What We Can Learn From the Stoics - And Why It's More Relevant Than Ever
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Two thousand years ago, a Roman emperor sat alone each morning and wrote in a journal.
He wasn't writing for an audience. He never intended his words to be published. He was simply doing what he did every day, examining his thoughts, questioning his assumptions, and reminding himself how to live well in a world that was, by any measure, extraordinarily demanding.
That emperor was Marcus Aurelius. His private journal became one of the most widely read books in history. And the philosophy that shaped it 'Stoicism' has quietly become one of the most relevant frameworks for modern life that the ancient world ever produced.
This is what the Stoics believed, what they practised, and why it matters more now than it has in centuries.
What Is Stoicism?
Stoicism is a school of philosophy founded in Athens around 300 BC by a merchant named Zeno of Citium. It was later developed and refined by a series of remarkable thinkers, most notably Epictetus, a former slave who became one of the most influential teachers of his age, Seneca, a playwright and statesman who served as advisor to Emperor Nero, and Marcus Aurelius, who ruled the Roman Empire for nearly two decades while writing philosophy in his spare moments.
The Stoics were not interested in abstract theorising. They were interested in one practical question: how should a person live?
Their answer was built around a deceptively simple idea.
The Central Idea: The Dichotomy of Control
The foundation of Stoic philosophy is what Epictetus called the dichotomy of control, the distinction between what is up to us and what is not.
In his Enchiridion, written down by his student Arrian, Epictetus opens with this:
"Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions."
This sounds simple. It is not simple to live. But the Stoics believed that almost all human suffering comes from our failure to make this distinction clearly, from treating things outside our control as though they were within it, and things within our control as though they were beyond it.
We cannot control the traffic, the weather, other people's opinions of us, the economy, our health, or most of what happens to us. We can control how we respond. We can control what we think, what we value, what we choose, and how we treat people.
The Stoics argued that if you can genuinely internalise this distinction, not just understand it intellectually but live by it, you will be largely immune to anxiety, resentment, and frustration, because all three depend on caring too much about things that were never in your hands to begin with.
Memento Mori - Remember You Will Die
One of the Stoics' most distinctive practices sounds, on the surface, rather bleak. They regularly contemplated their own mortality.
Marcus Aurelius returns to this theme throughout his Meditations. Seneca wrote about it extensively in his letters. The Latin phrase memento mori 'remember you will die' was a Stoic reminder, not a morbid obsession but a clarifying tool.
The Stoics believed that awareness of death is one of the most powerful antidotes to procrastination, pettiness, and the misallocation of attention. When you genuinely hold in mind that your time is finite, that the people you love will not always be here, that today is a resource you can spend or waste, it becomes much harder to justify wasting it on things that don't matter.
Seneca was particularly direct on this point. In his essay On the Shortness of Life, he argued that life is not short, we simply waste most of it. We give our time to other people's priorities, to distractions, to busyness mistaken for purpose. The person who uses their time with full awareness of its finitude, he wrote, will find life is long enough for everything that matters.
In an era of infinite distraction, this feels less like ancient philosophy and more like urgent practical advice.
Negative Visualisation - Wanting What You Already Have
Related to memento mori is a Stoic practice called negative visualisation, or premeditatio malorum - the premeditation of evils.
The practice involves deliberately imagining the loss of things you currently have and take for granted. Your health. Your relationships. Your work. Your home. Not as an exercise in pessimism, but as a tool for gratitude.
The Stoics observed that human beings are extraordinarily good at adapting to good fortune and extraordinarily bad at appreciating it while it lasts. We get the job we wanted and within six months it feels ordinary. We fall in love and within a year the relationship becomes the backdrop to our life rather than its centrepiece. We achieve goals that felt important and immediately replace them with new ones, never pausing to enjoy what we worked for.
Negative visualisation interrupts this adaptation. By imagining what it would be like to lose something, we temporarily recover the appreciation we had before we became accustomed to it. The Stoics weren't trying to make themselves miserable. They were trying to make themselves grateful.
Modern psychology has independently arrived at the same conclusion. Research on what psychologists call hedonic adaptation, our tendency to return to a stable level of happiness regardless of positive or negative events, confirms exactly what the Stoics observed. And studies on gratitude practices show effects strikingly similar to what negative visualisation was designed to produce.
The Obstacle Is the Way
One of the most practically useful ideas in Stoic philosophy is the reframe of adversity.
Marcus Aurelius wrote: "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
The Stoics did not believe in avoiding difficulty. They believed in using it. Every obstacle, they argued, contains within it the opportunity to practise a virtue. Patience, courage, creativity & resilience. The person who can genuinely see setbacks as opportunities for growth rather than simply as setbacks has an enormous advantage over everyone who cannot.
This is not naive optimism. The Stoics were not pretending that bad things are actually good. They were making a more subtle argument: that your response to bad things is within your control, and that the right response is almost always to look for what the situation is teaching you or demanding of you rather than to simply resist or resent it.
