The Stoic Method For Setting And Achieving Goals

Move beyond traditional goal-setting methods and delve into ancient Stoic wisdom that has stood the test of time. Learn how to set meaningful goals, cultivate discipline, and navigate life's complexities with a newfound sense of balance and purpose. We'll explore the Stoic principles of control, acceptance, and intention, drawing on the teachings of philosophers like Cicero and Epictetus. Through thought-provoking exercises like the "CCTV Experiment," we'll challenge you to align your daily actions with your deepest values and aspirations. Whether you're struggling to make progress on your goals, seeking equanimity in challenging times, or aiming for a life of deeper fulfillment, this workshop offers valuable insights and tools to help you transform your life.

Transcript

Hello and welcome,

This is John Brooks here,

And I'd like to now introduce you to a comprehensive and transformative lesson where I'm going to blend the power of goal-setting with the wisdom of Stoicism to help you lead a balanced and fulfilling life.

If you've ever found yourself setting goals and not making progress or feeling unbalanced despite your achievements,

You're in the right place.

In this lesson I'm not going to be just offering another pep talk on smart goals or the virtues of discipline.

Instead,

I'm going to be delving deep into the philosophical underpinnings of Stoicism,

A 2,

000 year old philosophy that offers a blueprint for living a meaningful life.

We'll explore core Stoic concepts like control,

Acceptance,

And intention,

And then see how they can radically alter your approach to goal-setting and discipline.

You'll learn from the insights of key Stoic philosophers like Cicero and Epictetus,

And I'm going to be breaking down complex ideas into practical tools you can use every day.

One of these ideas is the CCTV Thought Experiment,

A mental exercise designed to keep your actions in line with your values and goals.

Whether you're looking to improve your strategies for achieving personal and professional objectives,

Seeking equanimity in challenging times,

Or striving for a life of deeper contentment and value-aligned discipline,

This lesson is designed for you.

So prepare to focus on what you can control and find peace and contentment no matter the outcome.

So if you're ready for a transformative experience that will challenge your existing beliefs and equip you with actionable insights,

Let's get started.

The topic of this workshop is going to be about goal-setting.

If you're interested in personal development,

Self-improvement,

You would have heard about things like smart goals and all the different kind of,

You know,

Pop psychology goal-setting techniques,

And I'm not here to say that they don't work.

I think they're great.

For me,

It's like the question is,

How can we set goals and achieve our goals in a wise way?

Like that's what it's all about for me,

In a way that maximizes our likelihood to achieve them,

But also doesn't increase unnecessary stress or suffering.

When it comes to things like discipline,

You know,

You'll often hear this idea,

You know,

Discipline equals freedom.

That's something the Navy SEAL Jocko Willink talks about,

You know,

Like the more disciplined you are,

The more successful you're going to be,

The more conscientious you are,

The more likely you are to live a better life.

For me,

I don't really use the word discipline much.

I like the idea of living according to your values or following your values because you can be very disciplined about the wrong things,

Right?

You can have like a hundred percent discipline and be doing all of these things and they're all the wrong things for you.

So for me,

What is actually,

You know,

A better way to approach it is find the right values and then figure out how to live each day according to those values.

In my own experience,

When I was overcoming my anxiety,

I started doing various techniques and practices to try and address the symptoms of my anxiety and I became very disciplined at those.

Like one of them was like weightlifting.

I became very into weightlifting and disciplined around weightlifting,

But it was just the wrong thing.

It's not that it wasn't useful.

Like it definitely was useful and it definitely increased my well-being,

But it didn't address the root of my anxiety,

Right?

So I became very disciplined about something that didn't fulfill me in the way that I needed to.

It didn't fulfill the goal of why I got into it.

We're going to be focusing on Stoic philosophy.

It's a 2,

000 year old philosophy,

Philosophical blueprint for living a good life,

A life of virtue,

Developing excellence of character,

Developing the Stoics believe there were four cardinal virtues.

That would have been temperance,

Practical wisdom,

Justice,

And courage.

Courage is an important one.

Courage is the ability to act morally even in the face of danger or fear.

You know,

A lot of people can be saintly when they're not afraid.

The question is,

Can you be saintly?

