Practical Stoicism

In this episode, I talk about parenting, exhaustion, frustration, and the very real challenge of remaining Stoic when your emotional battery is running on empty.Stoic Mentoring: https://tannerocampbell.com/mentoringSunday 7th Webinar: https://stoictalks.uk/june-cosmologyUsing a story from my own 43rd birthday, I walk through a morning that did not go according to plan. What I wanted was a peaceful day. What I got was a very normal morning with a two-year-old child who wanted things his way, struggled to communicate those wants clearly, and repeatedly tested my patience.The story revolves around a simple trip to a café that gradually became a lesson in expectations, frustration, entitlement, and emotional regulation.The deeper lesson is not really about toddlers. It's about the stories we tell ourselves.I had convinced myself that my birthday entitled me to a peaceful day. Rationally, I knew that wasn't true. But emotionally, I had quietly bought into the idea anyway. That expectation became the source of much of my frustration.From there, I explore several Stoic lessons:Managing expectations before frustration takes hold.Recognizing when we're running our emotional batteries too low.Understanding that self-care is not selfishness.Appreciating how much children learn from our behavior, especially when we're angry.Recognizing the difference between discipline and rage.I spend particular time discussing the impression we leave on our children. Children are constantly watching us. Every outburst, every moment of patience, every act of self-control becomes part of the example we set for them.A parent losing their temper doesn't just solve a problem poorly in the moment—it can shape how a child understands relationships, authority, safety, and emotional expression for years to come.I also argue that many parents wait far too long to recharge. We run ourselves into the ground, then expect one special day, one holiday, or one break to somehow restore everything. That's not sustainable.The Stoic approach is much simpler: maintain the battery before it reaches zero.Even a single hour each week dedicated to rest, reflection, reading, walking, or simply being alone can dramatically improve our ability to show up well for the people who depend on us.The central message of the episode is this: parenting is hard, and perfection is impossible. But we can dramatically reduce the likelihood of losing our tempers by managing our expectations, protecting our own wellbeing, and remembering that our children are always learning from how we choose to respond.Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts.

In this episode, I talk about heat, irritability, anger, and why being physically uncomfortable can quietly erode our Stoic practice if we’re not paying attention.First, an announcement: after years of being asked, I’m officially opening applications for 1:1 Stoic mentoring and life coaching. This is a six-month mentorship for people who are serious about applying Stoicism deeply and consistently in their lives. It includes weekly calls, structured curriculum, support between sessions, and a small accountability group. I explain who it’s for, what’s included, and how to apply.Apply for 1:1 mentoring here: https://tannerocampbell.com/applyThe core topic of the episode, though, is anger — specifically how heat and physical discomfort make anger far more likely.I draw heavily from Seneca’s On Anger, where he describes anger as a kind of temporary madness: a passion that overrides reason, destroys judgment, and pushes people toward destructive choices they later regret. I connect this to modern psychological research showing that heat increases irritability, hostility, and aggression.The basic point is straightforward: when we’re physically uncomfortable, our threshold for frustration lowers dramatically. Small provocations escalate faster. We become less patient, less reflective, and more likely to lash out.But rather than treating this as an excuse, I frame it as a call for preparation.A Stoic does not pretend the body doesn’t matter. The Stoic prepares rationally for predictable challenges. If you know extreme heat affects your mood and judgment, then planning ahead becomes part of your moral responsibility.I walk through some practical examples from my own life living in the UK during a heatwave:Buying bags of ice in advance.Staying hydrated constantly.Having contingency plans for cooler environments.Saving for a long-term cooling solution.Refusing to indulge self-pity or dramatics about discomfort.The point is not “be tough.” The point is “be prepared.”I argue that failing to prepare for predictable discomfort is itself a failure of Stoic practice because it unnecessarily increases the risk that we’ll act irrationally toward ourselves or others.The Sage would not ignore heat to prove toughness. The Sage would plan, prepare, adapt, and endure intelligently.That’s the real lesson of the episode: Stoicism isn’t about pretending external conditions don’t affect us. It’s about anticipating their effects and choosing wisely despite them.---Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts.---I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at ⁠https://stoicismpod.com/members⁠---Subscribe to A Little Wiser, a newsletter which explores philosophy more broadly than Stoicism and publishes multiple times a week.

