The Daily Stoic
Episodes
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...
Why Do You Care What They Think?
11 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a moment that almost everyone remembers from their childhood. They have just received something they really liked--a new shirt, a new toy, a...
What You Think You’re Lacking Is The Problem
10 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
George Ball, the diplomat and advisor to President Kennedy (one of who David Halberstam would call ‘the best and the brightest’), once observed ab...
Love Always
09 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
1981 was a tough year for tennis great Billie Jean King. That year, she sat down to write her memoir having endured serious betrayal on multiple front...
Things Worse Than Dying
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Death and dying are the worst parts of life, right? After all, they do end the whole thing. So while it does make sense, generally, to try to avoid d...
If Today Was Your Last Day
05 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We put a lot of thought into making distinctions about what’s urgent and what’s not. We put a lot of effort into planning. We have our conservativ...
We Pay The Iron Price
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Game of Thrones, the people of the Iron Islands believe they have been entitled by God to steal and seize whatever they like. Women, land, possessi...
Nothing Exempts You From Hard Work
03 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s interesting, if you think about Greek and Roman mythology, that the Gods were so active and busy. Athena and Circe and Hermes all worked to hel...
Nothing Can Touch The Soul
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun and the song it inspired, One by Metallica, tell the story of Joe Bonham, a soldier who has been grievously inju...
It’s Time To Get Up. It’s Time To Get Up
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
One of the best passages in all of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is the opener to Book V. In it, Marcus has a dialog with himself as he struggles to...
Another Reason To Journal
28 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Walter Isaacson’s wonderful new biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, he spends a lot of time dissecting and exploring the ideas in Da Vinci’s notebo...
Don’t Make This Mistake (Or Stop Before It’s Too Late)
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Why are good people attracted to serving bad people or bad causes? Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Seneca advised Nero. Da Vinci attached himsel...
Love Not Hate
26 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s easy to stir up resentment, harder to create common ground. It’s easy to point out what’s wrong, it’s much more difficult to come up with...
Make Sure You're Coming Home
21 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
All of us have day jobs. Even professional philosophers are still professors or authors, which means they have other responsibilities than just thinki...
Different Folks Need Different Strokes
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Confucius was once asked for advice by a student, and in replying essentially urged him to wait and be patient. Later he was asked for advice by anoth...
What To Do When You’re Not Naturally Perfect
19 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It was on this day in the year 86 AD, that Antoninus Pius, the man who would become best known as the stepfather of Marcus Aurelius, was born. Most pe...
Approach Your Troubles Like Doctor
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s famously said that you should learn from the mistakes of others because you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. In that way, th...
This Will Help You Get Rid Of Crazy Thoughts
17 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Aaron Thier’s novel The World Is A Narrow Bridge (the title is a proverb we have written about before), one of the main characters is a runner. H...
Virtue Is Contagious (and Has Obligations)
14 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The line from Confucius was that “Virtue is never solitary; it always has neighbors.” What he meant by that was that good behavior and good thinki...
It Comes For All, Young And Old
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The New York Times Obituary section this past weekend featured a somberly diverse list of losses: William Jordan, the impressionist, was dead at 91. E...
What Should Good People Do?
12 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Confucius, like Seneca, was an interesting hybrid of philosopher and politician. For instance, in addition to his teachings and writings, he pushed fo...
The Ideal Weapon For Spiritual Combat
11 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Michel Foucault has a fascinating essay on journaling entitled “Self-Writing.” In it, he describes journaling as a “weapon in spiritual combat,”...
You Are Worth Fighting For
10 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. Given that a number of prominent Stoics committed suicide, and that suicide was described by Epictetus as the “...
Study The Lives of The Greats
07 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It would be this Sunday that in the year 1813, General William Henry Harrison sent three volumes of an ancient book to his 15 year old son, John. The ...
The Only Kind Of Comparison Worth Doing
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It is said that comparison is the thief of joy and is, therefore, mostly to be avoided. This is true. You’re on your own journey with your own uniqu...
How Are You Still Not Doing This?
05 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria wrote in Vita Antonii that the reason he did his journaling--his confessing, as the genre was called by the Christians-...
This Message Is Waiting For You
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On April 24th 1924, the pioneer writer Laura Ingalls Wilder got a note that he mother, aged 84, had died. It was a sad day, particularly since it had ...
In This Way You Are Unstoppable
03 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Acceptance? Resignation? That’s not me, we say, when we hear the Stoics preach those concepts. I never give up. I’m a fighter. Ok. If you say so. ...
Your Heart Shouldn’t Be Getting Harder As You Go
31 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The old joke--which dates back to the 1870s--is that if you’re not a liberal when you’re young you have no heart, but if you’re still a liberal ...
This Is The Only Thing That Matters in Life
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1940, while he was struggling as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Walker Percy wrote to his uncle and adopted f...
Why You Do This Work
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There is an element of this philosophy that is a lot of work. You do all this reading. You do your morning and evening journaling. Maybe you attend me...
There Is Always Something To Be Grateful For
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most stunning things about Anne Frank’s diary is how indefatigably happy it is. One might expect that her journal, which she kept from 19...
Why You’re The Luckiest Person In The World
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“It’s unfortunate that this happened,” Marcus says in one of his imaginary dialogs. Then he corrects himself: “No. It’s fortunate that this ...
How To Make The World A Better Place
24 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The line from George Bernard Shaw was that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” He isn’t wrong. The reasonable man bends himself to t...
Everything Hangs By A Thread
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most misleading things about our world today is the increased sense of comfort we feel. Yes, on average planes crash less. Yes, diseases ha...
Here’s Why Worry Is Pointless
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Humble people worry less than the arrogant. Why is that? Because they aren’t so conceited as to think they have any idea (or control over) what may ...
It Helps To Be A Little Deaf
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was given a little piece of advice on her wedding day by her mother in law: "In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a li...
Be Tough On Yourself and Understanding To Others
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Remember that Stoicism isn’t about judging other people. It’s not a moral philosophy you’re supposed to project and enforce onto the world. No, ...
You Always Have a Move to Make
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today you might find yourself dealing with something tough. Stuck in a new situation. Hit with a situation that’s been developing for some time, but...
Exploring the Softer Side
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There is a harshness and a hardness to the Stoics. But there is also a softness and a grace, the velvet glove over the iron first. Think of Marcus tal...
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There’s no way around the fact that the Stoics talked about suicide. A lot. To the Stoics, suicide was famously the “open door”—the option ava...