The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

A meditation to practise the most useful idea in Stoicism until it actually sticks. The dichotomy of control is simple to say and hard to live: some things are yours (your thoughts, your actions, your responses) and most things are not (other people's opinions, the outcome, the weather).

This guided practice walks you through that sorting in real time, so you can feel the difference rather than just understand it. The more you sit with it, the easier it becomes to put your energy where it can actually do something.

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A full hour of guided practice for Stage Two of The Mind Illuminated, John Yates' map of meditation. Stage Two is all about the wandering mind: noticing sooner when your attention has drifted off the breath, and coming back without frustration.

This is not a quick reset. It is a long sit for people who want to actually build the skill, one gentle return at a time. Find a comfortable position, settle in, and let this run.

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A guided version of the Stoic daily mindful review, the practice of looking back over your day with honest eyes. You move through your thoughts, emotions, speech and actions, not to beat yourself up, but to see clearly where you acted well and where you would do it differently.

I take you from opening awareness and grounding, through weighing the consequences of how you behaved, to mentally re-enacting the harder moments with a bit more virtue next time. Done regularly, it is one of the quiet engines of becoming wiser and easier to live with.

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Most communication advice is a pile of tips. This one is a compact framework you can actually hold in your head. I draw on the CIT model (cognitive interpersonal therapy) and Stoic philosophy to lay out the few principles that quietly improve both your relationships and your inner state.

The thread running through it is the old Epictetus point: it is rarely the situation that wrecks a conversation, it is your read of it. Get the read right and the right words tend to follow. A short, practical cheat sheet for talking to people well.

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If you are just starting to meditate, start here. This guided session is built on Stage One of The Mind Illuminated, where the whole job is simply turning up: establishing a steady, regular practice before you worry about anything fancier.

I take you through a structured preparation, a gentle transition, and a focused sit with stretches of silence so you can settle in. Practise it often and you build the one skill everything else rests on: showing up to the cushion day after day.

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A guided meditation on the one certainty we spend most of our lives avoiding. Drawing on Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, this practice helps you sit with the fact of your own death, not to frighten yourself, but to loosen its grip and bring what matters back into focus.

You will spend time with the fear itself, imagine the same life with ten years, one year, and one day left, and contemplate the long stillness on either side of a life. It does not end there. The practice closes by turning toward love and compassion, so you leave the sit softer rather than shaken. A heavier one, handled gently.

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Marcus Aurelius had a habit of stripping the glamour off things he wanted: the fine wine is just fermented grapes, the expensive meal is dead animal and plants. This guided meditation puts that practice to work on your own cravings and attachments.

You take something you are pulled toward and break it down into its plain parts, with the flattering story removed, until you can see it with a neutral eye. The point is not to hate the thing. It is to loosen its hold, so the wanting stops running quite so much of the show. Includes examples and a few questions to sit with.

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A calm way to close the day and hand it over to sleep. This evening meditation walks you through a Stoic review of the hours behind you: first the things that went well and the decisions you are glad you made, then, gently, the places you would do differently next time.

The looking-back is about growth, not a list of failings to chew on in the dark. You finish by setting one clear intention for tomorrow, so you can put the day down and rest. Listen as you wind down for the night.

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A short guided morning meditation built on Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. You will notice thoughts as they arrive, make room for what the day may bring, and return attention to the one moment you can actually use. I practise this to start the day with a steadier head. It will not fix everything. It gives you somewhere to begin.

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Most of us treat meditation as something we do for ten minutes and then leave on the cushion. This episode is about the opposite: carrying mindfulness through the whole day, into your health, your relationships, the ordinary moments where you usually run on autopilot.

I get into why the mind is so addicted to thinking, why the meditation-app boom sells the practice as a kind of mental vitamin, and what Sam Harris took from his 10-day retreat. Joseph Goldstein's point lands hardest for me: the sitting is just the frame, the real practice is the rest of the day. I also share the prompt I keep coming back to, "What is here now when there is no problem to solve?"

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