Practice like a Stoic: 37, Catch and examine the judgments underlying your impressions and impulses

Learning how to use logic to better deal with daily irritations

A long and frustrating wait at the doctor’s office, generated by Midjourney.

[This series of posts is based on A Handbook for New Stoics—How to Thrive in a World out of Your Control, co-authored by yours truly and Greg Lopez. It is a collection of 52 exercises, which we propose reader try out one per week during a whole year, to actually live like a Stoic. In Europe/UK the book is published by Rider under the title Live Like A Stoic.Below is this week’s prompt and a brief explanation of the pertinent philosophical background. Check the book for details on how to practice the exercise, download the exercise forms from The Experiment’s website, and comment below on how things are going. Greg and/or I will try our best to help out! This week’s exercise is found at pp. 220-224 of the paperback edition.]

“Epictetus urged the need of a sound grammar of assent; and in dealing with the impulses, to take good heed to keep them subject to reservation, unselfish, and in due proportion to their object: always to refrain inclination, and to limit avoidance to things within our own control.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.37)

Marcus offers several interesting concepts this week. To begin with, let’s look at the idea of a “sound grammar of assent.” Here, Marcus highlights Epictetus’s insistence on employing logic, one of the three fields of study of the ancient Stoic curriculum, the other two being physics (understanding how the world works) and ethics (figuring out how to best live one’s life). Logic is important because it allows us to think through what we do, and why. Properly applied, it helps us curb our impulses to act.