Askesis — Voluntary Hardship
This week's concept is askesis (the Greek word, pronounced "ah-SKEH-sis"), which simply means voluntary hardship: the practice of deliberately choosing difficulty in order to build the character and strength that fortune cannot give you and cannot easily take away. It is not self-punishment or performance; it is training, the same way an athlete trains, except the goal is a well-ordered soul rather than a stronger body. By the end of this week you will understand what askesis is, why the Stoics thought it was non-negotiable, and how to weave it into ordinary days without turning your life into a monastery.
Passage
For who is the man in training? He is the man who practises not employing his desire, and practises employing his aversion only upon the things that are within the sphere of his moral purpose, yes, and practises particularly in the things that are difficult to master. And so different men will have to practise particularly to meet different things.
— Epictetus, Discourses 3.12.8
Reflection
Epictetus sharpens the definition of askesis considerably here. Training is not generic toughening; it is the deliberate practice of directing desire and aversion toward the right targets, meaning things inside your own moral purpose rather than things outside your control. He adds something practical: different people need to train against different weaknesses. If anger is your soft spot, you practice patience in situations that provoke anger. If comfort-seeking pulls you off course, you practice going without comfort. Askesis, in other words, is diagnostic before it is prescriptive: you have to know where you are soft before you know where to train.
Go deeper
Where in your life does your desire or aversion most reliably pull you away from how you actually want to behave, and what would it look like to practice against that specific pull?
Practice
Name Your Training Target
Take seven minutes. Think of a situation from the past week where you reacted in a way you later regretted or found weak. Write two or three sentences describing what your desire or aversion was doing in that moment. Then write one sentence naming the specific thing you would need to practice to handle it better next time. Keep this note; you will return to it later in the week.