Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Self-Mastery: How to Transform Your Life by Taking Control

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

Have you ever wondered why the richest countries on Earth consistently rank so high in anxiety and depression? Research says this is because we’re so overstimulated by instant gratification that our brains never feel satisfied and become increasingly unhappy in the quest for more. We’re literally addicted to pursuing pleasures that will never satisfy us.The cure to this man-made misery? Self-control. I know, I know. Your body might be rejecting this idea as too boring or hard. But stay with me. In this episode, you’ll learn how hyper-access to indulgence is physiologically changing your brain, and I’ll coach you on what to do so you can calm your mind and start experiencing more vitality and true joy on a permanent basis. 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. A few weeks ago, I wrapped up a trip that took me through Austria, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Italy, and then back to England. And when I am traveling, I am open to everything. I want to explore the culture, try new foods, meet new people. I don't impose too many restrictions on myself. When I'm at home, I follow a more disciplined protocol, and this feels really good to me. And here's why. Not giving into every desire makes me a happier and healthier person. Have you ever wondered why the richest countries

on earth consistently rank so high in things like anxiety and depression? I always always, wondered this. People have it all. Why are they so upset? Well, research says that this is because we are so overstimulated by instant gratification that our brains never feel satisfied, and so they become increasingly unhappy in the quest for more. We are literally addicted to pursuing pleasures that will never satisfy us. And the cure to this man-made misery is self-control. And I know I know your body might be rejecting this idea as too boring or hard, but stay with me. In this episode, you will learn how hyperaccess to indulgence is physiologically changing your brain, and I will coach you on what you can do to calm your mind and start experiencing more vitality and true joy on a

permanent basis. We all have our vices. This could be mindlessly eating cookies that you're not even enjoying, drinking at a party when you said you weren't going to, turning down an invite, to meet friends you can do work and then getting distracted and not doing anything, you don't have time for this anymore. Life is too short. How long are you going to wait before you start demanding the best for yourself? Let's create a self-mastery guidebook to help you create the life you want. I have a hedonistic self-concept that doesn't exactly match what other people would consider hedonistic. I go to bed early, I barely drink, I work out every day, I don't eat junk food. And yet, for a lot of my life, I have given into every whim that has popped in my head. And this felt like freedom to me. I remember walking

along the beach and then veering off into town because the idea of having English breakfast just popped into my mind. And this was a delicious temporary pleasure that I gave into, but it also threw off my more meaningful plans for the day. And this isn't to say that you can't be spontaneous, but regularly going along with impulses without questioning them can block you from feeling real fulfillment. Impulses are part of the automatic patterns that often protect and comfort us. I want external pleasure right now, that dopamine hit of instant gratification, to feed that desire. Our ancestors needed dopamine to stay motivated to look for food and so they didn't get killed. They weren't surrounded by pleasure everywhere like we are today. They were just trying to survive.

Today, our brains are still in survival mode, but our brains are also confused. Eating a brownie is not a life or death situation, but impulses can make it feel this way. I need this right now. Sometimes we just want to eat tasty food and watch Netflix because it sounds fun. And other times these urges appear when we're avoiding what we want to be doing, what we said we were going to do. Instead of going to that networking event or sitting down to right, we comfortably numb ourselves with drinking, scrolling social media, snacking, vinging online courses instead of taking action, dropping everything to do something for someone else. This is a favorite procrastination technique of my coaching clients. We give in to these desires to escape the discomfort we are feeling. So most of us follow these

impulses on autopilot. They're invisible to us. I am very comfort-driven and have used this to procrastinate. My mindset has been, I can't get started on my most meaningful work until I achieve optimal conditions. I don't want to be too hungry, not too hot, not too cold. I need to be fully alert. Maybe I should clean my kitchen first. One of the most useful things I have learned is a lot of people, if not most, are not motivated to do the thing when they said they were going to do it because it feels uncomfortable. On some level, I thought life was supposed to feel comfortable if you were doing it right. This is not the goal of life, and it's not possible. Not everything worth doing feels great. And the most important things to you often feel awful, giving birth, starting a business,

