Stoicism Day to Day: Work, Money, Love and Family

Why these four areas

The ancient Stoics wrote about the life they knew: households, slaves, public office, dinner parties, exile. Much of it translates directly. Epictetus’s lectures on roles, Seneca’s letters on wealth and friendship, Marcus Aurelius’s notes on dealing with difficult colleagues all speak to modern readers with surprisingly little adjustment.

We focus on four areas because they share a structure. In each of them you have real responsibility and real influence, and in each of them the outcome is not yours alone. That combination produces most of the stress in ordinary life: you care a great deal, you can do a lot, and you still cannot guarantee the result. The Stoic tools were built for exactly that.

The tools that apply everywhere

Three ideas from the theory part of the site do most of the work in daily life.

The dichotomy of control. In every situation, separate the part that is entirely yours (your effort, honesty, tone, preparation) from the part that is not (other people’s choices, timing, luck). Put your energy into the first. See the dichotomy of control.

Roles. Epictetus taught that your duties are found in your relationships: as a son or daughter, a parent, a colleague, a citizen, a neighbor. The question “what does my role require here?” usually has a clearer answer than “what should I do?” See Epictetus on roles and duties.

The reserve clause. Commit fully to an action, but add mentally “if nothing prevents it”. You will do everything to make the project succeed, if nothing prevents it. This keeps effort high and disappointment manageable. See the reserve clause.

Work

Most people spend more waking hours at work than anywhere else, and most workplace stress is about things outside our control: decisions from above, colleagues’ behavior, clients’ moods, reorganizations, markets.

The Stoic approach has three parts.

• Judge yourself by your work, not by recognition. Did you do the job well and honestly? That is yours. Whether anyone noticed is not.
• Treat difficult people as Marcus Aurelius did. Every morning he reminded himself that he would meet the meddling, the ungrateful and the arrogant, and that they act from ignorance, not malice he needs to take personally. This does not mean tolerating abuse. It means not letting their behavior decide yours.
• Do not make your job your identity. A role is something you play well, not something you are. The Stoics would see a person whose whole worth depends on a job title as dangerously exposed.

For leaders, the Stoic emphasis is on example and fairness rather than control. More in Stoicism at work and Stoic leadership.

Money

The Stoics were not against money. Seneca was one of the richest men in Rome. Marcus Aurelius ran an empire’s finances. Their view was that wealth is a preferred indifferent: reasonable to seek and to keep, useful for doing good, but not part of what makes a life good, and never worth acting badly for.

In practice this suggests a calm, unglamorous approach to personal finance. Spend on what serves your life, not on what signals status. Keep enough of a margin that a setback does not force you into bad choices. Do not let financial worry, or financial ambition, take over your attention. And remember Seneca’s warning that the poor person is not the one who has too little, but the one who wants more.

More in Stoic finance: money as a preferred indifferent and Seneca on wealth.

Couples

Relationships are where the dichotomy of control is hardest to apply and most necessary. You cannot control how your partner feels, thinks or behaves. You can control how you treat them, how honestly you speak and how you respond when things go wrong.

The Stoics have a reputation for coldness here, largely because of passages like Epictetus’s advice to remind yourself, when you kiss someone you love, that they are mortal. Read in context, these are not instructions to love less. They are reminders to love what is actually there, a free, mortal human being, rather than a possession. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus’s teacher, described marriage as a partnership in which husband and wife should share everything and care for each other, in sickness and health, which was unusually warm and egalitarian for his time.

More in Stoicism in relationships: loving without owning.

Parenting

Parenting may be the clearest example of partial control there is. You have enormous influence over a child, and none over the person they will choose to become. Many parents suffer from treating the second as if it were the first.

The Stoic position is that your duty as a parent is fully yours: to provide, to teach, to set an example, to protect and to love. The result of that duty, the adult your child becomes, is shared with the child, their friends, their temperament and chance. Doing your part well is the measure. Seneca and Marcus Aurelius both lost children, and what they wrote on the subject is some of the most painful and humane in the tradition.

More in Stoic parenting: raising children without controlling outcomes.

The limit: calm is not coldness

Every application above has a failure mode, and it is the same one. Stoic calm can turn into detachment: not caring at work, not engaging with a partner, not being present with children. That is a misreading. The Stoics held that human beings are made for each other, and that justice and kindness are part of virtue. Marcus Aurelius writes that we should be glad to do good to others the way a vine is glad to produce grapes, without expecting thanks.

If applying Stoicism is making you less involved with the people around you, something has gone wrong. The aim is to care well, not to care less.