BONUS | If You’re Feeling Anxious Right Now, Listen To This

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

0:56Would you describe yourself as an anxious person? Sure. Yeah? Yeah. What does it look like for you? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think for me, it's this constant sense of questioning. Yeah. And I've tried to transition the questioning, at least in terms of questioning myself and questioning every decision, into paying attention and noticing. Yeah. Because that's a little bit different. And something I think is really helpful for people is if you just kind of like go through your day and just start by paying attention to how you spend your time. Yeah. You don't have to do anything else. like if you just notice you know what are you responding to when you have little pockets of free time how do you spend that time how do you structure your day with whatever autonomy you have i think if you do nothing else then just moving forward you're going to probably make some better decisions and the second part is like what do you want more of and what do you want less of and so i have tried to take some of my anxiety which is always like it's a physical manifestation Like I'm feeling like really, you know, this tightness in my chest and, um, and it's very much in my head too.

2:05I'm just like worried all the time. I'm trying to like, okay, what, what, what is going on right now? What do, what do I need? Uh, what is happening? What do I need? What can I do? How can I maybe also get out of myself? So it's not just like, what do I need for myself? But if I really don't know what to do, then it's like, is there some small thing I can do to be helpful to somebody? And that's actually going to make me feel better usually, right? Like hopefully it's going to help that person too. but I'm also going to be like, oh, okay, that's cool. I did something there. Yeah. Like, have you gotten better at noticing when it's you or the anxiety talking?

2:37Do you know what I mean? Like when you're like, hey, I'm in this, this is not me in my resting state. This is the anxiety state that is feeling this intense or this worried or what, like, can you notice that? Yeah. I got a lot better at understanding cognitive distortions, which I wrote about in this book about like black and white thinking or personalization. Like if this thing happened, it's not, you know, if some negative thing happened, it's not the end of the world. Sure. If I get some criticism, maybe it's actually more about that person's experience than mine. Right. Which you know this stuff intellectually, but I kind of had to like delve into it a little bit more to understand it.

3:12Like to not just understand it, but to internalize it, I think. Well, one of the interesting passages where the Stoics talk about anxiety is Marcus Rios. He goes, he's sitting at the end of the day, you know, and he's reflecting in the journal and he goes, you know, today I escaped my anxiety. And so he's, you know, when you have a good day where you didn't have it. And then, but then he, he catches himself and he says, actually, no, I discarded it because it's within me. And I think that's something I've tried to get better at. It's like, the airport is not the cause of the anxiety. I am in the airport bringing the anxiety to it, right?

3:49Like it's not what's happening in the world. That's the source of the anxiety. It's my opinions about what's happening in the world, my sense that it should be different, my sense of powerlessness over it. Like I'm, it's not that I'm choosing to be anxious, especially if you tell that to someone who's anxious, that sounds very dismissive. But the point is like the common variable in all the situations that you are anxious in is you. And that it's, and so what I think Marcus is doing there and what I try to do, and it

4:23You take this feeling that you have and then you kind of go, why am I feeling this way? What is the logic of this? Is that actually logical? How is this worked out? And similar, like you're just kind of, you're almost, the same racing mind that's causing the anxiety can be used to kind of slow it down and detangle the knot that you've twisted yourself into. Yeah. You ask, what is the evidence for this? Yes. What is the evidence? and maybe you can come up with something, but most likely it is your projection or something else. And then once you realize, oh, this is just a thing, then maybe you do still feel that, you know, but you can also be aware, okay, I've been here before, right?

5:03I've been here before, this is going to pass, right? Am I doing more or less the right things, right? Am I, you know, like I may not be - More often than not. Yeah, exactly, right? Am I working towards something that I believe in that is important to me? Do I feel like I'm being true to myself? yourself and these sound like these. Have I done everything I can do? You know, like if you're, you're like, Hey, I want this to go well. Well, have you done everything you can do? You know, and then if the answer is yes, then you got to chill out. Right. And if the answer is no, maybe there's something specific that you can do.

5:36Right. And that helps too, I think, because often it's this overwhelming generality. And so if we say, Oh, here's actually three things I can do that might create a better outcome. I don't know for sure, but I'm, you know, if I do these three things, then I've done my part. Yes. So yeah, getting specific has really been very helpful. Another question I like is like, would that really be so bad? Right. Like what, like, what's the worst that can happen? Yes, exactly. Right. Because, because often you just have this vague existential doom that you haven't put up for review and evaluated. And it's like, you know, it actually, what would happen is they would laugh at you or actually, or no one would figure it out.

6:14No one would care. More likely. Yes, exactly. People are judging me. People are judging me. But actually, most of the time, they don't care.

6:26We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone. And then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

7:01My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

7:38Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County. I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house.

8:19It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour.

9:04And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

9:30So when the Stokes talk about how some things are in our control, some things are not in our control, what they're saying is, well, focus on what you control about this situation. Reminding yourself that, hey, just feeling anxiety, emoting about the problem, biting your nails about it, talking about it incessantly to people, it's not making it any more or less likely to happen. it. So try to put that energy to constructive use. Try to think about, okay, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I can do. Here are ways that I can influence this situation or at least prepare myself to be resilient or endure or bounce back from it if it does happen.

10:03Put yourself to constructive use. Put yourself working on something that makes a difference. Just make sure you're not confusing spending mental bandwidth and energy and torturing yourself emotionally. Don't confuse that with making a positive difference.

10:22There's a story about Cleanthes, one of the ancient Stokes, and he's walking through Athens one day and he sees this man talking to himself. You know, the way that we all do it. Like, what's wrong with you? You idiot. How could you be so stupid? You know, that sort of negative self-talk that sometimes when we get so frustrated, so disappointed in ourselves, we can't help but break out into. And Cleanthes stops and he interrupts the man and he says, hey, I just want you to know you're not talking to a bad person. What an amazing interruption. What a great kindness to do a stranger. I think we can imagine somebody doing that for us the next time we get really riled up, the next time we get really upset with ourselves, just to remind ourselves you're not talking to a bad person.

11:02You're talking to you. You're not talking to a bad person.

11:09Life is difficult enough. it's hard enough, you shouldn't suffer imagined troubles, Seneca says. That means don't borrow suffering, don't get scared, worried, annoyed, anxious in advance of something that may or may not happen. That doesn't mean you're naive, you think everything's gonna go your way, you do have a plan for the worst-case scenario, but that's different than torturing yourself in anticipation of something that perhaps the odds are only 50-50 of actually even happening.

11:40what people say what people do the things that happen these things can't upset you only your opinion about those things can upset you the events are objective it's what we make up about them it's the story we tell ourselves about them it's that we say we've been insulted or offended or transgressed against or harmed that's the problem it's not things that upset us Epictetus said it's our opinion about things look it's a bad use of your creativity the time you're spending imagining what might happen the conversations you're making up in your head the things that you think people are thinking about you this is a bad way to deploy your creativity you're using it to make yourself miserable you're imagining these terrible scenarios notice you're never imagining things going well, people liking you.

12:32You're putting your imagination to work on your anxiety, on your self-consciousness, on your doubt, and it's just not a good use of it. The Stoics would say our mind is this incredibly powerful thing. How are you going to deploy it? How are you going to use it? Are you going to use it to torture yourself or are you going to use it to move yourself forward to solve problems or create them?

12:57no amount of philosophy Seneca says takes away our natural feelings or inclinations is this in my control or is this not in my control is this up to me or not up to me that's the essence of stoic philosophy Marx really says that we have to remember the thing is not causing us anxiety we are causing the anxiety in ourselves it's within us which means that we can let it go

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