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Happy New Stoic Year: Lessons for a calmer 2026

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What happens when you stop negotiating with the universe and start engaging with it?

Start 2026 with a calm, practical reset as Philippa and Penelope explore a 4D take on Stoicism you can use without reading a single philosophy book. You will hear how to meet delays, detours and difficult people with intention so you suffer less and choose more.

You will learn:

  • Self-reflection that turns rumination into learning
  • Premeditatio malorum planning for what could go wrong so your nerves are ready and your plans can breathe
  • The view from above to widen perspective and cool hot emotions
  • Negative visualisation to grow gratitude for what you already have
  • Micro moments that compound into real change by next January


Picture the airport queue, the family hiccup, the tricky email. One steady breath. One kinder interpretation. One choice that the future you will be proud of. Notice how your physical, emotional and intellectual presence shifts when you stop negotiating with the universe and start engaging with it.

Try it this week. Name one likely snag using premeditatio malorum, prepare a simple response, and practise it once. Then spot the gift inside the next setback and take one step your future self will thank you for.




SPEAKER_02:

Hello, my name's Philip Walla. My name is Penelope Walla, and we are two of the directors at 4D Human Being. And welcome to the 4D Human Being podcast. What's it all about, Pen? It's all about your personal and professional relationships, it's about your communication skills, how you lead, how you work and build teams, how you are looking after yourself and your well-being, and how you are much more at choice. What do we mean by that? Well, sometimes we can get a little caught in patterns in life, and we can all be a little bit on our automatic pilot. So 40 human being is all about helping us get back to choice and being a four-dimensional human being, and your fourth dimension, of course, is intention. So whether it's about your impact, your leadership style, your team dynamics, whether it's about your well-being, whether it's about your communication or your presentation skills. Anything that involves human beings interacting with other human beings, 4D Human Being are here to help. We're gonna take a deep dive and look at some tools, insights, theories that are gonna help you go from a 3D human doing to a 4D human being. So that you can happen to the world rather than the world simply happening to you. Hello, happy new year! Happy New Year! Do you know, Phil? I do have to say that I have made a New Year's resolution to try and make more of an effort to look good on a podcast, but we all seem to be doing them before or after a yoga class. So can I just say the fact that we're doing the yoga class though is a testament. It is. So happy new year. Yeah, since we're going out on the 2nd of January. Yes, let's hopefully Christmas was. Yeah, hopefully Christmas survived. So in fact, we want to talk about. Well, sort of, there is a sort of super segue, or at least a segue. We want to talk about, yeah, not just surviving, but thriving and from a place of 4D stoicism. A nice mashup of the Seneca's, the Marcus Aurelius, and 4D. All of that. And it's it's so about intentionality. So before you press stop on your podcast video. You don't have to have studied philosophy to get a lot out of this episode. And also we use the word stoic in a sort of sense of gritting our teeth and tolerating difficulty. Well I it's not that at all. Well, I remember years and years ago, do you remember we did a short course at the School of Life on philosophy. Oh, it was so good. It was only sort of six to eight weeks or something. Yeah. And I didn't know anything about philosophy, it just wasn't an area that I had studied at all. And I had real assumptions about what some of these different philosophies were about. And Stoicism, I had an image of people sort of in ancient Greece in sort of Hessian sacks and really suffering. Suffering, giving themselves a really, really hard life. And actually, it's not about that at all. And I I think Stoicism needs a sort of a reboot and a reintroduction because it's so wonderful. Well, let me give it a quick let me give this book a quick plug. So The Stoic Challenge, a Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer and More Resilient by William B. Irving. Super, super accessible and absolutely talks to the idea of as a stoic, when difficult things come your way, you say to the universe, game on. Yes, let's play. I'm not gonna be set back by this, I'm gonna meet this and find my way through it. And that I just love that you're not expecting the plane to not be delayed, you're expecting it to be delayed and you're ready for it. And when everyone else is ah complaining and cross and angry, you're like, okay, what's what's the gift to the book? What can I learn? How can I step into this? Let's play. And there's so many pieces in there which we'll get on to. Although I will say I'm really gonna commit to I and I think I am a pretty stoic person. You really are, especially in airports. Yeah, it's it's really a philosophy that I absolutely love and live by, and it served me very well. Though there are some things I'm gonna add into my stoic practice, which we'll talk about. But I will say that I'm going to in the last couple of weeks of December, Phil, it's quite it can be quite hard to be stoic. So um last night I was not stoic. I started panicking about gift buying. Uh I was really, if anyone listened to our last episode, I was really sort of hurtling down the last few meters of the throwing things in the Christmas basket. Of the mountain, buying like madness. The new year, because the betwixtness, as we call it. So between Christmas and New Year, there's oft there's often, not for everyone, but there's often not very much going on. So it's a good chance to kind of step into a bit of self-reflection, a bit of stoicism as we're gonna talk too. So looking forward to 2026. Me too. So we're gonna talk about both a more resilient or stoic approach to life, and secondly, not making it kind of big mountains to climb every day. But you have from the 2nd of January, when this goes out, 363 days to make tiny steps that means by the end of the year you will be somewhere incredible. So those are the two parts we want to talk about. I'm gonna bridge this with Michael Bublet from Christmas, because who's on repeat play on your interview? So I yeah, listening to Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, the lyrics Michael Bublet is Christmas, really, isn't he? Basically, he is he is the modern day St.

