On Coping Part I

Okay, so we're going to be doing now our first 10 minute meditation on coping. Okay, so again, pen and hand, I think, was a good idea. Try to work with each question if you can. Again, I encourage us to maybe even open up our own meditations. Obviously, I sent it to you in an email, right? Just so you can move at your own pace, but of course, I'll share my screen. And let's get going here. I'll give us 10 minutes. [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [SPLASH] [BLANK_AUDIO] And just a small piece of encouragement. We have a couple minutes left for the meditation. As you're doing this, maybe if you know, I think this would be good for the conversation. Write down a couple of the numbers for the questions that interest you or that you would like for me to elaborate on. And of course, I'd love to hear from your own perspective on the questions, but that's never mandatory, right? So at the very least, so I do think it's nice to have some questions we'd like to discuss as a group. Or again, if you want me to elaborate, feel free to have a short list of questions. Whenever we meditate, put them in the chat when we do our group discussion. And we'll return to them and we'll talk about that, all right? So we'll then take another minute or two to do this. Then we'll shift to some bibliotherapy. I'll ask you, I'll ask you to take a quick look at a couple short sections and we'll have our group discussion. [BLANK_AUDIO] Okay, so that's 10 minutes and now we're going to shift our thinking. And again, we use the bibliotherapy. Hopefully, as a way to help us work on what we were considering with the meditations, right? So first we dialogue with ourselves. Now we kind of enter into a dialogue with a couple of philosophers, okay? It's going to be one second here and I'll share my screen. And once again, we have numbers here for free to collect which quotes you think are useful. And you may be agree with some you disagree with. Again, maybe you would like for me to elaborate a bit on one or two of the quotes. So we're going to look mainly at number two and then we'll spend a couple minutes also looking at number three. [BLANK_AUDIO] And one more quick reminder, right, when we're looking at the bibliotherapy, even when it's not necessarily at home and we have some more time, we're always looking for what does it say, what does it mean, how can I apply it, why does it matter? So keep that lens in mind as we're addressing the bibliotherapy for the next few minutes. Does this suggestion? [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] So let's say another two minutes or so on this. And again, I would love to see numbers in the chat interpretations in regards to which quotes we would like to discuss. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Okay, so let's talk about these ideas, right? So as we have the title of chapter on coping. So mostly in this chapter we're discussing the three main topics I would say are anxiety, let's say stress and worrying, right? So three of these things I think we could argue they are very similar, although there are some differences and I think we'll get down to the heart of some of those differences. But these questions and these quotes I think get us starting into that, let's say into the mode through which we can actually alleviate a lot of the anxieties, worries, stresses, and also fears that we have, right? So let's get into some of what you all want to talk about because we have some great comments in the chat. And Daniel, just to be clear, number four you mean the quote or the question. [BLANK_AUDIO] I think we were looking at the quotes at that time, but I know I want to make sure. [BLANK_AUDIO] All right, so I'll give you a minute to respond to that Daniel. But on that note, let's go to the questions because we have a point from Nye that I think is really interesting. So most of the questions, right, you're saying kind of gave you the sense that you could grapple with, or let's say live with or, again, cope with things better. That's a beautiful point, right? The whole, one of the main objectives of the whole kind of meditative thing we're doing here is to not only organize our thinking, right? But it's to shine a light on the thinking, right? So which is to say, to a larger extent that these moments of realization are like really what we're going for here, right? The ideas that we then confront and deal with in the bibliotherapy should kind of give us the tools, the techniques to cultivate what we need to cultivate, right? So to cultivate, let's say, a greater sense of tranquility might be a good approach to today's thing, right? Questions like how could I be less anxious? How could I be less stressed, right? So these are questions that ancient philosophies, various ancient philosophies or schools of ancient philosophy took really seriously, right? Some of what we're going to discuss the next couple days will come from the Stoics, other kind of a Picarean standpoints will come to the forefront of our discussion. So I mean, these ancient schools, we're schools. So people will go to these places like, you know, physical schools, epictetus described to the school as a hospital for individuals who are pretty much suffering, right? We're virtually suffering. And back, you know, obviously ancient Greece preceded, you know, our modern conceptions of psychology. Nonetheless, they were trying to help people, I think, deal with a lot of stuff we deal with today. From, again, anxiety, worry, stress, anger, right? These are all things that we have to cope with. So we're going to be talking today a lot about, you know, that powerful realization. We can't fix this, I think, from Al-Kindy, right? Wonderful quote, we can't cure the sickness for which we do not know the cause, right? So, you know, saying, the other step one might be, oh, wow, I'm not, I could cope with things more effectively, which is to say I could be less anxious, for example. Well, that's a great moment. Now we work on through the questions, right? The questioning in the meditation itself is a technique, right? So, again, the technique is the cup and then the water is the concept. So we have the idea of meditation as today's cup, as we'll do it at each class with 10 minutes, at least. And then the water today is, you know, anxiety, stress, worrying. Next week, it'll be happiness. Next week, it'll be confidence, right? So we have to keep in mind that, you know, to your point, Naya, there's power in meditating. There's power in organizing our thoughts. There's usefulness in taking these questions and then really examining ourselves, right? Not worrying about the book yet, which is to say the bibliotherapy, not worrying about other philosophers' opinions yet, but that time examining ourselves, our past, our images of the future, our understanding of ourselves now, our actions, our feelings, our thoughts. That's a very good idea, right? And I sit and kind of will hopefully not repeat this too much, but I do think this is one of the main takeaways of the class that I hope you carry with you beyond the class. This is meaningful time that we spent in the meditation, right? And I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, we have more people echoing that, right? And yeah, being dismissive is something we have to be on the lookout for, right? I think a lot of what we'll see, and I'm not sure if we'll get to this today or tomorrow, but Alan Debutton and the School of Life, which I encourage all of you to go on YouTube. A lot of our essays I'm taking right from their website. I've read a number of his books. And we have some quotes from his books in here and books from the School of Life as well. They are big on not dismissing things. We have a whole really cool essay about bears. We're getting to a little bit later. If, again, if not today, tomorrow, a whole essay on bears where it's like, you can, well, that's, I'm not going to spoil it, right? Let me just say, you need to sit with things. Major events in life, memories that you've held on to, and learn how to detail them, learn how to see them more clearly. How to leave them in the past, right? For example, today we're talking about anxiety. That is a future-driven emotion. All right, we're going to talk about the levels, I think, and how anxiety grows, right? For one way of understanding it, we might think that anxiety, we start thinking about what is possible. Oh, it's a negative possibility. Okay, then we start elaborating on it. Right, we start feeling now, kind of, you know, feeling in a way that's a little bit heightened, then it goes from possible to probable. Okay, well, this might happen. Well, this probably will happen. Then we can make it feel like it is certainly going to happen. We can even make ourselves, you know, feel as a result of this thinking, right? And maybe even our actions, too, can perpetuate this. We can make something that's not even happening, feel like it is happening, or that it has already happened, right? So, anxiety is something that, once again, is towards the future, and it's something that we have to learn how to grapple with. So, it doesn't become overwhelming. And we can. This chapter, again, we're going to get to a number of conversations. I'll hopefully highlight some very practical strategies. In addition to what we just had a moment ago, which is kind of a, let's say, philosophical conversation about what is anxiety, what's a future-driven, negative emotion, right? It's you creating an imagined future that you then become emotionally, let's say, distraught over, right? So, it's very much in the imagination. And we're going to have some quotes that I'll highlight that have really helped me. I think that's it. from Senica, yeah, as the first one I like to mention during my brief lecture, that is really just about imagination. So