Zen Stoic Path Show

Important Quotes: “Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.” -Pema Chodron“You can begin from your very weakness. That’s your strength. It’s not your big ego and your big will that is the strong thing here. It’s your it’s your sloppiness, it’s your weakness. It’s your foolish side that is your strong suit.” - Alan Watts “The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events—that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies—and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life” -Alan Watts “What you resist persists.” -Carl JungIf you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” -African ProverbKey Takeaways:Pleasant emotion generated through delusion often will feel uneasy, contrived, or like you’re trying to talk yourself out of the agitation or discomfort the current feeling is creating. If this comes up, take a moment to reflect deeper.Pleasant emotions generated through intention feel effortless, balanced, and present. Often times when pointing in the direction of intention, you may not even acknowledge or even notice the feeling due to being present in the here and now.Look to your weaknesses and flaws. These are the parts of yourself that you attempt most to hide. Look to your anger, your sadness, your fears, your frustrations, the things you dislike most about yourself. What are these emotions really trying to tell you?Zen Stoic Intentions and Delusions Episodes:Embrace vs. Resistance: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000532944170Understanding vs. Controlhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000533054692Discipline vs. Expediencyhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000533815367Sincerity vs. Performancehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zen-stoic-path/id1571381944?i=1000533951153References:Jordan Peterson - The Story of Buddha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycIAW0M2-NQ101 Alan Watts Quotes: https://secularbuddhism.com/101-alan-watts-quotes/ The Enlightenment of The Buddha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVKK-WVW2uwWhat We Resist Persists: http://www.shoshanashea.com/blog/2018/6/11/what-we-resist-persistsAlan Watts -Waiting For Magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ReD00p6IC8

Marcus Aurelius Quotes: “When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.” “Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human- however imperfectly- and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.” “Pride and outward show is an arch-seducer of reason, when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business that’s when it has you in its spell.”References:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0xDtK3g3Q&list=PLzKrfPkpj5olfny8ao7uoBTydABymwEdu

Marcus Aurelius Quotes: “How easy it is to repel and wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.”“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.” “The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”References:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0xDtK3g3Q&list=PLzKrfPkpj5olfny8ao7uoBTydABymwEdu

The Lion and the BoarAn Aesop's Fable On a summer day, when the great heat induced a general thirst, a Lion and a Boar came at the same moment to a small well to drink.They fiercely disputed which of them should drink first, and were soon engaged in the agonies of a mortal combat.On their stopping on a sudden to take breath for the fiercer renewal of the strife, they saw some Vultures waiting in the distance to feast on the one which should fall first.They at once made up their quarrel, saying:"It is better for us to make friends, than to become the food of Crows or Vultures, as will certainly happen if we are disabled."http://www.taleswithmorals.com/the-lion-and-the-boar.htm

Brandon is a certified Corporate Based Mindfulness Trainer through Potential Project, Dually Certified Mindfulness Coach with the ICF & IAC, he also holds certifications on Proper Ethics and Ethical Conduct when teaching mindfulness courses by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. He is the founder of Modern Mindfulness, China’s largest mindfulness community with over 8,500 active members and 1,000 active members in Austin, Texas. Brandon has also founded and manages The China Trainer’s Community, China’s largest community of English speaking corporate trainers of Fortune 500 companies. Brandon has experience in Corporate Based Mindfulness Training and Mindfulness Based Coaching with a wide range of clients and organizations ranging from the U.S. Government, the New Orleans FBI, and companies such as Volkswagen, Chevron, Disney, LEGO, Alibaba, and others. He has also recently founded, and trail blazed a new service in the mindfulness industry: Mindfulness Based Consulting, with the simple goal of helping mindfulness teachers do their work full time.https://www.modernmindfulness.com/

“The philosopher’s school is a doctor’s clinic: you should not go there expecting pleasure but rather pain.” – Epictetus“Philosophy does not propose to secure for a man any external thing. If it did (or if it were not, as I say), philosophy would be allowing something which is not within its province.” -Epictetus “Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.” -Seneca"This is therefore to say that the transformation of human consciousness through meditation is frustrated so long as we think of it as something that I by myself can bring about, by some sort of wangle, by some sort of gimmick. Because you see it leads to endless games of spiritual oneupmanship. And of guru competition. Of my guru being more effective than your guru. My yogas are faster than your yoga. I am more aware of myself than you are. I am humbler than you are. I am sorrier for my sins than you are. I love you more than you love me. There’s this interminable goings on where people fight and wonder whether they are a bit more evolved than somebody else and so on.” -Alan Watts

