Tag: Philosophy

The Daily Stoic: Always Have a Mental Reverse Clause

The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman is a book meant to be read a page per day on the practical wisdoms of Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus. On today’s page it was mentioned that Stoics always prepared their mind with reverse clauses.

What this means is that when something occurs in our lives, our mind can view it in a number of different ways. One way will make you self-pity, and make you feel unfortunate and helpless. The other way is empowering, positive, and constructive.

One classic example in my field sales career is rainy weather. One part of the mind will say, how unlucky that it’s raining so much, and only on the days that we feel so ready to get out there and sell! The alternative, reverse clause to this would be to remind yourself that maybe business owners will have more time to hear your pitch because there will be fewer customers on the high street, or that more homeowners will be home to open the door to hear what you have to say.

I also recently lost in the semi-finals of my title defense of my town’s snooker tournament. I could view it in a defeatist attitude and say to myself that I was unlucky, or that I’m not cut out to play this game at a high level. Or I can be grateful that I even had a title to defend in the first place, or use the defeat to spur me on to improve even more. I can even tell myself that now I don’t have to play the final, which means an extra evening in a few weeks time to enjoy some different hobbies or spend time with friends and family.

We can all use these silver-lining thoughts to the seemingly difficult situations in our lives – relationship break-ups, rejections at a job interview, a bout of illness perhaps. In fact, we hear all the time how people who have gone through something difficult recount how they don’t regret it happening at all, and can take strength from it. They sometimes even describe how it was the best thing that happened to them.

This excerpt from the Daily Stoic reminded me that yes, life is difficult. But the level of difficulty and hardship really is subjective in the way that it’s perceived by our own minds. And Stoics believed that the only thing we can control in our own lives is that perception.

Do Today What You’ll Thank Yourself For Tomorrow

After recently listening to the English comedian Jimmy Carr on Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast, and subsequently Carr’s new audiobook titled Before & Laughter, I learned a few things.

Firstly, that Carr is not just a comedian, but a deep thinker and a very wise and funny man. There’s another side to him that you don’t see on television or stage that I found more interesting than the what we usually expect from him and his strange laugh.

Carr opens the book by stating that he always thought when reading others’ autobiographies, “God, that person speaks about themselves a lot!” So what he decided to do for his book was to mix in lessons he had learned that could benefit all of us, with a few stories about his own life. It was a perfect mix: Too much self-help and it becomes preachy, too many stories of his own life would maybe lessen the impact on the reader.

One of the main things I got from listening to the book is that Carr prioritizes the long-term over the short-term. He mentions famous psychological experiments such as the marshmallow test, where young children are tested for their ability to delay gratification. Spoiler alert: the children who were able to delay gratification ended up having better social, health and academic outcomes throughout their lives.

One of Carr’s mantras is to do things that will make tomorrow’s version of yourself thank you that you did today. For example, today I registered for self-assessment on my tax return – something that I dread and do not enjoy, but I will be grateful that I did once it is complete. Other tasks like household chores, brushing teeth, showering, skincare, and working out, would all elicit a similar response from future you.

Then you have things like cultivating relationships with friends, family and significant others. One of the most common regrets of the dying is that they didn’t keep in touch with friends or tell loved ones how they felt about them enough. If we do these things today, hopefully we can avoid a similar fate.

Choosing to do the hard things now make our lives easier down the road. Making sure your car is adequately serviced should prevent a call to a tow-truck later on. Staying on top of work and becoming great at what you do could create financial security in the future. Making sure that you have your devices charged overnight will take away potential hiccups tomorrow.

One reaction I had to Carr’s advice was: if we are always trying to help the future versions of ourselves, are we forgetting to enjoy and cherish the current versions of ourselves? When is it acceptable to have fast food, sit on the couch, binge Netflix or social media? Would we still be present in the moment if we are always thinking of the future?

After hearing Carr’s point, I made some changes to my life where I valued the future version of myself more, and began to think longer term. I stayed on top of my to-do list, went to bed earlier, used social media way less, worked out, and applied myself at work better.

