Heroic Chat with Donald Robertson: Mastery Is a Practice, Not a State

Foreign. It is 1:01pm Central Time, which means it is officially day one. Today we have a special guest, one of my absolute favorite teachers and stoic philosophers and practitioners, Donald Robertson. Donald, thanks for being here and I'll give you a full intro, but great to see you.

That's great to see you, Brian. You know, I always love speaking to your community because I know that they're all really into stoicism and philosophy. So very looking forward to it. Absolutely.

Right on. Well, you've helped us get more deeply into Stoicism. We will open the app and search for Robertson. And what we will find, Donald, is that I am a big fan of yours and student of yours, and you have helped us shape our understanding of stoicism deeply. So, team Search Robertson. In the app, you will find 16 plus ones in which I reference Donald and his work. You know, your. Your choice of Hercules. I want to talk about a little bit today in the context of your hero's journey. So I want you to share the story in a moment about the choice of Hercules, and then I want to hear you tell us the choices in your life that were akin to the choices Hercules made on your hero's journey, where you chose the hard path, you chose the noble path, when you could have gone an easy way. So that'll be fun. Your warriors versus librarians distinction. Goosebumps. I don't know how many times I've come back to that, but it's fantastic. And there's just so many other ideas there. Of course, Donald wrote How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, and which, again, just to load that real quick, if you all have not read the note yet, get it. If you want to go deeper into stoicism via Marcus Aurelius, this is the book to read. Donald does such a fantastic job with that. And then the philosophy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I also loved your connection to CBT and ancient Stoicism is just so cool. That's a bit more of a dense read, you know, then how to Think Like a Roman Emperor. And of course, you also have the. What do you call that? The. The Beautiful. It's not a comic. What is. What is the name?

I don't normally do this, but I have to have it right beside me.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I love it. So what's the word for that? I'm Verisimus. But what's the.

What's the graphic novel? You mean a graphic novel?

I don't get how much Donald. I read books. So this is a graphic novel that if you want to introduce this to anyone, particularly those who might be into more of a visual representation of these ideas, then check that out. So, Donald, again, appreciate you. Thrilled to be here today and excited to go deep. We start these chats with a quick breath and just a little grounding exercise. Put you on the spot because I didn't ask you before we came on, but we've had a number of our guides lead us in a quick, you know, meditation or visualization or whatever. Mark Divine, Navy seal, did a box breathing exercise. John Mackey of Whole Foods had a really cool little, little thing he did. Do you have anything that you're comfortable doing just to kind of ground us over, you know, a minute or two?

Yeah, sure. Like a couple of minutes. Okay. So, I mean, if you guys want to close your eyes and put your feet flat on the floor if you like, and separate your hands and rest them on your lap if you want. And with your eyes closed, you're naturally going to become more aware of the sensations in your body and the rise and fall of your breath. Maybe any sounds that you can hear around you. Sound of my voice. I want you just to, each time you exhale, think of counting. So you're going to start, let's say, with the number 10, and then silently in your mind, count down from 10, one number with each exhalation. Kind of like this. It sounds like this in your mind. 10, Nine, Eight. Just carry on counting each exhalation of breath so you reach zero, and then start again with the number ten. And as you continue doing that, don't try to change your breathing. Don't try to stop it from changing either. Just observe natural rise and fall of your breath. And I want you to realize that the counting, something that you're doing voluntarily, you're choosing to do it. It's a technique for an exercise. There's also other stuff going on in consciousness, in your mind that's involuntary or automatic. There might be automatic thoughts or memories or images. There might be sounds or sensations that intrude on consciousness. So as you contemplate your breathing, continue gently counting. Just notice the distinction between what you're choosing to do, the technique, and the other stuff that's just happening to you. So distinction between what's directly under your control, what isn't, it's automatic or involuntary in your experience. It's a very stoic, philosophical distinction, and you can learn to become more attuned to it just by doing a very, very simple, minimal exercise like this. So I'm just going to give you another 20 seconds or so to carry on doing that in silence. Then when you're ready, your eyes still closed, just stop counting, let go of the numbers and just continue to contemplate your breathing. Do nothing for a while, Becoming an observer of your own mind, thoughts and feelings, sensations. When you're ready, in your own time, gradually thinking about opening your eyes, beginning to. When you're ready, opening your eyes, think about movement and action and where you are, what you're doing and conversation that we're all having right now.

Donald, that is the coolest way to integrate a quick mindfulness meditation practice with stoicism that I could ever possibly imagine. Well done and on the spot. I imagine you've done that before, but that was fantastic.

Done it before. I was always a techniques guy as a therapist. So over the years I've taught therapists for a long time and yeah, we've done a lot of different kind of practical exercises. But I like this one because it's really, really simple. It's a rip off or it's inspired by a technique that's well known in psychology called the Benson Method that was published by a professor of physiology. I know you like these facts called Herbert Benson, Harvard Medical school in the 1970s. He was an expert in blood pressure and that technique he developed from a number of studies. It's become very popular in behavioral therapy, cbt.

That's so cool. I'm going to open the app again and search Benson for all the references. He was one of the leading researchers back in the day who made a science out of. He didn't call it mindfulness, he called it the relaxation response.

Relaxation response, that's right.

He's from Harvard. So in the, in the 70s, 80s, whatever it was, he couldn't call it meditation at the point and he wanted to be deferential to. There are a lot of different ways to elicit the relaxation response, whether it's a meditation practice or yoga or whatever. We have a couple of notes on that, so check that out. But Donald, I want to, I want to start with you. So you know, when I, when I think of you and I think of your hero's journey, I'm just very curious because you're this fascinating blend of a therapist who is trained therapists, a stoic scholar and practitioner in the truest sense and you're tatted out so that, that combination here. Then there's all the other, there's all the other cool stuff going on. But who does that? That is an iconoclastic hero that has a Good story behind it. So can you tell us a bit about your hero's journey? And if you could weave in the choice of Hercules with your story, that would be even better.

If I can weave in the choice, oh, I'll have a go at doing it. I noticed that in addition to my tax, I've just realized you can see that black and white object behind me is my cat. It's worth explaining in case you're thinking, what is that? I think it's on camera. I grew up in Scotland, as you may be able to tell, right in a small town called Eyre. And there wasn't really that much doing there. I dropped out of school, but I ended up going to university and studying philosophy at Aberdeen in Scotland. And I studied Plato and Aristotle, also studied Heidegger and Wittgenstein. And then I went to Sheffield University and I did my master's degree at an interdisciplinary center for philosophy and psychotherapy. And that set me up for life, basically. I've always had been involved in interdisciplinary studies combining, mainly combining ancient philosophy and modern evidence based psychotherapy at a practice in Harley street in central London, as a therapist for many years. And I trained other therapists around a training school, supervised them before I immigrated to Canada about eight years ago. Now mainly I write books, speak at conferences and stuff like that. But the story that you're alluding to, the Choice of Hercules, is one of the most important speeches about philosophy in antiquity. And it was a speech that was delivered originally by a sophist called Prodicus. His buddy Socrates heard it and paraphrased it. It was written down by Socrates student, an Athenian general called Xenophon. And that book that he wrote it in was found by Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. And he read it after he'd been shipwrecked in Piraeus near Athens. And it inspired him. It's an exhortation. It's what we call protreptic or exhortation. It's meant to inspire young men to become philosophers. In ancient Greece it was mainly young men, but you could call it a motivational speech. It's like a recruitment drive for philosophers in a way. And the speech says that the hero Hercules, who we may think of from Disney cartoons and stuff like that, is about the goofy God, demigod. But the Stoics idolized Hercules as this symbol of self discipline and wisdom. Hercules is lost in a wood in adolescence. It doesn't know whether to take the road on the left or the road on the right. And two goddesses appear before him. And one pushes her way to the front, and she's very beautiful and very alluring. She tries to seduce him. She says her name is Eudaimonia, but she's lying. And she says that if he follows her path, he'll never have to work again. He'll be able to live from the labor of other men. He'll have sex all day. He'll have the most amazing food. He'll live in a palace, you know, like, he'll live this absolute life of luxury and never have to lift a finger. She says, so it sounds very appealing. Sounds like the kind of thing that's on offer sometimes on social media today. Like, people are being sold a lifestyle and things like that. And gradually she finishes and the other woman comes forward, and she's a much more serene figure. And she tells Hercules her name is Arity, or Virtue. And her path, she says, I'm going to be honest with you. It's not for everybody. It's pretty tough. It's going to require a lot of hard work. You're going to have to fight monsters. Like, yeah, you're gonna have to face rejection. Like, you're gonna have to endure a lot of hardship. Now, Hercules had to complete the 12 labels famously. And so in Greek mythology, he had to do these incredibly tough things. So I'll give you the abbreviated version, the TLDR version. The last one is he has to go down to Hades and wrestle Cerberus bare handed, right? So it's tough. Like, it's hard going this path. And he has a think about it. And long story short, Hercules decides that he would rather follow the harder path, because Arete says, I'll be able to give you one thing that this other woman can't promise you. And that's the pleasure that comes from looking back on your life with a sense of pride and satisfaction. Like, you never gain that from the life of luxury and easy living that she's promised you. You'll only get it from effort, hard work and accomplishment. And he's won over by this and the myth. And so you have to imagine that Zeno was listening to that, and he apparently shot up, dropped the book, and said, where can I find a guy like the Socrates dude that's reciting this speech? And that was how he embarked on his career and ended up finding the Stoic school. I guess, in my life, you know, that was the career path that I followed. And I started off as a young guy in ar. Funnily enough, the main opportunity for me was working in It. And I was very lucky that I got a job as a systems analyst when I was like 18 or 19 or something like that. But I quit my first job, and everyone thought I was crazy because I said I wanted to go to university and study philosophy. And people said, what kind of job are you going to get by doing a degree in philosophy? And I. I didn't know the answer to that question, but I said, you know what? I don't know, but I'm going to figure out a way to. To make it work. And sometimes now I kind of take it for granted because, you know, that was many decades ago. But by following, I guess, my passion and the thing that I was really enthusiastic about, gradually, over time, you know, people started to become interested in the books that I was writing. And I find that now I spend all day, every day talking to people about philosophy. And it's a huge privilege, but I get satisfaction from the fact that I sacrificed things along the way and took risks and made an effort to pursue my. My dream.

