- So pretend you're stuck in traffic.
You're super frustrated,
you're gripping the wheel tight.
You can't believe that you're late for work
and it's your first day
and you just landed your dream job
and it's bumper-to-bumper traffic
and you can't do anything about it.
How does that make you feel?
Probably pretty frustrated, right?
Why though?
Okay, new scenario.
Imagine you're walking down the street,
you're having a great time,
you say hi to the lovely couple
and they say hi right back at you.
There's a Catholic priest
walking a little Chihuahua and you say,
"Good evening, Father,"
and he says, "Good evening, my son,"
and it felt really good, you're like,
"All right, there's a cool cast of characters here,"
and then you wave at the third and final guy
and he's like,
"(bleep) you man, stay away from me."
Unless he was the king of dry humor,
that would probably hurt a little bit.
But why would that bother you?
Now, these might sound like stupid questions,
why would it bother me?
"Obviously it would bother me,
like, being stuck in traffic
10 minutes late to work
when I just landed my dream job,
it's my first day
and there's a situation
completely out of my control,
it's just so indicative of my life,
nothing ever goes my way."
Or, "Obviously I'd be mad if someone said
(bleep) you, that's insulting.
I'm just trying to lighten the mood
and this person spits right back in my face."
But there's a problem.
Being angry and rattled over situations
completely out of your control
often leaks into the rest of the day,
like you get frustrated over a situation,
it doesn't just last the duration
of that situation, you harbor that negativity
and it leaks into your relationships,
into your career, into your family life.
Maybe you're stuck in traffic
on your first day at work
and you finally get into the office
but you're rattled and you're pissed off
and you're flustered
and you have a horrible day at work.
You make an awful first impression,
a far worse impression
than just being late for work.
So there's almost no utility to being rattled
about situations outside of your control.
So now you're thinking,
"Okay, Joey's just gonna give me a guide now
about why negative emotions are bad
and I shouldn't be so affected
about negative situations
and I should just stay positive
and stay productive."
Yeah, kinda.
But it's deeper than that.
I'm about to introduce you
to a concept that has served me
extremely well throughout my life
and it's a concept that I adopted from stoicism.
And if you adopt this mindset fully,
you will not only be more resilient
to the chaos of life,
but the chaos will actually make you stronger,
to the point where you might actually
prefer a little bit of chaos
so that you can get stronger.
All right, here's the secret.
It's so simple, it's almost insulting.
The mindset is radical acceptance.
Now let's backtrack a bit.
Let's go back to why you might've been frustrated
about that guy saying fuck you
or being stuck in traffic.
I think it's because there is
a fundamental thing going on here.
You have a fundamental rejection
of reality as it is.
You lived your life with a sort of expectation
of how reality actually is or should be
and you've been living in this reality
and something came along and shit all over it.
And that thing that shit all over it
is actual reality.
And that's sort of the key, life is shitty,
it produces shit.
But the key is to be fully aware
of the spectrum of shit that life can produce.
All the way from just a little bit poopy
to the ultimate mega dump,
which is probably something like you
and everyone you know and love dying
and then the world ending or something like that.
But actually, the mega-mega dump would be
everyone you know and love dies
and the world dies,
but you're still somehow alive
to watch it all happen and then you die.
Meditating on and fully embracing
and accepting life as it is, your own mortality,
the fact that you're going to die one day,
the fact that everyone you know and love
is going to die one day.
This sounds super depressing for me to say
and it sounds super depressing to think about
and you might think,
"This is a bit of a mood killer,
I don't want really wanna watch this video,"
but this is what the ancient
stoic philosophers did,
like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus,
and it actually helped keep them grounded,
focused on the bigger picture
so that they could live a more
fulfilling life in the present moment.
The point of all this isn't
to just spend all of your days
thinking about what your tombstone
will look like in 50 years, 30 years, tomorrow,
but to focus on the things
that are truly important,
the things that are eternal,
not the frivolous things that will fade away,
the fact that you dented your car,
the fact that you said something
embarrassing to your crush,
but to think about your soul,
to think about the virtues you are fostering,
the legacy that you're leaving
and the effect that you have
on the people around you
and the world that you're a part of.
Certain things in life seem tragic,
but also inevitable.
We cannot avoid tragedy,
we cannot avoid hardship,
it is woven into the fabric of our reality.
And any time we are completely floored by it,
it's often because we haven't considered it,
we didn't consider that it
was even a possibility, so when it happens,
we don't know what to do with that information.
But if we live our life
in acceptance of life as it is,
the things that we can't control
and the things that we can,
then it'll stop feeling like
we're constantly drowning in the waves of life,
splashing on the shore,
we'll become a surfer.
If we can reflect on
and fully accept the highs and lows of life
and just how high and just how low those can get,
then we'll stop being so surprised
when bad things happen.
And it's not like you're like,
"Oh yeah, just my luck,
bad things always happen to me, told you so,"
it's more like, "Okay, yeah,
a bad thing happened to me.
Something bad happened to me
outside of my control.
What is in my control?
What can I gain from this
and what can I do about it?"
That's what an attitude of acceptance gives you.
And this attitude isn't just
hypothetically useful,
it's also very practically useful.
When I started adopting this mindset in my life
as I started to get into more stoicism,
I would get less rattled
when my editing program would randomly crash
in the middle of an edit.
Rather than Adobe Premier crashing
for the 800th time in two days and me going,
"Oh, what the are fuck, you kidding me?
I just lost everything,"
you go,
"Yeah, right, hm, okay,
this happened, I'm switching to Final Cut Pro."
If a fight breaks out at the bar,
you're not gonna be like,
"Oh, what's goin' on, oh oh,"
and you join the outrage.
You notice what's going on,
you land a key punch to the throat if you need to
and you walk out of the bar.
Pro gamer move,
it's like Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner,
stone cold.
Anyways, yeah, that's pretty much
all I got for this video,
I'm not gonna tie a nice bow on this one.
I don't really feel like being super poetic,
I'll do that next video.
I'll save the production value for next video.
So I hope this was helpful for you,
and let me tell you about a hobby
I recently picked up involving stoicism.
Take it away future Joey.
One of my favorite things to do as of late
is to go on a very long, moody nighttime drive,
preferably in the rain
and dive into some of the most thought provoking
ancient wisdom ever recorded.
Right now, I'm diving into
Letters From a Stoic, by Seneca.
And obviously I'm not reading
a book while I'm driving,
I'm listening to the audio book,
and unless you've been living under a rock,
then you'll know that the best
and most convenient way to listen
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expand your mind, make yourself smarter,
and as usual, have a great time.
What's up?
It's the third and final version of Joey here.
I forgot to film an...
Actually, I didn't forget to film
an outro to the video,
my camera died (laughs).
If you liked this video,
the one that I just edited
and the one you just watched,
consider hitting the like button
because the like button actually does help
me do better as a YouTuber.
It lets YouTube and the algorithm know
that this was a decent video
and it might've been helpful
and then it just pumps my bald head
into more people's homepages,
potentially helping them out.
So it helps me out, helps everyone out,
it's just a win-win.
If you're lurking here
and you haven't subscribed yet,
consider subscribing 'cause that also helps
the whole operation out as well.
I'm really excited about next video,
I kind of hinted at a higher production value.
So yeah, that's the only hint I'll give,
I don't know what else to say
other than stay tuned for next video.
Thank you so much for watching
and we'll catch you in the next video.
(ambient music)