caring for a sick parent, speaking on stage for the first time. We forget that not everything feels effortless, so we resist and make excuses not to do them. I'll do it tomorrow. I didn't get enough sleep tonight. So-and-so just called me and asked me to come over. There are many reasons why we procrastinate. Sometimes it's fear of putting ourselves out there. Sometimes it's simply that ordering a pizza feels way more fun and immediately gratifying than the long-term satisfaction of cooking nutritious meals for ourselves. The more ancient, non-rational part of our brain loves quick hits of pleasure. In her book, Dopamine Nation, psychiatrist Anna Lemke says that our brains just can't cope with modern life's abundance

of dopamine-triggering stimuli. And this has created a global problem of overindulgence and addiction. We get caught up in the pleasure pain cycle, which she explained on the Hidden Brain podcast. Quote, pain and pleasure are co-located in the brain. The same parts of the brain that process pleasure, also process pain, and they work like opposite sides of the balance. Our brain wants to stay in balance, so if we get a dopamine hit from some external pleasure, our brains will work very hard to try to restore a level balance. And they do that first by tilting an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain before going back to the level position. We are overloading our brain's reward pathway with too much dopamine. In

our brain's effort to compensate for too much pleasure, we are essentially individually and collectively down-regulating our own dopamine production and transmission, not just to baseline levels, but actually below baseline levels. So we are in a dopamine deficit state, which means that we are all unhappier, more anxious, more depressed, more irritable, less able to take joy in the things that used to give us joy, and also more susceptible to pain. We've changed. We've changed our brains as a result of constantly bombarding them with these high reward substances and behaviors. We pay a price for every pleasure, unquote. Lemkei recommends dopamine fasting, taking a break from whatever triggers excessive dopamine in you, be that social media, YouTube,

dessert, whatever. These fasts allow your brain's pleasure pain balance to reset. This will allow your brain to regain sensitivity to more modest rewards. Fasting of any kind, isn't a new idea. For thousands of years, religions around the world have fasted as a spiritual discipline to connect to something higher, develop their character through self-discipline, and to cultivate gratitude for what they have in life. Fasting helps our body digest and rest. It heals our body. It's renewal. You may have heard that the word breakfast comes from Middle English, and it literally means to break one's fast from food. I practice intermittent fasting and usually eat between nine and five. If I'm hungry on a morning walk or after 8 p.m, I let myself be hungry. I have

trained my brain to understand that hunger sensations are not an emergency and that my body actually has plenty of fuel. I'm not starving and I can wait for my next nutritious meal to eat. This felt uncomfortable at first and required a lot of self-discipline, but after a few weeks, this way of eating felt very natural. My pleasure, pain, balance, restored. And now I have a healthy, sustainable way of eating that I enjoy. This still requires a certain amount of self-control, but much less, way less. So now I can move on to other challenges. Self-control involves making mindful choices about what's truly good for us and what's not. The Stoics believed that most humans had the capability of making these rational decisions. To do this, we need to consciously feed the rational side

of our brain, our prefrontal cortex. This part of our brain controls our executive function, our ability to make decisions, take action on goals, prioritize, and reassess things based on new information that comes our way. It helps us connect how what we're doing now will affect us in the future. This allows us to delay gratification instead of giving into immediate instincts. The prefrontal cortex helps us honor our commitments to ourselves. So why does this matter? Why does any of this matter? We all have dreams of external goals from I Want to Volunteer Twice a Week to I Want to I want my business to generate $1 million next year. And more internal goals. I want to be less