That's so good. Every single thing about that is fantastic. I think, you know, I have this. I don't know if I had that the last time we connected, but I put Arete on my arm as a reminder of the ultimate game, you know, if the ultimate summum bonum highest good of life is to experience eudaimonia. Well, how do you achieve that? You live with Arete. And as we did the branding work for heroic, which is the tattoo here, Arete equals heroic. The moment you are expressing your best self and closing that gap and being that yudaimon, you are heroic from our vantage point. But we had to create a. You know, our branding team went through all these exercises, and one of them was, imagine that you're going to a party and you, the brand, are at the party. Who are you and how do you show up? And I have goosebumps right now. It's very clear to me, we're Arete. We're the ones showing up. We're not, you know, vice dressed up as virtue. Right. The other goddess. We're the stern yet elegant and humble and beautiful and somehow charismatic woman that's there. That's something about her special, you know, and that also the darkness of our brand. You know, I was, no, no, this isn't going to be easy. We're not going to give you the blue skies and the white, puffy clouds. This is dark mode. This is hard work. Let's go. So I have an affinity to that story, and you introduced me to that story. So bless you and thank you. It's deeply shaped how I think about things and all the way down to the brand that we created for Heroic.

It's amazing, you know, I wonder what the ancient Greeks, if they could see today, would think of that. But, you know, our privilege, your privilege. My privilege is often we're just discovering really cool stuff and curating it in a way, and introducing it to a new audience. You know, like, I feel like I just talk to people about my hobby. My. It took me a long time, a lot of hard work, to get to the point where I can get away with doing that all day and still afford to pay the rent. But, you know, if you persevere, then I think confident often you'll find a way to make a livelihood out of doing your hobby, even if it's something is, you know, something like philosophy, which the whole world thinks is the least useful, least practical discipline in the world. But people crave philosophy because it gives them a sense of purpose and meaning in life. It seems like the least practical thing in the world, but maybe it's the most practical thing in the world when.

You talk about this. So there's a few different places I want to go before we go too much further. I do want to know what your tattoos are, because that's going to be an important part of our discussion.

The ones you can see.

Yeah.

This is a Celtic tattoo.

Go ahead, we'll go there. Then I'm going to step back. We're going to hear about your heroes. And I want to hear about. Actually, let's go here first. One of the things that you've helped me clarify my thinking on is the fact that ancient philosophy was insanely, intensely practical. We studied these things in order to achieve the things that we felt called to do and play our roles well. And somehow there's been this abstraction into ivory towers and we've lost the practical warrior spirit. So your distinction on the librarian of the mind vis a vis the warrior of the mind. If you could just shine a light on that briefly, then we'll get to the tattoos and your heroes and all that good stuff.

I mean, sometimes it's weird stating things that in a way should be like, are so obvious. Actually, I think to a lot of native Greeks, it's more obvious. But when we started talking about stoicism, for the modern stoicism organization and doing conferences and stuff like that, we got some pushback. There were academic philosophers that said, you guys are reading too much psychotherapy into this. And, you know, like, it's philosophy isn't therapy, it's not self help. And I thought that showed a woeful ignorance of the ancient literature. Like we're like many, like real specialists in that area. Like I say, often native Greeks as well will think, of course, ancient philosophy is all about psychotherapy and self help. They wrote books about the therapy of the psyche. They talk about it constantly. The medical or therapeutic model is central to Stoic philosophy and earlier to Socrates, Pythagoras. It's there in some way in almost all of the ancient Greek philosophical traditions. They were like, you know, in some cases there were different types of Greek philosophy, but some of the Greek philosophers were almost like Buddhist or monks or yogis. The Pythagoreans took a vote of silence. They didn't talk about philosophy like for many years. They just contemplated it and you know, lived their lives differently in communities and developed self discipline. The Cynic philosophers often didn't really write much. They didn't do logic. They just worked on developing their character like a yogi. And Stoicism is kind of a hybrid of the more academic side of philosophy. They study a logic and stuff and then the more kind of character based yogic self discipline state of philosophy. So ancient philosophy was all about self improvement and we lost that somehow. It's one of the great crimes of history. It was stolen from us or it disappeared in part because of the things that the industrial revolution and the division of labor. So being a philosopher became a job that you did in a university and you get paid to stand in front of a blackboard and give lectures and stuff like that. And it stopped being what it originally was, which was a way of being and a way of life. You know, the ancient Greeks talk about philosophy very much as a whole way of life, not just like a salaried university position or something like that.

I love it. Fantastic. Quick highlight of the tattoos. What do we got?

Now? This is like just a Celtic tattoo. It's a dragon basically. But this is my. This is a Stoicism tattoo. You're not going to be able to read that very easily. But it says you udende non peponfas in Greek, which it means, it's quote one of the earliest Stoic quotes. It comes from Crates. So Zeno, after he read the choice of Hercules, he became a follower of a Cynic philosopher called Crates. And Crates made him carry a bowl of lentil soup through the Ceramicus, which is the cemetery, but it's also where the prostitutes worked. And it was a busy kind of slightly rough part of ancient Athens. To overcome his shyness, he had to carry around the bowl of lentil soup and tried to hide it under his robes and crates, smashed it with his staff so it was running down Zeno's legs. And Zeno freaked out. He became very embarrassed. And Kratos said to him, but nothing terrible has happened to you. It's all in your mind. It's just you catastrophizing it. And so I had that tattooed in my arm because it was. It meant a lot to me. I thought it summed up in a way the concept of decatastrophizing, which is quite central to the psychology of ancient Stoicism.

Wow, that is amazing. Just to drill into that for a moment longer, were there times in your life where you tended to catastrophize and this is a reminder for you or how. Why does that have such deep meaning for you?

Because I'm like, you know, people have different personality types, right? So I'm quite an introverted, sort of introspective guy. Like, I write, I like books and I like philosophy and stuff like that. I'm quite a verbal guy, like writing and stuff like that. So people like me are prone to worry and depression and these kind of more cognitive problems. Like, we, we think we overthink things, right? So our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. As Seneca said, you know, like, thinking like is our biggest asset, but it's also harmful when we morbidly ruminate or when we worry and overthink things. So, you know, we all, we suffer from our virtues. Like, if we're not carefully, they easily turn into devices. And so I think, you know, in my past, I tended to overthink things like, and to think about them in an abstract way, which kind of can make you prone to what we call in psychology today morbid rumination or. Or cognitive worrying. And that tends to be associated with catastrophic thinking, which I would define is. Well, it's technically defined in psychotherapy as exaggerating the severity and probability of a threat and also usually underestimating your coping ability. So if you do that, you'll freak yourself out. And we tend to do that the more we get lost in our thoughts about problems.

So good. Thank you for sharing that. And you share tools on how to deal with the tendency to ruminate or catastrophize in both of your books. Can you give us your number one? Go to practical. This really helps. Of course, you're looking down at your arm and boom, there's an ever present Reminder. But is there a practical tool that you can share with us that you use that you think we'd benefit from?

