Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Choose a Life Philosophy

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Do you have a philosophy that you live your life by?My guest today thinks you should — and so do all the Stoics who came before her.I’m speaking with Brittany Polat, author of Tranquility Parenting: A Guide to Staying Calm, Mindful, and Engaged and  Journal Like a Stoic: A 90-Day Stoicism Program to Live with Greater Acceptance, Less Judgment, and Deeper Intentionality. She’s also a steering committee member of Modern Stoicism, and co-founder, along with Eve Riches, of the nonprofit Stoicare, which “aims to share Stoicism with everyone who cares about people and the planet.”We discuss the importance of having a life philosophy for yourself before you can hope to influence other people — especially kids. We also talk about how to cultivate more positive emotions in your life; how to be more mindful; how to fit reflection into your day, and more. As you’re listening to this conversation, think of one thing you want to start implementing to live a more harmonious life. https://sarahmikutel.com/Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to Live Without Borders, a podcast about how to live the good life through Stoicism, personal development, and cultural exploration. I'm your host, Sarah Megatel, an American in England who's here to help fellow citizens of the world like you make the most of the brief time you have here on Earth. It is time to make every moment matter. Do you have a philosophy that you live your life by, a handbook to guide you? My guest today thinks that you should, and so do all of the Stoics who came before her. I'm speaking with Brittany Pollitt, author of Tranquility Parenting, a guide to staying calm, mindful, and engaged, and she also wrote journal like a Stoic. Brittany is a steering committee member of modern Stoicism and co-founder of the nonprofit Stoic

care, which aims to share Stoicism with everyone who cares about people and the planet. Today, Brittany and I are discussing the importance of having a life philosophy for yourself before or you can hope to influence any other people, especially kids. We also talk about how to cultivate more positive emotions in your life, how to be more mindful, how to fit reflection into your day, and more. As you're listening to this conversation, think of one thing you would like to implement to start living a more harmonious life. On to the episode. Welcome, Brittany. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's great to be here. Thank you. If you could have a coffee chat with anybody living or dead, who would you choose?

Oh, well, I don't know about coffee because I don't think Epic Titus necessarily drinks coffee, but I've always wanted to sit in his classroom. So he would definitely be one. I don't see us having a nice coffee chat together, but I think it would be more of a one-way, you know, unidirectional, him telling me what to do. That's what he seems to do. But there are a number of people throughout history, I think, that I would like to sit down

and have coffee with. maybe one would be Christine de Pizan, who is one of my heroines. She lived in the middle ages and was one of the first, if not the first female professional writer, just a very fascinating, strong person who supported her family by her pen when she had to do that. So she would definitely be one. I also really like Elizabeth Carter, who was actually the first translator of Epictetus into English. Very interesting. Very just another fascinating woman, self-taught. she became a scholar in an age when women were kind of expected to sit down and get married, this kind of thing. So, yeah, I think I would like to meet all of those three people in person. What about those people do you really admire? Because in Stoicism, we talk a lot about mentors and what we can learn from people. What questions would you ask them? And also, what is it about their character that you really value?

Right. Well, I think you just said it is character. I mean, that's what stoicism is all about. And I think throughout history, it tended to be emphasized more than it is in our current day and age. And so, you know, it's something that people actually talked about a little bit more. So obviously, Elizabeth Carter, in her work, she was a translator of Epictetus. So this is something that she deliberately focused on. But Christine DePizan, for example, she was somebody who probably didn't ever expect to take on the position that she ultimately did.

but she found herself in a position in life where she had to do it. You know, nobody at that time was like, oh, I'm going to be, you know, the first female professional writer, but she just stepped up when life required her to do it. And I really admire that. I think it applies to all of us. You know, we don't always get to choose what happens to us in life. Well, we never get to choose what happens to us. We only choose how we respond and what we do with that.

