The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - The Joy of Not Being Dead (with Ryan Holiday on The Daily Stoic)

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Dr Laurie often uses the teachings of the ancient Stoic philosophers to help her through daily life - so she was invited on Ryan Holiday's hit show The Daily Stoic to discuss what she's learned. Ryan started off asking Dr Laurie's thoughts on death and the importance of seeing life as finite - but never fear, the conversation wasn't at all depressing.  The Happiness Lab will be back with a new series after Labor Day, but we'll be bringing you more interviews with Dr Laurie throughout the summer.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. you well and that you're taking some time off to rest and recover. I've been on a bit of a vacay myself, but the team and I will soon be back at work preparing the next season of this show. We'll be sending you back to school, happiness lab style, as I review some of the must-read psychology books of the year. So stay tuned for lots of well-being wisdom coming your way this September, but I won't be abandoning you until then. Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some episodes from other podcasts, and the common thread is that I appear

as a guest in all of them. First on the list, The Daily Stoic. Ryan Holiday's hit show is all about what the ancient stoic philosophers can teach us about living better today. I was invited on the show to talk about death, but don't let that topic scare you, because as you'll hear,

my conversation with Ryan was actually kind of fun. If you like what you hear, you should check out The Daily Stoic, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic podcast. I was swimming in Barton Springs yesterday. I'm swimming, I kind of see this movement. It's like a weird thing with Barton Springs where, you know,

there's like huge fish in there. And you know there's turtles, you don't see them as much, not as much as like Balmore or whatever, but I see this sort of soft-shelled turtle just start to head up to the surface and then just like takes off like a rocket just, and it almost hits me. It was dodging turtles, surfacing turtles from the depths of Barton Springs.

And I just, I was like, ah, man, life is absurd and life is good. Even just like the light in the pool was amazing where you could actually see everything because it's brighter in the mornings. I don't know, it was just a great day. And so I'm excited to tell you about today's episode. Actually, this goes back a couple months now.

My research assistant, Billy Oppenheimer, who you've heard me talk about before, many of you get his Sunday newsletter, which I highly recommend. You can find that at BillyOppenheimer.com. He is working on a book, which I'm very excited about. I'm sure he'll be on the podcast when that eventually comes out, though he has not sent me a copy of it. And I'm saying this here on the episode

to jostle him a little bit, so he'll finish it up and get it into the publisher. No, but anyways, Billy sent me a clip. He's like, hey, did you see this? And it was a clip of the Huberman Lab podcast where this woman, Dr. Laurie Santos, is talking about Mmento mori. And I was like, oh, wow, that's so cool.

And let me actually play the clip real fast. It's useful to remember, like, you know, this is limited, right? This is temporary. I should enjoy this now while it's happening. The most extreme version of this, of course, is with our own lives, right? Contemplating our mortality. There's this idea of memento mori, which is a common phrase.

Actually, my ring has memento mori on it, which is morbid, right? I'm going to die. I'm not going to be here. But when you recognize that, you know, the old school folks thought, and I think it's true, like you realize, like, I can't take any of this stuff for granted.

I have to pay attention now. This is not the kind of thing that's going to last forever. And then so we reached out and we found out that Dr. Santos would be in Austin for South by Southwest. And she came to the studio. I was like, Hey, what are you in town for? South by? This is when she shows up and she's like, Oh yeah, I'm here at South by to interview

Michelle Obama. And I was like, what? Okay. That's a, that's a pretty good reason to come to town. Not what I would have expected to bring someone to Central Texas, but here we are. And it does make sense. Dr. Santos is an expert on happiness.

Her Yale course, The Psychology and the Good Life, teaches students how the science of psychology can make you happier and live a more fulfilling life. They've told me the most popular class in Yale history. And Yale has a pretty decent history. I mean, it is 300 years old. So to have the most popular class at one of the most prestigious universities in the world

is a pretty incredible accomplishment. And you know, it makes me think, like I was introduced to the Stoics while I was in a class in college called Aristotle and the Meaning of Life. So, you know, I just love that this stuff is so popular. And I love that she is bringing the Stoics into her courses. She is, as you will see in this episode,

very well-versed in the Stoics. We share a lot of ideas and strategies that we both try to apply in our personal life. And yeah, I just, I really liked this interview. It was really exciting. Our work is of course incredibly popular. You've seen it all over the world. She has an online version of the class

called the Science of Wellbeing on Coursera, which has had more than 4 million students go through it. Her podcast, The Happiness Lab, where she interviews people like Michelle Obama is one of the most popular podcasts anywhere there are podcasts. So it's all very impressive. You can check out her work at drlorysantos.com.

You can follow her on Instagram. I will link to that. You can follow her on Twitter. She has a YouTube channel and a TikTok channel. I will link to all of this. Anyways, I was just thinking, this is a good life, man. Dodging turtles in Barton Springs, dropped my kid off from school, went swimming.

Then I picked him up and went on a field trip. I just, I get to do this. This is what my life is. It's always perfect. There was traffic, there was this, you know, but like by and large, this is what the good life is. Stressful couple of weeks for me, but I don't know, more good than bad. And that's, I think, basically what we're going to talk about in today's episode,

which I am excited to bring to you now. This is my favorite thing in the live studio podcast is like, tell me your table story. Okay. This is Joan Didion's table. Oh my God, that's a really good table story. All right, you win, that's very nice. People are like, it's kind of a weird table,

but it's like, I bought it at this auction, and this was like a dining room table, Joan Didion's house. Yeah, isn't that cool? That's super cool, yeah. Normally I'm not like a coaster person, I'm like, stress, I'm like, please, please? I just wanna ask. Sometimes I'll go like, oh, you can just put that down there

and then they'll think it's like a suggestion. You know? I'm like, get it off the table. I think at some point I'll probably, cause it's, I mean, the table had history before, but now all these people have sat at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I thought it was a charity thing.

And so I was like, oh, but maybe I could just re-donate it like 10 years from now. All these other people will have sat at the table. I mean, Joan would be happy bringing Ali Scoville as a target. Maybe. She seemed pretty judgmental. Maybe.

That's true. She probably doesn't like anything. And like everything is, she's like this tiny lady. You know? So like sometimes like we have like an athlete coming in soon. And I'm like, I don't know, we might have to get different chairs. This is meant for a small person. Well, thank you for coming.

Yeah, thanks so much. I've been a fan for a while. So when I got this invite, I was like, yes, yeah. Well, I thought you might have your Memento Mori ring on. I took it off to travel because I'm scared I'm gonna lose it. So, which is dumb. I also have another second arrow. So it's an arrow.

So that's my Buddhist one. I have my memento mori one and a Buddhist one. Well, tell me the story on both. Memento mori, remember you will die. Why is that something you wanna wear on your person? Because it's nice to remember that you're gonna die, right? I mean, no, seriously. I mean, I think it like causes you to live better.

And there's research showing this too, right? That fast forwarding to your death, this idea of death awareness, noticing that things might go away soon, you wind up like enjoying things more. Whether it's like a local thing, like they do this with like college seniors who are about to graduate and just notice,

hey, you're gonna graduate really soon. They spend their time differently when you remind them. But I think for bigger things for life too, this is like, I mean, this is what the stoics were on top of like before anybody did these social science studies about this stuff, but yeah. Isn't it interesting how much social science studies confirm just hypotheses or arguments from ancient philosophy

that they were just making up 2000 years ago or 2500 years ago? And even still, like I have a colleague, Hedy Kober, who studies meditation and a lot of kind of, you know, ancient practice from Buddhism, I was like, you need to go do stoicism. So she's doing a negative visualization studies now to try to see if that also can like,

she just studies like craving and these kinds of things. Can it reduce craving? Can it make you feel better and so on. But I'm like, still new insights from them are coming in. So do you just kind of fiddle with the ring and- I do, yeah. Is there something you run through in your mind? Actually another reason I don't take it to podcasts

is I would thwack it, you know, like I have to take it out on it. Yeah, you notice it every once in a while and then you... This is another one I got, because this came from Arthur Brooks, who I know you had on your show. I think he was wearing a very similar... Yeah, so his work with the Dalai Lama, he hangs out with these monks who... Did you go on that trip? I did not. I had a wedding and I was like, can you move the wedding? No, no. But I met

one of the monks who was there and because of the work they gave me this. And so it's, you know, blessed by the Dalai Lama and it's meant to remind you that you're on the path to being a bodhisattva. And it is true that I'll be like, like literally today driving over here, trying to get out of the main part of Austin city.

