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January 9, 2024 8 mins

Today, Dramos takes lyrics from Kid Cudi and a Seneca quote to focus on the stoic idea of taking action when it comes to caring for our mental health.

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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yes, Yes, I am Dramas And this is the Street
Stoic Podcast, bring your daily dose of Tomless Stoic philosophy
remix for the hip hop generation. Now, with that in mind,
let us get things started with your daily shot of inspiration.
Now today we are going to be talking all about

(00:37):
the stoke practice of taking action. And we're gonna pull
a lyric, a couple lyrics from probably my absolute favorite kid, Cutting,
and this is the track New Mode, And in it
he says, finally got my head right. It's a new me.
It's like I got heaven in my sights. Now beauty
I see. And then further in the song, he says,

(01:00):
I sit with thoughts so sober I do just another
night alone. I decide, I decide finally accepting me, loving
who I am inside. This is obviously just a beautiful
sort of declaration of choosing to love yourself right, But
I think it speaks to the idea that happiness requires

(01:21):
consistent action. Happiness is a decision. And this isn't too
discredit anybody dealing with depression, anxiety, mental health issues. All
of those things are incredibly real. But just like talking
to a therapist, getting medication, getting help, whatever it might be,
all of those things are forms of taking action, right,

(01:45):
And that leads perfectly to a quote from one of
the stoics, Seneca, where he says, a man is as
miserable as he thinks he is. And obviously this on
its surface is a bit overly simplified, right, but at
core it's a very true statement, because even when you're
depressed or sad, you have a choice in that moment, right.

(02:05):
You can sit back in that sadness, or you can
decide to fight back. And again, I'm not saying it's easy.
What I'm reminding you of is you always have a
choice at the end of the day, right. And it
doesn't mean that it's a light switch where all of
a sudden you know you're just like, Okay, I'm gonna
fight now, I'm happy. But again, you have the ability

(02:26):
to make a series of decisions that will hopefully eventually
get you to that place or get you into a
better place. Right. And I relate to this deeply on
a very personal level. You know, I've talked about my
own struggles with depression and anxiety a lot, right, And
you know I was on antidepressants for the better part
of a year and a few months ago, towards the
end of last year, you know, with my my psychiatrist

(02:50):
and therapist, we wean me off of those things, right,
And that was the plan from the beginning, right, was like,
I'm gonna sort of do the work, use the anti
depress essence to kind of like quell what's going on,
and then kind of figure out from there what actually
works for me in terms of like coping with my
depression and anxiety and things like that. Right. And it's

(03:13):
amazing because now on the other side of it, I've
learned coping strategies through therapy, through a lot of self
work that helped me when I begin to feel the
depression coming on, right, I now have a toolkit that
allows me to immediately go into action. Right. And I
think that's what I'm speaking to here, And that's what

(03:34):
you know, Cutty is talking about having those those sort
of moments alone where he's thinking to himself at night
and deciding that he's now going to love himself. Right,
He's not going to allow the negative thoughts to be
louder than the positive ones, right. And that's all that
we're talking about today with this idea of taking action
and recognizing that happiness, you know, requires consistent action. Right

(03:59):
it is it is something that you choose to be
rather than something that just naturally sort of happens for you,
you know all the time. Now we've heard from kid Cutt,
you've heard of want to stow e Seneca, you've heard
from myself. Now let's talk about how you can make
it your mantra for today. But first to take a
quick break and then we'll be right, all right, So

(04:29):
today we have been focusing all around the stove practice
of taking action and through the lens of happiness, right,
understanding that happiness requires action. And you've heard from Kid
cut you've ever want to stow e Seneca, you've heard
from myself. Now let's talk about how you can make
it your mantra for today. Now, I think the one
thing if I wanted you to like, remember one thing

(04:49):
from this entire episode is remember you always have a choice, right,
You have a choice to fight or to give in,
to take action, or to be complacent. Beat yourself up
if certain days you choose to give into it, Right,
if you choose to again disconnect from the world and
sleep all day and you feel like that's what you need.

(05:10):
Don't beat yourself up about that, but recognize that that's
a temporary solution. Whereas if you can train your brain
to constantly take action, to keep looking for things to
be happy about, to keep poking holes in the sort
of narrative, the negative narratives that your brain begins to
invent about yourself. When you can train yourself to consistently

(05:31):
take that sort of action, then you're really on the
road of consistent happiness or at least things like depression
or sadness, not feeling quite as heavy right, feeling far
more manageable. And that's sort of what I'm trying to push,
is like the mindset that we begin to get in
is you know, understanding that happiness is not just going
to fall on our laps, particularly those of us who

(05:52):
might deal with some sort of mental you know, struggle,
mental health issue. It's all about creating a toolkit for
yourself right coping mechan and again, all of that requires action.
And the beauty I think in all that we're talking
about today is, I think for a lot of people,
it's very easy to feel hopeless when you are struggling

(06:12):
with these things on a consistent basis, right. But I
think the beauty in the idea of our life just
being a series of actions and life itself just requiring
constant action. It's a reminder that you have the power
to take the steps towards healing yourself as well. Now
to recap all we're talking about today, I just love

(06:34):
this cutting record. I love these lines like finally got
my head right, you know, just another night alone deciding
finally accepting me, loving who I am inside, right, making
that declaration, deciding that loving himself is going to be
an action that he's going to consistently take. And Senega
breaking it down very simply, right when a Stokes saying

(06:55):
a man is as miserable as he thinks he is. Right,
it all starts in our mind. Yeah, is that overly
sort of simplifying it, of course, But at its core
that is true. Our happiness and in our quality of life.
It all first and foremost starts with the quality of
our thoughts. That's a very real thing. And even me
kind of my own struggle that I've talked about with depression, anxiety,

(07:18):
things of that nature. What's made it better, what's made
my life so much happier, is recognizing the power I have,
taking the actions needed to learn and to develop the
skills needed to cope, and again, just continuing to push
myself to go into action mode, to go into fight

(07:38):
mode when I feel something come on and it's changed
the quality of my life entirely, right, And that's all
through those small series of actions that I know are
within my control and that I continue to take on
a regular basis because I remember that happiness requires a
series of consistent actions. And this is just your reminder

(07:58):
today for whoever it needs it. Now, with that said,
thank you so much for checking out the Street Stoke Podcast.
Do your best to apply these concepts into everyday life,
and I'll catch you banks time. The Street Stoke Podcast
is a production of Iheart's Macula podcast network.
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