The Daily Stoic

It’s Good That Things Have Been Hard

04 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe you’ve had a hard time of it recently. That business project is three months over projections. Your book isn’t really selling. The comments ...

It’s Time: The Daily Stoic 10-Day Spring Forward Challenge

01 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Spring is here! While most of us unthinkingly set our clocks forward (or have devices that do it for us), how many of us take any steps to spring our ...

Read Like A Spy

28 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As we’ve written about before, one of the most surprising parts of Seneca’s writing is how that avowed Stoic quotes Epicurus, the founder of Epicu...

How To Get Better (and Live a Great Life)

27 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Eleanor Roosevelt had a great rule. We must do the thing we cannot do, she said. And if you look at her life, she more or less followed this rule. She...

The Three Hardest Things To Do In Life

26 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

According to the great Jesuit Monk, Anthony De Mello, there are three intellectual feats that we struggle with on a regular basis, that are harder tha...

What Not To Do With Your Freedom

25 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Last fall, there was a New York Times profile on what’s called the FIRE movement. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The proponen...

How A Stoic Thinks About Sex

22 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re born into certain religious faiths, you tend to be raised with strong views on sex that come from on high. You’re not supposed to have s...

Do Less, Better

21 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Here’s the simple recipe for improvement and for happiness. It comes from Marcus Aurelius and the fact that it came from such a busy man with so man...

Speak The Truth, Let Them Howl

20 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

No matter what your profession is, there are things you can say that will cost you. Speaking up against somebody’s pet project can get an officer pa...

The One Thing To Be A Slave To

19 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Slavery is one of the most common metaphors in Seneca’s writing. He talks about people who are slaves to sex and slaves to work. He talks about peop...

This Is What Progress Looks Like

18 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How do you know you’re making progress in this philosophy? It’s a question that every person has struggled with at some point in their practice, i...

This Is How To Go Out

15 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Epicurus’s final letter begins with a rather remarkable sentence: “On this happy day, which is the last day of my life, I write the following word...

It Can Happen To You

14 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A few weeks ago, we ran an email about Austin Murphy, the former Sports Illustrated writer whose thirty year career (which included interviewing presi...

Escape This Indelible Stain

13 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Meditations, Marcus speaks passionately about escaping the “indelible stain” of power, of being changed by the purple cloak that the emperor tr...

An Important Reminder To Do The Right Thing

12 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Our newest Daily Stoic coinSummum Bonum is an expression from Cicero, Rome’s greatest orator. In Latin, it means “the highest good.” And what i...

What Will You Do Now?

11 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the winter of 1824, things were not looking good for Simon Bolivar. He was at one of the lowest points of his decade-plus long revolution of South ...

YOU Are Not The Problem

08 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Epictetus’s most powerful line is about how it’s not things that upset us, but what we think about things that does all the damage. What he really...

How Do You Fill The Void?

07 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Seneca wrote constantly about time. One of his most compelling observations was about how people are protective of their money, their property, their ...

Avoid Owing (and Being Owned)

06 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Seneca was a very rich man. He accumulated that fortune largely due to his service to Nero’s corrupt and broken regime, and then he put that money t...

When You Should Give Up

05 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

No one would ever call Winston Churchill a quitter. His whole reputation is built on his instinct to fight. He was the lone objector when appeasement ...

All This In A Nutshell

04 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Near the end of the Eisenhower Administration, the speechwriter James C. Humes was asked to help the president write a short address. After submitting...

Out of Many, One

01 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The motto of the United States—seen imprinted on its currency and its buildings—is e pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”It happens that this is...

Success or Failure—Neither Reflect On You

31 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Just a few weeks ago, the writer Austin Murphy wrote an insightful, revealing article for The Atlantic that personalized the changing nature of the ec...

When Something Breaks

30 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If a close friend had their home broken into, you’d comfort them and tell them that it was only stuff that had been stolen. If your child broke thei...

Closing Your Eyes Is Not An Excuse

29 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Richard III, Shakespeare has a scene where Brackenbury is handed orders from Richard by two men who clearly plan to murder the King’s brother. Hi...

