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Meditation: The Stoic Daily Mindful Review · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: As you progress with stoicism, your character will naturally improve in the flow of daily life.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: But you may have noticed that stoicism fails you sometimes when you need it most.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: We may do our stoic morning meditation only to realize that in the evening, we have not acted like a stoic for most of the day.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: So what do we do?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: How can we fix this?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: The best practice there is for integrating stoicism into our lives is a daily mindful review of our thoughts, emotions, speech, and actions.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: When we increase our mindfulness as a stoic, our behavior and speech will naturally change in such a way that reduces psychological distress.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Beyond this, our emotional dependence on externals will reduce and we will no longer be enslaved to things outside of our control.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So now let's begin a session of the Stoic Daily Mindful Review.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: Sitting comfortably, take a moment to let everything in with eyes open.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: All you need to do is allow and receive the sensations, the sensory data that comes to you.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Drop back and just allow an expansive open awareness of sounds near and far.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Light, shadow, movement, sensations subtle and strong and thoughts positive, neutral and negative.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'd like to invite you to close your eyes and just ground yourself where you're sitting.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: The first part of the daily Stoic Mindful Review requires us to choose an event that stands out to us as being particularly unwise.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: This event could have been a situation where you were attached or controlled by your desire or aversion, a situation where you allowed anger to sweep you away.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you refused to use any form of rational judgment to assess a situation.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: It can be anything you choose.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Use your intuition.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Usually these events are linked to turmoil or agitation and caused some unnecessary suffering either to yourself or someone else.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: And you can also examine thoughts, because even thoughts that are not acted upon can still cause harm to us or other people.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: If you are struggling to think of an event, just imagine your life over the last day or the last week, and ask yourself, if I were a wise stoic sage, what would I have done differently?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you still struggle to find any event, you can choose events from much longer ago.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: This still works excellently as a training device.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now that you have this event in mind, evoke all of the details.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Broad details and fine details, random details and significant details.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Where were you?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: What were you doing?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: What were you wearing?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: How was your mood?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Who were you with?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: What were you planning to do next?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: What were you doing before?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: What things were you into at the time?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: What was important to you back then?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Evoke all of the details.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Try as best as you can to put yourself back in that emotional space that you were then?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: And you've evoked the details, the next phase is to ask yourself how self aware you were.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Was stoicism in your mind?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Were you attempting to act with wisdom and rational judgment in the moment?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Were you viewing the situation from above?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: Did you pause and pay attention?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: What was your overall level of awareness?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: And now thinking about the cause and effect of the situation, what were the consequences of your behavior or thoughts, both immediately in the moment, and perhaps longer over time for you and the people involved.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: You can even ask yourself how this event may impact people who weren't even directly there, other people in your life that weren't directly involved.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now that you have a clearer picture of the event, your level of self-awareness, and the consequences, do you think there are any obvious ways you could have acted differently?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: The goal is to cultivate wisdom and virtue, excellence of character.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd like to ask you, if you regret any of your speech or actions, would you have preferred to have responded differently?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Would greater awareness have improved the outcome?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's okay to feel regret during this exercise, to channel that emotion, to help you make better decisions in the future.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you can now use this moment to bring a strong intention, to be more mindful in similar situations in the future.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Make a strong commitment now.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Make a promise to yourself now that you vow never to break again.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is of course a long-term commitment, but there are things we can do immediately after this guided reflection is over.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Are there any things you can do immediately to make amends, to make things a little bit better?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a message you can send, an action you can take?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Anything that will step you in the right direction to negate some of the harm that was caused by your lack of wisdom.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And remember, we are not blaming ourselves or feeling guilty.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Most likely there were also things you did very well, and you need to acknowledge that too.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: What we are doing is using a wise kind of regret.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: We are acknowledging what we could have done differently and how we would like to act in the future.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: The final stage and arguably the most important stage of the stoic mindful review will be to look at our intentions behind the behavior.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Going back to the event again, what was your deepest intention?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Were you driven by any kind of selfish desire or irrational thinking?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: What was driving you to act in that way?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Try to detect all of the subtle intentions that were motivating your actions and thoughts.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Let's now reflect on how this craving or attachment or delusion could be replaced with more virtuous intentions such as generosity, courage, discipline, tolerance, and clarity.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Let's now reenact the situation in our mind, but this time we will do wise action.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: We will do the things that we think we should have done back then, but didn't.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: We will act in a way that doesn't make us regret the situation.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: We will act virtuously.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: So run the event through in your mind now, and this time act in a way that you are pleased about.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: By practicing these steps regularly, you will dramatically increase the wisdom you bring to your ordinary life.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Eventually, situations that stir up strong emotions in you will act as a kind of stoic alarm, at which point your stoic training will come fully online.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: The very act of doing this stoic mindful review is virtuous.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to thank you for taking the time out today to develop your character in this way.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: I encourage you to do this session regularly and try as best you can to take the lessons that you've learned here into life.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'll see you in the next section of the Stoic Handbook Meditations.