how do you have a better imagination? How do you deal with a negative imagination? How do we take control of our daily lives and how do we integrate practices maybe that encourage us to imagine a future that is something that we are excited about? How do we deal with, again, flying thoughts or thoughts that may cause anxiety? We'll get out into all that today, but the first initial point of the question is being something that is useful to enlighten us, to the ways that we can improve and the ways that we in the moment might not be thinking, feeling and acting in ways that are great. That is exactly what the point of the question is, right? So it is a great comment. So thank you. Let's get into some specifics here. I am sorry for that. I was a little bit of a necessarily long opening remark there, but let's see here. What do we have? I said we're going to go to the questions first. So give me a second here. Let me stop sharing this screen and we'll go to the questions. Alright, cool. So which one do we want to look at? Let me go back to the chat. Number two. Alright, so Naya, would you like to elaborate at all on why number two stood out to you or would you like for me to kind of just jump in here? Am I sharing the right screen? Yeah, yeah, okay, great. So let's see number two. Yeah, so number two is a big question, I think, right? Because that's obviously not super specific. And I think throughout the set of questions we have some more specifics, like disappointment, anger, pain, failure. These are all sort of general, let's say, quote unquote, negative emotions, right? So I think number two, again, gives us kind of a general direction to consider. And with our responses, that word respond to make it a little more detailed, maybe let's think about it in terms of how you respond with our thinking, feeling, and behaving. Right? So I think one interesting part of this too is to examine our actions, because I think actions are likely the easiest thing to examine. And when we think about actions, we could also think about speech in that context too, right? As speaking as a form of taking action. Thoughts and feelings also weaken examined, but I think at times, especially thoughts for me at least get a little bit hectic. And that takes more training, but we could really think about what we do. So an interesting concept might be, well, when I'm in a stressful situation, how do I behave? Do I do things that perpetuate the feeling of being stressed or being angry? Right? I think this is really very lucid and clear to think about with anger, right? It's like a lot of times angry people stay angry because they act in ways that perpetuate the anger. They raise their voice. Yeah, I'm stuck in traffic. I could start yelling and cursing in my car or I can feel stressed out and learn to stop myself and pause so I can stop the feeling from turning into an action. That action is going to fuel the feeling. It's rare that you think angry, feel angry, get angry, then all of a sudden you're calm, right? And out there are situations where we let it out, right? And then, okay, I'm calm after I release, definitely the case in certain situations, right? But I think it might be interesting to consider how do we create like speed bumps between our thoughts, feelings and actions so we don't get that negative, like let's say feedback loop, right? And I think this is even more interesting to consider maybe in the context of like talking to people. Two people yelling, nobody's listening, right? And even that at times let's say might be necessary, but ultimately to have healthy relationships, right? We have to learn, I think, how to respond to negative emotions, especially if we love people, right? In a way that is controlled. If our objective is to continue to be in a loving relationship with somebody, we have to maybe work on our capacity to cope with our own emotions such that we don't escalate situations, right? So this idea of coping is both as we have in the class a lot, right? It's both ethical and moral. It's about cultivating itself so we could be having more pleasant inner dispositions, but also it's like how do we act in the world so we don't just create an angry or world for everybody, right? So again, two is pretty large in scope, I think. Yeah, so and now you're bringing up interesting point two, this is another great part of these questions, I think, is like it asks you to maybe deal with things that you have been putting off, right? So the idea that being dismissive is the opposite of coping, I would say at times being dismissive can actually help us cope, because I think there are some thoughts, some feelings we have to learn how to dismiss, that actually sort of comes up in the essay about bears, right? We have to learn how to maybe ask questions of our feelings and then dismiss them. So being dismissive I think can be a part of coping, but being excessively dismissive where we never sit down to actually address stuff, that's a problem, right? Because like you're saying, I think I may have already shared this sort of metaphor in this class, right? From the book "Ego is the enemy" by Ryan Holiday, it's an interesting book, I've been reading it. It talks about how if you don't sweep, he uses the example of a dojo, right? Place where you practice martial arts, and the idea is that you want to sweep the mats every day, so you don't kind of get it, let's say like an accumulation of dirt, then it takes you longer to sweep it, not only that, but you have a dirty dojo, right? Which is not respectful to the space. So it's sort of an analogy for how if we have practices of, let's say, addressing our small anxieties, they don't pile up, and then the unfortunate reality is, you know, we tend to notice things maybe when they've gone wrong, right? Whereas being vigilant, which is a great notion we're going to confront in our own practice chapter, this idea of prosicate, right? If you're vigilant over your daily little, let's say, little stresses and anxieties, they don't pile up, and then you don't crash, right? So the idea of being a little bit vigilant, let's maybe say this comes through discipline among other virtues, I think, discipline, introspection is something that Epictetus suggests, right? So we can interpret that in a couple of ways. If you're disciplined about your introspection, to me, that means you're doing it with some frequency, such that it's going to prevent a problem, right? Teniah's point. So I think coping, again, even now, it's just such a cool point. It's like, we're talking about not even necessarily coping with stress or sadness or disappointment or loss as these questions encourage us to consider these sort of, let's say, nuanced types of suffering, right? Because they're all a little bit different, and more than that, maybe we'll all stand things a little bit differently. So I try to provide different language to see what will resonate with each and every one of us, to optimally, let's say. But the idea too, that, like, just you need coping mechanisms, and then the mechanisms deal with these specifics, right? So if you're being consistently dismissive of whatever it is, whether, again, loss, pain, failure, conflict, whatever, it might make sense to start off with talking about, okay, what are your mechanisms? Right? So that's a great point, now, thank you. Let's see, any other questions we want to discuss? For me, again, I like number two a lot because it's putting us a little bit in the driver's seat, right? It's at the very least, maybe asking us to consider how we can control our responses to things. Right? Negative emotions, negative situations, especially situations, we could view as external things, right? So we can maybe think about the pain that the external world seemingly causes us, and then the pain that we might just be generating within ourselves, and maybe, you know, is that a result of our own free will or is it maybe a result of some internal psychology, subconscious, right? Something neurological, something environmental that we don't have all that much control over. So nonetheless, I think we need systems in place, as you've been saying, to examine these things. And does anybody have any, like, maybe a concrete response to this? So even, too, I think, you know, top agraphically, or like, let's say, like our internal map of ourselves, right? For me, I know I generally respond to negative emotions. I'll get angry before I get sad. I don't really get sad that often. My default is angry, or frustrated, let's say. Whereas I've seen people respond to the same or similar situations, they might be disappointed or sad. I tend to lean towards the anger, frustration side of things, right? Those are different emotions. There's a different thought, or like, let's say, different lines of thinking, right? And what we get from number 10 to how do you deal with pain? Some of the suggestions we'll see in the bibliotherapy are like, okay, the stoics, especially ask us to try to make something useful out of our pain, right? Epic teotuses, I think, interesting quotas, in pain, you will find strength, right? I think by that, he also means you'll find it if you look for it. So there's still for him this sort of very active approach to cultivating healthy reactions to externals, right? I also think number 15, why do you usually become upset? So even that, I think, is very useful. We kind of learn about to you sort of a terminal, that's like, you know, kind of our modern understanding of this, right? We sort of learn what triggers us, right? And when we learn what triggers us, well, that'll impact the way we view things, impact the way we move in certain situations, right? Even number, let's say 16, I'm sorry, not 16, what was I going to do there? How do you help others, right? How does that connect to coping? Right, maybe when we help