Speaker 1Hello, everybody. How you doing? Hope all is well. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about one of the major tools that we're going to be using to sort of do this thing, philosophy as a way of life, right? Basically, as we've said, and as I hope I've established in the first lecture, there are certain key elements to this, right? So to pursue philosophy as the art of living, as a form of therapy, we're going to have a lot of different techniques, right? One of which is listening to this right now, right? That being said, today we're talking about another technique to get us on the path to knowing ourselves, caring for ourselves, and serving others that I think is really effective. So in Blackboard, if you're in my class, we have a book called Self-Writing Guide. That's what I'm talking about today. This short episode, I think, will probably cover the first couple sections, then we'll get into more details. And this book is sort of, especially these first couple sections, isn't too much of a, let's say, a deep dive philosophically into the practice or into the history. So I'm going to be talking about self-writing guide. We're going to have more discussions on that later in our work together. There's a whole chapter in our other book, Bibliotherapy, once again on Blackboard, that is called Daily or Frequent Philosophical Practices. And that's where we really get into some of the more sort of philosophical, historical comments on self-writing as a practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical in nature. We'll throw in a little bit of history. But it really is very practical. The first part of this book is about two pages, and it's basically a book about self-writings. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical practice. So what this is, this is kind of more of a practical discussion. Of course, also philosophical . So why bother with that initially, right? We have like tens of thousands of thoughts a day, right? I think what this page also gets into very meaningfully is basically like at times we're fighting blind, which is to say we don't understand our thoughts fully. We can't or we have difficulty controlling them, right? We talked about flots. Last time we'll have some strategies in this book to deal with flots in a very effective way or at least a more effective way. And basically, right, we're not able to see our thinking. We definitely don't get into like the why behind a lot of our thinking. We might be dealing with anxiety, feelings of sadness, being disappointed, being stressed, being imbalanced, right? All these things are very common. And I think what's becoming or not necessarily becoming uncommon, but there's a great book called iGen by Gene Twinge that I really recommend. It's very interesting. It's sort of a look into – well, I mean it's like – I guess it would be – it's the first generation pretty much born with iPhones, right, born with smartphones, hence the name iGen, right? And I think what self-writing does, and I mentioned that book because it sort of documents the social, emotional, psychological, among other things, impacts of having smartphones just ready at hand all the time. And one of the other conversations she has I think really well is basically that generation is also sort of turning away from relationships. And I think what this does ultimately, this meaning of self-writing practice, if we're not necessarily going to be having spiritual exercises in our lives, spiritual communities, right, this is a good, let's say, way to either supplement that. If that is a part of your life, it can add to it I think in a very meaningful way. For example, one of the strategies we'll talk about, I've had students pair it with a number of different religious texts, right, their experience reading. Let's say, for example, I've had students pair it with a number of different religious texts, right, their experience reading. Let's say, for example, I've had students pair it with a number of different religious texts, right, their experience reading. Let's say, for example, I've had students pair it with a number of different religious texts, right, their experience reading. Let's say, for example, the Bible has been improved by implementing one of the practices specifically I'm thinking that we'll talk about with self-writing, and it's improved their relationship to a higher power. Whereas I think this also could work really effectively if you're someone who isn't necessarily religious, which is to say you might believe in a higher power, you might not. But either way, you're not going to a house of worship on a weekly basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis. This, I think, could also be a secondary. But either way, you're not going to a house of worship on a weekly basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not, let's say, praying on a regular or daily basis or you're not. And I think the key there, too, is like, and we'll talk about this when we establish some virtues you need for self-writing, this is something that involves a process, something that involves effort, something that, you know, we have to understand, you know, we're not going to ever be perfect, but we can try. And in that trying, we'll make progress, and in that progress, we should feel good about ourselves, right? And not only will we feel good about ourselves, we'll feel better about life, right? So this isn't about becoming perfect. This is about pursuing. This is about pursuing growth through the practice of, again, sitting down with a pen and a paper and examining our thoughts, okay? It is the process of writing about your thoughts, feelings, and actions on a frequent, if not daily, or even more than once daily basis with the aim of understanding and caring for yourself. When we do this, we become healthier versions of ourselves, which serves everyone around us, and we can also offer help and service to others more effectively, right? So I think that, to me, that's something I sort of like to do. I sort of borrowed from Thich Nhat Hanh when he, you know, great Zen thinker, right? When we take better care of ourselves, everyone benefits. I think that's really an accurate point. And it doesn't stop there. We have to do more than that, right? Which is why I add the second part of that sentence. We have to actively and proactively, authentically and justly try to engage with others, right? All of which is served by the self-writing because not only can we examine ourselves with this, but of course, we can examine other people in our world as well, right? And again, the whole point of this too is to do that with a greater sense of deliberation and a greater sense of clarity, right? When we learn how to wrestle with our own thoughts and feelings and actions, we get better at doing the same with and for those around us, right? So we want to get this practice in. This is always, again, as the class is sort of aimed, right? That Socratic idea of knowing yourself is really where this practice can start, right? For those of you who may take a course with me in the future, one I might be offering is on logic-based therapy. And it's basically, as the name implies, it's using logic, which is a branch of philosophy, to sort of work through negative ways of thinking and feeling. And ultimately, the six steps of logic-based therapy culminate in an action plan, right? So self-writing too is an interesting balance between taking action. And thinking and feeling. So when I say know yourself, when we go into care for yourself, a part of the self-writing too is to encourage new action. And the self-writing itself is likely or could be a new action that will be helpful in creating better ways of thinking and feeling, right? So it kind of feeds on itself in a very interesting way as well. And I thought I'd make that clear, right? So no matter what, as I said, right? We want to stick with this ancient idea of philosophy or the art of living. This is from Marcus Aurelius. Being more like wrestling than dancing, right? There's a few reasons he gives for this. And I think ultimately a key one for me that I pulled from this analogy is the unpredictability in a wrestling match versus the choreographed nature of a dance, right? The sort of resilience one needs because you're being attacked in a wrestling match as well, right? So in order to deal with the sort of, let's say, misfortunes of life, the bad things of the universe, right? The universal throw at us, the difficulties, we need a companion, right? I mentioned this in the last episode, I think. Philosophy is that companion and self-writing, in a literal sense, your notebook can go everywhere with you. Or your notebook can sit in one spot, let's say in your home or at your work, and you could go there and you know it's reliable, it's there, and it becomes a place for you to, once again, get rid of some emotions. It could be one thing, get rid of some thinking, just get it out. Then we can see it more clearly. We have this very powerful vantage point. For a general, you'd want the higher ground, right? And another analogy I use, you wouldn't wrestle blindfolded. So the writing allows us to get out of our own heads and see with greater clarity. The writing allows us to establish order in what might be a set of chaotic thoughts. It allows us to more clearly see, let's say, to use kind of a cliche, right, the silver lining in some negative thoughts. Because we can encourage ourselves more clearly in our writing to be deliberate. And we'll see that. I have 12 strategies for us. That we're going to get into in a different episode that create a sense of deliberation and intention. And one of the virtues we'll talk about also is having a sense of purpose. So that's knowing how to set up a writing session, going in with that sense of clarity. And then also, you know, a capital P sense of purpose. Like I'm doing this with a larger sense of who I might become in the future, who I should become. And that's what's going to motivate this practice. So we'll talk about that as well. But this idea of blindness in life and then using the self-writing to fight that, to wrestle. More effectively with the world around us, to wrestle more effectively with ourselves, to gain the higher ground in a literal sense, or to look down on our thinking instead of being immersed in it, instead of being, let's say, instead of being suffocated by it, we can get it out and look down on it. It's a greater sense of control, greater sense of clarity, all really good things. things, right? We'll talk a lot about Michel Foucault in this chapter that's in bibliotherapy, and one great idea he presents is the notion that self-writing is basically like a tool for spiritual combat, right? So if you daily are able to sharpen this tool and work on it and work with it, it'll also work on you, and that's the meaningful aspect of it, right? That's the shaping ourselves element of things. So I kind of sort of end this little page here with, if you're interested in leading a more peaceful, disciplined, anxiety-free, stress-free, confident life, then the practice of taking time out to cultivate yourself through self-writing will be useful, right? So let's keep that in mind. Those things should interest all of us, and also we could add to that as well, a life where we're more able to serve others. If any or all that interests you, then I would strongly suggest taking the opportunity to look at the self-writing book and also taking our weekly work together in this course. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, make sure to hit the like button, share this video with your friends, and subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss out on any of my new videos, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to this episode on the self-writing practice guide, right? So this chapter, or this short section, let's say, is on the key elements of an effective writing practice. We can kind of look at these as virtues, right? So as I say in the first line, there are a few virtues one needs to cultivate in order to have a healthy self-writing practice. In short, we should strive to be consistent, be honest, be vulnerable and confident, be focused, and be patient. So we cultivate these things when we're doing the practice, and we need to also see them as the key elements of execution. Executing the practice, right? So I'll do a little brief overview here. Of course, if you're in my class, you have this available to you on Blackboard, but I do think these are conversations worth having, right? So first one is be honest. There's a reason for this being first, right? If we're not confronting ourselves honestly, there really isn't much of a point here, right? And one of the great things about the self-writing practice, and if we were working in person, you'd have time to do this in class with our philosophical meditations, is that it can be private, right? And it should be, I would say. Generally speaking. Of course, once you write something, if you think it would be helpful to share with somebody, obviously that's a great idea, right? That being said, you want to have the sense and, again, the practical sort of execution of the practice where it is just you and yourself or you and the notebook, right? The reason for that is that privacy, I think, encourages us to be as honest as possible because we're not afraid of being judged by another person, so we're going to be able to be more open, right? There are things that we wouldn't want to say to anybody else. The notebook becomes a place for that. There are things, too, and this sort of will go into our next verse because all these really connect, I think, pretty nicely in terms of being vulnerable and being confident. Well, you sort of need to be vulnerable so you can then be honest, and then in order to write that, you need to be confident because you have to face yourself, and that takes some courage, right? So even though we're not being judged by anybody else, and I do suggest, once again, that the book is private, we fear sort of judging ourselves in a way, I think, at times. And when we write it, I believe, or even when we say it out loud, and if nobody can even hear it, to a degree, and this might be just me, but it becomes realer in a sense. And that sense of realness can be kind of frightening in a way. But that's where a lot of the meaning will come from, I think, is confronting ourselves honestly and being vulnerable enough to ask certain questions, being vulnerable enough to confront our ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that maybe we're not proud of, that maybe we need to change. But we lack the confidence to, or we lack the strategy to. So that's where the confidence has to come in, right? We move through that fear of judging ourselves, through the fear of kind of making it real in a way, and we pursue truth, right? So if we prioritize honesty when we're writing, not only will we be able to sort of hopefully discover the truth in the external world, right, like the truth of the way we might be perceiving something, we could, again, use the notebooks to observe our own actions. We could use the notebooks to observe the actions of others, the feelings that we seem to pick up from others, the feelings we have within ourselves. All of these things can be tested for truthfulness more effectively when we see them more clearly in the notebook, right, especially when it comes to our own thoughts, right? So we're attempting the notebook really with writing, too, to be articulate in a way that, let's say, is more exact, is more organized than what we might be thinking, right? It's going to be easier to call ourselves. The truth becomes more accessible as we try to articulate it, right? And the more clear that articulation is, the more we can change it, and the more easily we can work with it, right? So that's why we do the notebook practice, right? We will know if we are bullshitting ourselves more quickly when we write and can then look down at what we believe to be true. Again, if we are pursuing the truth, which once again is why this is the first virtue, we have to set out not to just write about anything. We have to be at least. We have to be moving towards something that is truer than what we are currently thinking, maybe. We have to test our thinking to see if it's faulty and incorrect and untrue or if it – I mentioned the word doxa last episode, right? And there are sort of – there's a couple different ways to understand that. Doxa could be understood as like a weak opinion. It could be understood as common opinion. Now, I think to some degree at some times and in some examples, we can understand common to mean different things, of course, at least in my perception of that to make it more interesting. If you're in a room full of experts and the common opinion is something, well, okay, obviously still examine it, but it would likely be the case that that opinion might be more reliable, right, for example. But we have to be very careful with doxa because there's that connotation too that it is false. Again, we're just talking about the use of the word here and I interpreted it a little bit differently to make it kind of a fuller conversation. But ultimately, we're testing for truthfulness. We need techniques for that. Dialogue is another great technique to question things. Well, the notebook is yet again – back to we talked about wrestling last episode. You don't want to wrestle blindfolded. We want to get down to the truth as effectively as possible. This is a pathway to that. The written word will help us illuminate the truths that our thoughts and feelings obscure. That's a great idea. Our anger might get in the way of seeing the truth. Once again, when we write, we can grapple with the anger more effectively. We can slow down as well. We're not just rushing in our thoughts. We're asking our minds and bodies and souls to do something else. We're slowing down to write, to read, to see, to articulate. That slowness is a good thing. The solitude is a good thing. Let's start the practice off with the intention of being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being vulnerable and then meeting that or coupling that vulnerability with the confidence to confront the ideas. Okay? Let's start the practice off with the intention of being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. And let's continue to cultivate that with an openness to being truthful and pursuing the truth. If it's focused time, it will be meaningful. Put your phone away, maybe only use it as a timer, or maybe for some music, but do not answer emails, do not respond to texts, do not be reading something else as you're doing this. Really try to focus on this. We're training ourselves now, not only, once again, in pursuing the truth, pursuing self-knowledge and self-care, but we're training ourselves to focus, which is a skill we can use throughout our lives. The ability to suspend the rest of the world and to be attentive to one task will serve you in all that you do if you enact it. Look at self-writing as a training ground for this important skill. The philosophical term for this kind of focus, or we could even say vigilance, is proseke. We'll confront this word a lot in that practice chapter, which can be understood as attention to oneself to make sure that we use our reason in the pursuit of self-mastery. Proseke is a pathway to growth through dialogue with ourselves, which is a pathway to self-love. As Seneca said, try to perfect yourself. If for no other reason, in order that you may learn how to love, right? So with the idea of attentiveness, once again, greater attention to ourselves will hopefully be training grounds to give greater attention to others. That's a hugely important part of loving others, to actually pay attention to people regularly, to be awake to who they are, what their needs are, what their thoughts, feelings, and actions are. We need to cultivate that attentiveness and that vigilance towards what? So in this case, it's self-mastery. But also, we could work on developing mastery in all the parts of our lives. If you want to do that, you need to learn how to focus. There's a great book by Dr. Cal Newport called Deep Work, where he talks about this. So this idea of proseke, pursuit of self-mastery through attentiveness, through vigilance, is a wonderful idea. And again, there's great carryover here. As we'll see with our strategies, which is an episode that we're going to talk about in a little bit, you can have a whole practice based on researching something else outside of yourself. That, of course, will fuel your personal development in some regard. But ultimately, it's about learning how to be focused, using the writing for clarity. Right? And again, we learn how to love when we pursue growth. Because, and this is a great, another piece from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist that we already mentioned earlier last episode, right? When love stops growing, it starts to die. So growth is an essential element of loving ourselves and loving others. To be focused. Is the best way to grow effectively. So we're practicing that with this. Being with people in a genuine, authentic sense is needed. Being with ourselves is needed. That's what the self-writing is for. So we cultivate that virtue, learning how to suspend the world and be focused, right? And then that will fuel and be a key element of what will make this practice work for you. Right? Next one. Be consistent and be patient. Nothing will happen overnight with this. Right? It might be the case that we have some control over how we shape our habits and that our habits then shape us. Okay? We have to at least try the writing practice for some period of time consistently with some patience to really give it a fair shot. Right? We could try to train ourselves day in, day out as you would train the body with moderate, consistent effort. With an eye toward progress. And it's that simple. Right? So how would progress look in a self-writing practice? Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that you write for longer, which that could be it. Right? But what I think it does mean to a degree would be that over time, you're able to be more honest with yourself. Back to virtue one. Right? Over time, you're able to really feel good about the practice. It becomes woven into your life. You do it kind of naturally. Right? So for me, and this is a great sort of personal anecdote to highlight why being consistent is so important. Right? Sometimes you'll feel the self-writing practice, you'll feel its power because of its presence. You'll have a good day of writing, you'll find, you'll kind of find something out or you'll realize something or you'll be able to, let's say, even just say one example, you'll address a memory that's been bothering you, you'll create peace around it, or you'll create a really compelling, engaging vision for your future that'll inspire you to take action that day or let's say, again, just some examples of potential practices, which we'll review in the next episode. But you'll find a quote that really resonates with you. You'll write it down. You'll think about it. It'll help you. Right? You'll learn how to create meaning with your daily life from not just doing a to-do list, but by sitting with the tasks and like asking why bother and having good answers for that. That'll make you feel good. Right? So that's the presence. But what I really discovered, this was early, not early, but it was like last fall, basically. I stopped writing. Right? So I noticed the power of the practice of self-writing on a daily basis really profoundly as a result of its absence. I found last fall that I was becoming really easily stressed. Like small stuff was really bothering me more than it should. Then it started sort of piling up. Right? And I became a generally more stressed out person. Right? A generally less resilient person. And I realized, oh, why is this happening? I had a lot on my plate. What have you. Whatever. Right? But ultimately I was healthy. Things were going generally okay. And I realized, oh, I haven't been writing. I stopped. Like it's been about two months. I haven't even picked up a pen to like do my old practice. And my old practice that I still continue today is I wake up, I put the date, I write a mantra, and I sort of start with gratitude. Then I get into intentions. And my intentions are pretty much always the same. I have like general intentions. Right? Every day I want to grow. I want to serve. Right? These are things I write to myself. And then I kind of go on off of that intentions about how I want to specifically embody it that day. And I'll kind of work in other mantras and ideas as per their need. But each day I'm confronting that need, that sense of need. Right? So, for example, another thing I've been writing a lot recently is that life is not a competition and life is not a race. And that has real implications for me. Right? Life is not a race for me has also then been leading to my days feeling like they're a little bit slower, which is good. And I'll even repeat that much to myself throughout the day. Like, let today be slow. Don't rush. And that's been really helpful for me. And then I actually added this practice recently, too. At the end of the day, I've been sitting and I've been writing for another five minutes or so about what I accomplished that day. And maybe also about what I left undone. All right, so I'm gonna do this tomorrow. Right? And that's been helpful to keep me on track and give myself some encouragement and some, you know, some changes. Some scrutiny as well. So those mantras at the beginning of the day, those intentions, that gratitude is helpful. We have to touch down on that. So again, for me, I stopped doing that and I felt its absence. When I did, I made some time. I think it was on a Saturday for an hour and I just wrote and I felt a little bit better afterwards, but I'm like, okay, this has to become consistent again. So we might notice it in its absence and we might notice it with its presence. Right? So either way, being consistent is key. And also, I like to say, be patient. Because we shouldn't have unrealistic expectations for this. You're not going to write for a week and all of a sudden, no longer be anxious about graduating. You're not going to write for a week and all of a sudden not be stressed at all at work. Okay. We have to be patient with it and we have to be purposeful with it. And I think the next episode will be really helpful with that because I'll give us some technique suggestions here. Right? So it will not work overnight as you've been saying. Right? So it will not work overnight as you've been saying. So it will not work overnight as you've been saying. So it will not work overnight as you've been saying. We have to give it some time. We have to also be open to keeping things the same when they're working and making small changes when they don't work. Okay? The whole point is not to quit, but to be willing to make changes. Right? So keep that in mind as well. Let's get to our final virtue here or key element. We have to be purposeful. Right? So we have to spend time cultivating a sense of purpose with our practice, create a large vision and then small aims for how you like to develop your business. How you like to develop yourself. Craft an image of how life could be better and of the vices or problems you would like to transcend or move beyond. And this is, this is constant. This is, this is consistent, right? Think of purpose as both purpose, lowercase and capital K capital P purpose. The lowercase might be how you will structure a self writing session for that day. First, again, for me, I know my morning writing, the purpose, let me get some gratitude. Let me get some intentions. Let me. And also another part of this too, is that this is where the life is not a race. Life is not a competition came in. I wake up every day feeling like I have to get going immediately pressuring myself. So the writing reminds me to take my time a little bit in the morning, be appreciative and not put myself in competition with anybody or even, um, let's say, I think competing with ourselves is generally healthy idea, but I become excessive about it. So I have to learn how to reel that in. Right? So that's my, both my lowercase purpose. Which is to say, I wake up, let me get five to 10 minutes of writing, calm writing with some coffee, some water, some music. So that's a small purpose. It's driven by, you know, I'm oriented towards a goal. They're small though, because 10 minutes, the larger purpose is I need to calm down. The larger purchase of purposes. If I take life a little bit slower, I think I'll enjoy it more. The larger purpose is allowing myself to have the confidence that if I slow down a little bit, nothing wrong will happen. If anything, I'll feel more, let's say, um, I'll feel more energetic. it because I'll be less tired from the stress I'm putting on myself, right? So as I'm saying here, right, it might be the self-writing practice. It might be to create a sense of calm in the morning or make sure that you took risks that day to work on developing your confidence. These are just examples, right? But that second part, that's checking with yourself at the end of the day. Did you speak up in that meeting at work or did you allow yourself to succumb to fear of being judged? Okay, so the capital P sense of purpose is the larger vision that you can craft, revisit, and return to when you need inspiration and an image to call your gaze forward and up towards your self-defined higher self. So I know I have to be less stressed out. That's for like just health in general. I know I could benefit tremendously from relaxing a little bit. So me telling myself to relax, that it's not a race, is going to be helpful for me. And I have moments and days where I am calm and I am very productive and I feel more fulfilled. So that kind of reaffirms the notion that pursuing this larger vision is actually really healthy. Right? So we're going to end this episode here. This was like a good 20 minutes. And then I will be recording the next one on some different practices. All right. So hope this was helpful. Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon. Hello, everybody. How you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome to the third installment of our recordings on self-writing and our self-writing guide. So we're in chapter three here. I do ask that you read this. Once again, it's on Blackboard, so I'm not going to be too exhaustive with this lecture. But I do want to give some general points on each of the strategies. And basically, before we get to that on how to use the strategies. Right. So first of all, these are not, you know, this is not a comprehensive list. Right. So there could be other strategies you might think of. I've had students think of their own strategies that have been really, really interesting and powerful for them. So please feel free to use this simply as a starting point. This whole list. Some of these I've gotten from my own practices myself. Others I've gotten, you know, from researching and reading and learning about the ancient practices of self-writing. Some of it's been inspired by just, you know, even one line from philosophy. Make a practice out of it. So please, once again, see what works for you. Try different ones out. Add your own elements to them. Combine them. Whatever you want to do. Right. The hope is that once again, something you make as a result of this class just works for you. Right. So that being said, let's get into it. Let's get into some of these ideas. Right. The first one is simply a gratitude practice. So I think we have two elements here we want to consider. Remembering the good things and imagining the bad. Right. So that's, this is coming, at least from my perspective, from my experience, from stoicism. Right. The idea that we have to imagine the bad specifically is kind of coming from my approach to Epictetus, who will study a lot. Right. He tells us to every day wake up and think about the bad. Right. So I think that's a great idea. And for example, visit the idea that we're mortal. The hope isn't, of course, that, you know, we're encouraging that. We pass away. The hope is that we use this imagination to give us strength. Right. To make us grateful for the fact that we are simply just alive in that moment. We'll talk enough about memento mori. I think I already talked about it a few episodes ago. It'll come up a few times in this semester. It even comes up in this chapter. Right. So basically, to be thinking about it, to be thinking about it, to be thinking about it. Thinking of these other situations as, you know, let's say an imagination exercise can relieve some suffering in the moment. Right. One example of this might be you're in traffic, you're getting angry. Well, be grateful that something worse isn't happening. Be grateful that also you have a car. Be grateful that it's not also pouring rain outside. Be careful. Be grateful that at least you're healthy enough to see the road. Be grateful that you're able to hear some music on the radio. Right. So these are all things we could do to alleviate our daily suffering. Imagine that, you know, how things can be worse is a really good way to become grateful for what's in front of us. So that's one pathway to gratitude that we can put in our daily writing and also our daily thinking. That might be really useful. And then remembering the good things, too, is a great that's a simple but powerful practice to wake up and write down three things you're grateful for. That's something I've done. Right. And maybe not even just writing them down, but taking some time to think about them or writing a few sentences about each. You could do this, of course, at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day, at the end of the week, whatever you want to do. Right. But gratitude is a powerful pathway to a lot of other good stuff in life. Right. Living in the moment. It grounds us. Right. If we're grateful for what we have, we're not going to be as desirous for what we do not have. Then when we're thinking about what we do not have, we're not going to be as desirous for what we do not have. As a way to get as grateful for what we do have. That's like really grounding us, I think, in a very positive way to live in the moment, live and work with what we have in front of us. Right. Also, Epictetus is saying you want to be happier. Try being more grateful. So it might even be a pathway to happiness as well. Right. It's a lot of good stuff going on there. Once again, practically speaking, you could even have on a daily basis or every other day, whatever, sit and write about how things could be worse. Damn, I really should appreciate what I have. And what's ironic, too, about life is a lot of times we get what we want and then what we want eventually becomes a pain in the ass. Right. So you get the new job. It's great for two weeks. And, oh, OK, it's still a job. Or I still have some qualities of my old job I didn't like. Well, you made it. It's still a good thing. I remember, for example, when I started a job out, when I first started teaching. And I still love to do this. Right. But it was like it was absolutely elated that I got the opportunity. And then I use that to remind myself on a rough day or let's say I have a class that isn't participating, which isn't a problem asynchronously. That's interesting. Right. Maybe it's a weird benefit. I can't tell if you're paying attention or not. I'm just imagining you are. And that's that's you know, that's OK. That works for me. So maybe I have a difficult class or a difficult day with a class. Right. Or they're not really engaged or whatever. Right. I would remind myself, you know, there was a time when I was like really. I would remind myself, you know, there was a time when I was like really. Applying to do this and people were ignoring me and I couldn't, you know, get my foot in the door somewhere. So that reminder, again, that use that imagination a little bit of the past there. I mean, what if I never got to do this? I've been really happy doing this. Right. It's always we can guide ourselves with gratitude. To lead a happier, more fulfilling life. Right. So once again, waking up, writing down what you're grateful for, spending some time with this imagination exercise, crafting image of how things might be worse and getting us grateful for how things might be worse. And for how they are. All good ideas. Right. Let's go to number two. Harmony through intentions and execution. This is right from Epictetus. Right. This is from Pierre Hadot's philosophy is a way of life. And this practice has two parts to it. Right. So we have a morning practice or morning element and a nighttime element. Once again, I do suggest you read this. I think I'm going to obviously leave out some details in the lecture. But to generally talk about this, we wake up, a lot of us make to do lists. That's good. That is good. You give yourself aims. Aims are important. One hundred percent. Epictetus asks that we fill that out a little more with some philosophy, with some meaning. Because the tasks, if they don't already feel empty again, especially when they're habitual, they at times can feel empty. We do not want to feel like our days are empty. You have enough of those days in a row. Things start feeling pretty meaningless. So if on a daily basis we confront the ideas that guide us or let's say that should guide us when we do these things. We'll see them as bigger than what they really are. Or maybe even that's an overstatement. Right. We'll see them for what they truly are. Because we're becoming constantly right. There's no such thing as doing nothing. Everything you're doing is shaping who you are is what I think potentially powerful idea we could think about. Right. So you don't want to just go to work or go to the meeting or go to class or, you know, you want to go and you want to sort of prescribe to yourself ways you want to be in that space. I want to be kind when I go pick up my sibling from school. I don't want to just ignore them. I want to be kind to them. I want to pursue that. So how would that look? What would that mean? Well, maybe I make sure I smile at them. Maybe I make sure I ask them about how their day was and actually listen. So all of a sudden now we're giving ourselves these prescriptions on how to live. We're kind of creating our own ethics. That's what we need to do. Right. We can imbue, we can give our lives a sense of meaning. We have to confront the notion that maybe we have to be the sources for that. That's what I've been asking for us in the morning. Give your life a sense of orderliness and a sense of meaning that emanates from you, that comes from you. I don't want to just lecture. I want to be awake when I do this. When I make my to-do list, and at this point in all honesty, it's something I do mentally, but I'm not just putting the test. I sit with the test. Why is this important? And I've had difficulty with this in the past too. And I'm grappling with it now in a better way. I've had to give more meaning to like, let's say, being more organized. I'll put that generally because that's how disorganized I was at one point. Like putting things, even just papers. I got this new like accordion folder thing and I'm excited about it, but I had to get myself excited about it. I'm like, you know what? I'm tired of looking for papers. Like day to day doesn't bother me, but every three days I'll do something and it'll take me 45 minutes to find it and I'll get angry. So I'm like, I could avoid this. Also something as simple as getting passionate about putting my keys in the same spot. How did that look? Well, I got like this, like this box that I put the keys in that I actually like how the box looks. So now I'm not looking for my keys as much. I spent most of my adult life looking for keys, the other large portion of it in traffic. So I'm like, okay, I got to make these experiences better. I have to make them meaningful. I know I'm going to maybe a traffic today. Let me listen to an audiobook. and when I'm in traffic also this is great it's a great idea what he's saying in the morning I'm gonna go somewhere my new traffic right let me prescribe the idea that's gonna guide me in traffic today it's not gonna be anger I'm gonna be guided by the notion of patience the idea of learning I'm gonna put on an audiobook like I said right I listen to a lot of great audiobooks that have really changed the way I think feel and act in sitting in traffic so not only did they alleviate stress and anxiety in that moment which is positive but they also help me develop myself they gave me tools I've used in the future it's a great idea but it's only because I saw myself I saw this experience I'm like how can I make this different so when we sit every day with our experiences how should I be guided or how should I let's even say guide myself is a better way to put it during these actually during these are not exercises during these events during these obligations during these tasks life will take on a great sense of meaning and we of course want to avoid meaninglessness not a good idea right so that being said we do to-do list we kind of put it on philosophical steroids let's think about the why the ideas that will guide us I make this for myself right I don't have to go to class today I'm choosing to go and I'm not only gonna go but I'm gonna try to get something out of it I'm gonna be disciplined I'm gonna be focused I'm gonna challenge myself to participate I'm gonna be confident things to think about then at night we check in with ourselves and this is great too we have to see at night for epictetus how we failed and how we've succeeded applying as he says you know that self scrutiny with kindness were possible right so we check in that's the accountability that we need was I really nice today with my with my family or was I kind of rude could I have been a little more confident today could I've been a little more productive in the face of a delay