An emperor’s tools for turbulent times.
“Why, then, do you wonder that good men are shaken in order that they may grow strong? No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley. It is, therefore, to the advantage of even good men, to the end that they may be unafraid, to live constantly amidst alarms and to bear with patience the happenings which are ills to him only who ill supports them.” ~ Seneca
Introduction
We find ourselves in turbulent times. The emergence and spread of COVID-19 has taken much from many. Some have lost their jobs. Others, their lives or the lives of ones they love. And worst of all: nearly half a year into it and there’s no clear end in sight. “These are” in the words of Thomas Paine “the times that try men’s souls.”
Yet as the souls surrounding us are tempest-tossed and people across the globe shelter in isolation, the world—now more than ever—needs us to be strong. Our spheres of influence are counting on us to be leaders—of families, companies, teams, friend groups, and ourselves. To be examples of how to meet chaos with calm instead of fear. To be cool and collected—an anchor in this storm when the winds and waves of fear, anxiety, and panic present themselves. “To be” as the revered Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius put it, “like the rock that waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging sea falls still around it.”
Now if you, like me, long to be that rock for those in your circle during these uncertain times, then you could do worse than the practical wisdom of the ancient Stoics—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Oddly enough, Marcus Aurelius’ reign as emperor was partly characterized by a plague (eerily similar to COVID-19 in its symptoms) that would claim as many as five million lives throughout the Roman empire and eventually bear his family name: the Antonine Plague.
So how did Marcus cope with the plague and other calamities? By reflecting on the philosophy of the capital “s” Stoics (not to be confused with little “s” stoic—which generally means emotionless) that came before him, repackaging the principles in his personal journal, now commonly known as the book Meditations. It is those recorded principles that shuttled Marcus safely to shore when caught in the storms of his reign. Principles that, today, are used (largely thanks to Ryan Holiday) by NFL athletes, CEOs, hedge fund managers, artists, and everyone in between to navigate the anxieties of everyday life. Principles I find myself drawing on every day both personally and professionally, as a corporate attorney counseling startup founders through the current economic climate. Principles so helpful in practice that they are now commonly incorporated in modern-day cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
And with what remains of this article, I offer up a few of my favorites (along with the occassional CBT analogue). Without further ado, I present: an emperor’s tools for turbulent times.
Emperor’s Tools for Turbulent Times
Focus on what you can control; let go of what you cannot
Much of Stoic philosophy focused on the mental therapy of differentiating between what we can change and what we cannot. As put by Epictetus: “[t]he chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”
In the twelve-step recovery community, this concept comes through in the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Indeed, an important part of an addict’s healing is the reminder that they cannot change the abuse they suffered or the pain they caused others. Those things are out of their control so it does not do to dwell on them. But they do have the power to control their present actions and write a new ending to the story they are living.
What does this mean in a world of COVID-19? It means looking at the laundry list of things you cannot control—how long this will last, how others follow the rules of social distancing, how others react, how much toilet paper is at the store—and letting go of them so that your energy is not needlessly drained. It means focusing, instead, on the things you can control: your attitude, how you follow the rules of social distancing, how you show kindness and grace, the example you are setting, the person you are when this is over. By focusing on what we control, we stop letting the air out of our balloon and conserve our energy for tackling the task at hand.
Remember this, like all things, is temporary
With no end to the devastation of COVID-19 in sight, the uncertainty of how long this all will last can cause waves of overwhelming anxiety. Waves we worry will batter us eternally. For such waves, Marcus gives us this prescription:
Reflect often on the speed with which all things in being, or coming into being, are carried past and swept away. Existence is like a river in ceaseless flow, its actions a constant succession of change, its causes innumerable in their variety; scarcely anything stands still, even what is most immediate; Reflect too on the yawning gulf of past and future time, in which all things vanish. So in all this it must be folly for anyone to be puffed with ambition, racked in struggle, or indignant at his lot – as if this was anything lasting or like to trouble him for long.
You may recognize this sentiment as a different flavor of the aphorism you’ve most certainly heard in the past months: “this too shall pass.” When citing the utility of this phrase in 1859, Abraham Lincoln offered this commentary: “How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’”
Today, therapists offer similar reminders to patients overwhelmed by unpleasant circumstances—coaching patients to remind themselves of the bigger picture and remember there was a time before this struggle and there will be a time after. Each wave has a before, during, and after phase. Same as the one in which we now find ourselves. When we remember that the current pain we are experiencing will one day be gone, we put pain and anxiety in its proper place as a temporary condition rather than a permanent one. As a moment in time and not the remainder of our existence. It is then that we catch a glimpse of the light at the end of tunnel and remember that we are capable of enduring much more than we think—including anything COVID-19 throws our way.
When you catch yourself catastrophizing—stop
For those like me, prone to overthinking and susceptible to worry, it’s common to suffer from a cognitive distortion psychologists call catastrophizing. Especially so in times such as these. Catastrophizing involves distorting events in your life through a lens of worst-possible scenarios. Make a mistake a work? Catastrophizing will have you convinced that you will lose your job, your wife / significant other in the blink of an eye.
