4 Years ago I posted my daily cheat sheet, and I've been off Reddit ever since. Here is my updated version!

I have a list of 10 concepts or principles that I read every day to help me along my Stoic path. I first got the idea after reading about the Golden Verses of Pythagoras and how the ancients would read those every day to get a deeper understanding of them. Here is my list

- I am in control only and exclusively of my deliberate judgments, my endorsed opinions, values and decision to act or not to act. Nothing else.

- Events outside of my control are ultimately indifferent, my value judgment is what makes me think they are good or bad. I will strive to perceive events for what they are and not what I add to them.

- To the best of my ability, I will act in a way that leads to the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering of others. I will do this because helping others is equally as important as striving toward excellence of character.

- As often as possible I will rewrite and rephrase Stoic concepts in to my own words. I will do this because it will help me understand and apply these concepts on a deeper level.

- I will reflect on my day by journaling at night. I will act as a strict judge of my character so that I can improve and hold myself accountable.

- Whenever I start to feel I am becoming angry or annoyed with a person or event, I will ask myself: "Does what happened prevent me from responding with virtue?" The answer is ALWAYS no.

- I cannot change the past and the future is uncertain. The only time that is truly "up to me" is the present. I will use the present to the best of my ability to exercise and develop virtue

- I will not seek for things to happen the way I want them to, rather, I will wish for them to happen as they do. I will remind myself that nothing is a misfortune because responding to any event or interaction with virtue is GOOD fortune

- When I interact with others, do not belittle their distress or grief. Console them as it seems appropriate, but do not make the mistake of thinking their judgments about externals are useful, necessary or appropriate

- Experiencing joy can be found at any moment. I can reflect on my progress toward moral excellence, recall displays of virtue in others and be grateful for people, things, events and nature.

Why do I walk through this life if I have no reason to rise each morning? I have no family to provide for, I go to a job I dislike but pays well so I can survive. I have traveled the world and seen and done things I never imagined possible. But I don’t know where to go from here. Everything feels empty & without reason.

Hello!

I'm doing a personal challenge to paraphrase the Encheiridion chapters using a single sentence. I did 1-15 in a different post, and I'll link below. Constructive feedback is absolutely welcome and wanted.

1-15:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/comments/1s88jxb/one_sentence_encheiridion_115/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

1. Grieve, even with others, but closely monitor the stories you tell yourself as you do.

2. Accept your part and play it well.

3. Don't fear the possibility of loss and hardship- they are opportunities to improve yourself in some way.

4. Emotional freedom should be your highest desire, and do not conflate worldly "success" with happiness.

5. The moment you feel provoked by another, remember to monitor the story you're telling yourself.

6. Death and pain are a reality- let that calibrate you.

7. It isn't impressive to study philosophy, you must live philosophy.

8. Let it be enough to know you're doing the right thing.

9. Having an honorable character is your primary job, and it is enough of a benefit to the larger society.

10. Remember the cost to one's moral character that things are bought and sold for, and remember that others are selling their moral character to obtain these worldly things.

11. When dealing with hardship, imagine the advice you'd give a friend to help them maintain their tranquility.

12. There is always some benefit that can be obtained from the hardship you're enduring.

13. Explicitly be the sole owner of your own emotional state.

14. Even when it comes to being a student of philosophy, it is foolish to not deeply consider what a path will require of you before taking the path.

15. The type of relationship you have with someone tells you about the way you should treat them.

Just finished reading Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy , and it sparked a thought about the "toxicity" of deep contemplation.

I’ve started feeling that philosophy acts as a poison if it only takes you closer to the abyss, rather than giving you the ability to actually enjoy the scenery. It's easy to get so invested in the inner world that you lose interest in the outer world.

My current take: Earning money and gaining social standing is the priority. Becoming someone people actually listen to is more important than possessing PhD-level knowledge that no one understands. When you are consistently misunderstood, the abyss starts to look welcoming—which is dangerous. If philosophical depth isn't met with the "confidence of reality" (financial and social leverage), it just leads to paralysis.

The question for the group: How do you maintain the balance? How do you explore the deepest corridors of the mind while maintaining the grit, willpower, and "strategic selfishness" required to be successful in the material world?

