How to Apply Ancient Wisdom in Modern Times: The Stoic Path Ep 163 | Guest: Benny Voncken

I have a lively conversation about the stoic path with my guest, Benny Voncken. Today, you will learn how an old philosophy can be successfully applied to modern life.

Key Points

• Stoicism is a pragmatic, Western philosophy that shares similarities with Eastern philosophies like Buddhism and Taoism.
• The core of Stoicism is about self-awareness, understanding one's emotions, and using reason to make virtuous decisions. [14:26]
• Stoicism emphasizes the importance of accepting fate, focusing on what is within one's control, and living in the present moment. [08:06]

Insights from this conversation:

1. Stoicism is a practical philosophy that can help people live better lives in the modern world. [05:25]

   2. The core of Stoicism is about self-awareness, understanding emotions, and using reason to make virtuous decisions. [14:26]

  3. Stoicism emphasizes the importance of accepting fate, focusing on what is within one's control, and living in the present moment. [08:06]

Stoicism is relevant to out modern life, and upon closer examination, a person can see how much of what is being talked about in the 21st century is a reiteration of many of these perennial principles.

RESOURCES:
Via Stoica's Website

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Transcript

This transcript was generated using ai and therefore may contain some errors.

Julia Marie (00:00):
This week we explore the ancient philosophy of stoicism and how it just might be the answer to our modern problems. How is that relevant to your life today? You may be asking, well, you're going to be surprised to discover that much of the current spiritual philosophies being taught today are modern
interpretations of these stoic principles. Welcome to Evolving Humans, the podcast for Awakening Souls.
I'm your host, Julia Marie. Settle in and get ready for another spirited conversation. Benny Voncken is my guest today and after teaching for almost 12 years, he discovered stoicism and coaching to improve his own life. He is co-founder of Via Stoica, where he and his co-founders offer stoic life coaching, corporate
training, motivational speaking, and workshops. The mission is to help people live better lives through the creation and application of a philosophy of life, primarily based on stoicism principles. Their website is via stoica.com. I want to welcome you to Evolving Humans. Benny, thank you for spending some time with us today.
Benny Voncken (01:34):
Yeah, and thank you for having me on, and what a wonderful introduction. That was really great to hear, and thank you for your time as well.
Julia Marie (01:42):
Well, my first question is always the same. What was it like growing up in Benny's House?
Benny Voncken (01:51):
That's a great question and I love thinking back to that. I just had a wonderful upbringing, to be honest.
We lived in such a small village in the Netherlands and we were able to go out in the woods and just really explore everything like the outside, but also the imagination. We used to just play around and everything could be turned into something amazing. So if I look back at my upbringing and my
childhood, that was what we had a safe environment with a lot of respect. And we also were taught all the valuable lessons in life. Sometimes you fall and you stand up, you get back up and you keep going ahead, but with love and appreciation for everything that's surround. You
Julia Marie (02:29):
Had a great upbringing and reading your story, there were some bumps in the road along the way before you got to where you are today. So what happened in your life that led you to the stoic philosophy?
Benny Voncken (02:45):
Yeah, I think what happens in everyone's life, right? Life isn't that smooth sailing fairytale that we all expect. There are bumps in the road and for example, one of the quotes from Seneca that I really love is he says, you are unfortunate because you have never been unfortunate. You have never had the opportunity to show yourself and life what you're capable of. And sometimes I wonder if we are brought
up in a very smooth and safe environment, then even the smallest pebble will make you fall. But as you grow up and you start to become an adult and you have the responsibilities of life and you have to meet all those things and you have relationships and they crumble and fall and yourself, you fall into the pits
that we all come across and we also have to climb out of those. And for me, for example, my marriage ended, which is not easy to go through.
(03:34):
And then I also dealt with alcohol and how the relationship that I have with that, I quit drinking four and a half years ago completely some physical things. All of these things just life happens. And I think that that's sometimes not the way we want life to go, but that's where philosophy like stoicism can help you accept everything. One of the sayings that they say is A more fat is accept fate. It has a plan and we just have to either decide to live with it or to rebel against it. And the more we rebel, the more difficult it is and the more we accept it, the more easier and peaceful we can live.
Julia Marie (04:12):
I read some of the philosophers, but I never thought, frankly of bringing those ideas into my current life.
So for those who may be wondering, before we go any further, can you maybe explain a little bit about what Stoicism is and more importantly, why should I care?
Benny Voncken (04:36):
Yeah, that's a good question. And again, I'm not here to turn people into stoics, but I would like for people to start thinking more about their lives and create that philosophy of life, which means questioning, being curious, wondrous about everything. And so when we think about stoicism, that was really a philosophy
pretty much based on Socratic philosophy, who was teaching and talking to everybody in the streets and Zeno of Cityum, he brought that back. He kind of started with the cynics and he learned from other kinds of philosophies back in the day. And the cynics said, Virtu was the only good virtue, and you can kind of
separate that and wisdom, justice, courage and temperance. And he said, that's pretty much everything you need to live a good life. If you are virtuous, you do all the things that you do well, your consciousness, your conscious will be at peace, you will be at peace.
(05:25):
And that's pretty much the goal of philosophy of stoicism is to live that peaceful, flourishing, good life.
And they say apart from that, Xeno said to live in accordance with nature, to really learn who you are, but also the role that nature plays around you and how you fit in it. And when you reach that balance and harmony again, that will reach you to that onic state. And the good thing about Zeno is because you had
Plato and Aristotle, they brought it back to the academy and the Liss to more of the elite class of philosophers. And Zino went to the Stoa, which was the painted porch in Athens, and he just started walking up and down and people started listening to him and started philosophizing. And that's where the
name stoicism comes from, the stoa. And he brought it back to the people. He said, philosophy isn't any good if you can't apply to life, we can talk about it all we want, but when you need to learn to use it in life because that's where it matters, that's where we have that connection.
(06:21):
So when a lot of people ask me What is stoicism? I usually kind of look at it as a more western and pragmatic version of Buddhism, of Taoism. There's a lot of things that kind of coincide with it. And I think that that usually helps people give a more realistic idea of stoicism. Because nowadays when you
open the social media platforms and they talk about stoicism, they show especially men, like strong men and like, oh, you have to not show any emotions and do this and not smile or whatever. And that is such a sad state of affairs of stoicism because it is really a philosophy that puts you right in the center of life that
makes you really be curious about everything that also inside you, your emotions. You have to embrace them, learn what they are, and then they say, and this is where it kind of differs a little bit from Buddhism and Taoism to say, we have reason logic, right?
(07:13):
That's something that we've been given by the divine, by God, by providence. And we use that reason logic to examine the events that happen around us to make sure that we have the right impression of it.
Because they say that nothing is good or bad, things just happen. We make a good or bad, we add a label to it and we say, oh, this is not what I want, so it's bad. This is what I want. So it's good. They say, no, examine what it is. Use that information to make sure that you make the right virtuous action and then your life will be good.
Julia Marie (07:43):
That's what I like. You're using the stoic terms, but what we hear in contemporary spirituality today is self-awareness. Be aware, be in the moment, be present. That's really basically a contemporary translation of what you just said.
Benny Voncken (08:06):
Oh, yes. And the stoics are very much of being in the moment because that's the only thing we have. We don't have the past, we don't have the future. The only thing we can really have is even Marcus Reis in his meditations. And I was just rereading it. I love to reread it. And these are his personal notes, never meant
for publication. He was the emperor of the Roman Empire, and he was just reminding himself, it doesn't matter if you're a hundred or 10 years old, we all lose the same thing, the present, nothing else, nothing more because we don't have the other thing. So it is really interesting to see how spirituality, different
philosophies, religions, they have a lot of the basic foundation of thoughts are the same. Focus on what you can control. That's a big thing, what stoicism talks about. But look at the now and appreciate it, be wondrous, curious.
(08:53):
And again, Socrates, he was very big on knowing yourself. A lot of people, I think what I see is a lot of people are looking outward to get some kind of approval or recognition from people and they forget about the closest connection we have to nature, which is ourselves. So once we start to really turn inward and
start to learn about ourselves, then we can also become better people for the people around us. So it is again, another negative that people say about stoicism, that it's selfish, but it is to be a better person for the people around you because they're very strong at that connection with the world. They call themselves
cosmopolitans. They say, oh, if someone asks you where are you from? Don't say Athens or Crete or wherever, say, I'm from the world, I'm from the cosmos. So there's a lot of links with this spiritual and philosophical sense in that way.