And so she's an example of someone who took a very unexpected circumstance, the death of her husband. She had her family to support not only her children, but I believe a sister and her mother, a lot of people to support. And so she used what she had, which happened to be an exceptional set of skills, and she made something beautiful with it. So I just really admire that. How have you taken that and sort of used it in your own life? Has there been a time in your life when something was thrown at you that you weren't expecting? Absolutely. Yeah. So I discovered Stoneman, activism actually when I was in the middle of a, I guess looking back, I could call it a career change at the time. It didn't seem like it. It seemed like kind of an end, a career end, when I was trained as an academic in applied linguistics and ended up not pursuing that for family reasons. I found myself at a time when I was at home with my kids, which was not something that I ever wanted to do at all. It just kind of happened. And I was at my wits end. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't. like it. You know, it was, I felt completely cut off not just from my work, but from my identity,

who I felt I was up to that point in my life, from social connections, from rewarding work, all of it just seemed gone to me. And I had to just kind of regroup and figure out, okay, what am I going to do now? What am I going to, where am I going to go from here? It was very, very difficult. Stoicism helped me with that. And so through Stoicism, I've tried to kind of embody that spirit of just making the best with what you have. So basically everything I've done since then is, you know, working with what I have between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. when I have to pick up my kids from school, you know, just doing what I can to, you know, not only pursue rewarding work for me, but also to help other people and share stoicism with others. So I feel like I've tried to do that.

Whether I'm successful, I don't know, but it's an ongoing project. Yeah. So you sounded like had a career and then decided that parenting was what you wanted to do. Could you tell me a little bit more about that decision? I'm just curious because you said it wasn't something that was sort of on your radar. So was there a certain values based decision that you made about doing the switch? Yeah. Well, first of all, before I say anything more about that, I want to emphasize that it's different for every person. Every family, every mother, every father has a different choice to make. And I definitely don't judge people if they made a similar decision to me or if they didn't, that's something that it's different for everyone. And it's just up to your circumstances. For me, what worked out best

was we decided to prioritize my husband's career just because of earnings potential and the potential to go different places and do different things. So we ended up making that decision. And it was never a moment where I said, oh, yeah, I want to leave my career. I would rather stay at home with my kids. It just sort of happened, right? So it was something that I ended up dealing with on the back end. I wasn't prepared for it. I wasn't psychologically motivated in this direction. And I think that's one reason it was so difficult. I think it's always difficult when a woman makes that decision. But, you know, especially if you didn't want to make it, it's kind of, it felt like exile or unemployment more than, you know, a deliberate choice. So I found myself just scrambling around and saying,

okay, okay, now what do I do? Now that this is the reality of my life. how am I going to deal with it? So I don't know if that answers your question. No, no, it definitely does. And I like that you use the word exile, a very stoic word for that. But yeah, I guess in the academic world, there's only so many options. And if your partner's career goes one way, that definitely does influences your career. So I believe I heard you tell a story before that, yes. So now you're this mom. You've got these kids running around. And you were like, I need some help of this. And so you just Googled wisdom. Exactly. Yeah. I knew I needed something. I just didn't know what. I couldn't put my finger on it.

Like I mentioned earlier, our culture, I don't think does a very good job generally of presenting this structure to us anymore. You know, it's kind of there's a great emphasis on you do you, you know, figuring out where you are as a person. But when it comes to supporting other people in a family structure, there wasn't a lot that I could rely on. I started looking around, you know, self-help, parenting books, this kind of thing, and nothing was really speaking to me. I looked into Buddhism. I looked into different traditions. And it just wasn't what I was looking for. I couldn't sink my teeth into any of it. And so then, yes, as you mentioned, one day I was just really frustrated. I sat down. I went on Amazon and typed in wisdom. And William Irvin's book, A Guide to the Good Life came up. The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. And it was kind of mind-blowing. I was like, oh, wow. this is interesting. What is this all about? So I ordered this book, loved it, and kept going. I ordered Donald Robertson's book and then started reading Seneca, I think, and then Pierre Haddo. So I just kind of kept going and I knew immediately this is what I've been looking for. So I kind of latched on to Stoicism and I've been going ever since. So that first book you read where you said

mind-blown, like what specifically shifted your viewpoint of the world? One of the things that I like that Irvin does, which I also tried to do in Tranquility Parenting, is talk about the aspect, the concept of a philosophy of life, which I'd never thought about before. I had picked up a book on philosophy in high school, I think, and it talked about 20th century analytic and continental philosophy, and it was just extremely, you know, boring and pointless. It seemed to me, to my high school self, I couldn't figure out what this had to do with my real life. And so I kind of set philosophy, to the side for, you know, the next 10 or 15 years. When I read Irvin's book, suddenly he brought out the practical aspects of,