And I looked at it, it was about to road rage and I was like, no, I want a path to being a bodhisattva. Control of this and so, yeah. So the reminders help, yeah. Yeah, I don't know if people agree. People find momentum more morbid, people find it disconcerting, depressing. There's a reason that people don't do it,

that they don't wanna think about it. Oh, it's disturbing. I mean, I think it's partly the disturbingness that makes it so powerful. Yes. Right? It like makes me a little wanna like vomit in my mouth every time I think about it, but it also makes me wanna put my phone away and notice the things around me

and have a conversation with someone. So yeah, I think it works because it's really discombobulating. And you can get desensitized to it itself a little bit. And what I think is interesting, which has never been desensitized for me, is the one that Mark Sturlus talks about in meditations, which he's cribbing from Epictetus.

He says, as you tuck your child in at night, say to yourself, they will not make it till the morning. So there's something about momentary memory for yourself. You just be like, yeah, of course I'm gonna die. I always knew this, hopefully. But it's when, if you have to meditate on losing someone or something so precious to you, you never become desensitized to that.

It is always a very powerful, sobering, humbling, and a little bit terrifying thought to run through your mind. And there's something about the human mind that doesn't wanna consider it precisely because of all those things. Yes, yes, yes. But what's amazing about the human mind

is that you can just instantly switch your reference point with a little bit of imagination, right? And I think this was one of the stoic insights, like if you actually have a bad thing happen to you, that changes your reference point. Like I actually lose my phone, like while on this trip, oh my God, that's such a pain in the butt. I got to get, I never realized how much I appreciated my phone, but I get a new phone. It's like, oh, a phone.

It's so useful. I can look at the map and so on. But what's amazing is we don't actually have to go through the actual terrible thing. We can just simulate it very briefly. And this is, I think Marcus Aurelius' insight, right? Like every morning you should wake up and think, I might get shunned, I might lose my job, I might lose my legs won't work and stuff.

And I think that that's amazing that we have the power to do that, that we don't actually have to face the real consequences, but we can psychologically reset our reference point. It's such a good hack. Well, what's interesting is we use our imagination in a way that's not helpful all the time. Totally.

So we imagine a bunch of extremely unlikely fake things. We're ruminating on stuff that nobody's thinking about and we're torturing ourselves with our imagination. Instead of using our imagination to prepare for things. Like oftentimes, if you act like that, if you just kind of have this vague imagining of a terrible thing, you feel unpleasant. But if you can get specific with it and you go,

what would I do? Here's what my plan, actually it has the exact opposite effect. So you sort of decide how you're gonna use your imagination. And this is a critique that I sometimes get from my students. So I talk about these negative visualization psychology studies in my happiness class, and I'll always get a student who stays after class

and is like, but wait, isn't rumination terrible? Isn't that like the worst symptom of depressive episodes? And I'm like, Marcus, I really didn't say, do that 14 hours a day. He said like, first 10 minutes right before the wordal, do that quickly and then recognize that that's not true, appreciate and move on. And I think that's where we get stuck, right? Is that we have to know the dosage of some of these practices and that can get a little

tricky, including memento mori, right? A terrible health, anxious paranoia that you're going to die is not awesome. Right. Hypochondria is not supposed to be the result. Correct. I think the Stoics were good about giving us that sort of dosage, but in practice, that's where the rubber meets the road.

Sophracene is like the right amount. Yes. Like the ability to discern, which is also, it's interesting that the line between like, where is your temperance, where is wisdom, but they're the same, they're related. It's like, what is the golden mean of this exercise, this truth, this idea? Because when you hear Seneca on the one hand say, you know, we suffer more in imagination

than in reality. And then he also says, he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary. He says like the unexpected blow lands heaviest. And then he's also saying like, don't torture yourself with every possible thing that could happen. People feel like that's a contradiction. And I think oftentimes that is a critique of the Stoics that they contradict each other. What they're actually saying is not too much over here, and not too little over here, get the right amount, even on something like, hey, am I prepared for things to not go my way is very different than ruminating on how

they're never gonna go your way. Exactly, exactly. And I think, you know, if you, this is, I love the Stoics, but I also like bringing in these other kinds of traditions too, right? Like if you look to Aristotle, this was something that Aristotle was really worried about, the kind of right amount.

Like virtue isn't one thing or the other, it's not kind of bravery or cowardice. It's this lovely sweet spot in the middle. And so, yeah, so I think that the right amount is something that we should be thinking about a lot. Well, that's the problem with the word temperance is that temperance in America, not even in English, but the temperance movement became the abstinence movement.

Smash your bottles of pride. Exactly, I mean, none, not what is the right amount? What is a moderate, safe, reasonable amount? And that's a hard, and look, there's some things- Be fair, it's hard, right? Not at all. Some things you should definitely not do. There's probably not a moderate amount of heroin

that you should be doing. Yeah. Or fentanyl or something, but there are other things that if you can do them in moderation, it's totally fine. And I think ruminating is probably one of those things because there's a fine line between ruminating and being ignorant. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things I think the Stoics would say is that, you know, the main principle of like finding agency over your own mind, finding agency over your own emotions,

finding agency over your own actions, like they almost want you to be probably in that hard sweet spot of sorting it out for yourself. That's the kind of virtue that the Stoics want you to cultivate. Yeah, you wanna be prepared for things to go wrong, but also not a cynical, miserable, you know, because I don't believe in manifestation, but I do believe like, if you have a fundamentally negative worldview,

the world will be negative to you. I don't think you're changing reality, but if you only look for the worst, you're gonna find a lot of bad stuff. Okay, but this is a spot where my students also get it confused, and I think it is really confusing psychologically, right? Because on the one hand, we know thinking about the worst helps you a little bit in all the ways

we were just talking about. We also know that optimism helps you a little bit, but it also has these interesting downsides, right? In the manifesting work, there's lots of work by folks like Gabriel Oettingen that if you fantas helps you a little bit, but it also has these interesting downsides, right? In the manifesting work, there's lots of work by folks like Gabrielle Oettingen that if you fantasize about a positive future a lot, you take less action towards that positive future. So she does these studies where you fantasize about getting fit and going to the gym all

the time. You think, oh my gosh, it's gonna be so great. I'm gonna fit in my clothes and look great, whatever. But then the more you fantasize about it, the less you actually go to the gym. And this too comes from a weird feature of imagination, which is that if we've imagined a goal, we don't want that goal as much anymore. There's this lovely study by this guy,

Kerry Morwedge, who has people either imagining putting quarters into a vending machine over and over again, really slowly, or slowly eating M&Ms one by one. And then at the end of the study, people come out and there's a big vat of M&Ms. What does he find? He finds that people that imagine the quarters

eat less M&Ms because they kind of feel like if you imagined eating all the M&Ms, you're kind of satisfied by them. You don't need them anymore, right? And this is what happens with certain kinds of positive fantasies. We imagine that we already went to the gym and got all the benefits.