all to the good all to the development of the self right self-awareness self-knowledge first how to go today and be honest all right now let me give it a new direction after I scrutinize myself all right cool number three I just want a lot I think for me I grabbed it with uncertainty and ironically so one of the audiobooks I listened to you that was really impactful for me it's a couple audio books one was work like da Vinci and one was think like da Vinci I went through a da Vinci phase where I was really learning a lot about him interested me and there's idea that we get from I think it was from pretty much like da Vinci embodied it and embrace it and I think it's a it's a term from painting sfumato it's an Italian word it sort of means like foggy almost it's like when something's obscure and it's like a fogginess to something like a shadow kind of it's not clear what you're seeing life is full of uncertainty and uncertainty plagues us for myself included I'm plagued by the uncertainty especially you know in these times with career stuff I've been feeling very uncertain about the future even just the fact that and I mean this kind of like you know I never thought I would teach asynchronously because I never really nobody ever presented me with the opportunity I've always enjoyed teaching in class and now Here I am I'm hopefully going to be offering value to all of you I'm hopefully gonna be giving us a good experience here and you're offering us a good experience but it's really uncertain about how do you even approach this in the right way right so we have to get better at looking at life's uncertainty and being comfortable with it not being afraid of it right and certainly not being paralyzed by it so I think making time to sit and research the things in general that we're interested in but especially those things that are uncertain where there is sfumato that we have to work through some or we have to work through a lack of clarity that's a great thing to practice in our self writing exercise so maybe it's you know for example this week I really want to spend 10 minutes a day focusing on my job future just one example right or focusing on you know I really want to get into better physical health let me spend a week for 10 20 minutes in my notebook just learn it and writing stuff down and carrying that question with me of how can I be healthy inward and researching it and then writing it writing about it right because once again when we write we have greater clarity when we write our thoughts are more organized when we write we can look more clearly at our actions and feelings for truth right so I think those are actually two very good examples or let's even say you don't know what career path you want to take it all sit with that question and don't be bothered by it as much as you were in the past sit with it right at the top of the page get after it read listen right read what you write analyze it right so the self writing and that paired with the development the research works for that the external goals of that nature right and once again we sit and it's consistent I can almost guarantee you even learning a little bit on a daily basis about something that's unclear that's bothering you will alleviate some of that feeling of being bothered I can almost guarantee it right because the mind the body the soul are all communicating if your mind your soul are anxious you start taking action it almost alleviates it immediately you're nervous for the test the best thing to do is stop thinking about it study for 10 minutes it'll calm you down because you start feeling like you're acting they're taking action creating a new self towards the direction you need to go in right it's the same thing here and I live this actually on a regular basis I'm constantly you know unclear about things I'm constantly asking questions right what's the best even for me as a doctoral student what's the best way to write a dissertation proposal I don't know I've never written one before so I have to figure this out I can be stressed about it and think I'm gonna do a bad job at it or I can spend you know five ten minutes here and there learning about it drafting stuff right and that's a good thing and that once again helps us relieve stress we're taking action towards a valued aim that we're defining for ourselves and we make that a practice we're getting used to we're training that skill oh here's something uncertain I'm not gonna let it scare me I'm just gonna examine it I'm gonna get my pen in hand let me see what's up and see what I can observe let me create a consumption habit which is to say let me listen to this let me read this stuff let me write it down and then of course the notebook too becomes a place and we'll see this really clearly with one other practice where that information is now collected we can return to it it's way more useful we don't rely on our memories we rely on the notebook we can go back or what I find out three weeks ago boom here it is again with that idea of developing and research right there are thousands of books written speeches given free online right and research already done on what makes for a healthy relationship and a healthy body just as examples start writing what you learn and then start implementing it with a greater sense of clarity read listen I chose healthy body and relationships those are really important things in life to try to pursue let's say healthiness in being a better friend being a better significant other you can learn about that people think about that for thousands of years right don't just allow yourself to sit in this formato and the lack of clarity and not move through it okay we can we can and should learn how to learn not only for the sake of acquiring knowledge but for the potentially therapeutic results as well that's what I was saying a moment ago it's therapy to face this formato bravely gather information and move towards the goal life is full of uncertainties we can learn to deal with them more calmly a lot of benefits there and of course not only can we research these other things like relationships let's say fitness or a job we can research ourselves and see what we can do about it okay we should work to do a kind of research about our memories visions of the future and current perceptions of ourselves in our world through self writing to test for truthfulness bias usefulness and to find the sources of our ways of thinking feeling and acting to research ourselves might mean confronting questions that we often neglect okay returning to memories that seem to shape us and inquiring into their importance and working to understand them in greater detail we might also spend time examining examining our hopes for the future to see in what to see in what they are rooted okay that's a great idea so again we have this whole general philosophical idea of know yourself right that's a research conversation to a large extent okay give your research a clear stated purpose today I want to work on this memory today I want to work on developing my physical health for examples right I want to learn how to even something you know how to just eat healthier okay the research should have a clear stated purpose and like research in a lab or for a scholarly paper should result in something new a new plan of action a new way of thinking in this case it might be a new relationship to something your cousin said to you at a party this is personal but whatever example something your cousin said to you at a party once that you haven't been able to shake off for a few years yeah I got really detailed here or a new way of confident discussing who you are on a first date if we're asking about the other person's interest with a smile or we can learn these things we can research these skills we can research ourselves and again research these other things as well so we're learning which is useful and then we're practicing how to learn especially in the face of sfumato right that uncertainty that cloudiness that life has so much of right let's move on next one this is this is one is very useful I've had people respond that this is ironic way of putting it right they responded this is called the response right so one of the great things about philosophy too is that it's a companion as I've been saying right we want certain things ready at hand you have a flaw which were to describe as a flying thought one way you might want to respond to instead of following it I think I did give the bad pigeon analogy on this already right instead of following it you might want to sit down and write about it okay we're hit with what at times might seem to be seemingly random emotions Okay. time to time we all get sucker punched and the only thing worse than getting hit is getting hit by surprise. As much as we might have built up a strong inner fortress with a habitual practice or practices, it is near impossible to avoid the random sporadic attack of negative feelings and thoughts. Once again, self-writing can be helpful here. Maybe you can keep a small notebook in your pocket or a small piece of paper in your pocket. Maybe you can have a notebook in your car or in your office. If none of that works, use your phone to type out some thoughts. The idea here is that you are trained in writing as a way of seeing your thoughts more clearly and taking action as a means of getting out of your head, right? So this is a great, very simple idea. You have a new way to respond now. Instead of following the pigeon or the negative thought, you have a new strategy implemented, right? Wherever you are, so I say in your car, in the office, right? In your home, whatever. Maybe get a small one with you. They have really small notebooks that are actually pretty cool. Keep it in a notebook or a backpack or whatever, right? A briefcase, whatever. It's a great idea. And I even get into sort of a more imaginative, like a more, let's say, imagination-based response framework where instead of getting anxious in the moment, maybe you can't even write, maybe you don't want to take your phone out, you could actually imagine yourself writing. So if you have, let's say, a calm or a calming, better way to put it, writing practice that might be in a specific space of your home or a notebook that you enjoy using or a ritual around your writing, yourself doing it so you don't have to necessarily respond in the moment with writing but you can respond in your imagination with you know what this flying thought i'm not going to deal with it now and i'm just deal with it when i'm at home