The Rad Stoic #006

Well, I went into my DisruptHR speech assuming that adrenaline would take over and supplement any lapses of preparation. For the most part, that happened. But when jiving with the audience, I got off my script train and had a performance in the last minute that wasn't perfect but perhaps it gave me the chance to level with the audience and just share what I wanted to convey.

Yea, it wasn't perfect and I got booed off stage and my license was revoked, but I tried my best damnit!

OK there was no stage. And I don't think folks get licensed for 5-minute speeches. But I am glad I did it. I went out of my way (literally, 2 hour drive) to challenge myself in front of strangers, open myself to scrutiny for both for my content and delivery and met some good people in the process.

Once the video is made available, I will share it on my LinkedIn page.

And if you are wondering "Chris, why are you even doing this?" I will say that, in addition to reading about philosophy and Stoicism, I am an avid consumer of AI content. If you follow the money and the incentives of business, you will find that there will be a disruption to jobs - the level can be debated. And people will need to evaluate what they are doing, what they can do, and where their value lies. Some folks might not like what they see or think that things are unfair.

I like to think that part of my value -- in the present or the future -- could lie in helping those folks find the mental resilience to take the next step and go forward, not backward.

Quote 1

Turn around negative scenarios to find some benefit and use it as fuel. Simple but, of course, not easy.
– Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way

Quote 2

We should be anticipating not merely all that commonly happens, but all that is conceivably capable of happening if we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck numb by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones.
– Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

Quote 3

The sudden loss of hope courage can have a deadly effect on the health of a body. The death rate in the week between Christmas 1944 and New Year’s 1945 increased in camp beyond all previous experience. It was simply that the majority of prisoners had lived in the naïve hope that they would be home again by Christmas. Any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzche said "He who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how." Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.
– Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Rad's Take

The wheel of randomness hit us with the holocaust and overall negative visualization. As Gob Bluth would say, "COME ON!!"

But this is both the reality of the world and the benefit of a Stoic mindset. We would love things to be hunky-dory all the time, but they're not. And that doesn't give us permission to contribute to that negativity -- just implores us to be ready for it.

So be ready for the negative situations, even if they are unlikely. When they come to fruition, don't just soldier through them, turn them to your benefit. The mental and tactical readiness allows us to be happy in the face of what others would perceive and blatantly negative scenarios.

"But Chris, the fucking holocaust. That is blatantly negative."

What if I said "You're wrong." Even me thinking that and typing it, it feels wrong. But there is a mindset that says the guy who walked into that camp, a psychotherapist already and about to be published, was in a prime position to truly understand what makes people tick. What enables humans to push through circumstances that are just the most horrific in history. Then, that guy wrote down, in the most eloquent way, his findings. And that writing has made its way into 16,000,000 households.

That's a pretty good thing.

Victor Frankl took the holocaust, the deaths of his pregnant wife, father, mother, and brother and went on to found 'logotherapy' which his focused on enabling people to find meaning in their lives and 'tragic optimism' which is literally finding optimism in the face of tragedy.

As Holiday says in the first quote "simple but of course, not easy."

The things that are easy are barely worth doing, that is if you want to be productive. It is easy to block every shot my daughter puts up on the hoop in the driveway (and sometimes I just see that ball floating and need to swat), but it doesn't accomplish anything. If something is difficult, pursue it. "The hard is what makes it great" as Tom Hanks said in A League of Their Own.

So experience the hardship. The world not going as you want it. Know that it has punched you before and it will punch you again. But this next time, be ready for it.