others and we try to focus on decreasing the suffering of others, we get a sense of freedom from our own suffering. That's more of a practical notice, but we'll see that come up one more time. 17, I like a lot. Do you make lemonade out of lemons or lemons out of lemonade? So basically, right? Kind of a weird idea. But ultimately asking us, do you actively try to see the difference? Do you have the silver lining in situations? And how much better could that make your life? Right, even in times of suffering, are you looking out for the beautiful things? And your daily life, right, are you searching for the goodness? And it sort of revolves around this idea of perspective. And I end with that one because I would like to turn to somebody called our attention to how number four, and Daniel, I'm thinking that you met in the quotes, is complicated. So let's talk about number four. And when we look at four, let's keep in mind this idea of lemons and lemonade. Right? All right, so number four, say not I was once fortunate. A fortunate man is fortunate under all changes. Right? So this is, I think, let's for a moment interpret this. This is Mark Sirrelius writing to himself. We always keep that in mind, I think. So he's encouraging himself to not, let's say, be swayed by an unfortunate event here. Right? He's trying to encourage himself to always see that even to be alive is a privilege. Right? That there's always something to feel like, let's say grateful for or something to feel fortunate for. And I love to keep in mind that he's writing to encourage himself to lead a stress-free, anxiety-free life of service to others. Right? So as the emperor of Rome and as a stoic, these journals, I think we see the philosophy and we really get to see somebody forming themselves. Right? So this to me, I would imagine he wrote this after having a rough meeting or a rough morning where he got some bad news. And his plans had to change and he wants to encourage himself to not characterize himself in a way that would ultimately not benefit him. Right? To say, I was once fortunate and it applies that right now I'm unlucky. Well, if you always think you're unlucky, you might start looking at the world like in a very negative way. Right? Quite clearly. Right? Whereas if you keep in mind, I'm lucky and then you work to unpack and highlight and clearly articulate the ways in which you are fortunate, you start feeling grateful and your disposition is more positive. So I think four works with the idea quite nicely of lemons and lemonade and making the best out of situations. Right? Maybe we can argue that that's somewhat of a naive perspective. But I think working from the stoic perspective, it's, they want us to see, right, that we have to work to at least fortify ourselves, our inner fortresses, right? In the face of an unpredictable universe where things are out of our troll. Right? So to see ourselves as fortunate is to kind of maybe guard ourselves against becoming pessimistic. And then we also at number four for two and three. So let's see what we have in number four, right? In number three. Pleasure unless it has been kept within bounds tends to rush headlong into the abyss of sorrow. And so this to me is about balance. Right? And if we're talking about coping with stress and anxiety and worry among other things, right? We need to learn how to control our pleasures so they don't control us. And I think a really good example of this from a, you know, maybe an overly simplistic perspective is it might be pleasant to drink some wine. Right? It is. To drink too much wine though, you're going to feel sick the next day. Right? And what this is about and we can, you want to just one simple example, as I said, but it really is about keeping things balanced to avoid suffering. Because even pleasure that is pleasurable, not suffering, right? If we don't learn how to deal with pleasure well, it will lead into suffering is what Seneca is trying to say. And that's from a stoic philosopher, right? Even the Epicureans who their whole philosophy as we'll see ultimately revolves around pleasure. Well, they want us to focus on certain pleasures, the pleasures of existing, right? So many meditative practices involve focusing on our breathing. Because to breathe is really to exist. So the Epicureans had sort of, let's say, a hierarchy of pleasures that were really important. So what I mean by that is it was important to see them as ranked in a way, right? So the pleasures we should focus on as I said the most for the Epicureans were the simple pleasures of existing. And we could even work to define what it meant for those pleasures to be simple while it's breathing. We could say those are the pleasures that are both natural and necessary, eating, drinking, water, right? So by eating also eating things that are healthy that will sustain us, right? So not just eating for the sheer sake of eating, right? Or like eating to excess, for example, right? So the level one pleasure is the ones that we should prize the most and get their natural necessary. The level two pleasures are natural, but they're not necessary. And the level three pleasures are not natural and they are also not necessary. So if we spend our whole lives, let's say trying to be famous, which would be a level three pleasure, it's not really natural, it's not necessary. We're going to run into some problems. We're going to run into some sorrow. So we have to learn in order to cope with things and not make our own suffering how to deal with pleasures, right? So there's a stoic pathway to that and the epikarean pathway, which I was just characterizing, right? So we have to learn how to organize our pleasures and where our focus should go is very important in regards to not turning pleasures into sorrows. And I think again, eliminating certain pleasures too will also keep us from suffering. So when you look at number one, for example, add statues, paintings, and whatever any art has derived for the luxury. You will only learn from such things to crave still. So the idea from Seneca here is like, again, a little bit on balance, but also an acknowledgement that, for example, materialism, if you're obsessed with just acquiring luxury goods, that's not really going to cause anything positive if it's an obsession. It'll just perpetuate itself, right? So I think it's really useful for a modern understanding of pleasures and sorrow, right? And then a lot of what we have being offered to us in the rest of these things involves imagination, right? Because we talked about anxiety once again, being something that's driven towards the future. So it's imaginary. Right? So let's see what we have here in regards to imagination, right? My favorite quote here really in these two sections entirely is we suffer more in imagination than in reality. So that's number five in section three, right? It's a beautiful idea. How negative is your imagination? How positive is your imagination of the future? So I think someone who's anxious will just be leaning more towards that negative side. And as we'll see from a couple of readings in the homework reading, I think addresses this to an extent, right? Exit is a natural part of being a person. So the idea shouldn't be, I want to work to never be anxious. It's not really possible, right? We're going to have some anxiety in life, it's a natural part of being a person. The question might be, and I like to be exactly this, exactly this isn't really possible. But I like the idea of at least trying to figure this out to some degree, right? What percentage of our imaginations on a daily basis is negative and what percentage is positive, right? And then let's sit with those negative imaginations, right? Those negative moments of imagination, let's even call them like these negative narratives of the self and world that are again projected to the future. That's examine them. Where could they be coming from? Where could these fearful notions of the future be coming from? What external voices, what external events, what interpretations of ours populate these narratives, right? And then also from a very practical standpoint, how could we maybe make sure we spend 10 minutes in the morning, five minutes in the morning, maybe with a self-riding practice cultivating healthier images of the future, right? And then a to-do list is an image of the future. So maybe scheduling ourselves, giving ourselves more time to think about the meaning behind our tasks, maybe that'll alleviate some anxiety. That's positive planning of the future versus negative planning of the future. All these, again, we're seeing the content and the cup, right? So Seneca is saying we suffer more often in imagination than reality. That's water, right? That's a philosophical idea. He's letting us know, or maybe suggesting, that we do this. Now we have to use the techniques and the tools to grapple with that suffering, the imaginary suffering that is our anxiety, anxiety, right? So I'll let that quote. And there's another that I think also pairs that really well, right? Number six in number three, you will suffer soon enough when it arrives. So look forward and meanwhile to better things. So this is a little bit contradictory to some of the questions. other stoic ideas. So the stoics I think ultimately want us to have a positive view of the future, but a part of that, so we have two parts to it. It's cultivating a self and it's perceiving. So again, of course we perceive ourselves, but also we perceive the external world and we perceive certain realities. So we're going to talk about throughout the summer. It sounds a little bit morose, but one of the most powerful parts of stoicism in my opinion is the concept of memento-mori, which means and translates to remember that you're mortal and also it obviously applies to everyone. All humans are mortal. So for