Julia Marie (09:44):
So how do the stoics look at God or the universe, however you want to name that overarching intelligence.
Benny Voncken (09:53):
They have a word called logos, which in some translations means also literally word, but it also talks about reason and just logic. So if you read the stoic text, the ancient stoic text, you will see words like providence, God, the Gods, Zeus, all of these come back intertwined and intermingled, but also with
nature and universe, and they call it the rational universe. And that's where they say that everything is at peace because although we look at the universe outside and we see the planets and everything, and it looks very chaotic, they say, no, everything is there. It's pure reason, reasonable logic, everything has a
cause and effect. So they believe in the deterministic fate that everything happens because this happens and the next thing happens. And then we as humans, we have that little sliver of free will. We can say, I accept it or I don't. And if you accept it again, your life will go smooth. And if you don't, your life will be more a turmoil. So when they look at God or the universe, they really see that pure reason, logic that everything makes sense and there everything is at peace.
Julia Marie (10:59):
So before I move to my next question, is acceptance in your world the same thing as surrender?
Benny Voncken (11:09):
That's a good question. And I think this is where I think a lot of people choose one philosophy or a train of thought of the other because of the words we choose. Some people, if you say surrender, they will automatically feel offended and oh, I'm not surrendering. And if you say accepting, that's a different way.
I think accepting is more of an active approach than surrendering, but it is in a sense the same to me. You either accept or you surrender to fate or you say, no, I'm going to fight it. So I think that's where a lot of people can debate about it philosophically about the words we choose. But I think at the end of the day, it
comes down to the same thing. So whether you say, okay, I surrender to fate, yeah, great, as long as you live with it, long as you say, okay, whatever happens, fate is the right thing. It has no mean of bad things to us, so why not just surrender to it? Personally, I like both of them. I don't really mind, but I get why
people get kind of jittery when they hear certain words.
Julia Marie (12:12):
You've mentioned more than one of the philosophers, which one of the stoic philosophers influenced you the most?
Benny Voncken (12:23):
We have so little text of stoic philosophers left. We have Zeno the founder, and we have Es and Crucis. Crucis apparently wrote about 700 books, but none of them survived. Just a few quotes here and there.
And then we have the Roman stoics, we have Seneca, which is a prolific and great writer if you want to read some good prose. And to be honest, he also has one of the best information sources of information of stoic philosophy because he wrote so much. We have Cicero Note Statesman, Marcus Radius. He only wrote what we know, like the meditations. But for me it was really Epictetus who gave me the verbal slap in the face, as I always call it, because he is very direct. He tells you like This is the way it is. And interestingly enough, he was a former slave. He grew up as a slave, started teaching or learning under a Smithsonian's rufuss and started practicing philosophy there.
(13:14):
He became a stoic teacher, got X out, and then lived in northern Greece in Nicopolis, and he started his school and a lot of people went there. And luckily we have his discourse and a handbook ready from him.
So it's really nice to read. But for me, because of his direct approach, I need that. And I think that that's also why I say it is important not to just follow something, but to really find a voice that speaks to you.
And a lot of these things, again, they say the same thing, but if you find something that really resonates with you and that you can put into practice, that's the way to go. Because you can say, I'm going to follow this, but I don't know. And for me, epic is really, and it also makes me laugh sometimes when he uses
certain words and certain directness, I kind of like that. I need it. So epic T is the one for me. But again, I just like to read all of this stuff.
Julia Marie (14:06):
If you were going to distill it down, what is the most essential piece to the philosophy itself?
Benny Voncken (14:18):
For that? I think we would have to go back to Socrates. Maybe I'm taking it away from the stoic philosophy, but they really lean on his thoughts. And that's all about knowing yourself, really understanding who you are. When we talk about the emotions, right? Again, this is another critique of STOs. We say, oh, you have to shove your emotions aside. They actually say no, you have to understand
them profoundly because only then can you put them, give them the right place, give a pause to them and use them in a correct sense. Maybe for example, anger is not the emotion you want to act out of, but you want to know why you get angry because if you don't do that, then how can you ever get a better
relationship with it? And Socrates was really big at knowing yourself when he read that at the Apollo of Delphi, the temple of Apollo in Delphi it said Know thyself.