But I ended up getting an unexpected side-effect from serving my future self. Instead of becoming bored of doing the ‘right’ thing all most of the time, I actually felt pretty good about myself. All these micro-decisions we encounter daily, and choosing the right option to serve the future version of yourself, ends up making you like yourself more in the now.

So taking care of yourself in the future, is indirectly serving yourself in the now.

To Learn is to Be Conscious

When we are learning to drive to pass a driving test, we have to be aware. New stimuli are constantly picked up by our sensory receptors to be transmuted into interpretation and meaning, thereby helping us to make choices in the moment.

Fast forward to once we have passed our driving test and have gotten used to our car and the roads. We have stopped learning. We are able to listen to podcasts or music while driving. We may even talk on the phone or eat while driving. Sometimes we will drive our daily one-hour commute to work and it passes by in an instant. Because we are no longer focused on learning how to drive, our minds become desensitized to the activity and it starts to wander. We are no longer present. We become unconscious.

When we are learning, we are consciously competent/incompetent. When we stop learning, we are unconsciously competent/incompetent.

If all the tasks we do in our lives are things we feel we have already learned, we drift into unconsciousness. Life passes by in a trance-like state.

The solution is to learn. A state of learning always snaps us out of unconsciousness into full awareness. We can either do this by choosing entirely new skills to learn, or by refining (or even revolutionizing) the way we already do activities we feel we have fully learned. It can be as simple as becoming aware of how we breathe, or how we walk.

Because learning creates a state of awareness, life will no longer pass us by, and so being able to experience life to the fullest.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

The lowest common denominator of your life is simply: You.

Out of all the terrible, unlucky things that have happened in your life, you were there for all of those events. Equally, all the joyous, remarkable things that have happened in your life, you were there too.

In that case, since you are the lowest common denominator in all these life events, you are the single biggest reason why all these things happened, whether good or bad. Instead of blaming our parents, our exes or the media for our troubles, understand the role you have played in allowing these factors to limit you and therefore shape your life.

Whether life is perfect or whether it’s a living nightmare, you have the responsibility and the privilege of deciding what you think about it, and how to respond to it. Stop giving people the power to ruin your day or shape your life. Ultimately, you have the power to decide what your circumstances mean.

Sometimes you read stories of the rich and privileged, who seem to have it all, stumble in life and fall prey to destructive behaviors and never-ending misery. On the other side there are people out there with much more modest means who fill their lives with love and gratitude.

This just proves that instead of always trying to change our environment to suit our temperament or our tastes, it is more important look within. We think a holiday will cheer us up, or a new job or new relationship. And it might work, in the short-term. But then we realize that we are enacting the same pattern over and over again. There is no point in running away, or hiding. You can’t escape yourself.

Because no matter where you go, there you are.

The Difference Between Becoming and Being

Most of us are obsessed with becoming. We are on the journey to realizing our potential and becoming the best person we can be. But by trying to become, we place ourselves in constant states of dissatisfaction. Life like this is a grind. It’s a struggle.

But what if we just ‘be’? Firstly, the thought of just ‘being’ releases the heavy load we choose to carry with us day-in, day-out. We stop hyper-focusing on the future and begin to appreciate the present. After all, the concept of time and deadlines are just a social-construct (if there were no humans on this Earth would time exist?).

Besides, most of what we are trying to ‘become’ is so accessible to us anyway. Becoming confident, charismatic, funny etc. is a never-ending dream until one day we decide to ‘be’ exactly that. The only thing holding us back is ourselves. By transitioning from trying to become, to simply being, is the mastering of our wild minds, a shortcut for positive transformation, and an invitation for self-love.

Are You Ignorant of Others’ Ignorance?

Imagine someone whose beliefs oppose your own: who they will vote for in the next election, whether Brexit should have happened, whether we should have a universal basic income, whether prostitution and drugs should be legal, whether pineapple belongs on pizza etc.

We think: “Wow! What a bigoted, unpleasant, intolerant person! How could they even possibly think that they’re right!?”

But when we respond like this, we are likely to become bigoted, unpleasant, and intolerant of their bigotness, unpleasantness, and intolerance. And in turn, when we voice our strong opinions across, they could become intolerant of our intolerance to their intolerance. And the cycle gets vicious and continues on. And then we start hating each other.