Or can you be good when you are feeling fear?

So the first two concepts we're going to be going over in this workshop,

The dichotomy of control and internal goals are both Stoic ideas,

And then identity goals is something that is more related to modern psychology.

This is a really good starting point before we go on this journey together.

It's what I call the CCTV experiment.

One of the things that I realized on my own path is that very often we can talk a big game.

We can say that,

I want to achieve this.

I want to do that.

We can have these epic goals.

But if you actually look at how we are living,

That might be in direct conflict with the things we say we're aspiring to achieve.

Someone could say that they want to be a writer.

They want that more than anything else,

And yet they might not write a single sentence in six months.

What do you believe?

Do you believe their actions,

Or do you believe their words?

Which one is telling the truth?

This experiment is based on the idea that if you want to know what people truly believe,

You don't look at what they say,

You look at how they act.

Let's look at how we've been acting.

Just imagine that there's been a CCTV camera following you around,

Just like the basic movements of your day,

Your routines and your work habits and things like that.

If there were some alien species that were trying to figure out,

What does this person want?

What does this person love?

What does this person hate?

What is this person's goals?

They could never have a conversation with you,

And they could never hear you.

They just monitored your behavior.

What would they conclude that you value?

What would they conclude that you do not value?

We might tell people that we value healthy eating,

And then we actually see that we're raiding the fridge at 3am every night.

According to the people watching the CCTV,

They might conclude this person actually values cookies.

There's this big issue that keeps course creators up at night.

It's this idea that very few people actually finish courses.

Obviously,

A certain portion of the people that embark on courses do finish them,

But a large percentage get really motivated and excited and believe this is going to be the next thing that will come along and fix everything.

Then that shiny object syndrome starts to fade.

A week or two goes by.

Other distractions,

Like maybe we'd call them priorities,

But other distractions come along and knock us off.

There's other issues and other stresses,

And we forget to do this work.

I just want to put it on you.

How important is working on your anxiety?

Will you be living according to that over the next couple of months if we were to put the CCTV out into the future?

We're all saying that it is important.

That's how we're starting this discussion.

We're saying that there are things we want to work on.

If we use a kind of retrospective,

Future retrospective thought experiment,

If in a month from now,

Six months from now,

We were to look back,

Would we say that we tried?

Would we say that we gave it a good shot?

Did we act in alignment with this desire to improve our anxiety?

You can think about this on a daily basis to help you refresh why you're here.

A lot of stoic ideas have become diluted and mixed in with popular self-help.

How often have you heard people say things when you're stressed like,

Only focus on what you can control?

Don't stress about it.

Just focus on what you can control.

Or people might just say,

Let go of what you can't control.

There's a lot of cliche advice.

Be grateful for what you've got is another one.

These ideas didn't come from nowhere.

They came from culture.

Originally,

These ideas could be found in ancient Stoicism.

The ancient Stoics thought very hard about things like what we can control and what we can't control.

They thought very hard about things like happiness.

One of the stoic ideas for happiness is that there are two ways to attain happiness.

One way to attain happiness is to get the things that we think we want across the gap between where we are and where we'd like to be.

I'm here and I like this thing over there.

If I close the gap,

Then I'll be happy.

They found a different approach.

Well,

What if we could learn to want what we already have here?

They developed practices and exercises to want exactly the life that they have.

They found that that was actually a more direct path to happiness and more sustainable than always chasing this thing that they don't have.

Because if you develop a habit of always chasing what you don't have and always trying to close the gap,

Then you become essentially a full-time gap closer and you're always dissatisfied.

You can't be seeking something and satisfied at the same time.

That's where this idea of focus on what you have comes from.

It's cliche advice that actually comes from deep philosophical thought.

The dichotomy of control was a concept that the ancient philosopher Epictetus spent a lot of time refining.

The different Stoics had different flavors of Stoicism and emphasized different things.

Epictetus was the author of The Handbook or The Enchiridion,

The author of Discourses,

The author of Fragments.

He inspired Marcus Aurelius a lot.

He was an ex-slave who became freed.

Actually,

The name Epictetus means acquired.

He lived an interesting life.

His leg was broken by his master.

He was a cripple,

And then he earned his freedom,

And then he became a teacher of philosophy.

