How Stoics Win

Advice and counsel.

One of my signature pieces of advice for my children to beat anxiety is as follows. Whenever you are stressed out and doubting yourself, go help somebody else. They will thank you and say “I couldn’t have done it without you.” That’s how you know your value. It could thus be said that my own journey came from helping my children overcome their own failure by leading them to help others overcome their failures. This particular habit of creating victory out of defeat is thus fundamental to why Stoicism is a winning strategy. So let’s get expository about it.

No Fear of Failure
The perspective of approaching some challenge that can result in a win or a loss is that you have to accept the possibility of loss. It is reasonable to accept your ambition. Understanding risk is not the same as risk avoidance; it is about managing risk. If you become realistic in a cost benefit analysis, it’s not because you are a genius, this is something you can learn practically. Imagine gaming in Vegas. If you are willing to spend money on the experience of gaming, then it doesn’t so much matter to you that the odds are in the house’s favor. The more you play, the better you can get at recognizing the situations that play generates. Sometimes the person next to you loses or wins spectacularly. You can learn from that as well.

The important point is that losing is part of the the game. The key ability is to contextualize loss, to accept it as a consequence of the rules. This enables you to stop catastrophizing. When you catastrophize, you begin believing that the world is out of control, or worse that the world is conspiring against you. You instantly victimize yourself. This enables all kinds of destructive dynamics.

Sharing Your Scars
Nothing should be so truthful as a post-mortem. Our traditions of funerals veer away from all that. Don’t ask me why. Most of our resumes are chock full of success and glory, and our cautionary tales tend to take the shape of supernatural zombie apocalypses. We sometimes get into quick analyses and readily declare something to be a shitshow, even when the path to success is clear. Doctor, it hurts when I do that. Then don’t do that. Sometimes it can be that simple. Even if you can see the way around somebody’s errors, you benefit when they tell you the truth about them. Sometimes there are reasons why that you never imagined, which sheds light on your prejudices.

If you are responsible for yourself, then don’t lie to yourself. If you are responsible for others, don’t lie to them either. When you make painful mistakes, when you endure suffering that could have been avoided, you don’t pretend that the stove wasn’t hot. So your experience, good or bad, can be an example and a force multiplier when explained truthfully to others. Let them learn from your mistakes. Don’t hide them just because you failed. Don’t be cynical and say “That’s just the way it is.” That’s cowardly. If people ignore your lessons and fail the same way, that’s on them. If you conceal your scars and others fail the same way, that’s on you. Don’t think you can get away with it.

The Universe Makes Sense
People forget that human beings have survived for tens of thousands of years. Our lives were full of knowledge and experience that was shaped by learning how to adapt to our environment. We might be fallible in the short term, but we have won in the long term. Our instincts make sense for our surroundings. These surroundings are what define us, we are the spirit in the barrel of Earth. We walk. We breath. We reproduce. We build. We destroy. We are capable of all of these things, often instinctually. That is because the laws of the universe are consistent. We make sense because our environment makes sense. If you jump off a cliff and hit the bottom with 50Gs of force, you die. That doesn’t change. Your fear of heights is reasonable.

You can wish for 7 fingers on each hand. You can wish you never had to use the toilet. You can wish to instantly learn kung-fu, but you will be contradicted by what is. You can pretend. You can tell fairy tails, but these will not change the rules of the universe. There is no magic. There is only the mystery of what you have yet to discover. And you won’t live long enough to discover everything. You can curse your fate and yell at God. That only raises your blood pressure, not the meaning of sea level or the nature of boiling water.

Whatever can go wrong is permissible by the laws of the universe, but that law is not conspiring against you any more than your very existence is real. You exist by the same laws. You’re not in some simulation. The simulation is in your imagination.

Now is Not Everything
Playing doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes perfect. Sometimes. Persistence is primary. So persist. You don’t have to win every time, because where you are now is not everything. If you lose today, then that’s one day. If you lose every day this year, the Earth is not going to stop moving to a new spot in the universe. So find your own center of gravity, move it forward and persist. Even if you have to pivot, play that angle.

The same goes for your environment. Now is not the worst time in the history of mankind. It’s not even close. Study history. Study the history of human failure, of human anything. It changes. It gives you perspective on what could happen again, or might never happen again. Now is not everything. As long as you’re alive, you get another chance. As long as humans have been around to tell the tale, you can discover what their chances were and how they changed. Nothing at all remains unchanging except the laws of the universe, most of which we don’t even understand, now.

When my children cried, I told them the same way Homer Simpson did, that’s the worst thing, so far. Next time if make this mistake again, you won’t cry so much. You’ll know more than you do right now. All you need to do is pay attention and remember.

Trust Yourself
What do you know for sure? Your name? Where your right hand is? How to walk up stairs? You could list thousands of things. You’d get bored doing it. You already know what you don’t know - what you haven’t tried. People don’t fail because they have weaknesses so much as they overuse their strengths. You know what skills you have that are hammers and you are eagle-eyed about finding nails. This wasn’t always the case. Trust that you can find a new case. Trust that you can teach yourself. You have two sides of your brain. The smart side can guide the stupid side. The confident self can reassure the fearful self. Start working on trusting yourself to do right by yourself.

Sometimes all you need is somebody else to say what you were thinking, and suddenly you feel OK about it. Here’s the thing. Don’t wait. Stop prefacing all your comments with qualifications. Stop saying “In my humble opinion”. When you say what you really think, then you don’t waste anyone’s time. If you offend someone or speak out of turn or say something incorrect, you immediately learn something new when you are told. Don’t assume that you will be told any of those things until you are. Deal with the reality of speaking your mind to others. It is, after all, your mind. Don’t let speaking your mind be contingent on what you anticipate will be a negative response. The purpose of speaking out is so that your ideas might die, instead of you. See the difference? Don’t be impulsive. Speak up and say what you intend to do. That’s the benefit of being a social animal. Say what you mean, and don’t mumble.

The Scooter Story
At the age of 55, I was deep into circuit training. I went from 225 down to 195. I got to the point at which I was hyped up after my hour workout and wanted to run more afterwards. So I drove to my neighborhood park still sweaty from my workout to walk on a dirt track and do sprints and pullups on each lap.

One day on the walking part I watched a gaggle of young parents monitoring their toddlers playing. One such kid, about 3, was riding his scooter on the basketball court. Shortly, he fell off. Like all parents, these were immediately responsive to his wails. Then things went wrong. Daddy immediately pulled him away from the scooter and deposited him into Mommy’s arms. He kept crying as Mommy bounced him up and down and made ‘awww’ sounds. Within a few seconds she was promising ice cream and Daddy was putting the scooter in the minivan. After a minute, the kid was still crying over his not-skinned knee. So much for that adventure.

What should have happened is that the parent should have gone to the scene of the accident and assessed matters. “What happened?” should have been the first question. This immediately shows concern, but it also forces the kid to stop crying and explain. That puts the kid in charge of communicating the situation, even if they’re still whimpering during their explanation. The parent could then reconcile this with the assessment and back up the kid’s story to the extent he got it right. Then a cause and effect relationship could have been explained in kid language. “It was a pebble, that stopped your wheel. Yes that happens sometimes.” It would have given the kid a chance to go kick the pebble off the court. “Now let’s see about that knee.” Fix it. Get back on the scooter smarter than the first time.

Here’s a little dose of Jocko.