Support my work for as little as £0.87/wk: https://stoicismpod.com/members--In this episode, I lay out a practical, step-by-step Stoic framework for making decisions well.A lot of people interested in Stoicism know the quotes, know the terminology, and understand the broad concepts — but when an actual difficult choice appears in front of them, they still don’t know what to do. This episode is about solving that problem.I begin by making a distinction the Stoics took very seriously: the difference between wanting something and determining whether something is right. Most difficult decisions are not difficult because we don’t know what we desire, but because we’re uncertain what action accords with virtue and reason.From there, I walk through an orthodox Stoic decision-making method rooted in Panaetius and preserved through Cicero’s De Officiis.The process begins with examining what the Stoics understood to be the four roles every human being occupies simultaneously:Our universal human nature as rational beings bound by the virtues.Our individual nature — our temperament, strengths, and weaknesses.Our circumstantial roles — parent, child, citizen, employee, neighbour.Our chosen roles — career, projects, commitments, ambitions.I use a detailed example throughout the episode: a person deciding whether to take a major overseas promotion while also caring for an aging mother whose health is declining.The key Stoic insight is this: the right action is usually found at the intersection of all four roles. Most modern ethical thinking frames difficult choices as trade-offs, but Stoicism instead asks us to search for the action that satisfies all our legitimate roles without violating virtue.I then explain the “tragic conflict clause” — what to do when no intersection seems possible. In those cases, the Stoics held that lower-order roles must be abandoned before virtue itself is compromised.After identifying a candidate action, I introduce three tests the Stoics would apply:The rational defence test: can you clearly explain why the action is right?The sage test: would a genuinely wise person choose this?The role-fidelity test: does the action honour your responsibilities regardless of what others do?Finally, I discuss the importance of post-action review — what the Stoics called prokopē, or progress. Stoic character is built not through perfect choices, but through repeated examination, correction, and refinement over time.The core point of the episode is simple: Stoicism is not passive inspiration or emotional comfort. It is a disciplined framework for reasoning through life well and choosing in alignment with nature, virtue, and our roles.Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I take aim at what I call “stoa shaming”—the habit of pointing out someone’s failure to be perfectly Stoic as a way of dismissing both them and the philosophy.You’ve seen it. Someone loses their temper, struggles with their weight, or makes a mistake, and the response is: “That’s not very Stoic of you.” On the surface, it sounds like a call to higher standards. In reality, it reveals a misunderstanding of Stoicism itself.Stoicism does not expect perfection from its practitioners. It defines perfection—sagehood—as something effectively unattainable. The Sage is a theoretical ideal: someone who never errs in judgment, never assents incorrectly, and never acts viciously. That’s not us. That’s not anyone.What we are, instead, are prokoptôns—progressors. People in motion. People practicing.This matters because if you misunderstand Stoicism as requiring perfection, then every mistake becomes evidence of failure, and every practitioner becomes a hypocrite. That’s the logic behind stoa shaming. It reduces a philosophy of progress into a brittle standard no one can meet.But Stoicism isn’t a label you “achieve.” It’s a framework you use. Saying “I’m a Stoic” doesn’t mean you embody perfect virtue. It means you’re attempting to move toward it using Stoic principles.That means mistakes aren’t contradictions of the philosophy—they are the condition under which the philosophy is practiced.When someone says, “That’s not very Stoic of you,” what they’re often doing is collapsing the distinction between Sage and student. They’re holding a progressor to the standard of perfection and then using the inevitable gap to dismiss both the person and the system.It’s also, in many cases, a defensive move. If they can frame you as inconsistent, they can ignore what you’re saying. If you’re not perfect, then your arguments don’t count. It’s an easy way to avoid engaging with the substance.The Stoic response is simple: reject the premise. You are not trying to be flawless. You are trying to improve. And improvement requires error, correction, and continued effort over time.So when you fall short—and you will—you haven’t failed at Stoicism. You’ve participated in it.And when someone tries to use your imperfection against you, consider what they’re actually asking for: not progress, but perfection. Not practice, but performance.That’s not Stoicism.Listening on Spotify? Leave a comment! Share your thoughts.I am a public philosopher, it is my only job. I am enabled to do this job, in large part, thanks to support from my listeners and readers. You can support my work, keep it independent and online, at ⁠https://stoicismpod.com/members⁠Looking for more Stoic content? Consider my 3x/week newsletter "Stoic Brekkie": ⁠https://stoicbrekkie.com⁠Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Register for the May 9th workshop today: https://tannerocampbell.com/may--In this episode I work through how Stoic Justice differs from what we moderns typically mean by the word — because when we say "justice" today, we almost always mean retribution: rewards for the deserving, punishments for the rest. Stoic Justice isn't concerned with desert in that sense at all. It's concerned with giving each person what is owed to them as a fellow member of the Cosmopolis, and failing to do that is, on Stoic terms, about as serious a moral error as you can commit.Along the way I push back on the fairly common claim that Justice is the "highest" of the cardinal virtues — the one that orients all the others and without which courage collapses into bravado, temperance into private self-management, and wisdom into mere cleverness. I grant the intuition has some force, but antakolouthia — the mutual entailment of the virtues — rules out any hierarchy, and I note that Marcus, contrary to what some popular communicators like to imply, isn't in the camp that elevates Justice above the rest.From there I trace how our thirst for a culprit is eating away at social cohesion in the West. The older western instinct — that it is worse to wrongly convict the innocent than to let the guilty slip through — is being quietly replaced by something uglier: not "did this person do the thing?" but "is this person close enough to the thing that punishing them will feel like justice?" We're no longer just eager to punish the accused; we're hungry to produce more accused, and the bar for what counts as worthy of condemnation keeps dropping. Evidence stops being something to weigh and becomes something to enlist.I argue this is injustice in the precise Stoic sense — not the cartoon sense of wanting to hurt someone, but a failure of attention. You cannot give each person their due if you will not first do the patient work of finding out what is due. And I close with what I want listeners to actually do: the next time they feel themselves reaching for a verdict, pause long enough to ask honestly whether they're trying to find out what's owed, or whether they're just trying to locate a target for something they were already feeling before this particular person walked into view. Getting the right outcome by accident isn't justice — justice is the discipline itself, and what's true of the individual eventually becomes true of the society they're part of.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices