Stoicism, Self-Examination & Living a Philosophy | Benny Voncken | EP76 The Josh Button Podcast
Stoicism, Self-Examination
& Living a Philosophy
& Living a Philosophy
2,300 Years Old. Still the Most Practical Framework on the Planet.
Benny Voncken is a Stoicism coach from the Netherlands, currently based in Athens — the city where the philosophy was born 2,300 years ago. He came to Stoicism through a combination of divorce, alcoholism, and an existential crisis that forced him to stop running from the questions he'd been avoiding. He found the Stoics at the right moment, immediately recognized himself in them, and spent the next several years building a coaching practice around helping others find the same clarity.
This conversation covers what Stoicism actually is (not what the internet thinks it is), why the popular "broicism" version gets it almost completely wrong, the distinction between Stoicism as a philosophy versus a set of life hacks, how Benny used it to stop drinking and rebuild after his marriage ended, the dichotomy of control as the single most useful mental tool he's found, and the practical coaching framework he's built through viastoica.com to help people find their own philosophy of life.
It is also one of the most personally resonant episodes of this podcast — two men comparing notes on the particular kind of growth that only comes after real collapse.
Philosophy isn't something that is very popular nowadays. And Stoicism has kind of gained in popularity — but is that the true philosophy, or is that the broicism part? Because the true philosophy is so much different. I always compare it to a Western, more pragmatic version of Buddhism.
— Benny VonckenWhat We Cover
What This Episode Covers
What to Walk Away With
- Stoicism is not what the internet thinks it is. The popular version — suppress your emotions, take the hit without flinching, the stiff upper lip — is a cultural misreading. The actual philosophy, as Benny describes it, is closer to a Western pragmatic version of Buddhism. It is about using virtue to guide your actions rather than letting emotions drive them. It is about self-examination, rational response, and living in accordance with nature. Feeling things is not un-Stoic. Not examining why you feel them is.
- The philosophy is a hard sell online because it doesn't promise quick results. There are no five steps. There is no protocol that transforms you in a week. Stoicism asks you to do the ongoing, uncomfortable work of self-examination — to look at who you are, why you react the way you do, what is actually driving your decisions — and to do it consistently, probably for the rest of your life. That is not a marketable headline. That is, however, what actually works.
- There is no virtue without struggle. This is not just a quote — it is the structural argument for why comfort-seeking at all costs produces a shallow existence. The Stoics make the same point directly: Seneca writes that you are unfortunate because you have never been unfortunate, never been tested, never had to show who you actually are. The obstacles are not the problem. They are the training. The framework doesn't just tolerate difficulty — it actively welcomes it as the only environment in which virtue can be practiced.
- If nobody is pushing back on the changes you're making, you're probably not making real ones. Both Josh and Benny arrived at this independently from the same experience: when you start actually changing, people around you get uncomfortable. When Benny stopped drinking, people told him he wasn't funny anymore. Not because he wasn't — because their own choices now felt exposed. As Josh puts it: if you're not getting the pushback, it's worth asking whether you're actually stepping out of line. The criticism is often confirmation.
- The dichotomy of control is the single most useful tool in the framework. Everything in your life falls into one of two categories: what you control, and what you don't. Your judgements, intentions, and responses — those are yours. The weather, other people's opinions, the outcomes of your actions — those are not. The Stoics don't say to ignore what falls outside your control. They say to stop directing your energy there. Focus on your sphere of influence and let the rest go. This is not passivity. It is precise targeting of effort.
- The Stoic archer story is the cleanest expression of this. You can train. You can have perfect equipment. You can aim with full focus and perfect breathing. The moment the arrow leaves your hand, whether it hits the target is no longer up to you. If you did everything in your power until that moment, the outcome belongs to the world, not to your failure. This is the frame Benny uses in coaching — it explains why he doesn't take it personally when a client doesn't do the work. He has done everything he could. The rest is not in his sphere.
- Readiness cannot be manufactured. You cannot be told about Stoicism before you are ready to hear it. Benny says directly: if someone had introduced him to the philosophy ten years earlier, he would have dismissed it immediately. The existential crisis, the divorce, the alcoholism — these were not just the backstory. They were the precondition for openness. Most people who find a framework that changes them describe the same thing: it arrived exactly when it needed to. This does not mean you wait passively for the crisis. It means the crisis creates the aperture.
