Does How to Think Like a Roman Emperor help with grief?

How to Think Like a Roman EmperorDonald Robertson

Donald Robertson. Photograph by Zahra Louis, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Yes, once you can think again — and it is the most practical book on our shelf. It teaches one skill: how to notice a thought, and then decide what to do with it. It will not comfort you. It was never trying to.

What it is

Donald Robertson is a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist. The book uses the life and writings of Marcus Aurelius to teach Stoic practice — biography, philosophy and modern psychology in the same volume.

What it actually argues

The book is built as a life rather than a lecture. It follows Marcus Aurelius from boyhood to death, and each stage of that life is paired with a Stoic technique and then with its modern descendant in cognitive behavioral therapy. Robertson is explicit that this is not a coincidence: the founders of CBT cited Stoic philosophy directly, and he writes as a practicing therapist rather than as an enthusiast.

The techniques are concrete. Cognitive distancing — separating an event from your judgment about it, on the old Stoic line that we are disturbed not by things but by our opinions about them. The view from above — deliberately widening perspective until the thing fills less of the frame. Premeditation of adversity, which is rehearsing loss in advance so it does not arrive entirely unanswered. And the reserve clause: intending an outcome while holding it loosely, because the outcome was never yours.

Underneath all of it is the dichotomy of control — the division of everything into what is up to you and what is not. Robertson is careful about how narrow the "up to you" column actually is. It does not contain your health, your reputation, other people, or what happens to the people you love. It contains your judgments and your actions, and almost nothing else.

And the reason this book sits on a grief shelf rather than a self-improvement one is Marcus himself. He buried most of his children. Robertson does not pass over that or use it as inspiration — he shows a man writing the same reminders to himself over and over, for years, which is what somebody does when the thing has not been solved. You are not watching a serene man. You are watching someone practice, badly, on the bad days, and keep going.

What it was good for

Learning by worked example rather than by instruction.

You are not told to be calmer. You watch a man who buried most of his children do the actual work, in his own notebooks, badly on some days. He is not serene. He is practicing.

That distinction mattered to us more than any technique in the book. Stoicism is not about not feeling it. It is about what you do in the twenty seconds after you feel it.

Who this is wrong for, and when

Not in the first weeks. It is a training manual, and nobody can train in the first weeks.

Not if "be rational about this" is what people have already been doing to you. If you have been told to be strong by somebody who meant well, this book will sound like them. That is not their fault or the book's — the timing is just wrong.

Stoicism is routinely misread as not feeling things, and some people arrive at it hoping for exactly that. If what you want is a way to stop feeling your grief, this book will not provide it and should not be used to try.

If this one is not right for you

• Want the theory first? → The Happiness Hypothesis
• Want stillness instead of training? → Siddhartha
• The full list, sorted by how far along you are → The Shelf

Our note — from Austin’s family

This is the one that showed us what training a mind actually looks like. Not an idea about being calm — the examples, from people who were doing it under real pressure. We came back to it more than once.

Common questions

Is Stoicism useful for grief?

It can be, but not early. Stoic practice is a training method, and training requires capacity that early grief takes away. What it offers later is a way to notice a thought and decide what to do with it, rather than being carried by it.

Does Stoicism mean not feeling your grief?

No, and that is the most common misreading. Stoic practice is about what you do in the moments after a feeling arrives, not about preventing the feeling. Marcus Aurelius, who buried most of his children, wrote the same reminders to himself for years — which is what somebody does when a thing has not been solved.

Is this book connected to cognitive behavioral therapy?

Yes, directly. Donald Robertson is a practicing cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, and Stoic philosophy is one of the acknowledged historical roots of CBT. That is why the book reads as method rather than inspiration.

Last reviewed October 2026. We make nothing from this recommendation. There are no affiliate links on this page. See our editorial and sourcing policy.