Yeah, I mean, like there's tools that we use in therapy that come in all shapes and sizes and some of them are difficult to explain, some of them are easy to explain. Some people like doing, some others people don't like doing. I'm going to actually teach you one that people don't like doing, but it's really easy to do. So some of the most powerful techniques are ones that aren't that popular. And I'm partly, I'm going to teach it because you won't find it in many self help books, but it's used quite a lot in clinical practice. And I'm going to teach you it because it happens to be very quick. So if we can get past the barrier of people feeling weird about doing it, because it's an odd technique, it's a very interesting one. So there are. In the first book I wrote in Stoicism, I identified about 18 different psychological strategies. Stoicism has a big, a large toolbox. But I think the most important one is cognitive distancing. We sometimes call it cognitive defusion because it's in stoicism. And that blows my mind because it's central to modern psychotherapy over the past few decades only really. So we now know that this is very important psychological process. It's used in the treatment of severe depression and anxiety, but also holds promises. We're building psychological resilience. It's a shift in perspective. So cognitive distancing happens when you separate your thoughts, especially upsetting thoughts, from the events to which they refer. So normally I think if something bad, if I lose my job, I think that's catastrophic. Like losing my job is catastrophic. And cognitive distancing would be if I said to myself, no, I'm viewing it as if it were catastrophic. Like, that's the narrative that I've created, that I project onto it. In itself, it's neither catastrophic nor good. It's just a neutral event. But I'm choosing to tell myself that it has this value. I'm projecting the concept, a catastrophe onto it. And so when I realize the way Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, described it is, he said, imagine you're wearing colored spectacles, say they're rose tinted, but you've been wearing them for such a long time you've forgotten that you're wearing them. So you just assume that the cat is pink, that the house is pink, that the world is pink, and then One day someone knocks them off, and you realize, oh, no, it's the glass that's pink. And I was attributing that to the external events. So imagine you're wearing catastrophic colored glasses, and you assume, losing my job is catastrophe. You know, like breaking up of a relationship is a catastrophe. Oh, no, I'm just choosing it to look at it that way. Someone else might look at or experience the same event and think it's bad but not catastrophic. Or they might think it may even lead on to better things in the long run. Or, you know, they might see it as a. An opportunity in the ground, or they might suspend judgment about it. So viewing as a catastrophe isn't the only lenses that you could potentially wear. Now, there are maybe a dozen different ways that we can help people to gain cognitive distance. But the simplest and weirdest, which has been validated in laboratory settings, is to use a technique that psychologists have known about for a century, but they only recently figured out the practical value of it. And that's to repeat a word or phrase rapidly for 45 seconds. So if I take a negative belief that I might have and my go to is a kid's nursery rhyme that says, nobody likes me, Everybody hates me, I think we'll go and eat worms. So if I believe that, I'd probably feel kind of depressed, right? Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. In cognitive therapy, what we'd often do if we identified that that's what someone was thinking and they agreed that it was unhealthy and they wanted to modify it, we could do that in lots of ways in cognitive therapy. We could get them to weigh up the evidence for it and things like that. Or we could just say. Say it rapidly out loud for 45 seconds, which would sound like this. Nobody likes me. Over the hates me. Nobody likes me. Of the hates me. Nobody likes me. Everybody likes me. Everybody likes me. Everybody likes me. Everybody likes me. Everybody likes me. Everybody likes me. Of the nobody likes me. Nobody likes me. Of the his me. Nobody likes me. Nobody likes me. Or treat. And that's about 10 seconds, right? So 45 seconds seems like an eternity. And your mouth will be dry and your lips will be rubbery. But by the end of it, we know that about 90% of people will say that they feel more detached towards the words. So they could still think about the idea. They might go, maybe it's possible. Nobody likes me. But they don't feel as fused with it. They have gained. It's almost like they've stepped to one side and they now look at that belief. That's cognitive distancing. It's a subtle psychological shift. And one way of getting it is just to take a negative thought or that you're having, or belief that you hold and repeat it rapidly out loud for 45 seconds, maybe every day for a week or so.

That is so fantastic. I thought when you were teeing that up that we were going to do some sort of mantra. So I'm like, rt, rt arte. I think that's what I'm going to tears is my word. And you go the exact opposite way, which is so good. Go straight at it. The thing that you're so afraid of being true that you have fused to. We defuse it paradoxically by running right at it. Yeah, it's just brilliant. I love it. Equally weird and effective. So let's go. We got a new tool for our armamentarium.

Yeah, yeah, it's weird. You know, we have to tackle these negative thoughts head on. And in cognitive therapy, one of the things that's distinctive about it, I think one of the things that characterizes stoicism is a facing of the negative and facing problems. Like in Premeditatio Malorum, we visualize negative events rather than kind of trying to just think of positive ones or running away from it. Like in cognitive therapy, we'd say what people don't normally do is face the negative thoughts or visualize the negative scene. And that's where usually a therapist helps somebody to do that. And if it's done in the right way, it often fills a therapeutic gap and avoid in their life. It allows them to engage mechanisms and process processes that they wouldn't have used otherwise.

That's so cool. And I'm thinking of William B. Irvine echoing your perspective. I think it was a stoic challenge of, you know, him thinking that negative visualization, as he describes it, is the most powerful toolkit from the Stoics toolkit and the Memento Mori idea. And just really facing head on these challenges. Love it. And you. And let's step all the way back to your journey. Your favorite. I'm going to frame this up actually with one more thing. You also got me to have these individuals on my wall of meditating on my heroes, you know, as an ancient stoic practice of, well, who do I admire? Who do I aspire to be like in certain ways? Let me reflect on them, let me meditate on them. So actually, I'd like your theoretical commentary on that briefly. And then I would like to know who your heroes are when you think of the individuals who have most inspired you, perhaps whose virtues you would like to embody, who comes to mind for you? But if you can give us that theory and the practice again, that'd be.

Fantastic, of modeling role models and stuff. I will say something again, kind of controversial, but from a clinical point of view that we call it modeling. And there's many different types of modeling. You can model behavior, you can model thinking. There's different types of modeling and it's very important in psychotherapy. It's underutilized, although all researchers agree that it's one of the most powerful tools. As an aside, there's something about the fact that psychotherapists and clinicians work with individuals, often in a consulting room, that limits the amount of modeling that they can do. It's easier to do modelling in some ways in a group setting or when you leave the consulting room. That's a bit, well, aside for you. Now, the interesting, the most famous discovery about modeling is that there is a distinction between what we call coping and mastery modeling. So mastery modeling is when you see somebody who's exceptionally good at something and you try to imitate them. So they'd be like the world's greatest public speaker. And you're like, I want to be like that guy. I'm going to try and kind of model his behavior. And coping modeling would be when you see somebody who's struggling but making progress. Now, what the research shows pretty conclusively is that at least for dealing with anxiety and psychological problems, coping modeling works better. The problem being that if we see somebody who's already flawless at something, it kind of gives us a go. It can actually be counterproductive because sometimes people think, well, I'm never going to be that good. So they can even get a little bit depressed about it.

But.

But it doesn't tell them the steps that they need to take to get there. Whereas if we see somebody who's doing public speaking and they get a little bit anxious or they make some mistakes, but they overcome that, then we can potentially learn from them the mental and behavioral strategies that we would need to use ourselves in order to make progress. And with that in mind, I'll give a kind of paradoxical answer to the question who my role models are. So I'm one level sure. You know, I love famous philosophers. You know, I've written a lot about Marcus Aurelius, but I, the philosopher that I, I love even more than Marx. Aurelius is Socrates. Socrates I really do kind of try not to idolize. But I like you know, Socrates is. Is my kind of hero. To me, you know, he's a far more complex and nuanced and multifaceted figure. So as a writer, he's. There's a lot more depth to him than there would be to Marcus. Marcus Aurelius is a really cool guy, but sockstream is a different level in terms of the complexity of his character and the depth of his thought. But the people that actually are my role models, I've thought a lot about, and they tend not to be celebrities or famous people. But the people that have inspired me the most in life are kind of anonymous people that I've met, individual people over the years, and in many cases, they're actually recovering drug addicts or alcoholics that I've known through my work. Because the people that I've seen who have hit rock bottom and started to rebuild their life, they've become maybe very humble and started again from scratch. I always admire people that have. Also the other people that admire people who quit their job and kind of ripped up the rule book and said, I'm just going to start again from scratch. Albert Ellis, the founder of cognitive therapy, did that. He was a psychoanalytic therapist, and he decided it wasn't working for him. And at a time when this was a very radical thing to do and CBT didn't really exist, he quit doing psychoanalytic therapy. And he said, I'm going to start completely from scratch and figure out a whole new way of doing therapy, because this isn't right. And then it was how he invented rational emotive behavior therapy that later evolved into cbt. So there. Those are the people that I've taken the most inspiration from in life, rather than kind of famous philosophers, although I do also love Marcus Aurelius and Socrates and many other famous philosophers.

