Stoic Coffee Break

Erick Cloward

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"Act on your principles, not your moods." A weekly meditation on how Stoic principles can help you be a better human. https://stoic.coffee Follow us on social media: https://instagram.com/stoic.coffee https://twitter.com/stoiccoffee https://facebook.com/stoiccoffee

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261 - What Others Think

Stoic Coffee Break

06/20/23 • 13 min

Do you worry about what others think of you? Does it keep you from doing or saying things that you would like do? Today I want to talk about thinking errors and projection and how we can use stoic ideas to clean up our thinking.“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
— EpictetusA lot of what we do in our lives is geared towards what we imagine others think about us. We act certain ways, wear certain clothes, or buy certain things because we think that we will somehow gain approval or fit in with some certain kind of group by doing so.But if we really think about it, we really don’t know what others are actually thinking about us. We are really just making assumptions and guessing based on our life experience and our own thoughts about ourselves.

What Others Think About Us

About a year ago, I did an episode about self acceptance which I consider one of my best and most important episodes. If you want to go back and listen to it, it’s episode 218. The reason that it was such an important episode for me is that I had learned some hard lessons about how I was not very accepting of myself. Because of this, I had low self esteem, and I felt like I was just not a very good person. At that time, I decided to figure out what it was that was so awful about me. I did an exercise where I made a list of everything that I didn’t like about myself. I realized that if I was going to work on self acceptance, I really needed to understand what I wasn’t accepting about myself. After I wrote down everything I didn’t like about myself, I realized that about half the items on the list weren’t things I didn’t like about myself, but were actually things that I thought others didn’t like about me. To be clear, these were not things that others had told me they didn’t like about me, they were stories that my mind made up. As part of that practice I discarded those things because they didn’t fit my criteria. But it was a powerful lesson about how our minds will make up stories to keep things consistent. Meaning, if you believe that you are an awful person, your mind will try to find proof to back it up. It will catalog everything you do that you feel reflects negatively on you as proof of your belief. If it is unable to find things, it will begin to reinterpret things in such a way so that it helps to prove you right. Because our minds seek to make sense of the world and create the consistency that it needs, our thoughts about ourselves are incredibly important. In fact, how we think about ourselves is far more important than what anyone else thinks about us. Who we think we are, guides our choices, which leads to the kind of life we have. We take actions because we think they are in line with who we are as a person. Our minds try to help us stay consistent with our identity.For example, when I was religious, I said and did things that in hindsight I really wasn’t sure I believed in, but I repeated them because it’s what I was told was the truth about the world. Because I had a certain identity, I acted in accordance with that identity. Once I started questioning things, I chose my own belief system that felt more aligned with being the kind of person I wanted to be. So why do we we get caught up so much in what other people think of us? There are a number of reasons.

Social Creatures

We are social creatures and we thrive when we are part of a community. We are built to connect with other people and other people are a mirror of ourselves. It is through other people that we get to know who we are. For example, how do we know if we are a kind person if we have no one else to be kind to? Because we want to fit in with our community, we are constantly trying to be aware of social cues and body language. But, it is all a guess on our side. We may think we know what a certain look or sigh means, but we can easily misinterpret things, and since we really do not have direct knowledge of what most people think of us, we make assumptions. We fill in the gaps because we don’t know what someone else might think of us. The problem with filling in the gaps is that we tend to assume that others think like we do. So if we don’t really like ourselves, we assume that others won’t like us either. We may even treat them poorly simply because we assume they dislike us, based upon our own assumptions. They may have done nothing for us to be able to make a clear judgment about how they feel about us, so we’re really just guessing.

You Spot It, You Got It

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
— Marcus AureliusIn psychology, there is a term called projection. The idea behind projection is that often people will accuse others of something that they are struggling with. For ...

