The Daily Stoic

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 ourselves so busy, why we kill ourselves with work, why we can’t be still.This drive is what allows us to accomplish things. So it’s not all bad. The problem is that when we do accomplish things, we often don’t feel that much better. We look back at the road we just traveled, we look down at the mountain we just scaled, and we think to ourselves: this is it? We never seem to fill the void.As Marcus Aurelius wrote: “You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.” Isn’t that exactly right?What we have to realize is that more is not the answer to our problems: more sex, more money, more power and renown. These will never satisfy the place inside us that never feels full. Nor will magical thinking, or plant medicines in the jungles of Peru. No

Gretchen Rubin is one of the most thought-provoking and influential experts on habits and happiness. She has written several New York Times best sellers, which have sold millions of copies, including The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. She also hosts the award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin. In short, Gretchen Rubin has thought a lot about what it means to live a happy life.Her new book Outer Order, Inner Calm is a playbook that helps readers discover ways to make more room for happiness in their lives. This is something the Stoics were often writing about—finding stillness and tranquility, ridding of nonessentials that clutter our lives, learning to stay calm and sane amid life’s chaos and craziness.In our interview with Gretchen, we asked how she maintains that inner calm with something so hectic and uncertain like a book launch,I think about actions, not outcomes. That way, I stay focused on the things I can control (more or less). So I don’t think about “making the book a success,” but

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?” Crates asked. “I am talking to myself,” the man replied. “Be careful,” Crates told him, “for you are communing with a bad man!” Whether this young man was in fact a bad kid or not, Seneca doesn’t say. One suspects Crates was joking—unless it was his practice to go around insulting complete strangers. Or it may have been that Crates was referring less to the quality of that stranger’s soul and was instead making a more general point about the dialogues we are all prone to having with ourselves—conversations that are hardly productive or healthy. The writer Anne Lamott spoke of a radio station, KFKD (K-Fucked) which plays in far too many our heads:Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble o

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, who kept Epictetus chained up long enough that he became disabled by it and walked with a limp for the rest of his life.His body and his time and his labor were controlled by someone else. That’s what slavery is. But what’s remarkable is that even in this state, Epictetus retained freedom in one important sense, and it would be this that his teachings would later revolve around: People could do whatever they wanted to his body, but his mind always remained his to control. No one had the power to make him bitter, to make him lose his desire for life, to take away his power to choose to think a certain way. (You may recall the Hurricane Carter story in The Obstacle is the Way, along similar lines)Compare that to say, Seneca, who was perfectly free to live and do whatever he wished from the day he was born yet was driven by his own ambition willingly into the arms o

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 the human race is one person (all of its members parts of the same body, brothers—not in competition any more than hand is in competition with eye) enables him to see that originality is necessary, for there is no need for eye to do what hand so well does.”It is a particularly beautiful and necessary insight for two reasons. The first half reminds us of something the Stoics believed very deeply as well—that we were made for our fellow humans and are part of the same collective being. “What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee,” Marcus wrote to himself. He wrote like this constantly. “The universe made rational creatures for the sake of each other, with an eye toward mutual benefit based on true value and never for harm.” “All things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other.” “Revere the gods and look after each other.” In fact, we mad

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:“Draw further back and laugh.”When you zoom out far enough, almost everything becomes absurd. Think about it: We are monkeys living on a space rock. We are a split second of the infinity of existence. If humanity survives long enough, people will laugh at us the way we laugh at Neanderthals. People used to have serious arguments about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin or whether the world was flat. They not only thought kings were a good idea, they thought they had divine right! What do you think they’re going to think about the arguments we have today? Or even our cutting edge science?Even WWI is funny with enough distance. One archduke was assassinated and the entire world went to war over it. For basically no reason. And then, even after millions of people died, everyone was so stupid that they immediately forgot the lessons of the war and had to f

“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 Caros and Stacy Schiffs of the world. And Alban Butler’s The Lives of the Saints? Or Plutarch? Who has time to read that dusty old collection about the lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans?The answer is that you do. Or rather, that you should make time to study the greats of history.In Book Four of Meditations, Marcus writes::“And then you might see what the life of a good man is like—someone content with what nature assigns him, and satisfied with being just and kind himself.”What’s the “if” that came before the “then” he is referring to? We can only guess. That is the entirety of his writing on this point. But not unlike a Jeopardy answer with multiple possible questions, this one fits:What is it to study history and biographies?Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus were all intimately familiar with the lives of the greats (and not-so-greats) that came before them. And i