He says that tranquility and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle.

Some things are within our control and some things are not.

It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.

He does not mince his words.

Epictetus,

When he speaks,

Is very direct and very clear.

For him to make this kind of statement that tranquility and freedom,

Emotional tranquility and emotional freedom begin with a clear understanding of this principle,

Understanding what you can and can't control,

We should take this really seriously.

This is not some kind of cliche advice.

Just only focus on what you can control.

This is something that we should really investigate and dig a little deeper.

The Stoic principle is the dichotomy of control.

So in the handbook,

Epictetus says we are responsible for some things,

While there are others for which we cannot be held responsible.

The former include our judgment,

Our impulse,

Our desire,

Our vision,

Our mental faculties in general.

The latter include body,

Material possessions,

Our reputation,

Status.

In a word,

Anything not in our power to control.

There's this internal side.

This is us.

All of the machinations of the mind,

The way that we think,

The way that we employ conscious judgment.

There's the external world,

Possessions,

Body.

You could say,

Well,

Isn't your body within your control?

Well,

It's not directly within your control.

You could get sick.

That is not within your control.

Someone could physically hurt you.

That is not within your control.

You do not control the way that your DNA is going to change over the next six months.

There are many things in your body that are not within your control.

We can exert certain judgments that interact with our body,

But it's still the judgments and the decisions and the actions that are within our control.

The way that I like to think about this is similar to a garden.

So I have a pretty long garden and I have a few neighbours with neighbouring gardens.

I can see into the neighbouring garden.

Epictetus says that there are some things that we are responsible for and some things for which we are not responsible for.

It doesn't mean that the things we're not responsible for can't have some kind of influence on us or impact,

But it's just not up to us to manage those things.

I like to think of my garden.

What's in my garden is my responsibility.

Certain weeds that I need to uproot,

Certain flowers that I want to plant,

That's up to me.

It's within my control.

But if my neighbour has a really messy garden,

That's not up to me.

It's not my responsibility to deal with that.

Now I may be able to have a conversation with my neighbour,

But at the end of the day,

When all is said and done,

It's not within my control.

It's not up to me.

It's not my responsibility.

So to simplify what is within your control and what isn't within your control,

You could say that there's the internal world,

Your intentions,

Thoughts,

Actions,

And that those are within your control.

Everything else,

The way that people react to you,

Your reputation status,

The way that your day pans out is not ultimately within your control.

You do not have the power to control all of those things.

As much as it would be nice and as stressful as it is when things don't go our way,

That is just the way of the world.

And Stoics encourage a type of realistic optimism.

We have to really become aware of the way that life is.

Life doesn't always go our way.

Life has obstacles and issues and stresses,

And this is something that we should be equipped to deal with and not get upset every time something doesn't work out.

Cicero was not a Stoic,

But he was a very knowledgeable philosopher and really understood Stoicism well.

Here,

He gives a really good indication of how we can leverage the dichotomy of control with goal setting.

So Cicero says,

If a man were to make it his purpose to take a true aim with a spear or arrow at some mark,

His ultimate end,

Corresponding to the ultimate good as we pronounce it,

Would be to do all he could to aim straight.

The man in this illustration would have to do everything to aim straight,

Yet,

Although he did everything to attain his purpose,

His ultimate end,

So to speak,

Would be what corresponded to what we call the chief good in the conduct of life,

Whereas the actual hitting of the mark would be,

In our phrase,

To be chosen but not to be desired.

So Cicero is using the idea of an archer or a spear thrower and saying that as a philosopher or someone seeking to live a wise life,

We are aiming the bullseye.

The chief good is wisdom,

A virtue,

To live a good life.

All we can really do is aim as straight as we can,

But no matter what happens,

There will always be the universe.

There will always be a gust of wind or an arrow that just doesn't go how it's supposed to go.

Instead of desiring the hitting of that mark,

We should just choose it.

When it comes to our own goals,

What we want to get into the habit of doing is choosing what we want to aim at,

But focus most of our energy on the aiming straight part.

So focusing more on our intentions,

On the things within our control,

And even though we are definitely aiming at something,

The real desire that we have is not the hitting of the target.

