7 Stoic Principles and Practices to Improve Your Life

1. Course Trailer: Epithelia said, How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself? Are you worrying too much? Do you feel like you're living a soft life? Does your ego getting away when you're supposed to be learning new things? Do you feel like your life is passing you by and you're not achieving the things you've always wanted to achieve. Are you embracing more negative thoughts than positive ones? Do you feel like life is just happening to you and not for you? Hi, my name is John Morrison and I am the instructor for this course. I hope that you join me and hopefully many others as we go on this journey of self-discovery through the lens of stoicism, ancient philosophy that is just as relevant today as it was 2 thousand years ago. In this course, I hope to challenge you to begin thinking differently about your life by embracing a few key stoic principles and practices, you'll discover that who you want to become is more attainable than you think. And the only thing getting in the way as you through brief lectures calls to action worksheets and a final project. My goal is to help you identify and analyze what's holding you back from living the life that you want to live? The course is organized by principle and practice, and each lesson will contain words of wisdom from a founding father of stoicism. A vignette centered on how I've understood and applied the principle and a call to action for you to start using the practice in your everyday life, there are seven key principles and practices ranging from overcoming worry to what you should do when you think life is just happening to you instead of for you, as well as identifying the importance of your time, your final project is a simple slash, not so simple journal entry. You'll be given seven prompts to choose from and we'll be asked to share your thoughts in a journal entry, you'll find the most value in this project if you write at least 100 words, it is my hope that you develop a fondness for journaling and we'll consider making it a daily habit for years to come. The goal is that you deeply analyze your choices, actions, and thought processes to reflect and live an examined life. A Socrates would say, I want to thank you for watching this course introduction, and I hope that you join me and many others on this journey of self-discovery to live a more meaningful and purposeful life. 2. Don't Suffer Imagined Troubles: Seneca said that we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. Our imagination or the voice in her head will often make us think things that just aren't real, things that aren't even a cause for concern. These are called empty fears and they are often more difficult to overcome than real rational fears. They create a thinking pattern in our mind that prevents us from thinking about and focusing on what really matters. It's the sort of pattern of thinking that leads to toxic negative thoughts. Like I can't do this or there's no way out of this problem or nobody loves me, your cares about me. This is an embarrassing confession, but at 19, I was overcome with a fear that I would never ever get married. Why I was thinking about this in 19, I don't know, but I genuinely remember thinking that I was going to die alone, that I was going to live my life in isolation and I was never gonna find someone that would that would spend their lives with me. Needless to say, there was some definite mental suffering going on in that time. Cylinder. My thinking patterns too. I'm not smarter good enough for anyone. I'm just going to mess it up. If someone actually does want to be with me, no one will ever find me attractive or funny or other things. It was like I was in a war with myself over something that definitely shouldn't have been as important as I've thought it was at the time. And it's hard to not embrace these thinking patterns today. Where are we slide one way or the other? We're where everything is black and white, where it's either going to happen or it's not going to happen. It's like we've been conditioned to embrace the extreme are the outliers in situations. For whatever reason, the extreme that we typically embrace or the side that we tend to move towards is usually negative. And we connect these negative phrases to it to basically publicize our worry about a certain situation. My wife and I are very punctual people and oftentimes we have this conversation around what time do we need to leave for something. And often we, we end up in this line of thinking that if we don't leave at a certain time, traffic is going to slow us down or traffic is going to prevent us from getting there. When in reality, 10% of the time we encounter traffic. Again, it's like we're being conditioned to think about the negative side of things more than the positive side, which is really unfortunate. Take the news, for example, tune into any program on any station and you'll be told that an issue is much bigger and much more worrisome than it actually really is. Everything is sensationalized and their hope is that you have some sort of reaction to their content. And what's interesting is the reaction that they hope to get from you these days leans more towards frustration or anxiety, or disdain, or disgust or fed up. Notice that's not even the last emotion or reaction they want to get from you as indifference because that means you would spend less time consuming their content. This is happening in entertainment, it's happening in the business world, it's happening in religion, and it's probably happening in your social groups as well. Everyone's competing for attention and the strategies that are being used are prompting us to worry about things a little bit more than we