The purpose of this experiment is to see what happens when I try to live in alignment with Stoic values for 30 days. The part I’m going to document here is my relationship with entertainment and other activities done only for pleasure. In the Stoic view, pleasure and comfort are okay, but they’re not experience that are worth sacrificing anything for. Living a virtuous live produces them as byproducts, but they aren’t good motives on their own.
For more details, see this post.
This experiment begins on Monday, April 12, 2021, and concludes May 11, 2021. Updates should be posted every few days.
The Log
Day One
Some early observations on the first day.
There’s an interesting relationship between the equanimity Stoic practice allows and the normal ups and downs of mood. It’s a blustery, snowy day here, and I didn’t sleep well, so my mood isn’t great, but the equanimity is still present. I haven’t made perfectly rational choices all day, but I don’t think I’ve done anything “on tilt” and I don’t think I’ve shirked any important duties. For the most part I feel equanimous towards my tired body and dull mood.
I also really enjoyed lunch. Just beforehand I listened to William B Irvine talking about the practice of doing things while keeping in mind that you may be doing them for the last time. It’s a very simple practice. When you’re doing something enjoyable, take a moment to contemplate the fact that it may be the last time you do it. People are constantly doing things for the last time — eating a pizza, picking up their child, talking to a loved one — having no idea that there will not be another time, either because something changes in their lives, or they die before it happens again.
I ate a nice salad and a coconut curry soup, and enjoyed it with the awareness that I would maybe never have it again. It works with everything, and reveals how habitually we take for granted that this particular experience doesn’t matter that much because there’s always another one coming. If we were aware that it was, or even that it could be, we’d appreciate it much more.
Day Two
Two days in I feel pretty great. It’s been easy to say no to the usual types of diversions I fall into.
Most of the time doing the “virtuous” thing was no problem, because succumbing to time-wasting activities feels instantly bad, and it’s such a relief to just drop the impulse and go back to doing the next thing.
Slightly more difficult (but even more rewarding) is attending to a mundane task when it’s something that doesn’t quite demand the attention. Spooning leftovers into tupperware can be done with the body alone, while the mind ruminates or reminisces. Each time I notice the mind going elsewhere, I bring it back to the details of the task, as though I’m watching an arthouse movie, observing the little clumps of rice tumble down into the container, then my hands pushing on the lid with a satisfying thwump. I drop my normal habit of monologuing while I do “mindless” tasks, and the result is that I’m much less agitated, and life feels much more quiet. I feel a lot like I feel on a silent retreat, but somehow even more stable.
There is an interesting synergy between mindfulness practice and Stoic doing. The intentional doing doesn’t allow mental chatter to ever really get going, and because it’s more active than mindfulness, it is more effective at keeping the mind stably in the moment, at least so far. My meditation sits have suddenly become better, as well, which feeds back into the stability of mind during the day. There are many layers going on here — I’m coming out of a winter funk and an even longer depression, and during that time my meditation practice has been in a lull. It’s coming back strong now, and the Stoic practice seems to be an almost perfect catalyst.
On the other end of the equation, my mindfulness experience is what is even allowing me to do this. I don’t know how I’d be able to drop mental chatter so readily if I wasn’t a regular meditator. I’m quite aware of mental talk when it is happening, so when I slip into it after spending most of the day in mental quiet, it’s very obvious.
I have a ton more to say but I’ll leave it at that for today.
Day Three
I’ve reached my first interesting challenge. I’m feeling dull today. I might be sick. Or perhaps the return of winter (it has snowed for three days) and the subsequent lack of activity has caused a mood dip. For what it’s worth, my morning meditation was excellent – best sit I’ve had in months – and I’m very calm. While I’m still conducting myself with the Stoic attitude, I’m not feeling very get-up-and-go. I will deal with this fluctuation Stoically – attending to the moment, dullness and all, as the work of a human being.
I’m experiencing many urges to compromise the day, by pushing the work I was going to do to another day, to take it easy – essentially to come back to ‘the work of a human being’ tomorrow. That’s my usual response. Procrastination. Rationalizing that it is a perfect time for indulgence and stepping away from responsibility.
