Skeptical, not Cynical: How to Think in an Age of Misinformation | 372

In today’s media environment do you know how to think well? How do you know who to trust? Today we’re going to talk about how Stoicism can help you to think critically about what you consume, and how be skeptical without being cynical. “You become what you give your attention to…If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.” — Epictetus ACT 1 — THE PROBLEM When was the last time you read a headline and immediately trusted it? Not skeptically clicked through to check — just trusted it? If you're like most people, that moment feels increasingly distant. And honestly? That makes sense. We've been burned. We've shared things that turned out to be wrong. We've watched experts contradict each other. We've seen the same event reported in completely opposite ways by outlets that both claim to be telling the truth. The result is a kind of information exhaustion. A low-grade weariness that comes from not knowing what to believe anymore. And I want to say clearly at the start of this episode: that exhaustion is valid. You're not paranoid. You're not stupid. You're a person who's paying attention in an environment that has made paying attention genuinely difficult. But here's where it gets interesting. Because that exhaustion tends to push us toward one of two wrong responses. The first is blind belief — you find a source that feels right, that speaks your language, that confirms your worldview, and you just... outsource your thinking to it. It's comfortable. It's simple. And it's dangerous. The second is total cynicism — you decide everyone is lying, everything is propaganda, and the only rational response is to trust nothing. It feels like wisdom. It isn't. Here's a distinction I want you to hold onto for this entire episode: Skepticism is a method. Cynicism is an identity. The skeptic says show me. They stay open, ask questions, and update when the evidence changes. The cynic has already decided the answer is "they're all lying" — and that's not a conclusion, that’s surrender. It feels like critical thinking but it's actually the opposite. It's just a different kind of lazy. The Stoics had a lot to say about this. And what they built, two thousand years ago, is one of the most practical frameworks for navigating an information-saturated world that I've ever come across. ACT 2 — THE PHILOSOPHY Impressions and Assent Let's start with Epictetus. Epictetus was a former slave who became one of the most influential philosophers in history. And at the center of his entire teaching was something he called the discipline of assent — in Greek, synkatathesis. The idea is simple but demanding: you don't have to accept every impression that arrives in your mind. In fact, you have a duty not to. Here’s how he explained impressions and assent: “Impressions, striking a person's mind as soon as he perceives something within range of his senses, are not voluntary or subject to his will, they impose themselves on people's attention almost with a will of their own. But the act of assent, which endorses these impressions, is voluntary and a function of the human will.” — Epictetus (Fragments 9) But more directly on this point, he taught his students to meet every incoming impression — every piece of information, every claim — with a kind of active interrogation. He called it confronting the phantasia, the impression, before assenting to it. He put it this way: “Don't let the force of the impression when first it hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it, "Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.” — Epictetus (Discourses II, 18.24) That's a media literacy practice, written in the first century AD. Think about what that means in the context of a headline designed to provoke outrage, or a video clipped out of context, or a statistic stripped of its methodology. The impression arrives and feels like the truth. Epictetus says: slow down. That feeling is not the same as fact. Take the time to interrogate it and see if there is any truth behind it. It’s Okay to be Wrong Now let's talk about Marcus Aurelius. Marcus was Emperor of Rome — arguably the most powerful person on earth during his reign. He had every incentive to believe his own perspective was correct. And yet the Meditations are full of reminders he wrote to himself about intellectual humility. In Book 6, he wrote: "If anyone can refute me — show me I'm making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective — I'll gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance." — Marcus Aurelius Read that again. The most powerful man in the world writing a personal reminder that being wrong is okay, as long as you're pursuing truth. That's the mindset we're after. Not "I'm right until proven wrong." Not "everyone's lying so nothing matters." It's: I am genuinely open to being corrected, because the truth matters more than my ego. That takes courage. In a world where changing your mind is called flip-flopping, where admitting uncertainty is seen as weakness — saying "I don't know" is one of the most rebellious, intellectually honest things you can do. I'd also note something Marcus wrote that speaks directly to the media environment we live in now. He reminded himself: "The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."  — Marcus Aurelius Not look away or catastrophize. Rather, look clearly and try to see the truth. That's the goal. Protect Your Mind And then there's Seneca. Seneca was deeply concerned with what we let into our minds. He saw the mind as something to be guarded, not left open to whatever happened to walk through the door. In his Letters, he wrote: "Retire into yourself as much as you can; associate with those who will make a better man of you; welcome those who you yourself can improve." — Seneca He also warned about the danger of consuming too many voices indiscriminately: "Be careful above all things to avoid a book that is a hodgepodge of many different authors... Restlessness of spirit is the mark of a sick mind."  — Seneca He was talking about books. But replace "book" with "social media feed" and it lands with the same force. The point across all three of them is the same: there is a gap between the event and your judgment about it. That gap — however brief — is where wisdom lives. And the entire modern media ecosystem, from cable news to social algorithms, is engineered to collapse that gap to zero. To get you reacting before you're thinking. The Stoic practice is an act of resistance against that. It's taking back the gap. Misinformation There one more thing worth pointing out: why misinformation works. Conspiracy theories, and misinformation more broadly, are emotionally satisfying in ways that truth often isn't. They resolve chaos into order. They provide a villain — someone to blame. They offer community — fellow people who see what you see. And they deliver certainty — the comforting feeling that the confusing world suddenly makes sense. Sitting with "I don't know" offers none of that. It's lonely. It's uncomfortable. It requires tolerating ambiguity without resolution. That's not a cognitive failure. That's an emotional challenge. And meeting it honestly — choosing the harder, more uncertain path — is exactly what emotional courage looks like. ACT 3 — THE PRACTICE Okay. Let's make this concrete. There are three things I want to give you today. A practice for curation, a red flag framework for evaluating content, and a way to think about who you actually trust. Part One: Curate Actively Most people are passive recipients of information. The algorithm decides what they see, and they scroll. But algorithms are trainable. They respond to what you engage with. Which means you can shape them intentionally. Follow primary sources over commentators. Wherever possible, go to the scientist rather than the pundit summarizing the scientist. Go to the actual speech, the actual study, the actual document. Commentators have agendas — sometimes explicit, sometimes not. The closer you get to the source, the less filtering you're receiving. That said — and this is important — even experts have to earn your assent. Having credentials doesn't mean someone is immune to incentive, bias, or being wrong. A credentialed source raises your floor. It doesn't end your critical thinking. Part Two: The Red Flag Framework Before you share something, believe something, or let something shape your view of the world — run it through these six questions. 1. What's the motive? Who benefits if you believe this? Follow the incentive. This applies to media outlets, individual commentators, studies funded by industries, politicians making claims before elections. Motive doesn't automatically disqualify a source, but it's always worth knowing. 2. Is this a fact or an opinion? This sounds obvious but it's constantly blurred. Watch for opinion stated with the confidence of fact. Watch for interpretations presented as conclusions. Ask: what is actually being claimed here, and what would it take to verify it? 3. Is it trying to make me feel before I think? Emotional language, urgency, outrage, fear — these are persuasion tools. Sometimes they're legitimate. Often they're being used to rush your assent. If content is working hard to provoke a strong feeling *before* giving you anything to evaluate, slow down. 4. Look at the language and framing. Here's an exercise worth trying: find two different outlets covering the exact same story and compare the headlines and word choices side by side. You'll see the bias immediately — not in what's reported, but in how it's framed. The words chosen to describe the same event reveal the perspective of the outlet. Neither version may be lying. Both are shaping. 5. Are they citing primary sources? Are they linking to the actual study? Quoting the actual statement in context? Or are they summarizing someone else's summary of a summary? Every step away from the primary source is a step where distortion can enter. 6. Does this only confirm what I already believe? This is the hardest one. If a source never surprises you, never challenges you, never makes you uncomfortable — that's not a sign you've found a trustworthy source. That's a sign you've found a comfortable one. And comfort and trustworthiness are not the same thing. Part Three: Evaluating Who to Trust We can't verify everything ourselves. There isn't time. So we delegate trust — we find people and institutions we believe are reliable and we lean on their judgment. That's not lazy, it's necessary. It's a cognitive shortcut that allows us to function. But it has a serious failure mode: we think we're trusting experts. Often we're just trusting people who agree with us. We follow the economist who confirms our politics. The doctor whose conclusions match what we hoped to hear. The commentator who articulates what we already feel. And we call that informed. It isn't — it's just confirmation bias with a credential attached. So how do you actually evaluate whether someone is trustworthy? Here are some markers worth looking for. They change their mind publicly — and explain why. This is rare and valuable. Someone who updates their position when evidence changes is demonstrating intellectual honesty. Someone who never changes their mind regardless of evidence is demonstrating something else. They steelman opposing views before dismissing them. Can they articulate the strongest version of the argument they disagree with? If someone only ever presents the weakest version of the opposing view, be cautious. They distinguish what they know from what they think. "The data shows X" is different from "I believe X." Trustworthy sources are careful about that line. They're willing to say "I don't know." This is the most underrated quality in a source. Certainty is easy to perform. Epistemic honesty is harder. Their track record is checkable. Have their past predictions or claims held up? You can actually look this up. It's worth doing occasionally. And then the uncomfortable question you have to ask yourself: Am I following this person because they inform me — or because they comfort me? That question is the whole practice in one sentence. ACT 4 — Conclusion Let me bring this back to where we started. You're tired. The information environment is genuinely overwhelming, genuinely manipulative in places, and genuinely confusing. That's not in your head. But here's what I want to leave you with: the goal is never