Stoic exercises: ten practices you can actually do daily

A Stoic exercise is a drill, not a reading. Each of the ten below has what to do, when to use it, a worked example, and the passage it comes from. It is practice, not treatment.

• Written by Dr. Momir Pantelic, MD, CCFP, MPH — family physician (Harvard-trained, Master of Public Health) and creator of Stoic Mind. Published and last updated August 18, 2026.
• How to practise: one intention in the morning, one interruption during the day when something knocks you sideways, one short debrief at night. Five minutes a day is a practical starting point. Do not run all ten — pick one, run it for a week on real situations, and keep it only if it earns its place.
• 1. Sort the situation by what you control. Two columns: what is up to me (my next action, my preparation, what I say) and what is not (another person's reaction, the result, the past). Epictetus, Enchiridion 1.
• 2. Separate the event from your judgement of it. The bare fact with no adjectives, then the story you added, then a fairer reading of the same fact. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.7; 8.47.
• 3. Rehearse the difficulty once, on purpose. Name the fear and finish the sentence: if that happened, the first thing I would do is… One pass, then stop. Seneca, Letters 24; 91.
• 4. Widen the frame (the view from above). This hour inside this week, this week inside this year, then back to the single action in front of you. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.30; 12.24.
• 5. Set the day's intention before you touch your phone. What today asks of me, and the one difficulty I expect. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1.
• 6. Debrief the day in three questions: what did I do badly, what did I do well, what will I do differently? Seneca describes exactly this nightly self-examination. Seneca, On Anger 3.36.
• 7. Put a delay between the anger and the act. Seneca's remedy is postponement — the greatest cure for anger is delay. Seneca, On Anger 2.29.
• 8. Voluntary impermanence: remind yourself of the nature of what you love, that it is not guaranteed, and do one thing today that reflects it. Epictetus, Enchiridion 3. Caution: this is an appreciation practice, not a rehearsal of anyone's death. Skip it, or do it only with your clinician, during acute grief, health or harm-related OCD, severe health anxiety, suicidal thinking, or where trauma symptoms destabilise easily.
• 9. Treat the setback as the training. Name the capacity it trains, then take the first rep. Epictetus: it is difficulties that show what men are, and God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Discourses 1.24.1.
• 10. Hold your rules when pressure arrives. Decide them while calm and treat them as fixed: whatever rules you have adopted, abide by them as laws. Epictetus, Enchiridion 50.
• A seven-day starter sequence, one exercise per day and not cumulative: control, judgement, morning intention, evening debrief, view from above, anger delay, holding your rules. At the end of the week keep the one or two that suited you and let the rest go.
• Limits and when to get help: these exercises are educational practice, not treatment. See a clinician if low mood or anxiety has lasted most days for weeks, is interfering with sleep, work or relationships, involves panic attacks, or comes with substance use as coping. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 9-8-8 in Canada and the US; in the UK and Ireland call Samaritans on 116 123, or NHS 111 in the UK, or 999 in an emergency; in Australia call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
• Primary Stoic sources: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1, 4.7, 7.29, 8.47, 9.30, 12.24; Seneca, Letters 13, 24, 91; Seneca, On Anger 2.29 and 3.36; Epictetus, Enchiridion 1, 3 and 50; Epictetus, Discourses 1.24.1.
• Related psychological evidence — indirect, and it does not validate every exercise here: these ten exercises have not individually been clinically validated. Ellis (1962) and Beck, Rush, Shaw and Emery (1979) credit Stoic philosophy in the cognitive tradition; Gross, Psychophysiology (2002) concerns cognitive reappraisal; Hofmann et al., Cognitive Therapy and Research (2012) reviews the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy.