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[UpRiverMatt]

Personally at this time in my life I find Jungian psychology and the insights into the inner world of my psyche to be most interesting and fulfilling because it teaches you about the mind itself, and specifically teaches you how to learn about your own mind.

I also find the concept “Amor Fati” translated from Latin as “love of one’s fate” to be a rare mix of both highly comforting and highly motivating. It encourages one to love both the good and bad of what happens to you and gives meaning to it by letting you know that it’s all happening for a reason specific to you.

I find both of these mindset topics together can yield very potent results. Knowing oneself and loving oneself and one’s fate sound like a pretty good life to me.

[UpRiverGreg]

Very interesting Matt. I’m curious, are you able to give some examples of things you learned about your own mind through specifically through Jungian psychology?

[UpRiverMatt]

There’s a lot, but a simple one was that when I get upset it’s usually something I’m doing wrong, not something someone or something else is doing wrong. In general, I’ve learned that the real progress to be made in life is often solved by looking internally and practicing awareness, not looking externally for things to blame. I don’t really think this is specific to me though. Those are a bit more personal.

What’s your favourite mindset topic here? Let me guess, Stoicism ;).

[UpRiverGreg]

Good example!

Yes, you guessed it. I’m a big stoicism fan. I found once I internalized the idea of being able to endure whatever life decides to throw at me, my overall outlook and quality of life vastly improved.

I think the key to happy and successful life is having infinite endurance.

[UpRiverSpencer]

Yeah, I’ve gotta say stoicism is amazing. I’d recommend that most people go ahead and make their way through the stoic greats – Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. These guys are the bomb.

I would add, though, that there definitely are right and wrong translations of these books. It’s funny, while doing my Philosophy degree at U of T, the idea of good and bad translations really became apparent to me and the rest of my colleagues. If anyone if planning on reading any of these stoic heavy-hitters, please hit me up and I’d be happy to share my sources of the best, most readable, and most relatably translated to today’s world, editions of the greats!

[UpRiverMatt]

Stoicism is a great base for anyone’s mindset I think, but would you say it is only one tool in the mindset kit? What downsides or missing pieces do you think might need to be covered with other mindset tools?

[UpRiverSpencer]

Good question, Matty B.

To be honest, I think that Stoicism is a good Swiss Army Knife of a system. It kind of has an answer, which is usually pretty predictable if you study it, to most daily situations. Now, I do NOT profess to have the kind of mind the ancient great stoics did, but some of my issues would be as follows:

1. Seems very idealistic. –> One kind of needs to learn about Stoicism before it is immediately required. What I mean by this is that if you are currently in a fit of rage, frustration, jealousy or what have you, trying at that moment to look into Stoic values won’t really help. You need to internalize and ideal stoic mindset to have the ability to pull this out of your cognitive toolkit when needed.

2. Doesn’t necessarily encourage emotionality towards good things. –> An issue with being supremely rational all the time, is that to allow yourself to get overly happy with something is allowing yourself to be lead by emotion. This fundamentally goes contrary to the necessary mindset you must adopt and PRACTICE if it is to be successful towards its desired end (which for a lot of ancients is resolve in the face of death).

I will add though, that Seneca has a pretty great saying with respect to stoicism that kind of answers my critiques. He says: “one must use one’s philosophy the way a hunter uses his knife…” I.e. the hunter does not simply attack everything and everyone around him because he carries his weapon. Rather, he uses it in very particular situations when needed. In this light, perhaps it is good to be emotional towards the things that elicit positive and pleasant emotionality from an agent, and only use you ‘stoic knife’ towards the things that render one sad, mad, or whatever else may want to be reasonably disarmed.

Hope that helps!

[UpRiverMatt]

Awesome response Spencer, I love the knife analogy. That does answer my question, and puts into perspective how to use Stoicism better.

[UpRiverSpencer]

Ayy im glad dude. Yeah, stoicism is the shiiiiit 😀

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