So how do we break the cycle?

As difficult as it may sound, it’s to lead with compassion and seek understanding. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey’s fifth habit is ‘Seek to Understand, Then to Be Understood’. We see the world not as it is, but as we are – meaning that everyone sees a different picture of reality. A combination of the way that people were brought up and their environment creates a worldview that leads to different beliefs and opinions.

If we lead with curiosity instead of competition – if we begin to understand how their beliefs and opinions formed – it could make a little more sense why they would think that way, and also show the arbitrariness of their beliefs – there’s every chance that if we had the same environment as them, that we would believe most of the things they did too.

As tough as it is to accept, it’s much more conducive – as a default – to see that there’s a deeper reason that people think a certain way, instead of just labelling them as stupid, uneducated or ignorant. It would be a shame for us to be so ignorant of their ignorance.

Lessons in Stoicism: The Illusion of Control, and How to Deal with Adversity

Lessons in Stoicism is a book written by John Sellars that introduces the Stoic school of philosophy made famous by Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus in the first and second century AD.

One of the main themes in Stoicism is the idea of control within one’s life. The Stoics asked themselves what they really control. The answer – the only thing we can control is our judgements. Although judgements are only a small part of the mind, the Stoics believed that because we can control our judgements, we are able to control what truly matters for our wellbeing.

So, if our happiness is based on our romantic relationships, career, possessions, appearance, or health, we are leaving our happiness in the control of external forces. Even though we can take actions to aid us to be successful in the categories above, we ultimately cannot control whether a partner loves us, whether a company hires us, whether possessions remain in our possession, and whether the body remains healthy. So make your goal simply to do the best you can.

Another tenet of the Stoic philosophy is how to deal with adversity in one’s life. Stoics believed that adversity is the stimulus that is needed to develop as a person, and that life wasn’t complete without facing any difficulties – that would be the real misfortune! Even so, the Stoics remind us not to seek out adversity and drama for the sake of it, it will happily come naturally in the timeline of our lives.

The Stoic philosophers practiced a technique called the premeditation of future evils. They thought about all the possible bad things that could happen in their lives – the death of a family member, loss of reputation and riches, loss of health etc. This may seem like a negative thing to do, but the Stoics found that when people avoided thinking of these setbacks, they were ill-equipped to deal with the reality of it when the time came. Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk frequently thinks about what he would do if he found out his mother had died in a car accident – not only does it prepare for the probable event that his mother will die before him, it realigns him to what is truly important in his life.

Read more about Stoicism in some of Seneca’s most revered essays: On Tranquility of Mind, Consolation to Helvia, and On the Shortness of Life.

Ubuntu: Why There is No Such Thing As Self-Made

Ubuntu is an African philosophy made famous by leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The word literally means humanity, and is often translated into “I am because we are”, or “humanity towards others”. There’s also a popular maxim in Ubuntu: “A person is a person through other people”.

The philosophy teaches the interconnectedness of humanity, and that it is for your benefit to help others. It’s a philosophy that fosters community, compassion and kindness.

In the Western world, we are keen to describe ourselves as self-made, or use the term to describe someone positively. But in reality there is no such thing. In the modern world, we can easily lose a sense of the fact that we are being helped all the time. If we go to the store, we are using money that somebody gave us, to buy food someone grew, made and packaged, using a car that somebody manufactured and taught us to drive, on roads somebody else built, stopping at traffic lights that somebody invented.

The growth of the population and the globalization of the culture makes it much more difficult to remember these things that we can be grateful for, based on other people’s actions. As Warren Buffett said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Ubuntu simply describes that we can’t speak without learning it from others, walk without learning it from others, or even think without learning to think from another human being. We learn how to be a human being through other human beings. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in The Book of Joy: “After all, none of us came into the world on our own. We needed two people to bring us into the world.”

