Mark: Alright Michelle, I'm going to say a word, and you give me the first image that pops into your head. The word is... "Stoic." Michelle: Easy. A statue. Probably marble. Definitely has no fun at parties and is judging my life choices. Mark: (Laughs) Perfect. That's exactly the myth we're here to bust today. Because the real Stoics, the ones we're talking about in John Sellars' fantastic little book, Lessons in Stoicism, were anything but statues. Michelle: John Sellars... he's a big deal in this world, right? Like, he's not just some guy who read a few old books. Mark: Exactly. He's a philosophy lecturer and one of the founders of the Modern Stoicism movement. His whole mission is to show that this isn't some dusty, academic exercise. It's a practical toolkit for living, which is probably why the book is so highly rated and seen as one of the best starting points for anyone curious about this philosophy. Michelle: A toolkit. I like that. It sounds more useful than a marble statue. So, where does this toolkit start? What’s the first tool we pull out to stop being so… stony? Mark: The first step to breaking that statue myth is understanding their core operating principle, which is something they called the dichotomy of control.

Michelle: Dichotomy of control. That sounds a little intimidating. Break it down for me. Mark: It's actually incredibly simple, and it's the foundation for everything else. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who was born a slave and became one of the most respected teachers of his time, put it this way: some things are up to us, and some things are not. Michelle: Okay, that seems obvious. Mark: It does, but the genius is in how they defined the categories. The only things that are truly up to us, in our complete control, are our judgments, our impulses, and our desires. Basically, our inner world of thought and reaction. Michelle: And what's not in our control? Mark: Everything else. Our body, our health, our reputation, our wealth, what other people think of us, whether it rains tomorrow. The Stoics would say these things are "external" and largely outside our direct command. The book has this great quote from Epictetus that says much of human unhappiness is simply due to misclassification—thinking we have control over things when we really don't. Michelle: Hold on. That sounds great in a philosophy class, but what about my career? My reputation is my job. I can't just decide it's not in my control and stop caring if my boss thinks I'm doing a terrible job. That feels like a recipe for getting fired. Mark: That's the perfect challenge, and the Stoics have a brilliant answer for it. They aren't saying you shouldn't care or shouldn't act. They're saying you should shift your goal. The book uses this fantastic analogy of an expert archer. Michelle: An archer. Okay, I'm listening. Mark: An expert archer does everything in her power to hit the target. She checks the bow, she selects the best arrow, she accounts for the distance, she controls her breathing, she perfects her aim and her release. All of that is within her control. That is her work. Michelle: Right. She's a professional. Mark: But the moment the arrow leaves the bow, it's no longer in her control. A sudden gust of wind could blow it off course. The target could unexpectedly move. Her goal, as a Stoic archer, is not "to hit the target"—because that depends on external factors like the wind. Her goal is "to perform the act of shooting as skillfully as possible." Michelle: Ah, so it's about focusing on the process, not the outcome. I can see that. It’s like a startup founder. She can control the quality of her product, how she treats her team, her work ethic. She can't control whether a pandemic hits or a competitor gets a billion dollars in funding. Mark: Precisely. Her job is to be the best possible founder, day in and day out. If she ties her happiness to the outcome—becoming a unicorn company—she's setting herself up for potential misery because the market is the wind. But if she ties her sense of success to her own actions—to being a virtuous, hardworking, and excellent leader—then nothing can touch her. Her sense of worth comes from within. Michelle: That's a huge mental shift. It’s moving the goalposts from the external world, which is chaotic and unpredictable, to your internal world, which you command. Mark: Exactly. You stop trying to control the wind and you focus all your energy on perfecting your shot. That's the dichotomy of control. It’s not about passivity; it’s about strategic focus. It’s about pouring your energy into the one area where you have 100% jurisdiction: your own character and actions. Michelle: Okay, so if we can't control externals, what about the internal stuff? My feelings? The book talks a lot about emotions, which feels contradictory for 'statue' people. If I'm angry or anxious, that feels pretty out of my control sometimes. Mark: That is the perfect bridge to the second, and maybe most misunderstood, part of the Stoic toolkit. They had a very specific, and I think revolutionary, idea about where emotions come from.