(15:05):
That really had a big impact on him. And that's something that I think we forget in our lives. We look at all the influences we get from outside. We have this kind of, I always call it the script of life. You're born, you go to school, you have a career, you do this job, you have a family, a house. That's the script that we
supposedly have to follow, but that doesn't go for everyone. And we have forgotten a little bit that connection that we have with ourselves. So for me, it all starts with really understanding who you are and then we can apply all the other things. And obviously there's a lot of good techniques because even
modern day therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy leans heavily on stoicism. They use that cognitive think tools that the stoics use. So we can see that coming back, but it all comes down like who you are, and the better you understand that, the better everything makes sense as well around you.
Julia Marie (15:58):
So that's the core of the philosophy. And in my reading, again, to prepare for our conversation, I noticed there were four principles basically that underpin the philosophy itself. You want to explain a little about each of those?
Benny Voncken (16:18):
So yeah, we have, as I said, the STOs believe virtue is the only good, and then we have the four cardinal virtues, and we can see them coming back towards, for example, Christianity as well. We have wisdom, justice, courage and temperance and whoever you speak to, especially on the stoic side, everybody has
their own virtue or their own piece of knowledge where they have to work. Temperance is a big one for me. As I mentioned before with alcohol, I don't have that sense of once I start drinking, then that moderation that goes out of the window. And that's why I figured it's either one or zero. As the late
Chandler, Matthew Perry, he said, I have two options. It's zero one, and for me, zero is the best choice because one, then it leads to everything else. So we have those four virtues, wisdom, and these are all types of knowledge, all types of experiencing life.
(17:09):
So wisdom is kind of a culmination of acquiring knowledge, experience, and then putting it directly into linked with life and what nature, and just knowing what to use, when to use it, and being able to identify all the events and giving them the right impression. We have justice, which isn't the justice that we think
about in a sense it is, but it's really being that connection with others being just and fair to the people around you. That's where really that sense of unity of society comes from, especially with the stoics, the courage, and this, again, especially among men, this is like, oh, I'm going to do all the things that I'm
afraid of. But first we need that and courage or justice and wisdom to understand what the right thing to do is, because we don't want to just brazenly rush into dangerous things. That's foolish, right?
(17:58):
That's not courage, that's just not being smart. But we need to know what the right thing to do is, and then we need the courage to do it, even though it's difficult. For example, knowing yourself, it's not easy if you start to dig deep, you start to find things you might not want to see. It takes courage to do that, and that's
where we want to apply that courage. And then we have the temperance, as I mentioned, the moderation where it's just doing the balance thing. Just don't go overboard to one side to the other, but just make sure that you do it in the right sense and not with the extravagance of, especially in the Roman and Greek days
where the people were able to go to all the extremes they could. And that's why someone like Marcus Aelius is probably the best example of a story because he was the Roman emperor.
(18:44):
He said, even in a palace, you can live well. And he didn't mean that in a bad sense. He said, I have all the things around me that can lead me to extravagance. Look at all the other emperors before me. And even behind him, after his son even was probably one of the worst. But he managed to apply that temperance
and say, no, I just need what is enough for me. And again, that's one of the words that I really like to stress on is knowing what is enough, something that we have kind of lost in the world. We just want to have more and more and more. But once we see that, oh, this is enough, let me just be grateful for what I
have. And from there I can see what comes my way or what leaves and it's all fine.
Julia Marie (19:26):
That's a profound insight that I just want to take a beat to acknowledge what is enough and why do we need more than what is enough. One of the things I was taught in my early awakening, let's just say direct encounters with higher intelligence. And one of the things that they told me would basically be a stoic
principle, and that is balance in all things.
Benny Voncken (19:55):
No, even like Epic did, he has a great discourse. He gives us the example of being at a banquet and he says, you're invited to a banquet. Just take your seat. And when food comes your way, don't go grabbing for it. Take it when it comes, take the, and if it doesn't, don't worry, but don't refuse yourself from it. Just
take what comes your way, eat it and use it. But don't go grabbing and doing all those accesses. And again, one of the big things that he's all about is about our wants and desires and the aversions, the things that we wish to avoid. Those are the things that cause us the real stress because all the things that we
want, we want, we want, they're not under our control. What is under our control is just to be grateful for what we have right now. So yeah, enough is such a, for me, once I really started to focus on that, I live a very minimalistic lifestyle. I've sold everything. I lived in the complete opposite side of, I lived in Dubai
for a while and I saw all the craziness, and after I left there, I sold everything all my life. It's in a backpack and a little rucksack and that's it. And I just figured, okay, I have enough and this is all I need for now. It's good.
