The Daily Stoic

Tell The Truth, Even If They Hate You For It

17 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There is a certain archetype that is as old as literature and history themselves. One of the first times we see it in the West is with Cassandra in th...

It’s OK To Struggle

14 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nietzsche’s classic line was “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It’s a nice sentiment, but is it true? Don’t people who were born w...

It Doesn’t Matter What You Do, It Matters How You Do It

13 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The occupations of the three most well-known Stoics could not be more different. Seneca was a playwright, a wealthy landowner, and a political advisor...

Never Abandon Your Ideals

12 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Anne Frank would have celebrated her 90th birthday today. Although her life was cut tragically short, so much of her preternatural wisdom survives to ...

Why It’s Important To Be Healthy

11 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It wouldn’t seem like eating well would be an important part of the philosopher’s job, but indeed it is. Antoninus Pius, the adopted stepfather of...

How To Think About Obstacles

10 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We can think of hardship many ways: As failure. As unfairness. As the end of the conversation. Clearly, this was not meant to be, we can say. They don...

When You Need Help...

07 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe you’re having a difficult time in your relationship. Or work has worn you down. Maybe things have gone exceedingly well in your business and n...

What The Simple Life Is

06 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Seneca wasn’t fond of philosophers you could recognize. Not by their fame, but by their uniform. In his time, just as it is in ours, there was a typ...

The Earth Is Big And Has Room For Everyone

05 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There is a line in the Odyssey (most recently translated by Seneca’s wonderful biographer, Emily Wilson). Odysseus, still early on in his journey ho...

Good Stuff Comes Out Of Bad Circumstances

04 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If Marcus Aurelius had his choice, he probably never would have been emperor. If he could have chosen how his reign would go, he probably wouldn’t h...

An Easy Source of Encouragement

03 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Marcus Aurelius write his Meditations? It wasn’t for an audience. It wasn’t simply to practice his Greek or his rhetorical abilities—he ...

Stop Wasting Time on Trivialities

31 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his twenty-third letter to Lucilius, Seneca opens with some meta snark that is relatable to anyone who has ever been trapped in a banal conversatio...

The Best Technology Ever Invented

30 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There have been all sorts of wonderful technological innovations since Marcus Aurelius’s time, particularly in the domain of writing. We got the pri...

It’s OK To Cry

29 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We know that Marcus Aurelius cried when he was told that his favorite tutor passed away. We know that he cried that day in court, when he was overseei...

What Do You Have To Draw On?

28 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For most of us, things are pretty good right now. The economy is booming. Our jobs or our personal lives are going well. Most of the doomsday predicti...

Things Don’t Make The Man

27 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It’s very easy to associate our possessions and our positions with our identity. There’s even an expression to that effect: The clothes make the m...

It’s Not As Unfortunate As It Seems

24 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Things we didn’t want to happen happen to all of us. A business deal falls through. A grade comes back that we didn’t expect. A person we care abo...

The Road To Ladies and Gentlemen Again

23 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Two years ago, the world lost a great scholar and Stoic philosopher, Peter Lawler. Peter, a longtime writer for National Review and political science ...

You’ll Be Happier If You’re Realistic

22 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We tell ourselves that if we just get paid more or get promoted, we’ll stop being so miserable at work. Or we dream for months in advance about some...

Eat And Be Merry

21 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A few years ago a study by Brad Bushman at Ohio State University found a link between low blood sugar and arguments between spouses. It pretty much co...

Make It Happen. Whatever It Takes.

20 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On this day in 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Her solo exploits are well known. Less so is that Earhart ...

Don’t Let Yourself Be Rushed

17 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Caro is getting old and people are getting worried. He’s now 83 and each day that passes makes it increasingly unlikely that he’ll ever fin...

Find The Space

16 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Think about the last time that someone made you upset. What did they say? What did they do? Now think back: How did you react? What did you say? What ...

How To Overcome Selfishness

15 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Bertrand Russell was no fan of the Stoics. He thought they were cold, hated riches and passion. He thought Seneca and Marcus were hypocrites. But then...

