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by Erick Cloward
"Act on your principles, not your moods." A weekly meditation on how Stoic principles can help you be a better human.
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- 1 weeks ago52 min
Interview With Ward Farnsworth: Stoic Author & Professor | 396
Ward Farnsworth is Professor of Law and holder of the W. Page Keeton Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He's the author of several books on philosophy including The Stoic Practice and The Socratic Method. His new book Should You Tip For Takeout? is a guide to seeing the applications of philosophy in everyday life. Join us on this wide ranging conversation about philosophy and how you can become a better thinker! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment! My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here! Find out more at https://stoic.coffee Watch episodes on YouTube! Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads. Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 2 weeks ago17 min
The Architect and the Repairman | 395
The Problem: Living in Repair Mode Years ago, I decided that I wanted to learn how to ride a motorcycle. They had always been scary to me and I wanted to get over that fear, and save some gas on my commutes to work. While taking the course to get my permit, I clearly remember one of the most important lessons. In order to avoid a hazard in the road — a pothole, debris on the road, a stopped car — don’t look at it. When you focus on what you’re trying to avoid, you’re more likely to ride straight into it. There’s a name for that. It’s called target fixation. Whatever holds your eyes, your hands follow. You steer toward what you’re staring at, even when it’s the very thing you’re trying to avoid. That’s why riders get told the same thing over and over: look where you want to go, not at what you’re afraid of hitting. I’ve been thinking about how much of our inner life works the same way. The other day when I was journaling I noticed that I kept listing all the ways that I was falling short of the things I wanted to accomplish. All the times that I didn’t stop doing some habit that I was trying to change. In each one, I was focused on what was broken. It made me reconsider my approach. Let me give you two people. The first is an architect. Before anything gets built, the architect has a picture of what it’s supposed to be. There’s a plan and a purpose. Every decision gets measured against that plan. The second is a repairman. The repairman’s whole job is finding what’s wrong. Something leaks, he patches it. Something cracks, he fills it. He’s always scanning for the next problem, because that’s the job. Now, we need repairmen. Things break, and ignoring them just makes the problem worse. But think about what it would mean to live your whole life as one, with no plan and no picture of what you’re building. Just a constant scan for what’s wrong. I think a lot of us do exactly that when it comes to who we are. Try this. Think about the things you’re trying to improve about yourself right now. If you’re like most people, the list sounds something like: stop yelling, stop procrastinating, stop scrolling, stop overthinking, fix my temper. Notice something about that list. Every item is a pothole. It’s a list of what’s broken. And underneath that list there’s usually a quieter belief. It goes something like: once I fix all of this, then I’ll be a good person, as if goodness is what’s left over after you’ve patched every leak. Here’s what happens when you live that way. First, the flaw becomes the center of your attention. You wake up thinking about it and you go to bed reviewing it. You’re staring at the pothole, and you know where that leads. Second, you become reactive. If there’s no plan, the only thing that tells you what needs attention is whatever feels uncomfortable right now. Today it’s your temper, tomorrow it’s your phone, next week it’s something else. You’re always responding and never building. And third, the one that does the most damage: you start to believe the repairman’s basic assumption, which is that something is broken. Not that something went wrong, but that I am broken. Your identity becomes the defect list. Picture two homeowners. Over the course of a year, they spend exactly the same amount of money on their houses. The first one only calls someone when something breaks. A leak here, a cracked tile there. All year long he’s fixing. The second one has a plan. He’s finishing the basement. When a pipe leaks along the way, he fixes it too, but the repair serves the plan. At the end of the year, the first homeowner has the same house he started with. The second one has a better one. So here’s where I want to land with this idea. Repair isn’t the problem. We all have things to fix, and pretending otherwise is just another way of avoiding things. The problem is repair without a blueprint. Because without a picture of what you’re building, you can’t even tell what’s actually broken. You only know what hurts. And the Stoics had a lot to say about that. The Philosophy: You Need a Blueprint Start with a simple question. What does it mean for something to be broken? A chair with a cracked leg is broken because it can’t do what a chair is for, which is holding you up. A clock that won’t keep time is broken because keeping time is its job. “Broken” always means broken relative to a purpose. Without knowing what something is for, you can’t say whether it’s broken. You can only say whether you like it. The same goes for us. If you don’t know what you’re for, you have no way to tell a real flaw from something that’s just uncomfortable. Marcus Aurelius wrestled with this on mornings when he didn’t want to get out of bed. In the first entry of Book Five of the Meditations, he reminds himself: “In the morning when thou rises
- 3 weeks ago1h 2m
Interview With Andres Kuusk Pentamind Champion and Thinker
Find the transcript here. The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 4 weeks ago12 min
Vonnegut's Envelope: Why Inconvenience is the Cost of Community | 393
The Problem The last few months have been isolating for me. I was working hard on my book, which I turned in last week. It was exhausting, but I'm proud of what I've written. It also meant giving up a lot of social time. After writing for six or seven hours, I was often so drained that I skipped things I'd planned to do, because I just didn't have the energy. But as I thought about how much I'd been staying home, I realized this wasn't new. Looking back over the last few years, I could see how easy it's become to stay home and avoid the friction of the outside world. The music I listen to, the movies I watch, the things I have delivered: they're all conveniences I appreciate, but they take me out of the experience of everyday life out in the world. When I was growing up, I had to save my money to buy a record or a CD, so I was picky about what I bought. I'd talk to the people working in the store, friends, sibling, and ask them what they liked. Once I made my choice, I'd go home and listen to it all the way through, reading the liner notes and lyrics. "Oh wow, Stevie Wonder played harmonica on Sting's Brand New Day?" "I knew it! That's Bruce Hornsby playing piano on The End of the Innocence." Sometimes an album took effort. Not every song grabbed me right away. Some took a few listens before I liked them, and some just weren't as good as the others. But listening all the way through, I got a sense of the full story the artist was trying to tell, why they put this song after that one. The album itself was a story. We'd also swap albums with friends and siblings, partly to save money and partly to discover something new. We'd talk about the songs we liked and what we thought they meant. It was inconvenient compared to sending a link or sharing a playlist today. But that friction (the cost, the trip to the store, having to sit at home and play it) added something. Because we spent money we'd earned, the album we chose mattered more than all the ones we didn't buy. And sharing it took effort, so it became something we bonded over. TV was the same. We had one TV, and shows aired when they aired. My siblings and I would argue about what to watch, then all sit on the couch together. Whether it was Battlestar Galactica, The A-Team, or a James Bond film, we laughed, cried, and talked about it afterward. That inconvenience brought us together. This isn't me telling stories about the good old days. It's recognizing that convenience has a cost. Why sit on the couch together at the same time each week when everyone can go to their own room and watch whatever they want? Why invest in an album when the algorithm will queue up the next song and let you skip anything that takes effort to like? I was reading an article in The Atlantic about how the convenience of modern life has made us lonelier, and there was a line in it I think the Stoics would agree with: "Inconvenience is the cost of community." Kurt Vonnegut understood this. He didn't keep a box of envelopes at home. When he needed one, he'd walk to the store to buy it, and along the way he'd talk to his neighbors, see the scenery, and have, as he put it, one hell of a good time. That friction was the price of being part of his community. Today we order food instead of going out to pick it up. We stream movies instead of watching them with strangers in a theater. We text instead of calling, even though research shows a phone call leaves us feeling far more connected. We've reduced friction so much that we can go days without interacting with another person beyond the bare minimum. Even when we do go out, the store has become a place to get in, get what you need, and get out. We used to go to the mall not to buy anything, but just to hang out and run into people. Those random encounters, the conversations with strangers, the person you'll never meet who might have become your next best friend: that's what we're giving up. I once did a thought experiment: what's the end result of perfect productivity and efficiency in our society? I came to the conclusion that it's each of us living in a little box where everything is delivered and streamed. Why face the friction and inconvenience of the world when you can be catered to and endlessly entertained? In a way, it's not much different from The Matrix. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we're there yet, but we're heading down a similar path. How often have you ordered something online that you could have bought at a store in your neighborhood? How often have you had food or groceries delivered instead of going out? How often has your family been in separate rooms, each watching their own shows, instead of sharing a movie or just having a conversation? We prefer to stay in our little boxes and avoid that friction. The Stoics would have looked at that little box and said it's not just lonely. It's unnatural. The P
- Sep 19, 202612 min
Why You Need to Fight Better, Not Less | 392
Do you know how to fight well? Do you think that having relationship without conflict means that everything is just fine? In this episode we’re going to talk about why conflict can be a good and necessary thing, and how to fight well. “Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi The Problem There's a version of "peace" in a relationship that isn't peace at all. It's just two people who've agreed, without ever explicitly saying so, not to bring things up. You know the feeling. Something your partner did bothers you, but it's small, so you let it go. Then it happens again. You let that go too. Weeks later you're annoyed by the way they load the dishwasher, when in reality, it has nothing to do with the dishwasher. That's not peace. That’s a volcano simmering under the surface. That’s pressure building, and that pressure needs a release valve. The other day I was listening an episode of The Interview podcast and they had Priya Parker on as a guest. Parker works as a conflict mediator and is the author of the book The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict. In the interview she frames fighting well as a way to build connection, rather than it being a point of rupture. As someone that has long been conflict avoidant I was intrigued by how to argue better. Parker poses the idea that we as a society have become conflict avoidant in our personal and professional relationships to the point that it’s become unhealthy. Our misplaced desire for peace means that important things are often never addressed then we wonder why relationships fall apart. She proposes that rather than avoiding conflict, we need to lean into it. Conflict itself isn’t the problem, but the way that we handle it is. Leaning in to conflict may not seem very Stoic. The traditional image of a Stoic is someone that doesn’t let things get to them. That they’re impassive. But that’s not true. A Stoic doesn’t let things get to them that are unimportant, but there’s a difference between being patient with the unimportant and avoiding things that are hard. We tend to think there are two ways to handle disagreement: avoid it, or blow up over it. Most people have picked a side. Conflict-avoidant, or conflict-prone. And each side thinks the other one has the problem. Here's the uncomfortable part: they're the same problem. Both are what happens when nobody's built the skill of disagreeing well. The person that avoids never practices it, so when it finally surfaces, it comes out as sarcasm, distance, or the silent treatment. The person that blows-up never practices it either, so it comes out as an explosion instead of a conversation. And it's not just at home. The same thing happens on at work. The meeting where everyone nods, and the actual disagreement happens in Slack DMs an hour later. A team that "never fights" looks healthy on paper, but it usually isn't. It just means nobody's said the hard thing yet. Unresolved conflict doesn't stay contained. It leaks out. It shows up as resentment, as withdrawal, as the passive dig — everywhere except the one place it needs to show up, which is the actual conversation. We've confused peace with the absence of conflict. They are not the same. Peace has to be actively worked for. The absence of conflict is a symptom of avoidance and constricted communication. I grew up in a home where we had no idea how to argue well. My example came from my parent where my dad would bully us into submission, often turning violent, while my mother would fall into passive resignation to avoid his wrath. Rather than being a safe space to be able to talk about hard things, we learned to bury how we felt and avoid conflict as much as possible. I’ve made the mistake of confusing peace and the absence of conflict in the past and it cost me. I would avoid conflict at almost every turn because it’s how I had survived. In my marriage, it got so bad that at one point my ex-wife asked my opinion about something and I froze, trying to think of the “right” answer. She got frustrated with me and said, “I want YOUR opinion, not the answer you think I want!” Now, when I say that I was conflict avoidant, I would avoid things until I didn’t. The resentments would pile up until I’d exploded at the wrong time and in the wrong way. A disagreement about chores would turn into a litigation of all the frustrations that built up over the last month. The volcano would explode leaving a disaster that would take weeks to clean up. And even after things were more or less back to normal, there was always lasting damage. Relationships would cool, leaving both sides walking on eggshells trying to avoid another explosion. It wasn’t safe. I wasn’t safe. All because I didn’t know how to fight well. Because I didn’t know how to fight well, this same pattern showed