should. So I want to encourage you to approach situations like Epictetus who said, make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens. There's no need to burn yourself with worry over things that haven't happened yet and may never happen. My challenge for you today or this week is for you to really analyze the information that you're consuming. Does it seem like the information that you're consuming is presented to you in a way that it's supposed to prompt you to think about it in a certain way or prompt you to worry about something more than you should. Does it seem like someone or some entity is trying to manipulate you to really be concerned about something that has nothing to do with you or your family. Really break down the strategies used by either in the media that you consume, someone at your workplace, someone at your school, maybe even a close friend. Are they trying to prompt an emotion or a reaction from you based on what it is they're telling you. And if so, thanks Yourself. Is worrying about this really important is worrying about this is going to provide value to my life or value to those around me. If you're going to worry this week, if you're someone that just has to worry, Try to worry less in your imagination than you do in reality. So again, if you're going to worry, Try to worry in reality where something actually is happening right in front of you instead of about something that hasn't happened yet and may never happen. 3. Be Teachable: Epictetus said it's impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. If you want to improve yourself, you have to be teachable. Someone that thinks they know everything lacks humility and they're not very fun to be around, to be honest. They're always trying to one-up you or they're always trying to steer the conversation back to something that they do know about. Instead of actually learning from, you, are learning from the conversation that's going on around you. They close themselves off from new relevant information that might, that might go against what it is they believe or what they think. Think of someone you know, that's entrenched in a conspiracy theory. How willing are they to hear information that contradicts what they believe to be true? The answer is probably not very. A bigger question I have is, how could progress in any field be made if we all assumed that we knew everything once we learned the basics of that field. It's arrogant and foolish even for those who feel like they're experts in the field. I have a PhD in Educational Leadership, and there are dozens of leadership theories that I know nothing about. But I have a PhD should not, doesn't that mean that I know everything about my field? That's a common misconception of people with PhDs that we know 100% of everything that goes under our PhD umbrella. So I have a PhD in education. So that means that I know the secretaries of education in all 50 states, for example. That's just not how it is. It's just not the reality is for someone that has a PhD or someone that would be considered an expert in the field. What, what's going on here is that we know a lot about a little. Anyone that's ever earned a PhD spent years researching something, researching very small details, very narrow ideas to understand why something is the way it is. For example, my dissertation was on cognitive engagement strategies from teachers at a Virtual High School in Oklahoma. My data and findings were interesting, but they're not necessarily going to be the same as what a researcher in Florida would find if he was looking at cognitive engagement strategies of elementary teachers in a rural district for example. Again, I have a PhD in Educational Leadership. And there was a time during my PhD that I couldn't even tell you who the secretary of education was at the federal level. It was just something I wasn't paying attention to. I was paying attention to my very narrow ideas because I was trying to learn everything I could about a very specific thing. But who the secretary of education was in 2017 would seem like it's definitely something a PhD candidate would know. But the thing is, I wasn't embarrassed at the time because I was so focused on what I was doing. If someone wanted to have a conversation with me about the Secretary of Education at that time. I would've listened and I would've engaged in the conversation because I like to learn new things. And here's, I guess another confession. I'm totally okay being ignorant about something when I first start learning it, my wife just gave me a violin for my birthday. And it's probably the second or third time in my life that have actually touched a violin. I know I'm gonna sound and look ridiculous for a long time as I tried to learn that thing. But with practice and discipline and instruction, I might be able to play a few songs a few months from now. This is how it works with anything brand new. You have to be okay with the beginning stages of learning something new and the mistakes that you're going to make, because you're gonna make a lot of mistakes and there's nothing wrong at all from making mistakes. In fact, I would argue that you learn more from mistakes than you do from someone just giving you points to consider. I want to encourage you to be teachable this week. Be okay not knowing everything about everything. I want you to sit and just listen to your friends, your coworkers, your teachers, if your family members, and see if it seems like they want to teach you something. And in that moment when it's, when it seems like they want to teach you something. Pause, stop, and just really learn from them. Don't try to one-up them. Don't try to add to what they're teaching. You. Just listen and analyze what it is they're trying