The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

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 has spent years testing this stuff and re...

1 Jun 20212min

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 tolerant and kind with the people who tested ...

28 Mai 202128min

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 temptation to theorise instead of act. In this...

8 Mai 202110min

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 around me. More than anything, it taught me ...

16 Apr 202111min

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 meet almost everything. In this lesson I bre...

31 Mar 20215min

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 thousands of hours on the cushion, and it s...

24 Mar 202113min

I read a lot, so it feels strange to say this, but reading books is a poor way to actually learn something. Exposure to ideas is not the same as living them. In this one I lay out how I think about le...

17 Mar 20219min

A Stoic Handbook reader wrote in about pornography addiction, and I do my best to give it the careful answer it deserves. It is a nuanced subject and I try not to flatten it. Part of what makes it har...

5 Mar 202125min