Transcription
Stoicism, the philosophy of the strong, silent, independent man. He is unbothered, at peace within his solitude. No one has ever seen him sweat or stress. We don't know if he even feels anything at all, but if he does, we would never know. He is too strong and stoic to show it.
If you search stoicism on the internet, it won't be long before you find countless videos and articles praising this image: the strong, independent, unemotional, indifferent man. In fact, the very first definition you'll find of the word stoicism is the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.
The problem is that this is a bastardized and twisted caricature of what the actual stoic philosophy taught. It's a myth that being stoic means to feel no emotions at all or be completely removed from natural human passions like love or fear.
There was a brilliant video done by Aperture in which he explains how stoicism became a buzzword for the manosphere. Stoicism, stoicism, stoic. In the video, he points out that certain male influencers and authors have commodified stoicism and turned it into a quick hack for achieving hyper-masculine success, rather than the philosophy's original purpose, which was to help one live a moral, virtuous life in service of others.
What's worse is that modern research actually suggests that buying into this naive understanding of stoicism actually leads to worse psychological outcomes: feelings of loneliness, a perpetual feeling of dissatisfaction, depression, a harmed sense of well-being—all from a philosophy that was meant to teach you how to live well.
So this video is about how we corrupted this beautiful and simple life philosophy into the "M" brand of masculinity and mental toughness. And I'll do my best to provide a jargon-free guide to start your practice into the beautiful philosophy of stoicism, because I believe it is one of the most empowering mental and emotional frameworks that we can all adopt and we can all live by.
We live in a world of global instability and chaos, masked by local stability and individualism, which only perpetuates our feelings of fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. We lack cultural consensus around social issues. We lack a sense of trust or allegiance towards public figures. And as a result, our mental health is suffering at alarming rates. Which means it is a dangerous moment in history to not know who we are. It is a dangerous moment in history to not be able to trust ourselves. It is a dangerous moment in history to not have a clear sense of purpose, a clear system of values and principles which we live by, which guide us. I believe the stability we cannot find in the world we must create within.
So ultimately, that's the purpose of this video. I hope it serves you. I hope it sheds a new light on stoicism and shows you the true beauty of it.
One of the main reasons I was inspired to write this video was a study I came across that was published in 2022, titled "Misunderstood Stoicism: The Negative Association Between Stoic Ideology and Well-being." Now, this paper caught my attention because I have personally studied and practiced stoic ideology, or I have practiced stoicism for several years, and I've seen the massive positive influence that it's had on my emotional and mental well-being. I've seen its ability to guide me through life's natural ebbs and flows with a sense of grace, with a sense of gratitude. And on top of that, stoicism has been explicitly credited as the founding philosophy for what is now called cognitive behavioral therapy, which is the current gold standard in the world of psychotherapy. So that's all to say that stoicism works. We know this to be true, if understood well. That's the caveat. Had to change real quick—was getting really hot in my room.
So what the study found is that a naive understanding of stoicism is related to poor psychological outcomes, right, a worsened sense of well-being. Now you ask yourself why. If we know that stoicism works, it's actually pretty common sense. If a person thinks that being stoic means emotional non-reactivity or suppression, that person will likely identify that emotional non-reactivity with their sense of manliness or their sense of "M" toughness. And that person is a lot less likely to seek emotional support from their friends, from their family, from therapists. They're less likely to try things like journaling, like meditation, because that would challenge their identity—that they're manly, mentally tough guys. These people who see their independence as a sign of their toughness will, of course, be less resilient in the long run compared to people who have strong social support networks and use them wisely.
Another reason is that if you try to suppress or deny your emotional reaction to an event, you are inherently labeling that emotion as wrong, right? And when you do that, your brain categorizes it as a threat to your identity, to your psychological survival, and it will thus magnify that experience. This is a psychological phenomenon known as the rebound effect or the paradox of thought suppression. And there's been decades of research showing that when we try to block out a certain emotional reaction, we experience it more often—right, that feeling, that emotion, that thought keeps recurring more often. If you try to suppress your anxiety, you'll be more anxious. If you try to suppress your fear or shame, you'll be more scared and more embarrassed. The more you try to conceal unpleasant or embarrassing emotions, the more threatening your brain is perceiving them to be, and therefore the more often you will think about them and experience them.
This is why stoicism has nothing to do with emotional suppression, but rather it deals with emotional distancing—that is, recognizing your automatic emotional reaction to an event and without judging it or without judging yourself, simply observing it, right, creating distance from it. This is what the stoics meant when they said, "Let reason be your guiding principle." Because when we create this sort of psychological distance from an event or an emotional reaction, we can view them more objectively, and we can thus take a course of action that is more aligned with our values, with our principles, with who we want to be, with how we want to show up. But that has nothing to do with not experiencing your emotions.
In fact, in one of the foundational texts of stoic philosophy is a series of letters that Seneca, who was a Roman statesman and one of the leading intellectual figures at the time, wrote to his mentee Lucilius. And in the 71st letter, Seneca said this: "I do not withdraw the wise man from the category of man, nor do I deny him the sense of pain as though he were a rock that has no feelings at all. I remember that he is made up of two parts: the one part is irrational; it is this that may be bitten, burned, or hurt. The other part is rational; it is this which holds resolutely to opinions, is courageous and unconquerable. You must not think that our human virtue transcends nature. The wise man will tremble, will feel pain, will turn pale—for all these are sensations of the body."
So there you have it. The stoic person can still be anxious, can still be scared, can still be stressed, can still be full of joy and life and laughter. Oh my God, that can be a stoic person. The difference is that there is an unmoving centeredness to their character. All of these experiences, the very emotionally taxing ones, they don't move this person from their center. Their center meaning: What are my values? What are my principles? Who do I want to be in this world? How do I want to serve others around me? My emotional experiences are not going to change my actions that are aligned with that. That's the difference. There is no resistance. All these experiences just pass through you. That's what it means to be stoic.
There's a great passage by Donald Robertson, who is a stoic scholar, a former psychotherapist, and author of "How to Think Like a Roman Emperor," that I think captures this idea beautifully: "A brave man isn't someone who doesn't experience any trace of fear whatsoever, but someone who acts courageously despite feeling anxiety. A man who has great self-discipline or restraint isn't someone who feels no inkling of desire, but someone who overcomes his cravings by abstaining from acting upon them. The sage conquers his passions by becoming stronger than them, not by eliminating all emotion from his life. The stoic ideal is therefore not to be passionless in the sense of being apathetic, hard-hearted, insensitive, or like a statue of stone or iron; rather, it is to experience natural affection for ourselves, our loved ones, and other human beings, and to value our lives in accord with nature, which unarguably opens us up to experiencing emotional reactions to loss or frustration."
So now that you've understood how stoicism can be terribly misinterpreted and go wrong, and now that you understand the value and the beauty of stoicism, I want to share with you three of the most practical, jargon-free tools that I think will help you get started on your journey with this beautiful philosophy.
The first tool is the founding principle of all stoicism: It is the realization that men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them. That was Epictetus who said that, or as Marcus Aurelius put it: "We have control over our minds, not external events. Realize this, and you will find strength." As Shakespeare paraphrased in Hamlet: "There is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so." This is your mantra. This is the core of your practice. This is the founding pillar, right? It's realizing that the only thing you're guaranteed is chaos, is change, because that is the natural order of the world. Nature is a far more intelligent system than we could ever conceive of; it existed long before us, and it will continue to exist long after we are gone. So what the stoics teach us is that trying to control this force or trying to impose your preferences on it is futile. Acts of nature, socioeconomic forces, other people's behavior—most of the world, most of what is unfolding in front of you is largely outside of your control, and most of it is an illusion, right? To think, "Oh, I'm going to start this business, or I'm going to build this amazing career, and I'm going to make a bunch of money and have all these savings, and I'm going to build status, and I'm going to find this beautiful partner that's going to love me and respect me, and they're never going to leave me; we're going to have children," and all the like—you have your life map, right, and you find security in that—but that's an illusion, right? Markets crash. People die. People get injured and lose skills. Things happen. Every—to think that you have control, you're fooling yourself, and you're setting yourself up for potential misery if you think that you have control, because you don't. It's the truth. Stoicism teaches us that the only thing that we have control over is our attitude, is the perspective we choose to take towards how events unfold in our lives.
