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 every Monday.
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
Marcus Aurelius Was Terrible at Stoicism
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
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 end of his life he wrote, to himself, that he was "far from philosophy."
In this episode I read the passages most Stoicism channels skip. The two getting-out-of-bed debates, four books apart. The brutal self-talk about caring what people think. The procrastination confession. The contradiction of Commodus and the gladiatorial games. And the old distinction that makes sense of all of it: the sage versus the Stoic in training. Marcus knew which one he was.
If you've ever felt like a fraud for relearning the same lesson again and again, this one is for you.
Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/h1Rm4Cv_aQY
Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co
The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com