{"id":2601,"date":"2022-10-20T15:14:45","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T15:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/?p=2601"},"modified":"2025-01-25T22:25:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T22:25:33","slug":"how-to-be-a-stoic-9-stoic-exercises-to-get-you-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/how-to-be-a-stoic-9-stoic-exercises-to-get-you-started\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Be A Stoic: 9 Stoic Exercises To Get You Started"},"content":{"rendered":"

1.\u00a0The Dichotomy Of Control<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .\u201d\u00a0Epictetus<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can\u2019t. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather\u2014 no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can\u2019t make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change.Return to this question daily\u2014in each and every trying situation. Journal and reflect on it constantly. If you can focus on making clear what parts of your day are within your control and what parts are not, you will not only be happier, you will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle.<\/p>\n

2. Journal<\/h3>\n

\u201cFew care now about the marches and countermarches of the Roman commanders. What the centuries have clung to is a notebook of thoughts by a man whose real life was largely unknown who put down in the midnight dimness not the events of the day or the plans of the morrow, but something of far more permanent interest, the ideals and aspirations that a rare spirit lived by.\u201d \u2014 Brand Blanshard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Epictetus the slave. Marcus Aurelius the emperor. Seneca the power broker and playwright. These three radically different men led radically different lives. But they seemed to have one habit in common: Journaling. It would be Epictetus who would admonish his students that philosophy was something they should \u201cwrite down day by day,\u201d that this writing was how they \u201cshould exercise themselves.\u201d Seneca\u2019s favorite time to journal was in the evenings. When darkness had fallen and his wife had gone asleep, he explained to a friend, \u201cI examine my entire day and go back over what I\u2019ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.\u201d Then he would go to bed, finding that \u201cthe sleep which follows this self-examination\u201d was particularly sweet. And Marcus, he was the most prodigious of journalers, and we are lucky enough that his writings survive to us, appropriately titled, \u03a4\u1f70 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u1f11\u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd, Ta eis heauton, or \u201cto himself.\u201d In Stoicism the art of journaling is more than some simple diary. This daily practice is the philosophy. Preparing for the day ahead. Reflecting on the day that has passed. Reminding oneself of the wisdom we have learned from our teachers, from our reading, from our own experiences. It\u2019s not enough to simply hear these lessons once, instead, one practices them over and over again, turns them over in their mind, and most importantly, writes them down and feels them flowing through their fingers in doing so. Stoicism is designed to be a practice and a routine. It\u2019s not a philosophy you read once and magically understand at the soul-level. No, it\u2019s a lifelong pursuit that requires diligence and repetition and concentration. (Pierre Hadot called it spiritual exercising). That\u2019s one of the benefits of the page-a-day (with monthly themes) format we organized the Stoics into (and the weekly themes in The Daily Stoic Journal). It\u2019s putting one thing up for you to review\u2014to have at hand\u2014and to fully digest. Not in passing. Not just once. But every single day over the course of a year, and preferably year in and year out. And if Epictetus is right, it\u2019s something you\u2019re supposed to keep within reach at all times\u2014which is why a collection of the greatest hits, presented daily, was so appealing to us. In this way, journaling is Stoicism. It\u2019s almost impossible to have one without the other.P.S. Check out The Daily Stoic Journal. It\u2019s an easy place to start and is built around the Stoic journaling methods of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca.<\/p>\n

3. Practice Misfortune<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Seneca<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seneca, who enjoyed great wealth as the adviser of Nero, suggested that we ought to set aside a certain number of days each month to practice poverty. Take a little food, wear your worst clothes, get away from the comfort of your home and bed. Put yourself face to face with want, he said, you\u2019ll ask yourself \u201cIs this what I used to dread?\u201d It\u2019s important to remember that this is an exercise and not a rhetorical device. He doesn\u2019t mean \u201cthink about\u201d misfortune, he means live it. Comfort is the worst kind of slavery because you\u2019re always afraid that something or someone will take it away. But if you can not just anticipate but practice misfortune, then chance loses its ability to disrupt your life. Emotions like anxiety and fear have their roots in uncertainty and rarely in experience. Anyone who has made a big bet on themselves knows how much energy both states can consume. The solution is to do something about that ignorance. Make yourself familiar with the things, the worst-case scenarios, that you\u2019re afraid of. Practice what you fear, whether a simulation in your mind or in real life. The downside is almost always reversible or transient.<\/p>\n

