Stoicon-X Midwest Lightning Talks | Stoicon X Midwest 2020

we are extraordinarily fortunate to have 16 speakers who answered the call to give lightning talks for stoicon 2020 midwest it's excellent that we have so many people who are willing to give lightning talks and all of these are pre-recorded so i have lined them up one after another it also produces a few challenges as far as staying on track and on time so what i've decided to do is instead of giving individual introductions to each speaker before they talk i'm just going to say i'm so happy to have all of them here and we are going to prepare a document that'll have bios and the links where you can find each of these speakers if you're interested and we'll be sending that out to you in the next few days or so i don't want to say anything more because i don't want to take up any more time just sit back relax and enjoy learning about stoicism and all sorts of interesting experiences and features and insights from our great lineup of lightning talk speakers everyone my name is ben aldridge and stoicism has had a profound effect on my life several years ago seemingly out of the blue i was hit with severe and debilitating anxiety and i didn't understand what was happening to me when i started having panic attacks i had no systems in place to deal with this so this led me on a bit of a quest to try and understand how to manage this anxiety how i can deal with it so i started reading extensively on mental health on psychology on philosophy all of these different subjects and this is where i discovered stoicism and one aspect of stoicism in particular had a huge impact on me and that's the concept of voluntary discomfort now the stoics were very creative and they would deliberately step outside of their comfort zones in order to build mental resilience and they would do this in brilliant ways they would expose themselves to the cold to the heat they would fast from food and water and sleep on hard surfaces and this really inspired me this really resonated with me so i started to test out this concept and at first i was very very anxious so i tried in a very simple small way by pushing myself out of my comfort zone and then over time this built up and i started to complete challenges and i started to expose myself to adversity as a in a controlled environment and the more i did this the more confident i became and this this concept of voluntary discomfort had such a huge effect on me and my anxiety my relationship with my anxiety completely changed i learned what tools and tricks i could use to deal with it and this stoic framework has been so important to me that i've written a book about it it's called how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and the concept is exploring all of these different things that i've been doing to step out of my comfort zone and how stepping into discomfort can teach us a lot about who we are and how we manage difficulty and adversity and this is really why stoicism has changed my life and why it's something that i continue to study and there's been many more ideas within the philosophy that have helped me to live a better life the idea of negative visualization some of the concepts on control what we can and can't control and how we respond to external events and all of these different things have had a very positive impact on my mental health and that's why i believe that stoicism is so important and i'm really really excited to be able to share some of my ideas on stoicism and how it's helped me personally and i believe that the concept of voluntary discomfort in particular can be great for us it can be a really empowering thing when we step outside of our comfort zones and can see that we are gaining confidence when we can do these things that are difficult and learning how to manage that difficulty anyway thank you so much for listening and i encourage you to push yourself out of your comfort zone and maybe try a stoic challenge maybe have a cold shower or maybe get into fasting or try all these different things and see how that has an effect on your mindset thank you when we experience hardship we are encouraged to read the stoics and to start journaling but while we go all the way back to the ancient stoic texts and read from there our understanding of how to journal is much more contemporary our method of journaling is mostly informed by the pioneering work of james pennebaker who in around the 80s taught a method called expressive writing a kind of free form journaling as a way of thinking through an issue identifying emotional reactions to an issue making sense of it and finding a way forward now the penta baker idea is that you write about a single issue that's bothering you you write for brief stretches of time say 15 to 20 minutes and you write consecutively for one to five days and you stop writing when the issue stops troubling you now the only problem with that is that some problems don't stop troubling us we cannot change them and we cannot leave them we are stuck with them at least for a certain period of time with these ongoing problems than the temptation really is to keep writing page after page after page and while the cathartic hit or release of getting it all down on paper is satisfying endless rumination is the last thing that we want now the type of self-writing or self-help writing that we find in marcus aurelius differs significantly from the expressive writing method that we inherited from pennebaker for one thing there's hardly any personal references in the text for another there's no account of personal anguish no dramatic accounts of confrontation with other people and no confessions of anger which we have which we find in seneca's letters all marcus aurelius does is rewrite re-express and reformulate uh the stoic doctrines he's basically paraphrasing so i left my freeform journaling to journal with marcus aurelius and here's an example of one journaling session first i open up the meditations i'll read a section quietly to myself i'll copy it out in my journal literally copy it out word for word this really just helps me slow down and it helps me focus my attention on the text itself instead of on how the text relates to me which is a subtle but extraordinary difference now once i've copied the text i still have more work to do i need to make these teachings these doctrines these maxims speak loud and clear to me pierre hadeau talks about rhetorical amplification and this just means how to make words and meanings sound more amplified to your own personal ear which enhances your own comprehension and memorization of a text so back to marcus aurelius i look at words and um rhetoric i do some summarizing i do some rewriting and reformulating or paraphrasing of the text now if i'm able to come up with a spectacularly good re-ex re-expression i'll transfer it either to some wall art or to my own pocket handbook i've created a little pocket-sized handbook my own enthusiasm my own handbook for life which is precisely what epictetus instructed his own students to do now journaling