Stoicism is a philosophy and a toolkit that can help us to both be happier and to live better lives. This week author and cognitive behavioral therapist Tim LeBon shares how Stoicism can help you manage your emotions, develop a positive mindset, and create sustainable habits. Listen in as Tim and I explore the dichotomy of control, why SMART goals don’t work, and what you can learn from the Stoic three ghost exercise.
Tim is a cognitive behavioral therapist who has worked in the NHS and in private practice in the UK, as well as now working remotely. He’s the author of two previous books, Weiss Therapy and Achieve Your Potential with Positive Psychology. His expertise in Stoicism, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Positive Psychology, Philosophy and Compassionate Focused Therapy (CFT) has informed his newest book: 365 Ways to Be More Stoic.
You can learn more about Tim at timlebon.com or pre-order your copy of 365 Ways to Be More Stoic by visiting timlebon.com. The book will be released in the United States on April 4th but you can get it now on Kindle if you pre-order.
Episode Transcript
Tim LaVon is a founding member of modern stoicism for which he’s the director of research. Tim is an accredited cognitive behavioral therapist working in the NHS and in private practice in the UK and a lot of it remotely now as well.
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He’s the author of two previous books, wise therapy and achieve your potential with positive psychology. His expertise in stoicism, CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, positive psychology, philosophy, compassion, focus therapy, psychotherapy has informed his newest book 365 ways to be more stoic. You can learn more about Tim and pre-order your copies of 365 ways to be more stoic by visiting timlabon.com. The book will be released.
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in the United States and on April 4th, but you can get it now on Kindle if you pre-order. Tim, thank you so much for being here today. This has been something I’ve been looking forward to immensely and thank you for your time. Thank you so much for inviting me Marcus. I’m looking forward to it. Yeah, this is going to be tremendous. And we were saying before we hit record how Stoicism has become very much worldwide known now, but yet I think it’s one of those situations where we mistake familiarity with knowledge or true expertise in the actual subject matter. So
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but they may not know exactly what it is. And books aren’t, there are quite a few out there. Can you explain how your book is different than what a lot of the other books that are out there around Stoicism are? Great question. So when writing it, I think I was thinking of what book would I like to guide me in my practical application of Stoicism? And, or perhaps what would I have liked when I knew a bit less about Stoicism? Because it’s not necessarily aimed at someone.
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who knows a huge amount about Stoicism, although I hope they would benefit as well. So it’s organized into short entries, which if I was doing a life coaching, a Stoic coaching session with someone, it would kind of guide them through the key Stoic ideas. So you can take each entry on its own, but what people have told me is that they kind of like to then read the next one and then the next one.
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So as you say, it’s out in the States next year, but it’s already available in the UK. So I’ve been starting to get some feedback on it. So for example, we start off in chapter one with the dichotomy of control, which is probably the single most useful thing that my clients tell me is really helpful for them and distinctive about stoicism. And we start off with
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almost a cliche, like sports coaches these days or sports people say, how are you going to manage? And then they say, I’m going to control the controllables. And it’s good advice, isn’t it? It’s good advice for throughout our day, and for sports champions as well. So it’s a good place to start. But then what we’re doing is we’re throughout chapter one, we’re giving examples of that, and getting deeper into the philosophy, the real philosophy of stoicism.
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So for instance, we go onto the Serenity Prayer, which just takes it a little stage further because it starts to talk about virtue, the courage you need, the wisdom and the serenity. And then we’ll talk about the Stoic Archer, the idea that you aim and you can control the process, but not the outcome. So you shouldn’t be too bothered if you miss, although you might learn from the feedback. And then even in chapter one,
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trying to connect it with my own life and my own lessons I’ve learned from my psychotherapy practice. So connecting it with the kind of problems that people have when they come to psych therapy or coaching, and how in Chapter one, psychotomy of control is relevant. So that’s, I don’t know whether that’s answered your question partially. So one of the differences, you know, one of the distinctive things about
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It’s the kind of book that you can dip into, but also each entry builds on each other. So you’re in a kind of guided journey into the concepts. It’s also drawing on my own experience as a, thank you for that very kind introduction. And yeah, I probably am as old as it makes me sound. I have got over 25 years experiences as a psychotherapist and as a trainer, you know, a lecturer.
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coach. So, so it’s drawing on that experience integrating. So it’s a stoic book, but it’s integrating the psychology, modern psychology, and the philosophy, and, you know, the things that we learn in therapy. Another thing that I must mention, because she’s been so great in helping to develop this book is my editor, Casey Pierce. So I used to think I was quite good at writing.
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and could make things. Look, I wrote a self-help book. Don’t we all, right? I wrote a self-help book, Achieve Your Potential in Postural Psychology. And I thought that was quite punchy. But Casey, so Casey is the edge of the book and she is just so good at turning kind of stodgy prose into something really relatable and sometimes even funny. So I hope it’s a joy to read for that reason. And also of course,
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I’m an English man of a certain middle age and Casey is younger and American and female. So I think that kind of, I guess that kind of hooting and throwing between those two perspectives. So sometimes I would write something and Katie would come back and say, yeah, but you know, I’m not sure if this is the appeal to all readers, or you’re not giving your readers quite enough value today. So then we’d come and adapt it.
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So that’s some of the things that mean I hope it’ll be a really instructive book, but also a really enjoyable read that will be useful in practice. It’s nice to have somebody like that to bounce ideas off of almost like a thought experiment to figure out how to better serve, like you said, the audience. And I also love this notion that you’re talking about having experience because frankly, anybody can regurgitate wisdom from somebody else, especially if that person that we’re regurgitating it from is already
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process the material through a life of experience. But we’re just sort of echoing the sentiment and it doesn’t necessarily mean that we understand it or that we’re living it or that we’re putting it into play. And I think that’s why, like when Donald speaks, when you speak, it comes from this informed idea because you’ve experienced it, you’ve seen it either to yourself, helping clients. And then we start to see those patterns sort of emerge. And now it’s like, well, we still wanna be present and be receptive to whatever it is. We have an idea, at least a direction and say,
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Okay, is this under my control or is this not? Do I have it flipped? Do I think this is under my control, the opinions of somebody else and it’s not, or is it something that’s under my control, like taking action and I’m choosing not to lots of times we get caught up in sort of the semantics of those things. And that can leave us in a quandary, whether it be this idea of a new year’s resolution and people think that they’re going to change their lives. And you’re, you understand too. It’s as great, everybody wants to change, but being able to implement those things.
