The Stoic Life Hack: Say Less, Live Better

"The man who tries too hard to shine dims their own light". — Tao de Ching

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Have you ever done something good and then felt an uncontrollable urge to shoehorn it into a totally unrelated conversation? I’m really hoping this isn’t an accidental confessional and it’s not just me — we’ve all done this at least once, right?

Anyway, I realise I’ve shot myself in the foot here because if I use a good deed that I’ve done as an example, I’m instantly a hypocrite so just imagine some heroic act, it doesn’t matter what. What does matter is the empty feeling you get after saying it out loud and how it is in direct opposition to the response you were expecting.

Exaggerating a bit, you may expect to be high fived to death by everyone who could’ve plausibly overheard you, or paraded across the room and praised for your generosity. What you actually received instead was a suspicious look from others as if they knew what you were trying, like they had direct access to your desperate thoughts. When people vie for praise it’s glaringly obvious and the insecurity can be seen a mile away.

Now say someone brings up your good deed at a restaurant, there’s no need to be bashful, you just shouldn’t make your own noise.

Praising yourself instantly makes you unreachable, trapping you in your own ‘me, me me’ bubble where you’re the star of your own show.

To add to the pile of Marcus Auerlius quotes:

“A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another as a vine to bear grapes again in season”.

There’s also a similar quote that’s doing the rounds on social media:

“maybe your garden isn’t growing because every time a flower grows you cut it to prove to someone that you’re a gardener”.

If you’re praised then, don’t make up a lie, but humbly redirect it to others who helped, so you don’t get drunk on the compliment.

Sorry to bombard you with quotes so early but the Stoic philosopher Epictetus said something similar:

“Avoid a frequent and excessive mention of your own actions and dangers. For, however agreeable it may be to yourself to mention the risks you have run, it is not equally agreeable to others to hear your adventures”.

Now, you might disagree with the end of the quote as it sounds like he wants you to not tell stories and trade your personality for a closed-off one. To extend an olive branch to a man who died 2000 years ago, keep the interesting stories you tell occasionally and do away with the ones you’ve over-used, and re-hashed to oblivion. Let me explain why.

Using the same stories keeps us locked in the past

Stories told over and over can lock us into ways of acting, thinking and feeling. When we re-hash a story we’ve already told, we’re reopening an old narrative and transporting ourselves to an outdated version of ourselves. In other words, if we tell a story repeatedly, it has the power to keep us in the past, returning us to our old patterns of behaviour.

For example, say you were involved in a car crash that was your fault (sorry that sounded like the opening line of an insurance scam stick with me). Anyway, if you’re not a confident driver and it’s been years since you’ve driven, telling this story over and over again will solidify your self-perception that you are a danger on the road which, in turn, will make it harder for you to overcome your anxieties about driving.

In this sense, your self-belief or rather lack thereof is stunted by rehashing your inadequate past (sorry that sounded less scathing in my head). A related quote that lives rent free in my head is by the philosopher Kierkegaard who wrote “although life can only be understood backwards, it must be lived forwards”.

Conversely, as previously mentioned in the context of sharing a good deed, if you re-hash a story which revolves around you being the hero, you’ll also stunt your growth, whilst simultaneously inflating your ego to frightening proportions. People will instantly see through this façade, making you appear full of yourself (remember that ‘me, me, me’ bubble, you’d be back in it).

So, when we tell a story about a previous situation, it is often a selective account, omitting details that we deem less important in favour of details that make us look good; the hero of our own story.

My Weakness

At this point I’m conscious that it has been heavy on the messaging so let me come clean with my weakness. When someone I’m not that familiar with asks me a question I don’t have an answer to, my brain malfunctions. One I’ve been getting more recently is this stinker of a question:

How’s the job market going, any idea what you want to do?

I’ve tried all the tactics with this one, saying I’m in between jobs right now, or even mentioning a job that I have no intention of doing just to fill the air and satisfy their traditional guidelines of what counts as a job, just so we can get to a different topic. Afterwards, I would think “I wish life was like classic quiz show Mastermind that lets you just skip a question with no pushback”. Then every time, I realise I can actually just do this without being rude. If I don’t have an answer, that’s alright, I don’t have to throw a hail Mary of a random job out there that I think would make me look like I’ve got my life figured out, I think my movie collection answers that for me.

If, like me then, people pleasing is an issue and talking is a reflex let me leave you with another quote by Epictetus:

“If you wish to be thought so likewise by anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you”.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon

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