Michelle: I’m ready. Tell me how the emotionless statues actually dealt with feelings. Mark: They would argue that you are never a passive victim of your emotions. Instead, you are their author. The Stoics saw emotions as the direct product of judgments we make. Michelle: What does that mean, a 'product of judgment'? Mark: It means an event itself is neutral. It has no inherent emotional charge. The emotion is added by your interpretation of the event. The book quotes Epictetus again, and this is a game-changer: "Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed." Michelle: Wow. So if someone insults me, the insult itself isn't the problem. The problem is my judgment that says, "That was offensive, that was unfair, that person disrespected me." Mark: Exactly. The insult is just sound waves hitting your eardrum. The suffering comes from the story you tell yourself about those sound waves. Michelle: So it's like a cognitive algorithm. Event + My Judgment = Emotion. And the only variable I can change is my judgment. Mark: You've got it. That's the Stoic hack. They aren't saying "don't feel." They're saying, "intervene at the judgment stage so the negative emotion never has to arise in the first place." It's proactive emotional engineering, not suppression. Michelle: That sounds incredibly difficult to do in the heat of the moment. Mark: It is. And they acknowledged that. Seneca, who was a tutor and advisor to the notoriously volatile Emperor Nero, knew this better than anyone. He lived in a world where one wrong word, one flicker of an unwanted emotion, could get you killed. Michelle: That puts my frustration with a slow driver into perspective. Seneca was dealing with life and death based on someone else's mood. Mark: Absolutely. And he wrote a whole essay called "On Anger," where he describes anger as a "temporary madness." He saw firsthand how destructive it was. Caligula, another emperor he served, once ordered Seneca's death simply out of jealousy. Seneca only survived because someone convinced Caligula that Seneca was so sickly he'd die soon anyway. Michelle: That's insane. So for him, this wasn't just a philosophical idea. It was a literal survival strategy. Mark: It was. He breaks down the emotional process into stages. First, there’s the initial shock or physical reaction—what he calls a 'first movement.' You can't control that. If a book drops, you'll jump. That's involuntary. The second stage is where the judgment happens. You assent to the idea: "This is bad," or "I have been wronged." The third stage is the full-blown emotion, where you lose control and are swept away by it. The Stoic work happens at stage two. Michelle: You have to catch it. You have to pause between the initial shock and the judgment that follows. Mark: Yes. You have to create a space to ask yourself: "Is this judgment true? Is this situation actually harmful, or just inconvenient? Is this person's opinion something I actually control or value?" By questioning the judgment, you can stop the emotion from gaining momentum. Michelle: It’s like being a bouncer at the door of your own mind. You don't have to let every thought in. You can check its ID first. Mark: That’s a perfect analogy. And that high-stakes world Seneca lived in, where he had to be a bouncer for his own mind every single day, brings us to the most challenging, but maybe most powerful, Stoic idea: how they viewed adversity itself.

