The Accidental Stoic Pt. 5 - Practice Misfortune

(If you have already read one of the other parts, you can skip the intro. I wanted to make sure all readers had the background no matter which lesson they were starting on. Enjoy!).

I love Tim Ferriss.

I love Ryan Holiday.

When you go through something traumatic you find yourself looking for answers, grasping for knowledge.

You hate the way you feel.

You don’t know what to do yet, but you know you never want to feel this way again.

But what can you do?

You allow yourself to be teachable.

Allow yourself the opportunity to learn from your mistakes so you don’t have to relive them again.

Two of the people that I turned to were: Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday. They practice and preach Stoicism: the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint.

In these blogs I am going to break down 5 pillars of the philosophy (Time Is Brief, Overcome Adversity, Live A Life Of Character, Self-Awareness, and Practicing Misfortune), and explain how I became one without even knowing it. What a pleasant surprise! Nothing like having a goal and realizing you are already there!

I find the best way to allow yourself permission to be teachable is either acknowledging the desire and need to learn or finding yourself in stories about other people and applying it to your own life.

1. Practice Misfortune:

Poverty.

Little food.

Poor Clothing.

No comforts of home.

Become face to face with want.

Realize you can handle more than you thought.

Anxiety and fear are rooted in uncertainty. Show yourself that you can deal with the unknown.

This is the stoic practice that jumped out at me the most. Practicing misfortune is what started the whole idea of this Accidental Stoic series. I am not sure if anything addresses misfortune, at least in this sense, better than a tiny cell in a 150 year old prison (with another person).

Poverty? I had no money. I refused to have my wife put anything on “my books” other than for necessities. I wanted to feel every ounce of my punishment. I knew it would make me better and stronger on the other end. I didn’t want to try and mask the emotional turmoil I was in with Top Ramen, canned sausages, and chips like all the other idiots around me. I wanted the cement and bars in my veins. I wanted them to harden my heart so I would get out of there and be a machine. Concrete and steel. No more fucking around.

Even when I got to Soledad and got a job, I made $0.09 an hour. Just enough for toothpaste, floss, and deodorant at the commissary once a month.

They don’t serve you much food. I was hungry all the time. My first day out I went to In N Out and couldn’t even finish a hamburger. I got full too fast. This was a single burger too. No double-double or anything. That’s how much my stomach had shrunk.

Now I fast once a quarter, 5 days at a time, for physical and mental health reasons. On top of that there are a lot of advantages to not being a slave to your stomach.

Poor clothing? You mean my set of blues for chow and my basketball shorts and white t-shirt for everything else? Or my PIA issued converse-style sneakers? Yeah. Poor clothing, check!

No comforts of home? That’s easy, wasn’t home. No family. No friends. Nothing. 10 minutes phone calls at the end of the day, if the phones were working, if they decided to give us yard, that’s it.

All I wanted to do was be home. See my wife and daughter. BBQ with my parents. Go to my in-laws on Sundays. That’s it. Get home, show everyone that this will not defeat me, and that I will be better than ever. That is something I still think about every day. Show everyone that no matter how fucked you are, you can pull yourself out. I want that for my daughter more than anything. Show her that you only lose if you give up.

I never thought I would have made it through prison. Why would I? There are people that wanted me there because they didn’t think I would make it either. But I did, and I did it well. I’m not afraid of going back. I can do prison. That is not something I am proud of, but it’s something I know I can do. 

If I can deal with prison, and all the crazy shit that happens there, what can’t I handle out here? 

Exactly. Absolutely nothing.

That’s what happens to people after traumatic events. Wars, attacks, tornadoes, hurricanes. They catch a glimpse of their true strength, the types of things they can make it through, and it’s a power surge.

That’s the real reason the Greatest Generation is the greatest generation, they were tested. Mentally, physically, emotionally, everything. Basically a whole generation of men and women had to go to war, had to deal with war. If you made it back, after seeing what you saw, after doing what you did, what the hell can compare back in real life? Absolutely nothing.

Look at really great people. I mean REALLY great. They all had to make it through something. The greatest people of our generation had to deal with something traumatic that allowed them to tap in to their potential, their strength, and their greatness. None of them would be who they are without it.

This was my trauma.

This was my insight.

This is what I can compare every difficult thing to for the rest of my life.

