Stoicism
Focus on what's yours. Meet the rest with dignity.
A 2,300-year-old operating manual for the mind. Sort the world into what you control and what you don't, practice four cardinal virtues, and treat every event as material for character.
A working philosophy, not a mood.
Stoicism is a Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens around 300 BC. Its core claim is small and severe: virtue is the only real good, and living well means using our capacity for reason to navigate what we can control while calmly accepting what we cannot.
It isn't stiff-upper-lip repression. It's the opposite — a practice of seeing what's actually here, feeling it fully, and choosing your response on purpose instead of by reflex.
Four ideas that do most of the work
- 1
The Dichotomy of Control
Epictetus's foundational move. Sort every situation into two piles: what's up to you (your thoughts, choices, actions) and what isn't (other people, outcomes, the past). Peace begins where you stop trying to control the second pile.
- 2
The Four Cardinal Virtues
Wisdom (seeing clearly), Courage (facing what's hard), Justice (treating others fairly), and Temperance (self-control). Every moral question in Stoicism collapses back into one of these four.
- 3
Amor Fati — Love of Fate
Not tolerating what happens. Loving it. Every event, favorable or brutal, is material for character. This is how the Stoic turns a setback into a gym.
- 4
Premeditatio Malorum — Premeditation of Evils
Rehearse what could go wrong before it does. Not to worry — to disarm the shock. Most disasters, seen ahead of time, become survivable.
The voices worth reading
Phoenician merchant who lost everything in a shipwreck and started teaching on Athens' Painted Porch — the stoa that named the school.
Born a slave. Taught that freedom is entirely internal. His student's notes became the Discourses and the Enchiridion.
Roman statesman and playwright. His Letters from a Stoic are the most practical, humane entry point.
Roman Emperor who kept a private journal while on military campaign. Published posthumously as Meditations.
Start here
- Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
- Letters from a Stoic — Seneca
- Discourses and Selected Writings — Epictetus
Turn on the practice inside your Sets
When on, four Sets quietly surface a Stoic prompt at the moment it's useful — none of them change your existing flow. You can turn it off any time.
- Reorient asks whether what's pulling you off center is in your control before it hands you a principle.
- Trigger Repair adds one sub-prompt in Step 2: "What part of this was yours to hold?"
- Weekly Review reframes the Lessons prompt around Amor Fati — what did you resist that turned out to be material?
- Daily Record Section F offers a Premeditatio primer: what could go wrong tomorrow, and how would you meet it?
- Values Compass gets a one-tap "Load the Four Virtues" button in setup and edit mode — always available, no toggle needed.
Make a Model through the Stoicism lens
Sorts the work by what's actually yours to control, and builds character from the rest.
Start a Model on Stoicism →Switch the overlay on above and a short reflective line appears inside each of these Sets. Nothing is stored separately; you answer it in the Set's own words.