to teach you. Think of the ways that you can use or apply what they're trying to teach you. If they're encouraging you to read a book or watch a documentary, go pick, Go get the book, watch the documentary. Example of this happened literally a couple of days ago. My friend mentioned a documentary about making Raman in Japan. That might not sound interesting, but it was something that he was really interested in and he felt like he learned a lot from the documentary. What do you think I did? I watched it and it was great. I learned a lot. What I pulled from it though was probably different from what he pulled from it. He's more of a process person. He likes to see the behind the scenes of things. I'm more of a purpose type of person. I like to look at the why. I like to analyze why someone says what they say or why they do what they do. Now, when he and I have a conversation about this, we'll have a conversation about the same thing, the same content, but we're going to have a conversation about it in two different perspectives. So again, be teachable this week. Try to learn something new from someone that you are either close to or maybe not close to and see if it's something that you can apply to your life. 4. Seek Out Challenges: Seneca said difficulties strengthen the mind like labor does the body. He also said fire is the test of gold and adversity of strong men. In other words, those shy away from difficulties and challenges, you'd be surprised how satisfying doing hard stuff really is the feeling you get right after you have surmounted an incredibly difficult thing is definitely worth chasing. In fact, hepatitis said the greater the difficulty, the more glory and surmounting it. Skillful pilots earned their reputation from storms and Tempest. So let's talk about butterflies for a second. Did you know that butterflies release a chemical when they're trying to break out of their chrysalis, and that chemical actually strengthens their wings. Their movements inside the chrysalis pumped fluid into their wings, which helps them expand. The release of that chemical and the expansion of their wings helps them build the necessary muscles they need in order to do the things that a strong butterfly can do. Butterflies have to go through this struggle to emerge from their chrysalis and live the rest of their short lives. I want you to think about your crystals for a second. There's something that you know, you need to go through so that when you emerge from it, you come out as a stronger, healthier person. It really is unfortunate how software has become. We tend to embrace comfort way more than we embrace adversity, which that makes sense. Why would you wake up at five AM to run eight miles when it's just so nice and warm under your blankets. I got to a point in my health journey that I hated being soft. I needed to change for two reasons. One, health reasons, I was obese, To be honest, I was just obese. But two, I just didn't want to be someone that was so timid and afraid to experience life. What did I do to kick-start this? I started signing up for Spartan races, marathons, ultra marathons, anything that was kind of difficult and scary to force me to try to build the necessary muscles that I needed to build to emerge from my chrysalis. I knew that if I sign up for something that I was gonna be more motivated to actually do it, especially if I was spending money on it, which all these races cost money. Always going to spend $200 on something than not go do it. So I actually completed a Spartan trifecta in 2021. That's where you complete all three erases. The 5k with 20 obstacles. The super, which is the ten K, with 25 obstacles. And then the beast, which is a half marathon in distance with 3232 obstacles. And I was doing that as I was progressing through my weight-loss journey. And more recently I completed a trail run in Kentucky in the snow and freezing weather. I can't describe how I felt after these events. I mean, I can It was like I was a different person, a person who wasn't afraid of anything, are afraid of anything rational. I felt like I was a person that loved themselves enough to endure hardships and not give up. And I began feeling like I can be proud of myself. I think this is why the Stoics encourage their followers to embrace hardships and adversity. It's like they knew, they knew what it would do to them. Like they knew that their followers would come out on the other side of whatever the adversity is or whatever the challenge is, a different person, someone that was more capable and willing and not afraid to live their lives. I want to encourage you to start looking at difficulties and hardships as opportunities to strengthen your mind or if they are physical difficulties or physical challenge to strengthen your body. So again, I want you to push yourself this week, embrace diversity, embrace difficulties as opportunities to get better. They're happening for you not to you. 5. Consider Timing and Appreciate the Present: Seneca said, while we wait for life, life passes, there's really never a perfect time to do the things that you want to do. If you always wait for the perfect time to do everything you would only ever accomplish a fraction of the things that you wanted to accomplish. Additionally, the more we think that someday we'll do that thing, the less likely we are to actually do that thing. Life gets in the way and everything. If I kept putting things off and waited for the perfect time to do things, I would've never completed the Spartan trifecta. I would've never signed up for a trial run. I would've never have lost 50 pounds. Many times we think our life starts when we engage in some sort of standard life event, like getting married or having a baby, or buying a house or getting the dream job. Quentin Tarantino, one of my favorite film directors, said that his life didn't technically start until he released Reservoir Dogs, his first movie. And what he felt to consider was that his life up to that point had conditioned him to be able to write and direct that movie. Perhaps it wasn't the life that he wanted, but it's the life that he needed to emerge as one of the most influential screenwriters and directors of all time. I'm gonna sound cliche and maybe even foolish for a second. But your life started the minute you were born, or arguably a few months prior. And everything that you've experienced through your life has been an important part of your life experience, even if it seems like it wasn't. Let's take travel for example. Familiar faces and places may seem bland to you right now as you think about Paris and what you can experience in Paris, I'm gonna quote from Marcus Aurelius here and it's kind of a longer quotes, so I'm gonna have to read it. We should remember that even nature's inadvertent has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top and the oven, the ridges are just byproducts of the baking and yet pleasing somehow they arouse our appetite without our knowing why or how ripe figs begin to burst and olives on the points of falling the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty. Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight, the furrowed brow of the lion flex a foam on the Boers mouth and other things. What he's saying here is that we should value the things right in front of us more than we currently are. Our lives are made up of many small details and we often lose sight of them when we look too far ahead. There's beauty in Paris, but there's also beauty in your drive to work or in your garden, or in the wrinkles of your loved ones face. Just going somewhere else to experience beauty may not be as satisfying or fulfilling as you think it will be the same where you go there you are suggests that we're always in charge of our perception of a thing. Meaning if you get annoyed by bad weather and Cincinnati, you're going to get annoyed by bad weather in France or traffic and Denver versus traffic in London. Being mindful of the quality of our life every day is obviously easier said than done. But it's important that we begin to take advantage of and guard our time as much as we can because it's our most valuable asset. I started this lesson by saying that there's never a perfect time to do the thing that you wanted to do. And what I really want to say is that it's very important that you focus more on the present than you do on your past and in the future. Your president is all you have really, it's, it's, it, it's everything. If you're always nexting, thinking of the next thing that's going to happen in your life, your life is going to pass you by and you're not going to enjoy the things that are right in front of you. Yes, it's important to plan and to think about a family vacation that you might take this summer to Disney World or whatever. But what you need to do is also think about what can be, what value can you pull out of every single minute that you're alive? What value can you pull out of each day that you wake up in the morning? Time is passing you by right now and your life is falling right along with it. I want you to start thinking about your life differently. Appreciate the little things that happen every day. Think about your son or daughter. Smile the way your wife does her hair or the passion that your husband has about his favorite football team. Don't wait for your life. It's happening too. And for you right now, spend time this week thinking about the thing or things that you've been putting off. What if you started to take it seriously and decided to make it happen? I know this lesson kind of had two parts to it. One, it's time for you to stop thinking about doing something and just do it. But then also to really valuing what goes on over the course of your day. I want you to do two things with this lesson. One, I want you to write down a few things that deserve more of your attention than they actually do. Because you're often not thinking about them, are carrying about them because there's always something passed them. Which I know that that's not gonna be easy to do. But then secondly, think about the thing are the things that you want to accomplish with your life. That you know, you're putting off things that you know, you can make moves today to kick start that process. Because your life is moving, time is passing you by really quick and you want to take advantage of every minute that you have in your day. 6. Guard Your Time: Seneca said, it is not that we have so little time, but that we lose so much. The life we receive is not short, but we make it so we're not L provided, but use what we have wastefully. He also said people are frugal and guarding their personal property, but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy. He's suggesting that time is your most precious, valuable asset here. Would you agree? Try to think of anything that is more precious than your time and it's cliche, but no one knows how much time they really have. You can randomly die today or tomorrow in an accident or from some random disease that you didn't know that you actually had? How are you spending your time every day? Would you say that if you did in fact die today or die tomorrow, that you live the life that you wanted to live. What I've found is time as both a teacher and a healer, oftentimes the only way to get over something is to give it time. Take heartbreak for example. Time also teaches you the value of life as the experiences you lived through in many of the things that you learn over time, craft