The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
This podcast aims to bridge the gap between knowing Stoic philosophy and actually applying it in daily life. Host Jon Brooks offers practical guidance for living Stoically, with new episodes released every Monday.
Episodes
Difficult People: A Stoic Masterclass
How do you stay yourself around someone who keeps drawing you into conflict?In this recorded Stoic masterclass, I work through five practical moves: expect difficulty, notice the hook, drop the rope, make your boundary a behaviour, and look honestly at your own patterns. We also map the inner citadel: what belongs to you, and what was never yours to control.The session distinguishes everyday frict
Stoic Joy: Six Habits For A Calmer Life
You can get better at handling difficulty and still forget to enjoy your life.This half-hour Stoic talk explores six habits for practising joy, including the seven-second control check, the View from Above and the Joy of Enough. It also covers a 24-hour virtue experiment, obstacle training and a morning-and-evening routine.Choose one habit from the session and give it a place in your day. There&ap
The Reset: How to Come Back Quickly When You've Lost It
Marcus Aurelius expected to be knocked off balance. His advice was to come back quickly and treat every return as training. This short Stoic practice is for the moment after you’ve snapped or started spiralling.The Reset uses SPQR as a modern memory aid: Stop, Pause, Question, Reframe. Take one breath, check the story you’re telling yourself, and look at what’s actually here and what your part is.
Massimo Pigliucci: How to Think Clearly Without Certainty
How do you make a decision when you might be wrong? Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci joins me to explore critical thinking and scepticism in everyday life.Drawing on his book How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic, Massimo explains how the ancient sceptics and Cicero approached uncertainty. We discuss degrees of confidence, how much evidence a decision needs, and why an open mind still needs a way to act.You’ll
The Flinch: What to Do With the First Jolt of Anger or Anxiety
Your body reacts before you decide anything. Seneca says even the wise still blush and sweat. This short Stoic practice helps you name the first jolt of anger or anxiety and stop mistaking it for a decision.This is the first episode of One Passage: one ancient passage, one practice to try today. Notice the flinch once, name it, and record whether you caught it. Even noticing it after you’ve reacte
Let Go Of What You Can't Control: A Stoic Meditation
You keep returning to the reply that hasn't come, the decision someone else is making, or the conversation you wish had gone differently. This 13-minute guided meditation uses Epictetus's image of the dice and the player to work with one situation you've been carrying. Settle with the breath, separate what has fallen from the use you can make of it, and choose one next action. The p
The Stoic Pause: Respond Without Reacting
You know how you want to handle anger. Then someone says the wrong thing, and you're already reacting.This 45-minute Stoic talk works through PAUSE: Perceive, Acknowledge, Unhook, Sort and Engage. It connects the Stoic distinction between an impression and your response with guided practice for emotionally charged moments, followed by questions from the original live session.Practise making r
Stoic Sleep Practice: Full-Body Release Into Deep Rest
A 13-minute guided sleep practice for nights when your body is in bed but the day is still moving through your mind.This slow full-body scan moves from the scalp to the toes, letting the jaw, shoulders, hands, hips and legs release into the mattress. There is almost no philosophy here, deliberately. Nothing to learn and nothing to solve.Put the phone down, get comfortable, and let the practice fad
Is This Worth Your Peace of Mind? A Stoic Guide to Anger
Anger can feel like strength, clarity or self-respect. But once it gathers momentum, it narrows your choices and makes you pay for the first reaction twice.In this full live masterclass, I explore Seneca's three warnings about anger: it makes us a slave, accelerates quickly and spreads between people. I share the question that has helped me interrupt it: "Is this worth sacrificing my pea
Stoic Morning Rehearsal For A High-Stakes Day
A 7-minute guided Stoic practice for the morning of a presentation, interview, difficult meeting or test.You will rehearse one realistic setback, separate what is yours from what is not, and choose how you want to act when the moment arrives. The practice draws on premeditation of adversity, Epictetus's first chapter of the Enchiridion, and Cicero's archer image.Use it before the event,
Envy Is the Greatest Motivator
Envy has a terrible reputation. But the feeling itself can tell you what you value, where comparison has hooked you, and what you may need to work towards.In this episode, I separate malicious envy from the more useful kind, drawing on Alain de Botton, the story of Mozart and Salieri, and my own experiences learning guitar and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I also share a simple envy diary practice you can
A Stoic Morning Practice For Grief And Loss
Some mornings, grief is present before you open your eyes. This gentle guided practice does not ask you to stop grieving or manufacture a better mood. You will make a little room for the weight, notice one source of warmth, and choose one small act of care for the next few hours. The Stoic frame draws on Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.48; the guided structure is a modern adaptation. Use it seated
The Marcus Aurelius Quote He Never Wrote
One of Marcus Aurelius's most famous online quotes does not appear in the Meditations. In this episode, I look at several fabricated, misattributed and over-smoothed Stoic quotes, including one I used myself.The point is bigger than pedantry. A philosophy built on checking impressions should not be taught through claims nobody checked.Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.coThe Stoic Vau
Stoic Morning Practice: Be Fair To Yourself
Some mornings, the first voice you hear is a prosecutor. It lists what you did badly, what you did not finish and what you should have become by now.This guided Stoic morning practice helps you take one honest mistake, separate the facts from the verdict you added, and test that verdict against what you would say to someone you care about. It draws on Seneca's nightly self-review and Epictetu
You Broke the Streak. Now What?
One missed day is rarely the problem. The story you tell yourself the next day is.This episode looks at the Stoic idea of progress, why trends survive lapses while streaks do not, and the Same Day Return: one tiny action that gets you back into a practice without trying to catch up.Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.coThe Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com
Stoic Attention Practice: Return Before The Noise
Before the first message, headline, or demand, practise the Stoic discipline of attention. This guided meditation introduces prosochē: noticing where the mind has gone and returning before an impression becomes an automatic judgement or action. It draws on Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.29, and Seneca, Letters 13.4. The sound, body, breath, and one-word labelling sequence is a modern guided adapta
The Stoic Skill Underneath Every Other Skill
You look up and twenty minutes have gone. The problem is not only the phone. It is the tiny judgements your mind keeps accepting while you scroll.In this episode, I explain prosochē, the Stoic practice of attention, and share Name the Hook: a one-word exercise for catching what has taken hold of you before shame takes over.Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.coThe Stoic Vault: stoicvault.co
Stoic Morning Practice: Start Before You Feel Ready
Some mornings, nothing has gone wrong and the day already feels like too much. This guided Stoic morning practice starts from Marcus Aurelius's own argument with the bed in Meditations 5.1. Rather than manufacturing enthusiasm, you will choose one real reason to move and one obstacle to begin. The practice also draws on Meditations 5.20, where Marcus treats an obstruction as material for acti
Why You Knew Better and Did It Anyway
We usually explain regret as knowing better but lacking discipline. This episode argues something more useful: in a hot state, the values on your internal scoreboard change.I connect Epictetus with hot-cold empathy gaps, self-control replication research and implementation intentions. Then I give you a four-minute handover note: one specific if-then plan, written while you can still see clearly, f
Nobody Does Evil on Purpose. Really?
Stoicism says nobody does wrong on purpose: every bad act begins in a mistaken judgement about what is good. But does that survive contact with clear-eyed cruelty, compulsive habit and modern moral psychology?I test the claim against Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Medea, research on psychopathy and the Stoics' own internal disagreement. Then I keep the practical part that still works: catching o
Why the Relaxed Man Always Wins (with Bas Rutten)
The most feared striker in MMA history spent this conversation talking about calm.Before his first fight in Japan, Bas Rutten wrote one letter on each fist with a marker: R, for rustig, Dutch for relaxed. He'd found out that morning his opponent was 33 pounds heavier, the round was thirty minutes long, and there were no rules he recognised. Mid-fight he was calm enough to overhear two spectat
Are You Using Stoicism to Numb Out? | with Erick Cloward
Stoicism is meant to help you master your emotions. There's a version of it that just teaches you to avoid them.In this conversation I joined Erick Cloward on the Stoic Coffee Break to talk about "stoic bypassing" (Jules Evans' term): using the philosophy to suppress hard feelings instead of feeling them. We both grew up learning to push emotions down, so it got personal.We cov
Marcus Aurelius Morning Preparation: Stoic Affirmations from the Meditations
During the 170s of the common era, while ruling an empire and often away from Rome, Marcus Aurelius wrote notes to himself in Greek. What survived is not a public book. It is a private notebook, the Meditations, sentences a man wrote to remind himself how to live.This is a short morning practice built from eight lines drawn from the Meditations. Some are close to verbatim, others are rendered in m
Are Stoics Emotionless? Erick Cloward, Author of Stoicism 101
Are Stoics really emotionless? It is the most common thing people believe about Stoicism, and it puts a lot of people off the one idea that might actually help them.In this conversation I sit down with Erick Cloward, host of the Stoic Coffee Break podcast and author of Stoicism 101, to take the myth apart. We get into why the word "stoic" came to mean cold and shut down, and why the Stoi