It's like, well, I don't need to put action into that. I think it's kind of like you took, like obviously the ancients were saying, like you should do things for the right reasons, not for necessarily the external rewards. But if part of what is motivating us is the reward and you have stolen it, like you've taken it on credit, you've fantasized it into existence,

you have decreased some of your motivation to do that thing. Like I've always, I try not to talk about like a book that I'm working on. I prefer to spend all the energy doing it. Yes. Because I find that that depletes the motivation to do the hard, uncomfortable day to dayness of the thing. It's easier to live in the fantasy world

than the messy making it world. Right, or you can use your imagination to recognize, okay, if that's my goal, what's it really gonna take, right? This is kind of like, you know, when you go to the baths, like know what's gonna happen at the baths, right? If you have this goal, know what it takes to get there. And I think that was another really rich, I associate that with Epictetus,

but correct me if I'm getting the wrong stoic here. Yeah, where it's kind of like, you know, if you want that goal, you wanna be like the fit person, imagine the plan toic here. Where it's kind of like, if you want that goal, you want to be like the fit person, imagine the plan to get there. And it turns out from the research that that's a thing that works really well. If you imagine, okay, I want to get fit, say, well then I have to go to the gym every day,

I have to put my sneakers out, I really have to commit to this. That helps you know what the plan is because you kind of rehearsed it, it's not as bad or not as much of a pain in the butt. But also sometimes you do that and you're like, actually, there's no way I'm gonna get my act together to do that.

And then you can have a more appropriate goal, right? You can kind of use your imagination to figure out which goals are appropriate. Well, I think of, we were talking about testing the stoic ideas like in the laboratory. Person who did that most recently is Stockdale. Stockdale gets a graduate degree in ancient philosophy at Stanford, the Navy sends him, and then he gets thrown into a real Stanford prison experiment.

To be fair, most psychologists don't go as hard on Stockdale. Yeah. And there he's basically testing a lot of these ideas. He's also really well-steeped in the sort of literature as well. But what I think is fascinating is they asked him after, you know, who had the hardest time? And he said it was the optimists, because there was this sense that they would get out by the they they were always falling for the hey, by Christmas or, you know, news stories would trickle back to them or they'd hear things in letters, you know, and arms justice is coming. And then when that wouldn't happen, they were crushed. And what's interesting in his memoirs, which obviously he wrote after the fact, but you can even see it memoirs, which obviously he wrote after the fact,

but you can even see it in some of the letters he wrote at the time, he kept saying like, it's gonna be at least another two years. It's gonna be at least, like he was, as it turned out, underestimating how long it would take, but he was not at all convinced that this would happen quickly. And so there's something about optimism

that can set you up to be crushed by a world you don't control. Because again, what our mind is doing is it's setting up these reference points. And if we set up a reference point, like by Christmas, everything's gonna be great and it's gonna be perfect and we don't get there, we feel terrible, even if objectively,

we probably could have made it, I mean, we're talking about terrible Vietnamese prisons, probably a bad extreme case. But the idea is if you set your reference point too high, then even getting the second best possible thing feels kind of crappy. Here's another one of my favorite psych reference point studies. So researchers analyze people's smiles on the Olympic medal stand, right? And that is who's happiest, right?

So you look at the gold medalist, that person, best in the world, really happy. What's going on with the silver medalist? Turns out they're not showing expressions of happiness. They're showing expressions of things like grief, contempt, deep sadness. And that's because their reference point was like, I almost got gold. So they're objectively second best in the world, but feeling really crappy about it. That kind of makes sense. But the reason I love this study is they also analyze the smiles of the bronze medalist.

Right? Happy to be there. They're so happy to be there. In fact, in some cases, their smiles are bigger than the gold medalists. Cause like, oh my God, my alternative, my negative visualization is like, I almost didn't get up here at all. And that study has always been really powerful to me.

And I love that because I think there's a Seinfeld bit about that, that predates the student. He sort of intuited it just as a student of human nature. And that's the best studies confirm kind of what we obviously know, or it confirms like the opposite of what we think we know. But that one, so he nails, that's exactly what it is. Jerry Seinfeld was such a great psychologist

in so many, so many different ways, yeah. Yeah, I think for me, the momentum or anything is, it's not that you are going to die tomorrow, but that you could. Yes. And the couldness puts a level of uncertainty and then it forces you to make some decisions. I think that's kind of how I think about it.

That's right. And I think those decisions ultimately are ones that make us a lot happier, right? The decisions are usually to be a little bit more present, to not fall for the low value dopamine hit in the current parlance, even though it's not really a dopamine hit, but just the kind of low value quick,

like I'm looking at my phone rather than hanging out with my kid before he goes to bed, right? And those changes matter a lot. Those changes matter a lot for our moment to moment happiness, but I think those changes matter a lot for really appreciating the stuff we have in life, which again, you know,

is this so lovingly pointed out, like, is not guaranteed at any point. Yeah, the like, hey, should we extend the vacation one day? Or hey, should I blow off work and go spend an extra bit of time for this? Or should I take this phone call? It's the, it could be the last time that you get that thing. And so you should probably seize it while it's here. That is, I think, just a real practical way of momentum where it helps you make better day-to-day decisions. It also changes our time horizon, right?

Like, psychologists often worry about these cases of myopia, right, where you're not saving enough, you're not eating healthy enough, you're not protecting your future self. I, from a happiness standpoint, worry a lot about the opposite, which is hyperopia, which is like, we're constantly saying, I'm doing something for my future self. I from a happiness standpoint worry a lot about the opposite, which is hyperopia, which is like we're constantly saying, I'm doing something for my future self, right? But we both get our future self wrong. And sometimes like the future isn't guaranteed. So, you know, take the

reward, take that fun thing now, you know, you know, how many times like, do people not end up spending their frequent flyer miles and they expire or, you know, buy this nice bottle of wine that you and your partner are gonna have one day and then you finally find it and it's like corked or something like that. I feel like we're constantly in danger of corking our lives even in these local domains. I mean, I've heard you use the example of your kids

going to bed and that stoic mantra helping you notice and be present. What would you be doing if you weren't being present? Well, you'd probably be checking an email for something. Like, future you is trying to get some work. It's not important at all. Exactly. Yes.

And so fighting our hyperopia and making sure, you know, we're prioritizing things in the present so that we get the right future benefit, I think is important. I've never met someone who's not saving for retirement, not taking care of themselves, because they have philosophically worked themselves into that position.

Yes. They're not doing that because they're just not responsible. It's not a philosophical point of view. I do think this is a trouble with some philosophy. People like, they try to like overthink it. And for these edge cases that aren't real or would affect such a minority of the, it's like people don't wanna work out

because they don't wanna be too fit. You know what I'm saying? You're not gonna get there, don't worry about it. And it's like, if everyone actually put in this ancient philosophical practice, social security would go bankrupt. And it's like, no, okay. First off, it's automatically taken out

of everyone's account. It's not a choice, that's why. But like, no, the people that are not doing it are doing it for other irresponsible reasons, not for an extreme philosophical principle. Yeah, and I do feel like hyperopia is one of the, you know, people who are a little philosophically informed are thinking about how to live a good life.

They're often the ones that are pretty good at like discounting, right? Like, you know, withholding, but then if you do that too much, you know, again, none of us know what our moment is. And the Mimim to Omori is just a reminder of like, could be tonight, what I to do different if it was. Well, I, how many of these people that are obsessed with sort of radical life extension have a life worth extending? Seneca talks

about this story about this emperor, this criminal sort of begging to be spared, like, don't put me to death. And, and he says, oh, you're really alive. That's what the emperor says to him. He's like, you've, you have wasted your life. You're a shitty person doing shitty things. oh, you're really alive. That's what the emperor says to him. He's like, you have wasted your life. You're a shitty person doing shitty things. And now you're begging to be spared. To do what? So you can go back to your life of crime? This is not a statement on the justice of the death penalty.

