Before the Notes
Most of what I read this month was related to Stoicism, with a few comics and illustrated books mixed in.
The Stoic books included How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and Breakfast with Seneca. I also read one book on Adlerian psychology, How to Think and Live Like Adler. There were quite a few comics and picture books too, but I will leave them out here.
The book I most want to write about is How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. The Roman emperor in the title is Marcus Aurelius.
I have already written about Stoic philosophy before, so this time I want to focus more on what this book made me feel and think after reading it.
One thing I really like about Stoicism is that it does not stop at abstract ideas. It gives concrete methods. It tells you what you can actually do.
Dealing with Desire
The author compares two kinds of pleasure: bodily pleasure and spiritual pleasure. From there, he introduces Stoic pleasure: achieving basic goals in life, which relates to bodily pleasure, while also experiencing a deeper sense of satisfaction, which belongs more to spiritual pleasure.
Essentially, spiritual pleasure comes from actions we actively choose, especially when we recognize virtue in our own behavior. Bodily pleasure, on the other hand, comes from experiences that happen to the body itself, such as eating, drinking, entertainment, and other forms of enjoyment.
Three Dimensions of Pleasure
Stoic pleasure can be considered through three dimensions: the self, other people, and the world.
- For the self, the important thing is to think about what we truly long for internally. We should stay cautious about depending too much on external things, while continuing to desire inner goods, such as kindness and honesty. These virtues should then be practiced in our relationships with others.
- For other people, we should think about their virtues and the good they have done for us. I prefer to understand this as: imagine more of the good in the other person, and let go more quickly of the bad they have done to you. Every time you are about to leave, even if you really must leave, even if the relationship truly cannot continue, remember the good they once gave you instead of ending everything in mutual blame and resentment.
- For the world, Stoicism suggests using negative visualization. So many people spend their lives endlessly chasing what they do not have. It may be better to turn back and look carefully at what we already possess, then imagine what it would be like if we lost him, her, or those things. This helps us cherish what is already here.
Methods for Overcoming Desire
The author then gives four progressive suggestions:
- Evaluate the consequences of desire;
- Notice early warning signs;
- Keep cognitive distance;
- Do something else that is genuinely beneficial.
Evaluating the Consequences
The book gives an example: suppose you often watch one hour of television after work. What are the long-term advantages and disadvantages of this habit? Is there something else you could do that would be more consistent with your real values?
To use myself as an example: while writing these notes, I really wanted to go out to the snack street and buy a late-night meal. Eating it once is not a big deal. Eating it twice is not a big deal either. But if it keeps accumulating? I will gain weight, look worse, and maybe develop health problems. Once I think through the consequences, much of the desire to eat late-night snacks disappears.
If I think even further ahead: between eating late-night snacks and exercising, which one will be better for me if I keep doing it for a long time? If I walk along these two different roads, what kind of life will each road lead to?
Noticing Early Warning Signs
One way is to record the appearance of desire every day. It can be very simple: write down the habitual tendency you noticed each time, meaning why that thought appeared, along with the time, place, frequency, and emotional experience. A table like this can be used:
<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Time/Frequency/Place</th> <th>Early Warning</th> <th>Urge (0-10)</th> <th>Pleasure (0-10)</th> <th>Thoughts</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td></td> <td></td> <td></td> <td></td> <td></td> </tr> </tbody> </table>Keeping Cognitive Distance
When desire appears, pay attention to the thought behind it. For example: “I want to know what is happening online,” or “There is nothing wrong with scrolling social media for just a little while.”
One method I learned from this book and found usable for myself is to separate thoughts from value. It is only a thought of mine. It does not represent anything. It has no inherent value. Thinking this way weakens many of my desires.
Doing Something Else That Is Useful
Instead of clinging to brief and empty pleasure, do something that can bring a real sense of accomplishment. Like what I am doing now: writing reading notes.
Creating More Positive Sources of Pleasure
First, replace bad habits with more meaningful actions, and intentionally arrange beneficial activities.
Second, think about the qualities of the people I admire most. How do their strengths influence me? How can I learn from them and benefit from those qualities?
Third, replace desire with gratitude. What would I do if the things I have now were no longer mine? What would happen if the people I love no longer appeared in my life? These things cannot be taken for granted.
Enduring Pain
The most important idea here is: do not complain. Beyond that, Stoicism also gives several methods for enduring pain.
