole way through. And he stopped once, he went to this little outside temple, and he was always smiling, always like, And that's his job. He's just a driver, you know? I mean, not to belittle drivers, but I'm saying his whole job is to just drive from point A to point B.
And then we got to the place we were finally getting to, and he was like, he was going to sleep where the drivers sleep. And we were like, no, no, no, we're going to pay for your room. And he was like, no, I don't want it. I want my thing. And I was like, yeah, I appreciate that. Because, yeah, he found his own way to be happy, and he seemed super happy the whole time.
And that takes real, like, inner discipline to be like This is my thing I like, this is what I'm doing, and I'm not going to sway from the way that I do these things because it might cause me pain probably, which is interesting. I, as I'm an anxious person myself, I have anxiety like my whole life. And I've been dealing with it with different tools and therapy and stuff like that.
I think one of the main things in anxiety also because I have ADHD. So it's like a combination of like my friend calls it. It's like there's, you know, how in creativity they say it's the magic what if, right? But that's also the cursed what if, if you look at it from the anxiety perspective, because everything could be bad, right?
So recently I've broken it down to like are you trying, as you said before, are you trying to make things not happen? Or do you trust yourself, if things happen, you'll be able to handle them? And I think that's a very strong distinction, and there's a problem there, which is, I think, trust. You have to trust yourself enough to know that you could handle them, and have enough willpower to to know that you'll be able to that it doesn't matter that all these what ifs, and They don't matter because you have no control of them and 99 percent of the time they won't happen.
You're just creating imaginary scenarios you don't have to deal with. But then you have to take your brain away from that. Because it's, it's, there's something, first of all, there's something more attractive in negative thought than there is in positive thought. Because in positive thought, you're just, things are good.
You're not thinking a lot. But then all these negative options, they're, they're, they're story time, you know. They're, they're, yay, oh, Netflix. I find that to be like a, a big challenge, like in terms of just pushing, just physically feels like, like you're pushing it to the other side and you're like, Oh, let's keep my focus here.
It's, it's hard to do.
Erick: Yeah. Well, one of the things that, that right along with that, it reminded me when you were talking is that Seneca tells us, like, usually we have anxiety because we're worried about the future or we're stuck in the past. We're worrying about things that we have no control over either way, because most of these things in the future that we think.
Aren't going to happen. And the things in the past, well we can't do anything about them. So, you're borrowing misery either way. So yeah, so the Stoics are very much about, like the Buddhists, being as present as possible. But, they also talk about and I'm sure you've probably read about this, the idea of Primanidātyamālora.
It means premeditated malice, and you sit down in a, in a safe.
Ori: By the way, you're giving me way too much credit for reading and being smart. I'm just telling well, you say the ideas that I've had and possibly overheard and uhhuh and some of it I've read very little. I've read, but these are just thoughts that I,
Erick: well, so the idea of Preme Malorum is that in a safe place.
You,
Ori: I can speak Hebrew and be like ancient Hebrew and be like, oh, look at me. And there you go. You just use those words. .
Erick: What's the idea that you, in a safe place, you sit down and you think about the worst possible scenario. What's the worst that could happen in this situation? So that way you, you get that from spinning around in your head, so you write it down or you talk it out or do something like that, but you take an active approach to it.
One, so that it gets it out of your system. At least, this is the way I view it. Gets it out of your system. But two, so that when you write it down, you can realize, oh, it's not as bad as I think it's going to be. Or, what will I do if that happens? And if it does happen, would I be able to manage that? And you go, oh yeah, if it did happen, I'd be able to manage that.
Like, when I was working for a startup, there was one point where they bounced five of my paychecks in a row. And, I had just gotten divorced, and so I was paying child support and alimony, and so I had 17 to my name for a week one time. Wow. And I had a date, and I, she came over, and I was just like, By the way, I've got 17.
He's like, well, there's a sushi place right up in the corner. Throw in your 17 and I'll cover the rest. I was like, thank you. And we had a great time. And then you were homeless.
Ori: Well, but then later that week. Pulling out of that sushi steak. Yes!
Erick: But I had to ride my bike to work, which was fine with me.
Because I couldn't afford to pay gas and things like that. And it kind of freaked me out for a little bit. But then I was like, okay. What would be the worst that would happen? If, you know, I lost my job, the company went under and I'm like, and it took me a while to find another job because this was back in 2005, 2006.
So the economy was okay, but there was, there were some things starting to shake loose a little bit, but I really thought through that. I'm like, okay, well, what would I do if I lost my job and was not able to find another one? I'm living in a pretty cheap apartment. Okay, let me just think about this. And I went through all the scenarios of what I could do.
You know, I could, I could move back to Salt Lake, where my brother was living at the time. Or I could move back to Minnesota for a while and live with my mom. And, then I would, yeah, I'd miss my kids for a bit. But, you know, it would probably just be for a few months, or maybe six months, something like that, until I got back on my feet.
You know, or if worse came to worse, I could sleep in my car. It's almost summer and that's doable. And I've got a gym membership that's super cheap. It costs me 49 bucks a year. It was a deal I bought way back when, and I just now pay 49 a year so I can go shower every day at the gym. Not a big deal. So I was like, okay, I can do this.
I could figure this out, you know? And, and so I just.
Ori: Heroin is pretty cheap
Erick: now. There you go. I went through all these scenarios like that and what it, it did a number of things for me. One, it reassured me that I would be able to survive. That this was not the bottom of the barrel. Like I could, I would be okay one way or the other.
And second, it also released the grip that money had on me. Because I realized that money wasn't that important. I mean, yes, it's important, but that I could survive on very little. Yeah. And I could make things stretch. And that I had community that I could reach out to, to help support me if I needed to.
And it was like, okay. And so that, by going through that, and then later on when I found out about it, I found out about stoicism. I went, Oh, that's, I've done this before in a very important time in my life. And yes, this is incredibly helpful and it relieved a lot of that anxiety for me.
Ori: I agree. I know that tool and I use it occasionally.
I always forget like in my mind is so I have so many things running around my mind that I, that there, there are tools that I hang onto that help me through time. And then there's tools like that, that when I use and they're, they're good. Yeah. And then I forget to use them again. So that's a good reminder.
Erick: Yeah, well often times it's because life's going along well. And so, while it's going well, and then you don't use it for a couple of months, and suddenly like, things get rough, and you're like, oh crap, what do I do now? And I have to do that periodically, because I'm just starting this whole change in my career.
And there are times when I'm like super anxious about it, and I look at my bank account and go, okay. I've got money, I can last for a while, but I need to start bringing in money. You could always use more on
Ori: Patreon, huh? This room is costing money.
Erick: Exactly, but things like that where I go, I go, you know, I need to, I need to start getting out there, I need to start doing these things, I'm doing all the planning right now, and figuring out, you know, what is it that I'm going to teach, how am I going to help these people, how do I make sure that I communicate my message in a way that they understand this is really important.
And thinking about how to do that because my, my, like one example that I found, I'm taking a course right now on how to basically create a mastermind and, or like a hybrid type of mastermind slash course and bring people into those kinds of things. It's expensive, but it's really incredible for me because it changes my mindset dramatically.
So my career for the most part has been me. being brought problems and bringing the tools that I have to bear to solve those. So I have, I know how to program all of these computers. I know how to do all of these things. I have a lot of domain knowledge in certain areas, but I have all these tools that I know how to apply to problems that people bring to me.
I'm not really good at going out and figuring out this is the problem this domain is having. and, and chunking it down in a way that, or communicating it into a way, this is your problem. I will help you solve that. Mm-Hmm. I tried creating startups on my own for a while back 'cause I was in tech or with other people, and I wasn't really good at being the person to go, Hey, what's the problem we're gonna solve?
I would be like, Ooh, there's this cool technology. You can do all this really cool stuff and we can do all these things with it. What should we build with it? I,
Ori: Hmm.
Erick: Hmm. So I needed somebody to bring a problem to me, and then I could help them solve that. So now it's going out and figuring out what people's problems are, asking them and understanding that, getting in their mindset, and then communicating that to them.
So that's been a big shift for me, and now I'm starting to be able to see that. And it was something that I wasn't very good at before. Like, I knew my own personal problems. Like, that's why Stoicism, my podcast, does well, because it's mostly, Crap, this is a problem I'm dealing with. Well, how do I deal with it?
So I go to Stoicism. I write it all out. Do a lot of thinking about it and bring all of it together to bear on my own problems and then I just share those with other people. And so that's basically how my podcast has worked. But to go out of where my problems are and to help find other people's problems and show them, Hey, you've got a problem here.
Let me help you with that. That's something that's new for me. And so it's something I'm learning.
Ori: What kind of problems are you looking for? I mean, we're talking about their problems, talking about life problems, talking about tech problems, what are you talking about?
Erick: Mostly life problems. This is again, the leadership thing.
It's like, what are the problems that the leaders are really running into? You know, and I'm going, well, you, you have all these tools and they'll help you to be a better leader. Okay. But what's the problem that they have that they need to be a better leader or how do you explain to them? Okay. You think you're a good leader, but you, you actually have this problem and I'm here to help you solve this problem.
And.
Ori: Not a bad reality show as well.
Erick: Yeah. So, like I said, I'm better when people just bring me a problem and go, Hey, I've got a problem and I've got, cool, I've got all these tools that I can bring to bear and help you solve them.
Ori: If I can tell you as a, as a comedian, it's like First of all, I've been, I think my whole life just wanting to be an artist and a writer, et cetera, et cetera.
And then I do morning pages and I just go through my own psyche and, And then As I've become a comedian, like I've been doing it for over 10 years now, it's like there is this thing where you sit at home, you take something and then you bring it out. And then they laugh when they identify, when they don't laugh, when they don't identify.
And then you slowly like start this process of like this circular process where where you start to identify, but there is the, for me the laughter is a key. So you're just like, I bring something out and then I see where they are. And that a lot of times echoes to me what's happening. How much of what I'm going through is actually echoing through everyone.
And there's also this everyone thing because as a comedian you're trying to get the room. So there's going to be one or two people who are never going to be with you because they're, you know, But it's fine. But I hate them. But but you see, that's, that's, that's identification thing. So, that echoes a lot of the times what you see other people's problems are.
So just even generic tools can come of that that can help you. Assess what, what the problem is. Like if you tell, if you tell, if you, let's say, if you go to do a corporate gig and you want to laugh at certain people, you'll see, you're going to see who they're going to tell you, you can and cannot, for example, or you say something about the boss, cause you don't care and everybody's like, and you're like, oh, okay, this guy's a narcissist.
But also there's just this echoing thing where I like to use that. Like. There's a risk to it. The risk is you're going to bomb. The risk is you're going to be the guy who said it and nobody is identifying with it. And it becomes a risk once you divulge the fact that you are flawed individual. Like I have a bit about being insecure.
I say like I'm an insecure person. A lot of the time. So I said, this is an audience. And I go, a lot of times I feel maybe I'm not smart enough, not funny enough. I'm not attractive enough, but I also know that I'm better than all of you. So I don't know how that works in one way. And they're laughing and they're offended at the same time.
And I see that they're laughing and I go like, and some of you are thinking, I'm better than you. And we have the same problem. You see, this is, this is exactly what's happening here. So it's that's one of the reasons I love comedy. It's, it's, it's exactly that because you don't feel alone in your own little, I don't know, something there about echoing about identifying the problems that are there because the more you're able to touch those things, the more it resonates through, through the room and you see that everybody has like similar issues.
But I think to me, like what you said before about don't put your mind in the future. Don't put your mind in the past. Yeah. Those are very clear instructions, but they've, maybe because of the repetitiveness of them, have become vague. So what I try to do is, if I like what you said now, the tool of like saying, alright, just write down.
I try to find within the veins of within the, within those I'm looking for a word that escaped me. Never mind. Within, within that field of saying don't look in the past, I'm trying to, to go, what's the muscle? What's the muscle of not looking in the past? How do I strengthen that muscle? And then how do I talk about that?
And how do I remind myself while I'm talking about it? So I just, I had a, a set yesterday where I was saying I've been having a panic attack for four days or five days. Because of the thing that happened to me, and I'm aware of it and I'm functioning, you know? And so I just started talking about it and just to getting all this stuff out.
When does anxiety come from? And wow, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just kind of, and, and everybody like identified with it and, and just letting it out just made me feel better and just making fun of myself. Mm-Hmm. for, for for being afraid of imaginary scenarios. Yeah. It's, it's ridiculous.
Yeah. You know?
Erick: Well, and that's, that's a good way I think of being present is. And a way to practice presence when you're getting stuck in the past is to vent it out like that. And that's why it's important to have community. And that's why, I mean, that's why oftentimes it's always the joke of, you know, when your partner, your female partner comes to you and it's just like, throws all these things out on you as a guy.
Our, our first instinct is we got to fix it because that's how we've been. Most of us have been raised. We got to fix the thing. Our only value comes from what we can do, you know? And so the first thing that, you know, any good. Marriage coach will tell you is ask if she wants it solved or if she wants you to listen.
And I mean you should listen anyway. Obviously. Practice active.
Ori: It'll be harder to solve if you don't listen.
Erick: Exactly. But you know, often times we just need to vent about the thing. And so for me often times my writing is that way. Writing an episode is that way because I'm struggling with something. I'll just sit down and be like err, err, err.
And go through and then I get done with it and go, ugh. Okay, it's not such a big thing. I took all of that and I put it out of my head and sometimes my journals are just that way, I'm just like I'm feeling anxious today and I just write about what's going on in my head and just getting it out of my head somehow deflates some of that energy that it has.
And it takes it, by putting it down there, it makes it a little more real so I can actually look at it. So it's not just spitting around in my head and ruminating on that. So that's really helpful, like you were talking about doing morning pages. That's kind of what this is sometimes. And for me, I find that by letting it out, it, it pulls you into the present and takes something from the past.
But you're talking about it with your friend, with yourself, whatever, right now. And it's. For me, that's a way of a bit of grounding as well. Also meditation is something that I do from time to time. That's very helpful.
Ori: Yeah. Meditation really helps. Yeah.
Erick: And for me, a lot of the main, the reason why meditation helped me become much more present minded.
I did this exercise about three years ago where I meditated for 60 minutes for 60 days in a row every day. And it was hard. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Sure. And I got it from um, what's his name? Totally blanking on his name. He's a VC. I don't remember. That's some other point.
But he had done that. One of his mentors is like, Hey, you really need to do this. And he's like, why? And he's like, because I'm telling you, you need to do this. I know you trust me on this. And he's like, okay, I'll do that. And he did it. And he was like, after that 60 days, It was like my base level of anxiety dropped dramatically.
Like by doing that, I became so much more aware of how my mind thought. So I can be aware of my own thinking at any time, far better than I have been before. Because, but also just that 60 minutes for 60 days. allowed my brain to process all of the backlog of things that had just been spinning in the back.
And it finally brought them to the front. And I could notice them be like, Oh, that's an interesting thought. I haven't thought about that for a while. And this thing, and it was like, he was able to just kind of work through and get rid of all of these things. So I did that. And I found that after that, that I was better able to look at my own thinking at any moment and realize all the stuff going along.
Yeah. All the clutter that was happening. And so I can just. Kind of stick my head up and go, okay, that's going on. That's going on. Hmm. Wow. There's a lot of things spinning around in here. Just be aware of it. And just that basic awareness then helped me in many ways. To, to recognize what was going on and what was causing some of that feeling, because our emotions are caused by our thinking, you know, worrying about something.
It's going to cause some anxiety, but if you're aware of it, it's easier to do something about it. Yeah. For me, I have this little practice that I do. I call it nudging, which is very simple. It's not edging, but nudging. And it's rather than trying to just change my mood on a dime, like I'm feeling anxious.
I don't want to feel anxious. So I'm going to try and do everything I can to get over here because our minds aren't very good at shifting that quickly. Except for emergency situations, you know, car's going to hit you. You're suddenly forgetting, forget about being anxious. And you're going to be like, Oh, you're going to be terrified.
So. But I found for me
Ori: If you get hit by a car, you're like, I might be gay. No, you're not.
Erick: Exactly. But I found for me, what it did was, what the idea of nudging is, is that I think, I think about something that generally makes me happy. Like I think about my kids. Or I think about the meal I had last night.
Just something a little bit happier. And I just kind of, just meditate on that just for a minute or two. And just, you know, And it just kind of like, or, you know, and I just kind of make myself just kind of relax a little bit and smile a little bit just to nudge my mood in the direction. And I think of it as kind of like if you take a, if you've ever been in a canoe, it doesn't take much to just shift a few degrees and go that direction and you are going to end up in a completely different side of the shore than if you kept going where you're going.
So that little nudge just kind of moves me in the right direction.
Ori: I, in the morning I do now when I wake up, I do, first of all, I I, I try to practice Transcendental Meditation I try to do it every day. I don't succeed, but I try. It is really helpful. It does reduce your anxiety, but what I'm starting to do every day when I wake up is I just sit, like, lay there for, like, a few minutes, and I think about that this is gonna be a great day.
Just, just I saw this comedian talking about it, but but he was talking about it from a different angle, but I like the idea of, like You kind of have to gaslight yourself. You kind of have to gaslight yourself. You kind of have to gaslight yourself. You kind of have to be like, it's going to be a great day.
And then, you know, why is it going to be a great day? Because my life is pretty good. This is pretty good, that is pretty good. If anything happens, I can deal with it. But you don't have to get in, like, especially in the morning, before everything kicks in. Because in a few minutes, everything is going to kick in.
You have a little bit already, the computer is starting to bring up all the stuff. You just sit there for a second, and you go, you This is going to be a great day because the sun is shining, my wife is here, and I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, you know what, this is going well, that is going well. And then you wake up and I found this to be like important where the first thing you say in the morning, right?
If you're with someone, if you're with a spouse or whatever. First, it's like, just do it in a very, like bring yourself to a place before you get out of bed where you can say good morning in a positive way. And I find that to be super important because a lot of the times I go, like, if I don't do that, I have this like, Oh, I'm saying the same words in the morning or she's saying, and I'm like, no, like I'm here.
I'm having, there's a goal to this. And I'm, I'm spreading positivity now. I'm like, hey, good morning, like, how's your morning? She's like, yeah, and we're already starting on some, some good footing. Yeah. You know, and you don't have to keep it up the whole day. It's just, just the beginning of it. Yeah. And I find that it has a huge effect on my happiness level.
Erick: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, basically that's, that's kind of, same idea. Yeah, just that, just reminding yourself about something to be grateful for. Yeah.
Ori: Yeah, for sure. I also do like, in the shower, I do like eight things I'm, I'm grateful for every day. That works.
Erick: Well, and that's the one thing I really like about stoicism is it's it's about just trying to practice things every day to have a better life.
And, and because they, the principles are, like I said, they're fairly simple, doing them well takes work, but you can do even just doing a little bit every day can bring such great benefits to your life. And I'd say you don't have to be perfect at it by any means, but if you're, it's never about perfection because perfection is.
I mean, again, there's no, there's no real way to define what perfection is. It's always just, are you moving in a good direction? And I think that that's, that's the answer.
Ori: Tell you what I think the problem with stoicism is, is branding wise. So I have a friend and he, for many years, he's like, oh, I'm a stoic.
And I, I don't, I didn't like that. I didn't like that. I'm a stoic. I'm like, what are you, a fucking Jedi? Like, you're not, just like, oh, I don't, I don't like it. There's something about it. And also, he's like, he's like this type of person, of course. He's like So I didn't know what that meant and then also he's like this type of person that sometimes he pushes things in So I'm just like the minute someone says I'm anything I'm already getting like critical about it, you know But so I think the and all this Marcus Aurelius, it's like it just sounds like gladiator, you know I'm a stoic, I have swords.
It's just that it's just bad branding, you know And I think that first of all saying I'm practicing stoicism I think is way better. Yeah You Okay. Because it's, because it's exactly what you just said, which is every day I'm doing something to try and get my life better and it's along the lines of Stoicism.
Yeah. So that's the thing. This is a big difference. You know? And yeah, and I would ask like, what would you, for someone who wants to start trying to practice Stoicism, what would you say first steps, first good steps would be? Just out of interest.
Erick: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, one of the biggest things.
And it's one of the hardest things, is again, understanding what you can control. And being able to look at that very clearly, and to stop trying to control things you can't. Because that's
Ori: So what would be the tools to, to, to focus on that, for example?
Erick: Well, I think a lot of it is What, is thinking about what are the things that we try to control the most in our lives that we don't have control over.
And usually that's other people. That's the biggest thing most of us try to control that we can't. We want to control what other people think about us. We want to control our reputation. We want people to like us. We want all, you know, we want this person to think we're great. We don't want our partners to be mad at us.
And rather than actually trying to communicate with them, we get mad at them and saying, stop being mad at me. And we get more and more angry with them. And for me, stoicism has been super helpful because I recognize the reason why I was angry about a lot of things or was easily set off by a lot of things.
It was because I was trying to control them. I was trying to use anger to control these things around me. 'cause that's what my dad, that's what my dad did. And so that was my example. And so it was, it was kind of hardwired in that way from, from years of abuse of when anything didn't go the way he wanted to.
We, you know, immediately got angry and hit us and, and things like that. And so it's, it was really hard with him because when he was good. Things were great. He was funny. He was kind. He was smart. He was generous. When things were bad. Ooh It's rough. Yeah, it was kind of like living with an alcoholic, but he didn't drink alcohol I mean I almost wish he did because then he could come home and go whoop.
Dad's on one tonight Let's you know, you can see the bottles or smell the booze and and the other thing Yeah, he was a closet bisexual and in the Mormon Church
Ori: Wow Harsh. Yeah, that's exactly the problem with these kind of things. Yeah. This is the way the world, no, it doesn't because why? Because you can do other things.
Yes. It's obvious. I don't ever get that about people who like are like preaching God. It's like if God is everything, why is not the possibility of everything also God, like why this? Exactly. It's just very, I don't think, I don't think people really believe in it. It's just one structure.
Erick: Yeah, exactly. And I think that I think it was Krishnamurti, I think was the author.
He has this book called the last freedom and really in the last freedom is really that You as a person need to realize you can do anything you want in this life. You have the choice to do anything that you want now You can't control the consequences for your choices, but you have the right to choose to live exactly the way you want You're not happy in your marriage.
You can leave You do not have to stay You do not have to make that choice. You do not have to work the job your parents want you to, or society wants you to. You can be a bum and live on the street. You have that choice. There are consequences with those choices. But you have that ability. And that's really hard for a lot of people to internalize.
Like, no, no, no, we can't all just do what we want. Like, yes you can. It can cause massive disorder in a lot of different ways in society and other things like that. So you have to think about what are the consequences of me doing exactly what I want to do or anything that I want to do. But you're allowed to do that.
Ori: I think it's safeguards people from making decisions that exactly that they don't want to deal with the consequences of, which is, I think it's not just because they want to do those things. They just don't want to think those things through. It's scary to think for a second about about anything.
About, like, what would happen if I was to Like, for example, even like things that we're already doing. I have this whole bit I'm working on with politicians and stuff like that. Everybody complains about them. What would you do if they disappeared? Would you do their job? Do you even know what they're doing?
They are the wolves, we are the sheep, because we've elected them to be the wolves. We want to sit here, you know, we just want to go, Netflix. That's what we want to do, you know. But, but, the point of it is, like, we don't even want to know. It's the same thing why we're angry with vegans. Because vegans are telling us things that we know that we don't want to know.
But if the book says eating meat is fine, then I don't have to listen to the voices in my head talking about morality at all. Because the book says this is moral, and I want to think about it. Because I know on some level it's not moral, it doesn't sit well with what I perceive morality to be. But I'm an amoral person in those respects, but I don't want to admit it to myself.
Yeah. And that solves that entire problem. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of kind of rules do that for people, and there's comfort in that. There's comfort in that.
Erick: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I had somebody ask me one time on, or they posted a thing on Reddit saying, What's the difference between Stoicism and a religion?
And I said, all right, I'll take that on that, let me explain what it is. Stoicism is a bunch of tools and principles that are just applied in any situation in life. It's not dogma. It's not telling you, you have to do this and this and this and this is saying, if you want to live a happier life, you want to feel like a better person, a moral person and be able to weather these things that are really hard.
Here's some tools you can use to do it. Yeah. Try them, see if they work. And I said, so there's no, you, there's no, there's no prescriptive law.
Ori: It's not, you can't be gay because Marcus Aurelius said you cannot be gay. Exactly.
Erick: I said there's no prescriptive things of like you have to do these things in order to be a stoic.
It's, it's a, It's not declarative. It's, it's this kind of like, here's the idea. Here's some ideas. If you follow these ideas, you're just going to find that you're going to be happier if you live this way. If you practice courage, if you practice wisdom, if you practice self discipline, if you practice justice, which to me, justice is how do you treat other people, try to treat other people?
Well, that's what justice to me says about is how do you interact with your fellow man? And it's so stoicism is just like, just try these things and see if they make you happier.
Ori: Let's go back to the example that you gave. I agree with you that you cannot control other people, but you can try and influence what people think of you.
Sure, absolutely. But within that realm, there is a whole level of debate with yourself. How much am I being myself? How much am I skewing towards the other person? How much does even the other person like it when I suck up to them? Or if I'm being myself, am I being too aloof? Am I being too, like you know?
And those are also hard tools to it's very hard to look at yourself from the outside and realize who you are and what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. Also, some people really like you and some people really don't. Yeah, and that's okay. That's really annoying. Yeah. Because you can't get any clear data from this.
Erick: Exactly. Well, like my, I was with my brother this last weekend in Frankfurt and, We've always had, we've been, we're, we've always been close, but also had some, you know, and we're brothers, you know, it's just kind of how it is. Just as we've gotten older and wiser, and I, there were always things that he would say where I'd just be like, man, he, because he doesn't have a filter, he doesn't have much of a filter.
Like, if he thinks it, it comes out of his mouth. And when I was younger, you know, I was much more trying to be the good Mormon and do all the righteous things. And he was the one who was like, ah, brah, you know. doing whatever he wanted. And I would always be like, oh, you're a bad person. And yeah, I was very judgy.
