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April 18 - April 29, 2021
I call it the Stoic test strategy: when faced with a setback, we should treat it as a test of our resilience and resourcefulness, devised and administered, as I have said, by imaginary Stoic gods.
the framing effect: how we mentally characterize a situation has a profound impact on how we respond to it emotionally.
The Stoics realized that we have considerable flexibility in how we frame the situations we experience. They discovered, more precisely, that by thinking of setbacks as tests of our character, we can dramatically alter our emotional response to them. We can, in particular, develop our ability to stay calm, even in the face of very significant setbacks, and this in turn can have a dramatic impact on our quality of life.
Their goal wasn’t to banish emotion but to minimize the number of negative emotions—such as feelings of frustration, anger, grief, and envy—that they experienced. They had nothing against the experience of positive emotions, including delight and even joy.
Their goal was not to remain calm while suffering a setback but rather to experience a setback without thereby suffering. It is an important difference.
I begin by describing the sorts of setbacks to which we are susceptible and the ways in which we typically respond to them. Although many people become frustrated, angry, anxious, or even despondent, others take setbacks in their stride. How do they do it? And can we emulate them? I then explore the psychology of setbacks: why do they affect us emotionally the way they do? I go on to show how, instead of thinking of setbacks merely as unfortunate experiences, we can reframe them as tests of our resilience and ingenuity. Doing this can have a profound impact on how we respond to them. Instead
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One sign of maturity is a realization of the extent to which you, either intentionally or unintentionally, make life difficult for those around you. Consequently, you should keep in mind the words of Seneca: “we are bad men living among bad men; and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.”1
Because of the connection between setbacks and desires, if a person were incapable of experiencing desire, nothing would count as a setback.
by being set back, you will often find that the biggest cost by far is the emotional distress a setback triggers.
Try keeping a setback journal in which you record the setbacks you experience, their source, their significance, and your response to them.
in many cases, the emotional cost of a setback is far greater than the physical cost. Wouldn’t it be great if you could reduce the emotional cost of a setback or even eliminate it entirely? It turns out that you can, by using the Stoic test strategy.
“We cannot always control what happens in our life . . . , but we can always control what we do with what happens.”
for everything I do, there will be a last time I do it. You might think these are dark and depressing thoughts, but they can have just the opposite effect. They can help us transform our ability to speak from something we take completely for granted into what it in fact is—something remarkable and precious.
Many, on hearing Ebert’s story, would use the word unlucky to describe him, but a much more fitting word would be unvanquished. During the last decade of his life, he experienced enough setbacks for several lifetimes and yet was not embittered by his fate. It was a triumph of the human spirit.
Technological breakthroughs have made it possible for locked-in patients to communicate with thought alone. Electrodes implanted in their brain send signals to a computer. By this means, a patient can pick out letters on a computer screen. The process is very slow, though: one woman patient was able to “type” at the rate of one or two words per minute—and felt delighted to be able to do so.10 I have found it useful, when my word processor is balky, to contemplate her predicament.
When the number of options available is limited, it is foolish to fuss and fret. We should instead simply choose the best of them and get on with life. To behave otherwise is to waste precious time and energy.
1969 publication of On Death and Dying. In this best-selling book, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance.
Dealing with your emotions and your subconscious mind, I should add, is a lifelong challenge, since unlike any children you might have, your emotions and subconscious mind are never going to grow up.
the anchoring effect. In Kahneman and Tversky’s experiment, the rigged wheel sank an “anchor” into the subconscious minds of their research subjects, and on lodging there, it affected their subsequent speculations about the world.
By thinking about how things could be worse, they effectively sank an anchor into their subconscious minds
This process, now known as negative visualization, is one of the most remarkable psychological instruments in the Stoic tool kit. It is important to realize that in advising us to negatively visualize, the Stoics weren’t advocating that we dwell on how things could be worse; that would indeed be a recipe for misery. Instead, what we should do is periodically have flickering thoughts about how our lives and circumstances could be worse.
