"Minimizing pain, maximizing joy" from Hidden Brain
“Minimizing pain, maximizing joy”
Source: Hidden Brain | William B. Irvine (Listen: 57 min)
Contributor: Selena Garcia
“do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” - William B. Irvine
Curveballs. Setbacks. Tragedies. What would ancient philosophers do?
In this episode of Hidden Brain, you'll be given some convenient and useful tools. You'll explore the psychological techniques of those who respond exceptionally well to life's hardships and learn why our reaction to our own suffering often ends up making it worse. Are you building your emotional immune system? And wtf is negative visualization? There's a lot of good stuff in this one. Check it out from beginning to end.
"For thousands of years, philosophers have come up with strategies to help us cope with such hardship. We talk with philosopher William Irvine about ancient ideas — backed by modern psychology — that can help us manage disappointment and misfortune."
“You have an emotional immune system, but you need to train it.” - William B. Irvine
(22:08) William: “The secret these people have in common—they realized a few basic insights. One is that history is history. History is over; you can’t change history. You can change what happens tomorrow. And another thing, the Stoics actually never said what I’m about to tell you, but I think it could be their motto: “do what you can with what you’ve got, where you are.” And if you look at the people that we hold up as this kind of hero, who bounced back from extreme setbacks, they did what they could with what they had, where they were.”
Some of the stories they discuss are Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King, Bethany Hamilton, Lou Gehrig, and others.
(28:53) William: “This is what I call Stoic training. I like to think of it in terms of your immune system. We all know about our biological immune system. What does it do? Well, it fights off germs. It fights off viruses. And the interesting thing is unless you develop your biological immune system, it’s not going to function properly…”
(29:46) William: “The Stoics didn’t think in these terms because they didn’t know about immune systems, but it’s a nice parallel. You have an emotional immune system, but you need to train it. And the way you train it is by experiencing things that are going to make you unhappy. You go out of your way to experience those things just because doing so will develop your emotional immune system.”
(30:36) Shankar: “Some people might hear what you’re saying and sort of think of what you’re saying as a form of gaslighting. And here’s what I mean, because effectively what we might be telling people is ‘yes, your life sucks. Yes, terrible things have happened to you, but if you’re unhappy, it’s your fault because you are not reacting properly to your setbacks. Is there a risk that stoicism can sort of transfer over into the phenomenon of blaming the victim?”
(31:02) William: “We could do that. I mean, here’s one way to put it; if you look at the classical stoics, they thought that if you want to have a happy life, if you want to have a life in which you flourish as a human being, there is an extent for which you have to take responsibility for that life. Now, that said, there are things in life you can’t control. And there are going to be these bad things that come up and happen to you. So, what do you do? You deal with them to the best of your ability. But the stoic insight was that most of the damage they do to you is not the event itself, but your reaction to the event. And so what you need to do, is figure out a way to keep that reaction within certain bounds.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST, HERE (57 min)
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