The point is, when I look at the life that these people are trying to extend, I'm like, what? You're living like a monk, but not in a philosophical way. Yes, in a life getting random You know, you're just- Yes, in a like, getting random injections and you can't hang out with people because when you hang out with people, you're gonna have a drink or go out and have some food.

You're gonna eat real food. You don't go in the sun because you're worried about the sun. Like, what you're doing is stripping all the reasons for existence out of existence to then prolong the existence so maybe in the future you'll someday be happy. You could be happy now. And I think they're getting the evidence wrong. I think a lot of the evidence for that form of longevity comes from like, I don't know, supplementary, like what, but if you look

psychologically at the kinds of things that extend longevity, it is happiness in the moment, your social connections, right? The good that you're doing in the world, the sense of purpose and value, right? These are the things that extend life when you're faced with terminal illnesses and so on. And so it's like, I think they're doing it for the wrong reasons, they're going to get a long life that's not very valuable. But I also think they're missing out. If really what your goal was longevity, you might actually just want a happy life in the moment because that would work for you. Have you ever talked to someone who's really old, like 90 to 100 or whatever? I've talked

to many of them. And first off, they don't talk about being old, they don't talk about wanting to live longer. And they're not even particularly pumped that they're still alive, to be perfectly honest. I don't mean like their life is depressing, but one of the striking things about someone, you meet anyone over 100, they are not clinging to life. They are not like, I hope I make it to 112. I need two more years to get this stuff done.

What they actually are is day to day. And like I just got Richard Overton in Austin, he was 112 and I asked him if he takes it day by day. And he said, at my age, you take it day by night. He's like, look, if I live through the evening, if I wake up tomorrow, that's like defying the odds once again. In fact, it can sometimes be painful

if you love these people, they're like, I'm ready to go. And you're like, don't say that. Yeah, yeah, because you're not ready for them to go. But they have gotten to a place where life is no longer so precious to them. And that's probably part of it. But it's just interesting to me that when you talk to the people who have it's like, I guess this is also true for wealth. When you you talk to the people who have it, they're like, it's not that great. I'd trade it for x, y,

or z. And then the people that are obsessed with life expectancy are often neglecting the present moment at the expense of some optimized future. Yes, yes, yes. And ultimately, like when you get there, you might be happier than you think, no matter what you optimized, right? I think this is another stunning thing,

is that as people get older, but specifically as people get closer to death, they wind up being more positive rather than less. And one of the cute studies that looked at this, I mean, just talking about a structural issue that we should talk about and fight about, but it looked at people on death row, right? Where for older individuals, probably they're getting closer to that last moment, but we don't know when it's going to be. Unfortunately, with individuals on death row, we can measure it. And so researchers look at people's journals, their expressions and things as they get closer. And rather than getting more negative, they actually get substantially more positive.

Because the anger, the frustration, the fear, it just dissipates because what's the point? Yeah, you're working out, right? I think we don't actually know why it is, but it seems like psychologically what happens is you wind up kind of happier. And if you look at kind of death row notes, because often people will write, you know, know about their situation, whatever, like way more strongly, like two to one strongly

positive words and other oriented words, like kindness and their connection and the meaning they've gotten and so on. Like it's not like- It probably turns down the noise on the trivial shit. They're not like, this guy stole this thing from my bunk. You know, like, just the things you're holding onto when there's an eternity. There's a story Lincoln tells, this guy in his town who hated this other guy, they hated each other and he finds out he has some terminal illness.

And so he reaches out and he says, I want to make amends. And so the guy comes in and he, I want to make amends. And so the guy comes in and he sees them and they make amends. And as the former enemy is leaving, he says, hey, I just want you to know if I survive this, the grudge is back. It's back. And there's something about the silliness

of what we cling to that the ephemerality of life renders insignificant. And I imagine whether you're sitting on death row, you just found out you have cancer or you're 95, you're just like, nah. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, this is one of the benefits of awful situations like finding out

you have a terminal illness or going through terrible trauma or cancer scare or something is like you wind up more positive, more likely to kind of drop the BS. There's lots of evidence for what researchers call post-traumatic growth, which is kind of just what it sounds like, right? You go through this traumatic experience,

and you're like, I feel more connected to my purpose. I feel more connected to other people. I feel it's much easier to kind of do what the Stoics said a lot about, which is like, just don't deal with the, you know, just drop the boring stuff, right? And that seems to come naturally when you face something kind of existential in this rich

way. You've been listening to me chatting with Ryan Holiday on the Daily Stoic Podcast. We'll get to more conversation after the break. To me, the essence of wisdom is like knowing what matters and what doesn't matter. And mental more is obviously a shortcut to like the ultimate wisdom of like, hey, basically nothing matters except this present moment and the people you love. But just yeah, the faster and better you can get at being like, I have no control over that. It doesn't matter. Like Seneca talks about paying the taxes of life gladly. Yes, I posted, we posted daily stuff like every April 15. And the,

the irony of the people who get angry and think it's making a political point and they go, you right, all right, so taxation is that. And it's like, no, he's saying that taxes are an unavoidable part of life, not just from the government, but delays or attacks on travel, rainy days or attacks on living in the tropics, right? Like there's just, every rose has its thorn.

That's what he's saying. And I think the element of what philosophy is supposed to get you to, what wisdom and sort of these practices, okay, this is just a fact. This is just a thing and my opinion about it doesn't matter, fighting about it doesn't matter, I just accept it and move on. And that's how you know you're making progress

is the less hung up and resentful and bent out of shape you are about those things that just don't matter or are inalterable. And I think if you understand a little bit about the psychology, you can realize that like not only do you have some agency in that, but there's learning that goes on, right? There's growth, right? If you take this mindset of like, I'm not going to let the BS destroy me. Then when the BS shows up, you're like, oh, hang on.

This is my time to level up. Like, this is some really good BS to like achieve my comments on. And that, reading the stoics has been kind of a game changer for me is to remember that when the tax shows up, you're like, oh, good thing. This is how I build up my like life tax resilience and this is actually good.

This is a chance for me to like show my medal or something. And I think that kind of stance can be really powerful because it means you almost, not only are you like, I'm just accepting of the BS when it shows up, you're almost like, bring it. You know, I go to the airport and I'm like, is this gonna be like when you go to the bath situation? Like, let's, you know, yeah.

I remember when I moved to New York, a friend who'd lived there a long time, he's like, look, the secret to New York is you gotta understand that it costs what it costs. You come from somewhere else, you're like, this is insanely expensive, this is insanely dirty. You just have all these objections that this isn't how it should be.

And he was basically saying like, look, if you're gonna go out for drinks in New York City, it's gonna cost a lot of money. If you're gonna go out to breakfast, your apartment's gonna, that's just what it is. And the sooner you accept that, and he wasn't making a financial point, he was saying like, don't add on top of this resentment

and bafflement and- And shock, like what? Like how weird- And don't spend a ton of energy trying to think you can beat the system, it costs what it costs. And to me, that's like just a really basic philosophical, like life is what it is. People are people.

When you go to the baths, expect this thing, that's what it is. And that was true in ancient Rome, it was true in ancient Greece, it was true in this or that dynasty in China. It's just how it is. Like the sooner you go, it costs what it costs, I'm just gonna pay and I'm gonna pay it gladly,

the happier you can be as a person. And this I think is where Imagination can help us because you can help yourself remember that Oh, this is a situation coming up where like it's a bath situation My husband's a philosopher also a big stoic Stan like me and he constantly is reminding me like this is a bath situation He lives in the Midwest, which means we're constantly flying through OAH Airport And I think like, you know Epictetus wasn't talking about here I've bought but he could have been

when he was talking about the bath. And like, literally when we, when I'm about to book a flight and I'm like, here's our layover in O'Hare, my husband will be like, remember, when we go to the bath, like when you go to O'Hare, flights get canceled, there is snow and you just have to, and I'm like, oh yeah. It's a bad situation. I flew through O'Hare a week and a half ago.