- Philosophy goes deeper than self-help. Jordan Peterson's 12 rules have value — Benny acknowledges this directly. But they stop short of the deeper question: why am I doing this? Who am I when I do it? Why does this particular thing trigger me so reliably? Self-help gives you steps. Philosophy gives you a mirror. The mirror is more uncomfortable and produces more durable results. Benny's anxiety, overthinking, and tendency to worry have dropped dramatically — not because he found better coping strategies, but because he now understands what is driving those states well enough to address them directly.
- Writing for an audience — even a fictitious one — structures the mind in ways that private journaling often cannot. Benny's poems started as personal journaling. They got better, more precise, and more useful to him personally when he imagined someone else reading them. The same happened with his blogging. When you write for yourself, the mind wanders. When you write for another person, you are forced to make the thought coherent. That process of making a thought coherent for transmission is also the process of fully understanding it yourself. The audience is not the point. The discipline of clarity is.
The Four Stoic Virtues
Stoicism rests on the premise that virtue — not wealth, status, pleasure, or comfort — is the only true good. The four virtues are the framework through which the Stoics define what it means to live well.
Words Worth Carrying
The Full Conversation
What Stoicism Actually Is — and What It Isn't
Stoicism originated approximately 2,300 years ago in Athens. Its founder, Zeno of Citium, synthesised elements of Cynicism, Platonic thought, and other existing philosophical traditions into something new. The name comes from the Stoa Poikile — a covered walkway or porch — where Zeno walked up and down delivering his philosophy to whoever would listen. This was deliberate. Where Plato retreated into an academy for educated elites, Zeno brought philosophy back to the street, back to ordinary people. That populist origin is part of the DNA of Stoicism — it is a practical philosophy, designed to be lived, not just studied.
The modern misrepresentation Benny is most concerned with is what he calls "broicism" — the version of Stoicism that circulates in masculinity spaces online as a prescription for emotional suppression, relentless toughening, and refusing to acknowledge difficulty. This is almost the inverse of what the Stoics actually taught. The Stoics are deeply interested in emotions. They do not say to ignore them — they say to examine them. To ask why you are feeling what you are feeling, what judgement is producing the emotion, and whether that judgement is accurate. Feeling things is not un-Stoic. Being driven by feelings without examining them is.
Benny's Story — Divorce, Alcoholism, and the Hotel Room
He doesn't frame his path to Stoicism as a discovery story. It was a collapse story that happened to end with a discovery. A marriage ending. Alcoholism — not the kind driven by physical need, he explains, but by social anxiety, by needing to fit in with a group of men when he didn't know how, by the pressure of group identity. And then a specific morning in a Dubai hotel room after a team football brunch where anything goes, woke up to a room in chaos, looked in the mirror, and told himself: this is not going to be my life.
He made a list. No alcohol. Get in shape. Eat better. Become financially independent. He then spent a couple of years in Dubai living quietly, deliberately, reading heavily, building savings, making the choices that would give him the time and space to pursue what he was becoming. Dubai, he notes, helped — alcohol is harder to access there, which made the early removal of triggers much easier. He calls it living like a hermit for a couple of years. He calls it the foundation for everything that came after.
Woke up in a hotel room. Everything was chaos. Looked in the mirror. Said — out loud — this is not going to be who I want to be. If I keep doing this, I'm not going to be old. This is just going to go really bad, real fast. That was the moment. Not a plan. Not a program. A decision made to one's own reflection. The rest followed from there.
When You Stop, They Tell You You're Not Funny Anymore
Benny's account of sobriety backlash is one of the clearest articulations of this dynamic in the episode. When he stopped drinking, people around him told him he wasn't funny anymore. His read: it wasn't really about him. When someone in your circle makes a significant positive change that you haven't made, it holds up a mirror. It asks a question you didn't ask to be asked. The criticism is often a defense mechanism — an attempt to pull the person back into the baseline rather than examine what the baseline is.
Both Josh and Benny have experienced this from different directions. Both arrived at the same conclusion: if you're not getting pushback, you probably aren't making real changes. The friction is diagnostic. It means you've stepped far enough out of the pattern to make the pattern visible.
The Dichotomy of Control — The Most Practical Tool in the Framework
If Stoicism had one entry point for the uninitiated, Benny would probably point here. Epictetus — a former slave who became one of the most influential Stoic teachers — opens his handbook with the distinction between what is in our power and what is not. Judgements, intentions, desires, aversions — these are ours. Body, reputation, property, other people's behaviour — these are not. The Stoics are not saying to ignore what falls outside your control. They are saying to stop expending your finite energy on it as if you could control it. Redirect that energy to your sphere of actual influence.
