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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

How to Make Joy.

Joy is good. Who doesn't like joy? The question is where does it come from? Is it an accident or is it something you pursue?

The Stokes would say it is neither. To mark us a really joy was something you did. It was a process. As he writes, joy for humans lies in human actions, human actions, kindness to others, contempt for the senses, the interrogation of appearances, observations of nature and events in nature.

By contempt and interrogation, he means not being distracted by false pleasures and passions, not making the mistake of thinking that joy is success or money or sex.

No joy is doing good for others. It's a walk along the river, seeing the small fish darting in the shadows. It's watching a horse being brushed down. It's watching the stocks of grain bend under their own weight as Marcus noted.

Joy is being with her children. Joy is reading a well written book. This is a simpler definition of joy, of course, but that is also good.

It means you can make it and have it any time you like, including this morning, including on the days when you get fired or find out that someone you know has passed away, including the times you are stuck in traffic or on an interminable hold with customer service.

Joy lies in human actions, actions you can take right now.

I think another way to express this joy would just be that word stillness. And to me, stillness is the key. That joy is the key to a good life, to happiness, to success, to peace, to stability, to steadiness, even in craziness.

And so obviously that's what I talk about in my book, stillness is the key, which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

I think it's the best thing I've ever written. And you can check that out. Anywhere books are sold stillness is the key.

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