Search Results for: stoic

Stoic in the Title, Shallow in the Text: Summary of Robert Rosenkranz’s ‘The Stoic Capitalist’

October 6, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Stoic revival is in full swing. Scan any airport bookstore or business influencer’s feed and you’ll find a glut of titles flaunting quotes from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca—repurposed as motivational mantras for the exceptionally busy and vaguely introspective. Stoicism, once a demanding discipline of character and moral clarity, now functions as ambient wisdom: a collection of slogans to soothe, sell, and self-brand.

What passes for Stoicism today is largely superficial. Its original rigor—a confrontation with mortality, ego, and the ethical demands of reasoned action—has been flattened into life-hacking shorthand. Books that once urged readers to examine their complicity in suffering now offer platitudes about resilience and control. Many treat it less as method than accessory—something to dress up success, not interrogate it.

This is where The Stoic Capitalist: Advice for the Exceptionally Ambitious (2025) by investor and philanthropist Robert Rosenkranz slots in, bearing a title so algorithmically precise it could’ve been brainstormed by a branding team. The book claims to blend memoir, philosophy, and practical guidance, and Rosenkranz’s résumé lends him credibility. But the philosophical layer feels thin—more narrative varnish than intellectual structure.

Rosenkranz admits he discovered Stoicism late, applying it retroactively to interpret his career. The result isn’t a chronicle of Stoic-inspired choices, but a personal history retrofitted with borrowed gravitas. Where readers might expect rigorous philosophical engagement in high-stakes environments, they’ll find a polished memoir glossed with Stoic terminology. Even core tenets—agency, emotional discipline, apatheia—are presented with troubling looseness. Rather than encouraging engagement with suffering and complexity, the narrative risks casting Stoicism as permission for detachment. The mantra “controlling the controllables” recurs, but without probing what control means—or why it matters.

Recommendation: Skim. The book may appeal as a polished life story with intellectual garnish. But its philosophical promise is more decorative than durable. Real Stoicism demands interrogation of one’s motives in motion—not just the elegance of hindsight. And that’s harder to market.

What the Stoics Taught: Shunning the Materialistic Frenzy of Greed

January 23, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Stoics are renowned for their profound insights into the workings of the human mind and their unwavering focus on distinguishing the internal from the external.

Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Emperor, emphasized that true contentment doesn’t demand much. While modern society often links happiness to accumulating possessions, the Stoics ardently rejected this idea. They believed that genuine serenity and peace of mind result from simplification, not accumulation.

According to the Stoics, a significant portion of our suffering arises from our unrelenting attachment to external things. Seneca asserted, “It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.” Even the poet Tibullus echoed this Stoic wisdom, emphasizing that only the internal world holds the potential to bestow authentic happiness.

Idea for Impact: Rethink why you invest so much time and energy in the pursuit of peace of mind through external symbols like possessions, status, and wealth when what you seek is nestled within your own mind.

The Stoic message resounds clearly: The only things within our control are our thoughts, emotions, desires, and choices—in essence, our inner mental and emotional states. It’s within this realm that we discover the key to authentic happiness and tranquility.

What a Daily Stoic Practice Actually Looks Like

September 11, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stoicism as a philosophy is a way of life; it should change how you live your life daily. This is what a basic Stoic practice means for most folks:

Start the day by setting your intention after meditation and reflection. Marcus Aurelius used to prepare himself through futurorum malorum præmeditatio—visualizing what could go wrong that day to be practically and emotionally prepared for what may come.
Throughout the day, pause, reflect, and make sure you’re applying the foundational Stoic idea of the dichotomy of control—separating things within your control and those outside your control. When you can accept, even love, what fate is handing you, your mood becomes stiffer to negatively impact. You’re to greet adversity with arms wide open—it’s a test of character.
At the end of the day, ask yourself what things you did well, what you did less well, and what items you left undone. Reflecting (“hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing” per Seneca,”) gaining perspective, and adjusting is an excellent way to ensure that the day’s efforts aren’t in vain—you’re living each day well, exercising virtue and strength of character.

Idea for Impact: To live well by intentionally focusing on your days—your actions and choices—is the basis of daily stoic practice.

Choose Not to Be Offended, and You Will Not Be: What the Stoics Taught

August 16, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When somebody offends you or causes you distress, think of the anxiety as their problem, not yours.

The Stoic philosophers taught that if you choose not to be offended by others’ actions, you will not be. An offense is up to your interpretation. Instead, treat others with kindness and assert your autonomy.