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from this kind of incremental idea to achieve something monumental is what takes a lot of time. And can I just put you up on the New Year’s resolutions? Of course. So they’re one of my pet hates, I think, New Year’s resolutions, because what are they? They tend to be things not in our control. They tend to be very dramatic things. And then after, I don’t know, I can remember when I was younger, a colleague of mine saying,
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I’ll give that to the end of January. You know, and actually it was, I think he only had to wait until mid January before, I can’t remember what it was. We too, yeah. Yeah, and then of course, what do you get? You get discouraged and you get to think that this thing, you know, which might’ve been under my control if I’d framed it differently, wasn’t under my control. So you get, so I’ve come into the habit, which I think is a better habit, of doing New Year’s goals, which are different.
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to New Year’s resolutions, because the goal, you know, we’re talking about smart goals, aren’t we? You know, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant with the timeframe. And so try and make the goals like that. And then what I used to do was tuck them away in a drawer and then look at them at the end of the year and be quite surprised at how well it had gone. But also I’ve been sharing my goals with a trusted friend of mine who sends his goals. And that’s an idea that we talk about in the book.
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In modern psychology, they talk about accountability partners, which is a really great idea of having someone who you trust, who you can talk to about what you want and whether you’ve achieved it. However, this year, as an experiment, I thought, hmm, there’s a whole chapter of 365 ways which could be relevant. So what I did yesterday, actually, was I worked my way through
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Chapter four, which is quite fun, it’s called Finding the Right Direction. It’s got lots of exercises, like the Stoic Three Ghosts exercise, which is from Christmas Carol, kind of topical as we’re speaking now in December. I know it’s gonna be broadcast later. So for those of you that can remember, they’re Charles Dickens or the Muppets version of it, perhaps. So there’s Scrooge.
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You know, he doesn’t want to change his ways at all, but we look at him and we think he’s a miserable old so-and-so. And he’s visited from the three ghosts, the one of the past, the present, and the future. And it’s the one of the future that really scares him because he sees himself, he sees his funeral, and he sees the funeral where there’s no one present and he’s got this empty grave, and that’s what his life is gonna be like.
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So the stoic three ghost exercise is three separate exercises to look at the past and a time when you were living better and what you can take from that, the present and perhaps people who you know around you now who are living better and what you can take from that and the future which is kind of a similar thing to Dickens and Scrooge. If you live your life as it is now, what are the risks?
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kind of a premeditation of adversity. Absolutely. And then what can you do about it to avert that? And I found doing that really interesting. And again, as I said, in the whole chapter, you go on a bit of a journey. You start off with the kind of traditional life goals. And then there’s a kind of little life coaching session with Epictetus, which I had kind of fun with. Oh, love it. And, you know, he’s a kind of tough Sergeant Major type of coach.
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tells it how it is, and then it ends with the three ghost exercise, and then a letter to yourself. And you can do this now, you can email a letter to yourself to be sent in a month in a year’s time or month’s time or whatever. And again, that’s something that I’ve done myself. And you know, I forget about it. So then, as I said, a while ago, it used to be looking a drawer nowadays, I get an email that says a letter from your Stoic Life coach.
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written in Epictetus’s style. It’s quite a lot. So I don’t like New Year’s resolutions. I do like New Year’s goals. And I think giving them a stoic twist makes them even more powerful because then their goals that are under your control. They’re in line with virtue. And they’re probably aiming at the common good as well. Yeah, I love that. And as you say, New Year’s resolution, the term in and of itself.
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It needs resolve. It’s something that isn’t resolved. So we’re already sort of framing and predisposing that to something that may not be positive or may seem daunting unnecessarily when it’s a goal is something we are voluntarily achieving or wanting to achieve in the process to work towards. Absolutely. It seems more, there’s less resistance, isn’t there? It’s kind of more attainable just by the very semantics. Absolutely. And the other part is there are so many people that will look and they’ll say there are these things that I need you to do. I need to have these smart goals.
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But then even though they know what they need to do, they know that there are repercussions, there’s metrics, there’s a time hack to that, there’s a deadline. Sometimes they are still stuck in that. What stops people from moving forward even though they know that this is what they want, this is something that’s going to help them, the people around them, their companies, their teammates, et cetera. What keeps them paralyzed in that place? So this is something that, you know, if it was a psychotherapy client or a coaching client, we would probably do some motivational interviewing type things.
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which would be assuming that there was some ambivalence there. So let’s give an example. Someone wants to lose weight. Well, let’s, let’s actually take, let’s take the real life example that I use in the chapter on self-control, if I can. So the true story is that my cholesterol rate was somewhat high, somewhat elevated. And so.
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And yet I found myself, despite all my, as you kindly said, you know, stoic practice, I found myself through habit, still eating plenty of, let’s be honest, as my wife would call it, junk. How could this be? How could this be? How, you know, she might say to me in a less or more epic teeter style ways, you know, Jim, how can you how can you be this stoic who’s not eating like a stoic?
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So to come back to your question, there’s ambivalence. There’s a sense that I know on the one hand, that eating healthily is good for me. It’s in my values. It’s better for those around me. But there you are, you’re tired. It’s the end of the day. You know, there’s something in the drawer, you know, a little bar of chocolate. You know, you can almost taste that in your mouth. And before you know it, you find yourself having just
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And then you rationalize, I’ll just have one little chunk, and then one chunk comes very moreish, you know, or bags of nuts, you know, they’re the worst, very normal, you know, so you can tell I’m speaking from experience here. So how can this be? How can it be that despite, you know, we might set ourselves, I might set myself the goal of eating more healthily, sometimes it might not happen. So in Motivational
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is kind of acknowledge that there are reasons to want to continue in this case to eat, which would be, it’s tasty, I deserve it, everyone else does it, it’s not going to do me any harm, we might rationalise. And so we put those alongside the disadvantages, which would be, I’m almost certainly reducing my life expectancy, I might contract not very pleasant.
