The Hardest Stoic Spiritual Exercise and Why It’s Crucial for Happiness

The Key Lies in a Unique Form of Courage

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism in ancient Greece, is said to have begun his studies in philosophy by tutoring under Crates, a cynic. One of the first things that Zeno learned, as a result, was to practice not being ashamed of things that were not shameful.

To reinforce this lesson, Crates apparently had Zeno walk around with a pot full of lentil soup in public places. When he saw that Zeno was embarrassed and tried to keep the pot out of sight, Crates broke it by striking it with his staff. Zeno ran away, mortified. When he did, Crates called out:

“Why run away, my little Phoenician? Nothing terrible has befallen you” (DL 7.3).

And, of course, nothing bad had happened to Zeno. He only worried that other people might think ill of him. And this worrying about what other people thought was something that Zeno eventually learned to overcome.

It’s something that you and I, everyone really, must learn if we are ever going to be happy and live a good life.

Because if you want to achieve that goal, if you want to live a good life, then you need to be (relatively) unconcerned with other people’s opinions for two reasons. First, you will otherwise end up living the life that they think you should have, not yours. Second, you will otherwise end up playing a game — the recognition game — that you cannot win.

I think the first point is obvious. If you are always trying to please other people, to live by what they think, then there will be nothing left of your life for you to decide.

The second point is pretty obvious too: there is always a bigger fish. If you think that you can win the recognition game, you are wrong.

To illustrate, think of it this way. Marketers developed what is called a Q-Score to measure how popular various celebrities are. Their goal was to allow large firms to use those scores to more effectively advertise to their fan base. At one point, Obama was on top of that list. Now, he’s not (because he’s just not in the news as much). Even if you win at that game, in short, you will be replaced.

What these points mean is that we all need to learn, we all need to practice, not worrying about other people’s opinions about us. And while there are actually harder Stoic actions — such as dying freely — this practice is the hardest of the daily activities you could perform.

The 20th-century philosopher of Greek antiquity, Pierre Hadot, called these practices that help you become a better person “spiritual exercises,” because they are like medicine for your soul, rather than your body.

To put the goal memorably: to live an invulnerable life, you must practice daily vulnerability.

In less paradoxical language, to achieve Stoic happiness, where events outside your control don’t ruin your life, you have to address the sources of your shame — you have to be vulnerable.

The exercise of vulnerability understood in the way that people normally think of that concept then, is nothing but courage, as the Stoics thought of that. That’s my main claim.

What I am going to do is explain two spiritual exercises concerning shame and vulnerability following the Stoics, so that you can learn to live a happier life. In that explanation, I’ll also make my case that what’s at stake is courage.

Let’s begin with the easier version of these exercises.

Social Vulnerability

We no longer have the Republic that Zeno wrote, but apparently it was controversial in classical antiquity. He prohibited the building of temples, law courts and gymnasiums in his supposed “utopia.” Further, Diogenes tells us,

“He bids men and women wear the same dress and keep no part of the body entirely covered” (DL 7.33–34).

Why would Zeno want people to wear androgynous clothes that didn’t cover all parts of your body?

The Stoic lesson here seems to be that people become too conscious of what other people think about them, and they try, wrongly, to conform to social norms. These include how certain genders should act and the idea that some parts of the body are shameful.

This doesn’t mean that to practice Stoic vulnerability you should wear a sack cloth or wander around naked (though maybe Zeno would have liked nudism?).

To practice social vulnerability, the main thing you need to do is learn not to be trapped by social categories and expectations about them. I’ll give you some examples broken down by gender (since that’s an important social category).

For men, the challenge can be put this way: can you do “girly” things? Could you, for example, order a Cosmo as a drink? Could you go to a Yoga class?

For women, the challenge can’t be to perform masculine activities — at least not simply. The reason is that when women do masculine things, they still tend to be thought good, or at least not so bad. A woman, for example, who can chug a beer in four seconds will command the respect of the bros at the local bar.

A better example, then, might be the no-makeup challenges that you see celebrities perform occasionally. When not using makeup, women aren’t explicitly crossing into masculine categories — it’s just vulnerability.

