The Uncommon Communicator

E103 - The UC Playbook: The Art of Stoic Living

• James Gable • Season 2 • Episode 103

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Ready for a journey back in time to ancient Athens? Today, we're thrilled to continue our enlightening dialogue with Felipe Engineer Manriquez on the philosophy that's shaped his life and many others - Stoicism. We promise you an exploration of this ancient philosophy's roots; its founder Zeno of Sidium, its therapeutic nature, and its profound impact on our lives. We'll delve into its emphasis on ethics and how our thoughts can influence our well-being. Plus, we'll unravel the mystery behind the placebo effect and its connection to Stoic principles.

But we're not stopping there. As we venture deeper, we'll unveil the crucial role Stoicism played in resurrecting a rational approach to psychotherapy in the 20th century. Hear about Swiss psychiatrist Paul Dubois, who masterfully integrated Stoic philosophy into his therapy sessions. We'll share stories of great Stoic thinkers like Epictetus and Seneca, who taught us the importance of living each day like it's our last. And finally, we'll discuss one of Stoicism's most poignant teachings - the acceptance of death. Through the lens of a deeply personal story about the loss of a beloved pet, we're going to ask ourselves a significant question - are we living a life worth repeating? Join us for a transformative exploration of Stoicism.

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Speaker 1:

You want to talk right down to us and a language that everybody here can easily understand. Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? What? Space one again. Space one again. I dare you, I double dare you. What we got here is a failure to communicate.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Uncommon communicator podcast, where we bring enlightenment to the topic of communication. In this week's playbook, we are following up on an absolutely great interview that I had with Felipe engineer Manriquez, and we covered the topic of stoicism. Now, talking with Felipe, he is one of those guys that is deeper than you see in his posts, in his leading in the lean industry, but we really delved deep into some philosophies, some philosophies of life that really guided him and that have recently intrigued myself as well. And as we talked about stoicism, we kind of just breezed over where it started, why it happened. I think it's important to understand its foundation. We're going to talk a little bit about that this morning or today as we move on, and we'll talk on a couple of other topics a little bit deeper, on maybe one that I skipped at the end and I got called out for, but we're going to jump right into this week's playbook Now, stoicism originated as a Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Sidium.

Speaker 1:

That is what we could not remember. We didn't know that on the top of our head, which is modern day Cyprus today, around 300 BC, it was influenced by Socrates and the cynics. Stoicism was very much a philosophy meant to be applied to everyday living. It focused on ethics, understanding, as you know, a study of how one lives their life, and it focused on understanding how people live and how they can turn informed by this information. Now, stokes called physics nowadays a kind of a combination of natural science and metaphysics and what they call logic, a combination of modern logic, epistemology, philosophy, language and cognitive science. Now, socrates considered philosophy to be, among other things, a form of a talking therapy, a sort of medicine for the mind.

Speaker 1:

Within a few generations of his death, this idea of philosophy was psychotherapy had become commonplace among the various schools within this Hellenistic philosophy and we kind of lose track of that. We lose the idea that this was really a form of psychotherapy. However, it was the Stokes who placed the most emphasis on this therapeutic dimension of philosophy. For example, the Roman Stoke teacher, epictetus, wrote it is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body, for it is better to die than to live badly. And he really states it bluntly within the philosopher school, as a doctor's clinic, that's what they kind of called it. Now, today most people are unaware of the extent to which ancient Greeks and Romans conceived of philosophy as a type of psychological therapy, and it's interesting that now, 2000 years later, we're seeing cognitive behavior therapies that are right in line with taking in the thoughts of these philosophers, where we have ownership, where we can take and own our thoughts, and that our own thoughts are going to get us past those points and even be to a healing point. You know, one thing we touched on a little bit is when you look at placebo, the placebo effect a lot of times plus placebo are 25 to 30% effective, even more so than the medicine that's being tested for, whatever thing that they're testing it on, which shows that within our mind we have that power to perceive the health that is within us. So how much more of that can we have in directing our own lives, in looking at becoming better through philosophy and through the stoic philosophy and through positive thinking?

Speaker 1:

Stoicism survived for five centuries, but its therapeutic concepts and practices were mostly neglected until about the 20th century where a rational approach to psychotherapy began emerging, which held that many emotional and psychosomatic problems were caused by negative self-talk and auto-suggestions which be amenable to like rational disputation. Its leading proponent, the Swiss psychiatrist Paul Dubois, employed a Socratic questioning with his parents, with his patients, and taught them the basic principles of a Socratic and Stoic philosophy of life. Dubois also noticed that, paradoxically, the stoic words of advice he read in the letters of the philosopher Seneca seem to be drawn from a modern treatise on psychotherapy. He says this in a modern treatise, but this was written in the 1st century AD. Dubois placed more emphasis than most of the other psychotherapists on the fundamental distinction that Stoics make between what is up to us and what is not. Then, that is, one of the key to Stoicism is there are things that are up to us. We can't blame others for this. Epictetus put it. What, then, is it to be done? To make the best of what is within our power and to take the rest, as it naturally happens.

Speaker 1:

Now, one of the things that I skipped during this episode and Felipe called me out for it was Stoic Rule number three, and that was accepting death. I didn't think it was the place to call it out, but he certainly called out the fact that part of the Stoicism, philosophy and that doctrine isn't to just hide it from it but to accept it. And how do we accept it? But by living a better life. So there's such a positive message that actually comes within that.

Speaker 1:

But, backing up a little bit, I had recently lost McGee. Mcgee was a dog that we had had for 14 years and that was probably one of the hardest things we do as human beings is to have to put a dog down. And that brought in way more emotion than I was prepared to handle. And in doing so it allowed me to kind of process through what is life, what is death. And McGee had served such a great purpose on earth, so much joy, so much happiness that he brought the family. I had even given a speech in Toastmasters about his life. I treated it as a memorial where I just was going to go up and talk about all the great things that he did. He greeted me unconditional, with unconditional love. You know, when we would play fetch and I would throw the ball, he would run with such laser focus towards that ball, but when he turned around, his ears would just be a flop and he'd be totally relaxed. He would enjoy that run back as much as he enjoyed going for his goal.

Speaker 1:

And then the last thing is everybody says this about their dogs. I wish I could duplicate him. I wish I had another McGee. I had another friend of mine who had a dog named Gracie Now Gracie. They had had for a lot of years, I think over 17 years. They had Gracie. It was a beautiful little Bichon and fluffy. That was their child. They would get a rotisserie chicken and debone it and feed this dog with such love, such care. Gracie was such a wonderful dog and I'm messing up because they got another Bichon and that Bichon was named Gracie. Now Gracie was never Lacey, but when you look at some of our pets, I've lived lives that we want to repeat it. That is became kind of the mantra that I learned from McGee.

Speaker 1:

And also looking at and accepting death. You look at, how are you living your life now? Are you living a life worth repeating? Epictetus said I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it, and I like this one. Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of our life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. What a message in that. Now let's close out that day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time, and that's a quote from Seneca.

Speaker 1:

Marcus Aurelius once said you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do, say and think, and that mindset alone brings us to the point of what is our UC moment. What did I gather from our chat with Felipe? And that's this, and I'm going to leave it in the form of a question today we learned a lot about how a stoic system can really guide your life. It can bring you happiness now it can not let the storms of life come against you, because you're taking ownership of those things. And then, when you look at death, death is looking at life directly. And are you living a life that's worth repeating? So the UC moment for today that I have for you today, your challenges are you living a life that's worth repeating? And that's all I've got. See you, bye.