The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
You've read the books. You know what Marcus Aurelius would do. But when life gets hard, the philosophy disappears. This podcast is for people who want to close the gap between knowing Stoicism and actually living it. New episodes weekly. Start with the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: https://www.stoicchallenge.co/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-description&utm_content=global
Episodes
180 episodes
Stoic Morning Rehearsal For A High-Stakes Day
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 ar...
Envy Is the Greatest Motivator
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 ...
A Stoic Morning Practice For Grief And Loss
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...
The Marcus Aurelius Quote He Never Wrote
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 ped...
Stoic Morning Practice: Be Fair To Yourself
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 fact...
You Broke the Streak. Now What?
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 b...
Stoic Attention Practice: Return Before The Noise
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....
The Stoic Skill Underneath Every Other Skill
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 H...
Stoic Morning Practice: Start Before You Feel Ready
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 ...
Why You Knew Better and Did It Anyway
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 re...
Nobody Does Evil on Purpose. Really?
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 Ep...
Why the Relaxed Man Always Wins (with Bas Rutten)
The most feared striker in MMA history spent this conversation talking about calm.Before his first fight in Japan, Bas Rutten wrote one letter on each fist with a marker: R, for rustig, Dutch for relaxed. He'd found out that morning his...
Are You Using Stoicism to Numb Out? | with Erick Cloward
Stoicism is meant to help you master your emotions. There's a version of it that just teaches you to avoid them.In this conversation I joined Erick Cloward on the Stoic Coffee Break to talk about "stoic bypassing" (Jules Evans' term): u...
Marcus Aurelius Morning Preparation: Stoic Affirmations from the Meditations
During the 170s of the common era, while ruling an empire and often away from Rome, Marcus Aurelius wrote notes to himself in Greek. What survived is not a public book. It is a private notebook, the Meditations, sentences a man wrote to remind ...
Are Stoics Emotionless? Erick Cloward, Author of Stoicism 101
Are Stoics really emotionless? It is the most common thing people believe about Stoicism, and it puts a lot of people off the one idea that might actually help them.In this conversation I sit down with Erick Cloward, host of the Stoic Co...
Marcus Aurelius Was Terrible at Stoicism
Marcus Aurelius is the most quoted philosopher on the internet, and his private journal shows a man who kept failing at the thing he's famous for. He struggled to get out of bed. He needed ten separate strategies to manage his temper. Near the ...
Stoic Morning Practice: Quiet The Inner Critic
You haven't done anything yet, and the voice is already running its commentary. Too slow, too weak, not enough. The day hasn't started and you're already failing in advance. This guided Stoic practice works with the inner critic directly — not ...
Stoic Morning Affirmations: Eight Truths for the Day Ahead (Guided Practice)
Most morning affirmations ask you to declare a future you wish for. The Stoics did the opposite. They began the day by recollecting what was already true.This is a short guided practice built from eight lines drawn from Marcus Aurelius, ...
The Manosphere Got Stoicism Backwards
The manosphere has spent years quoting the Stoics to young men. Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus. Seneca. The version they sell, anger as strength, dominance as virtue, emotion as weakness, is the opposite of what those philosophers actually wrote.
Overthinking Is Not a Thinking Problem
Most advice for overthinking points you at the thoughts themselves. Journal them. Replace the negative ones with positive ones. Breathe. Meditate. Run. But what if the thoughts were never the problem?Epictetus taught that it is not event...
The Anxiety Trap: Why Fighting Makes It Worse
For most of my adult life I had a low-level hypervigilance running in the background. I tried to fight it with books, breathwork, control techniques, willpower. The harder I fought, the worse it got.In this episode I share the breakthrou...
Why the Stoics Never Needed Willpower
You have quit every hard goal for the same reason, and it is not lack of willpower.The Stoics worked this out 2,000 years ago. Instead of fighting discomfort with more discipline, they asked one question that bypasses the willpower battl...
Stoic Morning Practice: Stop Dreading Day Before It Starts
Some mornings the dread arrives before the alarm. A tightness in the chest, a list already forming, a quiet resistance to the day ahead. This guided Stoic practice meets you there, not with forced optimism, but with honest preparation.Yo...
