The Stoic Approach To Radical Gratitude Equals Happiness

In this workshop, participants are introduced to the transformative concept of viewing adversity as a privilege. Drawing from the teachings of the ancient Stoics and philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, the session delves into the power of radical gratitude. The workshop challenges conventional perspectives on suffering and hardship, suggesting that enduring adversity can be a testament to one's strength and character. By comparing our lives to those of others and reflecting on the challenges faced by our ancestors, participants are encouraged to cultivate a deeper appreciation for their current circumstances. Through a blend of philosophical insights, personal reflections, and practical exercises, attendees are guided toward embracing life's challenges as opportunities for growth and self-improvement.

Transcript

So,

The main theme of this workshop is seeing adversity as privilege.

That's the main theme of this.

I want to start with a quote.

And this is a quote that I want you to tell me what you think it's about.

It's an unusual quote.

It's not the kind of quote that you would typically hear.

It's by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

And he says,

To those human beings who are of any concern to me,

I wish suffering,

Desolation,

Sickness,

Ill-treatment,

Indignities.

I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt,

The torture of self-mistrust,

The wretchedness of the vanquished.

I have no pity for them because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not,

That one endures.

I mean,

Obviously,

He doesn't sound like he would be the best person at a party.

He's wishing suffering and desolation and sickness on all of his friends.

But to him,

That's actually a very powerful thing,

Something that is good.

So,

What do you think that means?

Why would he want to inflict those things upon his friends?

Does anyone have a gratitude practice?

Has anyone practiced gratitude in the past?

You know,

Like the whole writing five things down every night that you feel grateful for.

The five-minute journal is a really popular method.

I'm not against regular gratitude.

Regular gratitude practice is still something that I do.

In my morning journal,

I write down things that I feel grateful for,

People that I feel grateful for,

Objects that I feel grateful for.

I think it's a really powerful practice.

There was a landmark study done by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough.

And they found that when they got people to write down at least five things that they were grateful for,

Thankful for each night,

They had a significantly higher mental well-being and physical.

Their immune system was higher,

Too.

When they infected them with a type of bacteria,

They actually responded better.

And they compared this group to people who wrote down hassles,

People who wrote down random things.

So,

There's a lot of power in the science of gratitude and regular gratitude journaling.

But I think it has its limitations.

Okay,

So typically when you do a gratitude journal,

You're sitting there and you think,

Okay,

What am I thankful for?

Well,

You know,

This person is great.

Okay,

Write that down.

This meal that I had was lovely.

Write that down.

Where I'd like to expand upon is,

And I call this radical gratitude.

And this is the main difference between standard self-improvement type of gratitude and the stoic approach to gratitude,

Is that the stoics would encourage us to feel a deep sense of gratitude,

Not just over the nice things,

Over the rainbows and the sunsets,

But over everything.

To feel a sense of gratitude about all emotions that we feel,

About all events that we experience.

Why?

Because that's the way it is.

To feel anything else other than a sense of gratitude for what it is,

What is presenting you,

And to not be looking at the benefit that it can derive is sort of missing the point.

This isn't to say that you can't feel upset and you can't feel sad.

A stoic would say,

Well,

You feel anxious,

Right?

You feel really anxious.

How can you be grateful that you feel anxious?

How can you become anxiety's friend?

Okay,

So that's what radical gratitude is about.

I like to practice martial arts,

Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

And I think that any kind of martial art is a very good model for learning and self-improvement.

The image that I like,

The analogy that I like is if you take the substance iron ore,

Found under the ground,

If you take it,

It's a very kind of humble material.

It's just like,

It doesn't look like much.

It's like a lump.

If you stress that iron ore and you add to it,

And you stress it and you add to it,

And you stress it and add to it,

Eventually that will become steel.

And if you keep refining steel,

It will eventually become like a katana.

And that humble iron ore can eventually,

Through stress and through addition,

Which could be thought of as knowledge,

Can become a steel blade that can cut through anything.

And that is the stoic approach.

We need stress as well as addition.

A lot of us want the knowledge,

But we don't want to have the stress.

The stoics did see adversity as a privilege,

As the stress to their iron ore,

Which would eventually allow them to become a blade.

So this is Epictetus writing in the handbook.

For every challenge,

Remember the resources you have within you to cope with it.

Provoked by the sight of a handsome man or a beautiful woman,

You will discover within you the contrary power of self-restraint.

Faced with pain,

You will discover the power of endurance.

If you are insulted,

You will discover patience.

In time,

You will grow to be confident that there is not a single impression that you will not have the moral means to tolerate.

So what are you saying here?

We can go into this.

So when you are insulted,

You have an opportunity.

You have option A,

To get angry about it,

To be upset about it,

To flip out about it,

Which you will then probably later regret.

Or you have option B,

Which is,

This is an opportunity for me to have patience,

To practice with this.

So in effect,

An insult becomes an opportunity to hone your patience.

If you are faced with pain,

You discover the power of endurance.

Again,

You feel pain.

You can say,

Poor me,

I hate this.

I wish this pain would go away.

Or you can say,

Well,

This pain is a really good opportunity for me to be mindful with it,

To practice enduring it.

Provoked by the sight of a handsome man or a beautiful woman,

You will discover within you the contrary power of self-restraint.

Again,

You can get completely lost in kind of obsessive thinking and fantastical thinking and get consumed by lust,

Or you can practice self-restraint.

Now,

Yeah,

I don't want to get into rights and wrongs with this stuff,

But the point is that whenever you feel an intensely powerful emotion that you don't think is going to serve you,

That is an opportunity to practice the opposite.

And so this would be an example of a flowchart.

So you have an experience,

And then you have a challenge with three Ls in.

You have a challenge from that experience,

Which you can then decide what to do with it.

You can react with vice,

Which means poor character,

Which will then form a habit.

You keep practicing with more vice in the future,

Or you can respond with virtue,

With courage,

Justice,

Wisdom,

Discipline,

And then you become more and more likely to repeat that in the future.

And this quote by Marcus Aurelius from the Meditations,

To me,

Encapsulates this very idea.

And it's kind of counterintuitive.

Not many people think like this,

But it is a very powerful way to think.

So he writes,

How unfortunate I am that this has happened to me.

Not at all,

Rather,

How fortunate I am that although this has happened to me,

I'm still unhurt,

Neither broken by the present nor dreading what is to come.

But something of this sort might have happened to anyone,

But not everyone will remain unhurt in spite of it.

Remember then that on each occasion that might lead you to grief,

To make use of this idea.

This is no misfortune.

To bear it nobly,

Rather,

Is good fortune.

So what he's saying is that when something,

Quote unquote,

Bad by most of our standards happened to us,

That is not actually bad.

In fact,

The ability to handle it skillfully with skillful means,

That is good fortune because it's an opportunity for us to practice virtue.

And this is what the,

You know,

People talk about the spiritual warrior.

What is the spiritual warrior?

The spiritual warrior is someone who's training,

Who's practicing mindfulness,

Stoicism,

Doing various kinds of practices,

So that when they do meet difficult circumstances,

They're able to act courageously and turn the misfortune or the grief into something positive.

So there's a Buddhist nun,

Pema Chodron,

She writes about,

She actually looks forward to experiencing things like depression and anxiety because she can then use it as practice.

So it's a very counterintuitive thing,

But most people,

They want to get rid of these emotions.

When she feels it,

She's like,

Oh,

Okay,

I can be mindful of this.

I can really sit with it.

I can explore it.

Oh,

Where is this emotion?

What color is it?

Where is it coming from?

And then by doing that and really sitting with it,

She can learn to overcome it and to master it.

Another quote by Seneca on the same theme,

Toil summons the best men.

The Senate is often kept in session the whole day long,

Though all the while every worthless fellow is either enjoying his leisure at the recreation ground or lurking in a tavern or wasting his time in some gathering.

The same thing happens in the world at large.

Good men work,

Spend and are spent.