And even though, as I was looking at the flight on FlightAware, it's like average flights out of O'Hare a week and a half ago. And even though, as I was looking at the flight on FlightAware, it's like average flights out of O'Hare are 32 minutes delayed, right? And I get there and I was flying from Dubai. And so it's like, all I wanted to do was get home. It's like the last two and a half hour leg and get there board the plane, immediate 32 minute delay. And I'm surprised by it.

I'm like, what? And it's like, no, no, they told you on average this was gonna happen. It could actually be worse that it was almost certainly not gonna be better. And here you are, you have the information, you know what O'Hara's like, and you know what O'Hara's like right now,

and then you're disappointed, caught off guard, and you are frustrated as if something's being done to you, as if it's not being done to everyone, and they didn't warn you in advance. Yes, yes. But for me, that advanced simulation, when I'm going to, you know, we're here in Texas having this conversation,

I'm in Austin, relative to the Northeast, there's just a lot of traffic. There's a lot of like, you're just gonna not go very far and you're gonna sit in traffic. And I just have to, when you're in Austin, you just do what the... Well, you go, hey, at least it's not Sao Paulo or something. Right? Yes.

Like, what the perspective goes is, hey, would you rather it be canceled? You know? And that moment of negative vision, like recognizing you have the agency to pick a different reference point is so, so powerful. A couple couple years ago, broke my knee on the ice for the second time. So I broke my knee on the ice first time and then a few years later broke my knee again. And it was like right at the beginning of this very busy period of my life and I was

so bummed out about it. And I was like, this is a time for the Stoics. And I picked up Bill Irvine, the philosopher, I think you've got him on the show, this book, Stoic Challenge. And he was like, you know, this is Stoic Challenge. But the book is awesome because it goes through like, you know, you broke your leg. I was like, well, that happened to me, like, but then he's like, but you could be, you know, blind, like you could have like had your leg chopped off,

you could be locked in, right? Where like, you know, you literally can't communicate with anybody except blinking your eyes and drooling. And I was like, oh, that's knee is great. I can deal with me. It's like, And so just having that power, like taking the agency to remember that you can find this reference point that makes you feel not that bad, that for me has been a real game changer. Well, Epictetus said,

we choose which handle we're gonna grab, that every situation has two handles. And I actually, I don't disagree with the Stokes too much, but I would say, actually every situation has an infinite number of handles, and you get to choose which one you're gonna go. So, hey, it's broke your knee instead of, you know, an amputation. That's one. The other is what are the fucking chances that I broke my knee twice the same way? Isn't this hilarious? You know, there's an infinite number.

Did the stoics talk about humor a lot? Because I feel like that's where my mind goes to with some of these negative visualizations, but I don't see that as much. Well, Seneca says that there's two schools of thought. He says there's Democritus, who basically despaired and cried over the awfulness of life, and Heraclitus, who laughed at it. And which are you gonna choose? So again, that's the handle, right?

You're gonna choose the depressing cynical handle, or you're gonna choose the absurdity laughter handle. We know that one of the stoics, Chrysippus dies of laughter. He's actually on the Wikipedia page for unusual deaths. And the joke is he was sitting on his front porch and a donkey runs away from its owner and runs up and begins eating like figs out of his garden. And Chrysippus says,

you should get that donkey some wine to wash down those figs. And then starts to laugh at his own joke, which as I do not understand, like I don't get the joke, what does it mean? And he laughs so hard that he dies. That's beautiful. Which I love because first off,

we have this idea of the humorless stoics. Yes, yes. And then in and of itself is funny. What a ridiculous way to die. Like probably if you would have told him that was how he's gonna die, he's like, that's beautiful. It's a legacy. And it's kind of a memento mori thing too. Like, you know, you look at like famous people who died on the toilet or, you know, like, just like you think life is so dignified and in your control and

you're gonna die with your boots on. And it's like, actually, no, you're gonna sneeze too hard and have a stroke. You know, like, the human body is so lame and stupid and you're not any bit above that. Yeah. And when you ultimately look at that, it's kind of funny, right? It's kind of, it's like connects you with everything. Yes. You see like, oh, there's a deer got an antler stuck in a tree. They'll find, or have you ever seen where it's like two, like a deer with another deer's head? Oh yes, oh yes. And you're just like, that's so dumb.

And then you're like, like human history isn't full of dumber ways that we've killed each other or accidentally killed ourselves, you know, it's just like life is pathetic in that way. Yeah, recognizing that humor can be part of your agency, I think is really, really, really powerful. Do you feel like the Stokes didn't talk about happiness enough? Well, I think, I mean, their whole point was getting to a happy life.

I think they didn't define it that much, because I think they were kind of like, what you want is not to be bothered by the BS of life. Like, I think they didn't state that out, because they just thought it was so self-aware. Let's eliminate all the pointless causes of unhappiness. Yes, yeah, yeah. And ultimately, I think they're channeling something I think is

really important in the happiness science, which is like, even in extreme circumstances, like it doesn't define your happiness in the way that you think, right? And all the good stuff definitely doesn't define your happiness, like getting more money, getting more prestige, that stuff. It doesn't make you happier. And I think the Stoics were on to that, but also for a different reason, which is like, at any point, it could go away, right? And I think the Stoics were on to that, but also for a different reason, which is like at any point it could go away, right? And so if you're going for the end, you tend not to have control over that stuff as much, right? So leading a life where you really don't want to be perturbed, just go for the stuff that

you can control and you make it much easier on yourself. Well, Cicero's question was like, can you be happy on the rack? Yes. And that seems like, you know, is that like a philosophical question, like the trolley problem? And then it's like, well, this dude did get his head and hands chopped off by a vindictive, you know, enemy. So it wasn't so abstract.

Like he did mean, can you be happy when you're grieving the loss of a child? Can you be happy when your government has fallen? Can you be happy when you're in exile? I do think the Stoics specifically had a more robust and resilient happiness in mind? They weren't talking about laughter and fun so much as... It's not smiling happiness, but it's something more profound. It's too diamonier, right? They're like stealing from these other ancient concepts. So it's really

about kind of having a flourishing life. But I think the difference of a flourishing life for the Stoics is like, okay, have the flourishing life and do all the good, valuable, moral things, but also don't let the BS get you down. Don't experience the perturbations. If we could just get, or just not get rid of the negative emotions, but use them in ways

to get you towards your values and regulate them as quickly as possible. In part, because like you can, right? And so I think what the Stoics are really focused on, or at least my read of the Stoics is focused on, is like regulating that negative emotion so that you feel happy kind of in your life. Modern day psychologists tend to think about happiness as having these two parts, sort of being happy in your life.

So ideally lots of positive emotion, the laughter and so on, but less negative emotion, not none, but less negative emotion. And then second, being happy with your life, which is kind of like, you think your life is going well, it has value, it has purpose. Having enough. Having enough, yeah. Not needing some conditional future thing to go a certain way to become happy then, but you have it now.

Yeah. And I think the Stoics tapped into both of these. Often psychologists talk about these two parts as sort of the affective part of happiness, how your life feels versus the cognitive part of happiness, how you think your life is going. And I think the Stoics wanted to kind of achieve both, right? You regulate your negative emotions, you come up with all these strategies

to have control over them, but you also have control over your thoughts and how you think it's going, right? And so even in a bad situation, you can think it's going well because you have a mechanism of appreciating it. Yeah, it's tough though. It's tough though.