SPEAKER_02:

Nicholas, isn't he? The the the lyric, a number of times in Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas is and all your troubles will be far away. And I'm like Michael, I'm I am I'm gonna challenge him on that lyric because not only will they be not far away for 2026, but I'm gonna say that over Christmas they weren't that far away. In fact, maybe they came a little bit closer. So I think that lyric is a really good bridge to maybe don't just cross your fingers, sing Michael Booblay, and hope that you just won't have any trouble you just won't have any troubles in the coming year. Actually, it might be better to say all your troubles will be right here by your side. So how are you gonna deal with it every day? So how are you gonna but it's true, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

Because it's it's it's from the dog pulling at your sock when you're trying to get it on to you know you lose your dog or like it's a bit you know I I just as a sidebar, Phil, I don't think we analyze song lyrics anywhere near enough to actually listen to what they're actually saying. Well you know what it is, Ben.

SPEAKER_02:

It's I'm afraid if I sort of, you know, whether it's feminism or or you know, or what's expected of masculinity or anybody to be fair, if we think about song lyrics and fairy tales, we are not we are not set up to succeed. Let's be clear. Oh goodness. Okay, so So yes, assuming that your troubles will not all be far away in 2020. Yes, I mean we really wish that for everyone, definitely, and let's be realistic. Um, yeah. So let's start with a the opportunity that 4D stoicism presents to us in a way to live, and we'll talk about what are the kind of tenets of uh of Stoicism. Well also just to start with where it where it comes from, like Philip have pointed out, I'd really encourage anybody who hasn't to, you know, at least at least sort of Google it or have a look at it, because there are different theories, if you like, of philosophy and how to how to live a good life, really. And so Stoicism is is one of them. And as you said, Phil Stoic. Well you sort of you feel like maybe in the Western world we've veered a bit more towards hedonism. We've definitely veered away from it. We've done it. Yeah, we'd we we definitely prefer the idea of the sort of bacchanalian sort of party on the hillside where wine is flowing and everyone is just sort of joyous and out of it, but actually that comes with a hangover, yes, exactly, exactly. And there's various you know, philosophies that focus on the collective or on the individualistic, and as Philip says on the pleasure versus on the virtue, and there's lots of different ideas which you know erose at different times in parts of the world, but obviously the the Greek philosophers are the most famous for them. Um so there are lots of different ways to live. I mean, maybe we'll introduce some war over the coming year because I do love a bit of philosophy. Uh we're gonna start with Stoicism, and our listeners will understand why as as we go through this, because as you said, it is very 4D. Very 4D. And it doesn't mean, as we said, it doesn't mean you live a miserable life. It's it's for me, it's a it's a lot about responsibility and self-reflection and being being awake. Yeah, so I'm gonna ask you to go through some of the stoic practices and to bridge to that, we'll give an example that actually William B. Irving in his book opens up with, and it really made me think of you because it's set in an airport. And you I spent a lot of time in airports, and and the story could have been you. It was the sort of the flight delay, the cancellation, everybody angry, frustrated, complaining. And he and going to the system, the other people. Going to the other people, exactly, looking for other people, and then the hotel that you the vouchers for the hotel you get given that wasn't up to scratch, then complaining about that. So so it just rolls and rolls. And if you think about the experience for those people, for their own mind, sort of mentally, nervous system, physically, deeply unpleasant, really difficult, and then the interactions between them for what if someone else gets a better room than you? I mean, so it's and then also the the knock-on effect of I've missed something. Oh, and then the narrative when you finally get there, but you've missed something, or you're late, and the stress that it's put under other people, when you arrive with the narrative, oh, it was a nightmare, that's how you start there creating an impact. So it goes on, the ripple effect, and he very much says, Okay, he whatever god you believe in, or whatever power you believe in, he says the stoic gods, he doesn't believe that there is a god, but it's a it's a you could think about a coach or a teacher or anybody. Yeah, he he thinks game on, he gamifies it. I think that's such a wonderful way to approach it because in that moment he's saying, Right, I'm gonna win this, and I just love that. And also, I think the second thing before I hand over to kind of what are the daily practices, and I've sort of referred to this, but I really want to hammer it home. This is not about trying to be calm through suffering, it's about building up a daily practice so that when these things happen you don't suffer. Yeah, and and and the Buddhists Well it's the second arrow, isn't it? It's the second arrow. The Buddhists would talk to this. It's you can't take away the pain or difficulty of the cancelled flight, but you can take away the second arrow of the suffering. And so stoicism is what you're doing. Which is what you self-inflict based on your responses, and it and you are responsible for your responses. And we talk about this in managing difficult conversations, as much as someone else is creating you think, creating a difficulty for you, your main pain is your own response, ruminating, anxious, worrying, complaining, bitching, gossiping. That's totally I would say I mean this is not a definition of of stoicism, but for me, and let's be clear, none of us are perfect human beings, none of us lived live the most sort of virtuous self- not here to be perfect human beings, here to be 4D. Exactly. And the other the other thing I would say is that really accept in life that these kind of philosophies and practices tend to, not always, but they tend to come over time in your life based on the experiences you've had and what you've learned. I mean, I sure certainly, I certainly wasn't very stoic in my youth. Um ever hopeful, I think. Yes, and I think there's two two reasons for for me that if I look back, stoicism was not really part of my life, and as I've moved forward, um it it has become so. And that's because of lots of things that have happened in my life. And and I think two two things for me that underpin it. One is what your expectations are, which I think perhaps for some of us, and all of us, depending on you know what we've sort of been brought into in terms of our family um system when we're younger. But for me, the expectations shift over uh the period of our life. You know, very much thought the fairy tale was going to happen to me, and you know, that the things like divorce didn't happen. Well, yeah, in some ways it did. Well, but I think our expectations shift, so that's the first thing. And the second thing, which