And they do so willingly.

Fortune does not drag them.

They follow it and keep step.

So this is a very,

Very anti-victimhood mentality.

The Stoics were totally against,

You know,

Having the mindset of I'm a victim of my circumstances.

In fact,

They say that fortune does not drag good people down.

Instead they follow it and they keep up with it.

So going back to the Nietzsche quote,

The key idea here is that yes,

Suffering isn't great.

You know,

Some people like to romanticize about suffering,

You know,

Like,

I don't know,

Like you tell people you're like certain spiritual people that you're having a really great day and they don't want to hear about it.

You tell them that you're having a difficult day and they kind of like latch onto it.

You know,

They really,

They really find like suffering to be like a juicy topic,

Which is fine.

You know,

It is,

But Nietzsche's point,

Isn't that suffering in itself is great,

But enduring and overcoming it is an opportunity to exhibit greatness.

Endurance is greatness.

And we know this because of the movies that we watch.

So there are some notes here.

Imagine you go to the cinema,

Right?

I don't know how expensive it is these days,

But you pay money,

You buy popcorn,

You get a drink,

And then you sit there and you watch the film.

And then the story is the main character gets everything they want for two hours.

It's just like,

Really?

Like that's it?

That's the film?

You know,

There's no struggle.

There's no challenge.

There's no conflict.

There's no drama.

There's no overcoming.

It's just,

You know,

The main character wanted to get this mission,

Achieve this mission.

Okay.

They get it within three minutes.

It would be a terrible film.

Like the essence of good drama is conflict.

It can be internal conflict,

External conflict.

And so one of the frames that the ancient Stoics had,

And this is a frame that I want us to explore too.

They thought they weren't necessarily religious,

But they played around with this idea that there was a Stoic God.

Okay.

Now you can be completely like an atheist.

You don't have to believe in any gods to play around with this frame.

And they sometimes thought that this Stoic God wanted to push them into challenging situations.

Just like we want to push our favorite characters into challenging situations when we watch them in a film or a TV program,

Because ultimately we want to see them overcome the conflict.

Okay.

So,

You know,

Think of the TV shows and movies.

You like,

You want to see the characters struggle,

But eventually overcome.

And so they would sometimes play around with this idea.

Imagine if a Stoic God had presented this problem to me and they were out there,

You can call it nature or the universe.

How would I overcome this?

Like a character in a play or a film that I like.

And I say,

That could be a useful frame that completely changes how you experience setbacks and suffering.

So let's,

Let's do,

Do a little reflection.

You can,

You can just think about this.

You can journal about it.

You can write about it in the,

In the chat box,

Whatever comes up.

So bring to mind an experience that you've had in the last month or two months that has been difficult.

It could be something small,

Something big,

You know,

You don't have to tell anyone,

But just something that kind of was like,

Oh,

Okay.

That was difficult.

Think back to how you initially framed the event,

You know,

Were there any automatic thoughts that were coming up?

Like examples would be I'll never get over this or,

You know,

Like sort of,

This is terrible or,

You know,

Feelings of like making a catastrophe out of it could be,

Could be the case or making it black and white,

All or nothing.

Maybe mind reading or so-and-so hates me making things permanent.

In your mind.

So how did you frame this event when it first happened now kind of time traveled back in your mind and imagine the same thing happening now,

But with one difference,

Imagine if before this event happened,

Someone had told you,

Or a stoic God had spoken to you.

And they said to you that I really believe in you.

I think you're capable of much more.

And I'm going to be presenting very difficult challenges to you because I want to see you overcome them.

I want to see you be able to thrive and rise as a result of overcoming these in knowing that a week later,

This event happened.

Would you frame it exactly the same way?

I mean,

Maybe you would,

Right?

I don't know.

Or would there be any difference of sort of softening around the,

The,

The emotions.

And then the follow-up question is,

Would you have been more likely to solve the problem if you were thinking about it in this sort of stoic God frame way or less likely because in my experience,

When you make a catastrophe out of things,

You're not really the best problem solver in the midst of despair,

Right?