“Reason gives each side time to plead; moreover, she herself demands adjournment, that she may have sufficient scope for the discovery of the truth; whereas anger is in a hurry: reason wishes to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought just. … The sword of justice is ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.” — Seneca"You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger." -Buddha"Say to yourself at the start of the day, I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people. They are subject to all these defects because they have no knowledge of good and bad. But I, who have observed the nature of the good, and seen that it is the right; and of the bad, and seen that it is the wrong; and of the wrongdoer himself, and seen that his nature is akin to my own—not because he is of the same blood and seed, but because he shares as I do in mind and thus in a portion of the divine—I, then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can I hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws. To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature; and to be angry with another person and turn away from him is surely to work against him." -Marcus AureliusReferences:https://dailystoic.com/keeping-your-cool-40-stoic-quotes-on-taming-anger/

We’ve all felt the deep existential fear of death before. Sometimes it makes us feel alone, afraid, and even lost.Imagine what life would be like if you could be at peace with your own mortality, so much so you could actually enjoy a strawberry in the face of death itself. The fear of death and lack of presence is where suffering persists. Those who learn to truly become present are those free from the burden of the fear of death, and thus can truly live. “We really shouldn’t be here at all. Considering that we are here, and considering that we really won’t be around all that long, even if we die of extreme old age, should instill a profound sense of appreciation for the present moment. There is no staying off that cliff; there is no avoiding those tigers forever. The mouse of inexorable time is chewing away at our lifeline moment by moment. The only choice is whether or not we will notice, eat and enjoy the strawberry. Because whether we enjoy or ignore it, we’re still getting eaten by that tiger.”-Dr. Munr Kazmirhttps://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-tiger-and-the-strawberry-b73de1dccf19“Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.” — Pema Chodron

Musicinstagram.com/2.weeks.noticeinstagram.com/drone_phonetikhttps://2weeksnotice.bandcamp.com/https://soundcloud.com/2_weeks_noticehttps://open.spotify.com/artist/0YU0zQW5R8hehPzbBy9W8sClothing: @yeet.stuffhttps://yeet-stuff.com/

In this episode, I share a disorienting experience I am currently going through and think through it in real-time over the podcast, using Zen, Stoic, and Zen Stoic principles to bring myself back to my center.

In this episode, we explore a lesson from Marcus Aurelius on how to deal with the worst parts of our fellow human beings.

In this episode, we discuss a Zen story that highlights the importance of emptying our minds as it relates to learning and growing.

In this episode, we explore, the belief trap! Most of the time in life, we do react to our actual experiences but rather what we believe about them. This creates unnecessary noise in the mind and disturbs your inner peace.

“Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.’ … Widely different [as fear and hope] are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope … both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.” -Seneca

In this episode, we discuss a Zen Story about how working hard could actually slow you down!

Ulf Schwekendiek is the Founder and CEO of Centered, a productivity app that helps users Flow through their Tasks 30% faster. Prior to Centered, Ulf was part of the product engineering teams of Apple/Siri, Autodesk, Postmates, Descript, Detour, Ditto & Groupon. Ulf earned his Masters in Integrated Digital Media from NYU. After leaving Postmates, Ulf took a moment to reflect on his work and how he accomplished it. He devoured books, blogs, and videos to better understand how to improve his productivity and use his time mindfully. This thoughtfulness eventually became his next venture. After designing the platform and building a team that shares the same passion for achieving mindfulness at work, Ulf launched Centered in 2020.

In this episode, we explore a quote from Seneca to help us better prevent the experience of burnout.

In this special multi-part episode, we dive into Zen Stoic Philosophy and how it can be practiced to create unshakeable inner peace in everyday life.

In this special multi-part episode, we dive into Zen Stoic Philosophy and how it can be practiced to create unshakeable inner peace in everyday life.

In this episode, we discuss how to be like water and how to have a mindset that allows you to better flow with life.