okay, this is what a life philosophy does. This is what it's all about, you know, going all the way back to Socrates or even before. And so he brings out this idea that we're kind of lost if we don't have this framework to guide us. And that's definitely what I felt in my life. I felt the lack of that framework. And so I was very excited when I discovered that this is something Stoises could offer. And within that framework, you know, it's not just a framework, it's a very logical one, but one that speaks to our psychology as well, that has not changed in 2000

years, obviously. So when I wrote my first book, Tranquility Parenting, I made sure to bring that in. And I pointed out that a lot of people in the 21st century actually develop parenting philosophies, right? So this is something that you'll commonly hear people talking about when they become parents, or if you read a parenting book. You know, it's not that uncommon to hear about a parenting philosophy. So I thought, wow, people have parenting philosophies, but they don't have life philosophies. How does this even work? You know, how does that make sense? So with stoicism and with tranquility parenting, what I'm trying to do is get people to reflect on their life philosophy first, and then everything that you do as a parent kind of derives from that.

So it's not that it's a separate parenting philosophy and life philosophy. It's all one package. Yeah, and you give people a beautiful framework on tranquil. parenting in this book. So can you talk us through the principles of tranquility parenting? Well, I don't lay out principles as such, but there are some concepts that I think are really, really important. So first of all, is this idea of life philosophy, which I just talked about. You need to have your principles in place. This is even more important when you have a child, right? Just as an individual, we need to have principles to guide us. But when you have to start making decisions that impact someone else's well-being, you know, what's the best thing for my

child? Well, how do I know? So this framework that you have for yourself then guides your decisions for your child and also helps you to relate to that child in a very positive way. So another principle I would say is control, of course, the dichotomy of control. You do not control your child. And this is one of the hardest things for me to learn as a parent, I'm sure, for many other parents as well, you know, we have this idea that it's my child, right? So it seems like we should be able to, in some way, control what they do. But once you actually break that down and think, okay, it's not my brain controlling this body, is it? This is a separate person. So thinking in terms of influence, thinking in terms of maybe authority, you do have responsibility for your

child, but you do not have control. So really making that distinction between, okay, I can influence this child's actions. I can influence who this person becomes. I do not actually control them. That helps us as parents to step back and, first of all, not feel guilty because guilt is a major emotion that many parents of the 21st century feel. anxiety. So I remember when I was a new parent, you know, watching my toddler climbing on the playground equipment and just feeling so anxious and worried, you know, oh, my daughter doesn't know what to do. this could end in tragedy. You know, I was on edge every moment.

So tranquility, parenting, and stoicism helps us to step back and say, okay, this is a natural part of life. This is about my child's growth. In some ways, I'm going to have to just step back and not control her, let her explore the world. And then, of course, stoicism helps us, in general, deal with our worries and anxieties by putting them into the context of the bigger picture of life, right? all of those trials and illnesses and pains that we experience, this is a part of the wider life that we experience. And in order to fully enjoy and appreciate this life, we need to accept those little

things that come our way. So this helps us as a parent too. And then teaching virtue as well. Can virtue be taught? Well, I think it can be taught, but just because you teach it does not mean that your child will necessarily learn it. It's something that you as a parent can. teach and you can hope that your child picks up on it. But we teach it not through necessarily sitting our child down and saying, okay, here is a lesson on virtue or here is a lesson on justice, right? We wouldn't do that. We incorporate it into our life. We act as a role model for our child. We help them kind of talk through, reason through their own emotions and their actions with other people. And so we kind of incorporate these lessons into daily life with our kids. I call

them teachable moments, looking for those little moments where you can help your child connect maybe a virtuous lesson with what they just did or what you would like them to do. Yeah, one of my favorite things about your book was you said when you're talking to your kids, don't just tell them what to do, tell them why, but using the principles that you already defined for yourself. Could you give an example of this? Yeah, absolutely. And I have to say, now that I've been doing this for over six years, it's really paying off. I can see in my relationships with my kids, in their ability to reason things out, that they have actually kind of internalized this process. So, for example, I remember when my daughter was four, she was in preschool. She came home one

day, upset because one of the other little girls in her class had said they didn't like her haircut or something like that. And my daughter, you know, she's very sensitive. She was very very, upset. She was crying about it. So we talked through the idea that, okay, this little girl hasn't learned how to be a good friend, but that doesn't mean anything about you. My daughter, I was talking to my daughter. It means that she hasn't learned how to be a good friend. Maybe she will learn. Maybe her mother can help her. Maybe her teacher can help her. Maybe you can help her by being a good friend. But it doesn't impact you. It doesn't mean that your haircut is ugly just because she said that. That's her opinion. Everybody else likes your haircut, you like your haircut. That's the main thing. So kind of just, you can see how I'm