judgmental. I want to be more patient. Often these dreams feel out of reach because we give into whims instead of staying on the path. We act as if we have no self-control, even though control over ourselves is all we have. I've spoken before about the story of Hercules meeting two goddesses, vice and virtue. One promised him an easy life with all the pleasures in the world. The other promised a much harder life, but said that nothing that is truly worth it comes easy. At first glance, you might say, take the easy life. Why wouldn't you? But the goddess of vice was promising false joy, temporary pleasure. The other goddess, virtue or Aratei, promised the long-term fulfillment that comes with self-mastery. It's the difference between a sugar crash

and a runner's high. We realize our dreams when we live with Aratei. consistently showing up as our best selves. We think life should be easy, that we should feel motivated to do everything. But we don't. Our brains tell us to take it easy, to follow false pleasures, to seek out dopamine. Those dopamine hits of pleasure are short-lived, and then we crash, and then we seek pleasure elsewhere. Long-lasting joy comes when we discipline these desires, when we learn to do things that are great for us, and when we learn to love doing these things. So how do we tap into this higher part of our brain when it's so easily hijacked by our primitive brain that only cares about what's happening right now?

One, know what you value in life. Two, set up rules for yourself that align with those values. Three, stay mindful of impulses. Be with them instead of acting on them. Four, remind yourself of your values and recommit to making decisions as your highest self. Today, instead of spending my day finding the best, grilled cheese in town. I plan what I'm going to eat in advance. It takes all the guesswork out of what's for lunch, what's for dinner. This has freed up so much mind space by getting rid of these

daily decisions because I already decided. My values include taking care of my body and doing what I said I was going to do. This isn't to say that I will never go on a grilled cheese hunt again, but I'll plan for it. It would be a mindfully led adventure rather than an impulse-driven one. Some rules or protocols that I've set up for myself. At home, no refined sugar or flour, no vegetable oils, no alcohol unless I'm having a party. I'm in bed by 10 unless I'm at some outside event. I exercise every morning. And of course, I don't eat any meat, although this is more of a value than a protocol. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I've been vegetarian for most of my life at this point. By the way, a protocol is simply a rule that you set up for

yourself. When I'm out with friends, I'm free to do whatever I want, but I still eat pretty clean and don't drink much. And I know that I'm going out. I've planned ahead for it. So I know what you expect. And when I'm traveling, I also do whatever I want. And upon reflection, even though I felt more hedonistic during these times, I wasn't gorging myself. I wasn't completely out of control. Research suggests that self-control is easier if you go 100% all in on something, meaning if you are going to give up Dariot home, give it up always. Or never eat sugar again or never have a glass of wine again. My rules work for me. You can decide what works for you. And once you start feeling disciplined in one area of your life, you start showing up this way in other areas of your life.

And this feels amazing. Way better than grilled cheese. In case you're curious about why I follow the eating protocol that I do, it was emphasized in a coaching program that I completed based on a lot of research, including what was found in the book, the happiness diet. So in the happiness diet, the authors said, quote, thanks to the introduction of industrial scale food processing, Americans have changed their dietary habits more in the last hundred years than

all of humanity had in the previous 100,000. The modern American diet, what we call mad, is characterized first and foremost by large amounts of simple sugars and refined carbohydrates, now found in everything from cereal to pasta. These sugars play

tricks on the brain, so you keep craving more of them, even though, excess consumption of these foods actually contributes to the shrinkage of key areas of your brain responsible for everything from memories to mood regulation. The second largest source of calories in the med are added fats, refined vegetable and seed oils that have high amounts of omega-6 fats, as well as trans fats, which have been linked to increased risk of depression. A third critical aspect of the med most detrimental to our brain functioning is the factory farming of cows, pigs, chickens, and even fish. Not only are these creatures pumped full of antibiotics

and hormones to promote their growth, but they feed on an unnatural diet of grain, which leaves their flesh deficient in many of the very fats and nutrients our brains have required from animals since the dawn of humankind. Strange as it seems, with the med, you can expand your waistline and starve your brain at the same time, which is exactly what growing numbers of Americans are doing. Study after study in the medical research journals confirm that people who are most dependent on mad-style eating habits have increased levels of depression, anxiety, mood swings, hyperactivity, and a wide variety of other mental and emotional problems. Our belief, backed up by ample research, is that the best way to prevent the mad assault on our health