Jason has been actively involved in sports and martial arts since he was a kid. He has an intimate understanding of athletic injuries and dysfunctional patterns that can cause imbalance, pain, and sub-optimal performance.​Jason has a passion for helping people of all ages feel great and deeply cares for every client that he works with. His goal is to help people attain optimal health and wellness. When he isn’t working, Jason loves to read, swim, and practice martial arts.www.explorationsinhealth.comEmail: [email protected]: @jasonbrazil_lmt

In this episode, we take a deep dive into what Zen Stoic Philosophy is all about as well as how it differs from Zen Buddhism and Stoic Philosophy. A forewarning, this episode was a bit of a rant and is also quite dense!

In this special multi-part episode, we dive into Zen Stoic Philosophy and how it can be practiced to create unshakeable inner peace in everyday life.

In this special multi-part episode, we dive into Zen Stoic Philosophy and how it can be practiced to create unshakeable inner peace in everyday life.

On this special edition week of The Zen Stoic Path, I share the story of how Zen Stoicism came to be. I discuss the death of my mother and how it inspired me to do what I do today. I go through my journey to becoming a coach and how Zen and Stoicism, revolutionized how I served my clients. Lastly, I share my deepest regrets and shameful experiences that ultimately led to the lessons that became Zen Stoic Philosophy.

Trusting yourself and being self-sufficient are not mutually exclusive from asking for help. But there is a big difference between being someone who asks for help because you’ve become dependent on others for validation, and someone who does their part and recognizes where they need help.Imagine a world where people were self-sufficient AND embraced the interconnectedness of humanity.There is great value in being aware of where your strengths and weaknesses are. It shows you where you can help and illuminates where you can give someone else the opportunity to help.“Don’t be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can’t climb up without another soldier’s help?” - Marcus Aurelius

Zen’s style of action is to enter everything wholeheartedly without having to keep an eye on itself. This is what it is to have trust.There is great value in believing in yourself. If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot really trust anyone.Trusting yourself is not necessarily for the faint of heart. Those courageous enough to do so create a very fulfilling and meaningful life because they become sincere in their expression rather than living in a delusion of performance trying to appease everyone around them. It can be difficult and feel foggy at times. Remember to just breathe and listen to what you’re feeling in the moment. When you have emotions come up, ask them what they’re trying to tell you. Trying to get rid of them is an expression of distrust towards yourself and removes your sense of autonomy. Remember if you’re going to say yes to an opportunity. Make sure you’re saying yes to yourself first.

When you are mindful about your own balance in life, you reduce the chance of your mess falling into someone else’s path.Being self-sufficient allows you a greater capability to help others, as you can’t pour water from an empty pitcher.The most valuable investment you could make is in yourself. You only experience life through your own perception. You’re of little use to the world if you do not develop yourself towards your potential.

In this episode, I interview one of my oldest childhood friends, Danny Frank. Danny has been on the spiritual path for over a decade and shares with us a wealth of knowledge that will help to illuminate the path.

Pay attention to the problems in life that stir up unpleasant emotions within you! This is where your purpose can be uncovered. Unpleasant feelings are most abundant in raw material for creativity! They point us in the direction of solving problems in a unique way that may eventually become valuable to others.Pay attention to the activities that feel like play or feel effortless to you.Fall in love with the process. Orient passion and purpose around a process you feel strong and fulfilled in. Obsessing about the outcome of your passion or purpose will only cause you to become lost.Love your path! All of it, the good, the bad, pleasant, and unpleasant. It is the path you chose. You must play the hand of cards life gave you. You don’t play any better by looking at the cards of others or wishing your cards were different. You play best when you don’t just play your cards, but love and embrace the hand you got!

