Stoics embrace hardship to build virtue while Epicureans avoid it. Every failure is a cost of tuition, an exchange of money or time for knowledge. The speaker calls this opportunity cost reversal, and references kaizen to show how each misstep reveals the next step forward.
And this is why Stoics were extremely successful. And this is why their teachings are still popular today, because Stoics embrace hardship and they used it to build virtue. And the Epicureans avoided hardship and seek comfort. Now, there's many other mental models that prove this to be true, and I'm pretty sure all of us have heard of the opportunity cost. But have you heard of the opportunity cost reversal? And if you haven't, to put simply, it's moments in time where things look like a loss, whether that be money or time, but actually it's exchange of knowledge. I myself have tried many things, and every single time something didn't work out, I would always call that the cost of tuition. That is the price you have to pay for the knowledge that you acquired to know that thing didn't work. That's essentially the opportunity cost reversal. And when you start to see everything as not a waste and you see everything as a gain, the universe has a very unique way of proving that. So in fact, if you do this enough times, you frame your mind and position it to only see gain in all situations. And if you only are able to see gain in all situations, by default, your life will start proving that to be true. There's a Japanese philosophy called the kaizen. Every misstep reveals the next step to improve.
