7 QUESTIONS FROM THE STOICS

ASK THESE QUESTIONS DAILY!

You know how much I love questions! The better the question, the better the answers and the more insight we can gain on a topic or situation. I can’t even count how many times on this podcast that we’ve talked about good questions and how important they are, because I talk about them all the time. In last week’s episode we talked about some important questions regarding the future; the future of appraising, the future of the banking and real estate industries, the future of business and how it would be done or should be done. When it comes to the future, we can never really know with 100% certainty how something will come about or exactly what will happen, even if we’re pretty sure something will happen. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter if we know for certain or not, what matters is how prepared we are and how we choose to respond. That’s essentially what we’ve been told by the Stoics, the Zen masters, and contemplative masters throughout the ages. 

You’ve probably heard me talk about the Stoics in past episodes, maybe you’re even familiar with them and what their philosophy was. At its core, Stoicism is about self-control, control over one’s emotions, disciplined and unbiased thinking, and the four virtues of moderation, wisdom, justice, and courage. But today’s episode isn’t about the Stoics, or Stoicism, as much as it’s about questions, some from the Stoics, some from Zen masters, and some from very wise people throughout history. As is my typical morning ritual, after meditation and a hot cup of coffee, I hit the books or the interwebs and start studying. Some time ago I came across a video by one of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, who has made it his life’s work to disseminate and make accessible the writings and collected wisdom of the stoics. Ryan has written more than a dozen books on the subject, offers a daily email with some wisdom in each one, has a YouTube channel, and is a popular speaker. One of the reasons he’s one of my favorite authors is not necessarily because he writes about the Stoics, I became a fan of the stoic philosophy because of his writings, he’s one of my favorite authors because of the questions he asks us to ask of ourselves. In this video I came across he was talking about 12 Stoic questions to ask ourselves every day. As usual, I have my own opinions about how important some of those questions are to be asking every day, So I’ve pared those 12 down to the top 7 questions I find the most compelling and try to ask each day in some form or fashion. The more you ask them of yourself, the more they become part of your DNA and, eventually, you’ll find yourself asking them unconsciously. In fact, I recommend writing these questions down as you listen to this episode, so you begin the process of cementing them into your subconscious.  If you don’t want to write them down, I’ve made it easy for you to copy and paste them from the blog. Just go to www.RealValueCoach.com/blog , find this episode, scroll to the bottom, and I have all eight questions numbered for you to simply copy and paste into your digital notes. 

First question for you, who are you spending time with? Now, when we ask that question, we’re not asking you for your daily schedule. Many of you will answer with who you are around most of your evenings, which is typically your family. We’re not necessarily talking about your family, although they matter when it comes to this question. The question is meant more as a global assessment of the totality of your sphere of influence. As Ryan Holiday put it, are they averaging you toward where you want to be, or away from it? I believe it was Stanford professor, Bob Sutton, author of ‘The No Asshole Rule’, who said to be careful who you surround yourself with at work because you will become more like them, they won’t become like you. It’s simply the law of averages. This is a tough one for lots of people because they look around and see dysfunctional family issues, dysfunctional friend group issues, and this question comes with an implication. The implication is that once you see, you must make a choice: create some distance, pick new friends, try to average up instead of down, maybe question where you’re headed with these people, and so on. Maybe one of the most important questions we’re going to ask today, which is why I made it the first one. I feel extremely lucky to have learned this one early in life and have sought to be in the presence of people I knew were better, faster, stronger, smarter, had greater vision, and better goals than I had. I look back over the past couple decades and, with the benefit of hindsight, can see the averaging was way up for me. My choice of people or groups to be part of has been a benefit to me to the positive. My hope now was that I had the same effect on others. That’s the question within the question, or the corollary to this question. Who are you spending time with and are they making you better, that’s question one (A). Question one (B) is, am I making those around me better, keeping them the same, or making them worse. Everybody in our lives is having an effect on us whether we know it or not. Every single one of them is having one of three possible effects. They’re either making you better, they’re making you worse, or they’re keeping you in the same spot. And we’re having those effects on those we associate with as well. Ask the question daily!

Question two, is this in my control, or outside of it? If it’s in your control, you have the chance and ability to make choices and respond appropriately. If it’s outside of your control, there’s nothing to be done except for choosing how you’ll respond to it. We talked in last week’s episode about the changes that are happening in the appraisal, the banking, the real estate, and well, every industry. Do you have control over what is happening in that regard? I’ll spare you the suspense, as well as the chance of answering incorrectly and embarrassing yourself. The answer is a hard no, you have not control of global change. You have no control over technology, data collection, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the number of transistors being placed on an integrated circuit board. None whatsoever. However, we see lots and lots of people who think they do have some control over that by bitching, whining, blaming, complaining, and sitting still. Some even think they’re choosing the proper response by making no changes, that’s their way of maintaining control over things. Is this within my control? No, ok, what is in my control? How you choose to respond is one of the only things we always have available to us in every moment and in every situation. If it’s outside of your control, what will you do about it? Ask the question daily!