with marcus aurelius in this way helped me formulate rules for life and not just solutions for specific problems i've been able to engage much more intensely with the or the stoic teachings and i've also been able to memorize more of the teachings which means that when i head back out into the world i'm actually equipped with a stoic toolbox which i can use now marcus aurelius goes over the same issues again and again but in an ever more eloquently expressed way and sometimes with remarkably vivid imagery just to make the teachings ever more memorable memorization is key because you need to take the doctrines with you as always to have them as epictetus says always at hand in book 3 section 2 of the meditations mark australius writes we should also attend to things like these observing that even the incidental effects of the processes of nature have their own charm and attraction take the baking of bread the loaf splits open here and there and those very cracks in one way a failure of the baker's provision somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite now i don't know how much of a baker marcus aurelius was but if you have any affinity for the hobby of bread baking like like i do then i'm sure you appreciate the attention that that marcus is giving here in the imagery that he invokes the splintering of the crust as the dough swells beneath the bread bursting forth in this array this mosaic of fractures and protuberances that are unique to to that loaf and though these cracks might not have been intended by the baker they are inescapable parts of the baking process a little bit of nature etching itself into the very crust of the bread and this is not the only part of the bread baking process that we can sort of find such beauty in if we reflect a bit more on on the nature of of the activity there's a lot that could be said in book six of his nekomarkian ethics aristotle discusses three different types of activities each with a corresponding intellectual virtue which guides it now two of these virtues are related to practical reasoning one of them is related to theoretical reasoning but none of them are mutually exclusive instead they all come together in unique ways which sort of informs the unfolding of any given activity and can lend some understanding in our case to this mystical art of do punching first of all we have poison making which is an act of production guided by the intellectual virtue of techne art or crafts person shift this is the this is the knowledge and the skill of the baker who knows the correct methodology to kneading who knows the the ratio of flour to water and also knows when to take the bun out of the oven so that it doesn't get burnt at the opposite end of the spectrum we have the you know from the more practical orientation we have theory or contemplation which is an act of meditation guided by sophia the pure rationality of theoretical wisdom and this is the knowledge marker shares in in his meditation in in a philosophical exercise or escapes that pierre ordo would have spoken about in terms of the concentration of of the eye bracketing all peripheral considerations to focus on the detail of the present moment you know on the cracks of the bread and how they manifest the reason of nature as a type of ascasis or philosophical exercise what aurelius is discussing would would implicitly have some sort of ethical significance so what does this have to teach us about moral virtue well firstly patience you know baking bread is not immediate gratification it and this also reveals something about our relationship to food not only to bread but food in general and what and how we eat you know if we could be more attentive to that relationship practicing what we could call mindful eating it could only serve to foster temperance bread baking then can also be considered a praxis and start up with the practical wisdom of prudence so my challenge to you then is not to undertake the practice of bread baking this only represents one form of philosophical exercises amongst many and what i would rather encourage you to do is reflect on the activities that make up any given day or week in your life consider how you could better understand the nature and nuances of those chores and how we could elevate those beyond being mundane errands to opportunities for contemplation and personal affirmation so thank you for including me in these presentations i hope everyone has been having a great stoke week take care and happy practice howdy my name is steve karafett i am a biology lecturer at the university of central arkansas and i have been podcasting on stoicism for almost four years the purpose of this talk podcasting as a stoic practice is to encourage you to consider podcasting as a means to learn about this philosophy but also to practice the virtues embodied by this philosophy stoicism needs your voice we are working on a cosmopolis a world wide stoic family and if a lot of our representatives are silent we won't hear from you so no matter who you are you have some unique perspective your voice can be shared and i encourage you to consider podcasting as a way of sharing that voice one of the virtues we can cultivate by podcasting is wisdom and my recommendation is to approach it like socrates understand that you don't know anything don't come at it as as if you're a guru on a hill and everyone's coming to you to learn from the master you are just another individual learning along with them and if you frame it that way people will come along for the ride it's impossible to begin to learn that which you think you know already and at the same time teaching is a very powerful tool because it helps you to learn seneca knew this 2000 years ago research in pedagogy now shows the same thing so what i like to do when i have a difficult topic is figure out how i would explain it to a child figure out how i would explain it to an adult and then imagine how a stoic who has been practicing for two or three hundred years might explain it to me and then i put that all together and try to then explain it to my audience podcasting is your chance to practice the virtue of justice it's your chance to share your unique interest your unique viewpoint with the world but it's important to do so in an honest way be honest with your listeners telling them what you don't know is a strength because they will see themselves in you and and one thing that's very humbling about podcasting is you may well affect the lives of others folks who are looking for stoicism as a guide to help them live a better life and you will be one of their guides even though you are in the bed next to them in the hospital as seneca might say giving them the advice you've been given they will see you as someone who has influenced them it's your chance to practice this virtue we are all made for one another and we can teach them or we can bear with them i like to teach i think you could teach them as well temperance is something you might want to have on hand as a stoic podcaster as well why because you're going to have to