How To Break The Cycle Of Stress | Epictetus

Most of us run a quiet stress loop without noticing it. We tell ourselves we have to worry, or something bad will happen. In this episode I look at that game first, then offer the Stoic alternative Epictetus recommends.

Here is the passage I work from:

“If you want to make progress, drop reflections like: ‘I will end up destitute if I don’t take better care of my affairs,’ or, ‘Unless I discipline my slave, he’ll wind up good for nothing.’ It is better to die of hunger free of grief and apprehension than to live affluent and uneasy. Better that your slave should be bad than that you should be unhappy.” Epictetus

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Transcript

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Let's talk about stress and in particular the cycle of stress. Many of us, when we are experiencing stress, we also add a story to it. So let's just say we don't do our work on time. We don't submit our university paper at the right time. We say in our mind, I will end up broke and ruined if I don't do better. As parents we tell ourselves things like unless my children get good grades, they will end up good for nothing. Maybe we have a tense relationship with a parent. If I upset my father by telling him the truth, he will hate me. Maybe we have big aspirations in life, and if I cannot travel the world, that means I'm a failure. Maybe we have a partner and we're not happy and we tell ourselves if I leave my wife, she will be depressed and she won't cope, and it will be all my fault. In other words, we have these rules, these unconscious rules almost, a sort of if then, if I do this thing, then something terrible will happen. In cognitive behavioral therapy, which is something that I synthesize with my stoic practices and teachings in my courses, we would call this fortune telling or making assumptions or catastrophizing. It's a sort of twisted thinking about reality, and we convince ourselves that we have this knowledge, this godlike knowledge about what will happen. I will end up broken ruined if I do not do better at work. Well, we don't know that, and yet we're basing our entire emotional life and well-being on that assumption. But going deeper than that from a principled point of view, in all of the examples that I just gave, we are essentially worrying about external outcomes. We are worrying about pieces in reality moving in ways that cause us pain. And that type of worry is influencing the way that we make decisions in the present. So we never break up with our partner because we are convinced that this terrible thing, them becoming depressed and suicidal is going to happen. So you could break down the cycle of stress for most of us like this. We worry about a future outcome. Let's take the outcome of doing well at work. Did the outcome come true? Then yes, it did. I can be happy now, we tell ourselves. And if it doesn't, then I cannot be happy now. So there are these rules. I have a goal, it's causing me worry. Did I achieve it? Okay, I can stop worrying, everything will be terrible. And what happens? Either way, a new cycle of stress comes along. We achieve a goal, we have momentary relief, cycle of stress comes along again. We don't achieve a goal, we feel extra stress, then we feel some relief, and then a new cycle of stress will come along again. It's almost like a stress rat race, a stress treadmill. And why this is so problematic is because this cycle of stress, it doesn't have a lasting outcome for happiness. It's based on promises about the future that may or may not come true. In other words, it's sort of like gambling. Will I achieve my goal? Won't I achieve my goal? Will I achieve my goal? Won't I achieve my goal? And we are knocked around by the randomness of fortune. So cycle of stress one. I will end up broke and ruined if I do not do better at work. Did you improve at work? Yeah, you did improve at work. Okay, okay, okay, I can relax, I can relax. A week goes by, cycle of stress two. Unless my children get good grades, they will end up good for nothing. Are they gonna get good grades? Right? And it just goes on and on and on. From a Stoic perspective, many of us are kind of addicted to playing a game of sacrificing our present peace of mind for the promise of happiness in the future. One of the issues that the Stoics recognize with anxiety is that anxiety can block us from enjoying an acceptable present. Things could be fine. In this moment, as you look around your room, things could be fine. But with sufficient worry about the future, it can actually prevent you from appreciating the present. It's essentially a distraction that puts blinkers on you. And all you can think about is the future stress, the future worry that you face. And some of us actually take on some stress in the present for the promise of avoiding greater stress in the future, you know, like someone who's studying extremely hard for a medical degree, you know. Yes, I'll I'll experience stress now so that one day I don't have to experience any stress at all, and I can just relax. And that's not really how things work. And so if you were to ask Epictetus or Marx Aurelius, they would probably say that it is better to upset our father or spouse with authentic expression, communication than to spend decades feeling uneasy and fake in the relationship. And they would say it's better to be poor and free of grief than to be rich and miserable. What they are looking at is virtue, you know, excellence of character, courage, discipline, justice, practical wisdom, even when things are difficult. There's a concept I learned from Dr. Aziz Gazipura in a book called Not Nice, which is all about assertiveness and expressing yourself authentically. And he distinguishes between harm and hurt. You know, so we can go through life and we can harm people. Alright, to harm someone, he defines that as the intentional desire to punish or inflict psychological or physical damage on another person. It's about the intention to hurt them. Abusers harm people. Hurt, on the other hand, is just part of being in any kind of human relationship. You will hurt people, even if you have the best intentions, even if you care about someone, you will hurt them. You know, imagine