Live Like A Stoic: 52 Exercises for Cultivating a Good Life

Stoics thought that knowing physics is essential to developing ethics; they believed that understanding how the world works is important to learning how to live. After all, if you don’t know the basics of how the world behaves, how can you find your place in it?

The ancient Stoics were pantheists—that is, they thought that God was the same thing as the universe. The God/universe was made of matter and regulated by cause and effect. In a sense, the cosmos itself was a living organism, and whatever it was doing was for its own benefit. However, since we are literally bits and pieces of the God/universe, we a

the Stoic premeditatio’s goal is to loosen our attachment to external events in general, from something as simple as breaking your favorite cup (to use Epictetus’s example from Week 3) to the death of a loved one. Since you’re only doing this for a day, we do not recommend starting with a serious situation.

Whenever you encounter something unfortunate happening to someone else, whether it be in person, on the news, or on social media, take a moment to remind yourself that it could happen to you as well.

Method 3: Practice imaginative premeditation The final take on premeditatio malorum is to imagine a situation you wouldn’t want to happen as if it’s actually happening. This approach is similar to imaginal exposure, a type of exposure therapy used to help people overcome their anxieties.

Method 1: Plan for things to go wrong. We’ll start this exercise by writing out a few plans for the day. Then we’ll assume that what could go wrong will.

Before you settle on your choice, you should also be sure that the exposure is doable for you. Ask yourself: How hard will the exercise be for you on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being super easy and 10 being next to impossible? If your answer was 3 to 5, then great! This seems like an exercise you’re likely to accomplish while still pushing your bou

To the fool, however, and to him who trusts in fortune, each event as it arrives ‘comes in a new and sudden form,’ and a large part of evil, to the inexperienced, consists in its novelty. This is proved by the fact that men endure with greater courage, when they have once become accustomed to them, the things which they had at first regarded as har

Use this table to strategize how you can respond Stoically if things go wrong. Try this for up to three of your plans for the day.