It's so good. I'm. I'm actually going to do a search right now, because when I look at my heroes, like, these are like the, you know, heroic portraits, whatever, and you kind of airbrush out in the process of creating them all the blemishes. But I have goosebumps right now even as I'm doing it. So this is. Let's see if I can do it. I'm going to share my screen again. So I got Abraham Lincoln up on this wall, and the most powerful wisdom that my heroes give me is not the shining light that they have become, but the pain that they endured in the process of becoming the individuals I admire. So when I'm just feeling beaten up and beaten down, and just, oh, where am I? I don't look at their. I look through their pictures to Epictetus's time as a slave and his, you know, crippled leg. Or I look at Viktor Frankl and the fact that he endured a hell of a lot more than I'm ever even needed to consider enduring. But it's the Lincoln picture that I'm going to share my screen with right now that actually gets me the most. So this is the source picture from the Abraham Lincoln portrait I have. And just the pain in his face and just how worn down he is and how much he sacrificed to play his role. Well, to use an aspect of Aurelius that I very much admire is, is what I see most, or what is actually, I should say, most powerful when I focus on this in the, the heroes, which feels very much like what you're describing of. Yeah, yeah. There's the, quote, perfect state, which was never perfect. As Abraham Maslow tells us, there are no perfect human beings, great ones, but there's never been one perfect one. But the process through which we actually endure and show up on that Herculean quote quest is ultimately what it's all about. Love it. What books? Yeah, you're, you're, you know, you talked about Socrates, you talked about Aristotle, but I want to. We got the heroes, we got some guides, books. What's on your kind of top three? You can't go through life without reading these books. If you want to. Where I was.

Well, I'll give us a slightly kind of a bleak answer to that as well, because again, from my background in therapy, I'm ever hesitant to recommend books because I think it's an individual thing and people have, have different preferences and so on. However, I make one major exception to that, which is that I believe that pretty much everybody who's interested in the subject should at some point read Plato's Apology because I treat it as an exceptional special case, because I consider it to be, hands down, the most important text in the Western philosophical canon. And it's, it's a big inspiration to all philosophy that followed, particularly to Stoicism. The Stoics refer often to Plato's Apology. It's a literary masterpiece. And it's also, I, you know, going back to what I said earlier, I'm not going to recommend that you go off and read Heidegger or something that's going to take you years to get through. You know, I think I like also the apology, because you could read it in a couple of hours, I think, and an afternoon it wouldn't take very long to leave. So you're not losing much if it doesn't resonate with you. But I think it's the kind of book, and this is true of much of the Platos, some of Plato's dialogues. I wouldn't recommend reading the whole of the Republic. This is a very long book, and it might not be for everybody. I think people often make the mistake of thinking they want to get into Plato. They pick up a copy of the Republican Public, they get like, a couple of chapters into it, and then they start to struggle. But the Apology is easy to read, and it also, strangely, it has. It's frustrating to philosophers because it has incomplete arguments in it. It has ambiguous arguments. He hints at ideas and then doesn't really develop it. But that's also. If you can tolerate that uncertainty and ambiguity. That's part of the beauty, because what the apology does is kind of plant seeds. And years and years later, decades later, you'll kind of remember this weird thing that Socrates said in the Apology that will come back and haunt you. But you'll often. If you're interested in Stoicism, you'll find those seeds often are developed into, like, more complete ideas in the. In the Stoics.

We got one out of you. I like that. I love your humility and your, you know, everyone's got their own deal. And I'll tell you what, I appreciate you bringing that up because I've read it, but I read it during the. I haven't done a note on it. And I read it during my Introduction to Western Philosophy class at UCLA as a junior, which was so uninteresting to me at the time because it was so abstracted from anything practical, that I jumped over to the psychology department. There we go. Started thinking about that.

Some philosophy books are a bit dry, but Plato's apology, for me at the.

Time, it was the presentation and the librarian nature of it, and I didn't have the intellectual curiosity at that time for the exploration of important ideas. And it was just framed in such a way that it didn't appeal. And I'm very excited to go back and then reappreciate it and note it up. And let's go. We got a two and three real quick. Or are we going to settle on that one?

Oh, well, okay. I'll also add the Enchiridion or the Handbook of Epictetus, because it's fairly short and it's easy to read. And I feel like everyone's read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. But that's another one that I would tend to recommend in terms of Stoicism. If you want another, I know, throw in a kind of curveball one, like a. Like a real, a more obscure book. If you really love the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and this is a slightly more of a niche one, there's a book called the Philosophical Regiment by the Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Cooper, that was written in the 17th century, so it's in kind of like Tudor English, but it's. It's his version of the Meditations. So it's like a second version of the Meditations. You know, it's equally beautiful. And, you know, if you love the Meditations, you'll probably also love that book.

That is awesome. Okay, cool. I'm going to add that to the. The list of must reads. And then just to state the obvious, folks, if you haven't gone into, you know, the app, right click on Theory, scroll down to the categories. We've got 50 of them or something. Click on Stoicism, and you will see notes on dozens of. Of books that are some of the best in stoicism, including the ones we mentioned from Donald. So just to make that explicit, my favorite collection of notes, along with the positive psychology ones. Awesome. Okay, cool. Going back to you. How do you structure your days? We're all about knowing the ultimate game, getting out of the hedonic treadmill into the eudaimonic life, and then forging antifragile confidence, knowing it's supposed to be hard, focusing on what we call the big three that we'll come back to, energy, work, and love, and then making today a masterpiece. How do you create your days and what practices have you engaged in that you found have really helped you connect and express your best self?

Well, because in the past, I specialized in teaching different techniques to therapists. So I've kind of. There's too many. And I'll go through phases where I'll focus on some and then I'll shift on to doing others. However, typically what I'll do is based on a technique that's found in the Golden Verses of Pythagoras and the Stoics. Allude to it and I'll interpret it from a CBT perspective, and that is that in the morning, I'll kind of mentally rehearse the main things that I'm planning to do in the day ahead, and I'll picture, like, the fork in the road of the choice of Heracles. Imagine what would happen if I Allowed fear or anger to determine how I deal with difficult conversation I have to have later in the day or some challenging situation that I've got to deal with. So kind of visualize what that would be like and the consequences. And then I'll visualize the alternative. So I'll use contrast. Like I'll imagine what it would be like if I exhibited more patience, more compassion, more self discipline, more wisdom and dealing with the same situations. So what's it like if I'm guided by unhealthy passions? What would it be like if I was guided more by self discipline and reason? I'll compare these two, like vice and virtue paths in the morning. Then in the evening, I'll kind of review the pipe golden versus tells us to three times before our eyes close, review the major events of the day and ask what we did well, what we did badly, and what we could do differently next time, basically. And in therapy, I'd also usually teach clients to rate their behavior in terms of a value that they've identified that they want to focus. So if it's creativity, I'd say from 0 to 10, what marks do I give myself for creativity today? If it was to show more compassion, I'd say from 0 to 10, how do I rate myself in terms of compassion? I use many other techniques within that framework. But another thing that I do at the moment as a writer, this is going to sound weird, but actually this is what I do. This is my routine. My wife will tell you she has to watch me sit and do this. I'll set a Timer, and for 10 minutes before I begin work, I'll kind of do the Benson method like we did earlier, the relaxation response technique. So I'll meditate for 10 minutes. Then I'll draw two columns. And using a technique that I take from Xenophon's memorabilia Socrates, I'll pick a concept or a statement, and I'll either weigh up the evidence for it and against it, and I'll jot down notes on it. Give myself 10 minutes to that's a bit time limit on it. Or either I'll take a statement like virtue is the only true good, and I'll say, what evidence is there for this? What evidence could there be against it? And I'll kind of weigh it up, like systematically in my mind, or I'll take a concept like justice and I'll take a definition of it, and then I'll try to think of situations where there would be an exception to that definition. So I'll try to clarify My concepts and evaluate certain beliefs. And then for 10 minutes, I'll shut my eyes and I'll visualize that I'm having a con conversation with usually Socrates. Like, or it could be like some other figure that I'm writing about. And I'll try and really imagine that main ancient Greece. And at the moment, I'm writing a book about Socrates. So for that reason, typically, I'll close my eyes. If I was writing about Marcus Aurelius, I may even visualize Marcus Aurelius. So I, you know, I go up every day and I shake Socrates his hand, which is probably weird to him as an ancient Greek. But he's getting used to it now. Like, he's adapting to my cultural norms. And I have a conversation. But sometimes I just talk to him, and sometimes he just talks to me. And often he disagrees with me, I find, like. But I'll chat to him. I'll say, surprises. I was thinking about writing this thing about you, my book. And, you know, and he's very like. I find that he's not. He doesn't. He's willing to be kind of quite flexible. He'll say, well, that wasn't actually what happened historically, but it would make more sense if you wrote it the way that, you know, I'm okay, he's right at this way, even though it wasn't exactly what happened. So he's a bit flexible with the truth sometimes, but he's kind of. He's got a very good eye for, like, what communicates the concepts more effectively. And I have these little imaginary discussions for 10 minutes.

