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After lifting weights with my partner, we often go to McDonald’s.

It feels good at the time. We have spent a couple of hours training, pushing ourselves and sometimes lifting more than we have lifted before. A burger, an ice cream and a coffee feel like a reward.

There is a story wrapped around the meal. We earned this. It is part of the ritual. We trained hard, so now we get to enjoy ourselves.

Described plainly, it is a high-fat, high-carbohydrate meal eaten after the gym.

It uses a large part of the calories I have available for the day. Later, when I’m hungry again, there isn’t enough room left in the budget to hit the goal I said mattered to me. Then I go over.

The plain description doesn’t make the food sound disgusting. It still tastes good. I still want it.

It just makes the trade visible.

The question isn’t whether I deserve the meal. It is whether that particular reward is worth the rest of the day.

The source

In Meditations 6.13 Marcus does something deliberately unglamorous. He takes the things that dazzle and describes them in their bare material: the fine dish is a dead fish, the vintage wine is fermented grape juice, the imperial purple is sheep’s wool dipped in shellfish dye. He is not being sour about it, and he is not trying to make himself want less. He is separating the thing from the story wrapped around it, so that the impression lands on the thing itself rather than stopping at the label. The technique works on dread exactly as well as on desire, which is the half most people skip.

The drill

Take one thing you are currently craving, or dreading. Write three sentences describing it in bare material terms only. No adjectives carrying a verdict, no consequences, no story about what it will mean. What it is, what it is made of, how long it lasts. Read it back once and notice what happened to the pull. Be honest if nothing happened, because sometimes nothing does, and knowing which of your wants survive a plain description is more useful than collecting the ones that dissolve.

From the studio

This week’s talk sits one step before the drill above. Before you can describe an impression plainly, you have to notice it arriving. The Stoic Skill Underneath Every Other Skill is about attention, and a one-word exercise for naming what has hooked you before shame takes over.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1882875/episodes/19639491

Write the three sentences. Reply with the one that surprised you.

Go well,
Jon.

Put what you’re reading into practice. Join the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge for one practical lesson and exercise each day.

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

One morning, I was supposed to edit videos for a new course.

The editing is slow and demanding. There isn’t much novelty in it. You sit down, work through the footage and keep going.

Instead, I started looking at technical improvements I could make to my website.

The work looked useful. Some of it probably was useful. I could research tools, ask AI questions, compare approaches and tell myself I was improving the business.

By the time I noticed what had happened, the course videos were still sitting there.

This is one of the more convincing ways I lose my attention. I don’t abandon work for something obviously pointless. I abandon the most important work for a different kind of work that is easier, more interesting and endlessly expandable.

The cost is not one wasted morning. It is the repetition.

Each time I do it, I move a little further away from the work that would actually move my life and business forward.

The source

Epictetus, Discourses 4.12.1, in Long’s 1877 translation: “When you have remitted your attention for a short time, do not imagine this, that you will recover it when you choose; but let this thought be present to you, that in consequence of the fault committed to-day your affairs must be in a worse condition for all that follows.” The claim is stronger than it first reads. He is not saying a lapse is regrettable. He is saying attention is not a tap you turn back on at will, and that today’s lapse is charged to tomorrow. Hadot calls the opposite state prosochē, continuous vigilance, and describes it as “self-consciousness which never sleeps.”

The drill

Set three fixed checkpoints in the day. Not phone reminders, physical thresholds you already pass through: the kettle, the car door, the front step coming home. At each one, five seconds and one question: where was I just then? Do not grade it and do not fix it. Say the answer under your breath and carry on. By Friday you will have fifteen samples of where your attention actually lives, which is different information from where you assume it lives. The thresholds matter more than the answers, because a checkpoint you have to remember is one you will not.

From the studio

On Tuesday’s talk, Why You Knew Better and Did It Anyway, I look at why a decision can feel sensible in the moment and foolish the next morning. A four-minute handover note lets the clear-headed version of you leave instructions for the version whose internal scoreboard has changed.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1882875/episodes/19627933

Pick your three thresholds before Monday. Reply and tell me what they are.

Go well,
Jon.

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

I was telling someone to take one clean week away from a habit.

It was good advice. Clear, practical and proportionate. Don’t solve the rest of your life. Just make it through one week without returning to the pattern.

