Live Like A Stoic: 52 Exercises for Cultivating a Good Life

When we perceive that another person has behaved wrongly toward us, the first step is to figure out what incorrect notion led them to act as they did. We can imagine ourselves in the other person’s situation, and, by thinking about what they value, can make sense of their actions—even if we don’t agree with them—immediately squashing the rising sen

Some modern Stoics refer to this exercise by the Latin term premeditatio malorum, the premeditation of bad stuff happening. It’s not that Stoics are pessimists; on the contrary, they are among the most realistic of people—they know that sometimes things won’t go their way, and are always mentally prepared for that occurrence.

The Stoics would say that much of James’s distress is caused by his failure to anticipate how things might go wrong. This week’s exercise is to soften the blow of misfortunes by anticipating them in advance.

Now that you’ve listed some possibilities, choose a type of discomfort you’d like to focus on for the week. Here are some tips: Concentrate on something that happens often. Ask yourself: If you were able to wave a magic wand to make yourself completely resilient to this discomfort, would your life improve dramatically? If

Method 2: Premeditate on others’ adversity. Now we’re shifting gears. So far this week you have focused on your own experiences. Today we’re expanding the power of premeditatio malorum to internalize the reality that you may be subject to unexpected misfortunes that happen to others.

The final step is to create some “at-hand” phrases you can tell yourself when intentionally practicing discomfort. At-hand phrases are an important part of Stoic practice; we’ll encounter them more throughout this book. They’re generally used as reminders of basic Stoic principles. Here, the purpose of these phrases is to remind yourself why you’re

For the next week, choose a time at the end of each day to think about someone you encountered who frustrated you or whom you perceived to do you wrong.

the Stoic premeditatio’s goal is to loosen our attachment to external events in general, from something as simple as breaking your favorite cup (to use Epictetus’s example from Week 3) to the death of a loved one. Since you’re only doing this for a day, we do not recommend starting with a serious situation.

You may have noticed that we’ve been focusing on aversion in the Discipline of Desire. That’s because aversion can be seen as a type of desire: the desire to avoid misfortune. We use the Discipline of Desire as shorthand for the Discipline of Desire and Aversion, the shortened name given to this discipline by French scholar Pierre Hadot.1 The cruci