That is so good. So we got 10 minutes, Benson. Relaxation, response, meditation, whatever you want to call it. 10 minutes of deep. What I would perceive as philosophical contemplation and clarifying your thinking. And almost. My son's into chess. He plays puzzles. It's like you're playing philosophical puzzles with yourself just to hone your game and sharpen the edge. And then the 10 minutes of conversation. Each of this is brilliant. But this brings me back to my wall as well. My joke is my heroes come alive. Kind of like Dumbledore's old headmasters in his office, you know, they got a certain style and they kind of talk to me and just come alive at different moments of the day and recently. And I'll ask them what they think and they'll give me, you know, thoughts and declarations. But I went deep the other day on, well, how would. I've got Jesus up there. You can't see him. Then I got Gandhi and Churchill and Mr. Rogers now in a Roosevelt not visible. How would you run heroic if you decided to create a public benefit corporation and not a nonprofit? Jesus. How would you approach this? What would you do? What literally? How would you run our business? And Gandhi? Same question. Churchill, Same question. And it's such a beautiful exercise. And when I think of your contemplation of the ideal sage practice, this is part of it for me is that aliveness and that relationship that we have where you're both adapting to one another's cultural norms and there's this felt sense of connection to the best within ourselves via the best within our ideal sages, whatever you want to call them. But I just love the way you start your day and then you write after doing the kind of prep work is that we're primed and ready to go. Nice work. Any other practices during your day that you found helpful to create that masterpiece Day? We've got the amazing and the PM and we've got the, the kind of ramp up period. Anything else come to mind?

I do lots of like little individual things on a kind of ad hoc basis. But you know, like I'm a practical level. I'm a big believer in intermittent fasting and having cold showers and all that.

You're going where I want to go. So let's, let's bring a sharper focus to it. And I'm going to go to the app one more time before we do. And I don't know if Michael's still here, but we have this practice thing, Donald, which I don't think we've talked about since we launched it, but basically in the morning we have people remind themselves who they are at their best in their energy, work and love, what virtues they're committed to embodying. And you tap, tap, tap and commit to them. And then what specifically you're going to do that day to be in integrity with those virtues and that identity in your energy, work and love. But the reason I brought it up is we have a PM routine that we've kind of conceptualized again inspired by you. I didn't realize that Pythagoras had the 1, 2, 3 the way you described it, which is awesome. But team, we'll be having that check in not coming that soon, but coming relatively soon as we wind up all the things we want to do. But let's go to energy, work and love. I jokingly say that I don't agree with Freud on a whole lot of things, but I think he got it right when he said a Good life comes down to essentially getting your work and your love right, with an asterisk that if your energy isn't where it needs to be, good luck showing up in your work and your love. You started to share some of your energy practices. I'd like to hear your top practices in your energy and in your work and in your love, what arises for.

You in terms of just energy in the sense of vitality. So, yeah, intimate fasting is like, you know, I'm old enough that I feel like you, once you hit 40 or thereabouts, like, either you reflect, you either you stop and kind of look back on your life and actually one of the most useful things I think, in life, you know, I've studied many different psychological techniques and I'm. But I tend to get more in favor of the simpler ones as get older. And really just reviewing your life and what's worked for you and what hasn't has potentially has very profound psychological benefits. So for me, like, intermittent fasting over the course of my life is the thing that's kind of helped my energy levels and. And the cold showers, like, I have cold showers, not even so much because I think it benefits my immune system or it's kind of like, you know, enduring hardship or anything like that. But it's me. It's kind of like drinking coffee. It really wakes me up. Like, I feel like I'd kind of be like lethargic and things if I didn't do that every morning. So those are the main things that I think benefit my energy levels. But also really, you know, thinking about love and about loving your work, you know, if you don't love what you're doing right now, then that should be like a red flag, you know. And is there a way that you can learn insofar as it's possible to like, ideally to try and love whatever it is that you happen to be tasked with doing and you have. We have to remind ourselves to do that. But if you can kind of cultivate a habit of feeling love and passion for whatever the task is at hand, then that's one of the main things that I think gives you energy. So I guess that segues into. You asked about love as well. I think for me also in terms of our relationship with events, it's about see viewing it as symbolizing or relating to something bigger and deeper. So whatever it is I'm doing, I either think of it as symbolizing something or I think of it as a step towards. And I try and have the bigger goal in mind. To begin with the end in mind, as it were, to connect it to deeper values and in terms of people, you know, I try and look for the best in people and to look at their potential, like, wherever possible. I think Marcus Aurelius is doing that. In book one of the Meditations. He's talking about some of his heroes, but he also talks about some more dubious people, mixed characters like his brother Lucius, who certainly had good and bad traits, but Marcus only really talks about the good ones. He's kind of. He wants to look for the things that are worth admiring and emulating and other people. And I think that that's a practice of compassion and friendship and love, but also something that contributes to our energy and our self improvement.

Perfect. Fantastic. I didn't check in before we left. You have a hard stop in three minutes?

No, we can go over a little bit if you want.

All right, cool. So then, team, if you have a question for Donald, obviously we could go on for a week or two here. We barely scratched the surface on the things we talked about, and those things were barely scratching the surface on the things that we could talk about. But if you have a question, raise your hand. We'll go back and forth. Lydia, straight up. Let's go. Lydia.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

Awesome. Again, Brian, I don't know if you know, it was Donald posting something on Twitter a year and a half ago that actually alerted me to heroic.

No way.

So, yeah, totally. And I was like, how did I get this far in my career without knowing about heroic? Anyway, I don't know if anyone's popular or active on Twitter, but Donald has a very active Twitter feed. And something that has been coming up a lot on Twitter is what I call bro ism. It's like the stifle your emotions, you don't need to care. Go hard, like kind of little David Gogginsy. And so one of the things that I want to know as a. As a coach who. Whose practice is very much informed by stoicism, is what's the best way to combat that kind of broism?

You mean this stuff that's kind of about and stuff. And like. Yeah.

So I.

What I'd relate that to is we sometimes. What we talk about is the distinction between lowercase stoicism and capitalist stoicism. So this is very important to therapists because there's a body of research literature on stoicism defined as an unemotional coping style that consists in suppressing or concealing unpleasant or embarrassing emotions. And there are several Research tools that are used to measure it. And the research generally shows, famously that it's unhealthy for several reasons. So trying to. If you're anxious and you try and repress that, or you try and block it out with distraction or drugs, or you try and mask it from people around you, people think of that as being tough, right? But here's the paradox. The research shows that people that do that are actually very vulnerable and fragile individuals because they're more susceptible to mental health problems like depression and anxiety, where, you know, they think they're less so they really believe that they're being tougher and more resilient. But actually the opposite is true. And they're particularly fragile individuals. And the researchers that. So I is a therapist. If I'm talking to the therapist, they'll say, whoa, whoa, whoa, Stoicism, is that that kind of thing about repressing? Because that's bad. Like, we know that that doesn't really work that well. And so that's a red flag for them. And they think that's. That sounds like bad advice. But if I say no, stoicism with a capital S, like the Greek philosophy, is a much more complex and nuanced approach to emotions. And it inspired modern cognitive therapy. They'll go cognitive therapy. We know there's loads of studies that show it's a good thing. And I said, yeah, so you wouldn't want to confuse these two things because one of them research shows is unhealthy and one of them shows it's healthy. So I think making that distinction and also just pointing out very simply that the studies show that trying the kind of machismo thing of repressing emotion, if that's what they think stoicism is. And I have to say, right, the Internet is full of self improvement gurus who do seem often to be promoting something like that and people like it appeals to them. But it may be. There's research suggests it may be quite bad psychological advice. And often when people come into therapy, they're doing things like that already. They're trying to be stoic and have a stiff upper lip and things, and it's not really working for them. That's not what the ancient stoics are talking about. They're talking about something. Cut. Long story short, it's a lot more nuanced than that.

Yeah, okay, so. So what I'm hearing is it's just a lot of education, then practical stuff.