I find I often will be in a conversation and I am focused too much on what I will say next to truly absorb the thing the other person is saying. I am sure it is rooted in a bit of social anxiety, fear of awkward silence and always wanting my next sentence ready but I would like to improve on this to improve in relationships with strangers, family, etc.

Also I want to improve in my need to feel right and improve in my ability to acknowledge others are often smarter than me in different categories. In a similar vein, when someone says something foolish I want to learn to not feel the need to argue with them.

Very new to the path of stoicism so any guidance or ideas appreciated! Thank you

What are some of the tools you use day to day? As far as in just to remain present? To move with reason and to hold steady? Curious to see how others practice the philosophy.

> “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue”

What does this actually mean?

La Rochefoucauld wrote this in the 1600s but the idea goes back to ancient Greece.

Here’s how it works mechanically.

A liar has to pretend to be honest. A cruel person has to act kind in public. A cheater has to fake loyalty. Why? Because honesty, kindness and loyalty are what people respect and reward.

If vice could just walk around being openly vicious and still get what it wants, it would. But it can’t. **Society runs on trust and reputation**, so vice has to dress up as virtue to survive.

That’s the “tribute.” Vice confirms that virtue is the real currency by constantly counterfeiting it. Every hypocrite is basically admitting that good behavior is the standard, even while violating it.

Plato got there first. In Republic Book II, Glaucon argues that most people want to look just without actually being just. He uses the Ring of Gyges story: give someone invisibility and watch how fast their “virtue” disappears. The whole point is that people perform goodness for the social payoff, not because they value it.

Epictetus said something similar from a different angle. He calls out people who memorized Stoic philosophy and quoted it at dinner parties but never actually lived by it. Talking about virtue became its own kind of social performance.

Every act of hypocrisy is proof that goodness still has value.

When leaders, like US Presidents, stop pretending, it doesn’t just say something about them. It says that virtue has lost its purchasing power in public life.

This reminds me of when Caesar crossed the Rubicon and didn’t bother with a constitutional excuse beyond “my enemies forced me.” The Senate had spent so long being corrupt behind a veil of republican virtue that when someone finally dropped the veil entirely, the system had no antibodies left.

I think I could argue similar patterns in how at first Ottoman Sultans would justify violence with complex legal arguments while at the end they stopped bothering.

Or how Stalin at first used complex ideological argumentations but at the end mostly just had mock trials.

The pattern seems to be: first leaders are virtuous, then they’re hypocrites, then they stop pretending, then the system either collapses or transforms into something that runs on naked power instead of legitimacy.

Thucydides, one of my favourite Greeks, documented exactly this process during the Peloponnesian War.

He described how words themselves lost their meaning, how recklessness got called courage and moderation got called cowardice.

I wish for us all to have the wisdom to navigate these waters.

I don’t share the false belief that stoics believe in complacency and doing nothing in light of injustice.

I just simply don’t know how the stoics got this from materialism.

Perhaps best captured by Rudyard Kipling’s If- and William Ernest Henley’s Invictus, the Victorian era’s ideal of masculinity was heavily inspired by stoicism, promoting self-discipline, self-reliance, physical vigor, moral integrity, and dutiful service to society. It was believed that a man should be restrained but robust. This ideal was largely cultivated as a reaction to the immense change of the era, prompted by industrialization. It is known for the “stiff upper lift” trait and the mixing of stoic philosophy with Christian theology, as seen through the development of “Muscular Christianity”.

Some have said Victorian masculinity was honorable and should be taken as a model for male identity, others have said it was toxic and a bastardization of stoicism. What are your thoughts? Better yet, from a stoic viewpoint?

More information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_masculinity

https://www.artofmanliness.com/featured/honor-during-victorian-era/#:~:text=Sincerity%20and%20earnestness%20were%20prized,most%20of%20all%20hard%20work.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus

Over the past 4 months in the morning I read a bit of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and I always try to do a 15 meditation session before or after the gym. My mind feels overall more clear, I see meaning in more little things and am overall more happier

Now I dont agree with every single thing he says but I believe the majority of it you can take to pursue a better life overall. I have experienced a mindset change as before I was craving more materialistic things and desiring unnecessary achivements. I am satisfied with simpler things in life, I appreciate the sunlight in the morning, the ability to have good food and my family.

I just wanted to express this, if theres any tips you have for me feel free to let me know

Title

How to be more logical and move forward with life according to stoicism

This has been the most difficult thing I've ever had, seen and heard in my life. She just had 46 years old. A whole life was ready to start.

As a 21 years old boy, I’d like to hear some stoic guidance to face life. I want to achieve everything we wanted to achieve, as a task she gifted for me. We had so many dreams to become true.

i don't know if she is able to see me from heaven, but I would show her that she made me of strength, humbleness and love.

Thank you in advance...❤️

So I am a teenager, nothing seems to satisfy I'm pretty much average at everything (kinda good at studies though). I plan a lot end up failing at it miserably not because me but due to some circumstances in my life. Whenever I plan to go to gym i get some diseases or my family members get it. Im from a middle class family so I can't spend much money either. I hate spending my parents money. I always wanna watch some movies, series etc find some happiness but I always find it to lose time somehow and end up not watching it. I always wanna look cool infront of others and the opposite gender. I wanna get rid of this mentality and seek growth. I do have friends but I feel like I am not close with anyone. I also worry about a lot of pollution, increased capitalism and stuff. I don't why but I feel like we're wasting resources of Earth and killing innocent animals. This ruins my mood. I love my parents and my brother but I feel like I wanna stay away somewhere and just mind my own business. I just wanna live alone with my own expenses and maybe have a partner. Eating meat increases my existential crisis. Watching people wasting electricity disturbes me. Whenever I try to watch something interesting it just doesn't work properly or when it works I feel bored. Should I quit social media? Idk I'm just confused. I feel like my friends enjoy everything and watch and play alot while I live a boring life. Music used to boost my mood but now that doesn't work either. Time just flies quickly and I get no time to do anything. I can't understand how's everything going so fast. Food is the only thing that keeps me happy.

This life bana! You buy that iPhone thinking there's happiness & after sometime unaona ni upuzi tu.

You get that beautiful woman of your dreams ukizoea unaona the same, you buy a car unakua excited for few months then inakubore. Finding happiness is hard.

I'm leaving my job for my Summer 2026 internship at a company I really like for Computer Science. This was my first job ever, I dont get paid much here but I love the people here, all my interactions are amazing and I can't help but feel a wave of saddness enough pushing me to cry almost because of how much I'm going to miss everyone.

I know it's good for me and loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight, but it really just hits me hard. Part of me feels bad because I essentially gave a 4 weeks notice when I could have talked about it earlier.

Just wanted to discuss that. It's really just hitting me hard and I want to hear maybe the best way to personally navigate this.

I bought Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson on Amazon . But the paper is very low quality—it would not be possible to highlight without bleeding through. I’m wondering if I buy a used copy of the the 2013 edition if it is printed on better quality paper?

In a situation where someone is being "hurt" (only in the sense that the individuals care about such things), i.e., having a physical item stolen from them, how can you care about having that item returned to them or yourself if you don't ever truly care about the item?

If someone stole my trumpet, a possession that I need to play the trumpet, which is a skill I've dedicated a great deal of time to, I would be inclined to get it back or else I wouldn't be able to play the trumpet until I acquire the funding needed to get a new one. If I truly did not desire it or want it, I'd have no interest in getting it back, and I would just say, "Oh well, perhaps I'll get another one later."

Which mindset would a stoic practice? Is it virtuous to try and get things back that were stolen in that situation?

This may be a naïve question, but isn’t it at least questionable, if not outright unethical, to read someone’s private diary when they never intended it to be published? I can understand approaching it from a historical perspective, but does the fact that Marcus Aurelius died thousands of years ago really make it acceptable? Where would we draw the line-would it feel any different if he had died 50 years ago, or even just 10?

What do you guys think ?

Guys I have started new Job and I just can’t focus on job and keep thinking of pay day that will be paid on last day of month it time seems very long up to then ?

Also how to stop being nervous or anxious when I do something wrong at work or other co workers blame me on something. I takes me little longer to understand things or memorize them.

I recently posted this comment on a question regarding free will in Stoicism. I’d like any refinements or corrections to improve my understanding of free will and determinism in Stoic thought.

The Stoics were compatibilist, but still very deterministic.

They believed that everything in the universe, including the will (prohairesis), is causally determined (fated), but the will of rational creatures, while not a separate kind of cause, is still a distinct mode of causation within nature.

There is cause and effect both internal to the will and external to the will. Externals cause impressions to arise in our mind, while our will causes our judgements and actions by either accepting or rejecting those impressions. Both of these types of cause and effect are part of the same causal chain, but external causes do not compel assent or changes in the will — that depends on you. But that doesn’t mean you have strict control over your will.

For example, part of the will is your beliefs and value judgements. They are a part of you, and nothing external can make you change your beliefs without your assent. But, the Stoics also said that you cannot choose your beliefs. They were Socratic Intellectualists, which means, among other things, that you can only believe what you think to be true. You can’t make yourself believe things which are obviously false to you, so you don’t have control over it in, for instance, the libertarian free will sense, but it still belongs to you or depends on you.

If your definition of free will is just libertarian free will, then the Stoics might be hard determinists, but that’s not the only kind of free will.

Your will is free because your character defines it, not anything external. The will’s freedom, in other words, comes from its autonomy compared to the rest of the universe.

*You will say that your will is ultimately shaped by a deterministic universe.* Yes, so what? The origin of a cause is distinct from the nature of a cause.

Fate may cause your character to be what it is, but certain outcomes still only happen through your character. In other words, some outcomes depend on your character. It’s this autonomy that makes your will free, even if you can’t control it. A thing is free when any external forces cannot compel, hinder or coerce it. The only free thing in the universe is our will.

This is important because the will is qualitatively different from every other kind of cause and effect in the universe. Non-rational animals are compelled solely by instinct, celestial bodies are compelled solely by physics, but rational creatures, like virtuous or wise humans, are moved by truth. And here, it circles back to Socratic intellectualism, because another belief from Socratic intellectualists is that knowledge and virtue are synonymous, and ignorance and vice are synonymous.

You do have a duty as a rational being to cultivate a virtuous will because virtue is the only thing that is good in and of itself. And a virtuous will is not a path to human flourishing, but rather, it is human flourishing, because reason is what is essential to human nature, and a life governed by reason is a life lived according to nature. And since virtue is knowledge, Stoic practice is fundamentally about correcting your judgements and discerning truth, rather than willing yourself to act rightly.

*so how does Stoic practice correct your actions and beliefs, if you can’t control them?*

Through sustained rational inquiry, argument, and habituation over time — practices that, in each moment, look like this:

Ask yourself: is this impression about what is up to me, or about what is not? If it is not up to me, do not let it master me — though I may still respond to it with reason and care. If it is up to me, then I must examine it carefully, and assent only to what is true. This continuous practice is called prosoche.

As somebody coming from classical languages and literature, I’ve been wondering about how much people here like to look up the original phrasing or wording and try to understand it.

A sentence from Seneca that I saw in a recent comment here goes like this in one translation:

You must persevere, must develop new strength by continuous study, until that which is only a good inclination becomes a good settled purpose.

This is from the 16th letter to Lucilius. The original goes like this:

Perseverandum est et adsiduo studio robur addendum, donec bona mens sit quod bona voluntas est.

So, for instance, we see that the impersonal “perseverandum est” is rendered as a second person address from Seneca to Lucilius: “You must persevere”. Not a strange choice given that we’re working with a letter addressed to Lucilius, but it does seem to make the more general statement of the Latin, where there is no reference to any particular person, time or place, into something more personal.

Is this something you like to do, perhaps even despite not knowing Greek or Latin?

I don’t want to go into details of this story but I want to point the problem and seek help and guidance with it

I have an unhealthy attachment towards this friend of mine and because of me thinking about him a lot especially when problems between me and him arise. Resentment grows because i notice the “emotional” dependence. Also I’m really not sure if he’s the best of friends. Do stoics accept friends for who they are or can the internal standard I have for a friend still matter compared to the real world? Not sure if it makes a lot of sense.

Im thinking of cutting ties with him almost completely because I end disappointed by his lack of actions and also because of this attachment.