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

There are countless other examples of this principle. You should not desire to be loved by your partner, but only to be the most lovable person you can be. You should not indulge an aversion to losing a match when you play a game or sport, but instead focus on playing to the best of your ability. Once you internalize the distinction between proper

Even though the Stoics thought the mind was our most valuable asset—it’s the most sophisticated and important tool we have at our disposal—they did not neglect the body. In fact, as Epictetus’s teacher Musonius Rufus suggests, the mind (or “soul”) and body work together, each influencing the other, for good or for bad.

Last week you practiced focusing on an outside view in order to quash your desires for things to go how you want them to. This week is similar. You’re now countering desires about other people’s behaviors. Instead of doing so by taking an outside view of your own struggles, you’re taking an inside view of other people’s actions.

Use this table to strategize how you can respond Stoically if things go wrong. Try this for up to three of your plans for the day.

Now there are two kinds of [Stoic] training, one which is appropriate for the soul alone, and the other which is common to both soul and body. We use the training common to both when we discipline ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, meager rations, hard beds, avoidance of pleasures, and patience under suffering.

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

To the fool, however, and to him who trusts in fortune, each event as it arrives ‘comes in a new and sudden form,’ and a large part of evil, to the inexperienced, consists in its novelty. This is proved by the fact that men endure with greater courage, when they have once become accustomed to them, the things which they had at first regarded as har

We learn from Stoic philosophy, as well as modern empirical research in cognitive science, that unless we are well trained we should avoid difficult tasks or situations that are hard to handle when we are tired, hungry, sick, or otherwise physically distracted.1

WEEK 5 Strengthen yourself through minor physical hardships

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.