The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

An anxious thought keeps coming back. It sounds reasonable every time, and thinking harder hasn't helped. I work through the Triple Column Technique with one everyday worry: asking a question in a meeting. The practice comes from David Burns's Feeling Good. I've adapted the middle column to ask what you're assuming, with Seneca's Letter 13 as a guide. Write the thought, ex...

The day is finished, but you may still be going over it. This quiet bedtime practice begins with settling into the bed, then offers short Stoic reflections on having enough and allowing yourself to rest. You do not need to repeat the lines or remember them. Let them pass, with long silences between each one. A voice-only meditation for listening in bed, with no music and a gentle close. Free 7-Day...

You understand the Stoic advice about anxiety. So why doesn't it help at four in the morning? I look at the gap between knowing and doing, why reading about anxiety can become a way of avoiding practice, and what changed when I stopped making calm the test of a useful exercise. The practice is small: separate the sensation from the instruction that arrives with it. You can feel anxious and st...

What would it mean to work with the life you have, even when it takes a turn you would never have chosen? This recorded talk explores amor fati, the practice of loving your fate, and the difference between active acceptance and passive resignation. I connect the idea with three everyday practices: looking for a useful response to adversity, separating what is up to you from what is not, and notici...

Your first jiu-jitsu class can expose how little your toughness helps. Going back takes a different kind of courage. Jon Friedland joins me to explore what training can teach us about Stoicism. We discuss competition nerves, judging a performance without clinging to the result, and why a black belt can leave someone's ego bigger than before. Jon explains how he keeps learning after nearly thi...

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 fri...

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&...

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...

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’...

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 react...

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...

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...

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 f...

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 pe...

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 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...

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...

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.co The Stoic...

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 Epictet...

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.co The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

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...

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.co The Stoic Vault: stoicvault...

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...

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,...

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...