Session Overview
Session One: Courage
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we
suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
~ Seneca
In this first session, we’ll examine the importance of courage, and what bravery means in a time like ours when we are confronted daily with threats to our own survival. How can we learn to cope with our fears? What steps can we take to strengthen our resolve rather than succumb to hopelessness? How does courage lead to emotional resilience and the ability to stand up again after we have been knocked down? As you’ll learn in this first lesson, courage looks different for everybody and bravery is an inside job.
Session Two: Justice
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
“What is bad for the hive is bad for the bee.”
~ Marcus Aurelius
In session two, we’ll turn to justice and the necessity of fairness in a well-lived life. Many people are suffering today from a growing sense of rampant injustice. Everywhere we turn, there’s evidence that fairness is no longer a priority in social discourse or public affairs. But how can we live with such blatant injustice? How does the conspicuous lack of fairness impact day-to-day well-being? In the era of cancel culture and public shaming, what does it mean to cultivate fairness and remember, as Marcus Aurelius points out, that “justice is the source of all the virtues.” This second lesson reveals the ironclad connection between fairness and flourishing.
Session Three: Temperance
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
“If you seek tranquility, do less.”
~ Marcus Aurelius
In Session Three, we’ll explore the virtue of temperance — the ability to be remain balanced, not excessive — including the relationship to our emotions. In roller-coaster times like these, it’s easy to lose self-control, to grow overly indulgent or dramatic, and fall prey to self-pity. But how can we temper our responses to turmoil and modulate our inner lives? In what ways do we need to cut back on exposure (to bad news consumption, for example) and protect our equanimity? Why do we mirror external chaos instead of choosing well-being and peace? This session helps you identify your tendencies toward excess and self-harm.
Session Four: Wisdom
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.”
~ Viktor Frankl
In Session Four, we’ll explore the virtue of wisdom, and the urgency of putting these principles into action. The ability to choose our responses to adversity — which Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl called “the last of the human freedoms” — lies at the heart of Stoic wisdom: understanding that happiness depends on how we react to events, not on events themselves. Why then do we give our power away to forces outside of us? How can we safeguard our autonomy and maintain an “internal locus of control?” What does it mean to choose one’s response to external threats, and how does this impact how we live? In this final lesson, you learn how wisdom can transform your perspective in times of uncertainty.