the stoics we shouldn't run from this fact and different schools of philosophy agree and disagree with this idea. So of course we as individuals will do the same, right? We could agree or disagree. But just to make a brief argument for this, and again I mean brief because we'll return to it at least once or twice more. But this is a pathway potentially I think to decreasing our anxiety. One, we realize the future is not promised. We do not know with a sense of certainty when our lives will end. So that lack of certainty for the stoics is something we should confront. So we should be less anxious about a future for a number of reasons. One, when it's not promised, we become more grateful for the moment. That alleviates anxiety. Gratitude for the moment grounds us in the now, has us thinking less about the future. That in and of itself, because a part of anxiety again involves looking to the future and then that future perspective is negative. So one way we can decrease our anxiety is by looking more at the present moment. So my mental mori should ground us, right? We see, okay, I have an expiration date. I don't know when that is. Let me get the most out of life right now. Let me take control of today. The only thing that's in front of me. And then we become busy with that work. Our anxiety should decrease. Right? In addition to that, when we're having these anxious narratives in our minds, we're creating this anxiety, we're creating this fear, right? Mental mori creates, I think, and this is maybe going back to early point we made, right? Should give us the courage to dismiss a lot of our anxieties. Because the idea also behind it is, well, I'm not going to be a forever. Am I really going to spend my time worrying about this bullshit? That's what I do to myself. I'm a big proponent and support of a mental mori, right? Because for me, when I'm anxious, and I tell myself, I'm not here forever. Am I really going to spend my time not even spending my time, right? Because I'm really not even respecting my time. When we're anxious, we're not respecting the moment. Our gaze is drifting, is drifting away from the moment. We're ruining our own sense of happiness in the moment by not focusing on it. We have a whole chapter on living in the moment that pairs really nicely with this as well, right? Because anxiety again, you're taking yourself out of the moment. So, a mental mori should ground us. Not only should it ground us, it should encourage us. I'm running out of time. Okay, this is a bad analogy. But if you have milk and you notice it has an expiration date, you don't want to waste that milk. What are you going to do? You're going to drink it faster, right? Because it would be a pain. It would be a waste to throw away some milk. That's annoying, right? I'm going to drink this, right? I'll just have some cereal. I'll make it work. Okay? So, that's the same thing with life, right? Another point with this. This goes back to grounding us to act in the moment, which again, fights anxiety really nicely, I think. If you're going on vacation, and you have to give somebody a gift, and it's like ceramic or something, right? And you're packing your suitcase, you wrap that gift, and you're like, you're nervous about it, right? You don't pack a hoodie the same way you pack a gift for somebody that's fragile. Why? Because you care for it, and you know it might break. If you think you're going to live forever, right? Instead of the stoic saying, no, you have to keep in mind, Epictetus says, every day, remind yourself of your immortality, right? That should encourage us to take care of life in a more effective way. Right? It becomes that gift instead of the hoodie. Right? If it's something fragile, we need to take care of it. Well, what is it? Our time. What is it? Our inner disposition. How we feel. How we think. What is it? Our impact. The way we serve others. That's our whole life. We can maybe say it's the way we work, the way we love, right? Other examples. All of that, though, involves living, and living happens in the moment, not during the party you're nervous about a week from now. Not during the work presentation, right? So there's a lot of different pathways to alleviate anxiety that connect to this idea of mental mourning, right? And I apologize if I'm bouncing around points here, so I'll do my best just to summarize a couple points, right? Mental mourning gets us taking action in the moment. You're out of the future thinking and you're engaging with the moment, right? It also should make anxieties and these things that we make for ourselves feel and look smaller. In the face of our immortality, we can't worry about this stuff. Right? And again, we're going to unpack this idea even more. In addition to that, we're no longer running from the inevitable of life. We're preparing ourselves for them. That becomes useful during times of hardship. Right? That sort of steel, sharpened steel notion, where we face that hard fact of life and then all of a sudden it becomes less hard. Why? Because we become tougher. Right? Because again, we're not running. We're confronting this fact of life that can seem to be unpleasant. I mean, we could even examine that, right? We're going to we're going to talk about socrates this week, right? He wasn't too concerned about death. He kind of had this notion again. It was a nap, no big deal. Like an internal nap or was Hades, I'll have a good time there. Right? So the idea for the Stoics is that we're re-evaluating not only ourselves, but we're re-evaluating these externals a lot. That's big for coping as well, right? Which we'll see in one of the homework assignments specifically. Right? Sometimes the way to cope with something is to change the way we see it. Other ways of coping might be to change the way we see ourselves. Right? Both of these things can be pathways to not fearing the future as much. They can be pathways to not worrying about what's happening in the moment as much. So we either have to make ourselves bigger, right? Or we have to make the things smaller. Right? And hopefully both of those things we should try to make those grounded in truth, make those grounded in justice, make those grounded in confidence, right? So those are virtues you want to cultivate, all of which fight anxiety as well, among others, right? So let me quickly get to the chat again. Number five, Carmelo from Two or from Three. [silence] Well, I already did five from three, right? So saying hold grudges, okay, so you're talking about five from two. All right. So section two number five, the most complete revenge is to not imitate the aggressor. So what does this mean? Well, it doesn't mean don't respond, in my opinion, right? Because he's not saying the most effective revenge or the best revenge is to do nothing. The idea to imitate, I think, is the key idea here. Right? So it doesn't mean that we shouldn't at times, let's say, again, correct others or guide others to different understandings or even, you know, we could argue that there might be a form of righteous anger, right? Maybe we could say we should be angered by certain things and respond to that. But we should avoid imitating. And Carmelo's point about holding grudges, I think, does go to this work with this pretty nicely, right? To imitate the aggressor is, again, I think we can hear this in Socrates once again in Crito, we talked about, right? Don't meet injustice with injustice. We could talk about, you know, the long history of nonviolent resistance, right? So you're not imitating. And again, we could challenge this. Do we agree or disagree? From Marcus Aurelius, I think, you know, probably clearly here, he's trying to encourage us to respond differently. Because I think that that, you know, again, for me, I try to apply it to everyday life situations more often than not. I think that's a part of the, let's say, the main goal of the course, right? How we can flourish and thrive on a daily basis. So I think about this in regards to coping because, again, in a argument with a loved one, to work to be the calmer person usually serves what is hopefully the shared purpose of both people involved, right? Which is to continue a loving relationship, right? So to imitate the aggressor and that circumstance versus defusing the situation, it's the opposite of coping, right? It's going to cause likely cause more suffering. And that's not always the case either, right? Sometimes you have to be, let's say, stern with somebody or again, I don't like the word aggressor or aggressiveness, necessarily, in this context, but it's just used for a moment, it's far human's sake, right? Sometimes you have to meet aggression with aggression and that will create a healthier scenario, of course. But again, I think generally speaking from my experience in relationships, it makes more sense to not imitate the aggressor. Especially if they're doing something that is wrong. What that big idea here too for Marcus, it really is. And for the Stoics too is that we find a lot of, let's say, what our happiness might be through virtue. Like a virtuous life is a good life. So let's say someone lies to you. Lying back is not what we should try to do. Right? Let's say somebody, again, insults you. Well, insulting them back, especially if the, you know, can we're drawing a difference between constructive criticism and an, you know, an, an insult, right? That damage is your personhood. That damage is your virtue. Right? So to respond virtuously in the face of someone who's not behaving virtuously, I think is also what he means by this. Right? Because you don't want to cause, we should suffer. Right? Within ourselves. We should maybe feel a sense that we've done, I mean, not maybe, I think we should work to cultivate healthy senses of when we're doing something wrong, right? Or doing something that isn't virtuous. So