Psychological Stoicism Part 2: You Are Living the Dream Life
This series of posts is not meant to be a comprehensive course on Stoic theory and practice. Instead, it offers small strategies that can assist you in maintaining tranquillity and guiding you in the right direction during stressful and difficult times. Click here for an introduction to this series of posts on psychological Stoicism.
You can hear an audio version of this post by clicking here.
Dream On
Around fifteen years ago, I presented a public lecture on the theme of positive living. It didn’t go well. During the Q&A session, a smiling woman asked me what I thought of the ‘Law of Attraction’. I can’t remember exactly how I answered her question, but I remember her smile quickly fading as she got up and stomped out of the room, shouting, “I don’t want to be around any negativity! This was supposed to be a talk on positivity!” An awkward silence descended upon the room, and I vowed to myself that I would be very careful when using the term ‘positive’ in future talks and workshops. It conjures up certain expectations for people.
Despite being an eternal optimist and, dare I say it, a positive person, I’m not a big fan of ‘the law attraction’ as espoused in books and films like The Secret. It is comforting to be told that you can turn your life around and attract good things, both material and circumstantial, by dreaming big, thinking positive thoughts and ordering them from the universe. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to back these claims, which have often resulted in wasted time and disappointment for many people. I’ve met many disillusioned people, still blaming themselves for not being able to think positively enough and reap the rewards.
That’s not to say positive thinking and dreaming are always bad. They aren’t. It would also be a mistake to think that the Stoics didn't want us to dream. Living by Stoic principles doesn't mean you extinguish ambition. The Stoics believed we should have ambitions, positive goals, and dreams, but we should be careful in our choice of dreams. One dream that the Stoics would happily recommend is waking up each morning with the knowledge that, with a bit of good fortune, we get to spend the day being us, living the life we happen to be living. Wait, what? Dream of the life we are already living? Yes. Allow me to explain.
Some good and bad news. The good news is that you're already living the dream life. The bad news is that the dream in question isn't being had by you but by someone else. Probably a total stranger. Much of the time this stranger will dream of being like you in specific ways. Wouldn't it be great, they tell themselves, to have your house, car, and job? Likewise, wouldn't it be great to be as healthy, wealthy, educated, or confident as you are?
In other cases, a dreamer isn't satisfied with being like someone else in certain aspects; they instead dream of inhabiting that person's life. I have heard that some people dream of living the life of David Beckham (my go-to example has always been Brad Pitt, but believe it or not, he is now 60 years old, so I thought I would move with the times, if only a little). They are convinced that if only they could live the life of David Beckham, or a close replica of it, they would find lasting happiness.
It may be easy to understand why someone would dream of living the life of a seemingly successful celebrity, but some may react with surprise to the claim that there are people who dream of living their life. My life, they may protest, just isn't that great. Indeed, they wouldn't want to live it if they had any choice in the matter. This unhappy individual might go on to describe the difficulties they are experiencing. They drive an old-ish car, recently broke up with their partner, and can’t afford to eat out because finances are very tight. Who on earth, they might protest, would want to swap the life they are living for mine?
They might be surprised to hear that lots of people would. Not just a handful or even tens or hundreds; it may be millions or even billions of people. Where are all of these people? You may find these people in your neighbourhood or town. If not, you will probably find them in another part of your country, or if not there, certainly in other parts of the world. This includes people who have no car, are deep in debt, or can’t afford to eat well every day. You will also find them in places where a person’s annual income will be less than the amount that the person with the old car spends on Netflix each month. It includes places where people have dirt floors, no access to flushing toilets, and have to walk miles to get clean(ish) drinking water. I could extend this list, but I think you get the idea. This is not meant to make people feel guilty for feeling unhappy in their circumstances, but it can help to gain perspective. In comparison to much of the world’s population, in material terms, they are living the dream life.
In what could be considered a reversal of this yearning for a celebrity dream life, a recent interview with French superstar footballer and multi-millionaire Kylian Mbappé piqued my interest when he gave an unexpected answer. When asked by the interviewer what he now dreams of, rather than answering with a list of possible championship titles or sporting achievements, he explained how he dreams of walking into a cafe, ordering coffee and sitting down to watch the world go by unnoticed. He is recognised wherever he goes and misses the freedom to do simple things. He said, “I would pay a lot of money for that, but it is impossible to buy anonymity, so I just fantasise about it.”
Travelling Back in Time
As well as considering other people, we can also look to different times. I’m a big fan of time travel. The concept of it, that is. I haven’t actually managed to travel in time. Not yet, anyway. I’m a complete sucker for any book or film based on time travel. To help me fall asleep at night, I often lie in bed, meditating on travelling backwards in time, imagining what the places I have lived in were like in earlier centuries and what it would be like to meet long-dead relatives. I often wonder what these ancestors would think of modern-day life. I imagine my father’s father’s father would be astonished by today’s technology. We have antibiotics that kill deadly infections. We can fly to other countries quicker than my great-great-grandfather would have been able to travel to the nearest city. We have phones that allow us to make video calls and instant access to most books ever written and music recorded.
If I could travel back in time and tell him all this, he might think I am living in paradise. However, as he lived in a time when none of these things existed, he wouldn’t miss them. In the same way, I don’t feel deprived of future technologies that my descendants might feel sorry for me missing out on. One of the things that made me most happy as a teenager was receiving a letter from my pen pal in the USA. I would handwrite my letter over a few days, post it and then wait. Airmail to the USA would take about a week, so if I were lucky, I’d get a reply within 2-3 weeks. If you had told teenage me that in the future, millions of potential ‘pen pals’ would be within instant reach and that I could send photos or even video chat, I imagine I would have felt delirious. However, with all that choice and instant gratification, I am not sure I would have been happier. Still, when I tell my children about my performative years, they feel sorry for teenage Matt. It must have been awful, they say, poor you! Thinking about those who lived in the past can remind us of the things we take for granted. In many ways, we are living their dream lives.