keep to a schedule don't just say i will podcast oh a couple times a month set a schedule know what it is ahead of time and stick to it and also this is a good chance to practice listening rather than talking if you have guests on your show and it's a chance to practice reading deeply instead of just skimming and pretending you know stoicism start to read deeply epictetus says consider the first steps to it and what follows and then if it is to your advantage and if so lay your hand to the work so think about it do you have the ability to put ideas together do you have a phone that you can record these ideas on then perhaps you have the means and the ability to podcast you will also need to practice the virtue of fortitude or courage if you're going to podcast you're likely to get feedback some of it will be flattering you so you'll have to think about how to deal with that but also there will be critical feedback you can learn from it grow from it you can learn what to ignore as well and a big one there will be technical issues you're going to have a famous guest on and their microphone won't work or your recorder won't work but you can deal with it you can practice the virtues and get through it if you want to consider podcasting i highly recommend anchor dot fm or the program audacity but if you have any questions on getting started email me sunday stoic gmail.com and seize the day carpe diem hey guys thank you for asking me to speak at stoichionics midwest for my lightning talk today i would like to discuss the future of modern stoicism however before we go into the future we must first discuss the past zeno founded the first school of stoicism the school continued after several generations and had multiple leaders eventually more stoked schools opened up throughout the known world in time though with the growth of the church philosophy fell out of favor so let's move to modern times having been linked with cognitive behavioral therapy modern stoicism has also gained a rather large following in its own right the modern stoicism movement has been very therapeutic for many people as the years go by more and more stoic groups are being formed currently listed on the stoic fellowship website are over 90 individual stoic groups around the world although much of the world is still not covered each year more and more stoichonax events have been made available to the public and now being able to utilize the virtual environment we can reach a global audience stoic virtue requires that if we are able to help others that we must my dream for the future is this for those who do not belong to a stoic group join one or if there are no groups in your area be courageous and create one the sharing of knowledge is the best way to achieve wisdom we are all students on the path to virtue let us help each other become teachers of the next generation let us work together to create a cosmopolitan society let us bring back the concept of the stoic school we have taken the first steps let us now go just a little bit further thank you hello dears this is claudia torres from brazil and i would like to tell you about my great experience studying stoicism with the weekly group of milwaukee stoic fellowship this group is coordinated by a great guy called dan hayes he's a very very patient guy when i began studying with them my english was terrible terrible so terrible that i forgot many words in the the sentence i was talking you know and he was very very patient with me and this was something that really touched me because um we don't see that usually right and also we began to study marcus aurelius you know and i saw how he also is very patient with things that usually our culture does not incentivize us to be you know and i was very touched by these these lessons and i i started to apply the stoic directives in my life with great results dichotomy of control is something that should be taught in primary school you know because it's so important for our lives it makes us stop being so sentimental you know and more focused in our own lives more focused in what we can really do to help um people around us but um respecting them you know understanding that each person has their own way of being and um this was so great for me that i decided to put up my own group here in my country a group in portuguese using the same method that dan had showed me you know and i began gathering people through internet you know and we do a weekly meeting on mondays and it's been very very nice for us for me for them you know and one of the boys that came knew some people in angola and he invited me to talk to them one day and i told dan about that right in the next day dan and shan you know it's a very nice to have these two people there always and they told me you can't put up a stock on x in brazil and i said oh my god can i really do that and boy i got energy you know i went out and about and i started talking to people i made friendships in linkedin linkedin linkedin with um with donald robertson and with greg sadler you know and then i started to invite them to come and and talk to us here and then greg lopez that had received me in the stoic um fellowship the big stoic fellowship he presented me to aldo dinucci that works with stoicism in brazil he translated directly from greek and he presented me other people and the result is that now tomorrow the 25th we will have the first toy connects brazil with 16 speakers we have already 130 registered people today this is wednesday i'm talking to you you know and um it's been a very very great experience because i have got more control of myself my depression i have had a problem with anxiety and depression in the last four years and i'm getting to control myself better even when i get out of of of mind you know i return more quickly and plus i have made many many friendship many friends like um good-hearted people and i really recommend that everyone have this experience because it has been very very nice thank you all so very much enjoy stoic um stoic connects midwest and maybe we'll see each other next year in person bye bye hello fellow stoics i decided to do my virtual lightning round talk about a virtually random topic i thought well the stoicons are usually in the 10th month of the year so i would just talk about whatever happens to be in the 10th chapter of epictetus's handbook so i picked up and produced a few english translations and it basically says something like this for each thing that happens to you remember to turn to yourself and ask yourself what powers you have for dealing with it if you see a beautiful woman or man you will find self-control for that if hardship should come your way you'll find the power of endurance for that if you are abused you will find patience now if you habituate yourself to this if you get used to doing this then you will no longer be carried away by impressions uh by your my appearances by your first impressions of external events so that is the gist of that entire uh 10th chapter and i love this little chapter for multiple reasons one is the