we damage our own virtue when we respond or imitate someone who's not being virtuous. We don't want to do that. That's really important. And that's one of the few things, perhaps, you know, I think it's a bit of a car just to believe that we can control our own virtue. Right? So these are also kind of different considerations, I think, in regards to interpreting that one specifically. Let's see what else we have in the chat. Can we cover some ideas from the chat? It's not a bad opening discussion. Thank you all. Would anyone else like to call our attention to anything else? So for number two, right, I just caught this. And again, for these group discussions, they're never going to be entirely exhaustive. J.Y. I keep asking if there's anything else you want to cover. But number two, check your habits, right? We are in the habit of exaggeration or imagining or anticipating sorrow. That's anxiety. Right? So if you would characterize yourself as an anxious person, let's say, again, we all have anxiety. We all do, right? But maybe you would characterize yourself as an anxious person because a lot of you are thinking about the future might be positive. That's a great way to be. And that might be the case for a lot of us, right? It might be the case also that a lot of us would say, no, I would say I'm an anxious person. Well, that's maybe because we have to just change our habits. So if we know, for example, and let's say we know, let's say for the argument, for the sake of the argument again, we are confident that there's a certain level of anxiety we're all going to deal with. But that doesn't necessarily make us anxious people. So let's say we have to reach a certain level of anxiety in order to say, yeah, I'm anxious, right? Let's say it's just a random number, right? Let's say 40% of our time or more, if our feelings of the future are negative, you'll be willing to say or you'll offer the idea that yeah, I'm an anxious person, right? Well, okay. It's not then about eliminating, and as I said earlier, but how do we maybe get on the other side of 40% that I think can come through an examination of our habitual ways of thinking and feeling and acting on a daily basis and thinking, especially with thinking or thinking about how we think about the future and the feelings we have, that's how we'll tackle anxiety, right? Habitually is the key element there. So even introducing, I think, and this goes back and going back to practices, even introducing a daily practice where you write a positive image of your future self, where you write a positive outcome from the event that you're anxious about, right? Can be helpful in integrating a new habit that tilts the scale to make you a less anxious person, right? So these are things we want to think about. And on that note, let's get into what we read for homework because obviously, what we were from homework is very much, I mean, it's literally called on anxiety, right? So just to get us a little bit involved here, take a moment, how did you sort of interact with this reading? I would love to hear quotes or even like, let's get some, it's still with numbers a little bit, right? On a scale of 1 to 10, how useful was this essay? 10 being, of course, okay, super useful, 1 being, get rid of it. So it's actually also very helpful to me because I'm always changing this document like between each semester. So if something gets a two, it gets a lot of 2s and 3s, I'll remove it. But if it's ranking well, I'll continue to use it. So let's take a minute here and I want to, of course, highlight some points for us. But again, quotes from the reading and at least, let's get a ranking, all right? So I'll give us five minutes here to refresh our memories before I highlight some of the key points for me. And thank you all for participating. This is, it goes so far. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] We got some comments in the chat and thank you. And of course, I love to hear from other people as well. And yeah, let's get into this reading. So it's on anxiety. It's coming from the School of Life, which is again, kind of founded by Alan DeBoutan, another philosopher that we have some of his specific work in this book as well. And let's start off with a point, Carmella and Soel made some great points. And so I think it starts off with your point, right? It's never truly banished. It meaning of course anxiety. It's a part of what it means to be humanized, I've said, right? DeBoutan goes on to basically talk about how we're kind of like, you know, spending a lot of our time being anxious, right? What really up against this anxiety, excuse me to quote the reading, as a permanent feature of life, something irrevocable, existential, dog, and responsible for ruining a dominant share of our brief time on Earth. So like we had before, right? This idea of percentages. We try to, you know, we try to eliminate it, eliminate it. OK, well, maybe that's not the right conversation. Maybe we're setting the bar too high. And we'll talk about more books, more Venetian School of Life too. And he eventually talks about the idea that we are even anxious about being anxious, right? So maybe we just have to lower the bar to actually make any progress here. So the idea of ruining a dominant share, maybe it doesn't have to ruin a dominant share. It just ruin a partial share, right? For lack of a better way of putting it, maybe. So the first thing he does is, I say that I really enjoy, as I put in the chat, with to respond to Soel too, is, all right, if you're the four things we tend to think will decrease our anxiety. Travel, beauty, status, and love, right? We would become if this, you know, if this or that happened in regards to these four things, right? So we characterize the vacation, right? He talks about, you know, meeting the right person. You're going to find a way to be anxious on vacation. You're going to find a way to be anxious in the relationship, right? If we don't address the self, right? If we don't work within ourselves, as you've been doing already in this class, to engage with our past, our present, and with anxiety, all three, right? In our future, of course, to just learn how to calm down, to learn how to, once again, not rely on these things, but instead to have systems within ourselves. The new job will bring anxiety with it. The new status will bring anxiety with it. Okay? So we have to maybe stop relying on these things, as let's say, ineffective lifeboats. Right? They're all going to fall short is what he's saying here. And I think this is great, because maybe again, for our own personal use, we can map, right? So where am I maybe thinking? I'm going to get some tranquility and how am I using that as an excuse, perhaps, to not confront my own daily, let's say, experiences and feelings in thinking, right? I'm sorry, I'm going to try to keep up with the chat here. Yeah, and so Nile, literally that's a beautiful point. And we're going to talk about that exactly. That's a really powerful word, acceptance. Right, acceptance. And before I forget, I just, I listened to YouTube's, I'm just, you know, a lot of stuff on YouTube sometimes. And I found this great quote, "I want to share with you all." That really speaks to today's lesson, right? So it's an Arabic proverb, and it's the stone which cannot be lifted should be kissed. Right? And this really is a wonderful quote. I think it connects nicely also to stoicism, the idea of a more faulty, right? So we have a mental worry, kind of Latin idea, and we have a more faulty, which is similar, right? Which is actually Nietzsche's characterization of the perspective from that school of thinking, right? From the ancient, some ancient perspectives. So basically what a more faulty means is, in sort of a literal translation, quote, on air quotes literal, I'm not going to, that really, like loving one's fate. So to love what has happened, to not want to go into the past and change things, right? So I think we could also apply it to whatever is occurring, 'cause whatever is occurring, if we can see it more or less is the past, right? So we talked about a little bit, I think, much right there's my other class, I apologize if it was, but just to briefly talk about this, the Greeks had a lot of different conceptions of time. So Kronos was like mathematical time, 'cause that's just moments passing, right? So not that much fun. Or for me, interesting, I can't do math. But the other type of time, or one other type, I think is very interesting in pertains to this nicely, is Kairos, right? So Kairos was more about our consciousness, or let's even say our sense of time, our sensibility, our ability to perceive and also with Kairos to take correct action in the moment, right? So the idea behind memento more, a more faulty too is, for me, connects this idea of how we perceive time, and to a large extent, right? 