you into the person that you are. We need to remember that time is a non-renewable resource. It's the one thing that we can never get back. Once it's gone, it's gone. And what we do every day is purchased with our time. You are using your time right now to watch this video, for example. And hopefully you're okay with that purchase of your time. But really think about that. You're spending time in the form of currency right now by watching this course. Again, obviously it's my hope that you find value in this purchase of your time. But I think it's important that we start thinking about this differently. I'm about to watch this in 30 minutes show on Netflix. Those 30 minutes that I'm spending on this show, are they going to be worth it or not? Is a question that you probably want to start asking yourself or more specifically, let's think of it like this. Let's say an hour of your time is worth $10. It's Saturday, and you're wanting to binge-watch the entire season of a show on Netflix. You look at the season and you look at the episode, you see that there are ten episodes in a season, with each episode being an hour. With our math, you're about to spend $10 per hour for ten hours. So you're going to spend $100 of your time to watch a show. Now that could be worth it to you and that's totally fine. I binge-watch shows all the time obviously. But what I want to do is start thinking about it differently. Is this show, is this ten hours of my life gonna be worth it? Am I going to find value in what I'm about to consume? That's all I'm trying to do with this course is to get us thinking differently about things, differently about the things that we do on a daily basis. It's common knowledge that there are three stages of time. You have the past, you have the president, and you have the future. But the only one that we actually have is the present. The past has already happened. It's over. The future hasn't happened yet, and we don't know exactly how it's gonna turn out. Like the episode of American Idol you just watched, you just watched it. It's over now. It's in the past. The only time that you have is this moment right now, the moment after you've watched the episode and you don't have the future yet, you don't have the next episode because the next episode has an aired yet. We often get so wrapped up in things that are not in the present. We get wrapped up in things that have already happened or things that haven't happened yet and that might not happen when our focus is not on our president anymore and we're focusing on our past or in the future, we began to deal with depression or anxiety, but that's gonna be for a different course. I want to encourage you this week to start valuing your time more. If you weren't already, start thinking about the value of the activities that you engage in. And if you want to, it's kind of a fun exercise. Assign a monetary value to an hour of your time. If you're about to go do something for three hours and an hour of your time is $20. Is that thing you're about to go do worth $60. The reason I'm pushing the money metaphor on us because again, we're so stingy with our money. We're so stingy with our property. And we're not stingy at all with our time. And seneca said, that is the most valuable, most precious asset we have. So that's the main thing that we should be stingy with. Let's start being stingy with our time. Let's say no to things that aren't going to bring value to our lives. Let's say yes to the things that might improve our lives. And if there's something that we're being asked to do or that we're being encouraged to do that. We don't know if it brings value to our lives or not. Let's really analyze it and really break it down and see if it is something that we do want to do. Now there's a chance that you might be asked to do something that you don't know if it's going to bring value to your life or not. What I would encourage you to do is actually think about it while you're doing. And if it's something that you have to do, think about the value that you can pull out of that thing that you're being asked are forced to do, which that's kind of a preview of a lessons coming up on a more fancy, but just really start thinking about your time and start being stingy with it and stop being pushed along. And a life that you don't want to live. 7. Quality of Your Thoughts: Marcus Aurelius said, the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. And he also said, you have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. Jensen Cerro, author of your a badass, expanded on this idea that your thoughts are more important than you think they are. And when she said Our thoughts become words. Words become our beliefs. Our beliefs become our actions are actions become our habits, and our habits become our realities. There are numerous benefits of controlling your thoughts. First and most importantly, you begin to develop mental strength. If someone in your life that is not quite as mentally strong as they should be, does it seem like they're all over the place with their thoughts or when they're sharing their thoughts and conversation. I want to say that a wild mind is not a mentally strong one. Epithelia said, Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagine anxieties about real problems. This is going back to a seneca said about suffering. Imagine troubles, a wild mind or a mind that's not strong, feeds on anxiety. Second, you'll find that you encounter less conflict in your life. It's probably obvious, but when you have less negative thoughts in your mind, you'll discover that you were less agitated and not as prone to unnecessary frustrations if you're calmer and more able to handle difficulties and frustrations when they come your