The One (or Two) Words To Live By

28 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Confucius was once asked by a student if there was a single word to to live by, a word that would always provide guidance and truth. He thought about ...

How To Make Better Decisions in Life

25 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Believe it or not, there’s a pretty magical way to start making better decisions. It’s a secret that will also make you feel better, look better, ...

Don't Limit Yourself

24 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Epicurus’s dictum was that “One sage is no wiser than another.” Clearly, Seneca agreed with this idea because he loved quoting Epicurus, even th...

If You Were Tested, Would You Pass?

23 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Perhaps you remember the 90s hit by the band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “The Impression That I Get.” You know, the ‘neeeeevvvvvvveeeerrrrrr ha...

We Are What We Think About

22 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ok, so it’s worth saying bluntly to any of the nice people out there who might believe in it: The Law of Attraction is complete horseshit. If you ne...

What Other People Get Away With Is Not An Excuse

21 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Let us stipulate first that Serena Williams is an extremely talented tennis player and an honest and ethical person. Let us also stipulate that she ha...

We Must Live By This Rule

18 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Zigong once asked Confucius: “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” His reply: “Is not RECIPROCITY such...

When Are You Going To Be Free?

17 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us tell ourselves that we’re putting up with ill-treatment or keeping our mouths shut about our beliefs because we’re working on something...

How To Respond To Crazy People

16 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

One suspects Marcus Aurelius was referring to a particularly frustrating person, some opponent who just would not, or could not, get the message, when...

Don’t Be Distracted By Darkness

15 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There’s no question that depressing things happen in this world. They always have and always will. People lie, cheat, steal. Envy, avarice, selfishn...

The Civil War Inside Each One Of Us

14 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of using the American Civil War as a metaphor, not just to explain the divisive political landscape, but the divide wi...

This Is What Karma Looks Like

11 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There is a simple proposition at the heart of classical Christianity: if you are a good person and do good works on Earth, when you die you will enter...

The Great Equalizer

10 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The author Michael Malice has a running gag: whenever a celebrity dies he posts a meme that says RIP but is a photo of a similar looking but a very di...

If It’s Not Simple, It’s Bullshit

09 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There’s not much in Stoicism that’s particularly groundbreaking: Focus on what you can control. Be a good person. Manage your emotions. A lot of ...

Find A Point!

08 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Barton’s beautiful memoir, Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived, takes readers along a man’s search for meaning when he’s forced to conf...

The Habit You Must Start This Year

07 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Why does Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations speak to us so? The answer, ironically, is that because the author had zero intention of doing so—in fact, ...

The One Thing You Must Avoid

04 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine this. You’ve worked for years on this novel—one that is indisputably the best thing you’ve ever done. You manage to get a publisher to b...

Do The Little Thing, It’s All The Matters

03 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza, as the Prague Spring happens and the Soviets begin a military occupation, takes the time to rescue a cro...

It’s Not How Long You Live, It’s How You Live

02 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In late December, Richard Overton passed away at the ripe old age of 112 and 230 days. When he was born, Theodore Roosevelt was President of the Unite...

Keep These Thoughts At Hand, Everyday

01 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Stoics were all about routine and concentration. Epictetus said that philosophy was something that should be kept at hand every day and night. Ind...

What We Do In Life Does Not Echo In Eternity

31 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In the movie Gladiator, Maximus, the protege of Marcus Aurelius, says famously, “What we do in life, echoes in eternity.” It’s a powerful, inspi...

Don’t Wait. Get Started. Now.

28 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We call them “resolutions” and they are the pr...

Everything Is Breaking Down

27 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Nearly two thousand years before Rudolph Clausius and Lord Kelvin first expressed the second law of thermodynamics (although there is debate on whethe...

Why You Need To Understand Power

26 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The actor Josh Peck recently had Robert Greene on his podcast to discuss the book, The Laws of Human Nature. It’s a fascinating interview, but one o...

Today Is A Very Special Day

25 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On December 25th, people all over the world celebrate Christmas, a holiday which marks the birth of Jesus Christ, one of the greatest philosophers who...

You Make Your Own Good Fortune

24 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We can all remember times when it felt like everything was going our way. We were getting the breaks we wanted and opportunities came easy. It was the...

