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Thanks for subscribing to Stoicism — Philosophy as a Way of Life on Medium. If you want to follow my Medium profile for even more articles it’s Donald J. Robertson. Oh, and scroll down to the end for a sneak peek of our current cover design proposal for Verissimus my forthcoming graphic novel on Marcus Aurelius.

I want to let you all know that you’re invited to a free Facebook Live Event that’s taking place on Wednesday 11th August, called A Guide to Stoic Exercises. …

People keep asking me for a practical guide to using Stoic exercises in daily life. So I went ahead and created one for you. It’s a free email course consisting of six lessons — each one describes how to use a different psychological technique from ancient Stoicism. The goal is to help you build your emotional resilience and cope better with stress.

My latest Medium article provides an overview of the six practical exercises we chose to focus on.

Read “A Guide to Stoic Exercises” on Medium

The new email course goes into these in more depth. It will officially…

For I made a vow, when the war began to blaze highest, that I too would be initiated... —Marcus Aurelius, quoted in Cassius Dio

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) is best-known today as the author of The Meditations, a collection of personal reflections on ethics and self-improvement inspired by Stoic philosophy. While researching my recent book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, I visited several locations associated with key events in his life. One was Carnuntum, in Austria, the legionary fortress where he stationed himself while fighting the Marcomannic War, and…

I first started training therapists and life coaches about 25 years ago. People often ask me if there are any online courses for life coaching or self-improvement that would be good for someone interested in Stoicism. I don’t usually recommend courses unless I know quite a bit about the content and the people running them. So I’m pleased to be able to say that there’s a really good online training coming up soon by Brian Johnson, author of the book A Philosopher’s Notes, which draws heavily on Stoic philosophy — a subject he’s as enthusiastic about as I am!

Kasey…

This is a story about a filthy dog… Over two thousand years ago, in ancient Greece, there lived a very controversial philosopher, who upset a lot of people. At first everyone hated him, sneered at him, and called him The Dog. But by the time he died, the people loved and admired him so much that they built a beautiful pillar, in his honour, made from white marble, with a statue of a little dog on top. His real name was Diogenes of Sinope and for over five hundred years he and his followers were known as the Cynics or…

Words of advice for young people? I’m a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist and the author of several books on Stoic philosophy. I’m always giving talks and workshops on self-improvement, or talking to people about ways we can help ourselves grow more emotionally resilient. There’s a perennial question that keeps coming up in these sort of conversations whenever a good idea emerges — why isn’t this being taught in schools?

There are a lot of important things we don’t teach young people, for some reason. Probably far too many to list here. (Although we’re well into the 21st century now, most of the…

Therefore when some terrifying sound, either from heaven or from a falling building or as a sudden announcement of some danger, or anything else of that kind occurs, even the mind of a wise man must necessarily be disturbed, must shrink and feel alarm... — Epictetus, Fragment

In recent decades, there’s been a revolution in the way cognitive-behavioural psychotherapists treat emotional disorders. A “third wave” of evidence-based therapies evolved that focus more on mindfulness of thoughts and acceptance of unpleasant feelings, rather than disputing our beliefs in order to change our emotions.

This sea change emerged from a growing body…

The Meditations of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is one of the most cherished and widely-read self-help classics of all time. His personal reflections contain a lot of good advice based on the ancient Stoic philosophy that he followed.

Below, I’ve outlined three of the most simple and practical Stoic exercises that you’ll find within the pages of The Meditations.

I’ve been researching Stoicism for nearly a quarter of a century, from my early days as a student of academic philosophy to my later career as a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist deeply engaged with psychological-resilience training. I’m the author of several books…