How many powerful, successful, important people would we say we're happy? Very few, right? But I think the stoics would be like, yep, because they're going after all these things that they ultimately can't control, right? Right. But I think also the stoics,

so that's another big principle of the happiness science. Like you can definitely become happier. You can't become infinitely happier. Like most of the modal size of most of the effects in the field are about 10%. Dan Harris has this idea of 10% happier. Yeah, sure. It's really built on the evidence

because you can go up about a point on a 10 point happiness scale. Yeah. It's what most of these interventions do, right? So you can get happier, but ultimately it takes some work. And I think those Stoics knew about, you know, I mean, some of the most painful sort of passages in the Stoics for me are when they're just like laying out, like, yeah, you know, your kid could go and you got to like just be like, yep, he didn't belong to me anyway.

And you're like, oh, but like, yeah, you know, it didn't belong to me. So if I really want to be happy, I just have to not, I have to, you know, the day after your spouse dies, you're like, yeah, I'm not perturbed because my goal is to live unperturbed. And you're like, oh man, that's rough. That takes a lot of work. It's a lot to ask.

It's a bit much to be like, you know, Mark Sturlus' meditation is a little depressing. It's like, okay, this guy was the most powerful person in the world. He spent his whole reign at war. There was a flood, there was a famine, there was a coup attempt. Some historians think his wife was repeatedly unfaithful. He buried more than half of his children. He lost his father as a young man. Just think of the conniving, awful, disingenuous people he would have had to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And by the way, what he really liked was books

and he never had a time. It's a lot to be like, well, he could have been more fun. That this guy got out of bed in the morning was a profound statement about his happiness and hopefulness and sort of character and resilience. I think it would have wrecked most people. Yeah, it's insane that he didn't kill himself, to be quite honest. Like, how did he not stagger under those blows?

And I would say he probably did, but there was some fundamental love of life and the day-to-day that kept him going. And I think that this, you know, this idea of a fundamental love of life and the day- day that kept him going. And I think that this idea of a fundamental love of life and the day to day that keeps you going is so powerful. In the happiness space, folks often talk about gratitude, I think it can sometimes sound cheesy. I wish I had better marketing.

I like to talk often about delights, which are just kind of just like things in the world that you delight. It's just sunny out. This cat's here and is really cute. You know, I mean, morning coffee has a little swirl in it and that's funny. It's like, oh, delight. It's just like-

That's some of the best writing in meditations. He's talking about like a stock of grain bending under its own weight. He talks about the brow of a lion. My favorite delight one, he talks about the way that you put a loaf of bread in the oven and when it comes out, it has this crack on the top.

And he's like, nobody knows why. And it wasn't on purpose, but it's sort of pretty. And just like the poet's eye for the mundane, extraordinariness of life. Yeah. And I think, you know, what they're tapping into is a positive emotion that we know is super important for happiness. We don't talk about a lot, which is this emotion of awe, right? It's kind of something bigger than you,

it's kind of like you don't really understand it, so it kind of makes you feel a little bit weird. And I think that Stoics saw that level of awe in so many things, including the moral goodness of other people, right? This guy, Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley does a lot of studies of awe, and he kind of goes through the different categories

where we experience awe. Like you think it's like, you know, like some spiritual moment or taking psychedelics or like the Grand Canyon. And he's like, most of the ones that normal people report on a day to day are the moral goodness of other people. Just like somebody did something really amazing and good or somebody achieved some really interesting thing.

Like, and I think this- You lose a pair of sunglasses and they're at the lost and found when you come back to them. Yeah, somebody turn them in. Or you're walking and somebody drops their ID and you see someone else pick up the ID for them and you're like, that's just-

You see someone help a mom down a flight of stairs, like carry the stroller or whatever, you know, like strangers when you say, oh, holding the door open, yes. Yeah, they're just kind of helpers around. And I think that the Stoics were looking for those moments of moral goodness.

They wanted to experience them themselves and be the kind of person that did that stuff, but they also were like open to noticing it. Plus the cracks on the bread, right? The little tiny little wonderful delights in the world. You were saying awe. It's like, how do you find awe in an awful world? Right?

Like not, hey, look, if you retreat to a monastery and you live in the beautiful green hills of China, you know, open up the window and be not, hey, look, if you retreat to a monastery and you live in the beautiful green hills of China, you know, open up the window and be like, wow, this is amazing. That's one thing. And it's like, I'm gonna go to the beach this weekend. It's gonna be wonderful. The ocean is the ocean.

But it's, can you find the awe in the delayed flight on the way there? That this is the miracle of flight. And you know, the rude person, hey, that we're not stabbing each other to death is actually pretty incredible. The coordination of all of this and can you find it in the not so awesome things? That's where the work is.

The anthropologist Sarah Herdy, who studies primates and primate interactions, has this essay about getting off a flight where everybody stands up and everybody's like pissy and kind of hungry. And she's like, if this was any other species, like she literally says, no one would leave with their testicles. Like testicles would just be all over this Delta fly,

like on the chairs and stuff. We'd be killing each other. We'd be killing each other. And she's like, it is amazing that we have one, that we get to be in one of the few species that all that happens is somebody says a nasty thing to the flight attendant. That we can by and large cooperate and collect with each other. So even in like the O'Hare terribleness, you can find these moments of awe.

But as we were just saying, it's hard. And it's hard in part because our mind is built with this negativity bias. We instantly go to the terrible things. It takes no work whatsoever to find like how mad I am about O'Hare, the flight is delayed, right? But it takes some work to notice the neutral stuff or the good stuff. But this is what I think that the kind of training and the practice is about, right? You build up the ability to do that better and better. I hope you've been enjoying my conversation with Brian Holiday on the Daily Stoic Podcast. We'll have even more after the break.

Don't you think that's the challenge of our time though, is like how do you find in so much awfulness, how do you not let miserable, awful people, which we see on the headlines or in the headlines. Literally up there. Yeah, I could pick up my phone right now and change my mood negatively if I wanted to. How do you not let that make you miserable? How do you not like the Stokes talk about

are the best revenge is to not be like that. How do you find happiness that make you miserable? How do you not, like the Stoics talk about it, the best revenge is to not be like that. How do you find happiness in profoundly unhappy times? That's the challenge. One of the insights I had, because I think sometimes also people think an additional challenge of that is people think it's not moral to find happiness in those times, right? How can you be the person that's looking away

when the economy's falling apart, the climate's falling apart, the world's falling apart? You're a bad person if you're not... The idea of if you're not angry, you're not paying attention, right? But this winds up being an interesting empirical question for nerdy psychologists like me. That has a certain hypothesis, which is like, if you're not violently angry and very perturbed in the stoic words about this, you're not doing anything about it. And this guy, Konstantin Kuchlev at Georgetown has been studying this. He actually goes out and asks,

who are the people who are showing up at a protest, for example, for say Black Lives Matter, or climate justice or something. And he finds it's actually the people who are experiencing the least negative emotion. And when you reflect on it, you get that. You're like, oh, if I'm experiencing extreme negative emotion, I'm not getting out of bed.

I'm just under the duvet about like all the terrible things in the world. But there's a statement of hope to go to the protest. Exactly, you think that there's some agency that you can take to fix it. And that set of findings has helped me a little bit because sometimes I kind of fall under that, like how dare I not be upset at this?

How dare I not be angry or sad or whatever? And that research suggests like, actually, if you want the bandwidth to make a difference, you got to go stoic and regulate some of your emotions so that you're noticing the bad things, but you're not affected, perturbed by them, right? And in theory, that's going to give you the psychological bandwidth to actually fix this stuff. So I've been helped by recognize like, oh, it's not just not a bad thing to not be pissed off at all this stuff or participate in it to the point that it affects my emotions. It's actually the most effective thing I could do

if what I wanna do is act better. Well, it all comes down to efficacy, right? Because if you are up against evil or powerful interests or intractable, you know, complex issues, the idea that you're gonna bring your best self while you're caught up in the passions, as the Stokes would say, is preposterous. No, it's precisely here that you need to be the most calm,

the most in command of yourself, because they're not gonna give you anything, right? They want you to be angry. That's actually, I mean, part of the media strategy, as they have disclosed, is this idea of flooding the zone with shit, making everyone confused and overwhelmed, making them believe they're more powerful

than they are, that the resistance is less powerful and the powers that be are more powerful, to make you think it's not possible that it's only gonna get worse, and then you don't do anything. That's the whole point is to make you irrational so you can't rationally solve for the actually somewhat solvable problems.