way. Another benefit of controlling your thoughts and health, one is that you'll sleep better. You'll find that the stress of the day, we just won't way as heavily on you at night when you're getting ready for bed. And in the off chance that you have a nightmare or a disruptive dream, you'll be able to dismiss it in a healthier way. There are several other benefits to controlling your thoughts and I can put together an entire course just on that part alone. But one last benefit that I do want to mention is that you're less prone to adopt a cognitive bias. Those that are mentally weak quickly adopt fallacies and illusions. Illusions like the social comparison bias or the conjunction fallacy or conspiracy theories or any other bias or illusion that helps them simplify the world. Someone that is building their mental muscle like you are, understands that the world is complex. It's not just black and white. You're able to handle two opposing thoughts and views at once and find the gray and most matters. I noticed several years ago that my thoughts tended to veer to the negative side of things. I was frustrated with where the United States was going politically. I was upset about the economy and I definitely cared way too much about what others thought of me. And I always assumed that they were thinking the worst. It was like I always expected things to go wrong. I didn't I did not think that anything would just go right fit firmly into place. I felt like there was always going to be some drama or some obstacle that I was going to have to overcome if someone wronged me, I was trying to find ways to get them back. I was negative about nearly everything and you don't know me, but your impression on me might not be that I would be that type of person, but I was so because of that, I was weak and unhappy. I wasn't handling things in a healthy way. And it took a drastic change in mindset and philosophy to get me out of that dark place. It was around that time that I read a book by hepatitis. And in it he said people with a strong physical constitution can tolerate extremes of hot and cold. People of strong mental health can handle anger, grief, joy, and other emotions. Basically, if you're mentally strong, you're more prone to overcome the ups and downs of life than you are if you're not mentally strong. This week I went to encourage you to begin examining your thought patterns. Are you quickly jumping to the negative, cynical, pessimistic side of things. Your thoughts veer into the negative when it comes to something specific, like your job or your spouse, or your friends or your neighbors. I'm asking you to analyze this because you may discover that one, you're negative about everything, or to only negative about specific parts of your life. Or potentially three, you might not be negative at all, but then you might be naive. So there's a different whole other self-discovery process that you might have to go through once you're able to diagnose what's disrupting your thought patterns, you're more able to address it. And so if you think that you're not the type of person that does that, then your exercise will be a little bit different. I would like for you to think about who you are. Think about why you think the things that you think, and why you tend to veer towards the positive. You might be in a healthy place with everything, with how you look, how you sound, how you're perceived, all these things, That's great. But I want you to dig and see why you're okay with it. Use this week to really examine your thought process because again, the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. 8. Amor Fati: Frederick Nietzsche is responsible for coining the term a more fatty, which means the love of your fate. Now I know Nietzsche wasn't a stoic and the classical sense. In fact, if you read Twilight of the idols, you'll discover very quickly that he had a particular disdain for Western philosophy posts Socrates, his disdain for Socrates and decadence will be for another course. But I just wanted to make sure that you understand why I brought and Nietzsche up in a stoic lesson. The point is, his belief that human greatness cannot be achieved unless you embrace your fate. Unless you are okay with everything happening in your life. Because you understand that it's happening for you and not to you, is very much a stoic idea too, of the founding fathers of stoicism discussed, discussed this idea of embracing your fate long before Nietzsche was born. They may not have called it a more Fauci, but it is very much the same thing. One of those Stokes was Marcus Aurelius and he said, a blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that has thrown into it. Meaning that a fire will typically burn the thing that touches it, which is bad for the thing that's burning, but it's good for the fire. The more things you throw out the fire, the brighter and healthier it becomes. You can actually argue that the things that are being thrown into the fire are happening for the fire and not to the fire. The other stoic, they understood the idea of a more Fauci was hepatitis. He spent the better part of his life as a slave, but he went on to become one of the greatest contributors to Stoic ideas that we know of. And he said, Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to rather wish that what happens happens the way it should happen, then you will be happy. Meaning things are gonna happen, how they're gonna happen. Your expectation of how they should happen is only going to frustrate you. Especially if you're hoping for things to happen in a very specific, organized, controlled way. Before I knew what a morph Otzi was. This idea of embracing your fate. Things are happening for you and not to you. My philosophy was, it