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 BrooksHow to Think Like a Roman Emperor: Insights with Donald Robertson
Donald Robertson is one of the people who has done most to bring Stoicism into the modern world, partly because he comes at it as a clinical psychologist who…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksBuild Discipline Through Habits And Community | Eric Brown
Eric Brown is back, and this conversation is about the unglamorous engine room of change: habits. As he puts it, "your daily disciplines cast a vote for the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Put Stoicism Into Practice | Donald Robertson
Donald Robertson describes Stoicism as "a kind of psychological toolbox", full of strategies for handling anxiety, anger and pain, and that framing runs…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksWhy, What, How: A Calmer Way To Build Discipline
We tend to think of discipline as punishment, something you do to someone, or to yourself, when they get it wrong. This episode argues the opposite: at root…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Role Ethics: Stop Trying To Be Everything
Trying to be everything to everyone is a fast route to feeling stretched and resentful. The Stoics had a cleaner idea, role ethics: at any given moment you are…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Paradox of The Dichotomy of Control and the Trap of Feeling Good
Almost everyone who reads a bit of Stoicism gets the dichotomy of control. Far fewer actually feel any relief from it. You can recite "some things are up to us…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksWriting to Resilience: Inside My Daily Stoic Journaling Practice
This is a behind-the-scenes look at the Stoic morning journal I actually do, not an idealised version. I walk through how I lay the page out to set the day…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Support Someone Without Taking On Their Pain
People think Stoicism means going cold. Caring about the right things, feeling nothing for the rest. I think that gets it backwards. In this episode I look at…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow Self-Reflection Shapes Happiness | Justin Noppé
Which emotions make a life feel good, and how much of that is in your control? Justin Noppé and I use that question to examine self-reflection, journalling and…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksAMA #3: How to Escape Intrusive Negative Thoughts
You cannot stop intrusive thoughts from arriving. What you can change is what happens next. In this AMA I take questions on how to stop getting hooked by…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Turn Stoicism Into A Daily Practice | Allan From WhatIsStoicism
Allan found Stoicism through Tim Ferriss and William Irvine, then had to work out how to make it part of an ordinary day. We spend most of this conversation on…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Ultimate Stoic Daily Routine
Most advice on Stoic routines stays vague. In this one I walk through a full day, hour by hour, with specific practices you can use straight away. It is built…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksAnxiety is Your Friend: Rapid-Fire Anxiety Q&A
I tend to think anxiety gets a worse reputation than it deserves. Handled well, it is information, not an enemy. In this fast-paced Q&A I sat down with my…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksWhen Someone You Love Is Suffering: A Stoic Response (AMA)
Someone you love is suffering and you cannot fix it. What does the dichotomy of control ask you to do then? This episode is a preview of a longer listener Q&A…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow Desire Takes Control: Three Stages Of Stoic Practice
Desire becomes a problem when wanting an external result starts to run your life. This episode maps three stages of attachment and three ways the Stoics worked…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksMarcus Aurelius Morning Meditation For Difficult People
Marcus Aurelius began the day by reminding himself that he would meet meddling, ungrateful and difficult people. This guided morning contemplation turns that…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks2 Types of Desires That Always Cause Disappointment
Some desires are set up to disappoint you no matter what you do. In this lesson I name two of them, what I call impossible desires and slave desires, and show…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Handle Insults: A Stoic Step-By-Step
An insult only lands if you agree with it. That is the Stoic claim, and in this lesson I turn it into something you can actually use. I walk through a…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks3 Communication Skills For Better Relationships
Most relationship trouble is really a communication problem wearing a disguise. In this talk I lay out the three pillars I keep coming back to: the habits that…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Loving-Kindness Meditation For Compassion And Service
Loving-kindness is usually associated with Buddhism, but the Stoics also believed we are made for each other. This guided meditation moves through three forms…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksCan Stoic "Positive Reframing" Go Too Far? w/ Donald Robertson
Reframing a bad event into something useful is one of the classic Stoic moves. But I have always wondered where the line is. Can you reframe too much? Is there…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Gratitude Meditation For Awe In Ordinary Life
Most of what keeps you alive is invisible to you right now. The food and water that arrived without you thinking about it. The atmosphere holding at exactly…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksMy Experience Using Stoicism With Anxiety | WhatIsStoicism
I spent years trying to understand and work with anxiety. In this conversation Allan, creator of WhatIsStoicism, interviews me about how I have used Stoic…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksWhat Did Stoics Think About Exercise? w/ Donald Robertson
The Stoics talked about training the body as well as the mind, but it rarely comes up in modern Stoicism. So I asked Donald Robertson what the ancient Stoics…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksEpictetus On Wisdom: Stop Trying To Look Wise
A lot of us get into philosophy and self-improvement not to actually become wiser, but to be seen as wise. Epictetus spotted how badly that backfires. In this…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Break The Cycle Of Stress | Epictetus
Most of us run a quiet stress loop without noticing it. We tell ourselves we have to worry, or something bad will happen. In this episode I look at that game…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksDonald Robertson on Illusion of Mastery, The View from Above, and Time Travelling Stoics
It is easy to read a lot about Stoicism and mistake that for actually practising it. I put this to Donald Robertson, and we get into the gap between knowing…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Superhero Diogenes the Cynic: Be Prepared for Every Fortune
Asked what philosophy had taught him, Diogenes the Cynic said it taught him “to be prepared for every fortune.” I think he is one of the strangest, most useful…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe "What If Technique" to Untangle the Source of Your Anxiety
When you are anxious, the fear is usually hiding underneath a vaguer worry. The What If technique is a way of following the thread down to whatever you are…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksCan Stoicism Make You Happier? | Donald Robertson