This moral is exemplified in the following clip from the movie Gandhi (1983) portraying racial discrimination in South Africa and Gandhi’s espousal of Christian values. A young Gandhi and his friend Charles Freer Andrews are walking in a Johannesburg suburb when they’re accosted by menacing louts who yell “Look what’s comin’!” and “A white shepherd leading a brown Sammy!” (Sammy—for swami—was a South African derogatory term for an Indian.) Despite Andrews’s misgivings, Gandhi strides along rather nervously and invokes the Christian principle of turning the other cheek. When one lout’s intentions of “cleaning up the neighborhood a little” are disrupted by his mother, Gandhi responds, “You’ll find there’s room for us all!”

Mastering an Offensive Situation Is Ultimately a Matter of Mastering Yourself

In Meditations, the great Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote about taking responsibility for the things within your control:

Someone despises me. That’s their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them. Ready to show them their mistake. Not spitefully, or to show off my own self-control, but in an honest, upright way.

Marcus Aurelius counsels compassion for those who offend you:

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?

Strength dissipates when you choose to be offended, and harbor malice. Marcus Aurelius counsels acting compassionately towards those who offend you:

That kindness is invincible, provided it’s sincere—not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight—if you get the chance—correcting him cheerfully at the exact moment that he’s trying to do you harm. “No, no, my friend. That isn’t what we’re here for. It isn’t me who’s harmed by that. It’s you.” And show him, gently and without pointing fingers, that it’s so. That bees don’t behave like this— or any other animals with a sense of community. Don’t do it sardonically or meanly, but affectionately—with no hatred in your heart. And not ex cathedra or to impress third parties, but speaking directly. Even if there are other people around.

Another Stoic Philosopher, Epictetus, who advocated integrity, self-management, and personal freedom, wrote in Discourses (transcribed and published by his pupil Arrian):

For there are two rules we should always have at hand: That nothing is good or evil, but choice, and, That we are not to lead events, but to follow them. “My brother ought not to have treated me so”. Very true, but it is for him to see to that. However he treats me, I am to act rightly with regard to him. For this is my concern, the other is somebody else’s; this no one can hinder, the other is open to hindrance.

Idea for Impact: To Be Offended Is a Choice You Make

When somebody insults, mistreats, snubs, or disrespects you, choose not to be upset. To be offended is an issue of the self—it’s a choice you intentionally make. Taking offense is about what you want them to be. It is about your desire to change their perspective and behavior.

Try to isolate offense by choosing to respond differently: by overlooking others’ wrongdoings with compassion and reminding yourself that you cannot change others, just your own self.

The Hebrew Bible (or the Old Testament) instructs, “A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11.) To be offended is a choice you make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon you by someone or something else.

Choose not to let others dictate your emotions—purposely or otherwise. Live life with the wisdom that nobody can make you do anything and that you alone can control how you react to your surroundings and circumstances. Choose to be more at peace.

Life Is to You as to Everyone Else: What the Stoics Taught

April 8, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Mosaic of Alexander the Great, who Sucked at Geometry

Life is as hard for one as for another

Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius (Latin orig. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium) tells a story of Alexander the Great’s schooling.

Even at a young age, the hugely ambitious Alexander dreamt of conquering empires. He had no patience for formal learning. When faced with the difficulty of understanding geometry, he whined to his tutor, “Teach me something easy.” His tutor replied, “These things are the same for all, as hard for one as for another.”

Alexander, king of Macedon, began to study geometry; unhappy man, because he would thereby learn how puny was that earth of which he had seized but a fraction!

Unhappy man, I repeat, because he was bound to understand that he was bearing a false title. For who can be “great” in that which is puny?

The lessons which were being taught him were intricate and could be learned only by assiduous application; they were not the kind to be comprehended by a madman, who let his thoughts range beyond the ocean.

“Teach me something easy!” he cries; but his teacher answers: “These things are the same for all, as hard for one as for another.”

Imagine that nature is saying to us: “Those things of which you complain are the same for all. I cannot give anything easier to any man, but whoever wishes will make things easier for himself.” In what way? By equanimity.

You must suffer pain, and thirst, and hunger, and old age too, if a longer stay among men shall be granted you; you must be sick, and you must suffer loss and death.

On a related note, the great Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations (trans. Gregory Hays,) “Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.”

Idea for Impact: Put your problems and worries in perspective

Beyond the randomness (or providence for those of you with a religious bent) of where we’re born and whom we’re born to, life is generally fair to all and cannot be easier for anyone. The trials and tribulations of life are equally difficult for everyone. Complaining about others having it easier is futile.

Learn to play the hand you’ve been dealt. If you’re fraught with pain and suffering now, don’t ask, “Why is my life so difficult? Why can’t it be easier?” Take solace in the realization that even the greatest and the mightiest had their share of life’s struggles. Make it easier by viewing life with calmness, composure, and evenness of temper.

A Prayer to Help You Deal with Annoying People: What the Stoics Taught

January 1, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

The 18th Century French writer Nicolas Chamfort once urged, “A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes to be sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the day is over.”

If you’re not looking forward to annoying people who seem to elevate provocation to an art form, consider the following prayer offered by the great Stoic Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121 CE–180 CE) in Meditations (trans. Gregory Hays.)

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me with ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

Along those lines, the Buddha taught his followers to transcend ignorance through knowledge by observing four practices of inner conduct: loving kindness, altruistic compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity with regard to the impure and the evil. And in the New Testament,

Luke 23:34 suggests, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Peter 2:23 offers the example of Jesus, “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to Him who judges justly.”
Romans 12:17–21 recommend, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath … Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Considered Response, Not Naiveté

Aurelius’s urging tolerance, understanding, and patience towards difficult people may sound like naiveté at first glance, but what he urges is a wise and measured response.

Aurelius (121–180 CE) was one of the great Stoic philosophers. Stoic philosophy was founded by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BCE. Its core themes of inner solitude, forbearance in adversity, and acceptance of fate gained far-flung following and made it the dominant philosophy across the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

One of Stoic philosophy’s central beliefs is that destructive emotions result from our errors in judgment. The Stoics argue that many things aren’t within our control, as I elaborated in previous articles (here and here.) The best way to deal with situations we have little control over is to anticipate and neutralize any negative feelings.

Stoic Forbearance through Emotional Detachment

The Stoics argued that our lives will be dramatically different if we realize that we can neither avoid annoying people nor change them. We must accept this reality and work on how we respond and interact with them. In On Tranquility of Mind, the other great Stoic philosopher Seneca (65 BCE–4 CE) wrote:

By looking forward to whatever can happen as though it would happen, he will soften the attacks of all ills, which bring nothing strange to those who have been prepared beforehand and are expecting them; it is the unconcerned and those that expect nothing but good fortune upon whom they fall heavily. Sickness comes, captivity, disaster, conflagration, but none of them is unexpected—I always knew in what disorderly company Nature had confined me.

As popular books on Stoicism expound, the Stoics encouraged a meditative practice of negative visualization called premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils.) As suggested by Aurelius in his prayer, premeditatio malorum consists of contemplating the potential challenges of the day ahead, thinking about which of the four cardinal virtues (courage, equanimity, self-control and wisdom) we may have to engage and how. By rehearsing not to resign ourselves to adversities, we’re prepared for a more considered response—we could forgive, forget, appreciate and empathize.

As part of the premeditatio malorum practice, we’re to contemplate a priori potential difficulties, setbacks, and misfortunes. While envisaging all the difficulties and evils we could foresee seems like an unwholesome—perhaps even a morbid—exercise, the Stoics argue that this practice can help us react to bad news with equanimity and hence minimize the impact of bad news on our self-worth or confidence. If and when a bad thing should actually happen, our initial response would be to think that “this wasn’t totally unexpected.” While we’d rather it hadn’t happened, we would nevertheless not be surprised by it because this potential outcome was expected all along.

Idea for Impact: Cultivate Equanimity and Manage Yourself First

To handle a difficult person, prepare yourself by thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Don’t focus on how he behaves, but focus on how you can react to him. By ignoring his irritating behaviors, you can neutralize his effect on you. In other words, if someone is being difficult but you don’t feel the difficulty he’s imposed upon you, you don’t have a problem.

The cognitive reframing suggested by the Stoics can be particularly effective in situations where you have little to no control. It’s far more productive to focus on your own behavior because you can control it. And by managing yourself first, you’ll come to appreciate that the annoying person isn’t as annoying anymore. As the other Stoic philosopher Epictetus reminds us, “Man is shaped not by events but the meaning he gives them.”

Reframe Your Thinking, Get Better Answers: What the Stoics Taught

September 29, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The solution to many a difficult problem can be found merely by reframing the problem, thereby changing or adjusting your perception of the issue.

Reframing is a very effective technique to shift your view of a specific problem, event, or person. When you approach a situation from another perspective, you are likely to reevaluate your intentions and find alternative, acceptable solutions to your situations.

Reframing helps in two ways:

Reframing allows you to consider a problem within a positive—rather than a negative—context. For example, if you’re trying out a diet, you can reframe it by asking yourself “What are some foods I like that I should eat more of? What new foods can I experiment with?” rather than wondering, “What foods must I give up?” Reframing can help turn a problem into an opportunity, a weakness into a strength, an impossibility into a work-around, and a conflict into a mere lack of understanding.
Reframing can also broaden a problem’s context, thus helping you recognize its systemic contributors. In other words, by reframing, you look at a problem within its larger context. For example, you could reframe an individual issue, “Why won’t Tom gel with our team?” to a systemic problem, “What are the attributes of our team that make Tom feel excluded?”