I'd just clarify to them that these are two different things. I clarify that there are things like the Liverpool Stoicism scale that show that kind of. And it's linked to the concept of toxic manner as a controversial idea. But toxic masculinity is associated with low case stoicism. But that kind of way of being we know is like leads people. I mean, I'll just give you one really simple quick example. People who think like that are less likely to go to a therapist and they're also less likely to go to a doctor and they're also less likely to seek emotional support from their friends and family. So surprise, surprise, if that's your way of coping in the longer term, you're probably going to be less resilient because all the research shows that one of the main things that contributes to resilience long term is having the right social support framework around you. So just tell them the research shows this is going to be do the opposite of what you think it's going to do. Could be.

Let me, Lydia, let me pull one step further. So there's the lowercase and capital S stoicism and then there's the, you know, suppression and all the other things that we know do not lead to the benefits we want. Give us again if you can. One practice that would be the. No, no, this is one way that we would encourage you to capitalize your S and approach it like a practicing stoic in which emotions are an important, the very least signal to. And this is how a stoic, again that capital S you would recommend we approach it.

So I try to be quick. So some of these techniques take a little bit of time to coach and explain. But a very short explanation would be this ancient stoicism would be more in favor of accepting unpleasant emotions insofar as they're involuntary. And then for example, so normally people think that if they are feeling anxiety, what they need to do is try and get rid of the anxiety by suppressing it, concealing it or something like that. And either that or they kind of ruminate about it and overthink it. And really the best solution is to do neither of those two things but something else to think about it, but in a different way. And there are many ways that we can think about or experience anxiety by shifting perspective. And that usually is about strategy. So the one obvious example would be the view from above. So that would allow me to say, hey, I'm feeling anxious. But if I kind of imagine the anxiety I'm feeling is just a brief moment within a longer story of my life, it seems less overwhelming and it's more Placed in context. And it allows me to accept my anxiety, situate it within a context, be less overwhelmed by it, but not run away from it or fight against it or try and conceal it. So we have to find an alternative way of accepting unpleasant feelings, basically. And the view from above is one possible way of accepting things from a different perspective.

Beautiful. And then it kind of the dance sequel, Name it to tame it. We're seeing it, we're not denying it. It's there, it's present. And then of course, we maintain agency to choose how we're going to respond to it via the view. Norby, you just frame the distance and then the, you know, the 45 seconds of let's go, Brian.

If I can start one other thing to that conscious, I don't want to omit it. So. And I think it's worth saying the central insight of stoicism in terms of emotion is what we now call the cognitive theory of emotion. So the stoics say passions our beliefs, right? And that's a radical idea. Like it revolutionized. We call, we literally call it the cognitive revolution in psychotherapy. Now what's going wrong sometimes with people who feel anxious and, or embarrassed and they, or whatever and they try to deny or repress those feelings is that they don't appreciate because most people don't instinctively appreciate that our anxiety is maintained by underlying beliefs. So I believe that something catastrophically bad is probably going to happen imminently and I'm not going to be able to cope with it. That's going to make me feel anxious, right? If I believe that I could cope with it easily, I'm probably not going to feel anxious. If I believed that it's not going to be that bad. Like, I'm probably not going to be that anxious. If I believe it would be bad, but it's really unlikely to happen, then I probably wouldn't be anxious. It takes this combination of beliefs generally to maintain anxiety. And so when people repress anxiety or suppress it or distract themselves from it, what they're not doing is examining the beliefs that caused it in the first place, they're not really getting to the root of it. And so that's missing like, you know, in the low case stoic approach. And ironically, if you, if you are anxious about something that's not real, like many forms of anxiety are, well, most forms of anxiety are irrational, right. In modern life. So if you're exaggerating a threat or overestimating its probability, or underestimating your coping, you're really unlikely to ever change those beliefs as long as you continue suppressing the anxiety. Like if you allow yourself to feel the anxiety and confront the situation, you're more likely to go oh nothing that cat, nobody died like nothing that catastrophic. Or actually I was more able to cope with it and I realized so the only way that we evolve emotionally and get iron out these misconceptions and distortions in our emotional thinking is by allowing ourselves to experience feelings to some extent and face the situations. As long as we're suppressing the emotions and avoiding the situations, we're stuck with what are potentially false, mistaken or distorted underlying beliefs. And that's very toxic, it's very unhealthy, whatever you want to call it. And, and that kind of macho low key stoicism thing is it's a recipe for neurosis basically. Although many the Internet's full of self help advice that's based on it strangely. So it is a big, it's essential problem I think of anybody that wants to do coaching or self improvement stuff today is how do you navigate around that?

And then Nydia, to David Goggins's defense, I don't know if you've read his books, have you read Ken Hurt? His willingness to go into the pain and his willingness to go into the trauma that he faced and literally obsess about it and look at it and see what he can do to alchemize it is in many ways I'm not online, I'm not seeing what he's posting day in and day out. So I can't see the energy he's creating and the Persona he's creating. But I'm deeply inspired by his willingness to go into his own pain in an individual level and approach it exactly the way in his idiosyncratic style that Donald's encouraging us to do. Albeit as a guy who is committed to being the hardest MF or history, which again that's his own role in the second book.

His second book, never finished, does a much better job of like introducing joy into that alchemization.

So yes, can I just reply to that and refer to something we mentioned earlier which is the distinction between mastery and coping modeling. So what you're both saying is if you dig into David Goggins books, there's more examples of him experiencing pain and anxiety and figuring out healthy ways of coping with it. But the problem that you might be referring to is people that maybe haven't read his books or have only had and they just see this tough guy like and they want to Model his mastery, like, and so they try, if you like, to take a shortcut, like, so everyone does that. They might look at Epictetus and think, he seems like a really tough guy. I would be like, Epictetus. How I'm going to do that? By trying to deny my emotions and suppress them, you know? So I guess the problem is more people superficially modeling mastery and trying to take a shortcut to get to it, rather than really studying the path that someone followed to get there.

This is so good. And then, Lydia, the answer isn't David Goggins doesn't get it. It's you don't get David Goggins. Go look deeper into his work and see what's going. Because all you're seeing is the highlight reel of him being a tough guy. And you think if you just ignore all this and that. And again, I'm the one constantly saying, get a good night of sleep. You know, David Goggins, Jocko Willman. God bless you guys on your four hours of sleep and all the things. Beautiful discussion. I love it. I'm going to check in again. Donald. I know that we had booked 60, so if we need to go, let's go. And if you're open, maybe we can just have a hard stop. So I don't need to ask you again.

I'm good for, like, I don't have another meeting for another hour or so, I think. But yeah, I came straight from one onto this. But I don't have a hard stop.

You're, you're on a roll, so let's create one just so we have a healthy constraint within which we can play. At what time would you like us to conclude our time together?

Let me see, what time is it now? I don't have a, I haven't got a watch.

It's 2:10 central.

I'm not sure we can go on until half past if you want. That'd be fine by me.

I mean, you're a noble man.

I'm just talking about my hobby, so it's fun.

You know, my joke is, are we working or playing? Are we working or demonstrating? Well, I don't know. Let someone else figure that out. We're just having a good time. Bless you. I appreciate your generosity of spirit and your modeling of what it looks like to be doing what you're here to do and sharing such deep wisdom. So amazing. Kimmy.

Hi.

Hi, Donald. Hi, Brian. Donald, I just want to thank you. I, I, I really appreciate the work that you've done. The, the, the way that you share the knowledge, and especially this one concept of, you know, bringing theory to mastery or theory to practice to mastery. So you say, don't be a librarian. You know, philosophers get out in the world. And, you know, as much as, you know, the nerd in me and most of us are nerds on this call and that will see it later, like, we. We love this stuff, and we can do it all day, but the challenge, the real challenge is to, like, okay, take it out into the world and share it with others and. And be vulnerable and put ourselves out there. And. And I definitely carry that with me, and I wanted to thank you for. For bringing that to my life.

Awesome. I completely agree with your sentiment. You know, what's the point? Unless, you know, we're improving our own lives, improving the lives of other people. In philosophy, I think I love academic philosophy. I love, you know, even the kind of nerdy, obscure, you know, parts of it. But, you know, for me, like, what's even more important is that we benefit from it and that we benefit society and the people that we care about as well. I feel as I get older, you know, and time goes on, I think I don't want to reach belong on my deathbed, like, and think, oh, yeah, you know, I read Heidegger, and it was really cool, but it never really benefited me. You know, I. I want to get to the end of my life and look back and think I kind of evolved as a human being and maybe I kind of benefited some other people along the way. I think most people might feel the same way. So if we can take something as cool as philosophy and find useful practical applications for it, that's an amazing thing.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Good to see you. Kimmy. Colleen.

Thanks.

Hello there.

Hi.

