Stoic Coffee Break

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 Sen...

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.—Marcus AureliusThe 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 thi...

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 Send us Fan Mail The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment! My...

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.—RumiHow 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 I want to talk about ways that we can make our language more clear, and increase our abil...

Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” —Marcus AureliusHow 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 you dow...

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself? —EpictetusHow 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 about keeping those commitments. Send us Fan Mail The Build an U...

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. — Marcus AureliusToday 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 of...

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."The life of those who live under a mask cannot be happy and without anxiety."― SenecaLink to Neil Gaiman's speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plWexCID-kA Sen...

It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it. — SenecaDo 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 which we v...

When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval. — EpictetusLiving 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. Why do we spend so muc...

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.—Marcus AureliusHaving 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 ca...

How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life. — Marcus AureliusHow 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 than it...

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. —SenecaStoicism is often seen as a tool to avoid emotions, but is this a good idea? How should stoics handle their emotions? In this episode...

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 AureliusLast 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 yourself. This week I...

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.&q...

An interview with Donald J. Robertson about his new graphic novel about Marcus Aurelius called Verissimus. We talk about all kinds of stoic history and the politics of his day. Send us Fan Mail The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment! My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here! Find out more at https://stoic.coffee Watch episodes on YouTub...

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. —Marcus AureliusDon’t let fear, low self-esteem and the negative voices hold you back from your true destiny. —David GogginsOne of the hardest things for me, and I’m sure that many of you fall into the same category, is to know what you want and have the courage to go after it. There are...

“When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.”― Marcus AureliusOver the past few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about equanimity and how it may be the most important idea that the stoics came up with. And the more I look i...

Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it. — EpictetusEvents in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it. — Robert GreeneThe hardest thing about any philosophy is being able to apply what you learn in real life. We can read all the books, watch all the videos, follow all the gurus, but until...

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. — SenecaWhen you're in the midst of a challenge it's really hard to think clearly. It's hard sometimes to remember that this moment is just...

Anxieties can only come from your internal judgement.— Marcus AureliusWe all have things in our lives that seems to stop us from completing things that we really want to do. Often, these things aren’t even all that big but end up being show stoppers nonetheless. Today I want to talk about why it’s important to pay attention to the things that get in your way, and some possible ways to get around t...

“To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.”― SenecaLife is never meant to be kittens and rainbows. A good portion of our life is going to sadness, disappointment, and failure. In this episode, I want to talk about how being too positive can actually be bad for you.  Send us Fan Mail The Build an Unbreakable Mi...

Brief is man’s life and small the nook of the Earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.—Marcus Aurelius Send us Fan Mail The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment! My book Sto...

One cannot pursue one’s own highest good without at the same time necessarily promoting the good of others. A life based on narrow self-interest cannot be esteemed by any honorable measurement. Seeking the very best in ourselves means actively caring for the welfare of other human beings. Our human contract is not with the few people with whom our affairs are most immediately intertwined, nor to t...

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.– Marcus AureliusAre you afraid to tell others what you really think or how you really feel? In this episode I want to talk about the idea of radical candor, and how committing to being honest about what you think and feel is one of the most challenging but rewarding things you...