The Daily Stoic

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 ...

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...