And I know that. But it was funny. He was, he was talking, he was telling me some story and he was, he was helping somebody out with something, but he was still giving them shit about things. And, and they go, you know what? You're a likable asshole. And he's like, yep, that's pretty much what I am. I just laughed.
I'm like, you know, but he's more than willing to just admit and he goes, yeah, I'm kind of a son of a bitch sometimes. And I'm okay with that. Not everybody, I'm not everybody's cup of tea, but, but his, he's got friends who are so like loyal to him because he is exactly who he is and he rubs people the wrong way. There's some people who do not like him because he's a lovable asshole and but he knows that yeah And he's accepted himself for who he is like that and I can have a lot of respect for that and we had a great time and really connected and for me a lot of that judginess that I used to have when I was younger I don't have anymore because I've worked on letting go of that And, and also he's softened up as he's gotten wiser, as he's gotten older about things.
And he's less judgy about things too. And so we were able to get him together and we had a great time. And it was, it was really a lot of fun. But I love the way you put that. It's just like, you're a real likable asshole. Like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with being that.
Ori: I feel I mean, I feel that way sometimes.
But I don't think I'm I think I'm an asshole. I think I'm, I used to be way more blunt about things. You know? I think moving to Europe has really changed my perception, but it's not just that. It's just that you work in TV and there's like a level of like, I have my authenticity, but also I'm aware that I might be wrong.
And at the same time I have to get along with all these people that I wouldn't necessarily hang out with and yet I don't want to betray myself. So it's always this kind of weird, I think recently what I've realized is I have, if I want to say something. I, I will say it because I have this I have this compulsion, I cannot not say what I perceive to be true.
But, I've learned to be nice in the way that I say it. Be polite, not nice, like, you know, so Be kind. Be kind, yeah. Yeah. Don't, like, I, I attempt not to create suffering. But at the same time speaking of Buddhist stuff, so at the same time I want to be authentic. I want to be real. It's not that, Oh, this person must know my opinion about them.
That's not the issue. But the issue is like, if there is an opinion I want to express, not necessarily about the person, but generally then I would like to express it because I feel like I'm entitled to it, but I feel like this is who I am and this is what I see in this, what I would like to do. And, and yeah, and I try to wrap it in such a way that my point will come across.
I don't feel On the inside that I oppressed myself on one hand and on the other hand that I didn't really cause any harm or pain unless The situation calls for some conflict. So recently I'm trying to get better at actually at conflict and realizing the conflict is not the worst thing in the world.
It's pretty good actually. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's necessary. Exactly. So I'm, I'm trying to get better at that, ironically from Israel, but, which I think probably is, is part of the problems anyway. But but yeah, there is, there is this for me, there's this constant. And, and when people look at me on the side, I think, for example on stage I'm likable, I think I'm I think people identify with me, like I, I'm very, I'm very, like I talk about a lot of dark stuff, but I will say it in a way that will include people rather than exclude, I'm trying, I'm not trying to shock anybody, I'm not trying to say something dark, I'm like, I look at it from a perspective of exactly what we've talked about, like, There's dark shit in the world.
This is just life, and let's, if we don't make fun of it, we don't bring light to the situation, then we're just gonna suffer. So that's what I'm trying to do, but I also come from that attitude. Of like, I'm not gonna try and shock you with saying words, I'm just, and And I do have some tension over I mean, it becomes more precise and professional when it's on stage, Cause then I'm like What did I say that where I lost them over here?
So I'm not gonna not say what the point of what I wanted to say But I will find a different way of saying it so it'll be palatable because my goal is to have a conversation.
Erick: Yeah Well, it's like for me. I I the way that I kind of see that is I try to practice radical candor as much as possible. And to me, candor is a little bit different than just being honest.
Okay. Because you can, you can be honest and tell the truth and everything like that. But candor is like, can I be candid for a minute here? It's very different than just saying, well, I assume you were being, you know, can I be honest here? It's like, well, haven't you been honest? Haven't you been telling? You know,
Ori: What's the difference between candid and honest?
Erick: To me, honesty is that everything you're saying is factually true. Candor is what's behind the scenes. It's pulling the curtain open and going, Okay, this is what you see, that's being honest. Let me show you what's really going on. It's much more vulnerable. It's much more about saying, This is what I've been really thinking.
This is what's really going on. Even though what I told you was true, there was a veneer on it. There was, there was a polish to it. Candor is like, here's more of the raw stuff. And so for me, candor is, is like a deeper step of honesty is kind of the way that I see it. But with can, but with everything, you kind of need to make sure you understand the opposite and the positive opposite.
And for me, the opposite of candor and the positive way is discretion. And so if you practice radical candor with people, you also have to have discretion and that's tact. That's knowing sometimes you don't need to say it, or sometimes you How you say it is important and you, you land it gently and go, by the way, I just need to tell you, you're a total asshole, but I love you anyway.
You know? And so it's, it's kind of the same thing. And so I, I, I try to think about that when I, when I deal with people, it's like, I want to tell you the truth. I want to be the, I want to show you the vulnerable truth, not just I'm telling you the truth, but I'm showing you the truth. Showing you something that's a little bit deeper than that.
This is the vulnerable thing of things, but also trying to use discretion at the same time.
Ori: Interesting. Can I be candid? Absolutely. I'm trying to get some basic tools to get into stoicism, because I like the idea. I like the, I like what I'm hearing about it. I don't, I think I understand, like it's a bit like geography.
Like, I know where major areas are, I think, I think. But I don't think I have the the stepping stones. Like what you just said, for example, about other people. Okay, I'm thinking about it. Or certain things we discussed. I'm like, yeah, I do that. But then I don't see the stepping stones towards getting into it, for example.
Just starting off in it.
Erick: I actually did an episode about three weeks ago called Beginning Stoicism where I Oh, just listen to that. Yeah. So that, that right there I think is a good place to start.
Ori: Should have listened to that episode then. Exactly. Waste everybody's time.
Erick: Exactly. But, I think a lot of it is, well, like you said earlier, it's a lot of, to me, I consider Stoicism as kind of Greco Roman Buddhism.
There are a lot of crossover because they came to the same conclusions, just understanding human behavior and, but a little bit less woo, if you will, and a little more rationality of things. And so the idea is that, you know, we're human beings, we have rationality, that's what makes us human. Homo sapiens as opposed to just being some other primate, is that we have the ability to, to, at least to a certain extent, think rationally as best we can.
Another thing that is really big on stoicism that I try to help people understand is that your perception of something is what causes the feelings that you have. It causes your distress. And they even say that in there. It's not the thing that bothers you, it's your perception of it. The way that you think about the situation bothers you.
Like you talked about this guy, your driver, he thought of his place where he crashed as his most comfortable place. It was his happy place. So when you look at it and go, God, that must be really uncomfortable. Why is he going to do that? And he looks at it and he's like, this is my comfy place. And he's all happy to be there.
Sleep in his car. Exactly. So for him, his perception on it was, this is my comfortable little, little safe space. Other people look at it and go, Oh, that would be terrible. I want my hotel bed. And then you need something much more than that. And so really your perception on almost anything can change how you are, how you feel about it and what you do about it.
Ori: So you change your own perception of things.
Erick: Yeah. That you choose your perception or you, at least you're aware of your perception. It's like, what am I thinking about this? That's, that's, what's the story that I'm telling myself about this situation. Like if somebody came up to you on the street, a simple thing of perception you had two people who are trying to get to work and they missed the bus.
One guy gets mad and he's flipping the bus driver off and he's all sorts of pissed off about it, you know, because he missed the bus and the bus driver continued on. And we've all had situations like that. His coworker is standing there and he just looks at it and you're like, eh, okay, whatever. Just smiles about it, goes to stand on the bench and starts looking around.
He's like, well, it's kind of a nice day today. And this is. Okay, and he's like, you know, hey, that's 15 more minutes. I get to chill out before I get to work. Hmm same situation And and so there you understand that it was they're just they're different perceptions on what it really meant. Yeah You know and people are like no no, but these things that happened to me They're the reason why I'm upset or because this person said this thing to me That's why I'm upset and it's like no it's because the story that you tell yourself about the situation about what the other person said.
That's what's making you upset.
Ori: But then what's the line between authenticity and perception? Because if you can change your perception of most anything, which I agree you can do and should do sometimes then how do you know that you're remaining authentic to yourself?
Erick: It's not about necessarily having to change your perception, because you can keep it.
It's about recognizing what your perception is. And recognizing that the way that you're thinking about that might be the thing that's causing you the distress that you don't want to feel. It's like you could be the cause of your own problem. Somebody said something mean about you and you're all worked up and upset about it.
Why? You're the one who's telling yourself this awful story about what they said. If you said, if it was some stranger who said something to you and you didn't really care, or it was somebody that you thought was an asshole and you didn't care about what it, they could say the exact same thing, and the story you would tell yourself is, Pfft, he's an asshole, I don't care.
It's only because you gave it weight.
Ori: So you have to look if your perception serves you or not.
Erick: Exactly. Because it could be that your perception is fine. That person said that awful thing, and I feel upset about that, and I want to feel upset about that.
Ori: You see, that's where anxiety kicks in a lot of times.
Because anxiety will hold on to the perception and say, Well, this perception has saved us many a times. You should never change this perception. Which is like, this is like how you know the brain is somewhat of a computer. Yeah. It's like, here are these files you shouldn't touch, and these ones. That's, that's true.
And I feel like in comedy there's somebody I met this woman once and she said she went to clowning school. And she asked her, like, if you have to tell me one thing that's really valuable from that. And she said, in comedy you don't, in clowning, you don't only have to agree to be the floor man, you have to enjoy it.
And that really spoke to me. You know, I was walking with my wife in Köln, which is a city in Germany. Just for the Americans. No. So I was walking there and I was and I was walking down the street and I farted. And two guys behind me laughed. Right, and my wife was kind of feeling a bit embarrassed about it.
And I was like, you know what, my job is to make people laugh. It doesn't matter if I'm on stage or off. I'm happy that they laughed at my fart. So, and it really changed, like, and that's something actively, like, I don't mind, and I think, by the way, it's a pretty powerful tool, not just for comedians, but generally, like, one of the things which I fundamentally disagree with is if people laugh at me, that means I'm weak.
I think that's, that's, that's a, that's a very common perception, by the way. And and once you change that, once, like, on stage, it doesn't matter what they're laughing at. Like, I'm instinctually funny in certain ways. And if my goal is to make you laugh, because I think you'll feel better, I'll feel better.
It doesn't matter if you're laughing at me or with me. Everybody's making this really, like, especially in comedy, this really important distinction. You're laughing at me or with me. I'm like, what does it matter? They're laughing. People are having a good time. It doesn't matter at all. And, And you can't control it anyway.
Yeah, and you can't control it anyway. And you shouldn't attempt to try. I mean, you can, you can, you can guide the laughter. You can try and play with it. But This whole concept, I feel like this is another thing when people are Connecting laughter to disrespect, which I think is an awful thing to do because you basically said I think John Cleese was saying something about that There's a difference between being respectful and pompous Like if you're not be if you if you if they can't laugh at you, you're being you're a dictator You're being pompous.
You're saying like I am you cannot touch me like you're over serious And I feel like that probably stems from, I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, but it probably stems from childhood when we couldn't handle it. Where somebody was laughing at you and you thought, oh shit, I'm in social danger right now.
I'm being demoted.
Erick: Yeah, I had a hard time with that because my last name is Cloward and I used to get called coward all the time. And the kids would laugh at it and I would feel so hurt and so offended and I had a hard time with sarcasm growing up because I got picked on quite a bit. Because I was a little bit smaller, and also because of my name and stuff like that.
And so my ex wife was, she was fairly sarcastic, and it was hard for me, and she was trying to play. Her sarcasm wasn't mean, it was her play, but for me, all sarcasm was hurtful. Yeah. Because, also because my dad would use sarcasm as a hurtful thing. It was never a funny, playful thing. And my ex wife was, you know, her sarcasm was trying to be play, and it wasn't until like two years after we were divorced, where I finally like I was reading an article about something like that and I was like, Oh, I never stopped.
Oh, geez. I always felt attacked when she was being sarcastic. She was trying to play with things. She was trying to make, you know, some kind of witticism or something. Yeah, like a, you know, She was trying to play with things and I was so serious and so Defensive all the time because I've grown up being very defensive all the time because the church is always telling you you're a bad person My dad is always telling me.
I'm a bad person Kids are teasing me. So I always felt like I was this bad person I was super defensive about a lot of things and it wasn't I guess that went two years later. I'm like she was trying to play
Ori: I'm gonna be here with it. First of all, I had this image of you and like if you need a if you need a You Image for your podcast, you just have like a yourself and kinda like a, I don't know what the body language is, but something like, but you have an S for stoicism, like , like a shitty superman.
You know what I mean? Like you're dealing with it not because of your bra and your, but you're dealing with it the way through stoicism. Yeah. Astro Pues you want, there you go. That's not bad. Yeah, exactly. But what was I saying? Ah, when I got here so Israel, we don't really have banter. We have, we laugh at each other, we laugh a lot, like, in Israel, because Jews, you know, we deal with tragedy through laughter, but we don't have banter.
We don't, we don't pick at each other. And when I came here and I met all these British people and the Irish people and Australians and everybody's like, you know, I felt attacked in the beginning. I didn't understand what was going on. People being critical of me, what's happening. I And and because I hang out with comics a lot, then somebody made it clear to me at some point, I think it was Brendan actually, my partner from the shows, Epic Comedy Berlin, check him out online, I've got a website.
So, he he told me that, he was like, well you're being a little bitch essentially. So I was like, ah, okay, they're doing something else. And then I asked him, what is banter? And then I realized what banter is, I was like, ah, okay. And there is this one comic in the scene here, he's he's a young comic and his name is Eunice.
He's a funny guy, but when I started getting into this banter thing and started to shit at people as well, la, la, la, la, la, he was, he's such a guy that you can tell him anything and he's just like, ha, ha, he laughs at himself. He takes it, he's, he's, he finds it funny. And then he laughs at himself. And you're like, this is the best punching bag I've ever had.
But also, he's enjoying it. So, and it also kind of like, there's a limit. Of how much you can do it. Because you're like, alright. But at the same time, it's fun because this guy's enjoying the situation. And then, even if he's not that good yet at punching you back, It creates this nice feeling for everybody.
And I realized, yeah, that's what you need to do. You need to kind of accept the fact that you're a piece of shit like everybody else. And allow them to point that out. And also not take it very seriously. Like, there's something about comedy. It's like, you're ugly, right? Nobody means that you're ugly, but you are also ugly.
Everybody's also all of these things. Yeah. And and that's, I think like, if you grab on to that idea, then you start to get fucked up. If you're like, oh, am I ugly? You go home and you're like, ah. Just let it go. Just let it be. Or am I dumb? Yes, you're also, but it doesn't matter.
Erick: Yeah, and that's where, again, he had a great perspective on things.
His perspective was anybody can make fun of him and he could choose to be offended or not. Yeah. And he chose he wouldn't be offended. He would laugh along with them because there's a little bit of truth in it and that's okay.
Ori: Yeah. Yeah. It's sadly now he's dead. No, he's not. He's not. But I hope if he hears this, he'll laugh at this.
Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting.
Erick: Yeah. So, yeah, I, I really appreciate our conversation on this. I've been enjoying looking at stoicism like through the comedic lens of things and just being able to laugh at the ridiculousness of life and, and the episode, well, the episode that I had a couple of weeks ago, it was, you know talking stoicism It was inspired because of, I came to your comedy show.
Oh no. I was having a crappy day, I was just in this, this kind of sour mood and I couldn't shake it. For whatever reason, I was just having a really rough time, and I was trying to work on the podcast episode for that week. It was a Sunday, and I was just like, not able to shake this mood. And so, I'm like, you know what, let's just go out for the evening.
So I looked on Meetup, saw the comedy show, and I'm like, comedy, there we go, that's what I need. And Just going to that and laughing for two hours. And I sat next to this really cool German couple that had just been walking by. Oh. And Who's the other comedian? I forgot his name. Partik. Partik. He just said, Hey, we've got a comedy show in English and you know, it's 7:30 and so they're like, Oh, okay.
Ori: Yeah. And so
That's fun.
Erick: So they were like, Oh, okay. And you know, they were really nice and we didn't, yeah, we're like, okay, they might come back. And they, they, they showed up and I sat next to him. That's amazing when people do that. Yeah. We sat next to him and we were all laughing.
We were having a great time and I chatted with him for quite a while and we were all just, I mean, it was a small crowd. I think there were only like 10 people. Yeah. Yeah. But it was a great crowd. Everybody was having so much fun. We were all laughing and filling the room and you guys were great. And it just set my mood for that whole week.
The next week just felt so much better and so much lighter. And it just, just squashed that sour mood. And so I had to write that episode. I'm like, this is what I'm going to do. And wrote that episode and it was pretty well received. And I really liked it because I'm just like, you know, stoicism. Everybody always thinks it's all so serious and all this stuff.
And I'm pretty serious on there because I'm trying to talk about how to approach hard things in your life. Yeah. But here's another way to approach hard things in your life. Learn to laugh about them.
Ori: I gotta say, for me, when I go to the show and I do the same, like, I perform, I feel the same way, like, I just saw today Facebook likes to remind you how old you are, so it's like, seven years ago you've written this, and I was like and I literally wrote today, like, seven years ago today, I had a really shitty day, but then I had a great show, and the show trumped the day.
And I really feel that that's that works, like it works both ways because comedy is, is, my dad was a doctor and he's dead. Which is, I like, I wrote a joke after this saying, well that means he's a bad doctor. It's the one thing you're not supposed to do. Anyway, so the so what he used to say is like, any patient that'll come into his to, to his practice, And is smiling, will 100 percent of the time get over anything that he has, any problem they have quicker than people who are not.
And when he used to call me he used to ask me, are you, I can't, he used to say on the phone, I can't hear you smiling. And I have on my phone every day at 5. 30 I have a reminder to smile. And the show that I'm doing, the hour that I'm practicing, where you came was our little lab where we're practicing our, like, longer sets.
So I called it, for now at least, it's called Laughing Matter. Because I do think that it, it just lightens your whole existence. And there's something about also knowing that you're not alone. If, when you're in a room and people are laughing it, it creates this subconscious confirmation that we are kind of similar and which is, which, which I think is beautiful to me and is also why I don't like when people say, Oh, you shouldn't laugh about certain things because that's a saying.
You shouldn't treat certain problems. You go to the doctor and say, No, I'm sorry. I'm not going to touch your asshole. Sorry about that. We don't do that here. It smells, you know, it's not popular thing to do. So no, you should go everywhere and laugh about everything. Because what you're trying to do unless you're an asshole, but then that's not funny being like a real asshole That's not funny But if you if you're really trying to get in in in somewhere that's dark and deep Then that will make you feel lighter about yourself.
And I think it's always good to laugh yourself Always good to laugh with others And you can also laugh at others. One of the things that I, that I I mean, there's a border there between being an asshole and being exactly like, like comedians are shitting on each other, you know? It's like, I was thinking about it.
Why do I love stupid reality shows? Me and my wife, we watch Temptation Island. We love that show. It's such a good show. And there was no one there, at least from Season 2, but also Season 1, but let's say, that has not understood what the format is, why they're there, and what the benefit of everybody involved is.
But, it is so much fun for them. They get the Instagram followers and the money. We get to judge other people and go, Look at their relationship, it sucks. And, and the producers get to go, Oh, I like this money that comes in from royalties. That's, that's what everybody gets to do. And that's fine, and that's fine.
And I think that I think that we should allow comedy to seep into as much, as many parts of our lives as possible.
Erick: Agreed. Agreed. Like the, like the old philosopher said, you should be seeking eudaimonia, which means a good spirit.
Ori: I like that. Probably had to do with wine.
Erick: Yeah. Sometimes wine does put you in a good spirit.
A good spirit for a good spirit.
Ori: And also, even though this is something I've been working with recently, there is a level of like apologetic ness, but it's not real. It's not real. So the standards people have, which I feel like it's, this is not to say that I am a com as a comic, don't want always to be better and the best comedic 'cause that's absolutely what I want.
But I also feel like it was just even not comedy shows just left. From just anything. Like we have weird standards about our own fun. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I'm not gonna laugh at it. Why? Like, there's, this is a new bit I'm just, I'm working on where I go like, I go like, why is that even there? And then I do something stupid.
I go like, And on some level, As the kid inside you knows that's hilarious. There's something hilarious about it. There's something funny about stupid shit that there's no reason to laugh at. But we're just sitting there going, now say something political. Because we've created this barrier between what it is okay to laugh at as adults, and what it is to laugh at as children.
And I think that barrier needs to slowly dissipate. Because that's what you want. That's what really, when you go to comedy, that's what you want, really. So, of course, it's my job as a comedian to get you there, but it's also helpful if you let go a little bit. You know, which is, I think, why people take certain drugs, probably.
But, that's what I'm saying, that there is, if I had to say two things, it's one, it's those things. Like, let comedy seep into anything, and also, just let, just laugh at stupid shit. Cause why the fuck not?
Erick: Yeah. And life is just full of it, and so you can either, Amor fati means to love your fate. So you, meaning, love your fate.
Fate. So it means that life's just gonna throw stuff at you. Life is gonna happen. And you can love it or hate it, but life doesn't care. The universe doesn't care. It does not give a shit. So you can hate it all you want, and the universe is like, So what? Still gonna dish it out at you. And so you can either just go, Okay, I love this.
And what better way to learn to love something than to be able to laugh?
Ori: Yeah, that's a normal thing. I feel like after this podcast, you're going to get letters and people saying, I like the thing, but gay people are still not okay in my book.
Erick: Oh, I'm sorry. I occasionally get some stuff like that. Like I wrote, I did one about talking about understanding your privilege in life.
You know, because it took me a long time to understand all the things that I just got because I was a white male in a Christian culture in the richest nation in the world. Okay. And, you know, had good high schools, all of these things, middle class, all these things that I got that I did nothing for, I just happened to get by virtue of my birth.
And I just talked about it, just saying, hey, there's nothing wrong with having privileges. Just know that you have them, understand them, and so you don't judge other people because they're not like you, because they didn't get the same things that you got. And do what you can to help those who don't.
That's it. You know, I wasn't, wasn't super preachy, I was just saying, understand your situation, understand that you got lucky, or maybe you didn't get lucky, but you probably got luckier than somebody else. Because there's always somebody lower than you who got worse things. And I got a couple of emails on that, how dare you, and you know, and you're going off on this political woke agenda and all this stuff, and I said, that's not it at all, you missed the whole point.
Plus, you're not being very stoic if you're writing into me being so nasty because something offended you, you chose to be offended. Sure. Sure. And then the other one was, I mentioned during the middle of the pandemic, there was one where I was talking in my podcast and I said, you know, with this going on, if you go out and you are, you know, not wearing a mask and you aren't getting a vaccine, your behavior is being selfish because you're not taking into account how you're affecting other people.
Sure. So I got some nasty emails about that. Of course. Same kind of thing.
Ori: Anything that's political, people will will, will, will respond immediately from there, especially Americans. Yeah. From there. No, this is the left and this is the right, and if you said this and I'm actually from there, just shut up.
Erick: Yep. Well. I think it's getting time for us to wrap this up, because I know you have some plans for the evening, and my MacBook is just about to run out of power, so
Ori: Look at that. It's a good time. Even the MacBook is like, shut the fuck up.
Erick: No, it's been a great conversation, so I've really enjoyed having you on here, thank you.
Ori: Thank you, thank you so much, and thanks for coming to the comedy show as well.
Erick: Yeah, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Like I said, it really reset my mood, and the last couple weeks have just been better just because of that. I don't know what I was so sour about, or what it was bothering me, but I remember waking up Monday and it just felt better.
Ori: Well, glad to hear that, man. That's, when you say that, it fills me up with joy.
Erick: Yeah. All right, so that's it. Yeah for today's show. I really appreciate already being on here and thank you for having me Yeah, thank you. So and don't forget to laugh because life is a joke.
Ori: Are you gonna have my Instagram on there?
Erick: Yeah. Yeah, I will put some ways to contact Ori In the show notes of the podcast episodes to make sure you follow him on Instagram. It'd be really great.
Erick: Yeah. Me too, man. Yeah. All right. Bye, everybody.
Bye. And that's the end of this week's Stoic Coffee Break. I hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Ori Halevy, and make sure that you follow him on social media at Big Old Jew and Epic Berlin Comedy Show. As always, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and thanks for listening.
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.
Do you think that you have strengths and weaknesses? What if I told you that you don’t? Today I want to talk about how strengths and weaknesses are all a matter of perspective and context.
"Strive for excellence, not perfection, because we often find excellence in our imperfections."
—Harriet Braiker
Attributes, Characteristics, and Context
We all have things about us that we think of as strengths and weaknesses. Maybe it’s certain abilities or behaviors that we have that we’re proud of and others that we’d rather put in a shoebox and hide in the attic and hope that nobody will find them, especially ourselves. But what if we’re wrong about thinking of ourselves this way? What if it’s the way that we perceive these things that cause us so much self-doubt and anxiety?
The other day I was listening to a podcast interview with Simon Sink, and he said something that really hit me like running into a brick wall. He said:
“I hate the conversation about what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses because everything requires context. You don’t have strengths or weaknesses, you have characteristics and attributes. And in the right context, those are strengths, and in the wrong context, in the wrong environment, those are weaknesses. Always. So it’s better to know who you are and look for environments where those things are advantages.”
And while this is something that I’ve always known, but either I was just in the right mindset, or just the way that Simon put it, or probably both, made me stop the video and think about that idea for a minute. What if we’ve been going about this all wrong? What if rather than looking at your so called weaknesses as that, weaknesses, and just started viewing them as something more neutral that is helpful in one context but not in another?