06/20/23 • 13 min

1 Listener

265 - The Road to Growth: Why the Journey Matters More Than the Destination

Stoic Coffee Break

07/27/23 • 11 min

Why do you set goals? Why is it important for you to accomplish those goals? Today I want to talk about why we should try to accomplish goals, even we never achieve them.“That which we desire lies across an ocean of hard won knowledge.”
— @TheStoicEmperor (twitter)

Achievement

Because we live in an achievement driven culture we often feel like if we don’t achieve certain things that we are falling behind. Whether that’s getting a college degree, making a certain amount of money, or achieving a certain amount of fame, there are always areas where we may feel like we’re not accomplishing what we think we should. But, let’s stop and think for a moment. Is there anything in this world that we actually have to accomplish? If you think about it from the most basic level, the only thing you really need to accomplish in this world to be a successful human is basic survival. Everything else is just things that we choose to do. There is nothing that we actually have to do. So if that’s the case, why do anything?Because part of being a human being is to learn and grow. It’s fundamental to our nature. It’s hardwired into us. I mean, just look at a baby. They can’t help but learn and grow. They’re always curious about everything and trying to learn and understand anything they come in contact with. They’re always making noise as they figure out how to speak. Curiosity, learning, and improvement are very natural things.

Process vs. Outcome

“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.”
—EpictetusHave you ever had a time when you accomplished an important goal? Maybe you worked hard for a promotion at work, or you got a car that you had always dreamed of only to find that you were happy about it in the moment, but a few weeks or months later, you were at the same level of happiness as before you achieved you goal? This is because far too often we get stuck on the outcome, of thinking that the actual achieving the goal that will make us happy. In study after study, scientists have found that even when they achieve some goal, people find that their happiness only lasts for a short period of time, then they find themselves at the same level of happiness as before they achieved it. This is called the Hedonic Treadmill, meaning that in order to sustain the same happiness, we have to keep achieving even more because we are never satisfied. So if this is the case, if we are not happier after we achieve out goals, then why should we even try to achieve or accomplish anything more? Why not just coast along and do the minimum in life? We work to achieve our goals not for the outcome of the goal, but because of the person we will have to become in order to achieve that goal. We go after goals because of the growth and change that will happen when we try to accomplish them. The work that we put in to achieve those goals stretches us in ways that otherwise would not occur in our everyday life. The skills we have to learn and the processes we have to put in to place will help us become a better person. The journey to a goal is far more important than the goal itself. A goal is something to give us a direction.

Man on the Moon

In 1969, the US landed the first manned craft on the moon. This goal had been started years earlier when President John F. Kennedy challenged NASA to put a man on the moon before the Russians did. While part of the reason for this goal was to prove military superiority over the Russians, Kennedy also knew that to land a man on the moon was an audacious goal. In a speech to Rice University in 1962, Kennedy said:“We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”Kennedy knew that work needed to get a man on the moon would be the organizing principle behind great advances in humanity. The technology that would have to be created to accomplish such a goal would need to be invented. He knew that discoveries in mathematics, engineering, material science, and many other fields would need to happen before we able to successfully have anyone striding on the lunar soil. He knew that even if we failed, the progress that we as a society would make in trying to reach the goal would be incredible.From that one goal, we now have all kinds of amazing technology. Things like improved fireproof gear that was created for astronauts is now standard in fire departments around the world. Other inventions that are in wide use includ...

07/27/23 • 11 min

1 Listener

166 - Imposter Syndrome

Stoic Coffee Break

03/25/19 • 8 min

Imposter Syndrome has killed more great works, more companies, more careers and possibilities than almost anything I know. When we begin something that we want to be skilled at, we understandably feel like we don’t deserve to call ourselves by the title that would accompany our work. Musician, actor, sculpture, entrepreneur, programmer, writer... We add qualifiers like “I’m working on becoming an actor.” Or “I work as an accountant but my side hustle is composing.”

Do I have to make money at it before I can call myself what I am? Do I have to wait until the title is bestowed up me? Who makes that decision?

