Before we begin our studies we need to ask ourselves: Who are the people that followed these precepts? This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. “Lameness is an impediment to the leg,” he would later say, “but not to the will.” Epictetus would choose to see his disability as only a physical impairment, and in fact it was that idea of choice that defined the core of his philosophical beliefs. Must be strangely exciting. All was well, except Antoninus lived and ruled for twenty three years. Preparing for the day ahead. In this case, a doctor meets an angel. On February 25th, 138, Hadrian adopted a 51 year old man named Antoninus Pius on the condition that he in turn adopted Marcus Aurelius. It’s not enough to simply hear these lessons once, instead, one practices them over and over again, turns them over in their mind, and most importantly, writes them down and feels them flowing through their fingers in doing so. Each card includes challenge instructions, a quote from Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, and an inspiring illustration. Cato gave his life trying to restore the Roman Republic. This exercise—envisioning all the millions and millions of people, all the “armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths”—prompts us to take perspective and just like the previous exercise, remind us how small we are. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions not outside.” — Marcus Aurelius, “You have power over your mind – not outside events. There is no good or bad to the practicing Stoic. The purpose of studying philosophy, Seneca learned from his beloved instructor, was to “take away with him some one good thing every day: he should return home a sounder man, or on the way to becoming sounder.”. Marcus Aurelius the emperor. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change. The second, more subtle point, is to tap into what the Stoics call sympatheia, or a mutual interdependence with the whole of humanity. I have simply wanted an object to crave 4BC in Corduba, Spain, the son of a wealthy and learned writer known to history as Seneca the Elder, While his commitment to self-improvement was beloved by his teachers, they also knew that his father—no fan of philosophy—was paying them to train his son for an active and ambitious political career. The quote from Seneca above takes part of Memento Mori—the ancient practice of reflection on mortality that goes back to Socrates, who said that the proper practice of philosophy is “about nothing else but dying and being dead.” In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote that “You could leave life right now. It’s going to walk you through more than a dozen actionable challenges that will help you elevate your game as a reader, learn how to think more critically and discover important books that will change your life. Give it a shot. It would be hard to find a word that dealt a greater injustice at the hands of the English language than “Stoic.” In its rightful place, Stoicism is a tool in the pursuit of self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom: something one uses to live a great life, rather than some esoteric field of academic inquiry.