Clarity of intent means knowing what you're trying to do before the wish to impress, avoid rejection or guarantee a result takes over. In this episode, I pair it with freedom from outcome: put care into your attempt while recognising that other people and circumstances still affect what happens next.
Published in November 2023. The recording contains an old Podia sponsorship and free-account offer, retained in the transcript as historical material rather than a current recommendation. Its availability has not been verified. Source and interpretation notes below qualify several claims in the original talk.
Decide what you're trying to do
You sit down to write and immediately start judging every sentence. Or you start a conversation wanting to get to know someone, then spend it checking whether they like you. The episode keeps returning to this problem: the task competes with your attempt to secure a particular response.
I use the image of an orchestra to describe those competing intentions. Wanting to win a chess game, wanting to avoid looking foolish and wanting to look impressive can pull your attention in different directions. “Sub-personalities” is a metaphor here, not a diagnosis or a claim that there are separate people inside you.
The practical question is simple enough: what am I trying to do in this conversation, game or piece of work? Give that a clear answer. Then notice when the wish to manage how you look starts doing the steering.
Aim carefully, then learn from the result
Cicero's archer comparison makes a useful distinction. The archer tries to hit the target and does everything they can to aim well. Hitting it remains something to choose, but moral goodness is located in how the person acts. That argument appears in Cicero's account of Stoic ethics, spoken by Cato in the dialogue.
My phrase “clarity of intent plus freedom from outcome” is a modern summary, not an ancient quotation or a formula that guarantees success. And having a good intention doesn't settle whether you acted well. If your attempt to help caused harm, listen, learn and repair what you can.
For a writing project, the episode suggests a goal such as writing for thirty minutes rather than becoming a famous poet. The first gives you something to attempt when you sit down. The second depends on readers and publishers too. Even the smaller commitment can meet illness or interruption, so use it as a direction for effort, not another reason to condemn yourself.
Borrow an example without copying a life
A successful person's routine leaves a lot out. The talk names parenting as one reason my own morning has a particular shape. Someone else's calendar won't give you their circumstances.
That is the useful caution in the discussion of success advice: ask whether the advice fits the job and the life you actually have. Working harder at the wrong thing can still be the wrong decision. Feedback matters.
The recording goes further than the evidence supports when it suggests that we get what we want “on the deepest level”, or that success is almost entirely luck. Those are speculative claims, not established findings or Stoic doctrine. People do not cause mistreatment by secretly wanting it. The responsibility for mistreatment belongs to the person doing it. Circumstances constrain us; our choices still matter.
For the underlying distinction, read what the dichotomy of control means. For applying it to a working session, see Creating the Ultimate Stoic Routine: Work Rituals.
Sources: the November 2023 recording is the source for the examples and modern formula. Cicero's De Finibus supports the archer comparison, and Epictetus's Enchiridion supports the distinction between our choices and external outcomes. The episode also mentions Derren Brown's Happy, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Inside Out, The Lord of the Rings, Michael Jordan and Harry Potter. Its remarks about their advice, motives or psychology are the speaker's illustrations, not independently verified evidence.
Full transcript
Lightly edited for readability.
Historical transcript: the words below preserve the recording, including its claims qualified above. The story that Zeno renamed the school to avoid a pedestal is unsupported: Diogenes Laertius connects the name to the Stoa but does not give that motive. The “write drunk, edit sober” line is not a verified Hemingway quotation; Writer's Digest discusses the misattribution. Neither drinking to write nor the old sponsor offer is a recommendation from this companion.
Welcome to today's lesson, where we'll be diving into the depths of what it means to truly succeed. In a world often obsessed with external achievements, I will be taking a step back here to explore the philosophy of success through a Stoic lens. Today, we're not just discussing success as an outcome, but as a journey, a journey that's both enriching and grounded in wisdom. I'm excited for you to join me as we navigate through some ancient teachings, personal reflections, and the art of balancing our aspirations with the realities of life. Whether you're striving for professional heights, personal development, or simply seeking a deeper understanding of life's complexities, this episode promises to offer valuable insights.