Epictetus, who was born into slavery and suffered a broken leg at the hands of his master, had more reason than most to test this philosophy against reality. He concluded that his circumstances had no power over his character unless he gave them that power. No one could enslave his mind, he argued, unless he allowed them to.
Amor Fati - Love of Fate
The most demanding of the Stoic ideas, and perhaps the most profound, is amor fati - love of fate.
The Stoics did not merely advocate acceptance of what cannot be changed. They advocated something stronger: a genuine embrace of it. Not tolerating what happens to you but actively willing it. Finding in the totality of your experience, including the painful parts, something to affirm rather than resist.
Friedrich Nietzsche, who was deeply influenced by the Stoics, described this as his formula for human greatness: "That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it... but love it."
This is an extraordinarily high standard. Few people can honestly claim to have reached it. But as an aspiration, as a direction of travel, it has a profound effect on how you move through difficult periods. The person practising amor fati is not asking why is this happening to me? A question with no useful answer. They are asking what does this require of me? A question that always has one.
The Stoic Daily Practice
What made Stoicism distinctive among ancient philosophies was its insistence on practice. These ideas were not meant to be read and admired. They were meant to be lived, daily, through deliberate habits of mind.
Marcus Aurelius wrote every morning. His Meditations are, in essence, a daily journalling practice, a record of his attempts to apply Stoic principles to the specific challenges he faced as emperor, father, husband and human being. He writes the same lessons to himself multiple times, not because he had forgotten them but because he needed to re-anchor them in his thinking before the day made its demands.
Epictetus recommended a daily review, a practice of examining at the end of each day where you had acted in accordance with your values and where you had fallen short, without self-punishment but with honest assessment.
Seneca wrote letters to a friend, but really to himself. Working through ideas, examining his own failings, and articulating what he believed. His letters are among the most readable pieces of philosophical writing ever produced, precisely because they feel like a person genuinely trying to figure out how to live rather than an expert dispensing wisdom from a height.
The common thread is reflection. Writing. Daily examination of thoughts, actions and values. The Stoics did not separate philosophy from practice. For them, a belief you don't act on is not really a belief at all.
Why Stoicism Is Relevant Now
It would be easy to dismiss Stoicism as the philosophy of a different time before smartphones, before the pace of modern work, before the particular pressures of a connected, comparison-driven world.
In fact, it was built for exactly this kind of world.
Stoicism emerged in Athens during a period of significant social upheaval, was developed in Rome during wars, political instability and personal catastrophe, and was practised by people who faced slavery, exile, illness, the deaths of children, and the collapse of everything they had built. The Stoics knew about adversity. They knew about loss. They knew about the feeling that the world was moving too fast and in the wrong direction.
Their answer was not to change the world, though Marcus Aurelius spent twenty years trying. Their answer was to change themselves. To become the kind of person who could function well regardless of external circumstances. To find in the act of living deliberately, with attention, with intention, with honesty about what matters and what doesn't, something the world could not take away.
In a time of constant distraction, anxiety about things we cannot control, and a culture that measures worth by external achievement, this feels less like ancient history and more like a direct address to the present moment.
How to Apply Stoicism in Daily Life
You don't need to read the complete works of Marcus Aurelius to begin practising Stoicism. Here are the most practical entry points:
The morning question. Before the day begins, ask yourself: what is within my control today, and what is not? Write it down. Return to it when you feel pulled toward anxiety about things outside your hands.
The evening review. At the end of each day, ask three questions that Epictetus recommended: What did I do well today? Where did I fall short? What will I do differently tomorrow? This is not self-criticism. It is honest assessment in the service of improvement.
The weekly negative visualisation. Once a week, spend two minutes imagining the absence of something you currently have. A relationship, your health, your work, your home. Then spend one minute being genuinely grateful it is still there.
The obstacle reframe. When something goes wrong, before reacting, ask: what is this asking of me? What skill, quality or response does this situation require? What can I learn from it?
The daily anchor. Choose one Stoic principle. One idea, one quote, one reminder, and put it somewhere visible. Your desk, your journal, your phone screen. Something that pulls your thinking back to what matters when the day tries to scatter it.
A Final Word From Marcus Aurelius
Near the end of the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes something that has stayed with readers for two thousand years:
"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength."
He wrote this to himself. As a reminder. Because he knew, as any honest person knows, that it is easy to believe this on a quiet morning and very difficult to live by it when the day gets hard.
That gap between knowing and living, between understanding an idea and embodying it, is exactly what the daily practice of Stoicism is designed to close. One morning at a time. One reflection at a time. One honest question at a time.
The Stoics have been dead for centuries. Their ideas have never been more alive.
Inspired to bring a little Stoic practice into your daily routine? Explore our Stoic Reflection Desk Cards - 52 principles from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus, designed to sit on your desk and anchor your thinking every single day.