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disease. It’s not going to be great for those I love and care for if I am not there for them. I’m not going to be able to do all the things that I want to do the rest of my life. And you put those two together. And it’s a pretty much a no brainer as to which are more weighty. So, so again, in motivational interviewing, or indeed in in the chapter on self control in the book, you’d start off with doing a kind of balance sheet.
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what are the pros, what are the cons? So you come to your own conclusion about what is the best thing to do rather than have someone cajole you because then, you know, what happens then, it’s kind of all that resistance comes through. Absolutely. That’s only the first step though, because otherwise it would be really easy and all diets, et cetera, would succeed. So again, in the chapter, I kind of thought hard about what the Stoics say
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about self-control, what modern psychology says about what can help with self-control. And I won’t spoil the whole chapter by saying everything that’s in it, but just to say that it’s partly to do with understanding the process. So if you like the virtue of wisdom, real understanding, understanding the process by which we rationalize.
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So we kind of recognize those rationalizations and arm ourselves with counter arguments. And also even the physiology of it, to understand the physiology, every time we have some sugar, then we kind of almost become, I don’t know if it’s almost actually, we start to become addicted to it. So it’s not quite as easy, even as just countering the rationalization.
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And there are other things like, so it does draw, we do draw on the wisdom of effectitis in this case, who’s got a lovely line about choosing the people you associate with wisely and making sure you don’t get too sooty, you know, covered in soot. Yes. You know, so again, if you’re a drinker and you choose to associate with your drinking buddies, you haven’t got a chance really. So choose.
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who you associate with wisely is another kind of tip. So there’s kind of all kinds of reasons why, how with the best of intentions, we might not achieve our goals, but help is at hand from the ancient Stoics and modern psychologists. And just like you say, we’re all practicing Stoics. We’re all trying to implement these ethos and live them. It’s simple, not easy. All of these analogies that we hear. And as you’re saying, there are all kinds of cognitive biases that we have.
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There’s this demand avoidance that can be created artificially unnecessarily sometimes if we don’t frame our, our mind in the correct place, as we move forward with the endeavor, there’s a million things I’d like to ask you, but before we get into even more of this deeper conversation, tell people about what got you interested in stoicism, cognitive behavioral therapy,
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all these things because again, this is not something that you just picked up a copy of a book and said, Oh, I want to talk about this. You studied it deeply for a quarter of a century. Shall I share with you something I haven’t shared with with other people? I would love that. Yes, please. So I could tell you the story that I’ve written in the book, which which I might, I might, might come on to. But the truth is that this probably started with my mother who had quite serious what we think of now as mental health issues when I was a kid.
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which deeply affected my family. And so I think looking back on it, she would nowadays be diagnosed with agoraphobia, panic attacks, depression, general anxiety. At the time, this was 1970s, 80s, she just said, you know, oh, I’ve got nerves. I don’t know if you know that expression, but.
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That’s what people said that then. I’ve got nerves and there wasn’t a proper treatment for her. That’s the long and short of it. There was this book by Claire Weeks, which some of your older listeners might know, called something like Overcoming Your Nerves, or something which she loved. And I obviously wasn’t her therapist, but I used to sometimes help her read this book and kind of helped her to some extent. That, I think,
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kind of primed me with two ideas. One was the idea that we’ve got tricky brains. We can all struggle with kind of mental health problems. And secondly, the fact that I could actually potentially help people. So I studied philosophy, not psychology. So I studied philosophy at Oxford, which gave me the idea that philosophy was something really practical or could be something really practical and make a real difference.
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So I started philosophy at Oxford and then in London doing post-grad work in ancient philosophy and also ethics. And then I didn’t pursue my academic studies. I went into IT and enjoyed that. It was good fun, made a lot of lifelong friends. But then in my late 20s, I kind of thought, hmm, I’m missing. I want to make more of an impact. I want to kind of do something a bit different. So I…
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I studied psychology, I studied psychotherapy and counseling. And as I said, I think part of that was kind of probably unconsciously, the idea that people like my mother really needed, you know, this was an important thing. So I trained as a psychotherapist and then eventually did a specialist training in cognitive behavioral therapy because I’d come to the conclusion that
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this well, I’m not the only person going to that conclusion. This was where the evidence was this could help people with mental health problems, not to say that other other approaches couldn’t help. But CBT seemed to have the most evidence. And it also really suited my style. Because CBT, it’s a very collaborative approach, listening to the client, you’re trying to understand things, but you’re trying to come up with really practical ideas. So it’s not just listening.
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So if someone comes to me with CBT, I kind of in the first session socialize them into it by saying, so it’s first, I hope I’m gonna be empathic and listening to what you’re saying, but what we’re really gonna try and do is we’re gonna try and be like detectives and trying to understand your problem in a new way, and then come up with ideas, which will draw on research that will help with your problems.
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So again, coming back to my mother, if she’d have been alive to do this, she would have had someone tell her about panic disorder and the kind of typical thing that happens in panic disorder. And then try and map it out to her specific cycle. So that’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to map out what we call an idiosyncratic, a very specific, you know, what’s going on. CBT tells us the map and you tell me what’s going on in your case. And we try and marry the two together and come up with a treatment plan.