way appetitus talks about our powers now some translations will say are capacities or faculties these are legitimate translations of epithelius greek word of dunamis from which we derive words like dynamo dynamic and dynamite so it does refer to inherent faculties or capacities or powers that we can develop within ourselves now part reason i love this too is epictetus is probably best known for talking about what we could call our power with a capital b the power of pro-heresis or rational capacity to choose things to select how we act and think and feel in response to what's going on around us and sometimes maybe even in spite of what's going on around us in fact just above this 10th chapter in the brief ninth chapter of the handbook it's all about uh proaeresis so in a way i like to think of this tenth chapter is showing the small p powers that flow from that big p power of proparesis and it gives us just three examples of self-control endurance and patience now these kind of powers are also referred to as virtues and some philosophers call virtues perfections of our power so it's wonderful how these all come together but how do we perfect these powers how do we build these powers within us to become full-fledged virtues well epictetus gives us advice here too in this small little excerpt he says if you get used to doing this or in some translations if you habituate yourself to doing this then you won't be carried away by your impressions well virtues are also referred to as habits you know virtues are good habits and the way that vices are bad habits so tedious is telling us to build up these powers we have to remember that we have them and call them forth in relevant situations so a lot of wonderful little insights there now if i can end on a personal note when my oldest son was little i used to love to sit and watch the old he-man cartoons with him in virtually every episode during a time of crisis prince adam holds his sword aloft in the air says by the power of grayskull it's struck by all this lightning you know most appropriate for a lightning round then adam says i have the power as he's transformed into this herculean uh he-man so i like to think that in a sense epithelius is telling us that we have the power not by gray skull but powers within our own every one of our own skulls now not the power necessary to become a he-man or a she-ra but the powers to deal with all the kinds of temptations and frustrations we deal with in the course of our daily lives or even in the course of a pandemic so i'll just end by noting i hope every one of us will remember especially during trying times that epictetus has told each and every one of us you have the power thank you hi everyone it's great to be here with you during this season of stoicism i wanted to share an idea with you that's really helped me in my stoic journey as i try to become a more excellent person and i hope it helps you as well it's the idea that we all have the seeds of virtue within us the ancient stoics were big believers in human nature they say that we are rational or social we have everything in us to become excellent virtuous people and i think this idea is very valuable because we can think about kind of watering the seeds of virtue and nurturing what's already inside us rather than rooting out what's already there and trying to replace it with something else we can think in terms of nurturing what we have so there are two ways that we can really develop this one is giving ourselves the right environment just like you would a plant and another is by withdrawing or drawing up what we already have so the first one our environment think about the influences that you have around you we live in a very complex world we all have a lot of information a lot of different influences coming at us all the time so try to reduce the negative ones as much as you can you're never going to be able to reduce everything unless you completely withdraw from the world but as stoics that's not what we want to do we want to stay engaged but as you as you're consuming social media or traditional media think about those messages that are coming at you you might want to start noticing how many of them are actually really negative and try to either set your filter and filter out the the really negative ones or the ones that are not reliable and or just kind of reduce your consumption you can't get rid of it all together but reduce as much as you can maybe once or twice a day you check the news something like that instead of having a steady stream of negative commentary coming at you all the time at the same time you want to replace that as much as you can with positive influences so looking to classical literature or fiction non-fiction whatever sources help you help guide your mind towards something more positive towards becoming an excellent person of course stoic podcasts and stoic material stoic books everything is really helpful so try to feed your mind just like if you were growing a garden you want to weed out the negative things and feed your mind you know good fertilizer the other thing that we can do is think about what we already have so like i said before we don't want to root out what's there we want to nurture what's there the way you can do this is for example if you're working on anger management you would say okay i'm not angry all the time in this situation maybe my boss said something to me or i got caught off by another driver and i was still okay i didn't get angry think about how you can apply what you did in that situation to other situations give yourself credit you're not an angry person every second of the day are you so draw that out into other situations be very deliberate about it i would recommend maybe in your morning meditation you identify a situation where you're prone to getting angry and then you say okay in that situation i'm going to keep my mind clear in a good place and then you do it and check in with yourself in the evening or if you tend to buy too many things on amazon or you you need to work harder at something whatever your issue is and we all have things that we need to improve at be very deliberate about it think about a situation where you can do that thing maybe you were browsing amazon one day and you didn't buy five books that you wanted think about how you can do that again and apply it to other situations so again we're watering the seeds that we already have within us instead of kind of cutting down everything and starting fresh so this idea has really helped me on my stoic journey and i hope it helps you as well thank you so much take care hello my name is nick mulroy and i was recently given the privilege of doing a paper in a podcast for modern stoicism the paper was predominantly about the need to start teaching ethics and morality in our schools again it is a topic that is just important science or history or any other and it is at the core of our society whether we trust one another has a lot to do with whether we are individually ethical i started learning about stoicism as a young man my