But this thinking is toxic and we must counteract it when we catch ourselves spiraling. Lest we become, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his 1816 letter to John Adams: “gloomy and hypochondriac minds, inhabitants of diseased bodies, disgusted with the present, and despairing of the future; always counting that the worst will happen, because it may happen. To these I say, how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!”
What did Marcus do to diffuse the catastrophizing? He would bring himself into the present moment and write: “Do not allow the future to trouble your mind; for you will come to it, if come you must, bringing with you the same reason that you now apply to the affairs of the present.” Reminding himself of what Seneca might say: “There are more things [] likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
In modern cognitive therapy, psychologists offer advice similar to the self-help employed by Marcus, encouraging clients to turn “what ifs” into “so what.” Turning “what if I lose my job?” into “so what if you lose your job?” and then repeatedly asking clients “what next?” to slowly de-escalate the catastrophizing. Using job loss as an example, the process might look like this. Question: “So what if you lose your job?” Answer: “I would be upset.” Question: “What next?” Answer: “I guess I would start looking for a new one.” Question: “What next?” Answer: “I’d keep looking until I found one.” And so on and so forth. You get the point. By using this technique when you catch yourself contemplating worst-case scenarios, you slowly pull yourself from the pit (hopefully before you’ve descended too deep!) and realize that your ability to cope is far greater than your fear. When we learn to change “what if” into “so what” we realize that the worst-case scenario we are imagining is nothing we can’t overcome. When (and if) it comes, we’ll handle it like we handle everything else. One foot in front of the other.
So if you catch yourself descending down the path of worst-case “what ifs” in this pandemic age of uncertainty, remember Seneca when confronting your anxiety about the future: “Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime, it is not. So look forward to better things.” Forget the pains of the past and anxieties of an unknown future; concern yourself only with what you can do in the present. And if you’re struggling with what to do in the present, as Anna says in Frozen II, simply “do the next right thing” and that’s a pretty good start.
Find beauty in brokenness
In a broken world, it’s easy to wallow in pain when life feels unfair—fixing our focus on the negative consequences of what’s happening around us. But for this, the Stoics give us the “reserve clause,” reminding us to “reserve” the right to find beauty where initially we are tempted to see only brokenness. To convert external misfortune into an opportunity to build virtue and fuel us into something greater. As Marcus put it: human consciousness is “always adapting itself easily to both practicality and the given event. It has no favoured material for its work, but sets out on its objects in a conditional way, turning any obstacle into material for its own use. It is like a fire mastering whatever falls into it. A small flame would be extinguished, but a bright fire rapidly claims as its own all that is head on it, devours it all, and leaps up yet higher in consequence.”
We see allies of the reserve clause all around us. For those familiar with Jocko Willink and his quip “Good,” this is his reminder that when things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that will come from it (if you look for it): “Didn’t get promoted. Good. More time to get better. Didn’t get funded? Good. We own more of the company…Got injured? Good. Needed a break from training.” I can hear his voice now: Got quarantined? Good. Time to write that article. Time to create what Neil Gaiman calls “Good Art.” Time to forge battle-tested relationships and memories that will last a lifetime.
So as you move forward, the next time you feel yourself crumbling beneath the weight of COVID-19 or consumed by the flames of future adversity, I hope you, like the Stoics, remember Seneca’s words: “Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.” I pray that you, like Job, say, “but he knows the way I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” and thank adversity’s purifying flames for refining you into something greater. And I ask that you turn your attention from the death, destruction, and darkness toward the beauty of what this pandemic has given us the chance to do—to slow down. To show kindness. To spend time with the things and people we’ve been neglecting. To love each other well.
Conclusion
Now before I leave you, I want to be clear: I am not suggesting that we take this virus lightly. In fact, the Stoics would counsel us to take it seriously indeed. To realize that we are different parts of the same whole and that a threat to one of us is a threat to all of us. “What’s bad for the hive, is bad for the bee.” So take the precautions that experts are advising. Put the health and safety of others above your inconvenience. Be the person you want your kids (or others) to be.
After all, virtue, like any athletic pursuit, is something that must be practiced. Which makes this pandemic our arena. “The true man” says Epictetus, “is revealed in difficult times. So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material.” What has this pandemic revealed about your character? Only you can answer that question. For me, it’s shown I’ve got some work to do before I’m Olympic-class material. I hope you’ll join me on this quest to “[w]aste no more time arguing about what a good man should be” and simply “[b]e one.” The journey starts now.
Suggested Reading
Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, Donald Robertson
Discipline Equals Freedom, Jocko Willinck
1829, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson; Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Volume IV, Letter dated April 8, 1816 from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Start Page 271, Quote Page 271, Published by F. Carr and Co., Charlottesville, Virginia.