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Stoicism in 3 Minutes: Master Your Emotions with Erick Cloward · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The following is a clip from my interview with Eric Claud, a stoicism-focused author and podcaster known for making ancient wisdom accessible and practical.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Eric's insights help us approach life's daily challenges with clarity, purpose, and calm.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he writes that supreme intelligence is knowing the real value of things.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of relate that back to the idea that Stoics feel emotions, but they try to feel them in proportion or accurately to what is happening.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not going to get super flustered by something that they deem is not worth getting fusted about.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like that thought that that they feel yeah, that you feel your emotions in proportion to the the situation at hand.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like that.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's part of for me, one of the reasons why stoicism was so attractive is because I used to be angry about a lot of things and I get set off very easy about all kinds of things.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I started reading about stoicism and understanding that, oh, really, it's just the way that you're thinking about this, not the thing.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I always wondered how people could be so calm in some situations where I was getting really riled up about it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, how do they do that?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why is and I was jealous of that because I'm like, here I am, so reactive, and they're so calm and cool and collected, and you know, they they know the right thing to say, they know the right thing to do.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: They, you know, and for me, I would be like, getting angry about this thing.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, how do they do that?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I started reading about stoicism, it's just like, well, it's your perspective.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's that story that you're telling yourself in your head that does that.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Then it it still took a long time to really uh integrate that into me as a person in my in my personal thinking and stuff like that.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, and people ask me that like, so how do you get good at implementing these things in your life?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of say, well, I kind of cheated.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Well, how do you cheat?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I create a podcast on this, and so I think about this almost every day and every week.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a constant, ongoing thing, but it's that consistency that does it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I gave myself something where I had to be consistent about it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so because of that, that's how I've been able to implement it.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I still struggle and I still fall short on things, and I still have to work my way through these things.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: But it's always a work in progress, but I'm a lot better than I used to be for sure.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's difficult to imagine that you would have been that reactive just from the the energy and the and the vibe.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I do think, but just that thought alone that Epictetus and the Stoic stress that it's not the event, but your judgment about the event.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just if you can just e even if you don't embody it, but you just think there's something to that, that thought alone can be life-changing.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because then every time you react, maybe 10 minutes later you can just go, it was probably how I was thinking about it that probably made me feel that way.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then every time you can be 1% better and feel that less intensely or recover more quickly.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I do think you know, people talk a lot about, you know, I've woken up and I'm not sleepwalking through life anymore.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I do tend to think that for me, that waking up, that being more aware is just recognizing that I am not reacting necessarily to external events at all times.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's my judgment and my opinion that is massively shaping how I'm feeling in any given moment.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it allows you to when you when you internalize that and you can truly see that, it allows you e in the moment to not be so reactive to things.