A friend of mine practiced vulnerability as a woman in an unusual way. She had been dating a guy (also a friend) for a bit. After going to dinner, the meal just didn’t sit well with her. So she simply announced that fact and then farted in the car. Not exactly the sexiest thing for a woman to do, but her boyfriend laughed it off … and they’re engaged now. So something good came of that show of vulnerability.

How to Practice This

Whatever your gender, what you are after is an “affective cognition”, a feeling. The thought goes like this:

They are looking at me … and I’m not as I’m “supposed” to be.

The Stoics called this an immediate impression. It’s not fully rational yet. You need to stop yourself from just agreeing to these impressions, so that you can figure out if they are right.

The crucial part is to discern whether the evaluative portion of that feeling makes sense. Yes, they are looking at me. But that’s not a big deal. Also, yes, I’m not conforming to social norms — I’m not as I’m “supposed” to be. But why does that matter? Why is that bad?

What was so wrong about Zeno holding a pot of lentils in public? What’s so bad about a guy ordering a Cosmo? What’s so terrible about a woman farting? Nothing.

Find that feeling and learn to separate out that part that holds that it’s a bad thing. It’s not. Your life as a whole is not going worse because of what “they” think. But if you give into that irrational first impression, then it just might.

How This Exercise Will Shift Your Life

This spiritual exercise will build your courage. I hope that’s obvious. It takes courage to wander around in public holding a pot of soup, or with a big girly Cosmo (if you’re a guy). It takes courage to fart in front of your boyfriend and hopes that he’ll still like you.

But you need the courage to live your life and not the life that “they” say you should live.

To understand how much that is worth, consider it this way. Can you put a price tag on living your own life?

Suppose a billionaire says that they will pay you a very large sum of money if you agree just to live according to their every whim for a year. How much would you ask for?

What if it was for ten years? How much would you ask for in that case?

Then why are you giving your life away for free? Why are you right now doing what “they” say without charging anything at all?

Personal Vulnerability

The second kind of spiritual exercise turns on what might be called “personal vulnerability.” Unlike the last group, the focus isn’t on social categories. Rather, it’s on what you think about yourself as a person.

Are you an athlete? A chemist? An entrepreneur? A writer? Those are categories of personal self-conception. They’re also where our deepest vulnerabilities lie. Zeno again proves to be a useful guide here.

After having practised and having taught philosophy for a while, Zeno realized that he still needed to improve his logical knowledge. So he went to go learn from the logical philosopher Polemo at his school … and Polemo noticed.

He called Zeno out saying:

“You slip in, Zeno, by the garden door — I’m quite aware of it — you filch my teachings and give them a Phoenician twist [to pass them off as your own]” (DL 7.25).

Zeno continued going anyway.

Think about that for a little bit. Zeno thought of himself as a philosopher, taught as a philosopher, made a living by his reputation as a master philosopher. Yet, despite this, he realized that his understanding of logic could use some help. So he then went to the school of another philosopher as a student. Then, the master of that school made fun of him for it … and Zeno still went.

The vulnerability at stake here (like the last one) isn’t about a trauma (go to counselling for that), but it is about something really personal. It’s about how you think of yourself, and about your vulnerabilities at the core of your identity.

I’ll give you another story to flesh out the practice. To be fair, and consistent, I’ve got to do one about myself.

So I’m a professional philosopher in the university system of the United States. This means that I’m supposed to be able to research, get my work accepted at peer-reviewed public conferences, and get it published in peer-reviewed journals. The core of who I am is wrapped up in this.

Three years into graduate school, I had not figured this process out. I was supposed to be smart. But I couldn’t get anything accepted into conferences, much less into peer-reviewed journals.

My wife started grad school two years after I did. She was also a theatre major as an undergraduate student and switched into philosophy. Yet she was able to get her work accepted into a peer-reviewed conference her very first year, and she did that while I was still struggling.

I took the advice of “keep on keeping on,” and after much trying, I finally landed … a commentary … on another graduate student’s talk.