is what it is. I applied the, it is what it is philosophy to every difficult thing that arose in my life, this approach was okay. But it's not nearly as powerful as a more Fauci, the, it is what it is. Philosophy is very much a shoulder shrug, kind of philosophy where this is going to happen because it's just going to happen. Whereas a more Fauci is, this is happening for a reason. There's something I potentially can learn from this, or there's value from this that I can pull and apply to my life. Again, the idea of things happening for you and not to you. Story time. I was training for an ultra marathon as 60 K in early 2022. I was running about a marathon a week, not just on one day. I would spread out the miles over the course of the week and I was feeling really healthy and prepared. And then on Valentine's Day, my wife and I got COVID. We got each other. Covid on Valentine's Day. That stopped my training for a good two weeks. I think it was 16 days from Valentine's Day two when I ran again, I found myself curled up in a recliner slurping soup and broth, watching YouTube during the three-hour windows of time that I was conscious, I went from running 25 to 30 miles a week to maybe taking 1200 steps a day, like to and from the kitchen or to and from the bathroom. And again, this went on for two weeks. I do want to say that we were very fortunate that our level of sickness was not fatal. It wasn't life altering. We didn't end up in the hospital like so many millions of other people that have gotten COVID. But it definitely was something that affected us for a good stretch of time. But needless to say, I was, I was pretty frustrated. I had never run an ultra marathon before and I knew I needed as much training time as I could get. There was a moment during the stretch of COVID that I considered canceling my registration for the event because I read something about fully recovering from COVID, especially for athletes. And it typically takes months, not just a couple of weeks, but I didn't cancel my registration. I am a little stubborn when it comes to things like that. I was I wanted to do it, so I was just going to do it. But the thing is the two weeks leading up to the race, I probably ran a total of 12 miles. I wasn't admitting it to anyone because my friend that I was running the race width and my wife would've talked to me out of going to the event. But I was noticing that my stamina and my breathing was a little off compared to before COVID. And I felt like my heart was prone to racing a little bit faster. I had a range of my heart rate that I was good with when I would run and after after a while I was recovering from COVID, my heart rate was quite a bit higher than what I was used to. But again, didn't tell anyone when I should have oh, because I didn't say it earlier. A 60 K is thirty-seven point to eight miles. On race day, I was feeling pretty good. I probably I would say I was probably around 85% in terms of why thought or how I felt or how I thought I felt. I probably should mention that it was below freezing. There was snow on the trail that we ran that day. We ran the first nine miles pretty well. We we're on pace to be able to hit the cutoff time for the 60 K. But it was around this time that I noticed my heart rate was in the 190s. I have one of these watches, like a runner's watch. And it was I could feel I can feel my heart wanting to just beat outside my chest. It also noticed that I was having a hard time breathing, getting out all the kind of gross like the mucus and the flame and everything. So I decided to kind of pull back on my speed and I walked for about a mile or two. The reason I wanted to walk is I want to get my heart rate down and I wanted to just clear out as much as I could in terms of breathing. And over the course of two miles of walking at around 20 minute mile pace, my heart rate was not getting below 142. I had kind of a difficult decision to make. I would've loved to have continued on for the entire 60 K, but I had to listen to my body. I decided to drop down to a 23 K and my friend continued on. He was having some struggles as well. He didn't finish the 60 K, but he did finish the marathon distance, which super proud of him for doing that. Anyway, for the last mile, I decided to actually jog to finish strong because you want to be jogging across the finish line, right? But there was this lady that caught up to me and we jog the last mile together. She was she was a few years older than me and she have to MIT. She was probably one of the nicest human beings I've ever met in my life. She mentioned that she had been doing trail runs for about 20 years now. And that particular day was one of the colder days that she ran. But we just had a great conversation around running around marathons, around running groups, joining a running group and the benefit of that. And how and what she did when she got COVID a few months prior, she detailed her recovery process and mentioned that typically it takes two to three months to fully recover and that she was really surprised and she kind of celebrated me for being willing to go out just two weeks after I had recovered from COVID, their wisdom around running and recovery that I gleaned from this conversation was priceless. And also her compliments for a nice layer because I was in the border of mental self-sabotage for sure. My amorphous Nazi understanding of the situation is that I learned to listen to my body. I wasn't out there to impress anyone or push my body to a near-death experience. I did originally sign-up to test my limits, but really wanted I wanted to do is stay disciplined. And typically I've found that I stay more disciplined when I sign up for something that's challenging. And also my friend and I