Shows / The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
You've read the books. You know what Marcus Aurelius would do. But when life gets hard, the philosophy disappears. This podcast is for people who want to close the gap between knowing Stoicism and actually living it. New episodes weekly. Start with the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: https://www.stoicchallenge.co/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-description&utm_content=global
Episodes
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe 5-Minute Emergency Drill: When the Craving Hits Right Now
That moment when the craving is right here, right now, and it feels like the only option is to give in. The drink, the scroll, the binge, the text you will…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksBecome Untriggerable: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Healing with Adam Rice
Most advice for men hands you tactics. Adam Rice wanted to talk about something underneath that: how to become harder to knock off balance in the first place…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksNVC in Real Life with Hans van Veen
If "just be nicer" has never once fixed your hardest conversations, this one is for you. I sat down with coach Hans van Veen to put Nonviolent Communication to…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksGood Kid, Tricky Moment: A Calm‑Parenting Reset
Your child says "no" and something in you surges before you have decided anything. This is a short guided reset for that exact moment. We slow the breath to…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Ultimate Stoic Sleep & Wisdom Meditation: Daily (2025)
A calm Stoic meditation to close the day. We move slowly through mindful presence, a gentle review of the hours behind you, quiet acceptance of how the day…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Complete Daily Stoic Meditation: Repeat Daily (2025)
One complete Stoic meditation, built to be repeated. The idea is simple: a single practice you can return to every day, so the ideas stop being something you…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoicism in 3 Minutes: Master Your Emotions with Erick Cloward
A short clip with Erick Cloward, Stoic author and host of The Stoic Coffee Break Podcast, on the one idea that quietly runs most of our reactions: it is not…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksI Am The Pilot, Not The Turbulence: 5-Minute Stoic Reset
Five minutes to find your calm centre when everything around you is shaking. This short guided meditation uses a steady 4-2-6 breath, then asks you to name the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksAmor Fati: The Stoic Art of Loving Your Fate – Ultimate Guide
Amor fati means "love of fate", and it asks something harder than acceptance. Not just tolerating what happens, but learning to meet every turn of your life…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Stoic Morning Ritual to Fortify Your Mind Daily (2025)
Ten minutes to start the day with a steadier mind. This guided morning meditation draws on Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus to help you anchor your…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksPlato’s Apology: The Only Book Every Human Needs to Read ft. Donald Robertson
If you could only ever recommend one book, what would it be? For Donald Robertson, the writer behind How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, the answer is Plato's…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksA Stoic Morning to See Things Clearly
Most of what upsets us is not the event but the story we wrap around it. This short morning meditation, about seven and a half minutes, walks you through the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks8-Minute Stoic Clarity for Your Morning
Eight minutes to set a clearer head before the day gets hold of you. This guided Stoic meditation moves through three simple steps: observe what is actually…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksWas Socrates in a Toxic Relationship with his Wife?
Socrates' wife Xanthippe has come down to us as the original nightmare spouse. But how much of that is fair, and how much is two and a half thousand years of…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow Did Socrates Become So Wise?
Where did Socrates' wisdom actually come from? It was not raw intellect alone. In this conversation, Donald Robertson and I look at the daily habits, the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoicism Is a Practice, Not Just a Philosophy
You can read every word Marcus Aurelius wrote and still fall apart the first time someone cuts you off in traffic. That gap, between knowing and doing, is what…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksSocrates' "Mirror For The Mind" Will Transform Your Thinking
Socrates had a strange idea: that another person can act as a mirror for your own mind, showing you the thoughts you cannot see on your own. In this…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksSocrates’ Two-Column Method For Clearer Decisions
The oldest self-help tool might also be the best one, and it fits on a single sheet of paper. I asked Stoic author Donald Robertson to walk me through…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Pick Your Battles Wisely | Donald Robertson
When do you speak up, and when do you let it go? When do you push, and when do you step back? Donald Robertson and I get into coping flexibility: the skill of…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Missing Piece of Stoicism: Why Kindness is Strength | Donald Robertson
Modern Stoicism gets sold as self-control and grit, which leaves out the part Marcus Aurelius arguably cared about most. Donald Robertson and I talk about the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow to Handle Difficult People: Stoic Strategies, Empathy vs. Compassion, and Communication Techniques
Some people are genuinely hard to deal with: the high-conflict ones, the boundary-trampling ones, the family member you cannot just walk away from. This…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksDonald Robertson on Socrates, Philosophy, and Modern Self-Help
I sat down with Donald Robertson, author and psychotherapist, for a proper conversation about Socrates: his life, his methods, and why a man who wrote nothing…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksCreating the Ultimate Stoic Routine: Work Rituals (2)
Part two of the series on building a Stoic daily routine, this time on the hours you actually work. Whether your work is a job, a creative project, or…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksCrafting The Ultimate Stoic Routine: Morning Rituals (1)
How you start the morning tends to set the temperature for the rest of the day. This is part one of the routine series, focused on a Stoic morning: a sequence…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Meditation For Judgement And Self-Compassion
The next time you catch yourself judging someone, this guided meditation turns that moment around and points it back at you, gently. Drawing on Marcus…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe 3 Procrastination Traps and How to Avoid Them
A short, practical one on why we put things off and how to stop. I look at where procrastination actually comes from, why the hardest part is almost always the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksEmbody the Stoic Dichotomy of Control: Meditation Practice
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Mind Illuminated (TMI) Stage Two Meditation (1 Hour)
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksDaily Stoic Meditation for Wisdom
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks3 Pillars of Skilful Communication Cheatsheet
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksMind Illuminated Stage One Meditation: Foundational Practice
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksFacing Mortality: A Stoic Death Meditation
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Meditation For Cravings And Attachment
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Evening Meditation For Wisdom And Sleep
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Morning Meditation For Resilience And Peace
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…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe 4 Most Important Mindfulness Tools to Build Focus
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 Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksAvoid These 5 Foolish Traps with Money & Success (Stoic Guide)
If you have ever caught yourself daydreaming about "making it", the money, the status, the proof that you matter, this one is for you. I walk through Chapter…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksWhat Does Stoic Toughness Look Like In Practice?