Marcus Aurelius Was Terrible at Stoicism
Marcus Aurelius is the most quoted philosopher on the internet, and his private journal shows a man who kept failing at the thing he's famous for. He struggled to get out of bed. He needed ten separate strategies to manage his temper. Near the end of his life he wrote, to himself, that he was "far from philosophy."In this episode I read the passages most Stoicism channels skip. The
Stoic Morning Practice: Quiet The Inner Critic
You haven't done anything yet, and the voice is already running its commentary. Too slow, too weak, not enough. The day hasn't started and you're already failing in advance. This guided Stoic practice works with the inner critic directly — not to silence it, but to strip it of the authority it doesn't deserve.You'll practise the Stoic technique of examining your impression
Stoic Morning Affirmations: Eight Truths for the Day Ahead (Guided Practice)
Most morning affirmations ask you to declare a future you wish for. The Stoics did the opposite. They began the day by recollecting what was already true.This is a short guided practice built from eight lines drawn from Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. No manifestation, no raising your vibration. Just eight reminders, a little silence between each, a brief rehearsal of one difficulty you exp
The Manosphere Got Stoicism Backwards
The manosphere has spent years quoting the Stoics to young men. Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus. Seneca. The version they sell, anger as strength, dominance as virtue, emotion as weakness, is the opposite of what those philosophers actually wrote.In Meditations 11.18, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his private journal that gentleness is more manly than rage. Seneca, in Letter 63, wrote that we may weep but m
Overthinking Is Not a Thinking Problem
Most advice for overthinking points you at the thoughts themselves. Journal them. Replace the negative ones with positive ones. Breathe. Meditate. Run. But what if the thoughts were never the problem?Epictetus taught that it is not events that disturb us, but our judgements about them. Overthinking is not a volume problem. It is a judgement problem. Somewhere in the loop you added a meaning to som
The Anxiety Trap: Why Fighting Makes It Worse
For most of my adult life I had a low-level hypervigilance running in the background. I tried to fight it with books, breathwork, control techniques, willpower. The harder I fought, the worse it got.In this episode I share the breakthrough that came when I stopped fighting and started welcoming. It is a Stoic and Nietzschean reframe called amor fati, the love of fate, and it changed my relationshi
Why the Stoics Never Needed Willpower
You have quit every hard goal for the same reason, and it is not lack of willpower.The Stoics worked this out 2,000 years ago. Instead of fighting discomfort with more discipline, they asked one question that bypasses the willpower battle entirely. In this episode I walk through the Stoic framework of virtue, vice and the indifferents, and the single question from Epictetus that replaced willpower
Stoic Morning Practice: Stop Dreading Day Before It Starts
Some mornings the dread arrives before the alarm. A tightness in the chest, a list already forming, a quiet resistance to the day ahead. This guided Stoic practice meets you there, not with forced optimism, but with honest preparation.You will practise the ancient Stoic technique of premeditatio malorum: facing what you are afraid of before it has power over you. Not to make yourself anxious, but
When the World Feels Unjust (A Stoic Response)
Most people hear focus on what you can control and assume Stoicism means stop caring about everything else. That is not what it means, and it might be one of the most misunderstood ideas in the whole philosophy.It starts with a line from Marcus Aurelius that most people skip: you can commit injustice by doing nothing. That is not an invitation to detach. It is a call to show up.In this episode I c
Discipline Is a Skill, Not a Trait (5 Stoic Moves)