Even as I said it, I felt the catch.

I wasn’t holding myself to the same standard. The particulars were different, but I knew what it was like to keep returning to something after deciding I wouldn’t. I knew how easily a clean commitment becomes a negotiation.

Clients sometimes think they are coming to benefit from my wisdom. That isn’t quite how it feels from this side.

I might be the person asking the questions, but they show me things about myself constantly. The conversation becomes a mirror facing in both directions.

The advice was still right. I meant every word of it.

I was simply another patient handing over a remedy I had not been taking consistently myself.

The source

Seneca, Letters 27.1, in Gummere’s translation: “I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure my fellow-men when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.” Seneca wrote that while extremely rich, extremely powerful and thoroughly compromised, which is exactly why it is worth reading. He is not claiming to have arrived. He is claiming the right to discuss the treatment while still on the ward, which is a much smaller claim than most people teaching this material make, and a much more defensible one.

The drill

Write down the three pieces of advice you give other people most often. The automatic ones, at work or at home or over coffee. Then mark each honestly: doing it, not doing it, or doing it badly. No plan attached and no resolution, just the marks. Most people find at least one line they have been dispensing for years and have not run themselves in months. The value is not the guilt. It is seeing precisely which ward you are standing on while you hand out the remedy.

From the archives

If you want the version of this with a more famous patient, Marcus Aurelius Was Terrible at Stoicism reads the passages most Stoicism channels skip: the two getting-out-of-bed arguments four books apart, the procrastination confession, and the old distinction between the sage and the Stoic in training.

Which line do you give most often and follow least? Reply with it.

Go well,
Jon.

Put what you’re reading into practice. Join the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge for one practical lesson and exercise each day.

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

Yesterday, I had my VO₂ max tested for the first time.

For some reason, I had already decided the number would be low. Maybe thirty-seven or thirty-nine. Something that would confirm the story I’ve carried for years: I’m not particularly fit.

I told myself it didn’t matter. At least I’d have a bad score to work from.

The result was forty-five.

The man running the test classed it as excellent. He seemed genuinely impressed and told me I had a good engine and a lot of potential.

I felt good, but mostly I felt shocked. My VO₂ max wasn’t the problem. Other parts of my fitness need work, but not the part I had already convicted.

The strange thing is that there was another voice underneath the whole time. A quieter one that thought I might actually be quite fit.

I hadn’t allowed that impression in. The negative one had required far less evidence.

The source

Epictetus, Discourses 3.12.15, in Oldfather’s translation: “This is the task of a real student of philosophy. To know the value of impressions, and to test each one as the money-changers test coins.” The money-changer is the whole point. He does not refuse the coin and he does not pocket it on sight. He has a procedure, and he runs it before the coin goes anywhere near the till. Most of what arrives in a day arrives already stamped with a value, and we accept the stamp because checking is slower than believing.

The drill

Pick one impression you have never actually tested. Not a category, one sentence you say to yourself: “I’m not fit”, “they’ve gone quiet on me”, “I’ve left it too late”. Write it at the top of a page. Underneath, write the cheapest piece of evidence that would settle it, and who could tell you in a single message. Then get it. Once, this week. The measurement is not the interesting part. The interesting part is how long you had been spending the coin without ever weighing it.

From the archives

The impression I never tested had been talking to me in the same voice for years. Stoic Morning Practice: Quiet The Inner Critic is a short guided practice for exactly that: separating the bare facts from the judgements the mind adds automatically, and hearing the critic as opinion rather than fact.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1882875/episodes/19330398-stoic-morning-practice-quiet-the-inner-critic

What is the impression you have been spending without ever testing? Hit reply with the sentence.

Go well,
Jon.

I asked him about violence. We spent most of two hours talking about calm.

Before his first fight in Japan, he found out his opponent was 33 pounds heavier and the round would last thirty minutes with no breaks. He wrote a large R on each fist.

R for rustig. Dutch for relaxed.

That letter became the thread running through our conversation: the two voices he heard mid-fight, the word that ended his drinking, and why controlling himself turned out to be harder than controlling an opponent.