Instead, I’m trying to take this as an opportunity to practice. It’s hard to find the same intuitive Stoic motivation that came so easily on Days 1 and 2, but a certain Stoic aphorism keeps coming to me: nothing that can happen to me can make me worse, only I can do that. I get to choose how I will field this onset of dullness (which I do attribute to the effects of the April blizzard – lack of real human contact, lack of activity and exercise, lack of sunshine – further evidence of the importance of those things to my well-being). Regardless of what is happening inside and out, I get to choose the values by which I live. I am shifting around the tasks I intend to do — doing more physical things today rather than writing/thinking tasks — but the values will remain the same. I am about to do some fruitful “Bodybuilding of the Will,” which is the whole point of this exercise.
Whatever I do, I’ll do I with full intention and honesty. Right now I’m exercising, writing this between sets. A nap might even be appropriate later. Lapsing into self-comfort is the only clearly wrong choice.
I’m noticing how incredibly clear and persistent that one familiar thought is – “I can give myself a break and get back to this later, when it’s easier.” It is the familiar refrain of a lifelong procrastinator, and the path forward for me is practicing better ways of responding to it. A marble bust appears at my right ear: “Nothing can happen to you that can make you worse, since your will is always yours.”
Days Four and Five
Days 3 and 4 presented an interesting challenge. The Stoic mindset was very obvious to me on Days 1 and 2, and got kind of cloudy on Days 3 and 4. I have still been living Stoically, but I’ve had to consciously think about what it makes sense to do at a given moment, rather than operate intuitively from the guiding mindset.
This happens in life, but I think ADHD makes it happen more. One of the subtle but significant challenges of ADHD is that you are prone to losing track of the feeling of a given intention. You can remember what you wanted to do, or even write it down, but the emotional/intuitive sense of what you wanted to do is gone. You know what actions you plan to take, but can’t recall how it felt to want to do them, so you have no intuition to guide you on a moment-to-moment basis through the appropriate actions. Instead you have to rely on thinking and reasoning your way through it, step-by-step, which is slow and devoid of momentum. (My pet hypothesis is that “intuition of doing” is part of what dopamine does for us, so if you’re low on dopamine you lose it more often. I’ve written about this idea here – scroll down to the heading, 3. Organizing your thoughts is really hard).
Today is Day 5 and I feel better. I am finding my way back to that intuitive alignment with the Stoic mindset. The next action seems more obvious than yesterday. Reading and listening to the Stoics helps guide me there. It is also sunny today and the snow is melting, which seems to have a major effect on my mood.
In the meantime, it only makes sense to use my Stoic tools to contend with this challenge, both now and when it inevitably returns throughout my life. Part of the strategy is to ask myself more frequently questions like “Is this [i.e. what I’m doing now] what I intend to spend this life on?”
Another trick is to do a quick series of small tasks – tidy this room, take out the garbage, look up this one research question. That helps me re-enter that mode of doing a task fully to completion with undivided intention and purpose, and to experience again the satisfaction of it.
Another insight I’ve had over the first few days is that Stoic living is guided by a sort of always-on intention to find equanimity with what is happening. Equanimity is a skill that’s also central to meditation practice. I’ve written about it here – it’s the ability to allow present moment experience to come and go naturally without fighting with it. In other words you’re consciously opening up to the experience of right now, rather than let yourself be driven away by what you find aversive about it or sucked in by what’s pleasurable about it. The essential act of Stoicism is practicing equanimity with what is happening now, as you do the things you rationally determine need doing.
As far as I can tell, what guides Stoic alignment more than anything is this fine-edged intention to be equanimous with whatever it feels like to do what has to be done right now – slipping the dishgloves on when you’re looking at dishes filled with tepid soup-water, to finish the assignment when you want to click over to Reddit. The duty of living Stoically seems to always be to engage willingly with this next moment of equanimity practice.
I remember this with the motto “My job here is to be as equanimous as possible with this moment.” It is basically always true and represents the Stoic mindset as well as anything. An example from a moment ago — when you save a page in WordPress, the browser often loads for an excruciatingly long time — fifteen or twenty seconds. It’s one thing to grumpily endure this, and it’s quite another to open up completely to it as though it’s your purpose. Halfway through the most recent period of loading, I remembered that, and the sense of alignment came back.
Equanimity also requires that you be present for what you’re doing. You really have to embody the task, because part of equanimity is coming to terms with how your body feels while you do it. That’s why Stoicism has been so helpful for my mindfulness practice (and not just vice-versa) – because it requires conscious, ongoing attentiveness. There’s really no room for split attention.
The same attitude is required for every task, fun or no fun, so all you have to do is practice it. That’s one of the great strengths of Stoicism – there are very few things you ultimately need to get good at.
Day Six and Seven
A full week has gone by, and it’s been one of the best weeks in a long time. Nothing particularly fortuitous has happened to me, and I had my share of low moods and setbacks, yet I had a pretty wonderful week. I’ve stayed engaged with what I’m doing for the most part, and I’ve been going to bed more or less pleased with my day.
I am getting more done, but that’s kind of beside the point. I feel like I’m really living my days. I’m appreciating more of what happens, I’m less afraid of the future — not only of what might happen to me, but of what I will do, or fail to do. So far it seems like this is the right philosophy for me, at least by this point in my life.
There were two separate breakdowns — days where I got frustrated enough that I sulked, and ended up watching some fairly pointless YouTube videos and clicking around on the web with no intentions really. I also ordered delivery, almost as a kind of protest. When I realized what I was doing, which didn’t take long, I tried to bring my new tools to the situation. Rather than immediately try to wrestle myself back to being on track, I just paid attention to how it felt to live reactively like this. It felt pleasurable in a small sense, but it also felt kind of absurd — like I was trying to step away from life for a bit, which isn’t really possible, since we’re always just making choices about how to spend the present moment. After my bad mood cooled off, I was excited to get back to living purposefully again, because it just feels better.
There were many smaller instances of going astray — I find myself looking at Instagram, with no real intention to learn anything or connect with anyone, and within a few seconds that feeling of aimlessness becomes conspicuous, and I close it up and feel some relief. I expected this experiment to feel different, as though I would be constantly policing myself, with my usual diversions becoming more and more tempting. But they’re getting less tempting. They don’t even deliver much in the short term, and they come with this obvious feeling that I’m not living the life I want to live.
I’ll write more about this in future updates, but my focus is shifting away from following rules about how I spend my time — e.g. no shows/movies, no food just for pleasure — to monitoring my intentions when I do anything. The rules-based approach is too clumsy and leaves me questioning everything. There isn’t a fine line between eating for pleasure and not, for example. I’m eating oatmeal for breakfast, but am I crossing a line by adding raisins? Salt? Maple syrup? Nuts? If instead of trying to follow rules, I’m continually questioning my impressions and my intentions — is this in alignment with the Good Life as I am conceiving it here, or not? That is clearer than having personal statues about certain activities.
Two instances came up in which I had planned to watch a movie with someone else, and Covid concerns prevented us from getting together. One was a movie — we had planned to watch a movie at the same time and then talk on the phone about it afterward. As we were trying to select one, it became clear to me that I didn’t want to watch one. It’s too long and I had other things to do. We went for a walk the next day instead. The other instance concerned a 55-minute architecture documentary, which I did watch, and we talked about it afterward. The whole thing was a positive experience. However, as I watched it, I frequently had the desire to do more active things and I took a few breaks. It made me realize I’m seldom compelled by a movie for long. Might be an ADHD thing, or a temperament thing. Even when I see a movie in the theatre I am constantly going on diversions in my head, about the production, the actor’s lives, the economics of movie theatres and so on. In any case, passive entertainment isn’t something I can easily do with a sense of undivided intention.