Life Comes At You Fast Pt II

21 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Just two and a half years ago, General Michael Flynn stood on the stage at the Republican National Convention and led some 20,000 people (and a good m...

How To Be The MVP

19 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Yet again, Nick Foles has been called up to start at quarterback for the Eagles. After spending another heartbreaking season on the bench behind first...

14 Day Stoic Challenge: New Year, New You

18 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We all know someone who constantly puts stuff off. Who loves to plan improvements for their health, their finances, their work, their friendships, the...

Here Are Signs You’re Making Progress

17 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Ok, you’ve been doing your reading and your journaling. You’re trying to be conscious of your thoughts and your actions. In short, you’re puttin...

You Do You. Whether They Like it Or Not.

14 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Think of all the people throughout history who were wrongly condemned and criticized by the mob. From the Civil Rights Activists to Galileo to ordinar...

You Don’t Get To Be Apolitical

13 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

There is a common complaint drifting through the culture these days: Why did you have to bring politics into things? Can’t she or he just sing/dance...

Don’t Let Your Virtues Become This Vice

12 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

So we’ve begun to get serious about our training, both physical and philosophical. Before, we never read, and now we do. Before, we were lazy and sl...

Be Good To Each Other

11 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“Man’s inhumanity to manMakes countless thousands mourn.”It is a verse from the poet Robert Burns. It was a favorite of Ulysses S. Grant as well...

We Aren’t Rational, We Become Rational

10 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us don’t think of ourselves as irrational. We don’t think we’re reactive creatures. We presume that we’re in control of our emotions, ...

This Is How They Treat You After You’re Gone

07 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Da Vinci painted his brilliant fresco, The Last Supper, and how did they respond? They nagged at him for taking too long. Then, after he finished, the...

What Would You Do?

06 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

News reports re-surfaced earlier this month that the teenaged son of Jeff Flake, the Republican Senator, had made a number of homophobic and racist co...

The Powerful Are Not Free

05 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It’s funny that we spend so much time being jealous of people whose lives we do not even begin to understand. People look at the famous and the powe...

It’s All In How You See It

03 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Seneca said that the growth of anything is a long process, but its undoing can be rapid, even instant. Jordan Harbinger built his career for 11 years....

These Are Life Choices You Control

30 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

If you haven’t heard of George Raveling, you should. This a guy that Michael Jordan addresses as “coach” even though Raveling never coached the ...

It’s Always Been This Way, Always Will Be

29 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We like to think that we’re so advanced. That things have changed so radically since the ancient days of tyrants and barbarism. But have they? Here...

Power and Success Can Make You Better

28 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Lord Acton’s line is so famous and so undeniably true that most people don’t even know that it’s a quote from a real person: Power corrupts and ...

Making A Difference IS Up To You

27 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Look, there’s no way around it: Part of Stoicism is accepting that a lot of what happens in the world is outside our control. Some people have taken...

What Is Sympatheia? (And Why It’s So Damn Important)

26 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In Book Six of Meditations, Marcus gives himself (and us) a command to keep an important idea in mind. “Meditate often,” he writes, “on the inte...

Do Not Avoid This Thought

23 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene concludes his final chapter with this meditation on mortality:“Many of us spend our lives a...

What Marcus Learned From Antoninus

22 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Where did Marcus learn to be Marcus? Ernest Renan writes that Marcus was very much a product of his training and his tutors. But more than his teacher...

Don’t Get Upset By What You Disagree With

21 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The response to the Daily Stoic emails can be a fascinating peek into human psychology. One email, because it makes a fairly objective point about Don...

Write And Think Clearly

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In his short new edition of How To Be Free, A.A Long observes the relative ease he had translating Epictetus from ancient Greek into English. This is ...

The Best Way To Fight Evil

19 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tolstoy believed his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, A Calendar of Wisdom. Like in The Daily Stoic, each day in that book i...

The Dance We Each Will Dance

16 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It would be hard to find a deeper, darker yet more philosophically interesting short film than the “Silly Symphony” that Walt Disney produced in 1...

