Just over sixteen years ago, I bought Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations on Amazon. Amazon Prime didn’t exist then and to qualify for free shipping, I had to purchase a few other books at the same time. I was 19 years old. I didn’t know what Stoicism was. I didn’t know who Marcus Aurelius was (besides the […]

Today it’s all about passion. Find your passion. Live passionately. Inspire the world with your passion. Passion, we tell ourselves, is the source of joy. The Stoics disagreed. In fact, they believed that passion(s) were what contributed to our misery. To the experts and gurus who assure us that passion—that unbridled enthusiasm, that willingness to pounce on […]

“We suffer more from imagination than from reality.” — Seneca The 21st century has been described as “The Age of Anxiety,” “The United States of Stress,” “The World of Worry.” The implication is that what we are experiencing—pandemics, terrorism, political and economic turmoil, existential angst, and let’s stop there—is unique, unprecedented, uncharted. News headlines, tweets, […]

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” — Epictetus What do the goals we set, whether personal or professional, require? If we hope to accomplish our goals, we need the discipline to hold ourselves accountable. We need the self-control to stay focused only on the things within our […]