4. Train Perceptions<\/h3>\n

\u201cChoose not to be harmed and you won\u2019t feel harmed. Don\u2019t feel harmed and you haven\u2019t been.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Marcus Aurelius<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Stoics had an exercise called Turning the Obstacle Upside Down. What they meant to do was make it impossible to not practice the art of philosophy. Because if you can properly turn a problem upside down, every \u201cbad\u201d becomes a new source of good. Suppose for a second that you are trying to help someone and they respond by being surly or unwilling to cooperate. Instead of making your life more difficult, the exercise says, they\u2019re actually directing you towards new virtues; for example, patience or understanding. Or, the death of someone close to you; a chance to show fortitude. Marcus Aurelius described it like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

It should sound familiar because it is the same thinking behind Obama\u2019s \u201cteachable moments.\u201d Right before the election, Joe Klein asked Obama how he\u2019d made his decision to respond to the Reverend Wright scandal. He said something like \u2018when the story broke I realized the best thing to do wasn\u2019t damage control, it was to speak to Americans like adults.\u2019 And what he ended up doing was turning a negative situation into the perfect platform for his landmark speech about race. The common refrain about entrepreneurs is that they take advantage of, even create, opportunities. To the Stoic, everything is opportunity. The Reverend Wright scandal, a frustrating case where your help goes unappreciated, the death of a loved one, none of those are \u201copportunities\u201d in the normal sense of the word. In fact, they are the opposite. They are obstacles. What a Stoic does is turn every obstacle into an opportunity. There is no good or bad to the practicing Stoic. There is only perception. You control perception. You can choose to extrapolate past your first impression (\u2018X happened.\u2019 \u2013> \u2018X happened and now my life is over.\u2019). If you tie your first response to dispassion, you\u2019ll find that everything is simply an opportunity. Note: This exercise served as the inspiration behind The Obstacle Is The Way.<\/p>\n

5. Remember\u2014It\u2019s All Ephemeral<\/h3>\n

\u201cAlexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Marcus Aurelius<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marcus Aurelius\u00a0wrote to himself\u00a0a simple and effective reminder to help him regain perspective and stay balanced:<\/p>\n

\u201cRun down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend\u2026or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is important to note that \u2018passion\u2019 here isn\u2019t the modern usage we\u2019re familiar with as in enthusiasm or caring about something. As Don Robertson explains in his book, when the Stoics discuss overcoming \u2018passions\u2019, which they called patheiai, they refer to the irrational, unhealthy and excessive desires and emotions. Anger would be a good example. What is important to remember, and this is the crucial bit, they seek to replace them with eupatheiai, such as joy instead of excessive pleasure. Returning to the point of the exercise, it\u2019s simple: remember how small you are. For that matter, remember how small most everything is. Remember that achievements can be ephemeral, and that your possession of them is for just an instant. If everything is ephemeral, what does matter? Right now matters. Being a good person and doing the right thing right now, that\u2019s what matters and that\u2019s what was important to the Stoics. Take Alexander the Great who conquered the known world and had cities named in his honor. This is common knowledge. The Stoics would also point out that, once while drunk, Alexander got into a fight with his dearest friend, Cleitus, and accidentally killed him. Afterward, he was so despondent that he couldn\u2019t eat or drink for three days. Sophists were called from all over Greece to see what they could do about his grief, to no avail. Is this the mark of a successful life? From a personal standpoint, it matters little if your name is emblazoned on a map if you lose perspective and hurt those around you. Learn from Alexander\u2019s mistake. Be humble and honest and aware. That is something you can have every single day of your life. You\u2019ll never have to fear someone taking it from you or, worse still, it taking over you.<\/p>\n

6.Take The View From Above<\/h3>\n

\u201cHow beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about people, it\u2019s best to take a bird\u2019s- eye view and see everything all at once\u2014 of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets\u2014 all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Marcus Aurelius<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marcus would often practice an exercise that is referred to as \u201ctaking the view from above\u201d or \u201cPlato\u2019s view.\u201d It invites us to take a step back, zoom out and see life from a higher vantage point than our own. This exercise\u2014envisioning all the millions and millions of people, all the \u201carmies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths\u201d\u2014prompts us to take perspective and just like the previous exercise, remind us how small we are. It reorients us, and as Stoic scholar Pierre Hadot put it, \u201cThe view from above changes our value judgments on things: luxury, power, war\u2026and the worries of everyday life become ridiculous.\u201d Seeing how small we are in the grand scheme of things is only one portion of this exercise. The second, more subtle point, is to tap into what the Stoics call sympatheia, or a mutual interdependence with the whole of humanity. As the astronaut Edgar Mitchell, one of the first people to actually experience a real \u2018view from above\u2019 put it, \u201cIn outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.\u201d Take a step back from your own concerns and remind yourself of your duty to others. Take Plato\u2019s view.<\/p>\n

7. Memento Mori: Meditate On Your Mortality<\/h3>\n

\u201cLet us prepare our minds as if we\u2019d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life\u2019s books each day. \u2026 The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.\u201d\u00a0Seneca<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The quote from Seneca above takes part of Memento Mori\u2014the ancient practice of reflection on mortality that goes back to Socrates, who said that the proper practice of philosophy is \u201cabout nothing else but dying and being dead.\u201d In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote that \u201cYou could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.\u201d That was a personal reminder to continue living a life of virtue now, and not wait. Meditating on your mortality is only depressing if you miss the point. The Stoics find this thought invigorating and humbling. It is not surprising that one of Seneca\u2019s biographies is titled Dying Every Day. After all, it is Seneca who urged us to tell ourselves \u201cYou may not wake up tomorrow,\u201d when going to bed and \u201cYou may not sleep again,\u201d when waking up as reminders of our mortality. Or as another Stoic, Epictetus, urged his students: \u201cKeep death and exile before your eyes each day, along with everything that seems terrible\u2014 by doing so, you\u2019ll never have a base thought nor will you have excessive desire.\u201d Use those reminders and meditate on them daily\u2014let them be the building blocks of living your life to the fullest and not wasting a second.<\/p>\n

8. Premeditatio Malorum<\/h3>\n

\u201cWhat is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events\u2026 Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes.\u201d\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0Seneca<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The premeditatio malorum (\u201cthe pre-meditation of evils\u201d) is a Stoic exercise of imagining things that could go wrong or be taken away from us. It helps us prepare for life\u2019s inevitable setbacks. We don\u2019t always get what is rightfully ours, even if we\u2019ve earned it. Not everything is as clean and straightforward as we think they may be. Psychologically, we must prepare ourselves for this to happen. It is one of the most powerful exercise in the Stoics\u2019 toolkit to build resilience and strength. Seneca, for instance, would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then, in his head (or in journaling as we said above), he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening\u2014a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates.\u201cNothing happens to the wise man against his expectation,\u201d he wrote to a friend. \u201c. . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned\u2014and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans.\u201d By doing this exercise, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory.<\/p>\n

9. Amor Fati<\/h3>\n

\u201cTo love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Marcus Aurelius<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would describe his formula for human greatness as amor fati\u2014a love of fate. \u201cThat one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it\u2026.but love it.\u201dThe Stoics were not only familiar with this attitude but they embraced it. Two thousand years ago, writing in his own personal journal which would become known as Meditations, Emperor Marcus Aurelius would say: \u201cA blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.\u201d Another Stoic, Epictetus, who as a crippled slave has faced adversity after adversity, echoed the same: \u201cDo not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.\u201d It is why amor fati is the Stoic exercise and mindset that you take on for making the best out of anything that happens: Treating each and every moment\u2014no matter how challenging\u2014as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not only be okay with it, but love it and be better for it. So that like oxygen to a fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel for your potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1.\u00a0The Dichotomy Of Control \u201cThe chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stoicism"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/161219_r29199_rd.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8926,"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2601\/revisions\/8926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmascience.com\/pma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}