I have a lot more to share but this is a longish update so I’ll save it. Next time I’ll share my revised thoughts on “background” entertainment, and whether it has a place.
Day Eight and Nine
I am currently figuring out how to contend skillfully with two questions that are somewhat related:
What to do when I can’t locate the Stoic sense of purpose and alignmentHow hard to push myself when I don’t feel up to the decidedly rational thing to do at this moment
I’m working on a well-overdue project that has proven to be much harder than I expected, and so I am constantly making ambitious schedules that I soon fall behind. I’m trying to interrupt that pattern and just crunch till the end. However that makes me vulnerable to a certain mode of reactivity that really sends me into a tailspin. When I don’t get done what I expected, and the schedule holds little room for error, it triggers some deep shame and guilt in me that is undoubtedly due to having experienced a lifetime of repeated ADHD-related self-disappointment.
When those particular emotions begin to arise, I fall into a familiar sense of “All bets are off” where I (historically tend to) retreat into a sort of who-cares apathy/anger/indulgence state that is utterly the opposite of Stoicism.
That started to happen yesterday and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I did my best to apply my Stoic skills and attitude to the appearance of this pattern, and it did help. I stopped, thought about what I could control that made sense to do next, but I was unable to relocate that sense of engaged alignment with my values that has been so accessible throughout Week One. This “alignment” as I’m calling it is so hard to describe – a kind of contentment and assuredness that I am doing the right thing, and a moment-to-moment awareness. In any case, there are times, when I’m triggered by my self-regulation-related trauma, when I just can’t find the Stoic mindset and I am going through the motions.
When I fall into that “wounded” state, I almost know that I will not do the right thing, or at least I fear that I won’t. My frustration tolerance becomes low. Trying to do something too challenging in those moments feels liable to send me over the edge into that apathy/anger state. This danger is a very familiar feeling to me – this sense that I am not really in control of my actions, that I simply cannot sufficiently “step up” and therefore I am doomed to disappoint myself and others forever. I genuinely don’t know how much power a person possesses to bring their own will to bear on itself — whether volition is truly in our hands as the Stoics say, or never actually in our hands, or somewhere in between. Epictetus’s dichotomy of control (i.e. some things are in our control and some aren’t) has boundaries that are not categorically clear – when it comes to will and intention, when are you pushing the river and when are you steering the best you can given the current?
Anyway, that is one hell of a philosophical rabbit hole, and I don’t need to figure it out in order to navigate this challenge. All I need is a strategy for bridging those tough patches without collapsing into bad habits and self-destructive behavior (as I frequently did before I knew about my ADHD).
Here’s what seems to help:
Making prudent concessions in the plan for the day – if I can’t do the “truly” rational best thing, I can rotate in something that is less pertinent but not as triggeringDoing physical, simple tasks that have to be done anyway — these are easier to bring full intention and equanimity to than more complex knowledge-work tasksClearing up my space, so as to clear the mind of clutterWriting the moment’s most pertinent need on a little sticky note beside me, or saying it out loud
The only trouble is that some of these concessions can also be a sneaky form of needless procrastination. I have spent a lifetime convincing myself that the truly hard thing doesn’t need to be done today. It is a difficult line to ride, between sensible compromise and procrastination, but Stoic practice is helping me zero in on it.
Another way of saying all of this:
I think what I learned in the last two days is that human beings are only capable of a certain amount of courage and temperance in a given moment, and the challenge is to manage that reality rationally, but also assess it honestly.
On the whole, I am accomplishing more than I ever have, and Stoicism seems to be an ideal philosophy for me. My experiment just happens to be coinciding with a very difficult time-crunching project. That’s probably a good thing.
Day Ten
The “central conflict” of my Stoic experiment story so far is remembering how to find, and find again, the particular mindset that makes Stoic living intuitive. I remember what to do objectively – do what has to be done when it has to be done, with undivided attention, while practicing equanimity with the moment – but there’s a certain perspective, a cognitive mode, a groove to settle into, that makes operating that way relatively easy to maintain, and much more rewarding. I keep losing and regaining that intuitive groove.