father decided to teach ethics not from a religious doctrine but from greek philosophy and he focused primarily on plato's republic and socrates which i know is not necessarily stoic but i believe socrates is at the core of stoicism as you can see clearly illustrated in the story of zeno and his shipwreck and then as a young man i joined the us marine corps and i served with the marine corps for a career i also served with the central intelligence agency as a career and eventually ended up as a as a senior policy maker in our department of defense all of those told me that the core principles as i see him of stoicism should be prevalent in our government the us government and every government for that matter justice courage tempers temperance and most importantly wisdom science deniers should not be a part of our government we need to be able to trust each other we need to be able to trust in our ability to reason to reach the conclusions and meet the challenges that we as a nation are going to face and the world's going to face be it climate change be it a constant struggle for limited resources and overpopulation all of these are coming and whether we meet them and we're up for the challenge or not i think we'll largely come back to whether we are in fact good people and whether we can actually trust one another my next project is going to be to learn more about stoicism because although i think i've been learning about it my whole life i do not claim to be in any way an expert i'm starting my education now and i look forward to meeting you and i look forward to we can have conferences in person my next project is going to be on stoicism in the military i always thought that was a well-known um issue but from discussions recently i found out it is not so i'll be working on that so i'd like to conclude by thanking dr stadler for inviting me to give this video and i look forward to learning more about stoicism hi everyone my name is dr debbie joffee ellis and it's my pleasure to contribute to this segment of lightning talks at stoicon hi to all my stoicon friends so some of you may or may not know that my late husband dr albert ellis was a very important shall i say ambassador for stoicism in the 20th and early 21st century al pioneered or shall i say heralded in the cognitive revolution in psychotherapy and a very significant part of his approach of rational emotive behavior therapy is the tenant originated as far as we know by epictetus which says that it's not events that create our emotions but our perceptions of the events those may not be the literal words that epic titus wrote but that was the meaning and al would acknowledge epictetus and marcus aurelius and other great stoic thinkers and writers and and that energy is very much part of our ebt rational emotive behavior therapy i loved to read and he loved stoicism and i pulled out this book this precious book i i love books and i love this one so much discourses and then carried him of epictetus and al read this repetitively at various times look at it i i'm very careful with it it was published in 1899 and the way al read books was i'm just opening here at a random page to underlying points that he liked if he really liked them he would do a a check mark if he didn't i'm looking um i can't find one here that he would do a cross and and if he wasn't sure or still reflecting um he would write question marks there and earlier before i start recording i just opened to this random page um well wildlife and that's my bookmark this isn't from 1890 or 1899. anyway and and just again enjoyed seeing evidence of how he thought about things really questioned and one of the things he underlined and clearly agreed with was regulate your will throw away your wrong principles and that is so much part of the philosophy of our psychotherapeutic approach where we teach the importance of thinking in rational ways particularly when challenging and or brutal things happen so that we can cope more effectively you know al and i taught i continue to teach that when we think in rational ways we create healthy emotions when we think in irrational ways we create unhealthy debilitating emotions and we have a choice we have a choice once we're aware that we have a choice so anyway that's my little bit for this lightning talk i hope it interests you here's my handsome alligator and i wish all of you that you keep safe and think in healthy ways choose choose choose to keep things in perspective and every day to focus on what we still can be grateful for despite and including difficulties around us and in our lives so wishing you all the best bye for now hello my name is caleb i am a programmer philosopher and founder of stoa a stoic meditation app you can find it on the play store or the app store it has a library of stoic meditations and conversations with people like massimo pilucci donald robertson and greg sadler so today i'm going to be talking about the nature of emotion let's take two ways of responding to feelings on one hand you have someone who represses their feelings this person bottles everything up they seek to be coal iron fortress never disturbed by pain or anxiety you can call this person the repressive then there's someone for whom every feeling determines their reality if they feel sad and the entire world is colored in their sadness they have thoughts like i am not loved the world is unjust and unfair nothing works yet if they're happy then the world is colored in a much brighter way this person is at the mercy of their feelings you can call this person the roller coaster i believe these two persons the repressive and the roller coaster are making the same kind of mistake they are confusing feelings and emotions this idea is hinted at by seneca on anger he has this line where a man thinks himself injured wants to be revenged and then dissuaded for some reason he quickly calms down again i don't call this anger but a mental impulse yielding to reason anger is that which overleaps reason and carries it away there are these two states that seneca is describing you have mental impulse this is what we call feeling and then emotion this is the judgment of whether or this state is actually good or bad sensations in the body what it's like to be in an effective state this is the feeling and then the judgments for the story for what is going on whether it's ultimately good or bad is this is an emotion so the repressive has made the mistake of judging that negative feelings are bad ultimately bad they then bottle them up they need to be avoided because they are bad and this results in ignoring the usefulness of feelings the rollercoaster on the other hand has made the mistake of allowing feelings to dictate their reason as soon as they experience a given states it becomes their full reality what is true they move too quickly from feeling to judgment of the emotion so margaret graver in stories animation extends this idea she has the following passage if the psychic sensations we experience in emotion are not identical with the pathing then the norm of apathy