5 Exercises From Stoicism To Improve Your Life - Massimo Piggliuci - #170

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, my friends in Podcastland, welcome back. My guest today is Massimo Piggliuci, and we are talking about Stoicism. Now, you very well may have heard Stoicism be thrown around a lot recently. It's been popularized by authors like Ryan Holiday and Massimo himself, but it's ancient. It's 2,500 years old. Why are people bothered about this ancient philosophy now? So I decided to get an expert on who can explain it to us. Now, there's quite an interesting history to how Stoicism developed, but I wasn't bothered about going into that today. What I wanted to get out of Massimo were the practical underpinnings. What is the philosophy of Stoicism? How can we apply it to our lives? What are the modern interpretations and adaptations of how we can use this ancient wisdom in a modern way? As you can see, perfectly fits the show's title. There is so much to take away from this episode and a lot to think about. What I also wanted to get out of Massimo were some exercises which you can apply to your life today or tomorrow, which will allow you to implement these Stoic principles and hopefully make you more resilient, happier and less prone to anxiety or negativity. So if you stick around until the end, you will get five practical lessons which you can use, exercises that you can do in your life, which allow you to not only think and understand this philosophy, but to also enact it and to allow it to change your life for the better, which seems like a pretty good deal to me. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. Secure your browsing online for less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month and get access to the entire world's Netflix library. You're still stuck indoors, you're still watching tons of Netflix, so why not 10X, 20X, the size of the library that you have access to by getting Surfshark VPN. You might think it sounds like it's super complex, it's not, you just simply download an app and once you've logged in, you can swipe through, you can have it on as many devices as you want. So you can have it on your phone, on your iPad, on your laptop, whatever it might be. And it makes your browsing secure and it stops people from price checking you by doing naughty things with how much you're being charged. And Netflix, yes, you need it. So head to surfshark.deals slash modern wisdom. They've upped the deal. It's 85% off and three months free and 30 days money back guarantee. Surfshark.deals slash Modern Wisdom. Go on and upgrade your Netflix. Go on and secure your browsing. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Massimo Piggliuci.
It seems like Stoicism is kind of similar to the hot new girl in school, you know, that everyone's interested in, she's just arrived here, and everyone's thinking, oh, she's, I want a bit of her. Everyone else seems to be interested in her. So what is it about Stoicism that's giving us this resurgence in the modern era? I'm not seeing waves of books being written about resurgence of Confucianism or Taoism. What is it about Stoicism that's made it the hot new girl?

**Massimo Pigliucci** (3:47)
Yeah, that's an interesting question. Well, of course, as far as hot new girls go, Stoicism is about 24 centuries old.

**Chris Williamson** (3:55)
She's aging well.

**Massimo Pigliucci** (3:57)
She's aging definitely very well. I also want to make a point, I actually comment on your observation that why Stoicism and not a lot of other philosophies. I've seen, especially since this COVID-Bruhaha started and this is all messes started, I have seen a lot of articles on other philosophies, including Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and if we go to the Western philosophies, also Epicureanism. But you're right, those are the exceptions. The overwhelming majority of things that I see are about Stoicism. I think it's for two reasons, and I think there are actually two different reasons, depending on whether we're talking about other Western philosophies or Eastern philosophies. Eastern philosophies are just not very Western friendly, that's one way to put it. Meaning that unless you grow up in, and vice versa of course, Western philosophies are not Eastern friendly. Meaning that if you grow up with a certain language, background, culture, etc., etc., it is less likely that something, that a philosophy that comes from a very different language and background is going to speak to you. For instance, before I got into Stoicism, I was actually exploring a number of possible philosophies of life, and I of course checked out Buddhism, because which is reasonably well known in practice even in the West, although the Western version is significantly different from the original one.