Last December I read the book A Guide to the Good Life, by William Irvine. At the time, I knew nothing about Stoic philosophy, but had heard about the book from Derek Sivers’ blog, where it was one of his highest-ranked books, and was intrigued by his brief review:
“Almost too personal for me to give an objective review, because I found when reading it that the quirky philosophy I’ve been living my life by since 17 matches up exactly with a 2000-year-old philosophy called Stoicism. Mine was self-developed haphazardly, so it was fascinating to read the refined developed original. Really resonated.”
I have always had a stronger response to personal recommendations than official reviews, and since getting into podcasts have discovered that many of the most reliable book recommendations come from very successful entrepreneurs. So for Sivers to say that this book resonated with him made me feel confident I would get something out of it, even if that something was not a new philosophy of life but just a few different ways of thinking through problems and framing the idea of happiness.
I won’t spend this post writing about the book. I actually didn’t love it – I really enjoyed the second, more practical half of the book but was slightly bored by the first – but I found myself thinking the same thing Sivers did as I read: The book really resonated with me.
(As a quick aside, it’s interesting how often I’m surprised, when I’m reading non-fiction, to find some form of my own beliefs staring back at me on the page. I think I often assume that any published bestseller must contain relatively unknown, or rare, belief systems and knowledge, when in fact quite often the purpose and value of these books is simply to reinforce beliefs that I have but neglect from time to time.)
So I read a book on stoicism. The Stoics believed a lot of things, and I’d recommend the book (if only the second part) to anyone, but for me two things stood out. The first was negative visualization, or, in my words, the practice of visualizing your situation as worse than it currently is, in order to force yourself to appreciate what you have, and become happier as a result. As you can imagine, a paraphrasing of Irvine’s paraphrasing of the original Stoics doesn’t sound particularly glamorous, but the message to me is pretty clear. I am extremely fortunate to have the things that I do, and it would serve me well to spend some time reflecting on that every once in awhile.
The crazy thing is that, while reading the book, I realized I already had spent considerable time reflecting on what I had. Back when I was living in Baltimore, during a particularly anxious and mopey week at work, when I was worrying about my career path, long-distance relationship and social life all at once, my mom told me, very simply, to make a list of everything that was going well in my life. So I did. I sat down, one early morning at work, and I wrote out something like this.
- relationship with Anne
- Grandfather still alive and I can spend time with him every week
- spending more time with my parents than I have in years
- ran my first half and full marathons
- have a job that pays me more than many entire families make
- live with three friends from high school
- have a car
- like my job most days
Nothing about the exercise felt like I was bragging in any way – in fact, at one point or another I had bemoaned those very same things. Long distance sucked and I was nervous Anne would stop thinking it was worth it; my grandfather and parents wanted to hang out all the time; running was eating into my social life; my salary was lower than what my friends were making; my roommates were always fighting; my car was a piece of shit; I hated my job some days. Even so, by simply writing out the list I forced myself to see the reality of my situation. Things were really, really damn good. People out there would kill to be dating someone like Anne, and to be making more money than they needed, and to still be able to see their grandfather. And here I was complaining about it all! All of my problems seemed very small when I began to think about what the flip side would be like
That is negative visualization. I spent time thinking about how bad things could be in order to reflect on how good they really were. Since that time, I’ve kept a little list, similar to the one above, in my wallet to remind myself how lucky I am. And in that small way I have been practicing stoicism.
The other concept that stuck with me was called the dichotomy of control. The idea here is that there are two categories that things fall into: those that you can control, and those that you can’t. Being hit by a car that runs a red light is not something you can control, but choosing to read instead of watching TV is. In that way, Stoics try to identify items they can’t control in order to stop worrying about them. It’s not worth spending time worrying about a car running a stop sign because you can’t do anything to prevent it; you might as well direct your focus to the things you can control instead.
I think on some level we all understand this, but don’t consciously attempt to practice it, and I’m definitely guilty of that. We apply for jobs, do as much prep work as we can, and then let the company’s decision overwhelm us for the week that we spend waiting for it, and then let it destroy our confidence in the weeks following a rejection. We worry about freak accidents we read about in the paper happening to us.
I can’t say I’ve done too much of this in the past, but I’ve started to focus on the control concept over the last few months, because it really works. The reality seems to be that, on a planet full of billions of people and an infinite number of micro events that all influence one another, there are many, many things that we don’t have control over. And when it comes down to it, most of the important things, the ones that will move the needle for our own happiness and success, however we measure it, are the ones that we do have control over. So eliminating our worry over the uncontrollable items frees up a lot more time to focus on the things that matter.
Those two pieces are just cracking the surface of the information out there. It’s not even the majority of what I learned from the book. But I’d rather start somewhere then wait until I’ve digested all there is to know before putting anything into practice, and at the end of the day, when something’s that good (and I think stoicism is) you just know it – you don’t need to spend too much time vetting it as thoroughly.
So I’m writing this because I am officially on the Stoic bandwagon. I am an absolute novice, know practically nothing about the underlying philosophy and am not disciplined enough to truly practice it as this point, but I’m going to learn more and continue to find areas where I can implement some of what I do know already. Beyond that, I think that any idea that I hear pop up as much as I have over the last six months, on podcasts and in a variety of difference articles and blogs, is worth looking into.
My next steps are going to be to read all of Ryan Holiday’s books (Obstacle Is The Way, etc…) and to also read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. It’s tempting to feel as though A Guide to the Good Life was a good enough survey of the philosophy that I can just stop there, but I think in my case I need the constant reinforcement of concepts to actually make anything stick in a meaningful way. I’m also interested to see how others write about the subject, and to juxtapose Holiday’s modern reframing with the original text of Marcus Aurelius. More to come on all of this.
The final thing I’ll say on the subject is that I’m relearning that philosophy is fun, and discussing it is even better. I bought the book for my Dad for Christmas, and after he had finished it I spent some time talking through the concepts with him. It was definitely the first time I’d done something like that since college (I don’t usually know many people who read the same books I do) and it was so refreshing to bounce ideas off of each other. He actually found that stoicism mirrored his religious beliefs in a lot of ways, because he trusts that God is watching over him and is therefore thankful for, and at peace with, the path that he is on (dichotomy of control).
Regardless of where it goes I’m excited to dive in a little deeper.