Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom

designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day 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 dailystoic.com.

The Stoics believed that stressful and dangerous situations unfold like this.

Something happens, we wake up to reports that the stock market is taking a dive, we get

screamed at by our boss, the doctor raises an eyebrow and recommends we go in for further

testing, and this of course provokes a reaction, not a good one, a scared one, or an angry

one, something emotional, or we go the opposite way and we just shut down, paralyzed by events.

The Stoics called these involuntary and immediate impressions that we form in response to bad

news or stress, phantasia.

Contrary to what you might think, the Stoics were quite sympathetic to these reactions.

They understood them as natural and largely out of our control.

You throw something surprising at someone they're going to be surprised.

That's how it works.

That's why it's called surprise.

This is not a philosophy meant to show you how to stop that.

Instead what Stoicism is about is what to do next, what to do after the involuntary impression

that has been given its moment.

As Donald Robertson writes in his wonderful book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, the

Stoic tells himself that although this situation may appear frightening, the truly important

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