Handbook for Holiday Wellbeing

It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times…that’s right, the holidays are here!

While many of us enjoy the festivities of the season, it also brings opportunities to overindulge in food, drink, and gifts. Or perhaps your greatest challenge is dealing with difficult family relationships, or the stresses of traveling and an overloaded schedule.

To help you stay focused on Stoic wellbeing, here are a few helpful quotes from the ancient Stoics. You can keep these in mind for whenever you need to resist sweet temptations, stay moderate in your desires, and maintain your equanimity in the face of holiday challenges.

Enjoy the season, and we’ll see you in 2025!

Moderation in Gift-giving

Philosophy teaches that we should be above pleasure and greed. It teaches that we should love frugality and avoid extravagance. It accustoms us to be modest and to control our tongue. It brings about discipline, order, decorum, and on the whole fitting behavior in action and in habit. If these things are present, they make a person dignified and self-controlled. - Musonius Rufus

It was nature's design that no great equipment is needed for living well; each and every individual is capable of making themselves happy. External goods have trivial importance and exert little influence in one direction or the other. - Seneca

Moderation in Eating

When you have savories and fine dishes set before you, you will gain an idea of their nature if you tell yourself that this is the corpse of a fish, and that the corpse of a bird or a pig; or again, that fine wine is merely grape juice, and this purple robe some sheep's wool dipped in the blood of a shellfish…Thoughts such as these reach through to the things themselves and strike to the heart of them, allowing us to see them as they truly are. - Marcus Aurelius

The goal of eating is to bring about both health and strength. Consequently, one should eat only inexpensive foods and should be concerned with decency and appropriate moderation and, most of all, with restrained and studious behavior. - Musonius Rufus

Equanimity in Relationships

If we place the good in right choice, the preservation of our relationships itself becomes a good. And besides he who gives up certain external things achieves the good through that. “My father's depriving me of money.” But he isn't causing you any harm. “My brother is going to get the greater share of land.” Let him have as much as he wishes. He won't be getting any of your decency, will he, or of your loyalty, or your brotherly love? -Epictetus

“My brother shouldn't have treated me in this way.” Indeed he shouldn't, but it's for him to see to that. For my part, however he treats me, I should conduct myself towards him as I ought. For that is my business, and the rest is not my concern. In this no one can hinder me, while everything else is subject to hindrance. - Epictetus

Dealing with Stress

Be like the headland, with wave after wave breaking against it, which yet stands firm and sees the boiling waters round it fall to rest. “Unfortunate am I that this has befallen me.” No, quite the contrary: “Fortunate am I, that when such a thing has befallen me, I remain undisturbed, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of what is to come.” For such a thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have remained undisturbed in the face of such a blow. - Marcus Aurelius