I used to think discipline was a character trait, like height or eye colour. Some people had it. I did not. That story is comfortable, and it is rubbish.The Stoics did not treat discipline as willpower. They treated it as a set of five trainable skills that get stronger with reps and weaker with neglect. In this episode I walk through each one, using some of the best lines Marcus Aurelius, Epictet
91% of Goals Fail: A Stoic Philosopher Explained Why 2,000 Years Ago
Most resolutions fail because they are built wrong, not because you lack willpower. Epictetus worked out why 2,000 years ago.In this episode I break down three tests from Stoic philosophy that expose whether your goal is real or just fantasy dressed up with good intentions: Control, Cost and Consistency. Then I take six of the most common resolutions, get fit, save money, get promoted, be happier,
Stoic Morning Energy Boost: 5 Minutes To Wake Up Ready
Some mornings you do not need calm. You need to wake up. This 5-minute Stoic practice is built for the mornings when your body is out of bed but your mind has not followed.You will move through five rounds of power breathing to flood your system with energy, then a short visualisation of yourself moving through the day ahead with purpose. No easing in. No extended relaxation. Just a sharp, deliber
Your Opinions Aren't Observations, They're Demands
You form hundreds of opinions a day. About the news, about your colleagues, about the person in front of you in the queue. They feel automatic, like seeing. But they are not observations. They are tiny laws you are writing inside your own skull, and then you have to enforce them.Marcus Aurelius buried one of his best lines in Book Six of the Meditations: it is in your power to have no opinion abou
"Remove Desire Entirely": What Epictetus Actually Meant
You read that line in the Discourses and your mind goes straight to cravings. Appetites. The stuff you are ashamed of. But that is not what Epictetus meant, and the real meaning is more useful than any advice about willpower.In this episode I break down the Greek word orexis, explain why it has nothing to do with food or your phone, and walk through the three levels most people get stuck on: the d
Marcus Aurelius Morning Meditation: Face The Day With Stoic Calm
You know the feeling. The alarm goes off and the day is already rushing at you. The emails, the conversations you are not ready for, the low-grade dread of what might go wrong.Marcus Aurelius knew it too. Every morning, before the weight of an empire landed on him, he sat quietly and rehearsed what was coming: the difficult people, the setbacks, the tests of character. Not with anxiety. With calm
Stoic Indifferents Explained: How to Want Without Suffering
If only virtue is good, why does anything else matter? Why go to the gym, build a career, or plan for the future?This is the question that confused me for about a year of reading Stoic texts, and the answer is one of the most useful distinctions in the whole philosophy.In this episode I walk through two ancient Greek concepts, axia eklektike (selective value) and apaxia (disvalue), that explain ho
Own What's Yours: The Dichotomy of Control (From The Vault)
This episode is a full lesson from one of the premium courses inside The Stoic Vault, my membership for people who practise Stoicism rather than just read about it.The lesson comes from the course Stoic Morning Routine: Start Calm and Strong. It covers the dichotomy of control, the single most useful idea in Stoic philosophy, and the one that changes everything when it actually lands.You will take
The Stoic Vault: What I Built and Why
About two years ago, I hit a wall. I had been teaching Stoicism for years. Writing about it. Making podcasts about it. And I was still losing my temper. Still spiralling over emails. Still lying awake replaying conversations. I knew the philosophy cold, and I could not apply it when it mattered.That is when I started asking what would actually help me. Not more books. Not more content. Something w
What the Stoics Actually Meant by Practice
Epictetus did not write books. He ran a school where students lived for years, practising responses to insults, hardship and loss. Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations as a daily training regimen, the same ideas over and over, drilling them into his reflexes. Seneca reviewed his day every single night for decades.The Stoics were not building a library. They were building a gymnasium for the soul.