The real desire that we have is trying to hit the target with a straight aim because that is within our control.

Sometimes when we aim at the thing that we want to hit,

That we choose to hit,

Things go our way.

We have a goal,

We go after it,

We attain the goal.

Amazing.

This could be a short-term goal.

It could be the goal of having a good conversation with a friend.

It could be the goal of having a nice day.

It could be the goal of giving a good presentation.

When things go our way,

Beautiful.

This is definitely an opportunity to feel thankful for,

To feel grateful for.

But sometimes,

I don't know if you've noticed this,

But things don't go our way and the universe has other plans.

This is not necessarily an invitation to feel frustration and anger and to invite you to be a victim.

This is also the opportunity for you to exercise acceptance.

By employing the dichotomy of control,

You can go through life and you can experience one of two things.

If you want,

You can either experience gratitude or you can experience deep acceptance for the way things are.

Both of those are paths to peace.

Whenever we're faced with a difficult situation,

We always have a path A and a path B.

We can certainly choose the path of frustration,

But we can also choose the path of equanimity.

Epictetus says,

Remember that if you mistake what is naturally inferior for what is sovereign and free and what is not your business for your own,

You'll meet with disappointment,

Grief,

And worry and be at odds with God and man.

But if you have the right idea about what really belongs to you and what does not,

You will never be subject to force or hindrance.

You will never blame or criticize anyone and everything you do will be done willingly.

You won't have a single rival,

No one to hurt you because you will be proof against harm of any kind.

I'm just sharing this because he really is stressing the importance of deeply understanding the dichotomy of control.

I would really like you to start thinking seriously about this concept.

Don't let it be this throwaway idea that you just kind of go,

Oh yeah,

It makes sense and then forget about it.

Really start seeing the dichotomy of control as a skill that you can start cultivating from today onward.

Ultimately,

What we want to get to is a point where we can experience a type of augmented reality where as we go through our day,

We can filter in real time things that are up to us and things that are not up to us.

It just becomes this beautiful interaction where we're not getting the two things mixed up as we often do.

Epictetus says,

You will never have to experience defeat if you avoid contests whose outcome is outside your control.

Don't let outward appearances mislead you into thinking that someone with more prestige,

Power,

Or some other distinction must on that occasion be happy.

If the essence of good lies within us,

Then there is no place for jealousy or envy,

And you will not care about being a general,

A senator,

Or a council,

Only about being free.

And the way to be free is to look down on externals.

So what I want you to focus on here is the first sentence.

You will never have to experience defeat if you avoid contests whose outcome is outside your control.

A very interesting statement.

What does he mean by that?

What does Epictetus mean?

You will never have to experience defeat if you avoid contests whose outcome is outside of your control.

Well,

One way we can avoid contests where we won't experience defeat is by not entering certain contests.

That's what one might think.

I'm only going to enter contests that I can win.

Another way of doing this is by determining your own rules for winning and losing in life.

Epictetus is saying that if you only use internal markers for success,

You can never really lose something outside of your control.

So in life,

You can create your own rules that you want to live by.

Rules are given to us by society.

Here is a rule for happiness.

Here is a rule for being popular.

Here is a rule you can use to gauge how well you're doing.

And then there are more basic things like here is a sports competition.

If you hit this many points,

Then you win the game.

If you don't hit that many points,

Then you lose the game.

But you can do this internal game where you create your own rules.

And so you can enter contests that you are capable of losing,

But if you make your own rules and those rules are internal rules,

Then you will never lose again.

Okay,

So we're going to get into this.

I know that this is a bit unusual.

So the Stoic engages in life by measuring themselves more than the results they achieve.

A Stoic values effort,

Intention,

Action,

Courage,

Discipline more than the mere outcomes.

If you seek contentment,

It is better to change yourself than to try and change the world.

Your primary desire should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won't be able to fulfill.

So if we look at something like a game of tennis,

So this is something that William B.

Irvine uses as an example.

If you and I are having a game of tennis,

I can try and win the game of tennis by outscoring you.

But no matter how good I get at that game,

Winning will not ever be truly up to me.

Okay,

It's not completely within my control.

Why not?

Well,

What if we're neck and neck,

We're on a tie break and I hit the perfect shot and a gust of wind blows it out?