signed up. So it was just something that I was going to be able to experience with a close friend as well. So I can't say with certainty that I embraced what happened that day. I mean, I still completed a fairly rigorous trial run. The snow and freezing weather. So I'm happy with that result. I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish that day. On top of that, I got to learn a lot of cool stuff from this random sage of running that I wouldn't have been able to get from someone had I not dropped down to a 23 K and finished at the exact time that I finished, I felt like COVID and I feel like the weather that day and I feel like everything around this whole experience happened for me and not necessarily to me. And that's what I want to encourage you to do. Start thinking differently about the things that are happening in your life. Think of them more in terms of happening for you instead of to you and to embrace them in whatever form they present themselves. The woe is me and nothing good's ever going to happen to me. Mindset has to be deleted In your mind. Wake up and embrace your day from start to finish from now on. And so my challenge is for you to start thinking about the things that you feel like happened to you every day and realize that potentially they're not happening to you. They're happening for you to prompt you or to provoke you to respond in a certain way. Think of it like this. The fact that you get caught in traffic when you are already running late isn't something that's happening to you, that the universe has decided to make you even more light than you already are. It's more an opportunity for you to identify what this is really trying to tell you. These things that you think are happening to you. I want you to really break down and consider what you potentially can learn from them. And begin to analyze how taking in a more fatty approach, an approach where this thing is not happening to me, it's happening for me. See what that can really do for you in your mindset. I promise you, if you adopt this approach to life, it's going to change your perspective on life tremendously. 9. Final Project: Let's talk about the final project. You'll be given seven prompts to choose from and we'll be asked to share your thoughts in a journal entry. You will find the most value in this project if you write at least 100 words, it is my hope that you develop a fondness for journaling and we'll consider making it a daily habit for years to come because journaling can be rather personal. I'm not going to ask you to upload anything you feel uncomfortable with. I want you to decide what you would like to share. Your uploads should be in Microsoft Word format or any other standard document format. Now the prompts, as I mentioned, there are seven prompts for you to choose from. Prompt number one, what are you grateful for today and why? Prompts number two, what is worrying you today? Why is it worrying you? And is it something outside of your control? Prompts number three, discuss a moment that occurred today are within the last week where you had to be teachable. Prompt number four, think of a recent moment where you felt wronged. Did you seek revenge? Why or why not? Prompts him or five, take an analysis of your thoughts over the last week. Have you found that the majority of them tend to be negative or positive? If negative, explain why you think that's happening and if positive, what sorts of things are you focusing on? Prompt number six, think of everything you believe to be important in your life. Make a list of five things. Which of them will be important after you die? Explain why. Prompt number seven. Consider the hours you're awake today. Do you feel as though you used or will use them? Well? Do you believe you are making the most of your time every day? These prompts are part of the course project and we're meant to really challenge you if you continue to journal after this course, which I hope you will. You do not need to be as aggressive with your thought processes as you have been if you chose from the last three prompts, feel free to just journal about whatever is on your mind. As you can see from the seven prompts to choose from, I'm really wanting you to dig on prompts four through seven. In fact, I hope you choose one of those prompts because it will make you engage in your self-discovery journey just a little bit more. 10. Conclusion: In conclusion, I want to say thank you again for spending your time with me on this course. Hopefully you consider a time well spent. If you were to say that an hour of your time is worth $10, hopefully this five dash $7 was worth it. I do want to encourage you to look more into stoic philosophy. There is a current, a current sage of stoic philosophy right now that's doing a really great job. His name is Ryan Holiday, but also I would like to encourage you to pick up a few books. The first one that you should probably grab is Marcus Aurelius Meditations. This has become sort of a like a life Bible for me. The next book I would recommend that you pick up is seneca, letters from a stoic also really good? Seneca is a really interesting figure. He's worth just looking into just by himself. Then one of my favorite figures of stoicism is epic, tedious, who I quote regularly across various platforms that I'm on. His book is called Discourses and selected writings. The Penguin Classics versions are all fine for these books. But I would definitely, if you want to look more into stoicism and you want kind of like the standard Gospels of the philosophy, these three books or other way to go. Again, I appreciate you for spending your time in this course and I hope that you didn't find value in it until next time. I wish you well, take care a more fancy.