Stoicism for a Better Life

If your goal is to improve yourself and make yourself better, do it with a sense of urgency, for you do not have much time left in this temporal existence. Every day we die...one day closer to the final death. So don't waste time. Make your virtue and bettering yourself a priority and actively work on it as often as you can.

Our bodies and our minds are like tools or muscles. We use them to perceive the world external to our thoughts, and we use them to interact with the same external world. As with any tool or muscle, overuse without rest and repair, we can damage them...some times even beyond repair. So take care of your mind, which we tend to neglect. And take care of your body. It is not selfish to rest sometimes. It is virtuous because it helps you be a better person.

It is undeniable that who we hang out with impacts our personality. One way or another, tow people who spend time with each other will rub off certain traits on now another. Some people will absorb more than other, but everyone gets affected by the company they keep. So make a conscious effort in who you spend time with and how you spend it. Give yourself the best chance to be virtuous.

We exist in these imperfect vessels we call a body. These bodies come with their own emotions and defence mechanisms. As such, it is impossible to be emotionless. We will always have knee-jerk emotional responses, this we cannot change. We can, however, control how quickly we get back to ourselves. So try and curb your body's response as quickly as you can and get back to being a reasonable rational person.

It is up for debate whether our free-will is an illusion or a real thing. But one thing is for sure: From our perspective, we feel like we definitely have free-will. Life essentially can be boiled down to making choices and decisions in the present moment. So use your free-will actively.

Addictions...we all have them. Some are more obvious, others more clandestine. Here is an opportunity to identify one, accept it distracts us from being mindful in the present moment, and actively work to remove it with a reasonable short term goal.

We often forget that there are 7.6 billion other people on this planet. We get so lost in our own self-involvement. This episode is all about recognizing other people and their own journeys and supporting them.

The more my island of knowledge grows, so does my shore of ignorance. Knowledge is power and philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. However, we make the grave mistake of overestimating our knowledge. The same way Socrates was the wisest man in all of Athens because he knew what he did not know, we must admit not only what we do not know, but also that what we know can be improved upon.

I received a great question (voicemail) from a listener that I had to take some time to answer. We keep saying "Nothing can be good or bad" yet we also preach moral goodness. How can we reconcile the two?

A special COVID-19 release:

I've released two episodes to help with the current Pandemic situation and give some very pertinent Stoic practices to help you through these uncertain, anxious and though times. Here are five additional useful Stoic practices for you.