You're kind of caught up in stuff.

You're kind of panicky.

So that's something that you can think about.

And it can be a fun sort of game that you play where you kind of zoom out for a minute and go,

Okay,

Imagine I'm the character in this in this film and I'm presented with this,

This problem.

How am I going to overcome that?

How,

What creative ways can I,

Can I overcome this with?

And when,

When we go into getting to know people,

This is something that I did a lot of reading on storytelling and script writing when I was doing filmmaking in university.

And one of the books I read,

They,

They said that to really get to know a character,

You need to see them under pressure,

Right?

So imagine the ultimate saint,

Right?

The ultimate saying,

They really like talk the talk.

You,

They really act super kind and lovely.

So you get this impression.

Oh,

They're really kind and lovely.

Now,

Imagine them walking past a bus full of burning children or bus that's on fire with children in,

What did they do?

Right?

That is way more revealing than them just talking kindly in,

In a,

In a church,

Right?

That really shows what they're worth.

And so that that's obviously an extreme example,

But we don't really get to know ourselves and the stuff that we're made of until we're put under pressure.

And so,

This comes back to seeing adversity as a privilege.

There's a,

There's a concept by Nietzsche that I'm,

I'm a big fan of.

It's very stoic.

The concept is called Amor Fati.

Nietzsche writes,

My formula for greatness in a human being is Amor Fati,

That one wants nothing to be different,

Not forward,

Not backward,

Not in all eternity,

Not merely be what is necessary,

Still less conceal it.

All idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary.

That might be a bit wordy.

What Nietzsche is saying is that he believes greatness is one's capacity to love their life.

Exactly how it is right now.

And one of the thought experiments that he had was imagine if your life as it has played out so far,

Was repeated for infinity over and over and over again,

Eternally,

You couldn't escape it.

That was it.

And so Nietzsche,

The idea that you have to love your life as it is right now,

You can't escape it.

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And so if you're faced with a situation right now,

Right this second,

To do anything other than love it,

In some senses,

Is like the deepest sense of ingratitude that you can show existence itself,

You know,

Like the privilege of being alive and being conscious is so,

This is Nietzsche's view,

So magnificent that if every minute,

Every hour of the day you're resisting life,

You're resisting your day,

Yeah,

He sees that as like the opposite of greatness.

This doesn't mean that you can't be a problem solver and you can't say,

Oh yeah,

I got triggered there and this is not ideal,

I got this feeling,

But can you love it as it is anyway?

And you can ask yourself,

You know,

Like,

I'm sure there have been difficult things that have happened to you in your past,

You know,

Like we all have traumas and difficulties.

Can you say,

I'm really glad that those happened?

It's a difficult thing,

Right?

And it's not something that can necessarily happen like instantly and,

You know,

You can't just necessarily think your way to it.

But I do think part of the healing process might be slowly getting there.

A lot of the stoic exercises can be done on small things or big things,

Right?

You can do stoic exercises for when a mug breaks,

Right?

Like that's when you practice it.

The same exercise can be applied when a loved one dies,

But the stoics would not encourage you to start with the really intense stuff,

They'd encourage you to practice with the small things,

Like really baby step your way up.

So if it is tough for you,

Then that's fine,

Like that's a signal that you should perhaps not use this example for this exercise and then to instead find something like a minor struggle or minor challenge that you're facing.

Milo says,

Yes,

Because it is teaching me to notice the cycles I have endured and to recognize now is the time to let it go.

Yeah,

Awesome reflections,

Really good.

So the building blocks of stoic radical gratitude is a deep appreciation and seeing the opportunity of adversity.

But then what about the actual stoic techniques?

There are a bunch of different techniques that we could get into.

Ones that I find most interesting is the comparisons to other people and comparisons to loss.

OK,

And this is something that I do find very interesting.

Epictetus,

He is a wise man who does not grieve for things he has not,

But rejoices for those which he has.

How often are you in this mindset of I don't have this thing on the other side?

So the stoic author William B.