Julia Marie (21:00):
I did go on your website and read that story. I thought, wow, I wonder what his experience of Dubai was. That would've been a lesson in excess to the extreme, I would imagine.
Benny Voncken (21:13):
Yeah, and I kind of lived that way for the last few years in Dubai. One of the best experiences that I had there. And if I had to kind of describe my daily activities there, I would go to work afterwards at lunch, I would go for read, and I do my writing, and that would pretty much be my day. And I would love to go
and read in the busiest malls there and just create my little bubble of silence and peace and just see all the people go about their frantic business and just be glad that wasn't me. So that was such a good lesson, and I've learned so much from it. But sometimes we need those lessons because the first year I did go into that
kind of overwhelming and indulgence a little bit is like, oh, here, spend this money. I don't really care or whatever.
(21:56):
But once you start to see where the money went, and also the thing with money is, and it's interesting, the more money you have, it takes away from your creativity and it takes away from you using your brain and your attributes as a human being because you can throw money at a problem, but that doesn't make you
better. It makes you more reliant to it because if you take that then away, who are you going to be? So for me, that was such a wonderful lesson to see, okay, money is great, it's a nice tool to have, but you need to use it well. And at one of the authors, mark Manson, he mentioned money makes a bad person worse and
a good person better, and you just have to decide which one you want to be.
Julia Marie (22:39):
It's fascinating to me how you were given the opportunity to compare and contrast. I mean, you've lived both ends of the lifestyle spectrum. You've lived in the world of excess, and now you're more in the world of let's simplify. And so just from your own personal experience, and to satisfy my curiosity, number one,
what did you learn? And number two, how did that choice change you?
Benny Voncken (23:11):
I think I aligned more with who I am because when we grew up, as I mentioned before, we grew up in nature. We didn't have a lot of money. It was more like, do you really need this? If not, then we're not going to get it. Or the hand me down clothes from my cousins and everything. And sometimes that's
difficult, especially when you see other kids who can have everything. So I think when I left Dubai, it was kind of like, oh wow, this is great for the first few months or weeks. But after a while, once you really start to see what life is and start to examine it and then take a breather, because even the year before I
went to Dubai, I started my own school and anyone who started their own company that at the beginning, you're not going to make a lot of money and it's making ends meet whatever you can.
(23:53):
So it was really going from one extreme there to the next. And that is just difficult to cope with. A lot of people go there, they don't make any money, they make a lot of money, but they spend it even faster and they leave in debt or they leave without anything else. So for me, that contrast was when I took the decision to not focus on the money. And I always say I've gained so much more from the Dubai than just the money. I gained knowledge, I gained all the books that I've read, but also the difficulties that I've had to deal with because that's where my relationship ended. My marriage started to go downhill and I had some physical problems as well there. So that's when you start to see what really important and what
really matters in life. And that's pretty much what made my choices. They weren't even choices to be honest. It was just the normal rational thing to do for me, the natural thing to do.
Julia Marie (24:45):
So if this conversation has intrigued the listener and they might want to know what some of the benefits of living a stoic life might be, what would you say to them?
Benny Voncken (25:00):
For me, the benefits really have been finding that inner peace. It was interesting. I had a conversation as I do with my partners at V Toka. We talk about this on the back behind the scenes a lot. And I was thinking, wow, my anxiety levels have really dropped. And the amount of, I'm not an angry person. I tend to look at life cheerfully, but I get frustrated and I do get angry sometimes, but the amount of triggers that I've had to put me in those states have reduced drastically. And a lot of it comes from being able to apply a certain pause, even simple as just stubbing your toe against something in the morning, where before I would just go all loose. And now it's just like, okay, take a deep breath, just it hurts a little bit. Nothing
really bad happened here. So just those steps really have improved my balance, but also my inner piece.
(25:50):
And one of the things that I've approached with my journey as a blogger and started writing and reading is dealing with criticism. So I recognized in myself that criticism had a big impact on me. Whenever someone said something bad or negative, and I felt like the best way to deal with it is to find criticism and
to learn to deal with it more. So we're better to find it and go online and publish your writings and share your thoughts, even on stoic platforms where I figured that would be a little bit more positive and supportive comments there. But no, it's still the internet. So people were quite harsh and they attacked me.