You do not need to care about MMA to get something from this. The harder fight here is the one that carried on after there was nobody left to punch.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube:

Go well,

Jon

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On Saturday, we took the kids to a fun park in Cardiff. Thirteen slides, a bouncy-castle area, about fifty pounds for the family.

In the bouncy area, children were running up the slides and sitting in places where someone could easily land on them. I couldn’t see a member of staff anywhere.

I felt tense almost immediately. Then stressed. Then slightly panicked. My kids are going to get hurt.

But I didn’t stop there.

They’re money-grabbing. They’re incompetent. This place is rubbish. They don’t know how to run it. Someone needs to put them straight.

The facts were that children were playing unsafely, I couldn’t see any staff, and I was worried about my own children. The rest was mine.

I had paid good money. I had expected something better. They had let me down.

Even as the judgement was forming, part of me could hear myself adding it.

The source

Epictetus, Enchiridion 5, in Elizabeth Carter’s translation: “Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.” The line is quoted so often it has gone soft, but the structure underneath it is sharp. There is the thing that happened, and there is the opinion you added, and the second one is doing almost all of the work. Epictetus is not saying the event does not matter. He is saying that if you cannot tell the two apart, you will keep treating your own additions as facts about the world, and defending them accordingly.

The drill

Three columns, one real event a day. Left: what happened, in the plainest words you can manage, the version a camera would agree with. Middle: what you added on top, in the exact words you used in your head, not the tidied version. Right: what is left of the problem if the middle column were deleted. Do it for something small. The petty ones are more instructive than the serious ones, because the addition is easier to see when the stakes are low and harder to justify afterwards.

From the archives

Long before that afternoon in Cardiff I made a whole episode about this exact mechanism, and I still needed reminding. Overthinking Is Not a Thinking Problem goes through phantasia, the Stoic account of impressions, and three ways to catch the judgement before it spirals.

Run the three columns once this week. Hit reply with what was in your middle column.

Go well,
Jon.

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

The Field Note

Last week, on the school run, I stumbled getting out of the car and knocked into someone’s wing mirror.

I hadn’t damaged it. I waved and said sorry. But the woman in the car looked at me, then immediately looked at the mirror, and something in me flared.

It felt like she wasn’t seeing a person who’d made a small mistake. She was seeing a problem. A threat to her car.

My stomach rose into my neck and the heat ran down into my hands. The line in my head wasn’t wise or polished. It was: who the fuck does she think she is, looking at me like I’m a piece of trash?

There was a primal urge to correct the injustice. To make her see me properly.

And underneath it, barely audible, another voice: you’re acting foolishly.

Both were there at once.

The Source

Seneca split the moment something stings in two. On Anger 2.3, translated by James Romm in How to Keep Your Cool:

“That first mental jolt produced by the impression of an injury is no more ‘anger’ than the impression itself. The intentional movement that follows, which has not only taken in the impression but affirmed it, that’s anger.”

The first jolt is involuntary. The flush. The tight chest. The stomach rising into the throat. Even the sage feels it.

Anger forms in what comes next. We take the sensation and agree with the story attached to it: she disrespected me, he shouldn’t have done that, someone needs to put this right.

A thin version of Stoicism tells you not to feel the jolt. To skip straight to “it’s outside my control” or “it doesn’t matter”.

Seneca’s account is more honest. Feel what happened. Then examine what your mind has built on top of it.

The Drill

This week, when something stings, don’t reach for the Stoic move yet.

A curt reply. A delay. A look that lands badly.

Before you tell yourself it’s fine, outside your control, or all part of the plan, stop for sixty seconds and name the raw thing.

“That felt like rejection.”

“My chest went tight.”

“I felt embarrassed.”

Say it plainly, out loud or on paper. Let it sit there without correcting it, reframing it or turning it into a lesson.

Then look at the story you added.

“They don’t respect me.”

“This always happens.”

“I need to show them they’re wrong.”

The feeling arrived on its own. The story is where you have some room to work.

Bypassing is skipping the first step and calling the skip acceptance.

Feel it first. Examine it second.

From the Studio

Nothing new from me this week, so here’s one from the archive that lands directly on this.

I sat down with Erick Cloward to take apart one of the most persistent myths about Stoicism: that it means feeling nothing.

It’s the same mistake spiritual bypassing rests on.

https://www.stoichandbook.co/podcast/are-stoics-emotionless/

Coming soon: I go on Erick’s show to talk about spiritual bypassing directly.