The Gap Between Knowing Stoicism and Living It
A few months ago I was in a conversation that started to go sideways. I could feel the tension rising, the tightening in my chest, my voice getting sharper. I knew exactly what was happening. I have studied this. I have taught this. I know what Marcus Aurelius would say. And in that moment it was like I had never read a word of Stoicism.If you have spent any time with this philosophy, you have pro
Release the Day: 15-Minute Deep Sleep Body Scan
A slow, Yoga Nidra-inspired body scan to help your body soften and your mind go quiet at the end of the day. You will move gently from head to toe, releasing tension as you go, then drift into a calm, spacious stillness that makes it easier to fall asleep.A quiet Stoic thread runs underneath it: release what you cannot change, and come back to the only place you ever actually rest, this moment.Fre
The CCTV Thought Experiment: You Are What You Do, Not What You Say
Imagine aliens installed a silent CCTV camera over your shoulder for 30 days, then compiled a report on what you actually value, based only on your calendar, your screen time, your purchases, and how you spend your evenings. Would you recognise yourself?The Stoics put it bluntly: acta non verba. Actions, not words. What you do is what you believe. Everything else is commentary.In this episode I la
Morning Gratitude: A 10-Minute Stoic Practice
Start the day with a short gratitude practice rooted in Stoic thinking. In about ten minutes you will name three gratitudes, shift your attention from what is missing to what is already here, and set yourself up to notice what is going right rather than only what is going wrong.It draws on Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, who both used this kind of looking to see clearly what they already had before th
Stoic Morning Practice: Let Go of What You Can’t Control
Start the day with the most useful Stoic distinction there is: what is up to you, and what is not.In this 6-minute guided morning practice you will gently name a current worry, notice where it sits in the body, and let go of everything outside your control. Through short teaching, a simple visualisation, and a daily intention, you will practise meeting the day with calm and a clear sense of what i
Psychedelics and Buddhism: Why Peak Experiences Aren't Enough (with Martijn Schirp)
Martijn Schirp and I have known each other for nearly a decade. He first reached out after reading a meditation article I posted on Reddit, a message that ended up changing my life and led to us co-founding HighExistence and running retreats together in Costa Rica.Since then Martijn has lived several lifetimes. Professional poker player who finished 102nd at the World Series of Poker. A crisis of
Make Your Time Count: Stoic Keys to Focus and Fulfillment
Most of us feel we have too much to do and not enough time to do it. The Stoics had a different diagnosis: the problem is rarely a shortage of time, it is how much of it we hand away without noticing.In this episode I draw on Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus to make the case for spending your attention on what actually matters and letting the rest go. We look at why a finite life is a gift ra
What You'll Miss When It's Gone: A Stoic Gratitude Meditation (Premeditation of Adversity)
What if the way into real gratitude is not positive thinking, but imagining loss?In this 12-minute guided meditation I walk you through an old Stoic practice called praemeditatio malorum, the premeditation of adversity. Used by Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus, it trains you to appreciate what you have before it is gone.We imagine a vivid scene: a sudden accident that changes everything. Not
Stoicism Decoded: Your Guide to Ancient Wisdom in Plain English
The Greek terms are where a lot of people get stuck with Stoicism. This episode is a plain-English guide to the vocabulary that actually matters, so the ideas stop sounding academic and start being usable.I walk through the key Stoic words and what they really mean: arete (excellence of character), apatheia (freedom from being ruled by passion, not apathy), prohairesis (the choice that is always y
The 4 Stoic Virtues: Your Compass for a Meaningful Life
Ever feel like you are drifting without a clear sense of what actually matters? The Stoics had an answer: four virtues to steer by.In this episode I break down the four cardinal virtues, wisdom, courage, justice and temperance, that Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus used to handle everything from private anxiety to running an empire.Wisdom is seeing reality clearly and focusing on what is yours to con
Epictetus' 20 Rules for Stoic Social Mastery: Cut the Noise, Claim Your Calm
A short, practical guide to staying calm in a world of group-chat drama and constant notifications. This 12-minute guided practice works through Epictetus' twenty social rules from Chapter 33 of the Enchiridion.You will practise pausing before you react, turning gossip into something useful, handling criticism without your ego getting involved, and choosing the company that actually lifts you
The Dichotomy of Control 2.0 – Epictetus for Anxious Achievers
Let me guess. You have read Marcus Aurelius. You know some things are up to you and some are not. And you still lie awake replaying conversations, spiralling over outcomes, feeling like a failure when things do not go your way.Yeah. Me too.Here is the problem: the dichotomy of control is brilliant philosophy and terrible instructions for real life. People hear focus on what you control and either
5 Stoic Skills for Unshakeable Confidence & Self-Sovereignty
