There’s a fact about you that most people are told once, in a science class, and then unfortunately forget.

It’s this- every atom of calcium hardening your bones, every atom of iron threading through your blood, every atom of carbon that strings together your DNA- once inhabited a star that died before our sun was born.

Essentially, you’re not visiting this universe. You’re not just a random speck. You’re made of it, you’re it- the universe looking back at itself, assembled from the ruins of giant suns that exploded and scattered their guts across the dark some five billion years ago, so that, in the fullness of time, you could sit where you’re sitting right now, reading this sentence, and wonder about it.

Pause and let that sink in.

I’ve been sitting with this fact for weeks. And I keep coming back to one question- why don’t we live like it’s true?

Sometimes loneliness has nothing to do with being alone. Often, it’s feeling like your problems are incomprehensible to others, a burden- yours to carry in silence. I’ve felt it. Most people I know have felt it. And when I came across the Stoic concept of sympatheia, I understood for the first time why that loneliness, however real it feels, is built on a false premise.

The Stoics– going back to Chrysippus– held that the entire universe is a single, living, breathing organism. Like literally. They believed that what we call “the world” is a unified body animated by a rational force, the logos, and that everything within it– people, cities, seasons, moods, deaths, coincidences– is connected through this web of mutual influence. They called it sympatheia- the co-feeling, the resonance of the whole.

We tend to think of our inner life as sealed off from everything else. My anger is mine. My grief is mine. My restlessness before the meeting is a private malfunction. But sympatheia suggests otherwise. It says that when you’re irritable without cause, or moved by something sublime- perhaps melancholy, or strangely at peace on an ordinary Tuesday– you’re picking up a signal. From the body of the world you’re part of.

The Stoics weren’t mystics about this. Marcus, in his Meditations, uses sympatheia as a discipline. When he felt cut off, bitter, superior, he would return to the thought, I’m a part of this, not apart from it. That reorientation put him back in the right relationship with reality.

The surprising thing I’ve found in sitting with this idea is what it does to suffering. When you hold your pain as entirely your own– hermetically sealed, unique, inexplicable– it becomes heavier. It also becomes harder to move through. But when you allow that your ache at losing something is the same ache the world has been feeling since the first person lost their thing– that it is, in some sense, the world feeling through you– it becomes bearable in a different way.

There is also an ethical weight to sympatheia that I haven’t been able to shake. If you and I are part of the same organism, then my indifference to your struggle is more than unkindness– it’s a kind of self-harm. A heart that refused to care about the lungs would be heart failure. The Stoics would say, the person who walls themselves off from others, who stops caring, isn’t protecting themselves. They’re damaging the whole.

The practice is simple. When you feel most alone with something– failure, fear, or grief you think no one could understand– pause and ask, has this ever been felt before? It has. A thousand times before you. A thousand times happening right now, somewhere else. That recognition won’t dissolve the pain. But it will remind you where you actually live, inside a world that is, at every moment, in conversation with itself.

You are not separate from any of this. You never were. You’ll never walk alone.

Nobody warned you it would feel like this.

Not just sadness – something more debilitating. Like you’ve lost a version of yourself. Like the future you’d built in your head has been condemned and bulldozed into oblivion.

I’ve been there. And I’ve found that the people who helped me most weren’t the ones who said “you’ll find someone better.” They were a group of men who died two thousand years ago.

The Stoics. And they have something to say about your broken heart- having themselves went through their fair share of this human condition. They lost children, spouses, friends- and they found their way through it all.

They’d say you’re in pain because of what you’ve decided a person’s leaving means.

That’s a brutal thing to hear. It may even feel like a betrayal – as though I’m asking you to pretend the pain isn’t real. But the Stoics aren’t asking you to be numb. I just want you to look more carefully at where the pain is coming from.

Because once you see it clearly, you can do something about it. Until then, it’s impossible.

what loss is

Heartbreak has a latent and crushing ferocity. It’s not like losing a job or a wallet – those losses live well delineated outside you. Heartbreak feels like losing a piece of yourself, like a debridement performed without anaesthetic.

And the Stoics would say- that’s exactly the problem.

Epictetus spent decades as a slave before becoming one of antiquity’s most celebrated philosophers. His master once, cruelly, twisted his leg to demonstrate a point about pain tolerance. Epictetus simply remarked- “You will break it.” His master kept twisting. “Did I not tell you that you would break it?” he said, calmly, as the bone snapped.