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 years—had been slowly but steadily robbing him blind. All the millions he’d earned from the royalties of his bestselling books were gone. All the financial security he thought he’d built up was an illusion—undone by the cruel deception and greed of someone close to him. In July, Palahniuk was asked what it felt like to lose all his money. He stared down at the ground. He was quiet. Then he answered: “It’s kind of nice. Writing was initially my way of saving money, because if you’re writing, you’re not spending. So it throws me back into writing. There are larger issues in life – the embezzlement is dwarfed by my father-in-law’s death. And there’s the awareness that I’m the person who got me to this place, and I’m still that person, so I can still turn it all back around, and come up with something really strong and vibrant and interesting.”First off, kudos is due

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 pivotal moment early in the life of Saint Augustine, when he was at a Roman bath with his father. One of the observations Greenblatt makes is about the steamy, quiet, relaxing atmosphere of the baths, with its alternating hot and cold, the scrubbing and soaking and resting and massaging. The kind of baths that Saint Augustine visited in the 4th century, Greenblatt writes, “was everywhere the same and has continued virtually unchanged to the present.” The bath he visited when he was simply Augustine of Hippo was essentially identical to the baths Marcus Aurelius experienced, that Seneca wrote about, that Cato was famously shoved at (and forgave his accidental assailant), that you might visit on a vacation to Istanbul, or really, not all that different from the locker room at one of those private athletic clubs in most major cities. You can actually still visit some of

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 agrees, Seneca explains that he is so readily able to draw from the teachings of a rival school for his writing because of a trick he learned in the Roman senate. Whenever a fellow senator introduced a motion with which he was not in full agreement, he would ask the Senator to break the motion up into two parts, thus allowing other Senators to vote for the part they approved of and ignore or vote against the other part. It was this strategy that Seneca applied to Epicurus and, indeed, that all good politicians use to do their job—it’s called finding common ground. It’s focusing on where there is agreement rather than on where there is conflict. We could all use a little bit more of this in our lives. Philosophically, it’s fascinating how much Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism and Stoicism all have in common. We could spend a whole lifetime studying and learning f

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 with her family, her father playing the fiddle, her mom knitting in a rocking chair. “She thought to herself, ‘This is now.’ She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”It’s a passage that has resonated with millions of people over the last 86 years, including the writer Gretchen Rubin who ends her book Happier At Home with a meditation on how it has inspired her for most of her life. But what does it mean? It means the same thing that the Stoics have always talked about. That you have to live in the very now, even when it is ordinary and quiet, because the now is very special. It is the only thing that is true. What has passed is past, and our memories of it gradually degrade and betray us. What has yet to pass is future, and

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. Desire, rivalry, excitement, infatuation, anger. These were powerful forces that, if left unchecked, were likely to hurt the person who had turned themselves over to them (and likely to hurt innocent bystanders too). The warning against manufacturing or feeding these emotional drives is a good one and ought to be heeded. But what is a person to do when they find themselves unexpectedly angry or hurt or excited? Should they just stuff this emotion down? Should they pretend it doesn’t exist? The Stoics talk a lot less about this. One suspects they might agree with the solution proposed by the beloved children’s television host, Mr. Rogers:“But do you know what I do when I’m angry? I like to swim, and so I swim extra hard when I’m angry...There are many things that you can do when you’re angry that don’t hurt you or anybody else.” What he’s talking about is the need for an out

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 of the book Ego is the Enemy. She thought he could use the book because Piers was “irritating, annoying, divisive, over-opinionated,” and “ready to start a fight in an empty room.” She meant it both as a compliment and as good natured (and true) feedback because anyone who has ever watched Piers Morgan on TV knows he has a big ego. Piers replied that he had no disagreement with her assessment but that he did resent the idea that ego was anything but a virtue. “Ego is your friend,” he said. “If you don’t believe in yourself folks, nobody else will.”Is he right? Is Ego a virtue? It almost feels petty, by way of an answer, to point out all the times Piers’s ego has gotten him in trouble. One notable time is, when interviewing an activist protesting Donald Trump’s forced separation of immigrants, he repeatedly tried to speak over her, and asked why she would protes

