Stoic Week asks you to live like a Stoic for seven days. This page gives each of those days one small, concrete exercise in the skill everything else rests on: telling what is yours from what is not.
Stoic Week is organised every year by Modern Stoicism; in 2026 it runs from Monday 26 October to Sunday 1 November, online and free. This page is not part of it and not affiliated with it. It is a companion you can do alongside it, or in any other week.
Each day has three parts: a situation to cut into what is yours and what is not, a line from the ancient sources, and a question for the evening. The evening questions follow Seneca, who wrote that every night, once the lamp was out and his wife had fallen silent, he went over his whole day and everything he had said and done.
Take the two minute check and note your score. On the last day you take it again.
Most frustration starts in the gap between what you wanted and what happened. Today, sort that gap instead of only feeling it.
What did I want today that was never mine to get, and what did I do that was?
Criticism arrives in two parts: what was said, and what you make of it. Only one of them is yours.
Which remark today did I carry longer than it deserved?
Fear lives on outcomes that have not happened yet. The line for today is the one many people think Seneca never wrote. Read how it really is.
What did I suffer today that has not happened yet?
Other people's moods are the thing we most often try to steer and cannot.
Where did I try to manage someone else's feelings instead of my own conduct?
Time rarely goes in large blocks. It goes in small pieces, most of them handed out on request.
Which hour did I give away today, and to whom?
Wanting feels as if it points forward. Often it only points at the next thing to want.
What did I want today, and would getting it really have changed anything?
The last day widens the view: to a world you cannot fix, and to the part of it that is yours. Hierocles pictured it as circles around you.
What did I do today for someone in an outer circle?
Then take the check again and compare it with your first score.
The week ends; the practice does not. The practice section has more than four hundred situations and propositions, the situation pages have every cut worked out, and the page on Hierocles explains the circles from the last day.
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases · About this site · Questions or suggestions