and happiness is to go back to eating the wholesome foods that nurtured the development of our brains over millions of years of evolution, unquote. That is from the happiness diet. My eating protocol is aligned with my values to work for a healthy body in mind and to be self-disciplined. If I were just trying to achieve an external goal like losing weight, I might give up after not seeing immediate results. It's clarity on my values, my why, that sustains me. So I choose to be the kind of person who commits to doing what's good for me. That is what keeps me going. And the unthinkable happens. You start to enjoy what you once resisted. Seneca said that we find fulfillment when we follow a path where what is pleasant and what is honorable align. What we do

is who we are. In the past, the thought of meal planning sounded so boring to me. Now I find it liberating. It has become something that I want to do. This isn't to say that I never have the urge to break the rules, but this happens so much less, at least when it comes to food impulses. Here's another willpower example. Let's say it's time to work and I have an aversion to sitting down in my chair and getting started. Instead of giving into this impulse and doing something else, I can simply sit in the chair and be with this feeling. Okay, I don't feel like doing this, but I'm following through on my word. And then get started. Take it one small step at a time. Commit to small actions. Set your Pomodoro timer and get rolling. If you struggle with getting started, plan in advance. for this. Commit to working on your project for 10 minutes and then give yourself more time on the calendar because you'll usually fall into a flow. When you wake up in the morning, remind yourself of your values and recommit to making decisions as your highest self. Before I get into what modern science has to say about discipline, let's review what the ancient Stoics had to say. The Stoics practiced

three disciplines as part of their commitment to living with Arate, the discipline of desire, the discipline of action, and the discipline of assent. The discipline of desire. So the discipline of desire is about training ourselves to want what is good for us and to avoid what is bad for us. Since I've talked a lot about food and exercise, this might be a good place to add that this isn't about shaming yourself or desiring a different body type. This is about accepting where you are now, making peace with what is, and moving forward from there. Most people think that external is like wealth, fame, the perfect body, the perfect pizza, that's going to make us happy. And these pleasures can create temporary happiness,

though the striving pursuit of them often causes more suffering than satisfaction. When I find the perfect person for me, then I will finally be happy. Once I change jobs, then everything is going to fall into place. Stoics say external things like this are indifferent, meaning they're neither good nor bad, but of course there are things that we prefer and disprefer. And there's nothing wrong with external goals to want to move to another country to start a business or to change your life in some other way. I champion this. It's the process of getting there that's the true magic, the steps that you take, who you become when you're going after your dreams, the virtues that you embody to get there. You don't have

control over the external outcome, but you can influence how your life turns out by the quality of your character. This is what we should desire and develop. Often we gravitate toward what is not great for us, scrolling social media when we're tired, and we avoid things that could transform our lives, walking 30 minutes a day. We want to flip that around. This involves not only how we take care of ourselves, but how we treat other people. Yes, we want to eat well and get enough sleep. We also want to be emotionally balanced so we can respond to other people with understanding and not blowing things out of proportion. We want to participate in life instead of numbing out when things get tough. And this includes accepting reality for what it is instead of complaining and focusing our

efforts on what's not in our control. We can choose to move forward with what's good for us and move away from what is bad. Next up, discipline of action. The discipline of action focuses on what you can contribute. The discipline of desire, which we just talked about, says that we should accept reality and not waste our energy pining for what isn't. But that doesn't mean we do nothing. But that doesn't mean we do nothing. This is where the discipline of action comes in. Let's say that you've felt hired for a long time and you realize that you usually only sleep for six hours and you just learn that most people should be aiming for seven or eight. There is no point in kicking yourself for staying up late and missing out on years of quality sleep. That is in the past. Now it's time to move forward.