We’re all guilty of this to some degree. In a world where everyone’s business is all over the internet, the temptation to talk about someone behind their back seems higher than ever. But not just talking behind people’s back, sometimes it's directly too while wielding the mighty keyboard via the comments or DMs.As we learn more about philosophy and its place in the world, we start to see people and things in our lives differently than we used to. Suddenly what is wrong with our own environment and the people in it becomes much more obvious.Gossip can be a guilty pleasure or an opportunity for self-reflection. Judgments on the surface seem to be wrong, but they can also be a signal to us! If we are able to catch ourselves in the midst of judging someone else, it can reveal to us something incredibly valuable that we would have never seen otherwise!The most self-aware people are NOT those who express their knowledge for attention and act the most righteous, but rather those who use their knowledge to self-reflect and become better people.It’s easy to feel better about ourselves by pointing out the faults in others. Sometimes it makes us feel like by doing so, we move further away from the faults we’re judging. But what if we were using the judgment of others as a defense mechanism? What if it was causing us to be even more disconnected from who we are and how we feel?“Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.” -Seneca

It is so easy for us to miss the forest through the trees. We live in the age of the “selfie.” The widespread perspective has become warped, where everything revolves around our own perception of ourselves. This causes us to put an undue amount of significance on everything we say and do while taking everything personally. One of the most valuable skills we can cultivate is self-awareness. Self-awareness is typically assumed as one’s preferences in life and “knowing yourself.” But this mentality leads more towards self-obsession. Self-awareness is cultivated by zooming out from self-obsession and seeing the nature of who you are and what you’re a part of. "How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about people, it’s best to take a bird’s- eye view and see everything all at once— of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets— all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites.” Marcus Aurelius.“Consider too the lives once lived by others long before you, the lives that will be lived after you, the lives lived now among foreign tribes; and how many have never even heard your name, how many will soon forget it, how many praises you but quickly turn to blame. Reflect that neither memory nor fame, nor anything else at all, has any importance worth thinking of.” -Marcus Aurelius Take a moment right now to zoom out from where you are. Observe your environment, the people in it, the country you live in, the planet. See yourself connected and part of existence. From this view how big do your problems actually feel? Remember this whenever you feel lost or alone.

“He has the most who is content with the least.” -Diogenes “It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.” -Seneca “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” -SocratesWhat if we could find contentment and inner peace right here right now? What if everything you were chasing was just taking you further away from yourself. Imagine a world where we could all perceive this.The most important thing we can learn is how to be content right now. It is an instant ROI on your time and energy.The happiest people are those who are present in the moment and desire the least.“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so, wants nothing. -Seneca You may not have everything you think you need at this moment, but you still have this moment. It is a moment that wasn’t promised to you, yet here you are. Alive and aware. What simple thing can you be grateful for right now?

Micah has been training in martial arts for over 28yrs. Including Muay Thai and San Shou kickboxing, as well as wrestling in high school. After discovering BJJ in 2006 he decided to dedicate the rest of his martial arts career to grappling.Micah has functioned as an assistant striking coach for kickboxing and MMA. He has also worked as a competitive gymnastics coach for the past 12 years, as well as a strength and conditioning coach.Micah was also an affiliated athlete for the World Freerunning and Parkour Federation. Hosting the MTV Ultimate Parkour Challenge Crash tour in Austin, TX, and one of the first certified movement/ parkour coaches in the nation certified by the WFPF.Follow him on IG @corsairbjjhttps://corsairbjj.com/

“We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears.” -Alan Watts

You don’t have to sacrifice all practicality in order to pursue your creative passions. There is no rule that your creative passions need to become your vocation and that you need to do what you love every day. What happens to that creative energy when it’s suppressed? Life is full of pain, suffering, and unpleasant emotions. Our creative energy is born out of these experiences, and failing to explore and express these things through our creative outputs can be the path to resolving what we think to be meaningless suffering. What if your creative aspirations were a form of therapy for your soul?Creativity is where you find your Zen. It is a place where time ceases to exist and all parts of you feel alive! This is how we make the most out of our pain and suffering.The best thing you could do for yourself is to express what exists within you rather than hide it. Without doing this, you will never know your full potential.It can be scary to show yourself to the world. We wonder “what if I’m made fun of?” or “what if someone turns this video into a viral autotune song?” This makes us feel lost and alone. As we said in a previous episode, find yourself through your practice, build your confidence through competence, connect with others by sharing your gifts.“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end, the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.” -Stephen Pressfield “The War of Art”

“One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance." — Dalai LamaWe need goals in order to have a sense of direction. If we don’t have goals, we don’t have any boundaries to base decision making, and ultimately get dragged around by the highs and lows of our environment. Life is lived in the process, not the outcome. One of the biggest problems goal settings creates is that it becomes a metric of self-worth and often times what a person attaches their identity to. This creates unnecessary noise and stress during the pursuit where a person questions their own self-worth. What if we based goals around a process that is truly fulfilling rather than the outcome itself? The way to get the most out of the goals you set is to fall in love with the process. Orient goals around a fulfilling process and you win whether or not you achieve the goal. There is no worse feeling than investing time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears into a goal and then achieving it only to be met immediately with an anticlimactic feeling of emptiness. Know when to say “fuck it” and move on to something else. “Never give up” sounds inspiring in a Rocky movie, but is wildly uninspiring in real life while in pursuit of something fundamentally meaningless to you.

We all want to feel better about ourselves. Life is difficult, there is pain and suffering and sometimes, we would love nothing more than for there to be a quick fix, or for things to be easier and less difficult. And sometimes we turn to things like excessive positive thinking or pumping up our confidence as a means of making things easier on ourselves. We’ve become addicted to expediency and expectation. What if instead, we approached life with curiosity and appreciation? Building competence in an area of difficulty and developing tested principles is the best use of your time and energy. Pumping yourself up with positive affirmations without developing competency and understanding is a gamble.Bottom line. True confidence comes from competence, experience, and exposure. False confidence comes from delusions of grander, expediency, and conviction over our crutches. (Technology, money, food/drugs, status, relationships)

After surviving a few near-death experiences and overcoming addiction, codependency, and anxiety; Kevin has dedicated his life to sharing how he did it and the wisdom he learned in the process. Kevin is on a mission to end trauma and assist human evolution. He utilizes coaching, visionary leadership, and trauma-informed bodywork to fuel his vision of positively impacting the trajectory of the human race.His bold “tough love” strategy, combined with trauma-informed unique practical guidance, has helped tens of thousands of people from all over the world break toxic cycles, heal emotional and relational traumas, and live with more self-love, healthier relationships, and inner fulfillment.Find Kevin at:[email protected]

We hear people say all the time, “I want to be happy,” or “do what makes you happy.”This advice is hardly useful in any practical way because what we think makes us happy is actually an abstraction of actual happiness. Happiness is not a thing you can go and get, it is a state of being, yet most people associate the concept of happiness with an external result or outcome. There’s a lot of “I’ll be happy if/when” type of mentality out there.You cannot pursue happiness because there is nothing to chase. It's not running from you.Imagine a world where we didn’t believe the lie that happiness exists outside of us? What might be possible?

"Repeated efforts to be one-up on the universe may eventually reveal their futility. Don’t try to get rid of the ego-sensation. Take it, so long as it lasts, as a feature or play of the total process — like a cloud or wave, or like feeling warm or cold, or anything else that happens of itself. Getting rid of one’s ego is the last resort of invincible egoism! It simply confirms and strengthens the reality of the feeling. But when this feeling of separateness is approached and accepted like any other sensation, it evaporates like the mirage that it is. This is why I am not overly enthusiastic about the various “spiritual exercises” in meditation or yoga which some consider essential for release from the ego. For when practiced in order to “get” some kind of spiritual illumination or awakening, they strengthen the fallacy that the ego can toss itself away by a tug at its own bootstraps." - Alan Watts Spiritual egotism is the attempt to use what is of a higher nature to fulfill the desires of that of a lower nature. To think you are somehow more spiritual or awakened than another person because of what you practice is in itself self-diminishing as anything spiritual. The ego is important and necessary to have an individual experience. You couldn’t say, “I’ve gotten rid of my ego” without an ego. “I” would be a meaningless concept without the ego. The ego or “I” is merely a measuring of your individual conscious experience.

“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own inner resources. The trails we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths. Prudent people look beyond the incident itself and seek to form the habit of putting it to good use. On the occasion of an accidental event, don’t just react in a haphazard fashion: remember to turn inward and ask what resources you have for dealing with it. Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.” -Epictetus"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one." -Marcus Aurelius.

When we judge others, we are actually judging ourselves. Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them or learn to bear them.' -Marcus AureliusContinuing to judge someone after the moment of noticing their wrongdoing rather than teaching them better or giving them feedback only serves to hold you back from freeing yourself.Silent judgement in your own mind or gossiping continuously about others keeps the noise going. It prevents your soul from progressing in its development.