Question three, to be or to do? No, not to be or not to be, that is not the question. The question is, to be or to do? You probably wouldn’t remember because it’s been some time now, but I talked extensively in a previous episode about one of my favorite dudes, a man name Colonel John Boyd. Colonel Boyd was an air force fighter pilot and master fighter pilot instructor. He singlehandedly changed the way air force pilots think and act while flying, whether they’re in a dog fight or just training. He came up with the acronym and concept known as the OODA loop, which is a mental training framework which stands for observe, orient, decide, and act. It’s the way our brains make decisions moment to moment. The reason I bring up Colonel Boyd is because he’s famous for being a hardheaded, take no shit warrior who always put principle above his own personal gain. He was passed over several times for promotion to higher ranks because he was constantly ruffling the feathers of the paper pushing, ladder climbing careerists at the academies and the Pentagon. He was more interested in doing things the right way instead of doing something just because that’s the way it’s always been done. While speaking to his students one day, he famously said, “One day you’re going to come to a fork in the road, and you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments. Or you can go that way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?” Colonel Boyd gave us an important life question, to be or to do? Ask the question daily!

The fourth question is, what am I missing to be worried or afraid? We all have limited resources when it comes to emotional reserves, awareness faculties, and decision capacity. That means that if all goes perfectly on any given day, we’ll make all the right choices, see all the potholes, take advantage of that perfect investment opportunity, see the attacker hiding in the bushes, and be at our most creative all day. The problem is nothing ever goes perfectly, and not necessarily for external reasons. Often, what we blame on external circumstances relieving us of those opportunities, our exhaustion at the end of the day, our inability to make any more good decisions by noon, and the reason you believe the sky is falling can be chalked up to worry. Fear and worry are two emotions, one natural and normal, one not. Fear is the brain’s natural response to perceived threats. Fear keeps us safe. Fear is what keeps you from walking through the bad part of town in the middle of the night. Fear is what keep you on your side of the yellow lines while driving. Fear has kept us save for as long as we’ve been on earth. The problem is that we are surrounded by information that stokes some of our greatest fears daily. When you become afraid of your fears you birth worry. Worry is the byproduct of fearing your fears. Remember, a little fear can be healthy as long as you do something with it. Harden your doors if you fear a break-in, learn self-defense if you fear being attacked, learn some new skills if you fear not having adequate skills going forward. It’s when we fear something and have no outlet for those fears that they become worry, and those two together cause us to miss a lot of what is going on around us. Fear and worry create their own natural responses from the body, the organism carrying your worried brain around. 

The body’s response to fear and worry is to flood the bloodstream with adrenaline and cortisol, the stress hormones. I won’t go any further on those body effects because I’ve talked about them in other episodes, just know that an excess of those two hormones in the body lead to bad things over time. Studies have been done where they ask people to write down all of the fears and worries on one sheet of paper. On another sheet of paper, they’re to write down how many of their fears and worries have come true. Time after time, 85% of the things on page one never came to pass. Of the 15% that did happen, 80% of those things were easily handled or contained valuable life lessons. Blend the math and you come to around 97% of your fears and worries are taking up valuable space. The question to ask daily is, what am I missing while I’m being worried or afraid. Look around you and try to see beyond the fear and worry to what lies beyond. Ask the question daily!

The fifth question to ask daily is, who is this for? This one may not make sense at first, or to everybody. I’ve been encouraging you all to ask this question in a variety of forms over the years with regard to your businesses. I encourage you to know who your market of clients and customers really are. Who is your ideal client avatar? What do they look like, act like, how do they make decisions, what’s important to them, what are their fears and worries, their dreams and aspirations, and how do they prefer to be treated? These are all important questions to ask in business because the clearer you get on those questions, the more you’ll see those types of clients arriving on your doorstep. What also happens when you get clear on those questions is that you start to really see who you’re not for, and who is not for you! With this podcast, I’ve thought long and hard about who my ideal listener is and, having done that, I can try to make content for that ideal listener. And, by the way, that has evolved over the years. If I had never sat down and thought about who this is for, there would have been nothing to evolve. Whether you’re making some kind of content, producing appraisals for your market, selling real estate, writing mortgages, or selling widgets, one of the most vital questions to ask frequently is, who is this for? Get clear on this question and the path gets very clear. I did a previous podcast called ‘what are you for’, where we talk about 4 important questions to help figure out why you do what you do and for whom? Essentially friends, know why you do what you do for who you’re doing it for. Know your market and know your audience. 

The sixth question to ask daily is, does this actually matter? You’ve probably heard the sentiment that we only have so many ‘effs’ to give and, when you’re out of ‘effs’, you just don’t care anymore. How do you run out of ‘effs’ to give? When you give away your attention, energy, and focus to the wrong things throughout the day and in life. If you ask the question, ‘does this really matter?’, you’re asking a question that pertains to something you would have had to give some deep thought to prior. To know if something matters or not you have to decide what matters to you and what doesn’t. if you’ve never thought deeply about that question, asking ‘does this actually matter’ will yield too many yes answers. If nothing is important and valued, you’ll think everything is important and valuable. This is when you give too many ‘effs’ to too many things and too many people. You’ll find yourself out of ‘effs’ to give and drained. First decide what really matters to you, then you can start building the habit of asking, ‘does this really matter?’ Ask it daily!