Simon then later give an example about how if he had to work on a project alone, he would either create something of very low quality or the stress it would cause would take a toll on his health because he works better in teams. He knows that he functions far better surrounded by people that are able to help him because that’s one of his attributes—leading and working with a team.
Shifting Perspective
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
— Marcus Aurelius
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
— Albert Einstein
The Stoics teach us a crucial lesson about perception. They tell us that the quality of our lives is determined not by what happens to us but by how we choose to see it. In other words, our strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin; In every weakness, there lies a strength.
So, let's apply this wisdom to our own traits, shall we? Let’s turn the lens and view our characteristics in a new light, discovering how what we see as vulnerabilities might actually be veiled virtues. Let’s take some common characteristics and attributes that some of us have and reframe them to see where these traits might be just the thing to help us find success and find little more happiness by just being ourselves.
The Overthinker
Let’s say that you have a tendency to to overthink things. Maybe your mind spins like a hamster on a wheel and you find yourself going down rabbit holes when you get focused on an idea. While this may cause some frustration, distraction, and sleepless nights, in contexts that require detailed planning and foresight, the ability to think of all possible outcomes becomes a gift that helps avoid possible pitfalls and see opportunities that we might have missed. Overthinkers are the ones that leave no stone unturned and help us chart the optimal path forward.
The Introvert
"There is a great strength in being silent and listening; this is where the roots of empathetic leadership grow."
— Susan Cain
Often, introversion is seen as a social setback, but what if I told you it’s actually your stealthy strength? In a world that can’t stop talking, the quiet among us are the Olympic-grade listeners. Stoicism urges us to value the power of listening—a skill that’s absolutely golden in relationships, counseling, and leadership. While everyone else is trying to be heard, you’re absorbing, understanding, and, ultimately, wielding the power of knowledge.
Introversion is often mistaken as a barrier to leadership and dynamism, but it actually holds within it the seeds of empathetic leadership. Introverts, with their preference for deep thought and meaningful one-on-one connections, can be uniquely positioned to lead with empathy, understanding, and a keen ear for listening. In an age where leadership is evolving beyond the loud and charismatic, the introverted leader builds teams that feel seen, heard, and valued.
The Risk-Averse
Playing it safe is often frowned upon, especially in our “go big or go home” culture. But let’s turn the tables and look at it through a more Stoic perspective. The risk-averse individual, those who prefer the known paths to the potential perils of uncharted territory. While often criticized for a lack of boldness, their cautious approach makes them the conscientious conservators of our world. They’re the master of calculated risks, and their cautious approach gives them the ability to foresee and mitigate risks, to plan with thoroughness and care.
In situations that demand thorough risk assessment—like financial investments, legal strategies, or safety protocols—this so-called weakness becomes the cornerstone of wisdom. Where others gamble, the risk-averse navigate with a map and a compass, turning potential pitfalls into well-navigated journeys. It is not the boldness of the steps we take, but the soundness of the path we choose that ensures our progress.
The Stubborn
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Stubbornness gets a bad rap, often seen as the refusal to be flexible. Yet, under a different light, this so-called stubborn streak can be a laser-focused determination. When channeled correctly, it becomes the relentless drive needed to bring projects across the finish line or to stand firm in one’s values against peer pressure. An unwillingness to quit when things are tough, and having the strength to persevere can be the thing that helps you succeed when others other abandon ship. When others dither or flip-flop, being a stubborn yet principled person can help you be the lighthouse, guiding ships with unwavering conviction.
The Daydreamer
Caught daydreaming again? Instead of scolding yourself for not having both feet on the ground, consider this: Some of the greatest inventions and artworks were born from minds that dared to drift. Stoicism teaches us the value of perspective, and the daydreamer’s perspective is one that reaches beyond the immediate horizon. In roles that demand creativity and innovation, the daydreamer is king. While others see what is, the daydreamer sees what could be, painting the canvas of the future with strokes of imagination.
The Procrastinator
Next up, procrastination – the thief of time, or so they say. I certainly fall into the category of being a procrastinator, and find it challenging to get things done early even though I know it would be lot less stressful. I get distracted easily, because I’m so interested and curious about so many things. Yet, what if I told you that the habitual dawdler is actually a creative strategist in disguise? Procrastination can be the brain’s way of allowing ideas to marinate, leading to bursts of innovation and creativity. When the deadline looms, I often pull out solutions that a more time-efficient approach might never have uncovered. Here, the eleventh-hour rush becomes a crucible for brilliance.
Embracing Who You Are
"The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials."
— Chinese Proverb
So, how do we apply this Stoic reframing, turning perceived weaknesses into strengths? It starts with a shift in perception. Instead of labeling our traits as inherently good or bad, we view them as tools in our kit, each with its moment to shine.
1. Context Is Key: Before you judge a trait as a weakness, ask, “In what context might this be a strength?” This is where the virtue of wisdom comes into play. Think of your traits as tools that need to be used in the right situation. Remember, a spoon might seem like a weak choice for cutting steak—until you’re served soup.
2. Balance Your Portfolio: Just like a savvy investor diversifies their portfolio, diversify your traits. Lean into your strengths, but don’t shy away from those so-called weaknesses. They’re your hidden assets.
3. Reframe Your Narrative: Stoicism teaches us the power of our internal narrative. Change yours to highlight the positive aspects of your traits. “I’m not shy; I’m a master listener.” See? Sounds cooler already.
4. Experiment and Observe: Life’s the lab, and you’re the scientist. Experiment with leaning into your different traits in various contexts. Observe the outcomes. You might be surprised at what you discover.
5. Vive la Différence: Appreciate your differences and don’t compare yourself with others. We all have different traits that make us better at some things than others. We need the differences to make a more complete, interesting, and dynamic world. If we were all exactly the same, the world would be a very uninteresting place.
6. Embrace Growth: Finally, remember that growth is a Stoic’s game. Your traits aren’t set in stone. They’re malleable, capable of being honed into sharper, stronger versions of themselves.
Conclusion
In the grand tapestry of our life, each thread—each trait and characteristic—plays a role in the larger pattern. What we perceive as weaknesses are often strengths waiting for their moment in the spotlight, asking for a change in perspective and a bit of Stoic wisdom to shine.
So, the next time you catch yourself bemoaning a personal flaw, remember the Stoic. With a bit of context, creativity, and a shift in perspective, you can turn that flaw into your signature strength and most prized asset. After all, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not about the cards you’re dealt; it’s about how you play the hand.
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.
Do you think that Stoics are too serious and all business? Do you think that if you adopt Stoic principles that you can’t have fun? Today I want to talk about humor and some of the misconceptions of Stoicism.
“It’s better for us to laugh at life than to cry over it.”
— Seneca
When you picture a Stoic, you might imagine someone with the emotional range of a sloth, but surprise! The Stoics weren't the ancient world's equivalent of grumpy cat. They actually had quite a bit to say about living "according to nature," and let's be real, what's more natural than snorting milk out of your nose from laughing too hard? Exactly.
So, how does humor fit into Stoicism?
The Stoics often talked about achieving eudaimonia, also translated as ‘good spirit’, which for the Stoics is about reducing negative emotions, and cultivating positive emotions. Since we are emotional creatures, we aren’t expected to not have emotions, and for me, having a good laugh certainly helps me get closer to having a ‘good spirit’.
Absurdity of Life
Because stoicism is about trying to see the world for exactly what it is, we can laugh at the absurdities of life. Seneca was all about chuckling at life's curveballs when he said, "Fortune is like that drunk friend who tries to help but ends up knocking over the lamp." Life is unpredictable, so why not have a laugh when things go sideways?
When you think about it, this is what Amor Fati is all about. It’s about not just accepting everything that happens in life, but loving everything that comes our way, and what better way is there to love everything that comes your way when you find humor in even the darkest times?
When we take things too seriously, we often get stuck ruminating and stressing out over things that are small or even imagined. When we get stuck in this mindset, our thinking becomes more narrow as response to stress, which it makes it hard for us to make better decisions. In these situations, often times the best thing we can do is laugh about it. Lightening our mood helps us relax which in turn helps us think more positively and be more open to possibilities.
The Stoics recognized that joy is not the same thing as being frivolous. They understood that joy is part of a well-rounded life. The Stoics themselves practiced self-deprecating humor in order to not take themselves or life too seriously. Epictetus was known to have a very dry and ironic wit. You can totally picture Epictetus cracking a smile and reminding us that just because we're after virtue, doesn't mean we can't enjoy a good meme. When talking about death, he once said, “I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived – and dying I will tend to later.”
It was reported that Chrysippus literally died from laughing at the sight of his intoxicated donkey trying to eat figs. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, once cracked, "I get up in the morning because the universe isn't done with me; also, someone has to feed the ducks." Keeping yourself grounded with a little self-mockery is very much in line with Stoic principles.
Keep Perspective
Laughter helps us to keep things in perspective. When we are in good spirits, we are better able to see things as they are, or imagine how they could be. When things don’t go the way we want, we’re better able to roll with things, focus on what went right, and move forward in a more positive direction. When we are stressed or pessimistic, then we’re more likely to catastrophize, only see the downsides, and wallow in why things didn’t work out.
Seneca gives us some good instruction on keeping a humorous outlook when comparing the serious and sullen Heraclitus the more cheerful Democritus. He wrote:
“We ought therefore to bring ourselves into such a state of mind that all the vices of the vulgar may not appear hateful to us, but merely ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. The latter of these, whenever he appeared in public, used to weep, the former to laugh: the one thought all human doings to be follies, the other thought them to be miseries. We must take a higher view of all things, and bear with them more easily: it better becomes a man to laugh at life than to lament over it. Add to this that he who laughs at the human race deserves better of it than he who mourns for it, for the former leaves it some good hopes of improvement, while the latter stupidly weeps over what he has given up all hopes of mending.”
Laughter is the Best Medicine
When comes to health, laughter is truly good medicine. With the pace of the modern world, we’re all under a lot of stress, which is detrimental to our long term health. Since stress hormones, those released for our ‘fight or flight’ instincts are meant to get us out of short term danger, such as escaping from a saber toothed tiger, we’re not meant to operate under this type of duress for long periods.
Exposure to these hormones over longer periods increase our risk for obesity, heart disease, cancer, depression and many other illnesses. Laughter, as it turns out, helps counteract many of these problems by relieving stress, increasing oxygen intake, and releasing healthy chemicals into our bloodstream.
Strengthening Social Bonds
The Stoics stress that it’s important for us to build community and be a productive member of society. Laughter is something that brings people together and helps to strengthen social bonds. Sharing a good laugh with family and friends or even strangers can help us form better social connections.
At a very simplistic level, when we laugh with others, we relax around them and are better able to just be ourselves. It feels like the other person ‘gets us’. We associate good feelings with them. Our memories of them are positive, which means it’s more likely we’ll want to spend time with them, or be willing to help them out when they need it.
For example, even though I had a difficult relationship with my father, some of my fondest memories of him are when he shared funny stories or we watched a movie that had us rolling on the floor. I can still remember his deep belly laugh and when he’d have to take off his glasses because he had tears in his eyes.
When we can see the lighter side of life, we are also better able to be compassionate to other people and more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. When we’re stressed or pessimistic, we’re more likely to place blame on them when things aren’t working out.
Wisdom in Humor
There are many ways to learn and often humor is the best way to communicate wisdom. The best teachers I had growing up were usually those that could make learning fun or add some humor into their lessons. A bit of humor in the class often made the difference between really enjoying a class or just getting through it.
Sometimes, the truth is so blunt, it hurts. But wrap that truth in a joke, and it becomes wisdom you can approach with a smile. Some of the best comedians share hard truths about life with humor that otherwise would be uncomfortable. By shining a light on hard things with humor, we’re more willing to look at things that we might otherwise would have avoided. By making us laugh, they open us up to seeing things from different perspectives that we may not have considered before.
Resilience
When we can learn to laugh about the hard things in life, we become more resilient. When the going gets tough, rather than letting it drag us down, we’re able to make something good of a tough situation. With a shift in perspective, what may have seemed like a frustrating situation, can be turned into something more neutral or even a funny story to share with friends later.
Learning to laugh at life also helps us in embracing imperfection. Nobody's perfect and Stoics get that. A well-timed joke about our own blunders reminds us to accept our flaws. I can imagine that if Marcus Aurelius had social media, he'd probably tweet, "Messed up today. #JustEmperorThings."
Looking at the Bright Side of Life
So how can you get better about looking at life from a more humorous perspective?
A big thing for me is to just watch some good comedy. Last Sunday night I was working on some business ideas and was finding myself stressing out about it. I found that my thinking was narrowed and it was really hard to generate ideas. Then I would get even more frustrated because I couldn’t seem to get out of this downward spiral.
So I went to a comedy show. It was small show but the crowd was really fun and the comedians were great. Some of the topics broached were dark, but still funny. I also made friends with the couple sitting next to me. Two hours of laughing reset my mood and started the week off with a much better outlook.
Since the Stoics are big on having awareness of what you are thinking, pay attention to when you’re getting critical towards someone or something else. Approach the situation like a comedy writer. Can you stop and see if you can find something funny about the situation? Can you laugh at yourself for getting too serious about something? I found that if I think about how I could turn it into a funny story to tell someone later can help to lighten my mood.
But with this said, be careful not to take things too far. Humor can be a great coping mechanism, but it can also be used to avoid having difficult conversations or dealing with challenging situations. Also, laughing at the expense of others is one way to burn bridges rather than building them.
The Stoics teach us to practice temperance, so make sure that you use humor at the right time and in the right doses. Trying to be funny at the wrong time can backfire and may cause more harm. Life isn’t all doom and gloom, but it’s not a laugh-fest either. Finding that sweet spot between levity and seriousness can help you strike the right balance in any situation.
Like they say, know your audience.
Conclusion
In essence, Stoicism with a dash of humor isn't just palatable; it's downright enjoyable. It turns out, you can pursue virtue and still have room for a good laugh. So next time you're pondering the Stoic virtues, remember to lighten up and let humor be your companion on the path to eudaemonia.
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.
This week's episode is an interview with Mark Tuitert, an Olympic gold medalist speed skater and Stoic author. We sat down in his home outside of Amsterdam and had a wonderful conversation about discipline, handling stress, forgiving parents, and about his new book The Stoic Mindset. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed the conversation. You can find out more about Mark Tuitert at https://marktuitert.nl
Episode Transcript: Erick: Hello friends, my name is Erick Cloward and welcome to the Stoic Coffee Break. The Stoic Coffee Break is a weekly podcast where I take aspects of Stoicism and do my best to break them down to the most important points. I share my experiences, both my successes and my failures, and hope that you can learn something from them all within the space of a coffee break.
This week's episode is an interview with Mark Tuitert. Mark is an Olympic gold medalist speed skater. He's from the Netherlands, which is where I'm living at the moment. And Luckily, his agent contacted me just as I moved here, and I was able to go down to his house and do an interview with him. And he just is working on a book right now called The Stoic Mindset, which should be coming out in the US and Canada and the UK in April.
We sat down, we talked about stoicism, we talked about his Olympic career, and we talked about how he was able to use stoicism to help him overcome a lot of challenges and eventually end up winning a gold medal in the Vancouver Olympics. So I had a really great interview with Mark, really enjoyed sitting down and chatting with him.
(I did mangle his name at the beginning of the podcast interview, but since then I've learned how to pronounce it properly.)
I hope you enjoy this interview with Mark Tuitert.
So hello everybody, today is my first live interview for the Stowe Coffee Break podcast. I'm here with Mark Tuitert so we're actually here in the Netherlands. I just happened to be here when we got contacted by him and it, so this worked out. So this is my first time actually doing a live interview and filming it.
So hopefully this will go well.
Mark: Do we actually have a coffee break? Here we go. Or a tea.
Erick: So for me, this is rather exciting because like I said, this is this is all new. And. I guess let's just jump right into it. First off, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to my audience?
Mark: My name is Mark Tuitert.
I was an Olympic speed skater and speed skating here in Holland is a pretty big sport. So I was a professional athlete between my 18th and well, 34, 34 years old. And after that, I have now my own company, I'm a motivational speaker, I write books mainly also about Stoicism I'm a big and avid fan of the Stoics.
So yeah, for me, I'm a father of two. I love music. I love sports. I love life. But I've had some challenging situations as an athlete, as an Olympic athlete. And I still work for television sometimes I go to the Olympics and do commentary.
Erick: Oh nice nice. So you're your agent sent me over a copy of your latest book. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Mark: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, The Stoic Mindset. Yes I always used a lot of wisdom From philosophy during my sports career. So within my career I I had to deal with a lot of pressure being an Olympic athlete. I missed out on two Olympics actually in 2002 and 2006 by various reasons. We can dive into that later probably.
And that were really challenging times for me. So I had to deal with overtraining with. My parents in a divorce situation with pressure of sports, with pressure of well, the public here in Holland, speed skating is a big sport. So you have a lot of pressure. You can earn money with it, of course, but on the other side, missing two Olympic games was for me a tough situation because I've been training for four years for the one Olympics in 2002 in Salt Lake City training for four years for the Olympics in 2006 in Turin and I missed out on those.
So for me, I had one chance to train for Vancouver another four years. And during that time I read a lot and I really was intrigued by the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, by the sayings of Seneca, of Epictetus, and I really, during my career as I got older and a little bit wiser, I used these. texts and philosophy, philosophical ideas to yeah, not only be, be a better person or make wiser choices. And that helped me a lot. Leading up to the Olympics in 2010. For me, that was the pinnacle of my career, probably last chance. Mm-Hmm, . I I could start on an Olympic games and two or three weeks right before these games.
I did everything I could within my control to be the best athlete I can be. And I had to dive deep for that in my whole life. And yeah, for me, that was life changing. So, what, what my mindset was right before these Olympic Games, I think was really stoic. I don't judge my parents for what they do.
I don't look at competitors, what they do. I don't worry about the journalists, what they write about me. I only focus on my internal state of mind, my mindset. That's what I call the stoic mindset in my book. And so I, I, I concentrate on my, yeah, my inner voice being. Stable being yeah, being a voice of courage.
So not dealing, not pushing away the fear because you feel fear right before an Olympic Games. Absolutely. Working with it. So not pushing it away. Stoic. Yeah, could be in our English or Dutch language. Pushing feelings away. Not like that at all, but just embracing the fear, embracing the challenge.
And just look at yourself. No, I give everything I have. I can look in the mirror. I know I did everything I could to get here. I'm 29 years old. I was in Vancouver. Probably this is going to be the last chance you get on an Olympic Games. Yeah, absolutely. And that's you're nearing your retirement age as an athlete.
Yeah. So these things for me were Yeah, these thoughts that They were thoughts that kept me grounded and It's not that I didn't aspire to a big goal. I aspired to win Olympic gold, to be the best speed skater I can be. So that's what I wrote a book about. So how can you give everything you have, dream big, reaching your goals, but still detach from the negative emotions resulting you know, with that road leading up to that big goal.
And for me, that helped a lot. And after two, three years ago we had difficult times with my company first energy gum. COVID was happening production wise, things were going the wrong way. So I was really challenged. Yeah, I learned how to deal with this, and I see a lot of people struggling with this, so why don't I write it down in a book so people actually can, yeah, maybe learn something from it.
And it's not like I want to point the finger, but I want to tell my story so people can relate to that. And they don't relate probably to winning an Olympic gold medal, but relate to the journey, relate to the setbacks, dealing with pressure, dealing with Things that are not in your control, dealing with chaos.
That's where I find the beauty in Stoicism. It's like for me, how can you keep standing upright in the storm of life? Like Marcus Aurelius did, like Seneca did, like all these great thinkers and people did who adopted this philosophy.
Erick: So what was it that first drew you to it? Do you remember how you found Stoicism?
Mark: Yeah. Well, I was always intrigued by history and in, in, in school, I loved history. And the first time I was really challenged by a situation was when I was 19, 20 years old. I was the hotshot talent in speed skating. I signed a big contract. I, well, I was on under the pressure of the Olympics of 2002 coming up.
I did a lot of interviews. My sponsor paid me a fair amount of money so there was a lot of pressure on me, but I still was living at home with my parents who were going through a divorce. So me being the oldest son, I tried to intervene between the two people I love and that didn't work out.
Actually, it, yeah, for me, what happened was I yeah, I, what was sort of a flight into the one thing I thought I could control that was training harder. So for me. I trained harder and harder and harder. I trained seven days a week, 2, 3, 3 times a day. So rest days, or I don't do rest days, you know? Yeah, I just grind.
Wake up early, go to bed late and grind it through. But that's not how you become fit mentally and physically and emotionally. I was wrecked the winter of 2002. I missed out on these Olympic games. I was overtrained. Lying on my bed, I was sick. So I couldn't train that winter. I missed the Olympic Games.
And that was, for me, that was like a sort of an epiphany. Like, how can we fool ourselves like this? How can we think we know how it works, life works, no? If I put the hours in, and of course you have to work hard and put hours in to get somewhere, but we can get blindsided, we can have blinders on, and I had that.
So as I was really fascinated how that worked, like, how can I fool myself? I have to reflect on myself so that this doesn't happen again. I have to learn from this. So I read a lot about overtraining, about how psychology works. But I also read by then when I was 20 years old, beautiful text of Mark Aurelius.
So I read parts of the meditations already. And a beautiful quote of, of Marcus is that the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. And for me, yeah, that's, that's, that were the first lights of stoicism that I thought, Hey, that's, that's a really, really beautiful way of thinking through setbacks, not as the end of the road, but it's an obstacle in your path and it's up to you to find a new direction in life.
So that's actually my first chapter in my book. That you can use obstacles or setbacks as a signpost. So what does this teach me? How do I deal with this? And from that point on I found a new journey with a new coach. And it went really well within two years. I was a European champion and everything happened.
In the right way, but I still was not there. It's not really, really what stoicism clicked for me was in the years leading up to Vancouver. But I learned through the years it, yeah, it sort of evolved.
Erick: Yeah. No, I think that I think that over training is probably very common in a lot of sports. So I know that so I used to cycle a lot, not competitively or anything like that, but I used to cycle a lot.
and there'll be times when I'd just be riding, you know. You know, two, 300 miles in a week. And while for Tour de France athletes, that's easy, but I have a full time job and kids and all that kind of stuff. And it was, you know, I basically wore myself out and you reach a point where your body just says, Hey, that's fine that you want to do that, but you can't and learning to step back and go, okay.
And so I think over the years I've worked hard to try and develop that, that attitude of working hard enough. Yeah. And resting enough. Yeah. And that has really made a big difference on that. And finding that, like Stoic teaches, finding that temperance, that moderation. Yeah. And it's that balance of those two that's really going to get us there.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. It's the self discipline, the moderation you have to find. And of course, especially when you're young, you can grind. You have to grind. It's beautiful. There's something, there's beauty in there too. Yeah. To have a big dream and give it all you have. But it's a really thin line in blinding yourself.
So that's what I found is beautiful in stoicism. It's the practical philosophy side of it. Yeah. And we don't philosophize about concepts and abstract things. You can really philosophize and how, how is this helping me to lead a good life and what does it mean to lead a good life? What is that? Absolutely.
Is that winning an Olympic gold medal? A lot of people, a lot of athletes I know. Are under the misconception that if you win the medal, like entrepreneurs, if they sell the company, if you do this, then it's all been worthwhile. So you look back from that gold medal to your career and then you can say it's worth it.
But that's, that's the other way. That's the wrong way of thinking about it. It's a guaranteed failure for yourself. If you look at it like that, if you think of happiness like that, if you think of success like that. So you can still chase that gold medal But I think you really have to reflect on what it means to be successful.
What does it really entail?
Erick: Yeah, very true. I think that One of the things that for me I actually approached this topic on my podcast last week. It was like, how do you stay content while you're striving for your ambitions?Yeah, and it's I people think of them as you would do one or the other like if I'm content with my life I'm not gonna be ambitious And it's not that, it's that you find contentment on the path, you don't find contentment, it's not an end point, it's not a static state of being, it's while you're journeying along, you find contentment there, while you're heading towards your ambitions, and if you can do that, you enjoy the whole thing all along the way and you're having a great time the whole along the way.
Mark: And you can have hard times and you can have challenging times. And sometimes you feel sad or you feel lost and that can all be a part of that journey. But that's what life is, right? I find it beautiful in Epictetus or in Stoics.
Accept the reality of life. You know, it's not a dream or something far away. What life entails so it's to accept that and not run away from it, but yeah, don't shy away from that
Erick: So I wanted to ask you, what are your daily practices in stoicism? What are the things that help you? Each and every day, because in Stoicism, we talk a lot about having practices, about having kind of rituals that we follow to help remind us to live these things and to get us there.
Mark: What are your practices? Well, I'm not like the dead ritual guy that has an agenda and says I'm doing, I'm doing this at six o'clock and then at eight o'clock, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What I really do is before when I wake up and when I go to bed, I take a couple of minutes to reflect. That's it.
Actually, I, I, I make sure I, I, I am thankful for what I encountered that day. Thankful for everything. Also, if it's hurting or it's sadness, I'm thankful for that. And that helps me a lot. So when I go to sleep, like Seneca says, before we go to sleep, we have all encountered fortune or the mistress Fortuna.
And I find that it's a beautiful thing to do when you, right, before you go to sleep, what are you thankful for and what are the things you still have to learn on your path there because we're all prokoptons, right? We're all stoic learners. We're not the saints. We're not the Holy Spirit. We're not God.
We're human beings. So I'm not a natural stoic. I'm an athlete. I want to win gold. I want to beat everybody. I want to challenge myself. I want to go out there. So stoicism for me is like a really a sort of framework. And I use these reflections every day when I wake up and when I go to bed. Also thinking of death, contemplating death memento mori what, what if I look back at the end of my life, hopefully it will, I will be old.
My, my grandmother is a hundred years. She's still. Is alive I hope to reach that age, but if you look back at your life, did you make wise choices? Were you chasing the right things, not the wrong things? Were you in connection with the people around you, the people you love? So, so these reflections help me every day.
Am I doing the right thing? For me to say at the end of this life or even at the end of this day, because you don't know if there's a next one. Are these the choices I want to make? Am I on my own path? Am I leading my own path? For me, stoicism is a sort of way to reflect on that. And that's what I write in my book to the stoic mindset.
It's, I don't embrace stoicism or I don't teach stoicism through my book. Like this is stoicism, like a religion or a dogma – far from it. I think everybody, you can see it as an inspiration and a school of thinking, learning to think better, to look at life in another way. And that's what helps me a lot. So it's up to you.
It's not like we don't have a teacher to put it into practice, but it's not like we don't have a teacher saying, Oh, you can do that. Or you can do that. No, it's for me, it's a relief and a way of expanding my view and and doing it in a non judgmental way. That's what I tell myself every day too. What, what are the things you're judging others about?
What's the judgment you can withhold? What's the reflection you can do on this?
Erick: I think for me kind of , to kind of clarify, or to kind of put a point on that, the way that I've talked about it, and because I've had people ask me, it's like, so what is the difference between this and a religion? Yeah.
And you, you nailed it. It's, it's the dogma. There's no dogma with stoicism. It's about, these are tools, these are mindsets, these are principles. And because they're principles, they're flexible, they're, they allow you to adapt to any situation. You filter it through the principle, you know, is, am I using courage?
Am I being wise? Am I being just? Am I being,
Mark: Disciplined? And probably you know, right? If you're not making a wise choice, you sometimes you do that and you know, yeah, you know, this is not a wise choice, but I still do it anyway.
Erick: Exactly.
Mark: Okay. But then you cannot fool yourself. Right?
Erick: Exactly. And, and the thing is, is it's, for some people that's harder. Some people want religion. They want a dogma because it's easier to follow, you know, you know, that's fine, too Yeah, and it's fine if that works for you But I think that I think that that's what attracted stoicism to me was that I grew up Mormon And so I was a very dogmatic religion, and I tried living all of the principles exactly the way they said and I was still unhappy.
I was miserable for so much of my life and so I left the church and that it wasn't until like I said about seven years ago when I finally found stoicism, and it was suddenly like, “Why didn't I know these things growing up these things could have really changed my life?” I learned what I can't control I learned how to change my perspective on so many things
Mark: and It's freedom of thinking it is way more freedom. It’s funny that stoicism started off and then Christianity came in between and now Stoicism is on the rise again probably and then I think it will be for a couple of thousand years. So it's what suits you and for me too, for me getting rid of the dogmas. So I'm, I'm really also a little bit, there are also people of course who say, Hey, this is not stoic or that's, that's not stoic.
And I find that amusing because this is philosophy. It's not like a set of rules you have to abide to. It's a way of thinking which you want to adopt because it enriches your life and it expands your thinking. Without judging and that's I think the beauty of it.
Erick: Yeah, I find that funny when somebody says when I I'll look on the reddit Stoicism forum sometimes and answer questions on there from time to time and I do think it's funny when somebody says well That's not stoic.
Yeah, whatever and I'm just like that's are you sure? I mean you're being very judgmental You see according to which stoic exactly you could say I don't think that follows stoic principles very well, and explain why but just to make a judgment, and you be the arbiter of, well that's not stoic. You know, you could say that that behavior doesn't seem to follow the principles, and I think that that's where, where for me, I like kind of having that, like I said, I like having that flexibility, because it allows you to, because life is full of nuance.
It's not black or white, it's not, It's not right or wrong all the time. It's things somewhere in the middle. It's like, for me, my favorite movies are the ones where you kind of like the villain. That there's empathy for the villain because nobody's all bad and nobody's all good. And I like it when people are darker and they're a little messier with things.
Because that's the way life really is. And I think stoicism allows for that messiness in life, and I think that's very important. Oh yes, it does. I think so too. And I think that too many, and I think that that's why it's becoming more and more attractive to people, because life is so complicated.
And I wanted to, I guess that kind of leads into one of my next questions is stoicism in modern life. I mean, how do you think that stoicism can help us with our fast paced technology to the world?
Mark: Well, I think we, we get distracted a lot by, by phones, by news, by social media posts. People really are getting used to just putting their thoughts and their judgments out there and we have to react.
So it's a reaction. Yeah. Society. We react on reactions. Yeah. So we react, but nobody takes a step back and reflects and think, Hey, why am I doing this? Why is somebody hurting me? Or what do I feel? You know, if on Twitter or X or whatever you call it these days, if somebody reacts and has a vile opinion or about me or I am on television and, and, and somebody.
It hurts me, it really is, I think, why is, what you could do, and I think this is really stoic, like, why does this hurt me this much? Why? Is the opinion of one, one person, of me, valuable? It might be, it might be somebody I respect or somebody gives me feedback in a, but if I respect someone, he gives me feedback in a, in a way I can do something with that, that, that's.
That's what I find valuable, but that wouldn't hurt me actually. Right. So why does it hurt me? Is it my ego? Is it something I want to push back on? And like, well, you this and you that that's the, that's the impulse you have. Right. That's what, what the Stoics teach, teach us is like, okay, the impulse is there.
Of course, if somebody cuts me off in traffic. My first impulse I'm going to do something to you, you know and I think the beauty of stoicism is to take a step back and think about, okay, somebody, do I give this person the power to make me feel like this? Like Epictetus would say, you're complicit.
In the story, if you react, you can also detach from that story, leave your own life and let the impulse flow away and use your thought on why this matters. So for me what really helped me is when I, in 2006, I missed the Olympic games. I was in the final five others in the final six of touring and I was lost.
I did really well in tests. I had a perfect score. I had a great condition. My technique was good. Where I missed out on the Olympics again, because I, I fell in the strangest places during a race, right? In the corners I fall, like out of nothing. I was unstable. So I thought about this again, like not trying to work harder or react, but take a step back and say, where is this coming from?
So I had a mentor, I had a great conversation with a mentor of mine and he really showed me a beautiful thing. He said, okay, what do you, he asked me a question, how, where do you stand you towards your father and mother? Because my father and mother were still fighting each other in the divorce situation.
And I put myself in between them. I was the one, you know trying to fix the situation. And I thought. Also, if I fix the situation, I find rest. And if I find rest, I can become a good athlete. So I have to fix the situation. But I learned to see it the other way around. This is not my situation. This is not my fight.
This is a fight between two people I love, but it's not my fight. I have to step out of this fight and say that. I said, Mom, I'm not your co fighter in this fight. This is you. This is me. I have my own path. And I went to my father and that's where judgment comes in. I was really angry towards my father. So a lot of anger and that's what a Stoics teach us.
And I think the beauty of Stoicism is. You can't get rid of that anger. That anger has got nothing to do with my father. Epictetus would say, we have our, our things that happened to us. I mean my parents divorcing. And then on the other hand, we have these emotions, but there's something in between.
That's your judgment of the situation. So it was my judgment of my father that causes the anger. It's not my father. I would, and it's, we all do this, right? We blame someone for the feeling we blame the person, or we blame the situation and that's totally not stoic. So Epictetus really, I thought that resonated with me.
So I talked with someone and Hey, I know this. This is from Stoicism, it's from Epictetus, right? So I, I thought about this, and I asked him what to do. He said, just call your father up, just do that. And I did that, without judging him. Yeah. It's my judgment, not his. So I asked him questions, and I, that's I think what we should learn to do more often, and that's what the Stoics, and we all learned from Socrates.
Don't think you know this. Don't think you're the right person for this. Don't think your judgment is how the world works. It's your judgment. Yeah. So if you ask a good question and be really honest in your, in you wanting to know the answer. So I, I called my father up and I said, I miss him and let's get into contact with each other again.
So I, I withhold my judgment. Of course, I judge him somewhere for what happened, but I tried to not intervene. Let that judgment intervene between our situation. And even up to this day, I, I, I, now I can say I'm 43 years old. I, that whole judgment is gone. It's gone. Yeah. I love my father for who he is.
And yes, he has his troubles and his dark sides, but Hey, look in the mirror. I don't? So, so for me, it was really, am I a better 20, 30 years older? These reflections. Do I know what it feels like to have not any contact with your sons for six years? No, I don't. So instead of judging him, it's wiser to try to let him into my life again.
Yeah, and my father was there when when I won Olympic gold medal. So it was, that was great and in these four years between 2006 and 2010. I didn't feel any anger, so the anger faded and what made that situation better for me in my life was my life became better because my choices became wiser because they were not fueled by anger.
I could become a better athlete, more relaxed. That sort of paradox, right? The balance, what we talked about. So I was more relaxed I could dive deeper with training, I could work harder and I become a better person, but also a better athlete. And that's, for me, that was the one thing I needed to really get the best outta myself and to become Olympic champion.
Erick: Yeah. Yeah, I can relate to that very well. I had to. A lot of anger towards my father as well. Yeah. So my parents got divorced when I was 20, when I was 20 years old. Yeah, yeah, same age. Yeah, and and when I found out why and found out all the reasons for it, and I was, like I said, I grew up Mormon. I was on my mission in Austria when I found out.
Oh, yeah. And I was, I was very angry. I was. I came home, I tried to talk to my dad a little bit about it. He was very evasive about things. And then unfortunately we never got to really reconcile because he died just a few years after that. So, just completely out of the blue. So, his pancreas just started eating the rest of his organs and he died within 10 days.
But over the years as I've gotten older and wiser, and I've had kids of my own and recognize how challenging that is, learned to really work to forgive him and to understand him because, you know, with the fact that he was dead, all that hate did, all that anger did was hurt me. And so trying to understand him, because he wasn't all bad, there were plenty of things about him that were great.
But when they weren't, it was really awful. And so it was like, about an 80 20 split. Like, 80 percent of the time, he was good. 20%, he was awful. And so I, now I'm at that point in my life where I can look back on that and just appreciate it. The good things.. He was smart. He was funny. He was kind.
Mark: Yeah.
Yeah. I think, yeah, that's a beautiful way of saying it. And I, that's also what I find fascinating is somebody to, to, to change that perspective. Yep. You don't need the other person. Actually, the person cannot be there anymore. It's your perspective, which you can change.
Erick: And that was the thing that I learned was that I had to change my perspective about my dad.
And I choose that perspective. It's not that I ignore the bad things he did. He was very abusive when we were growing up. At certain points. But I can still appreciate the good things that he gave us.
Mark: That's what Epictetus says, right? I found it beautiful in his sayings. He said too. It's your parents, you don't get to choose your parents.
That's what's given to you. So you better learn and love what's given to you. They can be challenging, they can be bad, they can do horrible things, but they're your parents. And I always pushed that thought away. People say, hey, it's, it's your father. I say, yeah, well, to hell with that. But it's true. It's like, it's exactly what Epictetus says and what the Stoics, these wise people tell us.
It's like, you can be angry at your neighbor or your brother, or you can wish another father, but that's not the case. This is reality of life. And it's your role as a son to be a good son, to watch your father or to watch your mother and to respect what they've did. You don't know. You don't know where they come from.
They have their burdens. They have their share which, which they take on their shoulders and you don't know what that's like. So you can judge them, but you don't know.
Erick: Yeah, and the only, and the thing is, is like I said, when you hold on to that, you're the person that gets hurt. You're hurting yourself.
It's that old Confucius saying, like, holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal that you want to throw at somebody. The longer you hold on to it, you're the one that gets burnt. And I was just like, I remember I read that when I was a teenager and I was like, that's an interesting idea. And then as I got older and found stoicism, I'm like, there's the coal again.
There's the coal.
Mark: Totally get that idea. It's so powerful that you can just. You know, just so you can get rid of these negative emotions. That's, I think, the beauty in the way of thinking in Stoicism is philosophy.
Erick: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to touch on something that I know is, it's probably one of the hardest topics in your book.
And that's about your mother's suicide. How did that impact you personally? And what was it that, maybe in Stoicism, maybe it was something else that helped you get through that? Because I imagine that was an incredibly hard thing.
Mark: Yeah, it was really hard. So my mother was severely depressed. The hardest choice I ever had to make in my life in 2010, right before the Olympics was to call my mother up and ask her not to come to Vancouver, just stay home.
And she was there when I first stood in the ice. She was there going with me to training, et cetera, et cetera. So I love my mother but, but for me, there was, I think we all, that's the challenge we all face in life. We have our own path to take. We have to find our own path. And for me, I was heading. I my life where I had to really choose my own path and make hard decisions.
So I called my mother up and said, mom, I love you, but I cannot handle you being there emotionally, physically. So please don't come. And she couldn't handle that trip because she was not in a good way and not in a good position in life. Two years later, she committed suicide. And that's, that's sad. That's, that's terribly sad.
But what for me clicked after that was. And I look at it. It's not, dying is not, for her, of course, dying was a sort of a relief. Because she was in a lot of pain. And I cannot comprehend what it's like to endure that pain. I know people who are depressed. I know people who have thoughts of doing that. And I know, thank God, a lot of people who get through that and enjoy life.
Again, she couldn't. So And she's stubborn. And she has a powerful will. Ha ha! So she really, for her, it was a relief. So the, the, the pain is on us as sons or as and, and that's there, there is no love without pain and, and, and that's what life is like. So it's painful. So. With negative emotions, I, I don't say they're, I'm, I'm not against pain.
If, if it's natural pain, if it's there, it's, it's real, it's okay. It's hurts, but hey, this is life. I don't have to push that back. It's there. So I let that pain come through. And for me, the real pain was not in that moment. She, she died or committed suicide. It was more in the, at the 10 years leading up to that point, she didn't have a life.
Yeah, she was depressed and she couldn't handle it. You know me with my stoic mindset. I'm like just think this different. She couldn't she just couldn't .And we tried. So for me, it was letting go of that and letting go of controlling her life or controlling her decisions. So finding peace in the decision she actually made and not only finding peace in that, but also not wanting to change that.
That's of course, I want her to be there, but for me, I want, that's me, as a son, I want my mother to be there. My oldest daughter was just born. So I'm like, You have your first grandchild and you don't want to be here anymore. And I thought about it and probably it's for her. And she know the, she know how this feels to have a grandchild.
And, and then there's such a disconnect with the way she was feeling for herself. So you, I cannot comprehend that. So for me, what, what I find beautiful in Stoicism is, okay, I have my life. And I want to, the way I can commemorate or honor my mother is to live to the full extent of my life. That's what I can do with the people around me I love, with my brothers, with my children.
And that's what I, that's my mission. I can do that and I can show another way. And I don't get my mother back for that, but my mother lives through me. Her love is still there and that helped me a lot. So death is not something I fear or abolish or abandon from my life. It's there. And I'm gonna be there with my mother and it's gonna be there for me.
But that the only thing I want is to live and go out there in life, not hold back, not hold back on love, not hold back on being pushed back by negative emotions. So let go of these negative emotions, clear space for joy, for zest, for freedom, for living. And and if death comes, then I can look back if I have the chance.
Maybe it's swift, maybe not and say to myself, wow, this is this has been a work of art. That's, yeah, that's how I look at it.
Erick: Yeah, I hope I hope I can get to that point as well. And right now I'm, like I was telling you earlier, I'm kind of in a state of flux of just finding my, my own path right now.
And I can appreciate what I've, what I've done in my life and accomplished, but I feel like I could do so much more. And sometimes I, I struggle with that because I don't feel like I've done anything great in my life yet. I don't have any, like, I don't have a gold medal that I can look back on, but I can at least look at, you know, I've got two great kids who turned out to be great people.
And I, I, I enjoy being around my kids. They're happy. They have their struggles, but they're just, they're good people. And they grew up, you know, even though my, my ex wife and I divorced when they were pretty young they grew up with two fairly supportive and healthy parents. And that's been That's something that I didn't really get because, you know, my dad, like I said, was very violent.
He was very, very tortured soul. And so,
Mark: yeah, so you broke the cycle.
Erick: Definitely broke the cycle.
Mark: Yeah, that's great, man.
Erick: Yeah, yeah. My sister one time, like, she, her biggest insult is you're just like dad. And there was one time where she saw me and my kids and she's like, You're not like, dad, you're a good father.
Oh, I was like, oh, wow. Thanks. Yeah. So
Mark: I would like to, we, I think a lot of people ask me this question if I, if I give motivational talks here in Holland and, and, and abroad too. A lot of questions, and I talk about this, I talk about the death of my mother. I talk my, about my parents. I, I share deeply personal stories also because I don't want to be a, a taboo or anything around that.
This is what happens in life. So for me, the question I get a lot is if it's hurting me or I feel guilt. And I could let go of that guilt too. So it's also again, Epictetus, you can blame other people. You can blame the situation or you can blame yourself. You cannot, you can also do not do that. Right. Don't blame other people.
Don't blame the situation and don't blame yourself. I did everything I could. I love my mother, but this is her choice. She wanted this. So we better abide to her wish because it's her wish. It's not my, I, my wish is that she would be here also in pain, but don't let her go. So I don't feel guilt in that way.
And like for you, you know, it's not, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. I think in modern society too, to be accomplished or be a good person. So of course we also feel guilt or we don't feel enough. And we have to, I think, get rid of that idea of not being enough. Or feeling guilty, of course you can make your, you make your own decisions and you're responsible for these decisions and that can be shitty decisions.
Yes. And you bear responsibility for that. It's not to. To wane off the responsibility. But if you do that and you do it with a intent, well, well intended, yeah. You should think of it every day, like it's a stoic reflection maybe. So where, where I, I don't have to feel guilty because I did what I could.
Did I do this? Did I make the right decision? Yes. Then I don't have to feel guilty. Do I feel accomplished? Maybe not, but me being the best person there is, that's an accomplishment. If we could all do that, raise beautiful children, that's the accomplishment. That's where, and that's great. That's enough. We don't have to add anything to that.
We want to. We want to build legacy. We want to be known until the end of their careers. Like Marcus Aurelius said, like Alexander and
Erick: his stable boy,
Mark: you know, they're, they're both buried. You can't see any distinction between their bones. What are you talking about? It's you. It's your own path. And you have to take that path.
Nobody else can do that for you. And that's, I think, the challenge in life that's, that's, that's hard. But that's where I think the purpose lies and the motivation lies and the beauty lies, it's the pain and the beauty, it lies there. And that's the road you follow. It's no, I'm not good enough. It's no guilt.
That's not there. You know, in the, Zeno of Citium, the original founder of stoicism. These were all ideas that were not there. Jealousy. You know, if we can get rid of these human ideas, which function right, they make us win gold medals because like, I have to beat that other guy. So it's not, there's nothing wrong with it.
But it's not good or bad in a, in an ethical sense. It's not a good life.
Erick: Yeah, it just, it's, it is, it is what it is.
Mark: Yeah, it can be beautiful. It can, it can, I've, I derive a lot of pleasure from it and I love that. But that's another concept of being happy or feeling fulfilled.
Erick: Yeah. And I think that, that we do sometimes feel that drive, like we have to accomplish something in our life.
And the thing is. We don't, we don't have to accomplish anything. You don't. What we have to do is be a good person. But, often times, when we,
Mark: And we have to, sorry, but, Go ahead. This is funny, because, You say we have to be a good person, Or you don't have to, You know, these are all also normative thoughts. If we look at Socrates, and his questioning, And his style of questioning, If you're not good enough, Or you have to be a good person, These are, normative thoughts.
You know, when you're looking back at Socrates and what he learns is if you challenge yourself, challenge yourself or others with questions, let's say Socratic questioning. I did courses on that because I find it a beautiful instrument. And Epictetus uses it in his colleges. So you can ask, so, okay, you have to be a good person.
Why? Why is that? That's a question, why do we have to be a good person?
Erick: Why do you have to be? And also, what defines a good person?
Mark: What is a good person? Yeah. And why do you have to be Or do you want to be a good person? Why do you want to be a good person? Do you? You can also say, well, I don't feel great about myself, but I have to be a good person.
So I can feel great about myself. I have something like that. You know, it's, it's all, we, we, we make up stories in our mind, of course. Yeah. So the challenge is I think to really challenge these thoughts. So why is this? Stoicism, when it comes down to the four categories the values, you know, the temperance justice.
Courage, wisdom, practical wisdom. If you think through it and you ask yourself these questions, you get down to the core of this. That's what you cannot debate, actually, because that's what, if you think about it, is what a great person or a good person, that's probably what it looks like.
Erick: Exactly. And for me, what I found fascinating was I've been studying some Socrates lately, because that was something that I found the Stoics and was like, oh, wait a second.
Basically the Stoics took Socrates stuff and this is the conclusions they came to using the Socratic method. Yeah, so basically he gave them the tools and they're like, hey, well, we're gonna refine it a little bit more. What I really liked about that was, like I said, they they used it and then they came to these conclusions.
So it's like, so they distilled down a lot of hard questions for us and answered some of those. But we can still use that same methodology to help answer any other questions for us. And so I've, that's one of, for me, that's been great coming from the stoics and then slowly working back into Socrates and trying to understand those things.
And I wanna get better about using that and think through that more. I, I think I use some of it naturally, but not in a more, in that kind of formal way. Yeah. So that's something I've been reading a book by Ward Farnsworth. He's a professor at the University of Texas, and he's written a couple of books on Stoicism and other philosophy, and he has one that's about the Socratic method, and it's like a practical handbook, and I remember, I was like, so I read part of that, and then I was like, okay.
So, yeah. Got rid of it because I have to sell my house and get rid of all of these things and so I need to go buy the e books so I can finish reading that book. But it was so good and he does such a great job of explaining it, you know, why, the how and everything but in a way that's very approachable.
It's not very dry like a professor, it's actually, you know, he's a good writer and so. . Yeah.
Mark: That's a great method. It's really, you can learn it and practice it and it's hard to do. Yeah. 'cause you have to put your own judgment out of the situation.
Erick: Exactly. And that's hard. Exactly. Go well. Well I know what good is.
We'll do you Yeah, of course. This is good. Yeah, exactly. Or why is that , why is it good?
Mark: And then you, and I think that's a weird stoicism you, if you think about it. And that's, I think the, the, the nature part where the nature part comes in. The ethics, the logic, and the physics. It's. Like this is how nature works.
This is works. This is how life works. This is how the world around us works. And if you call it God or will or et cetera, et cetera, it doesn't really matter. This is, yeah, this is the way we see nature works. So if you use your reasoning. And you use the, the, the, the, the knowledge, you know, about nature and the, the, the, the knowledge that we are social animals, so we connect with other people, learn from other people, can question other people.
I think you derive these ideas from stoicism. If you, if you think of it, well, that's, you come down to this. That's for me, actually, where I. And I ended up with, in Stoicism, it's like, okay, if you follow all these philosophical ideas, you know a little bit about how the world works, how we work as people, then this is what I find most fitting.
Erick: Yeah, it seems to be the most close to, you could say, almost a universal truth. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or a set of universal truths because, one because they're principles so they can be applied and there's a bit of flexibility but also it just seems like the natural end to those questions. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.
And that's, that's what I like about stoicism is that it's not an absolute you have to do these things. It's a. It's, here's the end result. And if you apply this in almost every situation, you will find this works and this is true. True. And, and I haven't found a situation where it hasn't worked. And so for me, that's been, yeah, that's why it's been so life changing for me because it helped me to see so many errors in my own thinking about things and my own reactivity and I used to be, I used to be much more hotheaded.
And now I'm much more calm about things like, like the other day, somebody sent me a really nasty note on Instagram because they didn't like a 60 second video that I put up and they were like, I can't get my time back and swearing at me. And I was like, wow. And at first I was like, you know, I, like you said, I felt that anger and I was just like, well, that's his problem.
Mark: You know, or like the stoics would say if it's his. reasoning So it's funny if, if somebody takes time to react on a message that took 60 seconds and he takes another 60 seconds to react, that's, that's okay. You've thought about this before you reacted like this. That's what, that's what you can define as stupid.
Erick: Exactly. And so I, I just was like, but I felt that little zing of like, and I had to just be like, okay, well, and oftentimes when I do that, I take even one further step back and I'm like, Wow, if somebody feels that way or feels that upset about something so small like that. Yeah,
Mark: imagine where they are in life.
Erick: Exactly. It almost, it made me feel sorry for them. And I have a little bit of empathy towards them. I'm just like, wow, that's, that's tough. If you're, if you're that upset because I had a 60 second video that you thought was me just rambling because I talk, I was in Florida at the time because I'm talking about the weather in Florida and then I, I, I proceeded to finish my lesson.
It was like, you know, 15 seconds of, Hey, here's the weather like this. It's kind of cool, blah, blah, blah. And then the, you know, the rest of the 60 second video was talking, you know, I think I was like, Hey, I'm going to be doing a Q & A session. Once you dance, you know, go ahead and post some questions here and I'll try and put them in there.
And I was like, wow, if he's that, if he's that upset over that. Wow, I feel, I feel kind of sorry for him.
Mark: Yeah, I think that's an empathic, empathetic way of looking at a situation.
Erick: Whereas before I would have been like, you're such a jerk. You're a jerk, no,
Mark: you're a jerk, no, you're a jerk.
Erick: Exactly. And so I decided that for me, it has been helpful because this allowed me to get more space in between that. Rather than reacting, I can respond better. And it's, it's definitely helped my life a lot. And I, I like not being reactive like that because I used to be much more reactive because it's how my dad was. That's how I grew up. Things, something upset you. It's just like,
Mark: Oh yeah, that's how you're probably wired and what you saw around you.
So that's really hard to change, but it gives a lot of freedom to, to feel that, right? That's, there's the freedom or else you become a slave of your upbringing or your father or your, or your, or somebody else who hurts you. And you can, you can be a leader for yourself instead of being a slave to the situation.
Erick: Yeah, and it's been really, really helpful. And I'm not perfect at it. I mean, there's still times when I get upset about things. Then I just have to
Mark: No, but I don't think Marcus Aurelius was or all these Stoics were.
Erick: Yeah. And they understood that. And that's, that's what's so great about Stoicism. It's not about perfection.
It's not about that you don't get angry. It's about how you choose to deal with that anger, you know, do you let it just consume you? Do you let it be reactive? Do you give that pause and just let it feel and just take a breath and let it out and then choose your response and there are many ways to do that And you just have to figure out which one's gonna be most effective for you.
Mark: Yeah, it's a misconception Stoicism right that stoic means that there's no anger or there's no I'm a normal guy. I'm not in the ideal situation. I'm not in the ideal situation of course, but of course there is in normal life. I, when I give presentations, that's the first thing I've done. When I talk about my father and I tell my story of being angry, I, I ask the audience who's angry sometimes and all the hands go up, you know, I say, well, good. Welcome in life.
This is what you feel. It's not a, it's a misconception that stoicism or being stoic means that you don't feel that anger. No, it can be there, but we're grownups. We have the ability to reason, so we can make a conscious choice to not give into that anger, but to give, to take distance from it and think about it and react in a different way and let it go.
That's what we as wiser, grown up people could do. That's our capability. That's up to us.
Erick: Yeah, and that's one of the things on my podcast. I talk a lot about people. I'm like, it's okay to feel all your feelings. Yeah. If you feel sad, okay. There are times where you want to feel sad. I mean, when somebody dies or If you love someone and you have to
Mark: let go, that's sad.
Erick: Yeah, and you want to grieve. You don't want to not feel those things. No. You want to grieve and you want to feel the full, you know, range of emotions in life. That's what makes life great is that you have all of these. And, and I see that on the Reddit sometime, you know, people will be like, ah, I'm feeling so sad about this thing and I don't want to, you know, how do I get rid of this emotion?
And it's like. You just gotta go through it. Just feel it. The more you resist feeling sad, the more it's gonna come back and get to you. And if you're able to just kind of flow with it, you know, you follow nature. Your nature is, nature is that we are emotional beings. So flow with those emotions.
But, but, what we're talking about is not letting them do, make you, not letting them drive you to do stupid things.
Mark: No, or not blaming anyone. Oh, you left me and now I feel hurt or sad. It's your fault. No, you're sad because somebody, you have to let somebody go or you don't want to let somebody go or else you wouldn't have felt sad.
So it's up to you. And not to change it, but to accept it. And feel it.
Erick: And accepting that. Absolutely. Accepting your emotions is an incredibly powerful tool. Because you're saying, it's one, it's acknowledging reality. I feel this way. That's reality. And
Mark: that's the beauty where logic comes in.
And I write it in a chapter five of my book, The Stoic Mindset, it's about amor fati. Hey accept your fate and love it. I think that's a really hard thing, especially if life throws you around or you, you get hurt or you have a terrible disease you have to encounter. And I think it can be really hard.
I have an example of Vivian Mantel. She was an Olympic Paralympic snowboarder and she had a beautiful life. She was a beautiful person. I interviewed her for my podcast. She's here in Holland. She's like. The pinnacle of, of the radiation of positive emotions of beauty, but still she was diagnosed with cancer, which she died from, from two years ago, sadly.
And she knew this, she knows, she knows she was going to die, but she still did all these things in life, which with a positive attitude, she never complained. She was there. She was cared for other people. She was a beautiful person. So that's also what's possible in that situation. So I think the funniest thing is that that's what I find the beauty in Stoicism.
It's in that sense rational because If you have the choice, you, she had like she, there was a doctor and the doctor told her you cannot snowboard anymore and you're going to die. You have cancer. So the logical thing to lead a good life and a fulfilling life is to, and this is terribly hard and I, I, I'm healthy.
So it's for me, it's easy to say, but if I look at her the logical thing to do is the only thing you can do is not only accept that, but also love it. The reality of life. This is my reality right now. And you can come, you can push it away, you can get angry of it, but that hurts you. So the life you have left is not going to be good.
It hurts you. So logically, if you want to lead a good life, the only option you have is to accept it. And if, if, if you want to lead a really good life, love it. Yeah. And that's, that's so hard, but it's logically, it's the only option you have.
Erick: There was a great article that I just read the other day and you'll love the title of it.
It's called “Welcome to Holland” Oh, yeah, and this woman wrote it and it was about how, kind of the story goes along. It's like so imagine you're planning a trip. You're going to Italy, you were excited. You wanted to go to Italy your whole life. You plan this trip. You've got it all down and you you make all the arrangements, you get off the plane, and the first thing that happens is, you, the stewardess, you know, welcomes you, and goes, “Hello! Welcome to Holland”.
You're like, wait a second, let's just go to Italy.
Mark: What's going on here? Why is the sun not shining? Where's my pasta? Where's my espresso?
Erick: So, and then you walk in and you're just like, but all these things I won't see. And, and, the woman who was talking about it, in regards to, sometimes the life that we want, flying to Italy,
it's not the life that we get. We end up in Holland. But if all we do is pine away for Italy and why we didn't get to Italy and life's unfair because we didn't get to go to Italy. Then we miss all the beautiful things about Holland. Yeah. We miss the windmills, we miss the canals, we miss
Mark: We miss the weather.
Erick: It's actually, I mean, I don't mind this weather. It's better. I lived in Minnesota for five years, so this weather is fine.
Mark: Well, I, I, my holidays I go to Italy because I love, I love Italy. I want to go there too, but I, we're here at the waterfront and it freezes over here. It's beautiful.
Erick: Absolutely. And that's the thing. It's just like all of the things here. Yes, we don't have, you know, Michelangelo's, but you have Rembrandt's here. You have Van Gogh's.
Mark: Yeah, we have Amsterdam. It's beautiful. That's what Epictetus is to quote. Do not seek to have events happen to you as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen and all will be well for you.
Exactly. It's just that I could not understand exactly what I mean. This is, yeah, Mark Aurelius said not this is a misfortune, but to bear this worthwily is a good fortune.
Erick: Yeah, absolutely. And so I, it was just funny that I stumbled on this article just a couple of days ago and I was like, that's so great. And I was like, given that I'm here…
Mark: So that's why you ended up here in Holland. You wanted to be here.
Erick: I didn't know where I was going. So I just, “Welcome to Holland!” Yeah, it was, it was, it was, but I really like that kind of metaphor about that and I thought it was appropriate for where we are. So just, I guess we'll finish up with a few more questions.
Here's a good one. Advice for aspiring Stoics. So if somebody is interested in Stoicism, what advice would you give? Are there specific books, practices or thought exercises you'd recommend?
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually this is the question I got a lot especially during COVID and during presentation.
So the Stoic mindset, I really. I wrote it because it's an introduction into how you can think more stoic and how I deal with that. And there are 10 lessons in the book, which you can follow. So it's really an intro to stoicism. If you want to dive deeper, of course, I would say people yeah, get to the original text of Seneca, of Marcus Aurelius, of Seneca is easy to read.
It's a good intro. Marcus Aurelius. It's not something, you know, the meditations you, you, you probably will read from A to Z within an evening is more, you read it through it and you contemplate and, and Epictetus, it's a little harder to, to, to follow and grasp, especially the whole bundle. So, but it's definitely worthwhile, I think, if you look at the Stoics and think of where they come from and what situation they were in life and it's unfortunate that we don't have all the texts of the early Stoics.
Yeah. And, and if you think of the Greek empire and the Roman empire and the Greek city state, Athens. What happened there? It's a beautiful way where these, these people went through challenges. So, so read them and think about that. What, what does that mean? If you, you know, if you're the emperor of Rome and you encounter not only the loss of children and the betrayal of your best general, but also a pandemic that ravages your empire, how do you deal with that?
How do you keep sane? How do you keep doing the right things? So if you wanted the leadership lessons, start with Marcus Aurelius. If you want to have a friend who gives you some friendly and more worldly advice, go to Seneca. If you want to have a teacher who sometimes is stern and tells you what to do, look for Epictetus.
So that's. Where I would start off with and with practices. Yeah, for me making the distinction between what is up to you or what is not up to you is really powerful. Stephen Covey borrowed it of course from Epictetus and it's beautiful I think because if There's a high pressure situations that that's what I always do.
If I have a hard time, I tell myself, okay, if I have to let someone go or it's a situation I am having trouble with handling or a companion in my company, which, which I have a situation with or a confrontation with it's okay, what's up to me. What's not up to me. It's my internal state. I can do the things for myself in a good manner.
I focus on the right things to do. And I work hard for that, but the reaction of the other person is not up to me. The goal we want to reach as a company is not up to me, especially in COVID you can make a perfect business planning. You can think of products coming your way and then COVID happens and everything goes down the drain.
Every plan you had. So it's not only the output, it's the input you put in. You have to devise a new plan. You have to sit together, et cetera, et cetera. So try to do that. And for me, like I said, at the end of your day. Like Seneca did, try to think of, I think thinking of death, it sounds a little scary or not natural for people to do, but I think that's a liberating thought.
If you think about death, it's for me, it's liberating in life. I write in my book, one of the principles I write about is death makes life more epic. Yeah. Thinking about death, about the end, makes Life more epic because it makes you think about the choices you make. Are these good choices? Do you stand by them?
Do you live a life where you live a life according to your values? Do you live the hardest thing people ask themselves when they die? If they have regrets, the regrets always revolve around that they didn't lead their own life. They led a life what other people wished for them or put upon them. Yeah. So that's powerful stuff.
You should think about that every day, not at the end of your life, but right now. Yeah.
Erick: I think most people regret the things they didn't do.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. So live a life with no regrets. And of course, like again, you will have some. You have some. You will do stupid stuff. You're a human being.
Erick: Yeah. And you may regret the dumb things you did, but I find that the things that I regret the most are the things that I didn't do, or the chances that I didn't take.
You know, I, you know, yes, there's some things that I did and I wish that I hadn't done them because they were tough, but I learned from them. And so I don't necessarily regret them. I, I may not think fondly on them, but I don't necessarily truly regret them.
Mark: No, but if you see a herd of people doing something and it becomes right, or it becomes, that's why these questions are so powerful.
What is good? You know, is it something we do in the society? Is it, is it the norm? Is this in a society which we follow? Does this, is this your way you really want to live or is this your own path or do you follow a safe path, which everybody will not judge you or everybody won't be mad at you or et cetera, et cetera.
So there are a lot of powerful things working against. We have freedom for us. To reach our full potential and to break through these barriers. To break through the mold and to open up and be free with regards to other people. It's not like, well, I'll do whatever I want and woohoo, freedom. Yeah.
That's not what real freedom is. So what is it? Well, maybe Stoicism has pretty good answers on that.
Erick: but yeah, I mean, for me, that's kind of why I'm here. It was that it, it was actually kind of scary and there were times I mean there's even, you know, time leading up to here where I just kind of panicked and be like, what am I doing?
And I'm like, well, this is crazy. I'm just coming over
Mark: You come over to Amsterdam, maybe live here, et cetera.
Erick: Yeah. And I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just making it up as I go along and trying to find new opportunities and try to see what I'm supposed to do in this life. And so right now it's very much exploring and it's, it's scary at times.
I'm just like, what am I doing here? I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm meeting people. I, you know, I met some people at a meetup last night that were really cool. Just getting out there and trying to make things happen. I mean, I never would have gotten to do this if I hadn't. No. And this has been great.
I've been really enjoying this.
Mark: So you have to sit with the discomfort. You have to sit with the chaos. You have to. Do not change it, but sit with it. And I think that's I think, yeah, there, there, there's beauty on the other side. If you want to go there and sometimes things happen, you never would have imagined.
Erick: And since I've been here, there've been some days where I'm just like, ah, what am I doing here? I should just go home. It's much more comfortable there. You know, I know all these, I know, I know people, I know how life lives, you know, trying to navigate things here because I don't quite speak Dutch yet, so working on learning that.
I mean, I speak German, so I understand, I understand a lot of it and it's actually made a big difference. I can understand, I can sit in most conversation and understand most of what's going on.
Mark: And it's funny, you know what, because I have, I'm, I'm going to the world championships in Canada and Calgary for speed skating commentary on television.
And I love Canada. I love going to the Rockies and I thought about, Oh, I have to, maybe I want to go there a couple of days earlier and see it. And I do that because I'm gone from home a long time. And it's such a. It was really, I said, well, if I think about this two days, I really already could have made the choice to go two days earlier.
I don't have to think about it. Just do it and see what I do because I want to do that. So why not? Yeah. There are 10 reasons why you couldn't or shouldn't, et cetera, et cetera. And there's one reason like, let's, I want to do it. Let's just do it and see what happens. Yeah. And that's the thing is you, that's so small.
This is a small example.
Erick: Yeah. And I mean, I, I know that if I didn't come that I would regret it. And I had a good friend of mine, she kept saying that. She's just like, if you don't go, you will regret it. So just, you're living, you're living a dream that you've wanted to do for quite some time. And that so many people would love to do. And you have this opportunity. You are in, you are in a place where this works for you, so you better go do that. And I'm like. Thank you.
Mark: Oh, that's great, man. Just kind of resetting my mind. That's kind of funny because I thought, hey, we have a digital conversation, maybe through a podcast, but you're actually here.
So, okay. Now I know the story.
Erick: Yeah, no, it's been great. All right. I think kind of exhausted most of my questions. Is there anything else that you want to add to it? So go ahead and tell people where they can find you. And anything else you'd like them or you want any socials that kind of thing.
So go ahead. Yeah.
Mark: You can always find me through Instagram, Twitter LinkedIn, Mark Tuitert. And my surname is T U I T E R T.
Erick: And I will put that in the show notes for the episode. So if you want to go find him, you can find him.
Mark: So you can find me here with contact info. I do speaking engagements and my book, the stoic mindset is out in April in the US, Canada, UK.
So I'm really excited to to, to tell my story. I hope. Yeah. But with maybe even if it's one person I can relate to or have an impact on in life and get into contact with stoicism in that way. Yeah. That will be worthwhile for me. So I would love to come over to the U. S., to the UK, to Canada to to deliver my story.
And thank you for being here in the Netherlands.
Erick: Yeah, and thank you for inviting me into your home. I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. This has been really great. So, all right. Thank you. All right. That concludes our interview. Like I said, I'll have a bunch of stuff in the notes for the podcast.
And thanks again for listening.
And that's the end of this week's Stoic Coffee Break. I hope that you enjoyed this interview with Mark Tuitert. And as always, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and thanks for listening.
Hey friends, just wanted to give you a quick reminder. If you aren't following me on social media, you really should. So I do post videos from time to time on Instagram and Threads and X, formerly Twitter. I'm also going to be posting this interview on YouTube and I will be adding more and more video content to YouTube, more long form stuff.
So hop on there and find me. So on instagram and threads, it's stoic.coffee. On x/twitter, it is @stoiccoffee. As well as on LinkedIn, you can find me there at StoicCoffee. Alright, thanks again for listening. Bye.
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.
Are you new to Stoicism and want to know where to get started in learning about it and how to apply it in your life? Then this episode is for you.
One of the things that I appreciate about Stoicism is that it’s very practical philosophy, and there are a lot of ideas and principles that have stood the test of time because they work in helping you live a good life. There are also misconceptions about what stoicism is and what it isn’t so today I’m going to walk you through the basics of what stoicism is, and how you can start applying it in your life immediately.
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
— Marcus Aurelius
Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that originated in Athens, Greece, then moved into Rome as it gained popularity. It was founded by Zeno of Citium, a merchant who found himself in Athens after surviving a shipwreck. While trying to figure out what to do next, he frequented a bookseller in Athens. He came across the writings of Xenophone, a Greek historian and military strategist, and in them read about Socrates. He was so inspired be what he read, that he asked the bookseller where he could find someone like Socrates to teach him philosophy. At that moment, Crates of Thebes, a Cynic philosopher, just happened to be passing the shop. The bookseller pointed to Crates and told Zeno that Crates was such a man, and Zeno became his student.
As Zeno began to learn more about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the other philosophies, he began to develop his own ideas about how to apply philosophy and live a good life. One of the main points about Stoicism is that it’s primary goal is not to answer the big questions about life such as why we exist and where we go when we die, but rather how to have a good and peaceful life by living a life of virtue. It’s a practical philosophy that can be applied in all aspect of life.
Control
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
— Marcus Aurelius
One of the first and most important teachings of Stoicism is that we need to understand what we have control over and what we do not have control over. The reason why this is so important is that most of our stress and frustration in life comes from trying to control things that we do not have any control over. When we focus on the things we can control, we’re able to make progress, and gain a sense of peace in our lives.
When we try to control what we can’t, we waste a lot of time and energy without making much progress. We can find ourselves getting angry, upset, or depressed because we’re trying to control something we can’t control, or often because we’re trying to control someone else or their behavior. On the flip side, when we don’t take control of the things that we do have control over, then we allow ourselves to become victims, and miss opportunities to create real change in our lives.
So that begs the question: What do we actually have control over? The Stoics teach us that the only thing we really have control over is our thinking, and our choices. In short, our will. Everything else is outside of our control. We don’t have control over nature, other people, or even our own bodies.
For example, you can’t control the weather, what other people think of you, or if you get cancer. They are are just things that happen, and not things you have any control over. What you do have control over is how you respond to the things that happen. You can choose to wear a raincoat when it rains. You can choose not to let what others think about you bother you. You can follow your doctors instructions in treating an illness. All you have control over are the choices you make about how you want to respond.
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
—Marcus Aurelius
Another reason that the Stoics teach us that we have control over our thinking is because the way that we think influences how we feel and how we respond to the things that happen to us. The emotions that we feel are caused by the thoughts we think, or the judgments we make, about the things that happen to us. Whether we feel calm or distressed in a situation is caused by what we think about the situation.
For example, let’s say you have two people heading to the same office, and they both miss the bus for work. The first person gets upset and yells at the bus. Whereas the second person shakes it off, laughs about it, and sits down on the bench and waits calmly for the next bus. Why does one person handle the situation angrily when the other is able to relax and go on with the day? Shouldn’t they both act the same since they both missed the bus?
It’s because of their thinking. In the first case, the angry bus rider is thinking how unfair it is that he missed is bus. He fumes about the fact that he’s going to be late, and is in a rotten mood for hours afterwards. Whereas the second rider sees that there is nothing that he can do about it, and that stewing over it will do him little good, so he lets it go, and enjoys the extra time he has waiting for the next bus. Same situation, just different thinking.
“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.“
— Epictetus
“Who does not admit that all the emotions flow as it were from a certain natural source? We are endowed by Nature with an interest in our own well-being; but this very interest, when overindulged, becomes a vice.”
— Seneca
One of the biggest misconceptions about Stoicism is that it’s about repressing your emotions and that Stoics don’t feel anything. But this is far from the case. Stoics have strong emotions just like everyone else. The difference is that they have practiced not letting their emotions overrun their thinking. They practice taking a moment to understand the thinking that led to the strong emotions. They also understand that emotions are transitory, meaning that they may feel strong or even overwhelming in the moment, but that over time they will fade and change.
The difference is that a Stoic recognizes that one of the main reasons that we experience negative emotions is because of our judgements about something. That the reason we’re upset or angry is not because of thing itself, but because of the meaning that we give to something, and that if we can be aware of our judgments then we change how we think about something. We can also decide that something is not worth spending time thinking about and let it go. We can also choose not to have an opinion about something.
For example, we often think that when we get angry at someone, it is the fault of the other person that we are angry. But the Stoics teach us that it’s not the other person that makes us angry, but our own thoughts that cause our anger. It’s the judgment that we made, the meaning that our minds give to what the other person did or said that causes us to feel angry.
Now I’m sure many of you are thinking that this is wrong. If someone says something offensive, then surely it must be the fault of the other person that you’re angry. But this is not the case. It’s your judgement about what they said that leads to you feeling angry. In a purely objective sense, the other person simply spoke some words, and we are the ones that gave those words meaning. If you decided that you don’t care about what someone said, then you can let it go.
To drive the point a little further, imagine if the other person said something offensive but spoke it in a language that you didn’t understand, would you still be offended? You probably wouldn’t because you don’t know what they actually said. Your mind wouldn’t have anything to judge so there would be nothing to find offensive.
“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.”
—Marcus Aurelius
One of the core tenants of Stoicism is that in order to live a good life, we need to follow the four cardinal virtues of Wisdom, Courage, Justice, and Temperance, which often translated as Moderation or Discipline.
But why these four virtues?
Let’s go over each of them briefly.
Wisdom can be defined as the practical application of knowledge and experience. It’s not enough to just know a lot, it’s important that we know how to apply it. Also, we don’t just gain wisdom through reading or studying, but by experiencing life.
Courage is the willingness to take action, even if we know we might fail. We need courage to gain wisdom because it takes courage to practice self awareness and see where we fall short, and have willingness to see where we are ignorant.
Temperance means moderation or discipline. With all things, we need to know how much is too little and how much is too much. By practicing temperance, we learn how to govern ourselves.
Justice, in a broader sense, can also be thought of as how we treat other people. When we treat others fairly, and advocate for justice in the world, we help make the world a better place.
The virtues are self reenforcing, like legs on a stool. We need to have courage to help us be self aware enough to experience life and gain wisdom. We also need courage to make the hard choices to become more disciplined. Temperance and wisdom are necessary for being courageous because too much courage can make us foolhardy and make bad choices, and not enough courage can mean that we fail to act.
By practicing discipline, gaining wisdom, and developing courage, we stand up for what we believe in and advocate for justice. By cultivating these virtues, we aren’t just meant to be good people, but we are meant to do good in the world.
“Give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths.”
— Epictetus
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Another core teaching of the Stoics is that the challenges that we find in our lives are not simply obstacles that are preventing us from getting what we want, but that they are the way to getting what we want. They are the things that help us to learn and to get stronger. If you simply got everything that you ever wanted and never had to struggle for it, would you ever learn how to accomplish anything?
Think about it this way. If you went to the gym and paid someone else to lift weights for you, would get any stronger? Would you put on any muscle?
No.
What’s more rewarding for you? Working hard, overcoming obstacles, and gaining skills and achieving your goal, or just being handed the prize you seek by a parent?
What’s more interesting to watch, an athlete or a performer who has put in countless hours of work and preparation, overcome all kinds of obstacles and developed their skills, or a someone just being given a role or position because they were well connected?
When I was about 12 years old, I spent many hours babysitting the neighbors kids and doing yard work so I could buy myself a stereo system. I had it for many years and every time I used it, I always felt a sense of pride because I knew that I had worked hard and saved up my money to get it. It was mine because I had worked hard to earn it.
“It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you — inside or out.”
—Marcus Aurelius
The Stoics were big on living a life of integrity, meaning that you do the right thing in all situations. That you would live your principles not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard. That you would do the right thing even when no one else would know if you didn’t. Your character matters and you do good always, not because of how others perceive you, but because when you are good and act with integrity, you feel good.
We all are faced with situations where we could get away with something that would benefit us. But the thing is, you would know that you did something against your principles. You will have to live with that. You will have to live with the knowledge that you did something that soiled your character. Whether it’s tossing garbage out of a car window, cheating on a test, or covering up mistakes at work, even if you never get caught, you would still know that you didn’t live up to your best self, and that you actively made the choice not to do so.
So how can you learn to apply Stoic principles in your own life?
First off, become familiar with Stoic teachings and principles. This podcast is a good place to start, and I’ve included links into the show notes for episodes that dive a little deeper into the ideas and principles that I’ve talked about.
Some books that I recommend include A Guide to the Good Life: The Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and most of Ryan Holiday’s books are good places to start. I especially like The Obstacle is the Way and found it to be very useful in reframing how I view challenges in my life.
I think that taking time each morning thinking about the things I’ve talked about today, and examining how you can apply them in your life can be very helpful. Starting off the day considering these ideas can help you keep them top of mind so that when situations arise you can find ways to apply them.
Each evening, take some time to consider how your day went. Did you handle a situation poorly that day? What can you do next time to handle it better? This kind of reflection each evening also helps you become more self aware and help reenforce where you succeeded or failed during the day and how you can handle things in the future.
And as I always do, I recommend taking some time each day to meditate and to write in your journal as they are good ways to develop self awareness. Since the Stoics stress that it’s important to manage how you think about things, journaling and meditation are both excellent ways to become aware of your own thinking. You don’t need to meditate for hours or write long essays in your journal. Just a few minutes to pay attention to you thoughts, or jot them down on paper can be exceptionally revealing.
Conclusion
More than anything, applying these principles take consistency. While the principles and ideas are pretty simple and logical, their application takes time and practice. Just because you learned something does not mean that you’re going to be great at applying it in your life immediately. But if you are consistently studying, thinking about, and consciously trying to apply these ideas in your life, you’ll start to see changes in your life for the better. Often, you’ll simply notice when you handled a situation poorly, then you’ll consider ways that you can handle that better in the future. Awareness, and the courage to practice that awareness are the first and most important steps to becoming a better version of yourself.
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.
Erick: Hello friends, my name is Erick Cloward and welcome to the Stoic Coffee Break. Stoic Coffee Break is a weekly podcast where I take aspects of Stoicism and do my best to break them down to the most important points. I share my experiences, both my successes and my failures, and hope that you can learn something from them all within the space of a coffee break.
So this week's episode is an interview with Constantin Morin, and Constantin has a podcast called Unleash Thyself. And Constantin and I had a great conversation a couple of weeks ago and he's just a really warm and very insightful guy and I really enjoyed the conversation with him. We had talked before that as well and I really appreciated his insights into developing the type of person that you want to become and getting over those internal blocks that keep you from.
From reaching your full potential. So his podcast again is, is called Unleash Thyself and I highly recommend it. Like I said, Constantin was, is a great guy and we just had such a wonderful conversation. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation with him and we'll see you at the end of the podcast.
Constantin: Hello. Hello everyone. We have with us today Constantin Morun from the Unleash Thyself podcast.
We're about to have a beautiful conversation around many, many amazing topics that are important in today's day and age and one that's very dear to my heart and for those that are able to see this in video format, I have a sign to my right here that says follow your heart. And what it really means to me is essentially not just following what's in your heart, but starting with knowing what's in there and allowing it to come up.
And I also equal that to finding your why, finding your purpose, finding what it is that you want to be doing and then pursuing it. Like that's the last thing you'll do in your life so that you can ideally find joy, fulfillment, success, abundance, and whatnot. And I know Erick, you and I had a beautiful conversation last week on this topic and so many others.
So I thought, why not start there? Maybe we'll, we'll start with you and say, well, how has your journey led to this point and how are you seeing this idea of potentially following your heart further down? whatever paths you decide to go on.
Erick: Yeah. So the last, uh, year for me has been, wow. I mean, actually, yeah, basically the last two years, but especially this last year has been, uh, massive amounts of changes.
So I'm currently in Florida right now and I don't have a house and I don't have a car and I got rid of most of my possessions. I have some things in my brother's place. Uh, Bicycle, keyboard, guitar, some clothes, old yearbooks, pictures, those kinds of things, but just a few bins over there and. What I have with me is a, a checked baggage, a carry on bag, and my backpack, and that's all that I have, and it feels very freeing to be in this situation.
One of the things that I did find interesting was that even though I've gotten rid of all of this stuff, My level of happiness, levels of anxiety that are part of everyday life haven't changed much from when I did own a house and I did have all of these things. And so I was talking the other day with, uh, so I'm staying with my friend Shana here in Florida, and we're talking to a good friend of hers who is just Went through a really, really nasty divorce and her ex was talking about, she was telling me about how he is always looking for things outside of himself to find his happiness, you know, he bought this new big truck, you know, that he was hoping, you know, so we could be like, I'm, you know, this big manly man kind of thing and all of these things that he does and he's so miserable and he, he tries so hard to have all of these things outside of him to make him happy.
And, you know, he's always, You know, he goes out of his way to make other people unhappy, thinking that by diminishing their happiness, it will make him somehow happier and have control over them. And it was just fascinating because I, you know, as I was talking to this gal and I just mentioned how, you know, the external doesn't necessarily change the internal.
It can be helpful for sure. If you're in a really bad situation, like if you're in a war zone and you get out of a war zone, that can be incredibly healing for sure. But for the most part, so much of our external doesn't change our internal. So I'm just as happy as I was before, I have just as much anxiety about what I'm going to do with my life as I did before, but I definitely feel a bit freer because I don't have all of these things that I have to worry about, and that right there has been, been really, really good for me and very healthy for me, um, but I still, like I said, I still worry about what I'm going to do with my future and where I'm going to go, so I'm.
Yeah. I'll be flying out to Amsterdam next week, which will be very interesting and very exciting. So I'm really looking forward to that. I'm going to move this mic here so I, uh, so I'm really looking forward to that. Um, but I think on, for the most part, uh, yeah, this next few months are going to be very much about discovery and trying to figure out what I can do and what I want to do with my life.
Constantin: Yeah. That's a beautiful spot to be in. If you can be there. And the story you shared from your friend and. the discussion you had that resonated so deeply with me because honestly, that described me a few years back before I really made a decision and said, well, I need to understand why this brings me joy, happiness, fulfillment, because like the person described, I tried all the external things, shiny toys.
Hanging out with the wrong people, doing the wrong activities. And I say wrong because they're wrong for me, not necessarily because they weren't good activities. And the putting down of other people. And what I have found that's very interesting that in all that process, Erick, is that it's usually like what you do to others and how you perceive others.
It's a big reflection of who you are internally. And perhaps in his case was about putting people down so he can feel better about himself. But that also can tell me, and based on what I know now, is that likely he was putting himself down internally. Because I was doing the same thing and I come from a place where like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
That's what I was doing. I was putting myself down. And I thought that's normal, which meant that why would I be doing anything else to other people? To me, that's normal. I'll put you down. I'll make you small because I make myself small all the time. And for me, the biggest catalyst, the biggest change was realizing that I was living a life that pretty much everyone else Painted for me in a way.
They're like, this is what you should do. This is what's gonna bring you, happiness's gonna bring you money. This is what's gonna bring you success, blah blah, blah. Fill in the blanks. And it wasn't until I was like, oh yeah, you know what? That's what happened. I lived someone else's life. Let's actually take a step back.
I want this constant in one. And that process took a while for me. 'cause I wanted it myself. with my own knowledge, following books, following podcasts. And eventually I came to the other side and I said, Oh shit, this is my, this is my passion. This is my, why this is my purpose. And since that day, everything became more clear.
Like in your case, nothing changed overnight. It's still a process. It took me in fact, six months to really do something about it. But then once I took that action, so I went from like awareness, I became aware of what it is because I did the work to action. That's when everything changed. That's when my, I came out of depression and moved on the other side.
That's when I, my anxiety reduced to the point where it's mostly gone now. That's where burnout pretty much. And all of these things start to happen in, in our lives when we align ourselves more with who we are. And that's what I found from my own life, the people I'm fortunate enough to, to coach and mentor and other people in my life that, that I've seen go on similar paths.
And it sounds like you're on the path, Erick, right now where you have left behind the things that you don't need anymore, that don't serve you anymore. And now you get to pave a new path and finding out. What really makes you tick?
Erick: Yeah, for sure. And yeah, it's, it's going to be an interesting path for sure.
There's so many roads and, and things I can take. Uh, as most of you know, I've been in tech for at least my listeners. I've been in tech for 24 years and that was something that I fell into. It wasn't necessarily what I wanted to go into. It just more of, I was just stumbled into it, found I was good at it.
And as people kept paying me more and more money to do it, it was like, okay, I'll, I'll keep doing this. And, um, you know, not the worst thing in the world, but by realizing that. It's probably not ever really been my passion. So I wasn't one of these people who came home from work or finished up work and then jumped on a, you know, my own project.
So I jumped on an open source project to work on it. You know, it's just like, I would find it interesting and I would read up on new technologies and I would find those things, but I found that. That it just wasn't, I just wasn't one of those super geeks that loved, you know, sitting down and programming all day.
I mean, I, I did it for work and what I found, yeah, what I found was that I love creating and that was really important. Uh, so having, uh, having a job where I was creative and I always need to be creative with everything I do is really important to me. I need to create things for other people, whether that's podcasts, whether that's writing a screenplay, which I did one time, uh, about 25 years ago.
For competition. I thought I wanted to be a screen player, screenwriter at one time. Uh, I've written music. So in fact, the, the theme for my podcast, if you listen to that piano theme, I wrote that it's actually a much longer composition and I took a piece out of that. So for me, it's, it's all about creating things and what I'm going to create next.
I'm not sure. And, you know, I, I definitely have lots of ideas, which makes it challenging to winnow those down and to, to really pick on those things. And I wish, I guess I don't wish, but for me, it's, it's a place of discovery. And so that's, that's always exciting. I like to explore as I like to discover things.
So I don't have a problem with getting out there trying to discover these things. I know a lot of people want all the answers now and they want to know exactly what they should be doing. And I. Over the last few weeks, I've been struggling with that. I have these moments of, of kind of almost panic or a little bit of anxiety of like, crap, what am I supposed to be doing?
Am I supposed to be working on music? Am I supposed to focus more on my podcast? Am I supposed to write a book? What is it that I need to be doing? And because I don't have an answer for that right now, there's, there's quite a bit of anxiety. And, you know, like text my friends, I'm like, ah, am I making the, making the right choices?
And they're just like, you're on a good path. Just follow this path out and see. Where you can go and where you can get to. And so I sat down last week, I think it was, and read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. That's something I like to do every now and then because it reminds me of remembering that you need to follow the path through and do your best in every situation.
And what was, there was something I was reading where, uh, no, it was actually, uh, uh, what's his name? Uh, Josh Terry on, uh, Instagram. I don't know if you've ever seen him. It says his Instagram thing is Josh Terry plays or something like that, but he, he gives inspirational videos. And I really liked one the other day where he said there are two different ways of following a path in this world or of… of finding your purpose in this world. One of them is to have a clear vision of where it is, and then you, you create a plan and you work relentlessly towards that vision. And plenty of people do this, and they, they mold their circumstances themselves around to try and reach that goal. And then there's the other side, which is, excuse me, which is where you live in each moment the very, very best you can, and you make a choice in that moment.
Do I want to go this way, or do I want to go that way? You try one of those, and you see how it fits, you do your best in that situation, and if it works for you, you continue on down that path, if not, you take some steps back, and then you change your path a little bit, and then you try the next thing. And again, but each moment you are trying to live that moment most excellently as possible.
And you said, either one is fine, but knowing how you work with things might be a better thing. It might suit you better. And for me, I recognize that I'm definitely more of the latter. I'm more of that person who gets in, experiences it, tries it, and then see if I like it, see if it works for me. If it doesn't, then take some steps back.
I've never had this grand vision of what my life should be. And I've been a much more of a, an experiencer of life, but it's hard sometimes to recognize that. It's okay to be an experiencer of life. I don't have to have the grand plan, especially in a world where they're always telling you, Oh, you have to plan your goals.
You have to have these big plans to do all of these things. And you have, you know, in order for you to reach your goals, you have to, you know, make smart goals and all of these different things with that. And I think that's true, but I think that not everybody works that way. And I, I, I oftentimes feel like I'm very disorganized in my life because I don't, you know, I'm not a project manager.
I don't plan things out in a big old project, uh, per se. But I'm able to manage things pretty well and get things done. I mean, I, my friend Lisa pointed out that I cleared a six bedroom, 3, 800 square foot house in just a few months when I was selling my house and got rid of all of this stuff that I accumulated for over 13 years.
So it was. You know, it was definitely doable and I'm definitely recently good at planning like that. But I don't feel like I'm a good planner like that because I don't have like a long term vision of like, in five years I'm going to be here, in 10 years I'm going to be doing this. You know, I don't even know what I'm going to be doing in three months.
Constantin: So here's the funny thing though, right? The definition of a planner that you might be using is someone else's definition. And that's what I have found on this journey as well is that we tend to jump on definitions that other people make for things. That's fine, right? Because you got to start somewhere.
But at one point we have to take control and say, well, what's my definition? Do I feel like I am a planner? And like you said, you give good example as to why you are one, maybe you're not one by the standard definition of the definition of those that you have had in your life as people to follow. And that's always interesting to look at because everything can be looked at the same way.
And you talked about this as well, about being okay with the unknown. And one of the biggest fears, if you talk from a psychology point of view, one of the biggest fears that people have in life is the fear of the unknown. And there's a good reason behind it when you look at how we evolved as human beings, right?
Unknown is what could kill you and in many cases it did back in a hundred years plus. So fear of the unknown is something that most people innately afraid of and then that gets built up with our society and whatnot. So it's beautiful to see that when we can be a bit more liberated and say, you know what?
I've been okay till now. I've made it to here. Let's allow some unknown to pour in. It's like, I know I want to. Like in your case, for example, explore music or in my case, explore public speaking, not be so rigid on how that's going to happen because that's when you miss out on opportunities. And that's how I was by the way, because I'm a project manager at heart.
I have the certifications. I had to like, Oh, I want to public speak. This is exactly how it's going to happen. And when you do that, you're essentially, it's almost like you're swimming upstream or you're swimming against a tide. You may get there because you're working really hard, but it's going to cost you.
Meaning your health, your mental health, your emotional health, all those things may come into play and some will not make it. Or you can allow a bit of the unknown to come in and they will show you a path. It's like, oh, if you go left here a bit. It's going to be less current than if you go right, it's going to be even less, right?
So all of a sudden you see opportunities, you see new experiences, new people come into your life to guide you. And then the end goal is like so much more beautiful and that's been very, very hard for me to do. And it sounds like maybe a bit for you also, but for me as someone with a mathematics degree, being analytical.
Trusting in anything other than my brain has been difficult, but once I start doing it, it's so much more liberating and so much more powerful.
Erick: Mm hmm. What's been the most interesting surprise that is, that's come about or opportunity that's come about when you've been less analytical?
Oh, that's a, that's
Constantin: A, that's an amazing question.
And so one of the things that I've come to learn, this is the last six months maybe, is that I've always had an intuitive sense. What it's like, it's not coming from here. It's coming from somewhere below, right from your heart, from your gut. People call it gut feeling, intuition, inspiration. And the more I get out of my head, meaning that I don't jump on a conclusion or use my analytical mind through meditation, through other practices, I have these, I want to call them voices, but inspiration coming up.
And when I listen to it, it seems to be guiding me on a good path. When I don't listen to it, I'm reminded, well, you probably should have listened. And I'll give you a silly example. Over the holidays, I wanted to buy some new couches off of Facebook marketplace. I find some I liked, go to buy. I have a chat with the person, everything seems all right.
And in the past, if I didn't jump on a sale on my Facebook marketplace, they would sell pretty quickly. So we arranged to do a deposit of 50. So not a huge amount. As I sit down at the computer to do the transfer, to put a deposit so I can pick the market the next day, I literally have this gut feeling that something is not right.
Literally, I'm like, this, this seems off. I look at their profile a bit. I see that they have some items listed in literally in Canada and one in the US. And one across from what I was in Canada. I'm like, that's odd. But instead of asking them any questions, I continued to look. I saw a couple more fees that seemed off, but I'm like, you know what?
I really want this couch. I'm just going to send the money. But the entire time I had the feeling that this was off. This is not good. As soon as I send the money and this is the way you, when you send the money, you cannot get it back. You're pretty much. Then I get up. I remember going upstairs. Telling my, my parents, my partner, it's like, you know what, I feel like this was a mistake, but let's sit with it.
And of course the next day comes up, I get ghosted and you know, I never see the coaches. And that's a great prime example where like, I'm just using, I wouldn't even say my analytical mind cause even my analytical mind could have seen this coming, but more like letting emotions to get the best of it.
Cause it's like, Oh, I really want this. Yeah. And not listening to the voice. And I've had that happen a lot more, but now because I'm getting out of my head, meaning that I'm not allowing my head to jump in as much, finding that balance, I get to hear that voice a lot more often. And it may show up as a feeling, it may show up as a something, you know, like a hormonal imbalance maybe.
I don't even know. It's very hard for me to explain, even though I look at it from a psychological and from a, I don't know, let's say science background.
Erick: Yeah. I've had that same thing happen to me before. So I get you. And as soon as I sent the money, it was like, wait a second. That was, ah, yeah, that was a bad idea.
And I knew that I knew that I didn't want it, but I was so excited about the thing that I didn't take that moment to pause and go, how does this feel? Does this feel right? No. Yeah. And that's the
Constantin: thing that people talk about. And it took me a while to really grasp, which they say, you can look at life as things happening to you.
Right? My car broke down. This person broke up with me. This experience was not good or good, whatever you want to label it. Or there's the other side, we can say, this is happening for me, meaning that, okay, I gave the money where I lost it. I could play the victim and be like, Oh, I can't believe I got swindled.
I can't believe these people did this to me. Blah, blah, blah. Right. And you become the victim and you beat yourself up. And there are other things happen there. Or you can say, this happens for me. Meaning it's like, okay, what lessons can I take out of this? What can I learn and why did this happen to me?
And for me, looking back at that, it's like, well, perhaps that lesson in my life came because It reminded me that, hey, you have another way to not just use your analytical mind or your emotions to make decisions. You have another way. It was shown to you. You didn't want to respect that. Well, here's what happens.
So that's a piece of a lesson. The other lesson could be is I don't trust people so easily. Do your due diligence at the very least ask them some questions. Hey, why do you have, you know, three listings all in different places in the world type stuff, right? So that's a big, a big, big, big lesson for me in the last few years.
It's like how you look at life. Are you the victim? So you look on the negative side or are you, is this happening for you and you look on the positive side?
Erick: Absolutely. Yeah. Think of it as a 50 lesson that you learned. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the price you had to pay to learn that lesson.
Yeah. I think that's a much better way to look at it is, yep. I had to pay a price for this, but if I don't learn that lesson, then I wasted my money. Whereas now you, you had that 50 and you gave it away and you learned a good lesson from that. It's like, okay, I can learn something from this. Yeah, that's very, very true.
Yeah, the Stoics are, are very big on making sure that we were able to take that step back and look at things in the, and be able to analyze them that way. But it takes that self awareness, which I think is, is very, very challenging. It takes a lot of work. It also takes a bunch of humility because. It's, it's much easier to play the victim.
It's much easier to be like, Oh, like you said, you know, the world happens. Things happen to you. And I actually did a podcast episode called that to you or for you a while back. And it was all about that. It's like, is life happening to you or is it happening for you? And the thing is, is that life just happens.
And your choice on that, whether it's you decide is good or bad, it's, that's your choice. You can say this was the worst thing that ever happened to me, or you can say this is the best thing that ever happened to me. You can have no opinion on it. You can just be like, this is what's happening to me. And you have to accept it because it is what is happening to you.
But your judgment on that, and how you perceive it, and how you let it affect you, that's always your choice. You know, when something happens Yeah, and that's really hard for a lot of people because they'll be like, Oh, this horrible thing happened to me. That's why I feel this way. And it's like, no, this thing happened to you.
You made a decision that it's a horrible thing. And so you are acting like a horrible thing happened to you. And maybe it was something that was hard. Maybe you were in a car accident and you're in a lot of pain. But the more that you, your perspective on it adds. Even another layer of misery onto it if you do it that way, because I mean, there are plenty of people who have good things happen to them and they're still miserable about it.
I was listening to Tim Ferriss's podcast with Morgan Housel, who's a financial guy. He wrote, he writes about the psychology of finance and stuff like that. And he was talking about, um, back in the 60s, there was an interview with like the richest man at the time. I cannot remember his name at all, uh, cause I'd never heard it before this point, but he saw this documentary on this guy and it, they showed him and he was like the richest man of the world at the time.
And he was one of the most unhappy people that this guy had seen. And, and they asked him, they said, you know, what? You have, you can get anything that you want in life. What, what do you want most in life? It's like, I want to be someone who's happier than me. And he didn't know how to do that. Like he had all of this money, all of these things, but he had this perspective on things that even with all of this money, he was still miserable like that.
Because of his perspective, because of the way he was viewing the world. And it was really, it was really interesting to see that. You know, cause like they say, money simply magnifies who you are. And so if you're a miserable person to begin with, you just often will make you more miserable. Yeah. So you're circumstantial.
I
Constantin: love that. I'll give you an example. I mean, it's happened over the weekend. I'm still pondering over it and I'm curious to see your take on it with a stoic background and what you've gone through life. And this is pretty much on theme right here with like life happening for me, to me, and also reminds me of how it would have reacted in the past.
So, I have a fairly new vehicle, a 2023 GMC Yukon, and in Canada where I live right now, it's been literally snowing in the morning, freezing in the afternoon, raining in the evening. On this particular day, which was this past weekend, I get in the car to go to some, a friend's house and I get in the car and as I begin to drive down the road, I hear some water pouring in the background.
And I'm like, man, I hope that's not inside. And I hope that's on the outside. I didn't pay much attention to it. All of a sudden I stop at a stoplight and water starts pouring through the main console of the car. Inside, all over the dashboard, everything else. Then I see water pouring all over my leather seats in the back and I'm like, wow, I can't believe this is, this is a one year old car.
I have like 10, 000 miles on it. And I remember in the moment I had this biggest aha moment and I'm like, huh? I did the old things that I would normally do is like, I was like, why does it happen to me now? Like I have such a busy week coming up. I don't have time to deal with this. It's the weekend. All those old narratives.
But because I've done a bit of work and I, by a bit of, I mean, quite a bit of work lately, I was like, huh, you know what? Those thoughts are not going to be conducive because I know the path they're going to take me down on. I was able to interrupt them. I was able to put our thoughts in and say, you know what?
It's Saturday. This happened. There's a reason. We'll figure it out later. I have a night, a night with friends coming up. I don't want to ruin that. So all I did is I got to my destination, right? I wasn't thrilled about it, but I was like, whatever. I got out, messaged my friends and said, Hey, I'm going to be 10 minutes late.
I had some paper towel in the car, cleaned up the car. And between walking between what I part and their apartment building, I practiced my tools on how to essentially interrupt those thought patterns and replace them with good ones. And for the rest of the night, I was able to ignore the situation completely, which my old me, I would have turned around and I would have tried to deal with the issue on a Saturday night, been pissed off, called everyone I know to complain about, Look, poor me.
This happened to me. How can this happen? You know, I paid this much money for this card issue. Anyway, down the path. I had a conversation, I had, you know, five hours with my friends, got back down, left, more water was pouring. I'm like, okay, I'll deal with this on Monday. It's not a big deal. Practice my things.
Another moment of realization came up. I was like, Oh, let me call my parents or let me call a couple of friends and tell them what happened. Right? So we can all sulk in the misery and be like, ah, you know, bad GMC or bad this and bad that. And then I realized, you know what? I'm not. Because there's no point in focusing on the negativity.
There's no point in doing that. I'll take care of the problem. Like I always do, right? Looking back, I've taken care of everything I had come up in my life. And then it's going to be a fun story. And the beautiful part for me was that as I started meditating on this and when I got home, right? And the next day I was like, okay, so why did this happen for me?
And then it poured in. It's like, well, it becomes a great story to tell on a podcast like we're doing now. It's the first time I shared this. It can become a great story when I go and public speak about how my old self would react. and lead life and how my new self is doing it. There could be many other reasons that I haven't figured out yet, but we can always look at the positive.
And of course, Monday came, I went to the dealership. They're like, yeah, that's a pretty big issue. We'll take care of it. Come back in a few days. We'll get you in right away and we'll get it fixed. Right. And it took an, what, an hour of my time to get the dealership and back. They'll give me a rental car when I take the car in.
It'll be fine. It's not a big deal. It's just a car. And like you talked earlier about, like, they're just things. They're not gonna really do much other than amplify your situation. And that's been my experience. And when I sat with that, and I still sit with it every day in meditation, the more I do that, the more I realize, wow, if this was five years ago, I don't even know how ballistic I would have went.
Right. Like I would have been aggressive with the people at the dealership, maybe. And I would have been crying at everyone that would listen and it would derail my entire week. Right. Cause then you're in that negative mindset that it's not going to lead you to anything positive because you and I talked about last week, how your thoughts lead to your feelings, lead to your actions, lead to your results.
So my thoughts, all negative, negative feelings, which amplify more negative thoughts. Then my actions are not going to be positive and then my results are going to be exactly what you'd expect.
Erick: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, that's a great story. I, uh, and obviously a great learning example for sure. And one thing you mentioned in there, which I really, uh, I hadn't quite thought about it this way, but that.
You talked about how you didn't want to complain because you didn't want to suck people into the misery and you'd all feel crappy about that. And I'd never quite thought of it that way because oftentimes, you know, you feel like, you know, I need, I need to get this out. I just need to vent about this thing.
And I think that in some cases that is important. You know, when something crappy does happen, you want to be able to just want to go and let that out. Um, But I think that even then you need to be very careful about that. And the Stoics, you know, Marcus Aurelius, he talks in there, it's like, don't ever hear yourself complaining out loud.
Not even, not even in private, you know, and it's that same thing. But I was, but I hadn't, I hadn't quite thought about it yet. It's that whole thing of misery loves company. And a lot of times people will talk about all the miserable things that are happening to them because they want to pull people in.
They want to have that. People would feel sorry for them and they get that attention and stuff like that. And I've known, I've had plenty of friends and relatives and who've done that and it gets exhausting. And I hadn't realized that I hadn't really thought about it like that. So clearly the way you said that, you know, suck them into the misery.
And I was like, Oh, that's really, that's very, very poignant. But I mean, for
Constantin: me, that was a, that was a fairly new realization. I'll be honest, I haven't considered it like that. And then I asked, okay, what would the purpose of me calling be? Other than to perpetuate misery, if it's like you said, if it's to get a second opinion, be like, Hey, what should I do about this?
What happened? There's a different purpose. But I knew in my, in my mind and my heart and my body, that the only reason I would call is to complain and be like, Oh, how could this happen to me? Because I already knew what I was going to do. I mean, I had to take it to the dealership. It's on the warranty.
There's not really like I have 10 choices. I knew what had to be done, which meant I'm not going to call about opinions. I'm not going to call about anything else other than to complain. But there will be situations in which you find yourself or like something bad happens, like you said, and you do need those people in your corner.
But then I guess we have to check ourselves and see, are we calling to really complain or are we calling to say, Hey, this is what happened for me. It's not great. What is your opinion? What can I do? And then you kind of brainstorm back and forth. Yeah.
Erick: And I think that, I think that you can, in some instances with the right person, vent.
Because sometimes you just need to let that frustration out. And, and sometimes I've done that where I'm just like, Ah, this is the thing that's going on. This and this and this and this and this. And, okay, whew, all done. And it's just like, it's letting that energy out. But letting that person know, hey, I need a second to vent here.
This has nothing to do with you. This is not me dragging you down into the suck. This is me just, I need to let this energy out because it's spinning around in my head and once I say it out loud, I get that out. I think that's a very, very different approach because you're not necessarily complaining there.
It's more of like you're almost factually explaining the situation out loud just so you can put your story together in your own mind. And I think that there's, I think that there's a big difference between that, between complaining and venting. And I think that. I think they can be very interesting. I had something similar like that happened to me a while back, not nearly as, as epic as that, but, uh, I, I had scheduled to get my booster vaccine and my flu vaccine for this year and had it all scheduled out.
And before I was going to it, I had a doctor's appointment and then I had an hour in between the doctor's appointment. And when I was supposed to get my vaccine, the vaccine was on the far. It was the only one I could get, and I just wanted to get it done and out of the way. And so I finished up my doctor's appointment, walked to my car, and I couldn't find my car keys.
And I was like, what is going on here? And I look inside and they're sitting on my chair, like great. So I had to call an Uber to come pick me up, take me home, get my spare car key, bring me back. I drove all the way out there. I mean, just barely made it in the nick of time and it was at one o'clock and I said, okay, I'm here for my appointment.
They said, Oh, I'm sorry. The software double booked to you. Somebody's already taken that slot. We don't have vaccine for you today. And like, I was like, and I was so mad. I'm like, what? You expect me to suffer because your system screwed up. This is, and I just stopped right there. Cause I could feel myself getting so heated and I was like,
I'm sorry. I'm, I'm acting out of line. I'm really sorry about that. I know there's nothing you can do about it and I know it's not your fault. Have a good day. And I turned around, I was walking down the aisle and I was just like, and you know, one of the other people at the place was like, Hey, is there anything I can help you with?
