You’ll be practicing three separate skills this week, though they can be summarized in just two words: sympathize stealthily.

The first skill to practice is sympathy. Whenever you encounter somebody who is experiencing joy or trouble, take a few moments to try to understand where they’re coming from. The skills you learned back in Week 4 may help you see things from another’s perspective.

Once you see their perspective, congratulate them on their successes and sympathize with their failures—but without offering advice, whether it be Stoic or any other kind. The challenge is remembering to sympathize instead of “Stoic-ize.” Write an implementation intention to help you remember.

In the Enchiridion, Epictetus offers advice similar to Seneca’s, but adds an important caveat, asking his students not to “groan inwardly” when sympathizing with others’ pain.¹ Neither Seneca nor Epictetus would advise empathizing with others’ feelings for reasons we discussed back in Week 3. Your goal is to see things from another’s perspective—not to feel what they feel—and to listen instead of talk.

Seneca also cautions against using Stoicism to pass judgment on other people. Over the course of the week you may have initial judgmental thoughts about other people concerning their character or behavior. These initial thoughts are outside of your control—to a large extent, they’re automatic. However, whether you believe them or not is within your control.

The second skill to practice this week is catching and challenging any judgmental thoughts. Start this process by creating an implementation intention for when you catch yourself in a judgmental thought, for example: If I catch myself judging someone, I’ll say to myself: I don’t know all the reasons for their behavior. If you are at a loss for what to say, see some suggestions from Marcus in Week 25. Write an implementation intention to help you challenge your own judgmental thoughts.

The final skill to practice this week would be especially useful to Lewis: Do your utmost to not mention your Stoic practice, and don’t give Stoic advice to anyone this week. Create an implementation intention to help you remember to practice your Stoicism stealthily when you feel the urge to offer Stoic advice.

As usual, review these implementation intentions each day to refresh your memory if you feel the need, and take a minute or two to mentally rehearse executing each one.

In A Guide to the Good Life, modern Stoic William Irvine recommends practicing stealth Stoicism in order to avoid mockery. We recommend stealth Stoicism for another reason: It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that you’re practicing Stoicism simply by talking about it and by calling yourself a Stoic. As we mentioned earlier, actions speak louder than words, and right now you are practicing the Discipline of Action, not the Discipline of Talking a Lot About Stoicism.

Practicing stealth Stoicism, challenging judgmental thoughts, and sympathizing all work in concert to help bring the focus to your own thoughts and feelings in order for you to become a more prosocial, virtuous person. These skills shift your focus inward rather than on other people. After all, you have control over your own thoughts and actions, so it’s most useful to put your attention there. The world has more than enough ways to judge other people already. It’s our hope that Stoicism doesn’t get added to that list.

This week’s practice involved three different skills, all working toward the goal of bringing your attention to your own actions, rather than using Stoicism to judge or advise others. Did you find focusing inward challenging? Did you remember to practice these skills? If so, how did it go? Take a few minutes to reflect on your practice this week.

Next week’s exercise will continue the theme of focusing on yourself to help you act more prosocially.