you're looking after a toddler. I have a toddler, and he or she really wants to stay in the park for another hour, but you have to go home, you have to prepare dinner, you have to keep them on a schedule for their own benefit. You're not trying to harm them. In fact, you're actually trying to help them. You're trying to make them have the best possible day ever, to make sure that they have a good meal, to make sure that they have a good sleep so they can enjoy their day tomorrow. But they might not understand and they might get hurt by that decision. In some sense, it's unavoidable. But harming loved ones is avoidable. It is a decision. Sometimes we'll do the right thing and people will get hurt, but we can decide if we want to hurt people. That is a choice within our control. So going back to stress, every time we experience a situation that would ordinarily have caused us stress, we can ask ourselves a simple question. This is something I do myself all the time. I ask myself, is this situation worth sacrificing my peace of mind for? It's a very simple question. Is this situation worth sacrificing my peace of mind for? And ask it seriously. About a week ago, I bought a coffee, full latte. It was exactly what I wanted in that moment. I put it in my car. Just before I drove off, I picked it up to place it in a different cup holder. The lid fell off the coffee, and the entire cup spilled all over the floor where I was driving, all over the mat, uh, all over my shoes, and the coffee was gone. That was it. There was nothing left in the cup. I didn't even take a sip. And this knee-jerk reaction of, you know, like this flash of frustration or you know, feeling like I was a victim of fate kind of really quickly flashed through my mind. And then I just asked myself that question Is this spilled coffee worth sacrificing my peace of mind for? And in about two seconds, I concluded that it was not worth sacrificing my peace of mind for. And in fact, my peace of mind is the most valuable thing that I have. It's infinitely more valuable than any amount of caffeinated beverage. And so I ignored it. It didn't matter anymore. The coffee was where the coffee was, the cup was where the cup was. But I still had my peace of mind. And so, in the end, who won? And this example is a great example because the Stoics, the ancient Stoics, would encourage us to practice with smaller things, like spilled coffee, and work our way up to greater and greater things, you know, like your phone breaks, your car breaks down, some important project fails. Is this situation worth sacrificing my peace of mind for? Very few of us would answer yes to that situation. And if you do answer yes, if you do think it's reasonable to trade your peace of mind for whatever situation is happening, by all means go and do it. Maybe there will be times where that is acceptable to you. But very often when we do sacrifice our tranquility, we're not only miserable, but we're also less effective. A lot of us cling to this idea that frustration and anxiety make us perform better. I don't know about you, but when I look at high achievers at work, and I mean athletes, musicians, even fighters, they have a look on their face that is engaged and attentive, alert. But when they're at their best, they don't look stressed. Only when they are failing, floundering, struggling, suffering, then they look stressed. And I'm not so sure that that stress helps them recover necessarily. And so we can go through life now with this new way of operating, this new way of perceiving stresses as a trade for our peace of mind. So let's just say we get a warning from our boss in work. If you don't work harder, I'm gonna write you a warning. Okay, this happens, and then we ask ourselves a question Is this worth sacrificing our peace of mind for? If the answer is yes, then you are about to embark on a cycle of stress, and then you have the following thought: I will end up broke and ruined if I do not work better. Do I achieve the outcome? Yes or no? And you go through a cycle of stress until the next one comes along, and that becomes your habit, your way of dealing with stress. Or we can say, no, this is actually not worth exchanging my peace of mind for. So we keep our peace of mind, we relax into it, and then we say to ourselves, okay, I have my peace of mind, I've also had that information from my boss. What do I want to do about it? So it doesn't make you less effective, it actually makes you more effective and you escape the cycles of stress. Generally speaking, I like the model of everything being a trade-off in one way or another. Nothing is completely free. You can't be productive at everything on earth, right? You have to be unproductive at certain things, so you can be productive at other things. There is a limited amount of time and energy and resources that you have in your life. So trade-offs are always going to happen. And it's also, I think, wise to lower our expectations about reality. Certainly you can aim up, you can aim high, you can work hard, you can cultivate skills, definitely do these things. But we also have to recognize that no matter what we do, there will be times where people are rude to us, and that's it. There will be times when family members and co-workers say the wrong things, where they are insensitive and lacking empathy, this is part of life. And if every time something like this happens, where someone treats us rudely or we spill our coffee or we get a warning from a boss, if we allow our tranquility every time to be disturbed, in some sense we are entrusting our peace of mind to them. We are saying, You can have my peace of mind, and you can do what you like with it. You can stamp all over it, because every time you do something that I don't like, I'm going to allow my own peace of mind to be owned by you. And you hear comparisons to slavery and discussions about freedom in stoic writings alone. Well, this is what it's really about. You know, people call themselves free, people say they have freedom, but then at the same time, the same individuals will allow their emotions to be owned by someone else. And so don't be like that. Make the decision to ask yourself that question Is this worth sacrificing my peace of mind over? And then go from there.