The seventh question to ask daily is, is this who I want to be? This question is tied closely with the last question about what matters and what doesn’t. If you haven’t thought deeply about who and what matters to you in life and business, a variety of unimportant, or at least less important, things will suck your time, your energy, and ultimately your life from you. You’ve got to know what really matters to you to be able to discern quality answers to some of these vital questions. I love this question because it forces me to really sit and think deeply about the things that are important to me. I can tell you that this question has helped me tremendously over the last 15 years or so, and I’ll tell you how. We all get placed in situations in life, or we put ourselves in situations based on our choices, where we have the opportunity to ask, and then take immediate action on the answer to this question. I was in a situation once where I was with a group of guys at a bar/restaurant and one of the guys was being really rude to our server. All of the other guys in the group said nothing so I said nothing. Each time the server would come around and be treated rudely by this person, I could feel the embarrassment and shame rising up in me. My first instinct was just to get up and leave so that I didn’t have to be associated with this behavior. I said nothing and did nothing despite my shame and embarrassment because this person had a loftier position in life than I did at the time. The night ended, we went our separate ways, and I sat in my car in the parking lot just swimming in my shame and embarrassment for not standing up for this person. Here I am, a martial arts teacher, a teacher of self-defense, a fighter for justice, a champion for the weak and I did nothing out of my own sense of being lower in some way than the bully in this situation. And it was while I was sitting there in my car thinking about all of this that the question kept popping up, ‘is this who you are Blaine? is this who you want to be? who do you want to be, man?

The context of that situation and the shame I felt for not standing up for the server forced me into this questioning process that I’m so thankful for today. It didn’t take long for me to answer the question, and the answer was a hard ‘NO!”, I did not want to be that person at all. Here’s the thing, I also knew in that moment that just walking back into the bar and apologizing to the server for all of our behavior was an extremely weak response. It was low hanging fruit, for sure, but it was too easy because the damage had already been done. I did, in fact, walk back into the bar and apologize for this guy’s behavior, and then for not saying something while it was all going on and the server was very gracious about the whole situation. But that’s not where this question had the most impact for me because it wasn’t really about the server, it was about me not standing up in the moment it was happening. That was the real crime, in my opinion. To me, it was like seeing somebody be attacked in a public space and nobody comes to the aid of the victim. We’ve probably all seen videos of these kinds of events and my blood boils to think somebody could be in that situation and nobody comes to their aid. I had always told myself that I would be that person who would jump in and help, but the attacks that I was witnessing didn’t look like the one’s I had imagined. They hadn’t risen to the level of a physical attack, and I hadn’t trained for, or really thought about, this kind of vicarious personal attacks and bad behavior. I was impotent and ineffective in that scenario and completely embarrassed and ashamed to my core. In decided while sitting in the car that night who I wanted to be, and it wasn’t that person that I was that night. Ask this one daily, my friends! You will inevitably be thrust into situations where having an answer to this question will help you make a decision in a critical moment. 

To put a bow on that story, I knew I needed to say something to the person who was bullying the server and I knew doing so would likely end our relationship, which was a business relationship. I decided in the car that night that the money was not worth the feeling and, if this was the way this person acted, I didn’t really want to keep doing business with them anyways. But here’s what happened. Instead of calling this guy, I drove to his office the next day to have a chat and end the relationship. Although the server would never get the benefit of knowing this was all going on in the background the next day, I felt like it was the least I could do as some kind of penance. I walked into the guy’s office and told him the story and how I saw it. I shared with him my embarrassment and disgust and was ready to just walk out. Before I could actually turn around and start my valiant walk out the door, he said, ‘Blaine, I thought about myself last night and realized I was being a real DB at the bar!’, he went on to say that he drove all the way back to the bar from home to apologize to the server and give him a shit ton of money. That was his form of penance, and he had the resources to do it. The interesting thing for me was what he said. He said, “I left the bar, got all the way home, thought about my behavior, and realized this was not who I was nor who I wanted to be’. We sat and chatted about the incident for another hour and realized we had some shared values around this topic and I’m happy to say we’re still good friends today. Ask yourself daily, is this who I want to be?

The 12 Questions from the Stoics- By Ryan Holiday

1. Who are you spending time with- spend time with people who make you better
2. Is this in my control? What will I do about the things that are not in my control and in my control. Am I throwing good energy after bad
3. What does your ideal day look like? Your life is made up of days. If you don’t know what your ideal day looks like, you’ll never be able to intentionally live it. It may happen by accident occasionally
4. To be or to do- John Boyd- The OODA loop
5. What am I missing to be worried or afraid
6. Are you doing your job?
7. What is the most important thing?
8. Who is this for?
9. Does this actually matter?
10. Will this be alive time or dead time?
11. Is this who I want to be?
12. Is this part of who you want to be as a character