Now, there are some things that you have to have to be credentialed before you are official. Just because I want to become a doctor, does not mean that I can just throw a stethoscope around my neck and start seeing patients. But for most other things, you are the only one that needs to decide.

Why do we do this? Why are we afraid to take on the title of what it is we’re doing? If I am making music, am I not a musician? If I get up each morning and type even 100 words on my book, doesn’t that make me a writer? I think it comes down to the worrying about the opinions of others. We feel like we’re an imposter because we think that there is some criteria set or that we have to reach a certain level of proficiency before we can assume the title.

But who has set this level? In most cases, we ourselves are the ones that have set some imaginary level. We have decided what we think make someone a writer, a musician, an athlete. The good thing about that is that we are the ones that can change it. We are the ones that can decide what that level is, and make it be more generous.

I say that we do it Bob Ross style. If you are painting, you’re a painter. If you’re out there in your running shoes putting the miles in, you’re athlete. Every time you pick up that guitar you’re a musician. If you are actively doing whatever that goal is, that’s all that matters. Even if you only get down a few words each day and they are terrible. Even if you struggle to play the only two guitar chords you know. Only got a mile into your run before you had to walk? That’s okay, you are a still a runner.

When we’re working on something we love, and are pushing ourselves to stretch and create and become better that we before sometimes all we can do is just keep moving forward as best we can. When we’re starting out we need to remember that the quality or the quantity of our isn’t where we want it to be, but the fact that we’re doing it is important. And if we keep on doing it, we will get better. I think the saying “fake it till you make it” is pretty descriptive of how we need to handle imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is just worrying about the opinions of others, and that is something, as the Stoics remind us, we have no control over. What you do have control over is if you’re going to keep going. So pick up those brushes, lace up those shoes, and keep pounding away that those keyboards, and don’t worry so much about what others might think.

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Hello friends! Thanks for listening.
Want to take these principles to the next level? Join the Stoic Coffee House Community!
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Thanks again for listening.

03/25/19 • 8 min

164 - Thinking in Bets

Stoic Coffee Break

03/12/19 • 5 min

How often do we approach decisions in a black and white manner? We wonder if we are making the "right" choice, which often leads us to think there is only one choice. What if instead of there being a "right" choice or a "wrong" choice, we looked at choices based on their likelihood to achieve the outcome that we want? In today's episode we'll discuss the book Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. In this book, she teaches us how to approach decisions like a poker player by understanding probability, dealing with less than full information, and how sometimes we just get lucky.

03/12/19 • 5 min

163 - Self Ownership

Stoic Coffee Break

03/04/19 • 6 min

Self Ownership

> “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.”
> — Marcus Aurelius

One of the things the Stoics teach us is that we shouldn't worry about the opinions of others. This advice is very sound and seems pretty easy when it's people that we don't really know or care that much about. When it comes to the opinions of people closest to you, this is not always an easy thing. For example, if your parents disapprove of your choices, or you and your partner disagree on something, it's not always easy to stand by what you feel is right, and let go of their opinions. Self ownership is the idea that you are 100% responsible for your opinions, emotions, and actions. It means that you recognize that no else "makes" you feel, think, or do anything. It meas that you give yourself the space to have your own thoughts and opinions, and that you allow others the same. That you and those you love can disagree and hold different views.

Are there people in your life that care about that always seem to be on the opposing side or disapprove of your choices? What are ways that you can set appropriate boundaries and hold true to yourself?

03/04/19 • 6 min

162 - Don't Kill the Message

Stoic Coffee Break

02/25/19 • 7 min

Don’t Kill the Message.

Often, we dismiss an idea because it makes us feel uncomfortable. We may dismiss the idea out of hand because it conflicts with our preexisting beliefs. We may not like the idea because it could mean that we supported an opposing view, and we are often loath to admit that we were wrong. We can be blind to seeing the merits or truth of something based on our own feelings or prejudices. Feelings are shortcuts to making decisions, and while they are very useful, we need to be deliberative and analytical thinking to make better decisions.

