Why Asceticism Makes You Happy: My Stoic Experience

I'd been letting myself go a bit, so this weekend I'd planned to get back on track.

Zero sugar: no more pastries, cakes, or dark chocolate. Zero alcohol: no going to the pub – or only for a Perrier. Two real meditation sessions a day: it's true that in Paris, between my son and my appointments, I often rush through them – back to it.

While I was at it: no more phone. I'm off Facebook and the rest, but I spend hours on Reddit and YouTube. Uninstall! (Even if it means reinstalling later...)

And why stop there? I went as far as running the following experiment:

For forty-eight hours, whenever I felt like doing something that wasn't necessary... Well, NO! I didn't do it. The point wasn't to deprive myself or suffer for nothing, but to study how I respond to frustration, see how my brain reacts under pressure, watch the thoughts and emotions that come up when I break my habits.

I called it my Stoic experiment.

Lately, I'd been thinking about the role of effort, discomfort, and discipline. In particular while listening to Chris Williamson's podcast with David Goggins on pushing past your limits, rereading Marcus Aurelius and his Stoic buddies, thinking back on some of the Buddha's teachings on the nature of experience, listening again to Joseph Goldstein's talk on the end of the passions, but also, simply, by taking a cue from people I admire who seem to handle effort differently.

Also: through the counterexample of people close to me whom I see sinking under the weight of their addictions.

The theory goes like this: since no one escapes suffering and discomfort, you have to learn to live with them. Better: make them allies. We don't control outside circumstances, true, but we can control our relationship to them. That's where there's room to grow, and ground to experiment on.

First takeaway from the weekend: it's hard. Anyway.

The moment you turn down the cake, the YouTube session on the couch, or the little end-of-day beer, that moment is extremely hard to get through. Everything inside you screams: "But why?! We've always done it this way!" The weight of habit bears down and the body rebels: hunger gets sharper, or tiredness, or the urge to drink. It takes an effort that seems out of all proportion to the actual size of the obstacle.

And a minute later... nothing.

The discomfort and the difficulty are gone as fast as they came. No trace, no aftereffects. You feel neither better nor worse, as if the obstacle had never been there.

Then, as you let each new urge pass, it gets easier and easier – across the board. You end up wanting less, being less attached to getting what you want. With no goal to reach in the future, you become more available to the present: you take in what is, instead of constantly comparing it to what should be.

The upshot: you realize that the rest of the time, you act on very short-lived impulses that have no bearing on long-term happiness. Worse: giving in to an urge reinforces the "I want / I get" mechanism, which makes the next assault harder to resist. Letting go is a muscle you train.

Second takeaway: you find yourself in situations you've never been in.

When I forbid myself from collapsing on the couch for another YouTube session, for a while I feel a bit stupid. What do I do instead? If I don't lie down, do I stand? Sit? But... where? At my desk? On that chair in the corner nobody ever uses? But... TO DO WHAT?

A habit is the permission we give ourselves to surrender, body and soul, to a familiar activity that raises no questions. As soon as you break the routine, nothing goes without saying anymore and the questions come back. Everything becomes new and mysterious. What if I played the xylophone? Cleaned the windows? Remind me: what did we do for fun before phones?

Because let's be honest: a YouTube session is twenty minutes minimum – and there are several a day. A beer is often two beers, and it means getting there, friends, and chatter. As for sugar, it's like food in general: a whole ritual that involves shopping, cooking, eating, doing the dishes, and so on. Often with the radio or TV on.

So it's simple math: when you stop all that, you get time back.

Hours, literally.

That's why this weekend, without really noticing, I started drawing again, made music on my Pocket Operator again, visited a retirement home and a cemetery, read much more than usual, and my journal is full of flashes of insight on the meaning of life and the nature of existence.

I recommend it.