3246: [Part 2] What is Stoicism and How Can it Turn your Life to Solid Gold? by Mr. Money Mustache

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily, Episode 3246 What is Stoicism and How Can it Turn your Life to Solid Gold, Part 2 by Mr. Money Mustache of Mr.MoneyMustache.com And I'm Justin Malik. Welcome to the old podcast, the OLD podcast, Optimal Living Daily, where I read to you

[00:00:19] like a big ongoing audiobook from many different authors. Today being a continuation from yesterday, so I'd recommend listening to yesterday's episode first if you haven't already. But if you're all caught up, let's get right to Part 2 and continue optimizing your life.

[00:00:34] What is Stoicism and How Can it Turn your Life to Solid Gold, Part 2 by Mr. Money Mustache of Mr.MoneyMustache.com Moving from the mental to the physical, Stoics actually enjoy experimenting with voluntary discomfort.

[00:00:56] As I contemporary Stoic, you might make a point of seeing how long you can leave the air conditioning off on a summer day, or try hiking in bare feet instead of shoes occasionally to feel the land and force your feet to adapt to tougher conditions than

[00:01:11] a moisture-wicking merino wool hiking sock. Sounds absurd by modern standards until you realize that by doing this, you're actually broadening your comfort zone even while you eliminate your fear of discomfort. Thanks to the practice, you're now able to enjoy yourself in a much broader range

[00:01:29] of temperatures and appreciate the comfort of shoes when you do have them. Meanwhile, a person with the extreme opposite philosophy might become irritated if they ever have to travel in less than a first-class airplane seat or stay in less than a five-star

[00:01:44] hotel or drink sub $500 per bottle wine. By experimenting with voluntary discomfort, we learn to appreciate far more of our life and can be content with a much simpler and more wholesome one. The more pleasures a man captures, the more masters he will have to serve.

[00:02:08] Nature itself told the Stoics what conditions they should learn to appreciate as humans, since they realized we are all in fact an integral part of nature. In Mustachian terminology, all of these thoughts relating to adapting your comfort level to embrace nature are collectively referred to as bad city.

[00:02:28] But there's much more to the philosophy than sitting around trying to be happy with what you've got. Stoics believe that the main purpose of our productive energy is to fulfill all of our life's obligations to our best ability and to help our fellow humans.

[00:02:45] So a Stoic is actually a hard-working person who enjoys the feeling of hard work, even extremely hard work as it just falls into the voluntary discomfort slash bad city category described earlier. Rewarding social interactions are a specialty of the Stoic.

[00:03:04] They believe that humans are social animals at the core and thus we must exercise this part of our personality to maintain a balanced happiness. But at the same time, it is not rational to have any interest in fame or social

[00:03:18] status since these are fleeting indulgences rather than sources of true happiness. When we encounter insults from other people, we must deal with them with reason rather than anger. Either the insult is true, in which case we should be grateful for the insulter for

[00:03:36] pointing out this area in which we could improve, or it's false, in which case we should pity the insulter for his lack of accurate perception. Either way, an insult is nothing to get upset about.

[00:03:50] In the case of a true FWIT who not only insults us but manages to commit major injustices to us, the best revenge is simply to live an even better life while refusing to be like that person.

[00:04:05] I have actually been through a major encounter with one of these and while my initial anger took over a year to subside, I'm happy to report that I'm now exacting my quote-unquote revenge more thoroughly each day.

[00:04:20] The core of all of these tricks and techniques is to let reason triumph over your reflexive emotions. By understanding human emotions and motivations as thoroughly as possible, Stoics are able to bend our evolutionary programming and use it for the purpose

[00:04:36] of attaining a ridiculous amount of happiness rather than its original purpose which is to survive and reproduce successfully. For example, our insatiable desire for more of everything is not a moral failing on the part of humans. It's a natural evolutionary program just as simple as the programming that

[00:04:57] makes even you raise an eyebrow when you see an unusually curvaceous and sexy butt. Ancestors of ours who were insatiable and always wanted more mates, more children, more food, more social standing and more security against

[00:05:14] predators and enemies were quite simply the ones who got to produce the largest number of surviving children. But while insatiability did historically lead to more children, it does not lead to more happiness in a modern life. For happiness, you have to trick yourself into being happy with

[00:05:32] the things you've got. Last in my own miniature summary of Stoicism, I'd like to point out the difference between pleasure and happiness. An alternative philosophy called hedonism suggests that to have the best life you simply maximize pleasure.

[00:05:49] But Stoics reject that since pleasure is just one dimension of true happiness. Eating cupcakes is pleasurable as is sleeping in, drinking wine and watching TV. Higher level pleasures might be had by driving a fancy car for the first few

[00:06:09] times, receiving compliments from important people or having millions of people ask for your autograph. But each pleasure very rapidly wears out if overused and the hedonist is left scrambling desperately higher up the pyramid of earthly pleasures until he runs out of money or health.

[00:06:29] Meanwhile, by focusing on happiness, the underlying signal delivered by pleasure, the Stoic can make it a much more consistent and tranquil companion in his life. In our society as well as those thousands of years ago, the Stoics is truly the one who has got it going on.

[00:06:48] In these days, he ends up becoming much richer as an almost trivial side benefit. You just listened to part two of the post titled, What is Stoicism? And how can it turn your life to solid gold? By mrmoneymustache of mrmoneymustache.com

[00:07:08] And I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you again to Mr Money Mustache. And again, you can hear more from him over on Optimal Finance Daily where articles covering all things money from saving to investing to earning more are read to you every day.

[00:07:27] And nice to hear this reminder about finding comfort in discomfort. We probably don't hear this enough because it's so counterintuitive to what we're taught that life should be. Seems like the dream is to work hard to make more money just so

[00:07:42] we can then live the ultimate life of comfort. But that just makes us weak, right? Sounds great on the surface, having people wait on you and do everything for you. But if you really think about it and visualize it, what are we doing then?

[00:07:59] Do we even have a purpose? Are we so displeased with discomfort that any kind of inconvenience becomes a problem? That doesn't sound like a great way to live. So something to think about today and this week as you go about your days, I'll do the same.

[00:08:16] But with that, thank you for being here listening every day. And thank you if you've ever shared this show with someone that goes a really long way to keep all of this going. Have a great rest of your day and night, and I'll see you tomorrow as usual.

[00:08:29] Where your optimal life.