I took part in this year’s Stoic Week – getting up at sunrise like Marcus Aurelius who advised: “Say to yourself first thing in the morning: I shall meet with people who are meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable. They are subject to these faults because of their ignorance of what is good and bad.”

A survey taken before the week and repeated after showed my life satisfaction rose by 42 per cent and flourishing by 11 per cent as positive feelings, as recorded by the questionnaire, conquered negative ones. I wrote about the experience here:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/five-lessons-of-stoicism-what-i-learned-from-living-for-a-week-as-a-stoic-1.4392422