1. The time is ALWAYS now. Master your relationship with the present moment.- Do things right away to prevent being weighed down and cluttered by unfinished tasks. Quick decisions.2. Do less, but do it better. Eliminate unnecessary actions by eliminating unnecessary assumptions. Recognize the difference between urgent and important. Know your outcome.- Take as much off your plate as possible, and focus on what is important. Simplify and reduce to essentials. - “If you seek tranquility, do less. Or (more accurately) do what’s essential. Do less, better. Because most of what we do or say is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more tranquility. But to eliminate the necessary actions, we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well.” — Marcus Aurelius3. Meditate on your own mortality. Memento Mori

Seneca Quotes, “Letters From A Stoic: Letter II”: “You do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another. Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing to my way of thinking, is better proof of a well ordered mind that a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass the time in his own company. To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”“Food that is vomited up as soon as it is eaten is not assimilated into the body and does not do one any good. Nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent changes of treatment.Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in mere passing.” -Seneca, Seneca Quote “Letters From A Stoic: Letter III”: “People who never relax and people who are invariably in a relaxed state merit your disapproval — the former as much as the latter. For a delight in bustling about is not industrious — it is only the restless energy of a haunted mind. And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia.”

Chrysippus The Fighter: Philosophy as “a cultivation of rightness of reason.”Stoicism is “a philosophy of endurance and inner strength- of transcending one’s limits and measuring oneself against a higher internal standard” -Lives of The Stoics, Ryan Holiday"Runners in a race ought to compete and strive to win as hard as they can, but by no means should they trip their competitors or give them a shove. So too in life; it is not wrong to seek after the things useful in life, but to do so whole depriving someone else is not just.” -Chysippus.Part of Chrysippus’s ethical breakdowns was the development of Stoicism’s concept of Sympatheia. This was rooted in Zeno’s belief that we all belong to one common community. “Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe.” -Marcus AureliusRemember human beings are made for each other.If it’s bad for humanity it’s bad for us.“Be strict with yourself, and patient with others.” -Marcus Aurelius

If you always live with the future in mind, you’ll miss out on life. The most important moments (and fondest memories) happen unexpectedly and in the process, not the outcome or destination. Sometimes it’s nothing your mind could have even conceived… something someone says to you (a joke, a story, a compliment) or a look someone gives you. Follow through on what you commit to. Do not simply try to rush a process to expedite the discomfort of tougher times.Fall in love with the process of what you’re choosing to do with your time.

In this episode, we interview Eric Duran. Eric is a software engineer, mentor, and content creator. Eric shares with us how he went from humble beginnings to working as a software engineer at the top of his field, at one of the largest tech companies in the world!You can find Eric at @champagnecoder on Instagram for content on life lessons, career advancement, work/lifestyle setup, and technical interview prep!

One of the biggest problems we face in society is that we’ve been taught not to trust ourselves.Lack of trust in ourselves leads to a disproportionate amount of overthinking and indecisiveness.So many decisions to make, What if I’m wrong? What if I make a mistake? What if I fail?Indecisiveness and overthinking comes from a lack of clarity on what direction you want to move in. It comes from a lack of sincerity in yourself.Being performance oriented will get in the way of your intuition because it attempts to please others or present you in a different light than you truly are.Learn to listen to the voice of your unconscious mind. It is the quite voiceless voice that is more of a feeling and at the very most a whisper.Ask yourself: What do I really want? Is that really it?Your unconscious mind (intuition) will answer immediately. The voice isn’t loud and won’t attempt to convince you but it will make itself known via emotion. Detach from the outcome and be willing to be wrong.Decide on what you really want and go there! Have an aim and purpose in why you want to move in that direction.Use emotions like a compass. If your intentions aren’t in the right place, you’ll know. Something will feel off even if you’re doing “the right thing.”

Marcus Aurelius: The 5 Ways The Human Soul Degrades Itself: The Human Soul Degrades Itself:1. To be disgruntled at anything that happens is a kind of secession from nature, which comprises the nature of all things.2. When it turns its back on another person or sets out to do it harm, as the souls of the angry do.3. When it is overpowered by pleasure or pain4. When it puts on a mask and does or says something artificial or false5. When it allows its action and impulse to be without purpose, to be random or disconnected: even the smallest things ought to be directed toward a goal.