Michelle: Okay, I'm braced. I have a feeling this is where the philosophy gets really tough. Mark: It does, because it runs counter to almost everything our modern culture tells us. We're taught to seek comfort, avoid pain, and eliminate friction. The Stoics, especially Seneca, had a completely different take. He saw adversity not as something to be avoided, but as a necessary training exercise for the soul. Michelle: The soul's personal trainer is... misfortune? That's a hard sell. Mark: Think of it this way. Seneca asks, how can you ever know if you're courageous if you've never faced danger? How can you know if you're patient if everything has always gone your way? He argues that a life of unbroken good fortune is actually a curse. It leaves you untested, soft, and unprepared for the inevitable moment when things go wrong. Michelle: So hardship is like a gym for your character. You don't want to live at the gym, but you have to go there to get stronger. Mark: Exactly. He says the wise person will put up with adversity, not necessarily go out of their way to meet it, but they will see it as an opportunity to display virtue. An opportunity to practice courage, justice, and moderation. Michelle: Hold on. This sounds a lot like the cliché 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger,' but the book even says that's not quite right. And this other idea he had, the 'premeditation of future evils'—thinking about all the bad things that could happen—sounds like a recipe for anxiety, not resilience. How is that helpful? Mark: That's the crucial distinction. It's not about becoming a pessimist or dwelling on negativity. The point of the premeditation of evils, or premeditatio malorum, is to remove the element of surprise. Michelle: Surprise? Why is that the key? Mark: Because shock is what paralyzes us and fuels irrational emotional responses. Seneca says that a blow "falls hardest on those who don’t expect it." If you've never once considered the possibility of losing your job, getting sick, or losing a loved one, the event itself will be devastatingly amplified by the shock of its arrival. You'll be thinking, "This can't be happening to me!" Michelle: Which, as Seneca points out, is an illogical thought. Of course it can happen to you. It can happen to anyone. Mark: Right. So by calmly and rationally reflecting on potential misfortunes—not to wallow in them, but to simply acknowledge their possibility—you're doing two things. First, you're reminding yourself to be grateful for what you have right now, because it's not guaranteed. Second, you're mentally preparing yourself. You're building a kind of psychological immune system. Michelle: Ah, so it's not pessimism. It's emotional disaster-preparedness. It’s like having a fire drill for your feelings. You hope you never have to use it, but if the alarm goes off, you know exactly where the exits are instead of panicking. Mark: That's a brilliant way to put it. The book tells the story of Seneca writing to his friend Marcia, who was inconsolable three years after her son's death. His advice was essentially this: you should have prepared for this possibility. Not in a morbid way, but by remembering that life is temporary, that our loved ones are, in a sense, on loan to us. Michelle: That sounds so harsh, but I can see the logic. The quote from Epictetus in the book is even more direct. He says, "Under no circumstances ever say ‘I have lost something’, only ‘I returned it’." Your child, your wife, your property—it was returned. Mark: It's a stark reframing, but it's aimed at reducing suffering by aligning our perspective with the reality of nature. Nothing is permanent. By accepting that, we can love and appreciate things more fully while they're here, without being destroyed when they're gone.

Mark: So when you put it all together, you have this incredibly robust, three-part toolkit. First, you use the dichotomy of control to focus your energy only on what you can truly influence: your own mind. Michelle: You stop trying to control the wind and perfect your archery. Mark: Exactly. Second, you act as the bouncer of your mind, examining your judgments to engineer your emotions, rather than being a victim of them. Michelle: You rewrite your own emotional algorithm. Mark: And third, you use life's inevitable challenges as your personal gym, a training ground to build character, using premeditation not as pessimism, but as a fire drill for your soul. Michelle: It's not about being a statue at all. It's about being an archer, a cognitive scientist, and a mental athlete. It's incredibly active, not passive. It’s a philosophy of action, not apathy. Mark: That's the whole lesson. Stoicism isn't about enduring life with a stiff upper lip. It's about engaging with life skillfully, rationally, and virtuously to achieve what Zeno, the founder, called 'a smooth flow of life'—a state of inner tranquility and resilience, no matter what the world throws at you. Michelle: It’s a profound shift. It feels like it could change the texture of your entire day. Mark: It really can. And maybe the one thing to try this week, for anyone listening, is from Epictetus. It's incredibly simple. The next time something frustrating or upsetting happens—someone cuts you off in traffic, you get a critical email, your Wi-Fi dies—just pause for a second and ask yourself one question: "Is this in my control?" Michelle: That's it? Just ask the question? Mark: That's it. You don't even have to have the perfect answer. Just the act of pausing and asking that question short-circuits the reactive emotional spiral and puts you back in the driver's seat of your own mind. Michelle: I'd love to hear how that goes for people. Let us know what you discover when you ask that question. It feels like it could change everything. Mark: It just might. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.