What are some areas of your life where you dismiss an idea because it made you uncomfortable? How you can set aside your prejudice and look at it objectively?

02/25/19 • 7 min

160 - I, Me, and Enlightenment

Stoic Coffee Break

02/11/19 • 8 min

What if you were able to look at the world and yourself more objectively? What if you could see things without so much judgment or emotion attached? In today's episode, we talk about a basic concept about the self from Anthony De Mello that can help us act in a more objective and less reactive manner.

You can read more about this idea in the fantastic book, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, by Anthony De Mello.

02/11/19 • 8 min

161 - Better Than You?

Stoic Coffee Break

02/18/19 • 6 min

Better than you?

We are always comparing ourselves to others. It is the ego’s way of feeling like the self-image that is is a good one. We want to feel like we are “doing it right”. Often this means that we compare ourselves with others, making sure that we appear or at least feel like we are “better” than they are. But what does that really mean? Why are we better? Who is the judge of what is better? Can we just look at someone else and see that they are the same just that they’ve made different choices?

Anthony De Mello in the book Awareness, said:

> “Someone once had a terribly beautiful thing to say about Jesus. This
> person wasn’t even Christian. He said, “The lovely thing about Jesus
> was that he was so at home with sinners, because he understood that he
> wasn’t one bit better than they were.” We differ from others—from
> criminals, for example—only in what we do or don’t do, not in what we
> are. The only difference between Jesus and those others was that he
> was awake and they weren’t.”

In today's episode, we're going to talk a bit about comparison, how it keeps us from compassion, and a simple strategy to move past it.

You can read more about these ideas in the fantastic book, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality, by Anthony De Mello.

02/18/19 • 6 min

159 - It's About Time

Stoic Coffee Break

12/17/18 • 12 min

Time is the most important, the most in-demand resource that we have in life. Are you spending yours wisely or do you let it go to waste?

How much time?
The most finite resource that each of us has is our time. We can always make more money, but making more time is not something that any of us can do. While we can’t ever know exactly how much time we have, each of us can learn to spend our time more wisely.

>“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it... Life is long if you know how to use it.”

>— Seneca

Time Wasters
Are you just wasting time? How much time do you spend on social media? How much time do you spend on watching T.V. or Netflix on a given night? What are the time-suckers in your life? I mean how many likes do you need to give on Facebook? I find that I’ve had to limit my time on Facebook since it such an easy rabbit hole to fall in to.

I remember that I saw a talk once given by movie critic Micheal Medvid, when I was in college. While I don’t see eye to eye with him on a lot of things, he said something that really stuck with me. He said talked about how at the time the average American watched an average of 28 hours of TV a week. And this was before Facebook was even dreamed of. He talked about the fact that it’s not that there is enough quality media to watch. There’s plenty of good material. It’s that we lose a lot of our lives if we’re immersed in that much TV. We miss family connections. We miss out on living our own lives when we live by proxy of watching someone else’s life, real or fictional.

Indecision
One area that I’m currently struggling with is deciding where I want to put my time outside of work. I have so many things that I’m interested in doing and things I want to work on that I struggle with paring things down so that I can give enough time to the things I really want to do. I have plenty of good options, things that are very interesting to me. But I’m struggling to choose one, and because of that indecision, I’m not really moving forward with any of my plans. I’m working through the choices and deciding where I want to go. I’ve set a deadline for the end of the year, so that I can focus my energy on a few things, rather than being spread too thin.

>"Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay, yet we easily let others encroach on our lives — worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We're tightfisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers."

>— Seneca, "On the Shortness of Life," 3.1-2

Priorities
One of the things that we really need is to have our priorities lined up. This is going to be different for everyone. For some, family is their top priority. For others, it may be their work. Others it may be service to a cause. There is no perfect list of priorities. Each person needs to decide for themselves what is most important for them, and stay focused on it. If you don’t have a clear vision of where you want to go, then you’ll end up exactly where aim. Nowhere.