So let's embark on this thought-provoking journey together. So, what I would like to discuss in this talk is a way to think about success. And that's just what it's going to be. It's going to be an exploration of what success is, and maybe some myths around success, and the right way to approach success in a way that hopefully does two things. It increases the likelihood that we attain the success that we're looking for. But also protects us from instances where we don't. Because in life, you might have noticed, you don't always get what you want.
But you can always choose how you respond to those types of situations. I suppose a good place to start would be Cicero's arrow analogy. One of the fundamental principles in Stoicism is the dichotomy of control. You've heard it. A lot of the ideas in Stoicism are in modern-day pop psychology and self-improvement. Even just in general conversations, right? Say you're having a stressful day. It's not unusual for someone to come along and be like, just focus on what you can control. Right? And we go, okay. It's not very good advice when they say it like that, because you're like, how do I do that?
But you know, the idea is there. And that comes from Stoicism. Right. So the Stoics go back over 2,000 years, and they were exploring the question: what does it mean to live virtuously? They were carrying on carrying on the project that Socrates started. What is wisdom? You know, like does anyone know what wisdom is? What is justice? What is courage? What is what does it mean to live a virtuous life? And the Stoics took that further and tried to flesh out a philosophy. And it was initially called Zenoism because Zeno was the founder.
And then he didn't like that because it kind of made him too much on a pedestal. So they changed it to Stoicism, because the place where they would talk was on the Stoa, which is a painted porch in ancient Greece. So going back to the dichotomy of control, it's really important that we understand this because this can be applied not just to when things don't go well, but just to life in general. So there was a statesman, philosopher, thinker called Cicero, and Cicero knew a lot about Stoicism. He was not a Stoic himself, but he knew a lot about the topic.
And he came up with a really beautiful way to think about the dichotomy of control. So he said, Imagine an archer or someone throwing a spear. The thing that we're aiming at is the thing that we have chosen. So we're not desiring it, but we're choosing to hit the bullseye. The thing that we desire is trying to throw or aim straight. Okay, so in life, we choose different things in the external world. You know, we might choose to increase our wealth, choose to increase our health. But the thing that we're really desiring, the things that we're really focusing on is how straight are we aiming?
So we're less focused on the reaction from the external world and more focused on our actions. If you had really pure intentions and you went and you did something kind for someone and they didn't like it, a Stoic would be like, well, that's okay. You know, they didn't like it. That's not up to you. You didn't control that. There's no point being upset about that. Your intentions were amazing. You were really trying to be kind. You were aiming straight. You know, feel just as great, regardless of how they reacted to you.
Right? You were aiming straight. So we want to focus less and become less attached to the actual hitting the bullseye and be more focused on our aim. And the dichotomy of control is about that. So our judgements, our considered opinions, our intentions, our thoughts, our actions, these are the things that are important to us. We go out into the world and we choose different things and we keep trying to aim straight. Sometimes things go our way, sometimes we hit the bullseye. And when that happens, we can rejoice. We could say, well, this is nice.
There's lots to be grateful for. But when things don't go our way, we practise something that is also very important. We practise equanimity and acceptance. Oh, I didn't hit the bullseye. The universe, life, sometimes causes that to happen. There is such a thing as fortune in the world. I can't control everything that happens out there. So when that happens, I will still practice patience and equanimity and calmness. And that is the source of the dichotomy of control. How many of us listening now are pretty good at practising in life like this?
You know, so when you have a goal that you're aiming at, do you become attached to it? Or do you feel a sense of just choosing it? You know, I choose that goal. But if the universe has other plans, I'll accept that too. So, how do we relate the dichotomy of control to success? Well, there are two kind of main things I want to cover in this discussion. So the first one is how we think about success, but I'm going to come to that in a moment. And the second part, which I'm going to address now, is what I call the Stoic success formula.