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 in your performance review were brutal. Life can be like that. It kicks us around. The stuff we expected to be simple turns out to be tough. The people we thought were friends let us down. A couple storms or unexpected weather patterns just add a whole bunch of difficulty on top of whatever we’ve been doing. How could that possibly be seen as a good thing? You have to squint a bit to see it, but there is one way: if you see what’s been happening as practice, as training. Seneca wrote that only the prize fighter who has been bloodied and bruised—in training and in previous matches—can go into the ring confident of his chances of winning. The one who has never been touched before, never had a hard fight? That’s a fighter who is scared. And if they aren’t, they should be. Because they have no actual idea how they’re going to hold up. His point was that the boxer who ha

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 lives forward? March is when we start to think of spring cleaning, but how many of us get our whole houses in order? Not just our physical spaces, but our minds, our routines, our assumptions?Think of how you spent the last week. Were those seven days as efficient or productive as they could be? Or did you waste time? Were things more complicated than necessary? Did you fall back on bad habits? Were you, like so many people, still stuck in the doldrums of winter?The 10-Day Spring Forward Challenge is set up to push you to examine those parts of your life, to examine your choices, to examine your relationships and move you closer to living your best life.It was Marcus Aurelius who said “This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.”It’s up to you whether you’re going to let those . New Year’s resolutions dissolve into missed

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 Epicureanism. Even Seneca knew this was strange as each time he did so in his famous Letters, he felt obliged to preface or explain why he was so familiar with the teachings of a rival school.His best answer appears in Letter II, On Discursiveness in Reading, and it works as a prompt for all of us in our own reading habits. The reason he was so familiar with Epicurus, Seneca wrote, was not because he was deserting the writings of the Stoics, but because he was reading like a spy in the enemy’s camp. That is, he was deliberately reading and immersing himself into the thinking and the strategies of those he disagreed with. To see if there was anything he could learn and, of course, to bolster his own defenses.It’s very easy, especially in today’s social media and algorithmic world, to become caught in a feedback loop of your own viewpoints. You read an article about one to

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 conquered her shyness and became a leading public figure. She overcame sexism and preconceptions about the role of a First Lady—a job she never wanted—to turn it into a powerful pulpit for good. She forgave her husband’s betrayals and affairs, even though they absolutely crushed her. Even in childhood she overcame obstacles and proved resilient — both her parents and one brother died while she was young, and yet she persisted onward. Each time she was faced with limitations, internally or externally, she managed to transcend them. She pushed past her fears, her reservations, and the doubts of others. This was what made her great. What the Stoics wanted us to know is that we are capable of far more than we know. We can do far more than anyone else thinks. We have great strength and power within us, if only we choose to seize it. If only we ignore that “can’t/don

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 than just about any physical activity on the planet. Just three. They are, he said, in this order:-Returning love for hate.-Including the excluded.-Admitting you are wrong. This is not a modern affliction. De Mello, while certainly observing the world he was trying serve, was also tapping into an ancient idea with which the Stoics would have wholly agreed:- “If you must be affected by other people’s misfortunes, show them pity instead of contempt. Drop this readiness to hate.” — Epictetus- “No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love for human beings, nor more attention to the common good. The goal which it assigns to us is to be useful, to help others, and to take care, not only of ourselves, but of everyone in general and of each one in particular.” — Seneca"If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the

Last fall, there was a New York Times profile on what’s called the FIRE movement. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The proponents of this movement have adopted some important Stoic principles. They believe that life is unpredictable and that working for years at a job you hate for decades to retire at 65 is a dangerous risk (what if you don’t make it to 65?). They believe that many people are on a hedonic treadmill, working long hours to pay for things they don’t want at prices they can’t afford. By living below your means, investing wisely, by learning practical skills (like changing your own oil or biking instead of driving) and radically changing your lifestyle priorities, they’ve found that it’s possible to retire as early as age 30.That’s awesome. And should be looked at seriously by everyone who has unquestionably assumed the mantra of our consumerist, materialist society. But still, it brings up this question: if you were suddenly able to retire much younger than expected, what sho

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 sex before marriage or do this or that because God wouldn’t like it. (How that entitles you to regulate what other people do is less clear, but we’ll leave that to another discussion). And if God doesn’t like it, well that’s trouble. It is a rigid and restrictive worldview, to be sure, but it also offers a great degree of simplicity and clarity. Do this, don’t do that. For those who are not religious, however, it is a little less clear what to think about all things sexual. Should you do whatever you want—following every urge and impulse your body has? Should you chase pleasure? Or should you avoid it? What do you teach your children, whose innocence you want to protect, without being controlling or repressive?These are the type of questions the Stoics were always wrestling with, as they tried to find a rational path through the world. A path that was both in accorda