IF I WERE TO WRITE my own list of " what I should have known before turning 20," the top of the list would have been Stoicism.
In fact, it might have been the only thing on the list -- as the philosophers Zeno, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius have summarized it all for us on the very topic of "how to live a good life." Wait, wait, wait, I am not selling you stoicism as a philosophy of life here in this post (although I am actually very tempted to).
My goal in this post, as the title suggests, is to show you how and why this 2,000+ years old way of thinking could enhance our way of designing in the 21st century. Let's start with why I think I would have lived a much better life past my 20 had I known about Stoicism back then.
I must have alluded to my love for Stoicism somewhere in the past 80+ posts, and for sure in an interview (in Chinese) that I gave to my former student, I did talk about how Marcus Aurelius' personal note to himself complied as Meditations has completely changed my way of seeing the world. Over the past few months, I have been re-reading Stoicism from the perspectives of Zeno, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, and Epictetus, through which I have learned so much about what I missed reading only Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
When dealing with the death of my father, for instance, I perhaps would have been much more calm and accepting had I used, a psychological trick that the Stoics calls, "negative visualization" to pre-live the world without him in it before he passed. I would have been much more prepared, and therefore less shock when it happened. I would also have cherished every moment with him more; hence, wouldn't feel so much of a sense of regret.
I would have also thanked him for the 62 years my father's contribution to the world (and 29 years to my life) rather than his absence. And the list goes on. In other words, had I been a Stoic, I would have dealt with that black-swan-kind-of-blow much more calmly. First, a disclaimer I am not philosophy major student and my reading of classical Greek and Roman is non-existence. So, my knowledge of Stoicism here is second-handed, based on what I have read from the four books below.
[gallery ids="4674,4675,4676,4677" type="rectangular"] I'm going to get right into it. These are the 4 things I learned from Stoicism that I wish I had learned at least 16 years earlier. The single most important idea of Stoicism is "know what's in your control." Rule#1: There're only two things in life you can control: Your opinion and your value. Marcus Aurelius once said: "You only have power over your mind, not outside events.
Realize this, and you will find strength." This rule, I believe, is the foundation of everything that has to do with Stoicism.Everything else is not in your your total control. So, knowing this very important fact, we should live a worry-free life about the tennis game we are going play, the result of the job application we have just submitted, the opinion of other people on you, etc.
Those are things that you do not have the total control; hence, they're not worthwhile your time; Rule#2: Opinions of others should have no effect on you. Insults, gossip, rumor and hateful words can be sources of misery, sadness, grudge. We all sort of unrealistically want the world to like us -- however absurd that sounds. I have seen so many people who cannot get over the fact that someone just criticized them -- someone whom they don't even like!
When a Stoic is asked how he feels about an unreasonably hateful opinions from his oppositions, his respond is simply (as paraphrased by the philosopher William Irvine) "If he [my opposition] disapproves of what I am doing, then what I am doing is doubtless the right thing to do." Again, other people's opinions are not one of the two things that you can control. Rule#3: Seek joy from what you already have, rather than from what you don't. Many people misunderstand Stoicism.
See, even in a respectable dictionary, the definition of being stoic/stoical is "Enduring pain and hardship without showing one's feelings or complaining: he taught a stoical acceptance of suffering." This dictionary and many people think that Stoics, therefore, must be sad, emotionless, and perhaps also quite joyless because they always have to endure pain and hardship. On top of that, Stoics do not seek or expect pleasure, fame and fortune to come their way. Wait, no pleasure, no fame, no fortune ---- what a tribe?
In fact, the Stoics already know that most of the time the reason why we are not happy is precisely because we constantly seek and expect pleasure, fame and fortune. When we get what we want, we are happy -- but only for a short time as we need to find more things to fulfill our continuing desire.
And as these thing are sought after not just by us but by many others (hence limited in number), their availability is never entirely in our control (back to Rule #1); hence, they're likely -- very likely -- to be the source of unhappiness, joylessness, and discontents.
So, instead of wanting what you don't already have, and using your physical energy and willpower on things you cannot control, "look inwardly" at things that you can control (Rule#1: your value and your opinion) and use them to your own advantage.You can simply change your value and opinion to like what you already have. Isn't that much easier? So, Stoics are not emotionless or sad; quite the opposite, they are always joyful because they are happy with what they already have.
Rule#4: Focus on the means, and not the end. Wait, so does that mean that Stoics are usually poor and powerless? Since they don't seek and expect pleasure, fortune and fame? Well, no.
In fact, quite the opposite: Marcus Aurelius was one of the greatest Emperor of Rome (and therefore the most powerful person in the western world); Seneca was a man of letters (in addition to being a statesman, a playwriter, a tutor and a private advisor to Emperor Nero) who was, among other things, also the richest man in the Empire; Musonius Rufus and Epictetus ran their own top educational institutions (so they would be like President of Harvard and Princeton today).
These were all, in the strictest sense of the term, quite ambitious people, if not down right overachieving. The list of Stoics who are also successful is actually very long! How did they do it? Well, these guys were successful precisely because they were not doing things purely to seek pleasure, fame and fortune. They're doing their jobs because they "enjoyed" doing their jobs -- either because those jobs were their duty to the society, or they simply "loved" their jobs.