He wasn’t indifferent to pain. He wasn’t dead inside. What he understood – the thing that kept him sane across every indignity – was a distinction so simple it sounds like a joke until you actually live it,

Some things are in your power. Most things aren’t.

In your power are your judgments, your desires, your response to what happens.

Not in your power is another person’s feelings, their choices, whether they stay or go.

Bring that to your breakup. Everything you’re suffering over – every 2 a.m. replay of the last conversation, every phantom buzz of a phone that never lights up with their name – lives in the first category. Your opinion about it. Your judgment that this constitutes a catastrophe. That you are now somehow less, or that the future you imagined is the only future worth having.

The relationship was in the second category all along.

you can’t lose what you never had

This is one of the strangest and most liberating passages in all of Stoic literature. Epictetus writes in the Enchiridion,

“Never say of anything, ‘I lost it’; but say, ‘I gave it back.’ Has your child died? It has been returned. Has your wife died? She has been returned. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not this also been restored? ‘But he who has taken it from me is a bad man.’ What does it matter to you through whose hands the Giver asked it back?”

He’s talking about death. But the logic holds for love, because love operates by the same law.

Every relationship is on loan. You didn’t own the person who left. You were entrusted with that closeness for a while – a season, or years – and then it was recalled. The grief you feel isn’t evidence that something has gone wrong. It’s possible to see it as a gift- the fact that you were given something real, and you had the capacity to value and enjoy it.

That’s no small thing. That’s, in fact, one of the richer bounties a human life offers.

The suffering begins when you refuse the loss. When you keep circling back to reclaim what was never permanently yours.

stoicism ≠ emotional coldness

Let me stop here, because this idea is badly misunderstood.

The Stoic approach to heartbreak isn’t don’t feel anything. It’s not the withholding of tears or the performance of indifference. Seneca, who corresponded with his friends for decades and wrote with extraordinary tenderness about the people he loved, said it well in a letter,

“Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail.”

He goes further,

“The recollection of lost friends is pleasant in the same way that certain fruits have an agreeably acid taste... after a certain lapse of time, every thought that gave pain is quenched, and the pleasure comes to us unalloyed.”

Marcus Aurelius – who governed an empire and fought wars while watching his children die – didn’t float above grief on some philosophical cloud. Read his Meditations and you find a man who ached, who doubted, who woke up in the morning and had to argue himself out of bed. The Stoics weren’t made of stone.

What they refused was the prolongation of suffering beyond its natural course. What they resisted was the theatrical amplification of pain – the of grief for attention, the feeding of sorrow to avoid the work of moving through it.

Epictetus draws this distinction,

“When you see a person shedding tears in sorrow for a child abroad or dead... do not hesitate to sympathize with him so far as words go, and even to groan with him; but take heed that you do not also groan in your inner being.”

Sympathy, yes. Solidarity, yes. The full-blown collapse of yourself into the darkness of someone else’s absence? No.

the root of your pain

So what exactly is the judgment that makes heartbreak so devastating?

Usually it’s one of these:

This person was the only one. Or: I’m not worthy of love if this person didn’t love me. Or: My future is ruined. Or: I wasted years.

Each of these is an opinion presented as a fact. Each of them can be examined. None of them survives crude scrutiny – but they do tremendous damage when you let them go unquestioned.

Marcus Aurelius writes,

“Take away your opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed.’ Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”

I don’t want you to latch on denial. You’re being asked to separate the event – they left – from the story – I’m ruined, I wasn’t enough, love is impossible for me.

The event is fixed. The story is yours to live as you wish. Yes, you possess this freedom.

on what you control now

The Stoic question – always, in every crisis – is the same, What can I do here?

Not- what could’ve gone differently. Not- what do I wish they would do. Not- how do I get them back. But- what’s actually in my hands right now, in this moment, that I can act on?

And that’s not as small a question as it sounds when you’re in the middle of it.

You can control whether you feed the grief or move through it. Whether you rehearse the relationship’s ending or review what it taught you and the beautiful moments you shared. Whether you reach out to the people still in your life or marinate in isolation. Whether you build something with this time or just survive it.

Epictetus puts it this way,

“Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.”

Not passive resignation. Active realignment. Stop spending energy pulling against the current of what’s already happened, and feel how much energy becomes available the moment you use what happens.

on life lessons

I know it’s the last thing you want to hear. But heartbreak will teach you a lot.

It tells you what you valued. What kind of love you want to give and receive. Where you overextended and where you undervalued yourself. What you were seeking in another person that you might start seeking in yourself.

If you numb it too quickly, you skip the lesson. If you drown in it indefinitely, you also skip the lesson – you just suffer longer for the same curriculum.

The Stoics ran toward self-knowledge the way other people run from it. “Know thyself” wasn’t a bumper sticker to them. It was the entire project. And grief, if you sit with it, is one of the most efficient teachers of self-knowledge you’ll ever encounter.

the way out

There’s a line in Seneca that I’ve returned to more than almost anything else from the ancient world,

“He who has been able to say, ‘I have lived!’: every morning he arises he receives a bonus.”

This is where the Stoic path through heartbreak ends up – not at the detachment red pill gurus will try to sell you, not at numbness, not at some airbrushed emotional neutrality, but at genuine appreciation for having lived something that mattered enough and that was so beautiful to lose.

You loved someone. That’s extraordinary. The fact that it ended doesn’t unmake what it was. The Stoics would say- don’t insult the experience by pretending it didn’t happen or by begging people to come back, but also don’t drown in it as though it’s the only thing that mattered in this ever abundant life.

You’re not the sum of what you’ve lost. You’re something that continues, that has agency, that still has a long road ahead of it.

Grief is the price of love, and it’s worth paying. They’re two sides of the same coin. Life as we live it. But then, at some point – not prematurely, but eventually – you have to get up, look at what remains in your power, and decide what to build next.

So let me tell you what I’ve been sitting on.

You probably already own the most famous book in Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations for an audience of one- himself. Reminders to steady his mind- his emotions, written at the edge of an empire, meant for his eyes alone. The most quoted Stoic text in history is, technically, a private diary.

I’ve been keeping a diary like that.

For the last year I’ve kept a running set of maxims- short, blunt lines I wrote to keep myself level. I practice medicine, which means my day is wall-to-wall human beings at their most frightened, their most stubborn, their most unreasonable, and the work is- least to say- bit chaotic. These lines are the railing I held onto. I’d have frankly gone under without them.

The plan was to keep them on the low, the way Marcus kept his. But I’ve come to change my mind. They’ve carried too much weight to sit in a drawer working for nobody but me.

So I’m releasing them to a few of you, as The Stoic Manual: Meditations on the Art of Living — 150 maxims, written for anyone, beginner or expert, to be used at anytime life calls for it.

Here’s a taste,

This special book will go to Annual & Lifetime members only. And you can secure a copy when I launch, plus all other bonuses, by upgrading your subscription below,

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^{If you had already subscribed, don’t worry. I’ll send it to you when I launch.}

That said, here’s today’s mini-essay, plus a surprise at the bottom.

You want to win. To be a great writer, parent, nurse. Insert your profession.

Living in this world also bids you desire financial freedom, a loving spouse, creative success. Get a promotion. Win the election.

You want to attend the concert. Or the event you’ve planned on going for the last two years.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting those goods.

They enhance the quality of your human experience.

But it’s wise to put them in perspective. Handle them in due proportion.

Knowing how much people and things can have power over you when they’re the source of your pleasure, it’s prudent to be careful with how much you value them. It’s wise to know the price you’re paying for them.

There’s no use gaining the world but losing yourself.

The cure to desperation Stoics recommend means you shouldn’t want or value external things to the extent that you prostrate yourself — lose your soul. Owe people. Act against your cherished ideals. Do diabolical shit. Destabilize your emotional balance when you don’t get or lose them.

Know what’s worth valuing above all else — wisdom and being pro-social.

Act as if you already have much, like you don’t need these indifferent goods — even if they can have a positive impact on your life. Like you’re ready to give these things back to fortune at any time — for they have insignificant claim to your happiness.

Make your well-being come from inside you: how you think, the choices you make, how beautiful your character is, and how you act.

How? Through practice.

But, shouldn’t you obsess over getting better, enjoying yourself and being victorious? You should.

It’s a sin not to bless the world with your greatness. It’s foul not to have fun with your friends. But with the attitude that virtue is the highest good and that’s enough for your fulfillment. With the attitude that you’ll make the best of whatever misfortune life brings.

So, focus on the things you control: the reps, your diet, applying for the position, writing the articles, cold emails, being a better friend, having fun.

That’s what is up to you and you can rely on it to make you happy. But you have to see it as enough.

The Aesthetic Experience

“...aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists, to a large extent, in the fact that, when we enter the state of pure contemplation, we are raised for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares; we are, so to speak, rid of ourselves.” — Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation)

The Stoics were big fans of appreciating the beauty in the world. This comeliness is reflected in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The artful expression of Stoic ideas is why the book still resonates 2,000 years later.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them…for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.”

In the spirit of washing away the dust of earthly life, these are the three art pieces I found interesting this week. Enjoy.

Exhibit I

Exhibit II

Exhibit III

It’s prudent to think of all the bad things that can happen to us, our relationships, the business. Or the new job we’ve started.

We don’t want to get caught by surprise when life disappoints us. When a valuable item is stolen. When we get laid off from the cool job we’ve always wanted.

This practice primes us to live with confidence because we’re well prepared to adapt in case anything bad happens.

We want the peace of mind that comes from the wisdom Seneca shared with his friend Lucillus saying,

What is quite unlooked for is…

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If you’ve been a long term reader, you know I like putting stories in my essays for you to get a multidimensional perspective and firm grasp on the day’s lesson. Today is no different. The following is a beautiful story On Self Reliance as told in Aesop’s fables,

A Farmer was driving his wagon along a miry country road after a heavy rain.

The horses could hardly drag the load through the deep mud, and at last came to a standstill when one of the wheels sank to the hub in a rut.

The farmer climbed down from his seat and stood beside the wagon looking at it but without making the least effort to get it out of the rut.

All he did was to curse his bad luck and call loudly on Hercules to come to his aid.

Then, it is said, Hercules really did appear, saying:

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This story is about the Lion & the Ass from Aesop’s fables

One day as the Lion walked proudly down a forest aisle, and the animals respectfully made way for him, a donkey brayed a scornful remark as he passed.

The Lion felt a flash of anger.

But when he turned his head and saw who had spoken, he walked quietly on.

He would not honor the fool with even so much as a stroke of his claws.

It’s natural to feel anxious, stressed, angry, excited.

We’re human.

It’s impossible to go against this wiring to become unfeeling robots.

Don’t try.

Sure, unbridled emotion causes…

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Power asserts itself and crushes any obstacles to its expression. It has to — if not, then it’s not powerful enough is it? That’s the presumption.

It’s why Thomas Shelby of the show Peaky Blinders refuses to apologize to his enemies after one of his brothers, John Shelby, ambushes a Mob-star by the name Angel Changretta, beats him up along with his henchman and cuts his eye with the razor blades in his cap.

Even if Tommy had promised his family peace at the start of the season, begging for pardon shows weakness and puts his family in grave danger. He tells his brother,

“the only way to guarantee peace is by making the prospect of war seem hopeless. If you apologize once, you do it again and again and again, like taking bricks out of the wall of your fucking house. Do you want to bring the house down, Arthur? … if we lift our heels off their necks now, they’ll just come at us.”

This is a tricky situation. You can’t help but empathize with the protagonist.

Machiavelli was right.

It’s difficult to…

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The following is a story of Two Travelers & a Bear.

Two Men were traveling in company through a forest, when, all at once, a huge Bear crashed out of the brush near them.

One of the Men, thinking of his own safety, climbed a tree.

The other, unable to fight the savage beast alone, threw himself on the ground and lay still, as if he were dead. He had heard that a Bear will not touch a dead body.

It must have been true, for the Bear snuffed at the Man’s head awhile, and then, seeming to be satisfied that he was dead, walked away.

The Man in the tree climbed down.

“It looked just as if that Bear whispered in your ear,” he said. “What did he tell you?”

“He said,” answered the other, “that it was not at all wise to keep company with a fellow who would desert his friend in a moment of danger.”

If our relationships are to thrive, the love for our family, friends, and spouses must have a paternal dimension.

It’s why we learn how to argue.

We must be actively involved in their lives- in the good and difficult times.

Seneca wrote,

He who regards himself only, and enters upon friendships for this…

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It’s almost mid year. June starts tomorrow. Too quick, isn’t it? That’s a snippet of how fast life goes. We risk having nothing to show for our time here.

Some of us might have forgotten the resolutions and goals we set at the start of the year. Some of us might be feeling like giving up as the road isn’t as easy and glorious as it seemed in our minds. Some of us might have gotten side-tracked by urgent business. But that’s the nature of improvement. And that’s why I want us to turn to a timeless ‘pick-me-up’ to help us gather all the forces we can for the remainder half of the year. To remind us how much good we can still express from within us to tackle all that’s in front of us.

The passage below is one of my favorites from Epictetus, a slave who turned into a Stoic philosophy teacher.

It’s a reality check for all of us, a deft nudge reinforcing the idea that, as Marcus Aurelius would tell himself,

“We carry our fate with us—and it carries us.”

It’s also a chance for us to renew our vows to philosophy because we want to be great. Be healthy. Raise beautiful families. Have long-lasting relationships. Create wealth. Do impactful work — all this culminating into the happiness and satisfaction we crave deep down, Eudaemonia.

It goes like this…

“How long will you wait before…

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Gratitude is the thought you get when you look at your life as if for the first time.

In your depths of being, you come to understand that, this life you’ve created for yourself here- it would have all turned out different, probably for the worst, because…

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It’s good to fail. Stay with me now.

The pragmatic way to think of failure is not in the event itself.

But of what it…

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You wish you could change people. Perhaps they could be a little more kind. A bit more ambitious. Healthier.

But you end up disappointed whenever they fail to follow through with the resolutions and promises they’ve pledged.

You might even get angry at them.

Sometimes you close yourself off for sanity’s sake. They don’t deserve your time and attention.

You give up on them, yet it hurts you knowing how much you care.

But you’re looking at this all wrong. You don’t have to get angry at a person.

People need love and support. Just like you. Not to be told what to do — because they’ll rebel.

Even children, as tiny as they are, want to feel in control of their lives.

That’s why it’s imprudent to bombard people with instructions on what to do or how to live better.

Adapt.

Wisdom is…

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In December 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky stood on a scaffold in a Saint Petersburg square facing a death sentence. He was twenty-eight, a brilliant writer, condemned for reading the wrong books with friends. Scared shitless, he watched the priest, the rifles, the first men tied to their posts. He had perhaps a minute left.

Then suddenly- a drum, an officer, and an envelope came to the scene. He had been pardoned the day before. The sentence was a hoax to teach them a lesson.

The man who walked off that square was grateful, obviously, but quite different. Before it, Dostoevsky was a promising novelist who wrote like a man who assumed he’d have decades to do his best work- hence always half-committed, distracted. After it, something in him died. He went to a Siberian prison camp and came back and wrote like a man with nothing left to lose: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov- classic widely read books that go to the heart of the things most writers circle. He stopped saving himself for later. He no longer had the patience for trivialities, for the small careful dull life.

Dostoevsky needed a death sentence to live well. To master his mind and emotions. To turn out great. You only need to think clearly for the length of this essay.

See, a lot happens when we die: decomposition, worms, a foul smell.

But I want you to contemplate what happens to the realm of sensation.

Observe.

Fear has no hold of you when you’re dead. Neither does…

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“What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag, or boar — and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges?

Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules.

And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?” ― Epictetus

Discomfort sucks.

But it’s only by viewing our troubles from a…

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You fear you might have fucked up.

You might think the pain, discomfort, misfortune, and losses are unprecedented.

Feeling out of touch — out of your depth, you might ask yourself, “What the fuck was I thinking?”

All that worry is suffocating.

Trust me. You’ll even forget you’ve had some good times.

But, as my father told me on a phone call, it’s during these moments that it’s wise to remember the struggles you’ve been through before and…

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A Poison Tree by William Blake

    I was angry with my friend; 

    I told my wrath, my wrath did end.  

    I was angry with my foe:  

    I told it not, my wrath did grow.

    And I watered it in fears,   

    Night & morning with my tears:   

    And I sunned it with smiles,   

    And with soft deceitful wiles. 

    And it grew both day and night.   

    Till it bore an apple bright.  

    And my foe beheld it shine,  

    And he knew that it was mine. 

    And into my garden stole,   

    When the night had veiled the pole;   

    In the morning glad I see;   

    My foe out-stretched beneath the tree.

You’ve felt like shouting at a person before. Or probably have several times.

Like beating them for messing up your food order. For doing something that inconveniences you, gets you late for a meeting.

For making decisions about your life without consulting you. For pouring coffee on you and messing up your cool outfit. Annoying you with crazy demands when you’re tired. Talking to you condescendingly. Or repeating the same mistakes you had addressed.

Look, I get it. I also struggle with anger.

You feel people should know better.