And it's based on the dichotomy of control. The Stoic success formula can be applied to literally anything in life. It can be applied to relationships, it can be applied to business, creativity, health, any goals that you have, anything that you want to achieve. It's a very simple, sort of like as simple as E = mc squared is as an equation, but it's extremely profound and deep when you start to look into it. So the formula is this clarity of intent plus freedom from outcome. That is the formula. Clarity of intent plus freedom of outcome equals success and equanimity.
So let's break that down. So clarity of intent. If I were to ask you who you are, okay, you probably have an answer. Or I'm this is my name, this is what I like, this is what I dislike. We all tend to think of ourselves as this one entity. Have you ever noticed, though, that you have different sides to your personality? Right? So, like the side of you when you're really underslept. I would imagine that's a very different side than the side of you that is extremely well slept and relaxed.
Or let's just say you feel very content and happy versus the version of you that is craving and addicted to something. Same person but different sides. One way to think about this would be: well, it's just me, but I just have different edges to my personality. Another way to think about it, and this is the way I prefer, is that what we call you is actually a collection of different personalities. You have different sub-personalities. Think of an orchestra with all the different instruments and musicians. Sometimes certain instruments are louder than the others.
Just like sometimes you might get triggered and the angry subpersonality rises up, takes control. There's a movie Inside Out, Pixar film, about the different emotions going on in your head. It's kind of like that. That's a very simple version of it, but it's it's that if you have an addiction to something, that addiction is its own entity. Another movie references Lord of the Rings, Gollum. You know, Gollum has like Smeagol and Gollum, and Gollum is the addicted subpersonality. And in the movie is presented as two individuals, but they're actually in one body.
You might be thinking, well, where are we going with this? Okay, subpersonalities, different personalities. Well, the goal of spirituality, of meditation, of Stoicism, is to harmonize the different subpersonalities. You could say that an enlightened individual is someone who has harmony between all of the different subpersonalities. It's not like one person is arguing with the other person and then there's a bit of a fight, and then one person's shut down. It's harmonious between all of them. And if you want to be successful at something, truly, this is where the clarity of intent comes from.
If you have too many intentions happening at the same time, you will get the thing that you want, even if that thing is contrary to a different sub-personality's want. So think about it like this: you're playing a game, right? Let's say you're playing a game of chess. One of your subpersonalities wants to win the game. Okay? Like, I just want to win. I'm competitive, I want to win the game. A different sub-personality just doesn't want to look stupid. That's a different goal from winning the game. Very different goal. So now you have two goals.
You have two intentions. Another personality wants to look very impressive while you win. So it's not about winning, it's about looking good doing it. And so you have these different intentions, and so any one of those intentions now is weaker as a result. So if anything happens that makes you look a bit stupid during the game of chess, you're less likely to activate the part of you that just wants to win. I realised this because I had a friend who was a professional poker player. And he would always say intentions equals results, intentions equals results.
And I would just be like, What do you mean? You know, what does that mean, intentions equals results? He's like, Well, I realised that when I used to play poker professionally, most people didn't want to win the game. They'd be playing it and then their ego would be activated and they just didn't want to lose. Or they wanted to beat the person across the table from them. Pure winning was no longer something they wanted. If they just wanted to win, they probably could have most of the time. You can also see this in relationships.
If you want to make a friend, you're at a party. One intention is I want to make a friend and just have a great conversation. That's it. Great conversation, that's my intention. Where we can get messed up is I want to have a great conversation, but I also don't want to get rejected. And I also want them to really like me, and I want them to have stuff in common with me, and I also want them to find my jokes funny. Now you have five different intentions. So that pure intention of I just want to make a friend and have a good conversation, that one gets squished.
And you have this kind of muddied intention, which makes it harder for you to actually get the thing that you're seeking. Children are incredibly charismatic because often they just have a very clear intention. It's just like it's projecting straight through their eyes what they want. It's not like 50 different things, it's just this one singular thing. It helps to be very mindful with yourself to see when you have different intentions. There's also this idea that I really like. It's quite a difficult idea to accept, but it's the idea that on some level we get exactly what we want on the deepest level.
