The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

If any external thing causes you distress, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to eliminate now. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47

Your attitude might resemble that of a doctor – a very good one, let’s say – who has had a long career of working with dying patients and their families. In the best doctor of that sort we would find kindness, warmth, and compassion. There would be feeling. But emotion would be unlikely. You would sympathize but you would not go through mourning of

our pleasures, griefs, desires and fears all involve three stages rather than two: not just an event and a reaction, but an event, then a judgment or opinion about it, and then a reaction (to the judgment or opinion). Our task is to notice the middle step, to understand its frequent irrationality, and to control it through the patient use of reason

Anyone who crows about being a Stoic isn’t; progress in Stoicism may be measured in part by one’s awareness of failure at it.

with respect to emotion and adversity, Stoics want the kind of wisdom that we associate with long experience. But in certain settings they seek, in effect, the attitude of the newcomer.

show them those qualities that are entirely up to you: sincerity, dignity, endurance of hardship; not pleasure-seeking, not complaining of your lot, needing little; kindness and generosity; being modest, not chattering idly, but high-minded. Don’t you see how many you could display immediately – having no excuse on account of lack of natural capaci

Experience is humbling. Instead you might have other types of joy – the calm kind that comes from appreciation and understanding.

the absence of emotion prescribed by the Stoics in response to a thing is also what we would expect naturally from long enough exposure to it.

The first principle of practical Stoicism is this: we don’t react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us.