Is my skill going to stop that?

What if for some reason the judge,

The umpire hates me,

Is totally biased against me for whatever reason?

What if my opponent is just amazing that day,

Like just so good,

Like unreal,

Like unbelievably good,

And they just beat me fair and square?

What if I have a terrible night's sleep and there's nothing I can do about it?

What if I get sick on the day of the game?

So many factors that could lead to me winning or losing.

So the Stoic approach is,

Well,

Why would you enter that game if there's a chance that you could lose?

And so play a different game,

Play an internal game.

The rule for winning or losing should be something like,

If I play to the best of my ability,

Then I've won.

Okay,

That goal is up to you.

You can actually definitely hit that.

You can also not hit it too,

But that is within your control.

Winning on points is not within your control.

So there's a distinction here between internal goals and external goals.

So you have a goal.

So the first question we ask is,

Is this goal within our control?

So the example,

Let's use the example of,

I want to be on the Joe Rogan podcast.

Okay.

Is this within my control?

No,

It's actually not directly within my control.

I could fail at it.

It's not an internal goal.

I can't guarantee that it will happen.

So it's an external goal.

It's not within my control.

So I have three options.

I can pursue it,

And maybe I'll do it,

And maybe I won't.

There's an element of gambling there,

Roll of the dice.

There's always a chance that I could lose that because it's an external goal.

The other strategy that we could use is that we could avoid the goal altogether.

Actually,

I don't want to do that.

There's no chance of defeat now,

Which is nice,

But there's also no chance of success.

So this is the path of comfort that we've talked about.

So the pursuing of an external goal can lead to frustration or highs.

You're kind of living on a roller coaster,

Ups and downs.

Avoiding the external goal can lead to a life of comfort where you never really go after anything.

Neither of these are ideal from a stoic perspective.

So they would ask you to redefine the goal and to change it into an internal goal that you can achieve.

So instead of,

I want to be on the Joe Rogan podcast,

Maybe a better goal would be,

I want to keep creating powerful lessons and publishing them once a week to the best of my abilities and I'll see what happens.

That's something I can do.

That's something within my control.

It's not completely under my control,

Obviously,

Like a meteor could hit earth,

But that is a lot more within my control,

Within my responsibility than just appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast.

But a lot of us have these lofty external goals.

I like to think of this as a success formula.

I call it the stoic success formula.

You'll see this a lot come up in spirituality,

But you'll also see it with high performers.

There are two elements.

The first one is a clear intent.

So people who are successful are very clear about what they want.

I have a friend who used to be a professional poker player,

And he said that a lot of the time when people are playing poker,

At a certain point,

They stop wanting to win.

Their intention stops being focused on winning and instead becomes things like,

I want to beat the person opposite me.

I want to crush the person next to me.

I want to appear to be level-headed.

I don't want to lose all my chips.

All different intentions from just the pure intent of winning.

And a muddled intention can really devastate our chances of success in life.

And I used to go out and do a lot of social challenges and interacting with different types of people.

And I would notice that if I would put on a confident persona,

Even though I wasn't feeling confident,

There's two intentions.

One of them is try and act a certain way.

The other one is to try and act a certain way.

One is to act cool,

And the other one is suppress how I'm feeling.

People just wouldn't respond well to me at all.

And then I did an experiment where I just decided I'm going to be 100% congruent,

And I'm just going to talk to people and tell them exactly how I'm feeling in the moment.

And what do you know?

Everyone responds really well to that.

So I could just walk up to people and be like,

Hey,

I'm super nervous right now talking to you.

I feel super awkward,

But I just wanted to say hello.

It's clear.

It's just like,

Okay,

Got it.

Guy who's nervous.

People don't tend to reject people like that,

Even if they're being awkward.

If they're aware of it and owning it,

That's so different from someone who's feeling awkward,

But they're trying to force this cool person persona,

And it's just this intent is getting muddled up.

So that's something to think about.

And then the other side of the equation is the freedom from outcome.

So you can go in there with a clear intent,

Like,

I'm just going to say hello.

But if you really care about that working out,

And you're kind of attached to it,

And you're clinging to it,

And there's a subtle sign that it's not going to work out,

That's also getting communicated,

Right?