And that’s why there’s no such thing as self-made. I am because we are. Ubuntu.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck: Mark Manson’s Refreshing Take on Life

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck is a book by Mark Manson, describing a counterintuitive approach to living a good life. Although counterintuitive, it actually makes a lot of sense. Here’s why:

Manson raises the idea that the self-help genre always fixates on what you lack. By dreaming of riches, the perfect intimate relationship, or a billion dollar business reinforces the fact that you don’t already have all those things. And giving too much of a fuck that you don’t already have those things is bad for your mental health.

Living a good life is giving a fuck about only things that are truly important, knowing that you’re going to die one day, choosing the values in life that mean the most to you, and living those values.

Manson then introduces the idea of the Feedback Loop From Hell. Because human beings have the ability to have thoughts about our thoughts, we can get into a right pickle when we compound our negative emotions. We are say sorry about saying sorry, feel sad about being sad, guilty about feeling guilty. We get angry at ourselves for getting angry, anxious about being anxious and the vicious circle gains momentum.

We need to understand that feeling negative emotions is okay, frequent and normal. But if we keep going round the vicious circle that is the Feedback Loop From Hell, it’s going to make it far worse. So how do you end the feedback loop? Simply: Stop giving a fuck that you feel bad. This short-circuits the loop and you can start again from a blank slate.

Once you accept the negative experience you are having, it in turn becomes a positive experience. And paradoxically, the desire for a positive experience becomes a negative experience. Knowing this, the plight of the world may just simply be that our expectations are too skewed to be happy.

Manson simply tells us: Don’t try. When you stop giving a fuck, everything seems to fall into place. If you’ve ever been in the Zone while doing a task, you’ll notice that you’re not really trying at all, you’re just doing it and the results are coming. When I work as a salesman, the more I try to get people to buy my product, the more they’re deterred from actually buying it.

The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of a struggle is a struggle. So our only option is to embrace the suffering and the struggle, and give less of a fuck about them. One of Manson’s most prominent ideas in The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck is the entitlement culture in the world today. Mediocrity is the new standard of failure, because at least if you’re terrible at everything you can tell yourself that you’re special and deserve to be treated differently. Entitlement culture means that we flip-flop between feeling amazing and feeling terrible (but at least we’re getting the attention that we’re looking for).

In a recent Paddy Power advert on TV, football manager Jose Mourinho describes how special he is and how special Paddy Power’s jackpots are. He then gets rudely brought back to reality when a taxi driver interrupts him mid-speech. “That’s not special, someone wins that jackpot every single day!” That’s how we should view our problems. They’re not unique. You’re not the only person in the history of the universe to have experienced the problem you’re going through right now. The person sitting next to you might be going through the same thing. You just didn’t care to ask because you were too self-absorbed in your pseudo-specialness.

Most of the problems we have are not only common, they have simple solutions too. The more that we debate our choices in our minds, the more blind spots we accumulate, when in fact if the same problem was translated to a third person and we’re tasked with giving advice to them about it, we’d say something along the lines of: “Shut the fuck up and do it.”

Manson suggests that happiness comes from you solving your own problems. Of course, the problems never end, it’s just about choosing better problems all the time. Solving the problem of finding a job you like brings the new problems of how you’re going to fit in with your work colleagues, how to meet the deadline you’ve just been given and how you can make a positive impact in what you do.

Manson brings some hard-hitting truths in the course of the book. Words like: Your actions don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. The vast majority of your life will be boring and unnoteworthy and that’s okay. We don’t actually know what a negative or a positive experience is in relation to the total timeline of our lives. The worst thing to ever happen to you could end up being the best. Instead of looking to be right all the time, look for things that prove we are wrong.

Manson tells us that meditating on mortality is one of the best antidotes for life. Avoidance of what is painful and uncomfortable is the avoidance of being alive at all. He quotes Mark Twain: “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” You too are going to die and that’s because you too were fortunate to have lived. Now shut the fuck up and do it.

Do Good Things Come to Those Who Wait or Are We Just Postponing Our Lives?

The way the world is right now, it’s so easy to wait. We kill time, watching each day go, hoping for a new season to arrive, or something arbitrary day to come before we allow ourselves to take a risk that we’ve been thinking about for a while.

We begin to think of the here and now as a preparatory period, yet, as Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” How would it feel for life to end and all you did was “prepare”?