The mountain of rejections was difficult to handle, in part because conference applications tend to (or at least tended to) come twice a year, and there’s a lot of lag time in between. So your failures linger for months.

I figured it out eventually … after doing something a little like Zeno. I decided to let go of the idea that I knew how to write philosophy.

Instead, I set myself the task of reviewing a stack of journals to figure out commonalities among all the publications. I worked as a sociologist, basically, coding up what was published, how common certain topics were, etc.

Then, after an embarrassing amount of time doing meta- work, I discovered that philosophers only make about 15 publishable types of arguments. Really only four of those are both accessible to grad students and regularly appeared in print. And of those, two looked to be the most regularly published. I focused my efforts on just those formats … and it worked.

So, I ate humble pie about something at the core of my identity until I figured it out. That’s the idea at stake in the Stoic exercise of personal vulnerability.

How to Practice This

Just like in the last practice, there is a feeling and train of thought at work here. It goes something like this:

I’m supposed to be an x.

Xs are people who do y.

But I’m failing at y.

So I must be a failure as an X.

And because of that, I am a failure.

There is an insidious slide going on here, and you need to stop the spiral.

I’m not going to say that you need to stop thinking of what you are doing as failing. It was crucial that Zeno recognized that he was, really, failing at his logical exposition. It was crucial that I recognized that I didn’t know how to write professional academic papers. Neither of us could have improved without those realizations.

What you need to stop is the slide from outcomes, what you are failing at, to states, who you are. That’s the mistake. The challenge, in a question, is: can you think just the facts of this matter and let the irrational evaluation go?

Here’s another way to think of this practice: can you tell your own shame story? Maybe not to someone else, but at least to yourself?

You want to get to the point where you can recognize past shameful events as just what happened. You need to learn to accept them as what they are, and that they are ok.

How This Exercise Will Shift Your Life

Facing failure is hard. Facing failure about the most intimate aspects of your personality is exponentially more difficult.

But you have to do it. You need the courage to recognize what is going on, to face the sources of your shame, and then address it.

To think about how much this is worth to you, imagine a scenario parallel to the last one.

Suppose that you meet a billionaire and, because he is bored, he gives you the following offer. He says: I will pay you an enormous sum of money, name your price. You only have to give up ever achieving your dreams. And when you think of new dreams, you cannot pursue those either.

You can live a life of ease. You won’t have to work, and you can travel. But you can’t ever achieve anything of value. In fact, as soon as you become modestly good at something, you must quit, forever.

To be clear, this is not just about pursuits that could give you status or recognition. You can’t even be good as a parent or a lover. Those are achievements too, and they are especially valuable, so you can’t have those either.

How much money would you demand in that case? Would it ever be worth it?

Then why are you giving up on yourself for free?

Stoicism as a Way of Life

Practising vulnerability is exercising courage. And without courage, you will not accomplish anything that has real value, that is good, in your life.

That has been my primary thesis, and I hope it makes sense now.

This piece began from a conversation I had with a contemporary, practising Stoic. We had an intuitive disagreement.

He couldn’t put his finger on what he didn’t like about my article “Why Happiness is ‘Flow’ for the Stoics and How You Can Sustain it.” At base, he thought that the example that I used of Stoic flow was too “soft.” He wanted a “hardcore” Stoicism.

To his mind, Stoicism should focus on more exemplary deeds, like Cato the Younger’s suicide. Not the daily life of ordinary people.

Those are good points, but I worry that pitching Stoicism in that way makes it a haven for machismo. Giving into machismo will prevent the growth you need; it’s cowardice masquerading as courage.

The Stoics didn’t need external validation of their masculinity (or femininity), because they deliberately practised addressing their sources of shame; they practised vulnerability.

This is the hardest practice you can do on a daily basis. It’s also the most important.

I hope you learned something and thank you for reading.

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Sebastian Purcell’s research specializes in world comparative philosophy, especially as these ancient traditions teach us how to lead happier, richer lives. He lives with his wife, a fellow philosopher, and their three cats in upstate New York.