So this is all kind of very new to me, philosophy in general. It is fascinating to hear you talk and to know that the things that I'm hearing from Brian, that their roots are so deep and so beyond me, but the concept that isn't beyond me that you talked about that touches me is the idea of the coping modeling versus the mastery modeling, and the idea of as. As deep as I am into heroic, which isn't that much. We talk about being a radiant exemplar as our desire so that we can be helping from a place of strength and wholeness or maybe completeness. And my perfection might also be layering on top of that. But I didn't realize for the first several weeks that I've been into this world that I am a coach. I am A piano teacher. But I have a wealth of other areas that I'm interested in. But I even called myself a method coach. I even called the people that the model that we use, life coaches. These parents are very. A part of that process of what we call simply music. It's outside of the. The traditional way of learning music, blah, blah, blah. But as I'm going through this and I am in mastery and coach, for me, because I'm not the radiant exemplary are yet I'm seeing some of these ideas that seem so well beyond my ability to, like, describe, but then so practical in the idea of like, I'm trying to help my students, my piano students, to reach for virtues such as creativity and to have this very supportive permission to be able to explore and to evolve and to create. And so my question and concern is with my limited capacity and experience. I'm not the radiant exemplar. But as the idea if I could frame myself as like, I am the like model me because I'm struggling through it and I've got some tools because I'm in this community, I am being exposed to these ideas that are transforming me that I have in the. I'm in the practice version of attaining some level of mastery. But also these. When you talk from a. From a therapy point of view in the world of piano teaching, like, we don't. We're not talking. They didn't come to me for therapy. But yet layered on top of all of the challenges is very much psychology. It's very much emotion, it's very much some of these tools. And just navigating me as a piano teacher, slash already in the role of coach, how do I, like, be careful about boundaries and being honest and humble. But also I've got these tools I want you to try and explore. And with me, as I'm being exposed to these ideas, I feel like if.

You go deep enough into almost any subject, it ends up becoming philosophical. And it often ends up when you're dealing with other people and you go deeper enough into any subject, becoming kind of therapeutic as well. In many cases. I could totally see how piano coach that could be elements that resonate with therapy and the relationship that you have with students. You asked about boundaries, and that is the toughest problem for therapists and coaches and counsellors in a way. And people have very different perspectives about boundaries in terms of their personal ethics and their values. And one of the things that shapes it, to be honest, is your experience over the years. Years. So I find that, you know, people have Difficulty understanding the need for boundaries until they've kind of seen problems arise either with other people that they know. So I used to supervise therapists, and I'd see some of the sticky situations that my supervisees would get into, and that would sometimes make me think, oh, I need to be more careful way about those situations myself in case I find myself in the same problem. So I wish there was a shortcut, you know, like, here's the list of 12 boundaries that you need to set up or something like that. It's hard to understand just from something as abstract as what it's like in practice. So I think really the key is just to be mindful and thoughtful like you were talking. Also depends what sort of boundaries we're talking about. But I think you were alluding to sharing your struggles. We call that disclosure sometimes in therapy. Like, how much do you tell clients about yourself? It's tricky in therapy. If you tell clients too much about yourself as a therapist, that doesn't seem to work so well. You know, people often say, if your therapist is talking more about themselves than they're talking about you, that's a bad sign. On the other hand, I said, one of the most powerful tools in therapy is modeling, coping, modeling. So every therapist will know. If you tell the client, I had a problem that was kind of a bit like this. And this is how I dealt with it. So Albert Ellis, we mentioned earlier, had. Was scared to ask women out on dates. And he tells his client was like, I asked 100 women out on dates and they all turned me down, apart from one. She gave me her phone number, and when I called her, she didn't return the call. It's his famous story, right? But he said, but by the end of it, he'd overcome his social inhibitions, right? So that's his kind of famous anecdote about how he overcame a sort of phobia, like a kind of social anxiety. And again, it's hard. There would be certain things that it's inappropriate to reveal. So perhaps if he talked about his sex life or something, it might have been too much information, like. And it's going to maybe depend on the individual what it's appropriate or inappropriate to share. So I think that that's just something that you, unfortunately, you know, you have to decide on an individual basis and be mindful of.

Let me jump in here too, because this is so alive. And I got goosebumps multiple times through your discussion, your framing of it, Colleen, and then your description, Donald. This more than anything is what, when People ask me, well, how do I coach? I almost always now I have new language for it. Tell them about your challenges, doing the things that you now have attained, not mastery is a practice, it's not a state. So we're constantly evolving, we're constantly practicing. We have the humility and the wisdom to know that. And again, where I've had the deepest impact is when I share that I'm not perfect. And I try to do that all day, every day. Oh, I yelled at my kids yesterday. We did this. There's no such thing as perfection. And then very, very practically with you, I think it's actually not. Not that it's not hard, but it's not that hard. We can use your own experience mastering the piano as a context to tell these kids. I totally know what it's like. When I first learned the scales, you should have seen how I ran away from the piano. It was so hard. But then I said, I don't understand how to do that yet. And I realized that if I put in more practice and you get your Carol Dweck mindset, growth mindset opportunities and self theory, and this kid has a fixed mindset. How do I get him to have a little bit more of a growth mindset? And again, my 10 year old son Donald is now into chess. Goosebumps. It's astonishing to me. I grew up with this terrifying fear of everything. You know, he's. I've been hammering yet to him and how do you get good at anything you practice? We win or we learn and learning is winning. And I've said it so many times, it's obnoxious. And now he's got chess as the context. You have piano as a context. So there's no need for the perfection that one may think one has to have. When we think being a radiant exemplar, it's no, no, no, no, no. Here you are as a piano expert, which seems to be, you are a piano master. We can embrace that and we can look at your evolution and teach them the philosophical ideas in the context of their struggles to master the things that you also had to learn how to master. And then it's like, for me anyway, as a dad in particular, it's been exhilarating, which I feel is the closest analog to your work with kids learning the piano. And if that isn't goosebumps, coaching and modeling again from humility, from deep, practical, concrete examples of how you also had those struggles, then there's that. You know, Donald, your point on when Albert Ellis did that to a client, the intimacy with which he was able to navigate that relationship, which will always be one of the main drivers of the effectiveness of that dynamic, goes through the roof. And then I got Emerson up there, Ralph Watto, who tells me every morning, trust thyself, every heart vibrates that iron string. You know, check in with your diamond. What's appropriate here? Experiment. And what a blessing for your kids to have you doing the work you're doing to be able to bring that in this context. It's deeply inspiring for me to see what you're doing.

It takes courage as well. In a way. What you're talking about is acknowledging vulnerability when. If you're talking about disclosure, like admitting your own weaknesses and so on, sometimes that takes courage. Right. It's a challenge to do that. But you know, where people, your students or clients would only have an opportunity to model your coping if you tell them, for the most part about the struggles that you've experienced in the past or the ones that you've experienced recently. Otherwise, often they would know about it. Like we. One of the challenges of life is that people hide. You know, over 50% of the US population have a lifetime prevalence of diagnosable mental health problems. That means they have a history of psychiatric. Over 50%, notoriously, based on the most recent National Institute for Health prevalence study. Right. But if you ask most people, they would underestimate that because people don't share that information normally. Like, they keep it private and they conceal it from other people. But that means that we don't normalize these problems like we think. Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way. And we don't get as much opportunity to observe how other people cope, whether the ways they cope badly, ways they cope well, and what we can potentially. We're denied a lot of learning because people keep secrets, but that's. That's human nature in a way. And you, you're making a unique step if you're willing to be more open about anxiety that you've experienced or other problems that you've had to overcome.

Yeah.

So good.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Your response again as we wrap up. So good to see you come back excited to continue to explore that for so many reasons. Bless you, Ryan.

All right, I think I'm unmuted, so got a question, but take. I gotta take a quick moment to fanboy out. Actually. The whole reason I found heroic was from the philosopher's notes. Dive into stoicism last year and a philosopher's note for how to think like A room maneuver and I bought how to think. So it's really, I mean I'm wearing a Marcus Aurelius tank top right now. Not planned that to come out that way today. So being here and seeing the whole web of connection, I'm just misty eyed. It's really cool to see this here happening. But my question is this year my deep dive is on Eastern philosophy and I've been deep diving into the yoga sutras, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the parallels between a lot of the practices that are embedded in deep in yoga philosophy and Stoic philosophy related to conquering the mind and will power and all that. There's just so many parallels and I'm just curious if you've ever looked into that or what your commentary is on any bleed over between those two Philosophy, philosophical, you know, schools.