And once you accept your reality, then you can make a plan with clear eyes to change your own life and the world for the better fate permitting. We are called to play different roles in our lives, and it's our duty to fulfill our purpose to the best of our ability for the greater good. Again, you can't control the outcome, but you can live with integrity and perform your role in society with excellence and let the chips fall where they may. Side note on that phrase, according to grammarist, the phrase let the chips fall where they may means doing your best and then being content with whatever outcome, because it's not in your complete control. It's about acceptance. Quote, let the chips fall where they may is an American idiom that came into use

in the late 1800s and refers to wood chips scattering as one chops wood. The image is of one concentrating on the work at hand, not on the inconsequential chips of wood, end quote. I really like that idea. Focus on the task at hand. Even if you're scared, have the courage to endure what you're afraid of and the discipline to let go of unhelpful desires that aren't serving you. And then discipline of assent. The discipline of assent says that we need to examine our first impressions and not automatically accept them as true. Most of our suffering comes from unchallenged interpretations of a situation rather than the situation itself, our judgments. If we want to live a healthy and emotionally balanced life, we need to pay attention to the stories we tell ourselves.

This means instead of jumping to conclusions or spiraling out when a thought pops into our head, we take a step back and ask, is this a reasonable thought? Is this a reasonable thought? Is this? is what we want to be doing right now. Observe what is happening in your mind without judgment and question whether your thoughts are true. What's another way to look at this situation? What information might you be missing? What biases might you be bringing? Also, observe the sensations in your body. What emotions do you associate with them? If you're feeling anxious, how would you describe how that feels inside you? Your body is constantly sending this information to your brain. Your brain then process.

this information and spin stories based on your past experience. You're seeing the world through your specific lens. It's not the only lens. Modern science backs up with the stoics say about discipline. In her book, The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonical talks about using our prefrontal cortex, the rational side of our brain, to override the fight or flight part of us that feels an immediate urge to satisfy cravings. We can decrease stress and increase our sense of self-control, by slowing down our breathing and relaxing our body. To increase discipline, she says, we should also meditate and exercise. Quote, exercise turned out to be the closest thing to a wonder drug that self-control

scientists have discovered. It not only relieves ordinary everyday stress, but it's as powerful in antidepressant as Prozac. Physical exercise like meditation makes your brain bigger and faster, and the prefrontal cortex shows the largest training effect. The important muscle action being trained in all these studies isn't the specific willpower challenge of meeting deadlines, using your left hand to open doors, or keeping the F word to yourself. It's the habit of noticing what you are about to do and choosing to do the more difficult thing instead of the easiest. View every choice you make as a commitment to all future choices.

So instead of asking, do I want to eat this candy bar now? Ask yourself, do I want the consequences of eating a candy bar every afternoon, for the next year. Or if you've been putting something off that you know you should do, instead of asking, would I rather do this today or tomorrow, ask yourself, do I really want the consequences of always putting this off? End quote. She's talking about stoic discipline, training our minds to reflect before responding, which she refers to as pause and plan in her book. This enables us to choose self-mastery and virtue over impulsivity. Whenever we're challenged, this intentional pause allows us to respond more mindfully. The stoic practice of visualizing

what could go wrong in life also aligns with what McGonagall says about considering the long-term consequences of our actions. We can imagine what our lives would be like if we sacrifice our future vision by giving into present desires. This mindfulness practice increases our self-awareness and self-control and could be the jolt that you need if you find yourself repeatedly saying you want to do something and never following through. Self-discipline is not about punishment. It's the opposite. Developing this attribute, this virtue, will help you flourish and manage challenges with less stress and more resiliency. McGonagall emphasizes self-compassion, which aligns with the stoic virtue of kindness towards oneself and other people. And another