Toughness gets sold to us as never flinching, never feeling, gritting your teeth and pushing through. I am not convinced that is it. In this episode I work…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow to Hack Health in All Areas with Justin Noppé
Justin Noppé works with health and fitness for a living, so I used this conversation to ask him the questions I actually wanted answered. We get into the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksCan Science Explain Spiritual Experience? With Steve Taylor
Can consciousness and spiritual experience be studied without abandoning scepticism? Steve Taylor is a psychologist at the University of Leeds who works in…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksAnger: The Most Dangerous Emotion
This is a full lesson from one of the premium courses inside The Stoic Vault. We sit with anger through Seneca, who treated it not as a sign of strength but as…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksBuilding Resilience: Stoic Practices for Overcoming Anxiety
Anxiety is the thing I have spent the most time wrestling with, so this episode is less a lecture and more a report from someone still doing the work. I share…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Struggle and Triumph of Living Authentically with Dan Munro (Round 4)
Dan Munro is back for a fourth conversation, and this might be my favourite one yet. Dan is a coach and the author of "The Naked Truth", and his whole project…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksSelf-Mastery and the Discipline of Surrender with Eric Brown
"Self-mastery is the ability to live by choice and not by chance." That line from Eric Brown sets the tone for this whole conversation. We range widely…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksDan Munro’s Guide to Overcoming the Validation Addiction
Dan Munro is back, and this time we go after the validation addiction: the quiet habit of arranging your life around being liked. Dan is a coach and the author…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksClarity of Intent: Stoicism's Formula for Real Success
Most of us measure success by whether we hit the target. The Stoics would say that is the wrong place to put your attention, because the target was never fully…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe 3 Limits of Modern Stoicism
I love Stoicism, which is exactly why I want to be honest about where it falls short. In this lesson I lay out three places modern Stoicism tends to go quiet…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Focus Training: A Six-Step Plan For Distraction
Distraction is rarely a willpower problem. It is usually a setup problem: we sit down to focus without ever preparing the ground. This episode walks through a…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Handle Criticism Without Abandoning Your Work
When you put your work out in public, the criticism comes. I am an introvert who ended up making content for a living, so I have had my share of being told I…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Journalling For Beginners: Build A Daily Practice
Marcus Aurelius did not write Meditations for publication. It was his working notebook. This episode shows how to build a philosophical journalling habit that…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksA Stoic Meditation on Awe: Seeing the Invisible
A guided Stoic meditation on awe. We slow down and try to see what is usually invisible to us: the sheer unlikeliness of being here at all, the scale of the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe 6-Step Mental Checklist Before You Do Anything
We make most decisions on autopilot and only notice afterwards that we reacted instead of chose. This episode lays out a six-step mental checklist you can run…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksSet Stoic Internal Goals: Focus On What You Control
If you set your goal as winning, you have handed your peace of mind to other people and to luck. Epictetus had a fix for this, and it is the heart of Chapter…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Meditation To Calm Your Mind Before You Act
Nerves and overthinking often arrive just before you need to act. This short guided meditation uses a few Stoic ideas to settle the mind: what is in your…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHealing Versus Awakening | Zen Teacher Henry Shukman
Henry Shukman is a Zen teacher and meditation instructor who has woven together meditative practice, psychotherapy and plant medicine on his own road from…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Use Bad Luck Without Pretending It Is Good
A bad weather forecast, a worrying noise from the car, a small omen that something is about to go wrong. These little signals can sour a whole day if you let…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Make Better Trade-Offs When Time Is Tight
Becoming a parent stripped my time down to almost nothing, and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to my focus. This episode is about what I…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksIs Your Need for Approval Causing Anxiety? A Talk with Dr. Aziz
A lot of anxiety hides behind being nice. Dr. Aziz Gazipura has a PhD in clinical psychology and spends his time helping people build social confidence, and…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksEmbracing Fate: Nietzsche's Answer to the Victim Mentality
You can be a genuine victim of something terrible and still refuse to live as a victim. That distinction is the whole episode. As I put it in the conversation…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoicism Meets Authenticity: A Conversation with Dan Munro
A friend kept telling me I had to talk to Dan Munro, so I did, and this is the first of what became several conversations. Dan is a confidence coach with an…