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So that’s CBT, which you can probably tell from my talking, I love. And I do CBT, I work in the NHS and that’s what we do in the NHS is so I’m especially, I specialize in CBT for anxiety disorders and depression. So why stoicism, you might well say, you know, why, if you love CBT so much, why get into stoicism? I always felt from when I was studying philosophy, that
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philosophy had had something important to add. And I think that CBT gives the kind of medical almost diagnostic and treatment plan for people with psychological disorders. You know, they’ve researched what works. And I think it’s really important that people seek something like CBT or other treatment if they’ve got an actual psychological disorder. But what about the rest of us? You know, who may or may not have a…
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you know, because I think it’s all a continuum, in the sense that, you know, you can be depressed, you can be moderately depressed, or you can just have periods of low mood or demotivation. Stoicism, first of all, stoicism was what the people that created CBT drew on, people like Aaron T. Beck and Alba Ellis, they read Epictetus especially, and loved some of what they read, and then created
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CBT, particularly on the idea that it’s not events that affect us, it’s our judgments about them, which I’m sure all you listeners are aware of. But they might not all know that that was the sentence that launched the CBT revolution. Of course, CBT then gave it legs and did all kinds of research and added a very strong behavioral element to that cognitive bit. However, coming back to why stoicism, the people who
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are not necessarily the best versions of themselves. They may not have the skills yet, but they really want to be the best versions of themselves. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend they go to CBT because CBT is rather disorder oriented. And then you’d probably go to a CBT therapy therapist and they would say, Tim or Marcus, there’s nothing wrong with you. You know, you’re subclinical, go away.
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And I know therapists who would say that to people, which is a real shame in a way, because they realize, the person realizes that there’s something out and they want to be a better version of themselves. So that’s where stoicism comes in. Stoicism is a philosophy and a toolkit that I think if it’s understood well and if it’s applied well, can really help us to both be happier and
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who live better lives. So that’s what I love about stoicism. It’s that, again, that marriage between those, it’s a holy grail really. Who doesn’t wanna be happier? Who doesn’t wanna be a better person, a more virtuous person, as the stoics would say? And sometimes we think, oh gosh, we’ve gotta make a tragic choice. Either I’ve gotta be happy or I’ve gotta be a good person. And stoicism actually says that here is a way that you can achieve both.
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I think that’s a really powerful possibility. Yeah, they’re not mutually exclusive in the least. As a matter of fact, they all dovetail as you’re saying, when we do them all correctly and everything aligns. And I also love that you discuss this idea about, so when I was in chiropractic school, I didn’t finish my doctorate, but when we are differential diagnosis, first of all, as a chiropractor in the United States, even if you come in and there’s clearly a mass in your lung, when I take an X-ray, like a Pankos tumor, I can’t say it, that’s what it is.
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but I have to be aware of it so that I can refer you out to protect you. Right. But having said that, they even explained to us, if you tell somebody this looks like cancer to many people, that word cancer, that becomes their identity and many people depression, that becomes our identity. And now what do they do? They reinforce it. They tell other people, look, I’m depressed. I have depression. I suffer from depression and it becomes this very almost defeated.
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I don’t want to say victim mentality, but it’s very much this idea of, again, it’s out of my control. This is happening to me and I’m just sitting here absorbing it. And if that becomes sort of our default setting, now we’re in this place where taking action or having any sort of ability to control anything becomes something that’s just a dream or a pipe dream for us. Exactly. Strangely enough, I was just speaking to a client earlier today and without typology, any confidential information, what he, what he said to me, he was
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We were talking about dichotomy of control, and he was saying that he has come to understand if you try to control the things you can’t control, you become frustrated and you can get that victim mentality. Whereas if you let go of those things and only focus on the things you can control, which is of course what you do and what your attitude is, your judgments about things, it’s so empowering.
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That’s what he said. He said it’s so empowering and you get that kind of feeling proud of yourself, stoic joy even, of being able to achieve things. So I think that’s a really surprising thing about stoicism, perhaps, because sometimes, and I don’t know, I don’t know how much this is true, Marcus, these days. What do you think? Do you think that the public?
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opinion of stoicism has changed. Because these days, whenever I go outside of my little stoic circle, people say, oh, stoicism. Oh, isn’t that all about, you know, just stiff up a lip, as we say in Britain? Yes. Or I’ll tell you something else that my wife recommended my book to a friend of hers. So my wife is a hospital doctor, and she recommended it to a friend of hers who is also a senior hospital doctor. And this friend said, Oh, that’s kind of
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interesting. I’ll bear it in mind if I know someone whose life is in turmoil. And of course, it may well be that stoicism helps people when their life is in turmoil. But the point is that stoicism can help so many more people than that. It’s not just for when you’re kind of really in turmoil. So I don’t know what you think about about, you know, the public perception of stoicism. Do you think it’s kind of advanced from
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stoicism, just being about the, you know, repressing emotions and sucking it up. And does it advance from just being for something for someone when your life is in turmoil? I’m not sure. I’m really not sure what’s your I concur. I mean, in the United States, especially our attention span here has gotten smaller. It used to be an insult to tell somebody that they had the attention span of a goldfish right eight seconds. But in today’s society, especially with technology.
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The attention span is smaller. So an Epictetus quotes gets people’s attention and they may like it or they may share it or they may quote it. But again, taking it into a deeper level, how can I apply this right now? That made me feel really good. I got that dopamine. Should there’s traffic. I, again, you just saw this thing. Now there’s traffic. Guess what? Here’s your opportunity. Here’s your chance to apply this. So very much here in the United States and the people I’ve spoke to, even my clients internationally, this idea of.
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This helps you, you know, be the automaton and just move through everything. But truly a philosophy is only as useful as it is pragmatic and the user is the one that’s applying the tool. So if that person is willing to say, listen, this is a preventative maintenance tool, as opposed to, I’m waiting until the transmission is completely thrown a rod and I’m off the side of the highway in the rain type of tool. Now you can get as much out of it as you put into it. So I agree with you. And it’s just like anything else. I think we touched on this before that.
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Just because I’ve seen a clip of somebody or I’m listening to this, this interview, for example, I read the book. That’s only the very beginning. Like that is your, your first dip into the pool as it were. And now you can take from it what you desire. Bruce Lee says to absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own, which is very Marcus Aurelius, very Dallas, however you want to look at it. Having said that it’s about, do we have the courage to continue these ethos? Do we have the idea to use this virtue?
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every time because there are always opportunities every single moment. And if we choose to see those as opportunities, then we’re surrounded by lots of places that we can get better. But if we’re stuck in this place of feeling like, man, I hate Monday. I can’t wait till Friday. You know, my job is not fulfilling my relationships, whatever it is. Now we kind of back ourselves into this intellectual corner. And now if that becomes our identity, we are no longer even able to step out of that simply because as you say, the people that we surround ourselves with.