- Sep 9, 202614 min
Why Socrates Would Hate AI | 391
AI seems to be everywhere at the moment. You can’t go a single day without someone posting about how AI sped up their work and solved all their problems. But with every technology there are downsides that aren’t apparent when it first shows up. Today we’re going to talk about some of those downsides from a Stoic perspective and consider what Socrates might think of AI. “No man was ever wise by chance.” — Seneca The Problem Just like most of you, I've been using AI for different things. At first, it was pretty amazing. I could ask it questions and rather than having to wade through search results to find what I was looking for, it just served it up for me. I could use it to research topics or come up with ideas for my podcast. I've even written full applications in days that would have taken me weeks otherwise. It seemed like magic! But as I've used it over the past few years, I'm starting to see the dark side. And no, I'm not talking about AI destroying humanity, although that's always a possibility. What I'm talking about is the slow decline in cognitive abilities. For years, I've written out the episodes of my podcast. Rather than just winging it, I like to go deep into something to make sure I have it well thought out. The struggle while writing each week is what lets me actually understand a topic — and often what shows me the weak spots in my own thinking. With AI, that friction is removed. When I'm struggling to find points to support or contradict my thesis, it's all too easy to just ask Claude to give me those points. I could even ask it to write the episode for me. But in doing so, I'm doing myself a disservice. The best way to learn something is to struggle through it. When the mind has to puzzle through something and figure it out, it builds a mental model of how that thing works — and it's the reuse and reinforcement of that model that strengthens the skill. No struggle, no model. Software is a clear example of the same thing. When you build an app yourself, you think through how you want to construct it, using knowledge you've built up over years. You understand why you do things a certain way. You develop a deep intuition for the code, so when something breaks, you have a feel for where to look. When AI builds the code for you instead, you're approaching it like someone else's codebase. There’s no intuition because it’s unfamiliar terrain. And instead of building and expanding your coding skills, you’re just hunting bugs. And a skill you don't use atrophies. You become a worse developer, not a faster one. There's also the satisfaction that gets skipped. Part of what I love about coding, and about writing, is the struggle itself — puzzling through something, hitting the wall, and then having it click. Not just getting the code to work, but understanding why it works. When I write, that same process is how I learn to construct an argument, find the counterintuitive idea I wouldn't have reached if the answer had just been handed to me, and catch errors in my own thinking before anyone else does. Epictetus reminded us about the importance of struggle: "Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat." — Epictetus The more things get served up to us without having to think about them, the more our creativity and thinking muscles atrophy. The brain works the same way muscle does — it needs resistance to grow. The more rigorously we train our thinking, the stronger our thinking gets: we're able to puzzle things out, get to the root of them, understand them at an intuitive level. Seneca said it simply: "Excellence withers without an adversary." — Seneca We need resistance to be excellent. AI removes that resistance. Part of the problem is that we're confusing output with effectiveness, and knowledge with wisdom. Knowledge is good and helpful. But wisdom is a practice. It’s effortful, earned through trial and error, through trying something and seeing what works. It's the discernment of what's important, how things connect, and how to make a sound judgment. Skip the experience, and you never build that muscle, which means you won't have it when a real situation calls for it. Musonius Rufus pointed out the importance of practice in gaining wisdom: "Although understanding the theory behind the action enables one to speak, it is practice that enables one to act... Practice is more important than theory because it more effectively leads humans to actions than theory does." And here’s the irony: AI feels like magic because it gives you the answer instantly. But it gets there by predicting the most likely next word, averaged across everything it's seen
- Sep 2, 202613 min
Inner Critic vs. Inner Coach | 390