Hit reply and tell me: what feeling do you tend to reach past before you’ve actually felt it?

Go well,

Jon

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.6, in Gregory Hays' translation. The man who has done a good thing, Marcus writes, "does not call out for others to come and see, but goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season."

The vine image gets read as modesty advice, but Marcus is after something more structural: the good act is supposed to be complete in itself. The moment it needs witnesses, it has started working for a different employer. Grapes don't check who's watching.

The drill

One good act a day this week that nobody can find out about. Small counts: the mess cleared that isn't yours, the recommendation sent without copying anyone in, the thing put right silently. The act is the easy half. The real rep is afterwards: notice the urge to mention it, even sideways, even days later as a humble aside.

Don't judge the urge. Just count how many times it knocks. For most of us that is more often than we would expect, and the count is the real find.

From the studio

This week I put up a new one for the mornings: a short guided run of Stoic affirmations drawn straight from Marcus, the same voice you just read, eight lines to set the day by.

Fitting company for this week's theme, since Marcus wrote most of his to no audience but himself.

Listen Here

Hit reply with what you did. I'm joking.

Don't.

Go well,

Jon

This is a short morning practice built from eight lines drawn from the Meditations. Some are close to verbatim, others are rendered in modern English to be repeatable in the mouth and the mind. Between each line there is a little silence. At the end, one quiet commitment for the day ahead.

These were notes he wrote to himself. We are not the first to need them.

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For Christmas, I bought my partner tickets to go see a show in Liverpool. A weekend trip with no kids. The plan was to drive there, 3.5 hours, park near the hotel, and stay in a hotel. The day after the trip was Father’s Day, and my son usually sees me then. Then in the evening, a longtime friend travelled down from London to visit for 2 nights. It felt like a lot, a lot of disruption to the routine.

Obviously, it was disruption that I wanted; otherwise, I wouldn’t have arranged it, but along with the excitement and pleasant thoughts about it that came, there was also some trepidation.

What if it’s really difficult to drive into Liverpool? What if something just goes wrong with the hotel or booking? What if there are delays? What if there are just problems when we go out in the evening in this big city? What if I disappoint my friend with his stay? What if he wants to do things that I can’t deliver, as I have a family? We haven’t seen each other in years; what if there is some disconnect? As the weekend approached, a part of me was mentally fast-forwarding, looking forward to the point in time where it would be over.

As you might imagine, everything went great, and I had great times travelling, and my friend coming to visit me was also really nice. Lots of great conversations and family time. A very enriching experience all around. Because of my practice in Stoicism, I was able to hold all of this with a much lighter touch than I would have many years ago, and to have a lot more healthy skepticism over my initial impressions and assumptions about what may or may not happen. That’s what this practice is all about.

The source

Seneca, Letters 98.8, in Richard Gummere’s translation:

“He grieves more than he must, who grieves before he must.”

Seneca is writing about the tax we pay on misfortunes that haven’t arrived, and mostly never do. The line gets mistaken for an argument against the Stoic habit of rehearsing bad outcomes, but it’s the opposite half of the same teaching: the rehearsal is brief, deliberate, and done once. The pre-grieving is chronic, involuntary, and done all day. One is practice. The other is just paying interest on a debt you may never owe.

The drill

Takes thirty seconds. On Friday evening, read the ledger and mark each line: happened, didn’t, still open. Don’t try to worry less. Just keep the receipts. My own ledger runs heavily to predictions that never landed, and seeing that in my own handwriting does more than any quote has.

From the studio

This week’s episode is a long conversation with Erick Cloward, author of Stoicism 101, on the oldest myth about this philosophy: that Stoics are cold. They are not. They feel the thing fully, then work on the judgement they add on top. Same root as this week’s drill: the suffering lives in the story, not the event. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1882875/episodes/19347913

Hit reply with the one prediction from your ledger you’re most braced for.

Go well,

Jon.

In this conversation I sit down with Erick Cloward, host of the Stoic Coffee Break podcast and author of Stoicism 101, to take the myth apart. We get into why the word "stoic" came to mean cold and shut down, and why the Stoics actually felt their emotions fully. They just learned to be masters of them rather than ruled by them.