I've shared this example many times, obviously, because it's my story, but I thought I was going to be a professional athlete. I have plenty of friends who are actually playing professional sports right now or who went to get scholarships at top universities playing soccer. But I broke my leg. Things happened during the surgery; all of a sudden, my foot is amputated, and now I'm disabled. Things happen, right? What you have control over is your attitude, is the perspective you choose to take. Now, naturally, upon accepting this means you will begin to let go of some of your attachment for your vision, for material real things, for your preferences for how things should unfold, because if you have no control over anything but your reaction to events, that means, well, why should I have a vision? Why should I have a goal in the first place? But it's not about that, right? You're twisting it. This does not mean relinquish everything, go live in the mountains, go meditate every single day. You have control over your mind, not external events. So external events—it doesn't mean that, right? And that's because of the second stoic principle that I want to share with you, which is *amor fati*: the love of one's fate.
When you realize that you are just part of this natural process that is far more intelligent than we could ever conceive, that is largely outside of our control, you realize that every experience that is unfolding in front of you, consciousness itself, is a gift. It is a gift that you are here, right? It is a gift that your great-great-great-grandparents met each other, fell in love, had children, and then your great-great-grandparents met each other, fell in love, blah blah—it's a gift that you're here. Doesn't matter if you're 5'4" or super overweight, or you're Black or you're Brown, or you're born in this part of the world, or you have five toes—you're here, and things are unfolding in front of you; experiences are happening; nature is unfolding; nature is changing. You can choose to fight it and try to control the world around you and try to fight with things and be miserable your whole life, or you can say, "Wow, this is incredible. I'm so lucky I get to experience these things. Let me control what I can control, which is my attitude, my skills, the things that I have in front of me, and let me look to serve the world; let me look to do what is best with what I can."
I want you to think about it: It's no coincidence that our greatest sources of pain often become our greatest strengths. All of these things which unfold in front of us, both the good and the bad, right, the things that make us laugh and fall in love and feel creative and joyful, and the things that make us miserable and pain and hurt and shame—all of these things are part of the same intelligent natural process which is unfolding largely outside of our control. And when you realize that most things are largely outside of your control, you come to realize that why should your preferences or your will override that natural process, right? What an infantile and selfish point of view that is. Why should my preferences for how the world should be, for how things should unfold, change this natural process that's been going on for millions of years? Why? If you think about how selfish we are—it's myself included, currently—I'm not trying to be a guru here—we want all the things that we love to happen to us, and we want none of the things we hate to not happen to us, right? But those preferences simply came from our upbringing, the media exposures that we've had, this socialization that we've had. So why should our will, our preferences, impose that on the universe, that on others, right? *Amor fati* is instead saying, "These things are happening; let me engage with it in the most productive way; let me look to serve others; let me look to find a sense of balance, a sense of equanimity, a sense of peace within myself, right? Let me control what I can control, which is my mind, my attitude."
This is not a passive process. This requires strength. That's the other thing, right? What I'm saying here is not saying, "Oh, I'm going to just be super Zen, and everything can happen to me, and I'm going to be okay either way, so like I'm just going to float about life doing whatever, and I have no responsibilities, and I don't care about anything, 'cause Mikey told me and stoicism told me to just be Zen with everything, and I'm just going to go about"—like, no! It is an act of will to engage with life with energy, with passion, with enthusiasm, to love deeply, to work hard, to do things, and then when life rebounds at you and when it throws events and stressful things at you, it's an act of will to choose a perspective that is loving, that is empowering in that moment, instead of a perspective that is fueled by fear, by anger, by rage, right? That's an act of strength. That's an act of will. That's what stoicism is. So again, it's not—has nothing to do with being unemotional or apathetic, passionless, non-reactive, suppressive—none of that. You're engaging with the world actively; you're experiencing things deeply. But when you do things, when you love, when you take action, there will be things that bounce back and happen to you—nature, right? How do you react in those moments? It's looking to work for this force of the universe, for this force of nature, instead of against it and trying to impose your will on it, right? And that takes a deep sense of mindfulness, which is our third tool.