“Redirect your prayers … and watch what happens”

The great Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote in “Meditations” (trans. Gregory Hays,)

Either the gods have power or they don’t. If they don’t, why pray? If they do, then why not pray for something else instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to feel fear. Or desire, or grief. If the gods can do anything, they can surely do that for us.

But those are things the gods left up to me.

Then isn’t it better to do what’s up to you—like a free man—than to be passively controlled by what isn’t, like a slave or beggar? And what makes you think the gods don’t care about what’s up to us?

Start praying like this and you’ll see.

Not “some way to sleep with her”—but a way to stop wanting to.

Not “some way to get rid of him”—but a way to stop trying.

Not “some way to save my child”—but a way to lose your fear.

Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens.

Idea for Impact: Reframe, Always Reframe

If you find yourself stuck with a problem or difficult situation, try reframing your view of that problem. Consider alternate perspectives, revise your goals, and reconsider how you see the way forward.

To reframe, simply step back from your present viewpoint and alter the “lens” through which you perceive the reality. Discover your unspoken assumptions, challenge your beliefs, change the attributes of your perception of the problem, and downplay or emphasize various elements of the situation. By “looking at it another way” you can derive new meanings and define different courses of action.

Inspirational Quotations #1131

December 7, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

Always do what you feel deeply in the within to be the true thing to do.
—Wallace Wattles (American New Thought Author)

We like to be deceived.
—Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.
—James Baldwin (American Novelist, Social Critic)

Knowledge is the consequence of time, and multitude of days are fittest to teach wisdom.
—Jeremy Collier (English Anglican Clergyman)

The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

We ought to give thanks for all fortune: it is good, because it is good, if bad, because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

The best words for resolving a disagreement are, “I could be wrong; I often am.” It’s true.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

When you work seven days a week, fourteen hours a day, you get lucky.
—Armand Hammer (American Entrepreneur, Businessman)

You may call for peace as loudly as you wish, but where there is no brotherhood there can in the end be no peace.
—Max Lerner (American Author)

Negative Emotions Aren’t the Problem—Our Flight from Them Is

September 29, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Negative Emotions Aren't the Problem---Our Flight from Them Is Life is not a cradle of comfort but a crucible of experience. To be conscious is to be vulnerable—to injury, to loss, to the slow erosion of certainty. Suffering is not a glitch in the system; it is the system. And yet, the modern mind, coddled by convenience and narcotized by distraction, recoils from this fact as if it were an indecency rather than a reality.

We are told to “stay positive,” to “move on,” to “let it go”—as if grief were a clerical error and despair a lapse in etiquette. But this is not wisdom; it is evasion. The mature individual does not anesthetize himself against pain. He studies it. He lets it speak. He asks, as the Buddha might have: What is the origin of this suffering? What craving, what illusion, what attachment lies beneath it?

Negative emotions—anger, shame, sorrow—are not pollutants to be scrubbed from the psyche. They are signals. To suppress them is to silence the very messengers that might deliver us from ignorance. The Buddhist insight that suffering arises from clinging—from our refusal to accept impermanence—aligns, curiously, with the stoic’s call to meet adversity with composure and clarity.

There is no virtue in masochism, no nobility in wallowing. But there is immense value in refusing to be ruled by what afflicts us. To suffer consciously is to wrest meaning from pain. To observe one’s anguish without flinching is to begin the slow, unsentimental work of liberation.

Idea for Impact: You will not escape the wheel of suffering. Avoiding negative emotions won’t get you anywhere—it merely postpones the reckoning and deepens the illusion. In doing so, you do not become immune to suffering—but you cease to be its slave.

Inspirational Quotations #1092

March 9, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi

A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
—Marguerite Yourcenar (French Writer)

The foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you’ve just described hell.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.
—James Montgomery (Scottish Poet, Journalist)

If results are our goal, they must also be our test.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

I don’t want to work. I want to smoke.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

What you hear, you forget; what you see, you remember; what you do, you understand.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

Rage is essentially vulgar, and never more vulgar than when it proceeds from mortified pride, disappointed ambition, or thwarted willfulness.
—Hartley Coleridge (British Poet)

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

There is too much reason to apprehend, that the custom of pleading for any client, without discrimination of right or wrong, must lessen the regard due to those important distinctions, and deaden the moral sensibility of the heart.
—James Gates Percival (American Poet, Surgeon)

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

We are all born for love… . It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)