And I was like, well, no, because this is what happened. I explained the situation really quick. And she was like, Oh, I'm really sorry about that. That kind of, that sucks that you drove all the way out here for that. And I said, yeah, but I'll just get some chocolate and go home. So I, I got some chocolate, went across the street, grabbed some lunch.
Cause I could tell I was getting really hungry, which makes me a little bit moody and angry. So I was like, okay, and went and did that. But I was. I was very proud of myself because like you said, you know, five years ago, I'd have been snapping out a pull to Karen. I would have been like, let me talk to your manager.
This isn't fair. You know, and I would have tried that and nothing would have happened. And I would have just been angry and pissy and moody that whole day, uh, you know, and it would have ruined my day when I just caught myself and was like, yep, there's nothing you can do about this. You're not doing this to be malicious.
You're not doing this to be mean at all. You're simply doing your job and there's simply the way the cards fall that day. It was like, okay. And so I just let it go and that for me was like, when I reflect on that later that day, I was like, yes, yes. And you know, pat myself on the back because before, because before, like I said, a few years ago, I would have just been, the claws would have come out.
And so it was, but I mean, I was still slightly disappointed with myself because I still did get heated right at first, but I was glad that I was able to pull back quickly enough and be like, Hey, I know this isn't your fault. Have a nice day. I love
Constantin: the story, Erick, and what I like about that is your realization there that you are aware that that's not who you are.
And looking back at myself doing that in the past, even though I realized I'd be like, I'll continue through with it. And you realize you stopped yourself and that's the power of what we're talking about here because with all the work I've done, with what I work with my clients as well on essentially reprogramming.
their mind so you can do stuff like we just said on a consistent basis. It's not that negative thoughts will not come up. I mean, you still live in an environment that has a lot of negative stuff happening. They will come up, but now you have the tools. So first awareness and then the second, the tools to stop that from getting anywhere big, right?
So as you work through this, you know, there was a few months ago now. You, because you celebrate, because you reinforce it with your mind, likely if it happens again, you might not even get to the point where you blurt anything out. You might catch yourself before you even say anything else and you walk away and say, thank you.
You know, it happens. And that's the power of repeating something that you want to instill within you because all those negative reactions like you and I had in the past, I mean, those are not just there all of a sudden. They were things that we repeated all our life or we were shown by others in our life.
So that means that the opposite is true too, which means that if you have a reaction, that means you likely repeat it often, either to yourself or to others, and you can overcome that and put something better in its place.
Erick: Yeah. And it's taken a lot of work because my example was my father and my father was highly reactive and he was very quick tempered and not all the time, but a good portion of the time.
So when something happened in a way that he was unhappy with, it was just. Bam, that temper come out really, really fast and it took, it took a lot, it's taken a lot of work to be very, very cognizant of that. And part of that, I think also is that because we often feel like if we have a good excuse for why we act a certain way, then it excuses that behavior.
And, and so one of the things that stoicism has really helped me with a lot is to actually take responsibility for those things that I do that I, rather than coming up with an excuse for it and being, Oh, it was okay that I acted that way because of X, Y, or Z, I take responsibility for it, which that was the other thing I tried to do here was I said, I'm sorry, I'm, it.
I'm acting out of line, and I shouldn't, you know, I shouldn't be acting this way, and I apologize, and I hope that you have a nice day. I didn't say, oh, you, you screwed up, I can't believe you did this, and, you know, and, and, because I did, I could have used that as an excuse of why I'm allowed to be angry.
But I didn't. I recognized that I needed to take responsibility for my behavior and the way that I was acting and what I was doing. And stoicism has really helped me with that, like I said, because I used to always have excuses. If I had a good excuse, a good rationalization for it, I then I was, I was totally justified.
And that's our ego talking, because what it does is it makes it so that we We feel okay with our behavior. We justify our behavior. And I think the more that we can look at those things and take responsibility for them, then we can, it makes it much easier to improve our behavior. Because if we're actually taking responsibility for it, we want to be sure that we don't continue that behavior.
We want to show that we don't repeat that behavior. And so when we actually step up and take responsibility and say, yep, I, I did that, I don't like that I did that, but I did that because it's, it's reality. It's what actually happened. And so. You know, in this case, yeah, I got heated. I got, I got started a little bit, get a little bit angry and I took responsibility for that.
I got angry and that wasn't very cool of me and I don't want to be that kind of person. So I own that responsibility. I own that, or I, I own that behavior and I'm responsible for my behavior. And so it helps to, it helps to take that away from our egos because we're not trying to soothe our egos and say, Oh, I'm okay.
I was justified in being upset. Yeah,
Constantin: beautiful, beautifully said that. And if you look at both of our stories there, right, something negative happens and everyone has a different definition of negative, right? Both of these situations are cool because they're negative across the board. And then we looked at it and said, okay, what's the lesson in this?
That's the positive side of it, because it doesn't remove the fact that you still had to go somewhere else and spend more time and energy and do that. It doesn't take away the fact that I have to now deal with this issue. We don't know the damages inside. It doesn't take away any of that. It's not about negating the negatives.
It's about not focusing on them, which is what you emphasize so beautifully here as well, because we, I guess, because of culture and how we learned in school, but also our human physiology and evolution, We are prone to focusing on the negative. You and I talked about the negativity bias, which is the idea that anything negative makes it to your brain, to your conscious mind, a lot quicker, either from your memories or from what happens in the environment, because it was a defense mechanism as we evolved to keep you alive.
So you knew about all of this, which is something that we have to work against. That's why it's so hard to actually get a hold of it. And then once you become aware of that, then the next part is you have a choice. Do you want to do something about it because you have the knowledge? Or do you continue to be the way you are?
And I don't believe there's a wrong or a right answer. Some people choose to continue even though they know better. And some say, like you and I in this case, is like, you know what? We know better. Let's take an action. And the action is to, well, feel our feelings as we both, you know, I was angry as well in the moment I felt those feelings, but then I chose to let them go, let go the negative thoughts and move on to the lesson piece.
It's like it happens for me. What's the purpose and the reason they happen in your case? I'll give you like my two cents. It may have happened to teach you, not to teach you, to reinforce the lesson you just knew you learned. How can you learn something if you don't practice it over and over? So if this keeps showing up in your life, it's not that the universe doesn't like it.
It's like, well, let's get you better at dealing with the situation. So in your case, Erick, it could be like, well, you might not even have the outburst. It's going to get to a point where it could be like, you'll be frustrated. You might let. My event, when you get back to the car or in a private space, be like, okay, you know, that's unfortunate.
What can we do about it? So that's, that's, that's beautiful to see.
Erick: So do you think that most people fall into a negativity trap like that or fall into things being negative because they assume that these things shouldn't happen to them as if life should be great all the time. And so when bad things happen, they feel like, like the universe is out to get them, if you will.
That's a
Constantin: great question. I love the question. I'll say a few people might be like that, right? Because, uh, I can only give myself an example because I know myself really well. I've been like that many times in my life because I'll be like, I have a good stretch and then something negative happens like this.
I'm like, but I've been doing everything right. Why, why is this negative thing happening? Like, why is this being thrown my way? Why is this happening to me? Why, you know, like, and we get into that. And some people unfortunately have lives that are a bit tougher and then negative things keep piling up. But here's what I've come to realize.
Once you get yourself into a negative state, you're much more likely to attract more negativity into your life because if you can't appreciate the positives, then why would those be reflected back to you? Is if you look at just from a psychology point of view or from a physiology point of view or anything that's, let's say science based more, right?
Look at what happens. You and I both know the example, I think we talked about this. If you think about a red car, cause you want to buy a red car, when you go out on the street, that's all you're going to see. You're going to see a red car here, a red car here, a red car there. And that's the power of your focus where you put your focus.
That's where your subconscious mind will and with your conscious material will try to make that a reality for you. So if you focus on the negativity and say, I can't believe this is happening to me. I can't believe life is so unfair. I can't believe this, this, and that. You're telling your brain to bring more of that because that's what you're asking.
That's what you're talking about. But if you focus on the positive, that's more of what's going to come back into your life. So to answer your question That's part of it for sure. I have seen it show up in many different ways, right? People have had bad luck their entire life. And then that keeps building up because that's all they can focus on.
Other people have been mistreated and they take the mistreatment as a reflection on who they are versus on who the person doing the mistreatment was. And that was me earlier in my life because I was bullied and then I became the bully a bit. And I'm like, It was never about me to begin with, about what the person was going through.
And then when I was a bully to, let's say, my younger brother for, for a few months before I learned better, it was also because what I was going through, it was nothing else. Yeah, yeah,
Erick: I do find, yeah, and I do find that though, that often when people do get stuck in that negativity, that it seems like their life continues to be negative.
And I don't know if it's that they necessarily have more negative things actually happening or if it's just that they draw attention to those negative things far more than your average person does.
Constantin: Great, great point. And I can see, I can see it's both because So there was, there were studies and there's this paper coming up on this, but I'll tell you a couple that fascinated me.
So there, I don't know which part in the States, there is this beautiful road in the middle of nowhere, simple road. And it has like telephone poles every a hundred or so yards or meters and no trees or anything else. And then there was this stretch of road where there were a lot of accidents and like 80 percent of accidents.
The people that essentially just by on their own, they were hitting the telephone pole, but there's like a hundred yards between them. So like, they were wondering like, how can you hit a telephone pole when like literally you have so much space to like, just not hit anything. And what they've realized is that the people that got in those accidents, they would be like, you know, the car was swerved.
And then we're like, Oh, don't hit the pole. Don't hit the pole. All your mind gets there is like pole, pole, pole. And then that's the direction you're going to go into. And if you think about that, like take an abstract back and say, okay, how do I apply that in our life? If your focus is on the negative, Oh, I hope I'm not going to catch all the red lights on my way to work.
I hope. My manager is not going to be pissed off at me today. Like all those negative focuses that we have, well, that's what you're asking your mind to bring into your existence. And we're not talking about spiritual stuff here. We're talking about how our body works. And obviously if you take it to the spiritual side, that's how manifestation and law of attraction technically works because you put your focus on something and that's what you attract into your life.
And that's what I see when I go to your question or some people will technically have more negative stuff happen because their focus is so much in the negativity that that's all they can see because I, I'm not sure about you, but I have friends in my life that essentially I go to any party, I go to any gathering, all they can talk about is, Oh, this bad thing happened to me and this bad thing happened to me.
And this happened to my mom and this happened to my father. And you're like, wow, that person must have a really unlucky life. And then you realize, wait a second, maybe it's not that, because you know what? I've also had a lot of these things happen in my life, but I chose to focus on the positives. And then there were less of those things happening in my life.
Huh, I wonder if there's something there. Yeah, yeah,
Erick: I can see that very much happening. Yeah. Yeah, well, kind of back to what you said about the telephone poles. Uh, so I actually got my motorcycle license a number of years ago, and mostly because I'm terrified of riding motorcycles, and so I was like, okay, I want to, I want to, I want to do this to get over that fear.
Um, but what I found, what was interesting is they teach you in, in this, like if you're riding on your motorcycle and you see a pothole, you focus on away from the pothole. You don't focus on it, you focus where you want to go because where you're is like where your focus goes, that's where you go. And so that is one of the things that they, they specifically teach, you know, especially on a motorcycle because you, you are carrying.
In a car, it's, you can turn a lot quicker and with a motorcycle, so much of it is momentum so that you stay upright. So you can't turn nearly as fast, otherwise you lay the bike down. And so it's like, look where you want to go. And that was really a very important lesson like that. And I think, yeah, so basically you hit it right on.
Yeah. So people will, when they're sliding off the road, don't hit the telephone pole, don't hit the telephone pole. Bam.
Constantin: Well, there was another study. I don't remember where, this was in Europe somewhere, where they took a class of kids and they told them to run around the class, but avoid hitting any other kids.
And then they took another class and they told them, just run around the class, have fun, do whatever you want. Well, which group do you think had the most collisions?
Erick: Probably the first one.
Constantin: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because people are like, Oh, I want to make sure I don't hit this, this. Like you said, your focus is on like what to avoid.
And then that's what's going to come into your life. It reminds me of school sometimes, right? I was an A plus student up to the university, then I didn't care as much for school. I still graduated with a math degree. I still did well, but I remember when I was going in and I was afraid of, I cannot fail this test.
I don't want to fail this. Let it not be this, this, and this negative questions, and then they would be on the test. I'll be like, did I manifest that? What happened? Looking back now, I was just focusing on the negatives. Right. And I couldn't allow anything else to show up in my life.
Erick: Exactly. Okay. So we had talked earlier about kind of making the theme about this of, of finding your path, what advice or what are some experiences you want to share along that?
Cause I know that your podcast is about Unleash Thyself, which is very much driven with helping others find their path. So for you, what. I guess what are the top three things that you can put out there that you find are the most helpful for people trying to figure out their path and, and, and to head the direction of that their life should go or that they want their life to go?
Constantin: I love that question, Erick. And um, the way I look at it right now is I looked at how I've done mine and I did a lot of research. I did a lot of studies. It took me months to uncover it. Now the process I've streamlined it and it came down to like three big categories really, which is the uncovering. What it is that your why is your purpose doing a quick inventory where it shows up in your life.
And then for most of us, it doesn't show up much for me. It was like less than 10%, meaning that pretty much one in 10 actions I was taking was not driven. By this why, by this purpose, which meant, of course, I wasn't really happy because that's my why in the end is what drives that happiness, joy, fulfillment, abundance, all of it.
And then once you have that inventory taking action, because we talked all after doing this entire interview and conversation about the importance of action and putting your focus on something, right? But you can't do the last two steps unless you do the first one. So the first one, let's break it down a bit.
The way I see it when it comes to uncovering. your why, your purpose. It starts with who you are after the day, meaning that what I do with my clients and what I do myself as well is I look back at stories of my life. I, I will tell you, Hey, if you came to do this with me, it's like, Hey Erick, bring 10 stories.
Don't think too much about that. Think about stories that are important to you. Maybe the first time you got your first job, maybe summer camp when you were 12 and some cool stuff happened. Maybe, uh, uh, you know, the incident you had that, uh, with the vaccine, right? And the flu shot, that could be a good story.
And the idea is that then you have someone else, a coach, a mentor, a friend that doesn't even know you intimately to really influence you to, to negatively. You, you tell the story and as you go through the story, You allow the other person to ask you questions, not why questions. Why did you do this, Erick?
But more around what questions and how questions to try to get the feelings, to try to get to the bottom of it and showing who Erick actually is or who this person actually is. And what you will see come up from, it's actually phenomenal. For me, when I do this with my clients, it takes about three hours to go through 10 stories because you want to go deep.
You'll see patterns form up and most people will have anywhere between three to seven different patterns to form up. And that will lead you to seeing which one shows up more in these stories because you'll have stories that have nothing to do with each other. In fact, some are. Five years apart, decades apart, one is a school, one is a family.
And all of a sudden you see, whoa, there's a pattern there, there's a pattern here. So that might mean that that's more who I am. And from there you start to work with the person that was helping you do this, facilitate, you find out honing on a statement. Like for me, my statement that I came to, and by the way, this is always evolving because you evolve as a person.
But mine right now is, so actually before I even share mine, there's two pieces to it is what you do and the impact you have with what you do essentially. So mine is to inspire, empower, guide and support individuals. So that's what I do. So that they, so they too can find joy, fulfillment, success, abundance.
in life and their world becomes a better place, right? So that's the impact I'm having on their life specifically. So once I found my why, there's a second element to it. So that's the first part, right? The best, the biggest theme is usually your why. And the idea here is you don't want to be spending too much time on the words.
It's whatever sounds well for you, right? Mine, that's what sounded good to me. To you, it might sound different if that's your theme as well. But keep in mind, that's very genErick, right? You could take that, Erick, someone else can take it. And it's, it doesn't really tell you how you're going to do it, what type of, um, work you're going to do to fulfill that.
You then go to the next part, which is the how. So the other themes, because as I mentioned, there's like usually three to nine teams coming up. The other ones usually become your how, like how you're going to actually execute on this. So if I'm talking about inspiring, that's one of the things I want to do.
It's not that, Oh, I'm going to do a podcast. That's the, what the, how is, what actions do you take on a daily basis or want to, or rather. are taking on a regular basis to execute on your why, right? So maybe it's the way you talk. Maybe it's the way you listen. Maybe it's the way you reach out to people. It could be a million different things.
And you find those themes. It could be anywhere from three to five themes from what I have seen. So three hows. And now what do you have? You have a why, you have a how, or multiple hows. And the last piece is how do you actually, or the what rather, which is. What do you do with that? Meaning how does it show up in your personal life?
How does it show up in your professional life? So for me, it was, Oh, okay. The one of the Watts is the podcast. A second one is social media posts. A third one is how I show up in my personal life. A fourth one is how I show up in my coaching and mentorship practice. A fifth one is how I show up in my corporate life.
I don't know why or how I execute on my, on my, why in my
Erick: house. Can you explain the house a little bit more? I'm, I'm not quite catching that. So, yes. So
Constantin: let's, uh, let me actually, I have a, give me one second. Okay.
I have, uh, one of my journals here in which I, I work on on my own ideas. Other things. So I'll give you some examples from how I brought this down with a couple of clients recently. And, uh, when it comes to the house, let me, let me get to it and we can cut this out from the episode. Um,
because I want to be giving you a great example.
Okay, perfect. So your house, uh, here are a great question. Couple of things. Your house are essentially your strengths. What are you graded and how does it match with your why? Because it's part of your themes. Now this is a big one for me was that this is not necessarily how you want to be, but rather how you show up because we looked at little stories from your past.
So how did you show up in those, in the stories? So how you actually behave is from the themes we discussed. Now, let me give you an example. Um, and I have, I have a few here that we can go into. So let's say a theme comes up that you had that. You know, you are optimistic, right? I'm someone that's always optimistic.
That's one of mine, right? What does optimistic mean for someone? Optimistic means that you're someone that always looks at the glass half full versus half empty. You're someone that always looks at the positive versus a negative, and there's other definitions you can use. Okay. Now that's one of my hows, but it's not really a statement now, is it?
So you want to actually look at it and go a bit deeper into it. So looking at my notes here, where's my optimistic one is about finding the positive in everything. So what does it mean that I make a statement that says, okay, I'm optimistic. How do people see me? Well, I find the positive in everything.
When something is wrong, I look for what's right. That's actually part of mine. Okay. So what does it mean? So now I have an interaction with you or like this, what happened this past weekend, right? Or I have an interaction at work, a project might be derailed. Might be not going well, I could become pessimistic.
Oh, we're going to lose this contract or this is not going to happen. Well, I could look at it and say, you know, I acknowledge that there's negatives, but what's right, what's going well, what's positive in this, why is this happening for me? It's kind of the same thing we were discussing earlier, right? The, another one that I had done with a client early, um, yeah, this was earlier this month.
They, a theme for them that came up is that they, uh, are someone that want to make others feel safe. Okay. Right. And well, then the, the how becomes the idea that you are making others feel safe, secure and heard. So what do you do? You extend trust to others. This is breaking it down further, right? You let people know you have their back.
You allow them to know you're there to support them. You make them aware of the fact that, hey, you're here for their benefit. So if that's me, let's say that's one of my house, that means that every interaction I, I come up with, it could potentially show up in that. I have a conversation with you and I say, Hey, Erick, it doesn't matter.
You know how this conversation go. I have your back. We'll go to the bottom of this. It could be a stranger on the street, right? And it's, it, it frames it a bit. But so what you do then is you have your why, then you have your hows, and then you look at, okay, so how many, how does, how does this how show up in my life?
Am I making others feel safe, seen and heard in my interactions? If that was mine, for example, and I look back at my life. I wasn't doing that. Let's look at the optimistic one because that's mine, so I can speak to it a bit more. So if it's about finding positive in everything. Erick, I was doing quite the opposite.
I was exactly the person that we were talking about earlier. I could not find the positive in anything because, oh my God, this happened again and this happened again. Now, I, I'm excited if I say anything, you know, like let's say 90, 10%, 90 negative, 10 positive. Yup. And here's someone, you know, AmErickan dream, beautiful home, cars, loving dogs, partner, family, great job, yet I'm always miserable.
It doesn't make sense. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And when I found that and one that became the, wait a second. In my earlier years, I was able to find the positive in everything. I was always able to be optimistic. And that came up as a theme in my stories. Why did I unlearn that? Why did I stop doing it?
Because you see the idea of the stories that we look at is that they, it's not about. What happened in the story in the sense of like, Oh, this was the outcome, you got a job, or you lost a big game. It's actually how you acted throughout it. So who you are actually shows up even if you don't realize it.
Yeah. So a comment I have from a client of mine recently when we did Herds, she was like, Wow, I couldn't believe. how much I actually learned about myself in the process of going through the stories because she thought she knew everything about the stories because they're her stories, not mine. Yeah. It's just about like, when you go deeper, you realize, wow, the power of reflection and introspection.
Erick: Yeah. And for, yes, absolutely. I think it's more of the, uh, yeah, so it's like the attributes or the process of, of the thing. It's all
Constantin: the strengths. I call them the strengths. And this is what Simon Sinek is. A lot of this, some of, I mean, a lot of this, a lot of what we talked about comes from Simon Sinek as well.
He talks about, uh, finding your why or start with why rather, and then he has a book on working through it. And that one, parts of it came from that, parts came from my own personal experience and other books I've read. But it's really about. Understanding at the core of who you are, what motivates you, what are your strengths and doing more of that into your life?
Yeah. Okay,
Erick: good. Yeah, that was helpful. I'll
Constantin: give you another one that's, that's mine that maybe will ring more true for you or for the audience to, to connect here. So I told you my why it's about inspiring, empowering, all that stuff. This one is growth mindset. That was the theme that came up for me because you see growth mindset means that you're always willing and open to learn from every situation.
to grow, to, to, to realize that, wait a second, what you know is not the end all be all. You have opportunity to grow. And now when I say growth mindset, that's not really a how, right? I have to convert it into a action. What do I do? And mine was like, I learn from everything and everyone. So that's my how I learn from everything and everyone.
What does it mean that I am open to the ideas and points of views of others? Or everyone I interact with, it doesn't matter if it's the janitor in the office or the CEO of a company, they all have something to teach me. It doesn't matter if I'm driving to a friend's house or I'm having a party, there's something that I can learn from it, right?
Or we have a podcast episode. And that, that was a big one for me when I realized that was the case. So what does, what did it do to me? Well, you see, even though that there was something that I always did, it didn't mean that I was doing it all the time. I was doing it some percentage of the time. This allowed me to have clarity.
And now literally I approach every situation, this conversation with you, Erick, now, now it's like, before I start, I have my own mantras and things I go through. And one of the things is I am open to learning new things. In fact, I can even read it from my mantra here, but. If I can get to my screen up, but essentially it's all about being open to learning, right?
Learning and growing and growing. And that's, those are two of five I have, right? Some people have three, some people have four. I've seen some have six, but usually three to five is. enough to put you on a path and then your life can be guided a bit better. It's not about being rigid and saying, Oh, this needs to happen because realistically you'll have things you need to do in your environment.
They have no control over. So you can do all of these, but you can do some of it. Like in the example, like if let's say optimistic was yours, Erick, and you had the situation come up with your vaccine and you knew that that's who you are. Not just who you want to be, but who you are, then you can approach the situation a bit differently.
Erick: Yeah. And I think that optimism is definitely one that I try to incorporate better. Um, I did actually did a podcast episode a couple of months on that because, because of the background that I have, uh, growing up in a very strict religion and a very dysfunctional family with a lot of trauma. My, my natural tendency as a kid was, was very optimistic.
I was a very happy kid in many ways. So very, you know, And I remember that. I remember feeling like life is wonderful, except when my dad would, you know, lose his shed and, and smack us with his belt. But otherwise life was full of a lot of joy for a lot of time. Then as I got older and got to be a teenager, it was much, it was much harder.
Um, and I remember specifically making a choice when I was younger that I knew people who were truly happy. And I'm like, if they can be happy, I can figure out how to be happy because I'm not happy. And I, I, I can tell that they're not faking it. I'm not, they're not walking around going, yeah, I'm so happy.
Life is great. You know, but they, they honestly were just genuinely happy people. And because they came from good homes, they had good parents who loved them. Their families were strong and supportive. And so for me, I have always had a lifelong quest to get to that point. So because of that goal. I've had to actively choose optimism and it's hard sometimes because my, my history makes it so that I tend to want to be a little bit more on the downside and find that negative and worry about the thing.
What's, when's the other shoe going to drop and that type of situation or that type of outlook. And so I've actively tried to. Make sure that I don't do that or at least move towards a different direction. And oftentimes I do what I call nudging, which is the idea that if you wake up and you're in a bad mood or you're having a tough time about something and you're upset, that I don't try to immediately change my mood.
I don't go, ah, you know, try and, try and will myself into a better mood because that's really challenging to do that. But it's just more of like taking a step back. And kind of nudging my mood into a different direction. It's kind of like if you're on a boat. I mean, it's, it takes a lot of work to turn a boat around when you're sitting on, on a lake.
But it doesn't take a lot of work just to nudge it the right way and keep it going and then slowly turn it the direction you want to go. And it's just micro, and it's just like micro nudges. I mean, you can just micro thing and, you know, yes, it takes long. It's a longer arc to get there. It's not as sudden.
But it's much, much easier and it's a lot less effort and it's, the idea is I don't want to change my mood right now, but I want to make sure that my mood in an hour is a little bit better. And so you slowly kind of nudge it that way and you think, okay, I can choose to be a little bit happier about this.
I can choose to let go of this. I can choose to take a deep breath and let some of this out. I choose to focus on something that's a little bit better. But it's not like an immediate, like, you know, flip a switch because that, that almost seems, uh, you know, sociopathic or something like, Oh, I can just turn my emotion off and there we go.