writing see yourself at home writing because that should be a good thing that that whole image of you grappling with the good and the bad things in life should be one that is therapeutic because you know the writing works so the response can literally mean getting good at or habituating yourself to when you have a negative thought instead of trying to just think about it you write about it or if you don't have that accessible to you in the moment you start seeing this general you know this this idea of response as a lifestyle in your imagination and in your actions right so we could see maybe once again that we can confront questions as we said with research a moment ago and another way to embody this idea of response that could be again in our thinking or in our writing depending on what's accessible is uh how to deal with anxiety you know how to deal with anxiety right so again anxiety we're going to talk about it a lot i think it's a very common aspect of being a person something i think we pretty much all deal with so it really warrants our attention and philosophy is here to help with that right so i think i may have already mentioned this and i'm sorry if i'm repeating myself but um we confront our anxiety or anxious thoughts with is it true is it real is it happening which is to say this thing i think is happening or going to happen is it helpful to think about this is this in my control right so is this anxious thought again anxiety we can sort of define it generally for now as negative thoughts about the future negative images of what might happen and then in addition to that i think usually it's accompanied by the idea that we can't deal with it right that will succumb to the negativity or it'll stop us from doing what we need to do in life so it's not only just the event itself it scares us again we're making the image anyway but it's the image of the self we have that we won't be able to deal with it right so here we are respond to that keep writing at hand as a strategy keep imagining yourself writing as an ad or on-hand strategy and you have a new way to respond now it's a great tool right take your notebook out or sit down and write for a minute good idea and this actually goes really nicely into the next strategy because i've already been sort of using this phrase right ready at hand repetition repetition is powerful and writing the same phrases on a daily basis maybe even more than once a day will help you get the most out of it and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and how it's going to affect you and how it's going to affect you and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on and you'll have a better understanding of what's going on it might be the case that you need some daily i'm sorry some short daily reminders on how to act think and feel and others on how to not think act and feel so for me we've already talked about this right literally for me life is not a race whereas at the beginning of my uh let's say daily meditation morning meditation i'll say i'm grateful for i'm thankful for today's opportunities to practice x y or z whatever i'm doing right so one's positive one's negative we could benefit from both so we can make these phrases for ourselves and we could also of course get them from reading literature reading philosophy we can quote people in our lives we can quote movies whatever right but we want to have these phrases ready to go we can quote movies whatever right but we want to have these phrases ready to go so when we write them once again especially with uh you know we write them so when we write them once again especially with uh you know we write them repetitively on a regular basis the idea of to to engrave in our souls repetitively on a regular basis the idea of to to engrave in our souls that's also a very very sort of philosophical idea that's also a very very sort of philosophical idea the person who reminds themselves hopefully that life is not a race life the person who reminds themselves hopefully that life is not a race life the person who reminds themselves hopefully that life is not a race life is not a competition is not a competition is not a competition will then be able to catch themselves when will then be able to catch themselves when will then be able to catch themselves when they feel like they're about to start they feel like they're about to start they feel like they're about to start racing or feel like they're going to be racing or feel like they're going to be racing or feel like they're going to be competing with somebody for no reason competing with somebody for no reason competing with somebody for no reason it'll change the way we think feel and it'll change the way we think feel and it'll change the way we think feel and act if especially if it's repetitive right so it's not just writing or right so it's not just writing or right so it's not just writing or thinking right it's writing thinking thinking right it's writing thinking thinking right it's writing thinking reading rereading meditating on right reading rereading meditating on right reading rereading meditating on right defining what it really means defining what it really means defining what it really means um also i think repeating something and um also i think repeating something and writing brings us closer to acting on it because writing it is an action right again we're out of our head which i think could also be very powerful and in this section we get into why memento more a little bit right so i'll read this i think this is just a cool idea right so one suggestion for potentially powerful short phrase to repeat in our writing and thinking is memento mori the stoic school of philosophy from the ancient world encouraged us to remember that we are mortal and that everyone around us shares that fate to remind ourselves of this on a daily or regular basis should encourage us to take care of life as we are more aware of its fragility we can learn to fear other things less and be less annoyed as to even have a negative feeling or bad interaction with someone is better than to not have it at all it can also help us live with a greater sense of passion and urgency in the face of our confrontation with our own end one might argue that we can only truly love ourselves and others the best we can when we realize that there might not be tomorrow to call the short phrase memento more to mind might be our ticket to a little extra freedom tranquility and confidence things to think about writing that every day i have a sticker honestly too i'm gonna i might we're asynchronous but i'm i moved recently i'm gonna put up this really cool i think it's cool um painting that's basically memento mori painting uh it's a famous if you type in like memento more painting on google you'll find it it's a flower a skull and an hourglass so very interesting in my opinion i used to have a sticker that said memento more that i had i had to take sticker off of the wall my old apartment though which is upsetting and then you know i'd throw it out but ultimately this painting i think for me i do look at it every day and i do find that it does inspire me so powerful images too could be interesting right maybe there's art that you like um but the key here with ready hand repetition is that it's something that we repeat something that's useful and something that we engrave into our souls that helps us live better right next one this is a short one right the vent venting can be important i think venting to other people is cool sometimes we don't want to do that too frequently because i feel like we drag people down sometimes um but that's powerful as well and the best part about once again writing in a private notebook is that you can vent and you're not affecting anybody else so when we invented self-writing we are not only venting we should be sure to begin and end the writing session with a sense of direction that aims towards our growth and highest goals and goods right so it's not just about venting it's venting once again with a sense of purpose but do vent get it out get it off your chest get out of your system think that's really important right once again you might have times where you want to explode and it wouldn't be appropriate use a notebook for that right we should work even when venting to start and begin on a note of empowerment gratitude and some hope as we try to apply our reason to find out what is true about our current emotional state because venting can show us important things about ourselves too we have to consider it that's a good one i think if you find yourself you know venting a lot think about writing it so i have a few more here so we're running out of time because this is going to come you off in 30 at 30 minutes so i'm going to stop here and we'll continue with the next episode thank you for listening talk soon hello everybody how you doing hope all is well here we are again we're going to be finishing up our conversation of the self-writing guide with the last few strategies so we're going to jump right in here this one number seven a toolbox for living well the hope namata i'm going to read this paragraph i think it's pretty pretty good at explaining the technique for us so we can collect words and use them to work on ourselves and our lives it is very common nowadays that if you buy a calendar or planner each page might have a quote from an influential person to inspire you the hope namata is an opportunity to construct that kind of collection for yourself with your own goals in mind this strategy suggests that you use a notebook as a place to gather quotes that may come from different sources such as books movies songs your studies and even your own reflections on things said by family members friends and significant others among others these quotes are then to be read re-read meditated upon discussed with others and function as guides of conduct for you it can be viewed as a personally crafted book of words to live by so i love this strategy i teach this a lot we will we will sort of re-encounter this and get some more information on it in the philosophical practices chapter in our bibliotherapy book but i feel like for me this been really useful. So I wanted to talk about it early as well, right? I'm a big movie person. I listen to music every day. I also listen to audio books a lot. I read a lot. So for me, collecting these quotes and then having them play a role in my self-writing has been really helpful, right? We'll talk about this from Foucault's perspective. He's big on this idea. This