That you're not free from this outcome.

And yeah,

You will suffer more,

And you'll be less likely to achieve this outcome,

Because your attachment will get in the way of things.

You could say that it will cloud the intent.

So if you want to be a great athlete or something like that,

You want to have that clear intention of winning the game,

Let's say.

And you can definitely get emotionally wrapped up in the pursuit of it,

But it's not going to ever affect you to the point that you wouldn't be able to play well tomorrow or the next day.

It wouldn't kind of crush you.

It wouldn't be soul-destroying.

So yeah,

This is going back to the dichotomy of control.

So let's look at some internal goal examples.

So tennis,

Which I've mentioned,

The external goal would be just winning the game.

The internal goal would be playing to the best of my ability.

That's just a general heuristic.

Approval,

So social approval.

External goal,

I really want this person to love me.

Internal goal,

Oh,

I'm just going to behave to the best of my ability in a lovable way,

Whatever that means to you.

Write to get a book published.

Internal goal,

Number of times you submit a manuscript.

Many of the greatest books of all time were submitted many,

Many times before they were published.

This is a known thing.

I think Harry Potter,

You can check this out,

But it was a really high number of entries,

Like 20 plus before it was published.

Meeting a partner or soulmate,

I need to get people to find me attractive.

External goal,

This is just I'm going to express myself authentically and let whatever happens happen.

Just going to kind of put myself out there and talk to a lot of people within your control.

We've got one topic left,

Identity-based goals.

This is not a stoic idea.

So when it comes to changing our behavior,

Three levels to this.

You have the outcomes.

We could call this the external goal.

This is what we've been talking about.

We have the processes.

We can call this the internal goals,

Just different words for the same thing.

But then something we haven't talked about,

The deepest layer of all is our identity or our perceived identity.

External goal,

Internal goal,

Identity.

In some ways,

Our identity is the most powerful of all types of behavioral change.

There's a great book,

Atomic Habits by James Clear.

This is a really good book on habits.

The danger that we run into is that we read the book and we feel like we're super knowledgeable about habits,

But we don't really retain more than 5% of it.

A common experience with myself and people that have read that is we read the book and then we tell ourselves that we're going to change all of our habits and we feel really motivated for a few weeks and then life just goes exactly back to the way it was.

We have all of these different principles.

So if you've read this book,

You should have a really clear understanding of how habits work.

If you don't have a clear understanding,

I'd encourage you to go back and keep studying it.

I see this book as a textbook to keep going back to rather than just a book to read cover to cover and forget about because it's very important.

So anyway,

James Clear says in the book,

Imagine two people resisting a cigarette.

When offered a smoke,

The first person says,

No thanks,

I'm trying to quit.

It sounds like a reasonable response,

But this person still believes they are a smoker who's trying to be something else.

They are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs.

The second person declines by saying,

No thanks,

I'm not a smoker.

It's a small difference,

But this statement signals a shift in identity.

Smoking was part of their former life,

Not their current one.

They no longer identify as someone who smokes.

Most people don't even consider identity change when they set out to improve.

They just think,

I want to be skinny,

Outcome.

And if I stick to this diet,

Then I'll be skinny,

Process.

They set goals and determine the actions they should take to achieve those goals without considering the beliefs that drive their actions.

They never shift the way they look at themselves and they don't realize that their old identity can sabotage their new plans for change.

So it's this idea of wherever you go,

There you are.

Our identity is the kind of jumping off point for our behaviors and our thoughts.

And I put that to you,

But what kind of identity are you carrying around when it comes to anxiety?

Do you call yourself an anxious person who's trying to feel less anxious?

Or do you call yourself a courageous individual who is trying to achieve emotional mastery?

Different ways of labelling the same types of situations.

The story that we tell ourselves about ourselves has a massive impact on the decisions we make and the lives that we have.

Even the placebo effect.

The drugs are tested against the placebo effect to determine their effectiveness.

The placebo effect shows the power of the stories we tell.

If we tell ourselves the story that this drug,

This painkiller is going to help me feel less pain,

It actually does.

It has a physical response where we feel less pain.

We might physically react less.

Placebo is insane.