The Perils of ‘Comfort Inflation’

15 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It’s so easy to take progress and luxury for granted. Warren Buffet has talked about how somebody today--with the comforts of heating and air condit...

The Most Important Ritual You Can Practice This Year

14 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Marcus Aurelius spend those precious hours in his tent, writing by the lamplight, even on the nights and mornings he strained under the burden...

Be A User, Not A Loser

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. D.T. Suzuki, a 20th century Japanese author who was largely responsible for popularizing Buddhism, Zen, and Shin in the West, was once approached ...

You Become Like Your Friends

12 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“Nature gave us friendship,” Cicero wrote, “as an aid to virtue, not as a companion to vice.”What he meant was that friends are supposed to ma...

Get Yourself Under Control

09 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It was Heraclitus--a favorite of Marcus Aurelius--who said that “to be self-controlled is the greatest of excellence.” Isn’t that the truth? It’...

We Have So Much In Common

08 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In a very short period around 2003, the musician Rosanne Cash lost her sister, her step mother, her father , and her mother. It was a series of blows ...

Your Hunger For Money Is Starving You

07 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

William MacAskill is a fascinating guy. He is the youngest Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He’s one of the founders o...

Each Of Us Has A Duty

06 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In one sense, it’s hard to argue with the statistics that any individual’s vote makes a difference. One person out of so many? When more than 50% ...

Let Us Argue With Reality No More

05 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

So much of what we do as a society could be described as arguing with reality. Turn on cable news and you’ll find talking heads screaming at their u...

Don’t Borrow Suffering

02 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Here’s a line from Seneca: “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Meaning, we spend so much time worried about how bad things are goin...

Let It Go, You’re Plenty Guilty Yourself

01 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Like you’ve never cut in line, on purpose or on accident. Like you’ve never done something selfish or spoken with an attitude. Like you’ve nev...

Don't Be A Snowflake

31 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A few years ago, conservative commentators in America began using a term for young college students--mostly liberal--who insisted on #noplatforming sp...

Is Anxiety Playing Tricks On You?

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

You’ll likely know Charlamagne Tha God as the host of the nationally revered radio show The Breakfast Club where provocative celebrity interviews he...

The Present Is Pleasurable Enough

29 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On one of his more arduous hunts, after days of patiently tracking (and weeks of planning before that), crawling through the dirt and enduring difficu...

We Are So Soon Forgotten

26 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A few miles outside Rome, along the still-smooth stone-paved Appian Way, is a tall brick tomb that is rumored to belong to Seneca. Unfortunately, no o...

Time Doesn’t Make Everything Better...It Just Makes Them What They Are

25 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When we get dumped or we fail or we lose someone, we often hear that “Time heals all wounds” or some such remark, all of it in consolation. Obviou...

Be Severe Only With Yourself

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

One of the things that separates us from other people--indeed that has been responsible for our success--is our ability to be strict and self-discipli...

We All Have The Same Nature

23 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Greene’s five international bestsellers earned him descriptions like genius and master of human behavior. His newest book was just released. ...

We Take The Bitter To Get To The Sweets

22 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“The hunter worthy of the name always willingly takes the bitter if by so doing he can get the sweet, and gladly balances failure and success, spurn...

How To Be A Winner and a Loser

19 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Lombardi is a former NFL coach, GM and front office strategist who is largely responsible for introducing Stoic philosophy to professional spo...

Accepting The Little Facts of Life

18 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1800s, Theodore Roosevelt was on a hunting trip in Big Hole Basin in Montana. The trip did not get off to a good start. Upon getting off t...

Don’t Make This Mistake

17 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

There is a repeated pattern of failure in Marcus Aurelius’s life, and no matter how much we might admire him, it’s hard to deny it. His step broth...

Are You A Coward? Or Are You Brave?

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Varlam Shalamov was a brilliant writer who was sentenced in 1937 to years of hard labor in a Soviet gulag. If that were not painful enough, though he ...

Why Ego Is Your Enemy

15 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

One of the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous defined ego as “a conscious separation from.” From what? From everything and everyone, including...

Don’t Be All About Business

12 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Is there anything sadder than a person whose work is their life? They neglect their family, they put in crazy hours, they have no interests, no hobbie...