Yeah, and I think that you know what the research really shows is that we're just much better at solving these problems when we are not beset by our emotions, right? I mean, I think this is the thing you forget that like, you know, there's there's other cute study by my former colleague Susan Nolan-Huxam where she looks at this idea that we sometimes assume that like, if I ruminate about this problem, I get really upset about it, if it's like really affecting me, then then I'll find a solution. Because I think we have this, we're not like masochists and wanting to be so upset about stuff. I think we think that this is the right thing to do to get to a good solution.

But she has people either ruminate about a particular problem. These are college students. So it's like, someone's not hanging out with you. It's like these problems that aren't, you know, world peace and these big things we're worried about. But she either has people ruminate about it or just distract yourself. Just do something else to distract yourself

when you're thinking about this problem. And she has people go through optimal solutions and she finds that people who are ruminating, people who are thinking about it, getting so upset about it, they actually came up with the worst solutions. Then finally, who just distracted themselves and were like, I'm not gonna.

And so this is a sort of strategy I've taken with the current news cycle where it's one thing to be informed, but it's another to be destroyed by this stuff. And I think that what you actually need to do to get informed is not as much as we think. It's not being on social media every day. You're gonna hear about what's going on

in 20 to four to 40 hours. I don't need any more information to let me know that what they're doing is criminal, that it's cruel, that it's stupid, that it violates most of the laws of economics. Also, I know this by now, right? And this is also the fundamental idea from the ancients, that character is fate.

Like, even if some of the ideas were good, the people who are trying to execute them are bad people doing them for, you know, motivated by bad reasons. So I'm opposed, right? So I don't need to follow this day to day. Like sometimes it can be helpful to look back historically. Like if in 1964, you sort of actually put some thought into what was happening in Vietnam

and the bogus reasons we were there, you would go, yeah, we have no business being here and everything we do there is wrong. You didn't need to then follow it day to day for the next seven or eight years to update your opinion. Your opinion was correct from the outset. Actually, you could be organizing, you could be moving, you could be running for office. There's a bunch of things you could be organizing, you could be moving, you could be running for office. There's a bunch of things you could do, but reading the day-to-day news reports is only gonna make you despair.

And that was when it was day-to-day, right? The problem is we, like, I mean, a gift to you if you only look at this stuff like once a day. Yeah, a daily newspaper, oh my God, that would be incredible. Yeah, I mean, I often think about like, what would the Stoics think about what we are? Just like the clickbaity headlines

designed to like steal your emotions. They would be like, what have you done? Think about Mark Sturris. He's the head of this empire. So all the news, all the important, it's all his purview. He would look at your and my information diet and be like, how do you manage?

And he was running an empire of 50 million people in which information was essential, right? And he'd be like, you're just getting minute to minute reports about like cabinet meetings. He'd be like, I mean, they tell me like, I've been at the front for the last two years. They send me summaries and I read that. Like it's insane how much information.

And if you're not an intelligence operative or a hedge fund manager, chances are you are doing nothing with this information but torturing you. You wanna get just enough and you wanna have rooted it enough in psychology and history and philosophy that you can know what's what. Like you can know what's good, what's can know what's good, what's bad,

what's cruel, what's immoral, et cetera. But I don't think you need, you don't need the minutes of these meetings. You're not in the cabinet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you need to notice how it's affecting you. This is why I always love stealing all the ancients and pulling them together.

I think this was something that the Buddhists talked about a lot, right? Is this idea of noticing every time I pick up my phone and go on Blue Sky, I leave with my chest clenched, I'm ready to scream, my husband's going to be talking to me like, oh, that wasn't good. But I think sometimes these things happen, like our emotions change so unconsciously, and then we can unconsciously affect other people. It's a real skill to be noticing what this stuff is doing to you.

And so I think just notice, like, you know, did you get the information you wanted, or is it maybe you feel better? Do you feel better after or worse? Yeah, exactly. It's like, no, no, I feel worse every time I do this. Why am I doing it over and over and over again, expecting to feel differently?

Yeah. And it's time to, like, you know, what are the, I think sitting down and going, hey, what parts of my information diet can I cut out? And again, that you have a duty to be an informed participating citizen, but where is the proof that this is informing you? Or helping you participate.

Exactly, yes, exactly. Catherine Price, who's been on my podcast, The Happiness Lab a bunch, she has this lovely book called How to Break Up with Your Phone, where she kind of argues you don't need to break up with your phone, but you need to take it to couples counseling for kind of situations like this with the news. And she uses this acronym she uses, WWW, whenever she tries to interact with her social media,

which stands for What For, Why Now, and What Else. Like, what was this for? Was there a purpose to it? Was I trying to check some effectoid about what was happening in the news or was I just like sucked in, right? Why now? And this is a kind of mindfulness moment, like what drew you in?

Were you already a little anxious and that made you scroll even more? So you kind of, you know, created your own doom spiral. Frustrated, tired, bored. Bored, right? Like all these things that if we were, you know, following the Stoics, we'd just find some other way to notice and find some other way to deal with it.

But the biggest one, what else, right? There's an opportunity cost. Whenever you're spending your limited time, you know, moving up to your eventual, you know, death, right? Like doing this stuff and like what, you know, what else could you be doing with that time that might fit with your higher ideals and your values better? And the acronym has kind of helped me because sometimes I'll, you know, you probably do this day, you just find yourself with your phone in your hand, you're midstream, you're like, wait, WWW, like, I was being avoidant because I was avoiding some other problem and now I'm anxious about this other thing

and like, I could put this down and take a walk or I could put this down and go talk to my husband or something. Yeah, my wife and I tried out, like, when we see each other, you know, really getting sucked in the phone, we go, you don't want to be doing that. And we're like, and then as soon as you kind of break

the trance, you're like,'re saying, you know, like, and then as soon as you kind of break the trance, you're like, oh yeah, but I'm, like, it was designed by the smartest people with the best technology, for the same reason the casino doesn't have clocks or windows, and you just need someone to snap you out of the hypnosis a little bit, and then you can make a better new decision

instead of just continuing the decision that you already made. I mean, that's another thing I'm constantly thinking about what the Stoics would think about. We just talked about the information overload that we're all experiencing, the kind of fire hose. How's it the Stoics would be fascinated by the trance, right? There's so much stuff now that sucks us into a trance.

And I think the Buddhists had a different take on that, which is like, you wanna be president and the trance is bad for that reason. I think the Stoics think the trance causes you to miss out on so many positive emotions, and often is indirectly sucking you into lots of negative emotions too. Yes, yeah, anything that had power over you,

they would have been very skeptical of. So you're like, I can't not do this thing. They'd be like, well, let's not do that. Yeah, it doesn't stop, yeah, you gotta get away from that. So you have the momentum or a ring. And then what's the other bracelet? So the other bracelet, which actually my producer Ryan is my co-writer for my podcast, The Happiness Lab gave me,

is it's an arrow with two arrow points that goes around as a bracelet. Sometimes it stabs me because it's very sharp, but that's the parable of the second arrow, which comes from the Buddhist. So if you don't know it, Buddha talking to his followers and he asks his followers, if you're walking down the street and someone shoots you with an arrow, is that bad? And the followers are like, yeah, kind of seems like that sucks.