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they corroborate that belief. If we say, oh, I had a really great day there, like, hey, Mr. Optimist, can you keep it down over there? And now even if you had this like spark, it’s gone. It’s been stuffed out like a wet blanket out of fire. Exactly. And I like to even think about practicing stoicism at the supermarket, you know, because hopefully at the supermarket, nothing terrible is gonna happen, but you know, someone could take your spot when you’re trying to part.
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it may be that the item you want isn’t available. So these can all be stoic tests. Have we got as far as we would like? But also stoic opportunities to practice the skills, you know, dichotomy of control, what virtue do I need here in this situation? Can I notice those thoughts might set me in the wrong direction and either kind of ignore them or challenge them? And those, I think, are the…
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what we’ve just gone through there are so in the Pocacho cut something called the stoic elevator, which is the idea that you imagine an elevator. And at the first level, you might have the dichotomy of control. Except if you embrace that, that’ll help. But then you can take it so much further. The second level is the virtues, the idea of just cultivating the cardinal virtues, especially wisdom, courage, self control, justice, but all all the kind of the broader virtues like like
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kindness, which we’d see as part of justice, for example, and perseverance would be part of courage. So, if we embrace the virtues, then we’ll build on the dichotomy of control, because we will be controlling the controllables in a skillful manner. That’s what the virtues are. They’re just skills in living. And then the third level, I won’t go through all of the five levels in the book, but the third level, it’s kind of
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doing it in the moment, being aware of the thoughts and judgments and taking a step back, observing your thoughts, identifying perhaps thinking traps, like thinking something’s under control when it isn’t blaming someone or blaming yourself when you shouldn’t, and then choosing a wise, straight response. So these are skills, like any skills, we need to learn them, and we can practice them and then practice them.
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for a day, you’ll get better practice them for a year and you’ll get a whole lot better and they’ll become more automatic ingrained. I absolutely agree. And I’ve met a lot of people that are, whether they be an Olympic gold medalist or a world champion boxer or whatever, their relationship to how they interact with this notion of adversity or hardship very much dictates what they do. And many of them, there’s a direct correlation to how much adversity that they can
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endure and accept and then eventually work through and overcome that strengthens them and the amount of success that they can have and whatever their field is. And you know my story between being injured, paralyzed from the neck down, TEDx, the book about it. Versity was a gift for me, but it only became clear when I had no other option and I was forced to really accept it for what it was. And you’ve talked about your past with your mother and how that kind of led you down this road.
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Can you tell us about a time in your life when you faced some adversity that you didn’t know if you were going to be able to get through it, but yet once you were on the other side and maybe the story principles that you use to help you get through it, when you look back, you say, wow, that was an opportunity for me to really learn. And sometimes we need that hard lesson to really make us level up. Well, I don’t know if I’ve been through what you went through, to be honest. To be honest. Well, adversity is not a competition. That’s fine. It’s, it’s, it’s relative to us in the moment though, right? Cause it feels like it’s so like overpowering.
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So at the time this was scary. I mean, looking back on it, you might say, so what? But believe me, it’s slightly scary. But again, it’s something that many of your listeners might be able to identify with. So weirdly enough, when I was writing the chapter on coping with adversity, I started to feel a bit ill and I took the COVID test and it had the red line. And it wasn’t the very first wave, it was the second wave.
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But that was kind of scarier because one of my best friends had developed long COVID. And so, you know, I’d come across situations where this could be, well, it could be life threatening, obviously, but it could be life changing. You know, and at that moment, you just don’t know, do you? This could be it. And I can remember having those thoughts, you know, and you start to catastrophize. This could be it.
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And then the more mundane thoughts like, you know, I’m going to infect everyone else in my household and they might get it. And I’ve got a book deadline and I’m not going to fit keeping my deadline, which came pretty close to some of the other thoughts. Cause that’s when you write a book, you become a little bit obsessed with meeting the deadline. So there you are, you’re kind of sitting there and you’re not feeling well. And you know, people, listeners who’ve had COVID will know that
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it does affect your ability to think properly and your mood and your energy. And so I thought, okay, this actually is a bit of a stoic test. What would Marcus say if he was writing in his journals? Or what would Seneca advise one of their, you know, Seneca writing his letters to his friend, we assume, you know, and just that detachment is really needs to be the first step when you’re really, really kind of
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up against it. And so I can honestly, honestly say that in this case, I did manage to catch those catastrophic thoughts and say to myself, yes, you’ve got COVID. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to get long COVID. Most people don’t get long COVID. Yes, you might not meet your book deadline. But hey, those publishers, they’re not that evil. They’re going to understand.
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And it may be that it’s just a week change or two weeks change, but most likely it won’t be life changing and it will just be a couple of weeks off or whatever. You can use the virtues here. You can use self-control, not to let the worry get away with you. You can use justice and wisdom to minimize the chances of you infecting anyone else. You know, stay in your room, wear a mask, wear a double mask in fact.
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And the obstacle is the way is a phrase that can be helpful at those times. You know, there might be some good come out of it. You know, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t say that the good would necessarily always will come out of adversity, but it might. And I think staying open to that possibility can help. And looking back in my case, I think, you know, I work with a lot of clients who have long term health conditions, not not necessarily long COVID, but all kinds of long term health conditions.
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And so having that, so what, I mean, what happened was I had a week of lacking energy, not being able to do stuff, feeling a bit sorry for myself despite my kind of strike stance, but not descending into that real depth of low mood. And I can honestly say that that helps me become more empathic being in that situation. So probably a somewhat better therapist, because as a therapist, so this is a little bit of a sidebar,
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during the long COVID thing, that there was kind of a reinterpretation of the advice for what therapists were told to advise people. Because with some long-term conditions, the advice used to be to do more, despite not feeling like doing it. So that’s what we advise for people with depression in general. You may not feel like doing something, but then you’ll just get into a vicious cycle of not doing stuff, feeling bad about it.