When I’m in the groove, everything seems to unfold naturally. It’s an almost magical sort of state – I’m attuned to the moment in front of me, as though I’m looking out onto the moment from a clear window — and I see my desk, the kitchen counter, my hands folding a tea towel, or whatever is happening. I perform the necessary action, feeling desire and aversion but without being pushed or pulled by them. It feels like I am truly living, really surfing the wave of being alive, even if I’m just opening a cupboard, or peeling a sticky note from its pad.
This state is very obvious when it’s happening. I’m not sure if it’s what the Stoics refer to as ataraxia, or eudaimonia, or some other named quality. It’s certainly productive, but it’s also tranquil, meaningful, free of guilt, and it casts everything that happens in a beautiful light (sometimes literally) like a lovingly shot film.
At times I can’t locate this state, so I try to go through the motions of Stoic living, which is difficult, but better than collapsing into habit. Sometimes hearing or reading the right kernel Stoic wisdom at the right time precipitates this state. Other times I feel like I’m fishing around in murky water for something that is isn’t there.
It is definitely real though. It keeps coming back, so I’m trying to figure out what conditions give rise to it. One thing that seems to be strongly associated with it is a particular way of viewing the world visually, which I’ve been practicing haphazardly for many years. I watch the moment unfolding – my hands hanging up my jacket, my pencil forming words — as though it is a memory, or some kind of privileged glimpse of life, from a time and place where such things don’t happen –- such as the eons of non-aliveness that stretch on after death or before life begins. This way of seeing instills the moment, no matter how dull by ordinary standards, with a sense of preciousness. The hanging up of the coat, with all its sensory richness, deserves my full attention, because it could just as easily not be happening. I believe this sense of preciousness is what makes Stoic living so intuitive to maintain, when you’ve hit that groove – logically, it’s a no-brainer to appreciate the moment, and your chance to live it well, when it seems special that a moment is happening at all.
This is a very specific kind of gratitude – not for any particular event or thing but for the fact that you are experiencing events and things, and you could easily not be.
I’ve written about other ways to achieve this point of view fleetingly (here, here, and here for example) and I suspect the resulting state was a large part of what motivated the Stoics. This experiment is helping me slowly zero in a way to live from it nearly all the time.
The sages really were onto something – not just a more rational way to conduct yourself, but a moment-to-moment way of being that changes everything about what it is like to live a human life. I feel like a detective, combing through the evidence centuries later, picking up on the scent.
Days Eleven to Thirteen
Two excellent weeks almost in the books now. I’m still getting a lot out of each day, but I have noticed a quiet reversion of habits creeping in.
Existing habits are like water to a fish, so they can advance quite far without any sense that you’ve drifted away from the original course. Today I noticed how much less “stoic” my behavior has been in the last few days than earlier on, even though both days were filled with many moments of practice and insight. I’ve kind of started coasting a bit.
Basically, I’ve had to switch to a new strategy, but hadn’t done it consciously, so I was kind of drifting. When I began the experiment, it was with a very clear vision of how I wanted to live my hours and days, and my strategy was to attempt to embody that vision unceasingly. Of course I wouldn’t always succeed, but I would always aim for that ideal in every moment – mistakes were okay, but no conscious concessions.
After having practiced for a few weeks, this approach doesn’t seem to make sense, because (as I’ve discovered) there are a lot of times when I simply have no intention of trying to be perfectly Stoical, or I can’t find the mindset and can only go through the motions, which leads to resentment and possibly rebellion.
It seems to me that you not only have to practice Stoic alignment in each moment, but you have to cultivate an appetite for practice as the same time. It’s analogous to physical exercise. You begin wanting to just go, go, go – You think you’re willing to run till you drop, and lift till you can’t lift any more. And for a while you might. But to make it sustainable, you have to develop not only the skills and conditioning to exercise that much, but the desire to be that active in the long term, because otherwise you’ll have a day where you’re supposed to run ten miles, but you simply refuse to enact your own plan – the intention is just not there to max out your effort.