Erick shares the example that makes it click: two people miss the same bus. One shrugs and reads a book, the other is furious. Same event, two reactions. The difference is never the event. It is the judgement you add to it. We also get into amor fati, the view from above, and what it really takes to react less and recover faster.

Try this after listening: next time you react strongly, name the event in plain terms, then name the story you added on top. The gap between them is where the work happens.

Erick's book and podcast: stoic.coffee
 Companion article: https://www.stoichandbook.co/podcast/are-stoics-emotionless/

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

A quick note before we start.

This newsletter has a new name. It used to be The Stoic Handbook, like everything else I make. From now on the weekly email is called The Practice, because that is what it actually is. Not a digest. Not my best thoughts. One idea, pulled out of Epictetus or Marcus or Seneca, and put to work on your week.

Same person writing it. Same inbox. I am just being clearer about what it is for.

If you are new here, or you want a feel for the format, three posts are a good place to start: The Stoic Trick I Use When I Can’t Sleep, I Teach Stoicism. I’ve Been Using It to Hide., and One Rep in the Rain.

Right. This week.

This week I published a video on how Marcus, even though he’s the poster boy for Stoicism, really struggled with the task of being human over many years. I don’t fault him; being Emperor of Rome and trying to be as Stoic as Epictetus while doing it is playing life on hard mode for sure.

But it also got me thinking: did Marcus think he was a legendary Stoic practitioner? Probably not. And that puts me and a lot of other Stoic teachers, and in fact anyone who writes about self-improvement, in an interesting position. The question is… have you figured it all out yourself? Are you this perfected human being? And the answer is obviously… no.

What’s more problematic about this is that there are people who’ve never read a book or even heard of philosophy, and they may be better or more virtuous at certain things than us. So where does it leave us? Well, I don’t know if you noticed it, but hidden inside my line of thinking was comparison. Comparison is a tricky thing. Even the Stoics were big proponents of comparing ourselves to others with great qualities, looking up to them, and finding inspiration in them. The goal is to do this from the perspective of, “I can compare myself to others, but at the same time I will always just be myself.”

The dichotomy of control states that the only way I should compare myself to other people is through their ability to use good judgment. If we limit ourselves to a person’s ability to use good judgment and nothing else (not their talents or attributes, just their ability to use good judgment, which is something we all have), we can compare ourselves in a healthier way.

Everything always comes down to life being a series of proper judgments and poor judgments. When you look at someone you might feel envious of, you have to ask, “Would I want every part of this person’s life?” The way they use their judgment leads them to have all aspects of their life, not just a single part of it in isolation.

The takeaway is we can look at other people, observe how they use judgment, and admire it as a way to improve ourselves. The most important thing will always be how much better off we are now than we were before.

If you started as an absolute raging psychopath and Stoicism has got you down to just generally short-tempered, that might not look like much to anyone else. But the distance you’ve travelled is enormous.

Just like if you are completely paralyzed and you’ve done so much mobility that you can now walk a few steps. That is an incredible achievement, but it would be absurd for that person to compare themselves to an Olympic elite athlete. That is where the use of good and bad judgment comes in, and I think that’s how we need to view Marcus and all of our efforts as individuals who are learning and walking this path.

The source

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.9, in Gregory Hays’ translation: “Not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise or moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human, however imperfectly, and fully embrace the pursuit.” He wrote that to himself after decades of practice, in a journal never meant for us. The book gets quoted as the record of a master. This passage only makes sense as the note of a man who was still failing, knew it, and stayed in training anyway.

The drill

This week, borrow Marcus’s actual method. Each morning, write one line at the top of a page: the lesson you keep having to relearn, phrased to yourself in the second person, the way he did. “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself...” Each night, one more line: where the lesson came up that day, and what you actually did. Don’t grade the day. Just log the rep. Seven days, fourteen lines. If the same failure shows up five times, you are in good company. The Emperor of Rome logged his for a decade.

From the studio

This week’s video is the full case file on Marcus the struggler: the passages where he argues with himself about getting out of bed, the ten anger strategies, and why the Stoics’ word for a practitioner was prokopton, the one still in training, never sage. I went through all of it here:

Hit reply and tell me the lesson you keep having to relearn.

Go well,

Jon.