You believe, if you aren’t ruthless enough then they’ll keep taking, and taking, crossing your boundaries, embarrassing you — ruining your reputation as a respectable individual. Professional. Or parent.

Violence. It’s the only way you know to protect what’s yours.

Frustration and anger are normal reactions to life’s disappointments. To getting hurt.

And I’m not here to tell you not to get angry. Far from it. I want you to master your rage. To use it because I believe you’re mentally capable of a higher form of living.

For you’d be wise to know it’s much better to have a reputation for mercy and kindness than wrath.

You’d benefit from using rage to illume your words — giving them a sharp and charismatic edge that inspires.

It can give you the energy to fight for the weak, without letting it blind your decisions.

You can use it as fuel to get stronger than the enemy without letting the darkness consume you.

It’s therefore prudent to stake the satisfaction of expressing your anger for your ambition.

The Dangers of Anger

Anger comes from the feeling of powerlessness. The feeling that someone or thing has hurt you on purpose.

That’s why it’s good to know how to express your needs, fight for yourself, and if necessary, walk away from toxic interactions.

It’s why before you get mad at a person, you ought to gauge their level of intellect and wisdom.

You’ll also be wise to entertain the idea that people are doing their best. Or are tired, struggling with difficult emotions, overwhelmed. If not, you risk…

I. Not Expressing Enough Anger

An insidious detriment of anger is ignoring it, taking it lightly.

This way of living results from…

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It can be hard to let go of wild guesses of what people think of us. Even more pressing is their opinion of who we are. It therefore happens that we’re often attacked by thoughts such as these:

- “Do people think I’m smart, cool, pretty, ugly, stupid?”

- “What is my ex doing… have they moved on? Are they miserable after parting ways?”

- “Is my colleague happy with my work or is he being nice as it’s politically correct to do so?”

Funny, isn’t it. Even Epictetus pondered the absurdity of it all when he quipped, "If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you'd be furious. Yet, you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you."

Wisdom is knowing you’ll ruin your day by following those negative rabbit holes if you don’t value life itself at this moment, abundant with peace, freedom and happiness.

If you don’t say no to being pulled in by thoughts pregnant with the seductive allure of satisfying your curiosity but with nothing to show for in return for time and mental energy spent.

If you don’t caution yourself, as Marcus Aurelius would, that, “you cannot…

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I noticed there’s a lot of misinformation or rather a shallow understanding and misrepresentation of what Stoic Philosophy is and isn’t. Most readers stop here and wonder why they’re still confused, still frustrated by worldly events, still having unanswered questions, still anxious and planets away from happiness. So I took it upon myself to create a foundational primer on the essence of the philosophy, making it easy to understand for both new and experienced practitioners, covering the Dichotomy of Control, the three disciplines (Desire, Assent & Action), and the self they aim to protect and elevate.

What follows is how the three principles fit together, why the order matters and how they apply to your life, what changes when you see prohairesis as the whole self rather than a part of it, and how amor fati becomes a logical conclusion rather than a slogan you just repeat without an understanding of the basics. Let’s begin.

Imagine this. Strip a person of his health, his wealth, his name, his people, and ask what is left. Most answers are wrong. You answer “myself,” and the next question is what that word means now that everything you used to fill it with is gone.

Epictetus answered. He said you’re…

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Life can be funny and so random sometimes.

Because you express love, kindness and good intentions toward others doesn’t mean they’ll have the same for you. Because you work hard it doesn’t mean you’ll win and enjoy happiness, riches, and the respect of the world. And because you went to a good school, and were an exceptional student, doesn’t mean you’ll get a well-paying job and live lavish.

In fact, you’ll find the people who you think don’t deserve riches and good opportunities sit on the thrones you admire and drive the cars you only dream of.

You can get disenchanted about this fact, wondering how the fuck God works. And it’s understandable to feel this way.

But over time, you’ll come to realize that…

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Ancient Stoic texts shallowly touch on emotional intelligence- it’s a critical flaw that has famed the philosophy with coldness, when it’s in-fact quite warm and a source of solace from the world’s harshness. So I took the pains to research on this subject and I found a way to connect what the Stoics used to write with deeper contextual wisdom from our contemporary philosophers like Alain De Botton of The School of Life.

You’ll realize that there are four signs of emotional maturity. These include:

1. Self-love

Self-love is a healthy narcissism.

It’s the story you tell yourself when you…

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