not mentioning stoicism at all. Certainly no philosophical principles for a child this young, but just kind of talking through in everyday language how that really looks. Yeah, we've touched on this, but just to draw a fine point to it, why is it important to talk about principles rather than instructions with kids or rather than just instructions? Right. Yeah. So this goes back to an idea from Seneca. He talks about this in letter 95, I think, of his letters on ethics. So instructions are good in some situations,

but we can't give instructions for every single situation. Life is just too complex. You'd find yourself having to follow around behind your child and say, okay, in this situation, do this, right? Whereas principles, the child can learn the principles and then relate them to any

situation. So you might say they're more flexible. They provide kind of an operating system, I guess, but it's just the core of it. So if your child learns, for example, the principle that we're kind to other people, then he or she can apply that in every situation. Whereas if you say, you know, don't hit, then, okay, they might not hit, but they also might not share because you didn't mention that one.

And I promise you the kids will find the loopholes. If you leave any loopholes in your instructions, they will exploit them. So going back to principles means you're looking more at the spirit rather than the letter of the law. What would you say are the biggest principles or values that have defined your life? Oh, that's a big question. Well, my life as it's lived right now, I would definitely say justice and affection. So this idea of stoic love that I've talked a lot about that I know you like as well.

I find myself thinking more and more that we are meant as humans to be loving. This is just part of who we are. it's part of our human nature. And that expression of love is so important. And so increasingly, I try to live my life by this idea of love. It's not easy. It takes a lot of steps. And I know it's going to be a long process for me to get to where I want to go, but I can see it. And I think I know where I want to go. So I'm going to continue working on that. I guess wisdom, obviously, that's a big one in Stoicism. So a lot of times you'll hear people talking about, you know, intuition. I just read a book by a woman named Sharon Blackie, and it's called The Enchanted Life. It's a great book,

but she kind of contrasts rationality and intuition or heart and mind. And I don't like this contrast at all, because obviously in Stoicism, we want both of them. You don't want to have intuition or emotion or stories without also using, you know, your rationality, your reasoning ability, because then you can end up in really bad places and you don't even realize it. Right. At the same time, you wouldn't want to have someone who's just intent on reasoning without bringing in those stories and maybe more of a poetic understanding as well. Then you end up with, you know, psychopaths or sociopaths. Right. So it's really about both. I don't see any contrast between rationality.

and intuition, this kind of thing, I think we bring them all together, and that is actually the best of rationality. So we're using our reasoning ability, but also our more poetic sensibilities. So I think kind of bringing all that together to say, you know, wisdom and love at the same time, it's two sides of the same coin.

We need all of it together. I love that. I love everything you just said. And I think, you know, personally, you can't be, not that you can't be a practicing stoic, but you can't practice stoicism as effectively or as it's meant to be without having that love component. Exactly.

I'm curious, you mentioned that when you mentioned your value of love that you had a vision of where you wanted to get to, but you're not there yet. What is that vision that you see? In some ways, it's hard to put into words, but, Let me try. So again, going back to stoicism, the ancient Stoics strongly believed in good emotions, which is something that we don't talk about very often in Stoicism, and I think we should. So I'm glad we're talking about it here. So we all know about the bad emotions, the unhealthy emotions, which the ancient Stoics called passions. And these are things like anger or fear or, you know, the desire for revenge, this kind of thing.

they are very strong emotions that get out of control, and they're not based on reason. They're not based on a correct analysis of what's important in life. You know, you only get angry if you think someone has harmed you in some way or has harmed another person in some way, whereas Stoicism tells us that other people can't truly harm us, right? Because our character is what really matters in life, not all the accoutrements of life, such as money or, you know, property and things like this. So by changing our values by saying, okay, well, what really matters is what I have on the inside, not the outside, suddenly we don't need to get angry. We don't need to be fearful. We don't need to be resentful. And all these negative emotions kind of fade away or dry up, if you will. So by correcting

