Epictetus On Pain: What The Mind Adds
The Stoics drew a sharp line between what happens to the body and what the mind does with it. Pain is real. But the suffering on top of it, the part that says this should not be happening, is somethin...
5 Maj 20228min
Stoic Acceptance Contemplation to Reduce Anxiety Over an Uncertain Future
Most of our anxiety about the future is really resistance to the fact that we cannot control it. This guided contemplation works on accepting events as they are rather than fighting the way things unf...
30 Apr 20226min
How to Let Go of Things You Love
How do you enjoy something fully while staying ready to lose it? Epictetus answers with one of his best images, the sailor who goes ashore to gather shells and water but keeps an ear out for the capta...
22 Apr 20224min
Stoicism is Preparation For the Worst Day of Your Life
A tragedy happened close to home recently, and it knocked me sideways. This episode is me thinking out loud about death, life, and gratitude in the middle of that, and about the uncomfortable truth th...
9 Mars 20228min
How To Turn Stoicism Into A Practice You Can Measure
Most people have heard of Stoicism. Far fewer have met an actual Stoic, someone as calm and self-disciplined as the people who wrote the books. That gap is what set me off ten years ago. I learn throu...
17 Feb 20221h 40min
Epictetus on Foolish Bragging vs. Wise Pride
Epictetus drew a sharp line between two things that feel almost identical from the inside: bragging about what you happen to have, and taking pride in who you have become. One is fragile, the other is...
12 Feb 20225min
11 Stoic Strategies to Conquer Fear
Seneca wrote about fear more honestly than almost anyone. He knew it from the inside, the dread that arrives before the thing you dread ever does. In this one I go through eleven of his lines on fear ...
11 Jan 202225min
The Art of Stoic Reading
Reading the Stoics and being changed by them are two different things. You can finish Meditations and carry nothing into Tuesday morning. A listener, Mike Slavin, asked how I actually fold ancient Sto...
1 Jan 20226min
