Episode #178: A Couple of Latin Phrases To Reflect Upon

Your Coaching Journey

In this episode, hosts Tom Dillon and Helen Leanders explore the practical applications of Stoic philosophy in coaching through two Latin phr

Key takeaways

• Memento Mori serves as a reminder of life's finite nature to encourage deeper appreciation of the present.
• Amor Fati suggests that resisting reality creates more suffering than the actual event itself.

Main topics

• Stoic Philosophy
• Memento Mori

Notable quotes

Remember that you will die.

Conclusion

The episode offers profound philosophical frameworks for coaches to he

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:08) Hello and welcome to Your Coaching Journey, a podcast for doctors about coaching. Whether you're a coaching doctor, a doctor who is learning to coach, or a doctor who'd like to build coaching into your professional life, then this is the podcast for you. Speaker 1 (0:24) Hello, I'm Tom Dillon and with me today is my co-host and business partner, Helen Leathers. Good morning, Helen. How are you? Speaker 2 (0:29) I am very well, thank you. How are you? I'm Speaker 1 (0:31) very well, thank you. I'm feeling very stoical again. Speaker 2 (0:33) Are you? Speaker 1 (0:34) Yes. Speaker 2 (0:34) Okay. I'm back Speaker 1 (0:35) to the stoics this week. Speaker 2 (0:37) Excellent. They were a bit boring. Speaker 1 (0:39) No, just go with it. It'll be fine. Don't switch off. Don't turn off anyone. Ignore Helen and her boringness. It will all be fine. Speaker 2 (0:48) Okay. Well, tell me more about the Speaker 1 (0:49) stoics. Well, we're going... Travelling back 2,000 years to explore a couple of short Latin phrases, maybe another reason to switch off is talking Latin. But they've survived remarkably well. So they both come from the world of Stoic philosophy. I hear one of them quite a bit on the old Insta. The old Insta? The TikTok thing. You're not on TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. And I think they're useful to reflect on from a coaching perspective. Okay. So those two phrases are memento mori and amor farti. Speaker 2 (1:24) Okay. Speaker 1 (1:26) Come on, hold it together. Stop being a child. You're not five. It's Latin. Speaker 1 (1:33) Come on. Helen's gone. Right. So to the rest of you, whilst Helen's having a little bit of a corpsing moment. So obviously the Latin can sound a bit grand, but actually quite simple ideas that can change the way we think about our own lives and the conversations we have with our coaching clients. Speaker 2 (1:52) I'm back. Speaker 1 (1:53) Good. Thank you. Welcome back. Speaker 2 (1:54) I've never heard those phrases before, firstly. But you've heard Speaker 1 (1:57) of stoicism because we've talked about it before. Yes, yes. But just not Speaker 2 (2:00) that Latin. Speaker 1 (2:01) Okay. Speaker 2 (2:01) And I think, as I say... A lot of people hear the word Stoicism and imagine someone who never smiles, never cries, soldiers on regardless. Very stoical. Speaker 1 (2:12) It's a stoical way to be, isn't it? Just Speaker 2 (2:15) insist. Speaker 1 (2:17) Dogged determination. And I think it is a misconception when we talk about the Stoics. So I think in everyday language, that's how we think of it. But actually, the Stoic philosophers were not teaching us not to feel. But sort of not to allow ourselves to be controlled by the way we feel, not to be ruled by our emotions. So I think it's quite a difference there. So just to recap, and we talked about this on the last Stoics episode, but it's a school of philosophy founded in ancient Greece by Zeno of Cetium, early third century, developed by Roman thinkers, Seneca. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, I think they're the most famous ones that get talked about. And it teaches us that to live a good life, we should be focusing on what's within our control, our thoughts, our emotions, actions, and accepting things that are outside of our control. With a degree of equanimity. So they definitely believed in virtues. So things like wisdom, courage, justice, temperance. So the highest good and all that was the foundation of happiness. So, you know, you're kind of right. They were quite worthy bunch. Speaker 2 (3:32) Yeah. Yeah. But Speaker 1 (3:33) yeah. Speaker 2 (3:34) And I'm just thinking those. Those virtues are something that are fed into the positive psychology movement, aren't they? Definitely. Into the values in action. Speaker 1 (3:42) Via character strengths. Yes, they would definitely have taken some. Although I think Martin Sattelman and Chris Peterson would say that they looked at all religions and wisdoms across the ages. But the Stoics would definitely have fed into that. But I think they do offer some wisdom for us all living with some clarity, purpose, inner calm. Speaker 2 (4:05) In uncertain and challenging times. Okay. So let's go back again then to the Latin you were quoting earlier. Speaker 1 (4:12) Yeah. So let's start with the phrase memento mori, which literally means remember that you will die. Speaker 2 (4:21) Okay, sounds a bit bleak. Speaker 1 (4:23) It's not the most cheerful expression. But the Stoics weren't trying to make people miserable. Quite the opposite. Their point was that when we remember that life is finite, we begin to appreciate it more. So we stop assuming we've got all this time in the world and that we'll always have another opportunity, another holiday, another conversation, another chance to tell someone we love them. So that's their approach. I remember Benjamin Zardo, who's a classical composer. I saw him speaking at a conference once and he has a lot of wise things to say. One of the lovely things about Benjamin Zardo, I mean, he's a very up sort of guy anyway. He's very cheery. But he says that he measures success not by fame, by money, possessions, but the amount of smiley eyes he has around him. Speaker 2 (5:10) Oh. It's a lovely way to Speaker 1 (5:12) think. Speaker 2 (5:12) Yeah. And the Speaker 1 (5:14) question he gets to ask himself is, who am I being? when people's eyes aren't smiling. Speaker 2 (5:20) That's a Speaker 1 (5:21) nice way to think about how you go around in Speaker 2 (5:23) the Speaker 1 (5:24) world, isn't it? Anyway, so I remember him talking at this conference about a lady he'd met who was a Holocaust survivor. And she was telling a story about being on the train with her. She was 15 at the time with her eight-year-old brother on the train to Auschwitz. So obviously being captured by the Nazis, their parents had been lost to them. And they were on the train going to Auschwitz. And whilst they were on the train, As they were pulling into the station, she looked down and noticed her brother's shoes were missing. And she said, for goodness sake, why can't you keep your things together? Oh, you're so stupid. In the way that, you know, an older sister might talk to her younger brother. But the train pulled into the station at that point. And those were the last words she said to him because he didn't survive Auschwitz. She didn't see him again. So she came out of Auschwitz and made a vow to herself that she would never say anything again that wouldn't stand as the last thing she said to someone. Speaker 1 (6:19) So that's a way of thinking about, you know, maybe time is finite. Our life is finite. We need to think about how we live our lives. So obviously from that perspective, we're not going to be able to do that. We're going to get it wrong. We are going to say things we regret. But just that, you know, having a sense of life's not forever. There are things that are going to Speaker 2 (6:42) get Speaker 1 (6:43) in the way. Speaker 2 (6:44) So it's really about perspective. Speaker 1 (6:47) Yeah, and about life being financed. So that Oliver Berkman, we've talked about Oliver Berkman on the podcast before, his concept of 4,000 weeks, that we only get 4,000 weeks. And probably if you're reading his book, we've used a lot of them up