And you can see this if someone has like very low self-esteem, for example, and they don't feel like they're worthy of love, and then maybe they get into a healthy relationship, and the person that they're in the relationship with is nice to them, it almost kind of like freaks them out a bit because they don't think they're worthy of it. So they're like, Is this person just like fake or there must be a catch? And they actually would probably prefer it on some level to have a relationship where they're not treated well because that makes more sense to them, and so then they may create a self-fulfilling prophecy where either they'll do subtle things to create arguments, or they will just end the relationship and then choose someone else who helps them live through that kind of comfort zone in a relationship.
So clarity of intent is the first part, plus freedom from outcome. The two work hand in hand. But generally speaking, if you become really attached to an outcome, you are communicating both to yourself and to other people scarcity, scarcity, that this is so rare and precious that you should cling to it very tightly. Imagine someone telling you a joke, and in their heart, if you didn't that you see if you don't laugh at their joke, they're going to be crushed. How likely is it that you're gonna laugh at their joke?
I mean, you're not, because of that kind of tension that you feel. They say that comedians on stage, if the audience sees a lack of self-esteem, that's it. They're done. They're done. They're too attached to the outcome. Imagine if a comedian flinched in their eyes every time someone didn't laugh at their jokes. It would just become a massive negative spiral down. They'd be too attached to the outcome. I want to take a quick break to tell you about the sponsor for this episode, Podia. Being a philosophy and self-improvement creator, I've always pondered the simpler ways of the digital world.
I've experimented over the years with a bunch of different course platforms, but Podia stands out as the best. You could say it's the digital reincarnation of Socrates for online business. You can set up all of your courses, video courses, audio courses, digital downloads, you can engage with the community, send emails to everyone who subscribes to you, and you can do all of this without any tech degree. And it looks stunning. Web pages and websites are super easy to build. So if you're interested in becoming a creator, putting content out there, and pursuing the path of meaningful work, I recommend Podia.
You can sign up for a free account at podia.com/jon. My name is spelled J O N. So podia.com/jon and take a look at all of their features. Now let's go back to today's episode. Let's go back to a social situation. Someone is just chatting, like, hey, what's up? Just wanted to say hello. You're having a good time, and you just sense that this person doesn't really need you to talk to them. They don't need more friends. They seem happy as they are. They're just sharing. They're just sharing. What a nice energy to be around versus someone who is desperate to just cling to anyone to not be alone.
Okay. No, I'm the type of person that I would happily talk to anyone, even if they, you know, were alone, because I think that's cool, right? Talk to everyone. But you get my point, right? When someone's communicating that kind of scarcity, it can be quite off-putting from an energetic perspective. And this can be applied to so many different things. If you think about writers facing the blank page, how far are you going to get as a writer if you write a sentence and you just can't stand the way it looks.
So much that you have to delete it and try again. That's being attached to the outcome. Great writing advice that I really love is the first draft of anything should be terrible. You know, and some writers recommend typing out ugly first draft at the top of a new piece of work. You know, just like being carefree. I think Ernest Hemingway said, write drunk, edit sober. You know, it's just this idea of not being so attached to the outcome. You have the intention of writing something very meaningful, writing something profound, expressing yourself.
But while you're engaging with that, it's time to let go. You never want to cling too tightly to something that communicates scarcity. Another way you could phrase the success formula is full engagement and freedom from outcome. So you think of this could be applied more to sort of sport. If you're playing some kind of sport, let's just say basketball or something, you are fully engaged in the game. You're not ever your mind isn't everywhere, you're not trying to look good to the people on the court, you're fully engaged in the game, and you're shooting and you're free.
And in the moment, you're completely relaxed about what actually happens in the moment, your body language. If you look at Michael Jordan shooting a hoop, his body language is not someone who needs this to go in. Even though like a part of him has chosen that as wants it, his body language is so loose, it's exactly like he would do it in practice, where he's like, meh, whatever, just another shot. So, following on from this Stoic success formula, clarity of intent plus freedom from outcome, I'd like to spend a quick moment talking about external versus internal goals.