Looking Closer to Home
You don’t need to go to a far corner of the earth or back in time to find people who dream of living a life like yours. Indeed, there’s an excellent chance that you can find them a lot closer to home. You’re just unaware of their existence. Living near you might be someone who cannot walk out of their house or easily catch a bus or a train without making complex arrangements. They may rely on others to help them go to the toilet, eat, and travel to the library or shops. They might think you are lucky to be able to drive around in an old car. You might not be able to eat out this month, but they would love the freedom to just pop into a shop and make a meal for themselves.
Everyone is Living Someone Else’s Dream Life
Before moving on, let me point out that even this person is probably living someone’s dream life. In his book, The Stoic Challenge, William Irvine told the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, after suffering a stroke, woke up in hospital with locked-in syndrome. He lost nearly all of his physical abilities, apart from being able to slowly swivel his head and blink his left eye. Despite his physical incapacity, his mind remained fully intact. Although he could not speak, his doctors devised a way for him to communicate by blinking his left eye. Jean-Dominique Bauby lived for nearly two years after his stroke, unexpectedly dying of pneumonia shortly before his 45th birthday. During that short time after his stroke, Bauby painstakingly wrote about his experience of living with locked-in syndrome. His editor recited the alphabet until Bauby blinked at the correct letter and recorded the 130-page manuscript letter by letter over two months. Bauby’s memoir, The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, was published two days before his death and became a worldwide bestseller.
Mind the Gap
In the first post in this series of Stoic lessons, we introduced the gap theory of happiness. We suggested that, rather than trying to fill this gap in our happiness by coveting new things and different circumstances, we can instead learn to want what we already have by using an exercise called negative visualisation. Although less obvious, this strategy is far more effective in filling the gap. In the same way, if there's a gap between what we perceive to be our current life and the one we dream of living, we will be dissatisfied. One way to close that gap is to somehow achieve the life of our dreams. A second, less obvious but far more effective way to close the gap is to embrace the life we are living and learn to count ourselves lucky to be living that life.
You may question if this is possible and worry that you will have to forget about your goals and dreams if you do that. I understand, but be reassured that learning to embrace the life you live is possible, and it can be done while also holding aspirations for the future. How do we practically go about doing this? Let me introduce you to what I call the quantum leap meditation. The name does sound a little sci-fi, and with good reason, as I’ve borrowed it from an early 1990s TV time travel drama of the same name. The traditional name for this type of exercise is called the ‘trans life meditation’, but that conjures up various meanings and often confuses people when I introduce it at workshops.
The Quantum Leap Exercise
The quantum leap exercise is based on a psychological principle called anchoring. The Stoics knew our evaluation of what happens to us is usually comparative rather than absolute. Ask someone whether they are having a good day today, and they might tell you that compared to last Friday, they're having a terrible day, but compared to Monday, they're having a great day. Psychologists refer to the point of reference we use in making these comparisons as an anchor. The Stoics knew that although we have limited control over life's challenges, we have considerable control over the anchors we use in our assessment of daily events.
The quantum leap exercise is based on this anchoring principle. We can learn to embrace the life we are living by directing our focus away from the people whose lives we dream of living and toward those people who dream of living our lives. To do this, we can make a point of regularly visualising what life would be like if we suddenly found ourselves inhabiting the life of someone who, for example, faces daily physical challenges, maybe even locked-in syndrome, or someone living in poverty, who despite working many more hours than us a week, earns less in a year than we do in a week. You could also leap into the primitive life of someone who lived many years ago. I often read historical novels set in previous periods and usually find myself contemplating that my life now is much more comfortable than that of kings, queens, presidents and wealthy people of earlier centuries.
Just for a very short time, but with as much detail as possible, imagine what it would be like to live that other person’s life. For a few minutes, form mental images of their homes, workplaces, and daily activities. How do their days differ from yours? Don’t dwell on it for too long; just a few minutes before you hop back into the reality of your own life and resume your usual activities. You will likely find that this exercise will dramatically change your outlook on life for a short while and for the better. You may even feel some gratitude for your current lot in life. As with the negative visualisation exercise I described in the previous post, you will probably find that the effects of the quantum leap exercise are short-lived, so you can repeat this exercise as and when needed.
Prompt Yourself Regularly
You can also be reminded to do the quantum leap exercise when you feel slightly envious of the lifestyle of a celebrity who has appeared in the news or on TV or even a colleague or neighbour who seems to be in a far more advantageous situation than you. This reminds me of a beautiful sunny day last summer. Looking out my window, I saw a group of people in matching t-shirts carrying large cardboard cheques along my street. They were on the way to the next-door neighbours on either side of me. As it turned out, they had both won huge amounts in a postcode lottery. I had nearly entered the same lottery earlier that week but decided not to waste my money. In the following weeks, as new cars arrived on either side of me and my neighbours flew off on expensive vacations, I often imagined what I could do with all that money. I soon learned to become aware when my mind drifted off in that direction and used it as a prompt to do a bit of quantum leaping in the other direction while also wishing my neighbours well.
Many people find that practising these regular meditations can transform them into more compassionate people, changing their attitudes and behaviour towards others. The exercise tends to improve their lives and those of others they come into contact with. Everyone’s a winner. Enjoy your day living the dream life.