Modern entrepreneurial culture has absorbed many Stoic lessons. Founders are told to endure uncertainty, control their reactions, persist through failure, ignore criticism, remain disciplined, and accept that outcomes are never fully within their control. These are valuable and timeless lessons for anyone trying to do hard things. Anyone who undertakes to build a company will…
I have considered Stoicism and Epicureanism as responses to two different forms of working life. Stoicism seemed especially well suited to the perspective of the office or factory worker: the person who works inside a company, school, government agency, nonprofit, hospital, or other institution whose purposes and structures were created by others. The employee benefits…
Stoicism is fashionable again. Its language appears in business books, podcasts, athletic training, military culture, leadership seminars, and the daily routines of people trying to remain composed in an unstable world. Marcus Aurelius has become an unlikely modern celebrity. Epictetus is quoted by executives and coaches. The Stoic distinction between what is within our control…