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Stoicism Is a Practice, Not Just a Philosophy · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that there's a difference between someone who just knows a lot about Stoicism from someone who is a practicing stoic?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because you know you sometimes I've seen speakers and they they you know they studied stoicism, they give a lecture on it, but then someone asks them, like, do you practice it?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Oh, actually, no, not at all.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so uh, you know, what what's going on there?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I like um I did maybe I mentioned that when I first started, my my first degree is in philosophy, and so when I first got into stoicism, I was kind of reading books by academic philosophers, and gosh, it seemed this seems really weird to me now, right?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because the culture over the space of 20 years has completely changed in relation to stoicism.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a time where it was mainly academic philosophers that wrote about it, and they would happily say that they just read the books and it never actually occurred to them to I've spoken to professors, like senior academics, to say, it never occurred to me that anyone would try and actually put this into practice, which seems really weird given that the Stoics go on and on and on about how you're supposed to put it into practice, and that you know, Epictetus in particular rants at his students about how they're not to be um pen and paper philosophers and that they should actually be living the philosophy, otherwise, what's the point of it?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, how is it that someone could spend their career studying this and then think, oh, I didn't think he meant that literally?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I don't know, it seems really weird, but now I I think it it's become uh fairly common for like most academics now, I think, actually realize that that's absurd.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's taken them 20 or 30 years, but they they they they're now going, oh, there are loads of people that actually put this into practice.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it does seem a bit ridiculous to say that you would just read it and do it.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes people do still say that, but it's become less common.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, like you know, on the one hand, everybody that's into stoicism pretty much now is trying to put it into practice.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, I'm also kind of surprised.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think they they a lot of most people don't know how to put it into practice.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, um the Stoics have many psychological exercises and practices that they use, and so I see there are like thousands and thousands and thousands of people around the world trying to follow Stoicism, but if you ask most of them what they actually do, they're usually that they're not really using the contemplative exercises or the techniques that much, um, which still kind of surprises me.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's some it's kind of like they want to put it into practice, but they're still not really sure exactly how to do that.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's loads of resources explaining it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Stoic Week we run every year, and like 20,000 people or something, I think, have done that so far.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it it tries to really guide people through and explain like this is stuff that you would do every day if you were a stoic.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: You do the view from above and contemplate your own mortality, and you'd ask yourself these questions, and like there's yeah, like a bunch of specific things that stoics would do to try and train their minds.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that's the next stage in evolution of stoicism is that people start to kind of really uh become a lot bit more kind of structured than the way that they put it into practice and they're more aware of the actual exercises that they could be doing.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I see that as uh as something that is is kind of missing myself, and that like for some I'm a constant like experimenter and I'm always trying to kind of do things myself.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm definitely the type of person to like sit down and try and write like a routine and use your view from above meditation.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: But some people they they they just have a few books and they kind of get stuck on it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And like uh I I thought about this a lot.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like the first book I wrote in Stoicism, The Philosophy of CBT, I tried to list all the psychological techniques.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and there are about 18 like different, distinct psychological techniques that they describe repeatedly.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's like a whole toolbox of different techniques, but I mean that's too much, right?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem is there's too many.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say you could choose different ones to focus on.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I would say cognitive distancing in a sense is the most fundamental.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I I my experience has taught me that probably the view from above is the thing that people kind of find easiest to do on a regular basis.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like for most people who are like not really sure how to follow stoicism more systematically, what it says just to just maybe do the view from above every day or like every every few days, like because that alone actually is gonna help you make a lot more sense out of a lot of the other aspects of the philosophy.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like that's probably a kind of good enough starting place for the majority of people.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's fairly easy.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can even just listen to a recording, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or you know, pretty quickly once you've got the idea of it, you you could just shut your eyes and and think about the concept for a couple of minutes like every day, you know.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: It gets actually much, much easier with a a week or two of practice with most of these psychological techniques.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's kind of maybe we've overcomplicated it for people by kind of giving them too many options.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: We should just say, just do that.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just do that.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, like just to kind of get started.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't go too far wrong.