And at the beginning it was difficult after to say, but after a while I started to be able to filter the comments. Someone is just trying to hurt you. That's not my problem.
(26:38):
They are affecting their own character. I still have my choice to keep my character and soul pure in a good way. They are hurting themselves, they're not hurting me. And then I was able to look at the words and the things that they were saying, ask myself, maybe they're right, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I need to study more. And that really helped me to improve myself and my knowledge and all my past as well to keep going and to keep learning. So for me, when I look at what I've really gained is, first of all, again, when we know ourselves, we start to recognize the parts of life where we have to put some extra work in that we have to apply. And then don't deny that, but go and seek maybe advice, support somewhere and
find the people that can help you get better at those areas of life, your aspects of life.
(27:22):
And once you start to do that, you'll see that you will find life far more peaceful and joyous as well. And you can see everything. I love curiosity and wonder. And once you can apply that back to your life, that child, I think that that's a sad thing. I used, I was a teacher for many years teaching three year olds to adults. And when you see how kids look at life and how they really try to be inquisitive and Oh, what is this? What is that? And sometimes we get tired of the why questions, but those are the best ones. And I think that that's something that we tend to lose as adults. And once we get to regain that, then we can see how great life is and what a good experience it can be.
Julia Marie (28:02):
Well, I like the way you reframed that because that was a thought that crossed my mind when you were talking earlier was, oh, he's talking about how we were naturally curious as a child and maybe we all need to reenergize or invoke that aspect of our self, changed your life as a result of your exploration of the stoic
philosophy. And you now offer what you call stoic life coaching. What would stoic life coaching look like and what's the difference?
Benny Voncken (28:37):
So when we have life coaching from a stoic aspect, there two parts are different. First, as a coach, it helps me to be more objective when I listen to people, because as a coach yourself, it's easy to put your own opinion of other people. And that's something that I don't put on the impressions that I have. So also when
someone speaks to me and things that they say or believe I don't agree with, it is like, okay, this is not for me to judge. This is for their life to discover. So that's one part that really helps me. But then on the other side, the stoic practices, they've been tested and tried for over a millennium, so why would we try
something new and to give people the clients that we work with, those tools, even if they don't really, even if they aren't necessarily purely interested in stoic philosophy, they will still help and benefit them.
(29:27):
And we're not therapists, we're coaches, but we do, I've studied some CBT, just trying to get more knowledge of that and how it applies more in a modern day with the more scientific approaches and understanding. But when we do apply philosophy, it tries to trigger that curiosity in themselves. It tries to trigger them to ask questions and to really focus on that instead of just taking the problems and looking at them as face value and saying, okay, just try this. So it's some other questions, but stoic coaching, it really gives you the benefits of stoic philosophy to help you discover some obstacles that you have, but also to change the perspective and mindset of those obstacles and say, I need them to grow, and this is what Marcus already says. And the obstacle becomes the way it is. Like, okay, this is where I need to go because that's apparently something that I need to learn.
Julia Marie (30:21):
Is there something just in general that the listeners might be able to try in their lives to see if it helps them?
Benny Voncken (30:32):
Yeah, so there's a couple of things. One of the things that we bring on is the pause. And even when you read, I dunno if you read the Viktor Frankl, man's Search for Meaning, the book, it's a wonderful book.
And he says, between impulse and action, there is a moment. And that is our moment to decide what we do with it, right? That's our choice. And that's something that we all have. So if we get triggered by an event, then before doing something, we can take a pause. If you get angry, maybe you need to go for a
walk for an hour, maybe two, maybe you need to wait a day. But as you practice, that time becomes smaller for you to accept and see what happened and then to see what the best course of action is. But there's also something like negative visualization where you try to see what is the worst thing that could happen?
(31:19):
And even then, I could still be good. I could still live a good life. And when we look at the bad things that happened, they are all opportunities for us to do the right thing. For example, the other day I forgot to put the handbrake on the van and it backed into another car and I wasn't there. So I came there and someone
told me, oh, you got to call the police. And then you could have just gone and drove away and not say anything because no one knew who I was and all that stuff. But I went, called the police, got in touch with the person, the insurance company arranged everything. And I figured, this is not a bad thing. This is actually a great thing because this is a moment for me to do the right thing to make that choice. And again, for stoics, maintaining your character intact, that's the main thing that would be a successful life.
