Stoic Coffee Break

Growing up, many of us feel like we only have a few options in how to live our lives. Like, there is a list of things we need to check off to be happy. Certain  careers that are acceptable. Certain kinds of people we should date and marry. Goals we are expected to obtain in order to live life correctly. Often we get stuck in thinking that we have a few choices in life, and we think that’s how...

Mind Over Mood: The Stoic Art of Reframing One of the things we talk about a lot in stoicism is that it’s our perspective on something that causes our distress. So how do we change our perspective on things? Are there tools that we can use to help us view things differently? Today I want to talk about some of the things that get in our way of broadening our perspective, and what tools we can use t...

Trever Yarrish is the owner and founder of Zeal Software and The Hiive co-working space. He is also a good friend and one of my favorite people to chat with about stoicism. He's an avid student of stoicism and brings many of the stoic principles and ideas into his companies as well as his personal life. We sat down and had a chat about life, work, family, and the importance of having a process for...

Hey everyone, this year has been an especially rough year for many of us. I can honestly say it has been for me. I had another episode mostly written but I decided that I wanted to change things up and talk about what I have learned over the past year, and ask you about the most important things you have learned. The past few years have been quite a ride for the world. With Covid shutting down so...

How do you show up in the world? Are you acting the way that you want to? Are you being the person that you want to? If not, why not? In todays episode, I want to talk about how to live with integrity and be the person you want to be.  Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.  —Marcus Aurelius One of the most important things that we can do in our lives is to live with integrity...

Are you confident person? Do you have faith in yourself as person? Are you comfortable with who you are? Today I want to talk about how we often will self sabotage ourselves not because we don’t have the skill or capacity to do something, but because we let self doubt creep in and stop us from sharing our gifts and talents. To have self-confidence is to trust in one's own abilities and judgement....

Are you a nice person or are you a kind person? Do you know the difference? Today I want to talk about whether it’s better to be nice or kind. Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.  — Seneca I few weeks ago, I stumbled on a discussion on twitter of all place about the difference between being nice and being kind. It was an idea that I had never really though...

A cross post of a chat with Tanner Campbell of the Practical Stoicism podcast. Tanner is warm, smart, and interesting, with a great podcast. If you enjoy my work then you'll probably enjoy his podcast as well. You can find the Practical Stoicism podcast here: https://stoicismpod.com The three books I mentions can be found here: Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliot Nonviolent Communication by Marshal...

Do you want your life to be easy? Do you complain, get stressed out, or upset when challenges come up in your life? Today I want to talk about why we should not only accept adversity in our lives, but learn to embrace it. The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher.  — Ryan Holiday One of the things that I notice all the time are ads on Facebook promising some easy hack to get more cli...

Do you feel like the world is in chaos right now? I know that many of us feel like that. Spend a day on social media and easy to find all kinds of things wrong with the world. Is it that the world is truly more chaotic? Are things really falling apart more so than in the past? Today I want to talk about some of the reasons why some many of us feel like the world is in chaos. The mind that is anxio...

How often do you take what other people say and do personally? How often do you feel like you have to “fix” someone else’s mood? Today I want to talk about emotional responsibility, and how it can lead a stronger sense of self and keep you from getting pulled into other peoples emotional mayhem. Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. —Marcus Aurelius Th...

The stoics teach us that we have control over a few things - our thoughts, our choices, and our actions. In short, our will. So is there a way that we can get better with our thinking, and improve our outcomes? Today I want to talk about a model that can help us be more aware of how our thinking impacts us, and with that awareness, improve our lives. You have power over your mind — not outside eve...

Is it ever okay to hate someone as a stoic? Is there ever a time to have “righteous anger”? Today I want to talk about anger, hate and violence in our ever more divisive world. Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation. — Ibn Rushd Today the world feels like it in chaos. Everything from political violence, war, and ethnic clashes to threats of vi...

An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself. — Epictetus How you ever thought about how often we have judgments in our language? Are you even aware of how often we communicate our our opinions and feelings about others? What if we could remove judgments from our language? Today...

Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.”  —Marcus Aurelius How often have you been offended by someone? Maybe it was something someone said to you? Maybe they made a comment about your clothes or mocked something that you really liked such as your favorite football team or musician. Maybe it’s one of your siblings who always tries to put...

Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.  — Marcus Aurelius How often do you find yourself starting something only to notice a few weeks or months later that you let it fall by the wayside? Today I want to talk about why we have trouble keeping commitments to ourselves, and some ideas about how we can get better...

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.  — Marcus Aurelius Today I want to talk about one of the most interesting things about humans, the fact that we cling so dearly to our belief systems in face of contradiction evidence, often to our own detriment. Why do humans resist changing their minds, even in the face of overwhelming evidence?...

How much of our lives do we spend living in way to please other people? How much unhappiness do we feel in our lives because we’re not being ourselves? Today I want to talk about why it can be really hard to live authentically. “And this, too, affords no small occasion for anxieties - if you are bent on assuming a pose and never reveal yourself to anyone frankly, in the fashion of many who live a...

It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it.  — Seneca Do you think that life just happens to you? That you are simply a pawn in the game of life? Because there are so many things that we don’t have control over in our lives, it can be easy to fall into this kind of mental trap. The problem is that when adopt this kind of thinking, then we have placed an unhelpful filter through whi...

Living on this planet with other people can be very challenging at times. If you’re like me, sometimes you have a strong difference of opinion with someone, and you end up in an argument and spend a lot of time and energy trying to change the other persons mind. We see this play out on social media as well where people spend a lot of time and energy trying to debate other people to get them to cha...

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. —Marcus Aurelius Having a clear idea of what we can and can't control is the most fundamental principle of stoicism, and almost every other idea flows from there. This is also one of the easier concepts to understand, but so hard to actually implement. How do you manage to clearly divide what you can and...

How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life.  — Marcus Aurelius How often do you complain about the hard things in your life? How often do you find yourself disappointed that things don't turn out the way you think they should? Learning to accept what life sends our way is probably one of the most challenging things to do. But to wish for life to be other...

Everyone faces up more bravely to a thing for which he has long prepared himself, sufferings, even, being withstood if they have been trained for in advance. Those who are unprepared, on the other hand, are panic-stricken by the most insignificant happenings.  —Seneca Stoicism is often seen as a tool to avoid emotions, but is this a good idea? How should stoics handle their emotions? In this...

Acceptance of Others When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. — Marcus Aurelius Last week I talked about accepting yourself for exactly who you are, including all the things you like and more importantly the things you don’t like about...

One of the hardest things for us to do, though it is one of the most important things we will ever learn, is to accept ourselves for exactly who we are. But when you decide to take this on and make it a priority, it can be one of the most life changing thing you can do. "It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."&nbsp...