'Cause what is life, it's ultimately tied to time, in some very meaningful ways, right? We take again, we take action only in one time, the present, right? So the idea is here, I think, the idea of acceptance, right? Things are occurring in front of us. If they are, like this proverb says, if they are immovable, if they are irrevocable, if they, for example, out of our control, we have to learn how to relate to these things. So if our anxiety is something that is inescapable, if something that is just sort of a staple of our existence, we might just try to learn how to accept it. If there was an event in our past, a part of what we're gonna see with the other essays too, is that we have to accept that they have, we should not ignore them, right? And I think the idea of, again, loving and accepting, these are kind of similar ideas, right? Maybe it's aspirational to love what has happened to us. I think that's a fair idea. By aspirational, I mean, there are some things that are just terrible. Maybe we should not work to love them, right? I think, again, we can take it with these ideas. Maybe we should work to accept, and it doesn't have to even necessarily be, let's say, an articulated, positive acceptance. But to deny for the Stoics, and I think with the more Fati-2 as a part of that world, to deny what happened to us, or again, maybe to use our language of our conversation today, to be overly dismissive of what has happened to us, even if it was horrible, might actually damage us, right? So a part of what we might talk about, you know, let's say in psychotherapy, just for a moment, right? Would be, you have to unpack these negative things. You have to work to describe, characterize, detail, the negative events of our lives, because to not do that might be to plague us, right? We might be plaguing ourselves. We might be causing ourselves in the moment to have negative feelings. Then of course, excited again, we might be then causing ourselves to have negative feelings towards the future, right? So let me just run through an example here about why a more Fati might be something. Again, we can work with the idea of love, right? But at least acceptance, and this is what Deboutan is suggesting in this essay, right? One of the key sort of ways to deal with anxiety for him is acceptance. If you never, just for an example, right? And we have a whole chapter on relationships and love. If you never go back to that relationship, where let's say somebody lied to you, right? You ignore it, you deny it, you do not accept it. Which is maybe even to say, you don't have a full acceptance because you've never really come to cultivate an extensive knowledge, right? He's gonna say that detailing things, right? The very least thing them clearly is gonna be helpful. Again, you're not gonna sign up to fight somebody, or box somebody or wrestle them and then put a blindfold on. You're not gonna do that, right? So you have to work to characterize these things. And a part of that is through accepting that they happen. Right? So if you, for example, never really understand or come to characterize a past relationship or someone lied to you, I think it's more likely the case that you're gonna be anxious for the rest of your life about somebody lying to in a relationship. Right, one of the key words we're gonna see in the essay on bears is localize. Describe the time somebody lied to you and leave it there. We have to accept what has occurred in order to do that. And then I think a part of the way, again, this is maybe admittedly a bit of a stretch, right? But there's growth there. There's growth there for you that will then help you meet the right person or meet somebody who you are compatible with, let's say, if you don't believe in the idea of the right person, which is a very arguable point, obviously. But let's just talk about general compatibility, right? And let's be clear, this is romantic and also friendships, let's say. There's growth there for you 'cause now you're more free of that circumstance. It's no longer controlling you because at the very least you accepted it, you confronted it, you stopped running from it, right? You took control over that narrative. There's power there, right? So moving forward, not only are you growing 'cause of that encounter, but it's gonna allow you to grow and flourish with someone else. It's gonna allow you to hopefully offer them growth in a way that in the past, if you were still anxious about being lied to, you would not even perhaps be open to having such a profound relationship, in friendship or romantic relationship. So now you're offering growth to the world. Growth is a huge part of love, right? Tick Nhat Tan, Zen Buddhist, we're gonna talk a lot about him this summer, so that when love stops growing, it starts dying. So maybe a more faulty is more about this notion of if we accept what has occurred and we stop trying to change what has occurred but instead work to understand what has occurred so we can work to change ourselves in positive ways. That's a part of love, right? So we can work with the phrasing of it, I think, and talk about love and change and how they might connect, right? And the whole point of the class too, philosophy as the art of thriving, a huge part of the art of thriving is acceptance and growth and love. So, yeah, the word philosophy itself is the love of wisdom. Wisdom should help us love ourselves and love others and love the world. So all these things, I think, kind of coalesce or come together pretty nicely. An anxious person has, I think, difficulty in relationships with themselves and relationships with others that we want to be characterized by love. Exiting kind of suffocates that love. So let's even go on to talk about the essay a little more specifically here. Daniel, I get that in a minute. That's a great question. Let me just get a little bit back to the essay, but I will not talk about that. That's a beautiful question. And even for Deb Uttan, and here I am, I tell myself I'm not going to do it and I'm just going to do it, Daniel, because it's just what it is. For Deb Uttan, it's natural that we're anxious. And we get this right on page 116. So this is a perfect connection action. He says, we are the descendants of anxious people. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? He says right here, right? On 116, why are we anxious? So he talks about anxiety, natural part of life. We have to, again, realize this for him. Then, okay, stop trying to escape it in these four ways. You're going to be anxious on vacation. You're going to be anxious in the relationship. The new status of work is going to, you know, if you're habitually programmed to find something to be anxious about, you'll be anxious about it. Then he's talking about, okay, why are we anxious? And one of those points connects, I think, Daniel, to yours nicely and I'll do a little elaboration, right? So one, just to make sure we give enough talk about Deb Uttan's or at School of Life's Point, right? It's a fundamental state of our way of being for well-founded reasons. One, we are intensely vulnerable, physical beings. We know we can get sick. We know our bones break. We know we're mortal, right? So this might apply to people who always think they're going to be sick, right? That's an excessive version of this. But he's saying that's only excessive because it's normal to a large extent to acknowledge that we're fragile, because in fact, we are. We're susceptible to diseases and things, right? So again, it's about balance and acknowledging and acceptance. So let's keep going here, right? We can imagine so much more than what we have. And I'm sorry. We can imagine so much more than we have and live in mobile-driven, mediatized societies where envy and restlessness will be a constant. Earlier in our bibliotherapy, we didn't highlight it. But one of the things of three that we should really avoid is jealousy. Now, he's talking about the media here. We can talk about social media. And once again, we can really, I think, make really super clear and practical philosophical connections to thrive just with this alone, right? If you feel envy and if you feel restlessness as a result of your engagements with the media, or like, for example, social media, just spend your time differently. And that's an oversimplification, right? But think about what he's saying. He's saying one roadmap to leading a more anxious life is envy and restlessness through imagination and engagement with our society, right? Let's say our modern societies, although this has existed for thousands of years, right? Obviously, Epic Titus, Santa Cout, thousands of years ago were saying, we're anxious people. People are anxious. It's a problem, right? So that returns maybe adding another element to it that I think is very relevant. Because maybe now, I think there's some evidence to suggest that we're more anxious now than we've ever been. Right? And a part of that is access to media and social media, right? So if this is something that affects you, you might have to, once again, examine your actions. Do you start your day going on your phone? Do you start your day going on Instagram? Maybe change that. How many hours a day get that screen time thing, right? There's an app that limits your screen time. It kind of shows up like an hourglass, but it's also like you have an option to reject it and keep going. So, but still, you can even have an app that does that or an app that will monitor your time for you so you can see. Well, I spent five hours, three days in a row on social media. And I'm anxious right now. Right? We need to have these things. So again, back to our practices chapter for a minute, we have to heighten our awareness of our actions and our thoughts and our feelings. So that's what I think this at least illuminates for me. If we want to be less anxious, we might want to see how our social media habits are affecting our feelings of envy and restlessness. Just saying. Again, these are wonderful suggestions from them, right? Because we are the descendants of the great warriors of the species, okay? Anxiety is one of the reasons to Daniel's point that we're here. Our literal ancestors might have been the people who were anxious enough to take sound action that as he's listening to some really interesting things here, being torn apart by wild animals, right? I think, you know, even just on that note, right? We have like lights now, but thousands of years ago without fire, that was, you know, anxious people most of the mean, that was the been anxiety inducing too, right? Pre-fire, it's night, you can't see shit. Like, I think about what he's saying. He's like, you had to be anxious to survive in those environments, right? So it's even maybe we could say is wired into our DNA and I'll even make this even more