does not need to be cashed out as an injunction against every human feeling one might be impassive in the stoic sense and still remain subject to other categories of effective experience so the stoic attitude towards emotion reorients our perspective towards the correct judgment and virtues that's what is ultimately important it's not about avoiding negative feelings becoming wrapped up in positive feelings it's about seeing the world as it is and focusing on living well thanks this happened that was my friend coming to meet me after his class where he just learned about stoicism my friend knew that i battled with social anxiety and thought that stoicism could be helpful i was skeptical stoic that's oppressive right i'm trying to be myself i want to be expansive not restrictive then he told me about the real stoicism it's our thoughts that make us anxious and he quoted epictetus men are not troubled by things themselves but by their thoughts about them it struck me as weird although stoicism is ancient the direct link between thoughts and emotion recently became very familiar to me that sounds like cbt i hate cbt it doesn't work for me yes i said it like that he continued now about what you can control some things are in our control and others not things in our control are opinion pursuit desire aversion and in a word whatever are our own actions things not in our control our body property reputation command and in one word whatever are not our actions it was the dichotomy of control and when he said that quote i knew that i wanted to find out about stoicism you see the quote so well encapsulated the best of what was taught to me as a patient in a mental health facility i remember so well a session in which the patients were naming things we can control and that went on one side of the whiteboard and things we could not control and that went on the other side so for me that made an enormous cognitive shift and that was agency i could always do something if i feel stuck in despair i could go for a walk if i feel insignificant i can express myself in art if i just don't have the will to get up out of bed i can at least take a few deep breaths sometimes it's baby steps but it's good to know that i can control what i do during that session i heard the word stinkin thinkin changing that stinking programming is what cbt or cognitive behavioral cognitive behavioral therapy is really all about i didn't understand this about cbt until i became acquainted with stoicism stoicism teaches a way of living that will gradually shift the thinking patterns to ones that are more helpful and wholesome cbt when conducted properly does this effectively as well now bear with me this talk is about stoicism i'm going to go back to cbt for just just a moment in group therapy application was helpful medicine it was idiosyncratic i could pick and choose those ideas that were beneficial to me at that particular time but in one-on-one therapy i got the mistaken impression that cbt was one size fits all i don't feel like i can do it well have you tried cbt just tell yourself you could do it pusha the greater part of my life i tried personal pep talks and gave it up in despair that's what i thought cbt was a reminder of my failure according to the founder of cbt though each individual warrants an approach that fits their particular thought and behavior cbt needs to be individualized to be really effective the point i want to make is stoicism is that way too if you're still deciding whether stoicism would be helpful to you or if you just want more bang for the buck with your stoic discipline consider this think about how you can make it more yours consider your values your endeavors and find stoic practices that resonate with that and tailor it to yourself for example if phrase like it's nothing to me doesn't sit well then try something else like it can't stop me from being the person that i want to be the point of stoic practice is not that's to make stoics be and act the same stoicism is designed to help individual me and you to thrive hi this is dr mary bryan bates recording from the banks of the pawtucketway for stowacon x the midwestern version i'm going to be talking today about the benefits of having a life philosophy for patients i've previously talked about my reluctance to talk with patients about this issue um because i feel like i'm not an expert in philosophy um but today i'm going to talk about the benefits of um patients having this um the most common manifestation of lacking life philosophy that i see is depression and anxiety i see patients um who have um both depression and anxiety as well as the common manifest the common um sequela of depression and anxiety um the most um a frequent root cause of depression that i see is having to face an un a difficult decision all of the options are unpalatable um often the patient will know which option feels right to them but it will come along with accompaniments that they feel are unacceptable um and sometimes stoicism can give them a different way to evaluate their options which can really help them get unstuck sometimes stoicism can reframe the question or the options and that can really be helpful um stoicism is also really good at helping people find a way to deal with discomfort and so stoicism can often help people figure out how the unpalatable options can be a little bit more palatable um people who are depressed are more likely to die from their heart attacks more likely to have out of control diabetes having depression makes it harder to control one's weight which worsens once joint pain and non-specific inflammation finding the motivation to exercise is difficult when you're depressed and then people are more likely to become weaker to fall to have fractures um and poor balance and also um when they and also insomnia when they don't exercise um another condition which a life philosophy helps with is anxiety excuse me um the internet is filled with articles about how stoicism is helpful for anxiety um my clinic is filled with anxious people anxiety tends to worsen people's blood pressure to cause them to be suspicious of all of their symptoms and to um to have unnecessary workups which are expensive and then discover meaningless abnormalities which then cause them to embark upon further um medical workups people who are anxious are reluctant to leave their house they often become reluctant to engage in exercise that needs to happen outside of their house less exercise we've already talked about the downsides to that stoicism can be [Music] helpful for anxiety and [Music] depression but it can also be um helpful when you're trying to find the motivation for doing something that is beneficial for yourself i often find that people who have a hard time doing things that are beneficial for themselves have no problems at all with doing things that are beneficial for other people it's almost as though they feel they themselves are not worthy of self-care um stoicism has um great ideas about having a legitimate place in the universe and being worthy of care oneself