Yeah, I, I guess like I started off studying history of Indian thought when I was like a teen and I studied like I studied it a bit at university, so university I studied the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads and the Dhammapada is part of like history of Religions course. But then I became much more interested in Stoicism and so I kind of left the Buddhist like in yoga stuff behind. I have a Buddhist tattoo as well, so I've got kind of multicultural tattoos. Historically there was. So the problem historically was that Persia was in the way between east and west and so the Persians and their successors controlled trade and communication along the Silk Roads. And that prevented the ancient Athenians or subsequently the Roman Empire from having that much contact with the Far East. But they did have some contact, most notably when Alexander the Great conquered Persia and got all the way to the north of India and Afghanistan. And Alexander the Great took three philosophers with him and one of them was a guy called Pyro or Pyrrho of Ellis, who is the founder of a movement in Greek philosophy called Skepticism. So there are, you can find parallels that there may have been cross communication both ways. Well, there was like, but only a bit here and there throughout the centuries between the Far east and the West. There's even one anecdote about Socrates talking to an Indian merchant about philosophy actually. But the main point of contact that scholars are interested in at the moment, and I think there are about three books written on this recently is the influence of Indian thought on Pyro's Skepticism. And so this was another Greek philosophical tradition that interacted with Stoicism and evolved alongside it. There's not a lot of evidence for direct contact between the Stoics, but there would have been. The Stoics would have known a guy who knew a guy who knew a yogi, if you like. Right. So there's a kind of indirect. Some indirect contact. Right. Cut a long story short. One of Marcus's friends reputedly talked to yogi. The Greeks don't even have this word, but they use the word gymnosophoi, which means naked wise men, to describe Indian philosophers in general. And one of Marcus's Greek secretary, who is also a. A philosopher and a rhetorician, reputedly met gymnosophae and talked to them. So Marcus may have known a guy who knew a guy who knew early Buddhists or Hindus, you know, but it's very. It's kind of vague and hard to interpret. But if you're interested in the overlap, there are several books on the. The influence of Hindu and Buddhist thought on Greek skepticism. And there are a number of articles that modern authors have written. You can search on the Internet. Several people have written for. For example, Patrick Usher, I know, has written about the parallels between Buddhist thought and Stoic thought, which is easy to find those comparisons.

Awesome. Thank you so much and congratulations on your sub stack stuff. Y' all go check out his Facebook group too. He's awesome on the Internet. He interacts with people all the time. You can talk to him in the Facebook comments. He's out there.

Awesome.

We're gonna get. We're gonna get Donald on heroic. We're gonna see what his virtues are, what his identities are, what is AM and PM routines look like, and do everything we can to push more and more people to your wisdom. Donald, we gotta. Gail, can you frame this thing up as quickly as you can? We'll do one more little speed round. Bullet round. Or is that not possible?

Super quick. Super quick. So I love this community. I love that everybody is studying these wisdom traditions. I personally always need to have a break and have just a book going of literature, like contemporary literature. I just finished D.H. lawrence is one of his books. And a lot of. I don't know, I just. There's some quotes that just make me think so much of stoicism in his work. I'm curious if you have any contemporary writers that you've read and that you love just because they point to these wisdom. These tidbits of wisdom and you can see it wrapped in a beautiful story?

No, I'll tell you why. And people. This always shocks people. I often, throughout my entire life, I've told People I barely read fiction like, and it's a shame. And one day, maybe I'll remedy that. But the reason for it is that I have to, for my work and research, read so much nonfiction. I don't. I. Unfortunately, I don't. So usually I want to do is watch movies. Yeah, is. Is my kind of outlet. I. The last thing I want to do after spending all day reading, which is pretty much my job, like reading books all day long is go. I've got a bit of time off. And what I could do is pick up another book and read it, right? So for contrast, I'll usually watch a movie. I watched Paris, Texas, the other night. My wife, that's the first time she loved that beautiful movie, Right? If you buy a bit trivial for you, I'll tell you something that might be interesting for your whole community to check out. I think you can find it on YouTube. There's a documentary. I like a band. Like, I like a lot of kind of dad rock, right? Or whatever you want to call it. Classic rock. There's a band that. One of my favorite things when I'm talking to my friends in Canada and America is to show off about, like, obscure British bands that they haven't heard of. And so. So, like, there's a band called Dr. Feel Good who were like, big in the 70s and kind of were playing like, blues that was kind of evolving into punk. And their guitarist, Wilco Johnson, died a few years ago. But he. Before he died, he made a documentary called the Ecstasy of Wilco Johnson. Now, he was an English teacher originally, so he's really geeks out about Shakespeare and Chaucer and Milton and he's quoting all these English literary classics. But he had a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, so he thought he was going to die within six months. And this entire documentary is really about him coming to terms with his own mortality and referencing a lot of English literature. So it's very. I think it's a great deal of interest to people who are interested in stoicism and philosophy. It's about one man's attempt to contemplate and to give meaning to his imminent death. And he's also really in a really cool band as well. He was. He also played the Executioner in Game of Thrones. I'm. I'm told I haven't seen that, but he's a pretty cool guy. So I'd say check that out. D.X. lawrence. Incidentally, there's one of the puzzles of my. My life is I'm interested in the history of psychotherapy. And D.H. lawrence wrote a book, the name of which I can't remember. But he describes someone talking to a psychiatrist and them explaining a technique for overcoming habits. And it's the earliest source I can find that refers to a technique that we call negative practice and psychotherapy. And it's earlier than any of the sites, so I wish I knew where he got that from, because he says he portrays someone learning from a psychiatrist. This is before I can find any references to it in the psychiatric literature. So he talks about overcoming stammering. I think so just as a bit of trivia for you, like an actual kind of technical therapy technique and Lawrence's writings. That's of considerable interest.

Really interesting. Thanks. Thanks very much.

I'll look into all of those.

Brilliant, Gail. Thank you. You are just a treasure trove of. You're an archaeological scholar of the fascinating. I love it.

I'm old.

That's. You and I are also brothers.

Like that. My wife Alexandra just reads and reads and reads all these different things. I'm like, if I'm not archaeologically digging in a very practical, pragmatic way, then no, no, I'll turn my brain off with a good movie. We'll also have to see. And one of the facets, very small but important facets of the social platform will be your favorite movies. So when I want to go and look at a great movie, I'll see what Donald Robertson recommends. So this has been so fun. I appreciate you once again and just. Just an honor to have you here today. You have made a deep impact in my life personally and by extension and directly, obviously, to so many members of our community. So bless you. Thank you. Feels like the fun has just begun.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure as always. It's really inspiring to see so many people that are getting so much benefit of the classics and. And helping so many other people as well. It's fantastic. So appreciate you and everyone in your community and your staff as well. Brian, thank you again.

You're so good. And to go back to Ryan, tell us the best place where people can find you. What's the best way to get more into you and your work they can find.

I do a lot of stuff on Substack. You can find me on Substack. And my website is just DonaldRobertson name. And if they want to check out the Plato's Academy Center, I was just gonna say.

Yeah. In addition, Donald is basically. And resurrecting. Resurrecting isn't the right word, but doing Some extraordinary things with Plato's Literal Academy.

Yeah, yeah.

Where Plato had his academy. Donald, tell us briefly about that, if you're up for it.

Plato's Academy, the ruins exist in a park called Academia Platanos in Athens. And we have a non profit that we started about a year ago. And our goal was to build a conference center adjacent to. The Greek government have plans to build a new museum there and to renovate. It's a poorer suburb of Athens, so we hope that it would bring foreign revenue and investment to help urban renewal in that area. And my goal is for people to be able to go to Plato's Literal Academy, like, and walk where Plato, Socrates, Zeno and Aristotle all walked talking about philosophy. We had a conference there for 100 CEOs last September and a marquee in the middle of the park with Bethany Hughes and Angie Hobbs speaking at it and a bunch of other scholars and academics. It was amazing. And yeah, like, we run a lot of virtual online events. We've got one on philosophy and resilience coming up soon. So Our website is Plato's academy.org. check that out if you're interested. If any of you fancy a trip to Greece or want to attend the virtual event, say, we'd be more than happy if you wanted to join us.

Amazing. All right, Donald, go have a great rest of the day. Thanks for taking us today.

Thanks very much. Thanks, everyone. Bye bye.

Now. We already just went, obviously. So long. I don't know if everyone's into ultra endurance sports today and if we want to try the connection or if we just want to wrap today up. What do we got here? We got a.

Let's see. Thumbs up for connecting.

Thumbs up if you want to hang out. And I guess we can. We can hang out if. If we're connecting you if you wanted to. Otherwise, just drop. We'll see you take a deep breath on the way out. Day one is tomorrow at 1:01pm what are we doing? Hands or thumbs or if people wanted to communicate, actually do like the raise your hand, actually use the emoji, whatever. If you wanted to stay. It looks like we got some people staying who do want to connect, which is both awesome and astonishing and. And perfect. So awesome. Nat. Bless you. I'm gonna go. You're gonna hopefully take a break while they're hanging out, and I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. That was so much fun.