And the thing is, it’s going to vary for each person. Everyone has differing things that are of more or less important than others. And we need to understand that what we find important, is not going to be the same for others. And that’s okay. If everyone had the exact same priorities, we’d have a very much less interesting world to live in. Understanding what priorities are yours can help guide you in focusing on the things that are most rewarding.

Core Values
One of the areas that can help you choose what your priorities are is by understanding your core values. We talked about this a few episodes ago, and these are the things that can help you stick to the priorities that are more rewarding for you.

Changes
As you move through the different stages of life you’ll find that the things that were important to you in your teen years will be far different than those in your twenties. Those things that seemed so important in y...

12/17/18 • 12 min

165 - How to be Angry

Stoic Coffee Break

03/18/19 • 9 min

How to be Angry
One of the things that I find vexes us in modern society is how to be angry. Anger is not a bad thing in an of itself. It simply is an emotion. When we get angry it is because something has bothered us. We’re generally not taught how manage our anger very well. Things get pushed below the surface, when they stew and remain unresolved. We are often afraid of dealing with someone that is angry because we as a culture, at least here in the U.S., avoid talking about it and dealing with it in a healthy way. It is used to bully people, intimidate others, and to shut down discourse. We see this in our current political scene, where many of our leaders lash out at anyone they feel have wronged them or disagree with them in any way.

Of course there will be anger where the love is strong, spilled like gasoline
It’s crude but it’s a power we can draw upon, if it fuels the right machine

— David Wilcox, Covert War

One of the things that I’ve been meditating on lately is how do manage anger better? My role models for anger growing up were either explosive rage, or passive acceptance. Neither of these is useful or helpful in dealing with the things that upset me. In working with my therapist, and talking with my partner, I’m working on how to be angry in a productive way, and trust that I can be angry, and talk or even shout about the things I need to get out. I’m not trying to suppress anger or pretend that I’m not upset or push it to the side. Basically, I can be angry without being an asshole.

In the January edition of the Atlantic magazine, Charles Duhigg, one of my favorite authors about habits, writes about a study about anger in Greenfield, Massachusetts that was done in 1977. The researcher, James Averill, was curious to understand if the existing attitudes about anger, that it should be avoided and suppressed, really held up in a place where the quality of life seemed to be rated very high, and crime rates very low. He sent out an in depth and almost invasive survey and the result surprised him. Most people reported being angry several times a day to several times a week. And here’s the thing, most of these angry episodes were typically short and restrained conversations, rarely becoming blowout fights. And contrary to Averill’s hypothesis, they didn’t make bad situations worse. Instead, they tended to make bad situations much better. They resolved, rather than exacerbated, tensions. When an angry teenager got upset about his curfew, his parents agreed to modifications — as long as the teen promised to improve his grades.

Anger is one of the densest forms of communication. It conveys more information, more quickly, than almost any other type of emotion. And it does an excellent job of forcing us to listen to and confront problems we might otherwise avoid.

—James Averill

If we could, when dealing with someone who is angry, at least count on a general way of how that person might act, we could confront them and work on resolving issues rather than ignoring the problem until it manifests itself in violence. If we knew that we could get angry about something, and that the target of that anger would be willing to listen to us and work towards a resolution, we could be angry in beneficial ways that help bring up and work on difficult topics.

And as societies around the world become less able to deal with their anger about every day life, the world as whole becomes a more violent place. When politicians stir up anger in their voters against some distant group that is easy to demonize, there is no easy outlet for the perceived wrongs. I think this idea of not being angry is really not healthy.

How can you learn to be angry in a fruitful way? Rather than making anger something to be feared, what if we could, as a society, teach people how to be angry in ways that direct us towards resolution, rather than division? Are there ways in your own life that you could turn anger into a positive force?

Resources:
Chales Duhigg - Atlantic Magazine