our judgments, we can eliminate or reduce. I guess reduce is a better goal than completely eliminate at first, we can reduce the negative emotions and have room for these very positive emotions. Now, the ancient Stoics said that only the sage will experience purely, you know, these pure positive emotions because the sage has perfected judgment. And none of the rest of us have this. You know, this is an aspiration that we work towards. So I guess when I'm talking about, you know, perfect love or perfectly positive emotions, that's what I'm talking about, is what the sage would feel. It's not something I'm ever going to achieve. I'm never going to have perfect judgment, but I think I can get closer than where I am now. And I think the closer I get,

the more I will experience of these, you know, positive emotions, the more I'll be able to share them with the people in my life, people that I love. And I feel like this is working towards the realization of who we're meant to be as humans. It's our full capacity for being a human is sharing this love with other people, love of our planet as well, you know, really connecting with the natural world. That's certainly a part of it as well. But I think it comes out, especially in our relationships with people, because of our very social nature. That's just who we are. And so I think it comes out especially in our connections with others. What are your in the moment practices for Stoicism? let's say somebody does something that really makes you mad,

like a complete stranger bumps into you and then looks at you like you did it. I don't know if you would have an immediate reaction to that or not, but what maybe you would have done in the past in a situation like that or something similar? And what do you do now? Yeah. Well, I was actually thinking about this last week because I live in the suburbs, so I'm not really bumping into people very much,

but I do drive and, you know, people do crazy things when they're driving. So I was thinking that now I'm able, when somebody cuts me off or does something crazy to me, I'm able to say, well, that person did what they thought was right. And I feel kind of sorry for them because they have to live as a person with poor judgment, right? So they made a very poor decision to pull out right in front of me where I could have hit them. You know, that shows a lack of judgment on their part. and that poor person has to go through their life with bad judgment. They're going to be making bad decisions today and tomorrow.

And, you know, you start to just kind of feel bad for that person because they're never going to fulfill their potential that way. If they are actually arrogant and, you know, narcissistic, then they're going to cause misery to themselves, to the people around them. They're never going to know true joy or happiness. And so I was able to actually think, to feel compassion for the person who pulled out in front of me and almost got hit. Instead of getting angry, I didn't have an anger response at all. So that was a lot of progress for me, I would say. Because when I started my stoic journey, I would definitely have gotten angry. So I can see progress.

Yeah. And it's important to recognize those progressions. There's been a lot of research saying that most of us, we're in our own little world, and if we do something, we say, okay, well, I had a really bad night's sleep, and that's why I got until late at work or whatever. But when other people do it, we sort of assume the worst and are like, oh, they're just being lazy today. And when we can be mindful of when have you been in their situation and extend that grace, I think, is also very helpful in the situations. Absolutely. So you have a course out now on Stoic love. And in this course, you mention that we can't just wait around for people to love us. We need to cultivate love within ourselves. Can you talk a little bit more about self-love? Right. So this is based on my experience as kind of a shy person or, you know, very introverted. I've found that a lot of times, you know, I was expecting other people to make the first move, basically, toward coming towards me

and saying, oh, you know, I like you or you're a great person. I think you're great. Whereas what I needed to do was, first of all, have confidence that I am a good person, no matter what, right? So stoicism can help us befriend ourselves to use Seneca's term and love ourselves and exonerals and love ourselves and accept ourselves the way we are, this in turn enables us to accept other people and kind of remove the judgments that I think we all too often apply to other people, to ourselves. You know, we internalize other people's judgments. And so loving yourself is a great place to start. And then you can start generating this goodwill towards other people by removing those judgments,

remembering, kind of like you just referred to, remembering that people have a lot going on in their lives. So removing the judgment that we apply to other people, like you were just saying, you know, we tend to be kind of indulgent towards ourselves and then get offended when somebody else does something that we might have also done in their situation. So just stepping back and removing those judgments, remembering that everybody's trying their best in this life, right? All of this can help us to generate love. But also this idea that it starts with us. So not sitting around and waiting for positive feedback from other people, but kind of like that famous saying, be the change, right? It starts with you, right? So it comes from within yourself and you're able to

offer that as your gift to the world, to other people, and to yourself as well, you know. It's not just for other people. This is the full realization of who you are as a creature who's made to love others, right? So it's for yourself, but it also benefits other people as well. So yes, definitely not sitting around waiting for it to come to you. You know, why is nobody, why doesn't anyone like me? No, it starts with you. And that will bubble out into other people. I love what you just said about, yeah, you making the first move.