which can be very helpful for um for people who are struggling with this issue stoicism can also be helpful when you're trying to make a difficult medical decision um the first question i often ask people when they're faced with a treatment decision is what makes life worth living knowing this guides the decision about one what one is willing to sacrifice for what else for example maybe someone is willing to sacrifice quality of life right now for quantity of life or maybe one is not willing to sacrifice that um the older one gets the more important the question of what makes life worth living becomes when you get a bad diagnosis it's not a good time to figure out what your life philosophy is having life philosophy can also be helpful for having making consistent responses to the world if you aim at one goal one day and then another goal another day you're unlikely to get either goal for example if you are aimed at maximizing the pleasure of your life at this moment um that you might make decisions that make it harder for you to then um care for the grandchildren later which um because you yourself might require medical care um or you know personal care and this um thus one ends up with a situation where they're unlikely to get either um so having life philosophy can be really helpful for making consistent decisions this has been a brief overview of the manner in which i think having a life philosophy can be beneficial for patients sorry i heard a squirrel um stoicism is a good philosophy to share with patients because it can be effective for depression and the decision paralysis which often underlies depression um it can be helpful with anxiety it can provide people with motivation for taking care of themselves having life philosophy helps people when they have to make difficult treatment decisions i don't think that philosophy is going to replace sglt2 inhibitors or ssris anytime in the near future but i do think that having a philosophy and being able to discuss philosophy with patients and being comfortable suggesting to patients that they consider the importance of philosophy is a good trick to add to the doctor bag i'm dr mary brown bates this is uh stoicon x the midwest version thank you hello i am harold and i study philosophy in ancient greek at university of oslo i would like to begin by thanking greg sadler for inviting me the topic that i want to discuss today is what it means to be a diamond according to epictetus a demon is an adjective that derives from the word idols which can be translated as either reverence or shame or sense of shame and a diamond is often translated into modest self-respecting or having a sense of shame this might be different in the united states but at least my nature country shame is mostly considered to be something negative and having a sense of shame is considered to be a bit old-fashioned however i think that both feeling ashamed and especially having a sense of shame is important for our moral development and i think that epictetus would have agreed with that epictetus even thought that our sense of shame is part one nature it says that our nature is to be people who are free noble-minded and self-respecting i dammit for what other animal blushes what other animal has a sense of shame that's from three seven i will focus on two points a sense of shame is something that can be built up or broken down and a sense of shame is connected to epictetus's role ethics the feeling of shame is something that can be built up and broken down by our actions in the same way that arizona believes that we become righteous by doing righteous acts epic says that we break down our sense of shame by doing shameful acts and build up by acting in accordance with our sense of shame we see this among other places in discourse 2 4 where a picture speaks to a person who has apparently gone after another man's wife epictetus claims that by doing so he is destroying his sense of shame which in turn destroys a sense of community he also writes that dress as a carpenter and a grammarian preserves his techne his craft by performing it skillfully and breaks it down by doing the opposite a person will break down his sense of shame by doing shameful acts and build up by acting in accordance with it in the discourses 210 with their kind of hierarchical approach to the rules which epictetus tries to use to deduce our appropriate actions from uh we begin by assessing what is appropriate for us in virtue of being humans and since humans are rational social creatures the appropriate action for us will be rational and social actions further down in the hierarchy there are other roles which we have in virtue of being for instance a father or a citizen and so on we can derive appropriate actions based in part on our role as human beings and more specifically in virtually having certain relationships with other people and positions in a society in all cases an appropriate action will be something that involves playing our roles in a good way idols comes into the picture when we see the tension between how we should live and how we actually live especially with regards to our role as humans that is rational and social uh epicurus writes you carry god around with you poor rich and yet you have no knowledge of it you suppose that i mean some external god gold or silver this within yourself that you carry him and you fail to realize that you're defiling him through imperial thoughts and unclean actions yet in front of a divine image you wouldn't dare to do any of the things that you do but when god himself is present within you and he sees and hears everything aren't you ashamed to think and act as you do you who are ignorant of your own nature and are an object of divine anger that's from 2-8 epictetus main point here since because our kinship with god ought to be something that we ought to keep in mind when we are living our lives and he appeals to his human sense of shame in order to get the point across i think that is quite possible for us to bring our sense of shame into our understanding of our different roles for instance i as a student might use my sense of shame in a situation where i am tempted to ignore my obligation obligations as a student by going out and get drunk so to conclude epictetus thinks that shame and a sense of shame is essential feature of being human shame is related to our understanding of who we are and what role we should play and how we should do so shame can be a motivator for developing virtue and a sense of community and consequently shame is not something that we should try to rid ourselves of in every possible case the tricky part is to get our sense of shame to hit the right target if you want to read more about this i can recommend uh an essay by rakana kantikar from 1998 called idos in epictetus all of the translations that i've used today come from robin hart and his translation of the discourses thank you for having me i discovered stoicism when i was still in my teens since then i've been practicing some form of stoicism but all these years i never call myself