O'Viney wrote A Guide to the Good Life and The Stoic Challenge.

He was a philosopher.

He's also written a book on desire.

He calls it the gap theory of happiness.

Most of us feel like we're on one side of a gap.

And the way that we get happy is by crossing the gap.

Right.

So it's like,

OK,

I'm over here with my with my car,

But I really want my neighbor's car.

So if only I could get that car across the gap,

Then I'd be happy.

My job is OK,

But this is other job that I really want.

If only I could cross this gap,

Then I'd be happy.

And we do this on the micro as well.

Like,

Oh,

I really want to eat ice cream right now is not good enough.

But if I could just cross this gap to ice cream,

I'd be good.

I'd be happy forever.

I'll be happily ever after if I could get this relationship,

This material possession.

And so we're literally going through life,

Deluding ourselves,

Telling ourselves that if I just close this gap,

Then that's it.

I can relax.

But it doesn't work because we adapt.

Right.

We always adapt.

There's always a new gap that can appear.

We know we cross one gap.

Great.

A new gap appears.

And this is why sometimes when you when you achieve a goal,

You can get a bit depressed because you've worked really hard on closing this gap.

You've achieved the goal.

And then it's like,

Right,

I've just graduated from uni.

Now there's this other huge gap of getting a job.

Like,

Oh,

OK,

That's difficult to deal with.

And life is a series of gaps.

So the Stoics recognized this 2000 years ago,

And they they thought,

Like,

Rather than try to close the gap,

A really counterintuitive approach.

Why don't we try and learn to want the life that we have right now?

It's a really radical kind of plot twist,

Right?

Rather than try to close the gap,

Can we find ways to want the life we have?

Can we find ways to want the car that we have,

The phone that we have,

The lifestyle that we have,

Can we find ways to do this?

And so comparisons to others and comparisons to loss,

A type of technique to help us do that.

That's the idea behind it.

You hear in self-improvement a lot.

Do not compare yourself to other people.

I don't know if you've heard that.

It's kind of a classic meme.

That's lacking a bit of nuance.

I think comparing yourself to other people in a way that promotes unnecessary suffering.

Like,

Sure,

Don't do that.

Like,

Probably not a good idea.

What's the benefit?

But at the same time,

We can't really get around comparing ourselves to other people.

You know,

We're social animals.

If I ask you,

Are you good at writing?

Are you good at music?

How you know if you're good at it is because on some level you're comparing yourself to other people.

We're in a hierarchy.

Do you earn much money?

Well,

You have a sense of like,

What's a lot of money?

What's not a lot of money?

We're comparative creatures.

If I ask you,

How is your day going?

You could think,

Well,

My day is going really well compared to my brother who's in hospital right now with a terminal illness,

But actually is going a lot worse than my best friend who just won the lottery and has met the love of her life in the Bahamas.

So I don't really know where to put myself,

Right?

It can be quite tricky.

So how we even answer the question,

How are we,

Depends a lot on what we're using as the reference point,

The anchor point to answer that question.

So Stoics were all for comparing yourself to other people,

Providing it was done in a wise way that promoted increases in compassion,

Wisdom,

Virtue,

Peace of mind,

And things like that.

They were pragmatists.

So Seneca says here,

No man in public life thinks of the many whom he has surpassed.

He thinks rather of those by whom he is surpassed.

And these men find it less pleasing to see many behind them than annoying to see anyone ahead of them.

That is the trouble with every sort of ambition.

It does not look back.

So when we're pursuing success,

Right,

We're not often looking back to where we came from and kind of like thinking,

Oh,

I'm killing it compared to where I was.

I'm killing it compared to the people that I used to compare myself to.

Instead,

We're looking forward and I find the phenomena of,

And this is something I've always found interesting.

You can find a supermodel that can be very insecure about their looks.

You can find a top 0.

1% career model that is insecure about their looks.

And you have to ask,

Why are they insecure about how they look?

And it's because they've stopped comparing how they look to normal people.

And now they only compare themselves to other supermodels.