was big in the ancient world, right? This idea of a guide of conduct, something that we return to. All of these things really play nicely into shaping ourselves, right? And also this is great because we start seeing the world as a set of tools and possibilities and opportunities for resources to shape ourselves, right? There's a reason why you return to certain artists. There's a reason why you return to certain albums. There's a reason why you return to certain directors and like their work, right? It's connecting to you in a specific kind of way. The Hopenematz is like, let me collect what's useful here. And this was the strategy I met. I may have mentioned this or I may have not have mentioned this, but I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea. And so I had students pair this with pre-existing reading practices around religion. So for example, I had a student who would read the Bible frequently and they paired that with this practice where they, instead of just reading the Bible, they would open a notebook next to it and then start taking certain aspects of the text into their notebook, those that really spoke to them. And then their notebook could also be something they could read throughout the day or read once or twice a week in addition to their reading of the Bible. That became extra useful, became a good addition to a pre-existing, I would say, spiritual practice that involved religion and reading. And then it kind of imbued it with an even greater sense of specificity, right? Made it even more applicable to their way of life. And they really seemed like they enjoyed that. So the Hopenematz, we're extracting what's useful, we're collecting it, and we're revisiting it. I think it's an interesting practice to consider. Now, this one, this next one, I think is really specific. But I think confidence is super important and it's something that we don't train at all in school, but it's really necessary. So I think it's a good idea. It's necessary for school and pretty much everything else in life. So I suggest that we think about confidence narratives as self-writing, right? So among other virtues, confidence is largely about what stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. We can all think of people, if not think of ourselves, who have been through a lot, have achieved great things, challenged themselves frequently, and yet lack confidence. Belief in ourselves can largely be attributed to the way we talk to ourselves about who we are, what we've done, and what is possible for us. And so I think it's a good idea to think about confidence narratives as self-writing. I think it's a good idea to think about confidence narratives as self-writing. Many of these internal voices may connect easily to an external voice that we once heard. Confidence is necessary and can be worked on by establishing competence. That competence does not become confidence unless we also practice the art of reminding ourselves that not only can we confront our fears and control them, but also that we have been willing and that we are still willing to face difficult or scary tasks that might lead us to goodness. Okay, we can take time to sit and write about all of these things, but we also can focus on what we have done to influence those outcomes, how we have grown and how we have been competent in the past. We should work to honestly highlight our wins, our moments of strength and goodness to display to ourselves that we are in fact capable of thriving in an uncertain present and future. Look for the power, find it, write about it, and revisit the writings or add more when required. One other pathway to confidence is to confront our fears and control them. We can confront our irrational fears on paper. Writing about our thoughts, feelings, and actions sheds a light on them in a sense and is an effective way of calling ourselves out. When we start examining our fears instead of running from them, we gain a higher degree of control. We are confronting them instead of running from them and listening to every command they bark at us. We can learn to conquer some fears and maybe walk alongside others such that when they arise, we do not succumb to them and entertain them. We can learn to conquer some fears and maybe walk alongside others such that when they arise, we do not succumb to them and entertain them. We can learn to conquer some fears and feelings or take actions that are unhealthy for us and or others. with my writing right so two pathways to confidence there confrontation of the fears reminders of the competence and that's that for that section but i just think that's a great thing to think about because confidence is something that we all i think could benefit from confidence is virtuous confidence is not arrogance it's the balance between arrogance and cowardliness we all need confidence that's a great self-writing idea i think next one this is big for our class right we have a whole book of questions on blackboard called philosophical meditations so i suggest a number nine questions we all have a lot of questions some are large some are small and all could benefit from clearer examination sitting down and writing a burning question question on the top of the page and working to write as many thoughts you have in whatever format works for you is a great habit to have this sort of pairs nicely with research right because ultimately you'd have a research question and i think this is slightly different because it might not necessarily feel like it might not necessarily feel like it might not necessarily feel like research right so for example a question like what is my purpose what should i pursue this year is kind of research-esque but it doesn't necessarily involve consumption right so for that research example the first one it was more like okay how do i figure this out let me read listen right with these types of questions i would say it's more about listening to yourself and again of course we compare them as i said at the you know the initial onset of this discussion about the techniques but i think just generally speaking with the philosophical meditation we may find that a lot of them don't necessarily require external research they really require a lot of internal reflection right once again know yourself um yeah and learning how to ask good questions is really powerful right learning how to ask ourselves questions that guide us to growth will help us do the same thing with others one of the best ways to encourage people is through asking them questions one of the best ways or probably the best way of course to understand people is by asking them questions all good relationships all healthy relationships involve teaching and learning within ourselves and then offering that to other people and so i think this is a really good way to do that to others good teaching and learning has to revolve around questions not statements right so training ourselves to question ourselves and our world is a powerful tool for leading a good life and self-writing makes this process much easier and more effective for sure questions can drive us you know drive us to feeling very stressed anxious right we need to take control of that take the burning questions write them down again exactly we have a lot of hopefully very thought-provoking questions in our philosophical meditations book that pertain again really nicely to this strategy and i ask that every class or every session every week you stay with philosophical meditation notebook open and you take time to write answers to those questions let's keep it moving here keeping track so our notebooks can also be places where we keep track of our progress and failures similar to the daily practice from epictetus that encourage us to do this as a result of simply having a day so you wake up go ahead and do it right this kind of keeping track can focus more on a specific idea or type of development we are looking for we can work to write down what we consume in terms of food what we listen to what we read with the intention of seeing how our habits are serving us or damaging us right so again the notebook can become a place and you see this a little bit in like the personal development world i think there's sort of at times what i think is uh an obsession with keeping track of things so if you have a notebook that can become a place and you see this a little bit in like the personal development world i think there's sort of at times what i think is uh an obsession with keeping track of things um and i mean that like kindly right i think again anything that's excessive is likely not a good thing but i think there are good examples of this in the personal development world of just tracking right tracking our habits and i think that could be a profoundly philosophical self-writing exercise right because again if we're here to shape ourselves you know in terms of like um creating healthier ways of thinking and feeling and acting which is what we're doing right keeping track of what we consume and what we do and then not just again from epictetus's perspective of i'll make i'm making a to-do list but from okay so this month let me look back all right what was i doing and again i love to use simple examples with this but i think you know working to um keep track of tasks that connect to specific kinds of development we're working towards right and including notes on how we feel think before during and after the task right and for the duration of the task and how once again keeping track of how we acted during the task did we really apply ourselves for example right um it'll work you want to develop expertise in something well keep track of how often you read about it you want to develop maybe you can return to the simple example but you want to develop a certain physical skill right you want to get really good at yoga you want to get really good at brazilian jiu-jitsu you want to get really good at running whatever it makes sense to keep track of it keep track of your progress sit right how did it go today how much did i do what was my time right how many times did i train for example brazilian jiu-jitsu this this month after each session sit and write well was i ready to train today how did i feel during what did i learn so we're tracking with that in mind we're using our notebooks for that right we could also do this on you know in a very spiritual way was i less angry this week well every time you get angry write about it am i still being conquered let's say to use context right am i still being conquered