Almost regardless of how bad things are, they could be worse, and this alone is reason to give thanks.
frame events cleverly, and we might even find ourselves welcoming the setbacks we experience!
“what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things.”
Epicetus
Whereas most people valued fame and fortune,6 a Stoic’s primary goal in life was to attain and then maintain tranquility—to avoid, that is, experiencing negative emotions while continuing to enjoy positive emotions.
He also knew that when people judge others, they do so in accordance with their own values, not in accordance with the values of the people they are judging. He therefore concluded that a sensible Stoic will ignore the praise of non-Stoics, so it would be pointless for him to go out of his way to gain that praise by sharing his setback stories.
if you can bring yourself to laugh at the things that make most people cry, you have a powerful weapon to use against life’s adversities.
The Stoic test frame: The last frame that we shall consider has gamelike elements: when confronted by a setback, the Stoics say, we should pretend that imaginary Stoic gods are testing us with our well-being in mind. To pass this test—and thereby win the game—we must stay calm while finding a workaround for the setback.
when you experience a setback, you are faced with not one challenge but two, and the second—preventing a flood of negative emotions—is usually more critical than the first. This emotional challenge may be secondary in terms of time and causation, but it is often the primary challenge in terms of its impact on us. Usually the harm done us by our emotions—if we allow them to be triggered—is the biggest cost associated with a setback.
Stoics recommend that when we experience a setback, we make a point of consciously framing it as a kind of test. Allow ourselves to get frustrated, and we get a low grade; allow ourselves to become angry or despondent—or even worse, regard ourselves as victims—and we fail. Ideally, the setback won’t give rise to negative emotions within us, not because we are successfully concealing our distress but because we have no distress to conceal.
“excellence withers without an adversary.”
Seneca
Regardless of the imaginary tester we choose, the key thing is that we assume that we are being tested for our own good.
You must therefore grade them yourself, and in coming up with a grade, you should take two things into account. The first is how you conducted your search for a workaround for the setback.
An optimal workaround, by the way, won’t necessarily be a pleasant workaround. To be optimal, it need only be less unpleasant than the other possible workarounds.
The second but more significant factor in grading your performance will be your emotional response to the setback. If you remain calm and collected, you will be worthy of, say, a B. If your goal is to get an A or even an A+ on the exam, though, you will have to do more than remain calm; you will have to welcome the setback and even perk up a bit on its appearance. In this respect, you need to resemble a fireman who, after years of training, is finally called on to put out a fire. At last, a chance to show his stuff!
Notice that the two components of a Stoic test can receive different grades. You can hit on the optimal workaround to a setback but get quite upset over being set back, in which case your workaround grade will be high but your more important emotional-response grade will be low.
take a few minutes to consider the setbacks you have recently experienced—or, if you have started keeping the journal described in Chapter 1, take a look at the setbacks you’ve recorded there. How would you grade your responses to them? Are you satisfied with this grade? And if not, what can you do to improve your grade on future setbacks?
if we are set back, we have five seconds to declare the event to be a Stoic test.
Once we start thinking of setbacks as Stoic tests, we may discover that instead of dreading them, we look forward to them.
start your toughness training by dealing with these fears.
In doing prospective retrospection, you simply remind yourself that at the present moment, almost regardless of what you are doing, you are quite likely living in the dream world of your future self. Enjoy living that dream!
the Stoic principle that we should not concern ourselves with things we cannot control.
The American poet Mary Oliver is winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In her poem “When Death Comes,” she expresses an outlook on death that resembles that of Canus. She tells us that when death comes—like “an iceberg between the shoulder blades”—she doesn’t want to realize, now that it is too late to do anything about it, that she has simply been a visitor in this world. She doesn’t want to end up sighing, frightened, or arguing. She wants instead to enter that “cottage of darkness” full of curiosity, knowing that she spent her life play ing the role of “a bride
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Those interested in learning more about Stoicism are encouraged to read my Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), in which I introduce the Stoic philosophers and explain how we can put their principles to work in our own life. Those wishing a deeper understanding of Stoic philosophy should take a look at Massimo Pigliucci’s excellent How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
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