What if real confidence is not positive affirmations or fake-it-till-you-make-it, but a handful of skills the Stoics spent centuries practising?In this episode I walk through five: clarity of purpose, holding outcomes loosely, closing the gap between who you are and who you pretend to be, a sense of self-worth that does not depend on other people, and actually enjoying your own company. Together t
The 5-Minute Emergency Drill: When the Craving Hits Right Now
That moment when the craving is right here, right now, and it feels like the only option is to give in. The drink, the scroll, the binge, the text you will regret, the thing you do not need. The pull is real. The urgency feels total. But here is the Stoic version of the truth: the craving is an impression, not a command.This 5-minute guided drill teaches you to put one act between impulse and acti
Become Untriggerable: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Healing with Adam Rice
Most advice for men hands you tactics. Adam Rice wanted to talk about something underneath that: how to become harder to knock off balance in the first place. We get into spotting an ego flare in your body before it runs the show, the language of conscious communication, and why intimacy tends to beat performance.Adam is an evolution coach, yoga teacher, shamanic guide and men’s work facilitator,
NVC in Real Life with Hans van Veen
If "just be nicer" has never once fixed your hardest conversations, this one is for you. I sat down with coach Hans van Veen to put Nonviolent Communication to work in the messy real world: the moment your jaw tightens mid-argument, the urge to take everything personally, the conversations that keep going in circles.Hans walks through the OFNR model (observations, feelings, needs, reques
Good Kid, Tricky Moment: A Calm‑Parenting Reset
Your child says "no" and something in you surges before you have decided anything. This is a short guided reset for that exact moment. We slow the breath to settle the nervous system, set a one-line intention, and use the cue phrase "good kid, tricky moment" to hold two things at once: kind and firm.You will pick one calm sentence or boundary, picture setting the shaken snow gl
The Ultimate Stoic Sleep & Wisdom Meditation: Daily (2025)
A calm Stoic meditation to close the day. We move slowly through mindful presence, a gentle review of the hours behind you, quiet acceptance of how the day actually went, and the wider view from above that lets the small stresses shrink back to their real size.It leans on a few old Stoic ideas about gratitude and letting go, shaped into something you can listen to in bed with the lights off. Use i
The Complete Daily Stoic Meditation: Repeat Daily (2025)
One complete Stoic meditation, built to be repeated. The idea is simple: a single practice you can return to every day, so the ideas stop being something you read and start being something you rehearse.Press play in the morning to set the tone, or any time you need to come back to a steadier frame of mind. The more you repeat it, the more it does its work.Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge
Stoicism in 3 Minutes: Master Your Emotions with Erick Cloward
A short clip with Erick Cloward, Stoic author and host of The Stoic Coffee Break Podcast, on the one idea that quietly runs most of our reactions: it is not the event, it is the judgment you make about it. Change the judgment and the emotion changes with it.Erick puts it plainly: "it is just the way that you are thinking about this, not the thing." Three minutes, one practical handle for
I Am The Pilot, Not The Turbulence: 5-Minute Stoic Reset
Five minutes to find your calm centre when everything around you is shaking. This short guided meditation uses a steady 4-2-6 breath, then asks you to name the turbulence rather than be swept up in it, and repeat one line: "I am the pilot, not the turbulence."It works at your desk, in the car, or standing in a hallway between two hard moments. The aim is not to make the storm disappear.
Amor Fati: The Stoic Art of Loving Your Fate – Ultimate Guide
Amor fati means "love of fate", and it asks something harder than acceptance. Not just tolerating what happens, but learning to meet every turn of your life, the good and the painful, as if you had chosen it. This is a full walk through the idea.I cover where the phrase comes from, what the Stoics and Nietzsche actually meant by it, the quotes worth keeping, and the part that matters mos
The Stoic Morning Ritual to Fortify Your Mind Daily (2025)
Ten minutes to start the day with a steadier mind. This guided morning meditation draws on Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus to help you anchor your attention, soften the reactivity that runs on autopilot, and meet whatever is coming as something to practise on rather than dread.You will scan body and mind, reframe whatever you carried over from yesterday, and quietly rehearse the tests the da
Plato’s Apology: The Only Book Every Human Needs to Read ft. Donald Robertson
If you could only ever recommend one book, what would it be? For Donald Robertson, the writer behind How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, the answer is Plato's Apology: Socrates on trial, defending his way of life and refusing to flinch in the face of death.In this clip Donald explains why this short text sits underneath so much of what came later, the seeds it planted that Marcus Aurelius and
A Stoic Morning to See Things Clearly
Most of what upsets us is not the event but the story we wrap around it. This short morning meditation, about seven and a half minutes, walks you through the Stoic practice of objective representation: looking at a recent experience and gently pulling the plain facts apart from the feelings stacked on top.You will pick one situation, see it as it actually is, and reframe your response from there.