Like, so Buddha says, okay, imagine you're walking down the street, someone shoots you with the first arrow, but then they also, immediately after that, shoot you with a second arrow too. Is the second arrow, is that worse? And the followers are like, yeah, it sucks twice as much to get shot by a second arrow. The Buddha says, first arrow is the circumstances of life. That's your car doesn't start. That's you break your knee. That's your O'Hara point and your flight's delayed. You don't have any control over that. That's the world shooting with the arrow. But the second arrow is usually

the one you shoot yourself with. That's that I get really pissed off at the delayed flight. I'm angry and I'm pissing at my husband when I break my knee or whatever it is. And he's like, you don't have any control over that first arrow, but the second arrow you are shooting yourself with. And in my case, in the worst moments, it's not just a second arrow, it's like a 16th and a 17th arrow.

Cause like, you know, I've like, you know, somebody at work does something stupid. Hours later, I'm talking to a friend, I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe that person did that. And it's like, the person's action is done. This is hours later. And so, it's a Buddhist, you know, parable in a Buddhist tradition, but I think it fits so much with the Stoics. It's like, the one arrow, let that go, because like, you can't control it, you know, ignore it, deal with it. But the second arrow, it's on you. You definitely

can control that one. And so for me, that's been really helpful is like, is this the first arrow or is this the second arrow? Sometimes my producer Ryan, who gave me the thing, well, if I'm complaining about something over text, he's based in London, so we're often texting each other, he'll text me the archery emoji, archery emoji, and I'm like, okay, fair enough, shut up, moving on. Well, EpicData said, you know, it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things. And our opinion about things.

And our opinion about things is the second arrow, right? Completely. It happened, it is bad. It happened, I'm harmed by it. It happened because that person is an asshole and they purposely targeted me. That's the second arrow stuff, the story we tell ourselves about it.

I'll never recover, et cetera. And it's so amazing just how differently you feel when you change the story. My father-in-law passed away recently and everything was discombobulated and it was like, we weren't doing stuff. And I found myself remembering that like, hey, this is a possibility in people's lives, people die.

And was at like, parking lot or something and somebody like pulled into my space and my instant reaction other than than that person jerked, whatever, was like, maybe a family member of theirs died. It was just in the possibility space for me. And that just changed my reaction to everything. Instead of being pissy, I had compassion. I'm like, oh my gosh, cut in line, do this thing.

And that just feels so different. But it really was just a slight change in the possibility space, which handle I was grabbing to interpret this event. And you just realize that's possible for you all the time. Yeah, in a way, some of our grief is the second arrow. Not that we're sad that we lost them. This is the one I have to say. It's like, I get it, I know the stoics are right,

but like, wow, is this one hard? Like your kid dies, you're like, well, it wasn't really mine in the first place, moving on. No, that's not what I mean. Because I feel like the grief of just loss is unavoidable Like your kid dies, you're like, well, it wasn't really mine in the first place, moving on. You have delicious company. No, that's not what I mean. Because I feel like the grief of just loss is unavoidable and a fact, right? I don't think any of the Stokes were like,

oh, they were mortal when I met them. I don't think anyone's actually doing that, right? And I'm not sure it's healthy to do that. But the decision to say be haunted by the memory of this person is a loss on top of the loss. So while they were alive, every time you thought of them, it was positive, right? And when you saw them, it was positive.

And now they're gone. And you think of the anniversary of their death or every once in a while, I think about how many dead people are on my phone. Oh yeah. Right? Because I type in the letter C and then,, like, I think about how many dead people are on my phone. Oh yeah. Right? Because I type in the letter C and then, oh shit, I forgot.

But the feeling of like sadness, loss, bitterness, whatever, I could also feel joy and love and gratitude. And so there's this second, and Seneca talks about this in one of his consolation essays where he's like, do you think your father would want you to break down in sadness every time you think of him? That would have been like, if, if as he was leaving life, he was like, by the way,

your memory is going to haunt your daughter. Like he'd be like, no, that's, so that's the worst thing. All anyone would want is to be remembered fondly and be a positive ongoing sort anyone would want is to be remembered fondly and be a positive, ongoing sort of energy in your life. And that is, if we don't have total control of that, especially right as it happens, but as time goes by, I think you get to choose whether, how you think about that memory and what that death means to you.

And I think the Stoics were kind of hedging against a certain form of that grief, which is like, I didn't do right by that person. I didn't spend time with them, right? Like in theory, they're hedging against the regret of what happened. So that, you know, when a person you care about passes, you're like, I recognize they were mortal the whole time. No, I'm not grieving,

but I don't regret what I did when they were alive. I spent the time that I could have spent with them. I invested as much, like, you know, I'm washing my hands of the regret part of it. And that does feel like a different way to grieve. I think- And they're certainly not holding onto the grudge. Yeah, for sure.

They're dead. So like, I'm not sure they want you to be like, I should have called more. You know, they have let that go. You probably can too. Yeah, but if you do it in advance, then everybody, then it's happy all the way through. Yeah, but yeah, the second arrow of like,

okay, you lost them too soon, and now you feel guilty all the time. Yeah. Like you did lose them too soon and you could have done better, but the decision to wake up today and feel like a piece of shit about it, that's the second arrow or third arrow, fourth arrow.

That's right. And recognize the second arrow is on you. Like, it's sort of, you know, like two things, right? Like this is in the second category. This is a thing that you can control and it might be hard and it might take some work, but you actually can change your opinion about it. Yeah, fate took them from you,

but you are taking this out on yourself. Yes, yeah. That's a very stoic way to reinterpret the pre-from-the-sec arrow. No, it's so beautiful how, like, I do know there's a couple stoic, like, archery lessons. I mean, they just had the same technology and they were alive at the same time. Well, I was wondering, like, it's just people getting shot with arrows all over the place, like, Buddhist days. Like, what was going on in, like, these ancient times? I know both the Stokes and the Buddhists use that like muddy water one.

And so you're just like, even the metaphors are the same. Like they're just coming on the same essential truths. And it's very rare that you come across any of the philosophical schools and you're like, this is something totally different than any of the others. And to go to the earlier point, this totally contradicts all the science about this subject. Well, I was saying the Buddhist,

there are these cases where I like the Buddhist better than the Stoics. Here's a case where I like the Stoics better than the Buddhists, which is that the Buddhists were like really into the idea of suffering, not into it like you should get it, just like it is inevitable, it is there, it is centered. And I think the Stoics were like, yeah, there's the perturbations, but like it's number two.

Like it's, these are, conceptually, these are two distinct categories. So whereas the Buddhists were like, central is suffering, and then you got to do the stuff around it. The Stoics were like, I don't know, man, these are two categories, and we could kind of think about them differently.

And so that's always given me a little bit more hope. I also think, you know, living in Western civilization, there's something about the Stoics that is, not just familiar, but sort of practical in the sense where it's like, somebody's gotta run for office, somebody's gotta man the sewers. You know, like, I think Buddhism is a more spiritual

and sort of individualistic pursuit. And there's something about stoic philosophy that is like, okay, but this will work for society. Not a band of roving monks. Yeah, I mean, the stoics were like the OG, like advice column self-help, you know? Like it was gonna be like not in the posh, like, you know, like books and stuff.

Like it was gonna be in whatever the like tabloid magazine TikTok video of the time was gonna be, minus the terrible algorithmic stuff. But yeah. I think the Buddhists and the cynics are closer to each other in the sense where they're like, this is all bullshit, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the stoics are like, a little, some of it is, but like. Dude, you gotta get through your day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like you have a kid and they're hungry, so how are you gonna feed them? You know, there's just like, there's a sort of, this is life, this is this human organism we were born into and we have to figure out

how to operate collectively in this city that we live in. And there's like positive emotion on the other side of that, right? There's like these kinds of opportunities for growth or humor and all these things we were talking about. Well, this is awesome. You wanna check out some books real fast? Yeah, please, let's do it. for growth or humor and all these things we were talking about. Well, this is awesome. You want to check out some books real fast?

Yeah, please. Let's do it. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.