So often we think, we just assume, I think a lot of people assume, like, yeah, of course people will just come to me. And when they don't, like, it doesn't even occur to a lot of us. Like, oh, maybe I should be the one to make this first move. And yeah, it's not just a. about love, I think. So many people think confidence needs to come. There needs to be some sort of external source. Like, I'll be confident when such and such person recognizes me or I'll feel like better about my life when this person likes me. For people who are newer to Stoicism or who haven't really thought about this much, how would you guide them and to start thinking about how to create

these feelings internally or these thoughts that would lead to these feelings internally? Right. So we've talked a lot about things in the moment. You know, how do you respond to things in the moment? But it actually starts long before the moment. It starts in your personal reflection. Now, I know it's difficult to carve out time for reflection. It could be, you know, journaling or some kind of spiritual practice. But I strongly encourage people to figure out a way to incorporate some kind of time in their lives when they can think about these ideas, when they're not under pressure. You know, you can't do it all in the moment when you're already angry or when you're already anxious or something like that. You need some preparation time ahead of time. Right now,

I, you know, I wake up in the morning. I get my cup of coffee. I have a space when I have time to myself. You know, I have my one little spot that I always sit in and I read my stoicism. I do a lot of my thinking and writing at this time. So that's my space to get the day started. But if you don't have that much time in the morning, or if maybe you're more of a night owl rather than a morning person, you know, find a time in your life that works for you. One tip that I recommend in Tranquility Parenting is that you do some meditation while you're brushing your teeth, right? Because, you know, you have to brush your teeth. It's something that's already part of your routine. You do it in the morning and the evening, hopefully. So use that time, you know, connect it, connect your motor motions, brushing your

teeth to your thoughts. You can do a review for the day. You can prepare yourself for the day ahead. You can, at the end of the day, you can say, okay, what did I do well today? What do I need to do better tomorrow? This is kind of a classic stoic technique. So if you only have two minutes a day, then use those two minutes a day. You know, use them wisely, work them into your routine, and hold yourself accountable for it. I think that's the main thing. It really needs to be consistent. If you have more time, that's great.

If you have 15 minutes to do a meditation when you get up in the morning, that's awesome. If you have 30 minutes to do journaling, wonderful. You know, as much time as you can give, that's awesome. You have another book out now. So your new book is journal like a stoic. And I would like to ask you some questions

that you ask in that book. Sure. When have you felt most alive? I feel most alive when I'm with my kids. I especially love the contrast between sometimes I'm sitting working, you know, in my philosophy. I'm reading or something and then one of my kids will come and give me a hug. And it's just this jolt from the theoretical or abstract to something that's very real and very human. So in those moments, you know, when I'm hugging one of my kids or spending a special moment,

And I think that's kind of a recognition of the best in me. So I feel very alive then. I imagine that really brings you, you know, back to the present when you've got a kid wrapping their arms around to you. Right. Talk to me more about stoic mindfulness and how you use it in your daily life. Right. So I really like stoic mindfulness because it's kind of directional. It's directed. You know, mindfulness is a buzzword these days. People always talk about mindfulness. And I think a lot of it is good. You know, it's paying attention to your thoughts as they arise. And there is an element of that in stoicism as well. I think that's where stoic mindfulness prosaq. I think that's where it starts is noticing what's going on in your mind, noticing where your attention is going in that moment. I think in kind of popular mindfulness, there's an element of just you know, seeing where your thoughts go and an element of non-judgment. And in Stoicism, we kind of turn that around and say, okay, is this where I want my thoughts to actually be right now? Could my thoughts be in a better place? So it's a little bit more directed than I think a lot of the

mindfulness programs, especially based on Buddhism or insight meditation. So Stoic Prozicay is paying attention to where your thoughts are and then saying, okay, is this virtuous? You know, is this leading me in a healthy direction? So, for example, people who ruminate a lot, which is definitely in my history of doing that, you know, where is my brain right now? What am I thinking about? And is this a healthy direction? If it's not, then we have the power to redirect our thoughts.

We can train ourselves to start to do this. So sometimes noticing our thoughts and just following where they go is the right way to go. but I think stoicism gives us this extra tool of talking to our thoughts and saying, you know, is this what it claims to be or is this a false appearance? Am I really, you know, does this person really hate me or are they just having a bad day, for example, right? So kind of pushing back a little bit and talking to those thoughts, I think is an extra aspect of stoic mindfulness that we don't find in all mindfulness programs. Yeah. And exactly. As you said, questioning your thoughts, Like, is this reasonable what I'm thinking right now?