Epictetus famously said, "We should respond to troubling thoughts by reminding ourselves, 'You are just an impression, not at all the thing you claim to represent.'" And in modern psychology, the skill is called cognitive distancing, a term popularized by Dr. Aaron Beck, who is the founder of cognitive behavioral therapy. Distancing refers to the ability to view one's own thoughts or beliefs as constructions of reality rather than as reality itself. And the way Aaron Beck explained cognitive distancing or mindfulness—stoic mindfulness—is through a classic analogy of viewing the world through colored, tinted glasses, right? If your whole life you were wearing rose-tinted glasses, the whole world would look warm and pink to you, and it would be fair if you assumed that everyone else viewed the world in that way. But then one day when you meet someone that's worn dark blue glasses for their whole life and they told you that, "The world to me looks dark and blue. Right? What's the sun? Is it that like dim kind of bluish light up there?" Then you would realize that the world is not pink at all. The world is neither pink nor blue; it just depends on what color of glasses you're wearing. That's what cognitive distancing is. It's realizing that events are neutral by nature; emotions are neutral by nature, but it is the labels that we attach to them that create our experience of them, and our experience of them internally then recreates more experiences, right? Because our actions are premeditated by our thoughts and our beliefs.
So mindfulness is developing the ability to create the sort of emotional distance, a sort of cognitive distance, and that's a practice that you have to do every single day, right? For me, a way that I do this is by daily meditation—10, 20 minutes every single day. It can be journaling; it can be prayer if you're a person of faith. But it is developing the practice of recognizing that you are the observer of your thoughts; you are not your thoughts themselves. And that when a certain label is attached to an emotion, right—"My boss criticized me. This is horrible. This is so embarrassing. It's humiliating. Oh my God, what if I get fired? If I don't keep doing well in my job, oh my God, like if I get fired, I won't be able to pay my rent," and then your mind goes in spirals, right? But those are just labels you're attaching to the event; those are a color of lens that you're putting on that event. What if you looked at the event as neutral? "My boss criticized me. Okay, like literally okay. Why was it valid? Like, do I want to do better at this job? Yeah, okay. What actions can I take to do better at this job? Is it possible that he criticized me because he knows that I'm a good employee? He knows that I'm capable of doing more, and he believes in me, and therefore he's given me feedback so I do better, right? If he didn't believe me and he thought someone else could do a better job, he probably would have done it already. This is an opportunity for me to upscale, for me to grow." Like, there's all these different self-talk narratives that you can attach to it, right? Which is why language is so powerful, and I've made videos about that in the past, and I've talked about that in the past in depth, right? Language brings order to consciousness; it's what allows us to navigate the world of thoughts, ideas, and feelings.
So if you haven't tried it already, I suggest you practice mindfulness. And I'm not—it doesn't have to be every single day in a meditation cushion; it doesn't have to be through journaling; it doesn't have to be through some mantras and crystals and Transcendental Meditation. Mindfulness is an every single day, every moment practice. Someone cuts you off on the highway, right? You went all the way to the gym, and you realized that you forgot your shorts, and now you can't work out, and you have to drive all the way back home. That's infuriating, right? There's a massive line at your usual lunch spot between work, so now you can't eat lunch and get back to work at the same—all these little infuriating moments, those are opportunities for you to practice mindfulness; those are all gifts that the universe is giving you for you to grow and develop your character. We have to start there, right? And that's a daily practice; it's not—there's no end goal; you simply get better at it, and through getting better at it, you develop a sense of equanimity, a sense of centeredness that will then compound and influence every other area of your life. Because if you're balanced, if you're clear on your purpose, your values, your mission, and if you're centered, you can thus engage with the relationships, the people around you with a sense of harmony, a sense of love. You can engage with your work, with your clients, with your business, with everything with a sense of service, with a sense of love, with a sense of energy. You can engage with your health with a sense of energy, a sense of passion, a sense of all these things which you say you value; you can then attack them from a centered place instead of letting the random, the chaos of everyday life, of nature, influence your behavior. That's what stoicism is. You're still experiencing things deeply.
So I hope this video helped clear up the misconception around stoicism, right, around the Andrew Tate's macho man, male influencer version of stoicism, which says, "Don't feel anything; be stoic; you know, just do the action, but you can't feel anything"—like, no! That's only going to make you more depressed, more lonely, and more dissatisfied than everyone else. So please don't do that. I hope this video served you. I hope this video inspired you to go and read the original texts, right? If you want to learn more about stoicism, please don't watch any more YouTube videos on it. If this clicked in your brain and you like stoicism, read Seneca, read Epictetus, read Marcus Aurelius. Those are the three people you need to read. No more videos by Mikey, even if I post another video in the future—that's not for you. No more Ryan Holiday; no more like—no! Go read the original texts and practice this every single day. I hope this video served you, and I'll see you around. My name is Mikey. Peace.