The Only Measure of Success

14 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There’s plenty written about people pushing through failure, pulling themselves out of the depths of despair, rising above against all odds. There a...

Look For Teachable Moments

13 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On the eve of the 2008 election, the journalist Joe Klein asked Barack Obama how he’d made his decision to respond to the brewing scandal about Obam...

If It’s Right, It’s Right For You

10 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes we get asked or tasked with doing stuff in life we’d rather not have to do. Maybe that’s working a less than glamorous job when we’re ...

You Decide The End of The Story

09 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When James Stockdale was shot down in Vietnam, he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. He spent seven years being tortured and subjected to uni...

The First and Most Important Victory

08 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It’s easy to look at people who are calm and self-disciplined and assume that their disposition comes naturally to them, or that it is somehow divin...

Who To Be Friends With?

07 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Of the Stoics, Seneca seems like the one who had the most fun. He’s the one who it’s easiest to picture spending time with friends or mingling at ...

Don’t Sell Out

06 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his Discourses, Epictetus asks a probing question: “Your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a...

Be Sure To Love Them While You Still Can

03 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In one of the darkest passages in all of Stoic thought, Epictetus discusses the prospect of putting your child to bed and saying goodbye to them in yo...

Do Your Duty, Every Day, Everywhere

02 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy was recently interviewed by the New York Times about his grueling travel schedule, which will include 22 c...

You’ll Never Get To Perfect

01 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Rosanne Cash tells a story in her memoir, Composed about a performance she did with George Harrison. Dress rehearsal had gone wonderfully but the perf...

You Can Admit You Were Wrong

30 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A Stoic is determined, but not obstinate. A Stoic controls what they can, recognizes they cannot change that which is out of their control, but that t...

Make Beautiful Choices

29 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Epictetus says that “if your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” It’s simple and it’s true. You are what your choices make you, nothin...

Do This For Your Future Self

26 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, TED speaker, and author, Derek Sivers, recently wrote an article that began, “You know those...

Always Think Of Their Intentions

25 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We live in a culture where people sit on the sidelines and pass a lot of strong judgements. We look at people we don’t know and decide whether they’...

Difficulty Is Forging Us Into Who We Need To Be

24 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Look, nobody wants to go through hard times. We’d prefer that things go according to plan, that what could go wrong doesn’t, so that we might enjo...

We All Share This Thing Together

23 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Yesterday was the 49th year we celebrated Earth Day...in the 4.5 billionth year of the Earth’s existence. In 1970, at the height of counterculture i...

When You're Having A Bad Day

22 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Theodore Roosevelt famously said that comparison is the thief of joy. Using what other people have or what they’ve done to chart your progress, hold...

The Race To Run Is Against Yourself

19 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It can be deceiving to hear the Stoics talk about an indifference to external recognition or rewards. Marcus says that fame is meaningless. Seneca tal...

Look For The Good

18 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Laura Ingalls Wilder had a hard scrabble existence. From the Kansas prairies to the backwoods of Florida, she and her family eked out a life from some...

Don’t Worry About Being Respected

17 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In a conversation on “You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes” about Martin Luther King Jr., the screenwriter and director Adam McKay talked about the ...

No Room For “Them”

16 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“They” hold up very poorly in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that Marcus holds up very poorly when “they”...

How To Bounce Back

15 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When you begin to type “Marcus Lattimore” into Google, the first suggestion is “injury”. On October 27th, 2012, on live television, running ba...

Here’s A Reason To Be Good

12 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The funny thing about egotistical people is that—despite any power or wealth they might have—they are really easy to manipulate. All you have to d...

Freedom To or Freedom From?

11 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

At the core of legal theory is this idea that there are essentially two forms of liberty—positive and negative. Positive liberty is the freedom to d...

All That Matters Is How We Respond

09 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It was the great Athenian leader, Pericles, who said that there was nothing wrong with poverty. It could be caused by so many things—a business fail...

Do You Want To Be Less Angry?