8-Minute Stoic Clarity for Your Morning
Eight minutes to set a clearer head before the day gets hold of you. This guided Stoic meditation moves through three simple steps: observe what is actually happening, notice the judgment you have quietly attached to it, then choose a steadier way to see it.The point is not to feel nothing. It is to stop being run by the first reaction, so you can watch your thoughts instead of being dragged along
Was Socrates in a Toxic Relationship with his Wife?
Socrates' wife Xanthippe has come down to us as the original nightmare spouse. But how much of that is fair, and how much is two and a half thousand years of bad press? I sat down with philosopher and author Donald Robertson to look at what we actually know about their marriage.We get into whether she was genuinely difficult, whether Socrates was the easy one to live with, and how much of the
How Did Socrates Become So Wise?
Where did Socrates' wisdom actually come from? It was not raw intellect alone. In this conversation, Donald Robertson and I look at the daily habits, the charisma, and the genuine love of people that made Socrates the figure everyone after him kept arguing with.Donald reaches for an unlikely comparison, Jimi Hendrix, to make a point about total immersion: what it looks like when someone gives
Stoicism Is a Practice, Not Just a Philosophy
You can read every word Marcus Aurelius wrote and still fall apart the first time someone cuts you off in traffic. That gap, between knowing and doing, is what this clip is about. Donald Robertson, one of the leading Stoic authors and a cognitive-behavioural therapist, makes the case that Stoicism is something you train, not just something you study.We dig into the common misconception that readin
Socrates' "Mirror For The Mind" Will Transform Your Thinking
Socrates had a strange idea: that another person can act as a mirror for your own mind, showing you the thoughts you cannot see on your own. In this conversation with philosopher Donald Robertson, we follow that thread through Socrates on wisdom, self-awareness, and the art of asking the right question.We get into how he used dialogue to surface what people did not know they believed, and what he
Socrates’ Two-Column Method For Clearer Decisions
The oldest self-help tool might also be the best one, and it fits on a single sheet of paper. I asked Stoic author Donald Robertson to walk me through Socrates' two-column method: a simple way to question your own assumptions, pressure-test a belief, and make a clearer decision.We trace how this approach fed straight into Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and why it still holds up as som
How To Pick Your Battles Wisely | Donald Robertson
When do you speak up, and when do you let it go? When do you push, and when do you step back? Donald Robertson and I get into coping flexibility: the skill of matching your response to the situation instead of running the same move every time.We pull from Stoicism, CBT and martial arts, including Epictetus on how you work out whether you can actually fight the lion in front of you, and why even Ma
The Missing Piece of Stoicism: Why Kindness is Strength | Donald Robertson
Modern Stoicism gets sold as self-control and grit, which leaves out the part Marcus Aurelius arguably cared about most. Donald Robertson and I talk about the missing piece: the idea that real strength shows up as kindness, and that anger is closer to weakness than to power.It is an easy philosophy to misread as cold and detached. We make the case for the opposite, that justice and a kind of broth
How to Handle Difficult People: Stoic Strategies, Empathy vs. Compassion, and Communication Techniques
Some people are genuinely hard to deal with: the high-conflict ones, the boundary-trampling ones, the family member you cannot just walk away from. This episode is a practical toolkit for those relationships, pulling from Stoic philosophy and modern psychology.I get into the caretaking trap (where caring tips over into harming yourself), why empathy can actually lead you astray and compassion serv
Donald Robertson on Socrates, Philosophy, and Modern Self-Help
I sat down with Donald Robertson, author and psychotherapist, for a proper conversation about Socrates: his life, his methods, and why a man who wrote nothing down still shapes how we think two and a half thousand years later.Donald blends cognitive behavioural therapy with ancient philosophy, so this is Socrates read through a modern, practical lens: what his way of questioning actually does to y
Creating the Ultimate Stoic Routine: Work Rituals (2)
Part two of the series on building a Stoic daily routine, this time on the hours you actually work. Whether your work is a job, a creative project, or something like training martial arts, the aim is the same: turn it into something you do with intention rather than just grind through.I walk through a six-point pre-work ritual drawn from John Yates' The Mind Illuminated (motivation, goals, ex
Crafting The Ultimate Stoic Routine: Morning Rituals (1)
How you start the morning tends to set the temperature for the rest of the day. This is part one of the routine series, focused on a Stoic morning: a sequence of small practices that point you at clarity and resilience before the world gets a vote.I walk through reading and sitting with a Stoic quote, journaling to build gratitude and anticipate the day's obstacles, a short meditation, readin