So you've decided to write a book of poetry. Okay. Now, if I were to ask you, how do you break that down into actionable goals? Okay, that will probably determine I wouldn't say necessarily determine whether you do it or not, or how successful you are, but it would probably determine how you feel about the project, which it then has an impact on how you do it, if you do it, etc. So an external goal would be I've decided to write a book of poetry, get it published, and become world famous as a poet.
That goal would be a classic external goal. It's a goal that is the outcome of which is not up to you. You could choose it, but you don't really control that outcome. You can't control whether your book will get published by some big publication. You can't control if you get famous. So the Stoics would recommend turn that into an internal goal. An internal goal like I'm going to enjoy the process of finishing a poetry book. Or I'm going to write for 30 minutes each day until this book is complete. That's something that you can control.
That is up to you. Many books that we love, you know, Harry Potter among others, was turned down by many publishers before it actually was published. And this is very common among good books. And if the author had given up at any point during that journey, maybe we wouldn't have had Harry Potter or some other great fiction work. So it's really important to think about well, what do I want to do? What is within my control in this? To create art that other people love, not necessarily within my control.
To create art that I enjoy doing and I enjoy looking at, that is within your control. So speaking more broadly then about success in general, there are two kind of unspoken assumptions that a lot of us inherit about how to become successful. This is quite common. Number one, we look at someone who has achieved success. Number two, we try to copy them in some way. This is super common. Like most podcasts are about this. We kind of learn from them. How many articles have been written about this big entrepreneur's daily routine or that artist's artistic process?
Okay, it's like this is basically how most of us try to become more successful. We look at someone who has it and we try to copy them. I think this is really good. I've definitely learned a lot from studying other people and having role models, but it needs to be treated with caution as well. For a couple of reasons. The first one is going back to the clarity of intent, we can have someone's productivity system, but may not have their intent. Okay, so let's just take me for example. I don't find it difficult to wake up at 7.30 a.m.
Okay, so if someone was to write a book about my routine, they'd be like, he wakes up 7.30 a.m. But if you dig a little deeper into it, the reason why I find it easy to wake up at 7.30 a.m. Is because I take my son to school. It's like there's no option to not wake up at that time. Like the whole day would be you know, kind of messed up. He wouldn't go to school, or I would just sleep in, and or he would wake me up. But like having a child changes whether I would wake up or not.
So that's important. That's context. If you look at the way that Elon Musk uses a calendar, for example, you might be able to learn a few things about how Elon Musk uses a calendar and applies to your own life, but you aren't him. You don't have you don't wake up with the messages that he wakes up to, or the pressure, or the stress. You don't have his traumas, right? You don't have his goals, you don't have his neurobiology. This can be applied to like anyone on earth. So the idea of learning from other people and copying the systems is nice in a way.
You can't just take one thing from someone without taking the whole thing. Okay. You can't just say, like, oh, I'm going to be as successful as this person because I copy their you know routine. You also have to copy their brain and their nervous system, right? Like you have like that stuff is very important, like the important thing too. Yes. So there's these six rules of success by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger, by most people's standards, would be considered successful in terms of his accolades, his income, political acting, all of that kind of stuff, right?
He was top of the food chain in those things. So he has these six rules of success that he tells people. Because they often ask him, like, hey Arnold, how do I become as successful as you? And his six rules for success include things like work really hard, ignore the naysayers, give something back, things like this, kind of like generic rules for success. And you look at those and you go, Yeah, like that makes sense. I'm gonna work really hard, I'm gonna ignore the naysayers, I'm gonna not give up, and I'm gonna have a vision, and I'm gonna give something back.
And it might kind of inspire you. And you go, that's that's it, that's how he became successful. But what you probably don't realise when you listen to those rules of success is that they could just as easily be called Arnold Schwarzenegger's six rules for failure. Because more people will follow those rules and fail than succeed. You know, true success is very rare, right? There aren't that many people that are Mr. Olympia seven times or the biggest action star in the world. How many people have ignored the naysayers and the naysayers were saying something that was actually useful?
And then they just failed? How many people worked really hard at something because they were told to just work really hard? That's what successful people do, and it was the wrong thing to work hard at. They worked hard and then they weren't home enough, and their family life started to deteriorate, and then they became stressed and upset, and then their business life started to deteriorate, and then they failed because they worked too hard at the wrong thing. So there are obviously basic building blocks of success. Derren Brown in his book Happy says they're essentially two talent and hard work.
You know, if you really strip it down to the basic principles, to be successful, it's kind of like talent. You kind of need talent. You're not gonna be very successful at something you have no talent in whatsoever. And talent can also be applied to skill. Let's say skill and talent. And you also have to work, you know, if you don't show up, then you're not gonna get any opportunities. So I think this is really interesting. That a lot of us kind of just try to copy other people that are successful or listen to their advice, and we don't look deeper.
Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger's secrets to success were not that much to do with working hard and ignoring the naysayers. Maybe the fact that he thought like that easily is something that he didn't choose. Maybe his upbringing helped him think that way naturally. Maybe a certain person that he met, a mentor in his life, just really liked him. Maybe this is a crazy one. Maybe he just had really good bodybuilding genetics that helped him. That's, you know, seems to be the case. There are so many different things in Arnold Schwarzenegger's life that contributed to his success that he didn't even choose.
And then this also brings us to the discussion of the self-made person. When we become successful, it's very tempting to kind of say, you know, I earned this. Look where I came from, look what I've achieved. Okay, and it I don't want to criticise anyone who does that. If you've achieved something and you feel proud about that, that's great. You know, like I'm all about finding as many ways to be content and full of gratitude and happy as possible. But we should also kind of temper that with a realistic and rational viewpoint that most of our success, if not a hundred percent of it, is actually luck.
You could say that there are actually no self-made people. Now, you can take credit, of course, for the way that you know you might have made good decisions or had good relationships or worked hard and things like that. But you didn't choose your own IQ. You didn't design your own brain. You didn't manufacture your own levels of discipline and motivation. You didn't choose where you were born. And even if you were born in a place where there was no opportunity, you didn't choose that you were endowed with the gifts to get out of that situation.
Whereas other people didn't or couldn't. You didn't choose your parents, you don't control how your liver functions, your heart beats. Most of your thoughts are just sort of thought by thoughts themselves, just come and go. If you meditated, you know this. So, yes, it's okay to feel, you know, a sense of pride over things you've achieved, but more importantly, it's important to feel gratitude and to really rejoice in the fact that it could have been so much worse, but it wasn't. We all have been given unfair advantages, and I think life actually becomes nicer, and you can become more compassionate towards other people when you start to see that.
In society, we tend to think that successful people have made their success, and unsuccessful just didn't make it. That's a meritocracy. But sometimes when I'm doing coaching people, I can just see, you know, certain individuals, they just for whatever reason weren't gifted the same gifts that I have been gifted with. You know, for example, I had something as simple as a very loving mother, you know, something who was just very nice, very good to me. If you've never had that, you don't know what it's like to be loved by your mother, and then I'm criticising you for not having discipline or motivation or something, that just doesn't make any sense.
Like I, you know, like who am I to make that kind of comment. Thank you for joining me today. As we wrap up our exploration of success through the lens of Stoicism, I hope you've gained some new perspectives on how to approach your goals with both clarity and equanimity. And remember, it's not just about hitting the bullseye, but also how we aim and the intentions we set. As I discussed, success isn't solely defined by external achievements, but also by our internal journey and the harmony we create within ourselves. If today's episode resonated with you, consider how you can apply these principles in your daily life starting today.
And if you found value in this discussion, feel free to look at some of the other talks and courses I have available. So, with all that said, until next time, keep aiming straight, embracing the journey, and finding balance in all that you do. Stay curious, stay inspired, and stay on the path.
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