I’ll warn you now:
This week’s article is going to be very different.
I’m away on holiday to Italy, so I don’t have time to write an article with a system breakdown.
Instead of I’ll be dropping some brainfarts for stoic solopreneuring.
I always use holidays as a chance to reflect on my life.
But in case you hadn’t noticed I mostly write for myself.
The audience and you (the reader) is just a side effect.
With that being said, let’s dive in…
Why Stoicism is the answer to all your problems
If I could recommend only ONE thing that they should be teaching in schools for coping with modern life?
It’s not maths,
It’s not business,
It’s not how to make fucking soda bread.
It’s philosophy.
Philosophy is how you act, how you think about your life, and how to cope with problems,
In case you hadn’t noticed,
Most people just now have a lot of problems
and most people aren’t coping with their problems.
Our world is changing so fast that education is failing to keep up,
and we aren’t teaching people how to deal with this new barrage of information and problems.
Stoicism is thousands of years old and yet is more relevant to the modern world than any other religion, philosophy, or mindset.
Stoicism is a philosophy for life that improves your enjoyment of almost every aspect of life.
Stoicism is the answer for Introverts
Stoicism is an adjective, not a verb.
You practice it every day.
As an introvert, it has an answer for every aspect of life.
For me, it’s the only philosophy of life that makes sense.
Religion is the closest many will get to a philosophy for life. But religions have an agenda.
Most don’t have any philosophy for their life at all.
Stoicism helps me find my purpose,
how to deal with challenges,
how to treat others,
how to set boundaries
how to manage my emotions, and impulses
how to find happiness between the cracks
Here’s just a few nonsensical lessons from Stoicism that actually build happiness
- Endless positivity is for fools. Instead, practice imagining how it would feel to lose the things you love.
- Recognize that people are mostly shits and it’s fine because we’re all shits.
- Pre-rehearse all the things that could go wrong, and be pleasantly surprised when they don’t.
- Realize you’re not a special snowflake and the world doesn’t owe you anything. We don’t all automatically deserve an exceptional life, otherwise, no-one would be exceptional. Instead, we are all just insignificant specs hurtling through space and time on a sphere of clay. All your problems don’t seem that big a deal now, do they?
Stoicism teaches you a kind of funny pessimism that allows you to laugh at life’s misfortunes and challenges.
A lot of these are antidotes to conventional self-help books which often spout comforting platitudes catering to what people want to hear, instead of what they actually need to hear.
If you don’t have a philosophy for life, prepare to suffer.
If you don’t have a philosophy for life,
If you haven’t thought about philosophy,
then you are probably an “enlightened hedonist”.
You are endlessly seeking pleasure with no higher purpose in life.
I don’t mean you’re on a mad rampage, guzzling wine and chocolate.
I mean you’re stuck in a loop of consumerism.
“hedonism is the default philosophy of most people and certainly has become the dominant view of consumer culture.”
– Dalai Lama, book of Joy
In most of the world, we live in a capitalist society, also known as “consumerism”.
Capitalism is the current dominant culture in the West that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.
Anyone with half a brain could figure out this is not a long-term solution.
You can’t endlessly increase consumption.
Yet this is what most of us do:
Welcome to the “Hedonic Treadmill”
We work to earn money to buy things that we don’t need, for status, to give ourselves the illusion of progress, and in the short term, we are satisfied.
This is called Hedonic Adaptation.
But as soon as we have obtained the thing we desire, we become bored of it, and seek a new, higher-value item to covet.
Have you ever bought a phone, then 1 year later found yourself bored of your perfectly good phone,
now craving the upgraded model with the exact same features, and a few extra numbers?
So not only will you need to waste your entire life working a 9-5 to buy things you don’t actually need,
you will need to buy ever-increasing items to satisfy the new high.
But each time you will return to the same base level of happiness as when you started the cycle.
This is called the Hedonic Treadmill
The same is true of goals.
The moment you hit your goals, you will set a new goal and work harder.
This is why measuring success by goals or things you own is a path to misery.
We endlessly chase what we don’t have,
instead of learning to love what we already have.
So how does this apply to your solopreneuring or running a lifestyle business?
Stoicism introduces a way to stop chasing the wrong goals, to change what you value, and to adjust your behaviour to a lifestyle which is more sustainable.
(I’m talking about sustainable in terms of mental stability and happiness, not in terms of eco-friendly here.)
Ready to step off the hedonic treadmill?
If you haven’t already, follow this link right now and read “happy” by Derren Brown
Many of you will know Derren Brown only as a celebrity magician, famous for his acts of hypnosis and mental magic.
This is just the surface.
He’s a truly inspiring person, an artist, an author, a scholar, and a philosopher. Above all, he’s an expert on the human mind.
Happy was my first introduction to Stoicism, and it has had a huge influence over the way I see the world,
on my mental resilience, optimism, and happiness.
It’s not “philosophy” as you might imagine it. There are no Schrodinger’s cats to be seen.
This is practical, accessible, and impactful advice on how to deal with life’s challenges.
I hadn’t realized until reading this book, just how much everything I did was to impress people I don’t know or even like.
Happiness teaches you to learn your validation from within, instead of judging yourself through others’ perception of success.
It taught me to love the process instead of chasing the goal.
At least it taught me to try. I frequently need reminding.
The length of the trial is painstakingly lifelong.
It might be the ultimate challenge to set your sights on
The illusion will be it’s close enough to seize.
And one day you might buy the notion it’s something you’ve achieved.
but I would argue you’re no closer than ever
The path cost life total mastery is extra
You understand that there is always someone that can teach you
Forever novice even though they call you sifu
– 🎵 Greydon Square, the Master Paradox
The perfect philosophy for solopreneurs
It’s the perfect philosophy for introverts and for running a one-person business.
It sounds too good to be true,
but anecdotally If you keep it up long enough,
I promise you with time you’ll experience less stress, big problems become smaller, your relationships improve.
You’ll also experience sudden bouts of “stoic joy” and appreciation which are hard to describe until you experience it.
I recommend stoicism as the answer to
- stress
- anxiety
- ambition
- listlessness
- boredom
- procrastination
- weakness
- selfishness
- more.
Here’s x4 basic steps for Stoic journalling:
Take 5 mins every day. Write down…
- One thing you’re grateful for
- Predict x3 things which could go wrong today
- Imagine your life if you lost something you highly value
- One thing you did today which wasn’t your best version of yourself
Examples of Stoic journalling
Here’s a collection of some of my daily reflections on stoic solopreneuring.
These are unedited brainfarts, recorded as I typed them so excuse the roughness.
If you find these interesting you can subscribe for instant access to my entire library of Solo business stoicism,
which is a running record into my most intimate and personal world,
and a reflection of where my head’s at each week behind the curtains.
I use stoicism to run a solo busineses without burnout.
Subscribe for instant access to my essential reading list for stoic solopreneurs.