certainty. Certainty isn't available. The world is too complex, too fast-moving, and too full of competing inte rests for any of us to have certainty about most things. The goal is integrity of thought. You cannot control what's true. You cannot control what gets published, what trends, what the algorithm decides to show you tomorrow. What you can control is your process — how carefully you receive information, how honestly you interrogate it, how willing you are to be wrong, and how deliberately you choose who to learn from. That process — slow, humble, rigorous, and yes, courageous — is a Stoic practice. It's the discipline of assent applied to daily life. It's what Marcus was doing when he reminded himself to stay open to correction. It's what Epictetus meant when he taught his students to interrogate every impression before accepting it. It's what Seneca understood when he said to guard your mind like it matters — because it does. And maybe most importantly: it takes more courage to sit with "I don't know" than to grab the nearest comfortable certainty. In a world that rewards hot takes and punishes nuance, choosing to think carefully is an act of character. You don't need to know everything. You just need to know how to think. The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. 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How often do you put things off? Why do you put things off that you know you should do?  Maybe waiting for circumstances to be just right before you make a change? In this week’s episode we’re going to dive a deeper into why put things off, and what you can do to build momentum, and move forward. “It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.” ― Seneca Last week I had a Q & A episode, and one of the questions was about not taking action. I thought it was a great question, but I wanted to dive in a little deeper into it this week. One of the things that we struggle with is putting things off. We know what we should do, but sometimes we have hard time getting ourselves to do them. Maybe it’s habit that we want to start or one we want to stop. It could be a creative project that we spend a lot of time “researching” but never seem to get started. Maybe it’s a hard conversation that we need to have, but keep putting off. We have good intentions, but even with those good intentions we avoid taking action. What makes it even harder is that we don’t struggle like this with everything. There are things that easily capture our interest and we happily and enthusiastically do them. We’re successful in some areas, so why do we struggle to get started in other areas? In this episode we’re going to dive into why we put things off, and what we can do to get momentum to move us forward. Act 1: The Problem Most people assume that it’s a motivation problem. That we just don’t have enough willpower or discipline to start what we know we should. We beat ourselves up over it, telling ourselves that we’re lazy, not motivated enough, or that we should just try harder. But that framing is simply wrong. This type of framing leads to a shame spiral which makes it even worse. It’s like a double whammy—you don’t accomplish what you want, then you feel even worse for not doing it. To be clear, this is not a character flaw. Getting ourselves to take action is something that isn’t new to our modern era. It’s such a part of human nature that philosophers have been wresting with understanding this for 2500 years. The ancient Greeks had a word for this: akrasia. It roughly translates to acting against your better judgment — knowing the right thing to do and doing something else instead. Or nothing at all. The author Steven Pressfield calls this Resistance—the force that gets in the way when we want to do something that is important to us. I love how he describes it: “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate; it will seduce you. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” Even the philosophers argued about why we failed to act in our own best interest. Socrates believed that a person, with enough knowledge would always choose to do the right thing. Aristotle found this idea troubling because it violated reason—why someone with knowledge still work against themselves? It’s a question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Even Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world at his time, and a life long student of philosophy still struggled with this. He had to remind himself to get out of bed in the morning: "At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for?"  — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.1 He was fighting some of the same battle we still fight today, and had to talk himself into doing what he knew was the right thing to do. Akrasia doesn't discriminate. It visits everyone. The question is what we do when it shows up. Act 2: The Philosophy The Stoic Diagnosis Here's where the Stoics cut to the chase. They held a position that, at first, sounds almost too clean: if you truly and fully judge an action to be good, you will do it. If you don't do it, that tells you something. It tells you that you don't actually believe what you think you believe. Not fully. Something else is winning underneath the surface — some competing impression or belief that's being treated, in that moment, as more real. So the Stoic diagnosis of procrastination isn't “you're weak.” It's something more precise: you are holding a false impression, and you haven't examined it. That's a different kind of problem. And it requires a different kind of solution. The Hidden Trade-Off Here's what I've come to believe, drawing both on Stoic philosophy and on modern psychology: procrastination is always a hidden trade-off. We're not avoiding the task — we're avoiding the feeling the task brings up. Psychologist Tim Pychyl, who has spent decades researching this, frames procrastination not as a time management failure but as an emotion regulation problem. We put things off to avoid the emotions those things trigger. Fear of failure. Fear of judgment. The discomfort of difficulty. The anxiety of beginning something we're not sure we can finish. And in the moment of avoidance, we make a trade: short-term emotional relief now, for long-term cost later. We choose the comfort of not starting over the discomfort of beginning. And we dress that choice up in rational language: "I'm not ready." "I need more information." "I'll do it when I have more energy." Strip those away and what you usually find underneath is fear. That's the competing belief that's winning. Not laziness. Fear. The Disguises Akrasia is a shape-shifter. It rarely shows up wearing its own face. Here are the most common disguises I've seen—in my clients, in myself, and I suspect, in you. It shows up as perfectionism. We tell ourselves, “I’ll start when I can do it right.” The hidden belief here is that imperfect action is the same as failure—so we protect ourselves from failure by never starting. Sometimes it shows up as over-preparation. Endless research, planning, optimizing—everything except doing. This one is insidious because it feels productive. You're technically working on the thing. But you're circling it instead of landing. It even disguises itself as productive procrastination. You stay busy with smaller, easier tasks so that you feel like you're making progress while the important thing remains untouched. All of these are about waiting—for inspiration, for motivation, for conditions to be right. In Stoic terms, all of these are a failure to examine the impression driving the behavior. Carl Jung, writing from a completely different tradition, captured the same idea: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."  — Carl Jung The false belief driving avoidance is usually unconscious. We don't experience it as a belief — we experience it as reality. As just the way things are. The Stoic practice of examining impressions is, in this sense, the same work as making the unconscious conscious. Seneca even wrote a whole treatise on it called On the Shortness of Life. “Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” There's a fiction we tell ourselves — that there is a future version of us who will do this. Better rested. More inspired. Less busy. More ready. Shoving everything off to the future and loading all those things onto someone else—our future self. Seneca is saying: that person is not coming. The key to getting things done is not having the right circumstances, not when we’re better or stronger. It’s consistency, now. It’s doing even just one step today rather than waiting until tomorrow. Marcus Aurelius echoed this idea, writing: "Do not act as if you had a thousand years to live... while you have it in your power, while you still may, make yourself good."  — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.17 This isn't meant to be anxiety-inducing. It's meant to be clarifying. The urgency of life, held clearly, is a gift, not a threat. Act 3 — The Practice This Is Not a Willpower Problem I want to be clear about something before we get into some of the practices you can use. If your approach to procrastination is to grit your teeth and force yourself, that strategy will eventually fail. Not because you're weak. Because willpower treats the symptom, not the cause. You can white-knuckle through the task this time. But the underlying impression — the fear, the false belief — is still there. It will show up again tomorrow, and the day after. The Stoic approach is more surgical: don't override the impression. Examine it. The Core Practice: Examine the Impression When you notice yourself avoiding something, pause. Don't shame yourself for avoiding it — that only makes it worse, and Brené Brown's research on shame confirms what the Stoics already understood: shame doesn't produce change. She wrote: "Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change." Rather motivating us forward, it produces more avoidance. So how can we combat the tendency to shame ourselves for not acting? Instead, we can get curious. Ask yourself: “What am I actually afraid will happen if I start this?” “Is that fear true? Or is it an impression I've accepted without questioning?” “What do I actually believe about this task — not what I say I believe?” Now remember, this is self-investigation, not self-criticism. The Stoic doesn't stand over themselves with a whip. They stand over themselves with a lamp. They look at things objectively, withholding judgment so they can see things as they are. When you find the fear — and you usually will find a fear — you can look at through the lens of the Dichotomy of Control: separate what is in your control from what is not. First off, is the outcome of this task in your control? No. What is under your control is your effort. Your honesty. Your willingness to begin is. Action Precedes Motivation Here's an important reversal that makes a big difference. We have the relationship between action and motivation backwards. We wait to feel ready, and then we'll act. But readiness, motivation, comes from acting — not before it. The Stoics captured this in the concept of kathêkon — appropriate action, taken now, in the present moment. Not when conditions are perfect. Not when we feel inspired. Now. The discipline isn't in feeling ready. It's in beginning anyway. And the remarkable thing is that once you begin — once you take even a small, imperfect step — the emotional resistance usually drops. Not always. But often. Because the task, once you're inside it, is almost never as threatening as the story you built around it. "Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task."  — William James The thing you're dreading costs you energy every single day you don't do it. The mental overhead of carrying it. The low-grade guilt. The way it sits in the back of your mind. Starting — even imperfectly — often costs less than continuing to avoid. A Small, Practical Anchor When the task feels overwhelming, when the gap between where you are and where you need to be feels too wide — don't try to cross it in one leap. Just take the next action. Not 'finish the project.' Just: open the document. Send the first message. Make the one call. Set the one thing in motion. "Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens."  — Epictetus What is in your power, right now, is the next small action. That's all Stoicism asks of you. Not perfection. Not the whole mountain at once. The next step. Remember, those obstacles are the things that teach how to overcome the obstacle. You don’t get better at it by putting it off or avoiding them. You get better by trying, failing, and learning. Then trying again. And again. And the thing is, when you learn how to do something when circumstances aren’t ideal, think how much better you’ll be when you have been slogging away and circumstances do move in your favor. If you can stick to it when it’s hard, then you’ll sail even faster when the wind is in your favor! Act 4: Conclusion The Emotional Courage Reframe I want to bring this home to something that sits at the heart of this podcast, because I think it reframes everything we've talked about today. Addressing akrasia — facing the thing you've been avoiding — isn't about force. It isn't about suppressing the fear and pushing through. That's not Stoicism. Real Stoic practice requires a specific kind of courage. The courage to sit with the feeling you've been avoiding. To look at it directly. To ask what it actually is — not what it's pretending to be. And then to choose to act in spite of it, not in denial of it. That's emotional courage. Not the absence of fear. The willingness to examine it, name it honestly, and move anyway. Over time you’ll see that the discomfort of starting becomes less than the fear of failure. You’ll take action, even in the face of uncertainty. Marcus Aurelius had to do this every morning. Seneca wrote about it constantly. Epictetus built his entire teaching around it. The Stoics weren't people who had transcended difficulty — they were people who had developed a practice for facing it. That distinction matters. Closing Thought There is something you have been putting off. You know what it is. Maybe it's been sitting with you for days, or weeks, or longer. The Stoic invitation today is not to force yourself. It's to get curious. To look at the impression underneath the avoidance and ask whether it's true. To separate what you actually control from what you're afraid of losing control over. And then — when you've looked at it clearly — to take the next small step. Not the whole thing. Just the next step. "Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."  — Seneca The thing you've been putting off doesn't need a better version of you. It needs the version of you that exists right now — willing to begin. ---- The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment! My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here! Find out more at https://stoic.coffee Watch episodes on YouTube! Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads. Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you stop worrying about what others think of you? Is worrying ever useful? Can Stoics be ambitious? How can I actually do what I know I should?In this week's episode I answer some of your questions through the lens of Stoicism."It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."— Marcus AureliusSend us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if the thing you've been quietly doing your whole life — the thing that feels almost too easy to count — is actually your greatest gift to the world?And what is it costing you to keep holding it back?"If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke."— Brendan FrancisSend us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you get back up when too many things in life hit you all at once? How do you get your momentum back when it feels like every step is like wading through molasses? Today I want to talk about how Stoicism and friendship can find your balance and get moving again when life knocks you off your feet.When you have been compelled by circumstances to be disturbed in a manner, quickly return to yourself and do not continue out of tune longer than the compulsion lasts.— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VI.11Send us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you make a decision when all the choices in front of you feel like bad ones? Today I want talk about how Stoicism can help us take action when faced with impossible choices. “What should we have ready at hand in a situation like this? The knowledge of what is mine and what is not mine, what I can and cannot do.”— Epictetus, Discourses I, 1.21Send us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is Stoicism all about being strong and serious? Is it too pessimistic and always looking for where things can go wrong, where the next challenge or struggle is? Today I want to talk about the softer side of Stoicism, and how many of the tools the Stoics teach us can actually lead us to joy.“To live happily is an inward power of the soul.” — Marcus AureliusSend us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why does virtue matter in leadership? What happens to a community, a city, a country when there is lack of virtue in leadership? In this episode we’re going to discuss power, leadership, and why virtue matters."Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." — Abraham LincolnSend us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why is it important to resist and stand up against injustice? What happens when we don’t stand up to injustice? Today we'll explore why virtue is necessary, what the Stoics taught about resistance, and how to actually practice moral courage in your daily life."The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.6Send us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you living the life you want? Are you waiting for something to happen to push you into becoming the hero of your own story? In this episode I want to talk about why we fear stepping into greatness, and how you can be your own hero.“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths...Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.” — EpictetusSend us Fan MailThe Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! The Build an Unbreakable Mind program for building mental discipline is now open for enrollment!My book Stoicism 101 is available! Order here!Find out more at https://stoic.coffeeWatch episodes on YouTube!Find me on linkedIn, instagram, or threads.Thanks again for listening! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.