Another question that was in your book was, have you ever had an encounter with the natural world that led you to a deeper understanding of your life? Yeah, I think it's really important for us to incorporate nature as well. So I would say, hmm, just one encounter. Well, when I was a teenager, I would often spend time out in our, we had a kind of large backyard with a beautiful view. and I would go out there and do my homework under the oak trees. And I just remember looking up and the golden light shining down and thinking, this is what it's all about. You know, this is life.

It's very special. And I think a lot of us as adults, we look back on our childhoods and recognize that we felt a connection that has kind of been lost. And so just having the time to spend time in nature, you don't have to be doing anything, I think. You know, perhaps especially if you're not doing anything, you don't have to be kayaking or, you know, hiking the Appalachian Trail or something specific, just getting out into a park or like my experience, just, you know, having a quiet moment to connect with that oak tree and those sunbeams. You know, I think it can really keep our natural roots in our heart. That openness and curiosity that we sometimes get away from, especially now when we're either walking around with headphones or. you know, have some sort of distractions. I find myself, I live near the beach, and so when I go down to

the beach, I go to the beach every day. And sometimes, you know, I might feel like I have so much going on or I haven't done enough or I have to do this. I need to go faster on this. If I sit down on the beach and no headphones on and I'm just staring at the ocean, I can feel the wave sort of regulating my body and just, yes, that is the ocean doing what it's meant to do, not thinking about it. This is the rhythm of it and it slows me down and I'm like, actually everything is fine. Sematically, I just find it transformative. So I definitely, yes, the nature is so powerful. Totally agree. So you are the co-founder of a charity called Stoic Care. Can you tell me more about that? I founded this with Eve Riches a couple of years ago. And our idea, we kind of have a twofold goal.

One is to put to rest forever the idea that Stoicism is about not. caring, right? Because there's still this ugly stereotype floating around out there that Stoics don't care about people, that Stoicism is all about detaching ourselves from other people, lots of misunderstandings out there. So part of our intention is to show that stoicism is actually about caring. It's just about caring about the right things. It's about not caring about external or superficial things, but caring about the things that matter, like other people like virtue, like our character. And at the same time, we want to provide kind of a gathering place and also resources for caregivers or for anybody who cares in any capacity, which actually is all of us, right? We all

care in some way, whether it's as a family member or as a friend or in our profession somehow. So bringing tools and resources that stoicism has, these great psychological tools and sharing them with caregivers or anybody who needs help caring. What are your priorities? for this year? Is there any particular area you're focusing on? Oh, we have some exciting things going on. Actually, one area is actually prisons. So there are a number of people around the world, particularly in the U.S. and the U.K., who are sharing stoicism in prisons. And so we're trying to bring everybody together for a conversation about this to maybe build resources or share advice. So this is a really promising area. And as you know, I think it was two weeks ago, there was an awesome benefit conference

hosted by Wisdom Unlocked, and they're doing a lot of work in prison. So this is definitely a great area, a great cause. And there's actually a lot of energy bubbling up around stoicism in this area. So we're very excited about that. We've also got, like you mentioned, the Stoic love course going on. So this is an area where we kind of want to draw more attention as well. And we just had one of a workshop on. on animal care, which is exciting. We might be doing some more with that, an area where, you know, we haven't really talked about that much in the Stoic community. So, again, we're kind of drawing attention to areas where care is very irrelevant, but

where it hasn't been talked about so much so far. You are involved in modern Stoicism as well. Could you just talk a little bit about what that is and how you got involved? Oh, yeah. Modern Stoicism is another nonprofit organization. they were started in 2012, although they were not incorporated as a nonprofit at that point, but that was kind of the beginning point of the organization when people in the UK came together to talk about stoicism kind of in modern times.

And this was people like Chris Gill, John Sellers, Tim LaBahn, Donald Robertson, psychotherapists, academics, just talking about stoicism, really. And I think from there that grew into Stoic Week, which is still going strong. I think it has several thousand people participating every year. Every year it's still going. We also added Stoic Week for students a couple years ago. So this is a separate course for younger people, kind of more attuned to what they might be interested in

and the way they would perceive things. And obviously Stoicon is a big part of that. So at the annual conference bringing people together to talk about all things, stoicism, that takes place in October every year. This year we actually have the Stoic Summit, our first in-person gathering since 2019, since before the pandemic. So we're really excited about that, just bringing people together face to face and having those conversations that are kind of difficult to have online or in an online conference setting. So, yeah, modern Stoicism basically just tries to share Stoicism with people all over the world.

