You think the Stoics didn’t experience stress?
Of course they did. Zeno lost everything in a shipwreck. Cleanthes was dirt poor, scraping together a living watering rich people’s gardens (and both Zeno and Cleanthes were repeatedly attacked and criticized by their philosophical rival Aristo). Seneca had health problems, was exiled, and then had to show up to work for years in Nero’s court—walking on eggshells around an unstable man with a penchant for bloodlust. Epictetus survived thirty years of brutal slavery. Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome. He had 14 children…and 60 million subjects. He oversaw more than 2 million square miles of territory. Can you imagine?
The friction of making ends meet. Of conflicting obligations. Of overwhelming responsibility. Of too few hours in the day. Of people. They say hell is other people—who isn’t surrounded by a lot of those? In addition to uncertainty, pain, failure, loss, the list goes on.
These were all inevitable parts of life, according to the Stoics. But suffering because of them? Actually being stressed because there is stress? No. Those are not the same things. One does not have to follow the other.
When Marcus Aurelius said that he could choose not to feel harmed and then he wouldn’t be? That’s what he meant. When he talked about discarding his anxiety, that’s what he meant. Stress was a fact of life. Being stressed, feeling stressed, acting out in response to stress—that was a choice.
It was up to him, as it is up to us. We don’t have to worry. We don’t have to dread. We don’t have to be overwhelmed.
Indeed, you might argue that all of the Stoics’ teachings revolve around the idea of combating and avoiding the unnecessary pain of stress and anxiety and worry and frustration. The philosophy demands the active life—it demands that we participate in politics, be social, contribute to the common good, fight for what’s right—and so it is critical that Stoicism also teaches us how to resist the temptation to succumb to the stresses that follow that activity.
That’s why the pages of Marcus Aurelius’s private journal are filled with notes to himself on how to calm down, to see things from a different perspective, to not take this or that too seriously. That’s why Epictetus talked to his students over and over again about focusing on what was in their control and nothing else. Seneca’s letters are constant reminders to not suffer before it is necessary. Not just reminders, but practical, actionable steps to overcoming both.
Inspired by these last few difficult years, we’ve assembled the best Stoic wisdom into an actionable course—Slay Your Stress: A Daily Stoic Challenge. So far it’s been an incredible success—we heard from more people after its debut in 2020 than almost anything we’ve produced. Well, with the current state of the world we decided there wasn’t a better time to enhance this course and bring it back.
The new 20-day challenge, which includes 6 new days, is designed to equip you with the strategies and mindsets needed to reclaim your life from the negative effects of stress and anxiety.
How much more enjoyable would your days be without the constant dread of stress looming over you? How much more productive would you be without spending hours per day indulging imagined troubles? How much better would your relationships be?
Stoics have been trying to domesticate feelings of anxiety and stress for two millennia. They didn’t always win, but they managed to make progress, the same kind of progress you want to make. We’ve designed this course to help you reclaim your life from stress and anxiety. In this 20-day challenge, we will lay out the most actionable ways to manage those counterproductive emotions, backed by thousands of years of research and practice.
You’ll learn to:
- Seize what is in your control and ignore the rest
- Make your to-do list more manageable
- Stop sweating the small stuff
- Get out of your own head
- Gain perspective by zooming out
- Wash off the mud of life
And much, much more…
Additionally, there will be 3 live video sessions with Ryan Holiday, the bestselling author whose books about Stoic philosophy have sold more than 5 million copies in over 30 languages. Along with his writing, Ryan owns a small-town bookstore he opened during the pandemic, travels around the globe to teach people and organizations how to apply Stoicism to their actual lives, and has two young sons. Like the ancient Stoics whose teachings and lived experiences we will be drawing from, Ryan has a lot of experience using Stoicism to domesticate feelings of anxiety and stress.
How many hours per day do you lose to stress and anxiety? That’s what the Stoics wanted to ask. Now multiply that by 365. Now multiply that by the rest of your life. Imagine what you could do with those hours, those weeks and months, those years.
Don’t you think it’s time you did something about this?
Sign up for Slay Your Stress Now
This will be a live course. Beginning on July 26, all participants will move through the course together at the same pace.
Registration is now officially open.
Registration will close on July 25 at MIDNIGHT.