08 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Few people have studied the life and writings of Seneca as deeply as James Romm has. Romm is the author of a great biography of Seneca, Dying Every Da...

What Goes Up, Must Come Down

05 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Each of has been blessed by Fortune. We’re alive right now, instead of 50 or 500 years ago. We were born free, and not into slavery. We’re reading...

Do Better Where You Can

04 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When we look at the lives of a great man like Marcus Aurelius or a great woman like the Catholic activist Dorothy Day, it’s easy to be intimidated. ...

You Are Here On The Mountaintop

03 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The point of memento mori is not to make you sad. It’s not to make you anxious about how few days you may have left. On the contrary, it’s suppose...

It's Just The Glasses

02 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his wonderful new book How To Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, historian,...

All Things Can Be Used for a Purpose

01 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

One of the benefits of being an artist is that everything that happens to you—no matter how traumatic or frustrating—has at least one hidden benef...

Friendship Makes Life Worth Living

29 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

By now you may have read the viral story about the unexpected friendship between Charles Barkley and the late Lin Wang, a cat litter scientist from Io...

Do Not Be Afraid

28 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Life is pretty great, usually. Until you start thinking about what’s on the other side. That’s when things get less certain; when the fear of deat...

Know It Inside And Out

27 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy in the United States and an unsung hero in the history of the world, was once asked by a Congre...

Take The Time To Be Grateful

26 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

AJ Jacobs is known for his unique style of immersion journalism. He’s lived, literally, according to the Bible. He’s went out and met every obscur...

We Are All Tested In Different Ways

25 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It was said that Socrates saw his difficult marriage as a sort of challenge that life threw at him—that the fact that his wife’s personality and i...

It Smells Like...Life

22 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The German poet Friedrich Schiller supposedly liked to write with a drawer filled with rotting apples tucked into his desk. The smell was overpowering...

Are You Tired Trying To Fill That Void?

21 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

All of us are trying to find something. Trying to find meaning, love, contentment. Because we feel like something is missing. That’s why we keep our...

Do Your Best

20 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Gretchen Rubin is one of the most thought-provoking and influential experts on habits and happiness. She has written several New York Times best selle...

Beware the Voice in Your Head

19 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Seneca tells the story of the philosopher Crates, who was walking in Athens when he saw a young man talking to no one around. “What are you doing?”...

What It Really Means To Be A Slave

18 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Epictetus was born a slave. Quite literally, his name means, in Greek, acquired. Ultimately, he came to be the property of a man named Epaphroditus, w...

The Most Important Thing: Realizing That We Are All One

15 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Let’s take a second to meditate on this observation from John Cage, the experimental musician and student of Zen philosophy:“That one sees that th...

Zoom Out...And Laugh

14 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The way to make all your problems, even the really vexing and painful ones, seem less severe? It comes from Seneca. All you have to do, he says, is:“...

Why You Should Read Biographies

13 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“I don’t have time to read a book that long,” you might say when someone recommends one of those epic volumes from the Ron Chernows and Robert C...

What Does It Feel Like To Lose All Your Money?

12 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, the writer Chuck Palahniuk received the kind of news that all of us dread. Someone he trusted—the book agent who had represented him for ...

Always, Ever The Same

11 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his wonderful book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, the Pulitzer Prize winning scholar Stephen Greenblatt spends a lot of time analyzing a pivot...

Take What’s Good, Ignore The Rest

08 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

One of Seneca’s most powerful strategies comes from his time as a Senator. Speaking again of a thought from Epicurus, with which he only partly agre...

Now Is Now

07 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There is a beautiful passage on the last page of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s, The Little House in the Big Woods. She writes of an evening in the cabin wi...

Find A Good Outlet For Your Passions

06 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Although today we consider “passion” to be a good thing—as in find your passion—to the Stoics, the passions were something to be wary of. Desi...

Is Ego A Virtue?

05 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 2017, Good Morning Britain anchor Susanna Reid presented her co-anchor (actually she calls him her TV husband), Piers Morgan, a gift. It was a copy...

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 ...