practical, right? Maybe the people who raised you in a literal sense, right, were anxious people. That's very possible too, right? Because we can sort of map to some environmental factors. We can map in the case that he's saying with a descendence, right? To some, let's say, you know, factors from evolution, perhaps, right? And that could even mean like in the way that we've established technologies that should decrease our anxiety and then some technologists will increase our anxiety, right? So it's a very interesting point he raises here about kind of the growth of, you know, again, the warriors of the species and its idea of being descendants to me has a lot of really interesting implications. Again, both a larger scale to dance point to like, it might have motivated us to get things done, which might in this sense be, it's like invent phase, right? Like fire, I think was probably something that was invented among other reasons, of course, to like deal with the fact that we couldn't see what was going on in that, right? We needed a way to be less concerned about what would happen two hours from now, right? We needed ways to create a greater sense of certainty around waking up tomorrow. And I'm among other things too, right? So let's pause on this point to see how we can address a damn question here, right? Do you think anxiety is synonymous with ambition in a way? Well, again, I do think a certain amount of anxiety, one is necessary because it's just going to happen, but I do think to agree with you, yes, in a way it is synonymous, but I think we can have ambition that is paired with confidence, not with fear, right? Which is ironic, this is weird, right? Because you need fear to be confident, right? So again, for me, I like to ground it in a daily life. I think someone who's, let's say ambitious, but confident is just even maybe slightly less fearful than the person who's just anxious. So we can be driven by a lot of different things, right? Exiting, we said, is a future driven emotion that's coupled with a sense of negativity. And that negativity, usually again, comes in one of two ways, right? One is this event or this potential future is scary. We might be misperceiving or creating an exaggerated image of the negativity, right? And or we might be creating a non-confident image of ourselves. So usually for me, I think anxiety is, it's not only this event is scary, but it's scary, this event is scary and I can't deal with it. This event is scary, and instead of responding with, but I can handle it, I'm going to crush it, you respond with, and I'm scared of it, right? So there's a really interesting painting by Francisco Goya called Colossus, and as the name kind of implies, it's literally like, a giant person, and there's like, he's like in the clouds, right? So like his abdomen is covered by clouds, and below him is a village, like a full village. And to me, that's a pathway to being less anxious too. So by that I mean being confident, right? Being above the village to me implies being above fear of externals, right? Then the job interview, it's normally to be nervous about that to an extent, but I'm not going to let that nervousness conquer me, then make me anxious. I'm above it. I'm bigger than that story I'm telling myself. They need to tell yourself a story about yourself, right? Which is that I'm bigger narrative. I've done interviews in the past, I'm fine. I'm prepared for this job, I'm fine. I'm qualified for this job, I'm good. I'm going to wake up, I'm going to work out, I'm going to feel good. I'm going to wake up, I'm going to put a suit on for this is my personal example, because sometimes I'll just wear a suit. This is maybe, this is a little bit personal. But honestly, if I'm having a situation in life sometimes I'll just, I have one nice suit, I'll just wear my suit. I would, you know, visit my parents, you know, we all live within 10 minutes of each other. So I would like go home on a Sunday and I just had my suit on because I had a rough week and they'd be like, oh, did you go to church? No, I just wore it. I just need to, I'm just in a suit today because I feel bulletproof in the suit. Suits and haircuts will do this. Okay? They're talking about haircuts already. I'm teaching a couple of places now, but at the end of the day, this warrants repeating. After a haircut, I'm haircut confident. I'm unstoppable for two days. The next 48 hours I'm making unreasonably confident decisions. And it's a problem. But when you put a suit on or you get a haircut, it just, you know, it's so thank you. It just happens. Won't get on the bar. I am literally unstoppable. So we need these types of things, these habits in our lives. Right? As well as trying to say that they also make us resilient about anxiety. Right? So let me get back to Dan's question for a minute here. Right? Is it absolutely synonymous? I would say no. Is there other moments where it might be? Yes. But no matter what, anxiety is not something we should pursue. Right? We shouldn't wake up and I'm not saying you're saying this. Let me make myself anxious. Time is moving forward no matter what. We are moving forward through time no matter what. That's unstoppable. So the way we view the future. Right? Again, the anxiety can trigger some ambition, but we don't want to hold on to the anxiety while being ambitious. Right? The motivations we return to most frequently are very important. So I would not recommend being, or let's say, I would not recommend trying to perpetuate being motivated by anxiety or even motivated by anger. Right? So anger comes up also in this chapter on coping, or you should be able to cope with anger. But I've done this in the past two and I know other people who do this. Sometimes we start thinking of anger as a positive motivator for ambition. Right? Can it be at moments? Yes. But if we rely on anger for motivation, we will become angry people. You do not want that. And then you're starting to associate anger with a positive thing. I'm going to prove this person wrong. Let me do the good thing of, let's say, going to school. Let me do the good thing of, let's say, going to the gym. Right? Or getting a new job. Wait a minute. Seneca tells us, right, the most sustainable motivation is love. Like love is a positive thing, generally, right? Does love also come with suffering, of course. Right? But again, if we're working to direct our ship a little bit, using it as a ship metaphor, life is rocky. Life will throw a way that is, that's anxiety. And naturally, that will happen. We want to work with the way we don't want to make waves that get in our way. We want to make waves that help us. So the idea that it's synonymous, I would say no. Again, it's a part of it maybe. There are definitely different things. Because anxiety doesn't necessarily equal ambition. It could just equal the opposite. Right? Exit, it could paralyze us. It can make us afraid to try. The ambitious person is not afraid to try. The ambitious person is not paralyzed. Let's say the person who's ambitious and they act that out. Right? It can be a slight motivator, I would say. I think that's a positive aspect of my answer. But we can be ambitious as a result of other things that are healthier. Was that helpful, Daniel? And if not, I can keep going for a couple of minutes here. But was that at all illuminating or? Cool. Yeah. But I get your question now. And I think it's a meaningful one. Thank you. So let's keep going here. This, I think the next reason why we're anxious kind of works with the vacation very well. Right? Visible objects and locations. Tables, beaches, only symbolize calm to our eyes rather than instill it in our psyches. So that's interesting too. And I think to a degree we could argue with this maybe as I think water. I think bodies of water. Have a natural maybe proclivity for or capacity for calming us down actually, right? But then I got I think even the conversations we sustain. As a result of that, that's the instilling, right? This one I think is very important for college students because the progress of our careers and of our finances. Play themselves out within the tough mind and competitive destructive random workings of an uncontained capitalist engine, right? So even just going to school with the intentions of getting a job only plays to anxiety. Right? Because it plays so that we have to compete. Right? The considerations around school, at times feel like as if they're mainly financial and we miss once again the moment we miss the actual intrinsic value of the experience of being in school. Because we're anxious about the grade, even writing a paper, right? Instead of an idea to myself, I'm still a student. Instead of just addressing the moment, the question of the paper. You're nervous about the grade and that's why you don't start the first sentence, right? The first sentence, the hardest one to write. It's anxiety. You're worried about how it's going to go. You're worried about the grade before you even start the paper. Yeah, we work to ground ourselves in the moment. We acknowledge that this is natural. Okay, I'm not I'm not abnormal for feeling this way and then we get movement, right? We rely on our self-esteem and sense of comfort. On the love of people we cannot control and whose needs and hopes will never align. Soon we see with our own. So this is an argument for maybe developing a greater sense of self-sufficiency. Right? So the idea that if we instead of looking to externals, which is to say other people for our self-esteem, we can work to cultivate our own sense of merit. How do we do that? Well, I would argue once again, a daily practice of how did I make progress today? And then trying to make that question positive should make us feel good about ourselves. Right? How did I challenge myself today? We define all that for ourselves. Right? We have to