We didn't talk about this. We chatted a little bit before we hit record about how we both. have living abroad in common. You spent some time abroad when you were in your younger years. Can you tell me about that experience? Yeah. So I basically spent my adolescence longing to be in Europe, to escape suburban America and move to Europe, you know, the European lifestyle. And so I did when I was 18, my second semester of college, I managed to get myself abroad and spent the next four years, basically hopping around between France, Germany, England, Austria, and eventually Turkey. I finished up in Turkey before realizing that the weather in Europe was too cold.

And I had to come back home. And I live in Florida now, so the weather is much more agreeable for me. But, yeah, I do love Europe. I love the European lifestyle. I love the, you know, the beauty, both the natural beauty and the cultivated beauty of the villages and the cities and everything. So it's definitely a great place to be. Yeah, I love it here, which is why I've been here for years and years. And Seneca is famous for talking about, I feel like sometimes this idea can be misconstrued.

Because some people think of it as like, well, you don't need to travel because you should be able to like be happy wherever you are. And I think part of that's true. Like, yes, you should be able to be happy where you are. but also I think travel is very culturally enriching. And I think it's kind of a stoic thing to do to not just hear about people or maybe like make certain prejudices based on what you might see on the news, but to go out and actually meet people yourself and have these conversations and be a citizen of the world in a sort of more literal sense.

I agree. And I have to say those passages in Seneca, I found very helpful when I, you know, during my times in exile, quote unquote exile, when I wanted to travel but couldn't. So I feel like he's not saying that you shouldn't travel. I don't think he's saying that at all. Travel is considered a preferred and different, but there are times when for various reasons,

you know, for a physical disability, a lack of funds, other obligations, for whatever reason, you can't travel. And during those times, it's important to remember that it is actually a preferred indifferent, similar to health, you know, we would all prefer to be healthy. Sometimes that's not what life gives us. And so our ability to make the best of what we have, I think Seneca's passages were a real wake-up call to me that I had been spending so much energy wishing to be somewhere else when actually I did have all the resources I needed within myself right where I was. I definitely, you know,

I would encourage people to travel. I'm going to Italy again this summer with my kids. taking them to Rome and Florence for the first time. So that's going to be fun. But yeah, I think just thinking of travel as a preferred and different, kind of comparable to health or some other nice things to have, but not necessary to have. Not necessary to have to be a good person and have good character. When I think about Stoicism, I feel like I go through different time periods where certain passages like really resonate with me right now and like, oh yes, right now, like this is really speaking to me. Is there anything right now where you're like, I'm really enjoying this right now where this is like really helpful to me right now?

Well, I've been reading Chris Gill's new book, Learning to Live Naturally, which I think is one of the most important books on stoicism of the past, you know, 30 years since the advent of the modern stoic movement. And I'm doing a series on my new substack where I kind of translate this very difficult, lengthy book into, you know, just kind of breaking it down and simplifying it a little bit. And it's been really great to help me think through everything. I've just been writing about his chapter on oikiosis, which is one of my favorite topics ever in stoicism. But it's great to, you know, really think about it theoretically and then think about how the fact that we are rational and social creatures

impacts our responses to the world and how we want to be virtuous and this kind of thing. So I guess that's just to say I'm really thinking about this concept of how we're rational and social together. Maybe it could be summed up by Marcus Aurelius's statement that to be rational is to be social. So that's what I'm thinking about right now. Very cool. Well, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to bring up? No, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much. Well, Brittany, where can we learn more about you? Is there anywhere you want us to head? Sure, you can follow me on Twitter at Brittany Polat. You can check out my new substack, Stoicism for humans. I just started it about two months ago, so just getting off the ground, but I plan

to post hopefully weekly over there, and of course, at Stoicare.stowacare.com. Excellent. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. That's all for now. Go ahead and follow the show or hit subscribe so you can hear more episodes like this. And if you would like my help taking bold action on your own dreams, like Living abroad, changing careers and other life transitions, visit Live Without Borderspodcast.com. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot?

I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.