quick side note, you've heard me talk about the four stoic virtues, wisdom, courage, justice, and moderation. People use different words for these virtues, especially moderation, which is often referred to as temperance, prudence, self-control, self-discipline. I've used these interchangeably. Head heroic performance coach Brian Johnson and I am certified in his program likes to describe these virtues as wisdom, courage, love, and self-mastery. I like this as well as this language sounds both more accessible and more accurate. When Stoics talk about justice, they are talking about treating others with fairness and dignity and caring about the world and contributing positively to it. They're talking about love. Self-mastery helps us manage our cravings and avoidance issues,

but it's about so much more than that, so much more than just control. This self-discipline allows us to live as our higher selves, to make wiser decisions, and to enjoy healthier minds and bodies and happier relationships. It involves finding that golden mean between excess and deficiency, to live with equanimity and a sense of peace and purpose. Self-mastery or self-control, for now I will continue using these words interchangeably as that's the Stoic vernacular. Self-mastery is fundamental to living with Aratee and inner tranquility. It's what we need for a smoothly flowing life. While I was researching this episode, I found it very interesting that the science of willpower is still being debated so much in academic circles. In 2011, psychologist Roy Baumaster and also New York Times,

Times science writer John Tierney published a book called Willpower Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. In it, they argue that willpower is a finite resource that gets depleted throughout the day. If we devote a lot of mental energy to something, they say we will have less for other tasks and that our self-control and performance will wither. They call this ego depletion, and you may have heard this theory of willpower. But then a few years later, a bunch of other studies came out countering what they said, and this includes a study by Stanford's psychologist Carol Dweck, who wrote the transformational book, Mindset. Her research found that willpower only depleted if you believed in the idea of willpower depletion. In other words,

ego depletion is only real if you think it is. In an article about this, the Harvard Business Review referenced psychology professor Michael Inslich. He said willpower should be seen as an emotion rather than a finite resource. Quote, just as we don't run out of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows based on what's happening to us and how we feel. Viewing willpower through this lens has profound implications. For one, if mental energy is more like an emotion than fuel in a tank, we can manage and use it as such and learn to ride out bad feelings. Similarly, when we need to perform a difficult task, it's more productive and helpful to believe a lack of motivation is temporary than to tell ourselves we're spent and need a break and ice cream, end quote.

This makes a lot of sense to me, although as I said, science is still debating this, just like they continue to debate everything. That's science. What hasn't changed in 2300 years is stoicism's ability to invigorate and enliven us. Delightful bonuses that come up with practicing self-mastery. So when research studies conflict and confuse, go with the wisdom that has stood the test of time and go with whatever helps you live a better life. Be the leader of your life. Another example, there are researchers who like to drag Alcoholics Anonymous saying it doesn't work. But the group has saved so many lives. I'm sure there's millions of people who agree that Alcoholics Anonymous could be very beneficial.

And researchers from Stanford, Harvard Medical School and the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction found that AA is way more effective in helping people get sober than psychotherapy. That was a little aside. I just wanted to re-emphasize that there are disagreements about everything. We need to tap into our own wisdom and lived experience and follow the path that strengthens us as people that allows us to be good citizens to grow, to treat other people well. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. To sum all this up, self-mastery means understanding and accepting what is in your control and what's not, and focusing your time and effort on what you can

control, your thoughts, your actions, your emotions. Know what you value in life. Set up rules for yourself that align with those values. Stay mindful of impulses and be with them instead of acting on them. Remind yourself of your values and recommit to making decisions as your highest self. Impulse control is an exercise of the mind. It's a character builder. Yes, you will likely receive extrinsic benefits, including improved health, but it's who you become through practicing self-mastery that matters. As you shrink the space between who you are now and who you aspire to be, you will start experiencing a remarkable sense of fulfillment and genuine happiness, which unlike immediate gratification, endues. The more you show up as your highest self, your true self, that is when

you really start to thrive. I would love to help you get there. If this episode really hit home and you would like help designing and honoring a plan that will transform your life, get in touch with me at sarah micotel.com. That's all for now. Thank you 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.