How often to you spend time worrying about everything that is happening in the world? How can you create more joy into your life? Can a Stoic be happy and joyful? Today I want to talk about Stoicism and joy.
“A cheerful disposition and serenity of mind are not the result of luck but of wisdom.”
— Seneca
Now I know that when we post things online we often only show the good side of things. It’s like we curate our online lives to show how fabulous our lives are. I know I share a lot of myself on this podcast but even so, I still don’t show everything. So I’m going to be real honest with you all. The last few weeks have been hard. I’ve found myself in some pretty dark moods because of the political chaos going on, worries over finances, struggles with gaining traction with my business, as well as a string a grey days here in Amsterdam.
While I struggle sometimes with some anxiety, I’m not usually prone to depression. But a few weeks ago I had a few days where I felt really straight up depressed, and I really understood what I’ve had others explain to me a deep depression feels like. I had no motivation to do anything, and felt physically run down. I spent one weekend just binging on Netflix because I had no energy for anything else.
It’s taken be a few weeks to get back to where I feel like I’m back to my usual energy levels and mentally in a better place. I’m not sure if it’s just worry and anxiety about everything, or if it as one friend suggested that I was suffering from burnout. I know that I have a tendency to catastrophize about things, or as Rich Roll so eloquently put it, “doomcasting”. I want to be an optimist, but it often feels like I’m fighting an uphill battle with my own brain.
I know that I’m hardwired to take things pretty seriously. There are many reasons for it—childhood trauma of growing up in a violent home, the shame and fear instilled from growing up in the Mormon church. But I want to have more joy in my life.
And this is why Stoicism has been such a lifeline for me. It’s the life preserver that keeps me floating when I feel like I’m drowning and gives me that support to kick back to shore. When things are a struggle, Stoic tools are the ones I use to get back on my feet and keep going.
Now the reason I’m so open and honest about the things I struggle with is because everyone struggles, we just rarely see it. Unless they are really close to us, most people don’t open the kimono and show us what’s really going on. Even then, people often put on a brave face, and are afraid to tell those close to them when they are struggling.
Even now, I’m still a little hesitant about creating this episode. I can hear the thoughts in my mind like, “Will other people listen to this and think that I’m failure? Will they think that I’m not good actually using the tools I teach? Would they want to be coached by someone who doesn’t always have it together?” But I’m hoping that my openness can help you to see that even someone who has worked hard to live a Stoic life and understands these principles in a deep way is not free from the hardships of life.
With that said, I want to talk about joy. Now a lot people don’t think that Stoicism is about joy, but rather about enduring the hard things in life. But I want to challenge that and talk about how Stoicism is just a set of tools and those tools can help you not just survive but thrive.
So how can Stoicism help us find and create more joy in our lives?
Joy is the Opposite of Fear
First, I want to propose that joy is the opposite of fear. For me, joy is a combination of happiness, love, and fun. Think of a time when you’ve felt joy. I want you to imagine what that felt like. There’s a confidence not from bravado, but because you see and amplify kindness and love. Joy is inclusive and infectious. Joy is optimistic even in the face of all the hard parts of life.
When you are stuck in fear it’s hard to feel joy. When you are angry you can’t feel joy. This is why the Stoics were so insistent that we learn how to manage our fear and anger.
But what if the opposite is also true? What if you used joy to help overcome fear and anger? Besides the struggles that I’ve been going through, the other reason why I wanted to talk about joy in this episode was that the other day when I was caught up in some of that doomcasting and stressing about life, I stumbled onto this ridiculously joyful video on instagram. It made me laugh out loud and relax and release all that stress. I want to share that with you now because in about a minutes time, it helped to reframe some of the worries that I was feeling.
If you’re listening to this, imagine someone in a sunshine costume skating down a forest road in fur-covered roller-skates, sunflower glasses, and tiara. I’ll leave a link to it in the show notes so that you can enjoy it in it’s full glory.