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having no energy, getting more depression. And that used to be the advice for people who had a long-term condition and didn’t have any energy. But the advice has somewhat changed now, depending on the condition. And now, certainly for long COVID, it was true that it was recognized that it’s more like a battery that’s run out and you’ve got to recharge. If you’ve got no battery, it’s stupid to say, just go and do stuff.
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because there’s nothing in the tank. So it’s a quite subtle difference between the situation where there isn’t the energy, but you can do stuff by doing something even though you don’t feel like it and the situation where there is literally nothing in the tank and what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to rest and you’ve got to be compassionate to yourself and you’ve got to recharge the battery and then do things very gradually. So to come back to my COVID, I’d kind of read that advice.
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But this was now it was, it was my own experience. So in that, in that huge, you know, the first few days of COVID, you know, you can’t do very much. And so you’ve got to rest. It’s a great, like you say, it’s a great reminder. If it’s, if it’s us, we want to be the exception to the rule. Or dare I say even some leaders, they can give incredible compassion and pragmatic empathy, empathy to everyone around them, but not to themselves. I don’t need that. I’m strong. I don’t need this. I’m the leader.
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And like you say, even though the gas tank is going down, there’s still all gas and no breaks. And there is no other answer for them. And these are the people that like when you say, listen, you need to step back, you need to cultivate empty space, you need to have intention behind this. For those people, that’s harder for them than to actually push even more. So it’s a very, I don’t wanna say slippery slow, but there’s never like a balance per se, it’s more about this capacity to adapt and be willing to read the writing on the wall, not only for yourself,
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for those around you, if you’re wanting to be able to do this long-term. Absolutely. There’s so much in this book that I’m looking forward to getting into. You’ve talked about some of your favorite entries. So this book is for basically anybody, whether they are an experienced stoic or a person who’s into any kind of philosophy, a leader, a performer, anyone like that can apply these tools right now, literally as you’re saying, they can read it and then if they, somebody in the coffee shop looked at them with a
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judgmental eye or whatever, you can just kind of let that go. And it gives you that opportunity to start putting it into play and ingraining it within us. So it becomes part of our moral fiber. Exactly. And yeah, I do hope that it will be useful for people who even don’t know anything about stoicism as well. Maybe they’ve heard the word, maybe someone has told them about it. As I say, I personally found going through chapter four helpful yesterday.
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So I’m hoping that season stoics either help consolidate their practice or it’ll help them give stoic role models. Can I actually read out an entry? Cause there’s one that I want to share with you. Cause please know I would love that. Yeah. One feature that I think people might find helpful is, so in the stoic literature, you know, there are examples of ancient stoics and you know, Kato was often trotted out.
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actually not as many as you’d like of knowing exactly what they’ve done in their lives that are stoic. But I was one of the founders of Modern Stoicism, which is a not-for-profit group that aims to research stoicism, which I’ve been involved in the research, and also to run things like Stoic Week, which it’s a free course, usually every October and November, where people try to live like a stoic for a week, which doesn’t mean putting on a toga, it means reading a bit of stoicism.
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doing some stoic practical exercises just for a week. And we found that when we do the measurements, we’ve got wellbeing measurements at the start and at the end, and we find that for many people, there’s a significant improvement in wellbeing. So that’s, I think it’s very significant actually, it’s not just anecdotes. But what we found, we also asked for quality of feedback. And a lot of people say, hey, this has really made a difference and it’s helped me with my relationship, or it’s helped me.
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think about my job or help me with a difficult child or parent or whatever. And so I thought, and Casey, my editor thought as well, that, hey, why don’t we, why do we ask some of these modern Stoics if they’ll be kind enough to share some of their Stoic success stories, because then they’ll be real life exemplars of Stoicism in action. And again, this is an idea that the ancient Stoics talked about, look for a role modern.
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And I was thinking, well, you know, Kato would be a great role model, but, you know, I don’t know, says a little bit of a high bar, you know, you kind of think the thing that Kato did. So what about just people, people we know? What about us? So I put some examples like that example of me managing COVID, COVID is one of the examples. Casey talks about the way that she managed to.
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to lose weight to die successfully using Stoic ideas. And so we use some of our own examples, but also we use some examples from Stoic literature, but also we’ve got a lot of examples from modern Stoics, and they’re just little case finesse. So I’d like to read one of my favorites, if I may. Oh, please, please. Right from the author’s mouth, everybody, listen up. This is number 82, and it’s on Stoic forgiveness, that’s the title of it. And it’s from John.
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Harlow, who is a young stoic, he’s in his 20s, he was in his early 20s when this happened, and he was very into caving. That was his hobby, and he would go into caves with fellow cavers. And these were, to set the scene, you know, we might think of going into caves as, you know, on the seaside, but this was like deep down into the earth’s crust, you know, using ropes and goodness knows what.
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where you’re completely cut off. There’s no cell reception. But what you do do if you do that is you do tell people, if you don’t hear from me within 12 hours, then come and rescue me. And that’s important to this story. So you might guess what’s gonna happen. So this is a story. Climbing vertically up a rope out of one of Britain’s deepest caves, I found another party.
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had accidentally pulled up my rope, leaving my partner and me stranded 50 meters below the surface. Waiting for rescue, 12 hours, in miserable conditions, I found comfort in stoicism. We considered what a good and helpful reaction might look like in our situation and avoided casting judgements on our sensations of hunger.
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and cold. That simple reflection certainly helped during our 12 hour wait for rescue in the mud. Once out, however, Stoicism helped me forgive the individual who had pulled up our rope. He was deeply sorry for his mistake and determined to ensure it never happened again. Without Stoicism, I might have judged his past actions and not his character.” So I love that story.
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because they were deep in trouble. And it’s how Stoicism could help at the time with, okay, I’m hungry, it’s just a sensation, it’ll pass, all those kinds of things. But I think more significantly for John was afterwards, without Stoicism, this would have been unforgivable. And we could think of it, you know, that is kind of the normal reaction, you know, stupid person, how could they have done such a thing? I’ll never forgive him. But almost like Marcus Aurelius in the meditations,
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2.1, one of my favorite passages, people are going to do this stuff, but they do this because they don’t know any better, essentially, or in this case, he’d done it by accident. So I shouldn’t turn away from them. We’re all in it together, all fellow human beings. And it’s about forgiveness, which I think is lovely. It is it’s like you say, the intention behind pulling the rope up was not diabolical and he starts with imagination. And again, as Aurelius says, how that you will meet people like this.