Like,

Obviously,

You can always find this new reason to be insecure if you never look back.

And so the question is,

What are you using for an anchor point for success?

Who are you comparing yourself to?

And maybe you're looking too far forward.

So the question for you that I'd like you to answer in the chat is,

Are you living a dream life?

Would you say that you're living a dream life?

Are you living the dream,

As you would say?

Think back to when you were a child,

You know,

Like you probably had a certain,

I don't know if you wanted to be an astronaut or something.

But do you feel like you're living the dream?

This is it,

Like you're doing it.

Or do you feel like actually you're very dissatisfied because you're nothing like you want to be?

You don't have the life that you want.

Nothing is really going well.

And everything sucks.

Do you think could be other people's dream life?

You know,

So like,

Is the amount of money that you earn,

Do you think that could be someone else's dream life,

Lifestyle?

Where you live,

The type of relationships that you have,

Your level of education,

The family that you have,

The parents that you have.

It's kind of hard for us to think about that because,

You know,

Things could always be more perfect.

But of course,

You know,

Obviously you are literally,

Literally living someone else's dream life.

If you think about it,

You know,

There are people that just don't have access to clean water.

I'm parenting a three-year-old and it's tough.

It's really challenging.

But I'm not parenting him in a war zone.

You know,

Like,

Can you imagine the people that are in a war zone with like five kids that get to see me with my struggles?

You don't think that they would dream of having that?

Like literally dream of it as they go to bed,

Like hoping,

Like praying that they could have that.

You know,

So like when I'm stressed and stuff,

That's literally even the stressed version of me is someone else's dream.

It's like,

Oh,

Please give me that stress.

I would do anything to not have bullets flying past where I live.

You know,

There are many people that they,

You know,

They might earn in a week how much you spend on coffee in a day.

You know,

There are people that are working in blistering heat all day.

There are people that don't have wooden flooring or carpet.

And not just like a few people,

Millions of people,

Loads and loads of people.

And,

You know,

Like on one hand you could go,

Well,

I don't want to think about that because it upsets me.

And I don't want to think about that because I don't want to put myself like above other people.

The exercise is not to put yourself above other people or to make you depressed.

It's simply to recognize that the life that you're living is not as bad as the stories you probably tell yourself that it is.

It's just a simple recognition and it's something that you can return to over and over again.

And this is radical gratitude.

You know,

Like even the issues in your life are still things that other people would dream for,

Dream to have those issues.

Montaigne,

A French philosopher in the 1500s wrote,

In all circumstances,

We compare ourselves to what is above us and look to those who are better off.

Let us measure ourselves instead by what is below.

None are so miserable that they cannot find a thousand examples to provide consolation.

A lot of stoic ideas have been diluted and made a lot worse in kind of cliche form.

You know,

When you're having a hard day and someone comes up to you and they say,

Well,

It could always be worse.

It's like,

That's not even remotely helpful.

You know,

You just want to get away from someone who says that to you and you're having a hard day,

Right?

Or,

You know,

When people say,

Only focus on what you can control.

Don't focus on what you can't control.

Again,

It's a stoic idea,

The dichotomy of control.

If someone tells you this as a kind of advice giver,

It's not helpful,

Right?

Obviously.

But what if we contemplate on this seriously?

What if we really take serious the idea that things could actually be worse and we really meditate on it and think about it and find examples of it?

And this is what one would do if they were practicing stoic is they would go,

Hang on a second.

How worse could things actually be right now?

Like not in a sort of naive and,

You know,

Non-serious trivial way,

But for real,

How bad could things be right now?

And this question is part of my morning journal.

I always ask myself the question,

You know,

What,

What misery and pain have you escaped?

You know,

How terrible could things be,

But aren't.

And,

And it's not a depressing thought,

You know,

Like the,

It can be something simple,

Like the fact that you can go and drive for an hour and make it through the car journey in one piece.

Great.

You know,

There are other people that weren't so lucky that day.

You know,

The fact that you can go and do a workout in the gym and you didn't pop your hamstring.

Amazing.