Cognitive Distance
This sentence was especially useful to me:
It is not events themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them.
Applied to physical pain, this means it is not the pain itself that disturbs us, but our view of it. When we stop making value judgments about pain, the suffering is reduced. If we do not treat pain and illness as harm, then pain is no longer harm in the same way.
Functional Analysis
I did not really understand this part.
The book says that if you want to change a behavior, it is important to deeply understand its consequences.
I still did not quite get it.
Objective Description
Describe your pain in an objective, third-person tone. Reduce emotional language. Do not add layers of judgment. Simply state what is happening plainly.
Breaking It Down
Look at things objectively. Separate out the present moment and divide it into smaller parts. Marcus says we can ask ourselves: within the current difficulty, which parts are truly unbearable or impossible to endure?
More specifically, put the past and future aside, and focus only on the isolated present. In doing so, pain can be greatly reduced. For example, I often feel troubled by the daily report I need to write. Recently I developed a method: I do not spend every moment of the day thinking about how to write the report. I only think about how to write it when I actually need to write it. Then the anxiety only lasts for those few minutes of writing.
Thinking About Limits and Impermanence
Marcus says that if a part of the body is affected, let that part complain. The mind does not need to join in, and it does not need to judge whether the feeling is terrible or harmful. In other words, just think concretely about the painful part. Do not expand it into other imagined problems. Do not over-imagine.
Besides limiting unpleasant feelings to the specific uncomfortable body part, Marcus also often reminds himself to consider their duration. He sees them as limited in both time and space. For example, experiences that once felt unpleasant to me do not seem like much now. Many uncomfortable feelings eventually fade. They are temporary.
Stoic Acceptance
Stoic acceptance means actively accepting all illness and pain that come to us. Marcus imagines nature as a doctor, like Asclepius, the god of medicine. Hardship becomes a remedy for pain, and willingly accepting suffering becomes a kind of psychological treatment for impulse.
Thinking About Virtue
The method I appreciate here is to ask myself: if someone else experienced similar pain or illness, what admirable virtues might they use to face it? What strengths would we praise in them? Then I can think about what would happen if I tried to imitate those strengths or virtues, and to what extent I could actually do it.
Overcoming Fear
The Dichotomy of Control
The first point is that, while taking action, we should calmly accept that the outcome is not entirely under our control. This is also an application of the dichotomy of control: recognizing that some things are simply not within our power.
The book gives an example that also reminds me of the idea of “internalizing goals” from How to Think Like a Philosopher:
The true goal of a Stoic archer should be to draw his bow skillfully, because only this is within his power. Paradoxically, he is not concerned with whether the arrow actually hits the target. He controls his aim, not the arrow’s flight. So he does his best and accepts whatever happens next. The target—perhaps the animal he is hunting—may unexpectedly move.
Premeditating Adversity
The second point is to imagine the worst situation you might encounter, so that you develop the psychological capacity to bear it. But this kind of imagination has to be moderate. You should not put huge pressure on yourself all at once. It is enough to let yourself bear a small amount of pressure and gradually find a more general way to deal with difficult emotions.
This method allows us to face anger and other negative emotions directly, as well as our own fear and anxiety.
Emotional Habituation
This is also similar to what psychology calls exposure therapy. We train ourselves in advance to cope with enough difficulties, thereby increasing emotional resilience. Through imagination, or through actually doing certain things, we expose ourselves to fear and anxiety. When this exposure is long-term and moderate, it can effectively reduce fear and anxiety.
The Inner Citadel
In physical reality, we may not be able to escape to a peaceful estate for a relaxing vacation. That kind of escape is also a way of avoiding stress, and relying on it can create new problems.
Stoicism offers a better method: true calm comes from our thoughts, not from beautiful and refreshing natural surroundings. Resilience comes from the ability to recover composure no matter where we are. At that moment, we can retreat into the “inner citadel,” even if our real environment is terrible.
My own response to this is to imagine a peaceful place inside my mind, a place I especially like. When I feel fear or anxiety, I can run to this place in my inner world and gain a brief moment of peace.
Delaying Anxiety
The most useful sentence I learned about this point is:
Temporarily set these thoughts aside instead of actively suppressing them. Just tell yourself that you will put them aside for now and deal with them later at a specific time and place.