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like this today, like he talks about their nature, they may not be aware of it or they’re doing it for other external necessity that we have no idea about. And if that’s the case, then what we do is just dissect the person from that, look at the action and say this action is inanimate, there’s nothing there, it is neutral. Therefore, how am I going to respond? All these things that we know and all these the things that we’ve learned. Is Epic Kiddish your favorite stoic? If you were to claim one as your favorite.
50:49
I was just asking about your favorite child. I know it’s impossible. I know. Can I hedge my bets there? Of course. I’m going to go for each of the big three and insert for certain things. Right. OK, so I’ve already told you my favorite passage. So there are passages in the meditations like 2.1, which I think that is so deep. You know, it is just so you can read it at a very surface level as just, you know, OK, there’s going to be annoying people, but also, you know, it’s all the layers of stoicism are there if you if you look for them.
51:18
So I love Marcus for his kind of, yeah, he knows he’s not a perfect human being. He knows he’s just trying to be the best version of himself. And obviously, well, we assume that meditation wasn’t meant for public consumption. So it’s just how it is and it’s how. So I think we can really take solace from that, that here is someone, the most powerful person in the world at the time, who’s laying bare his soul and just trying to be a better version of himself. However, Epictetus,
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I kind of have a love hate relationship with Epictetus actually, because he could be the sergeant major. And if you kind of read him and you’re kind of kind of in the wrong mood, it’s you know, who is this holier than thou person telling me, you know, what’s what’s Epictetus like on a bad day, you know, we don’t know actually what Epictetus was like, I’d like to have known, you know, I’d like to be following him around and saying, hey, Epictetus, all about what you’re saying there in Discourses. But I do love Epictetus, because
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He is the more, the most, in a way, the most therapeutic one who inspired CBT. And in that sense, I, so I draw on epic teachers a lot in parts of the book, but Seneca as well, because I so appreciate his essay on anger and on the shortness of life. And so there’s two chapters basically, which are kind of my take on those two chapters. So.
52:46
I really like all of those popular Stoics. And I think you go to each of them for different purposes. Agreed. And that’s what I, again, having this knowledge is fine, but wisdom that is acquired and unutilized is the equivalent of ignorance. If you learn these things, but then are not willing to at least become aware of them or be present enough to be able to deploy them when you need them the most, then why are we doing it other than to just try to feel good for this moment?
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And again, if you’re in the beginning of your, your philosophical journey, I know that a lot of younger people, especially in the United States, um, some of them see philosophy as something like a drudgery or it’s a humanity that’s a requirement, or maybe it’s not as exciting because it’s sort of forced on their throat to say, okay, you have to look at this, you have to look at this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you look at any areas of logic, if you look at anything in everyday life, you can apply this probably multiple principles to it. Like you said,
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Epic Ketus with his background in slavery, having to learn how to get through the day with these principles. Again, Marcus Aurelius meditations was never meant to be seen by millions of people in all these different languages. So this shows us really a cross section into their soul in the process and the heat of adversity. And that’s when we need it the most. That’s when we have to be able to say, okay, take myself out of this, detach for a moment, look at this logically. And start.
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putting some of this stuff in a play if we want to truly be able to get to that next place. And I like to think of the joy of Stoicism. Oh, yeah. The joy of Stoicism. That’s an entry called the joy of Stoicism. One of the most surprising, I talked about the research we’ve done in modern Stoicism, and one of the most counterintuitive findings is that when we do correlational studies, so we give people questionnaires about how stoic they are and then questionnaires about how…
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how happy they are or how flourishing they are or what emotions they have. And one year we did it with a whole load of character strengths, lots of research in psychology on character strengths. And we were really interested in what character strengths were positively associated with stoicism, if there were any that were negatively associated. So does stoicism actually make you worse in some ways? And which strengths would improve the most when people had been stoic for a week? And what we found is there’s…
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three real findings, three headlines from this. One was that none of the strengths were negatively associated with stoicism or were depleted by stoicism. So being stoicism doesn’t make you more pessimistic. It doesn’t make you more negative. It doesn’t make you lower your mood. So you know, so if people think stoicism, it’s going to make me grouchy or
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Number two finding was that the character strength that was most positively associated with Stoicism was zest, which is amazing because it’s not at all the, you know, what people think. So zest means being energetic, being enthusiastic. And that was the one that came out even above things like perseverance and wisdom and courage, which all came up very highly. And then when we…
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we thought, well, that might be a fluke. So let’s see which character strengths improves the most, increases the most after a week Stoicism, in stoic week. And that was zest as well. So there must be something in this, it’s something that we could do further research on, I think, but just the research we’ve got means that if you practice Stoicism, you’re probably gonna be not just a better person, not just a happier person, but someone who is also
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more enthusiastic and able to take joy in your everyday life. Absolutely. And that’s going to help those around you. It’s going to make you a better spouse, a better parent, a better leader, a better teammate. And as you say, as these, these other attributes increase, we find our sense of humor increases. We find our compassion for ourselves and others increases. We find these things that used to be this huge adversity. We can look back on it and say,
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Why did I make this out to be bigger than what it really was? And that’s because like you said, without zest, taking this empowerment and moving forward, once we’re in motion, it’s not nearly as daunting, but when we’re flat footed, when we’re stationary and we haven’t taken any sort of action, it just sort of becomes this cycle that we perpetuate. Yeah. And I think controlling the controller balls is a big thing in that, because if you get up in the morning and you hit your head against a brick wall, try and
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do things you can’t control, you’re going to be very discouraged, disappointed and fed up and pessimistic. If you’re focusing on the things you can control and if you’re doing it in a skillful way with virtue, then you’re going to get positive feedback from the world. You can get positive feedback from other people and you’ll be more enthusiastic. So I can, I can, I can understand how that is the case. Well, and this, again, this is why we see some of the best entrepreneurs in the world. Tim Ferriss is one of the first people that talked about
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cognitive behavioral therapy from a very real standpoint for a lot of people. That was their first sort of exposure to it. So this is functional no matter where you’re at, whether you’re at the top of your operating capacity or whether you’re a person who’s just trying to get through a sickness or hardship or a loss or COVID or whatever it is. This is a plug and play application. If you’re willing to step back, be very honest, not beating yourself up, but just saying no bullshit or what’s the reality and what can I do moving forward?
