#40 -Stoic Q&A Philosophy, Mindset and Living Deliberately

This is a special episode where my girlfriend and I address a variety of questions regarding philosophy, Stoicism, minimalism and living a deliberate life.

I want to thank Marina for her amazing questions! 

Here are all the questions we discussed in this episode:

1. What is your girlfriend’s accent? I’ve already mentioned I liked it a lot, I’m actually interested in different accents but I can’t recognise them just yet, what was it?

2. How did you introduce Grace to Stoicism? How did she react? I mean, not everyone would be interested in philosophy nowadays and you’re very lucky to have each other and share the same view on life!

3. How did you manage to stay in a long distance relationship? How difficult was it for you? Do you think your lifestyle philosophy contributed to your relationship and helped you with it?

4. Did I understand you right, that you compare psychology/therapy to Stoicism?

5. What is negative thinking / negative visualisation? I mean, people tend to visualise good things, picture themselves having what they want and so on

6. Don’t you feel sometimes that your philosophy goes against the worldwide trends? People tend to show their money, power, level of life by buying expensive and usually useless things, living alone in huge apartments of like 5-6 rooms, wear expensive brands just to show their income or whatever. Grace mentioned consumerism which is quite the opposite tendency to minimalism, do your friends understand your view on those aspects?

7. A bit about books. In what way are printed books better than audio? I think you said you wanted to reduce the amount of audiobooks you consume, why do you think printed are different?

8. Some thoughts on the “Create more than you consume” point - if everyone followed this rule, who would consume what we all create? There would be no point in creating, if everyone only created their stuff and didn’t care about other people’s creations. I feel like I’m failing to explain my question clearly, haha. What I’m trying to say is that there should some balance, right? If everyone only stayed focused on creating something, adding value to other people’s lives, than who would consume all this value and stuff? There should be some people who don’t create that much but who consume more, otherwise it would be useless to create anything as no one would pay attention to it. Or did I miss something?

9. You talked about trying a digital detox. Did you try it, how did it go? How do you control the time you spend on social media?

10. Dichotomy of control - could you please explain it a bit more? I got that it claims that one should not focus on what is not in their control. But then, how to do this? I struggle with anxiety sometimes, I often feel nervous about things I can’t change, for example. Even if I do understand that o shouldn’t, I still can’t help it. Can this concept show a way to solve this problem?

11. Can I apply Stoicism to my relationship somehow if my partner is not into philosophy?

12. Is the main idea if Stoicism “Memento Mori”?