How Stoics Find Ideal Mentors

Worthwhile mentors are hard to come by, but Stoics need never be without one.

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When you’re facing a problem or feeling stuck, imagine the example of the ideal wise man or woman and how they’d cope with your challenge.

Consider the examples of Socrates and the Stoics Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, or Zeno. Maybe your exemplars are historic figures like Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King, or Victor Frankl. If you study their words and actions often enough, you’ll start to intuit how they’d respond to your problem.

Better yet, have a whole toolbox of wise men and women to call on, each bringing a unique perspective and skill set that can be matched with the challenge at hand.  

“Happy also is he who can so revere a man as to calm and regulate himself by calling him to mind!” the philosopher Seneca writes. “…Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you; picture him always to yourself as your protector or your pattern. For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.”

In other words, ask yourself: What would Marcus Aurelius do?