Nothing will be as bad as San Quentin, and I was able to go through that at 34. That gives me about 

50 years of ammo.

Wish I could have gotten that insight on purpose.

But accidents aren’t always bad.

Joey

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Secrets Will Ruin Your Life

*disclaimer: This article will sound pious and self-righteous, but it really isn’t. I have been on the wrong side of this advice and I saw the error of my ways. Things were extremely difficult for me for a few years, but it was also the best thing that ever happened to me: the truth.

What they don’t know won’t hurt them, right?

It can be our little secret, or is it?

Have you ever told yourself these things?

You keep the secret because you are worried it would hurt their feelings to know the truth.

But you weren’t worried about their feelings when you did the thing you are keeping a secret, were you?

Now you have to keep it a secret. Place it in your back pocket and carry it with you, everywhere, forever.

You can act like it’s not there.

You tell people it’s not there.

You tell yourself it’s not there, it’s no big deal, it was only that once, or everyone does it.

Which is your favorite excuse?

Which one makes you feel ok about your secret? Your lie? Which one allows you to sleep at night?

The Real Secret

The truth is, everything you think you are doing by keeping that secret is slowly eating you alive.

Secrets are a cancer.

You can ignore them all you want. Tell whatever stories you want to, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s there, and it’s destroying you, one cell at a time.

Doing drugs? Cheating? Drinking? Gambling? Flirting a little too much? Just getting a little high? 

What is it? What’s your cancer?

None of them is better or worse than the other. Secrets are secrets. The punishments may be different, but the cancers are all the same.

Telling the people you love and care about is out of the question because you know it will hurt them. 

As long as they don’t know, everything is ok, you have it under control. But you don’t. Your thinking has been flawed from the beginning. It shouldn’t have been done in the first place, and now you are justifying it. What an asshole.

Each of those secrets, each time you have to tell a lie to cover up those secrets, you are driving a wedge in to your relationships, and you are slowly killing yourself from the inside out.

If you are honest (which isn’t likely), you are just trying to avoid confrontation, or worse, punishment. Deep down you know what you are doing is wrong, but we are fascinating beasts, we just tell ourselves it is ok, using any excuse we can get our hands on, and voila! We excuse ourselves. Like magic.

If you are holding back a piece of yourself, you are never truly present. It is just sitting in the corner of every room, forcing you to keep your eye on it. Is it going to come out? Or is it just going to sit there? What if they see it? Over and over, day after day, this ball and chain that you attached to your own ankle is being dragged around, making it difficult to truly walk with the ones you love.

Why don’t you just let it go? Take it off. Be free.

Because you are afraid.

You want your cake and eat it too.

You want to do what you want to do, with zero regard to friends, family, and loved ones, but you don’t want them to know. You are what I would refer to, as a dickhead. You want them to think you are a good person. Maybe you are, but not right now, and that is killing you, whether you want to recognize it or not. You know they will look down on you. You know they will be mad at you, or maybe even hate you. It’s better to tuck it down deep inside, to sit on it, than let it out. You are jumping on the grenade. Now you feel good about yourself. Taking one for the team. What an asshole.

They Know

Stop pretending they can’t feel your secret. They know something is up. They know the real you. Just because you haven’t said it doesn’t mean you don’t wear it on your sleeve. They can smell the alcohol, they see your pupils, they know you don’t normally stay at work that late, they saw the bank statement. They know. But it’s not true if you don’t admit it, right? Deny, deny, deny as you slowly die, die, die.

Set Yourself Free

Tell the truth.

It is going to hurt, you and them.

You should have thought of that when you did it, or did it the first time, and every time after that, but 

you didn’t. Whatever happens, you deserve it, but they deserve the truth even more.

Worst case scenario, they are done with you. Should they give you a second chance? Or third? Maybe, maybe not, but you have given them the choice. Now that they have the truth, they can deal with the real you, at least what you have really done.

Best case scenario, they punch you in the face and give you that second or third chance. What that allows you to do is address the needs of the situation honestly. No more lies. No more stories. No more pretending. It is just you and the truth. Everyone can see it for what it is and you can attack it accordingly.

This will be the best and worst day of your life.

I did, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Ever since T-Day my life has been getting better and better.

Just do it. (This blog is not brought to you by Nike, but it should be).

You know it is the right thing to do.

Joey

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