Modern Stoicism gets sold mostly as resilience and acceptance. But I wanted to ask the obvious follow-up: can it actually make life more joyful? Not just…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksDonald Robertson Writes The World’s First Stoic Graphic Novel
Donald Robertson spent nearly three years making VERISSIMUS, a graphic novel about the life and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. It might be the most ambitious…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Path of the Spiritual Warrior
The spiritual warrior is someone who treats every hardship as training rather than punishment. In this short clip I unpack that idea and how the Stoics turned…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksJames Stockdale and the Power of Realistic Optimism
James Stockdale spent over seven years as a prisoner of war and credited Stoicism with getting him through. What he noticed there became the Stockdale Paradox…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Stoic Reframe to Deal with Loss of Any Kind
The Stoics had a hard but freeing way of thinking about loss. Nothing is really yours. Everything you enjoy is on loan, and grief hurts less when you stop…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow Stoicism Helped Me Stop Fighting Anxiety
I spent years trying different ways to get rid of anxiety. Stoicism and cognitive behavioural therapy gave me a better question: what happens if I stop…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHard Challenges Unlock Inner Superpowers
The Stoic claim here is bold: whatever lands in front of you, you already hold the inner resource to meet it. Tempted? You also carry self-restraint. The more…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksEpictetus On Pain: What The Mind Adds
The Stoics drew a sharp line between what happens to the body and what the mind does with it. Pain is real. But the suffering on top of it, the part that says…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Acceptance Contemplation to Reduce Anxiety Over an Uncertain Future
Most of our anxiety about the future is really resistance to the fact that we cannot control it. This guided contemplation works on accepting events as they…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow to Let Go of Things You Love
How do you enjoy something fully while staying ready to lose it? Epictetus answers with one of his best images, the sailor who goes ashore to gather shells and…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoicism is Preparation For the Worst Day of Your Life
A tragedy happened close to home recently, and it knocked me sideways. This episode is me thinking out loud about death, life, and gratitude in the middle of…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow To Turn Stoicism Into A Practice You Can Measure
Most people have heard of Stoicism. Far fewer have met an actual Stoic, someone as calm and self-disciplined as the people who wrote the books. That gap is…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksEpictetus on Foolish Bragging vs. Wise Pride
Epictetus drew a sharp line between two things that feel almost identical from the inside: bragging about what you happen to have, and taking pride in who you…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks11 Stoic Strategies to Conquer Fear
Seneca wrote about fear more honestly than almost anyone. He knew it from the inside, the dread that arrives before the thing you dread ever does. In this one…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Art of Stoic Reading
Reading the Stoics and being changed by them are two different things. You can finish Meditations and carry nothing into Tuesday morning. A listener, Mike…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksIs Anxiety Ever Useful? Donald Robertson On Derren Brown
The Stoics can sound as if they want you to feel nothing. Donald Robertson, who has spent his career bridging Stoicism and modern therapy, takes that head on…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksA Stoic Wake-Up Call For Procrastination
This guided reflection is meant to make you slightly uncomfortable. You will sit with the questions procrastination helps you avoid: Am I using my time well?…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Insult Training: Practise Staying Calm Under Verbal Attack
An insult only stings if you let it through. The Stoics had specific methods for taking the heat out of it, and in this one we do not just discuss them, we…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Negative Visualisation For Gratitude And Resilience
This is a guided meditation in the Stoic practice of premeditation of adversity. You will spend time imagining how much harder your life could be, and in doing…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Guided Reflection On Desire And Aversion
Epictetus had clear advice on the two pulls that run most of our lives: what we want and what we are trying to avoid. This is a guided reflection on both. You…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Object Deconstruction to Reduce Cravings and Attachments
We rarely see the things we crave plainly. We wrap them in a story, and the story is what hooks us. This guided reflection uses the Stoic practice of object…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksA Guided Stoic Reflection On The Death Of Seneca
Seneca met his death the way he had spent years preparing to. This guided visualisation places you inside his body on his last day, so you can feel your way…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Goal-Setting Visualisation: Focus On What You Control
Stoicism can look paradoxical at first. We are told the outer world is not ours to control and that our energy belongs on the inner one. So where do goals fit?…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksThe Stoic Guide to Overcoming Anxiety
I lived with intense anxiety for the better part of a decade. It sent me down a lot of rabbit holes in personal development and philosophy, and most of what I…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksLearning Stoicism: A Systematic Approach to Stoic Praxis
People often treat Stoicism as something you read rather than something you train. This episode is my attempt to lay out a more systematic way to actually…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksWelcome to The Stoic Handbook Podcast
Welcome. This is The Stoic Handbook, where I share short lessons and guided meditations on using Stoic ideas in modern life. I am not a guru, just someone who…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoic Guide to Navigating Troubled and Toxic Relationships
Difficult people are one of the most reliable sources of suffering we have, and the Stoics knew it. Marcus filled his private notes with reminders to stay…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksDifference Between "Would" and "Could"
One Marcus Aurelius line has stuck with me more than most: stop arguing about what a good person should be, and just be one. It cuts straight through the…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksStoicism is Martial Arts for the Mind
I have trained martial arts for years, but my real love is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It has changed how I relate to my body, my sense of who I am, and the world…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksHow Stoics Interpret Reality
Epictetus had a deceptively simple claim: it is not events that disturb us, but our judgements about them. Sit with that long enough and it changes how you…
The Stoic Handbook with Jon BrooksMeditation: The Stoic Daily Mindful Review
One of the best meditation books I have read is The Mind Illuminated by John Yates, who writes as Culadasa. He holds a doctorate in neuroscience and tens of…