a stoic i didn't discuss it with anyone about four years ago i decided to write a book on stoicism almost all my friends were surprised even my brother asked me how i knew about stoicism i don't normally discuss my beliefs with anyone even now i don't call myself a liberal a conservative a christian an atheist or even a stoic this is because at some level i always believed what swarm kierkegaard said when you label me you negate me the moment i say i'm a story someone would ask me to explain stoicism to them someone would ask me why i want to be a story someone would ask me why that i don't behave like a story someone would say i behave too much like a story this label starts defining me i become a slave to that label it diminishes me it negates me so i never call myself a story all was well with the world with this philosophy until about four years ago then i got interested in stoicism seriously i wrote some 15 books on stoicism i spoke at story conferences i started a digital magazine in the story the word was out i'm a stoic people asked me what racism was sometimes while riding an elevator so it's time for me to have my elevator pitch handy it's not enough for an elevator pitch to be shot it should be accurate it should be understandable and relatable it should not put the listener off after some trial and error i came up with this here it is some things in life are under our control some things in our life are not under our control our life starts going wrong when we lose this distinction let me give you an example it's friday you get the word you are fired you are upset and you are dejected directed in the evening you had planned to go out for a dinner with a friend can you enjoy the dinner if you're like most people you cannot enjoy the dinner how can you you just lost your job just look at this closely you are upset about losing your job something you have no control over you refuse to enjoy your dinner a thing or a thing over which you have total control suppose you reverse this you are not going to worry about losing your job because you're not you can do nothing about it you are going to enjoy your meal because it is under your control and it is right in front of you every moment of every day if you ask yourself what things do i have control over now then your life will be very different for example right now you cannot you can you can decide you can enjoy your meal you can sleep well you can take it easy over the weekend and on monday you can call a couple of employment agencies spruce up your linkedin resume put the word out that you are looking for a job unfortunately most of us do exactly the opposite we worry about things that were no control over we failed to act on things that we do have control over this is the main reason why our life doesn't work as well as it should so whenever you are worried whenever you are anxious whenever you are upset ask a single question is this under my control if it is not it's nothing to you if it is ask yourself what can i do that's under my control do those things your anxieties and worries will be gone just by applying this one principle most likely this is my floors so maybe i can get off the elevator oh but i live on the 43rd floor of a hotel maybe there's not my floria so i continue now our anxiety is gone our worries are gone our life can become even better if you realize three more things number one you need a lot less than you think to be happy and fulfilled so moderate your desires number two you have the resources to face whatever may happen in the future don't fear anything external number three your happiness does not depend on what others have or do so be just in all your dealings with others stories consider these four principles practical wisdom moderation courage and justice has full virtues they taught taught us that all we need to lead the good life are these four principles oh this is my floor nice talking to you bye hi mark de chase here from the new england stoix first a big thank you to greg sadler the milwaukee stoic fellowship for hosting still connects midwest 2020 my topic today is stoicism and meditation i'd like to look at it from by comparing and contrasting the two looking seeing it from a historical perspective and since it's stoicism and it's a practical philosophy let's practice what in what ways are they different meditation is eastern it's experiential it's self-reflective and focused on meaning stoicism on the other hand is western rational it engages in the world and is a materialistic point of view where do they where are they the same well both disciplines have attention at their core the the focus on impressions both true and false the present awareness and significantly the breath or pneuma in greek while they were heavily influential on the stoics they came several hundred years before xeno the pythagoreans they advocated both morning and evening reflection they greeted the sun and thought about their place in the universe in the morning walking in silence and in the evening didn't let sleep past their eyes until three times they'd gone over the events of the day not only to reflect on the day but also as a memory exercise zeno the founder of stoicism focused on reason and a smooth current of life penicius the last athenian scallark or head of the stoic school in athens said one needs a mind that is always ready and alert so alertness reason these are very rational disciplines and pursuits epictetus in the later stowa said is anything is there anything that could be made worse by attention or better by inattention he was very much into focus and attention in book four of his discourses marcus aurelius influenced heavily by epictetus said do away with judgment and the notion i've been harmed is done away with do away with that notion and the harm itself is gone in today's terms that we would call this metacognition or cognitive distancing here are five ideas for practicing stoic influenced meditation be like the pythagoreans and in the morning reflect on the day ahead and in the evening think back on your day you can do this with recordings or just by journaling or just by thinking about it each day twice a day preferably take a meditation break even if you set your timer for five minutes a day take a break from work and practice tranquility you'll come back refreshed take a walk go outside be alert like penacious and experience your senses during a conversation pay very close attention like epictetus would and most of all treat life as a meditation practice like marcus would non-judgment and acceptance i'd like to end by having a 30-second practice of meditation ending with a gong here are some links with more information including our thursday night new england stoics stoic influence meditation thank you very much you

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

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Keywords: Lecture, Lesson, Talk, Education, Sadler, Philosophy, Learning, Reason

Id: 58DFnwDV340

Length: 74min 20sec (4460 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020