tamhonkhoe.com

Stoicism 3 – Week 6: Review

Published after review by the project owner. No reviewer from within a tradition has checked this page yet.

Not yet trial-taught Not yet expert-reviewed

Before you start: this level 3 course deals with death and loss. If you are newly bereaved, seriously ill, or having thoughts of dying or harming yourself, please save the course for another time and see Get help now straight away.

This week: look back on the past five weeks, keep what suits you and leave what does not.

Measurable goal: rate the five habits (0–10), choose two to keep and do them on at least 5 of 7 days; write one letter to yourself one year from now.

1. Traditional teaching

[Traditional teaching] Stoicism teaches that reflecting on time and death is for living today better, not for being afraid. The two sentences below from Seneca have already appeared in the course; this week, read them again together.

That man is happiest, and is secure in his own possession of himself, who can await the morrow without apprehension.

Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae morales), Letter 12, excerpt (read in Week 1), Richard M. Gummere (Loeb, 1917–1925). Licence: Public domain.

Show me that the good in life does not depend upon life’s length, but upon the use we make of it;

Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae morales), Letter 49, excerpt (read in Week 3), Richard M. Gummere (Loeb, 1917–1925). Licence: Public domain.

Reading it in context

  • This course chose the parts of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius that are about how to live, and left out the parts where the Stoic writers discuss leaving life by one’s own choice. tamhonkhoe does not follow those parts.
  • [Verified] A 2022 study (Karl et al.) found that reading Stoicism as "suppressing emotions" goes with lower well-being. Sadness, fear and missing someone when you think about loss are normal responses; the course does not aim to make you feel less.
  • If an exercise in the course does not suit you right now, dropping it is a good choice. You can come back to it later, or never.

2. What science finds

  • [Verified] A pre-registered study of 1,307 people in New Zealand, Norway and the USA: wanting to show fewer emotions and wanting to feel less went with lower well-being. This is correlational. (Karl et al. 2022)
  • [Verified] Laboratory research on reminding people of death gives uncertain results: a meta-analysis found a moderate effect, but a large replication project could not reproduce it. (Burke et al. 2010; Klein et al. 2022)
  • [Inference] No study has evaluated this course directly. Go by what you have noticed yourself over five weeks, and stop if the course makes you feel worse.

3. Practice for adults

About 30 minutes a day.

  1. Slow reading (5 minutes). Read the two passages.
  2. Rate the five habits (15 minutes, once). Score each from 0 (no help) to 10 (a lot of help), with one line of reasons: - Week 1 – Closing the day: "Today I have lived" and three lines. - Week 2 – Measuring one worry in four columns. - Week 3 – 30 minutes for something that matters. - Week 4 – Watching change and doing one task fully. - Week 5 – Carrying on what someone who went before left.
  3. Choose two habits to keep (5 minutes). Note when in the day you will do them. Do them every day this week.
  4. A letter to yourself one year from now (15 minutes, once). Write to yourself a year from now: what I want to use my time for in the coming year; the people I want to spend time with; one habit I want to still be keeping. Put the date to open the letter in your calendar.
  5. Write it down (5 minutes, evening). Did I do the two habits; what helped, what got in the way.

4. Kids' corner 6+

Game: "Height marks" (5–10 minutes, with an adult)

  1. Have the child stand against a wall or door. Mark their height with a pencil or a piece of tape, and write the date.
  2. If your home already has old marks, look at them together: "Then you were this tall. Now you are this tall."
  3. Ask: "Where do you think the mark will be next year? What would you like to learn this year?"
  4. Finish: draw together "something I want to be able to do this year" and stick it beside the mark.

Talk only about growing up and what the child wants to learn. Do not talk about old age or death.

5. Stop practising if

  • You feel panic, have flashbacks of trauma, have a lasting sense that you or the world are "not real", lose sleep for several nights, or have thoughts of harming yourself or of dying.
  • After the course you think about death more than before and find it hard to put down, or you feel low for a long time. Then stop and talk to someone you trust or to a mental health professional.
  • If you have a history of psychosis, bipolar disorder or severe PTSD, ask a doctor before practising for more than 20 minutes.
  • If so, stop and see Get help now.

6. Foundation skills on daynentang

To keep two habits going after the course, daynentang has a lesson: Một việc nhỏ có ý nghĩa mỗi ngày (in Vietnamese).

7. Practice for today

Rate the five habits from 0 to 10, choose the two highest, and do one of them today.

Science sources

  • Karl JA, Verhaeghen P, Aikman SN, Solem S, Lassen ER, Fischer R (2022). Misunderstood Stoicism: The negative association between Stoic ideology and well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 23(7), 3531–3547. doi:10.1007/s10902-022-00563-w
  • Burke BL, Martens A, Faucher EH (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155–195. doi:10.1177/1088868309352321
  • Klein RA, Cook CL, Ebersole CR, et al. (2022). Many Labs 4: Failure to replicate mortality salience effect with and without original author involvement. Collabra: Psychology, 8(1), 35271. doi:10.1525/collabra.35271

Scripture sources

  • Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae morales) – Richard M. Gummere (Loeb, 1917–1925) (Public domain) · link