Constantin: But, Well, yeah, that's, that's funny you mention that because to some of those things it can be like that, but there is also a thing where you want to let your emotions happen and then feel your feelings and then be able to let them go. And you touched on something very important there, which is the power of knowing who you are.
And you said, you know, you're someone that's optimistic. So let's say you go to this exercise, you found, find your why, find those house of strengths. Well, that's the power of knowing who you are. Most of us go through our life without knowing who we really are below the surface, below all this negativity.
So then at least you have the awareness, but can you imagine how you can navigate your life? If you know this, cause you're living, you're living proof, you at least know some of it and you choose the optimist side. Is it not, is it going to happen every time? Not yet, but through practice you can get there.
Because guess what? That negativity that you're talking about, so the reverse, the pessimism and when the shoe, the other shoe is going to drop, that's also a learned behavior. So that means that you can unlearn it and bring something else, something called brain plasticity that some people may be familiar with, right, from psychology.
And this is actually funny enough from a science point of view, it's only fairly recent that they've realized that, wait a second, your brain. Not only can adapt to new situations, but can also change old patterns and beliefs and whatnot. Because in the past, they believed that once you're a certain age, that's it, it's game over.
What you know, you know, and nothing changes. But now science is catching up and saying, you know what, no, you have the power. You have the power to change everything and anything about your situation. It's up to you.
Erick: It takes a lot of work to do that, for sure. Oh, it does. And I think they
Constantin: I guess, for the interest of your, uh listeners.
Some of my listeners may have seen this already or not. But let's talk a bit about the process of interrupting thoughts, right? Because I feel that that's a powerful tool that people can use right now. And as I tell people in my life, as I tell my clients, as I tell people on shows, the feedback I get all the time is like, I can't believe this actually works and it works as fast as it does.
And for that, Erick, let's preface with this. There are five stages, right? So you have the environment. Which is anything outside of you that causes something within you. So like, let's take my example, my car, right? My car is my environment. The negative stuff happens, then what's going to happen? A thought or a belief is going to pop into my mind.
Ah, not this again. Why does this always happen to me? AmErickan cars are useless. You can name it. You can be, that's a belief, right? Or a thought. Yeah. That could be in my mind. That's negative, right? That's going to then go to what? Emotions and feelings. I'm going to start to feel a certain way again, like that.
Why is it always me? The victim is going to come up. You allow that to happen, which is what we, most of us do, then your actions will get impacted. So the actions that night was I'll drive to my friends. I'm going to have a good time. So there's a couple of things that happens in impacts in all me would be like, turn around, cancel the party.
I disappoint my friends. I disappoint myself. I'm going to sit in misery. That's pretty bad action. Right? And then from that action, a result comes, but what would the result be if I turned around and I settled my misery and called people up? I mean, it's not going to be good at all, right? Probably not what I would want.
So that means that in the process, there are five stages. Look at what we can control a hundred percent. My actions, we try really hard, but really they're influenced by. Everything out. Sorry, not my actions, what we have in life is influenced by our actions, right? You can't control your actions fully, you have some control, but if your feelings, emotions are a certain way, then you can't really control that.
Because I remember when I was depressed and suicidal, I wanted to get better. I wanted to do more, but I couldn't, I couldn't take the actions. I couldn't bring myself to, nor could I touch my emotions and feelings. I mean, sometimes you can change it, right? Some external force can come in and can make you happy temporarily.
For example, I always look for escape in food, sex, gambling, gaming. It brought temporary satisfaction or buying a new shiny toy. But again, temporarily, then I'm going to jump the thoughts for a second. We'll go to the environment. What can you control in your environment? You have control over who you choose to hang out with, maybe what job you have, but a lot of stuff in your environment, you have no control over.
Like I'm going to jump in my car and drive. I have no idea what anyone else is going to do on the road. I'm at the mercy of anyone there as a quick example. So then it leaves us with a thought and beliefs, which we know from brain plasticity, we have a hundred percent control over. So that's what we should be focusing.
Yeah. So let's talk about that really quick, but I'll pause to see if you have any questions or you want to add anything in there.
Erick: No, that's exactly the same pattern that I, that I follow and I use. So, um, and that's very much informed by Stoicism because it talks about really the main thing you can control is how you think about something that the misery that you feel in a situation isn't the event itself, but your perspective on that event.
It's how you think about it. So yeah, so I find that to be very true. Um. That if you can focus on how you think about something, not just, and I think there's kind of multiple parts to that. I think that there are the things, the actual subject of your thoughts. So the stuff that you're focusing on is very, very important, but there's also the perspective that you hold about those thoughts, kind of your attitude about those thoughts.
If you want to, for lack of a better term, that if you always, you can look at the same, you can have two people looking at the exact same situation, the exact same facts. If one has more positive outlook on it, they're going to describe it very differently than somebody who has a negative outlook on it, even though it can be the exact same situation.
So your circumstances, your facts, everything can be the same. Their thoughts could be similar, but their attitude, I guess, would be the best way. Like their attitude and their thinking. Can be very important and it's interesting for me when I find people who are extremely negative like that is just that there, it's that perspective on everything.
It's just that they have this dark filter over everything. And so anything that comes in when it could be taken as possibly positive, they find the negative in it. You know, it's, you know, it's kind of like, wow, here's a sunny day, but it's so hot out there. Well, yeah.
Constantin: Okay. I mean, you're right. I mean, like I said, the environment influences all of that.
So if you grew up in a house like that, or some negative things happened to you in your childhood, and all of us have had negative stuff. Some traumas are deeper than others. That's going to shape up your life. So of course. You may have more negative thoughts for you that, like you said, half of those may be positive to me, but for you, that will be negative, which will trigger the entire chain again.
So that's beautiful. Absolutely. A hundred percent.
Erick: And for me, one of the things that was the biggest shift for me, um, was about, I a year and a half, two years ago, um, I had a podcast episode that I'd taken a break from the podcast and I came back and this was kind of my kickoff again for this last stretch for the last two years.
And it was really important for me because what it was about was recognizing that in order to In order to be happy, I had to learn acceptance and there's Stoics talk about that a lot. They have a term called amor fati, which means accept your fate, meaning accept everything that happens to you because it happens and you can either love it or hate it.
Universe doesn't care. It's still going to happen. So acceptance is a big part of them. And I had a situation where I. Somebody that, that I really cared about hurt me very deeply, and I was very, very angry, and I was just, I was absolutely furious at this person, and I recognized that the reason why I was so angry was because their opinion of me mattered so much to me.
That if they, you know, whatever that opinion was, that influenced so heavily on how I thought of myself. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Why do I base my own self esteem on somebody else? Because then it's not self esteem, it's other esteem. And I'm like, this is, this is really interesting. So I did a really deep dive into this whole thought and this whole area because I was like, how do I take that back?
How do I take back my self worth, my self esteem? I've outsourced it, I've outsourced it to somebody else, and it was making me incredibly miserable because anytime this person would be upset with me, I thought I was a horrible person. And so I, I did a lot of reading on different things. I, I studied some young and some Freud, you know, thinking about maybe identity and roles in life and, you know, just trying to.
Trying to figure out how I could take this thing back and why, why it was this way anyway and what I, what I realized was that my opinion of myself was so bad that I needed that validation from somebody else that I thought I was not a very good person and so if I needed somebody to tell me and reassure me that I wasn't a bad person and obviously somebody is.
You can't outsource that to somebody else because sometimes they're going to be mad at you. They're going to be frustrated with you. They're going to be annoyed with you. And so I was like, okay, well, what is it about myself that is so awful that I have to be validated by somebody else? What is so bad?
What is it that I, that is terrible about me that I think I'm such an awful person? And I was like, I really don't know. And so I sat down and I wrote a list of all the things I didn't like about myself. And it's funny because I'll tell that to some people and they'll be like, what, why would you do that?
Why wouldn't you write down all the nice things about you? And I'm like, no, if I'm going to practice self acceptance, I need to go down there and figure out what are all the crappy things about me. And I went through this list and I realized that. It kind of fell into two categories and there were the things that I truly didn't like about myself that attributes and things that I just, I thought were weren't great.
You know that I could be a bit selfish at times, you know, but the other things fell into things that I thought other people didn't like about me. So there weren't even things that I didn't like about me. These were projections that I was putting on other people. Now they're important because that often tells you when you're projecting these things onto other people, that that's really how you feel about yourself.
But I had to, but some of those I could look at and go, Oh, okay, that's just an insecurity. I can, that's something I can dismiss. But by going through that exercise of just writing down everything that I didn't like about myself or that I thought was awful about myself, I realized that most of those things, that all of those things were things that were completely acceptable.
They were problems that everybody else had, they were problems that, that weren't really that far out there and I was not as awful as I thought I was. And that for me was a giant pivot point in my life where I went, okay, I can just, I don't have to love everything about myself. But I can at least accept everything about myself.
I can accept that I can be selfish sometimes. I can accept that, that I get annoyed and frustrated at people. I can get, I can accept that I lose my temper at times, and that I get a bit overheated, and that I'll start yelling because I'm just so frustrated. I can accept those things. Do I like them? No, but they're part of me.
So I'm just accepting reality. And from that point on, it made it a lot easier to work on my thinking and those kind of things because I could take responsibility for. My selfish thoughts. I could take responsibility for my angry thoughts. I could take responsibility for all of those things that our egos like to push off and go, Oh, you're, you're not a bad person.
You're, it tries to protect us from that. But if you can recognize, yeah, it can be selfish sometimes. Okay, when you do something selfish, you can go up to it and go, yeah, I was being selfish there. I can be angry sometimes. I can be jealous. I can be all of these things. If you own that, then it's much easier to take responsibility and accept that.
So it's easier to actually deal with that. You're like, wow, I was kind of, I was being really self centered here and I was being kind of a jerk to mom that day or whoever. And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't acting the best that I could have. But you can own that a lot better and that allows you to deal with those thoughts much, much better.
So for me, that's, that self awareness was a really big turning point in my life.
Constantin: Ah, thank you for sharing that powerful, vulnerable story. I couldn't agree more. And as you were sharing that, you, you came up with two things, like you said, self awareness and acceptance. And it's funny when I talk about integrating your why into your life.
I use a framework I came up with and awareness and acceptance are the first step. If you cannot do that, there's no way you can go to implement anything else. Because now look at what you did. Let's say you discover that you could be a bit selfish. Let's take that one as an example. And selfish has a negative connotation in life, but really it's not because is it selfish for me to take some of my money and invest it in myself, give myself a coach, give myself a course.
Some people will see it as selfish because I could be giving that money to someone else. I could be buying my partner something. It's selfish because it's for you. So there's a definition there. But now, at least, what do you have? Awareness. You can make a choice and say, well, do I agree with this part of me?
You can say, you know what? It's not that bad. You accepted it. You healed it. You allow it to keep. But if you say no, then guess what? You have the power to change. And say, you know what? I'm going to keep an eye out for this. When it comes up, I will interrupt this thought, this belief, replace it with something else.
And maybe in six months, maybe in three weeks, maybe in a year, I won't be selfish anymore. Or whatever the negative aspect of yourself you want to change. And that's, I believe, the biggest power that essentially you're talking about because that allowed you to not be on this path. We will now have choice, but before you may have felt like you didn't have choice because like you, and the example you used is so powerful because I was also seeking validation externally because I was feeling so bad about myself internally without realizing beating myself up that I was just looking externally for all the validation and what does external validation do?
Like it feels great in the moment, right? It makes you feel so good, but it doesn't stick because you don't have self validation. Yeah. If you don't have self validation, then it doesn't matter. Like, I could think that you're the most amazing human being on this planet, Erick. And that's going to stroke your ego.
That's going to make you feel good. But if you don't have the same feeling, tomorrow you'll forget. And I do something that maybe you interpret as me not being happy with you. And like you said, then you go down the spiral where like, Oh, you know, but why does Constantin not like me anymore? What, what, what's going on?
And I've been there myself so many times. Yeah.
Erick: Yeah. It's amazing how, how much we twist and turn and try to become something that we're not because we want that external validation. And I noticed that for me, a lot of that, that That unwillingness to look at myself and to look at the things I didn't like about myself for so long was because I wanted to believe that I was a good person.
And so, I thought that if I looked at these things, it would show me that I was wrong. And so, and So there was an unwillingness to look at that, and when I would do things that I wasn't necessarily happy about, or I would do things that were not in line with who I thought I should be, I could come up with all kinds of rationalizations internally about why I did that thing.
Oh, well, you know, she really upset me, and so she deserved for me to yell at her, all of these things. And we, we rationalize these things to ourself. Because we don't want to believe that we're not a good person. So everybody thinks, I mean, I think most people think they're a pretty good person, but they're afraid that they're not.
And which is where a lot of insecurity comes from. Which, if somebody truly believes that they are a good person and that they are, Then they are comfortable with themselves, then anybody can say anything about them and they just, they can just be like, okay, that's your opinion about that. And okay, it doesn't, it doesn't have that much of an impact.
It's, it's a way of just being able to, it's not even bulletproofing yourself. It's just because you recognize that who you are, your self image can't be moved by what other people think of you. Yes. And that is an incredibly powerful and powerful place to be. And I've worked really hard to get there. And so like sometimes I'll get negative comments on my, you know, Instagram or whatever like that.
And it used to kind of set me off a little bit. And now it's just like, I look at him like, Oh, okay. Interesting opinion. You know, next, next, yeah, next. It's like, I don't have time to deal with and, you know, to spend on. That type of negativity and it's really surprising to me because, you know, my podcast is about stoicism.
It's about, you know, you taking control of your life and being responsible, being compassionate, being kind to other people. And so when I get people who throw trashy things on there, it's just like, are you, are you actually understanding stoicism? Plus you're wasting all of this time throwing this negative energy at me.
Why? You know, it's like,
Constantin: you mentioned it really well earlier, it's like, it's a reflection of who we are inside. Right? So that person might be going through something tough. They have a poor opinion of themselves and they take it out on others. And I know I speak from firsthand experience because I've been there myself in the past.
Not necessarily comments on social media, but comments in relationships and in friendships and even work sometimes, right? Because you're so frustrated at yourself without realizing it and because you have no awareness, right? And especially you don't have acceptance, it's hard to fix anything. Yeah. And before we, we jump off of this topic or um, go anywhere else, let's, let's go back for a second to the thoughts, um, to share this tool with people that they may find beneficial.
And this is why I mentioned to you that I'm using it every day. I'm using all my clients. My mentor is the one that taught me this. I'm using it in my professional life, my personal life, and I've shared it in my podcast as well. So it's like this. You have a thought come up and because like you were saying Erick, you can become aware of these things.
The first step is awareness. So you have a thought come up or a belief. It's about catching yourself and saying, Oh, do I really believe that I'm a procrastinator or I'm stupid? I'm fat? Whatever the case may be. You're like, you know what? That's not something I agree with. I want to interrupt the thoughts so it doesn't come up again or it doesn't turn into a much bigger problem than it impacts my emotions and then my actions and whatnot.
So what I do in that is simply the following. And before I share this, I will ask you a question. I know I asked you this question last week, but play along with me. Okay. Every human being has this scenario where they'll be working on something or they'll be doing something. And then they have a thought come up and they say, Oh, I need to go pick up something from the kitchen.
They get up. They physically move themselves from where they were, maybe on the couch, maybe on the chair and they go to the kitchen and by the time they get there, they forget why they got there to begin with. I'm assuming that happens to you. Yeah. Happens to everyone. That's, and the funny thing is if you look from a physiological point of view, that's a natural reset that we have built into us as humans.
So what happens essentially. Because you physically removed yourself from the place, you interrupted whatever thought patterns you're, you're having, a vacuum got created called the scotoma. And like anything else in nature, when there's a vacuum, it has to get filled up and it got filled up with different thoughts and beliefs.
So by the time you got to where you wanted to go, you forgot where you got there because that was on top of mind. Now if that's automatic, that means we can harness it and make it or put it on manual control. So coming back, I have a thought, let's say I'm ugly. Let's use one that I used in the past. Okay, that's a thought I don't agree with because I already became aware of this in the past.
I accepted the fact that, you know, that's not true. I don't allow, I don't want to entertain this thought or belief, really, because it's a belief. I then want to do, the first step is do something physical. Remove yourself from whatever you're doing. If you're sitting down, just stand up. If you're in with a group of people, And a thought comes up or you're in a meeting, excuse them and say, hey, I need to go use the washroom.
My apologies, I'll be back in 30 seconds, a minute, whatever. You remove yourself. That creates a scatoma. Now, as soon as you do that, what I do is, and for those that are not watching, is essentially I'll be taking a deep breath while putting a big smile on my face.
Big, big smile on my face. And I'll explain in a second what it does. And the next step to that is to celebrate, and you talked about this too. You celebrate that you caught yourself, that I caught the negative thought. So you're celebrating something that actually happened. You're not making stuff up.
You're celebrating the fact that you caught yourself. And the way I do it is I. hit my chest and I say, yes, Constantin, we caught it. While I have a big smile on my face because I just took a deep breath. And what am I doing with all of that? So the deep breath continues to reset, but it also brings in fresh oxygen into your body.
The big smile moves you instantly into a state of happiness, even though you might go back to negativity in a few seconds, doesn't matter. It brings you there. Celebration also enhances the happiness and guess what? It starts to release Dopamine and other good feel hormones in your brain, your brain is gonna go like, what just happened?
Why are we happy? And it's gonna look to find clues. And, and then the next step is to replace the thought with whatever, you know, it's like, Oh, I'm not ugly. I'm beautiful. And here's the proof for it. Right? So what you've done there is interrupted the thought, brought in joy and happiness and all that with it and the good hormones and then replace it with a positive thought.
You do this once, it's not going to have much of an effect other than pull you out of that. potential negative scenario you're about to go in. But you do this multiple times, you start training yourself. There's exercises you can expand from here where you do it on purpose, where you start thinking about negative stuff on purpose and interrupt it.
You're going to see that after a few days, after a few weeks, it's going to become more and more on autopilot to the point where the idea is that It's not like you're not going to have negative thoughts come up. We talked about that. They will come up because your environment is your environment, but you're going to train your brain to be like, nah, that's not what I want to entertain.
I want to go through a good thought and belief. And then that says a train. And for me, what has it done? It allows me to literally, when something bad happens, yes, I can see the negative side of it, but I'm not going to spend hours and days and weeks in it. It's going to be momentary. And I'm like, you to spend time there.
I go here. And that's a strategy that I've seen work with pretty much everyone that's willing to try it. I haven't seen it fail yet. Now, sample size, obviously, it's always a question, but I've seen 100 plus people use this within my own circle and from my mentor as well. It's working. Yeah.
Erick: No, I can definitely see that.
That's, it's very much, it's, it's a bit more intense than what I was talking about with my nudge, which is, you know, just like, Hey, be aware of that. But basically it's, it's, it's a nudge. It's a, it's just a short little exercise to interrupt that, that pattern and, and just move it up in a much more positive light.
So yeah, I can see how that would be very, I can take
Constantin: a whole lot, 10 seconds. That's it. Right. Yeah. It doesn't have to take a long time. Now, obviously if you're at home working from home and you, you have the luxury of taking a bit more time, sure you can, but there's no need for that, right? Just interrupt every time it comes up.
And I was talking to a nurse friend of mine the other weekend, we're having dinner and she's having a harder time because it's winter here in Canada, the winter blues, she's from a warmer country. And she was talking, he's like, what, what do you do? What, how can you overcome this? And I gave her the exercise.
This was in the evening of our dinner. And then the next day she messages me cause she was a skeptic before. He's like, you know what? I've tried it and it actually really works. I have no idea why, but it works. And I'm like, okay, try it and see. And I'm always of the opinion, don't take my word for it. Or don't take Erick's word for it or any expert in the world.
Try it. Do your own research. If it works for you, keep it. If it doesn't, toss it away. Now, of course, don't try it. You know, don't do it halfway there and then toss it out. Try it maybe for a week. Because like I said, it takes you 10 seconds, 15 seconds, right? And it doesn't do anything negative to you. Yep.
Erick: And then on the other side, how you mentioned that there's a, you know, How you often do negative visualization, the Stoics have a term for that is called premeditatio malorum, which means premeditated malice. And so it's, but yeah, it's the idea that, um, if you, if you put yourself in a safe space, you sit down and you think about what's the worst things that can happen, then it makes it much easier to face those things because you've already faced them in your mind, which is incredibly powerful.
And that's a tool that I've used and I stumbled on it accidentally. Um, After my divorce back in 2006, where I was divorced, I was getting divorced. I was working for a startup and they bounced a whole bunch of my checks. And I reached a point where I basically had 17 to last me for a week. So it was really, really tough.
I was riding my bike into work every day. I cycle a lot. So that was fine. So I didn't have to pay for gas, but I was just kind of panicking because I'm like, okay, what happens if I run out of money? And. I went through this whole exercise of like, okay, well, if I wasn't able to get another job, I guess I could move back to Salt Lake, move in with my mom or move back to Minnesota, move in with my mom for a bit, but then I wouldn't be able to see my kids for a while.
That would really suck. But, you know, then I could look for jobs, you know, There were just all kinds of things that I went through of like, how would I handle that situation? And for me, it was really, really helpful because I was like, well, if I needed to, I could live in my car for a bit. You know, I mean, that wouldn't be fun, but I have a gym membership that I can go to the gym and I can, you know, I can take a shower there and you know, I can do all the things that I need to do.
I go into work. Okay, yeah, this, uh, I'll figure this out, but it really took that power of money away from me. That power of that fear of not having enough, it was just like, oh, well, it's just a, it's just a resource. And if I don't have enough of it, okay, I'll have to figure something out, but I can do this.
But it, it changed my attitude towards money, which was helpful. And it took away a lot of fear because it was like, yeah, I could survive even if things got really, really crappy. They didn't get that crappy, but, but it was, it was just a thing that I kind of went through. And I was in a way, I was kind of forced because like I said, the company I was working for was bouncing some checks, found out later on that the president of the company had been, um, embezzling money.
So that's why they were bouncing checks because he was, he was basically pulling money from the coffers. And so, yeah, that turned into a whole messy scenario, but for me, it was, it was, it was very powerful. And I was really glad that happened at that time because it made it so that I was less worried about money overall in my life.
And I was like, I can live on so much less. I can live off of little, I'll be able to, I'll be able to make things happen. And I'm luckily I've never had to since then. And uh, I'm doing okay as far as things go, but uh, yeah, it was, it was a really powerful lesson for me. Exactly.
Constantin: And it's really what, if I understand you correctly, what you did in the scenario as well as essentially realize that nothing holds power over you.
It's your perspective that does, it's your beliefs that do. So if you believe that if you don't get money now, you're going to be broken out on the street, you're going to have that because you're not allowing any other opportunities to show up in your life. What you did is realize, yeah, I mean, I'll always be okay.
Yeah, it's not going to be ideal, but that's temporary. If, if we allow it to be temporary, because what happens in the case, if you don't do what you did or other, because there's many other exercises one can do. You end up in a situation and then you're going to play the victim and not say that you're not a victim, right?
Because, you know, you could be the victim of something, but I'm saying playing it to yourself, meaning that you over emphasize it and all of a sudden it becomes a chain effect where you can't pull yourself out of it. And that's what I was with my depression for the longest time. It's like until I really hit the rock bottom, I couldn't get up because even though certain things were bad, I was so over emphasizing them.
And I wasn't allowing the positivity to shine through.
Erick: Yeah, yeah, that can definitely happen. So I'm glad you were able to pull that out. So
Constantin: yeah, absolutely. And I, funny enough, I had that reflection on that too, a while back now. And I'm like, with the knowledge I have now and the tools I have now, can I see myself?
And I couldn't visualize, I couldn't see a scenario in which I would, not because I'm someone that cannot get depressed because I still have days when I'm not as happy or you know, I still have some thoughts that are not the best in the terms of like, let's say depressive thoughts. But now I have tools where I can get to feel my emotions, which is the one thing I didn't know before, like you actually can feel your emotions, I can feel your feelings.
And then I have tools to pull myself out and say, well, once that happens, there's no point in wallowing in it. How do we change those thoughts and beliefs and move myself over? So that's why one of my mentors says, knowledge is power, right? Then you hear people say, ah, you know, that's not great. It's not true because knowledge is, doesn't give you anything.
And technically it's true because knowledge gives you a choice. So meaning if I have the knowledge now, I still have a choice. I'll do, I use the knowledge. Or do I actually decide to go against the knowledge and that's a choice that anyone can make and you know what's right and wrong. And we talked about that at length.
Erick: Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, we're coming up on an hour, a little over an hour and a half here. Um, is there anything else that you want to bring up before we close out this conversation? Well, I think
Constantin: we touched on so many important points here, Erick. So I want to thank you for your time and energy and everything else that we've shared, the space we've shared.
I think I'm good. How about yourself?
Erick: Yeah, this has been a really great conversation. I've enjoyed what we've talked on. So we're going to cross post this on each of our different podcasts. So if you're listening to it on Constantin's, then you'll be able to find me at stoic. coffee. That's my website is, yes, stoic.
coffee. And go ahead and give a shout out on yours. Yeah,
Constantin: absolutely. And if you guys are watching this on Erick's show, then you can find me at unleashthyself. com. Or you can find us on social media, on YouTube at Unleash Thyself, me personally on LinkedIn under Constantin Morun. And we'll both have these in the show notes as well, respectively.
But yeah, come check out our work. I mean, Erick is doing a fantastic work for those listening on my show and definitely go check out his stuff. All right.
Erick: All right. This has been a great conversation, Constantin. Likewise, Erick.
Constantin: Thank you so much.
Erick: Thank you.
And that's the end of this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed this conversation that I had with Constantin, and I hope that you check out his podcast. Again, that's Unleash Thyself podcast, and I think you could really learn a lot from it. Like I said, Constantin is a very insightful, very thoughtful, very warm person, and I think you could get a lot from that.
As always, be good to yourself, be good to others, and thanks for listening.
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.