Benny applies this directly in coaching. A client doesn't do the exercises between sessions. He can listen with full attention, ask the right questions, give the right practices, and hold them accountable. Beyond that, it is outside his sphere. He has done his part. The rest belongs to the client. This is not indifference — it is the precise allocation of effort that the philosophy asks for. And it is also, as he acknowledges, ongoing Stoic practice for the coach himself every single session.
Philosophy vs Self-Help — The Deeper Question
Benny has thought carefully about where self-help ends and philosophy begins. His read: self-help gives you the steps but not the why. You can follow twelve rules for life and improve along several measurable dimensions. But if you haven't answered the deeper question — why am I doing this? who am I when I do it? why does this thing keep triggering me? — the steps eventually run out of steam. Philosophy is the ongoing examination that self-help books often promise but rarely deliver, because they are structured as finite programs rather than as lifelong practices.
The Stoic foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy is not incidental to this point. CBT works precisely because it takes the Stoic insight — that it is not events but our judgements about events that disturb us — and operationalises it as a therapeutic technique. Benny's coaching reaches back behind the CBT layer to the original philosophy and asks the harder questions CBT was designed to make more accessible.
Writing as Stoic Practice — Poetry, Journaling, and the Fictitious Audience
Benny's Instagram contains what people call poetry — he doesn't claim the title, but accepts it. It started as journaling: five to ten minutes in the morning or afternoon, working through what he was struggling with, what he felt good about, what the day had surfaced. The poems emerged from that practice over time, with their own rhythm and structure, not as art for art's sake but as a method of making thoughts legible to himself.
The shift happened when he started writing as if for an audience — even a fictitious one of unknown size. That single change imposed structure. It forced him to make the thought coherent enough for another person to follow. And that process of coherence-for-transmission is also, he finds, the process of fully understanding something himself. The same dynamic drove his blogging: when he wrote just for himself, the mind wandered freely. When he imagined someone else reading it, the mind had to organise. Both practices are Stoic in their logic — the examined thought, made visible, examined again.
Where to Start with Stoicism
- Meditations — Marcus Aurelius Personal diary of the Roman emperor, never meant to be published. Short excerpts. The most accessible entry point to primary Stoic texts. Essential.
- Letters from a Stoic — Seneca Letters written to a friend on how to live. Practical, direct, occasionally funny. One of the most readable ancient philosophical texts in existence.
- Discourses & Enchiridion — Epictetus The former slave who became the most influential Stoic teacher. The Enchiridion (handbook) is 52 short sections. Begin here if you want the foundational framework in the most compressed form.
- How to Think Like a Roman Emperor — Donald Robertson Contemporary author based in Athens. Accessible, psychologically-informed introduction to Marcus Aurelius and Stoic practice. Recommended by Benny as a beginner's bridge to the ancient texts.
- How to Live a Good Life — Massimo Pigliucci Philosopher and author based in Athens. Academic who practices what he teaches. Another contemporary bridge to the ancient philosophy.
- Introduction to Existentialism — Robert Olson The book that introduced Benny to Stoicism by contrast — a survey of existentialism, absurdism (Camus), Sartre, and the Stoics. Benny says reading the Stoics chapter made him immediately recognise himself.
- Via Stoica — Beginner's Guide & Quote Library viastoica.com — reading recommendations, stoic practices, free consultation
Stoicism coach. Dutch, currently based in Athens. Former teacher in Dubai. Came to Stoicism through divorce, alcoholism recovery, and an existential crisis that produced an immediate recognition when he encountered the ancient texts. Has been studying and applying the philosophy for years and building coaching practice Via Stoica to help others find their own philosophy of life. Offers one-on-one coaching (four to twelve sessions), group workshops, and has taught Stoicism in both English and Dutch. Currently developing in-person offerings in Athens. Also hosts the Via Stoica podcast and writes regularly on the philosophy. Has two modes: Stoic coach and enthusiastic cat-sitter.
Stay Dangerous. Stay on the Mats.
Stoicism is a philosophy of hard-won resilience. So is jiu jitsu. If you're a midlife athlete who trains to stay dangerous, sharp, and hard to kill — the free Midlife Grappler's Survival Guide was built for you.
Get the Free Guide Or comment GUIDE on any @thatjiujiteiro post — we'll DM it instantly.Note — This episode is a philosophical conversation for educational and personal development purposes. Nothing discussed constitutes mental health treatment or professional counselling. If you are dealing with addiction, depression, or a mental health crisis, please reach out to a qualified professional.