58:27
Exactly. Absolutely. Tell us more about you’re involved with obviously modern stoicism and then tell us about the other examples that you’re with Aurelius and all these other. So the Aurelius Foundation is an organization which is trying to get stoicism more in business organizations and also with younger people. So it’s got kind of, it collaborates with other organizations like modern stoicism.
58:56
So as I said, I’m in both, some people like John Sellers are both. But I guess modern stoicism would kind of be more, a somewhat more academic organization, you know, and provides things like stoic week. The Orreggius Foundation, it’s really interesting how, because they’ve run things like well-being weeks within organizations. So, you know, you take an organization,
59:23
And you’d say, here are some stoic materials. We’re going to meet up every day. Think about how we can apply that. And for me, that is such a positive thing because as we’ve said before earlier today, stoicism offers this marriage of happiness and virtue or in the business world, I guess you’d think of it as being effectiveness and engagement. So you want the CEO, it enables the CEO.
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to be effective in their job, but also to be an ethically good CEO, dealing people within organizations with compassion and with wisdom. So, and again, it’s very different from the kind of a business ethics point of view, where it’s just kind of, these are the rules, you know, you’ve got to do the good thing, but that’s going to cost you money. This is a different take, because you try and implement that kind of virtue-based approach.
01:00:21
and it’s a win-win. And the other thing that so so, Ray’s Foundation was founded by Justin Stead, who was originally a professional tennis player. And he didn’t make it professionally, I think I’m right in saying, if Justin’s listening, he might, he might disagree and say, Hey, Tim, I ranked blah, blah, blah. And, you know, didn’t you see that match where I beat Pat Cash or whatever? I don’t know if he ever did beat Pat Cash, but you know.
01:00:50
He was a very good tennis player, but he didn’t make it to the top echelon. So he’s, and then he became a very successful entrepreneur with a company called Radley. And so he, he is a success story, but what he’s very aware of is the young people who don’t make it. So people who, who make it to the nearly the very top and you think about it all their lives, you know, as a teenagers, they might be a top soccer player, for instance, in their, in their school, even in their town.
01:01:19
And yet, you know, there they are aged 18 or 20, and they get called in the end of the season and said, I’m really, I’m really sorry, we’re gonna have to let you go. And then where are they? Because if you think about it, they’ve had all these expectations, this is their identity. Yes. And then, you know, maybe they haven’t concentrated on their studies. And so Justin was very keen, not and not just for tennis players, but for young people in general, to think about what could be useful, what could be of value to them and thinking that
01:01:49
the stoic approach. So I think what Justin said is, gosh, if I’d have known stoicism when I was younger, it would have really helped me not make some mistakes. And Pat Cash actually identifies himself as a stoic. And so Pat is part of the, many of your listeners will know as former Wimbledon champion, is associated with the foundation and talks very engagingly about how stoicism or the stoic approach
01:02:19
controlling the controllables, trying to live according to virtues, both how it could have helped him more and how it did help him and is helping him now. So we’ve got the connection with elite sport, we’ve got the connection with business, we’ve got the idea. I think taking that business mentality can be a very positive thing. You know, actually the stuff that makes us succeed in business, how can we use that to make stoicism?
01:02:48
better known? What will appeal to entrepreneurs to CEOs? How can they make stoicism live for them? It’s not just something that they read in the book, it’s something that they live every day. So I think that’s a very exciting prospect. And so, you know, if you’re listeners, check out the websites of both modern stoicism and the Aurelius Foundation, depending on
01:03:14
and their interests. The Rose Foundation, for instance, offers a course on wellbeing, that’s partly involved in. But also they’ve got a whole library of resources of videos, you can see Pat Cash there. They can even see me talk about talk on there if they can bear listening to me for any longer. And a whole load of other people as well. So those are just exciting resources that people may not be quite so familiar with, because I know people are very familiar with people like…
01:03:43
Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday and other people. But these are also people I think are worth, the Eurovision Nationals won the Stoicism. Lots of good resources there. I absolutely agree. And I love that, again, Stoicism works on any level. So it’s not the survivorship bias where it’s like, okay, let’s look at all the people that are at the top of the game that have used Stoicism, but look at these myriad of people that it’s failed. It’s like, no, everyday life, it doesn’t matter where you are.
01:04:10
doesn’t matter what the situation is or what your role is, you can apply these principles and, and there are so many people that are doing stoicism without the knowledge that they’ve been influenced by it, it’s by a tertiary, somebody else’s example, somebody else saying this, somebody else saying that again, in the military, if you have a 25 mile ruck march with a hundred pounds on your back, it’s like, you can bitch and complain all you want, but we have to still do, we just have to keep moving. So suck it up, embrace the suck, however you want to call it. But those are the times when we, again,
01:04:39
we are controlling the controllable. And in this case, the distance we can’t control, but how we apply ourselves in it, how we take each step moving forward is absolutely under our control. Indeed. Absolutely. Tim LaBonde, we can learn more about you and all the things you were talking about at timlabonde.com. Is that where you would direct us? Yeah, absolutely. So website timlabonde.com. I’ve also got a YouTube channel, Stoke Life Coaching, which I’m going to be putting little videos on, which can illustrate more examples of.
01:05:07
stoicism in action, practical stoicism. And there’s even 365 ways to be more stoic on Instagram as well. Standing, everybody go follow those things, go support him. I try to have only people of quality on the show. And I would absolutely say that what he’s giving you is the very top quality. Support him, go get copies of the book. And Tim, I look forward to talking to you again in the future soon. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.