(32:05):
Where now we look at money and career that would be no, for the stoics and philosophy, character and your soul, keeping that pure and intact, that is the success, the successful life. So we have that negative visualization, doing the right thing, but also momentum mori that embracing of death. Remember that you
will die. And that was something that I think a lot of people struggle with their own mortality, and we tend to forget it. We tend to kind of brush it away in the stoic, say, no, it's part of life and it's nothing bad.
How can something that is so natural that's going to happen to everything that's just part of change, the flux of the universe, how can that be bad? It's part of us. So they really try to embrace it. It's difficult, but it's something that we could embrace. So we have the pause, the negative visualization, and
Julia Marie (32:54):
Those are those right there for very good tools. I mean, the pause would give you the chance to decide\ whether you were going to react or respond to a situation. And that's huge. And then contemplating whether or not I want to do something that's going to keep my character pure, if everybody lived their lives according to that one principle, Benny, we could change the world just with that one thing. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you wish I had?
Benny Voncken (33:35):
That's a little bit of a thinker, but I think most of the things that we've, I can talk about this for hours. This is part of my life and whatever, that's why I can go off on, I try to keep the listener in mind and just not make it a long monologue. But I think that, no, I think we've touched on most of the things, and I think the most important part about stoicism is to realize that it is a philosophy of life. And what that means is that it is your own one to develop and to create and to listen to that inner voice and that intuition that we all have. And we tend to kind of mute that out with all the noise and all the things around us, all the influences from the outside stoics, they talk about the dichotomy of control to distinguish the internal
from the external.
(34:20):
And they say, the only thing we can really control are our opinions, our views, and our actions.
Everything else, even our body, even all the possessions that we have, they're on loan at one point. We're going to have to let go and be able to part with that, with grace, with cheerfulness. And that's one of the things that the stoics and philosophy teach us. So one of the things that I think people would want to focus
on is creating that, the philosophy of life, what really matters to them, and also thinking about what is a good life to them and what does success mean when we hear all those words thrown at us. Try to find your own definition again, like we said, but enough, all of those things. There's such strong concepts that
we don't even think about what they actually mean to us, and we just follow other people's opinion about them that we tend to just forget to live our own lives.
Julia Marie (35:11):
Well, that's beautifully said, and yes, I can tell that you love to talk about this and that it's your passion. You light up your whole energy, just you sparkle when you speak about the stoic. So you're definitely on the right life path. I just want to thank you for spending time with us today. It's been a great conversation.
Now, before we go, please tell people a little bit more about what you offer and how they can find you.
Benny Voncken (35:41):
Yeah, and thank you for your time. Again, I love talking about this, but especially with someone like you who are so inquisitive and ask such great questions and also great energy to talk about these topics. And people can find me on via stoica.com. I tend to write weekly blogs. We post them there. We offer stoic
coaching there. So if anyone wants to talk, they can book a free consultation with us and see if there's a way we can work together, which you can read all the other things that we offer there as well. We have a podcast called the Via Stoica podcast, and they used to be weekly, now biweekly spaces on X, where we have live conversations with people and see how they apply it or where they have questions or how we can help that way. And just on the regular social media platforms, you can see me, I usually write, I've been doing it now for a while, like a daily Contemplations kind of turned into poetry, and I use them in the mornings and the evenings, so they can find me on Instagram with Benny via Stoica. But if you
Google be Ivanka or via Stoica, you would tend to find us as well.
Julia Marie (36:48):
Again, I just want to thank you for spending time with us.
Benny Voncken (36:54):
Yeah. And again, thank you for having me. And I always love having a platform to share the true sense of stoicism and to encourage people to think about their own lives and create again, that philosophy of life for themselves.
Julia Marie (37:07):
Well, that's our time for today. Evolving Humans is now on YouTube where I bring you additional content not available through the podcast, such as the channeling, podcast releases, and other similar content. Just go to Evolving Humans with Julia Marie and hit Subscribe so you don't miss any new content. And now here's a quote for you to ponder as you go about your day. A gem cannot be polished
without friction, nor a man perfected without trials. Seneca