His sheer joy at the wondrousness of life is infectious, and it reminded me of how I take things too seriously, and that I need to work on not just surviving or enduring but finding and creating joy. When I find myself getting too serious I take a break and rather than doomscrolling, I start joyscrolling. I find videos like this or stories that talk about the joy of life to remind myself to see the great things in life and to practice gratitude for the simple fact that I’m still alive.
Perspective
One of the most important ideas in Stoicism is that we have control over our perspectives. We can literally choose how we want to interpret something. We can decide to be offended by what others say or that the thing that is happening to us is terrible. We hold on to tightly to all the stresses in our live. We worry about things to come or things that happened in the past.
But as Epictetus reminds us:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them.”
Now this isn’t to say that things aren’t challenging or at time physically painful. It means that so much of our suffering is in our minds, and that we are the ones that cause a great deal of our mental pain. By understanding this simple idea, and working on being aware of our perspectives, and reframing how we view something we can reduce our own mental suffering.
Being a Stoic doesn’t mean that you won’t have negative emotions or that you won’t suffer in life, but that you have to tools to reduce and overcome that suffering. You can choose to change your outlook to one of joy.
Acceptance
Acceptance is a very important tool in the Stoics toolbox for finding joy. As Seneca clearly explained:
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.”
Basically, we often suffer because we want things to be different than they are. We worry about things out of our control. When you let go of all the things you can’t control, and relax into the moment, you allow yourself to feel joy, to feel gratitude for everything that you already have. This is why the Stoic idea of amor fati is so important. We “love our fate”. We don’t just accept everything that happens but learn to love everything that happens. It the ultimate form of gratitude.
Impressions
The Stoics understood that while you need to be aware of what’s going on in your own mind and manage your thinking and perspectives, you also need to be careful about what you expose yourself to. If you’re constantly exposing yourself to negative things, then that’s what you’re going to be focused on.
“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.5
It’s kind of like the old adage, “you are what you eat”, but in the modern era we could say, “you are what you consume”, meaning that if you’re constantly watching and reading content that is all about outrage, anger, and things to be afraid of, then that’s what you’re going to be constantly thinking about. With a steady diet of negativity, you begin to develop a negative outlook and color everything through that lens. It becomes garbage in, garbage out.
This also holds true with the kind of people that we spend time with. As Seneca reminds us:
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters 7.8
This stands for people in real life as well as online. Others ideas, attitudes, and perspectives influence us in direct and subtle ways. The more time you spend with others, the more you begin to adopt their ways of thinking. There’s nothing wrong with this, but you need to be discerning about what perspectives you take on. Make sure that you surround yourself with those that hold your values and support you in living your best life and becoming a better person.
Gratitude
The last thing I want to talk about is gratitude. The Stoics taught that gratitude for what you have is so important to a happy life. They believed that gratitude was a natural part of being a human:
“Nature ordains that I must act as a grateful person. I will show gratitude, not as a mere obligation, but as a delight.”
— Seneca, On Benefits 2.11
Marcus Aurelius reminds us:
“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.27
Think about that. What if you took the time to imagine what it would be like if you didn’t have all the things in your life that you currently had? This kind of negative visualization helps you to see what you already have that you can be grateful for.
Conclusion
Now I want you to take a moment and I want you to just think about how amazing it is to be alive. That there are trees and birds and lakes and the sky. That we’re on a blue planet floating around in the vast expanse of space with a glorious sun that brings us warmth and light. Think of the wonder of all the time before your birth—all the billions of years and changes and explosions and planets being formed that had to happen to make you exactly who you are and that you get to experience this life. That you are listening to my voice that was transmitted from Amsterdam to tell you that life is amazing.
So when life feels hard and you’re struggling, remember that you get to create the kind of life you want. You get to choose if you see life through the lens of joy. You get to make choices and take actions to create joy in this world and make the kind of life you want and the kind of world that you want. Be the joy.
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