You can have less allergic reactions to things when placebo works.

It's incredible the belief that we have and the stories that we tell ourselves.

So we really want to examine that when it comes to anxiety and our goals.

What stories are you carrying around?

What kind of unhelpful beliefs do you attach to your identity?

Let's look at some examples.

Basic goal setting.

These are from James Clear.

The goal is not to read a book.

The goal is to become a reader.

Subtle distinction there.

The goal is not to run a marathon.

The goal is to become a runner.

The goal is not to learn an instrument.

The goal is to become a musician.

This is something Mike and I talk a lot about with anxiety.

Seeing anxiety as a path of mastery.

Not to become an anxious individual who's trying to feel less of this terrible emotion,

But actually becoming almost like a spiritual warrior or becoming someone who thrives when we get emotional challenges and always being that person.

Just as you see some Buddhist monks and I've heard Pema Chodron,

Who's an amazing Buddhist nun.

She says that she currently looks forward to experiences of depression and anxiety because it gives her something to practice with.

That's the place that she's at.

Same feelings,

Completely different storyline.

She actually is like,

Oh,

I'm looking forward to that.

I relate a lot back to parenting.

It's a very good test.

Dealing with a toddler having a tantrum is really difficult and really frustrating.

You can tell yourself a story about that when it's happening that you're a victim as a parent.

But if you have a plan that you believe in,

Suddenly that tantrum becomes an opportunity to practice being a really great parent in the moment.

What I found is when I've studied parenting and then I experienced difficulties in parenting,

I'm like,

Oh,

Great.

This is an opportunity now for me to practice this stuff I've been learning,

As opposed to,

Oh,

This is an opportunity for me to feel completely helpless.

So there's a same situation,

Different story that we're telling ourselves about it.

That concludes the main lesson,

But I just want to end with a quick recap of the journey that we've been on so far.

The fact that you're listening to this now at the end of the lesson means you've stuck with it.

So congratulations to you.

Now let's maximize our learning so we can implement the ideas into our daily lives.

So we've touched on everything from the virtues of temperance and practical wisdom and justice and courage to the specific tools like the CCTV thought experiment and the Stoic success formula.

We've looked at different revered Stoic philosophers like Cicero and Epictetus and explored the dichotomy of control,

Which urges us to focus on what is genuinely within our purview,

Our thoughts,

Intentions,

And actions.

We've questioned how committed we truly are to the changes we say we want to make and recognize the importance of aligning our daily actions with our long-term aspirations.

We've also examined the significance of having a clear intent and being detached from outcomes,

A powerful combination that enables you to find peace and contentment in any situation.

So whether you're looking to master a specific skill,

Achieve professional goals,

Or simply live a life of greater contentment,

Remember that the Stoic principles we discussed today aren't just intellectual exercises,

They're actionable guidelines.

I want you to use tools like the CCTV thought experiment to continually assess your alignment with your values and also the Stoic success formula to strike a balance between your aspirations and equanimity.

Now before we part ways,

Reflect on this.

If you could project your CCTV into the future and look back,

Would you find that you've lived in accordance with your values and goals?

The real work starts now,

After listening to this lesson.

I want you to use this experience,

This shared journey with me,

As your launchpad.

Make the philosophies and tools a daily practice and you'll be well equipped to navigate life's complexities with both wisdom and balance.

Thank you so much for joining me,

And as you continue your journey,

And as you continue your journey,

Aim your metaphorical arrows with precision,

But always remember the true bullseye is within you.

Until next time,

Live wisely and take deliberate action aligned with your deepest values.

Reviews

EXCELLENT❣️ SO much WISDOM contained in this interesting and ENLIGHTENING Talk!
Thank you! I will be listening again without fail. 🙏🏻💕

Very interesting psychology talk of setting your intentions. Will definitely try and put them into practice.

This is an excellent recording! Packed with lots of useful ideas and information. I will be returning to listen to it again. Highly recommended.

Nice

Still not completely clear on what CCTV stands for exactly. I really got a lot out of this in terms of my goals and what i can control. Also how important intention is. Thanks!🙏

Outstanding reminder of what I am capable of and what I often forget. Thanks 🙏 for sharing your wisdom with me today Jon!