define our own challenges in life. So we can cultivate this feeling of self-satisfaction that isn't reliant on a grade for me or on a compliment from a loved one. We can and we should do that and that alleviates anxiety, I think, in a number of ways. Right? So those are the reasons why. And now we get into some of the solutions, which goes back to Nias point, right? The single most important move is acceptance. There is no need on top of everything else to be anxious that we are anxious. The mood is no sign that our lives have gone wrong. Really that we are alive. And I love the idea that he used the word mood here because moods come and go. They change. Right? So even seeing, I think, Mrs. Back to the Mental More a little bit, we could tell ourselves, oh, this anxiety will pass. That's a relief. I think that's relieving to a large extent. Okay? We should be more careful when pursuing things. We imagine what's the first for. We talked about we can pursue them by all means, but for other reasons than fantasies of calm. And with a little less vigor and a little more skepticism. Okay? We are far from the only ones with this problem. And here's advice number two that I think is a pathway. I'm sorry, our result of that pathway of acceptance, right? We must learn to laugh about our anxieties. Laughter being the exuberant expression of relief when a hitherto private agony is given a well crafted social formulation in a joke. So I think what are you saying here is literally joking by your anxieties like with people, but also I think we could learn to literally within ourselves laugh at our anxieties and try to smile at them. Right? And then he goes on to provide us for that. I think it's a pretty interesting kind of comedic. Like cartoons in a way. Right? And I think too, and we're talking about the sense of meditation as inter dialogue. Let's say anxiety rises up within us without our control, which I think is a pretty interesting point, right? Maybe something you hear a song or you see something or you you're reminded of us of something and you're just you just you quickly go from thinking to feeling anxious. Right? How do we cultivate a healthy response to that? Well, he's saying when we again accept it and then we go into laughing about it. And I think especially if it's one that we've confronted before as a lot of anxiety's person that I deal with are familiar. It's rare that I get a new thing to be anxious about. If it's seemingly new, it usually connects to the same one or two things, right? So at this point, and I've been grabbing this myself, I think this is actually sort of possible, right? And by sort of, I mean it might not work every time, but I think we can try to habituate this. The idea that you again is sort of the question and we'll confront this another essay to from him or from the School of Life, where it's like we can have that, you know, it's almost like an uncle you don't really like who's just going to be at the party. You know, like he's going to try to talk to you and like you're going to have to deal with it and you can't go off because you're at a party. So it's like you have to just learn how to deal with this person. This is the little person that whatever you have to learn how to deal with this person calmly. And they shouldn't ruin the party for you. And what you definitely shouldn't be doing is driving to the party, planning and arguing with this person. You ever do that? Every plan and argument with somebody at a party and they don't even show up. And you're like, okay, I just wasted 40 minutes in the car, planning a fight with this person. He's a great metaphor for life. Again, metaphors for how we can deal with ourselves. If you know, for example, when, okay, I have to go to this class, I'm going to be a little bit worried about whatever, or you know, I have to do this or that or whatever. We know ourselves. And maybe again, a part of this work is getting to know ourselves even more and back to triggers maybe. So for me, I know, for example, when I'm tired, if I don't get good sleep, I know I'm going to be more anxious that day. So I can look at those thoughts from a different perspective from, let's say I can look at them with a different sense of distance and a different sense of levity, right? Which is to say this is laughable because I know this is just the tiredness talking. Right? So I think that's a part of it too. I'm not going to fight with it. I'm just going to accept it or I'm a little tired. I'm going to have these thoughts. That's acceptance. All right. They're not going to ruin my day, but they're going to be there probably. So I'm going to laugh at it. Same thing with the uncle, right? He's going to be there. I'm going to try to keep him moving. I'm not going to sit with him too long. Same thing with thoughts. Right? I don't have to sit with this thought for too long. I don't have to ask you too many questions or engage with it and give it power. I just have to learn how to laugh and smile and, okay, I'll see you later. I think my mom's calling me. You know, and my mom calling me is another ideas, another task is another thought. Right? So that's how we have to deal with these things, I think. Let's go on, right? I think these cartoons are pretty interesting. I'm not necessarily labored too much on these, right? But again, too much desire will cause us anxiety. Okay. We have to learn once again to control those and have the right types of pleasures. We can't let ourselves get exaggerated, right? I use the idea of a boat before here. We have the example, you know, don't drown in a glass of water. Well, don't, which is to say don't exaggerate. or don't get into habit of exaggerating things. Not everything is awful. Exities hugely connected to that idea, right? It's not just that the party might be a little bit boring or awkward, we start making it awful, right? Well, catch that narrative. Right? Use evidence. Well, I've not to parties before. They were, you know, rarely were they awful. They were just kind of boring. So why am I exaggerating this now? Right? Exitity also, when we get into like more of a scientific way of existing, like, okay, well, what exactly is my evidence for this? Sometimes we have new evidence, or we have very little evidence. Right? And even am I interpreting this evidence correctly? When we turn to the evidence, you know, a lot of our anxieties will also kind of, let's say, decrease, I think, in intensity. And that's that for that essay. Any closing thoughts? Any other questions or again, so what do we get at this? We learn a little bit about the, let's say, the topographical nature. We map anxiety. Here's where it comes from. And we went through that pretty, I think, extensive thing. Right? Then we talked about, again, it's an entrepreneurial part of life. Don't try to escape it with these main things that our culture seems to craft around escaping. It's not going to work. What we really have to do, once again, is learn to accept the anxieties, maybe understand them a little bit more, right? Understand their, their sort of their contours, if you will. The way that they, you know, rise up in us, what might trigger them, how we engage with them, how could you have healthier, right? And then, again, leading from acceptance into laughter as a way of coping with them back to the title of the chapter on coping is much healthier, especially those that are frequent, that are just kind of not pointing us anywhere useful, right? So to Daniel's question, too, like, there might be some anxieties that actually are useful for us. And this leads me to my three main questions, another, let's say, tool for coping with anxiety. I have three questions that I use that I think are really useful. That connect to what I was saying a moment ago, right? Is this real? What's three to four questions? Is this real? Slash, is this true? So is this real sort of like, is it happening right now? No. The thing in my head, is it happening? No. OK. Is it true? That's more obvious, right? Like, again, kind of connects to, is it real to an extent? And is it helpful? So if it's not helpful, why am I thinking about it? So some anxieties might be helpful. Why? I'm actually about to test two days from now. I think I might fail it. OK, stop. Take action, study. That's a useful anxiety, because it's helpful. But some anxieties are not true. They're not real, and they're not helpful. So those are the ones that we have to learn how to dismiss. And we dismiss them after we examine them in that way. Because if we dismiss the anxiety to study, before we ask, is it helpful, then we might not study. Then that is a missed opportunity to do something good for our future in our present. So today's question to that is, I think, is wonderful. Again, the word synonymous, I maybe wouldn't agree with. But does anxiety help with some ambition in a way? I would say, yeah, and that's how. Once we examine it, and we see that, in fact, some anxieties can be helpful. And then once we acknowledge an anxiety can be helpful, we should be able to see it one, not as anxiety, because at that point, it's not anxiety. It's a directive. It's an imperative. And/or it's taking action right now. And when we're taking action and we're focused on it, we're not thinking about the future. There we go. So that lens is, I think, a really helpful lens when it comes to work with anxiety. Is it real? Is it true? Is it helpful? Right? Again, it's no longer anxiety. And at the very least, we're actually thinking. We're not just feeling that. We're putting it to the test, which I think can be very useful. So on that note, let's take a quick-- let's take a quick seven minute break, because I just want to get some water. And let's come back at 11 o'clock. And then we're going to get into a couple other readings. So excellent job so far. I'll see everybody at 11.