Literally,

There are many people who went to the gym and hurt themselves,

Right?

So there's always something to be,

To be grateful for.

There's always a comparison that we can make that can really help us.

We can also go back in time.

Okay.

So like,

Think of your ancestors.

I don't know anything about this photo,

Right?

Like it's,

It's just a stock photo.

Like,

I don't know who these people are,

But just imagine that you,

Your ancestors from 300 years ago,

What kind of struggles did they have?

Maybe they looked a little bit like you or exactly like you sounded like you,

But they came from this completely different era on a day-to-day basis.

What do you think they were struggling with?

You know,

How do you think that they coped with a cavity?

How do you think they coped with the broken bone?

What do you think they did when they needed surgery or had a high temperature?

Imagine having a toddler who's got an extremely high fever 300 years ago,

No internet,

No doctors,

No phone,

No antibiotics,

No paracetamol,

Nothing.

What challenges do you think they faced that are solved for us?

And you can go,

You can go further back,

You know,

Like Paleolithic times.

What was the average life expectancy?

Like late twenties,

Something like that.

Mid thirties.

You know,

I've been to Costa Rica a couple of times with apotheosis retreats and,

You know,

Walking around those jungles,

Looking at night when there's no,

You know,

Things already lit by,

By candles and your own phone,

Staring into the bushes,

Wondering if you're going to see a jaguar's face,

You know,

It's,

It's creepy looking at every branch,

Wondering if it's going to be a snake.

And,

You know,

A lot of people that was every day of their lives,

But much worse than that,

Like literally getting people getting dragged off by tigers.

And this still does happen in certain parts of the world.

But so I've given you an example of extreme comparisons,

Right?

Like,

So people that are,

That are really struggling,

People that are starving in the world,

People that existed a long time ago,

But there are also people,

Ordinary people in your neighborhood where you live that you don't even know exist.

So let's,

Let's talk about something like relationships.

Does anyone have relationship problems,

You know,

Perhaps like troubles in their relationships or has had troubles in the past and difficulties.

And I'm talking about romantic friends,

Work,

Whatever.

And,

You know,

Maybe I asked you,

Are you living someone else's dream life?

And you might've gone,

Well,

No,

I'm not.

How could I be living someone else's dream life?

I have this relationship that's getting me down and it's a problem for me.

You know,

There are a lot of people that live quite close to you that will never have a single relationship their entire life.

You know,

It's not that uncommon.

It's really not that uncommon at all.

You know,

There are so many different illnesses and disabilities that a person can have.

And you don't,

You don't see it because you're not,

You're not mixed up in those worlds,

In those circles,

You don't go to those wards in the hospital.

But for every challenge that you have,

There are,

There really are people that would love to have that challenge just to experience it a little bit.

There was a famous writer.

He was,

I think,

I can't remember what he did before he got injured,

But he had an injury.

He was French and he got this thing called locked-in syndrome where he was completely paralyzed and he wrote a book,

Dive in Bell and Butterfly.

So he wrote an entire book just because he could blink his left eyelid.

He wrote an entire book by blinking his left eyelid and it was transcribed over many years into a book that was like a classic book.

And he talks about his experience,

But he was,

He had locked-in syndrome.

So he was completely locked in for many years until he died.

And the only thing he could move was his left eyelid.

And that's just like a very good example.

And there's a movie out that you can watch about that too.

I'd recommend you check it out of whatever you are complaining about,

Whatever problems you have,

There really,

Really is other people.

There really are other people that would dream about having that at night.

So there's this framing that I got from Seth Godin,

Who's a great marketer and writer.

He talks about the difference between saying,

I have,

Versus I get to have,

Right?

So like,

It would be something like,

I have to do the dishes.

This is,

I get to do the dishes,

Right?

There's a really subtle difference there.

The fact that you get to do the dishes is highlighting something,

Something that we've been kind of talking about in this conversation,

That you get to do the dishes,

Right?

When it might be the case that you aren't able to do that anymore.

Maybe you physically aren't able to do the dishes anymore.