The Stoic Story of: Alex Nielsen

Hi there! My name is Alex and I’m a big fan of Stoicism. I work as a Strength Coach, teacher, and at a wastewater treatment plant at a big chemical plant. 

And Stoicism helps me every day!

Check out Alex’s Social Media content here.

When I didn’t know

When I started to think about how my Stoic journey began, it was easy to think back to when I started writing online. But when I kept thinking about it, everything started with the Swedish podcast 25 Minutes.

Around 2015-2016, I started listening to this podcast with the hosts Karl-Mikael Syding and Ludvig Sunström. They talked about all perspectives of Personal Development, from Financial advice (Syding was the European Hedge Fund Manager of the Decade) to deeply philosophical thoughts.

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Although I didn’t know it was Stoicism, I started to embrace it and live by some of its core virtues and values. Also, Sunström mentioned a book he read, read, and re-read many times called Meditations.

I didn’t pick it up back then, but that would change…

When I started to write

In 2021, I challenged myself to publish 30 atomic essays in 30 days. I met many new people who I call close friends today. Many of them wrote about Stoicism, and I became more and more interested in it.

I slowly started to understand that this is close to how I’ve lived my life for 6-7 years and wanted to learn more. I kept reading all these atomic essays my new friends posted. 

But I still felt like an imposter (I still do occasionally). I had to tell myself that Stoicism isn’t a philosophy for the enlightened. It’s a practical philosophy for everyday people. 

A philosophy focusing on the journey and practice every day.

Now, I was ready to take the next step and implement all the Stoic tools into my life.

And it was perfect timing cause my new writing buddy Michael McGill just launched his Stoicism course.

When the daily drip of Stoicism started

I signed up and sat eagerly with my notebook while Michael gave me great lessons. Exactly what I wanted: many practical tools that I could implement into my life when I needed them.

But Michael kept talking about the “Daily Drip of Stoicism”. 

Slowly, I started to understand that all the tools I got weren’t the greatest takeaways from the course.

No, “The Daily Drip of Stoicism” was then, and still is, the most crucial mindset I have. 

See, all the books and ancient philosophers teach you so many great things and tools. But if you aren’t ready to implement the right tool or mindset at the right time, it doesn’t matter. Life is challenging, and most things happen fast, and you have to act or react in a short time frame. I’m not sure about you, but it’s hard to think about a great tool to use when something challenging occurs in life. 

This is why Michael’s lesson of getting dripped by Stoicism every day was so great. If I read, listen, discuss, or think about Stoicism for a short time every single day, it will always be on top of my mind.

And this makes it many times easier to use the right tool or mindset in new situations.

Is this something I can control? Am I living in the present? Am I a coward now?

When I started to talk about Stoicism

Now, I was totally blown away by the power of the Stoic mindset. But I was still a total novice. I hadn’t read the ancient Stoics and only had Michael McGills’ words to refer to. 

And I got an idea. Twitter Spaces was a brand new thing, and since Twitter was the main platform my writing buddies and I used, I wanted to talk about Stoicism there. But did I know enough about Stoicism to talk about it for 1-2 hours every week? No, I didn’t. Was my English good? Hell no. 

Then it struck me. Courage is one of the four core virtues of Stoicism. Stoicism is, after all, a journey. And what better place to practice my English than in front of many people for a few hours a week?

I have to do it!

I called my writing buddy Sam to discuss it, and he wanted to join me on this journey. And we had a go!

We decided to start talking about journaling, and in the first episode, we met many great minds who taught me so much. If you found this article, you might know two of them. Yes, you guessed it. Brice and Benny were there from day one.

This period is probably when my knowledge of Stoicism really took off. Since I hosted the spaces, I had to prepare and read a lot. I consumed content from the ancient Stoics and from people like Donald Robertson and Ryan Holiday. This alone taught me a lot. Then, we spent almost two hours every week discussing it and finding nuances.

If I got the Daily Drip of Stoicism before, it was nothing compared to this.

I’ve never felt better since my mindset nowadays prepares me for all kinds of issues in life. Sure, there can still be hard times, but now I’m prepared for them.

Now Stoicism truly helps me in life.

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