Beating yourself up doesn’t make you better person. Hating yourself doesn’t motivate you more. So what’s the difference between holding yourself high standards and punishing yourself for failure? In this episode we discuss the two warring voices in each of us — the inner critic and the inner coach. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” ― Epictetus The Problem When I was growing up, I used to be incredibly hard on myself. I had this belief that I had to be perfect. Much of this came from growing up Mormon. The standards that I was told that I had to follow were really, for me, unobtainable. I tried so hard to do everything right, be the perfect person, and beat myself up when I thought I had failed. You believe that if you just follow all these rules and act the way you’re supposed to, that you’ll finally be happy. My mom even told me that she was afraid to criticize me about anything because I was already so hard on myself she didn’t want to drag me down even further. But here’s the thing: you can’t hate yourself into being a better person. Hating yourself might give you some short term motivation and energy, but it doesn’t help you be a happier, thriving person. The standards that I had handed to me made me miserable. Because I judged myself so harshly, I also judged others really harshly too. I had this hardline view of how others were supposed to behave. When others made mistakes, rather than being compassionate and kind, I was often as judgmental towards them as I was towards myself. Another thing that happens when you’re that hard on yourself, is that when others give you feedback or criticism, it always feels like an attack. I felt like it was unfair. I was trying hard wasn’t I? I was doing my best! But it wasn’t their criticism that was the problem. Because I was already judging myself so harshly, it felt like I was being picked on. Rather than seeing it as correction and feedback, I saw as judgment being piled on what I was dishing out to myself. So where does that source of this come from? Shame. Shame that I wasn’t living up to those standards. Through that perfectionist lens, I saw my failures as a personal reflection of me. Not “I failed at something”, but “I am a failure as a person”. And because of that shame, I couldn’t look at my failures objectively. I looked at them as proof that I was as bad a person as I thought I was. Each mistake was just another item on my checklist as proof that I was not a good person. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown, a well-regarded researcher on shame, puts it perfectly: “Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.” Those impossible standards that we hold for ourselves keep us stuck in a spiral because we can’t ever achieve them, then use them as proof that we’re a failure. She puts is simply: “We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can't use shame to change ourselves or others.” The Philosophy So how do we move past this shaming and harsh self-criticism and become less judgmental about ourselves, without abandoning high standards? Some people think that Stoicism is about keeping unrealistic standards for ourselves, being unbending and unyielding. Even Marcus Aurelius said, “Be tolerant of others and strict with yourself.” But when he said that, what he meant was that you shouldn’t judge others by the standards you hold for yourself. They may have a different set of values and a different idea of what is important. You shouldn’t expect others to live the way you do. The Stoics, while they were strict with themselves and trying to live up to their principles, had a clear understanding that humans are fallible. We make mistakes. We screw things up. We’re not automatons. Therefore perfection is impossible. One of my favorite quotes from Epictetus is: “The ignorant blame others for their own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise see all blame as foolishness.” But I’ll admit, when I first read this, I didn’t truly understand it. How do you not blame anyone? If something goes wrong, isn’t there someone to blame? Over time, I started to understand: things happen. Life happens. Nothing will ever work out perfectly. Then I read a different translation of this quote and it fully clicked: “Small-minded people habitually reproach others for their own misfortunes. Average people reproach themselves. Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame something or someone is foolishness, that there is nothing to be gained in blaming, whether it be others or oneself.” Whil
- Aug 28, 20261h 33m
The Pressure Code: Interview with Performance Coach Jason Stacy | 388
Jason Stacy is a performance coach and author of The Pressure Code. He works with high performers including world tennis champion Aryan Sabalenka. In this episode we talk about how coming from living on the streets to being a top performance coach. We also discuss his formula of energy, emotions, and environment, and how the right combination of those leads to reaching your highest potential. You can find out more about Jason and his work at thepressurecode.com The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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