Again, since outcomes of anything are never in your control (Rule#1 again), focus your mind on the task that you enjoy is the best path way to success. When competing (be it tennis, exam, or whatever) you can control your mind to focus on "doing your best" -- whether or not you'll qualified for the Wimbledon is no longer in your control. Even if the success doesn't come, you're still not sad about it because you're neither doing it for the success, nor you're having any expectation about it (rule#3).
Now, these rules, if you could apply them well in your life, should already make you an employee/student/colleague of the month. These are qualities that everyone expects from you as a person in the society. You'll be the kind of employee/student/colleague who is not only happy with the job assigned to you, seek joy from what you already have, never complain about opinions of others, and, most importantly, hold dearest your own value of how you would like to be in the world.
In a way, if you can try to apply these rules i your life you are using design thinking to "re-design" your existence. Knowing what you can and can't control, you will be able to face with anything, including those moments when you are looking down at a frightening bottomless hole into which you are going to jump. In other words, Stoicism is an antidote to the black swan. If we're to push Stoic one step further, what about design thinking?
Turns out I am not the only one writing about this. There're quite a few great advise. Let's get right into it -- three more rules; stoicism for design thinkers! Rule#5: Try to live like a not-have, every once in a while. Yes, that's right. Stoics are known for their "negative visualization" -- imagining what's the worst thing that can happen. Well, the answer to that is obviously "death," but that wouldn't do you any good since you cannot simulate your own death.
How, how about "poverty?" Even Seneca, the richest man on earth during his prime, would allow himself to live like a beggar every once in a while. His reasons? To know the condition of the poor for whom he hope to serve, and to simulate the condition of hardship that he himself, despite being an upperclass man, might also have to face if things didn't go as planned. For us?
There's a saying that "innovation grows out of necessity." When you're dealing with less, you automatically relocated your cognitive capacity to things that matter (remember how Steve Jobs wore the same clothes everyday?). Plus, you'll get to experience the kind of world that you otherwise (without this volunteering to live with less) would not have been able to experience and empathize. The author Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call this "being anti-fragile." In the sense, "being anti-fragile" is to be opposite of being fragile. Who wants to be fragile?
If you don't want your entire life and soul to be rocked by a black swan event, you'd need to get ready for it; in this case, it may take some simulation of a black swan event to make you the opposite of fragile.
Try this yourself, try walk out of the house without your smartphone for a week; an you'll find out by yourself what aspects of that smartphone that you miss the most (as for me, I thought it was the camera, which as it turned out, I didn't miss one bit; so I was very very wrong to use the quality of the camera as the single most important factor for my latest purchase of a smartphone...).
The music channel MTV did precisely this with their famous "Deprivation Study" that resulted in something quite spectacularly awesome. Rule#6: Don't just talk about it, do it. In design practice, we have magic word that we like to say when we're getting stuck. "Show me." Instead of debating with one another or in the team how possible/impossible your idea is, we'd just pack up and go the workshop (wood shop, metal shop, etc) and just prototype our idea.
That's the "show me," instead of "talk about it" principle; and usually it works like magic. Stoicism is not a theoretical philosophy. It doesn't ask you to analyze everything epistemologically, linguistically and ontologically before you can go ahead and make use of its wisdom -- it presents you with the most reasonable, ecological and resilient solution to whatever problems you are facing -- sometimes even before you're facing them. So, take it to heart that you don't have to "think" to live a good philosophical life.
Epictetus once said: "Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it." You, also, can just do it. Rule#7: Fail fast, and get up quickly. This rule is particularly important to design thinking. We want our first prototype to "suck" so that we know what works and what isn't. It's unfortunate that we're living in the era whereby people think that the more time you spend "failing," the less likely you'd make it to the top.
Look at all the awards to be given specific to the "young talents" or those "under 40s" -- what's the obsession with young age? Stoics do not have any time to care about these nonsense. They understand, again, what we can and can't control, and see through it how everyone has our own pace in learning, and finally, achieving whatever we want in this short lifespan on this earth.
Having a goal is in our control -- as a goal is an opinion -- so the Stoics are fine with that, but at the end of the day, whether or not one could arrive at that goal is no longer something that is in your control, so let it go. The best way of achieving your goal is to fail fast, so that you can identify what doesn't work, fix them, and try it again.
In other words, in the words of Marcus Aurelius, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Alright, so I hope I have convinced you the beauty of Stoicism and how we can apply them in design thinking. One more thing. A bonus rule: You weren't meant to procrastinate. Stoics don't believe that we should waste our time on anything. They believe that we all have our duty to fulfill.
Even if you don't have a job, you have the duty as a human being to be productive, if not to other people than to yourself. So, a practical advise? Never allow yourself to roll around in your bed for more than one minute. After that, get up and make your bed (research shows that the very sense of completion of making your bed gives you a jump start of the day).
Do everything you need to do to get yourself ready to work -- even if you don't have a job. Brush your teeth, have a cold shower (to get your blood flowing), and wear something nice (even if you are working from home, never wear a pajama and be at your desk!). Get to work!
On Design Thinking Part 7: The Four Noble Truth