The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living

Great journal

This is a brilliant tool for sentence of paragraph journalling, it is divided into weeks, a stoic practice presented on a page at the beginning of the week with a few paragraphs outlining it and three or more supporting quotations from famous stoics (for instance Week IV: A Little Better Every Day, with supporting quotations from Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus), with each day divided into space to write a Morning Reflection and an Evening Reflection and a question as a prompt alongside the date (for instance, January 22, What Bad Habit Did I Curb Today?; January 23rd, Which of my possessions own me?; January 24th, Am I doing deep work?).There is a four or five page introduction which is divided into a general introduction about stoicism and a two and a bit direction on how to use the journal best. There is an excellent bibliography and references, after a fashion, included also at the end of the book, I found this interesting because it goes beyond the "usual suspects", such as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus, mentioning Publilius Syrus, who I previously had not heard of prior to reading this reference.This selection of sources both interested and surprised me, prior to its inclusion the main reference was to the Daily Stoic book, which is a good read from the same author and planned as a companion volume, this selection includes a more than one reference for or about individuals who have applied Stoicism in circumstances similar to those of the original stoics, ie conditions of war, immanent death or maiming, low intensity conflicts.This is a nice hardback bound notebook besides, it also provides enough space for making a note, more than some smaller "single line" or "one sentence a day" journals, its not full blank pages though so you have to consider what you plan to write, and it contains pages for each day of the year. Allowing the collecting of a years worth of notes and reflections. It also provides a format, like plenty of these journals do, which you can continue to use once you have filled the book and having filled the book its likely the format will remain memorable and the habit of making reflective notes AM and PM stick after that time.In the past I've kept a small hardback edition of Seneca's Letters of Stoic in order to read a chapter a day and I have kept reflective journals, personally and professionally for a couple of years now, also I've kept journals of responses to prompt questions (either provided in books such as "If" and "If: Questions for the soul" or online generators) in the past, this Journal combines all these activities in a single place. Recommended.

I’ve decided to rewrite this since other reviews have covered the layout and structure, and all I feel I need to add is that the book itself is very attractive and robust with good paper. I thought it would be more useful to detail the ways in which the book has helped me:-Firstly, it has been an excellent introduction to journalling. It’s something that I’ve been aware of for some time, and had actually decided to do more recently, yet months had passed and I had still not made any progress. Luckily this book came out at a time when I had renewed my interest in the practice. I currently leave it on the desk near my bed so I always pick it up in the morning and before going to sleep, it has been relatively easy to make the daily entries except for on the odd occasion when I was pressed for time.Secondly, and perhaps most obviously it has helped with the practice of stoicism (I'm using it alongside the Daily Stoic book - although the journal can be used standalone). Sometimes the reflection or quote just hits the mark, it’s application becomes obvious as you encounter something during the day, or it helps you to think in a better way about something that has been troubling you.The third benefit is slightly more nebulous but I’ll have a go at explaining it. The daily entries encourage reflection (I should also say that I practice mindfulness meditation) and within these you somehow begin to refine your thoughts.Perhaps you you occasionally feel bad about something, or don’t behave as you’d like to, but you don’t really know what’s going on, and you just kinda forget about it and then it happens again, but theres no real reason. Sometimes you pay attention to it, sometimes you don’t. This could be something that really troubles you, or just something relatively petty, but you know something is not quite right… But once you start paying attention, and start thinking, and start writing, and asking questions, you begin to chip away at whats there, its just a kind of background process, you’re not actively working on it, but you’re asking the right questions... And then it clicks, it could be a few things that come together that explain it, and the answer seems so well articulated that you’re surprised you came up with it. It’s pretty powerful stuff.Anyway I highly recommend this book, its a great way to get into the habit of journalling, with all the benefits of stoic thinking.

This book is a journal and a study aid for people who wish to understand stoicism. So you might have to read some of the authors other books to get a real benefit from this. This stoic stuff is good, it can really change your life. Get his other books and start studying it's really life changing.

This book has interesting prompts for daily journaling. Since the intention is to get the reader to reflect on life, I'd say this is a big plus. However, I personally dislike writing in books, so feel that the extra pages added for this purpose are unnecessary - I'd much rather they kept the book slimmer and cheaper instead of having pre-arranged writing lines (whose space you might want to exceed in any case).

This book is full of questions; it's a handy journal if you're interested in self-reflection, growth and the Stoic philosophy

I’m a huge Ryan Holiday fan. I have read most of his books, subscribe to his newsletter and to ‘The Daily Stoic’ website which he is heavily involved in. I was always a philosophy fan, but not for the sake of it, because many aspects of it make sense to me. Stoicism is the branch of philosophy that makes the most sense to me. I use this journal everyday in conjunction with ‘The Daily Stoic’ book. This book contains wisdom from the most famous Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, Epitetus, and Seneca. These daily snippets of wisdom I use to live a better life. I have found it really helpful and combining this with my own journaling, I now understand the things I can control in my life and the things I can’t, I have become much more resilient and more accepting of what life brings. I highly recommend this to anyone that wants to live a virtuous life and who wants to learn resilience.