let's say to use context right am i still being conquered let's say to use context right am i still being conquered let's say to use context right am i still being conquered let's say to use context right am i still being conquered let's say to use context right am i still being conquered let's say i was confronted with the same trigger did i respond better how often did this trigger arise how did my responses shift over time why did they shift that i could look back right so keeping track with a specific development in mind over a longer period of time right we got two more here and we'll be finishing up so this is i think an interesting one too number 11 bird's eye view one sheet so this is where i think again this could be a larger piece of paper it's getting a little creative here maybe um we really want to get a bird's eye view which is to say a look from above on a major issue or major issues okay we may find that we are bothered by the same things over and over again and in our other forms of writing they keep coming up this is where this kind of connects to the tracking right um the previous one we just talked about we can take one blank sheet of paper put this idea at the top of it and really spend the whole sheet breaking it down making time to sit with that one memory and breaking it down and in detail or that one fear the virtue you'd like to develop or vice you'd like to control and focusing with singularity might be the antidote right so we're seeing some i think some very interesting connections here right this is like hyper focusing on one thing when we are done with the sheet we can put it away to revisit it and a kind of metaphorical letting go of what's on it that's kind of cool a psychic suggested that to me once yeah i i you know i i believe in psychics i have i have a psychic uh in my life who will just kind of call me and i went i had a bad job initially out of grad school and she was like every day write a little bit about what happened and then just burn the paper metaphors okay so this strategy can also work with crafting clear past development sometimes we need to see everything in one place i'm big on this too this is nice right and i first of all i'm going to talk a little bit about what i do in my day-to-day notebook and then i'm going to talk a little bit about what i do in my day-to-day notebook and then i'm going to talk a little bit about what i do in my day-to-day notebook now i have a larger piece of paper folded up where i kind of section my life off so it's like all right here are my big tasks i have to do with teaching big tasks i have to do with my work as a student big tasks i have to do with my work as an author and it's like these are the tasks that are so big they won't happen day to day like it'll take eight months a year or whatever and then like the day-to-day writing on the page of the notebook should all connect to these larger goals on this larger page in the back of the notebook right so the one sheet right the bird's eye view is to give us this kind of capital p sense of purpose and this idea that it's sort of like a very organized vision when we're talking about the second part of the strategy right so the first part is bird's eye view one sheet let me get a look at this one reoccurring thing or there's one powerful thing i need to examine it just for one sheet by itself right and then the second one sheet strategy is to get kind of everything in one place as i just said right to get all of our lives as simple and as clear as possible clearly stated or as simply and as clearly stated as possible in one place such that we have a guide right um there's a great quote i think it's from seneca right that no wind is favorable for a ship that doesn't know to which port it's sailing so we need to have some sense of direction right that's a really cool idea i think from seneca everything will just seem random if you have no general path for yourself so this idea of the bird's eye one sheet part two gives us that path right and we all have multiple roles that's key we might have full-time jobs relationships side business fitness goals right we can take one blank sheet and organize all these things such that there is a space for each of these major aspects of our lives then we can spend a few minutes thinking and writing about what needs to go into each box or column that represents the role and will inspire good action this creates a view over the major aspects of our lives this will make everything feel and actually be more manageable because it will be clearer than cacophonous disorganized thoughts because it's overwhelming you got a million things on your plate right again you want to thrive in your relationship you want to be a good friend you want to so we have to get all maybe right this might not be for everybody but for me i've once again i've used this to help me immensely right break it down organize it put lines right to make boxes or columns or whatever title each one get a general clear understanding of what the major tasks are should create some clarity help us move forward right here we go final exercise or final technique for exercises and this is you know i think also a good way to end ironically because i hope you carry something with you from this right so this is called leaving things behind and carrying things forward okay so again similar to research to an extent but much of what we do with our memory or in this case much of what we may not be doing affects us negatively we might locate some memories that stick with us and have impacted us significantly in this exercise if we carry these memories as pain or let's say only as pain and allow them to influence our actions thoughts and feelings in the present they are of course also shaping our future we what should we carry and what should we let go of this is a central question of this exercise so i think we could do this exercise when something kind of comes up right so we we might find that we're returning to a memory when we shouldn't be or returning to a memory in an incorrect way that isn't helping us or that isn't truthful we can sit down and ask ourselves what should i take forward with this what should i leave behind or i think we could even do this and just you know as like a way to check in with ourselves here and there right this could also be maybe something you do once and it really clicks and works and works for us right but ultimately i think it's it's commonly the case that our past influences our present and then thus our future in ways that we don't want it to so even just putting that question to ourselves right and really taking it seriously and writing about it right i think it'd be really helpful painting a more detailed image of the memory okay seeing the emotions around the memory why are we carrying it with us opening ourselves up to carrying these things forward right so the things that we learned right about the world things that we learned about ourselves right some memories of course are going to be super important for us right and so i think it's really important for us to be able to see the emotions around us right and so i think it's really important for us to be able to see the emotions around us right and so i think it's really important for us to be able to see seeing them perhaps as strength as sources of strength because we made it through something allowing them to not only torture us but to see that you know these are reasons why i should be confident okay we don't necessarily have to only focus on the pain we can focus on once again the strength that we got from the pain epictetus one of his most interesting quotes i think is in pain you will find strength so this is a way to find strength you will find strength in pain you will find strength in pain you will find strength in pain because you're asking a different question you're not just saying what was the pain here or why is this bothering me you're saying what should i leave behind what should i take forward you take the strength forward right and that's potentially a new insight that could be really helpful for us right so how do we relate to our past in the healthiest way possible well we have to make sure it's not only painful and of course it will be elements of everyone's past are going to be painful we have to make room for that pain again we have to learn from it this is actually going to be useful we have a great great essay we're going to read i'll allude to it a little bit now and i'll keep it brief but if you went camping right in the morning of this is from uh the school of life this is a great essay we're going to look at right um if you went camping in the morning of you made a specific type of coffee you put a specific type of shirt on you with your friend right you went to the campsite it's sunny there's trees there's dirt right and all of a sudden you see a bear that's a reason to be afraid right bears you don't want to get involved right so that makes sense you were afraid in that moment right if you don't learn how to leave behind the fact that you saw a bear that one day in that one forest right and it was it was just something that happened to you right if you don't learn to leave behind that emotion of being afraid that that rational emotion of being afraid what may happen is all of a sudden now years later when you when you make that coffee again you smell it you might all of a sudden fear might rise up in you because you think you'll see the bear you're making that delusional connection that whenever i smell that coffee here comes a bear you might be walking around the bronx or queens thinking that you're going to see a bear you don't want to live like that right so you have to confront that memory and the great word from that essay i think is you have to localize it this happened once this will not happen or let's even say it's incredibly unlikely this will happen every time i see trees and it's sunny and i'm wearing that shirt it doesn't make any sense but if we don't talk to the memory and again what should i carry forward what should i leave behind right leave behind that camping equals bear or that that shirt equals bear we have to detach localize leave it so i hope this was helpful those are our 12 techniques now in two episodes so once again choose what might sound interesting to you try to adopt it as soon as possible when we do our bibliotherapy i think the philosophy will help us with these things right and uh thank you for listening listening. Take care.
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