Instead, I’ve moved to a different approach that seems more promising. I adopt the Stoic mindset whenever it is available, and practice moment-to-moment as a default. When I can’t locate the mindset or intention to do that, I do short, intentional periods of practice, many times throughout the day. For example, I’ll practice for the time it takes to do the dishes, to walk to the store. After that, I’m allowed to drop intentional practice. Often I keep going anyway, but at least it no longer feels like I’m trying to do something indefinitely that I can’t do indefinitely.
(Incidentally, this is exactly the approach I tell people to use for meditation – practice for short periods and string them together, shrinking the gaps over time, so that you’re repeatedly succeeding instead of repeatedly failing.)
So far this has worked well. I can bridge the gaps in intention with these smaller, more achievable stretches, and soon enough the inclination for perpetual practice returns.
I’ll clarify what I mean by “practicing” because its elements are pretty clear to me now. When I’m practicing Stoicism moment to moment, primarily I am attempting to:
Do the thing that makes the most sense to do right nowWhile attending to it fully (i.e. not splitting my attention or thinking about anything else)While practicing equanimity towards the experience of itWhile appreciating the fact that I am having an experience at all
Practicing equanimity means allowing all aspects of experience (feelings, sensations, impressions, etc) to come and go without resisting the unpleasant or grasping at the pleasant. I’ve written about it here.
There’s a lot more to Stoic practice this, but this summarizes the default mode of operation as I interpret it.
Days Fourteen to Nineteen
The experiment is still going well, despite some hiccups, which I will discuss below.
On mental quiet
Firstly, I can say that this experiment has brought me to a new place with respect to quiet-of-mind — i.e. absence of mental monologuing and rumination. Even during the times my meditation practice has been the strongest, I’ve never quite had this much mental quiet. The reason is that it is impossible to entertain an irrelevant mental monologue while you are attempting to do something with full attention. The Stoic intention to attend fully to the task conflicts directly with habitual monologuing, so I just drop it.
What’s interesting is that all my years of mindfulness practice did not achieve this effect. There’s no question my practice experience is what is allowing me to have such good results on this front, but novice-level Stoic practice did something veteran-level mindfulness practice didn’t do, at least in my particular brain. I’ve spent a lot of time on meditation retreats with similar levels of mental quiet, but in daily life, the monologuing quickly reasserts itself, because it isn’t as directly necessary.
On health and medication challenges
This week has been a bit weird. My medication is giving me a side effect so I spent some of the week off it, and the difference kind of throws me for a loop, physically and emotionally. At least a couple of days this week came with low mood and a fair amount of “all bets are off” state, with similar results to what I described in the Day 8-9 update. With these kinds of drastic shifts in mood and outlook, it’s hard to settle into a mode of operation with respect to practicing Stoicism. Different kinds of effort are required at different times, and what’s possible behaviorally or emotionally keeps changing, so it’s hard to calibrate.
I have been more successful in bringing the tools of Stoicism to the challenges of practicing Stoicism itself, if that makes sense. I’ve become less strict with myself, with makes it surprisingly easier to practice consistently. The first few days I was managing a pretty strict moment-to-moment commitment to living Stoically, which was incredible, but impossible to sustain. Since then I’ve given myself a much longer leash, which means I drift into a state where I feel like it’s become impossible to “practice” as I know it, and have to bide my time until I locate the mindset or mood to practice more diligently.
On reading and writing Stoic wisdom
Reading and listening to and about the Stoics has been tremendously helpful in keeping the philosophy close to mind. I will often play my audio version of Meditations throughout the day, a few passages at a time. I read at least one installment from Epictetus’s Discourses each day, often on my deck with a cup of tea, and I try to read a daily letter from Seneca. I’m also reading Bill Irvine’s book A Guide to the Good Life.
I’m also journaling a lot about my experiences, using a typewriter, which really helps me keep my thoughts clear and intentional compared to a computer. This journaling is helping me to articulate exactly what it is I’m trying to do, which helps me remember to do it in the moment. It also helps me work out what my challenges are and what I might try differently. I see why Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations. He was reminding himself of what he wouldn’t be able to remember if he kept it in his head.
Days Twenty to Twenty-three
As I round the corner towards the end of the experiment, I want to reflect on its overall arc. I’ve reached what I think is a pretty good cruising trajectory with Stoicism, although I also want to ramp it up. I’ll explain what I mean.
During my first few days of the experiment, I came at the day intending to practice in every moment, and felt reasonably successful in this. I tried to live the whole day in this manner:
Doing whatever the moment called for (according to my most honest assessment)Doing it with undivided attention and intentionPracticing equanimity with my experience while doing this thing
The results were very powerful. But after a few days I ran into trouble. At first I was struggling to find the mindset of living this way, which seemed so obvious and intuitive at first. My solution, when I couldn’t locate the mindset, was to go through the motions the best I can, periodically asking myself “Is this how I intend to spend my life?” or “Is the why I’m on this earth?” to consciously examine my actions.
Then I started to struggle with the intention issue. You can’t do something you don’t intend to do, and you can’t will yourself to generate an intention, or if you can I don’t know how. As far as I can tell, you can only cultivate and nurture your better impulses, which has the effect of generating intentions more in alignment with your values. This to me is totally in the spirit of Stoicism, although I’m not as confident as the ancients that we have complete control of our will.
Lulls in intention are a major thing with ADHD. The brain is short on the engagement/intention-related chemical dopamine, and it can feel like you’re just on the outside of the possibility of intentional living. It is very hard to describe.
My response has been to use external supports as much as possible, and using practice periods, where I will take a task and practice doing it in the fully Stoic manner, then let up the efforting at the end. I repeat this all day. This has worked well – it’s like interval training for the cardinal virtues.
I said I want to “ramp it up.” If I go back to the “first principles expressed in my blog post, my original goal was to make myself into a quasi-religious devotee of Stoicism, and that’s still my goal. I mean “quasi-religious” in a positive way – devoting myself to Stoicism the way some people devote themselves to athletics, academics, or their church — I don’t mean I want to become a zealot.
To the extent I can accomplish this level of devotion, it makes sense to me, because everything else I truly value flows from the Stoic mindset – social connection, doing important work, mindfulness, appreciating without indulging, and many other (more subtle) habits and personal qualities. Devoting myself to Stoicism is the same as devoting myself to everything that’s important to me.
One thing I haven’t done, which would be an important first step, is establish solid morning and evening routines. The typical Stoic morning reflection involves looking forward to the day, perhaps doing negative visualization, or the view from above, and committing oneself anew to doing the work of a human. The evening reflection consists of three questions: What did I do well today? What could I have done better? What will I do differently tomorrow? I have done this haphazardly but it should be at least as regular as brushing my teeth. (Maybe I should tie it into my dental hygiene routine.)
I have begun adding to my daily plan (I plan each day on a sheet of looseleaf) a little section at the bottom with a variety of Stoic practices and tasks, including readings. Beside each is a checkbox, or really a circle that I fill in, like on a multiple choice test, if I do it. Most of them take a few minutes (do a negative visualization, do a task with end-to-end Stoic intention, read a chapter of Discourses) so whenever I’m not sure what to do next, I do one of them. I really get a lot out of filling in the circles. It has added many more Stoic-philosophy touchstones throughout the day. The mindset stays with me and the momentum keeps up too.
I’m a week away from the end of the 30 days, but I will absolutely continue to live this way. I think I will also continue to update this log, because it helps me sort out my thoughts and people seem to appreciate the updates.
Really feeling like I’m in a great place for this final week.
Day 30 Final Thoughts
The thirty days is up!
As I’ve said several times already, this was my favorite experiment ever. The Stoic philosophy aligns with my aspirations in every important area – social, spiritual, sensory, behavioral. To the degree I have succeeded in practicing it, I have been a very calm and happy person.
Today I’ll give you my thoughts on the experiment as a whole and what I picture Stoicism’s role being in the future.
