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Modern Wisdom5 Exercises From Stoicism To Improve Your Life | Massimo Piggliuci | Modern Wisdom Podcast 170
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Stoic Exercises For Modern Turmoil: Control, Virtue, And Resilience
- Chris Williamson and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci explore why Stoicism has resurged in modern times, especially during crises like COVID, and contrast it with other traditions such as Buddhism, Epicureanism, and existentialism.
- They outline core Stoic principles—the four cardinal virtues and the “dichotomy of control”—and emphasize Stoicism’s practicality compared with more purely theoretical philosophies.
- Pigliucci then walks through five concrete Stoic exercises (including journaling, premeditating adversity, and meditating on death) designed to build better judgment, emotional resilience, and a clearer sense of priorities.
- Throughout, they connect ancient ideas to contemporary psychology (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy, Kahneman’s System 1/System 2) and everyday situations like job interviews, workplace conflicts, and life under lockdown.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasFocus only on what is truly under your control.
Stoicism narrows ‘up to you’ to your judgments, endorsed values, and decisions to act or not act; everything else (health, reputation, outcomes) is influenced but not controlled, so energy should go into actions, not uncontrollable results.
Use the four virtues as a moral checklist for decisions.
Before acting, ask if it is practically wise, courageous, just, and temperate; if any virtue says ‘no’, don’t do it, which slows rash behavior and aligns choices with character rather than impulse.
Internalize goals: measure success by effort, not outcomes.
For situations like job interviews, Stoicism advises focusing on preparation and conduct rather than whether you get the job, reducing anxiety while still increasing the likelihood of good external results.
Regular reflection and journaling accelerate character improvement.
An evening review—what you did wrong, what you did right, and what you could do better next time—turns daily experience into a feedback loop for moral growth instead of rumination or self‑recrimination.
Premeditating adversity makes real crises more manageable.
Deliberately imagining worst‑case scenarios (e.g., illness, hospitalization) and planning Stoic responses in a detached way reduces fear and prepares you to act calmly if they occur, much like cognitive behavioral techniques.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesSome things are up to you and other things are not up to you… You should be concerning yourself with the first one and not the second one.
— Massimo Pigliucci (paraphrasing Epictetus)
If you guys are here just for the theory, you’re wasting your time and mine.
— Massimo Pigliucci (quoting Epictetus)
To be apathetic for a Stoic doesn’t mean that you don’t give a crap about things. It means that you’re not disturbed by negative emotions.
— Massimo Pigliucci
We tend to externalize goals. We tend to go after outcomes… None of them are up to us. Only our efforts are up to us.
— Massimo Pigliucci
We give away our time as if we had an infinite amount of it, but we don’t.
— Massimo Pigliucci (summarizing Seneca)
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