is the really, really big thing, which is really about what 4D has done for my life, is we start pulling the responsibility and the self-reflection back to ourselves. We hope we do. Yeah, we hope we do. So some people do, yeah, some people do. But for me, those are the two things that have really shifted how I see the UK and how I can more often respond to the world, is what are my expectations and what is my own responsibility and things. Yeah. So please don't imagine you have to suddenly, after this podcast, be a perfect historic human face time. And we're and we're human, of course, we're all human. This reminds me in the spring of this year, we'll have a new series out on 4D on demand, managing difficult conversations, and I've literally just been editing the video of Matt doing the responsibility game. Oh nice, where you've the analogy would be a tennis match. Yeah. And are you taking responsibility for the whole court, just your side of the court, or none of you? But that idea of you are 50% responsible for every relationship and you are a hundred percent responsible for yourself, and you know what? For anybody who likes control, that's the place to put your want for control because you really can control that. Yeah, there's no point trying to control their game, but if you really like control, pop it there because you'll be much more satisfied. Yeah, okay, Penn, practices, yes. So three of these that I that I I think I do, and there's one that I've I've noted I'm going to add into my practice. So, first one is self-reflection, which again, we always say this, we say this to clients when we're talking about even working with difficult cultures, different, difficult situations, difficult teams, whatever might be going on in a system or organisation, we will always say, look, a big, big part of our messaging and what we're going to get the participants or delegates to do is they've got to pull it back to themselves. So, yes, difficult things might be going on out there in the world or in the organization. Um, what can we control? Well, even feelings that feel justified. Yeah. That someone's been rude to you or they've let you down and you feel justified in your anger, and your anger is yours. Yeah, and stoicism starts with what can you control? Because a lot of the pain is ruminating and focusing on stuff, of course, that we can't control. So the first very first one is uh self-reflection. Now, there's a number of ways to do that. Journaling is a is a very sort of therapy. I can highly recommend. Therapy is a very good one. You can have sort of smaller practices as well. I mean, I I we use a tool called the Neural Reframe in lots of our work, which is really about catching your thoughts when they might be negative and reframing them to think about well, what's been useful here? What have I learned? What was I pleased with? That for me is a really good way to self-reflect. It's a game changer, the reframe. You know, they've done work on incidences or trauma, and it's the narrative, it's the framing that really changes your life experience, not always the event. It's amazing. And the airport one is a really good example for because if I think about days gone by, as you say, I'm I spend a lot of time in airports, you know, not always the best if it's you know two in the morning and the flight's been cancelled. Um but of course, now I think maybe because of experience, uh love the love the airline staff, do their best, not easy situations, but now I think what can I do to make sure that this is the least inconvenient for me that it possibly can and really what's what's happened, what's been detrimental, like maybe I've missed a day of whatever you know trip I was going on, or so really reflecting on what's what's the bad stuff here, and the other thing as well, which you mentioned earlier, is of course very often I'm travelling back and forth to see kids, get kids with kids. And of course, I want them to have the best experience possible. What a lovely, what a lovely thing to reflect on. Why do they need to be stressed? Because I've missed a flight. You know what that really makes me I've mentioned this before, that really makes me think of a moment in an airport where a couple were fighting because uh arguing at the security because one of them had not put the laptop on the right bag and they and this was the holiday. This is the beginning of their holiday, and and I think I've mentioned before I just Tom had only very recently died, so I was really alert to these moments to the experience you're creating, to the experience you're creating, and also couples and having your partner with you. And that that moment for me really encapsulates the irritation that one of them felt about the expectation not being exactly what they thought it would be, but then the ripple effect is you say that now is now that's got to be dealt with and managed, and if and five seconds of ah, where is that laptop? Yeah, yeah, let me let me check. Yeah, and getting that intentional self-driving the bus. Imagine then what would have then rippled out into the airport terminal. Yeah, yeah. And it is it saves you so much time having to repair totally and so much of this comes back to self-reflection and self-control. So much of it. So that's so that's the first one, uh self-reflection. The second one is um is it premeditatio malorum? Very good, Pen. I think the Harry, the Harry Potter in you. I know. Get my little um wonder. So what that means Premeditatio malorum. Yeah, so premeditating on well, literally evils. Uh what it means is, and we've spoken about this before in terms of um defensive pessimism, which what it means is is preparing yourself for difficulties and things that could go wrong. So reflecting on, well, what's the worst case that could happen here? Well, what if I did miss my flight? Or and for me, what this does is is it kind of prepares your nervous system. Well, you know what the so that you know you know what the I mean the absolute classic, and I'm and I experience this week on week. If I drive to a dance lesson, depending on my schedule, particular times of day, going through the town, yeah, obviously there's more traffic. Yeah. So when I have the presence of mind, my stoic 4D intentional self is switched on, I'll always give myself 10 more minutes. Yeah. Because that because that queue of traffic. Now, that's fine. That's a that's a sort of theory, and you could look at that and go, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. The difference in the experience when you're sitting in that queue of traffic thinking, oh, another 10 minutes of my podcast, I've got plenty of time, I left it. No, I mean, again, we know this in theory, but it's actually really coming back to not just knowing it rationally that actually that makes sense because there's gonna be more traffic, but really being a friend to your own future self, yeah, and giving yourself a much better experience. Cento per cento. But the only thing I would say, and which is one of the reasons that I know I'm a stoic, yeah, is I take this one to the extreme, Phil. I mean, I take it. Well, you always assume there's going to be a traffic job. My kids the other day. Because they're old enough now to travel independently, and I got a friend to take them to the airport, they were in Italy.

SPEAKER_00:

And of course, I do the premeditatio malorum of what if they miss the school bus? What if there's traffic?

SPEAKER_02:

What if there's so I So they took their sleeping bags?

SPEAKER_00:

So I find all of these things in for the pickup time to get to the airport, and my daughter called me from the airport in Milan and said, Mummy, the gate's not even up yet. We've got three hours.

SPEAKER_02:

Three hours. And I said Which for it which for which for a teenager is a life. It's a long time, and I said I'm really, really sorry, sweetheart.

SPEAKER_00:

But the upside is my nervous system's in check. Mummy's mummy's calm. Mummy's not suffering. Yeah. So one can take it a bit too far.

SPEAKER_02:

But if you know, if you know about yourself, that you know, going back to that self-reflection, self-control, intention and choice and responses, if you know that if unexpected difficult things happen, the nervous system is going to be shot to bits. This premeditatio malorum is a really good technique. I'm gonna add ready for any of that. I'm gonna add one in in case you still have family events coming up in the betwixt. Well, post-betwixt in the new year. This comes up a lot in coaching and therapy. Here's a question. When someone's close to you says something annoying or does their usual little jibe or dig, and you're then you're furious, you're cross. Here's a question. Are you surprised? And if you That's such a good question. It's such a good question. And actually goes back to expectations. Everybody I've ever asked that question says, no, I wasn't. So no, I'm not surprised. So then you say, okay, well, if you're not surprised, then you must on some level have known that would happen. Yes. So therefore, why are you annoyed about it? It's like saying, I know the sun will rise, oh, how annoying it's just risen again. You know it's gonna happen. And I, for me, that was a real game changer. When you start, when you start knowing, well, that that's how they behave. So if you think about your work, if you think about going back to work, your work colleague who doesn't reply to your emails quickly, quick enough for you.

SPEAKER_00:

Premeditation malurum.

SPEAKER_02:

Premeditation malurum. Like, are you surprised? No. Then why are you annoyed? I just love that so much. Premeditation malorum. Print that on a t-shirt. This is gonna be my new phrase for 20 genius. Love it, love it. Then third thing. No, no, third thing, perspectives. This is very 4D, and actually, this really speaks to spiral dynamics secondary systems thinking. Are you stuck in the old me tunnel? Yeah. Where what view are you taking it? What view are you taking, both in terms of sort of um horizontally? So are you looking from your perspective or are you looking around you, but also in terms of vertically, like how big and broad is your perspective? Um, so yes, perspective, the view from above, yeah, or the view from all around. We've been so. And we often talk about your intentional self zooming up like a periscope or a drone and looking down on a situation. And we do a lot, there's a lot of these pieces of work in the Managing Difficult Conversations series on 40 on demands coming up soon. I think that's one for everyone. I think that I think that's just a gift that we'll keep on giving. And so we talk about zooming up and getting that big picture, which does so much for you because when we're caught in our own irritation, we go into fight or flight, which quite naturally narrows our focus because you are quite literally in when you're in fight or flight, your whole system is going into a tunnel of where's the danger? Yeah, do I need to run away or kill it? So you're you literally your eyes and brain are narrowing. So we have to really pull back, pull up multi-perspective, we go, what's actually going on here? What might be going on for that person? What what are they thinking? Yeah, or you know, with the family members that irritate you, to notice that it's unconscious, yeah, it's a pattern, it's how they are. Totally. It's not that they woke up this morning thinking I'm going to irritate Brenda this morning. Exactly, exactly, Phil. And if the phrase comes into your head, it's not fair, this isn't fair, that's a really good warning sign that you are not practicing stoicism, and that the one of the reasons for that is possibly, probably, that your perspective is quite narrow because we cannot say, let's imagine that you're zooming right out and you're seeing like Earth in the universe, or even further than that. The phrase it's not fair becomes quite redundant. Do you know what? I mean, I know we've mentioned this before, but it's such a good place to mention it again. Look, justice is important, it's not that there's not a place for justice and doing the right thing and having a voice for other people who don't have a voice, like that is definitely what a wonderful commitment to make for this year. But the idea that life should be fair and that that's sort of what we're striving to get to because it's such a difficult concept. Because fair for the person who hasn't got back to you on email is being left alone to do things in their own time. That's fair. For you, what's fair is they get back to me immediately that I write to them. Now, they can never meet. No. So that's why we need the multi-perspectives to pull up. The idea of what's fair usually is our aspect. And even if it's not, I mean, even if we can say there's something that is fair based on a sort of a universal moral judgment, that's that's fine and that's true, and absolutely our justice system should should strive for that, as should our uh culture and society. And what I think what stoicism would say is it's a very difficult place to live from if your expectations are that other people in the system must always be fair. It's just gonna be tough because it's not, it doesn't work like that, so which is why it always pulls it back to the self. Yes, these things are gonna happen, yes, some of them will be unfair. What can I control? So that is perspective, and yeah, we would use, like you said, the IU, we, it maps, so taking multiple perspectives, but also pulling up and trying to take a higher perspective. I want to take a little diversion before we go to the last one because this feels like the right place to put something that I really liked online that I saw. If we think about that's unfair or it's not going my way in terms of the perspectives and some of the feelings that come up from that, I think one of the things that really ties in stoicism and 4D is to go below the the emotion and understand what's happening underneath so that you can then take some control and act and do something screwed. Yeah, because this is this is one of some of the things we talked about coming into this podcast. This is not about passively putting up with no and just accepting. No, so there was a it's yeah, it's exactly Phil. It's acting, it's it's active, but it's recognising what actually needs to happen here as opposed to I'm gonna go and have a moan about it. Yeah, or I'm just gonna do it. Or I'm just I'm I'm just gonna go completely silent and just feel annoyed. Exactly. That is not what we're talking about. Exactly. So I really liked um something I saw on social media and it was from a therapist. And I'm just gonna go through them very quickly because I just think they're so important of how things show up that if you suppress shame, you'll often go to perfectionism so that nobody sees that. And again, this self-reflection, if we can understand that, then we can go, I know what's happening here. Yeah, it's not because that person hasn't reached my perfection, it's because I can't face not being perfect myself. Your anger will often make you want to be easygoing, but you'll boil inside, and again, your anger is asking you to set a boundary. If you're an overwhelm, you'll go into overthinking, you'll do mental gymnastics to try to solve a problem. What you're avoiding is actually feeling what's going on underneath. Your fear becomes control, you'll start micromanaging. So again, if you can face your fear yourself, then you can stop um being irritated with other people, not doing what you want. You if you suppress your boundaries, you'll end up burnt out. So if you're burnt out, it's your thing you can control is your own boundaries. And if you have insecurities, it will turn to arrogance. So if you find yourself walking around with a puffed up chest, feeling like everyone else is not good enough, then that's something about how what you can't face. Now, I've gone through that very quickly, and I'm sure that we'll visit that again. Oh, by the way, jealousy will turn to um denigrating and mocking things in other people that you actually yearn for yourself. So if you are annoyed that they just seem to be doing what they want, yeah, they're just they're just taking time off. That's often because we feel like we can't, yeah, we need some time off. So we'll go through these another time in more detail because they're so important, but that it's a really good moment just to sort of slot them in, and we would call it the emotional messenger. What is that emotion asking you to do and to take that perspective? That's the vertical, I would call that the vertical perspective, as well as what's going on for other people. So I wanted to slot that in and very self-reflective as well. And it's just patterns, it's not it's just it's just what we've learned, they're just survival strategies. Yeah. To give yourself a break. Yeah, yeah. Okay, number four. So this is one, this is the one on the list that I feel I probably don't do. Uh, and it that what this is about is it it's about rather than looking forward into you know what I need to get done today, what I want to buy, what I need to sort out, what might happen next week, all of those things, which is all very, very useful in life. This is about taking time to imagine that you lose things that you already have, and by that we don't necessarily mean you lose, you know, your favourite teapot or something. It's more like you know, you might lose the love of somebody, or you might lose your inner peace, or you might lose some of your health, or so taking time to think about the things that you have that you might lose, and I don't know if I'm very careful. I have I have a re I have a good example of this that really helped me in a difficult moment. This was I think maybe a couple of years ago now, and I live rurally, and I'm not the only house that can get uh roofs can get leaks. Yeah, yeah, just because of how they were built, and maybe we have more rain. Who knows? I'm sure I'm I'm sure I'm sure fellow listeners will empathise, so I'm sure there's lots of us. Um it's sorted now, I'm very pleased to say. But a couple of years ago I had uh what we would term water ingress. Um so water coming in, and other information you never information you've never thought you'd have. There's the gift film, there's the learning. But it was very stressful because I I was on my own with it at that point and uh didn't know what to do. I'm not a roofer or a plumber. Um and I have various people trying to solve it, and nothing was working, so nobody was quite getting to the to the centre of the problem. And I was getting really upset and stressed about it, and then I just stopped one day and I imagined the whole house collapsed in rubble and me sitting on it and still worrying about the roof. No, that was just it. I was sat on the rubble going, Oh, there's no roof. There's no roof. What will I do now? And it was like something had kind of cleared because I'd come back to the important thing, which was the human being. Yeah, would I be okay? Yes, of course. And actually, what would you do? You just you know, call the insurance, go and stay with you or a friend. Like all of that is solvable, manageable, but it was such an interesting moment of having the you know, the most negative visualization of what could happen, and then realising that you would you would be there, yeah. You would still be there, you'd be you, and you'd take the next step. And I think unfortunately, perhaps sometimes we need things like that to happen in order to practice this particular element of stoicism because when life is sort of bubbling along quite nicely, dangerous time we don't tend to think about these things. Well, this is something that I mean, I would say those are the gifts in the difficult times, of course, because then you have to stop and reflect on well, what if I didn't have people in my life, you have to stop, and I think that's one of the important things. Uh, William Irving in his book says that part of our problem is that we take for granted that it should all be going our way, and that we negotiate with the universe to sort of try to bend it to our will rather than just engaging with it as it is, which is I think we mentioned before is what my TED talk talked about. Like improv is yes anding what is as opposed to fighting for what should be. Yes. And it's and it's not it's not that we should then sort of sit there all day and think about it. No, sit on a pile of rock or how awful life would be if I didn't have a roof over my head or these people in my life, or whatever it, whatever might be those valuable things to us. It's taking the time, and for me, you know, having sort of going you know going through the Christmas slightly frantic period, of course. If I take a moment to sit down and think, okay, well, you know, what happens if I haven't defrosted the chicken or the turkey in time, or what happens if I've forgotten to buy the parsnips, or whatever it might be, of course, really what's important to me is warmth with the people that I love. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. As long as I've got those two things. Which actually I think we'll be fine without parsnips. That's absolutely true. Actually, my kids will be pleased without parsnips, they don't love a parsnip fill. That's right. And in fact, yeah, exactly, they wouldn't care. But a lot of the um philosophers talk about um it's the sort of Hamlet moment, isn't it, with the skull sort of, you know, almost meditating on death. But it's it's the sort of equivalent of if the worst happens, what would I really want? I sometimes think about sort of, you know, those sort of Armageddon type movies. Um again, that's a sort of negative visualization. What would you do if you know the world was going to sort of, as we know it, was going to end. And then you imagine yourself, what would you want? Well, you'd want your loved ones probably around a fire because you'd want to be warm and you'd that's it, what telling a story or making sure that they've got some cover and like that's what I mean. I mean, it's it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs, isn't it? But you know, it's sometimes it's useful just to come back to that and think, well, you know, if the Wi-Fi's down, to not go you know it's the thing, isn't it, of being cross because there's no Wi-Fi in the aeroplane when you're flying thousands of feet in the air and expecting yes, exactly. And actually, I mean, I don't know if you remember a few years ago we were we were staying in in a very nice sort of house in Italy, um, as we so often do, and the there was a power cut, there was a terrible storm, and there was a power cart. Do you remember? Yeah, I did. And so we had obviously, I mean, my kids were s were sort of tweens at the time, so I mean that was fairly disastrous in terms of not having any Wi-Fi, but we couldn't because we couldn't really cook anything, and and particularly you for you're such a creative person. I think we we had such a laugh because we ended up playing some crazy games. We lit some candles. Luckily, we had some candles, and we did animal shapes on the wall. Oh, that's right. And then I started telling a ghost story, and of course they were just house screaming with sort of terrified delight. Yeah, which of course we wouldn't have done. And that is real stoicism, which you've well, how can we meet this situation? And what's the gift here? And of course, the gift was that we had candle lights. Yeah, we were in our own sort of horror. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And I'm going back to what you just said, Nasar, of course, one of one of the stoic practices is, and I think I I might say this wrong, but I think it's moratorium mori, which is thinking about death, yeah, and which is, I guess, the kind of extreme of thinking about what I might lose, what I might not have in life. And some people really do spend time doing that. Again, again, that's not necessarily one of the things that I personally do. Um, but I remember hearing Alan de Botton speaking about that once, and that it's kind of weird that we don't actually think about that very much. But again, it's not it's not to make ourselves sad, it's to make ourselves stoic and appreciate what life what life is and can be. Yeah, we often think about retirement because we know that's going to happen, so it's no different, is it? Yeah. Okay, so I'm a big fan of stoicism. Big, big fan. So take a moment and think about well, how what would be useful in terms of that self-reflection, multi-perspective taking, uh, expecting things to be difficult, and even imagining the the very worst. Imagine the the worst case scenarios, you I don't know, you go back to work this week. And what what you could what you could what you could lose, what what could be sort of negatively different rather than hoping that things are gonna be better. And then there's two things on that, isn't it? There's there's gamify it. So how can you find your own phrase for kind of like game on, let's play, and to focus on what you can control. And actually, therefore, in our language, the opportunity in in every one of those moments is not only to solve the problem, but to take another step towards the person that you want to be. Well, do you know one of the things I I definitely do because none of us want to be the irritatory. That's right, that's right. And one of the one of the things I definitely do since since um you know doing this work in 4D is, and again, I'm I do not do this all the time. No, we're not gonna be able to do that. We're gonna keep keep remembering we're not perfect human beings with 4D. When I do, when I do, if I have that, if I catch that moment before I respond to something that's been difficult, what I will think to myself is, what do I want to think about this interaction or this experience tomorrow when I'm looking back on it? How do I want to think about myself in terms of how I responded? And of course, if I get angry or say something I regret, of course it won't, it will be unpleasant for me the next day. So taking a moment to sort of think about what your future self will think about your response is a very nice self-reflection. Exactly. Co-create yourself with your future self. That's exactly right. Okay, so before we go, uh I want to just touch on micro moments. So as you think about the coming year, obviously the fourth dimension in 4D is intention. We talk about you know New Year's resolutions and intentions, and then we sort of crash and burn as we've talked about often when we do a new year podcast by sort of February, you know, we're not going to the gym and the donuts are back out. But but actually, what is what this year's been about, and I really have an intention for 2026, is real micro moments. This is going out on the 2nd of January, which means you have 363 days of micro moments. And if you imagine five minutes every day of one thing you're gonna do more of, less of, or stop doing, intentions do not have to be about doing massive things, they might be about doing small things, doing less, or stop doing things, or doing a few tiny things more intentionally. A few tiny things more intentionally every day, and then imagine where you'll be at the end of the year. And I really love that to really take the pressure off, yeah, and that it might be one of those practices we talked about recently, five, ten, fifteen seconds in the morning to pause, notice, yeah, so that you start lengthening, expanding time, as we've talked about. Look that up if you haven't um if you didn't listen to our previous podcast, or you know, taking a moment to pat your dog or whatever it might be, tiny, tiny moments that will start to shift. You know, we always talk about this, don't we? If you think about a ship or a car or if you are changing by half a degree, yeah, this is like dance. If you change by half a degree, you've suddenly hit the perfect position. Yeah, but it's tiny, yeah, and if you do that every time Toast it and it's next Christmas, my friend. Yes, exactly. And it's a real attitude. I have a client, and we we spoke, I mean, we didn't specifically reference stoicism, but we spoke about it in terms of what's the gift, what's the gift, it's like your tet your TEDx talk for, what's the gift that this might bring? And I remember I was on a conversation with him recently. I mean, he he's an amazing leader, and I think I I can safely say that things were going on inside the company that were the equivalent of your house or whatever. Yeah, it was a lot of difficult things. Yeah, love chess. And I said, you know, how are things going? And I knew that things were really difficult.

SPEAKER_03:

When he said, surrounded by gifts, pets oh brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Okay, I really want it.

SPEAKER_02:

Let's let's okay, so that is the real invitation for all of us and everyone listening. It's when the proverbial hits the fan, when things get really difficult, ru it's not gifts, it's not the S-H-I-T that hits the fan, it's gifts. The gifts are raining down. I love that. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the 40 Human Being Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Do take on board some of the insights, tools, and tips because every time that you try something new to get back to choice, you are making a vote for the you that you want to become. And I I love that phrase, Pen. I do too. And please do share this episode with somebody that you know would really benefit from the lessons and learnings we've been chatting about today. And of course, if you're interested in more from 4D Human Being, do get in touch. We run workshops, trainings online, in person, conference events and keynotes. We've got the 4D on-demand platform for your whole organization. And we do have a free essentials membership where anybody can sign up for absolutely free to access some of our insights, tools, and tips. So do get in touch with us if you'd like to hear more. We cannot wait to hear from you and to carry on the conversation.