[diegoprzl]

My opinion is that the popularity of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has brought the attention to Stoicism. I reached Stoicism by reading about CBT, and started reading about CBT because I wanted a proven tool to improve and modify my psychological state.

I would not call myself Stoic but there is a lot of wisdom there. I particularly like Seneca and Epictetus. The best modern book for me is "A New Stoicism" by Lawrence C. Becker.

[afarrell]

This is also how I got interested in stoicism. This isn't about becoming some Ubermensch. It is about meaningfully improving one's ability to meet the commitments one makes and the obligations one has to loved ones.

[bykovich2]

Is CBT seeing significantly increased interest amongst people in tech? I haven't noticed that, but I also haven't been looking.

[munchbunny]

I actually happened upon Stoicism through both CBT and researching meditation. I had some anxiety issues that I more or less learned to control by implementing CBT on myself alongside meditation. Those issues aren't gone, but I now have the mental tools to manage them such that it doesn't affect my life.

Later, I found that if I tweaked those techniques, they were also useful for staying focused and clear-headed in stressful startup situations, as well as compartmentalizing work and life, and a number of other things. In practice it meant that by adopting certain mental exercises, I was able to sleep better, work better, take care of myself better, etc. I didn't encounter the term "Stoicism" until several years after, and I found that its practices aligned pretty well with what I was already doing.

I don't call myself a Stoic because it's really not a religion or philosophy to me. It's more of a set of mental practices that help me go about my life with a clearer head. However, if you dig through Stoic writings, there's a ton that resonates.

[BoiledCabbage]

How would you best summarize those mental practises?

[munchbunny]

I'd probably summarize it into three general exercises:

1. Notice when I am feeling stress, anxiety, fear, anger, etc. Mentally identify and acknowledge the feeling, and then step out of the cycle. Meditate if I'm really having trouble detaching from the immediate situation.

2. Once I'm no longer stuck in the immediate situation, I have the space and mental presence to figure out the source of my problem. Why was I feeling anxious or stressed? What event caused it? What about it was bothering me?

3. Once I have that answer, I can understand my emotional situation rationally, and I can decide what I'm going to do about it. My goal isn't to stop feeling emotions, but rather to address the root cause or the mental pathway leading to it.

For the anxiety issues I mentioned, the conclusion to step 3 was to slowly recondition myself by exposing myself gradually to the triggering condition. Rationally, nothing bad was going to happen, so I needed my brain to learn that. I combined that with developing mental exercises to distract myself and get me away from the downward feedback loop of anxiety.

For general life situations, the answer comes closer to Stoic philosophy: understand what I can and cannot control, and then either decide to do something about it, or let go because further worrying about an effective dice roll is a waste of energy. Trying to influence the odds and making contingency plans counts towards "doing something about it."

The key to my happiness day to day was understanding that I actually have much more agency than I might initially assume. One or even several setbacks don't necessarily mean I fail my actual goal, and situations that look bad often only look that way because I think I'm out of options, or because I'm trying to eat my cake and have it too when I actually need to make a hard choice.

Among all of this, the key insight for me that CBT and meditation unlocked was that many of my limitations had a huge internal mental component, and if I can intentionally mold how I perceive the world, I can live much more effectively, and happily. The goal isn't to delude myself so much as to put myself in a mental state where I can be be more open-minded and deliberate.

[diegoprzl]

The fact that our brains have "bugs" and biases has seen a significantly increased interest, so I suppose that methods to solve those bugs has seen an increased interest too.