COURSE

6 Stoic Tactics to Escape Negative Thought Loops

In this 7-day Stoic crash course in ancient Stoicism, you will discover the most important principles to will protect your mind from neurotic anxious thoughts, feeling like a victim when things don’t go your way, and the methodologies to pull yourself out of negative downward spirals. Sometimes you can do everything right and still be met with difficult days where you feel stressed and overwhelmed and nothing seems to work. In such situations, it’s useful to have clear potent psychological principles to immediately pull you out of despair and transmute negative thoughts into joy and peace, and that is the skill we will build together in this course.

Resilience Health & Happiness Wisdom Grounded Psychology Science Guided Imagery Visualization Stress Stress & Anxiety

Meet your Teacher

Jon Brooks

Cardiff, United Kingdom

Jon Brooks is a passionate teacher and practitioner of Stoicism. He uses his martial arts background in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to innovate new methods to learn and master this ancient philosophical blueprint for the good life.

7 Days

7.2k students

4.9 stars

11 min / day

Resilience

English

Lesson 1

The 9 Destructive Ways Your Mind Attacks Itself

In this lesson, we look at the 9 symptoms you experience during a negative thought loop, why they feel so challenging, and why we find it so hard to escape them. When you gain awareness about what’s going on in your mind when you are experiencing negativity, you will have a better understanding of what intervention you need to pull yourself out of it. Just as a doctor needs a diagnosis to administer the right prescription, you too need to know what is causing your suffering so you can intervene with the right Stoic tactic.

Lesson 2

Nothing External is Good or Bad

One of the key doctrines in Stoicism is what’s called The Dichotomy of Control. This simply means that there are some things in life that we are responsible for and some for which we are not responsible. In other words, some things are in our complete control and some things are not under our complete control. When we learn to differentiate properly between the two, we gain the amazing ability to know what to care about, what to spend energy trying to change, and what we out to accept with equanimity. Even though this practice at first feels counter-intuitive, when you grasp this insight, your mind will never see the world the same way again.

Lesson 3

Hardship is the Key That Unlocks Virtue

The Stoics did not view hardship and challenges in life as something to avoid at all costs. Instead, they saw them as opportunities for developing virtue and mental toughness. They thought that all human beings need a bit of adversity to grow, just as a muscle needs to be broken down before it can become stronger. When we adopt the same view of hardship as the ancient Stoics, our resistance to negative thoughts and situations softens, and we can start finding the silver lining in any experience.

Lesson 4

All Things Have a Price of Admission

Very often in life, we complain when things don’t go out way. If not outwardly, then usually inwardly. This is essentially the pattern of resistance: the unwillingness to accept reality for how it is, and the tension you feel between your current experience and the experience you wish you had. The ancient Stoics noted that many things in life have a “price of admission.” In other words, to get what you want you typically have to be willing to pay the price to get it, which is often an emotional or behavioral price. By thinking of life in these terms, we unlock a more rational view of our situation and release the delusional grip of victim mentality.

Lesson 5

View Your Difficulties From Above

The Stoics understood a very important psychological insight: when we personalize negative thoughts, they cause us to suffer more. When something we would classify as “bad” happens to a friend, we still care, but we also see the situation with calm reason. It is not a total catastrophe, but rather an obstacle to overcome. If we train ourselves to not take things so personally, to step out of our ego-based view of life, and see things from above, the sting is greatly removed from otherwise debilitating setbacks.

Lesson 6

Do Not Add Anything to First Impressions

Our mind is a double-edged sword. Many of the great parts of our psychology, bring with them a problem. Anxiety, for example, is an emotional state that can keep us alive. It can keep us safe. But this same lifesaving emotion can also keep us stuck and afraid of living fully. In this lesson, we look at how our innate drive to understand the world through story, can also be a source of irrational pain. When met with a difficult situation, our minds like to add extra story elements and flesh out the narrative, even when those details are illusory and unhelpful.

Lesson 7

Learn to Want What You Already Have

There are, broadly speaking, two ways to become happy in life. The first way is to chase after the things you want and acquire them. The idea with this method of happiness is that there is a gap between where we are and where we would like to be, and if we could close the gap we will achieve fulfillment. The other approach, one that the Stoics favored, was to train ourselves to want the very life we already living—to desire the possessions and relationships we have now. Always chasing things, they believed, leads us to become ungrateful for what we have and constantly look to the future for happiness in a way that resembles gambling with big highs and big lows. When you learn to consistently want what you already have, negative thoughts become just “thoughts.”

4.9 (575)

Recent Reviews

Mónica

January 5, 2026

It really helps to have the voice of ancient stages through modern means and interpretations. I am again very grateful for this course and happy to keep on listening. Thank you.

Damon

January 3, 2026

Fantastic!

Iain

January 1, 2026

Excellent.

Randy

December 16, 2025

Thank you for the very useful course utilizing the stoic philosophy.

Mary

December 7, 2025

Terrific course! Loved each lesson and the clear presentation of ideas, concepts, and history. Thoughtful and inspiring!

maggie

November 18, 2025

Outstanding! Perspective presented perfectly! Real tools I can understand and apply. The whole world is different 🌎

Jennifer

November 10, 2025

Very helpful. Thank you!

Kirsten

August 17, 2025

You have gathered a lot of information and presented it in a manner that makes it relevant and useful to me. I have tried many ways to deal with negative thoughts that spiral out of control…and the information you have provided has been the most useful. I need to do the daily practice and review The 6 Stoic Tactics from time to time… I pick up additional ideas…so I have to work at this… and again it is the most useful practice I have found. Thanks!!!

Jennifer

June 3, 2025

I love this way of thinking. Thank you.

Gary

May 2, 2025

Insightful and informative sessions that I may return to. Also, a view of life that I have favored, and in many respects adopted and recommended to my adult children and friends. I believe the concepts and practices described in these sessions contribute to mental and physical health.

Ryan

April 29, 2025

Amazing work!!

Liliana

April 26, 2025

Thank you for this course. I will revisit again. 💖

Orsolya

April 14, 2025

I absolutely love your courses. This was the second one I took, and now I’m hooked. Thank you for bringing these thoughts to Insight Timer.

Katrina

April 8, 2025

Transformative. I’m not a cryer but I guess I needed it. Really helped to put things into perspective for me.

Scott

April 6, 2025

A beautiful and extremely useful course that everyone could benefit from in some way, regardless of their situation or life experiences.

Lloyd

March 17, 2025

You presented an excellent course that can be used in my daily life. I appreciate what you’ve done and thank you, thank you, thank you!

Jamie

March 13, 2025

I really liked the examples you gave. I am a coach for teachers and they often get into negative thought patterns after feedback from peers. I liked having the rephrase it to what have I learned through this feedback and what changes can I make as a result to benifit a positive outcome

Chuck

March 7, 2025

Really great discussions on stoicism. I'll need to go through it a few times to digest the content.

Mari

March 7, 2025

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