At the beginning, my intention was to practice Stoicism in every moment, at least the best I could. This resulted in several very memorable days in which I was doing one thing at a time while practicing equanimity.
The days that went like that were harder in one sense, but overall it was far easier to operate that way, as it freed me from the conflict of trying to get away with knowingly not doing the decidedly sensible thing in the moment.
This is what I pictured doing every day, but after a few days I hit a pretty bad mood dip and could not find a way to live in the same Stoic alignment as at first. I was still consciously doing my best, or going through the motions at least but I couldn’t find that intuitive sense that was so accessible at first. I then had weird complications with my medication, resulting in me going on and off it several times this month, which is not ideal for consistency of outlook, or behavior.
Still, I worked with these challenges the best I could, acting on my daily readings of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. Unevenness aside, I’ve gotten so much out of this new practice. I haven’t experienced this level of presence and ordinary-moment-related joy in at least a few years.
There are two particularly significant achievements that I attribute to this experiment:
The first was a major change in how I relate to other people. I began to question every negative impression I experienced when I’m out and about, with both strangers and people I know. I now explicitly question my initial feeling – maybe they aren’t actually doing anything wrong, or if they are, maybe they don’t know how to do otherwise. The Stoic method of questioning impressions in this way is very logical, since we rarely do have all the information required to justifiably condemn a person. I feel like I’ve become a lot fairer and more patient with people, which has made most social experiences far happier on my end, and presumably theirs. Because I spend much less of my energy being annoyed, I derive a lot more joy from being around people, no matter what they’re doing.
The second huge gain is more particular to me — I have stopped my lifelong habit of idly monologuing/dialoguing. As long as I can remember, I have, all day long, repeatedly slipped into internal and sometimes external self-talk. I now understand this to be a form of hyperfocus arising from ADHD – my brain is looking for something rewarding it can do consistently, so it latches onto a salient thought, resulting in my constantly talking to myself. When I’m alone it’s out loud, and in public it’s internal. (I wrote about this in more detail on my What ADHD is Like page.) I have essentially stopped doing this, and I think it’s permanent. It was always splitting my attention from the task at hand, making it completely incompatible with Stoicism. So I halted it every time I noticed it, and that seems to have broken the momentum. My brain doesn’t reach for this old pacifier very often now, and when it does, I just stop, and – here’s the part that makes me think it is permanent – stopping feels better than continuing.
I don’t expect this development to mean much to anyone else, but for me it has been life-changing. I really can’t believe it. I spent YEARS absorbed in this behavior, and I basically don’t do it anymore, and it seems like a lifetime ago when I did do it. There were undoubtedly other factors at work here – my life is changing in many ways since my diagnosis – but Stoic practice was apparently a pivotal catalyst.
One other major thing: I developed an excellent habit of practicing the “last time” meditation, as recommended by Bill Irvine, many times a day. I wrote about this practice on Day 10 — I am continually becoming conscious that I am alive right now, experiencing things, and there is a truly limited amount of that aliveness left. Each time I remember that, I become aware that I am in that short and precious window where it is still possible to do whatever I’m doing, whether it’s eating a carrot, ascending a staircase, or petting a dog. Just being alive is so wonderful, and Stoicism has helped me not just remember that as a concept, but realize its wonderfulness again and again throughout the day.
Despite these victories, I never quite returned to that all-day in-every-moment practice I was attempting at the beginning. It is certainly possible, and I think the only issue was settling into a rather successfully partway sort of practice. There is such potential in every-moment practice that I’m going to schedule days and half-days where I practice like that again, because it sure is fruitful when I can find the groove of it.
I think I will leave my report at that. This was a wonderful experiment and I’m looking forward to living the rest of my days as a Stoic.
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I've been a subscriber for at least a decade now, though I haven't always checked my RSS. But I'm unsubscribing now. Honestly what I read felt like intellectual masturbation. I'm listening to Ajahn Sumedho now, and even as i listen to wonderful teachings about present moment experience, I know...